Ninja Destroyer
Arcane
I'm playing Alma Witch, to get familiar with the skill system, been ages since D2 playing so the best thing for me is to go a well known path.
Yeah, this. I remember trying to play D2, starting, getting bored and uninstalling at least 3 times, so exciting and varied it felt.Some very selective nostalgia in here. Diablo II had probably the worst map design I've ever encountered. Hurp rectangular fields.
By slow burn I mean a fine cigar compared to some shitty chewing tobacco which instantly provides a nicotine fix. PoE does not suck at anytime, but it is a bit of an acquired taste for people who prefer intelligent game design. It's not a perfect game by any stretch, but it's a helluva lot better than a turd that starts out fun but burns out fast. Just because it gets better over time doesn't mean PoE is bad in the beginning, it just means that it has a more subtle curve. It's not a matter of good versus bad, but instead is a matter of lover verses whore. Does that make better sense?Reminds me of an argument put to me by a WoW player after I aired my views on how dreary it had become: "Oh, you think WoW is boring but you're only a level 40 warrior? Well, you really gotta get to the high levels. WoW only starts at level 70."PoE is a bit of a slow burn, but it's an incline since it helps weed out the dumb shits that prefer a more craptacular popamole progression.
I'm sorry, but the idea that you need to play a game for dozens of hours to get sufficiently leet for the gameplay to open up and become fun just isn't doing it for me. D2 which PoE tries to emulate was fun out of the box, PoE is just grindy, with boring map design and environments to boot.
What PoE gets absolutely right, at least last time I played, is the potion system and the monster damage balance. Even if you play the warrior guy, standing in the middle of a bunch of monsters even in the beginning will likely lead to you dying, making movement more important than in many other games of the type, and I find it appealing how the potion system doesn't simply revolve around TPing to town to stock up on 6000+ healing potions before a major boss fight but actually having to play the game well to get them refilled. Good thinking by the devs there.
It's far too quick.Multiplayer experience ultimately depends on the people you hook up with. While this is true for most games out there, it's even more so, imo, in PoE, because the loot allocation mechanics have high potential to generate butthurt.
D2 had far more variety and imagination put in their environments. PoE has different types of bland wasteland, some caves and some dungeons that are more or less interchangable. End.D2 had better atmosphere? WTF were you smoking? Catgirls and goofy midgets and naked warrior womynz. What atmosphere was that exactly? Bad fanfiction?
The skill and loot systems don't even need defending.
That's one of the things I really thought Diablo 3 did well was giving each player his or her own loot drops. The little delay isn't long enough if you're not right there next to the item or trying to decide if you care to get to it in time.Yeah, it sucks. From my experience, you either
a) play with stable groups of friends who you trust to leave your valuables (no matter how valuable) on the ground even after the timer has expired; people like that are damn hard to find "from scratch" because it's sort of acquired ethics, and you'll see plenty of top-level players on server who will still have an atrocious looting reputation, or
b) make own groups with name like "mannered co-op" or something, enforce this attitude and kick those who don't comply; these kinds of parties become more prevalent once you get to post-game on last difficulty (CB); from what I've seen, though, it never gets past "map owner gets maps", loot is simply too hard to control once you get to big groups and a lot of loot modifiers
But But But!Diablo 2 and PoE are both great games.
D2 had far more variety and imagination put in their environments. PoE has different types of bland wasteland, some caves and some dungeons that are more or less interchangable. End.D2 had better atmosphere? WTF were you smoking? Catgirls and goofy midgets and naked warrior womynz. What atmosphere was that exactly? Bad fanfiction?
The skill and loot systems don't even need defending.
D2 had demon haunted harems, the insides of giant termite mounds, lost Aztec cities, Egyptian tombs and the awesome Arcane Sanctuary.
No contest, in my book.