My recap of PoE vs D4 and why even still PoE is unmatched

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DamageIncorporated wrote:

Not really. He's very biased, preferring PoE. I have no bias, and to me, D4 is funner.

Fantastic. Just a fantastic sentence.

Both are fantastic games with deep flaws.
It took way longer to be able to view the PoE flaws from a top down perspective.
While in Diablo 4 it took two weeks.

I would not say that both games share the same flaws except for one. They are very distinct mostly.

The one flaw that both share are builds at the top end of scaling spectrum that are 10 to 100 times better than others. PoE could not or did not wanted to fix this flaw for now 10 years (CI key stone still exists to this day). D4 have the same flaw but is very young. We shall see if anything changes in the future.

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Subfocus wrote:

Man, I really do love visiting PoE and D4 forums, such a fun time!

I kind of prefer it here, actually. Have you seen the Diablo IV forums? It's a nightmare over there. Every top thread is people hating on the game and nonsensical forum trolls posting ad hominem in response.

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Exhumer1 wrote:

I kind of prefer it here, actually. Have you seen the Diablo IV forums? It's a nightmare over there. Every top thread is people hating on the game

I mean it's just quite a sad sign that Bliz customers ain't happy with their product.

These discussions always end up in a "My X is better than your X and my dad will beat you up if you dont agree with me".

Played POE for years, love the game, it does have many flaws but does not stop it being a great game. This season though was terrible, i think most would agree on that. This was probably due to them knowing that putting tons of work into a league when D4 was launching would be a waste of resources.

Played Diablo since it launched, and yes i am that old, It has had its ups and downs over the years (D2 LOD was the best imo) but the game has always done well.

D4 is a good game, no idea of the longevity of it at this stage, but I have enjoyed them returning to a darker gameplay. There are issues with the game though, but not enough to stop me playing it. My best guess is that they have learned from D3 and the new seasons will hopefully bring new gameplay as well as new rewards but we will see.

Plenty of room in my heart to love both games :)

I'm with you 100% here, but that's not really what's important. If the numbers decline or D4 pulls ahead in terms of popularity, I could definitely see things getting way more accessible and D4-like over time.

To set proper context, I haven't followed this thread for the last week or so.

PoE is probably my favorite game of all time. I have been playing D4 the past couple weeks though. I must say that the storyline for D4 is the best I've ever seen. Even the sub-quests generally contribute pretty good to the overall storyline. D4 is worth playing for that alone, IMHO.

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Turtledove wrote:

To set proper context, I haven't followed this thread for the last week or so.

PoE is probably my favorite game of all time. I have been playing D4 the past couple weeks though. I must say that the storyline for D4 is the best I've ever seen. Even the sub-quests generally contribute pretty good to the overall storyline. D4 is worth playing for that alone, IMHO.

I agree. Story was carefully made and I enjoyed it very much too.

D4's mechanics are so situational. You must do this to gain this. If this skill hits a vulnerable, you do % increase damage. The sucky part is, there are only a few ways to deal these conditions. Most of the time, it's from stupid basic skills..

This kind of mechanic really crippled build potentials. annoying at best.

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TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

To set proper context, I haven't followed this thread for the last week or so.

PoE is probably my favorite game of all time. I have been playing D4 the past couple weeks though. I must say that the storyline for D4 is the best I've ever seen. Even the sub-quests generally contribute pretty good to the overall storyline. D4 is worth playing for that alone, IMHO.

I agree. Story was carefully made and I enjoyed it very much too.

So...story-wise, DIV is unmatched by PoE (or vice versa, now I look at it). This seems to run contrary to your topic title BUT only if we are judging the story as significant if not THE determining factor of the match.

Which is an interesting thought to me: can we compare two games of the same genre, with the same ancestor really, based on a factor that said genre usually doesn't really highlight? Is DIV the first ARPG with carefully made, well-executed story/narrative design (this then includes the many side quests that add to the story of the setting if not the campaign itself)? It is the first I have played to do so. Sacred 2 is a similar format but no one would accuse that of being well-executed. Diablo traditionally relies on lore as background -- a necessary constraint when your game is literally a hole under a small town leading to Hell -- and when it didn't it really fumbled the execution. PoE...well, I can tell you the story of its main campaign but it literally doesn't matter in light of the Atlas.

So maybe it's unfair to compare the two given well crafted story/narrative isn't a main goal of ARPGs -- but I think Diablo IV does an incredible job of arguing that maybe it should be.

Conversely that for which ARPGs are traditionally made and judged remains PoE's victorious territory. In that light, yep, unmatched.

So like I said, that is INTERESTING. That a new ARPG from the genre's oldest franchise demands to be judged on terms that usually aren't the domain of the genre, almost certainly at the expense of those more traditional elements.

Amusing to me that three big hits of the past month or so did the exact same thing in this regard. They redefined the genre their direct forebears created. Not saying all three landed with me but no denying XVI, VI and IV are all financial wins of the big kind.

It'll get there eventually but boy does your "two" have a lot to live up to, too. We can say, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but Squneeix, Capcom and Blizzard all implicitly admitted it was indeed broke. Will GGG? Eager to find out...or maybe PoE ain't broke, in which case what exactly is the purpose of 4.0 being designated as a sequel/new game?

One thing is for certain: given just how many people and how much work it took to execute DIV's narrative design ambition, PoE "2" won't be competing with it on that front. And it doesn't need to be much better than PoE "1" to be a better ARPG in trad terms. It just needs to be more accessible. So there is every chance that even once it's out, PoE "2" and DIV will have fundamentally different goals and thus fundamentally different notions of success.

But only one of them was renamed to compete with the other. Kinda seems a bit one-sided. Almost as though Blizzard knew what they'd made had no chance of matching any other ARPG because it was content to successfully do something no other ARPG could have: throw stupid amounts of time and money at making it seem as vivid and intricate a game world as possible. DiV took a risk on the one thing ARPG players typically dismiss as background. It seems it paid off: "this has great writing" is praise you can't just buy en masse. Reviewers and armchair critics have their integrity, after all. But damn was it a nice feeling to say it and mean it. About a fucking Blizzard game.

What will PoE 4.0 take a risk on, I wonder. It'll be a shame if it doesn't take any at all, but not entirely surprising. PoE is fine as is. Apparently.