Is Path of Exile as addictive as Diablo 2?

I played D2 for a short time during 1.08 and for a significant portion of 1.09. I had the recent realization that 1.09 was such a long patch because Blizzard North was working on Diablo 3 at the time. 1.10 was a Blizzard South consolation after the breakup. I've bought 2 Blizzard games since, StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, and have been disappointed by both. Fool me once...

Hilbert seems passionate and informed on all matters Diablo 2. But I'm not sure what is being argued. Path of Exile has done an excellent job so far yet has room to learn. We don't need to revert to uniques trumping rares but POE could learn a little from Diablo 2's item progression. It's more fun to look for items that are good for you, rather than incremental properties you already use. And that's exactly what breaks down in the end game.

Hmm, thinking about it that way it does make sense.

I still think that there needs to be a better "guidance" to be able to take part in the "deep customization" in a similar way to D2.

Like you said, in a "bad" ARPG, you get item X, item Y, and you can instantly figure out which one is better/more powerful/etc. That gets boring.
However, at least IMO, here in POE you get item X, item Y, and you have like NO way to figure out which one is better (in general terms), without heavily testing both of them by grinding or something.
When you get a new item, a new gem, can choose to get a new stat, etc, you have a billion things to take into account. You have to take into account your gear stats, your gear links+sockets, your gems, your PST stats, and all of them in an integrated configuration, and THEN figure out if element X is better than element Y (element being stat/gem/item/gear/anything basically).



I think there should be a better system enforced to dissipate that feeling.
Give more tooltips on how stuff works; make the PST more interactive and give more info about it other than just give you a map of 1000 nodes and expect you to read every single one of them and analyze which path is best on your own. Another way is to make other info more easily accessible. For example the list of all gems should be easily accessible in-game for example. You can also give a list of possible items that can drop in your ilvl area, or have an easily accessible list of monsters, and which ones are in your area, so you can know what to expect and prepare how to fight them without having to memorize every single monster and all their stats, skills, etc.

For that last point, something like a POE Pokedex could work. When you kill a new type of monster, you can access more info about it in some Bestiary journal you can access through the main menu. But don't make it a useless "flavor" one, actually make it useful. Give the name and image of the monster, the average/max/whatever life it has, how much accuracy it has, how much evasion, armor, ES it has. List all of its abilities, and have each of those have links to a description of it, whatever. List the possible affixes it can have, etc.
A good option could be have it calculate, based on that monster's average stats and your own, how much life you can take out of that monster per hit, how much hits would take you to kill it, how many times you would hit it before it evades you, etc. Have it all shown in a user-friendly way, and maybe have it integrated when you decide to switch gear/stats/gems.

For example, if you want to choose a new sword, have this bestiary journal popup. Now, it tells you for each monster, which "beneficial area" the new sword enhances, and which one doesn't. For example, it can tell you that your chance to hit monster X will be lowered, but you will deal more damage to monster Y and you will thus kill it faster
With this info, now you DO know more and can make a better decision on whether to keep this new sword or not, or whether this new item is "better" than the last one, without having to blindly flail around with it and have little ways to gain any info whatsoever other than "maybe I'm killing the monsters faster...?" or "I now insta-die 3 seconds into the fight".

This "bestiary" could be one of such ways to give you better info and tools to make better decisions, and increase the pace of the game in terms of progression, without you having to stop playing, and go to forums to trade or start discussing whether the item is better or not, etc.

There should be a similar one for the PST perhaps. It's already daunting enough, I think there should be some way for you to make sense of that beast of a tree, specially if you are a new player of PoE. Explanation on what each stat does, the distribution of the stats in the tree, distribution of similar nodes, a way to find the shortest paths, or to find the path that maximizes some stat you want. More user-friendly GUI that shows you what paths you can take, what nodes you may be interested in, etc. For example, the more Dexterity you have, the Dex nodes will start flashing brighter, while the Str+Int ones will dim a little bit. That's a "simple" example. You could have other ways of "highlighting" nodes. For instance, if you have a 2-handed weapon equipped, highlight the nodes that benefit 2-handed weapons, and dim the ones that only benefit 1-handed ones, wands, spells, etc. If you have a piece of gear with a specific stat, highlight the nodes that complement that stat.
Based on common knowledge of builds, you can highlight specific nodes and paths depending on what the player is wearing, what gems he has, etc. If you have Shavrones and RF, highlight nodes that can benefit a low-life build. If you have a Shadow with Cold Spear, highlight nodes that can increase crit maybe. The possibilities are endless, all so the players can have a little better guidance when developing their build.
This won't break the game or anything either. I mean, you just highlight nodes in the PST, it makes NO difference on the game at all, other than making the player's gameplay more enjoyable.


Okay I posted a huge wall of text, and I could go on and on with ideas about that stuff (some that may be utterly wrong, some that may be right). I just wanted to get my point across, that there are better ways to "improve" gameplay, and "solve" many of the problems that are presented in these forums everyday without actually touching the mechanics of the game at all, but instead focusing on the user playing the game.
I think doing some of these may be a step in the right direction if they are done correctly.

EDIT: Of course, some of the stuff (mainly the node/path stuff from the PST) is already done in this site. But it should be integrated inside the game in a fluent way. Every time you find a new item, you shouldn't stop playing, hit Esc, open the browser, wait til pathofexile.com loads (depending on your connection), then wait til the PST page loads, and THEN see if looking at the PST can give you any benefits at all to decide if that item is useful or not. It should be fast and quick, 3-4 clicks tops, so you can easily check if the item is worth keeping/etc and move on with the game.

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I got it when it first came out, and played intermittently until LoD 1.10. It was always a bit disappointing, for the kind of reasons you described: far too many of the skills were underpowered,

That was quiet the way ARPGs worked at that time.

The only other way was to enable different skills after progression or change the way an ability works on higher skill levels.

D2 never had a big build diversity, because several skills are too weak/not useable.
But PoE isn't any different.
Why would you use a slow ass heavy strike, if you can use Glacial Hammer(freeze), Double Strike(fast), Infernal Blow(Explosion)
Why would you use critical weakness if Vulnerability/Flammability/Frostbite/Conductivity and Elem Weakness(no double/triple cursing)
Why would you use arctic Breath if Cold snap is a far strong less laggy and cheaper skill?

Or what poor skillgems such as Searing Bong. If the totem would be immortal that would be another matter.

Other Gems totally lost their killing power such as Shockwave Totem.
That skill was considered to be overpowered once.

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and the item mod pool was even worse, with finding a good rare (especially a rare weapon) turning into a game of hitting the handful of good mods among a sea of pointless ones

It's pretty much the same with PoE.
Why would you want spelldamage on a 2h wand if you are melee or the opposite?

Diablo II was, at least so far, the more addicting game for me. I play Path of Exile like crazy, but I'll be honest for a second - If I could get a good, updated res on Diablo 2 and convince my friends to play, I'd be all over it. But why? The game is like 13 years old, and I played it for literally thousands of hours. It's not even as large as POE! So why would I want to play it more?

The answer is - speculative, at best. It is hard to say. Maybe I'm just blinded by nostalgia, perhaps. Don't think so though, because I don't really care to play a lot of the other games I loved back then anymore - Diablo 2 is an exception, really.

I think it just hit some sort of ideal balance by accident, a balance between difficulty, diversity, replayability, and risk/reward. Also, it wasn't tied down by the extreme metagaming and consciousness devs have these days. Stuff like Enigma and BOTD were outrageous, and they remained that way - and you know what? The game was incredibly fun and didn't lose replay-value from the existence of high powered characters.

Part of the draw is the fact that any act, any difficulty can result in a great drop. This part is actually true in POE too - I can find a Mirror on the beach! But the odds are too low. I didn't play D2 hoping for that Zod rune drop, that would've left me feeling similar to how I feel on POE sometimes.

Really, the fact was there were SO MANY items to look out for that could be traded. Hell, I ran Normal Cows for days just to build up a collection of LLD (Low-Level Dueling) stuff to trade to my friends for some items they had that I wanted. And farming was fun, even in normal. Probably because they didn't murder the drop rates for a level 80 killing things in Normal.

Then you had Runes which were almost always worth picking up, flawless gems for cubing into perfects, because 40 of those could net you a nice mid or high rune, or a unique/set item you needed. Low level sets were fun to collect and extremely useful. Low level uniques were often worth keeping and both great early on, and sometimes great later on. I still remember finding a Stone of Jordan on Normal Baal - people thought I was full of shit, but you could get really good drops like SOJ, Vipermagi, Pcrown, and so on from normal. Same thing in Nightmare - Shakos, High Runes, most of the good jewelry, socketed stuff, LLD/MLD gear.

No matter where you were, you could expect to find something useful or tradeable, and the itemization wasn't as... obvious as it is in POE. POE has some great items and systems, but stuff like Kaom's is every bit as bad as Enigma, and both less interesting and 10x more common if you don't include duping.

In fact, I bet POE would be more enjoyable if stuff like Soul Taker and Kaom's *WERE* duped. I'd love to make a high HP build just to fool around with Righteous Fire and Blood Magic keystone + % Auras. D2 had overpowered builds and skills forever, and yet a ton of us played it for a decade.

Just some thoughts after reading this thread.

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Diablo II was, at least so far, the more addicting game for me. I play Path of Exile like crazy, but I'll be honest for a second - If I could get a good, updated res on Diablo 2 and convince my friends to play, I'd be all over it. But why? The game is like 13 years old, and I played it for literally thousands of hours. It's not even as large as POE! So why would I want to play it more?

You know what will be the sad part most likely?
Diablo 3 Expansion will start ripping off several ideas from PoE,GW2 and TL2 and implement them properly.
And guess which game suddenly became good?

No more AH, proper Goldsinks, some kind of Skilltree, last 10 levels grinding for levels instead of 21 like in PoE, more consoleversionlike Droprates.

The only thing which will certainly stay bad is PVP and lack of a PK mode.

I dont find it as addictive as D2. D2 was designed as a single player arpg with an online component. Turns out playing a single player arpg with friends is pretty fun! PoE was designed as an online only arpg with mmo mechanics, and the retention rate says something about how fun that is compared to the D2 model. Personally, if not for racing id have been gone a few weeks after OB launched. Mmo grind without any of the actual benefits of an mmo just doesnt hold long term appeal.

What i originally expected PoE to turn out like was an online, updated 3d equivalent of Median XL (D2 mod), especially when i heard Laz was helping out with the design. What its actually turned out as is more like an isometric equivalent of Hellgate London (which made the same "mmo grind with none of the mmo benefits" design mistake) with no offline component and much worse netcode.

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Hilbert wrote:

Searing Bong

Perfect way for cider elementals to relax after a hard day of setting beer traps.

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KoTao wrote:

I dont find it as addictive as D2. D2 was designed as a single player arpg with an online component. Turns out playing a single player arpg with friends is pretty fun! PoE was designed as an online only arpg with mmo mechanics, and the retention rate says something about how fun that is compared to the D2 model. Personally, if not for racing id have been gone a few weeks after OB launched. Mmo grind without any of the actual benefits of an mmo just doesnt hold long term appeal.

What i originally expected PoE to turn out like was an online, updated 3d equivalent of Median XL (D2 mod), especially when i heard Laz was helping out with the design. What its actually turned out as is more like an isometric equivalent of Hellgate London (which made the same "mmo grind with none of the mmo benefits" design mistake) with no offline component and much worse netcode.

"

Hilbert wrote:

Searing Bong

Perfect way for cider elementals to relax after a hard day of setting beer traps.

Can you elaborate more on what makes POE an 'mmo grind' and what makes D2 better/different in that regard?

d2 was not a single player game with a multiplayer component that was diablo 1 which is why playing multiplayer in d1 was fun but also horribly balanced and a joke.


d2 was blizzard honest attempt at making a true multiplayer game. this is also why diablo 2 plays different from diablo 1.


no poe is not anywhere near as addicting as d2. And it has everything to do with how the game rewards the players efforts.

where diablo2s rewards came at a predictable rate and in great enough frequency to keep game play smooth , path of exile rewards are sporadic and unpredictable.

to use an analogy .

d2 is like a carrot on a stick that you can always see in front of you
path of exile is like a carrot on a stick that some days is just given too you for no effort and other days is completely out of sight regardless of how much effort you put in.


part of this was the fact that diablo 2's items were several times more balanced.
when I say balanced I mean two things.

first items in diablo 2 scaled better. Items with plus skills could easily be used for long swaths of the game until another dropped.

second Items did not completely govern your entire character as the bulk of your stats and the majority of your skill points would be from leveling up.

This second point is of particular note, because it means that progression was not completely dependent on gear like it is in d3 and like how most progression is in poe.

you level up in d2 and you could go farther in the game. each level up gave enough reward in of itself to propel the player forward in content regardless of items.

And that feeling of always going forward , step by step is the heart of what makes a good arpg timeless.

So again ,no poe is not even close to being as addictive as d2 . but that isn't to say that poe has no addiction , it may be a distant second but it is still worlds better than everything else on the market.


if ggg demphasized the importance of gear a fair bit and made some of the item affixes scale better over the long run , they would go a long way in helping this game's addiction.
It was also an incredibly bad idea to make it possible to have 3 damage affixes on a single weapon, kinda makes anything without 3 affixes worthless and it makes getting the usable items extremely hard .

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I dont find it as addictive as D2. D2 was designed as a single player arpg with an online component. Turns out playing a single player arpg with friends is pretty fun! PoE was designed as an online only arpg with mmo mechanics, and the retention rate says something about how fun that is compared to the D2 model. Personally, if not for racing id have been gone a few weeks after OB launched. Mmo grind without any of the actual benefits of an mmo just doesnt hold long term appeal.


What i originally expected PoE to turn out like was an online, updated 3d equivalent of Median XL (D2 mod), especially when i heard Laz was helping out with the design. What its actually turned out as is more like an isometric equivalent of Hellgate London (which made the same "mmo grind with none of the mmo benefits" design mistake) with no offline component and much worse netcode.

Pretty much my thoughts. I will never play this horrible endgame anymore till Usercode leagues are available which can undo horrible changes such as chaos resitance. Meaning players can rewrite AIs, Scale drops, damage, skill tree and mods themselves.
I am positive I can do it much better.

I don't care if the characters will be put into a Void league after the league ends. If the private leagues are "BLAMCTIF sp np" Buttons only then the game is done for once the raceshedule becomes even worse.

I quit after OB 2 weeks because I had a timeinvestment just like on my level 84 in CB but my EQ was far worse, I did only like 9 maps and I couldn't acquire any currency unless I was trading. And the only thing on release I will check

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Perfect way for cider elementals to relax after a hard day of setting beer traps.

You see what I did there I see what you did there ;)

"

Can you elaborate more on what makes POE an 'mmo grind' and what makes D2 better/different in that regard?

Ok simple example:
How much time do you need to kill shenk and eldricht in D2?
2 min at best?
What happened to the WPs at Oak,Kratyn and Alira?
There is no risk reward in PoE.
The Gemleveling progression is 1-2 levels slower than in CB.
Why would you add a gem such as Empower?
Why would you make the skill tree insignificant on maps if several bosses manage to One Shot you if you don't pass a Res/Reduce check? You only grind for items so you can survive those hits.(Just like D3)
Increased Mob HP. Mainly double to triple defensive rares which take minutes to kill without posing a threat.
The gem level progression is 1-2 levels slower than in CB.
Stealth nerfs to have the same content from level 64 areas at level 77 areas.
Trading is a must because of nerfed vendor receipes and random chests, nerfed map drops in merciless.
Nerfed simple areas because of botter paranoia.
Rares/Bosses can DROP WHITE ITEMS. There was a time when at last all items were blue.
21 levels of heavily exping to max level instead of 5-10.
Added vendor receipes for MMO players level 20 gems ->20% gem(even in CB I only had level 19 gems!)
Typical changes from MMO players through and through.

And look at the uniques. There are far too many uniques you trash after 2-5 levels.
Where are items like Goldskin, Bonesnap, Angelic Set, Tankreds Set, The Ward, Steeldriver, Nightsmoke and many more.
All PoE has some weak equivalents to D1s Thinking cap which is Goldrim. But to be a real Equivalant it would need +1 to gem levels.

ARPG is a really fast paced genre with a linear progression. In D2 you did many fast runs or some lower rewarding runs and after some time you had some good items.
You have the feeling of a good and later finished character after being able to use all skills.
In PoE the average player needs more than 30h to reach level 75 and even then it doesn't feel finished at all.

Just look at the Patch notes: Some Rare Items can drop only in Endgame maps-->Grinding Hell.
Boss Drops Adjusted.
Totally contradicting towards the ARPG Genre.

The game is so grindy even hardcore MMO players are sick of grinding after level 90-92 and quit.
Just check the ladders. They are mainly offline.


You didn't play CB but CB felt really much like a polished D2 with some overpowered builds, which need some fixing.
OB ruined everything. There were alpha players last year which tested act3 and never came back to PoE because Act3 is terrible. They didn't even discuss the ideas with the community else there wouldn't be something like Chaos Resistance.

The Devs had better invested far more time into reading feedback right after OB.
I had my threads finished 2 days after OB and after regular players reached that point there were several reposts of the same issues.
But the devs decided to sit through it and 50k players became 10k-->5k etc.
The remaining players were of the type: What's the most powerful build? Dualsporktotem? Cool thx. And those players complained that the game is too easy because they never had to face reflect or bigger packs because all they did was cast 2 totems and sit back.
Better AI and abilities countering this would have been far more effective ways then the lazy ass 1 shot mechanic way.
What if Devs looked at CB how melees handled dualtotem players? They used dominating blow on totems and the totems killed their creator! Now imagine some mobs or bosses would dominate totems or convert them for some seconds!