Path of Exile

Anyone play that game? I paid $10 to participate in the closed beta.

A few days ago, PoE entered open beta.

Though the game is also always-online like Diablo III, it is everything Diablo III should have been, plus, leveling up is fast unlike DIII which is super-slow, especially with Paragon levels.

And, buying equipment is like donating to a small company like Grinding Gear Games unlike feeding Blizzard money for in-game items through their greedy RMAH.
 
I'm not sure I can agree with you here, I've played both.

1. I personally think that the actual gameplay in Path of Exile is not nearly as smooth or as fluid as Diablo 3, the combat doesn't feel as interesting or as ambitious, the AI on the monsters seems more simplistic and the whole game does not have the same gameplay polish to it.

2. I'm not sure how you can say there is really any difference in the leveling, You can get to lvl60 very quickly in Diablo 3 if you want, the Paragon levels are not intended that you have to do them, rather they are an endgame bonus added for gaining further minor improvements the longer you play, the whole point of Paragon levels was that the vast majority of players would never reach the maximum.

3. When you buy equipment in Diablo 3 RMAH you're buying it from the player, I made over £100 selling items when the RMAH launched, the money went right into my pocket and the transaction fee went to paypal. In Diablo 2 there was a massive problem with online shops selling items for real money, aswell as spam bots, people being scammed over ebay and forums setup with their own trading currency. The RMAH addressed all those issues that were guarenteed to arise again, and wrapped it up in a much easier, more secure and scam free package.

Still I did not buy a single item from it myself, found the majority of my gear on my own efforts and used the gold auction house (again trading with players) for items when needed. I also beat the game at its hardest on Inferno shortly after release, before they reduced the difficulty, which itself is proof that spending real money was not needed in the slightest.

4. Donating to a small company, a small company like Blizzard was in the 90s? They all have to start somewhere, when they become successful do you feel you should then abandon them as greedy money grabbers?.


Path of Exile is a cool game and I'm actually currently playing it, and though it has fresh ideas and is well designed, I don't think it has the polish or the gameplay quality of Diablo 3.
 
Well, the thing that makes PoE and Torchlight I and II better than Diablo III is:

-Drop rate is comparable to that of Diablo II
-Skill diversity
-Character is badass by skill and not exclusively by gear like Diablo III
 
Well, the thing that makes PoE and Torchlight I and II better than Diablo III is:

-Drop rate is comparable to that of Diablo II
-Skill diversity
-Character is badass by skill and not exclusively by gear like Diablo III

I have to disagree

1. Drop rate is based on trading and economy and a long term gamplay, if all the gear dropped at once you would be done within a week. Diablo 3 is a primarily multiplayer game and already even with low drop rates the game is massively over inflated with high quality gear, Diablo 2 was the same in this respect. As a solo player in both D3/D2 it can sometimes feel like you get no drops but if you persist you WILL get drops, this was no different in D2 and as someone who still has an active Diablo 2 account, with online characters going back 10 years, I last actively played it last year.

In Diablo 2 I have an exceptionally well geared Barbarion, but that is the result of years of playing, trading via forums and recieving gifts from a friend who regularly bought items from item stores. A friend who too this day still plays Diablo 2 with a new character every ladder.

So I have a great idea how the drop rates were in Diablo 2. In Torchlight the drop rates are far far higher than they were in D2, in Diablo 2 if one was playing solo he/she would hit a brick wall in progression somewhere during early hell, unless there was gear coming elsewhere via trading or hand me downs or a lot of hanging around in nightmare waiting for item drops, the difference in top quality gear and low quality in Diablo 2 was often ridiculously big, too big, bigger than it is in Diablo 3 by a long way, making D3 far more balanced and user friendly for people who want to solo.

2. Skill diversity - There are more builds in D3 than in D2, in D2 there were cookie cutter builds and there were crap builds, a handful of each per class. In D3 there are many workable builds and many "inbetween builds" on my barbarion alone I have been through a whole bunch of different playstyles that all excell at the end of the game.


3. Based on gear not skill? In all of these games it is based on both, Diablo 3 on launch was certaintly based on both, I saw countless of people with better gear than myself moaning that the game was too hard and that they couldn't survive because of not good enough gear, so how was it that I was able to actually beat the game while it was this hard?

I'l tell you how, skill, strategy and planning, not whining about gear (most of the guys whining had great gear, just wasnt great enough for them to play 1handed whilst watching eastenders). Diablo 3 has been nerfed and now caters to all levels of player, with Monster levels put in to allow extra challenge. But with a numbers game like this there is always going to be a cutoff point at where the only way forward is to improve your gear, that is no different for any of these types of games.

To say that Diablo is more about gear and less about skill and then comparing them to identical game styles is to be biased against one without just cause. And I'm saying this as a big fan of the genre in general, I played Diablo and then Diablo 2, Dungeon Siege II and then Titan Quest, then Torchlight and Diablo 3, then Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile.
 
Though, you have to admit, with Diablo 3, the server lag spikes make the game almost unplayable, and, I have a stable network connection.

With PoE, I may be kicked off a few times, but, there is less lag.

In Diablo 3, I have died countless times because of severe lag spikes that Blizzard doesn't fix.
 
I cant disagree about D3 lag spikes or performance, back when D3 was hard at launch.... and it was proper ridiculous hard... There was an issue where the game could not keep up with your reactions and you would die shouting furiously at the screen because your revenge or charge did got delayed by lag.

Aswell as that the game has big fps slowdowns when there are vast ammounts of monsters on the screen, regardless of how powerful your computer. These are things I can't argue with, but as far as balance and items are concerned, I disagree with your earlier statements.
 
I was playing Path of Exile a moment ago, and, the thing about it is the passive skill tree can make your character badass even with low-end gear.

Diablo I and II are about not having the best gear, but, having gear that is decent enough with what attribute points you allot your character with.

Diablo III is so much like World of Warcraft mainly because it was not developed by most of the DII developers - but by WoW developers.

Diablo III oozes like WoW in so many ways:

-Auto-stats
-Gear aesthetics
-cartoon graphics
-giant talking heads
-you can't be uber with low-level gear
-only certain gear builds that are similar are the best of the best
 
I was playing Path of Exile a moment ago, and, the thing about it is the passive skill tree can make your character badass even with low-end gear.

Diablo I and II are about not having the best gear, but, having gear that is decent enough with what attribute points you allot your character with.

Diablo III is so much like World of Warcraft mainly because it was not developed by most of the DII developers - but by WoW developers.

Diablo III oozes like WoW in so many ways:

-Auto-stats
-Gear aesthetics
-cartoon graphics
-giant talking heads
-you can't be uber with low-level gear
-only certain gear builds that are similar are the best of the best

I completely disagree with you, Diablo 3 is nothing like World of Warcraft at all. They removed stat choices because in D2 you simply tried to get everything as low as possible to pump it all into vitality, the better your gear the more you could pump into vitality making the difference between lower gear and higher gear characters massive, it was never really a choice, you were simply punished for using gear that required a lot of strength, restricting your options.

Really none of what you say in your observations can actually be backed up by any real substance. In WoW gear is seasonal with exact stats and characters are based on a strict balance for every each tier of content to create a fairly balanced difficulty level accross the board.

How is that anything like Diablo? where gear is massively randomized and where difficulty is has a scale of 1-10. You posted me your D3 character that might aswell have had probably over 300-400mil gold (or close to £100 worth) put into it, you don't need that gear just like you dont in Diablo 2, my D3 character has probably 2mil gold worth of gear, maybe less and is perfectly capable of clearing out the game on 6/10 difficulty.


This is the gear I used to clear the game back when it was released, when it was genuinely hard.

Statsjune162012-1.png


What is so special about it? Nothing, it's average gear just like any joe could find and most of it was self found, you don't need some super gearset (like your char actually has) to be able to beat the game.
 

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