My recap of PoE vs D4 and why even still PoE is unmatched

Hi everyone, I'd like to give my insight after playing D4 for few days.
Although at first glance it looks like Diablo 4 swallowed whole arpg scene, under all the shiny bits things are not that great in D4. There are many design flaws, uninteresting mechanics and so on to the point it becomes boring/annoying game really fast to my disappointment.

Progression: Monsters scale with the level of player. This means that every time you level up, whole world does the same so you are essentially weaker every time you level up. This gives you the feeling of never getting stronger. Your char feels the same at level 15 and level 40. PoE's scaling with zones gives much better feel with clear power spikes on the char along the way.

Controls: For me one of the biggest design flaws that ruin the precision of combat is left mouse click that has 3 actions bound into 1 (MOVE/INTERACT/BASIC SKILL). What this does is that every time you want to reposition you will end up standing in place attacking like a moron. Movement skills are very m
Now, you can UNBIND those actions but then new problem is created, you have to use 3 buttons instead of one.
This is a major problem because gameplay revolves around spamming 2 skills (basic and core) where now you either have both on left + right click and move with some 3rd button OR move with left click and use right click for one skill and some other for second skill. At the same time you have to juggle 4 other skills and their cooldowns.
I don't know what is worse, either having those actions bounded or not, but it feels horrible either way. It's probably designed to be played with controller primarily.
PoE compared to this feels razor sharp, precise and simple.
I plea to GGG not to ruin this with new gem system in PoE2!

Cooldowns: All D4 skills except the basic skill have cooldowns. This fact alone is something game breaking. This cooldown can be simple like timer or complex like depleted resource, something like D4 mana analog. Cooldowns can be from few seconds to few dozen of seconds and I can't emphasize enough how boring and annoying this is while at the same time basic skill of every class is so underpowered that you might as well not use it.
PoE doesn't cripple you like this. Even very early in the game you can spam you skills and have fun as much as you like with mana flasks.

Mob density and diversity: PoE is king of mob density and this is where D4 fails big time. Amount of empty spaces in D4 is staggering. You will find yourself walking and walking between areas with so little monsters in between you fast come to question "what I'm I even doing here?". Makes game very boring and time wasting and boy, D4 is designed to waste your time on walking.
Diversity of mobs in D4 is very low. There are like maybe 20 different monsters in the whole game and it shows.

Melee: Oh boy, did we all think melee can't be worse than in PoE? Well being in melee range in D4 is new level of bad. First thing that you notice is you're being hit every time when in melee range. Monster made a swing, you're getting hit almost without exception. You're getting hit a lot and it drives you nuts because your actions are so little worth. Have I mentioned cooldowns? Well you can't move like in PoE because of that. If you used your movement skill or "dodge" you're fucked pretty much. There's no defense layer as Evasion, you're getting hit non stop like a motherfucker. Not to mention that some bosses are very much anti melee designed.
Melee in PoE is million times better handled than in D4.

Campaign/Story: How lore is done in D4 is something that PoE can't compete, at least not with PoE1. But, even with top notch lore of D4 they managed to make PoE1 acts be much more interesting to play even after whole decade. Mob density is higher, diversity of skills and their modifications is higher, you can use your god damn skills.
There is a LOT more action in PoE leveling that in D4. It's simply more fun experience.

Endgame: there's not much to say about this, D4 can't come close to PoE in this regard. PoE has so much to offer for everyone's taste that I don't see any game being able to compete with it. Trading in D4 is virtually non existent also.

Good things about D4 are shiny new graphics and less meaningless friction that PoE has in abundance.
edit: "Shiny new graphics" is a bit disrespectful to Blizz devs. World is done beautifully. Art, music, sound effects, story, cutscenes, ambiance is top notch. I really did enjoy every part of that.


I'm not happy where core gameplay of PoE is atm either and PoE2 can't come soon enough. Ofc this is personal opinion and I think PoE got out of hand with some things.
-time requirement
-damage spikes which are always not primarily from monster damage but from char crippling thru map mods. If map mod shoots me in the foot by reducing my defenses for 70% I feel like my investment into defenses are wasted because I'll die either way.
In general, you die way too often in PoE between map mods, altar mods, mosters and random bullshit going on.
-big lack of QoL and lots of unnecessary friction that just gives frustration in the end.
-game needs to slow down and increase drop rates accordingly

All in all, PoE isn't a lesser game with introduction of D4. It still is the king of the genre despite low quality leagues lately due to PoE2 development.
PoE2 has the chance to blast the scene with it's quality and I whole heartedly hope it will.

My tldr:

Lore 9/10
Art, visuals 10/10
ambiance 10/10
Sound sfx 10/10
music 9/10
combat 5/10
monsters 5/10
build diversity 3/10
bosses 7/10 considering there is very few of them
UI 5/10
town layout designs 3/10 you gotta walk the walk dude
player interaction 5/10
stress level low

If you are wondering is the game worth 70$ depends on you. For me it is in the long run.
If you are looking another PoE (Diablo 2) you will be disappointed.
If you are looking for Diablo 3.5 with great potential in the future, jump right in.

Thanks, this looks like a good game review to me.

Sounds like Diablo 3 with an updated graphics engine. It's good that I decided not to waste my time on this.

Thanks.

Nice write up. I haven't played and don't plan to. I have watched a fair amount on twitch though and it just...doesn't look fun. :/

It all comes down to what POE2 will offer. I am really hyped rn. D4 is a 6/10 to me.

Poe2 looks dead on arrival for me.

I think d4 is going to be and already is a commercial success.

They could iron out this stuff.

The diablo people really made d3/ros a fun time after a lot of error.

That being said, por people think it's shake because its systems actually work as expected, there are less stats to scale, and it didn't have 8 years of content expansive in it (last two years of poe haven't gone core).

GGG could learn a lot from looking at the good stuff they did, like the cosmetics and the nifty character editing, mobs that don't one shot you from of screen. Degen grind that doesn't instantly kill you, a sensible amount of monster density. An item system that works.

A lot of poe dev practices is just player hate.

Everyone who played D3 pretty much new what to expect from D4, never understood why people got so hyped up about it. For me it was dead before arrival.

"

MadamMimi wrote:

It all comes down to what POE2 will offer. I am really hyped rn. D4 is a 6/10 to me.

About the same from me 6/10 for D4

"

roundishcap wrote:

Poe2 looks dead on arrival for me.

I think d4 is going to be and already is a commercial success.

They could iron out this stuff.

The diablo people really made d3/ros a fun time after a lot of error.

That being said, por people think it's shake because its systems actually work as expected, there are less stats to scale, and it didn't have 8 years of content expansive in it (last two years of poe haven't gone core).

GGG could learn a lot from looking at the good stuff they did, like the cosmetics and the nifty character editing, mobs that don't one shot you from of screen. Degen grind that doesn't instantly kill you, a sensible amount of monster density. An item system that works.

A lot of poe dev practices is just player hate.

Couldn't agree less about PoE2.

D4 is already commercial success but D3 was also. That doesn't mean anything about quality of those games.

Things I mentioned won't be ironed out, they are core parts of how D4 is designed and how they want things to work.
From what I experienced so far, game is made for console couch players from it's foundations.
It's different kind of game from PoE.

I'd agree GGG could learn stuff from it, like offscreen one shots. I'm not saying PoE is fine, it's not. There's a bunch of things here that are not good either. But pound for pound, PoE is just on a different level.
What GGG absolutely needs to do is to rework the game so that screen wiping of mobs isn't the way to play the game because otherwise you'll failing at it.

hoho interesting.

You left out the mount cooldown.