I still think GGG are going the Blizzard route

Just look at how they designed the game.

-Campaign areas are big, and get bigger with each Act, almost like designing them to get us to play for as long as we can, and help their player engagement.

-Now designing league mechanics every 2 months, instead of 4, ultimately making them rush out content, taking 2 months for POE1, and another 2 for POE2, instead of taking their time and make actual good leagues. Rushing out content is not gonna bode well for them in the long run.

-Making the balance of everything out of whack (they've always done this though, but POE1's balance is way better than POE2's right now). There is no reason some skills should be able to outperform the others. WE NEED BALANCE, to maximize build diversity. There is also no reason for certain melee skills to require certain melee weapons. ALL melee skills should be able to use ALL melee weapon types. Sniper's Mark, Freezing Mark, Wind Dancer, and Herald skills should NOT require weapons AT ALL. The decisions in the gem and weapon systems just do not make sense. I would suggest an overhaul on this, and balance them, accordingly.

DO NOT become the next Blizzard, GGG! We beg you! It is NOT worth it!

1) I don't think areas were originally made that big for the purpose of artificially extending player engagement. It's more likely because there are only 6 acts instead of 10, but they've responded to player feedback and have been reducing map sizes and improving layouts every patch. You can see the biggest difference when comparing older acts to act 4 and the interludes.

2) We literally just had an 11 month league. They are maintaining a 4 month cycle for the players for both games, because players demanded it.

3) If you are saying their balance is worse over time, then they are the opposite of Blizzard. Blizzard over the years, for example in WoW, got better at balancing classes but where they went wrong is homogenizing them too much. The problem with Blizzards playerbase is that they believe playing anything that is .1% worse than the best spec is a waste of time and you're trash for playing a meme spec. I have no clue what their modern ARPG balance is like because Diablo hasn't been relevant for over 2 decades.

And they also copied the uninteresting cinematic style of Diablo 3, with the painted PowerPoint slides

The areas are big, because ones from PoE 1 are pathetically small and claustrophobic, probably born out of technical limitations or slavish devotion to remaking D2. It's also good they are big.

Anyone thinking D2 had small maps because of technical limitations clearly hasn’t thought it through properly. Not only are most of act 2, 3 and 5 in a singular huge overworld map, zones like the Durance of Hate 2 are huge in Hell difficulty.

Bigger zones ≠ better zones

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There is no reason some skills should be able to outperform the others. WE NEED BALANCE, to maximize build diversity.

Agreed in regards to the balance. It will never be perfect but it seems for some skills not even an attempt is made to balance them.

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There is also no reason for certain melee skills to require certain melee weapons. ALL melee skills should be able to use ALL melee weapon types.

I understand there might be technical limitations in terms of animations for the skills, but other than that i would extend the same idea to Bow/Crossbow skills and even the passive tree where there are still too few nodes that are competitive, resulting in too many same layouts across players (at least on caster side)

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

Anyone thinking D2 had small maps because of technical limitations clearly hasn’t thought it through properly. Not only are most of act 2, 3 and 5 in a singular huge overworld map, zones like the Durance of Hate 2 are huge in Hell difficulty.

Bigger zones ≠ better zones

I can play through d2 from norm - hell everything in 6-8 hours. I've only made it to maps once in poe2. I play ssf and not having the crafting table or a meaningful way to fix res and get upgrades makes it unfun and or playable. Drops are horrible over all. I have to pick up every blue item to see if it started with a decent stat.

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

Anyone thinking D2 had small maps because of technical limitations clearly hasn’t thought it through properly. Not only are most of act 2, 3 and 5 in a singular huge overworld map, zones like the Durance of Hate 2 are huge in Hell difficulty.

Bigger zones ≠ better zones

I play d2 everyday, zones are small, they are sometimes seamless but very limited in width, just few small square maps glued together. It is a limitation of tile randomization tech. And yes bigger zones = better zones if populated and done properly, also no zones> zones as why tf do I ever have to teleport between places, other than Diablo did it 100 years ago? Go to BG3 devs and tell them to go back to 2d map and small zones, or Forza Horizon and tell them to close off the streets.

You think this has zones and no open world because it's better for an arpg? Or rather just because it started as an extension of PoE 1 and had to share the systems, just like the inventory (also a child of a billion stash tabs sold, or it's better for arpg again heh?). Then (guess) maybe got caught with the D4 open world promise, so made the zones bigger to compete a bit, without an idea on how to utilize them (so they don't feel that good), or just didn't predict the amount of amusement park syndrome in the fanbase, idk. It's not the size itself that's a problem though, and bigger is better just by feeling less artificial and claustrophobic.