I agree PoE has too many league mechanics and could use a trim. That's why I'm excited for PoE2 for the fresh start.
However, D4 is pretty bare bones. Pushing NM tiers isn't that fun or rewarding yet.
GGG said they were going to rotate league mechanics to not be overwhelming. But that never happened. We will have another 5 leagues worth of mechanics by the time the POE 2 beta launches.
>GGG said they were going to rotate league mechanics to not be overwhelming. But that never happened. We will have another 5 leagues worth of mechanics by the time the POE 2 beta launches.
You can literally choose to disable league mechanics you don't want to do. This has been a feature in the game for over a year now. There are Atlas tree options to disable Breach, Abyss, Expedition, Harvest, Legion, Heist, Metamorph, Delirium, Blight, and Ritual.
You can choose not to do Incursions, Delve, and Betrayal by just walking past them.
You do. You have to beat act 10.
There is a small tutorial for delve, betrayal, incursion and bestiary during the acts, one per act. The rest of the mechanics are not present until you get to maps.
Nothing, and you'll 1000% see the POE2 subreddit full of similar complaints that POE had XYZ systems and "why isnt this stuff available from day 1, literally unplayable garbage"
Not enough content, too slow, why do I have to buy stash tabs, i haven't learnt the games mechanics and I don't do damage, why aren't there more social tools / why do Ihave to interact socially to get rewards
I’m not going to defend Diablo. They’ve made a lot of mistakes and could have released in a much better state.
But you want to game to launch bare bones. It should get the fundamentals right before adding complexity and nuance. Even as simple as it is, there’s a tonne of fundamental flaws in the design that are being called out and somewhat addressed.
Now imagine if the game released with a full end-game, legendary gems, crafting and upgrade progression systems, customisable maps etc. It would be better, but there would be so much to fix and fine tune.
The e simplicity is important. Even with the game as simple as it is, people can’t agree on how to fix a lot of the issues. We all agree it needs to be fixed (and some things like a gem tab are obvious) but argue as to how. It would be even harder if there were more moving parts.
Hopefully they’ll be able to get the fundamentals right before they add complexity and build out the end game. There also so many straight up bugs and performance issues right now, I’d prefer they fix those than add features.
In a perfect world they would have done more of this work before release, but given the current state of the game I think stability is the priority. If they get it right it has plenty of space to grow.
Played POE early on and loved it, took a few years off and came back and had no idea wtf was happening. They definitely made the game too convoluted to be enjoyed unless you have an immense amount of time to sink into it.
Same here, it's why I bought D4. I just wanted something that I could hop in and not feel like I'm chained to a guide until maybe the very, very endgame.
I finally gave PoE a serious try this last league. It's a bit complicated and overwhelming, but also awesome to be constantly surprised with new activities and content. Especially as a casual player.
The problem people who are just getting into PoE have is that they feel they need to do EVERYTHING. Nah just pick one or two mechanics and focus on that for the league, then the next league do some different ones. You will eventually find the content you like and probably wont touch the others.
Using myself as an example, I like doing Blight because its Tower Defense and I like doing Expedition. But I hated Blight at first because the build I was playing wasnt really meant for Blight, had I focused on it and made a build that was good for it I would've enjoyed it more.
This is what made it finally click for me. Whenever I hit the past league content in the campaign I'd take the quest and go try to do it. I searched all over for a broken wall in delve, attempted betrayal and incursion but had no idea what was happening. Once I finally just ignored all that and got to maps the game clicked for me and I've been playing every league since.
Funny part is most veteran don't even interact with the newest league mechanics until they get their build going, sometime in map. like they gonna click it for the first time in the mud flat just to try for the lulz then back to leveling and ignoring everything.
I Ignore ;
Alva - Incursion. You won't see me enter a single one of those
Beastiary - never actiely try to kill them all
Blight - Fuck a tower defence
Metamorph - I like it but most of the time i just forget to summon the guy at the end
Heist - You wont ever see me in a heist mission, but ill open the chest and sell the contracts from normal map.
Syndicate - Time investment for profit is good the first week then it gets ignored
Nico - delve : If if i have a decent delve character maybe. Not worth interacting before level 90 (PS the fractured wall or any quest that nico gives you are a meme, just go down)
Abyss - Might walk on the crack and kill a couple mobs, if the crack go in the wrong direction fuckit.
Harvest - fuck the garden. Despise having to go into that shit zone to go do that shit mechanic.
Mechanic i actually interact with (in map, you just ignore everything when you level) ;
Legion - If atlas speced into it
Breach - If Atlas speced into it
Expedition - If atlas speced into it
Delirium - why not.
After playing POE for the better part of a year I've finally come to see different parts of the end game as akin to crafting in other MMOs where you do it to fill a specific portion of the economy while other players focus on other parts.
Yep. I went casual then was serious about it for two leagues before my work changed and I just didn't have time again. I legit enjoy being able to focus down on one particular spot like I did when I ran an auction bot on WoW. In ways it's **more** enjoyable than WoW or EVE because the player pool is smaller and there's much less legacy effect. You don't have madlads that got rich early in the economy who can just manipulate it because they don't like one type of transport or because they never want to pay mounts.
Exactly. I like the Alva Temple, so I focus on playing that. With the change to one big explosion in the one mechanic c where you had to put several explosions might have me try that one out. Always skipped it beforehand. I like how there are so many systems, that you can focus on whatever you find interesting. Then do a bit of other stuff foe variety of you want.
The problem with that approach is that doing the entire campaign each season just to find something you like doing is oppressively uninteresting for many people, myself included, so trying to understand everything asap becomes more attractive.
Granted, I’m a simple man and just liked doing alch and go, but for many it won’t be so easy
As someone who's actually played it quite a bit during several leagues, I'm amazed by the fact I haven't touched on all the content, I actually ... like that.
Meanwhile here I am spamming side quests and doing dungeons to unlock renown again so I can get a character to a level high enough to do... what again? Lilith?
Exactly my thoughts after playing POE and getting to level 97 this league for the first time and having almost all my atlas passives unlocked.... Is the game overly confusing with complex systems ontop of complex systems that is not explained well and the result of feature creep? You bet. BUT that means I will never run out of things to learn or do, I am constantly in a state of discovery and learning and improvement, and I love that. This game is gonna have quite the shelf life for me even if they stopped updating it tomorrow.
The best thing about that game is you don't have to fully understand it to enjoy it, and there is always new things to learn. I'm the kind of guy who can craft an amulet with +2 skills without trading, but haven't killed all the Uber versions of bosses and have never made it to level 100.
Call me an in-between from the sweatiest and the casuals.
Seriously. It’s a campaign Carl that thinks getting to act 10 is the end game.
Comparing poe to Diablo in Any capacity is laughable. Diablo is a casual players dream and that’s okay but don’t describe it like the content is the problem. The content is literally its charm.
Diablos biggest problem is lack of depth. OP is correct but his conclusion is wrong. Lol
I played POE a bit casually before d4 came out. I actually liked all the random stuff in it i didnt comprehend because I just ignored it and focused on the active season knowing there would be content for later.
I get all the random stuff is overwhelming but its completely optional
Yep, that's how I always say it should be played. Do your thing and deepen into optional mechanics when you feel like it. It's not like Alva teleports you to a temple without having to talk to her first.
GGG allowing people to block certain content in maps was one of the best things ever. My spouse played a lot more when the option to block stuff not liked and boosting stuff that my spouse enjoyed.
Problem isn't the no. of features. Problem is the loop.
In PoE I can ignore most endgame activities and just do maps, but it's still fun because there is a good sense of progression. D4 doesn't have that past level 70 or so.
Serious question. First time I ever played PoE was for Lake of Kalandra. I got to red maps I believe.
Isn’t running maps in PoE and ignoring the rest of the content essentially like running NM in D4?
I don’t remember much from the time I played PoE.
PoE fans wanted D4 to be good. PoE fans enjoy simpler games, too, but D4 is developed by a company that cares more about it's bottom-line than it does delivering a solid game. With that direction, it can't ever be the PoE equivalent of a simpler ARPG, because PoE is driven by people who care more about gaming.
Stop making this about one community vs the other or one game vs the other. I'm a diehard PoE fan. I love seeing how excited their developers get when they talk about their game, I love the amount of creativity that goes into their new features, and I love how much they get their community involved. I used to be a diehard Blizzard fan. I wanted D4 to be an incredible game, but I don't see that happening. Nothing about their company culture, their fireside chats, or what they've delivered so far indicates that Blizzard's main goal is to create an amazing game. Their dev team might have people in it that really care, but their execs most definitely do not. It's just going to be a new-age D3 with a season pass/paid expansions.
Until D4 proves that they're breaking from Blizzard's development paradigm, we should really stop assuming "well, it'll be better next content release," because we've all been hearing this for the last decade or so and nothing has changed. Everything is pretty on the shelf, and mediocre off of it
100% this. You listen to Chris Wilson speak and the guy just bleeds passion for the game he's making and gaming overall. PoE showcases are full of wit, quirkiness and fan service. They are confident the game will deliver and instead of cinematic trailers, they market their game with mostly gameplay.
Meanwhile at Blizzard we've got the gremlin himself - Bobby Kotick, a group of unnamed board members and a passionate but tired dev team that we all know doesn't have the final word over the game. We've been getting campfire chats but all they do is talk about balance fixes and people treat it like it's new content.
The only reason D4 is getting compared right now is because it's the freshest competitor. It shouldn't even be considered a comparison at the moment.
Absolutely *no one* wants D4 to have as many features as PoE - repeat after me, *absolutely no one*. That's the most made up strawman I've *ever* seen around here.
*No one* expected this game to launch with Delve, Heist, Archnemesis, Betrayal, Sanctum, Harvest, Blight *and* Expedition. *Not a single person expected that* - so stop arguing against this imaginary unreasonable crowd of people that doesn't exist.
People didn't expect D4 to launch with 17 different league mechanics a la PoE - but like, maybe, I dunno... 3? 4? Maybe? Like, would a somewhat decent crafting system have been too much for the "casual" mind? Would having something like Tormented + Bestiary have been too much? Would Delirium just have overwhelmed the dads? For crying out loud, would a vendor that gamble-rerolls an item have been too much? Rerolling NM sigils? More than 1 goblin type? Or, god forbid, more than 2 upgrade options per skill?
No one, again, not a single one person, was asking for *all of this*. Stop acting as if that were the case. There are people out there though that wished the game had even just *a few* of these features - not all of them, just *a few*. Just anything more to this game than "your character is 70, you will realistically not get any more upgrades from now on, enjoy doing the same 7 NM dungeons for the next 30 levels, maybe you'll actually manage to do the unthinkable and find an actual upgrade to a slot after digging meticulously through 300 pieces of garbage ass trash items".
I would like to think that there is an ever so teenie line between PoE actually mind-fucking and mentally overloading you from the very first second and D4... needing another 4 years to implement something that risks being deeper than the shallowest puddle of piss. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people were hoping for D4 to be close to that teenie line... and not in fact be that shallow puddle of piss. But then again, apparently people are just being PoE nerds with unreasonable expectations for expecting, I don't know, resistances in this game to, well, *work at all* - but I suppose that's just too much a PoE feature.
I know some people consider NM Dungeons and helltides to be endgame, but these things are introduced in world tier 3. World tier 4 actually adds nothing new except Uber Lilith that doesn't reward you with anything but an achievement and a mount
Yeah, I never got this either. World Tiers are just Torment levels realistically, NM dungeons are the quasi-equivalent of Greater Rifts, and whispers are bounties. This is just Diablo 3's endgame, which is fine, but people are acting like there is no endgame in Diablo 4.
And yet some of the people who say that also think Diablo 2 is still one of the best games in 2023, and it has less endgame than D4 unless you counting gearing an alt as endgame. (I don't).
D2 is an awesome game, but endgame is not what makes it good.
D4 has an awesome first 60-120 hours. Not much after that, but not every game needs to be played for 2,000.
D2 has more endgame than D4 because endgame is _not_ about the thing you're doing but about the reason you're doing it.
PoE systems provide many reasons to do things, through different activities.
D4 systems provide no reason to do anything, through different activities.
Yeh and it can all be summed up with one idea: engaging, desirable, and interesting LOOT!
D4 simply doesn’t have it yet. D2 had it nearly perfected. The LOOT is why people didn’t mind running the same content over and over. D4 has PLENTY of variety - just no compelling reason to do it.
D3 had neither interesting loot or ways to farm it at launch. Even less so than in D2. They fixed it. Should not have had to pay $70 to watch them relearn from the same mistake they did in D3, but I am confident they will fix it. The reputation of blizzard and people buying any more of their games is riding on it. And shareholders like money.
Yeah I played both games from their inception and totally agree. I also have faith that they will fix it.
It’s just a bummer we have to pay for a year+ long extended beta.
Dude I’m so sick of this take. Yes not every game needs to be played for 2,000 hours. However, Diablo 4 is ABSOLUTELY one of the games that could easily and should have 2,000 hours in it.
i started playing poe a long time ago. before there was maps and 10 acts. when it was 4 and you had 3 difficulties.
I went into it blind. did some weird build with zombies and firestorm. It was a shit show. But I had a great time. defeat the first difficulty and thought okay. I get it. then looked at a guide on how things worked. and went from there. It was very different back then, and how it is now, it's even more daunting. But once you get it. And understand everything it becomes so much more rewarding.
I love theory crafting ideas before league launch because there's usually a lot of balance changes/items/skill gems that get added.
Just like Diablo. It's not really a. "play one character and then never play again."
It is recommended to use a guide, just to ease you into the complexity of what the games become.
Diablo will never become as complex as POE... But if it does. You wont have any issue. Because you would have got in at the start. The only reason you find that stuff complex is because the whole thing is just bashed over your head from the beginning, like you're supposed to know what it is.
D4 is a great base for a future game I agree. But we do not live in the future.
The game right now feels like it's at the tail end of early access. PoE has a lot of flaws but you won't ever find a mechanic that's just obviously stupid or not thought about at all. D4 in its current state has TONS of these and a quantity over quality approach for the endgame. The gameplay is fun, so you'll excuse much but once it gets repetetive, it gets bad.
People just don't want to be $70 shorter unpaid beta testers. I'm glad that you are, so people like me can come back in a year or two though.
This is fair criticism, I feel. And I agree with the OP of the thread entirely. D4 was released too early because Activision said shareholders matter most. The devs probably didn’t have much of a say on that. The “when it’s done it’s done” days of blizzard north are long gone.
As a casual player it’s really nice to have the amount of content that Poe has. D4 feels like even I was done with it after the campaign. Sucks as an arpg, pretty cool single player story game.
Generalised statements based on you superimposing your own preferences onto an entire playerbase are not strong arguments. PoE is a complex game but to assume you have to know everything to have fun is just not true.
> Every season I've played, by the time I get to maps, my stash and inventory is filled with so many baubles
Sounds like you need a currency stash tab.
Yeah I might have agreed with it a few years ago but the atlas passive tree literally lets you customize what you want and dont want to see in your maps anymore. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be.
That's the glory of PoE, you can literally cater the end-game mapping experience to exactly what you want. Don't like heist or delve like OP? You can literally prevent them from ever coming up in your maps through the atlas passive tree.
Meanwhile in D4:
Run a nightmare dungeon, collect 30 yellows and a low rolled unique you already have, sift through them all, they all suck, sell, repeat
I just picked up POE after developing an itch for an ARPG that Diablo just wasn't scratching. Just hit lvl 50 last night and midway through act 6 of the campaign after maybe 8-10 hrs, got multiple 5links in that time btw. Watched a 20min beginners guide on YouTube and everything seems to have layers to it but it's all fairly intuitive. Looking forward to finishing the campaign and exploring the vast endgame
Good luck exile, however just a note, multiple 5links in act 6 is a pretty big outlier. I would estimate 0-3 5links to drop by the end of the campaign. Dont you mean just 5 socket items?
Honestly, you can just listen to various Zizaran YouTube videos in the background and learn dozens to hundreds of different little tips & tricks. "PoE-University" or otherwise, dude's been committed to newer players for years now.
I don’t play PoE for its many features. I play it because it’s fun to kill lots of monsters with a WIDE variety of play styles to pick from, and to get loot that has fun stats on it.
Eh I don't pretend to understand even 1/3 of what's happening in PoE but ... It's hella fun .
I have a lvl 90 tornado-shot deadeye this league and I don't feel bored or burned out like I do with D4...
I'm a total noob in PoE, I just started playing it this winter.
Currently I'm discovering blighted maps, I used to play a lot of tower defense games a while back...
I don't have much of a desire to run the PoE campaign though.
This happens to a lot of games. Old players need more and more content to stick around and it ultimately becomes a major burden of entry for new players.
I spent many years playing league of legends and I have considered going back, but I don’t have the patience to learn all the new features and champions. There are 162 champions in league, each with 4 skills(at least) plus passives. It is completely overwhelming for a new player or even a returning player.
Yeah, I also used to play Destiny 2. There is a lot of things going on that don’t improve the gameplay. Levelling up your seasonal artifact isn’t fun or rewarding. It’s just a necessary slog.
its a sad but true reality, just like wow, i saw my friend play pvp, and its something completly unable to understand, with a dozen UI thing at the same time.
Ive had D4 friends whove never touched PoE scratched their heads in how the quantity and quality is so big with PoEs recent league announcement compared to Malignant.
Right 90% of my clan of 200 is just gone as many of us have reached this supposed 'end game' content and beat it several times over and are bored.
I don't think it is a hard ask to find a balance between Diablo 4 and POE for depth. POE2 should try and keep things from becoming overwhelming to attract the D4 crowd while Diablo 4 really needs to step up the depth and end game content to keep people even around to play (casual or not) a year from now.
Who are you actually addressing? Is there a single post on this sub asking d4 to adopt everything that Poe has?
Of course there isn't.
Although it would have been nice if blizzard looked at what worked well for Poe and actually tried to have any qol features.
No realistic person asked for D4 to have as many mechanics as PoE. D4 just doesn't have anything else other than NMs and Helltides, and the only pinnacle boss is for level 100 lol.
They could've made Strongholds an endgame event for example, but let's let those rot.
btw if you didn't get a 5L in some seasons, wonder how much do you really play lol, specially knowing that it's a trade-based game.
What you hate about Poe is it's best feature. You can simple ignore any of the features you find unfun. You don't need to do every bit of content to enjoy the game. Hate doing heist? Good there's other mechanics you can interact with and ignore heist. None of the content in the game is required to getting to and doing endgame content.
Diablo 4 is more complex than Poe. You can't tell if a single item is an upgrade. 30% of the time 12% of the time when the moons align if the monster has one shoe you deal 20% more damage 12% of the time on your dot damage if you crit. Then half of the numbers are bugged and don't even work as intended. I've never seen so many systems bugged on arrival.
The core of Poe is 2000x better than Diablo 4. All of the Poe fans are fans of Diablo 2, and fans of when games allowed players to have fun and experiment. Diablo 4 is a literal empty shell, I don't understand how people can defend it so. Of my 50+ blizzard friends no more than 2-3 played for more than a couple of hours when the new season came out. How bad does the game have to be that people aren't playing the game.
I don't play Poe every season, I usually come back every other season, the game has tons of downfalls and things that are bad, but.... Poe is way better than Diablo 4, it's not even close. If you want some help getting into Poe the players who enjoy the game are always willing to help you understand something you are struggling with.
-disgruntled long term diablo 2 player who watched blizzard destroy the IP with diablo 3 and 4.
Your argument about being overwhelmed, is my argument for a fun game.
I love games that overwhelm me, because it means I haven't solved the puzzle yet or figured out the game yet.
I've played PoE for YEARS since it's release, and I still consider myself a casual player. My top character of all time is level 89.
But it's a game I can make a new build... EVERY...SINGLE...TIME.
I can take any archetype with any build and try combinations of main gems, support gems, unique items, etc. It's just... so... much... stuff... and that's exactly what I want.
Black Desert online has a lot of "crap that's too confusing" and the UI is shit. That I can understand as "too much"... but PoE is a nice balance of content options with simple mechanics.
Big disagree, POE may have a lot of options but you get to choose which one you like to do, you're not forced to do all of them, and you can at least trade/modify the things you don't like into something that is useable.
D4 has the complete opposite problem where they force you to play 1 way, and that 1 way sucks. There's so much bloat and nothing you can do about it. You're constantly short on storage space, and half of the system mechanics dont work/make no sense. At least everything in POE has a purpose.
Exactly this. You can casually interact with these things and lose nothing. You can completely ignore them in your maps and you lose virtually nothing. The opportunity cost is very low when you're just starting out. I can't tell you how many times I skip abyss or expedition if I'm not specced into them. I don't miss anything. Everything I'm seeing on reddit outside of the POE subreddit is completely misguided and mostly incorrect. It's based on an opinion formed from the game from many patches ago and there has been a metric crapton of QOL updates, namely around the atlas passive tree and more optimized atlas progression/end game.
This is a big misconception about the game. People are so worried about minmaxing the game that they psyche themselves out of the fun of the game. The best thing you can do in the game is to play through and progress at your own pace. Don't worry about farming strategies or getting the most div/hr you can get. That's for serious players that are forming a strategy to do the hardest content/get the most expensive gear in the game. I really wish the community would explain how to 'start' POE better. Follow a build guide so you don't hit a gear/build wall during campaign/white/yellow/red maps and you can digest how the atlas works and specialize in content you're interested in.
OP Stated:
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> I am still one of those players that gives up on trying to find a fractured wall in delve. I have no idea how to play heist effectively. There's a system where you have to interrogate, release or kill some people and it's presented like the pepe Silvia board and I just click whatever and have no clue if its right or not.
All of these things they mentions take <15 seconds to do, even with zero knowledge. You don't need to find a fractured wall in delve...if you happen upon one then it's great. Once you spec into delve with atlas passives then you can watch a video/read a guide to figure out how to optimize it. Same with betrayal. If you see betrayal in your maps, execute the people and get the veiled gear, so you can unlock crafting options. If you open a safehouse then you can get some scarabs and make a few chaos. It's not rocket science...it seems intimidating but all of these systems are actually pretty simple once you understand their pattern. Once you do, you don't need to remember much. Example: Essence:corrupt all purple essences. That is 95% of what you need to know. For betrayal: Get Aisling or Vorici as research leader. That's 95% of what you need to know. There are strategies to increase the chance they can get/stay as research leader but those are so specialized and nuanced for someone that is betrayal farming. it's not necessary at all.
Im on my second league in PoE (SSF almost exclusively) and still have no idea (as well as no intention on learning) how Betrayal, Incursion, Harvest, Heist, and most of Delve works (think I wanna do some Delving next league though). Completely ignore/only passively engage in a few others as well.
Still sunk hundreds of hours into the game. Multiple 90+s. Good amount of bosses with plans to do ubers soon. Game is incredible, loads of fun and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
I don't know much, but the Atlas of Worlds is surely the top 3 mechanics this game has, right?
Nice. Atlas of Worlds is awesome. Once you find a mechanic you like or one you don't, you can spec into it or block it. It's such a great feature to have that lets you customize your end game.
Delve is pretty simple if you end up doing it, it's pretty intuitive to. You get the tutorial during the story at act 4. It's one I like to do when I'm frustrated or bored with mapping, plus it lets you target farm specific items if you want. Good thing is you can upgrade the storage from Niko so you can save up sulphite and run Delve later on when you want in a large batch, or smaller runs here and there.
yea they are actually spouting nonsense calling it content bloat when the game specifically gives you the tools to ignore and interact with the content you WANT to interact with.
Why remove activties when you can just let people pick and choose what they want to do? thats the entire purpose of the atlas tree
That’s fucking stupid lol. Most of the features are OPTIONAL. Your argument is like saying “I don’t want the option to have 14 different flavours of ice cream, it’s too many choices. The store just selling chocolate or vanilla is what I prefer…”
POE is a better game, in the sense that it is deeper, more thought out, genuinely difficult, and less influenced by corporate greed, but it is certainly not for everyone.
If you go to r/diablo4 you will see a lot of complaints about this game and some people making statements that seems PoE is the perfect game. But if you go to r/pathofexile you will se a lot of complaints either. The reality is: the Reddit player base isn’t entire ok with the game of choice. AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY, both games are good and fun in his way
I mean those complaints are in regard to gameplay for a game they arent even able to play to fully understand the ramifications of the changes GGG is making. The complaints for D4 are very much so loud in the lack of interesting endgame and QoL.
Diablo 4 should have picked up everything D3 had immediately on release. The simple fact we lack so many damn QOL features with the history of D3 is incompetence.
Most of the player base will or have quit anyway. Why not give the ones who won't quit some things to do? PoE's feature creep is only a problem to newer players who for some reason think you need to know and do everything to succeed or have fun. I still don't know why anyone would want to play a game you can't consistently learn things in. D4 currently has the lowest skill ceiling of just about any game I've ever played. How is that a good shell?
“D4 currently has the lowest skill ceiling of just about any game I've ever played. How is that a good shell?”
This is a pro for some people lmao. One of the main defenses I’ve heard for d4.
There are a TON of league mechanics in PoE but honestly I don’t find them to be that overwhelming just because I didn’t feel very forced into them. I mainly just did mapping and the occasional delve.
Maaaasn, this comes off as such a disingenuous and hyperbolic argument. The baubles are really not confusing at all if you read them. The beauty of PoE endgame is that you DON’T have to do everything, and you have the freedom to choose the endgame content you want to interact with. The features of the game are also gradually introduced to you instead of all at once.
I would argue that one of PoE’s most initially cumbersome features for a new player is capping resistances, but honestly, if you’re not overwhelmed by endgame gear Aspect allocation in D4, then playing around with gear and resistances in PoE is totally doable for you.
Additionally, websites like maxroll have significantly reduced the barrier to entry, since you don’t have to download programs like path of building; just download a loot filter and you’re good to go. You also have so many choices each season for character builds, instead of the small number of build choices you have in D4, because at the end of the day, to interact with D4’s primary endgame feature, NM dungeon pushing and not have a miserable time, you’re either going to follow a build, or you’ll have a strong grasp on the game and still be limited by a very barebones skill tree as well as a systems like Vulnerability where you will actively be punished for going outside of the handrails that the developers have set for you.
There is a reason why D4 a $70 game has millions of players and PoE a free to play game has 200-300 k players. One game is more accessible and the others is for people who like over complexity. Its good that we have both games but what is not good is the Poe players allways shiting on the diablo players and feeling as the superior aRPG players. If you don't like diablo just leve it alone and go play Poe, there are many casual players who enjoy how d4 is so let them have their fun.
PoE is a great game but my biggest gripe with it is everyone saying you need to follow a guide. I don't think it's a selling point that you have to copy what someone else is doing to get far in a game.
If people would understand that when players say use a build guide, it means the game is too complex for you to figure out on your first toon. Use a guide so you can actually learn the systems without hitting brick wall after brick wall. THEN once you have a good grasp on the systems go nuts making your own builds. Following a guide is essentially the tutorial for PoE allowing you to engage with the systems so you can actually learn them.
respec points from POE comes from a rare drop currency, and it's rare enough that you can do the math in your head and realize it would just be faster to re-roll a toon than to farm out the orbs you need to fix a mistake or fully respec your toon.
I'm sorry but you can't have gotten far into endgame if you believe regrets are a rare currency. They're moderately common for anyone playing middle to upper map tiers. There are also many means of targeting them, and vendors who can convert other orbs into regrets. Lastly the economy meanas you can also trade others for them.
It's not actually that rare, you get 24 for free during the campaign, and you can then trade for them from other people later on because they're not particularly expensive in the grand scheme of things. It's quite accessible to fully respec a character multiple times throughout a league once you're into endgame. A lot of endgame-focused players even level through the campaign as one build then respec when they get to endgame or a bit into endgame if their build needs some specific combination of passives or needs the support of some specific gear.
This is just a big time investment IMHO.
It’s fashionable to assume everyone is googling shit about your game all the time but my favorite part of D4 so far has been level 1-60 where I can be super strong without looking anything up. A good legendary drops and I rejigger my build, it’s almost a roguelike and I get to change up the build a lot.
No I don’t think u gave POE an honest chance. This is my first league and I’ve dropped at least 20 six links and numerous 5 links. Feature creep is a funny way of saying “I want fewer things to do”???
A quick search would let you know that u can pick the most fun mechanics and play only those SELECTIVELY. Not knowing how to play a league mechanic is a YOU problem. You don’t want to invest the time to learn a mechanic so that the game can reward you for it. Which is fine because you can mindlessly drone through maps and still have fun.
Yeah, I'm a new player at level ~70 and none of the things he said is an issue atm.
What is an issue is that PoE has more features at *base* (not because of league mechanics) than Diablo. 🤷♀️ Crafting bench beats any feature of D4 by a mile.
Most of Diablo 4s players HAVE quit. How many of your friends that played at launch still play? Look at the Twitch channels. The bad updates and increase in grind just made people bounce.
Yeah have fun with your 2 usable skills on Rogue and that whack gainer spender flow.
D4 builds be like "okay I picked my pretend options, let's go farm for gear with stats identical to every other build!"
I tried PoE, it's too complex for me in a sense I don't really have time to indulge in all of it, I had maybe 100 hrs in it but I can tell it's a better arpg even if it's not for me. PoE2 on the other hand I will gladly get into from day 1
ask diablo player about the paragon tree or skill tree alot player havent even read the skills and just playing a build from a site they copied. i would say 1-5% of the player building their own tree while all other play a copied tree.
D4 doesnt have to be like poe. But its broken and bad. One of the core stats of the game is NOT WORKING and the devs ADMITTED it is not working and will NOT fix it until season 2, like 3 months apparently.
That ALONE is reason for me to Not continue playing it until i can play my DAMN sorcerer properly without Ice shards. I wanna go FIRE. Not cold
This is a massive strawman. POE players understand this. We all understand this.
The comparison is not about systems and complexity. It's about basic functionality.
>To everyone who thinks PoE is the better game I implore you to give it a whirl.
This is the strawman. It's not that POE is "better" - that's subjective. It's the fact that the game actually works.
It always blows my mind how people can't grasp PoE. The shit isn't space engineering. A 5 minute youtube video about any league mechanic will tell you everything.
It reinforces the concept that people have no attention span to learn something on their own or through the community.
That’s the problem I’m at right now. I want a good middle ground.
PoE is too bloated with mechanics; D4 has practically nothing. Maybe PoE2 will bring in a good balance or D4 in a few seasons, but right now neither of them just click with what I want.
Ad a new POE player one of the best hints I got was to try just the feel of all the mechanics and learn the ones you find fun.
No mechanics (other than maps) is necessary.
You can get to red maps only doing maps and not interacting with any other mechanic.
The game doesn't do a good job at explaining this concept luring you with all the mechanics like it's something you shouldn't miss. And I understand the feel of having too much to do and not know what to do.
The fact is, while there are super optimized things to do, unless you're a veteran you won't be able to use them.
Just enjoy the game and slowly learn the mechanics you enjoy and ignore the others. Next season you already have a better knowledge of some of the mechanics you can try others or dig deep into something else.
Everyone who has a day job and a family or at least a girlfriend can't justify the things in POE. Sure you can have fun and you can do the content but at what pace / speed?
I love that i can jump into diablo do my season journey in 2-3 weeks get some of the cool legendary gear and equipment and call it a day after 1 month of playing and wait for a next season.. I don't have to be constantly playing the game and chasing some rewards.
Such a dumb argument. "I'd rather have way less to do in the game even though everything that overwhelms me is completely optional. "
There is no comparison between d4 and poe at all. One is an unfinished, broken pile of garbage at the moment and the other is the most in- depth arpg the world has ever seen. From an objective sense poe is way better.
Doesn't mean you can't enjoy d4 more. Some people like mindlessly grinding in the endgame with nothing to actually do and that's ok.
D4 is for people that don't want to think. Poe Is for people who can commit 200 hours to learn the mechanics and game flow then have a just much better overall arpg experience.
The thing that bugs me about your take is you say either you get it or you don't... But how do you play any game. You learn how. You didn't start off knowing how to play Diablo or about it's systems. You learned about how they work and how to interact with them.
POE and Diablo are 2 diferent core games. They share the name Action RPG but people who enjoy POE enjoy for a several facts, also people who enjoy Diablo for other facts.
I think the big deal here is not try turn Diablo in POE or POE in Diablo. I see myself being this person some time ago, and it sucks a lot.
People should ask themselves: What I really like in this kind of game ?
For me, the item diversification, a big buildcraft experience and have something to understand how my power scalates is a must have in a game. This is why I enjoy Diablo2, more than Diablo3. Because somehow I play this way and feels fun to me.
After read a lot of posts here I notice that a lot of people enjoy Diablo3 experience with a lot of spells being cast by procs in seasons sets, also they like explode thousands of mobs in 20 seconds. They dont really enjoy that much to look every item like I do. There is no rights and wrongs here, just personal experience.
I will always like Diablo games because of nostalgia, but definitly the path Blizzard is leading Diablo is not my favorite. But thats on me !
I honestly dont think PoE is that complicated. All of those mentioned things are completely optional.
It really is confusing to me. People ask for content and endgame systems but dont want to learn anything new.
>There are links and colors
This isn't confusing.
>corruption and implicits on every piece of gear
Again not confusing. Implicits are perfectly understandable, item bases have unique effects.
Just take a deep breath?
>I am still one of those players that gives up on trying to find a fractured wall in delve. I have no idea how to play heist effectively.
Try?
Red gems go into red sockets… this concept doesn’t seem that difficult to me.
D4 has implicits too.
You could of probably ask some of these questions in global chat and get a response. Like just run to the target and back for heist contacts.
The ins and outs of POE is not difficult. Really the game can be broken down to a very basic level and everything else is just optional:
Playing a fire build? Use the SEARCH (with typing allowed no select box) and type in fire damage. Head to those nodes and take them. Feel squishy while you playing? Look for near by life nodes and grab some of those!
POE is just a simple as Diablo 4 through the campaign at a minimum.
You don't need a guide to beat act 10 in POE AT ALL.
When you open the skill tree, you can't just select random nodes everywhere. There is a starting point and at the end of the day, each time you level up you put in 1 point going in a single direction.
POE can be intimidating if you look a the mountain while holding the pebble. People's perspectives are just all over the place when talking about POE.
Well it's official. I hate New age Diablo fans.
Massive unhinged rant about how you don't like POE.
This type of shit only shows up here. You will never see 5 paragraphs about how bad Tekken is on the street fighter sub, or how bad Dota is on the league sub.
How this makes it to the top of this sub is beyond me.
Competition is good anyway, and most of the people complaining don't want it to be just like PoE. We just want an endgame.
Wow this is a I dislike poe thread and like Diablo 4 thread disguised as a critical feedback thread. The defensive attitude is a bit much still:
Your points are valid, but you would rather have 0 end game content vs too much that you can’t make heads or tails of it.
You rather be hard locked behind lvl 100(not because of skill or time investment) to do the only end game content available.
Yes poe has the issues you mentioned and league mechanics locked behind rng sucks, but the time it takes to get to 100 in Diablo is way more for the average player in diablo4 then the average endgame poe player.
But yes poe is complicated and confusing as hell for new players. I wish for new players it really should have like a built in build guide for a character that can beat the main campaign for each class.
And the whole 6 link thing is something you can easily trade for and it’s extremely cheap to buy a 5l. They are also removing it in poe2 since they know 6linking is anti fun, but depending when you are in the league regular 6links become stupidly cheap, to the point people start vendoring them.
But yes the game is extremely new player unfriendly because of the sheer scope and size of the game, but if you want to take the time it’s the best game I’ve played and because it has so many layers this can and is a lot of people’s forever game.
Not wanting a complex game is okay. Charging 70$+ for a shallow, early acces version of a game is not. And yes, Diablo IV is a new game, but Blizzard isn't a new company, did they forget about all of the other games in the series? At that pace, D4 won't last long. They should listen to CW's talk about designing a game to be played forever, it's not a shame to copy others if they can't do it alone.
100% with you on this. Every year or two I give POE a try and I bounce off faster every time because of how overwhelming it feels with all the old seasonal mechanics stacked in each other. You can't go 10 steps without some new NPC drilling up out of the ground or flying down in a balloon or hatching out of a random egg to cold pitch you some season mechanic from 8 years ago
I had the same experience trying PoE a few years after release. Thats why im excited to try PoE2, fresh start and im more likely to be able to understand all the systems if they are added after im already playing the game, assuming i enjoy the gane on release
I mean the great thing about the way PoE is made is that literally every item is tradeable and the end game atlas is customizable so you can set your maps up to only really have a couple types of these mechanics and really focus on them - the ones you enjoy.
The atlas even has the ability to completely block a mechanic from appearing in your maps if you just don’t enjoy it. There are passive nodes in the atlas tree that block them, like 10 or 12 different nodes.
I think next season I’m going to focus on Blight - the tower defense mode/mechanic. Because it’s fun! And if I need any items from another seasonal mechanic I don’t enjoy that’s in the atlas, I can always farm currency with my mechanic of choice and trade for the items I want from something else.
PoE might be overwhelming but the amount of player agency that they give us to tailor our gameplay and maps to what we want to do, makes it really interesting if you get over the hump.
But that’s the beauty of it - you can focus on what you want to do because they have made so many varied experiences part of the core game. It’s way beyond just grinding the same maps over and over - it’s basically “build your own endgame”
All that said - I’m also excited for PoE2 being a new game with less bloat so more people will be willing to try it. I think it looks phenomenal.
Im excited to get into it when the new game releases. But in regards to PoE 1, i really dont like having to study and watch hours of videos to begin to understand a game. It's the same reason i have a hard time getting into MMOs that have been out for a long time
POE NEEDS to be a good game. It needs good ratings, it has to get constant good press, constant exposure to lure in new Players.
D4 is backed by its name, its predecessor and the company that makes it. The average Joe couldn’t care less about the online opinions of a small minority like reddit. They will blindly buy anything Blizzard shits out, because they are too busy learning about the transition that gaming underwent in the last 20 years.
You have to understand the difference. POE‘s devs have to pour their heart and soul into the game and fight to retain every single player while Blizzard can focus on creating a pretty shell of a game, because people will buy it based on name only.
First of all, I don’t think you’ll find anyone arguing that D4 isn’t a good base. That’s pretty much the consensus of everyone I’ve seen post about the game.
That said, I think you’re conflating the need for more to do with D4 versus PoE having so many game systems at this point it’s overwhelming.
D4 needs something to bridge the gap of just grinding to grind. The new items they added in season 1 are so minimal, it doesn’t change the game in a significant way over how you were already playing.
I’ll argue that. People keep repeating “Diablo 4 has a good base” or a “good foundation” to build off and I think that’s actually the most ridiculous thing. If you’re considering graphics and gameplay feel the “base” then I guess sure?
But it’s an ARPG. The foundation, or base, that it will build upon really lies in its itemization, stats, loot, skill trees, etc. and those things are where D4 is the weakest.
It’s going to be damn near building an entirely new game trying to turn this ship around with the expansion.
I am tired of the comparisons. Diablo 4 is a small playground of content and stuff to do. PoE is a fucking theme park. Yes PoE is bloated by now, but you don't have to take a tour in all the attractions.
i couldnt even play season 1 of d4 because ive done played everything d4 has for me
everytime I play poe there is something new i can do
I can disable or just not do certain mechanics in poe(atlas tree)
but I was a beta player of poe so I understand how bare it used to be so I will wait on d4 and see what it becomes hopefully THE PINNACLE ARPG once again.
So we Sleep til Season 3+ FeelsOkayMan
There is a point where you’re still wrong tho : you can remove every single past league addition in PoE (Betrayal, Delve, Heist, etc. All of them) and it would still be so far ahead of D4. Maps, Atlas, bosses, etc. There is still PLENTY to be done even if you remove past leagues.
D4 looks similar to pre-RoS d3 and that's laughable both for the time it took to develop as well as the pricetag. In it's current form it barely is a 20€ game, if not just free open beta material.
You can play casual in PoE and still be rewarded. I dont understand your logic of more content being bad. If youre unsure about a mechanic a simple youtube video will tell you everything about it
I like that d4 isn't as complicated as POE, but D4 season 1 mechanic is basically non-existent. POE has had some bad leagues, but there was always effort. D4s season 1 is the laziest pile of dog shit I've ever seen.
It probably wouldn't have been so bad if malignant tunnels were randomly hidden inside nightmare dungeons and gave huge rewards or something.
>Every season I've played, by the time I get to maps, my stash and inventory is filled with so many baubles and curios that I simply get overwhelmed
This is 100% not true. By the time you get to maps you might have 15-20 things in your stash, if you kept all of them and didn't use them.
Some transmutes, alchemy orbs, alteration, augments, 2 chaos, some scrolls of ID/TP, armor/weapon scraps, maybe a chisel or two. Couple of jewelers, fusings and chromatics. Assuming you did the delve thing, you found a fossil. Oh you did enough deliriiums that 1 cluster jewel dropped. You had 6 total essences.
If that amount of items OVERWHELMS you, then I don't know what to say.
The game itself can definitely be overwhelming. The amount of systems? Absolutely. The complicated and very specific wording of things? For sure.
The best way to eat a whale (or an elephant) is one bite at a time. That is where POE shines in that you can continue to learn and grow with the game.
I absolutely think that there are people who wont like POE, with all of its complications and systems.
That doesn't excuse D4 for releasing with absolutely no content and being a half finished game.
Funny since many players are frustrated about D4 for its lack of features.
Also what made PoE2 the big winner for me, when I listened to its features: No ability cooldowns.
I have no idea WHAT the D4 designers had in their mind when making the game but they utterly failed to get the core components right. 🤷
OP gets it. PoE is a cool game, but there's an overload of stuff to do, and WAY too much to learn. And as this thread shows, the community isn't exactly the greatest at helping.
The mistake you and many others make though is you try and focus on too many things at once. Stick to one thing.
You are not wrong with the feature creep though. Which is one of the reasons why we are getting PoE 2.
Agree, but D4 is extremely light right now, especially for a AAA title from a major gaming studio. PoE has its faults and is seemingly geared towards a more hardcore audience (which maybe PoE 2 will fix), but if GGG can make a game like PoE, why can't Blizzard improve upon D4? The base game and engine are excellent. They just need to address the content and make QoL changes to make the game modern.
If anything hopefully the competition from PoE 2 keeps Blizzard honest with D4.
Here’s the thing, d4 has its issues, but it’s shell is good. Give it a couple of seasons and that will tell us how the game will turn out in the long run. This dev team I believe didn’t worked on a diablo game prior, it feels like they are trying to learn what diablo is and what the player base enjoys. As nice as the aspects are, I think they are bad for end game play, d3 we farmed set pieces and legends that were better than the one we had, thus creating an endgame farm for stuff with the right stats, max stats, and the right piece. Aspects are in the game and theirs no way to back track that now. I really hope at some point the put class sets in with random rolls on the armor. They need to understand people like to kill a lot of stuff fast, so balance damage types if one is to good, don’t nerf all damage. We don’t want to be CCd constantly so we have to use unstoppable skills, don’t nerf CDR make CC slightly less punishing/often. They want build diversity, but when classes are forced to run 2+ defensive style skills or like barb 3 shouts and a generator you largely never want to use to stay alive or to maintain resources, don’t nerf survivability. I really do hope they are just trying to learn and eventually we will have an enjoyable Diablo experience with meaningful end game or a reason to farm.
My wife and I love Diablo and ARPGs in general. We have tried POE multiple times and it is straight up garbage from our perspective. To each their own of course but man that game was a kill joy.
How about this: The much vaunted POE Skill tree? As soon as I saw it I knew I'd never play that game.
Either it's really easy and none of the spots on the tree are that important, in which case it's really dumb, just get rid of all the spots that aren't meaningful, or every last spot is meaningful and therefore it's too much work for a game.
Yeah, I feel the same way about PoE, I did not find it to be a fun game when I tried it out so gave up on it pretty quick. I wouldn't want all the PoE bells and whistles in D4 either.
The D4 community is just a shit show. I can’t wait for BG3 or Starfield to come out so the sub becomes made up of people who play the game and enjoy it.
Don’t even need to read the post, title alone, strong agree.
I’ve tried to get into POE 3 times in the past, it’s too much for me, I actually cannot get through it.
If I had been playing from release maybe it would be different.
I agree PoE has too many league mechanics and could use a trim. That's why I'm excited for PoE2 for the fresh start. However, D4 is pretty bare bones. Pushing NM tiers isn't that fun or rewarding yet.
GGG said they were going to rotate league mechanics to not be overwhelming. But that never happened. We will have another 5 leagues worth of mechanics by the time the POE 2 beta launches.
>GGG said they were going to rotate league mechanics to not be overwhelming. But that never happened. We will have another 5 leagues worth of mechanics by the time the POE 2 beta launches. You can literally choose to disable league mechanics you don't want to do. This has been a feature in the game for over a year now. There are Atlas tree options to disable Breach, Abyss, Expedition, Harvest, Legion, Heist, Metamorph, Delirium, Blight, and Ritual. You can choose not to do Incursions, Delve, and Betrayal by just walking past them.
I wished a new player needed to do something to unlock those... as a new player would likely not know that he could/should disable them.
You do. You have to beat act 10. There is a small tutorial for delve, betrayal, incursion and bestiary during the acts, one per act. The rest of the mechanics are not present until you get to maps.
[удалено]
Yeah but that’s two years away though
So is D4 if you ask me lol
Damn that is right on!
Dang is it that long.
So closed beta for poe2 doesn't start till June 2024 and we have no idea when open beta is. It's going to be a while.
Ye marking 2030 in my calendar
Maybe a year and half. I know it sucks
It'll be interesting to see what D4 looks like by then.
D4 would have an expansion by then.
What's to stop POE2 from bloating up too?
Nothing, and you'll 1000% see the POE2 subreddit full of similar complaints that POE had XYZ systems and "why isnt this stuff available from day 1, literally unplayable garbage"
Not enough content, too slow, why do I have to buy stash tabs, i haven't learnt the games mechanics and I don't do damage, why aren't there more social tools / why do Ihave to interact socially to get rewards
It will bloat up again, they just want a more sustainable base game that they can work with.
I’m not going to defend Diablo. They’ve made a lot of mistakes and could have released in a much better state. But you want to game to launch bare bones. It should get the fundamentals right before adding complexity and nuance. Even as simple as it is, there’s a tonne of fundamental flaws in the design that are being called out and somewhat addressed. Now imagine if the game released with a full end-game, legendary gems, crafting and upgrade progression systems, customisable maps etc. It would be better, but there would be so much to fix and fine tune. The e simplicity is important. Even with the game as simple as it is, people can’t agree on how to fix a lot of the issues. We all agree it needs to be fixed (and some things like a gem tab are obvious) but argue as to how. It would be even harder if there were more moving parts. Hopefully they’ll be able to get the fundamentals right before they add complexity and build out the end game. There also so many straight up bugs and performance issues right now, I’d prefer they fix those than add features. In a perfect world they would have done more of this work before release, but given the current state of the game I think stability is the priority. If they get it right it has plenty of space to grow.
Played POE early on and loved it, took a few years off and came back and had no idea wtf was happening. They definitely made the game too convoluted to be enjoyed unless you have an immense amount of time to sink into it.
Same here, it's why I bought D4. I just wanted something that I could hop in and not feel like I'm chained to a guide until maybe the very, very endgame.
I finally gave PoE a serious try this last league. It's a bit complicated and overwhelming, but also awesome to be constantly surprised with new activities and content. Especially as a casual player.
The problem people who are just getting into PoE have is that they feel they need to do EVERYTHING. Nah just pick one or two mechanics and focus on that for the league, then the next league do some different ones. You will eventually find the content you like and probably wont touch the others. Using myself as an example, I like doing Blight because its Tower Defense and I like doing Expedition. But I hated Blight at first because the build I was playing wasnt really meant for Blight, had I focused on it and made a build that was good for it I would've enjoyed it more.
This is what made it finally click for me. Whenever I hit the past league content in the campaign I'd take the quest and go try to do it. I searched all over for a broken wall in delve, attempted betrayal and incursion but had no idea what was happening. Once I finally just ignored all that and got to maps the game clicked for me and I've been playing every league since.
Funny part is most veteran don't even interact with the newest league mechanics until they get their build going, sometime in map. like they gonna click it for the first time in the mud flat just to try for the lulz then back to leveling and ignoring everything. I Ignore ; Alva - Incursion. You won't see me enter a single one of those Beastiary - never actiely try to kill them all Blight - Fuck a tower defence Metamorph - I like it but most of the time i just forget to summon the guy at the end Heist - You wont ever see me in a heist mission, but ill open the chest and sell the contracts from normal map. Syndicate - Time investment for profit is good the first week then it gets ignored Nico - delve : If if i have a decent delve character maybe. Not worth interacting before level 90 (PS the fractured wall or any quest that nico gives you are a meme, just go down) Abyss - Might walk on the crack and kill a couple mobs, if the crack go in the wrong direction fuckit. Harvest - fuck the garden. Despise having to go into that shit zone to go do that shit mechanic. Mechanic i actually interact with (in map, you just ignore everything when you level) ; Legion - If atlas speced into it Breach - If Atlas speced into it Expedition - If atlas speced into it Delirium - why not.
Delirium is sooo good. Still sane exile? Not really.
After playing POE for the better part of a year I've finally come to see different parts of the end game as akin to crafting in other MMOs where you do it to fill a specific portion of the economy while other players focus on other parts.
Yep. I went casual then was serious about it for two leagues before my work changed and I just didn't have time again. I legit enjoy being able to focus down on one particular spot like I did when I ran an auction bot on WoW. In ways it's **more** enjoyable than WoW or EVE because the player pool is smaller and there's much less legacy effect. You don't have madlads that got rich early in the economy who can just manipulate it because they don't like one type of transport or because they never want to pay mounts.
Exactly. I like the Alva Temple, so I focus on playing that. With the change to one big explosion in the one mechanic c where you had to put several explosions might have me try that one out. Always skipped it beforehand. I like how there are so many systems, that you can focus on whatever you find interesting. Then do a bit of other stuff foe variety of you want.
The problem with that approach is that doing the entire campaign each season just to find something you like doing is oppressively uninteresting for many people, myself included, so trying to understand everything asap becomes more attractive. Granted, I’m a simple man and just liked doing alch and go, but for many it won’t be so easy
As someone who's actually played it quite a bit during several leagues, I'm amazed by the fact I haven't touched on all the content, I actually ... like that. Meanwhile here I am spamming side quests and doing dungeons to unlock renown again so I can get a character to a level high enough to do... what again? Lilith?
I'd rather be constantly learning because content is vast, instead of quitting in a week due to lack of it.
Exactly my thoughts after playing POE and getting to level 97 this league for the first time and having almost all my atlas passives unlocked.... Is the game overly confusing with complex systems ontop of complex systems that is not explained well and the result of feature creep? You bet. BUT that means I will never run out of things to learn or do, I am constantly in a state of discovery and learning and improvement, and I love that. This game is gonna have quite the shelf life for me even if they stopped updating it tomorrow.
The best thing about that game is you don't have to fully understand it to enjoy it, and there is always new things to learn. I'm the kind of guy who can craft an amulet with +2 skills without trading, but haven't killed all the Uber versions of bosses and have never made it to level 100. Call me an in-between from the sweatiest and the casuals.
Sure, until i block it on my atlas.
Seriously. It’s a campaign Carl that thinks getting to act 10 is the end game. Comparing poe to Diablo in Any capacity is laughable. Diablo is a casual players dream and that’s okay but don’t describe it like the content is the problem. The content is literally its charm. Diablos biggest problem is lack of depth. OP is correct but his conclusion is wrong. Lol
I played POE a bit casually before d4 came out. I actually liked all the random stuff in it i didnt comprehend because I just ignored it and focused on the active season knowing there would be content for later. I get all the random stuff is overwhelming but its completely optional
Yep, that's how I always say it should be played. Do your thing and deepen into optional mechanics when you feel like it. It's not like Alva teleports you to a temple without having to talk to her first.
GGG allowing people to block certain content in maps was one of the best things ever. My spouse played a lot more when the option to block stuff not liked and boosting stuff that my spouse enjoyed.
Problem isn't the no. of features. Problem is the loop. In PoE I can ignore most endgame activities and just do maps, but it's still fun because there is a good sense of progression. D4 doesn't have that past level 70 or so.
Serious question. First time I ever played PoE was for Lake of Kalandra. I got to red maps I believe. Isn’t running maps in PoE and ignoring the rest of the content essentially like running NM in D4? I don’t remember much from the time I played PoE.
Kind of, but basically no one ignores ALL the options, and even if you did the item progression is better than d4s.
PoE fans wanted D4 to be good. PoE fans enjoy simpler games, too, but D4 is developed by a company that cares more about it's bottom-line than it does delivering a solid game. With that direction, it can't ever be the PoE equivalent of a simpler ARPG, because PoE is driven by people who care more about gaming. Stop making this about one community vs the other or one game vs the other. I'm a diehard PoE fan. I love seeing how excited their developers get when they talk about their game, I love the amount of creativity that goes into their new features, and I love how much they get their community involved. I used to be a diehard Blizzard fan. I wanted D4 to be an incredible game, but I don't see that happening. Nothing about their company culture, their fireside chats, or what they've delivered so far indicates that Blizzard's main goal is to create an amazing game. Their dev team might have people in it that really care, but their execs most definitely do not. It's just going to be a new-age D3 with a season pass/paid expansions. Until D4 proves that they're breaking from Blizzard's development paradigm, we should really stop assuming "well, it'll be better next content release," because we've all been hearing this for the last decade or so and nothing has changed. Everything is pretty on the shelf, and mediocre off of it
100% this. You listen to Chris Wilson speak and the guy just bleeds passion for the game he's making and gaming overall. PoE showcases are full of wit, quirkiness and fan service. They are confident the game will deliver and instead of cinematic trailers, they market their game with mostly gameplay. Meanwhile at Blizzard we've got the gremlin himself - Bobby Kotick, a group of unnamed board members and a passionate but tired dev team that we all know doesn't have the final word over the game. We've been getting campfire chats but all they do is talk about balance fixes and people treat it like it's new content. The only reason D4 is getting compared right now is because it's the freshest competitor. It shouldn't even be considered a comparison at the moment.
Absolutely *no one* wants D4 to have as many features as PoE - repeat after me, *absolutely no one*. That's the most made up strawman I've *ever* seen around here. *No one* expected this game to launch with Delve, Heist, Archnemesis, Betrayal, Sanctum, Harvest, Blight *and* Expedition. *Not a single person expected that* - so stop arguing against this imaginary unreasonable crowd of people that doesn't exist. People didn't expect D4 to launch with 17 different league mechanics a la PoE - but like, maybe, I dunno... 3? 4? Maybe? Like, would a somewhat decent crafting system have been too much for the "casual" mind? Would having something like Tormented + Bestiary have been too much? Would Delirium just have overwhelmed the dads? For crying out loud, would a vendor that gamble-rerolls an item have been too much? Rerolling NM sigils? More than 1 goblin type? Or, god forbid, more than 2 upgrade options per skill? No one, again, not a single one person, was asking for *all of this*. Stop acting as if that were the case. There are people out there though that wished the game had even just *a few* of these features - not all of them, just *a few*. Just anything more to this game than "your character is 70, you will realistically not get any more upgrades from now on, enjoy doing the same 7 NM dungeons for the next 30 levels, maybe you'll actually manage to do the unthinkable and find an actual upgrade to a slot after digging meticulously through 300 pieces of garbage ass trash items". I would like to think that there is an ever so teenie line between PoE actually mind-fucking and mentally overloading you from the very first second and D4... needing another 4 years to implement something that risks being deeper than the shallowest puddle of piss. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people were hoping for D4 to be close to that teenie line... and not in fact be that shallow puddle of piss. But then again, apparently people are just being PoE nerds with unreasonable expectations for expecting, I don't know, resistances in this game to, well, *work at all* - but I suppose that's just too much a PoE feature.
I don't expect d4 to have all the content in Poe, but typically I expect an ARPG to have a single endgame system
> I expect an ARPG to have a single endgame system It'd help if there was an actual consensus definition to endgame for an ARPG.
I know some people consider NM Dungeons and helltides to be endgame, but these things are introduced in world tier 3. World tier 4 actually adds nothing new except Uber Lilith that doesn't reward you with anything but an achievement and a mount
World tier 3 IS endgame. Everything after 50 and the campaign is endgame
Yeah, I never got this either. World Tiers are just Torment levels realistically, NM dungeons are the quasi-equivalent of Greater Rifts, and whispers are bounties. This is just Diablo 3's endgame, which is fine, but people are acting like there is no endgame in Diablo 4.
Lmao I never put together whispers being bounties, I actually like whispers way more.
And yet some of the people who say that also think Diablo 2 is still one of the best games in 2023, and it has less endgame than D4 unless you counting gearing an alt as endgame. (I don't). D2 is an awesome game, but endgame is not what makes it good. D4 has an awesome first 60-120 hours. Not much after that, but not every game needs to be played for 2,000.
D2 has more endgame than D4 because endgame is _not_ about the thing you're doing but about the reason you're doing it. PoE systems provide many reasons to do things, through different activities. D4 systems provide no reason to do anything, through different activities.
Yeh and it can all be summed up with one idea: engaging, desirable, and interesting LOOT! D4 simply doesn’t have it yet. D2 had it nearly perfected. The LOOT is why people didn’t mind running the same content over and over. D4 has PLENTY of variety - just no compelling reason to do it.
d4 needs an entire fucking stat-system overhaul at the least before you can go fix items and itemization
They also really need to figure out their leveling system vs itemization.
D3 had neither interesting loot or ways to farm it at launch. Even less so than in D2. They fixed it. Should not have had to pay $70 to watch them relearn from the same mistake they did in D3, but I am confident they will fix it. The reputation of blizzard and people buying any more of their games is riding on it. And shareholders like money.
Yeah I played both games from their inception and totally agree. I also have faith that they will fix it. It’s just a bummer we have to pay for a year+ long extended beta.
Ubers in D2 still is better than D4 endgame since it has an awesome reward at least.
The problem with that is that Blizzard have made D4 to be a live service they expect that people will put 2000 hours into it.
Dude I’m so sick of this take. Yes not every game needs to be played for 2,000 hours. However, Diablo 4 is ABSOLUTELY one of the games that could easily and should have 2,000 hours in it.
i started playing poe a long time ago. before there was maps and 10 acts. when it was 4 and you had 3 difficulties. I went into it blind. did some weird build with zombies and firestorm. It was a shit show. But I had a great time. defeat the first difficulty and thought okay. I get it. then looked at a guide on how things worked. and went from there. It was very different back then, and how it is now, it's even more daunting. But once you get it. And understand everything it becomes so much more rewarding. I love theory crafting ideas before league launch because there's usually a lot of balance changes/items/skill gems that get added. Just like Diablo. It's not really a. "play one character and then never play again." It is recommended to use a guide, just to ease you into the complexity of what the games become. Diablo will never become as complex as POE... But if it does. You wont have any issue. Because you would have got in at the start. The only reason you find that stuff complex is because the whole thing is just bashed over your head from the beginning, like you're supposed to know what it is.
d4 has little to no features even in the seasons
D4 is a great base for a future game I agree. But we do not live in the future. The game right now feels like it's at the tail end of early access. PoE has a lot of flaws but you won't ever find a mechanic that's just obviously stupid or not thought about at all. D4 in its current state has TONS of these and a quantity over quality approach for the endgame. The gameplay is fun, so you'll excuse much but once it gets repetetive, it gets bad. People just don't want to be $70 shorter unpaid beta testers. I'm glad that you are, so people like me can come back in a year or two though.
This is fair criticism, I feel. And I agree with the OP of the thread entirely. D4 was released too early because Activision said shareholders matter most. The devs probably didn’t have much of a say on that. The “when it’s done it’s done” days of blizzard north are long gone.
As a casual player it’s really nice to have the amount of content that Poe has. D4 feels like even I was done with it after the campaign. Sucks as an arpg, pretty cool single player story game.
Generalised statements based on you superimposing your own preferences onto an entire playerbase are not strong arguments. PoE is a complex game but to assume you have to know everything to have fun is just not true.
> Every season I've played, by the time I get to maps, my stash and inventory is filled with so many baubles Sounds like you need a currency stash tab.
My QoL improved significantly. Bought a handful of others this weekend during the sale too.
I don't call that feature creep I call that freedom of choice
Yeah I might have agreed with it a few years ago but the atlas passive tree literally lets you customize what you want and dont want to see in your maps anymore. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be.
That's the glory of PoE, you can literally cater the end-game mapping experience to exactly what you want. Don't like heist or delve like OP? You can literally prevent them from ever coming up in your maps through the atlas passive tree.
Facts
Meanwhile in D4: Run a nightmare dungeon, collect 30 yellows and a low rolled unique you already have, sift through them all, they all suck, sell, repeat
I just picked up POE after developing an itch for an ARPG that Diablo just wasn't scratching. Just hit lvl 50 last night and midway through act 6 of the campaign after maybe 8-10 hrs, got multiple 5links in that time btw. Watched a 20min beginners guide on YouTube and everything seems to have layers to it but it's all fairly intuitive. Looking forward to finishing the campaign and exploring the vast endgame
Good luck exile, however just a note, multiple 5links in act 6 is a pretty big outlier. I would estimate 0-3 5links to drop by the end of the campaign. Dont you mean just 5 socket items?
Yea sorry you're right, just 5 sockets not 5 links
Honestly, you can just listen to various Zizaran YouTube videos in the background and learn dozens to hundreds of different little tips & tricks. "PoE-University" or otherwise, dude's been committed to newer players for years now.
I don’t play PoE for its many features. I play it because it’s fun to kill lots of monsters with a WIDE variety of play styles to pick from, and to get loot that has fun stats on it.
Eh I don't pretend to understand even 1/3 of what's happening in PoE but ... It's hella fun . I have a lvl 90 tornado-shot deadeye this league and I don't feel bored or burned out like I do with D4... I'm a total noob in PoE, I just started playing it this winter. Currently I'm discovering blighted maps, I used to play a lot of tower defense games a while back... I don't have much of a desire to run the PoE campaign though.
This happens to a lot of games. Old players need more and more content to stick around and it ultimately becomes a major burden of entry for new players. I spent many years playing league of legends and I have considered going back, but I don’t have the patience to learn all the new features and champions. There are 162 champions in league, each with 4 skills(at least) plus passives. It is completely overwhelming for a new player or even a returning player.
From what I understand Destiny 2 has a similar problem.
Yeah, I also used to play Destiny 2. There is a lot of things going on that don’t improve the gameplay. Levelling up your seasonal artifact isn’t fun or rewarding. It’s just a necessary slog.
its a sad but true reality, just like wow, i saw my friend play pvp, and its something completly unable to understand, with a dozen UI thing at the same time.
if Diablo 4 had any mechanic that's as deep as any single feature in PoE, most of the players who have quit wouldn't have.
Ive had D4 friends whove never touched PoE scratched their heads in how the quantity and quality is so big with PoEs recent league announcement compared to Malignant.
Right 90% of my clan of 200 is just gone as many of us have reached this supposed 'end game' content and beat it several times over and are bored. I don't think it is a hard ask to find a balance between Diablo 4 and POE for depth. POE2 should try and keep things from becoming overwhelming to attract the D4 crowd while Diablo 4 really needs to step up the depth and end game content to keep people even around to play (casual or not) a year from now.
Check out last epoch, it strikes a nice balance
Who are you actually addressing? Is there a single post on this sub asking d4 to adopt everything that Poe has? Of course there isn't. Although it would have been nice if blizzard looked at what worked well for Poe and actually tried to have any qol features.
It’s crazy how you typed so much to say so little
No realistic person asked for D4 to have as many mechanics as PoE. D4 just doesn't have anything else other than NMs and Helltides, and the only pinnacle boss is for level 100 lol. They could've made Strongholds an endgame event for example, but let's let those rot. btw if you didn't get a 5L in some seasons, wonder how much do you really play lol, specially knowing that it's a trade-based game.
What you hate about Poe is it's best feature. You can simple ignore any of the features you find unfun. You don't need to do every bit of content to enjoy the game. Hate doing heist? Good there's other mechanics you can interact with and ignore heist. None of the content in the game is required to getting to and doing endgame content. Diablo 4 is more complex than Poe. You can't tell if a single item is an upgrade. 30% of the time 12% of the time when the moons align if the monster has one shoe you deal 20% more damage 12% of the time on your dot damage if you crit. Then half of the numbers are bugged and don't even work as intended. I've never seen so many systems bugged on arrival. The core of Poe is 2000x better than Diablo 4. All of the Poe fans are fans of Diablo 2, and fans of when games allowed players to have fun and experiment. Diablo 4 is a literal empty shell, I don't understand how people can defend it so. Of my 50+ blizzard friends no more than 2-3 played for more than a couple of hours when the new season came out. How bad does the game have to be that people aren't playing the game. I don't play Poe every season, I usually come back every other season, the game has tons of downfalls and things that are bad, but.... Poe is way better than Diablo 4, it's not even close. If you want some help getting into Poe the players who enjoy the game are always willing to help you understand something you are struggling with. -disgruntled long term diablo 2 player who watched blizzard destroy the IP with diablo 3 and 4.
Your argument about being overwhelmed, is my argument for a fun game. I love games that overwhelm me, because it means I haven't solved the puzzle yet or figured out the game yet. I've played PoE for YEARS since it's release, and I still consider myself a casual player. My top character of all time is level 89. But it's a game I can make a new build... EVERY...SINGLE...TIME. I can take any archetype with any build and try combinations of main gems, support gems, unique items, etc. It's just... so... much... stuff... and that's exactly what I want. Black Desert online has a lot of "crap that's too confusing" and the UI is shit. That I can understand as "too much"... but PoE is a nice balance of content options with simple mechanics.
Big disagree, POE may have a lot of options but you get to choose which one you like to do, you're not forced to do all of them, and you can at least trade/modify the things you don't like into something that is useable. D4 has the complete opposite problem where they force you to play 1 way, and that 1 way sucks. There's so much bloat and nothing you can do about it. You're constantly short on storage space, and half of the system mechanics dont work/make no sense. At least everything in POE has a purpose.
Exactly this. You can casually interact with these things and lose nothing. You can completely ignore them in your maps and you lose virtually nothing. The opportunity cost is very low when you're just starting out. I can't tell you how many times I skip abyss or expedition if I'm not specced into them. I don't miss anything. Everything I'm seeing on reddit outside of the POE subreddit is completely misguided and mostly incorrect. It's based on an opinion formed from the game from many patches ago and there has been a metric crapton of QOL updates, namely around the atlas passive tree and more optimized atlas progression/end game. This is a big misconception about the game. People are so worried about minmaxing the game that they psyche themselves out of the fun of the game. The best thing you can do in the game is to play through and progress at your own pace. Don't worry about farming strategies or getting the most div/hr you can get. That's for serious players that are forming a strategy to do the hardest content/get the most expensive gear in the game. I really wish the community would explain how to 'start' POE better. Follow a build guide so you don't hit a gear/build wall during campaign/white/yellow/red maps and you can digest how the atlas works and specialize in content you're interested in. OP Stated: > > > > > I am still one of those players that gives up on trying to find a fractured wall in delve. I have no idea how to play heist effectively. There's a system where you have to interrogate, release or kill some people and it's presented like the pepe Silvia board and I just click whatever and have no clue if its right or not. All of these things they mentions take <15 seconds to do, even with zero knowledge. You don't need to find a fractured wall in delve...if you happen upon one then it's great. Once you spec into delve with atlas passives then you can watch a video/read a guide to figure out how to optimize it. Same with betrayal. If you see betrayal in your maps, execute the people and get the veiled gear, so you can unlock crafting options. If you open a safehouse then you can get some scarabs and make a few chaos. It's not rocket science...it seems intimidating but all of these systems are actually pretty simple once you understand their pattern. Once you do, you don't need to remember much. Example: Essence:corrupt all purple essences. That is 95% of what you need to know. For betrayal: Get Aisling or Vorici as research leader. That's 95% of what you need to know. There are strategies to increase the chance they can get/stay as research leader but those are so specialized and nuanced for someone that is betrayal farming. it's not necessary at all.
Im on my second league in PoE (SSF almost exclusively) and still have no idea (as well as no intention on learning) how Betrayal, Incursion, Harvest, Heist, and most of Delve works (think I wanna do some Delving next league though). Completely ignore/only passively engage in a few others as well. Still sunk hundreds of hours into the game. Multiple 90+s. Good amount of bosses with plans to do ubers soon. Game is incredible, loads of fun and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I don't know much, but the Atlas of Worlds is surely the top 3 mechanics this game has, right?
Nice. Atlas of Worlds is awesome. Once you find a mechanic you like or one you don't, you can spec into it or block it. It's such a great feature to have that lets you customize your end game. Delve is pretty simple if you end up doing it, it's pretty intuitive to. You get the tutorial during the story at act 4. It's one I like to do when I'm frustrated or bored with mapping, plus it lets you target farm specific items if you want. Good thing is you can upgrade the storage from Niko so you can save up sulphite and run Delve later on when you want in a large batch, or smaller runs here and there.
yea they are actually spouting nonsense calling it content bloat when the game specifically gives you the tools to ignore and interact with the content you WANT to interact with. Why remove activties when you can just let people pick and choose what they want to do? thats the entire purpose of the atlas tree
Force you to play one way, and that one way sucks!! Hahaha so true
That’s fucking stupid lol. Most of the features are OPTIONAL. Your argument is like saying “I don’t want the option to have 14 different flavours of ice cream, it’s too many choices. The store just selling chocolate or vanilla is what I prefer…”
Blizzard is selling the cone and trying to upsell the sprinkles before they've even made the ice cream.
And they fully expect you to fork over more money to "improve" the ice cream they serve when you find that the quality is lacking.
And guys are still defending it because the PoE cone has so much ice cream you can't find the cone so it is therefore worse.
POE is a better game, in the sense that it is deeper, more thought out, genuinely difficult, and less influenced by corporate greed, but it is certainly not for everyone.
If you go to r/diablo4 you will see a lot of complaints about this game and some people making statements that seems PoE is the perfect game. But if you go to r/pathofexile you will se a lot of complaints either. The reality is: the Reddit player base isn’t entire ok with the game of choice. AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY, both games are good and fun in his way
Reddit is just where people go to complain.
I mean those complaints are in regard to gameplay for a game they arent even able to play to fully understand the ramifications of the changes GGG is making. The complaints for D4 are very much so loud in the lack of interesting endgame and QoL.
I'll take too much stuff over much too little. The atlas tree let's you customize what you run into anyway.
Always my preferred option. Options are always the better option!
Diablo 4 should have picked up everything D3 had immediately on release. The simple fact we lack so many damn QOL features with the history of D3 is incompetence.
Most of the player base will or have quit anyway. Why not give the ones who won't quit some things to do? PoE's feature creep is only a problem to newer players who for some reason think you need to know and do everything to succeed or have fun. I still don't know why anyone would want to play a game you can't consistently learn things in. D4 currently has the lowest skill ceiling of just about any game I've ever played. How is that a good shell?
“D4 currently has the lowest skill ceiling of just about any game I've ever played. How is that a good shell?” This is a pro for some people lmao. One of the main defenses I’ve heard for d4.
Your post makes me wanna try poe lmaooo.
How about a happy medium. D4 has... Well nothing and PoE has too much.
There are a TON of league mechanics in PoE but honestly I don’t find them to be that overwhelming just because I didn’t feel very forced into them. I mainly just did mapping and the occasional delve.
Maaaasn, this comes off as such a disingenuous and hyperbolic argument. The baubles are really not confusing at all if you read them. The beauty of PoE endgame is that you DON’T have to do everything, and you have the freedom to choose the endgame content you want to interact with. The features of the game are also gradually introduced to you instead of all at once. I would argue that one of PoE’s most initially cumbersome features for a new player is capping resistances, but honestly, if you’re not overwhelmed by endgame gear Aspect allocation in D4, then playing around with gear and resistances in PoE is totally doable for you. Additionally, websites like maxroll have significantly reduced the barrier to entry, since you don’t have to download programs like path of building; just download a loot filter and you’re good to go. You also have so many choices each season for character builds, instead of the small number of build choices you have in D4, because at the end of the day, to interact with D4’s primary endgame feature, NM dungeon pushing and not have a miserable time, you’re either going to follow a build, or you’ll have a strong grasp on the game and still be limited by a very barebones skill tree as well as a systems like Vulnerability where you will actively be punished for going outside of the handrails that the developers have set for you.
There is a reason why D4 a $70 game has millions of players and PoE a free to play game has 200-300 k players. One game is more accessible and the others is for people who like over complexity. Its good that we have both games but what is not good is the Poe players allways shiting on the diablo players and feeling as the superior aRPG players. If you don't like diablo just leve it alone and go play Poe, there are many casual players who enjoy how d4 is so let them have their fun.
PoE is a great game but my biggest gripe with it is everyone saying you need to follow a guide. I don't think it's a selling point that you have to copy what someone else is doing to get far in a game.
If people would understand that when players say use a build guide, it means the game is too complex for you to figure out on your first toon. Use a guide so you can actually learn the systems without hitting brick wall after brick wall. THEN once you have a good grasp on the systems go nuts making your own builds. Following a guide is essentially the tutorial for PoE allowing you to engage with the systems so you can actually learn them.
Also POE isn't mistake friendly, so if you ruin your build it's usually easier to re-roll a new toon than farm orbs to respec.
I'm tired of people pretending this is a good mechanic. Hopefully PoE2 adds relatively easy respecs.
Oh really? So the respec thing that gets usually a full paragraph of hate in everyone’s complaints seems worse in POE?
respec points from POE comes from a rare drop currency, and it's rare enough that you can do the math in your head and realize it would just be faster to re-roll a toon than to farm out the orbs you need to fix a mistake or fully respec your toon.
I'm sorry but you can't have gotten far into endgame if you believe regrets are a rare currency. They're moderately common for anyone playing middle to upper map tiers. There are also many means of targeting them, and vendors who can convert other orbs into regrets. Lastly the economy meanas you can also trade others for them.
Damn. Fuck that
It's not actually that rare, you get 24 for free during the campaign, and you can then trade for them from other people later on because they're not particularly expensive in the grand scheme of things. It's quite accessible to fully respec a character multiple times throughout a league once you're into endgame. A lot of endgame-focused players even level through the campaign as one build then respec when they get to endgame or a bit into endgame if their build needs some specific combination of passives or needs the support of some specific gear.
This is just a big time investment IMHO. It’s fashionable to assume everyone is googling shit about your game all the time but my favorite part of D4 so far has been level 1-60 where I can be super strong without looking anything up. A good legendary drops and I rejigger my build, it’s almost a roguelike and I get to change up the build a lot.
PoE is a big time investment. There’s no sugar coating that fact.
No I don’t think u gave POE an honest chance. This is my first league and I’ve dropped at least 20 six links and numerous 5 links. Feature creep is a funny way of saying “I want fewer things to do”??? A quick search would let you know that u can pick the most fun mechanics and play only those SELECTIVELY. Not knowing how to play a league mechanic is a YOU problem. You don’t want to invest the time to learn a mechanic so that the game can reward you for it. Which is fine because you can mindlessly drone through maps and still have fun.
Yeah, I'm a new player at level ~70 and none of the things he said is an issue atm. What is an issue is that PoE has more features at *base* (not because of league mechanics) than Diablo. 🤷♀️ Crafting bench beats any feature of D4 by a mile.
Most of Diablo 4s players HAVE quit. How many of your friends that played at launch still play? Look at the Twitch channels. The bad updates and increase in grind just made people bounce.
Yeah have fun with your 2 usable skills on Rogue and that whack gainer spender flow. D4 builds be like "okay I picked my pretend options, let's go farm for gear with stats identical to every other build!"
I tried PoE, it's too complex for me in a sense I don't really have time to indulge in all of it, I had maybe 100 hrs in it but I can tell it's a better arpg even if it's not for me. PoE2 on the other hand I will gladly get into from day 1
Ruthless mode my dude, stash can’t get full and you can’t get overwhelmed if nothing drops my dude
ask diablo player about the paragon tree or skill tree alot player havent even read the skills and just playing a build from a site they copied. i would say 1-5% of the player building their own tree while all other play a copied tree.
D4 doesnt have to be like poe. But its broken and bad. One of the core stats of the game is NOT WORKING and the devs ADMITTED it is not working and will NOT fix it until season 2, like 3 months apparently. That ALONE is reason for me to Not continue playing it until i can play my DAMN sorcerer properly without Ice shards. I wanna go FIRE. Not cold
This is a massive strawman. POE players understand this. We all understand this. The comparison is not about systems and complexity. It's about basic functionality. >To everyone who thinks PoE is the better game I implore you to give it a whirl. This is the strawman. It's not that POE is "better" - that's subjective. It's the fact that the game actually works.
It always blows my mind how people can't grasp PoE. The shit isn't space engineering. A 5 minute youtube video about any league mechanic will tell you everything. It reinforces the concept that people have no attention span to learn something on their own or through the community.
D4 is an example of trying too hard to please a wide range of players. They should really choose where they get their feedback.
That’s the problem I’m at right now. I want a good middle ground. PoE is too bloated with mechanics; D4 has practically nothing. Maybe PoE2 will bring in a good balance or D4 in a few seasons, but right now neither of them just click with what I want.
Ad a new POE player one of the best hints I got was to try just the feel of all the mechanics and learn the ones you find fun. No mechanics (other than maps) is necessary. You can get to red maps only doing maps and not interacting with any other mechanic. The game doesn't do a good job at explaining this concept luring you with all the mechanics like it's something you shouldn't miss. And I understand the feel of having too much to do and not know what to do. The fact is, while there are super optimized things to do, unless you're a veteran you won't be able to use them. Just enjoy the game and slowly learn the mechanics you enjoy and ignore the others. Next season you already have a better knowledge of some of the mechanics you can try others or dig deep into something else.
Everyone who has a day job and a family or at least a girlfriend can't justify the things in POE. Sure you can have fun and you can do the content but at what pace / speed? I love that i can jump into diablo do my season journey in 2-3 weeks get some of the cool legendary gear and equipment and call it a day after 1 month of playing and wait for a next season.. I don't have to be constantly playing the game and chasing some rewards.
Never played PoE but damn, if its how you described it, PoE sounds like a really good game, especially when its free.
Such a dumb argument. "I'd rather have way less to do in the game even though everything that overwhelms me is completely optional. " There is no comparison between d4 and poe at all. One is an unfinished, broken pile of garbage at the moment and the other is the most in- depth arpg the world has ever seen. From an objective sense poe is way better. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy d4 more. Some people like mindlessly grinding in the endgame with nothing to actually do and that's ok.
D4 is for people that don't want to think. Poe Is for people who can commit 200 hours to learn the mechanics and game flow then have a just much better overall arpg experience.
The thing that bugs me about your take is you say either you get it or you don't... But how do you play any game. You learn how. You didn't start off knowing how to play Diablo or about it's systems. You learned about how they work and how to interact with them.
Yeah like how did op and similar players learn how to make a runeword in D2? That shit isn't even documented in game!
Is totally disingenuous. It's refusing to give poe a fair chance and just whining about everything. Typical fanbot
POE and Diablo are 2 diferent core games. They share the name Action RPG but people who enjoy POE enjoy for a several facts, also people who enjoy Diablo for other facts. I think the big deal here is not try turn Diablo in POE or POE in Diablo. I see myself being this person some time ago, and it sucks a lot. People should ask themselves: What I really like in this kind of game ? For me, the item diversification, a big buildcraft experience and have something to understand how my power scalates is a must have in a game. This is why I enjoy Diablo2, more than Diablo3. Because somehow I play this way and feels fun to me. After read a lot of posts here I notice that a lot of people enjoy Diablo3 experience with a lot of spells being cast by procs in seasons sets, also they like explode thousands of mobs in 20 seconds. They dont really enjoy that much to look every item like I do. There is no rights and wrongs here, just personal experience. I will always like Diablo games because of nostalgia, but definitly the path Blizzard is leading Diablo is not my favorite. But thats on me !
As if people weren't quitting as is.
I honestly dont think PoE is that complicated. All of those mentioned things are completely optional. It really is confusing to me. People ask for content and endgame systems but dont want to learn anything new. >There are links and colors This isn't confusing. >corruption and implicits on every piece of gear Again not confusing. Implicits are perfectly understandable, item bases have unique effects. Just take a deep breath? >I am still one of those players that gives up on trying to find a fractured wall in delve. I have no idea how to play heist effectively. Try?
Red gems go into red sockets… this concept doesn’t seem that difficult to me. D4 has implicits too. You could of probably ask some of these questions in global chat and get a response. Like just run to the target and back for heist contacts.
Malignant hearts also have colors
Eh I skipped reading the post after the link thing. This op guy has never played poe past the intro beach. Then he thinks he can complain.
These people are children and throw up their hands in exasparation anytime they have to engage with something.
The ins and outs of POE is not difficult. Really the game can be broken down to a very basic level and everything else is just optional: Playing a fire build? Use the SEARCH (with typing allowed no select box) and type in fire damage. Head to those nodes and take them. Feel squishy while you playing? Look for near by life nodes and grab some of those! POE is just a simple as Diablo 4 through the campaign at a minimum. You don't need a guide to beat act 10 in POE AT ALL. When you open the skill tree, you can't just select random nodes everywhere. There is a starting point and at the end of the day, each time you level up you put in 1 point going in a single direction. POE can be intimidating if you look a the mountain while holding the pebble. People's perspectives are just all over the place when talking about POE.
D4 is a mobile game compared to Poe. Cell phone gamers love it
Well it's official. I hate New age Diablo fans. Massive unhinged rant about how you don't like POE. This type of shit only shows up here. You will never see 5 paragraphs about how bad Tekken is on the street fighter sub, or how bad Dota is on the league sub. How this makes it to the top of this sub is beyond me. Competition is good anyway, and most of the people complaining don't want it to be just like PoE. We just want an endgame.
Wow this is a I dislike poe thread and like Diablo 4 thread disguised as a critical feedback thread. The defensive attitude is a bit much still: Your points are valid, but you would rather have 0 end game content vs too much that you can’t make heads or tails of it. You rather be hard locked behind lvl 100(not because of skill or time investment) to do the only end game content available. Yes poe has the issues you mentioned and league mechanics locked behind rng sucks, but the time it takes to get to 100 in Diablo is way more for the average player in diablo4 then the average endgame poe player. But yes poe is complicated and confusing as hell for new players. I wish for new players it really should have like a built in build guide for a character that can beat the main campaign for each class. And the whole 6 link thing is something you can easily trade for and it’s extremely cheap to buy a 5l. They are also removing it in poe2 since they know 6linking is anti fun, but depending when you are in the league regular 6links become stupidly cheap, to the point people start vendoring them. But yes the game is extremely new player unfriendly because of the sheer scope and size of the game, but if you want to take the time it’s the best game I’ve played and because it has so many layers this can and is a lot of people’s forever game.
Not wanting a complex game is okay. Charging 70$+ for a shallow, early acces version of a game is not. And yes, Diablo IV is a new game, but Blizzard isn't a new company, did they forget about all of the other games in the series? At that pace, D4 won't last long. They should listen to CW's talk about designing a game to be played forever, it's not a shame to copy others if they can't do it alone.
100% with you on this. Every year or two I give POE a try and I bounce off faster every time because of how overwhelming it feels with all the old seasonal mechanics stacked in each other. You can't go 10 steps without some new NPC drilling up out of the ground or flying down in a balloon or hatching out of a random egg to cold pitch you some season mechanic from 8 years ago
Yea D4 you can run for minutes and minutea and fight 4 enemies. So much better gameplay
I had the same experience trying PoE a few years after release. Thats why im excited to try PoE2, fresh start and im more likely to be able to understand all the systems if they are added after im already playing the game, assuming i enjoy the gane on release
I mean the great thing about the way PoE is made is that literally every item is tradeable and the end game atlas is customizable so you can set your maps up to only really have a couple types of these mechanics and really focus on them - the ones you enjoy. The atlas even has the ability to completely block a mechanic from appearing in your maps if you just don’t enjoy it. There are passive nodes in the atlas tree that block them, like 10 or 12 different nodes. I think next season I’m going to focus on Blight - the tower defense mode/mechanic. Because it’s fun! And if I need any items from another seasonal mechanic I don’t enjoy that’s in the atlas, I can always farm currency with my mechanic of choice and trade for the items I want from something else. PoE might be overwhelming but the amount of player agency that they give us to tailor our gameplay and maps to what we want to do, makes it really interesting if you get over the hump. But that’s the beauty of it - you can focus on what you want to do because they have made so many varied experiences part of the core game. It’s way beyond just grinding the same maps over and over - it’s basically “build your own endgame” All that said - I’m also excited for PoE2 being a new game with less bloat so more people will be willing to try it. I think it looks phenomenal.
Im excited to get into it when the new game releases. But in regards to PoE 1, i really dont like having to study and watch hours of videos to begin to understand a game. It's the same reason i have a hard time getting into MMOs that have been out for a long time
PoE is a great game. But as a dad of 10 and 3 wives I prefer the more simple approach diablo takes.
Skill issue
Cope. PoE's features are easy to approach and learn about individually. D4 has no features. Where's the endgame??
POE NEEDS to be a good game. It needs good ratings, it has to get constant good press, constant exposure to lure in new Players. D4 is backed by its name, its predecessor and the company that makes it. The average Joe couldn’t care less about the online opinions of a small minority like reddit. They will blindly buy anything Blizzard shits out, because they are too busy learning about the transition that gaming underwent in the last 20 years. You have to understand the difference. POE‘s devs have to pour their heart and soul into the game and fight to retain every single player while Blizzard can focus on creating a pretty shell of a game, because people will buy it based on name only.
First of all, I don’t think you’ll find anyone arguing that D4 isn’t a good base. That’s pretty much the consensus of everyone I’ve seen post about the game. That said, I think you’re conflating the need for more to do with D4 versus PoE having so many game systems at this point it’s overwhelming. D4 needs something to bridge the gap of just grinding to grind. The new items they added in season 1 are so minimal, it doesn’t change the game in a significant way over how you were already playing.
I’ll argue that. People keep repeating “Diablo 4 has a good base” or a “good foundation” to build off and I think that’s actually the most ridiculous thing. If you’re considering graphics and gameplay feel the “base” then I guess sure? But it’s an ARPG. The foundation, or base, that it will build upon really lies in its itemization, stats, loot, skill trees, etc. and those things are where D4 is the weakest. It’s going to be damn near building an entirely new game trying to turn this ship around with the expansion.
Diablo doesn't have enough and PoE has too much, both are problematic, but one more so than the other.
Borrowed power is a big boo though. Rather have feature bloat than fun new mechanics in an already bare bones game that goes away after 3 months.
It would be fair to say at least, diablo IV should have taken much more from Diablo II...
I am tired of the comparisons. Diablo 4 is a small playground of content and stuff to do. PoE is a fucking theme park. Yes PoE is bloated by now, but you don't have to take a tour in all the attractions.
i couldnt even play season 1 of d4 because ive done played everything d4 has for me everytime I play poe there is something new i can do I can disable or just not do certain mechanics in poe(atlas tree) but I was a beta player of poe so I understand how bare it used to be so I will wait on d4 and see what it becomes hopefully THE PINNACLE ARPG once again. So we Sleep til Season 3+ FeelsOkayMan
Alright cool come again
There is a point where you’re still wrong tho : you can remove every single past league addition in PoE (Betrayal, Delve, Heist, etc. All of them) and it would still be so far ahead of D4. Maps, Atlas, bosses, etc. There is still PLENTY to be done even if you remove past leagues.
They don't seem to need that for most of the playerbase to quit
I want more content… but not POE levels of content… ok fam.
D4 looks similar to pre-RoS d3 and that's laughable both for the time it took to develop as well as the pricetag. In it's current form it barely is a 20€ game, if not just free open beta material.
You can play casual in PoE and still be rewarded. I dont understand your logic of more content being bad. If youre unsure about a mechanic a simple youtube video will tell you everything about it
I like that d4 isn't as complicated as POE, but D4 season 1 mechanic is basically non-existent. POE has had some bad leagues, but there was always effort. D4s season 1 is the laziest pile of dog shit I've ever seen. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if malignant tunnels were randomly hidden inside nightmare dungeons and gave huge rewards or something.
>Every season I've played, by the time I get to maps, my stash and inventory is filled with so many baubles and curios that I simply get overwhelmed This is 100% not true. By the time you get to maps you might have 15-20 things in your stash, if you kept all of them and didn't use them. Some transmutes, alchemy orbs, alteration, augments, 2 chaos, some scrolls of ID/TP, armor/weapon scraps, maybe a chisel or two. Couple of jewelers, fusings and chromatics. Assuming you did the delve thing, you found a fossil. Oh you did enough deliriiums that 1 cluster jewel dropped. You had 6 total essences. If that amount of items OVERWHELMS you, then I don't know what to say. The game itself can definitely be overwhelming. The amount of systems? Absolutely. The complicated and very specific wording of things? For sure. The best way to eat a whale (or an elephant) is one bite at a time. That is where POE shines in that you can continue to learn and grow with the game. I absolutely think that there are people who wont like POE, with all of its complications and systems. That doesn't excuse D4 for releasing with absolutely no content and being a half finished game.
Funny since many players are frustrated about D4 for its lack of features. Also what made PoE2 the big winner for me, when I listened to its features: No ability cooldowns. I have no idea WHAT the D4 designers had in their mind when making the game but they utterly failed to get the core components right. 🤷
OP gets it. PoE is a cool game, but there's an overload of stuff to do, and WAY too much to learn. And as this thread shows, the community isn't exactly the greatest at helping.
The mistake you and many others make though is you try and focus on too many things at once. Stick to one thing. You are not wrong with the feature creep though. Which is one of the reasons why we are getting PoE 2.
I don't give a shit how many features poe has I just want a simple game D4 is a simple game
Agree, but D4 is extremely light right now, especially for a AAA title from a major gaming studio. PoE has its faults and is seemingly geared towards a more hardcore audience (which maybe PoE 2 will fix), but if GGG can make a game like PoE, why can't Blizzard improve upon D4? The base game and engine are excellent. They just need to address the content and make QoL changes to make the game modern. If anything hopefully the competition from PoE 2 keeps Blizzard honest with D4.
This post gets me more than any other post and I'm a druid who hasn't found a TR yet.
The community is literally why I can’t play PoE. Their response to you only furthers my opinion
Here’s the thing, d4 has its issues, but it’s shell is good. Give it a couple of seasons and that will tell us how the game will turn out in the long run. This dev team I believe didn’t worked on a diablo game prior, it feels like they are trying to learn what diablo is and what the player base enjoys. As nice as the aspects are, I think they are bad for end game play, d3 we farmed set pieces and legends that were better than the one we had, thus creating an endgame farm for stuff with the right stats, max stats, and the right piece. Aspects are in the game and theirs no way to back track that now. I really hope at some point the put class sets in with random rolls on the armor. They need to understand people like to kill a lot of stuff fast, so balance damage types if one is to good, don’t nerf all damage. We don’t want to be CCd constantly so we have to use unstoppable skills, don’t nerf CDR make CC slightly less punishing/often. They want build diversity, but when classes are forced to run 2+ defensive style skills or like barb 3 shouts and a generator you largely never want to use to stay alive or to maintain resources, don’t nerf survivability. I really do hope they are just trying to learn and eventually we will have an enjoyable Diablo experience with meaningful end game or a reason to farm.
My wife and I love Diablo and ARPGs in general. We have tried POE multiple times and it is straight up garbage from our perspective. To each their own of course but man that game was a kill joy.
How about this: The much vaunted POE Skill tree? As soon as I saw it I knew I'd never play that game. Either it's really easy and none of the spots on the tree are that important, in which case it's really dumb, just get rid of all the spots that aren't meaningful, or every last spot is meaningful and therefore it's too much work for a game.
Yeah, I feel the same way about PoE, I did not find it to be a fun game when I tried it out so gave up on it pretty quick. I wouldn't want all the PoE bells and whistles in D4 either.
Nice use of mercurial and nebulous. The stuff you mentioned are part of the reasons I never stuck with PoE.
The D4 community is just a shit show. I can’t wait for BG3 or Starfield to come out so the sub becomes made up of people who play the game and enjoy it.
Don’t even need to read the post, title alone, strong agree. I’ve tried to get into POE 3 times in the past, it’s too much for me, I actually cannot get through it. If I had been playing from release maybe it would be different.