Feedback from a PoE player who started playing D3 again

Their creativeness is higher than their available resources.

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KenshiD написал:

But what do you mean with "what PoE was aiming for remains ultimately beyond GGG's current grasp."

If their goal was to create the ultimate ARPG experience I can imagine that fell a little short... or to the side, somewhere into uncharted regions of ARPG/MMO borderland.
However, as devs often like to point out the game conforms to their vision 99%, perhaps they were aiming at this all along.

And I do agree with what master chupacharan wrote, and I'd like to add my wishes for more powerful skills with longish cooldowns.

In fact, one of my favorite suggestions is a cooldown gem, which can boost the damage of any direct-damage spell a few times, but grants it a cooldown. Possibly in long-cooldown and short-cooldown flavors. The main obstacle to using more than one or two skills in PoE is you can spam only one of them, more diverse arsenal is always a plus in my book... and it would make a battlemage a little less stupid concept than it currently is.

The most frustrating thing about PoE is how much untapped potential it has.

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Gobla написал:

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raics написал:

What I'd like to see isn't a hard restriction, socket color could provide some kind of a bonus instead if you match it with the gem, so you'd still be rewarded to align it instead of severely restricted if you don't.

Just wanted to say, I think that's one heck of a good idea.

Perhaps instead of a bonus make it a penalty though, like -1 gem level or quality doesn't apply. You could socket truly important gems in their right color but leave other ones in off-color sockets. To get a BiS item you'd still need exactly the right sockets.

This idea definitely has merit

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allbusiness написал:

ARPGs are not about grinding and luck. ARPGs are about progression and killing mobs to progress. Path of Exile's progression massively sucks a left sweaty nut, especially when you reach early maps.

wtf are you talking about? ARPGs are about grinding, luck, progression and killing shit, the mixture of them all.

I'm not really a gamer but I've been playing RPGs since I was 11. Every single one I played involved grinding, some involved luck (D2, POE), some had steady progression (FF series, fall out series, skyrim) some had varied (D2, POE) and all involved killing shit. There was a balance between things though. FF series put more time into the story so they made items a steady progression. POE is more about items so they built variety in. I don't get the same excitement finding/buying a good item in an FF game that I do when I find something in POE.

That's probably going to be the same feeling with D3. My major issue with D3 is the story is flat, it's a typical ARPG story, skippable, not really worth the time and if it was removed no one would really give a shit. The items are bland and generic, they might as well have the same type of item system as an FF game, at lvl 9 you use this, at level 60 this, at lvl 90 you can hunt down the super item as the end game reward. Who cares about luck, apparently you don't need it, shit is coming regardless. Then killing shit, is it scaled to assume you have good gear so it's a tough battle or is it tuned around the average and you can just faceroll?

I dunno, people praise D3 now but just like when it came out in a month or so after it's released everyone will be looking for something else. There's nothing sticky about the game. It's like saying this year's CoD is the best ever and all other games should model themselves after it, only to see CoD next year come out.

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raics написал:

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KenshiD написал:

But what do you mean with "what PoE was aiming for remains ultimately beyond GGG's current grasp."

If their goal was to create the ultimate ARPG experience I can imagine that fell a little short... or to the side, somewhere into uncharted regions of ARPG/MMO borderland.
However, as devs often like to point out the game conforms to their vision 99%, perhaps they were aiming at this all along.

And I do agree with what master chupacharan wrote, and I'd like to add my wishes for more powerful skills with longish cooldowns.

In fact, one of my favorite suggestions is a cooldown gem, which can boost the damage of any direct-damage spell a few times, but grants it a cooldown. Possibly in long-cooldown and short-cooldown flavors. The main obstacle to using more than one or two skills in PoE is you can spam only one of them, more diverse arsenal is always a plus in my book... and it would make a battlemage a little less stupid concept than it currently is.

The most frustrating thing about PoE is how much untapped potential it has.

Hmm I am no fan of cooldowns... I find them really annoying which is why I dislike MMOs a lot.

The main obstacle to run more than 2 powerful skills are links and the reason to play more than 2.

If you have a singletarget and an AoE what else do you want besides curses, auras, and movement skills which are don't really do damage?

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Moosifer написал:

at lvl 90 you can hunt down the super item as the end game reward.

Anyone up for a round of lightning dodging?

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KenshiD написал:

If you have a singletarget and an AoE what else do you want besides curses, auras, and movement skills which are don't really do damage?

Very glad you asked. For a regular PoE-tastic build you don't need it for shit, but if you try something that works well in most other RPGs, you see it doesn't really work here.

Namely, tactical battle, or a 'battlemage' concept if you like. Battlemages are pretty interesting overall, they have lower stats than their origin classes and lower skill proficiency, but they work because they use the best each has to offer and use it cleverly, so you get more than the sum of their parts. Be it using sneak attacks on enemies stunned with color spray in DnD games, casting a fireball to draw aggro to your iron-hard defense in dragon age, buffing yourself with spiffy elemental auras in titan quest, using celestial light or maelstrom to group enemies in sacred or just pulling out to kick off a big-ass spell with a long cooldown before continuing to fight in melee while it recharges, it all works. Battlemage is interesting because he can handle encounters that would cream him on sight if you consider only stats.

But we can't do that here, we have no tools, and I consider it a big flaw. A flaw that is easily remedied and could fix the issue with selfcasting to an extent, a third spell with a big damage that's on cooldown is actually extra dps that you apply from time to time while doing something else. Vaal gems were probably supposed to fill the niche but soul gaining is too situational to function properly, and having a cooldown isn't as really vaal-themed as sacrificing souls, so I'm inclined to call that an irrecoverable bust.

A lot of interesting responses.

I want to keep myself out of the stretched Diablo 2 discussions, because I don’t want to look back and have an in depth discussions about a game that old. I would rather look at the present and the future, personally.

I also want to thank the following users who put the angry people in their place for me: bubblynuggets, Jiero, kasub, Real_Wolf.

I first would like to a couple of similar responses that I were to be expected:

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kasub написал:

@OP I'm not going to comment on specific details but pretty much all the D3 advantages you state are things that cater to a more casual player which is fine. PoE thrives in its complexity and depth(far superior itemization and skill system).I do agree D3 gameplay is a lot smoother though.

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Real_Wolf написал:

But build diversity, I still hate D3 from that, it is still very badly setup for build diversity. Despite being a poor PoE player, never had more than an exalt or two to my name, gear worth less than 10 exalt accross all my characters, I have made more different builds in PoE than are possible in D3.

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Xavderion написал:

Here's my feedback: it's fun to climb the item spiral for about ~20 hours because you're constantly getting rewarded for playing, but then you realize it's still as bland and shallow as pre-2.0 because the itemization barely got more complex (this could still improve with RoS) and there is simply no character customization.
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ElChivoDiablo написал:

To sum it up, for me D3 lacks build diversity, PoE does not lack build diversity. I play ARPGs for build diversity. And since this was a F2P game, whenever GGG decides to let us pay for a full on solo/self-found league without requiring trading to perfect your end-game build, I'd be willing to dish out another $60 for that, and be eternally grateful in the process. I wish you luck with D3 and let us know if you get bored with it!

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iamstryker написал:

If build diversity in D3 wasn't such a joke I would probably be interested in trying it again. However no amount of good changes is going to make me want to yet again make the exact same wizard as every other wizard in the game. D3 simply isn't deep enough, its an action game with a very thin layer of RPG on top to make people believe its an ARPG when its really not.

Maybe I'm not qualified for hardcore in some people's eyes since I do not spend several hours each day playing the game. However I do my investigations when not playing and figure mechanics out in great detail. I play on my own pace but am not the kind of player that rushes all the content with a cookie cutter build.
So hardcore or not, I'm probably in the same boat as Real_Wolf. I basically have to depend on trading to progress, selling unnecessary items and purchasing upgrades with the currency I made out of that.

This also means that I admit that I cannot say that I know whether or not the build diversity in D3's end game will be satisfying enough for me because I simply haven't get there yet. This is actually one of my main concerns with D3 indeed.

I don't disagree with the statements that D3 has NO build diversity. And the customization for my character at the moment is satisfying. I can pick skills, I can customize those skills, my main stats level automatically (no need to raise obvious stats), skills andstats are boosted by gear and gear can be customized by an artisan, by gems and by looks.
And also I don't know if you guys have taken a closer look to Paragon point in D3 but there are several stats that can be raised, not only the obvious core stats like vitality/strength/mana stats but lots of other stats as well in the categories Offensive, Defensive and Adventure for a total of 16 different stats that can be raised. So for me, at the moment and for a long time to come, this level of customization seems quite satisfying.

What I also disagree with is that the character customization is that great in PoE. I also mentioned this in my OP: The passive tree is huge, their are a lot of skills combinations and many item mods that are available. However I think that GGG made is overly extensive, basically forcing playing into micro management. I think PoE can be a lot more user friendly and simplistic while still maintaining good character customization. I think the balance between choices or options and a user friendly system is bad. A lot of choices are not real choices in the perspective of hardcore players, who are the main target group for PoE.

Nobody want to be a jack of all trades in PoE or the proper way of playing a game like this is to specialize. So why would you have to be bother with picking many +1% nodes? Why would you have to be bothered with making sockets the correct color and linking them? This is no challenge at all if you ask me, this is utterly useless in my opinion and again: I would just buy the correct sockets. I do not want to be bothered by useless random mods on items but nearly with the ones that truly matter.

If you think that micro management is fun and means diversity I would say your wrong.

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KenshiD написал:

As soon as you cannot sell your items there will be no point in acquiring better items anymore.

So, in RPG games we acquire powerful items to sell them? Ultimate PoE uber boss: Trade Chat... :D

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Startkabels написал:

So why would you have to be bother with picking many +1% nodes? Why would you have to be bothered with making sockets the correct color and linking them?

because everything (or almost) needs to have a cost :
- you want that keystone over there ? you gotta pick it up after X attribute nodes at least, find your way to there, optimize it, customize it
- you want to use RRRRB while wanting to use ES defence ? if you don't sacrifice some ES for a hybrid chest, you will have troubles rolling RRRRB because you basically want the cake and the icing at the same time, so if you really want it, you need to pay for it.
- do you want this rare chest with awesome mods or do you want the other one with okay mods and only 4 links ? if you do want the good mods, you need to fuse it until 5L to get your full combo.


It's all about making choices, and that's very important.
A game without choices to make is boring, and aiming for assisted players, I personally don't want that to happen in PoE.

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Fruz написал:

- you want to use RRRRB while wanting to use ES defence ? if you don't sacrifice some ES for a hybrid chest, you will have troubles rolling RRRRB because you basically want the cake and the icing at the same time, so if you really want it, you need to pay for it.

Don't cram this one in the same basket. It would hold water only if red gems were inherently more powerful than blue ones. You aren't necessarily getting a more powerful combination than a straight blue one with some other spell would be, you're punished for wanting something different, not something stronger.