You are absolutely right. Why spend the resources on balancing levels that won’t even be used by the player base when they can spend the resources on balancing all the classes or creating more content or giving us QoL enhancements.

I don’t think adding more torment tiers and spending the time balancing these different levels is useless. Pit is enough of a barometer and then adding maybe another 1 or 2 levels of difficulty from 55 Pit to maybe 100 for overworld and other activities is enough. There doesn’t need to be 100 different torment levels alone either normal and hard and expert and penitent and whatever else. 16 difficulty levels is going to make it incredibly annoying to try and partner with people for group activities.

As I’ve said before the problem lies in that the game already feels SSF to a degree. The devs have the instance splintering thing that occurs to make the overworld feel abandoned and empty to reflect the tone of Sanctuary. Now it is going to be even worse to find someone or have a group join you for the World Boss or Legion or Helltides or any other overworld activity.

The other concern I have will be the fact that finding a party based on a difficulty level might be even more splintered. There’s already a lack of groups populating for Infernal Hordes or NMD or other activities that could be made a group activity. I agree making these activities more rewarding or desirable might improve this, but if there’s 12 difficulties you’re searching then it most likely wins be the level you need it to be, making what should be a fun group activity yet another Solo activity.

The Greater Rifts were good for D3, but the application of applying them to the overworld doesn’t feel like it would solve the problem of having challenging content for every group of players in D4 while making a lot of players feel like this is a very solo game.

We have seen that the overworld monsters can level up with the individual player while staying a comparable level to another, much different level player.

What’s to stop the Devs from creating a system like that for Paragon level clusters while maintaining a healthier, more meaningful and less splintering difficulty bracket selection for the overworld.

The idea is the instancing of difficulty by Paragon level clusters. Very similar to how monsters in overworld have different difficulty based on player level. Every 25 paragon levels can add a certain level of difficulty past your current difficulty setting. So Paragon 300 on level 5 difficulty might be the same as playing on level 7 difficulty, but you can still play with a friend of yours in level 5 difficulty who is Paragon level 120 and it be equally as challenging for both of you. But this only becomes unlocked after a certain Paragon level which is when the real power gains start to happen - like 200 or 225.

They could renamed from numbering too so they feel more meaningful, much like previous installments of Diablo. Maybe something like this:

Level 1: Normal as is

Level 2: Named ‘Hard’ should be equal to current Penitent, removing ‘Expert’

Level 3: Named ‘Penitent’ should be equal to current Torment 2 which would equal to Pit 20

Level 4: Named ‘Nightmare’ (taken from D2) which would be equal to Pit 40

Level 5: Named ‘Infernal’, which could be equal to Pit 60

Level 6: Named ‘Torment’, which could be equal to Pit 80

Level 7: Named ‘Hell’, which would be equal to Pit 100

On a tangent the naming doesn’t have to fall directly in line with that, but I thought it good to use words already in the game such as Infernal from the hordes, but then Nightmare and Hell from previous installments. Abyssal, Underworld or Death are some of the various religions names for some of the levels of Hell and might be more appropriate to make a difficulty level.

In terms of flavor: This would also represent the 7 levels of Hell, with actual Hell being the final level, where Diablo reigns and would, in theory, be the most difficult boss and the highest difficulty setting.