Is Path of Exile as addictive as Diablo 2?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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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.

The ease of completing the game is exactly why people chose to reroll different characters. Once someone completed the game with their Hammerdin/Sorc/etc. they could roll a different build/class/etc. because they can accelerate and farm their secondary characters up faster than they could the first (and by significant amounts too). Building all sorts of wacky characters was the fun in D2, because you could do it fairly quickly. So you'd have people with 10+ characters just trying different shit out.


In PoE, people rarely play more than one character above 70 because it's just a gigantic waste of time to do so. It takes a week to just get a character into 70+ maps, and that's literally no lifing the game for that whole week.


And really if you wanted GGG to cater to true hardcore, they'd remove cheesy ass alt+f4 from the game. That's not even hardcore in the slightest.

I played D2 for a few hours today just for kicks and what surprised me the most about it in relation to PoE is how much better the combat feels. D2 feels more crisp and exciting. PoE feels a bit clunky and slow by comparison.

PS: Also booted up the incredible adventures of van helsing and dungeon hunter alliance. God do we love arpg's.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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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.

Not sure what you mean by "full-clearing", so I'll assume you're talking about maxing out a character.

Reaching max level, getting GG gear, and getting 20/20 on all your gems is not something that should come sooner. These things don't define a build, they are "nice-to-have" goals that define a character's edge in power, goals for the hardcore players to chase.

It is the build-enablers (5/6 links, build enabling uniques, getting a few gems to high quality) and the build-testers (access to high level maps) that should come sooner.

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Novalisk wrote:

Reaching max level, getting GG gear, and getting 20/20 on all your gems is not something that should come sooner.

Agreed, when they implemented that cheesy 20q gem recipe I said it was a mistake and still think so. A 20q gem should be the ultimate luxury, not bread-and-butter.

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raics wrote:

Agreed, when they implemented that cheesy 20q gem recipe I said it was a mistake and still think so. A 20q gem should be the ultimate luxury, not bread-and-butter.

Leveling and re-leveling gems to get 20% quality is very time consuming, I would not state, that it makes them "bread and butter". You know this my CI melee scion, hers gems are @ 19,5 lvl. Most of my 20 lvl gems were used on few characters.

I like this recipe personally : it gives you more progression when you reach lvl 70+ ( or 68+ ) maps, because you still have gems to level up and it still keeps bringing something to your character.

Plus it greatly simplifies solo player's life.

I may be a little bit unfair for casters though, since the difference between a level 18 and a level 20 gem is quite big.

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tmaciak wrote:

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raics wrote:

Agreed, when they implemented that cheesy 20q gem recipe I said it was a mistake and still think so. A 20q gem should be the ultimate luxury, not bread-and-butter.

Leveling and re-leveling gems to get 20% quality is very time consuming, I would not state, that it makes them "bread and butter". You know this my CI melee scion, hers gems are @ 19,5 lvl. Most of my 20 lvl gems were used on few characters.

That's fine, but it still takes much more time to acquire endgame gear than endgame gems, and they're much cheaper to buy than they used to be. I agree the recipe is awfully convenient, just not sure it should be.

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Fruz wrote:

I may be a little bit unfair for casters though, since the difference between a level 18 and a level 20 gem is quite big.

Yup, caster have quite a dilemma. The other problem is, that quality of quality is sometimes questionable for some gems (probably due to their nerfs... erhkmmm "life cycle").

For example, Blood Rage is better @ 1/20 than 20/1. But for totems? IMO it's for epeen only, totems in maps usually die not expire.

Freeze Pulse quality is a "must have", but EK? Considering that both spells need projectile speed to be viable, 60% projectile speed is no comparable to 15% projectile damage.

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raics wrote:

That's fine, but it still takes much more time to acquire endgame gear than endgame gems, and they're much cheaper to buy than they used to be. I agree the recipe is awfully convenient, just not sure it should be.

But it's again discussion about not so bad design spoiled by "economy".

From solo self found player perspective, recipe is very good - for a price of regrinding levels, you qet quality. But considering how much time one need to re-level gem, this price is quite high.

From the other side, we have "economy" and a lot of ppls sells gems while changing builds etc. so in fact gems cost ~1 exa for 1/20 and 2 exa for 20/20 (for rarer, can be higher). And this is quite affordable prices, even for non-traders, as it is not so hard to grind for 20 chaoses or so.

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allbusiness wrote:

And really if you wanted GGG to cater to true hardcore, they'd remove cheesy ass alt+f4 from the game. That's not even hardcore in the slightest.

I disagree with this; the server response to the client suddenly closing should assume players are innocent (power/internet outage) until proven guilty. Therefore, sine malicious players can fake innocent and exit trouble quickly, encounters should be designed with the premise that players can quickly leave the game. I believe some minor adjustments are in order (mostly dealing with menu logout), but in general I agree with GGG's approach to this issue.

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Novalisk wrote:

Not sure what you mean by "full-clearing", so I'll assume you're talking about maxing out a character.

Reaching max level, getting GG gear, and getting 20/20 on all your gems is not something that should come sooner. These things don't define a build, they are "nice-to-have" goals that define a character's edge in power, goals for the hardcore players to chase.

It is the build-enablers (5/6 links, build enabling uniques, getting a few gems to high quality) and the build-testers (access to high level maps) that should come sooner.

You mean like build-enabling runewords? I think duping was so damned prevalent in D2 that no one truly appreciates how rare highrune drops truly were.

Regarding 5/6 links: imagine if the current Chromatic vendor formula output Fusings instead of Chromes. Fuses would be a much more common currency, and the number of 5/6 links would be much higher; however, Chromes would be a much less common currency, so getting the exact colors you want would be even harder. If I was designing the game, that's what I would have done; made it so 5/6 link is much less of a hurdle, but in return make socket color more of a hurdle such that players are encouraged to utilize and level (off-hand slots!) a variety of support gems as they level. In short: more 6Ls but less ideal 6Ls.

Regarding build testers: Here I just disagree. Having a continuum of content for many levels of play is critical; this is what D2 did wrong, because you need more than Uber Tristram. If completing a build means completing all content, then I must agree with Tyler Durden: never be perfect, never be complete.