Diablo 4 made me appreciate PoE so much more.

I admit, I was really excited about Diablo 4. I was playing Ruthless just counting down until the beta this weekend, even staying home from St Patty's to play it.

I played a sorc there until level 20. And then refunded it.

It was just so... bland. Like I was playing a cheap Diablo ripoff. I can't believe they worked on this for so long, with so much excellent competition in the last few years, and came out with that boring garbage. Far from being a PoE killer, it played more like a Diablo killer... as in that's the end of that franchise for me if this is the direction it's going.

So consider this a review and comparison.

First, the graphics are great. Puts PoE to shame, especially the character models.

That's about all the good I can say.

The game is incredibly slow paced. Everything about it is a drag. Dialog takes forever. Cutscenes take forever. Walking around takes forever, and most of it is boring and empty. Combat is slow and mindless, especially since I only had 2 skills by level 20. There is so much open space and so little to do in that space that it feels like a very slow walking simulator. Mounts aren't implemented yet, but even when they are, it's hard to imagine that making a difference in the sparse, empty world. It just feels like some sort of indie demo of a big open world, not an actual beta of one of the biggest franchises. How can they screw that up so badly? Torchlight 3 was better. Torchlight infinite was better. Lost Ark was better. The Warhammer games were better. Titan Quest was better. Last Epoch is a lot better. I've never seen such a boring world. I actively wanted to quit because it got so tedious, and only stuck with it to get the level 20 cosmetic, which won't matter anymore after the refund.

There was zero challenge in the game. I didn't die a single time, on the harder difficulty, except when encountering a world boss that there weren't enough players for. Every pack of monsters died in one or two hits. Every boss was just dodging slow projected attacks while spamming spells. It was all so mindless.

The gear was lame. Minor stat boosts, like a mobile game. The uniques were boring. It made me stop caring about loot, the cornerstone of any Diablo game.

It was all bad, but then it gets worse. The skills... how the hell did they mess it up so bad? The skill tree is the worst implementation I've ever seen, with one point per level that you have to spend choosing between active skills and passive boosts to your existing skills. So either you can have an effective build and not have fun skills, or diversify and not have enough power in your skills. D3's system was casual and fun, with runes offering different playstyles and the free respecs letting you change it up to try new things. D2s system was way less linear and offered a lot of choices. PoE's gems are brilliant compared to either, and the passive tree enables builds all on its own. D4's system feels both suffocating and uninspired. Was this designed by some MBA type who never actually played a modern ARPG? What the hell were they thinking?

Quests and events... Oh man. What a great idea. What a bland implementation. They just copied all the stuff from Guild Wars and such pretty much verbatim, and they mostly just amount to kill a bunch of waves of enemies. Nothing like the seasonal mechanics of PoE.

It was all just do disappointing and sad. I was never a fan boy of any one franchise, enjoying most of them, but I was really looking forward to the next Diablo just because it's been so long since we had a new AAA ARPG. But this isn't AAA. This is uninspired trash. I'd rather go back and replay any of the gems from the last decade than go through D4 again. Yikes.

I tried D4, and it made me excited about the next POE season. Heh.

Anyone else feel this way?

Yes. It is a snooze fest.

Looks like you learned your lesson not to expect anything from Blizzard anymore, which has become a soulless shadow of its past. Many people already had such low expectations from D4 that in some other perspective the game looks like it has potential. I don't understand what happened, we can't just all blame it on greed, or maybe we can. We have to move on and stop giving them money and instead put it in projects that actually try to be creative, reinventing the genre, evolve and have the best in mind for the future of the consumer.

You barely played this PoE season, and PoE has been out for 10 years with polish and content expansions. What does that say?

For D4 it's not hard to conclude that you went in with totally unrealistic expectations for the Beta. But you feel how you feel, with the good news being that you got your money back, so you can buy more stash tabs or butterfly wings mtx here in PoE.

I came away from the beta (all 3 characters to 25), impressed. Better than I expected. The story was great, the atmosphere & environments were dark and well designed. The skills all felt really nice (and what we saw was a preview version) Looking forward to trying Druid and Necro next. The mob encounters were meaningful, not just screen blasting and bosses that last half a second. I found it refreshing tbh.

For what we did see in a limited fashion, plenty of NDA folks say endgame skill / builds are much better. Was it PoE? No, but it never was going to be. And quite frankly thats the appeal. If you like PoE play PoE.

Edit: Also watch Kripps vod from today. He has some end beta gear and build making that might make you look at it differently. It's at least interesting.

The real story here is that Kripp still makes vids and people watch them! LOL Nothing against him, just forgot about him.

That quest where you had to walk back and forth to the different altars with the idol thing during a sandstorm was the last straw. I guess they didn't get the memo from the 90s that most people DESPISE that shit.

To accentuate the positive: from what I saw of the story, it seemed promising. Those cutscenes are a disgrace though. Long and boring. They made me not interested in the story.

Harvesting herbs and berries from bushes? Hmm. Made me want to play an ES game.

> You barely played this PoE season, and PoE has been out for 10 years with polish and content expansions. What does that say?

...I'm not sure? What is it supposed to say? I don't know which metric you're using to say "barely played", but next to my full-time job and sleeping, PoE is probably the activity I've spent the most time doing this year (kinda sad, I know). I'm still pretty new to the game and trying out different classes and builds, though, so I haven't even reached the endgame.

More to the point, of all the other ARPGs I've tried, including D1/D2/D3, the Torchlights, the Dungeon Sieges, the Warhammers, the Titan Quests, the Grim Havens, the indie games, I generally like or love them all. I loved the heck out of D1/D2/D3 at launch, especially, and loved D3 even more after they got rid of the real money auction house and revamped loot drops.

D4 is the only one that left a bad "that's it?" taste in my mouth. Its pacing is just soooo off, like they turned what was previously a fast-and-furious ARPG with screens full of mobs into a slow MMO grind with fetch quests and pointless dialog. I guess maybe "story-centric" was a design decision this time around? I skipped every single line of dialog -- that's not why I play these games -- and the rest of it was a lot of running around through empty space and very little action compared to other titles in the genre.

That has nothing to do with my playtime, it's just a different kind of game. It's like a poorly done version of Lost Ark. Lost Ark had a lot of running around too but way faster travel and more mob packs to fill in the dead space between fetch quests.

As for "Kripp", sorry, I'm not really a part of the streaming culture and not sure who he is or how to find him. Can you summarize what he's saying about the builds and endgame? If D4 does turn out much better after level 20ish, I'd love to give it another shot. I've just never felt so turned off by an ARPG after the early few levels, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Not really a PoE fanboy here, just appreciative of GGG taking big risks (in terms of revamping the traditional skill trees and making it much deeper), vs D4 feeling like late 90s MMO... a soulless has-been.

> That quest where you had to walk back and forth to the different altars with the idol thing during a sandstorm was the last straw. I guess they didn't get the memo from the 90s that most people DESPISE that shit.

Yeah, exactly this. There were a few dungeons that required you to open three of somethings (don't remember what), running back and forth between a large empty maze. I remember thinking to myself, "Seriously?? Did noone say anything about this during playtesting?" It feels like some mobile game exec took over and turned D4 into a generic Asian MMO, going from explosive pew pew to exhausting grind grind. I NEVER once felt like an ARPG was too grindy in the early game -- not even in Ruthless -- until D4, because there was usually plenty of combat. Not in D4. It's a lot of slow-walking NPCs monologuing about something I couldn't care less about, following by running halfway across the open world and back again. Ugh.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

The story was great, the atmosphere & environments were dark and well designed.

I have a feeling POE 2 will have a word with you in the near future :)

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Reinhart wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

The story was great, the atmosphere & environments were dark and well designed.

I have a feeling POE 2 will have a word with you in the near future :)

Maybe lol, but with butterfly wings & circus clown mtx I doubt it. We jumped the " cyclone shark" on immersion a long time ago in PoE.

> We jumped the " cyclone shark" on immersion a long time ago in PoE.

Hey now, that's half the reason I love PoE, lol. Might be the first MTX I ever bought. How can any ARPG compete with cyclone sharks casting-while-channeling celestial cats?