PoE compared to Diablo 2 ?

hi guys, I have 2 question about this game.

1) Is this game is as grindy as Diablo 2 ? I mean the farm was insane in D2 once they introduced high runes. Most hell viable build required insanly rare drop.

2) Is this game require the use of an entry level build ? I mean the standard way to play D2 was to start with a build that could farm some easy place with crap gear in order tog et the items to play the class you really wanted to play.

Is this the same for PoE ?

This game is ridiculously grindy. But it's pretty not-grindy up until you beat the story mode, after that you get to do mapping which tries to hide the grind but it's still a grind. That's just the nature of ARPGs.

It's also not required to use a starter build, but it helps generate wealth if you want to do fancier builds. There's plenty of cheap, powerful builds that can be done on currency you'll collect just finishing Act 10

Thirdly don't ask people on the forums what the game is like. Download the dang game and find out on your own too. It's free, all you'll lose is some time

Well, it's an ARPG and they are all sort of grindy. It's the nature of the game. You basically just kill mobs to get loot to kill mobs faster to get loot faster^^

With the next league though we get an additional option to get loot: Beast crafting! You basically catch Pokemo....erm..monserts and sacrifice them to craft gear. So it get's a bid less "random grindy" and a bit more "goal focused grindy" if you know what I mean^^

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varlak74 wrote:

hi guys, I have 2 question about this game.

1) Is this game is as grindy as Diablo 2 ? I mean the farm was insane in D2 once they introduced high runes. Most hell viable build required insanly rare drop.

2) Is this game require the use of an entry level build ? I mean the standard way to play D2 was to start with a build that could farm some easy place with crap gear in order tog et the items to play the class you really wanted to play.

Is this the same for PoE ?

poe is much way harder.

there are so much choices and decisions to make and u will be forced to make choices... see the shit attached below and every step is gonna be so painful and basically the game is designed to fuck u in the ass in every step and whichever step u take.

when u wanna slot in a skill gem in ur gear, often times, its either the color is not right or the links are not there, or u run out of slots to slot ur gems, or whatever.

http://oi64.tinypic.com/w20tc9.jpg

What? What is that chart? WHY IS THAT CHART? That so over-complicates the gems its not funny. I mean sure, if you want to break down all gems by colour and arbitrary tag combinations you can read that chart, but it's so unnecessary.

Stop trying to scare people off by showing overcomplicated arbitrary charts =p

The game does have some complex mechanics, but there's now a good manual built into the game to explain most things fairly well.

@OP As a veteran D2 player of thousands (tens of thousands?) of hours, I hope I can relate a bit more to your conversion to PoE.

1.) This game I would say is more grindy than D2 by the sheer volume of grinding, but is offset by variety. Instead of just teleporting through to kill Baal 50k times in a row, you have a good selection of endgame content, and a good progression system. PoE uses something called "maps" which are like other items in that they can roll affixes which add attributes to the map. Monsters in the map may get more damage, more tankiness, certain mechanics may be introduced, or your character may be penalized with lower resistances, but you get increased rewards for taking the higher risks. So while you will do more farming, it's a lot less tedious.

The second part of this "Most hell viable build required insanly rare drop.". This is not the case in PoE. There is MANY builds which are viable in the end game, thousands. While there is always going to be "top" builds, that doesn't mean other builds aren't viable, as was the case in D2 where you needed to be a Hammerdin, a Frozen Orb / Ice Storm sorceress or one of a few other builds. Lots of players may be complaining about "reduced diversity" in PoE, but it's still far more diversity than any other ARPG on the market. There is still those super rare hard to obtain drops that enable certain builds, but trade is a very viable option for these, and those builds are not required.

2.) Most people will recommend going into PoE with a starter build. This isn't because it's "required" per se, but more so that it's going to make your life easier. Having a starter build is going to help you avoid mistakes which could potentially cause you a lot of issues. A starter build, like D2, has low gear requirements and a lot of survivability inherent in the build. PoE is a game that can easily punish the unaware player, starter builds make it a bit easier to take.

In D2 you typically had to farm at certain points for certain things, such as the end of Nightmare before moving to Hell. PoE doesn't have these farming pauses, and you follow a continuous progression. This is a bit complex with D2 in how starter builds existed - they were specifically designed to farm certain stop points that a non-starter build wouldn't be effective at. Because of PoE's more linear progression, it's not as mandatory to have specific builds. As you don't need to stop at any point to farm up before trying to progress, your build will just slowly fade out / slow down until it reaches its viable end point.

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VapidActions wrote:

What? What is that chart? WHY IS THAT CHART? That so over-complicates the gems its not funny. I mean sure, if you want to break down all gems by colour and arbitrary tag combinations you can read that chart, but it's so unnecessary.

Stop trying to scare people off by showing overcomplicated arbitrary charts =p

Pretty much my reaction when the same person dropped it in a D3 discussion thread. I mean, if that's how they see the game, that's fine. But that is so convoluted and personal it gives, at best, an indication that you can look at PoE in such depth and complexity. But you do not have to, and I'd argue doing so early on kills a lot of the wonder you can experience in those first few dozen hours or so. Again, if a person just wants to 'win', then by all means, copy a build or obsess over the numbers. But many of us from the old days had no such resources and just played whatever, learning from our mistakes. It was, at least for me, a LOT of fun!

Even now, with all those resources at my disposal, all that meta to copy and 'win', I just do whatever I want and enjoy it. Because fuck it, it's 'my' time and 'my' PoE experience.

But it comes down to what you want to get out of the game. If you're not the sort to enjoy defeat after defeat as a learning experience, then absolutely you can skip all that and play a 'starter' build based on the current meta. It's the smart thing to do, really, and there's a reason they exist.

All in all, I'd say if you enjoyed D2 you'd have to almost struggle not to enjoy PoE, at least before it turns into an addiction. If. Let's say if.

Regarding diminished diversity: this is a double-edged sword with PoE. Because no skills or gear are class-locked, we have a LOT more character diversity than any ARPG ever, but if you're talking diversity in terms of gameplay style, it really can be reduced to a specific number of boxes ticked: high ehp, high overall damage, AoE clear speed for hordes and adds and maybe high single target damage for bosses. And there aren't *that* many different ways to achieve that. But I think that's really looking at the upper end of things. Plenty of people just play the story and call it a day, or muddle around low to mid tier maps.

On that note, OP, I'd like to point out an often-repeated statistic, straight from the devs themselves: less than 1% of all characters made make it to Maps, being PoE's end-game. I imagine my tendency to start new characters when I get to about level 50 because I have a new idea contributes to that statistic! :)

poe is grindy, but you can use auction house......i mean poe.trade to get all the items easy with some ingame currency.

buildwise, regardless of the build you pick, you will fail HARD for the first few months. best to play somthing you like and learn the game mechanics.

Easy answer is:

(1) Yes.
(2) Yes.

Expanded slightly:

(1) The game is as grindy as you want it to be, from standard ARPG to SSF grinding to find your build-enabling uniques.

(2) In league play specifically, a lot of people play a league opening build to progress to end game and gear acquisition and then follow that up with another, perhaps more complicated, build around the gear/currency/proceeds from the first character.

Wtf is that chart..


So unnecessary.

it still needs blessed hammer and werewolves/werebears before it can even be compared to diablo 2.

Can't believe were getting pseudo pokemons before an actual blessed hammer skill.