D4 vs PoE: The Comparison

PC General Discussion
1

As a disclaimer, Diablo will always have a special place in my heart.

Okay onto the comparison

D4

  • New season is always borrowed power
  • Static / standardized gear
  • Balance problems with a hard ceiling for all builds
  • Good boss fights
  • Good clarity / readability
  • Fun open world events (sadly unrewarding)
  • Way better story
  • No endgame
  • Solid class identity (disregarding damage of certain things)

PoE

  • New season is always new mechanics / items
  • Dynamic gear
  • Balance problems with no hard ceiling (can fund an F tier build to endgame)
  • Good boss fights, HARD boss fights
  • Bad clarity / readability - way too much screen clutter
  • No open world, TERRIBLE acts
  • Story? What’s that
  • The real game starts at the endgame
  • I identify as a tri-elemental melee witch

Both games could learn from each other a bit, but these season themes are getting stale.

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2

Both games should never be like each other. The worst thing you can do is try and occupy a space that another competitor has already gained solid ground with and has developed their player base.

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3

I’d rather have the best of both worlds, the problems D4 has are easily solved by something PoE has done years ago and vice versa. They could learn from each other.

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4

Me too… but it is a lot easier said than done.

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5

Certainly not, but small changes can add up. Imagine if instead of focusing on borrowed powers they made new items, or made new content (not a revamp of existing content)

6

How are the acts terrible?

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7

What a stale topic. I thought people were done doing this.

8

you are comparing Lilith 1 to PoE.

9

After you clear them a few times they become very sloggy. Lots of missions, very random objectives, and overall a slog.

Yes you can clear them in a few hours, but it’s a very focused few hours. You absolutely can’t autopilot.

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They gotta do something to feel relevant. Boredom and stupidity make you do weird things.

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Visual clarity is indeed a problem in PoE, however I think some of the problems in other bullets are a matter of taste and even gane design, like well-defined classes vs character customisation from the beginning.

Or open world vs acts, this one I would say is a problem in D4 and a fairly big one, since not only it simply doesn’t work in a way that justify its existence but also over the years it became clear how it is limiting the game.

12

Just to clarify you’re talking about PoE1 right ?

Ok, so, here’s my problem when people want to compare D4 to PoE or LE

  • A good portion of the gameplay (like 10 hours of it) is placed in the Overworld and Dungeons in D4

It’s not a “fast level up so I go to rifts/atlas/monolyths” e.t.c. (I get it, D4 does not have that, yet)

BUT, by design D4 is an open-world dungeon-dweller game, therefore the “intuitive” thing is to improve the overworld and events (heck add surprises as secondary events even)

It’s also not designed to have monsters entirely trivialized cause it’s an open field, open world, it’s designed for monsters to “carry the weight” of progression

Killing 30 archers in the open field means nothing really (a nuisance that lasts up to 20 seconds, at most), killing 30 archers spread out in several archer towers is something completely different (especially if there are some chests and nice rewards to open)

I’m not saying that D4 should be entirely based on “hard to progress” features, what I’m saying is that loot should feel like region-cleaned/earned instead of being “farmed” over and over

Yes I know there’s the horse but that horse can’t run in dungeons, and that’s where the “soul” of D4 still endures, make things hard to, not just clean-up but conquer, along with unique/dedicated rewards

That being said, what will make D4 better D4 does not fit what makes PoE better PoE, that’s all

The easiest way to fix D4 is fix the Pit and make the gameplay itself more surprise-worth, that’s something that wouldn’t work for PoE but most definitely works for D4

They’re different games after all

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13

Unless you’re playing SSF… PoE endgame is 70% browsing a thirdparty website and idle trading in your hideout.