GGG did you even play Diablo 2?

I not sure you played the game enough honestly. Perhaps you just played 1 season and then botted for rares? That's the impression I get from playing your "vision".

For a game that was created out of love for D2, you sure went the other way.

There is a reason people loved playing D2 over and over, and it wasn't because they loved losing xp on death, nor was it because they loved getting 1 hit by snakes and dolls, and it certainly wasn't because people love randomness.

D2 had an established currency system with runes. The runes themselves had inherent value. You could use them to make powerful runewords and you could also socket them into items for powerful buffs. They had value beyond just trading them for items. The runes in PoE2 are mostly terrible besides the res and dmg. Divine orb has no value. Having a divine orb in your inventory does not help your character in any way. You can't turn it into a piece of gear, and you cannot socket it. Only a fool would use a divine orb on an item that isnt way late endgame item, and then it's only to min/max when you've done everything else in the game. Divine orb is a terrible fake currency with no value other than being rare. In a sea of white rocks a red rock is rare but has no inherent value.

D2 had gems. The gems were similar to PoE2 runes. D2 gems could also be used to reroll items. New players could collect these and have a way of starting off but PoE2 has nothing of the sort. Everything is completely worthless until you get to mapping.

PoE2 has no set items and the uniques are terrible. Diablo 2 had both and they were good items to use often much better than the rares you could find. The set items and uniques also worked with many different builds, they weren't customized for one specific off the wall build idea. Having the items available in game to find set the standard for the pricing of rares. PoE2 has no such standard, because everything is random. There are no concrete items to compare value to. Only a handful of uniques are actually worth using and the rest are chance shards.

D2 you could trade an item for another item. Poe2 you have to have "currency" to use the trade site. There is no way to use the trade site to trade a pair of boots for a pair of gloves. This is one of the reasons the economy is going to crap because everything is based off a fake currency with no value. This is why inflation gets out of control.

Rolling new toons was the endgame for D2. Either that or farming endlessly to min/max. It was fun to plan a build and find the gear for it. Each class had it's own thing that it did better than the others, and you could not get that with another class. PoE2 every class is the same, ya diff skill names the same 5 support gems. Build diversity in PoE2 is a joke. You either play the 2-3 builds that are OP or you struggle forever. Rolling new toons in PoE2 is the most boring experience I've ever had in an arpg.

I planned to type a lot more but I'm finding myself less interested and less hopeful in PoE2 the more I think about the state of the game. With the proper work PoE2 can emerge as the game of the century, but I would challenge GGG to go back and play Diablo 2 and remember what made the game fun and why people replay it even to this day.

I don't care what was in Diablo 2. It was released more than 20 years ago. It's old. It's done with. It should not have any influence whatsoever over any games in the modern age.

Wow, you're gonna lecture GGG about D2? The only company who were so dissatisifed with the D2 sequel that they made their own D2 sequel?

This is the main reason why Kalandra league was the tipping point in PoE1, for me. Changing the gold standard from exalts (highly useful currency used in the middle stage of the crafting process to make a rare item truly valuable) to divines (luxury currency that fine-tuned an already-good base) made no sense to me at the time.

I get the feeling that GGG selectively brings back the most punishing aspects of D2, like bricking builds and avoiding scammers in a wild west market. These might be the most memorable aspects of the first game to those who want a quick laugh, masochists, and people who didn't actually play D2 for very long. But for many players, having the freedom to experiment with unique build interactions was the most cherished part of D2. PoE1 does a decent job of recreating this sense of wonder, even if it's ultimately beholden to RMT services and farming/mirror crafting groups that encourage strict metas in trade league. PoE2 currently has very little of that "world is your oyster" feeling beyond the first few acts, when you're still coming to grips with the game.

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MagosX#1099 wrote:

Wow, you're gonna lecture GGG about D2? The only company who were so dissatisifed with the D2 sequel that they made their own D2 sequel?

Why not? Perhaps GGG has lost their vision of what made D2 fun, too.

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Andreuswolf#0361 wrote:

I don't care what was in Diablo 2. It was released more than 20 years ago. It's old. It's done with. It should not have any influence whatsoever over any games in the modern age.

You're honestly saying that in a game which pushes through a field/wilderness for the first act, then its desert second act , then its jungle/abandoned city third act? The mobs, the sound effects, the breakables... it couldn't be a much clearer homage, far more than PoE1 ever was.

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MagosX#1099 wrote:

Wow, you're gonna lecture GGG about D2? The only company who were so dissatisifed with the D2 sequel that they made their own D2 sequel?

This is incorrect. They started developing PoE because they were tired of waiting for a sequel. PoE beta was started in 2011 and D3 came out in 2012(PoE beta finished a year later).

PoE was a better successor to D2 than D3 was.

beside the fact that every evel in poe1` and poe2 is a nod to d2, yeah its clear they haven't played it since we dont have stamina/running and defence penalty when running. bad GGG

also is this post seriously advocating fro runes? prob one of the most hated changes in d2?

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

beside the fact that every evel in poe1` and poe2 is a nod to d2, yeah its clear they haven't played it since we dont have stamina/running and defence penalty when running. bad GGG

also is this post seriously advocating fro runes? prob one of the most hated changes in d2?

People do indeed forget that Runes were initially very controversial when they were introduced in LoD. More likely, those people weren't playing then or just weren't aware of what people were talking about outside of the game. The love for runes took a while to ferment.