Is Path of Exile as addictive as Diablo 2?

PoE is indeed as addictive as D2. The difference is that D2 had very little competition (it was a great game granted) while nowadays you can DL 50 different F2P games at any given moment. The difference is merely there was no alternative to D2 in it's time.

This is coming from someone who played D2 for 6+ years. I just think that had there been LoL, steam, and as many other easily accessible good games out there that I would have taken more breaks from D2 as well.

Both games are awesome, but yes D2 PvP was extremely fun.

For Crackmonster, more rewards make the game more attractive:

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Crackmonster wrote:

Let us theoretically say top-end uniques were now twice as common, that would mean it would roughly take only half the time to acquire the currrency to purchase those that you needed. For example the build i am working on right now needs an auxium and a voltaxic rift. The farming stretch to get them will be 10h every single day for about 2 months, of doing the same areas over and over, a time in which i in comparison would have been able to acquire full gears on not just one but several character in D2 by trading on bnet. I would have felt satisfied so many times maybe over 30 times by the time i would be satisfied one time in PoE.

Edit: Oh i just saw he made a thread about it :http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/769303

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So what, then, is Diablo 2's secret? It's not "the rewards were designed and spaced out – just powerful and rare enough to be meaningful, just frequent enough to enforce the loop described above throughout the game," as Curelea claims. The real answer is simple: the monkeys didn't realize it. Diablo 2 had excellent mechanics to confuse you regarding whether you'd received the juice or not.

I know I'm late to the party, but this is a false assumption. D2 kept the rewards meaningful by encouraging players to roll a new character before getting good drops becomes too infrequent. Rolling a new character is like a reset button for the loop, making drops seem better as the player out-levels his gear.

well most people do play the current incarnations of arpgs for the loots and the murder.


murder is nice and all in poe , but some times i just want some loot .

It's interesting that at higher levels in all 3 games, the reward scheduling (the frequency/magnitude/likelihood of reward) is completely out of whack and isn't anywhere near as addictive as the earlier game/ It just attracts a certain kind of anal completionist kind of gamer (of which there are a quite a few) which is fed a bit by the cognitive dissonance of 'I'VE SPENT SO MANY HOURS ON THIS GAME, IT MUST BE WORTH IT, I'M GONNA KEEP PLAYING AND GET ALL OF THE THINGS EVER'.

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Novalisk wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So what, then, is Diablo 2's secret? It's not "the rewards were designed and spaced out – just powerful and rare enough to be meaningful, just frequent enough to enforce the loop described above throughout the game," as Curelea claims. The real answer is simple: the monkeys didn't realize it. Diablo 2 had excellent mechanics to confuse you regarding whether you'd received the juice or not.

I know I'm late to the party, but this is a false assumption. D2 kept the rewards meaningful by encouraging players to roll a new character before getting good drops becomes too infrequent. Rolling a new character is like a reset button for the loop, making drops seem better as the player out-levels his gear.

It really didn't. You seem to have cause and effect switched: it wasn't that the incentive to reroll prevented grindy looting, it was that the anticipation of grindy looting caused rerolls.

Which does raise a very interesting question: why doesn't this pattern seem to emerge in PoE?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Novalisk wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So what, then, is Diablo 2's secret? It's not "the rewards were designed and spaced out – just powerful and rare enough to be meaningful, just frequent enough to enforce the loop described above throughout the game," as Curelea claims. The real answer is simple: the monkeys didn't realize it. Diablo 2 had excellent mechanics to confuse you regarding whether you'd received the juice or not.

I know I'm late to the party, but this is a false assumption. D2 kept the rewards meaningful by encouraging players to roll a new character before getting good drops becomes too infrequent. Rolling a new character is like a reset button for the loop, making drops seem better as the player out-levels his gear.

It really didn't. You seem to have cause and effect switched: it wasn't that the incentive to reroll prevented grindy looting, it was that the anticipation of grindy looting caused rerolls.

Which does raise a very interesting question: why doesn't this pattern seem to emerge in PoE?

Who is to say it doesn't? Unless I am mistaken, the anticipation of grindy looting is what keeps the Ruler of Wraeclast from progressing his toons beyond a certain point. I have more than a few builds that have had to be "shelved" due to running into a "gear wall". For me it is simply more fun to snag some item that I saved because it gave me a build idea and then run with the idea.

I do wonder why all of these people that feel that D2 is so much a superior game are not actively playing it, rather than posting about how "bad" PoE is by comparison. Last I checked the game is still supported and sold by Blizzard, accounts are free to create, and it even received a patch within the past couple of years (I think, been a few years since I played).

On topic: I find Path of Exile to offer me a deeper level of play than any of the Diablo titles. That has "hooked" me, what is going to keep me here is the cooperative play of my online community.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Novalisk wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So what, then, is Diablo 2's secret? It's not "the rewards were designed and spaced out – just powerful and rare enough to be meaningful, just frequent enough to enforce the loop described above throughout the game," as Curelea claims. The real answer is simple: the monkeys didn't realize it. Diablo 2 had excellent mechanics to confuse you regarding whether you'd received the juice or not.

I know I'm late to the party, but this is a false assumption. D2 kept the rewards meaningful by encouraging players to roll a new character before getting good drops becomes too infrequent. Rolling a new character is like a reset button for the loop, making drops seem better as the player out-levels his gear.

It really didn't. You seem to have cause and effect switched: it wasn't that the incentive to reroll prevented grindy looting, it was that the anticipation of grindy looting caused rerolls.

Anticipation of grindy looting was not the only reason people re-rolled. It wasn't even the main reason. Proof in hand, that anticipation is alive and well in PoE, but as you know people aren't re-rolling.

The primary factor for re-rolling is achieving the goal you set out to achieve with your character. The most common goal in an ARPG is seeing the build you planned realized, in action against the game's most difficult content. In D2 (pre-ubers) reaching that goal took a significantly shorter time. Simple as that.

I'm by no means saying D2 was a perfect game. There are countless areas where PoE excels above D2, but there are still some lessons the old man has to teach.

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Novalisk wrote:

The most common goal in an ARPG is seeing the build you planned realized, in action against the game's most difficult content. In D2 (pre-ubers) reaching that goal took a significantly shorter time. Simple as that.

I'm by no means saying D2 was a perfect game. There are countless areas where PoE excels above D2, but there are still some lessons the old man has to teach.

I am utterly amazed you say imply this is something D2 did right. The ease of full-clearing D2 was one of it's greatest flaws, not one of its strengths. To me, putting it on a pedastal for that is synonymous with the instant-gratitude mentality.

That's my opinion, anyway. Although I'm one of those people who doesn't use cheat codes even when I'm fully aware they exist, work, and are easily found. I know from experience this playstyle puts me in a distinct minority; just watch the average player slog through Starcraft 1's campaign mode (be honest with yourself). But that's a minority — the shortcut avoiders — I want GGG to cater to, at the expense of the majority; if you ask me, that's what hardcore really means.

I played D2 for years and years. Still occasionally pick it up and play for a couple of weeks at least once a year.

PoE lasted three months for me, then I was righteously fed up with the criminally awful loot system and never want anything to do with it again until that's redesigned or they provide a solo league with more reasonable loot rates.

Broken, backwards design that stems from people's misguided and pretentious misconceptions about what makes a game "hardcore."

D2 was the better game. Still is.