Four reason i think Diablo IV migh have the edge against poe(2)
" This is just it. You have PoE, and it delivers all of those. In spades. So why even care/talk about Diablo? You know it's not going to have any of those to the extent that PoE does. BUT -- in eschewing those, it'll almost certainly have some of the things *I* want in a Diablo type game. Let me go through them here. 1. Depth of itemisation: when a game focuses too much on that, especially an ARPG, it can quickly turn into work for the player. Of course, we all have our own thresholds there, but for me, the depth of itemisation exists purely to mix up how one does the same thing: kill shit, get better shit, equip shit, kill shit, repeat. You do not need a particularly deep level of itemisation to achieve that. It's a nice bonus IF it doesn't get in the way of the game itself. When it comes to PoE, caring about your items is almost the entire game. No thanks. 2. Depth of Character building: let's assume you don't mean items here (which then makes PoE's 'character building' quite shallow, given that also excludes equipped skills), and simply...what? passives? Again, if you make these too much a focus, you forget why it all exists in the first place: to facilitate the gameplay. In both the itemisation and 'character building' case, I'd say a strong, solid, reliable foundation is far superior to depth for the sake of depth. Unless you want to fall into a hole and just keep falling, I guess. It seems that is what a lot of Exiles do. 3. Depth of content: Uh, Diablo 4 is going to have that over Path of Exile for sure. Huge open areas and over a hundred dungeons (likely fashioned after Elden Ring's hand-crafted approach rather than, say, open and empty procedural/survival game style), long established lore, a small army of scenario writers and environmental designers and all that. Wraeclast is NOT a deep place -- it's largely a dead husk which is why when GGG needed to give players somewhere else to go they just fucking invented a dreamscape that cleverly reused assets from Wraeclast. Unless you mean something else by depth of content, in which case please elaborate and I'll address that too, if I am able. The core point is what you see as sine qua non for ARPGs, I see as potential traps for amateur designers who don't understand that those things are skeletal. They're not an entire body of a game. I'll add one more thing I expect from a good ARPG: a believably lived-in world. Diablo 1 got away with not having this because of technical limitations: it was essentially a dungeon crawl, BUT even then I got a sense that the monsters in the church and below had a life of their own, doing their own things. They didn't just exist to be killed by me. Then Diablo 2 had these awesome new settings where people lived, owned taverns, escorted caravans, and so on. Titan Quest has towns full of people in various Ancient World settings; Sacred 2 has townsfolks chattering away to each other (fucking weird conversations too). Even Diablo 3 had a sense that if your character wasn't there, the world still existed. I do not get that sense from Path of Exile at all. Everything in it, from the monsters to the NPCs, are like dolls that only come to life when you interact with them. The Exile is the only moving piece in the entire game. Wraeclast has a lot of lore interactables but it's all past tense. And then when we finally come across a lived-in setting (Oriath itself), we mostly just slaughter everyone in sight. It's a sad little power fantasy, really. And what's the follow-up to that? Literally. Killing. Gods. And PoE gets away with it because of the three factors you mentioned. Everything else is just place-setting. There's a reason most Exiles don't even read the flavour text. It doesn't matter. And the devs go to absolutely no lengths to give the player a reason to care. Real pity, because some of it is pretty good writing. But Wraeclast was never to me a believably lived-in world. It's too obsessed with being a mysterious husk, an archaeological simulation. Even when I read the graphic novel about Sarn at its height, it seemed more like a myth than true history. Like seeing the Coliseum today and immediately believing it once played host to massive simulated battles, massacres of Christians, and so on. That's the realm of myth, not direct history. Diablo 4, being some sort of blend of ARPG and MMO-lite with a small army of creatives filling its every nook and cranny, is absolutely going to present Sanctuary as a believably lived-in world. You will not be the only moving piece, even ignoring the other players. Could it do that and still focus on the three factors you mentioned? Sure, but sooner or later, there has to be balance. Depth of customisation *and* breadth of world in which to enjoy it. Without balancing those, an RPG is destined to be of limited appeal. So rejoice, Exile. PoE exists to give you what you want. D4 probably won't, but if Blizzard deliver on the proposition so far it'll give a lot of other players what they've been waiting for...so...what was the argument again? :) edit: fixed a few typos. Mybad. The name says it all. Last edited by 鬼殺し#7371 on Jun 19, 2022, 5:58:34 PM
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" Am I expecting a deep complex character building system in D4? Of course not. HOWEVER, what you and others are failing to realize, is that THAT ALONE is not good enough. In PoE, all that 'deep character building' is great in the planning and PoB phases. In use? It's screenwide one click obliteration the vast overwhelming majority of the time. Smashing flasks and movement skills without a single thought to what enemies you're fighting or what's actually happening on the screen. What I wish PoE would do, in my own personal perfect ARPG vision, is have the combat against enemies last more then .2 of a second. Have the combat actually be me using all my skills, needing to use CC, needing to use movement, and deciding how to tackle a rare mob and his minions as I dodge dangerous mechanics. The medallion of perfect ARPG combat has two halves; putting together your character and combat WITH your character. PoE does the first part very well; it's an absolute fun puzzle to 'get your character to work' with what you have. But the combat? It's ass. Through and through it's complete ass. It's 'insta kill or be insta killed'. D4? Well we don't actually know. but in D3, the planning was ass as far as gear goes (and zero skill tree points), but the moment to moment combat was fuckin LEAGUES beyond PoE's, even 10 years ago. D3's combat had you actually using multiple skills and manually dodging and moving just to clear magic packs. So PoE can brag all it wants that it takes a fuckin doctorate to piece together a build that hits X million dps with max res, but it's combat 99.9% of the time is brainless. And D4 has a chance to challenge that. |
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Are Diablo and PoE proper competitors at this point? PoE seems to have carved itself a fairly reliable niche as the immensely complex game for the hardcore of the hardcore. Regardless the size of that niche, it seems enough for the game to have stayed afloat for many years now.
People who are not too into the complexity level of PoE and the associated side effects are already not going to be playing it as much. People who do want that level of complexity know they won't find it in Diablo IV. And it has outgrown DII by this point. All of us who found PoE too much have already been spending more time with games like Grim Dawn, and soon perhaps Last Epoch. Amusingly, one of the reasons I do play PoE sometimes is that I really like the lore / worldbuilding, but I seem very much in the minority there. Diablo III's story delivery was very disappointing. Diablo IV was honestly not on my radar at all until I read this forum. Anything can change, of course, and Blizzard is now under new leadership, but it was a while since they put out a solid product. |
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" I really dont care much about the lore and have to admit that I do not understand most of it. Im playing this game since act 3 got released and still... no clue. ...but I really like that the setting is not your typical clichee fantasy setting. |
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PoE needs a lot of improvements, I hope that mainly the gameplay and animations will be renewed. There are many skills, but most seem very similar in gameplay and depth of effects.
I want to have reasons to farm, if the skills are practically the same, why should I invest in another build? Also, it's very strange how 100% Melee builds in this game are so rare, most are long or medium range builds, out of all the ARPGs, this was the only one I had an unpleasant experience with Pure Melee. ------------------- D3 has a quality that PoE doesn't: Tactical gameplay, especially in 4P. The synergy of D3 multiplayer is excellent and a lot of fun. If D4 has something similar, I will definitely give it a try. " My PC is an i7 4930k + 980Ti. It's pretty old, but it should be more than enough for this game. I definitely can't run this game at a constant 60fps during the map. Diablo 3 in 4P can be as dense as a 100% Delirium, but I can run D3 @60fps, and so can all my friends. PoE is an aberration in terms of optimization, it's terrible, much heavier and poorly optimized than Crysis. It's ironic that GGG places so much emphasis on cosmetics, but 99% of their players need to reduce their visual quality to play. Last edited by kenbak#5806 on Jun 19, 2022, 10:13:06 AM
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personally, i m sick of GGG's direction.
from what i m seeing they want: - make POE hard. which is enjoyable to some, not to others - make more end game content to challenge the 0.01%. probably that's where the whales are at. nothing wrong with making super tough content except that they render many builds not viable. melee strikes for example can be deleted at this point. the best strategy for all "non uber" content is always going to be, DELETE IT BEFORE IT DELETES YOU. - gating. a lot of gating. want 4 voidstones? work your ass off. the amount of things you need to do in a league now has increased so damn much that i feel that in order to avoid missing out, i should just stick to standard. its ironic. people shit on tencent saying tencent will control GGG. i m under the assumption that tencent money actually empowered GGG allowing them to go this direction. [Removed by Support]
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Play POE. Diablo is garbage now. Do you want me to elaborate? Pls don't. Either play POE or Diablo.
If you can't control it, STOP. Last edited by dagul23#7255 on Jun 20, 2022, 2:57:09 AM
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" Freudian slip Gutting Gameplay Gradually
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" I like Freud. Diablo is gone man. Play not "pay" hehe. If you can't control it, STOP. Last edited by dagul23#7255 on Jun 20, 2022, 2:58:02 AM
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Imagine being hyped about something blizzard churns out
 Second-class poe gamer
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