Path of Exile vs Diablo 3 2017

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Necromael wrote:

Here is a super intelligent analysis of poe from side of a veteran d3 player on blizz forums, posted recently :

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I played POE last night through act 1, about level 15ish. The gameplay and questing was ok, but in the end it left a bad taste in my mouth.

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Never going back to POE again. Yuck!

Hate to be that guy, but I think PoE process of account making should have an Iq test.

And I also wonder... do you really need to follow a build guide to try and enjoy PoE on your first playthroughs?
I mean.. come on... just hit play and have fun with a skill you like... later on, if you get hooked, check guides and walkthroughs to maximize your play style.

Players have become so lazy.

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鬼殺し wrote:

...Is this even a relevant argument anymore? Blizzard dumped D3 ages ago to focus on games that actually make money in this post-ARPG age. Their latest effort was an obvious cash grab -- 15 bucks for a single fucking class? That's something I'd expect to see in a free to play mobile game, not a premium AAA buy to play product.

To be fair, they're still developing new content for the game, although at a very slow pace. Despite the lack of attention from Blizzard, D3 still has a playerbase returning each new season. 15 bucks is overpriced imo(7-8 would have been fair). However, it's silly to expect something like the necro pack for free like some people did, that's too much work that went into new art, animations, skills, items etc to be free content in todays greedy dlc market.

There is no new art, they literally recycled 99% of assets. Only necromancer character portraits and gear inventory models are new in whole pack.

5 people working on d3 can't come up with much content, only recycle and change numbers as they do.

I must applaud those employees, as they managed to make necromancer class with such a low budget while being understaffed, probably to keep their jobs.

d3 was designed as a casual game 'for the masses' and was a terrible sequel to d2
it had some interesting ideas, but they either got rid of those ideas altogether or kinda left them in embryo stage

aside from original inferno difficulty which had overtuned damage and forced players into creative ways to progress, theres nothing really memorable about d3. the good ideas were all small things. in 2017 d3 is like a corpse. there are dozens of arpgs from the 90s Id rather play over it. hell Id play d2 any time over it and I got burned out on d2 so many times.
d3 itemization suck, its goals suck, its gear availability is a full 180 from what it originally was. meh.

poe was designed as a 'hardcore arpg' from ground up, with complex and obfuscated mechanics, great itemization and a lot of new ideas, with a lot of them either improvements from D2 or just great additions to the genre altogether.

the further PoE goes in development cycle, the closer it gets to D3 in terms of accessibility and complexity and choices though. ProjectPT was pretty correct in his evaluation of the direction the game has been moving towards. there are some unexpected surprises along the way, such as 3.0 not being another huge power creep patch, which was welcome and deserving of a supporter pack, but overall the game in 2017 is not the game I fell in love with in 2013. if it werent for constant updates, todays poe is closer to d3 than it originally was.

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grepman wrote:

d3 was designed as a casual game 'for the masses' and was a terrible sequel to d2
it had some interesting ideas, but they either got rid of those ideas altogether or kinda left them in embryo stage

aside from original inferno difficulty which had overtuned damage and forced players into creative ways to progress, theres nothing really memorable about d3. the good ideas were all small things. in 2017 d3 is like a corpse. there are dozens of arpgs from the 90s Id rather play over it. hell Id play d2 any time over it and I got burned out on d2 so many times.
d3 itemization suck, its goals suck, its gear availability is a full 180 from what it originally was. meh.

poe was designed as a 'hardcore arpg' from ground up, with complex and obfuscated mechanics, great itemization and a lot of new ideas, with a lot of them either improvements from D2 or just great additions to the genre altogether.

the further PoE goes in development cycle, the closer it gets to D3 in terms of accessibility and complexity and choices though. ProjectPT was pretty correct in his evaluation of the direction the game has been moving towards. there are some unexpected surprises along the way, such as 3.0 not being another huge power creep patch, which was welcome and deserving of a supporter pack, but overall the game in 2017 is not the game I fell in love with in 2013. if it werent for constant updates, todays poe is closer to d3 than it originally was.

You know, I really thought it was going to be good. You probably played the d3 beta, I did, and the game just felt great. Little did we know they were going to gut every single RPG element out of it before it was released.

My only real memory about release D3 was the fact I had to play it one-handed. I had broke my right humeris(mouse arm) right before the game dropped, so I had to play the entire time with my left hand and all my skills on mouse buttons. And they dont make Nagas for left hands at that time. So I had some crappy g300 with 4 buttons on the top around the mouse clicks and thats how I had to play d3 in all its inferno glory. Needless to say repair costs raped my wealth, lol. My main memory of vanilla D3.

I've since played a season or 2 in the SSF D3 version and honestly its fun for a bit. Its not something you can play forever, but if you got nothing else going on and you catch a season start its not that bad to keep you occupied for a month or so.

I dont see PoE being much different. There has always been low choice. There is always OP builds that people use. Avatar of Fire. Discharge. Etc. They always exist. If you had choice it was because the game wasn't hard enough to punish you for bad choices. PoE has actually gotten harder over time, IMO. The only hardcore thing about early versions of PoE was if you messed up your tree you were screwed. The actual gameplay, clearspeed or not, has become harder. Since it has become harder, you cant just run any sort of trash like you used to be able to do.

Yes, trading and various things have become more accessable but that was bound to happen. Its what people want. In the end vision has to be balanced with making profits/customers happy. I dont even know if Chris wanted trading/accesability in his game. If you were in CB you had to go outside and chunk shit on the ground to trade. He wanted a very cutthroat game. But those visions are not what make something succeed. Sometimes a game succeeds in spite of visions instead of because of them. In the end, the game was good and succeeded despite poor trading, poor accessability, and it was bound to need that stuff as it continued to grow.

Poe = hideout while api is running/profit.

D3 = just fun matters.

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鬼殺し wrote:

d3 beta was 40 hours of ridiculous fun and anticipation.

It was. I remember feeling that magical Blizzard feeling. Like this was the next big thing. Just couldn't wait to get the full game. Well, that ended shortly after the game was released.

I think the worst part about it all, is the game was a financial success, meaning that the next one we get will probably be just like it(or in the same vein), instead of what we really want.

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Destructodave wrote:

You probably played the d3 beta

nah

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If you had choice it was because the game wasn't hard enough to punish you for bad choices. PoE has actually gotten harder over time, IMO. The only hardcore thing about early versions of PoE was if you messed up your tree you were screwed. The actual gameplay, clearspeed or not, has become harder. Since it has become harder, you cant just run any sort of trash like you used to be able to do.

I cant agree with this, like at all. the wall for punishing you for making bad choices happened much faster in the old poe. easily. you would be punished before even going into maps. nowadays the damage that a toon does by simply throwing shit at the wall is so high that even with a terrible build you will last well into red maps. you easily can run 'trash'. you could clear dried lake as an elementalist in 2.6 without allocating any passive nodes on the tree. good luck doing that in 1.0 in docks. no, seriously, you would die 100s of times.

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Its what people want. In the end vision has to be balanced with making profits/customers happy.

it really doesn't. it depends on how much you value your vision and how much you value profits.
lets put it this way. if a woman is willing to sleep with a man for money, establishing a price range in which she is willing to do so doesnt change much to her characterization besides determining which tier she is. if the answer to 'ideal or money?' is 'how much money ?' then you should stop pretending to care about ideals. ideals and visions dont measure in paper nor can they be burned

to some devs, staying true to the game is the most important and they wont make concessions. I will respect the devs who decide NOT to expand and keep a small team in order to stick to their guns. what is the point otherwise ? the masses dont want a niche game. they really don't. a lot of niche games are able to weed out casuals by having shitty graphics (dwarf fortress) or super steep learning curves. (again, dwarf fortress fits here). most niche games are simply made for the love of PC gaming as it used to be.

I understand, business decision yada yada. its not a big deal. people have usually chosen money over ideals, it aint a new concept. and if there werent so few niche games out there, I probably wouldnt care much. but exactly because niche games designed for pc gamers of 90s and 80s dont sell, is the reason why there arent niche games in the market dictated by 'new generation' games.

it doesnt help that poe was first designed for a different audience, and I personally felt disappointed and almost betrayed. Im kinda tired of posting this all over here and reddit again, but if they wanted the game to be successful, they shouldnt have marketed as a niche hardcore game.
those two terms are pretty much mutually exclusive. its really that simple.

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I dont even know if Chris wanted trading/accesability in his game. If you were in CB you had to go outside and chunk shit on the ground to trade. He wanted a very cutthroat game. But those visions are not what make something succeed.

again, you dont 'succeed' in a niche game. you may succeed within that niche circle, but it wont give you recognition or wide audience. you arent catering to the masses in a niche game. no, you are catering to the opposite of the masses and about the most you can hope for is enough like-minded people for you to recoup and maaaybe make a little bit of profit if you're lucky

ie, if someone is making a niche game they fully understand what they're doing.

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鬼殺し wrote:

We got PoE. Grim Dawn. Wolcen. Diablo 3 isn't relevant anymore.

And I strongly doubt there'll be a Diablo 4. Blizzard dumpster-fired D3 once they saw how much bank they could make with a rip off but very polished card game, a rip-off but very polished moba and a hackneyed left-over but very polished team based shooter.

The entire concept of the ARPG, the long term grind doing fairly repetitive shit, runs contrary to the insta-gratification generation. Why was there an AH in D3 in the first place? To ensure that every single drop, from 5 gold to a legendary you don't need, can be instantly transformed into stuff you want. It's the exact fucking opposite of the loot grind, and it's what people want. Rather, they want the rush of the awesome drops in the loot grind but not the actual 'grind' bit, where 99%+ of your time is nothing more than ignoring suboptimal loot and killing the same 'trash' over and again.

I think there will be a Diablo 4. Just I feel its going to be exactly like current D3. Probably completely self-found.

See, I dont know. All the games you mentioned are popular and exist in this current generation. I'm currently playing Warframe. Its a supergrind to the max. But its popular, even now. A loot game will always be popular. People love to find things and people love to create wealth. Just our basic human nature will always cause a demand for these games, even in an instant gratification system. I dont know if you have ever played Warframe but you have to wait 3 days after you build a frame to even use it. Yet, one of the most popular F2p games on steam, right up there with their own games and PoE.

And people want trade. Again, loot becomes meaningless if it cant be converted to wealth. This is why online Arpg games end up outstripping offline variants. You want wealth and competition. People talk about how good Grim Dawn is but how long will that last without an online variant? Torchlight 1 and 2 were good too but no one talks about it anymore. I feel Grim Dawn will follow a similar path; that is if you care about popularity and community. You really think PoE would as popular and huge now without trade and online components? The wealth drive is huge for a lot of people. Just look at the arguments over the trade system.

Honestly the AH was good in theory. A place to trade and give people actual currency to use instead of SoJs. Just they implemented it about as shitty as they possibly could have. No regions, no seasons, everything is a stat stick, no gold sinks, everything instant, RMT to gold, shit drop rates, etc. I think the most comical part about it was hearing how they hired big-time economists to set it all up. Hilarious.

Very good discussion in here guys, thank you for all the feedback. I hope that GGG has read some of your responses. Same goes for Blizzard's forum, though that place is cancer.