Streamers are all gushing over D4 - what am I missing? It seems extremely shallow compared to POE

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Pashid wrote:

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Networm13 wrote:

From the point view of a casual or people who didn't play aRPG before, DiabloIV looks good. These people didn't care about builds, items, itemization, drops, etc. I think they will care about how Blizzard monetize the game though. And how often the new contents will be added in future expansions.

Depends if they start to sell full paid content dlcs right away or not.
Likely the case (after DI and the shitty wow expansion) but hey I guess some might like it to spend another 70 bucks for 10h of additional content.

That's certainly better than an expansion that is just a new class. I can't imagine they'll do that again.

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AndromedaDelux wrote:

It is shallow.

But guess what.

The barrier to entry, and the on boarding is as fluid as water. So of course they will be gushing. Because within 1 or 2 days, they can understand enough about the game to just GO PLAY THE DAMN GAME! It eventually gets predictable and linear after a while. But its Diablo.

Path of Exile is the far superior game. But it has terrible on boarding, and terrible barrier to entry. Something as simple as a fucking noob build auto fill with a side context for stats on items to look for would easily flip that narrative on its head. It doesn't even have to be shaper or elder viable. It can just be T10 map viable or something along those lines and it would at least help players get past the (WTF AM I LOOKING AT) Overwhelm phase of the game so they can actually focus on the content that all these damn writers and graphics artists spent creating.

A default witch passive tree for chaos dot, necromancy, Fireballs, arc lightning, and say Freezing Pulse, would be great guided builds for people to eventually warm up and feel comfortable enough with the systems to actually delve deeper into the systems. And then just do a couple of these guided paths across other ascendancies. They don't have to be the best, but it would help a ton if people didn't have to dig into a wiki before booting up the damn game.

Let people warm up to the game instead of dumping them into the deep end with an infinite list of possibility and no actual way of knowing wtf is going on without tabbing and watching someone elses content. Content creators are great, but eventually they have lives to live and things to do. They can't be there all the time.

And also, make it more obvious of wtf is going on with these icons for extra content. Things like Delve are explained pretty well, Blight not so much, Stuff like syndicate, (I've been playing for a long time and I still have no idea wtf is going on in syndicate, like why should I care if members hate each other or are allies? Divisions? wtf?) Less long form reading, more short contextual visuals or maybe even changes in wording can go a long way.

I'm not saying GGG needs to FULLY FOCUS on new players. But for gods sake throw them a bone. You don't need a masters degree to play this damn game, and new players shouldn't feel like you do.

They should feel like:

"Yes, playing this game is possible, and if you focus enough on it, you can make insane godlike things happen"

They shouldn't feel like:

"Playing this game requires a PHD, plus you need to download 8 different tools, watch 10 videos about strength stats, spend 4 hours watching a seminar on crafting, Just to beat act 1"

Should I be wearing armor based equipment? Energy Shield based equipment? Evasion based equipment? Does the game directly display which sets favor socket colors? I'm level 25 and have 4 extra skill points, where do I even put them? Can I fix those mistakes? Should I start over? I really like the potential of this game but I don't like how difficult it is to correct mistakes I'm level 30 btw. Who is shaper and how do I get to him? Should I be using this unique sword? Is this weapon better than this one? My resistances just got demolished after that act and now I'm dying, how do I get more resistances to get past act 6? I've wasted all my chromatic orbs trying to put blue sockets on this red armor why isn't it working? This thing gave me a quest to defeat the memory of the elder in the shapers realm where even is that? Etc etc shit new players say.


Why GGG hasn't done it yet...I have no fucking clue.

Commander decks in M:TG.

Of all the things for PoE not to "learn" from MTG, prebuilt decks that encourage players to see for themselves how to improve a loadout via incremental tweaks has to be one of the more obvious omissions.

You are dead right. The only problem is that at the heart of this idea is something non-Exile streamers like Asmongold have been calling for and thus it must be a terrible idea: respeccing ease before endgame.

I was always...always a fan of PoE's resistance to respec ease. Commitment to build and consequences for decisions not easily undone are generally good features of an RPG. BUT in hindsight I was so...so wrong. ARPGs have evolved past that, and ironically they did so with the one game to which PoE owes more than it will ever admit: Guild Wars 1. Way back in the mid 2000s ArenaNet created a hybrid of Diablo, Magic the Gathering, MMOs and team-based shooters that remains unsurpassed to this day in terms of loadout flexibility and potency. And sure, you can retool your PoE skill gems at will but they are so tied to a slew of other, all but set in stone character facets that it really doesn't matter.

So as someone who learns by partial mimicry in the early stages but soon wants to fiddle with the configuration as a precursor to true creation (and isn't that how most pedagogy works?) I fucking love your idea but sadly don't see a place for it in the PoE that is.

Maybe the PoE that will be might yet be will be less stubborn about its on boarding, as you put it. Less weirdly devoted to its own gatekeeping. I can't imagine how this wouldn't be a win for almost everyone.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Commander decks in M:TG.

Of all the things for PoE not to "learn" from MTG, prebuilt decks that encourage players to see for themselves how to improve a loadout via incremental tweaks has to be one of the more obvious omissions.

So I'll be contrarian here first before agreeing later. I first played MTG in Theros whenever that was (oh ok fine, I'll look it up: Sept 2013). My friends played MTG for years but I always sat out and did stuff with the non-MTG players because I felt too late to the party to want to learn all that stuff Does this sound familiar? There are threads every week on reddit asking if it too late in PoE's lifecycle to start playing.

Eventually they talked me into playing cube drafts and limited/pre releases which I did, and slowly came to enjoy. I only played through BoTG and Journey to Nyx, putting MTG down again for a long, long time until I finally got roped back in with a preconstructed cat tribal deck for Commander/EDH.

So here's the contrarian part - having my hands on that cat deck didn't actually help me learn, nor did I have any real clue on where to start to make the deck perform better. Why? Because the game has/had existed for SO LONG that I didn't even know where to begin, or, when things were going wrong, I had no context or tree trunk of knowledge with which to accurately analyze what went wrong.

As an example - suppose my cat tribal shipped with Swiftfoot Boots. How would I ever know what an upgrade for that card looked like? Even if I could intuit that maybe I could find a card with the same effect for less mana (Lightning Greaves), I wouldn't find it on a search - because the keyword changes from Hexproof to shroud. If I searched for 'artifact, haste, equipment' I wouldn't find Lightning Greaves. Keywords on cards get out of date, esoteric, don't always explain what they do on the card itself, and are subject to errata. Other cards are illegal in formats, or are printed in illegal 'unsets'.

Does this sound familiar? New players can't know what they don't know. At least not without real time investment. How can a new player have any idea how good cluster jewels can be (at the high roll, high investment crafting level) for their build? They don't even see them in the campaign till Act 8 I think, and even then it won't be obvious how good they can be, or what content they drop from.

To get to where I am at MTG today (I can make my own decks for various formats! And win with them!) I needed, so, so much more than the precon CEDH deck. I needed a patient playgroup of former judges who could and would explain every question about every card being played. I needed Youtube channels like The Commander's Quarters to put new cards in their historical power level context. I needed more Youtube channels like TheManaLogs to explain the 10 best cards of a type, and why they're good. I needed deckstats.net and edhrec.com to give me platforms to tinker on. Sound familiar? Needing a mentor or two in game, Ziz/ZiggyD videos, and PoB?

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I know you said players should be able to respec easier - but I'll go a step further -

I could be in favor of giving players pre-constructed builds in PoE, and in hindsight, I'm surprised they haven't yet. Chris own words are (80% serious 20% joking) 'once you're in maps we've got your soul'. Why the hell haven't they given new players a free build that gets them to and through a T1 map??

For most of my PoE life I would have scoffed at the idea. Fuck newbies, they gotta earn it. I had to.

But now, with the help of your magic analogy, I think I've changed my tune. Paying 50 or 60 dollars for a preconstructed commander deck didn't hurt the fun of the veterans. They were already playing better decks than mine. Bringing me to the game enhanced the fun of the community as it brought in another player. It isn't a zero sum game. Me getting to join in and have fun didn't take fun away from anyone already playing.

Now that I've brewed up some 'real decks' I would never hesitate to play with/against a new player with a precon deck.

Likewise, veterans of this game should already be playing builds better than whatever 10 or 15 pre-built character templates GGG could give to new players, having some more people farming T1 maps only helps the vets blasting 'true endgame' content, as they will be farming the divines you use to trade for and craft gg items and the pieces of the boss keys you use to find the big ticket items.

POE2 will fix everything, curious to see what, if anything they do for the new player experience.

there is so much you can do to help a newbie improve his build. it will take time to learn all the hidden stuff like timeless jewels, atchers eyes, op items like heatshiver, items combo, crafting etc. what pooe need is content that you can end for white and yellows. cause you can definitely reach that. make some kind of an important white/yellow quest. anyway, it s a bit off topic.

playing ARPG games since 1996 started with diablo 1
now im 37 , i play alpha beta and open beta D4 and i can say
game need more time to become fun

+
graphics amazing
sounds musics art amazing

-
itemization simple
skill tree simple

for early game release yes u can get fun until finish content that is it
but if they keep update and change systems add new things
this game will be top arpg
do you thing this will happen ? i dont think so maybe 1% chance

D4 is for people who just want to have fun and not have to take a college class to make a build. You just install, pick a couple skills and then play the game.

PoE you have to manage all your currency, plan out your 100+ passives correctly, min max your damage and defense, unlock all the content. Try and figure out which one of the 500 mechanics will give you the best chance at getting the loot you need. Then if you are lucky getting the items you need you get to start playing the actual game.

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xvorpsm wrote:

D4 is for people who just want to have fun and not have to take a college class to make a build. You just install, pick a couple skills and then play the game.

PoE you have to manage all your currency, plan out your 100+ passives correctly, min max your damage and defense, unlock all the content. Try and figure out which one of the 500 mechanics will give you the best chance at getting the loot you need. Then if you are lucky getting the items you need you get to start playing the actual game.

Haha, accurate.

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innervation wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Commander decks in M:TG.

Of all the things for PoE not to "learn" from MTG, prebuilt decks that encourage players to see for themselves how to improve a loadout via incremental tweaks has to be one of the more obvious omissions.

So I'll be contrarian here first before agreeing later. I first played MTG in Theros whenever that was (oh ok fine, I'll look it up: Sept 2013). My friends played MTG for years but I always sat out and did stuff with the non-MTG players because I felt too late to the party to want to learn all that stuff Does this sound familiar? There are threads every week on reddit asking if it too late in PoE's lifecycle to start playing.

POE equivalent commander decks would actually help a metric ass ton. I remember when I first started playing this game and word got across that I should "follow a build guide" So I did, one of Mathil1's builds. Little did I know at the time, that I DIDN'T KNOW SHIT ENOUGH ABOUT THIS GAME TO FOLLOW THAT GUIDE. My damage was horrible, I couldn't get the items I needed, my survivability was horrible, and one of the items suggested was so god damn expensive, the THOUGHT of even using it was out of the question...and it was required for the build to actually function...

Nobody told me I can't turn a full evasion armor piece into something that needed more red than green slots. Nobody told me that I shouldn't be following this guys guide, who by all visuals from someone looking in from the outside is a pro within the community. Nobody told me just how limited skill points were so that putting points into big stat nodes instead of getting them on gear isn't the way to go. Nobody told me just how important move speed is on boots. Nobody told me that getting a six link is damn near impossible with the little currency I had while following same said guide.

Thing is, I can't even get my friends to try this game out because they all share the same stigma that this game requires some doctorate degree to boot up. Its either, they log in, look a the passive skill tree and go "WTF, can you help me understand wtf is going on with this" and I basically have to carry them through the game with item boosts on top. Or its "Crickets" "Nah man I tried it for a bit when you suggested but its just too overwhelming...wanna play some league?" And I can't even dispute their sentiments either. I could sit there and say,

"Alright go download path of building, then copy this link into this thing, but its gotta be a link from a guide from this date or else the thing wont work, then go to this site and get an item filter and then click these things, then go to this site and bookmark this wiki thing so you can check the items you see, then go over here to this site and click this thing where you logged in from your poe to go to this link right here so you can trade for the items you need then log into the game and make a character, but first watch a video about the skill you wanna use."
"My anti-virus ate my path of building Andromeda"

*facepalm*

Like you said your friends introduced you to commander decks in MTG. Which honestly looks like it was enough to get you interested in playing the game more and understanding it more. Me personally I'm one of those people in the same camp. MTG looks cool, but wtf am I even looking at. But you said the game features these "Commander Decks" I've always wanted to give it a shot but it looked too crazy. But ey if they got something like that thats a bit more doable for new people trying to learn I might actually try to see whats to it. Might get a whole new MTG player here whats up.

As an aside though the only reason I even stuck with this game was because Pohx (the homie and content creator since Archeage) helped a dumbass like me out with information. Same time, if any of those content creators just decided to dip and find a new life this game is screwed. Cause there is 0 on boarding.