I didn’t play the game and I don’t plan to for 1 simple reasons: how they handle deaths - i.e map is lost and/or you need to redo the whole map again. I am not saying it’s wrong how they handle it, but I am saying, that, it’s just not for me.
With that said, I do like how they handle the maps, especially how you can imbue (GGG called it juicing, I.E pumping them up full of steroids) them by adding up to like 5 or so affixes on them, to drop more of something but thus making them more difficult. It offers player a choice, of playing a normal NMD or juice it up. If you all remembered pre-season or s1-2, how NMD 80+ was DIFFICULT, where you’d get stunned like crazy, frozen, and murdered. I remember doing mercys reach at nmd 100 early on, man, it was a pain, like 8 elites in 1 small room, it took 3 of us 10 min to clear them,. and guess what, reward was, not much.
Here, you start with a sigil or pit key as how it is now, and you create currency (akin to orbs or whatever they are in POE 2) to randomly buff the sigils. By buffing them, you not only increase the monster level, but their damage, freeze, stun, and other aspects, like lower armor, or resists, in make cdr less effective, but you also increase the rewards. If it takes you 15 min to clear 1 nmd, vs 2minutes now, and you die 2-5 times, it maybe worth it, if the chance to drop stuff is 200-300% or higher quality item’s 2-3 ga chance increases by 200%, so many choices.
By offering players choice, you create variety, which is a big win.
I also dislike how itemization is done in d4. Right now, using say, Sorc, you get a 2h staff with int and crit damage for example, and you u know the 2 rolls you need to roll and then we have 1 stat we need to ideally triple crit on, therefore, for that build, everyone will have 99% same gear. That’s is boring, and only rng is range of stats.
In POE 2, you find a good base or rare, and then you use different orbs to add up to 6 rare stats and you can even re-roll some of them after adding. In way, with 6 stats., it ensures you pretty much won’t have any item that is similar to anyone else (mirror legal duping is a different topic, lol). Maybe top 10% of best items will have 4 out of 6 same stats, but still, that’s a MUCH MUCH better variety. Now people have to farm white or magic or rare items or even legendary. They also have to farm 4-6 different orb like currencies to imbue the items.
What does it mean? Well - a few things: 1. a lot more chase items 2. a lot more upgrades. 3. a lot more things to farm 4. and most and by far most importantly, seasons won’t seem so long, because when you’re having fun, time goes by faster.
I do hear those who will say that it will complicate things by alot. And, yes, it will, but remember, those stopped at t1 or never broke p230, are not going to partake in any of this anyway, and one who want this, will need to go into t3 and t4.
I guess what I am saying is, take the best parts (be inspired) about POE 2 and implement them. Kinda what they took from D2 and vastly improved on it.
If d4 is 2 on the complexity level and poe 1 is 10, poe is 8, if you bring d4 to say 5, on that scale, then I feel like most people will welcome it