why not release whatever there is of the 6 acts for 0.3.0

Since it's now clear that it won't leave early access until 2026-2027, and constantly repeating the same acts twice for each character is a mind numbing and humiliating experience that will make players even more dissatisfied with the game?

I assume the idea is to release the 4-5-6 acts for 1.0 but that'd be crazy with these slow updates.

For me it does not matter if some NPCs are not voice acted or written yet, textures are missing, bosses don't move... just make sure the weapon set points and permanent bonuses are there.

im actually kind of shocked because at first it seemed like they had the acts basically ready and were going to drip feed them to us one at a time during a 6 month EA but, apparently not? they still haven't released a new act or anything, how is that even possible? they really oversold this game.

In a recent interview Jonathon suggested a late 2025 release was still possible, on the grounds that if they finished the Acts and were able to launch maybe another class or two, there would then be enough content in the game for 1.0. The complete set of classes and more endgame content would then come later.

Given the fires they are currently having to put out and the mindset as revealed above, it doesnt seem likely they would release Acts 4-6 in a prototype form. I do agree that almost anything would be better than the current need to replay acts 1-3 again.

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Lexiture#9954 написал:

mind numbing and humiliating experience

You know no one is holding a gun to your head making you play a game, right? If you're at a point in your life where playing a game is "humiliating" you might want to find a different use of your free time.

They cut the acts short so they could make some, any, endgame for players to have in early access. I guess people will complain about literally anything in a game at this point.

Also, I'm sure everyone would be just delighted playing unfinished acts where bosses don't move and have missing textures. That wouldn't blow up the bug reports forum or anything.

They will release acts 4, 5, and 6 in one patch when they are all ready. I'm almost certain that will be before 1.0, and I'm sure they intend for that to be in calendar 2025.

They aren't releasing acts one at a time because cruel is a functional solution as it stands right now with 3 acts, but an extremely out of place one if you added a fourth act.

Consider the current flow of the campaign. You finish 3 acts, you enter a giant portal to the unknown, it takes you to act 1 again, then you finish the 3 acts again but this time there is an event that kicks off the endgame.

There likely isn't a good story beat at the end of act 4 that would let you insert cruel difficulty, and there is nothing about the end of act 2 cruel that would cleanly provide a transition into endgame. It would also feel strange playing Act 1 and 2 twice, but acts 3 and 4 only once. We also don't know the relative length of acts 4, 5, and 6, and we know the length of acts isn't uniform (act 3 is a LOT longer than acts 1 or 2) if act 4 is short, then a 1, 2, 3, 4, cruel 1, cruel 2 campaign might leave players well short of level 65 on average.

Similarly, 5 acts and then you replay act 1 in cruel would be potentially problematic. They want the story to make sense and feel right when you play through and they likely can't do that until all 6 acts are done, so we'll likely see them all at once.

There is no telling how close or far they are from having them all done. There is a solid chance act 4 was done and ready before 0.2.0 was launched.

I don't think the other acts are as far along as they originally thought. They needed to cut bits from the acts we do have to get them in for EA. Having everything done and ready for 1.0 by the end of the year is probably a best case scenario, but the amount of fixing / rework things need is going to push that out I'm guessing. Since the campaign acts are used for leveling before maps, I don't think there really is a way to release them in a state that is too incomplete.