Not as "smooth" as that other game

What is this "other" game u guys are talking of?
Is it D3 or another game?
Cya ingame sometime in the future :)

I have to agree. Finally decided to try the beta of PoE yesterday after monitoring the website and forums for the last few weeks. I didn't get too play much yet, but this is clearly the point that immediately struck me when playing, especially after dozens of hours of D3. The "pause" feeling between each action can really get frustrating, and I'm pretty sure it can become a show stopper for new players.

"

Chris wrote:

Thanks for the thread, it's very interesting and there are several plans to improve elements of the game to make it feel smoother. Some will come sooner than others, but we'll fit them in.

At the moment, our immediate priorities are on features that greatly affect the economy/balance of the game (the new end-game, PvP, trade, etc) so that we can get those out of the way before we enter Open Beta. Making combat smoother can be done at any time, without requiring that we modify existing items or balance.

Thanks for the response, and thanks for making a great game that you've centered on the community. This is my first post on the forums, because so far, I have liked nearly everything I've encountered in this game. :)

I would definitely like to say that something as simple as combat smoothness/clunkiness can be a buzz kill though, and I feel that, as a solid company move, you should make a point of improving it somewhat before the Open Beta. Many of your player base, even now, are players of Diablo 3, and it is certainly no question when looking at the forums and the General Chat within game that people are constantly comparing/contrasting between the two. Players know that when choosing Path of Exile, the first thing that will be different are the graphics are weaker here, but great game play can definitely overcome weak graphics.

Character responsiveness and smoothness of move transitions are 2 things that are essential to ARPG's. They affect game play: I'm sure that many people who have played PoE longer than I already have died on occasion because of the split-second delays; I know I have. If that happens too often, the game feels underdeveloped and not worth playing "yet". A lot of players who choose to leave a game temporarily because it feels "unfinished" may come back later, or may find a new time sink to occupy them. It's better to have the game feel responsive now--which I don't assume will cost too much time and effort to do, but I could be wrong--and catch those players who would otherwise be indecisive.

Note: I'm thoroughly enjoying the game despite this, but I bought a Beta Key from here for myself and a friend, and my friend did comment on that, after just playing Diablo 3 earlier that day. After thinking about it, I agreed with him, and was going to start a topic on the same thing. It just so happens it's here. The way that he described it was, "It feels like there is empty space in combat," both when describing the move delay, and when describing the flow between killing one group of monsters and killing another. I could go into that further, but this is already becoming a long post.

"

Shippal wrote:

Players know that when choosing Path of Exile, the first thing that will be different are the graphics are weaker here, but great game play can definitely overcome weak graphics.

Wat.


Have you even played D3? Game is so blurry i couldn't even play it before i put darkd3.com sharpen filter on it, it physically hurt my eyes because they kept trying to focus and make it sharper. Most of the textures are washed out and bland and oh god the characters look just awful. Saying that D3 is good graphically is madness.

The first thing D3 players notice when playing PoE is that the storytelling and cinematics are lacking, and i'm okay with that.

"

lucid88 wrote:

"

Powster wrote:

lol... funny cuz I completely disagree. One of the first things I noticed when I played diablo 3 was that it wasn't nearly as smooth as Path of Exile. To me smoothness is one of the most important things of a game.. and diablo 3 fails at it.

I agree with you, PoE does seem much smoother than D3 in MANY ways except just this one... the cast to move delay. Thats IT. Im confident in the Dev's ability to adjust this to a more acceptable timing.

Not really sure what you two are hinting at here. Maybe the following might help if it is a technical issue. D3 has options to alter FPS for both for- and background which can be set at a totally different rate, and are set so by default. This is mighty stupid idea I think because it seems to cause a weird constant stutter the game has to catch up to. I maxed both out and now that weird laggy experience is gone; except for the normal lag that regularly occurs when D3 spawns a big mob in your face seconds before you die, which is probably even more of a crime than F*cking up their dungeons (which PoE does totally well).

Back to PoE. As a summoner I mainly do zonecontrol (or run away to fight another day) and haven't experienced any of the troubles current in this thread. One thing though that might be categorized under smoothness is that I can't click stuff when my minions are "standing over it". Minions seem to love to huddle around portals and areaexits I want to enter (when they don't run of like crazy to faraway lands). Loot and barrels seem less interesting, but it is pretty annoying I have walk around a bit and goat them away as to "clear the portal" (which I might have casted as a quick getaway).

"

Chris wrote:

Thanks for the thread, it's very interesting and there are several plans to improve elements of the game to make it feel smoother. Some will come sooner than others, but we'll fit them in.

At the moment, our immediate priorities are on features that greatly affect the economy/balance of the game (the new end-game, PvP, trade, etc) so that we can get those out of the way before we enter Open Beta. Making combat smoother can be done at any time, without requiring that we modify existing items or balance.

Thanks for your response Chris, glad you had time to read through. I look forward to the improvements you speak off.

"

Khodar wrote:

Have you even played D3? Game is so blurry i couldn't even play it before i put darkd3.com sharpen filter on it, it physically hurt my eyes because they kept trying to focus and make it sharper. Most of the textures are washed out and bland and oh god the characters look just awful. Saying that D3 is good graphically is madness.

Of all the points in my post to read and pick out, you choose that one? *sigh*

D3 is certainly not a graphical masterpiece, but poly counts, details within the environment, shadow/lighting effects, and overall art direction are all better. Perhaps you had issues because you were not playing on maxed settings. (I don't blame you; the game suffers from so much lag as it is, you don't need to stress out your GPU over it.) Yes, I played D3. I bought a new graphics card so I *could* play the game. Even with that, I was still never excited over the graphics, but at any time if you zoom in on D3 it looks worlds better than if you zoom in on PoE.

I'm not even saying this because I have a biased opinion. It's just the way it is. PoE is still the better game.

"

Shippal wrote:

"

Khodar wrote:

Have you even played D3? Game is so blurry i couldn't even play it before i put darkd3.com sharpen filter on it, it physically hurt my eyes because they kept trying to focus and make it sharper. Most of the textures are washed out and bland and oh god the characters look just awful. Saying that D3 is good graphically is madness.

Of all the points in my post to read and pick out, you choose that one? *sigh*

D3 is certainly not a graphical masterpiece, but poly counts, details within the environment, shadow/lighting effects, and overall art direction are all better. Perhaps you had issues because you were not playing on maxed settings. (I don't blame you; the game suffers from so much lag as it is, you don't need to stress out your GPU over it.) Yes, I played D3. I bought a new graphics card so I *could* play the game. Even with that, I was still never excited over the graphics, but at any time if you zoom in on D3 it looks worlds better than if you zoom in on PoE.

I'm not even saying this because I have a biased opinion. It's just the way it is. PoE is still the better game.

Ok they have some amazing environments in the game, but that's just another thing you take a good look at ONCE and never look at again, same with the story and cinematics.

I have D3 graphics maxed, runs at a perfect 60 (when it's not streaming crap from the servers...) and the game IS extremely blurry. Just go and check out the "sharpen" feature on darkd3.com and you know what i mean. Play with it for a few hours then press pause button to turn it on/off to compare.

"

Chris wrote:

...there are several plans to improve elements of the game to make it feel smoother. Some will come sooner than others, but we'll fit them in.

I really hope the change that comes soonest is smoothing out character movement, because at the moment it's ruining this otherwise extremely good game for me.

The way it is at the moment, your character continues moving in the direction they were going for a moment before changing direction, making character control feel very clunky and giving the game itself a "cheap" feel.

There should be zero delay between me moving my mouse to change direction and my character complying by moving in that direction.

I should be able to move my cursor around my character at high speed and my character should spin, constantly facing my cursor.

I really hope this is an easy fix because it would definitely be the difference between me playing PoE longterm or quitting after open beta starts. I would expect it to be offputting for many people who are used to D3 and/or Torchlight's smooth movement systems and are coming over to this game to check out one of the alternatives.

EDIT: I am not a professional, so take this with a pinch of salt if necessary, but it would seem to me that since the "guts" of this game is the movement/combat element, you'd want that to be rock solid ASAP so that if you encounter any optimization problems you still have plenty of time to fix them before release.

Also, if you "tighten up" elements of movement/combat post release you run the risk of alienating people who grew used to how it was and don't like the new iteration.

I'm not speaking for everyone, but I know I'd prefer to play an ARPG that has rock solid movement/combat and have to wait for extra content than to play an ARPG that has a lot of content but clunky movement/combat.