PoE vs Diablo 2 - Why D2 is still better

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tikitaki wrote:

No, you can't.

Please show evidence of you beating the game naked. TY.

There are several naked D2 run-throughs on Youtube :)

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Xavderion wrote:

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tikitaki wrote:

No, you can't.

Please show evidence of you beating the game naked. TY.

There are several naked D2 run-throughs on Youtube :)

none found.

only specific boss kills that looked like they took an incredibly substantial amount of preparation. quite an accomplishment, really.

but yeah, you are grossly exaggerating

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tikitaki wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

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tikitaki wrote:

No, you can't.

Please show evidence of you beating the game naked. TY.

There are several naked D2 run-throughs on Youtube :)

none found.

only specific boss kills that looked like they took an incredibly substantial amount of preparation. quite an accomplishment, really.

but yeah, you are grossly exaggerating

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18696990205&sid=3000

Ironman naked, you're welcome.

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Xavderion wrote:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18696990205&sid=3000

Ironman naked, you're welcome.

a team of 8 of some of the most hardcore experts of diablo 2 who had been playing the game for like 10 years manage to do this

and you use this as an excuse that the game is not balanced?

i doubt you could do such a thing, or anybody else in this thread.

ten years from now, im sure people will be beating PoE naked as well. or, more likely, with the way the game is going, in ten years nobody will be playing PoE at all.

thats another part of this discussion.

d2 walked the walk. it was incredibly successful, incredibly fun, incredibly accessible, had enormous replayability, a massive community that was active in every sense even hardcore PvP...

PoE has not walked the walk. comparing them obviously gives the favor to d2.

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tikitaki wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18696990205&sid=3000

Ironman naked, you're welcome.

a team of 8 of some of the most hardcore experts of diablo 2 who had been playing the game for like 10 years manage to do this

and you use this as an excuse that the game is not balanced?

i doubt you could do such a thing, or anybody else in this thread.

ten years from now, im sure people will be beating PoE naked as well. or, more likely, with the way the game is going, in ten years nobody will be playing PoE at all.

It's not an 'excuse', it's proof that D2 isn't very well balanced. If you know how to play it, you can beat it with pretty much any build. Some people enjoy that, I think it's dumb. I want my decisions to have impact :)

Also if GGG stick to their balancing plans, it will always be impossible to beat the game naked/white geared.

To me, PoE is obviously (heh) the better game.

balance does not mean that certain things are impossible

balance means things are equally viable.

i see balance meaning something like armor and evasion are equally viable.

d2 was pretty damn balanced in that a huge variety of things worked well =)

poe is not balanced because some builds work extremely brokenly well (ES builds) while other builds are mind numbingly awful (life evasion builds) -- despite the fact that the skill tree seems to encourage you to take those nodes. oh wait, the're terrible because evasion sucks and the game is not balanced.

d2 has much cleaner and better core mechanics design.

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tikitaki wrote:

balance does not mean that certain things are impossible

balance means things are equally viable.

i see balance meaning something like armor and evasion are equally viable.

d2 was pretty damn balanced in that a huge variety of things worked well =)

poe is not balanced because some builds work extremely brokenly well (ES builds) while other builds are mind numbingly awful (life evasion builds)

d2 has much cleaner and better core mechanics design.

So you can make a game really easy (D2 is very easy) so that everything is viable and call it balanced? That might be a legit (but imo a very boring) approach to balance, but I prefer GGG's approach by far.

Do agree on the build diversity issue though. By making it a tree that requires a lot of nodes to combine several skills, by design, D2 had a lot more things you were able to combine.
Want to make a barbarian build around War Cry and Berserk? No problem, you only waste 8 skillpoints. Every, single other point is put into the main 2/3 skills. Leaving you with a viable/playable build requiring very little if any specific uniques/rares that is then refined/personalized through the remaining 40 to 50 points and further upgraded through finding rares/uniques.

Want to make a poe build that combines Zealoth's oath and Ondar?(don't know why, but suppose you concoct a build in your mind that sounds like fun) You lose 12 points taking the fastest way to Zealoth's Oath and another 27 nodes getting to Ondar's guile. That's roughly lvl 40 before you even have your desired build. And you might not even need the specific stats along the way. Great, I have only dex nodes but need INT. I need extra HP or defence to barely survive on my way to level 40. Also, if I take the quickest route, I won't have this and this to upgrade my build.
So everybody follows optimized builds because taking a different route makes a difficult game even more ballcrushingly difficult.

I mean, I've seen builds suggesting you only start taking CI after ledge merciless. That means people have to postpone playing the way they WANT to play until level 55? Compare that with the few builds that require lvl 30 in diablo 2 to start playing exactly the way you want. Which you can knock out in 15 minutes of bhaal runs after a rush.

That's not discounting the requirement of a lot of builds on a 6 linked piece of armor or weapon. Actually finding the necessary gems and then getting 20% through gcp's or lvling one to 20. I hope you can understand that all of this isn't exactly attracting the D2 crowd.

In short, I think the skilltree that includes stat and skillpoints is hurting this game rather than help it.

Simple add stats to every other node already ingame. Or solve it with spheres of influence centered around specific nodes. Making every passive combinable with every other passive requiring you to choose 2 or 3 and putting all your points in those to further refine your character. With a max level of lvl 20 on the nodes, giving you a complete build at 40 skillpoints, leaving you with 60 levels of playing exactly the way you want.
And every skill a unique has should also be on the passives board, otherwise you might as well make a uniques check list for most builds.

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Xavderion wrote:

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tikitaki wrote:

balance does not mean that certain things are impossible

balance means things are equally viable.

i see balance meaning something like armor and evasion are equally viable.

d2 was pretty damn balanced in that a huge variety of things worked well =)

poe is not balanced because some builds work extremely brokenly well (ES builds) while other builds are mind numbingly awful (life evasion builds)

d2 has much cleaner and better core mechanics design.

So you can make a game really easy (D2 is very easy) so that everything is viable and call it balanced? That might be a legit (but imo a very boring) approach to balance, but I prefer GGG's approach by far.

if it was "boring" why did so many people play it for so long? it was mind-numbingly popular.

also, i'm not even sure GGG HAS an approach to balance. at least, they've never clearly stated what their balance goal is or what steps they are taking to achieve this.

the game is less balanced now than it was when i started.

Edit: @Hyskoa, great post...agree completely about many of your points =)

but a lot of it seems like fundamental design flaws, so i am not sure exactly how GGG could "fix" it.

The skilltree is really fun to work with, but not beeing able to respec(completely and for low costs) makes it pretty annoying. It takes me more time comparing my build ideas to others then actually plaing the game. While its fun to do so it would still be as fun or maybe even more fun if i could switch between the builds just as i want to. Testing out stuff simply isn`t possible without releveling a new char.

Now since the ranger patch i didn`t even reskill my ranger and just started another char to test a full dex+evasion based char first, just because i didn`t want to mess around with my "main" ranger. Especially in this case i think there should be at least one additional complete reset so that people can test it before they have to make the decision.

Something like get a full reset every 10 lv or just beeing able to completely respec with 1 orb of regret would make this game a lot more fun in my opinion. Beeing frightened of making "nearly" irreversible mistakes in your skilltree somewhat takes a lot of joy away from me.

I am right now at a point where i`m close to considering to not play PoE anymore. It feels a lot like D3 to me right now. It had some more intersting aspects and some worse aspects. (Diversity of skills used while playing, boring endgame(same as d3 for me) to name the worst parts). I really didn`t like the way the current map system works. I farmed piety and temple of solaris. Its lv 69?. W/e its higher lv then the maps i got; basically assuring better drops then maps, while maps beeing a lot harder. That shit doesn`t fit together sry. Then running maps and loosing the opportunity to even go back to the same map lv because no other map dropped makes it even worse. One shouldn`t be forced to do lower lv content which isn`t really rewarding(gets xp/loot penalities) while you could do harder content if you just got the maps to do so. I do like the idea of rolling maps, but i do actually think players should be able to store maps for ever, just loosing the enchant(or giving bosses a 100% chance to drop a map(same lv or higher).
Concerning piety i think she should drop lv 69-70 maps. What am i supposed to do with a lv 66 map i get from the lv 69 endboss? it feels like getting trolled pretty hard acutally.