So I've played Diablo 2 Resurrected open beta

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

I played the d2 beta. its ok for a 20 year old game but its crap by modern standards. i remember it fondly from the time but its unfit for 2021 outside of nostalgia.

I think these are two completely different games very hard to compare. And yes d2r feels a little last season no doubt but it still has some aspects that are so timeless that they would outperform even poe2. D2r simply never feels unfair and you always know what is going on while poe feels unfair a lot of times and often you can't see shit because the whole screen is cluttered with gazillions of overlapping effects. Sometimes less is more!

When I started playing PoE:
* Hailrake was scary.
* The firestorm beach mob was scary.
* Merveil required you to get cold resist if you even wanted openings to attack her.
* Devourers were the stuff of nightmares.
* Leaping mobs were extremely dangerous.

Now what’s the danger? It’s from some random rare mob that has a fucked up combination of mods you don’t have time to read or evaluate. That’s wrong. It’s better for the danger to be clear and related to the mob types than to be tied to mods you don’t read.

The early story doesn’t need to be easy either. That’s not a good vs bad game thing. It’s a design choice. I don’t see any reason to make it a snooze fest. Are new players really so fragile? I wasn’t.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

none of those things happened to me in act 1 or 2 of path of exile either, so not sure where you were going wrong tbh.


i played the d2 beta. its ok for a 20 year old game but its crap by modern standards. i remember it fondly from the time but its unfit for 2021 outside of nostalgia.

Didn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen. All the things the OP talked about are a problem. GGG's Act 1 revamp is terrible.

First zone out of town, you have a fast moving, teleporting, follow you around wherever you go, fire storming mini-boss, that ignites and kills you repeatedly before you can even get to the first way point.

Yes, an experienced player will try and not leave town without 10% move speed boots, and will most likely not engage with and run from the mini-boss. But even then, you may not get away. One wrong pathing move and you are surrounded, stun-locked, ignited, dead, cussing you got stuck on an obstacle, surrounded, and killed on the way to the way point.

It's not good design that the very first mini-boss in the first zone out of town must be kited/avoided in order to succeed. With no move speed and zero fire resist, you have no chance against this mini-boss, especially if you chose or were forced into a melee skill.

The Brutus changes are terrible too. One, Brutus is no longer in his boss room. Two, at the time of the encounter most players/builds do not have the DPS and life and mana regeneration to deal with the hard hits and mana spend required to win the fight before running out of flasks. You can be as tactical as you want, but when you are out of mana, your flasks are depleted, the boss isn't dead, you cannot use your skils, and there are no adds to gain back any flask charges, you are left running around in circles. This isn't fun. It's stupid. And three, upon success, your next step is to enter an empty boss room, traverse it, and exit. This is just silly. There is no point to this room if the boss is not going to be in it.

In addition, a lot of the other mini-bosses throughout Act 1 are now also ridiculous, in that the DPS and defenses required to fight them exceed the capabilities of the builds at the time the mini-bosses are encountered. Worst offender not yet mentioned is the leaping minotaur.

What's the point of this Act 1 revamp? If it's to make new players quit, job well done. But if GGG wants keep new players and at the same time wants the game to be more difficult, then GGG needs to make sure builds have the tools to take on the more difficult encounters. All the encounters I mentioned about above, most builds don't have the tools.

Sure, if you are Tyty, or the like, you load up your Stormblast mine, et. al., and blow through it and don't care about the increased difficulty. But to me, when playing through Act 1 the game needs to be accessible to everyone, using their chosen skill.

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Mirror_Image wrote:

"

ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

But that's not the game Path of Exile was ever intended to be

Open ANY of their sales pitches.

This one.
Or this one.
Or this one.
Whichever is closer to you.

Pour some tea or coffee or whatever drink you like.

Try to think if the game have ANY feature listed at their store page / in their sales pitch while drinking whatever you prepared calmly.

Ask yourself a question: 'If it's not how it was fucking intended - why the fuck the shit is written all over their store pages?'

Pray for right answer, if common sense fails.

...What? You completely just proved my point, 3 different times, in a reply you framed as a refutation.

From the pathofexile.com description of the world:
"Wraeclast is a dark, brutal continent. Scarred by mysterious catastrophes of the past and inhabited by creatures of nightmare, the very environment challenges exiles who dare explore it.

We're sick of the recent trend towards bright, cartoony RPGs. The art style we chose for Path of Exile is dark, gritty and realistic. Wraeclast is terrifying, and we've tried hard to do it justice."

From the Steam page:
"You are an Exile, struggling to survive on the dark continent of Wraeclast, as you fight to earn power that will allow you to exact your revenge against those who wronged you. Created by hardcore gamers, Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in a dark fantasy world."

The PS4 page:
"Earn devastating skills and valuable items as you fight your way through the dark continent of Wraeclast. With unrivaled character customization, Path of Exile is an award-winning online Action RPG created by hardcore gamers, for hardcore gamers."

All three of your examples explicitly mention the game's difficult, hardcore ARPG enthusiast slant. Nowhere on ANY of these pages does it say (or even suggest) the game is intended to be easy, approachable, and forgiving. So... what was your point, exactly?

^ Yes. ^_^