D4 vs PoE 1 and 2 - My thoughts as a casual player and huge Blizzard fan

PC General Discussion
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tldr: Lore, story and immersion is a competitive advantage Diablo 4 will always have. For casual players Blizzard should focus on better loot management and end game build diversity. If this is done I will have no reason to consider PoE.

Dear Community,

I have been a Blizzard fan/lover since 1994 when as a 14 year old I would play Warcraft with my siblings. (Got into RTS post the Dune (Frank Herbert’s epic lore) game. Diablo was my first ARPG love. The lore struck my soul, I remember feeling actual fear as I first descended Tristram and having the skeletons come towards me and one of my eternally lasting gaming memories was figuring out you can kill the Butcher (as the Warrior - later to be revealed as Aidan) using a strategy of criss-crossing firewall scrolls because I figured out the intersections led to multiplicative damage which burnt the Butcher to a crisp.

I love immersion and character customization. I played WoW fanatically from 2005 till 2022. Eventually work responsibilities (i run a fintech in Pakistan) family etc meant that I could not stay up till 2am to raid with my European guild (spent most of my life in London). I like to live an alternate life through my gaming characters and my IRL responsibilities limit the time I can spend on gaming to max 10 hours/week (if I’m lucky). Diablo 4 was an exciting opportunity to switch.

I got a Barbarian to level 55 on launch, another Barbarian to level 80 season 1 (managed to finish season journey) and now have a lightning storm Druid level 100 and have nearly finished season journey. (need to finish Hunter acclaim to lvl 18 and purify more seeds).

I think I’ve spent about 150 euros on skins and also purchased Activision Blizzard Shares (which was a good trade after acquisition got approved). I think of myself as an above average “monetary value” customer.

I follow a few content creators and there is this constant chatter about PoE. This is creating angst for me as I am wondering whether I should change to PoE (for me it’s binary as I only have time for one game). The mixing spells feature in PoE 2 seems amazing.

Ultimately the character customization and lore and emotional attachment to Diablo will prevail but I would please like to see the following implemented (this will remove any seduction/ temptation from PoE):

  1. Better loot management
  2. Less annoying stash space management particularly when it comes to aspects
  3. More than one build that does not capped out at NM 100 + Uber Lilith + AoZ - seems like there is only PetNado/ Stomstrike viable for casual players. Would be cool if there ways to enhance well designed builds. I don’t want to use guides I want to improve my build as that matches the fantasy of my character.
  4. Would absolutely love spells to interact with each other. the whole tornado + fire becoming a fire tornado would be fantastic. Appreciate lots and lots of work to do on this but this would be insanely fun and kill any appeal of PoE 2.
  5. Some kind of memory portal where you can see the videos/ ingame footage of campaign. The campaign was beautiful and immersive as was the cinema footage. Shame that you only see it once when you do campaign. Want to rewatch the stuff with my character. Also if you are emotionally attached to a character please implement rebirth function
  6. Storing multiple builds like D3. Happy if there was a farmable material cost to this or a quest or indeed an end game function that allows this.
  7. Would be unbelievable if our mogs/ earned mogs from Diablo 3 achievements and collections somehow transfer over to Diablo 4.

The above is a wish list. Thank you for your time reading my story and your consideration to this post. and most importantly thank you for making an amazing game.

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Why can’t you play both if you actually enjoy both? I don’t understand the notion that you have to stick to one game only, seems a little absurd to me. As of right now the Legions from PoE and the Seasons from D4 are offset enough to actually be able to play both, get to endgame, and enjoy yourself. Now granted PoE has more endgame right now then D4, but regardless.

If you don’t enjoy D4, don’t play it and wait until they add more content, QoL, whatever else you want then come back, or don’t. Same with PoE and PoE 2 when it comes out. Giving Blizzard an ultimatum if your demands aren’t meant isn’t really an incentive for them to change the game based on your suggestions.

They’re currently working on the game, they’re working on some of the very things you’ve suggested, not all mind you, but I would say out your suggestions they are working on: #1, #2, #3, #4 to an extent but probably not what you’re thinking, and #6. So only 2 out of the 7 you mentioned haven’t been touched on by the dev team.

Now the game needs a lot of work, no one’s going to deny that, but it’s going to take time, a lot of time. I would highly recommend playing other games in the meantime, PoE is a good alternative if you like that game, as are any number of games out there. Great thing about video games these days, they keep coming out with new ones every year, you get your pick.

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D4 is for a wider audience of players. Where as PoE 1 and 2 are niche for some players. D4 is considered to be easier to get into and mess around with builds etc etc as respeccing is easy just cost gold. PoE is punishing to new players unless they are looking at a guide for builds. Generally its good to try to explore the passive tree on your own first, however many fall into the trap of either having poor damage or 0 survivability. Respeccing in PoE you need orbs of regret and or use the few skill refunds you get from quests. In the early stages of the game if you mess up its better to just reroll instead of wasting materials.

PoE is far more complex in terms of player progression, skill interactions etc… But one of the reasons i no longer play PoE is the immense amount of bloat that was added with all the new leagues. Second reason is the long slog through 10 acts again, I just can’t seem to run through them over and over…

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There is no reason a game should create angst with you. Try another game if you want. It’s not like it’s a big life altering decision. Play what you want, think for yourself.

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I dont think Diablo can even compete with POE at this point, they are just stacked with developers who get ARPG games, and clearly play the game they make. I cant say that for Diablo 4.

The problem is, theres not really a place for Diablo in ARPG world, which D3 at least had a place, being that POE was a fledgling indy game at the time and really nothing else was out there.

Unfortunately, D4 is poorly made at its core design. Bandaid patches and cool modifiers on already existing mobs wont fix this. Take out the graphics and cutscenes and there is a VERY mediocre game in there…which was ok 14 years ago, but no longer the case.

I play these games casually, but like wow, diablo just isnt fun to play long term, and the level of casual needed to see D4 as a good game is just far beyond me, perhaps people who game 1hr a week, and never heard of ARPG before… this games great?

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I play/have played both. I won’t tell you which I prefer myself, but I would encourage you to at least try out the competition, you may just be surprised how good one or the other is.

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I would argue that Diablo 4 has the advantage in Story/Lore and Graphics only. Immersion is more than that though. If your gameplay is constantly broken with bugs and the issue of loot being broken, that is not immersive at all.

As for POE2 it will be free so take a few days to see if it is worth playing over this. Not a difficult choice. Don’t do the “sunk cost fallacy” thing where you play a game because you spent money on it. You may miss out on the better game.

I also think both games will mimic each other for what each does well, so hopefully in time D4 will also be good. And yes, I honestly believe it is D4 that needs to catch up, based on the systems in play in POE1, unless POE2 is some illogical step backwards…which from all indications it will not be.

That said POE2 hopefully will have better story representation than the first one did.

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Mama
uWu
Didn’t mean to make you cry
If Subdriver’s not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on

As if nothing really matters

:hamster: :popcorn:

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Diablo 4 is never going to be able to compete with PoE in terms of depth and itemization. The PoE devs eat, sleep, and breathe the game 24/7 and you can truly see their passion when they talk about the game. This is their baby. From what we have seen, it certainly feels like Diablo 4 is a 9-5 weekday job for most of the people working on the game. They clock out and that’s when Diablo 4 ends for them until the next day. That’s how the Blizzard machine runs and it is what it is. The devs aren’t bad people or phonies for that, they’re just doing their job and going home like all of us do at our jobs.

It’s just that when you’re motivated by passion instead of money, you pour your life into it and the end result always shows.

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Hi Iggi,

Thanks for engagement. The reason why I cannot play both is that with family (I have 3 kids and am a pretty involved dad) and work (I run a 300 person company) I only get max 10 hours or so a week.

I am competitive and target oriented by nature and for example with the seasons in D4, I barely managed to finish the season 1 journey in time ( i was stressing about hitting the world boss schedule in the last weekend). So if for example I only spent 5/10 hours of gaming time on D4, I doubt I would be able to finish the season achievements.

I did try PoE and played as a templar. I honestly liked it and thought it was great, but a) I did not like that I could not customize the facial features of the templar (because of my immersion fantasies) and b) I felt that to truly make meaningful progress in any grind/loot based ARPG you need to spend time.

I hope this makes sense. Finally I do not believe I was making any “ultimatums” I quite clearly presented my suggestions as a wishlist. How could I have written my post better to convey that this is not an ultimatum but a sharing of thoughts and a wish list?

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POE is an epic game filled with tons to do. D4 is a broken beta game with zero to do. Tough choice.

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Just curious. Why are you combing through the Diablo IV forums instead of playing Path of Exile?

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Combined with this:

Work against each other of course. Don’t get me wrong, we all have real life obligations and can’t spend every waking moment playing video games. Just saying that when you have a limited amount of time to play and you are competitive and target oriented, an ARPG may not be for you due to RNG constraints in general.

Having said that Diablo 3 might be more oriented to your time constraints. It’s extremely fast, loot drops like candy, and you can potentially get through all seasonal objectives relatively easily with some effort. Now obviously there are mixed feelings about D3 throughout the Diablo community in general, but wouldn’t hurt to give it a try assuming you haven’t already.

As I said before though, most of the concerns/suggestions you have for D4 are being worked on by the developers. However it will take time, your 3 kids may be in college by the time they get around to adjusting everything (obviously depending on how old they are now but that’s neither here nor there).

Like you said, even if you only spent 5/10 hours of gaming time on D4 though you probably wouldn’t get to complete much, even with the changes coming I feel it would just add more content to get through, rather then less. Now it may make the monotonous parts easier to slog through, and feel like less of a chore, but it’s more or less going to be more of the same gameplay. Kill things, get loot, curse rng gods, rinse repeat.

I present exhibit A:

This is an ultimatum. Now you may not have intended it this way, but you’re basically telling blizzard if, and I quote, “better loot management and end game build diversity” are not focused on by Blizzard, you will be considering PoE instead, with the possibility of playing that game over D4. I would say you could have just left out the part about considering PoE. Your opening tl;dr to your whole essay comes off as a “Do this or I won’t play your game”. Just how I perceived it is all.

I get exactly where you’re coming from, and you are in fact the target audience for Blizzard games in general. Sadly over the years Shareholder Gaming Studios games have decreased in quality and have just been rushed out the door with very little substance. Long gone are the giants of Triple A Gaming Studios, they’ve been replaced with greedy corporate shareholders that just want to make a quick buck before cashing out. As such we have to wait post-launch for them to add additional content and fix things.

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This!
I am glad we finally found something better in D4 than poe.

Thats why I played just like 3-4 sessons in poe. I hate that!

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I tried POE the other day.

Free to play/DL, so i said why not.

Made it to level 10 and uninstalled it. Game play is just not smooth. Map overlay was extremely distracting. Graphic were clunky. Honestly, the first town layout was kinds dumb.

It just didnt feel great.

No clue why people are attempting to compare it the Diablo series.

I may try and grab POE2 if it is free, but doubtful if we gotta pay for it.

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Tbh you should try it. They said they are casting a larger net to target a greater audience (market share) so it will be interesting to see what they end up with.

A lot of hardcore PoE warriors will lose their minds. But it might be fun.

I just want middle ground between D2 and D3. I want D4 to be ots own thing but it seems to be headed into the D3 direction where seasons are 1 week of gameplay. Tho S2 kept me engaged almost to the end of the season so they are doing some things right.

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Ya, PoE doesn’t give a good first impression imo. It’s 10 years old and can’t compare with it’s modern competitors in terms of graphics.

I prefer it because of how much it offers players to experiment with, but understand i’ve also grown accustomed to a certain amount of jank within the game.

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I understand your points and they apply to most people.

I’m actually in the same boat as Omarion to some degree. I only play one game at a time, so basically need to choose. I don’t have time to play more than one and really find it rewarding.

That is basically the main issue.

I am or was competitive, and that’s the thing some players were or have that mindset and attitude and because of limited time need to be very focused / directional. This is not mutually exclusive.

Anyway, regards to using the word “ultimatum”, I think that’s a bit strong and drives a connotation of trying to force some decision on the devs or I’m going to leave feeling.

That’s the same “ultimatum” that everyone has given blizzard that has already left for another reason.

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Adding useful Mercenares to Diablo 4, that would be my first step.

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POE looks fine its help up well and looks about the same as last epoch, sure, D4 has better graphics, but the ARPG genre never really hit the “graphics obsessed gamers” so you really dont get that crowd here.

Sure POE is overwhelming, especially with all the past league mechanics.

But comparing D4 and POE is like comparing a dump truck and a volkswagen golf. Totally different with totally different purposes. I dont think D4 can even start to compete in the space POE is, its just fully mogged on every level other than gimmicks like cutscenes and sound.

The problem is, D4 doesnt really have a place with ARPG games other than it has the diablo name outside of literal busydads with consoles.

The ARPG just isnt good enough and other than that it just stands on the campaign which ends relatively quick. Meanwhile they seem interested to force things they think the hardcore ARPG crowd, which are no longer here, will like, which is counter to what the busydads with consoles want.

Its a mishmash game with no real niche anymore basically.