PoE Vs Diablo 3 new expansion

Reposting this from another thread. I don't care much about story but I do care about atmosphere.

"

iamstryker wrote:

Reposting this from another thread. I don't care much about story but I do care about atmosphere.

Spoiler

I can't even describe how much more Brutus feels like the butcher from Diablo one as compared the the new butcher in D3.

The Butcher in D3 is a cartoony borefest. It doesn't pull you in at all, you just smirk the first time or two you see him and he utters those silly phrases.

The butcher in D1 and Brutus in PoE actually feel creepy to me. They are dark and greety and don't need silly phrases and cartoony graphics. They don't need a cutscene to introduce them, they just come at your full force with all of their hard hitting power.

+ The music when you enter brutus' chamber!!!

-Diablo 3 looks a lot better
From performance perspective, graphics quality this is true. From the overall graphical setting it's a matter of taste. I don't mind that D3 is bright during acts 2 and 3. I think that GGG used their resources well to put up with what they have, making PoE grim and dark. Shading is nice, everything looks dirty, foul. Graphics are not impressive, but the mood they generate is good, expected from a dark arpg.

-Action is a lot more smooth (no framedrops) and feel more impactful
Can't argue with that, D3 movement is far less clunky. They threw money on that.

-No desync
One of the best points, but still DC could kill your HC chars. It feels strange to play D3 after poe with the char exactly where it is displayed. Still, DC deaths roamed HC league, while PoE protects you from that somewhat.

-A melee character feels strong and vital as it should
This was totally untrue for like half a year. I haven't been playing D3 recently, but I think it suffers from the same problems. They are easier to manage since the classes are prebalanced as melee and ranged. PoE struggles with it, but they will eventually solve this I guess. Their solution to classes if done right offers much more fun to gameplay and char building.

-The story, the lore and voice acting are a lot better
Previously explained,

-Monsters, bosses and the environment are more creative and interesting
Monsters have skills and AI, not just damage, which is a point for D3, but design... well PoE monsters are fun too. They lack AI and skills though.

-The map is not a confusing blur like in PoE
The map is an atrocity.

-No need for fuzzy micromanagement with hundreds of overwhelming and unnecessary minor and boring passives (6% of this 2% of that) but choosing 3 dramatic passive skills
Its a matter of preference. Blizzard believes simplifying is good but hardcore rpg fans hate it. I hate it too. Hated that in WoW, hated that in diablo, loved PoE for that. If only builds were not failing because of certain mechanics like desync or MF.

-Itemization in PoE is better atm because of colour allocated item stats, but this will actually be addressed in the new D3 expansion. And also I expect D3 to take the overhand because they will also introduce loot 2.0 which means less but better drops too which will make playing the game more rewarding and which reduces the need to buy items, something that PoE needs badly
Who knows. I like PoE uniques more, they are fun and gamechanging.

-Skills in PoE seem better because of more customization but in my experience this is only partly true . It is just more fuzzy micromanagement with getting the right socket colours and links: Faster attacks/Increased physicial damage/Increased weapon elemental damage: It is just more DPS. Also some support gems are a lot better then others making a lot of support gems unneeded. In D3 there are just a couple of very effective runes per skill. However the fact that you can switch to a different skill and rune at any time does make your character less unique.
Skills are more fun, more customizable, that's a fact. Sometimes the choices are limited, but many gems will be added to change that. D3 model is not open to that. People switch to op build of the month by just going to town. There is not much to experiment with.
-Items you find but don't need are not as useless as in PoE, you can salvage them for crafting resources or sell them for gold

Crafting in both games is terrible. Crafting in PoE is tedious but the randomness is its strength. Prepatch diablo crafting was horrid. Don't know if its much better now.
-Crafting makes more sense because it's not as expensive and unrewarding as in PoE and it is more interesting because of recipes and leveling
up

-End game in PoE are random maps, In D3 you can raise your base stats with paragon points (max 100) after level cap. In the new expansion they will introduce lootruns which are similar the maps. So also here I expect D3 to take the overhand.
Well if lootruns are like maps, but more accessible it would be a great point for the game. For now though, its not. Can't wait to see.

"

iamstryker wrote:

Reposting this from another thread. I don't care much about story but I do care about atmosphere.

Spoiler

I can't even describe how much more Brutus feels like the butcher from Diablo one as compared the the new butcher in D3.

The Butcher in D3 is a cartoony borefest. It doesn't pull you in at all, you just smirk the first time or two you see him and he utters those silly phrases.

The butcher in D1 and Brutus in PoE actually feel creepy to me. They are dark and greety and don't need silly phrases and cartoony graphics. They don't need a cutscene to introduce them, they just come at your full force with all of their hard hitting power.

The new D3 expansion will be a lot darker but the Brutus fight has a good atmosphere I agree. However Brutus doesn't pull me neither because of the lack of story around him.

Overall I think D3's atmosphere is superior over PoE, GGG did their best but D3 just looks way better which improves atmosphere tremendously. Add the story and the voice acting and darker colours etc. and PoE is just no match for D3 regarding atmosphere in my opinion.

Diablo III Story critiques:

"

Diablo III wrote:

I am Belial, Master Tactician! Here are my plans, all neatly laid out with full written documentation of everything I intend to do and how I'll go about doing them.

*Hours later*

OMGWTFBBQ HOW DID YOU FIND OUT?! I'M DONE FOR, ARAAARGH YOU GOT ME *DEAD*

Also can't forget the whole TOSSING THE DAMN ULTRA IMPORTANT ARTIFACT OFF THE EDGE AT THE END! Now they're RETCONNING the ending and having it so Tyreal kept it for safe keeping but dies very near the start of the expansion losing the important artifact to the enemy, woo master story teller at work there.

Also almost (Did I just say almost? I meant -REDACTED-) every boss in the game has sinfully bad childish dialog and script. have you guys NOT SEEN the original Diablo manual? Dat story is just wow, amazingly awesome.

But anyways, the quality of the visuals in the cutscenes? Amazing top notch stuff, the scripts/events that occur in the cutscenes? Shit.

Voice Acting is quite good I thought but again, terribly abysmal scripts/story. The voice actors tried their best but no matter what they did they could not make the script not suck.

PoE may not have a fleshed out story, nor a detailed story (Yet). What little story it currently has is anything but bad. The voice acting I will say needs improving but the script is so far fine.

--------------------------------------------------
Diablo III gameplay/design decisions critiques:

Enough of Diablo's story, lets talk about the gameplay shall we? Oh well my Ping to their servers is around 230 to 250ms and the game was mostly fine like this. Then they decided to tweak stuff and made at least one boss impossible to beat alone. They made it so that Izual freezes you in place more frequently, guess what that accomplished? He now does his freeze move so often that by the time the server tells the client that you're no longer frozen and are free to move, he'll have repeated the move again and you're immediately refrozen. Yay chain freezing in place doing nothing but losing health, fun times, yay getting chain frozen and watching Americans etc. play without issue around you.

I'm not the only one complaining about that boss either and Blizzard have yet to revert the changes, so fuck you Blizzard.

They also removed loot from pots, lootable corpses, breakable objects in general not because they thought it would improve the gameplay, no, they did it to stop bots. Then they reintroduced loot to some breakables and lootable corpses but greatly nerfed the chances of getting anything worth while so it was still a pointless endeavour to bother with any of it, the reintroduction was a very poor attempt to appease player demand for the removed contents return.

None of those changes were to improve the gameplay, they were to stop the bots from being effective at farming to the detriment of legitimate players or to break the game for overseas players. Instead of banning botters they were making the gameplay less and less fun.

So far GGG hasn't shown any signs of worsening the gameplay to combat bots, in fact they seem to be completely ignoring the impact a change will have on the effectiveness of bots if the feature is good fun/helpful for those legitimately playing. GGG so far seem to be spending time banning bots instead of destroying their game.

heck GGG even manages to operate an Australian server! And they aren't a huge company like Blizzard! Another fuck you to Blizzard for being cheap fuckin' bastards. yeah aussie servers are expensive, or so we're led to believe, but how is GGG able to afford it? Why can't blizzard offer a similar service to what an indie company can afford? This indie company isn't even charging a $60 (Or more) entry fee either wtf.

With the aussie server my ping is reduced from 230-250ms to a pleasant 30-50ms and the difference it makes is night/day. (Desync is still an issue, but lag no longer is.)

In D3 the bosses felt like discarded power ranger boss battles (you know who I am pointing at the most).

The bosses in PoE feel pretty creepy to me and definitely not cheesy.

D3 had some decent lvls like the dungeons in act 1. My critique is mostly on the bosses and forced story line. Oh and the female Diablo. I was expecting better of Diablo than that.

Edit: I admit I was fine with the graphics, they weren't too much of a problem for me but the atmosphere just didn't work for me. Diablo 1 had the best atmosphere IMO.

"

Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Diablo III Story critiques:

"

Diablo III wrote:

I am Belial, Master Tactician! Here are my plans, all neatly laid out with full written documentation of everything I intend to do and how I'll go about doing them.

*Hours later*

OMGWTFBBQ HOW DID YOU FIND OUT?! I'M DONE FOR, ARAAARGH YOU GOT ME *DEAD*

Also can't forget the whole TOSSING THE DAMN ULTRA IMPORTANT ARTIFACT OFF THE EDGE AT THE END! Now they're RETCONNING the ending and having it so Tyreal kept it for safe keeping but dies very near the start of the expansion losing the important artifact to the enemy, woo master story teller at work there.

Also almost (Did I just say almost? I meant -REDACTED-) every boss in the game has sinfully bad childish dialog and script. have you guys NOT SEEN the original Diablo manual? Dat story is just wow, amazingly awesome.

But anyways, the quality of the visuals in the cutscenes? Amazing top notch stuff, the scripts/events that occur in the cutscenes? Shit.

Voice Acting is quite good I thought but again, terribly abysmal scripts/story. The voice actors tried their best but no matter what they did they could not make the script not suck.

PoE may not have a fleshed out story, nor a detailed story (Yet). What little story it currently has is anything but bad. The voice acting I will say needs improving but the script is so far fine.

--------------------------------------------------
Diablo III gameplay/design decisions critiques:

Enough of Diablo's story, lets talk about the gameplay shall we? Oh well my Ping to their servers is around 230 to 250ms and the game was mostly fine like this. Then they decided to tweak stuff and made at least one boss impossible to beat alone. They made it so that Izual freezes you in place more frequently, guess what that accomplished? He now does his freeze move so often that by the time the server tells the client that you're no longer frozen and are free to move, he'll have repeated the move again and you're immediately refrozen. Yay chain freezing in place doing nothing but losing health, fun times, yay getting chain frozen and watching Americans etc. play without issue around you.

I'm not the only one complaining about that boss either and Blizzard have yet to revert the changes, so fuck you Blizzard.

They also removed loot from pots, lootable corpses, breakable objects in general not because they thought it would improve the gameplay, no, they did it to stop bots. Then they reintroduced loot to some breakables and lootable corpses but greatly nerfed the chances of getting anything worth while so it was still a pointless endeavour to bother with any of it, the reintroduction was a very poor attempt to appease player demand for the removed contents return.

None of those changes were to improve the gameplay, they were to stop the bots from being effective at farming to the detriment of legitimate players or to break the game for overseas players. Instead of banning botters they were making the gameplay less and less fun.

So far GGG hasn't shown any signs of worsening the gameplay to combat bots, in fact they seem to be completely ignoring the impact a change will have on the effectiveness of bots if the feature is good fun/helpful for those legitimately playing. GGG so far seem to be spending time banning bots instead of destroying their game.

heck GGG even manages to operate an Australian server! And they aren't a huge company like Blizzard! Another fuck you to Blizzard for being cheap fuckin' bastards. yeah aussie servers are expensive, or so we're led to believe, but how is GGG able to afford it? Why can't blizzard offer a similar service to what an indie company can afford? This indie company isn't even charging a $60 (Or more) entry fee either wtf.

With the aussie server my ping is reduced from 230-250ms to a pleasant 30-50ms and the difference it makes is night/day. (Desync is still an issue, but lag no longer is.)

The story might be somewhat childish and over explained but it's still a childish story is still better than a the "story" in PoE which is just a number of separate evens. (I lost my medicine chest, I want you to kill this guy because he harasses us, I want you to deliver this to me, you need to get something to open a door etc.) That doesn't even feel like a story and does not pull me in at all.
I rather play a good childish story with good voice acting and a good atmosphere than a game with a story as vague and thin as in PoE where the player is almost not involved and needs to read boring wall of text to find something out about the story.
Also the script in PoE does not even make sense.

And then the part about the gameplay: First of all playing an online game with that ping is not a good idea, your points about boss fights that are frustrating are not valid just because of your ping.
And also a bad ping is constant, desync is unpredictable. I would rather have a bad ping.

And last your point about loots from objects etc.: They will introduce loot 2.0 with less but better drops, who cares if nothing drops from pots?
Also D3 will be darker in the new expansion.

"

iamstryker wrote:

In D3 the bosses felt like discarded power ranger boss battles (you know who I am pointing at the most).

The bosses in PoE feel pretty creepy to me and definitely not cheesy.

D3 had some decent lvls like the dungeons in act 1. My critique is mostly on the bosses and forced story line. Oh and the female Diablo. I was expecting better of Diablo than that.

Edit: I admit I was fine with the graphics, they weren't too much of a problem for me but the atmosphere just didn't work for me. Diablo 1 had the best atmosphere IMO.

Bosses seem a lot more interesting and epic in D3 to me, hell some bosses in PoE are just stolen from D3 (Skeleton King/Marveil, Weaver/Weaver, Butcher/Brutus)

"

Startkabels wrote:

Also the script in PoE does not even make sense.

all put together here

from the wiki



from damien_ggg



And then the part about the gameplay: First of all playing an online game with that ping is not a good idea, your points about boss fights that are frustrating are not valid just because of your ping.

zero logic as usual from you, im sure he doesnt have that ping 24/7

And last your point about loots from objects etc.: They will introduce loot 2.0 with less but better drops, who cares if nothing drops from pots?
Also D3 will be darker in the new expansion.

You tell the future bro? THats cool!

All I see from loot 2.0 = less stuff drops, more crap rares / blues

"

Startkabels wrote:

Spoiler

"

Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Diablo III Story critiques:

"

Diablo III wrote:

I am Belial, Master Tactician! Here are my plans, all neatly laid out with full written documentation of everything I intend to do and how I'll go about doing them.

*Hours later*

OMGWTFBBQ HOW DID YOU FIND OUT?! I'M DONE FOR, ARAAARGH YOU GOT ME *DEAD*

Also can't forget the whole TOSSING THE DAMN ULTRA IMPORTANT ARTIFACT OFF THE EDGE AT THE END! Now they're RETCONNING the ending and having it so Tyreal kept it for safe keeping but dies very near the start of the expansion losing the important artifact to the enemy, woo master story teller at work there.

Also almost (Did I just say almost? I meant -REDACTED-) every boss in the game has sinfully bad childish dialog and script. have you guys NOT SEEN the original Diablo manual? Dat story is just wow, amazingly awesome.

But anyways, the quality of the visuals in the cutscenes? Amazing top notch stuff, the scripts/events that occur in the cutscenes? Shit.

Voice Acting is quite good I thought but again, terribly abysmal scripts/story. The voice actors tried their best but no matter what they did they could not make the script not suck.

PoE may not have a fleshed out story, nor a detailed story (Yet). What little story it currently has is anything but bad. The voice acting I will say needs improving but the script is so far fine.

--------------------------------------------------
Diablo III gameplay/design decisions critiques:

Enough of Diablo's story, lets talk about the gameplay shall we? Oh well my Ping to their servers is around 230 to 250ms and the game was mostly fine like this. Then they decided to tweak stuff and made at least one boss impossible to beat alone. They made it so that Izual freezes you in place more frequently, guess what that accomplished? He now does his freeze move so often that by the time the server tells the client that you're no longer frozen and are free to move, he'll have repeated the move again and you're immediately refrozen. Yay chain freezing in place doing nothing but losing health, fun times, yay getting chain frozen and watching Americans etc. play without issue around you.

I'm not the only one complaining about that boss either and Blizzard have yet to revert the changes, so fuck you Blizzard.

They also removed loot from pots, lootable corpses, breakable objects in general not because they thought it would improve the gameplay, no, they did it to stop bots. Then they reintroduced loot to some breakables and lootable corpses but greatly nerfed the chances of getting anything worth while so it was still a pointless endeavour to bother with any of it, the reintroduction was a very poor attempt to appease player demand for the removed contents return.

None of those changes were to improve the gameplay, they were to stop the bots from being effective at farming to the detriment of legitimate players or to break the game for overseas players. Instead of banning botters they were making the gameplay less and less fun.

So far GGG hasn't shown any signs of worsening the gameplay to combat bots, in fact they seem to be completely ignoring the impact a change will have on the effectiveness of bots if the feature is good fun/helpful for those legitimately playing. GGG so far seem to be spending time banning bots instead of destroying their game.

heck GGG even manages to operate an Australian server! And they aren't a huge company like Blizzard! Another fuck you to Blizzard for being cheap fuckin' bastards. yeah aussie servers are expensive, or so we're led to believe, but how is GGG able to afford it? Why can't blizzard offer a similar service to what an indie company can afford? This indie company isn't even charging a $60 (Or more) entry fee either wtf.

With the aussie server my ping is reduced from 230-250ms to a pleasant 30-50ms and the difference it makes is night/day. (Desync is still an issue, but lag no longer is.)

"

Startkabels wrote:

And then the part about the gameplay: First of all playing an online game with that ping is not a good idea, your points about boss fights that are frustrating are not valid just because of your ping.

There's no other way for aussies to play the game. I've tried everything within my power to improve it without success. The Ping almost always varies within 230-250ms range excluding uncommon lag spikes. Unless I get a fiber connection (Not available here) I can't see an improvement occurring any time soon. Fiber installation for this area is planned to begin next year and dunno if we'll still live here for long after it is installed.

"

Startkabels wrote:

And also a bad ping is constant, desync is unpredictable. I would rather have a bad ping.

Eh, I like having snappy responses to my commands even if they may not be carried out exactly the way I expect them to be. I haven't had too much of an issue with desync in the game though it is definitely there and noticeable it hasn't really impeded my enjoyment of my style of playing the game. I do make minor use of the /oos command, usually when things are clearly out of whack. The 2 problems combined (lag & desync) however, was just abysmal which is why I praise the aussie server as it knocked one of the problems right out of the ball park.

Either/or is better then suffering both, we both know that. Which one we prefer suffering is more or less personal opinion though and I feel more comfortable with experiencing minor desyncs frequently over that of having all my commands lag.

"

Startkabels wrote:

And last your point about loots from objects etc.: They will introduce loot 2.0 with less but better drops, who cares if nothing drops from pots?
Also D3 will be darker in the new expansion.

I got good loot from them before they nerfed them and it was a real damper on my play style (Destroy EVERYTHING in each area I visit before continuing on). The changes they've made to the game since launch have just left me not bothering to try and progress from Act 1 Inferno to Act 2 anymore :/

It just feels so sterile only having a chance at getting decent loot from enemies. The big chests got nerfed and the destructible's got nerfed which was very sad. Destroying destructibles just leaves me feeling hollow now as I know it is utterly pointless time wasting now and a near complete waste of an aww yeah game mechanic. Destroying stuff looks cool, until you've done it a trillion times to the same stuff and the lack of any chance of decent loot from them it's just not... mmhm I'm gonna stop discussing it now as I'm rambling :/

"

mvm199 wrote:

"

Startkabels wrote:

And then the part about the gameplay: First of all playing an online game with that ping is not a good idea, your points about boss fights that are frustrating are not valid just because of your ping.

zero logic as usual from you, im sure he doesnt have that ping 24/7

I do indeed have a 24/7 230-250ping to various overseas servers (including D3's, duh), I hear some aussies manage around 170 to 190 though but those people probably live next door to their phone exchange.