Diablo IV

[Grunker]

It is an obvious desire to please all parties. But that is simply not realistic.

Exactly the vibe I'm getting from this "don't worry, this game will totally appeal to PoE-players, casuals and Corporate!" It's every time I read a sentence that makes me go "nice!" the next sentence is "errrrr..." and the following sentence makes me want to throw up. Then we're back to "nice!"

 

[Grunker]

I would've liked to have seen Diablo's item finding go like this:

A lot of unique items would be forged by a blacksmith or something in a town much like Griswold in D1. These would be your safe bet items, maybe not top of the line, certain rare items and their mods could beat them out, but still nevertheless great and are mostly static in their affixes.

Then some unique items that drop from monsters are very, very good, but because it comes from a demon from Hell there's a high chance it is corrupted and cursed. D1 flirted with this idea that some items had drawbacks, and I'd have loved to see that explored more. Wearing the Undead Crown slowly drains you of your life but allows you greater command of more high level undead, Duriel's Shell provides great fire resistance but at the cost of chilling/randomly immobilizing you, the Butcher's Cleaver provides massive physical damage but it cannot be used with a shield and is notoriously slow, etc.

Maybe you could find ways to lift the curse from these items by having a Holy figure bless it to purge it of its wickedness or something. Due to the strength of evil that is within it, this would require great willpower and would only be able to be done a limited amount of times per difficulty from that NPC. Any further would require a lucky encounter with a shrine.

Obviously this shit will never happen but I always thought it would have been cool and thematically fitting.

There's a ton of items that work pretty much exactly like that in PoE except instead of limited "blessings" as you call them the upgrades are hidden behind quest chains, bosses, item drops or crafting.

 

[ArchAngel]

https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23232022
System Design in Diablo IV (Part I)

This sounds pretty solid. Who is David Kim?

A retard that was in charge of Starcraft 2 balancing for years. When he left to work on D4, Sc2 balance got better...

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

There's a ton of items that work pretty much exactly like that in PoE except instead of limited "blessings" as you call them the upgrades are hidden behind quest chains, bosses, item drops or crafting.

The few times I've tried to get into POE I just couldn't really get the hook of it like others swear by. This was like maybe 3 years ago or so when I last gave it an honest go but my big issue is how much of a pain it is to play a melee based character with the random one shotting that seems rampant once you're at the "end game." From the melee builds I did see that worked it was this one skill that made you attack like fifteen feet away from monsters or it was a whole bunch of aura stacking/screen clearing nonsense that it may as well have been magic at that point.

Can you actually make a viable endgame build that involves either dual wielding weapons or using a big weapon and wrecking shop while being upclose and is comparable to something like a Zealadin or Frenzy Barbarian? For what it's worth I think the expansion of POE I played in was the one where your starting character could specialize into more focused subclasses as I remember going the Assassin route.

 

[Grunker]

Well it's not like I don't get you. I tried to get into PoE like 3 or 4 times before it "clicked"

 

[Grunker]

If by viable you mean kill every boss, then definetely yes. The game isn't balanced around the insanity streamer clear builds. Those trivialize the game, which I don't really mind. I just rarely play them myself. The game's lead director only plays really weird tank-builds that are anything but meta.

But I did finally get into the game by starting with less complex, more cookie-cutter builds to familiarize myself with all the complexity.

 

[Shadenuat]

Can you actually make a viable endgame build that involves either dual wielding weapons or using a big weapon and wrecking shop while being upclose and is comparable to something like a Zealadin or Frenzy Barbarian?

You can but even just hitting enemies with a big sword with Necromancer is more fun. Diablo 2 already is designed punishing for melees (almost every dangerous ability is hyper dangerous for melees, be it fire enchanted, curse on hit or the cute dolls in A3 + you need better equipment + tons of mobs) but it still kinda works. Diablo 1 is punishing starting about 11th level and beyond. But PoE is where shit is just ded. Although I didn't play their "melee patch".

If by viable you mean kill every boss

Even some of the early map bosses are a good wake call for melees.

 

[ArchAngel]

Can you actually make a viable endgame build that involves either dual wielding weapons or using a big weapon and wrecking shop while being upclose and is comparable to something like a Zealadin or Frenzy Barbarian?

You can but even just hitting enemies with a big sword with Necromancer is more fun. Diablo 2 already is designed punishing for melees (almost every dangerous ability is hyper dangerous for melees, be it fire enchanted, curse on hit or the cute dolls in A3 + you need better equipment + tons of mobs) but it still kinda works. Diablo 1 is punishing starting about 11th level and beyond. But PoE is where shit is just ded. Although I didn't play their "melee patch".

If by viable you mean kill every boss

Even some of the early map bosses are a good wake call for melees.

PoE melee suffers once you reach end game but you don't know what you are doing. You just compared that with campaigns of D1 and D2. In PoE campaign you can melee as much as you want and have fun. Actually in PoE campaign melee is way more viable than D1 or D2.

PoE endgame is designed to be super hard and unbalanced and it is left to players to deal with it in any way possible.

 

[Shadenuat]

For D2, I mean everything up to Hell. Which is where you get physical immune and similar stuff.

I feel more viable in it than in PoE.

 

[Grunker]

If by viable you mean kill every boss

Even some of the early map bosses are a good wake call for melees.

They're really not lol. Only if you're completely clueless, which is fair for a newbie, which is why I'm saying I didn't get into the game until I first played something more cookie cutter.

 

[Grunker]

For D2, I mean everything up to Hell.

Maps are after Hell in the logic of these games. They literally were back when PoE still had three difficulties

 

[Shadenuat]

If by viable you mean kill every boss

Even some of the early map bosses are a good wake call for melees.

They're really not lol.

They really are, and it gets progressively worse as you reach reds. But I guess if you just steal builds from reddit? But I don't see how can you have any fun playing game like that. The whole idea behind the game is that biggest challenge is when you press the Skills-hotkey.

For D2, I mean everything up to Hell.

Maps are after Hell in the logic of these games. They literally were back when PoE still had three difficulties

I don't know about logic, but it is not the same in practice. PoE campaign is almost autopilot, with final boss being only major stat check. D2 Hell stat checks you fairly early in comparison.

I didn't get into the game until I first played something more cookie cutter

I actually think that PoE atmosphere and looks are totally fine. And the story while anime has some nice things like that 2 bros story u learn from stained glass pictures.

But the basics of the game? The moment it gets to endgame, it just collapses for me. I do not enjoy killing monsters, and I do not enjoy getting loot. I just don't enjoy the basics, the process. It feels like a filler for crafting and tweaking the skill tree.

 

[Jasede]

It took me many many many tries before I got into PoE with a weird slow crit lightning ball build that made gigantic perpetually critting lasers.

My biggest problem with the game is how it doesn't really get going until you reach maps. It's tuned to be so unbelievably easy that the biggest challenge is slogging to the endgame.

Reminded me of Wow retail, where leveling to max is incredibly boring, takes forever, then you do incredibly easy dungeons to get some starting items, and then, eventually, finally, you can play the real game, mythic+ and mythic raiding.

 

[Shadenuat]

It honestly just makes PoE character building ever so more impressive, that it manages to hold together an RPG where leveling, killing monsters and looting is boring.

 

[Grunker]

"steal builds from reddit"

 

[Shadenuat]

It's a meme from 40K competetive. It sounds a lot better in Russian.

 

[Grunker]

Nah, I liked it. But I think you didn't get my point. In a game as compelx as PoE, you can't really expect to just start pwning shit with misguided builds of your own device. You gotta learn things first. That's why I had the same reaction as you the first couple of times. Then I bit the bullet and played a cookie cutter build, slowly learned as I play. A couple of leagues ago, I took a Hardcore solo self-found character with a Spectral Shield Throw build of my own creation to kill Uber Elder.

I should be amazed that we're even having this debate. It's usually guys like you arguing in Pillars-debates that it's very important that you can fail at builds if you do shit incorrectly and if you don't understand the system. I don''t hold to that and can enjoy both types of games, but lo and behold here's a game that is build entirely around the concept of punishing lack of system knowledge and rewarding understanding and experience, and you complain that you have to "steal build from reddits." I mean, you just can't win

 

[Shadenuat]

Talking about viability and funs of melee, Grunker tells about his Spectral Shield Throw build. This is basically ideal post about PoE.

 

[Grunker]

What a lulzy strawman. That point wasn't about the viablity of melee at all, it was a discussion about "homemade" vs. netripped builds. But I guess since you lacked a response to my point you instead chose to ignore it, hoping no one noticed.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I don't have hardcore gamer experience in POE so I'm very likely wrong here but I think shitty builds being trash is fine and it's great when a game punishes you for making something nonsensical and counter intuitive by kicking your ass the old fashioned way.

But POE in my limited experience comes off as the sort of game that doesn't even like it when you try weird builds. It's a game that's stubborn. It wants you to tackle it in a certain way at the endgame and if you try to deviate too much it has the most eager murder boner to put you back on your way.

 

[Shadenuat]

I don't have hardcore gamer experience in POE so I'm very likely wrong here but I think shitty builds being trash is fine and it's great when a game punishes you for making something nonsensical and counter intuitive by kicking your ass the old fashioned way.

I wouldn't call myself "harcor gamerz", although I played PoE since most of endgame consisted basically out of repeatedly clearing Docks. No matter the state of the game, however, or if character failed or not, I burned out somewhere around endgame extremely quickly and continued to do so up until err Synthesis I guess. Somewhere around turning mapos into mapos and first bosses the routine simply kills it for me, and I abandon character, good or bad, in fact if character turns out bad I actually have more fun with the game for some time. Eventually though Synthesis was the point where something inside me broke and I began having more fun replaying Diablo 1 than that.

As for weird builds, you can make them, but it is true that community is obsessed with running same shit; and it's not like they update all skills together - just look at some of the animations. Well, at least they didn't for a while.

 

[Shadenuat]

What a lulzy strawman. That point wasn't about the viablity of melee at all, it was a discussion about "homemade" vs. netripped builds. But I guess since you lacked a response to my point you instead chose to ignore it, hoping no one noticed.

As condescending as ever. But I guess "u must know your DraQs"?

 

[Grunker]

What a lulzy strawman. That point wasn't about the viablity of melee at all, it was a discussion about "homemade" vs. netripped builds. But I guess since you lacked a response to my point you instead chose to ignore it, hoping no one noticed.

As condescending as ever. But I guess "u must know your DraQs"?

Writing this post:

Talking about viability and funs of melee, Grunker tells about his Spectral Shield Throw build. This is basically ideal post about PoE.

And crying about "condescension". For reaaaaaaaaaaalzzzzz brooooooo

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Ladies, you're both beautiful.

 

[Grunker]

But POE in my limited experience comes off as the sort of game that doesn't even like it when you try weird builds. It's a game that's stubborn. It wants you to tackle it in a certain way at the endgame and if you try to deviate too much it has the most eager murder boner to put you back on your way.

Very untrue. That's what I meant by optimal builds trivializing content. That's the price the game pays for allowing all sorts of shit as long as its put together properly. What is really going on here is what Shadenuat says - he nails it:

community is obsessed with running same shit

I've never seen a community as obsessed with FotM as PoE's. Like, you can have the best players repeatedly state that some skill is incredibly good but if it hasn't been updated or no big streamers have played it for a while, the whole community concludes that it is trash. Often builds get slight, very small buffs leading to an explosion in player numbers even if the skill didn't get changed that much lol. The actual truth is that most skills are perfectly fine.