My recap of PoE vs D4 and why even still PoE is unmatched
" I don't know why you are trying to minimize this when I know you have played it? Maybe its more character based or something? This is not the experience ive had with the Pulverize Werebear I'm playing for example. The glyphs and pathing really matter, and change the way you gear/play. Whether it's the "Exploit Glyph" where you are making enemies vulnerable for a time period, or another that benefits stacking damage/reduction while your are fortified. These are not just stat sttuffers or multipliers, they are condition-based modifiers. This provides incentive to the player to make decisions on gearing and skills. As I said perhaps this is a Druid experience, and not true for the other characters, but I'm not seeing it the way you are it seems. Plus just from a desgin perspective, the devs will be able to supply new boards and glyphs, and perhaps eventually be able to make them rng based drops in the future. Imagine a legendary paragon board that a pinnacle boss drops for example, or random customized versions in the loot pools. Plenty of flexibility here. Anyways idk what else to say, I'm definitely positive on this part of the endgame based on my personal experience. It's quite good. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44#6905 on Jun 30, 2023, 12:06:18 PM
|
|
" The Exploit glyph is pretty much mandatory for every class & build in the game because invulnerability is too good to pass up on, it's just increasing the damage of something you are already doing anyway. You use the glyphs and paragon nodes that synergise with your skills you are already using, they aren't game changers. Something I'd say is more game changing is the sorc Fire Bolt enchant that causes direct damage to apply burning - you can use that without using the skill and it applies to cold/lightning skills. That opens up a whole bunch of gear affixes, paragon nodes and glyphs that do increased damage to burning enemies / reduced damage from burning enemies. I took that enchant an hour into the game and used it ever since, there's nothing like that on the paragon board. |
|
|
Innervation: note I said they add to the story of the world/setting, not the campaign. Each side quest in DIV, and there are many, is written in a way that reminds you what sort of effect living in Lilith's world would have on human beings. It drives home the irony of the name "Sanctuary" constantly -- but frequently these quests also end on a note of hope. And that too is the theme of the game: shit's fucked but change is possible. Not all hope for a better tomorrow is lost.
And these really are side quests -- when I hit Act V and just wanted to know what happens next in the main campaign, I started skipping them all. As a result, my map completion of certain zones is MUCH smaller. Side quests shouldn't exist to empower the character significantly, not in a properly realised game world. They are optional and there for the curious, the compulsive and the completionists. And that brings us to why PoE's sidequests don't do the same narrative lifting: they aren't really side quests for the most part. ARPGs traditionally don't have many at all. No one considers a quest that gives you a skill point a "side quest". They are mandatory. Add to this fact that in PoE, a so-called sidequest is usually nothing more than going somewhere and killing something (eg passive reset books in both acts 1 and 2 are acquired this way) OR retrieving an item for a truly pointless reward (looking at you, Cap'n) and it is easy to see the difference. Diablo IV's side quests can be quite detailed and take several steps to complete. PoE's, in the grand tradition of Diablo 2, not so much. Fairly thin npc in town has a request. Complete request. Get reward. Probably the only side quest I can think of that genuinely has some development as a result would be Love is Dead and you can tell whoever wrote that knew Clarissa and Tolman's story had already left an impact. Thanks Piety -- you were too good a villain and gone too soon. And this all comes down to DIV being open world and having the dev army at its disposal to make said open world genuinely seem alive with relatable people and their personal struggles. As I said, DIV foregrounds its writing with a confidence unprecedented in ARPGs. PoE doesn't because its "unprecedented in ARPGs" doesn't need to. PoE's brilliance in writing came in the form of minimalism. A quip here, a moment of tightly packed character detail there. All in service of its unique systems. Writing at the level of DIV would have been wasted in a game apt to attract people who consider campaigns "tutorials". Hence my skepticism re the incoming campaign's significance but eh can't call it a sequel without one I guess. That suffice as a response or do you have further queries? The name says it all. Last edited by 鬼殺し#7371 on Jun 30, 2023, 8:08:11 PM
| |
"They're literally not though, so I suspect you'd actually find significant numbers of people perfectly comfortable to call them side quests if you were to ask. Mandatory in this context means they're required to make progress through the main campaign, not "I will always choose to do it". Don't get me wrong, I absolutely agree the side quests in D4 are in many cases stronger (especially in a narrative sense) than the ones dotted through the campaign in POE - first and foremost because they more regularly involve characters as well as monsters and objects. Are they better than, say, Heist? No, but then POE has had a lot more time in the oven. And, I mean, long-term Diablo 4 players aren't going to consider missing out on the skill points, health potion increases, paragon points something they want to do either. They're going to choose to do most of those optional side quests for the exact same reasons people do those skill point quests in POE, and after the first time, probably skip all the dialogue in the process, just "going somewhere and killing something". |
|
|
Playing PoE for couple years now and D4 in this last 2 weeks. They both have ups and downs.
Poe is still top in my opinion because of the variety of different builds you can try and make, Fast pace fighting, and great endgame. D4 best part of it was I did not get 1 shot by anything leveling to 100. had tough fights but never 1 shot even without worrying on resistances or gear. Simple crafting. Was simple play thru more beginner friendly with a lot of different things to do besides level and endgame. A lot less math involved lol |
|
" Ah...I don't know. We know that lore in PoE is very opt in. I feel like its only fair to add in the terrain clickables and npc town-optional dialogues. Were this game 'that other game'
Spoiler
if D3 was TOG does that make D4 TOG2??
Then there is lore from stuff like Heist and Synthesis league. Those leagues were, in a very twisted form of the term 'side quests' in that you didn't have to do them to beat the game. Taken all together, if a player would opt-in to reading all those dialogs it would be quite substantial. One might even find themselves writing a paragraph like: The lore in PoE, and there is a lot of it, is written in a way that reminds you what sort of effect living in Wraeclast has on human beings. And not just human beings - play through the game with the Ranger to hear her opine about what it does to nature! It drives home the theme of the game name "Path of Exile" constantly - frequently these quests end with death - but also with survival. And that too is the theme of the game: life is tough - deal with it. There's plenty of dialog that adds to Wraeclast's setting. But GGG seem to know the audience of the genre and were keen to put the main course (mechanics and dynamics) front and center. With gameplay there is a very grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side effect with ARPGs. I've seen it thoroughly this past year on the LE and PoE reddits where a new player is blown away at first glance and can't believe what they've been missing and boast that after 300 (or 3,000 if you're leaving PoE for another game) in 'the other game', this new one that I've put 13 hours into is JUST THE BEST and EXACTLY WHAT I WANT. I'm not reducing anything or everything you wrote to 'this is just a honeymoon phase' but what I am saying is that from the outside looking in I don't see the differences. And I'm almost certainly never playing another Blizzard game so I won't be able to investigate for myself. This does make me excited for the new PoE campaign though...I wonder what if anything they will try in the narrative arena that they didn't or couldn't in the current live game. |
|
" once beta poe2 is out and even with 3.22 diablo4 will start to die slowly but surely. They messed up the gameplay. No idea how they could make it so bad. |
|
" Nah, Diablo 4 will survive for many years. Hell, it will even thrive. Diablo 4 does probably have A LOT of players that have never really touched PoE - and never will. But I seriously doubt that Diablo 4 will have this Ragnarok-like effect on PoE numbers that certain people are imagining. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
|
|
" Let's break this down - "A LOT of players that have never really touched PoE - and never will". D4 will "thrive" What are the categories here? 1) Diablo 2 players, who jumped into D4 - and a great many of these folks don't like D4 due to scaling, itemization, no targetted boss farming etc..etc.. MrLllama is an example representative of this group. 2) Diablo 3 players, who jumped into D4 - and a great many of these folks don't like D4 due to the lower loot drop rate, and the much much slower leveling. 3) New Players to the ARPG genre who are here due to the marketing campaign and hype - alot of these are the "dads with only 1-2 hours to play a night" and thus are progressing much slower then folks familiar with ARPGs. These are also the folks who absolutely abhor the concept of Seasonal content and progression resets. So, in order for D4 to thrive they would have to: 1) Re-do end game farming from copy/pasta dungeons to more storyline bosses, and change itemization completely - keeping the D2 folks interested. 2) Speed up leveling and item drop rate significantly - keeping the D3 folks interested. 3) Slow down the release of new content to account for new players who consume content at about 10x slower than the average APRG person. Do explain how you think D4 will "thrive" when it currently has an identity crisis that half asses interests of various customer segments but does not do a good job of knocking any particular segment out of the park; thus significantly reducing long term retention. It's literally the most average game across the board, other than graphics and arguably story. IGN: RFIncBlood_1 Last edited by Omgmynamesux#5130 on Jul 2, 2023, 4:57:32 PM
|
|
" I don't like it either, after spending a decent amount of hours in the game in the betas. I think it's a progression-less, average game - at best. But I didn't like D3 either, and have probably never been more disappointed over a game ever. I was even more disappointed over D3 than I was over CP77. That said; D3 thrived for years. A lot of people like Diablo 4. And it will probably have ten times the players that PoE will have. We knew that before launch, and that would probably be the case even if it was ten times worse than it currently is. Popularity was never - and will probably never be an issue for the Diablo franchise. The question will always be; can it steal a lot of PoE regulars? In the long term, I don't think it can or will. But the amount of PoE regulars on this planet is only a fraction of the Diablo 4 player base. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
|
|
