Path of Exile

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Krieger91

[H]ard|Gawd
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At first I was skeptical.... but holy shit! This is seriously what Diablo 3 should have been. Let me make this very clear right now: this game is awesomely complex. (Check out my post for more info: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038590152&postcount=154)

http://www.pathofexile.com/

The graphics are great/very dark and grim and the UI is very high quality. The skill tree is MASSIVE.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/

I really haven't heard anybody talking about this game at all, which is really sad. I am really really really urging you guys to check this out. There's so many cool features about this game, the skill/gem system is unique and the characters are very distinguishable and different. I cannot pull myself off this game. I think there's a huge public stress test coming up this week, but if you want a beta key you have a high chance if you post in the forums.
 
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Diablo 3 pails in comparison to PoE. Many of us have been playing the beta for months now. Great game with lots of potential.
 
This is seriously what Diablo 3 should have been.

http://www.pathofexile.com/

What Diablo 3 should have been? Diablo 3 isn't even out yet! And the beta has less content than what PoE has. I'd call that a generalization.

And I beg to differ. I've been in PoE for months and months. Some of the systems are great, but there is a lot left to be desired IMO. The game lacks substance. The environments are so bland. I leveled to 68 on my main and to 30+ on other alts in that game. It's great that the devs keep updating and changing a few things here and there, but over all, there is a great deal of polishing to be done before it goes live. And the acts, the ones that are completed, feel like they were put together haphazardly.
 
I really haven't heard anybody talking about this game at all, which is really sad.
You must not be following this forum very well than. Each and every D3 thread gets turned into PoE discussion by the second page :p
 
You must not be following this forum very well than. Each and every D3 thread gets turned into PoE discussion by the second page :p

I just don't follow the D3 threads, never really seen a large PoE thread.


What Diablo 3 should have been? Diablo 3 isn't even out yet! And the beta has less content than what PoE has. I'd call that a generalization.

And I beg to differ. I've been in PoE for months and months. Some of the systems are great, but there is a lot left to be desired IMO. The game lacks substance. The environments are so bland. I leveled to 68 on my main and to 30+ on other alts in that game. It's great that the devs keep updating and changing a few things here and there, but over all, there is a great deal of polishing to be done before it goes live. And the acts, the ones that are completed, feel like they were put together haphazardly.


Do you think they have some super hidden secret amazing content? No. D3 will be just like the beta except more levels. Things like the monk not having weapon animations will persist and the goofy character designs like the Demon Huntress running around in high heels will too.
 
I like the ambiance better than D3 but I can tell that the game play is not going to be nearly as good. PoE looks very clunky.
 
I like the ambiance better than D3 but I can tell that the game play is not going to be nearly as good. PoE looks very clunky.

Not sure what your basing that off of, but gameplay and combat are far from clunky.
 
Open stress test this weekend so should give everyone a chance i think this game is not that bad considering its gonna be free too.
 
Yeah, definitely going to check this out. Have both Firefall and Path of Exile's forums on automatic 1m refreshes in hopes that it counts as forum activity and will increase my chances in getting in. :)
 
Not sure what your basing that off of, but gameplay and combat are far from clunky.
The animation looks stiff to me. I guess hands on will answer that to me.

Since you seem to thing D3 is nothing compared to this, what is your experience with PoE so far?
 
I've been in PoE beta since the beginning. its "OK" ... it wears off quickly its not going to be some big blockbuster and no it will not compete with D3 once D3 is in its full release form with all the content and pvp etc. yes PoE beta is much better than D3 beta but please stop judging D3 by the f'n 25minute game play of beta.
 
The animation looks stiff to me. I guess hands on will answer that to me.

Since you seem to thing D3 is nothing compared to this, what is your experience with PoE so far?



If you want to talk about animation, what do you think about the monk animation?
 
If you want to talk about animation, what do you think about the monk animation?

I think the monk animations are awesome. I couldn't give 5 fucks if my weapon is in my hands as I do exploding palm or whatever.
 
I think the monk animations are awesome. I couldn't give 5 fucks if my weapon is in my hands as I do exploding palm or whatever.

That's just lazy development. Blizzard is the next Apple, everyone eats up their shit.
 
I think D3 is lack luster and lame, I'm in the beta and not impressed whatsoever.

It's D2 just rehashed and better textured.
 
The combat is very clunky and the UI is really bad IMO. Simple things like swapping gear and selling items are a pain in the ass. And the god awful inventory...ugh. When you click to attack it feels like your character's action is always 1 second delayed. Very clunky.

Monster AI is pretty bad too. You can just run through entire levels without getting hit once.
 
The animation looks stiff to me. I guess hands on will answer that to me.

Since you seem to thing D3 is nothing compared to this, what is your experience with PoE so far?
PoE is more old school feeling, the atmosphere and combat suit the genre and the backstory. The skill tree is much more complex and robust than D3. D3 is fine but I just have more of an affinity towards PoE and think it is much more of a traditional hack and slash than D3.
 
The combat is very clunky and the UI is really bad IMO. Simple things like swapping gear and selling items are a pain in the ass. And the god awful inventory...ugh. When you click to attack it feels like your character's action is always 1 second delayed. Very clunky.

Monster AI is pretty bad too. You can just run through entire levels without getting hit once.


Sorry, but I haven't experienced any of that.
 
While it looks cool, it seems like it is overly complicated just for the sake of making it complicated.
And, it's really not. Albeit, overwhelming at first, it's pretty straight forward after you play the game for more than 5 minutes. It's a great, robust system, which allows you to pick a lot of different possibilities. I was skeptical at first, too, but I really like it now.
 
While it looks cool, it seems like it is overly complicated just for the sake of making it complicated.

How is it complicated? There's 3 main attributes, choose one. Then choose your specialized path. It's a skill "tree", it branches off on purpose.
 
Sorry, but I haven't experienced any of that.

Neither have I. The selling of items couldnt be any easier, the ui is fine so not sure how to address it sucks, swapping gear is extremely easy, and.combat is fluid and intuitive.

As far as the skill tree being complex, I guess so if your too impatient or have an IQ lower than pocket lint.
 
Neither have I. The selling of items couldnt be any easier, the ui is fine so not sure how to address it sucks, swapping gear is extremely easy, and.combat is fluid and intuitive.

As far as the skill tree being complex, I guess so if your too impatient or have an IQ lower than pocket lint.

I agree.

The UI personally looks very high quality, look at the characters that are holding the health and life orbs, also the energy/mana shield graphics that change at higher levels. The whole design is really great. Also, with the absence of gold coins, a bartering system is in place and will lead to the community creating their own currency.

Combat is good, having a passive skill tree with multiple paths, while being able to gain active skills by socketing items will lead to some interesting results. Also, I love the different kinds of potions you can get, basically making them items with their own stats.
 
There is an open beta to stress test the servers over the weekend if anyone is interested in checking out the game :D
 
I think D3 is lack luster and lame, I'm in the beta and not impressed whatsoever.

It's D2 just rehashed and better textured.

What is it people?

Either Diablo 3 is nothing like Diablo 2 or its "just rehashed and better textured."
I guess Blizzard really is in a no win situation.
 
What is it people?

Either Diablo 3 is nothing like Diablo 2 or its "just rehashed and better textured."
I guess Blizzard really is in a no win situation.

In art design it's more like WoW than any Diablo game, in gameplay it's nothing new.
 
Got this email today...

We're opening up the Path of Exile Beta to everyone this weekend, March 30-April 1, so that we can stress-test our servers in preparation for entering Open Beta in a few months. This Open Weekend is the ideal time to invite your friends to play the game with you.

Last week we deployed the 0.9.7 Beta patch, adding over a dozen new skills and pushing six weeks of incremental improvement to the Beta servers. We've tuned the balance to be more challenging and want your feedback on these changes. This week we will deploy 0.9.8, which adds more skills, new social functionality and further balance improvements.

Due to the recent balance changes, we're going to migrate all existing Beta characters and items to the Legacy League (like we did with 0.9.5 in late December) so that there's a fresh economy and ladder in both the Default and Hardcore leagues.

Check out the list of frequently asked questions about the open weekend on the Path of Exile website at http://www.pathofexile.com/publicweekend/.

This is a great opportunity for you to show your friends the Path of Exile Beta and play alongside them while exploring the new updates. We're hosting four developer-run events at various times over the weekend, so you can show off the skills you developed playing earlier versions of the Beta too.

Kind regards,
Chris Wilson
Grinding Gear Games
 
Things like the monk not having weapon animations will persist and the goofy character designs like the Demon Huntress running around in high heels will too.

No, that's not nit-picky at all. Sounds like I will have a horrible time playing D3 based on those factors.
 
Alright, give all the D3 hate a rest, will ya? That's not what this thread is supposed to be about. There are plenty of other threads for everyone to go bitch in if that's what they want to do.

ON TOPIC:
I asked for a key for the beta to see what all the hoopla was about since the aforementioned people in the other threads keep saying that PoE was the end all, be all of ARPGs. While I will say that it has some neat mechanics, it is FAR from perfect. A few of my gripes (detail provided mostly for those not currently in the beta):

The barter system of the economy is a really interesting mechanic, but item trade in values relative to inventory size and barter item "value" basically suck ass, IMO. All white items are worth 1 identify scrap, regardless of size, type, or quality. A small health bottle that takes 2 inventory squares is worth the same 1 scrap as is the ironshod battlestaff that takes up 8 squares. You need 5 of these scraps/items in order to make 1 identify scroll - which are needed to identify/use/get full value for the blue items. Now you *can* sell the blues unidentified, but you will only ever get 1 magic scrap out of them that way. 3 magic scraps can be traded for 1 identify scrap, or if you save 20 magic scraps together, they can be turned in for 20 identify scraps (4 full scrolls). At best, then, unidentified blues have the same value as whites, at worst, they are only 1/3rd as valuable. Now, identifying the blues (at a cost of 5 whites each) does not guarantee you a higher value trade. Most identified blues end up being worth the same as the unidentified, though the ones with the best magical modifiers or the ones with the most magical mods *can* raise the value from 1 magic scrap to 2 or 3. In some rare cases you can get up to 4 or 5 magic scraps from a really good identified blue. Best case (unless you plan on wearing the item) is you make back the same value in scraps as you spent in identifying it. In most cases, you lose 4/5th the value you invested. Now, to aggravate this even further, the player inventory is so small that even carrying a full haul of whites for trade, you'll usually only get 1 - 1.5 identify scrolls. Having to cart in a full load of trash for each item you want to identify is pretty ridiculous, in my opinion.

How I would fix it: I think that most of my gripe with the above could be remedied by making the scrap value of the items relative to their inventory size. If you made each item worth its inventory size divided by 3 rounded to the nearest non-zero whole number, I think you'd get a fairer value for them relative to their cost in inventory size for hauling them around. This would give the following base values per size: 2 - 4 squares worth 1 scrap, 6 squares worth 2 scraps, 8 squares worth 3 scraps. This would carry over to the magic scraps for the blues as well. In case of the higher value blues, their scrap values would be multiplicative (i.e. a 6 square blue that currently gives 2 scraps would instead give 4 scraps. The best 8 square blue in the game would give 15 scraps).

My other big gripe is with the stat allocation system (the "passive skill tree" as it's called in game). For each level up you achieve, you get a bit more health, a bit more mana, and that's about it. Your other base stats remain the same. You do get, however, a "skill point" to spend, but it's more accurate to liken it to what we more commonly think of as stat allocation points. If I want more intelligence, I can "buy" 10 intelligence by spending 1 skill point on a blue circle. 10 strength for a red circle, and 10 dex for a green. There are other stat modifiers you can buy later on, but this is the basics of it. My problem is, that you can not always buy the points you need when you need them. For example, I am playing a ranger, but am also using a few intelligence-based mage spells. Whenever I hit an intelligence deficiency on the spell leveling, I go to buy another 10 intelligence. Last time I wanted to get more, however, the nearest blue circle was behind 3 other green circles that I'd have to buy first before I got far enough down that path to get to another blue section. Now since dexterity is a ranger's bread-and-butter, those points aren't truly "wasted" for me, but i certainly feel they could have been invested better than just serving to unlock the blue section I was trying to get to.

As far as how to "fix" this one - I don't know - I guess maybe the skill tree just needs to be tweaked/redesigned some more.

The other things I find fault with are closer to minor irritants than anything else I guess. The minimap is hard to use, hard to see, and clutters up the rest of your view (unless there are some other options to manipulate its size/location/opacity that I have not run across yet). Level/area design(layout) seems almost "haphazard" a lot of the time. It seems like their random terrain generator could use some tweaking as well. Unless there is a town portal spell I have yet to find, keeping a constant supply of portal scrolls is going to be really irritating (cost 3 identify scrolls). Finally, the quest system is the same uninspired "click past text when you see the exclamation mark" drivel that we've seen a hundred times before. Hopefully the NPCs and their quests will at least be getting some voice-overs done before release.



Now, having said all that, I AM really enjoying the game and think that a lot of what they've done is really neat and fun to play. I especially like the spell gems/socketing system and the fact that it allows anyone to use any spell they want to (to some degree - a fair few of them have specific item class requirements that would conflict with item reqs from other class paths).

Final assessment - not better, not worse - still fun to play, but very different from more traditional ARPGs like D3.

 
PoE is good for a free game, but I would never pay money for it and I imagine most will forget about it once Diablo 3 is out.
 
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