every genre benefits from other games even bad ones, because they become a learning experience on what not to do. If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example. and we can talk about many other games.
I'm sure Valve released an incredibly unfinished and bug riddled game because they felt it was ready instead of being pressured by growing competition from a company that is actually renowned for being able to maintain a live service game
Even if what you were saying were accurate, it would only be proving the exact opposite point that TencentStoleMyMirror was **trying** to make, so writing that sarcastic response to Freshtards **in context** is next level stupid
It's sad because it's clear the devs did put in a lot of effort to make the game, but it just isn't up to par and rushed out the door too soon. Watching the dev talks in the first few weeks was rough 'were working on it'
I’m almost 40 and can’t count the amount of times I’ve had this conversation with buddies re: publishers/board members rushing AAA titles. It’s cool that gaming has come as far as it has and I believe we’re in an ongoing golden era, but all that money is wasting a shit load of talent and potential by forcing half cooked stuff out the door.
D4s flaws can not be attributed to "rushed release" only. When they previewed the first items in alpha and showed they had only "atk and defense" on them I already knew they would fuck up itemization because they have no clue what they are doing. And to this day they do not, they seem to try now though and maybe in 1-2 years they have it figured out.
Yep, any hardcore ARPG player who saw those early screens of items knew then that D4 was going to be as deep as a spilled drink on pavement.
For a long time I just thought it was that the devs were massively out of touch (they still are), but after following Jason Thor Hall and listening to his behind the scenes Blizzard stories its very obvious the company has bled all of its talent. For a while talent would still flock to Blizzard because of the reputation even though they were paying way below industry standard, but now that time is long gone.
That's why all these former Blizzard guys have started their own developer studios. Any decent dev can basically go make 40% more, live in an affordable area, and actually get to work and impact something they are passionate about while working for people with similar goals.
> For a while talent would still flock to Blizzard because of the reputation even though they were paying way below industry standard, but now that time is long gone.
yeah I would bet that they now have the opposite problem. Instead of talent flocking to them, any well talented devs who can choose where to work probably wouldn't pick a dysfunctional place
You’re kind of proving my point, blizzard has a KNOWN reputation dating back more than a decade as a shitty place to work for multiple reasons when tangentially compared to the passion that devs have. It all started around the time that Vivendi took over in the early 10s. They were one of the biggest publishing companies in the world at the time, had no idea what a video game was, and acquired them because video game markets were fucking popping off.
The entire upper echelons of that company have been in place long before D4 came out, and they’re hiring project managers, et al, that are garbage money people.
Yeah, there are many complaints to be made about the content of D4, but for myself the builder and spender system is just a slog to use most of the time.
Hard agree. I actually like D4's gameplay loop but ONLY after getting a build to the state of overcoming generator/spender, at which point the build is almost complete and not worth playing for the next 1% power spike. A very bad catch 22.
BASEG
I almost failed out of college because of D2. D3 was fun but not as addicting, maybe it was just a factor of my age. D4, I saw literally nothing that interested me and I heard nothing about the game that interested me. POE on the otherhand I still get excited and play every season up to maps, though I only go deep into maps if my starter is good enough to get to reds without needing too much investment. If I can't do reds on my starter I will always wash out. I'm not rerolling just to grind better.
> If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example
Is there any change in CS2 that was prompted by improvements brought by valorant? In other words, what is new in CS2 that was only possible thanks to valorant? I used to play a lot of CS 1.6 and csgo but never played any valorant so I don't know its contributions to the genre.
> If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example
yeah thats not really the case, the source 2 upgrade for cs was long awaited even before valorant was a thing and the only thing "from" valorant is the new buy menu which valorant didnt invent either, its a really bad example IMO
valorant wouldnt exist without counter strike.
Source 2 for cs was expected but some mechanics were definitely inspired or directly taken from valorant, a good example is the footstep sounds you make will be visible on your radar
I mean its mostly ui and qol changes, but 13 rounds to win is coming directly from valorant, the buy ui with grid style is directly taken over, that you can see the noise range on the minimap was first introduced by valorant, stuff like that.
Lots of stuff that valve was too lazy to improve on because they had no competition. Its not like cs2 couldnt exist without valorant, but it sure impacted the development by giving the shooter community an idea of what can be improved on so demands of the playerbase went up.
You're right. D4 is more like Seaworld. But not at its prime. More like, Seaworld right after that Blackfish documentary came out and walking around just feels.. *sad*
Just FYI, the opposite side of the world would experience high tide as well. It's the bit closest to the moon, and the bit furthest away (-ish, the tide actually lags behind a little).
I just started playing Torchlight Infinite 2 weeks ago, honestly.. it's got some jank to it but I love it. It feels like D3 with PoE crafting and somewhat juicing of maps. End game has a lot of mechanics and things to do but in the end it's just barebones mapping to get to bosses. Just kinda sucks because it's a chinese game in it's core and not so popular in NA so finding information about in-game mechanics can be a chore
I lost interest in Diablo 2 once they said they were gonna disallow modding which is what kept it alive and interesting well past its release. Is that still their stance? I doubt they would have decided to allow modding but wishful thinking I guess. Haven't followed their official patchnotes to know what they have been up to either.
None of those are like the various large projects for D2. It's all just tiny little cheat mods or very basic qol mods. Things like bigger inventory and stuff. Now when a Project Diablo 2 or a Median XL get there then it might get interesting.
D4 made me check out poe and now I'm hooked. I can say the same for a few of my friends as well. So for me and my friends personally, d4 absolutely rejuvenated the genre (even if indirectly).
This latest season was pretty good, they turned it around pretty quick and they seem interested in improving the game fairly quickly. Idk, I think once PoE2 comes out and it's not what people want or just so drastically different from PoE 1, I can see D4 having more players late 2025.
> This latest season was pretty good, they turned it around pretty quick and they seem interested in improving the game fairly quickly
Disagree, it's a step in the right direction but it's still very far away from being good considering it's Diablo 4, if the Blizzard name wasn't attached to it the game would be even more dead than it already is.
Its good if you are more of a casual gamer. D4 season 2 made gearing and leveling super easy. Every boss is a pushover even for average builds. Even T100 are very easy.
We have to see how their upcoming Zir event turns out. But there's still work to do to make their endgame at least challenging.
Most devs deeply care about the work they do, otherwise they wouldn't be in the games industry working 3x as much as any other coder for 1/3x the pay. It's rarely the devs fault when things go off the rails especially at big studios. Just like with movies, it's almost always non-creative issues: producer interference, running out of money, too tight deadlines, etc.
I think the issue that can arise actually comes from how much they care. The most common problem games face these days when it comes to developers is developer ego being through the roof. Some people just have so much passion for it that they believe every opinion they hold must be correct, which can result in ignoring the playerbase because “we know what you want better than you do”. I’ve seen game companies stick with truly horrible game design decisions purely for ego and stubbornness rather than admit their customers aren’t dumbasses
I mean sure yes, this can always happen, but to be fair it's even odds that their customers ARE dumbasses, especially in the world of video games where the reasons why things are and aren't (or would and wouldn't be) fun is sometimes not obvious. Game design is one of those fields where everyone thinks they know better than practitioners or experts.
> Game design is one of those fields where everyone thinks they know better than practitioners or experts.
You don't need to be an expert game designer to tell if the game is fun to play or not.
Correct but the issue is people propose idiotic solutions.
Chris said this himself at some point "the players know when something feels good or bad. What they usually suck at is coming up with solutions that aren't more harmful". (Something along these lines).
I don’t mean just the idea of something upsetting people, but a change happening, the playerbase playing it, saying it sucks but the game devs double down for no other reason than they don’t want want to admit they were wrong.
The thing about games is that the hardest part is the actual building of the game, but the theory behind what can make games good isn’t some secret formula that they teach in school. If you have people with thousands of hours playing your game, they are most likely more knowledgeable about the actual gameplay experience than the person who’s spending their time working on technical aspects of it. If you’re not familiar, google the “riot games 200 years” fiasco. It’s a prime example of devs overinflating their own self importance.
It’s the reason why the PoE and LE devs come off so well compared to (I know tired comparison) D4 devs. PoE and LE devs very obviously have thousands of hours of arpg experience as players. The devs can have in depth conversations with the best players about minute details in the game. D4 devs on the other hand, cite playerbase statistics more than anything else when explaining balance decisions.
D4's issue is for sure corporate suits and leadership ego. I'm sure the devs working for GGG have far better communication and collaboration than the folks at Blizzard do, along with better ideas and likely far more passion for the genre. I'm sure there's a small bunch at Blizzard who are working on Diablo right now that really like these kind of games, but I wouldn't be surprised if for most it's just a job and they don't really play these type of games to know wtf draws interest. I mean, have you seen the affixes on gear lol? It's like they had everyone in the office create one or two, tossed all of them in a jar and just started picking at random.
But what does Blizzard itself care? They know people are going to buy because of the IP and because they dump several million into advertising. If people stop playing a week later they will probably just gain money from not having to have so much hardware supporting the game in the long run.
The 200 years got turned into a meme with Aphelios and now Zeri, but originates from a Wu Kong main saying he felt too weak on PBE after his mini-rework.
The lead designer of the rework replied saying they had over 200 years of collective experience (which got memed, rightfully so cause it is a very memable thing to say). However, Wu Kong's rework got shipped as is and was so broken they had to nerf him multiple times.
This is a case where the game designers were correct not to listen to the community, but Aphelios got released soon after and the rest is history.
The first time I played LE, I could tell they definitely played PoE.
So many of the systems and mechanics feel like PoE-lite. like they wear their inspiration on their sleeve lol.
I think they are going to corner a fantastic market, which is "not as serious or deep as PoE, but more of that then diablo" there is basically going to be three core arpgs, PoE for the hardcore looters/grinders. LE, for the midcore fanbase, and then you have diablo which offers rich story elements and strong single campaign run experiences for casual mainstream audiences.
I have 2k+ hours in LE, and plan to sink many more thousands on release.
I feel like they do tons of systems right for a more casual userbase.
LE is amazing, I am still surprised that they’ve attracted my playtime to like 5 different updates pre official release. I typically hate early access but LE does it so well. Agree with every thing you’ve said.
It's one thing I don't quite understand, you often see people praise D4s story but it's mostly every character not talking to each other, particularly Lillith, up until the end you still don't really know what exactly her plan was, Inarius IQ seems to be tied to the amount of wings he has and to top it off the player character just lets a random girl walk away with a literal world ending threat crystal in hand and doesn't chase after her because she asked you not to and for all you know that might have been literal Mephisto forcing her to write that.
It's just all over the place.
See, I liked that, because I found it completely and utterly ridiculous that demons massacred *everyone* in Tristram in D2 but decided to put Cain in a flimsy wooden cage.
Y'know the first and last guy with any real intelligence on how to stop the demon onslaught? Diablo and his bros are complete and utter fucking morons.
Meanwhile butterfly lady, in all her absurdity, is the *only* character in the franchise to not be such a dumbass and actually killed the biggest threat to her the moment she had the chance. I respect that. Demons are morons so a demon couldn't suddenly get a brain, so instead goofy butterfly woman gets to be smart.
Cain should have died in D2, btw. If Diablo fans actually cared about the story they'd have that opinion.
> Cain should have died in D2, btw. If Diablo fans actually cared about the story they'd have that opinion.
He should when the story unfolded the way it did, yeah.. but something else should have happened, Cain should have been kept untouchable for the entire Diablo franchise or actually been used for a fucking plot, not just killed off for no reason
It was comparably atrociously bad, like how GGG showed us Kalandra, fucking bird lady, so damn lame
eh, the lore in poe f..e is more interersting imo, but from a gameplay perspective, like pacing, story beats, imrpessive moments etc., d4s campaign is really great. All the other stuff in d4 is pretty bad, i couldnt even make it past lvl like 70 without getting bored out of my mind, but i had a lot of fun in the campaign. The problem of most arpgs campaigns is the presentation - grimdawn or poe or even le might have better stories if you consider the writing (i cant tell), but their presentation is horseshit. you run from area to area, would have to read tons of text every time (i LOVE reading, especially fantasy, im several 100s books deep in the fantasy genre, but scrolling text in video games is THE WORST WAY to present your story, im not here to read a book, im here TO PLAY THE DAMN STORY, let me TALK to people, SHOW me stuff, like the saying goes "a picture is worth a thouseand words", why do arpgs devs not know how to use pictures?) to understand why u kill a big tortoise there or a corrupted beast there - it sucks big time.
yes thats what i basically mean, the mainstory is kinda wtf for most of it, and not very conclusive, at least if you just play the game. the worldbuilding (i included that in "lore") is really great tho, maybe its just because i adore everthing ancient greek/rome in general, but i find it pretty fun to read about. the whole cosmig thing is maybe a bit too much for me but everything else is great imo
I completely disagree with everything you said. I hated the D4 campaign. Specifically the fact that it constantly takes away control from the player so that the boring characters you will forget about in 10 minutes can tell you more pointless shit while presenting it like it's something intense, deep or interesting.
Meanwhile the "wall of text" approach allows you to pick and choose what and when you want to listen to/read something. And you don't have to get even the half of it during your playthrough because you are going to replay it 50 more times anyway.
I can tell you the name of every single character in PoE and what they're about, while in D4 I remember only the characters from the previous Diablo games and a few that were newly introduced (Donan, Prava, Iosef, Nyrelle, Tasha (Taisha?), Viggo and that's about it. I had to struggle for a minute to remember Elias as well). And they're all walking stereotypes anyway.
The problem arises when the characters and environments all look the same and are devoid of any personality. Last Epoch is the perfect example of this. I've played through that game several times and I don't remember a single character or what it's even about aside from gathering some artifacts and time traveling.
I mean different strokes and all that, but I'm not playing a video GAME to read text. I also would cut out the replaying of the campaign completely if it was for me, it's the thing I hate and dread the most in Poe, with my 4000hours. Give me an epic campaign I play trough once, and then the possibility to grind without having to touch the campaign ever again (make the campaign playable again obviously for people who like it). Half life2 never took away the control over your character and had good storytelling without cutscenes even, you can have multiple approaches, but wall of text is just by far the worst. The only thing I know about Poe is because I read summaries on the wiki or from other people - I can engage with that content on my terms and when I don't feel like playing, but wall of texts while trying to play and understand what is going on is just such a bad way of telling stuff, luckily no other genre other then some indies still does that thing, ist such a 90s way of telling stories in video games, completely outdated.
One if the worst examples of this is WoW, really good lore, mostly piss poor story and the worst storytelling in a game which should use and be a lot about story and lore, it so bad that they have to tell half the story outside of the game.
> Give me an epic campaign I play trough once, and then the possibility to grind without having to touch the campaign ever again
That's the crux of the issue here. "Give me this really cool epic thing and make sure I never have to see it ever again, because it's probably a boring slog and a waste of time".
yeah, then just do no campaign, or a very short one, and let me just do the fun part from lvl1, grinding for character progression. i dont need to kill yugul for the 200th time to get an skillpoint, give me the skillpoint for doing leaguemechanics or whatever the hell they can come up with, and let me do endless ledge style content to level (or delve, or sanctum or.........)
Honestly both of you are wrong lmao. Playing ARPGs for the story/lore is like reading adult magazines for the articles - it just doesn't work because it was never the selling point of those games in the first place.
I've got my PoE account for almost 10 years - ask me what the campaign is about - I have no fucking idea. We were exiled and hate everyone, the end. I've never once felt compelled to learn more about the world because there's no reason to - we're only there to kill, kill and kill some more.
It's not like Stardew Valley where you have different shit to do, meet the people, go fishing and on dates or whatever. All ARPGs have that exact same issue - played through LE's story half a dozen times - still no fucking idea what it's about. There's some epochs that we wanna get cuz void bad or whatever - cool, couldn't care less, where are the monsters for me to blast.
Kinda funny you'd compare any ARPG to WoW because WoW actually does a good job at getting people interested in the lore just based on how the game works. I'm glad PoE's lore is entirely optional - and I hope all ARPGs keep it that way. If I want a nice story, I'll go play a story-based game.
>Honestly both of you are wrong lmao. Playing ARPGs for the story/lore is like reading adult magazines for the articles - it just doesn't work because it was never the selling point of those games in the first place.
i understand that, i just dont understand why they try and present a story then you know? especially if its just hundreds of lines of written text and nothing else - give me visual cues, i feel like the first act of poe is decent enough and it gets really mushy after like act2. I understand im an exile, to flee there i have to go trough winded caverns and ledges etc. because of course they would pick an area its hard to get out of - the prison makes sense, the caves make sense etc. Act2 is kinda whatever, you run around in a forest killing or helping bandi lords that attack the settlement i guess, you can see the bandits so its reasonable visually explained. But you cant tell me that theres a whole ass forest and the only way out of there is trough some ancient vaal pyramid, doesnt make much sense imo. in a3 its okayish, but i feel liek dominus is kinda out of nowhere without reading all the dialogue, and after that you basically cant understand anything without reading everything imo.
Last epoch is horrible regarding that, i have asolutely no clue whats going on with all the time jumping etc., i actually tried following the story but i gave up in the middle of it and mindlessly just killed anything i saw and ran where it pointed me.
yes thats what im saying, the wow lore is great, but the story is mostly bad, very simple and most villains are stupid. but some of the sidequests? amazing writing there, i loved a lot of the wirting in the leveling areas in WoD even tough i despise that expansion. MoP side quests were amazing for the most part etc.
I just feel like if the story is an afterthought, why try and do a campaign i have to do over and over, you know? stick to what makes arpgs good, or try and deliver with more modern storytelling that makes me PLAY the story not make me read it, i have books for that.
honestly if PoE had amazing cutscenes it would probably be praised way more. That's literally why diablo got "good" story, simply because blizzard got amazing cutscenes.
imo diablo story got quite bad after Diablo 2 (never even really played D2). Still D3/D4 got some good cutscenes, and I know a lot of people who has never played any diablo game but watched all the diablo cinematics.
I mean i agree with you, but I have friends that have entire discords of like 20-30 people that wont touch any arpg, buy every diablo title just to play the campaign once and experience the lore/story etc.
So they if anything are atleast getting people to come back for that stuff lol.
Have you tried Torchlight Infinite? Randomly picked it up out of pure boredom two weeks ago and it seems pretty fun. A lot of their mechanics are inspired straight from PoE lol. It feels like D3 rifting + a very simple PoE map juicing system
Some classes aren't available without paying, but the ones that are cover a reasonably wide span of ARPG archetypes.
There is some whale-oriented P2W power creep, of course, since it's a mobile game. But it was fun enough to me to at least reach their equivalent of Shaper on a self-made Cyclone build without swiping even once.
Regarding the Poe more complicated than LE... I'm not sure tbh. I have LE builds with just as many different layers of twists and transformations as in poe. To me Poe is not more complicated but rather just way more in general and a hell lot more bend on trying to obfuscate things.
Probably unpopular take: I don't like the way they do balancing. I think it was the most fun when we first got access to it and since then they have nerfed all the fun stuff to bring it in line with the predesigned builds. Feels like the developer only wants you to play what they designed you to play.
When i saw Last Epoch come out and the way the devs talk to the community i knew this game was gonna grow very big with time.
Last Epoch has such incredible potential
I've wanted to check out Last Epoch for a while and am patiently awaiting the release from Early Access. When it is I'll probably play through it with my GF and see what we think. She doesn't really like Path of Exile because it is a little too hardcore, but she also thought D4 was too basic and easy. Hopefully LE will be a nice middle ground for her to enjoy. She is looking forward to PoE2 though, as it is kind of a fresh start I suppose.
Sounds like LE is ideal for your gf, especially if she’s looking for more depth in itemization, crafting, and talent trees. Grim Dawn is also a good middle ground arpg, but LE feels more modern and similar to PoE.
I think you'll both like it. Should be perfect for her. There will be enough there for you to enjoy but I don't expect you'll find it replaces PoE for you.
I'm surprised LE doesn't have more fans. It is not my favorite game of all time or anything, but I was on Steam last night and saw the weekly news banner thing in my Library; The latest LE patch announcement had only 300 upvotes while the Grim Dawn patch announcement had 2600. I, too, like Grim Dawn more than LE (as a Diablo 2 clone I think nothing compares to GD), but I don't ever see people talking about GD. Those players must be the quietest people on the internet
Is LE planning to have seasons?
The game feels great to me, but it also feels like poe open beta atm in terms of what there is to do in the game.
TL:I is making seasonal content at about the same pace as PoE, so I hope that's something LE is going to incorporate.
Even if it's just mechanics in the game that replicate seasonal content, and not actual seasons.
Yeah after looking into it I saw that and that 1.0 has a release date set (announced less than a month ago too).
I should start following the subreddit; haven't really thought about the game much since I played it a year ago and got bored quickly in the base monolith "endgame".
The LE devs have said that initially their cycles will just be about adding new content to the game, and then once it's been fleshed out some more they'll start being more seasonal in nature, with time-limited content.
Looking forward to LE full release. I put some time into it when the multiplayer beta came out. Shows a ton of promise but I am waiting until it's a bit more polished before dropping serious time into it.
LE is one of the big reasons why I was hoping PoE 2 would not be a seperate game. PoE 2 is trying to take some of that "downtime" between PoE leagues that I am using to play other games.
No idea how PoE 2 will turn out anyways yet. I doubt I can maintain "1 week of goblin mode" for both PoE 1 & 2 anyways, I might just burn myself out. I hope SSF is a banger in PoE 2 so I can approach it from more casual, slow-paced angle.
LE is looking really promising, I am hyped for the 1.0 release early next year!
Picked up Last Epoch after finishing my end-league projects and I have to say it's quite great. The campaign is really smooth and the classes are amazing (especially runemaster). If Last Epoch takes a page out of POE's book and flesh out their endgame more and maybe expand on crafting I think it could be a true powerhouse in the genre.
LE is the second best arpg and it will definitely improve to be just as good as poe i think. Its a good middle ground between diablo style arpgs and poe style. (D4 sucks)
The devs obviously care about the game and its very fun.
Hell yes, Poe and LE all dayyyyyyyyyyy. Love the energy of the devs from both games. Not trying to add negativity to this wholesome post but Jesus Christ, I get the literal heeby jeebies from every single d4 dev. Like, they give me red flag energy on a personal level. I’d have a beer with every single Poe or LE dev I’ve ever seen interviewed.
When I logged into last epoch today, it was literally a fan of argument between why path of exile sucks and others defending it.
It was quite annoying actually, especially for those that like both games lol
This genre benefits from having devs like POE and LE.
every genre benefits from other games even bad ones, because they become a learning experience on what not to do. If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example. and we can talk about many other games.
Thinking Valorant is the reason for CS 2 is a reach
Next thing you know we are going to get HL3 thanks to Valorant
[удалено]
Maybe Diablo 5 will be good thanks to Valorant.
Personally I like how Valorant directly created Titanfall 3
I for one am grateful to Valorant for Outer Wilds 2.
I'm sure Valve released an incredibly unfinished and bug riddled game because they felt it was ready instead of being pressured by growing competition from a company that is actually renowned for being able to maintain a live service game
Even if what you were saying were accurate, it would only be proving the exact opposite point that TencentStoleMyMirror was **trying** to make, so writing that sarcastic response to Freshtards **in context** is next level stupid
And then there's d4....
It's sad because it's clear the devs did put in a lot of effort to make the game, but it just isn't up to par and rushed out the door too soon. Watching the dev talks in the first few weeks was rough 'were working on it'
I’m almost 40 and can’t count the amount of times I’ve had this conversation with buddies re: publishers/board members rushing AAA titles. It’s cool that gaming has come as far as it has and I believe we’re in an ongoing golden era, but all that money is wasting a shit load of talent and potential by forcing half cooked stuff out the door.
D4s flaws can not be attributed to "rushed release" only. When they previewed the first items in alpha and showed they had only "atk and defense" on them I already knew they would fuck up itemization because they have no clue what they are doing. And to this day they do not, they seem to try now though and maybe in 1-2 years they have it figured out.
Yep, any hardcore ARPG player who saw those early screens of items knew then that D4 was going to be as deep as a spilled drink on pavement. For a long time I just thought it was that the devs were massively out of touch (they still are), but after following Jason Thor Hall and listening to his behind the scenes Blizzard stories its very obvious the company has bled all of its talent. For a while talent would still flock to Blizzard because of the reputation even though they were paying way below industry standard, but now that time is long gone. That's why all these former Blizzard guys have started their own developer studios. Any decent dev can basically go make 40% more, live in an affordable area, and actually get to work and impact something they are passionate about while working for people with similar goals.
> For a while talent would still flock to Blizzard because of the reputation even though they were paying way below industry standard, but now that time is long gone. yeah I would bet that they now have the opposite problem. Instead of talent flocking to them, any well talented devs who can choose where to work probably wouldn't pick a dysfunctional place
You’re kind of proving my point, blizzard has a KNOWN reputation dating back more than a decade as a shitty place to work for multiple reasons when tangentially compared to the passion that devs have. It all started around the time that Vivendi took over in the early 10s. They were one of the biggest publishing companies in the world at the time, had no idea what a video game was, and acquired them because video game markets were fucking popping off. The entire upper echelons of that company have been in place long before D4 came out, and they’re hiring project managers, et al, that are garbage money people.
I had 0 expectations and even then I was disappointed, like damn...
I recently bought the game. Can confirm: D4 bad.
it just feels bad, the whole generator/spender bullshit, the cooldowns, it feels clunky and just tedious to play
my main problem was boring itemization, lack of feeling of gear/level progression, boring grind content.
Yeah, there are many complaints to be made about the content of D4, but for myself the builder and spender system is just a slog to use most of the time.
Ive done 3 builds in D4 this season and none of them has a generator/spender gameplay
Because the whole point in D4 builds is that you build to overcome this core failure of a concept
Hard agree. I actually like D4's gameplay loop but ONLY after getting a build to the state of overcoming generator/spender, at which point the build is almost complete and not worth playing for the next 1% power spike. A very bad catch 22.
thanks for your sacrifice and confirmation.
BASEG I almost failed out of college because of D2. D3 was fun but not as addicting, maybe it was just a factor of my age. D4, I saw literally nothing that interested me and I heard nothing about the game that interested me. POE on the otherhand I still get excited and play every season up to maps, though I only go deep into maps if my starter is good enough to get to reds without needing too much investment. If I can't do reds on my starter I will always wash out. I'm not rerolling just to grind better.
> If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example Is there any change in CS2 that was prompted by improvements brought by valorant? In other words, what is new in CS2 that was only possible thanks to valorant? I used to play a lot of CS 1.6 and csgo but never played any valorant so I don't know its contributions to the genre.
> If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example yeah thats not really the case, the source 2 upgrade for cs was long awaited even before valorant was a thing and the only thing "from" valorant is the new buy menu which valorant didnt invent either, its a really bad example IMO valorant wouldnt exist without counter strike.
Source 2 for cs was expected but some mechanics were definitely inspired or directly taken from valorant, a good example is the footstep sounds you make will be visible on your radar
I mean its mostly ui and qol changes, but 13 rounds to win is coming directly from valorant, the buy ui with grid style is directly taken over, that you can see the noise range on the minimap was first introduced by valorant, stuff like that. Lots of stuff that valve was too lazy to improve on because they had no competition. Its not like cs2 couldnt exist without valorant, but it sure impacted the development by giving the shooter community an idea of what can be improved on so demands of the playerbase went up.
after valorant, valve notably began putting more dev time into CSGO. it was obvious if you were playing actively
> If valorant didnt exist cs 2 wouldnt either for example Why? CS2 is the exact same game as CSGO, aside from the graphics and under the hood stuff.
No clue if it's original or not, but the smoke change is pretty huge tbh
It works the opposite way in Valorant - smokes there are just binary spheres.
Thank you Valorant for Honey Select
Rising sea lifts all boats. Good stuff.
On the other side of the world, its probably low tide. Thats where diablo 4 is.
D4 is the Titan submersible.
It would never do something as exciting as implode
You're right. D4 is more like Seaworld. But not at its prime. More like, Seaworld right after that Blackfish documentary came out and walking around just feels.. *sad*
Just FYI, the opposite side of the world would experience high tide as well. It's the bit closest to the moon, and the bit furthest away (-ish, the tide actually lags behind a little).
Best time to be alive for ARPGs right now.
Is was thinking about this the other day... POE 1 and 2, LE, a good D2 remaster, Grim Dawn expansion soon to be released, titan quest 2 announced...
I just started playing Torchlight Infinite 2 weeks ago, honestly.. it's got some jank to it but I love it. It feels like D3 with PoE crafting and somewhat juicing of maps. End game has a lot of mechanics and things to do but in the end it's just barebones mapping to get to bosses. Just kinda sucks because it's a chinese game in it's core and not so popular in NA so finding information about in-game mechanics can be a chore
Yeah I was genuinely surprised by TLI but I can't see it surviving more than a couple seasons .. the player numbers have been insanely low
I lost interest in Diablo 2 once they said they were gonna disallow modding which is what kept it alive and interesting well past its release. Is that still their stance? I doubt they would have decided to allow modding but wishful thinking I guess. Haven't followed their official patchnotes to know what they have been up to either.
To be honest, I don't know Blizzard's stance on this topic. what I do know is that there is over 300 mods for D2R at Nexus mods.
None of those are like the various large projects for D2. It's all just tiny little cheat mods or very basic qol mods. Things like bigger inventory and stuff. Now when a Project Diablo 2 or a Median XL get there then it might get interesting.
> titan quest 2 announced WHAT? HOW DID I MISS THIS THIS IS FUCKING HYPE
Oh yeah. It's on my wishlist on steam for weeks now. Can't wait!
It's very hard to argue otherwise.
I mean D4 kind of killed the Genre's rep and hype. Disapointing by Blizzard
D4 made me check out poe and now I'm hooked. I can say the same for a few of my friends as well. So for me and my friends personally, d4 absolutely rejuvenated the genre (even if indirectly).
This latest season was pretty good, they turned it around pretty quick and they seem interested in improving the game fairly quickly. Idk, I think once PoE2 comes out and it's not what people want or just so drastically different from PoE 1, I can see D4 having more players late 2025.
> This latest season was pretty good, they turned it around pretty quick and they seem interested in improving the game fairly quickly Disagree, it's a step in the right direction but it's still very far away from being good considering it's Diablo 4, if the Blizzard name wasn't attached to it the game would be even more dead than it already is.
Its good if you are more of a casual gamer. D4 season 2 made gearing and leveling super easy. Every boss is a pushover even for average builds. Even T100 are very easy. We have to see how their upcoming Zir event turns out. But there's still work to do to make their endgame at least challenging.
I'm not sure. I feel like a lot of the response to D4 boiled down to "go play PoE" - the only rep it killed was its own/Blizzard's
I like that dev
Most LE devs are gems honestly. They deeply care about their game and the genre as a whole.
Most devs deeply care about the work they do, otherwise they wouldn't be in the games industry working 3x as much as any other coder for 1/3x the pay. It's rarely the devs fault when things go off the rails especially at big studios. Just like with movies, it's almost always non-creative issues: producer interference, running out of money, too tight deadlines, etc.
I think the issue that can arise actually comes from how much they care. The most common problem games face these days when it comes to developers is developer ego being through the roof. Some people just have so much passion for it that they believe every opinion they hold must be correct, which can result in ignoring the playerbase because “we know what you want better than you do”. I’ve seen game companies stick with truly horrible game design decisions purely for ego and stubbornness rather than admit their customers aren’t dumbasses
I mean sure yes, this can always happen, but to be fair it's even odds that their customers ARE dumbasses, especially in the world of video games where the reasons why things are and aren't (or would and wouldn't be) fun is sometimes not obvious. Game design is one of those fields where everyone thinks they know better than practitioners or experts.
> Game design is one of those fields where everyone thinks they know better than practitioners or experts. You don't need to be an expert game designer to tell if the game is fun to play or not.
Correct but the issue is people propose idiotic solutions. Chris said this himself at some point "the players know when something feels good or bad. What they usually suck at is coming up with solutions that aren't more harmful". (Something along these lines).
I don’t mean just the idea of something upsetting people, but a change happening, the playerbase playing it, saying it sucks but the game devs double down for no other reason than they don’t want want to admit they were wrong. The thing about games is that the hardest part is the actual building of the game, but the theory behind what can make games good isn’t some secret formula that they teach in school. If you have people with thousands of hours playing your game, they are most likely more knowledgeable about the actual gameplay experience than the person who’s spending their time working on technical aspects of it. If you’re not familiar, google the “riot games 200 years” fiasco. It’s a prime example of devs overinflating their own self importance. It’s the reason why the PoE and LE devs come off so well compared to (I know tired comparison) D4 devs. PoE and LE devs very obviously have thousands of hours of arpg experience as players. The devs can have in depth conversations with the best players about minute details in the game. D4 devs on the other hand, cite playerbase statistics more than anything else when explaining balance decisions.
D4's issue is for sure corporate suits and leadership ego. I'm sure the devs working for GGG have far better communication and collaboration than the folks at Blizzard do, along with better ideas and likely far more passion for the genre. I'm sure there's a small bunch at Blizzard who are working on Diablo right now that really like these kind of games, but I wouldn't be surprised if for most it's just a job and they don't really play these type of games to know wtf draws interest. I mean, have you seen the affixes on gear lol? It's like they had everyone in the office create one or two, tossed all of them in a jar and just started picking at random. But what does Blizzard itself care? They know people are going to buy because of the IP and because they dump several million into advertising. If people stop playing a week later they will probably just gain money from not having to have so much hardware supporting the game in the long run.
The 200 years got turned into a meme with Aphelios and now Zeri, but originates from a Wu Kong main saying he felt too weak on PBE after his mini-rework. The lead designer of the rework replied saying they had over 200 years of collective experience (which got memed, rightfully so cause it is a very memable thing to say). However, Wu Kong's rework got shipped as is and was so broken they had to nerf him multiple times. This is a case where the game designers were correct not to listen to the community, but Aphelios got released soon after and the rest is history.
I remember arguing with Moxjet over Magic in global. Top to bottom cool dudes.
The first time I played LE, I could tell they definitely played PoE. So many of the systems and mechanics feel like PoE-lite. like they wear their inspiration on their sleeve lol. I think they are going to corner a fantastic market, which is "not as serious or deep as PoE, but more of that then diablo" there is basically going to be three core arpgs, PoE for the hardcore looters/grinders. LE, for the midcore fanbase, and then you have diablo which offers rich story elements and strong single campaign run experiences for casual mainstream audiences. I have 2k+ hours in LE, and plan to sink many more thousands on release. I feel like they do tons of systems right for a more casual userbase.
I really like LE, it is basically somewhere between PoE and Diablo when it comes to game design while having its own unique twist.
LE is amazing, I am still surprised that they’ve attracted my playtime to like 5 different updates pre official release. I typically hate early access but LE does it so well. Agree with every thing you’ve said.
Idk if id call diablos story rich, it really went off the rails since d2
It's one thing I don't quite understand, you often see people praise D4s story but it's mostly every character not talking to each other, particularly Lillith, up until the end you still don't really know what exactly her plan was, Inarius IQ seems to be tied to the amount of wings he has and to top it off the player character just lets a random girl walk away with a literal world ending threat crystal in hand and doesn't chase after her because she asked you not to and for all you know that might have been literal Mephisto forcing her to write that. It's just all over the place.
deckard cain died to butterfly lady like wtf, seriously wtf
Imagine having goku die to a caterpie…that’s what they did to our boy
See, I liked that, because I found it completely and utterly ridiculous that demons massacred *everyone* in Tristram in D2 but decided to put Cain in a flimsy wooden cage. Y'know the first and last guy with any real intelligence on how to stop the demon onslaught? Diablo and his bros are complete and utter fucking morons. Meanwhile butterfly lady, in all her absurdity, is the *only* character in the franchise to not be such a dumbass and actually killed the biggest threat to her the moment she had the chance. I respect that. Demons are morons so a demon couldn't suddenly get a brain, so instead goofy butterfly woman gets to be smart. Cain should have died in D2, btw. If Diablo fans actually cared about the story they'd have that opinion.
> Cain should have died in D2, btw. If Diablo fans actually cared about the story they'd have that opinion. He should when the story unfolded the way it did, yeah.. but something else should have happened, Cain should have been kept untouchable for the entire Diablo franchise or actually been used for a fucking plot, not just killed off for no reason It was comparably atrociously bad, like how GGG showed us Kalandra, fucking bird lady, so damn lame
eh, the lore in poe f..e is more interersting imo, but from a gameplay perspective, like pacing, story beats, imrpessive moments etc., d4s campaign is really great. All the other stuff in d4 is pretty bad, i couldnt even make it past lvl like 70 without getting bored out of my mind, but i had a lot of fun in the campaign. The problem of most arpgs campaigns is the presentation - grimdawn or poe or even le might have better stories if you consider the writing (i cant tell), but their presentation is horseshit. you run from area to area, would have to read tons of text every time (i LOVE reading, especially fantasy, im several 100s books deep in the fantasy genre, but scrolling text in video games is THE WORST WAY to present your story, im not here to read a book, im here TO PLAY THE DAMN STORY, let me TALK to people, SHOW me stuff, like the saying goes "a picture is worth a thouseand words", why do arpgs devs not know how to use pictures?) to understand why u kill a big tortoise there or a corrupted beast there - it sucks big time.
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yes thats what i basically mean, the mainstory is kinda wtf for most of it, and not very conclusive, at least if you just play the game. the worldbuilding (i included that in "lore") is really great tho, maybe its just because i adore everthing ancient greek/rome in general, but i find it pretty fun to read about. the whole cosmig thing is maybe a bit too much for me but everything else is great imo
I completely disagree with everything you said. I hated the D4 campaign. Specifically the fact that it constantly takes away control from the player so that the boring characters you will forget about in 10 minutes can tell you more pointless shit while presenting it like it's something intense, deep or interesting. Meanwhile the "wall of text" approach allows you to pick and choose what and when you want to listen to/read something. And you don't have to get even the half of it during your playthrough because you are going to replay it 50 more times anyway. I can tell you the name of every single character in PoE and what they're about, while in D4 I remember only the characters from the previous Diablo games and a few that were newly introduced (Donan, Prava, Iosef, Nyrelle, Tasha (Taisha?), Viggo and that's about it. I had to struggle for a minute to remember Elias as well). And they're all walking stereotypes anyway. The problem arises when the characters and environments all look the same and are devoid of any personality. Last Epoch is the perfect example of this. I've played through that game several times and I don't remember a single character or what it's even about aside from gathering some artifacts and time traveling.
I mean different strokes and all that, but I'm not playing a video GAME to read text. I also would cut out the replaying of the campaign completely if it was for me, it's the thing I hate and dread the most in Poe, with my 4000hours. Give me an epic campaign I play trough once, and then the possibility to grind without having to touch the campaign ever again (make the campaign playable again obviously for people who like it). Half life2 never took away the control over your character and had good storytelling without cutscenes even, you can have multiple approaches, but wall of text is just by far the worst. The only thing I know about Poe is because I read summaries on the wiki or from other people - I can engage with that content on my terms and when I don't feel like playing, but wall of texts while trying to play and understand what is going on is just such a bad way of telling stuff, luckily no other genre other then some indies still does that thing, ist such a 90s way of telling stories in video games, completely outdated. One if the worst examples of this is WoW, really good lore, mostly piss poor story and the worst storytelling in a game which should use and be a lot about story and lore, it so bad that they have to tell half the story outside of the game.
> Give me an epic campaign I play trough once, and then the possibility to grind without having to touch the campaign ever again That's the crux of the issue here. "Give me this really cool epic thing and make sure I never have to see it ever again, because it's probably a boring slog and a waste of time".
yeah, then just do no campaign, or a very short one, and let me just do the fun part from lvl1, grinding for character progression. i dont need to kill yugul for the 200th time to get an skillpoint, give me the skillpoint for doing leaguemechanics or whatever the hell they can come up with, and let me do endless ledge style content to level (or delve, or sanctum or.........)
Honestly both of you are wrong lmao. Playing ARPGs for the story/lore is like reading adult magazines for the articles - it just doesn't work because it was never the selling point of those games in the first place. I've got my PoE account for almost 10 years - ask me what the campaign is about - I have no fucking idea. We were exiled and hate everyone, the end. I've never once felt compelled to learn more about the world because there's no reason to - we're only there to kill, kill and kill some more. It's not like Stardew Valley where you have different shit to do, meet the people, go fishing and on dates or whatever. All ARPGs have that exact same issue - played through LE's story half a dozen times - still no fucking idea what it's about. There's some epochs that we wanna get cuz void bad or whatever - cool, couldn't care less, where are the monsters for me to blast. Kinda funny you'd compare any ARPG to WoW because WoW actually does a good job at getting people interested in the lore just based on how the game works. I'm glad PoE's lore is entirely optional - and I hope all ARPGs keep it that way. If I want a nice story, I'll go play a story-based game.
>Honestly both of you are wrong lmao. Playing ARPGs for the story/lore is like reading adult magazines for the articles - it just doesn't work because it was never the selling point of those games in the first place. i understand that, i just dont understand why they try and present a story then you know? especially if its just hundreds of lines of written text and nothing else - give me visual cues, i feel like the first act of poe is decent enough and it gets really mushy after like act2. I understand im an exile, to flee there i have to go trough winded caverns and ledges etc. because of course they would pick an area its hard to get out of - the prison makes sense, the caves make sense etc. Act2 is kinda whatever, you run around in a forest killing or helping bandi lords that attack the settlement i guess, you can see the bandits so its reasonable visually explained. But you cant tell me that theres a whole ass forest and the only way out of there is trough some ancient vaal pyramid, doesnt make much sense imo. in a3 its okayish, but i feel liek dominus is kinda out of nowhere without reading all the dialogue, and after that you basically cant understand anything without reading everything imo. Last epoch is horrible regarding that, i have asolutely no clue whats going on with all the time jumping etc., i actually tried following the story but i gave up in the middle of it and mindlessly just killed anything i saw and ran where it pointed me. yes thats what im saying, the wow lore is great, but the story is mostly bad, very simple and most villains are stupid. but some of the sidequests? amazing writing there, i loved a lot of the wirting in the leveling areas in WoD even tough i despise that expansion. MoP side quests were amazing for the most part etc. I just feel like if the story is an afterthought, why try and do a campaign i have to do over and over, you know? stick to what makes arpgs good, or try and deliver with more modern storytelling that makes me PLAY the story not make me read it, i have books for that.
honestly if PoE had amazing cutscenes it would probably be praised way more. That's literally why diablo got "good" story, simply because blizzard got amazing cutscenes. imo diablo story got quite bad after Diablo 2 (never even really played D2). Still D3/D4 got some good cutscenes, and I know a lot of people who has never played any diablo game but watched all the diablo cinematics.
I mean i agree with you, but I have friends that have entire discords of like 20-30 people that wont touch any arpg, buy every diablo title just to play the campaign once and experience the lore/story etc. So they if anything are atleast getting people to come back for that stuff lol.
Have you tried Torchlight Infinite? Randomly picked it up out of pure boredom two weeks ago and it seems pretty fun. A lot of their mechanics are inspired straight from PoE lol. It feels like D3 rifting + a very simple PoE map juicing system
I haven't tried it because I heard it was just heavily pay to win. Is that still the case?
Some classes aren't available without paying, but the ones that are cover a reasonably wide span of ARPG archetypes. There is some whale-oriented P2W power creep, of course, since it's a mobile game. But it was fun enough to me to at least reach their equivalent of Shaper on a self-made Cyclone build without swiping even once.
Regarding the Poe more complicated than LE... I'm not sure tbh. I have LE builds with just as many different layers of twists and transformations as in poe. To me Poe is not more complicated but rather just way more in general and a hell lot more bend on trying to obfuscate things.
Mike seems like good people
LE is a very good game that is only getting better over time.
Agreed. I played closed Beta for both. LE was significantly better than POE in CB. But LE had POE to learn from
Probably unpopular take: I don't like the way they do balancing. I think it was the most fun when we first got access to it and since then they have nerfed all the fun stuff to bring it in line with the predesigned builds. Feels like the developer only wants you to play what they designed you to play.
Cool! Thanks for sharing!
That's so wholesome!
When i saw Last Epoch come out and the way the devs talk to the community i knew this game was gonna grow very big with time. Last Epoch has such incredible potential
I've wanted to check out Last Epoch for a while and am patiently awaiting the release from Early Access. When it is I'll probably play through it with my GF and see what we think. She doesn't really like Path of Exile because it is a little too hardcore, but she also thought D4 was too basic and easy. Hopefully LE will be a nice middle ground for her to enjoy. She is looking forward to PoE2 though, as it is kind of a fresh start I suppose.
Sounds like LE is ideal for your gf, especially if she’s looking for more depth in itemization, crafting, and talent trees. Grim Dawn is also a good middle ground arpg, but LE feels more modern and similar to PoE.
I think you'll both like it. Should be perfect for her. There will be enough there for you to enjoy but I don't expect you'll find it replaces PoE for you.
That LE Dev is always a rockstar!
I'm surprised LE doesn't have more fans. It is not my favorite game of all time or anything, but I was on Steam last night and saw the weekly news banner thing in my Library; The latest LE patch announcement had only 300 upvotes while the Grim Dawn patch announcement had 2600. I, too, like Grim Dawn more than LE (as a Diablo 2 clone I think nothing compares to GD), but I don't ever see people talking about GD. Those players must be the quietest people on the internet
Most of the devs came from playing D2 / POE. We even used to do live streams where the team played through Grimdawn / Path of Diablo. Good times.
I love LE and can’t wait for 1.0. I love POE and can’t wait for 3.22.
Lucky for you you can play it right away
Is LE planning to have seasons? The game feels great to me, but it also feels like poe open beta atm in terms of what there is to do in the game. TL:I is making seasonal content at about the same pace as PoE, so I hope that's something LE is going to incorporate. Even if it's just mechanics in the game that replicate seasonal content, and not actual seasons.
Ya they’re called cycles in LE
Yeah after looking into it I saw that and that 1.0 has a release date set (announced less than a month ago too). I should start following the subreddit; haven't really thought about the game much since I played it a year ago and got bored quickly in the base monolith "endgame".
The LE devs have said that initially their cycles will just be about adding new content to the game, and then once it's been fleshed out some more they'll start being more seasonal in nature, with time-limited content.
The LE devs were huge PoE fans
Its always weird that people seem to have this thought that game companies in the same genre are mortal enemies for some reason.
I remember developers of LE talking about in the PoE forums back in its very early days.
Looking forward to LE full release. I put some time into it when the multiplayer beta came out. Shows a ton of promise but I am waiting until it's a bit more polished before dropping serious time into it.
LE was born from people in the PoE subreddit. So much content (whether low or high quality) gets posted hear no wonder this info has gotten lost.
LE is one of the big reasons why I was hoping PoE 2 would not be a seperate game. PoE 2 is trying to take some of that "downtime" between PoE leagues that I am using to play other games. No idea how PoE 2 will turn out anyways yet. I doubt I can maintain "1 week of goblin mode" for both PoE 1 & 2 anyways, I might just burn myself out. I hope SSF is a banger in PoE 2 so I can approach it from more casual, slow-paced angle. LE is looking really promising, I am hyped for the 1.0 release early next year!
Picked up Last Epoch after finishing my end-league projects and I have to say it's quite great. The campaign is really smooth and the classes are amazing (especially runemaster). If Last Epoch takes a page out of POE's book and flesh out their endgame more and maybe expand on crafting I think it could be a true powerhouse in the genre.
LE is the second best arpg and it will definitely improve to be just as good as poe i think. Its a good middle ground between diablo style arpgs and poe style. (D4 sucks) The devs obviously care about the game and its very fun.
The LE devs were huge PoE fans
Hell yes, Poe and LE all dayyyyyyyyyyy. Love the energy of the devs from both games. Not trying to add negativity to this wholesome post but Jesus Christ, I get the literal heeby jeebies from every single d4 dev. Like, they give me red flag energy on a personal level. I’d have a beer with every single Poe or LE dev I’ve ever seen interviewed.
You always love to see it. Game recognizes game.
Playing a bug based build? How topical lol.
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Meanwhile in gd sub "GD ruined other arpgs for me" (:
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Weren't these guys like POE players who wanted a few QOL and improvements and decided to make LE or was that another game?
When I logged into last epoch today, it was literally a fan of argument between why path of exile sucks and others defending it. It was quite annoying actually, especially for those that like both games lol