D4 had over 1 million closed beta access players, with multi-millions expected this weekend. Wow.

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鬼殺し wrote:

My poor stupid Wolcen. I have been corresponding with their Discord dev/CM about a whole slew of ps4/5 fuckups and I am dead sure they will never get them fixed. But I disagree that only chapter 1 felt polished -- all 3 had a nice flow to them and kept me going. Chapter 4, on the other hand, is a bloody mess. It all leads to the same endgame and I still find that mode quite sufficient for altoholism but it is glaringly clear they rushed it out the door.

There is a better timeline out there where the devs figured out how to turn the alpha version of Wolcen into a full game, but in our timeline it is the poster child for overpromising and underdelivering.

Ah by polish I mean actually working smoothly - act 1 was reasonably bug free but acts 2 & 3 suffered from all sorts of issues, broken quest triggers, falling through the floor on boss fights, bosses going invulnerable between phases and such. The actual flow was fine, just needed several more rounds of QA & bugfixing.

Hmm yeah. I dunno. Bugwise I found it derpy from go to woe for years.

Again, not something I anticipate with DIV -- although my necro's huge honking sword disappeared at some point which would have bothered me more had I actually used it for anything but a spell statstick.

That also used to really shit me in ARPGs but after d3 I realised it's a lost fight. Casters using melee weapons as foci is just a thing. It definitely bothers me more in ARPGs that still have basic weapon attacks since that then makes it seem even casters might be able to melee (d2 meleemancer or meleesorc for example). Remove all such things (as D3 pretty much did and DIV definitely does) and the precedent of weapon=statstick is there from scratch. The game sets it as a rule and I feel no need to go against that flow.

So that's something else I like about not just D3 and DIV but also Inquisitor -- they set their skill parameters early and don't break them. There is a simple honesty to that that PoE completely lacks in its overwhelming freedom of choice. Do anything your way? Awesome. Discover most of those ways are dead ends before long? Lame. I would much rather a game with 20 fixed styles that work than one with a million possible styles where maybe 50 work. You are looking at a difference of 100% style viability vs ...I dunno, some ludicrously small percentage.

And that is why Exiles revile DIV and most other ARPGs -- beating those odds is winning the game. Can't beat them when it seems a game has already done it for you. Of course to me that is like saying sightseeing is a waste of time because it is unnecessarily the long way around but eh, straight lines and all that. PoE is an incredible game for people who like the way lightning works -- it might seem to be taking a jagged or curved path but it always follows a course of least resistance/impediment. Sticking to the storm metaphor, DIV is more like the rain -- many drops doing much the same thing but still in slightly unique ways.

To the raindrops, lightning is just a flash.
To the lightning, raindrops are banal and insignificant.

And yes, Wolcen players were the thunder (signifying nothing) -- and I think Grim Dawn players are the wind, an intangible but resilient constant that doesn't even need a storm to do its thing.

I suppose all ARPGs aspire to be complete storms, but it'll never happen. Not when you can say PoE, D3 and DIV are all legitimate heirs to D2's legacy -- for build variety/trade mayhem, narrative conceits, and atmosphere/thematic coherence respectively.

That's the funny thing about the illusion of choice in PoE. Well maybe "illusion" is not the exact description, they are real, but my goodness the amount of noob traps, and pitfalls a choice can result in, just conveys a meh experience to the player. It's why most of the serious PoE players are pushed into metas as well. It's just feels bad to find yourself bricked or gimped.

I also really dislike the lack of identity PoE has embraced. Again under the guise of flexibility, it just makes things more bland. At least that's my view. I much prefer the class systems. I do think the ascendancies GGG added post launch were good, a way to focus and specialize, but they havent done that enough, and the balance between those options is glaringly bad (poor gladiator)

Gating the new 16 or so ascendancy options behind PoE2 is also a bit of poor form with respect to Standard and PoE1. It's intentional though, so I guess GGG doesn't care much about alienating those folks. They can just "start over" lol.

That said, can't argue with the results. GGG has done well for itself. Granted it has been in a bit a sheltered state competition wise. D4's appeal to a wider swath probably jeopardizes a large segment of the PoE playerbase, but we won't know to what extent for a bit.

As far as bugs go I honestly didnt see much in D4, but admittedly, small sample size. I cannot imagine what the PoE2 beta will look like when it arrives, let alone porting issues with PoE1 and Console versions. I don't even know how they are going to design leagues moving forward as PoE1 is parallel. (And are they releasing PS5/Xbox next generation versions?) Seems like a big limiting factor.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Gating the new 16 or so ascendancy options behind PoE2 is also a bit of poor form with respect to Standard and PoE1. It's intentional though, so I guess GGG doesn't care much about alienating those folks. They can just "start over" lol.

You are aware that "PoE2" is just patch 4.0 yea? A big patch with all the changes and new content. So how is anything "gated" behind something?

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Pashid wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Gating the new 16 or so ascendancy options behind PoE2 is also a bit of poor form with respect to Standard and PoE1. It's intentional though, so I guess GGG doesn't care much about alienating those folks. They can just "start over" lol.

You are aware that "PoE2" is just patch 4.0 yea? A big patch with all the changes and new content. So how is anything "gated" behind something?

I was surprised myself on this point. But apparently, if you don't select the PoE2 campaign, you won't have access to the 16 new ascendancy options.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Pashid wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Gating the new 16 or so ascendancy options behind PoE2 is also a bit of poor form with respect to Standard and PoE1. It's intentional though, so I guess GGG doesn't care much about alienating those folks. They can just "start over" lol.

You are aware that "PoE2" is just patch 4.0 yea? A big patch with all the changes and new content. So how is anything "gated" behind something?

I was surprised myself on this point. But apparently, if you don't select the PoE2 campaign, you won't have access to the 16 new ascendancy options.

Just means that you have to crate a new character even on standard.
You could even reuse the gear of older characters if it suites a build you plan to play on one of the new classes.
Or start out on the 4.0 league and get the character in standard after the league.

Once you've picked the new ascendancies you can also select them in poe1

Re TNG's ascendancies: incentive.

I laughed when I saw they were indeed gating the new subclasses behind their new campaign. GGG really doubling down on that whole YOU WILL PLAY OUR NEW CAMPAIGN AND YOU WILL LIKE IT shtick. Even if it's just once, which GGG better hope it isn't given how expensive a full campaign is to make.

They have already shown an ineptitude with feature creep and power leap in the game that is and you seriously think a shiny new 7 act campaign is somehow going to be perfectly balanced with the rickety old 10 act slog?

Lol really?


And you're right, Diabloski -- how did a game so rich with original lore, post-colonial commentary and a whole freakin' world based on a completely overlooked historical source to flesh out get so damned bland and generic? Not just in terms of the confusing slush that is the player character's palette, but just the whole....feel of it. There is so much to do to your character and yet it all seems in aid of creating little more than a different type of paste rather than something vibrant or vital.

I suppose it comes back to something I learned dabbling with painting as a kid: mix enough colours with no regard or respect for how they blend and you will always end up with brown.

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imanubcake wrote:

Once you've picked the new ascendancies you can also select them in poe1

This hasn't been confirmed anywhere I've seen. But please post if you have a source. If it works like the scion or something, like a one-time unlock, that's not so bad I guess. It does suck for anyone in standard that has an existing character, but I don't think they are worried too much about those type of players.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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imanubcake wrote:

Once you've picked the new ascendancies you can also select them in poe1

This hasn't been confirmed anywhere I've seen. But please post if you have a source. If it works like the scion or something, like a one-time unlock, that's not so bad I guess. It does suck for anyone in standard that has an existing character, but I don't think they are worried too much about those type of players.

I'm not going to go through the poe2 announcement video.
But they did also say that in poe2 you can select ascendancies from poe1 if you have already used those and that all current accounts get "grandfathered" so even if you haven't played as champion for example you can still select it in poe2

esit: not sure how it'll worl for scion. they might've said it