Decided to pick up POE after 2+ years and give it a try. Im not a huge fan of POE anymore, and not a huge fan of the high difficulty of the early levels. A few things I did notice(or realize) in contrast to D4 early levels after 2 years away… High mob density. Mobs attack extremely fast in certain cases. Water elementals slow or freeze you which likely lead to death. You get cornered and die by 15 mobs surrounding you. You dont have access to crafting materials to make something viable to get you through. Currency is scarce to non existent. Finding Medium/Large life flasks early are a godsend. Bosses hit harder, much harder. I often find myself running for my life unless Im using an OP combo of skill gems. Its honestly frustrating.
However it has one advantage… it makes loot more interesting because you NEED to think about your gear a bit more. With your limited wisdom scrolls, should you identify the rare wand and hope for more damage affixes, or identify the rare boots for movement speed + res (or tri-res!). Its a great dilemma to have. It makes loot weighted more and meatier. Choices matter more because the early level difficulty of POE is, in my opinion, quite high unless youre an experienced vet that doesnt skip leagues and puts 300-400 hours into the game each league (this used to be me…). Coming back to the game after two years, I feel like a noob again and I was getting wrecked.
Currently, in D4, for the first hour or two of gameplay we look for a green up arrow in most cases. Its not fun or interesting. The content is easy, way too easy. Slogging through WT 1/2 feels like an unnecessary step because there isnt any difficulty. I dont care about my loot, just XP/Hour to get to WT3 where things matter a bit more. Yes, itemization 2.0 is going to feel much better but increasing the difficulty of the game might make our choices a bit more interesting indirectly.
I don’t want it to reach POE difficulty in the first 1-2 hours of d4 gameplay, but ramp it up significantly. If POE is a 10 for the first 1-2 hours, then I would love it if D4 ramped up to 75-80% of that. Force me to make the choice between more spell damage or more resistance. Make those defensive stats mean more instead of looking for green up arrows.
then go play PoE. If you want something not as difficult in middle between D4 and PoE, go play LE.
D4 has it’s place, and it is a game made for majority of the people that can enjoy. PoE and LE both are somewhat niche product, and that is fine where they are - especially PoE.
I prefer D4 gameplay, requiring a bit more than one button builds.
Why do you think they are doing itemization 2.0 ? Because the D4 community has played other ARPGS, such as LE, POE, Grim Dawn, and see the value of good itemization from those games and want those successes ported to D4. Our voices have finally been heard and they are making the necessary changes. Additionally, they are changing crafting to be a bit more in depth than just the Upgrade x 5 and done. Hell, they are literally copying Forging Potential from Last Epoch with Tempering.
Taking some of what works from other games is smart.
Telling someone to “go play the other game, this is D4” is terribly short-sighted and narrow minded considering Blizzard is finally waking up to the fact that the other ARPGs on the market do some things rather well and they could learn from them. Im going to assume you read my post as “I want this to be like POE” which isnt correct. I want things to change a bit in D4, taking what works from LE and POE and making our game better. With all things considered, I do prefer D4 over POE any day of the week because I enjoy the diablo universe, audio, aesthetic, graphics, world design, gameplay. Its itemization, bosses, build diversity, and endgame that are terrible and need some inspiration.
I don’t think you understood what I am trying to tell you. The patch note looks great, I also think S4 and beyond is looking like a right direction with every changes they’ve announced.
I also don’t think D4 needs to be more difficult than it already is. You need to get your audience correct, and think about the whole philosophy behind this game, who the targets are and why the difficulty is set the way it is currently.
Let me give you an example - Dev already said they don’t want people to spend too much leveling, they want you to have fun and blast through leveling to enjoy their end game which is where the core is. Your suggestion to make leveling more difficult, making weird decisions sounds like a chore that would only slow people down, that ain’t fun… That is not what D4 is.
I don’t think leveling decision should matter at all if any. COnsider you will be changing out your gear at a fast pace, and making changes again when you hit end game, why should decision matter in the first place during leveling process ?
Homey, do you have a basic understanding of what a difficulty setting comprised of different levels is supposed to be? One that doesn’t require a research committee to establish?
And yet you imply the game has a limited range of difficulty, if not effectively one difficulty. That’s because, even as slow as you are, you intuitively understand that the implementation of “difficulties” in this game is not actually about providing players with different difficulty levels but providing them with another attempt at progression. It is expected for players to go to WT3 at around a particular level and then to go to WT4 at around a particular level.
That’s how degenerate this game is. Even simple common sense things are misunderstood by its developers and many of its players.
I think the first 30 levels are boring and easy because we get 8 skill points and 4 potions. Distribute this gradually… and yes today it is very easy it could be a little more difficult
Since Dablo4 released last year, the direction of the game change is to accelerate the leveling process and let players enter the end game(WT4) more quickly, because the major player base of this game would like to access all the end game contents ASAP. S4 changes also mainly focusing on adding end game contents. At least for now I don’t see a good reason to make leveling process more difficult. We have capstone dungeons guarding WT3 and WT4, which are already somewhat hard for casual players.
More difficulty before end game(WT4) will just force most people to find and follow maxroll best builds earlier, to enter WT4. More fun? Probably for some players, but doubtful for most.
They can’t make it any harder. The player base is way too soft for that. By season 5 you will get ubers just for logging in and all 6 people still playing will love it!
What high difficulty? I played it for the first time about 6 months ago and had no problems getting through the campaign. I didnt even use build guides. Now it does get much harder later on.
How? You know that season 4 is axing the different affixes for increased points to different attributes right? Explain to me how that increases build diversity? When that is completely a different from how paragon boards function.
Many of the Diablo Clones ARPG’s are the ones that for me, could only meet the depth of Diablo II and it’s expansion. The only modern ARPG that interest’s me is POE II. That is the only modern one I have any interest in.
I don’t know about this when a lot of those different features were better executions when it comes to Diablo III ROS’s features. If I wanted to play a stylized arcade ARPG, I would just play Midways Gauntlet. Arcade ARPG’s are not what I am looking for. I am looking for something that is more like POEII.
All of this depends on the execution and actual gameplay of those said changes for Season 4. Currently, I am getting ROS flashbacks and I don’t think that would be good for Diablo IV when it was supposed to be DII inspired. Many of the modern ARPG’s are the opposite of what Diablo II was.
I very carefully weigh my gear choices from start to finish. I always start in tier II and I upgrade even small changes in gear, except maybe weapon which changes too fast. I don’t know why people insist on using that word “we” when they should mean “I.” I also move tier by 40 and 60, into 3 and 4, sometimes much earlier if the build allows. And I do it myself, not get carried through capstones. There’s plenty of challenge if you play that way. Early tier 2 bosses will wreck you and take a while to kill, especially if you’re opening up the Occultist in the first few levels.
Also, they changed level scaling on account of people unable to advance early on in game due to just looking at the green arrow and not building a viable character. They wanted to shortcut everything and then couldn’t face enemies their level. Rather than learn how to play they screamed nerf and got their way as usual. So you will not get your wish as they’ve already done it that way and the instant-grat crowd wouldn’t stand for it.
Somehow D4 attracted a lot of players that don’t like to do that. And since they are seemingly the majority, if they aren’t playing they aren’t buying cosmetics and that’s a problem.
As D4 has skip campaign option, you can start play T100 dungeon 8 hours after you reach lvl 100 or try the lvl 200+ monsters in PIT in season 4. Or just rush to Nevesk to kill your mother at lvl 75. I don’t understand why you think there is lack of difficulty in D4.