Diablo 4 may end up to be a cashgrab, but watch any stream : its gameplay is actually fun

We don't know how Diablo 4 will end up playing out. Knowing that it's Blizzard, it will definitely be a grubby cash grab in one way or another and I will not support them until I'm certain it's a good game.

HOWEVER,

watch and stream and enjoy how good the gameplay feels. It's actually an "action' RPG. You move, you dodge, you execute combos, you control enemies, you round them up, you aoe them down, you dodge problematic boss moves while finding openings to deal damage, etc, etc ... exactly what a ARPG is supposed to be like.

I've booted POE last night and played up to Act 3, and I reached level 28, which is more or less the same level where D4 caps in the beta.

And what was my experience up until then? You know it all damn well... it's been the same for the last so many years...

click-click-click-click.

Things come at you, they die to your aoe, I don't even know what I'm killing or care... All I do is speeding up to the next area, rushing the levels higher...

So forgettable, so boring. The engagement is never there.

All that keeps this game alive is the pavlovian dopamine rush injected in your veins when a screen of monsters melts in a loot explosion... then on you go onto bigger numbers still... this is not a game, it's a click-simulation skinner-box combined with theory craft meta-gaming.

And the dissapointment comes when realizing that this game has been in the exact same state for years now, and despite the tremendous support it's been getting all that has been added, is increasingly complex item crafting options which will make anyone's (except the most die-hard grinders') head spin.

ggg tried to make rare monsters more distinctive and harder to engage.

it slowed down gameplay and made fights more meaningful, especially if you couldn't avoid archnemesis rares which were too strong for you for whatever weird reasons.

didn't turn out well as we all learned. players nowadays just can't ... it seems

Its because ppoe already have been "figured out", most truly new players actually dont have an easy time on champaign. You can mow down stuff because you know what to do, what works and what dont and the general path to cruise tro the game is clear

From what i hear, most newcomers have to force their way with die-respawn zerg style to get trough merveil. And can you bellieve that once the whole community feared dominus? And thats before we get to act 5 on kaom realm and daresso

On comparison, D4 is brand new, people dont know what to do and its in experimental stage. We all struggle on any game on the first run, but we just "level up", so to speak, as players and eventually we return to areas once we considered unfair and we cant even understand why it seemed so hard to begin with

Trust me, EVERY dungeon crawler, if played long enough, gets optimized and figured out to the point where you are killing whole hordes on each click, its not just poe, on D2 a well made light sorc could wipe entire screens of mobs, tornado shot style. On D3, you basically HAVE to mop the place, else you wouldnt complete the rift(like breachstones) and you only really interact with the boss at the end

Its just how ARPGs in general go, theres a reason pure combat alone cant keep players engaged on it for long, no matter how mechanically good it is

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Things come at you, they die to your aoe, I don't even know what I'm killing or care... All I do is speeding up to the next area, rushing the levels higher...

Exactly the experience I'm looking for, it's a powerfantasy ARPG, I want to kill millions of monsters, I am the God in this game, I have neither the patience nor the interest for D4's clunky ''combat''. The lot of you who think repeating the same pattern of action against a predictive AI is some incredibly high end skilled game design are hilarious, just like the dark souls players are for thinking they're some technical prodigies at the pinnacle of game mechanics for rolling and attacking to a simple rhythm a 3 year old could follow.

And D4's ''combat'' is not only repetitive and mind numbingly boring, the animations are also hilariously clunky for a modern game from a non-indie studio that's by the way not even out yet. This D4 beta came out faster than barb comes out of his clunky ground slam animation rofl

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Kranyum wrote:

I've booted POE last night and played up to Act 3, and I reached level 28, which is more or less the same level where D4 caps in the beta.

And what was my experience up until then? You know it all damn well... it's been the same for the last so many years...

Kinda obvious that something new and fresh is always better for the first few times till you get used to it and start to lose the excitement. Sure even D4 is going to become quite boring and dry after x characters or x hours of the same story line over and over again.

"

And the dissapointment comes when realizing that this game has been in the exact same state for years now, and despite the tremendous support it's been getting all that has been added, is increasingly complex item crafting options which will make anyone's (except the most die-hard grinders') head spin.

Disappointment cause they contentiously add new content within a timed cycle?
That's more or less something every arpg should do rather than slowing down the patch cycle in time.
But I guess not everyone is into more complex gameplay, crafting ect, but the same goes for people who are not really interested in over simplified and watered down games.
So it's a good thing that we have different types of games all across the arpg genre to cater the needs for their audience, and not just a copy of one product "sold" under a different title.

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DÉSPAIR wrote:

The lot of you who think repeating the same pattern of action against a predictive AI is some incredibly high end skilled game design are hilarious, just like the dark souls players are for thinking they're some technical prodigies at the pinnacle of game mechanics for rolling and attacking to a simple rhythm a 3 year old could follow

Thats some seriously gifted 3y old to be able to clear places like arnor londo on the back of just rolling and atacking on right time

Devolving dark souls to just roll and atk on rythm is kinda like those guys saying poe is slow and cluncky when they only beat brutus

And poe DOES take legit skill in many ways: for one, knowledge IS a skill(knowledge is important everywhere, its why we spend so much time on school...).
And before anyone says "I could do it too if i put the time", that dosnt really floats... in the theorical world where we all put time on everything, everyone have doctorate on high math and apreciate euler'id, you could put time on it but didnt, nor did most of the people. Studying and doing mental work is like menial work: Feels anyone can do it, but when it comes down to it, most simply cant handle it

Outside that, its quite a nice measure of skill how little geared you need to be to complete a instance: Some people can beat ubers with surprising little dps, theres definitly skill there, average joe cant touch even uber shaper unless the character have 20m dps

I played all 3 available classes to 25. It's got some pros and cons.

Somehow it has less skill variety than D3 which might become a problem later. The combat is fun and engaging but that's expected by design. Rogue was the only class I managed to not bother using my resource generator, though I think it's by design based on their melee skills.

Melee needs work. Big surprise. Barb really just has Lunge. The other builder skills aren't good. Melee Rogue builders aren't either though one is designed in a manner you hit once and try to maintain.

There is some fun synergy going on with Vulnerability, Overpower and such. Barb Fortify is an interesting take on durability while Rogue gets dodge. They're mostly linked to the class though.

The combat is considerably more fun IMO thanks to the synergy mechanics but time will tell. There's only so many ways you can build a class with such limited skill options. Legendary affixes would help a lot. Most of what I've seen is just damage, CDR or if you do X then get Y.

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vio wrote:

ggg tried to make rare monsters more distinctive and harder to engage.

it slowed down gameplay and made fights more meaningful, especially if you couldn't avoid archnemesis rares which were too strong for you for whatever weird reasons.

didn't turn out well as we all learned. players nowadays just can't ... it seems

No, what they added was rares which were either not worth fighting or just the same as before but with more hp, or ones that killed you, period.

Fights did not get more meaningful, you just went for more dmg and even more defenses. Until then you ran past rares that dont die in a few seconds because they were not worth killing. The exact same problem described in the thread.

And ofc they concentrated the whole loot in extremely rare mobs, which also got a big no.

Archnemesis was not a player problem, it was a game problem. Its really funny to see someone trying to twist this to look like its anything else.

Its always the same in poe, no fight can be meaningful and worth your time because there will always be builds that destroy the fight. Its only a question of how much such builds cost to put together, often its not that much.

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vio wrote:

ggg tried to make rare monsters more distinctive and harder to engage.

it slowed down gameplay and made fights more meaningful, especially if you couldn't avoid archnemesis rares which were too strong for you for whatever weird reasons.

didn't turn out well as we all learned. players nowadays just can't ... it seems

I don't think it's a matter of "players just can't" and more "the reward is absolutely not worth the effort."

Let's not forget that one clip from this woman streamer who spent several long, boring ass minutes, kiting a giant archnemesis buffed by essences, killed it, and got a handful of garbage essences as a reward.

I don't know about you or most people, but situations and outcomes like this were very common for me back in Kalandra league and it made the whole experience feel downright miserable. Slogging through a map, getting blasted instantly by rares or spending ungodly lengths of time pounding your face against a walking brick wall, for the promise of candy currency is far from an enjoyable experience.

If GGG expects you to face off against rare mobs who are as tough and dangerous as aspirational bosses, they better damn well pay off for the time and effort. But no, GGG made Archnemesis mods unrewarding compared to its original league. All risk, little reward.

And judging by the outrage during that league alongside many people quitting, I think it's safe to say many would likely agree.

D4 doesnt look fun watching it, but could be fun playing it. Aside from click and kill

Expectations are too high for any game today. We want something new that makes you wanna try it, instead of a revamped story or something we are familar with.

Impossible, but genere's like arpgs and mmo's are now merging into each other, making it interesting