Anyone else love d4 story but find the combat and looting to be completely unenjoyable?

Sarno: hoho (mostly -- I do think Exiles are simply too conditioned to how PoE works to ever settle for any other ARPG now)

Re wolcen: I am proud of my 3.4k hours on that game and if the ps5 version would stop erasing my characters and stash I would still play it today. Grim Dawn is just Titan Quest with a reach that exceeds its grasp. I still play TQ on tablet so Ive no need for GD.

Also I should point out I am playing DIV on console. It is an awesomely sublime couch experience for an old Diablo fan. I would never bother with it were I a PC player these days. Probably still be alting like crazy in Wolcen tbh.

Edit: okay so I hit level 50 and unlocked the paragon board. A bit daunting after how simple things have been so far but overall definitely some build flex to be considered. Seems to combine the PoE jewel system, D3's abandoned rune drop system and a basic stat upgrade grid. Nothing flashy but enough to give various characters a lot of diversity.

Probably too pedestrian for galaxybrain Exiles though.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Edit: okay so I hit level 50 and unlocked the paragon board. A bit daunting after how simple things have been so far but overall definitely some build flex to be considered. Seems to combine the PoE jewel system, D3's abandoned rune drop system and a basic stat upgrade grid. Nothing flashy but enough to give various characters a lot of diversity.

Probably too pedestrian for galaxybrain Exiles though.

So, the paragon board has all of the stats from the D3 paragon system with a few PoE jewel slots to change things up. You're exactly right. You can get base stats, defense stats, life, and other things that were in the D3 Paragon System. They just put a new skin on it. I think they migrated the D3 stat and scaling system and reskinned it with a different look. It's the same game as far as how it translates to combat. That's my perspective.

Although I'm not Galaxy Brained, I got to admit, it's remarkably clunky for being so simple. It really should just be base stat upgrades per level like any normal leveling system and then you unluck sockets...cough...glyph nodes every few levels. Why make me do unnecessary clicking for such trivial increases? Doesn't make sense to me other than to trick people into thinking it's some intricate system.

That being said, as much as I criticize, I'm happy people think they are getting their moneys worth because it means that what I spent will go to improving their experiences through their updates, patches, and future seasons. I really hope people enjoy it because I want them to get enough money to make some improvements in a way that makes me want to come back.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Probably too pedestrian for galaxybrain Exiles though.

I find it unreasonable, that people get overwhelmed by a skill tree that only provides bonuses. And now people are meme-ing on that for no reason.



D4 makes me feel like i have to sit through the game like in D3's seasonal 1-70. Why do people pay money to sit through that ?

I mean if the game is going to be like that why not just provide an instant-50 experience like they have in WoW ? Might as well port that to D3 as well while they're at it.

I guess at this point it can't hurt to look at the poe2 teaser. omegalol

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Blubbey wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

Probably too pedestrian for galaxybrain Exiles though.

D4 makes me feel like i have to sit through the game like in D3's seasonal 1-70. Why do people pay money to sit through that ?

I agree with you on the sentiment; however, people didn't exactly know what they were getting themselves into, and even I was hopeful it would have more complexity than it does. I think it was more wishful thinking that the character progression and paragon board were going to be sufficiently complex enough to warrant more thought. A mistake that I'm not making again with Blizzard.

So I liked the story, but I dislike how expositional it was in terms of gameplay. Walking through empty spaces as a walking simulator felt like a huge chore - even with Rogue who is the most mobile class before the endgame on a fresh toon.


The combat is actually decent for a rogue, twisting blades that is a meta build is surprisingly positioning-centric and you cant just button mash. But for most other builds the combat quickly devolves into the usual arpg combat.

chain stuns/freezes/CC are insane in NM dungeons. I stopped running any NM dungeons that have cold enchanted elites

I even bound elixir that gives you unstoppable to a hotkey and it still drives me bad.


Loot in D4 is a whole separate topic. Ancestral/sacred items are a messy system and having to refarm same gear in tiers and also build-defining aspects is puzzling. Moreover, smart loot means that if I want my alt druid to get trampleslide, I have to farm it with that druid, not my main...


The game is very barebones rn, moreso than D3. D3 at least had good arcade combat and a very difficult inferno on launch.


It has zero innovation and not even a single "whoa" moment where something cool happened. Excluding some well-made cutscenes.

I think Im gonna get my rogue into 90s, try to alt a druid and call it a day. Unless blizz has something groundbreaking for seasons, POE2 should piggyback off this game. POE2 has devs who actually know what ARPGS are and what people playing them want. Because POE devs are actual ARPG fans.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Grim Dawn is just Titan Quest with a reach that exceeds its grasp. I still play TQ on tablet so Ive no need for GD.

You need to try GD, really. It's exceeded Titan quest. It's really a great game now, especially with expansions that introduce a lot of verticality into level design.

It also has a ton more detail and exploration than TQ, map-wise and environment wise.


In fact, Id say GD right now has a far better, fleshed out static world than D4. Sure, it doesn't have multiplayer events, but everything else about the world is better and more interesting.

You got : real secret areas, rotating camera, sidequests where you can make real choices and your choices affect the world, environmental hazards that can be overcome with gameplay (ie, aether puddles which hurt like hell until you get aether resists and/or regen to walk through them to uncover more areas), more enemy variety, etc. Grim Dawn world is simply more interesting to explore than D4 which mostly is a giant generic copypasta

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grepman wrote:

So I liked the story, but I dislike how expositional it was in terms of gameplay. Walking through empty spaces as a walking simulator felt like a huge chore - even with Rogue who is the most mobile class before the endgame on a fresh toon...

Loot in D4 is a whole separate topic. Ancestral/sacred items are a messy system and having to refarm same gear in tiers and also build-defining aspects is puzzling. Moreover, smart loot means that if I want my alt druid to get trampleslide, I have to farm it with that druid, not my main...

It has zero innovation and not even a single "whoa" moment where something cool happened. Excluding some well-made cutscenes...

I agree with those points. I did truncate your post to save space despite how reckless I am with typing a whole lot. I have to agree. I did greatly dislike the artificial lengthening of the game by making me go there then here then get that over there, etc.

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grepman wrote:

You need to try GD, really. It's exceeded Titan quest. It's really a great game now, especially with expansions that introduce a lot of verticality into level design.

It also has a ton more detail and exploration than TQ, map-wise and environment wise.

GD was and still is an excellent ARPG. I honestly think if you stopped PoE today and never did another thing, both of those games are in the same tier of greatness. PoE is more of a hobby game so it gets some points that GD doesn't in that they update regurlarly.

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grepman wrote:

POE2 has devs who actually know what ARPGS are and what people playing them want. Because POE devs are actual ARPG fans.

As much as I like PoE. I genuinely hope they design PoE 2 with a bit more casual friendly content and only tuning the top 5% of the content for the veterans and more elite players. They tune way too much of the game around the more capable players and it's hard to get friends to stay into it.

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grepman wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

Grim Dawn is just Titan Quest with a reach that exceeds its grasp. I still play TQ on tablet so Ive no need for GD.

You need to try GD, really. It's exceeded Titan quest. It's really a great game now, especially with expansions that introduce a lot of verticality into level design.

It also has a ton more detail and exploration than TQ, map-wise and environment wise.


In fact, Id say GD right now has a far better, fleshed out static world than D4. Sure, it doesn't have multiplayer events, but everything else about the world is better and more interesting.

You got : real secret areas, rotating camera, sidequests where you can make real choices and your choices affect the world, environmental hazards that can be overcome with gameplay (ie, aether puddles which hurt like hell until you get aether resists and/or regen to walk through them to uncover more areas), more enemy variety, etc. Grim Dawn world is simply more interesting to explore than D4 which mostly is a giant generic copypasta

Played a lot of GD with a fellow Exile actually. It didnt get me at all. The lore is too tucked away in lootable objects. The voice acting was...okay. And overall it just felt like overcooked Titty Quest.

Setting wise, ironpunk lovecraft zombies just isnt as interesting to me as a hyper compressed Ancient World.

But the mods are kinda impressive.

Finally, Sanctuary was the first real ARPG world many of us knew, presented first as nothing more than a larger world beyond Tristram and then very well expanded in D2. And then basically treated like Azeroth 2.0 by D3. DIV does Sanctuary justice by constantly remembering what sort of world it is as a battleground not between human realms but between heaven and hell. It's a deeply philosophical approach that pulls from the same well as its visual inspiration from the Italian Masters: if the world is the midway between heaven and hell, then every person living in it is themselves a microscopic battleground between these equally tempting forces. Desire to be good will be balanced by a need to be selfish. DIV illustrates this...constantly. Diablo IV trucks with Biblical language but its actual scale of good to evil is selflessness to selfishness. Those who are true to their allies triumph over those who merely manipulate them.

Grim Dawn didn't have anything close to that sort of tonal coherence.

Didn't buy Diablo 4.
Didn't buy Diablo 3.

ALSO

Didn't buy Cyberpunk.
Won't buy Avowed.
Won't buy Baldur's Gate 3.
Maybe buy Starfield but surely not on day 1.

I am very critical when it comes to games.

Thanks for sharing...I guess.