Stuff I like about D4 and how it made me realize im not as "hardcore" as i was after all

A lot of people say D4 is for casuals, but D4 bad.

but wait. D4 was bad. now its in a much better game i can actually enjoy the game.

having "looking down" on diablo franchise for being paper thin and being an "elite" POE-er. if diablo franchise was what a "casual player" enjoyed, i really did look down on casuals.

but after playing "d4 reborn". i realized that i dont actually like POE 1. heres why.

Getting an upgrade is akin winning the lottery
- In POE you get tons of worthless shit until the one day you drop a divine and your dopamine spikes making you happy. but its a buttload of RNG.
- In D4, you DO get good items. sometimes 1-3 GAs. or even without any GA's an item can be good, but eventually you do get a "REASONABLE" upgrade.

You dont have a "path of progression"
- In POE it's more of getting lucky with your drops and getting lucky with crafting. But what if you're unlucky? Sucks to be you I guess.
- In D4, theres multiple ways to improve your character. you could try nightmare dungeons to level up your glyphs or you could try challenging the pit to improve your gear. you could also try getting direct gear from doing helltides or whispers. for sure it can feel tedious, but there is tangible progression. something you dont feel in POE. you can spend hours or even days playing, try to craft, fail and be sad. OR you could get lucky and be happy. but thats all LUCK.

No freedom to try different things on the fly.
- POE gears can be VERY demanding, they're like puzzle pieces that fit together to create something beautiful. but if you take a piece out, it can fall apart. Replacing gear is NOT easy, the cost of respeccing can be somewhat prohibitive.
- D4, respeccing has a cost, you DO NOT WANT to keep respeccing BUT it doesnt feel too much of a burden to respec. Item pieces can be switched out and you could improve the items gradually (via pit) if you felt you preferred it this way.

Cost for bossing is just too fucking high
- Remember how we needed to do 24 maps in order to try a pinnacle boss ONCE? Now we need to run T17s which can have hugely random mods and on top of that get the correct fragments for the ubers. after all that effort YOU COULD GET WRECKED.
- in d4 you can FARM the summoning mats somewhat. you dont feel as tho its too valuable.

No way to learn how to boss properly
- As an extension to the previous post. you have NO benchmark. its all or nothing. you do a pinnacle boss, get used to it, then do it again on an uber pinnacle. is it difficult? is it deadly? you can have a guestimate but you wont know till you try. and trying comes at a great cost.
- In D4, the pinnacle bosses exist in a strong but "doable" state in their base form. doing their "uber version" practically increases their damage/health and thats about it! you can learn all you need to from the very base pinnacle boss encounter without needing to actually try the uber version beforehand.

Uber bosses are "NOT OPTIONAL"
- there can be a lot to be argued on how optional the ubers are in POE, and i m on the side that says its not optional. you need it to unlock your map device fully and some uniques are now gated behind the ubers.
- in d4, uber pinnacles have an increased "cost for entry", but you DONT NEED to do it. it doesnt unlock something so significant that you're forced to get or want a carry to help kill the boss. at most all it does is give you 5x the normal loot that you would get from a "regular version". thats a vast difference between how POE pinnacles feel. in fact even the regular ones dont feel optional as you need them to unlock voidstones.

Reunlocking everything is much more tedious
- rebuilding your atlas, rebuilding sulphite mines, rebuilding your map pool. its a huge level of undertaking. i remember hogging on 820 waiting for free carries to appear. its the most efficient thing to do if you're weak.
- in d4, i never once asked for a carry. i m tempted to get carried for uber lilith/andriel carry for season challenge, but beyond that i've never felt the slightest inkling that i needed to be carried. nor do i feel too much hassle with the "map unlocks" there still is SOME hassle but its so damn minor and IGNORABLE. I DO WHATEVER I WANT TO DO. i dont need to unlock everything before actually having to start having fun. (oh yeah i do need to unlock t4 at the very least but still... thats so damn easy to accomplish). heck i can skip the entire campaign. it reminds me to the time the devs "justified" how they slowed the player down so that players could enjoy the detail they put into the game. FUCK. the game was BORING, i hated the game and quit. now the game is FAST AND FUN, i ACTUALLY LEARN TO APPRECIATE ALL THE SMALL DETAILS as i m playing the game so much i tend to notice more things that i purposely STOP zooming to actually enjoy em. as opposed to trying to ZOOM as fast as possible coz everything takes so long.

XP loss is LOSS
- poe punishes the player for bad plays. i used to think i was hardcore enough to accept it. 10 years later and my highest is level 99. i've already come to terms i m never hitting 100. i could technically afford just buying myself thru carry runs but whats the point of not earning it myself? theres 100001 ways that POE punishes me for not paying attention for 1/10th of a second. its also unforgiving with your internet connection. if you lag. you can lose 10% xp on return.
- i've always defended the 10% xp loss for the longest time, but having played D4, i think i would have rage quit d4 a long time ago had they put that in place. for sure D4 has a lot of FUCKING BULLSHIT deaths as well but at the very least its manageable. you dont get pushed back so far back. i got a bad lagspike? fuck no sweat. i ll lose some gold on repairs maybe hit some time penalty or something but its not TOO BIG of a deal.

I no longer subscribe to the "games built to be played forever" philosophy.
- i gave poe a lot of free passes as it was a game i wanted to play till i die. poe1,2,3, etc. my efforts would not be wasted back when poe2 was meant to be an expansion to poe1. poe2 MAY become the replacement to POE1 and become the basis for future POEs where you might be able to retain your gear from poe 2 to poe3,4,5. but that said. i no longer subscribe to this philosophy. it would definitely be nice to have but making things difficult to obtain to prolong player retention.... its not my thing anymore. i played this game for 10 years. no mirror. my friend played longer. he farmed up a mirror but also no mirror drops. i played this game for 10 long years and no mirror drops. no headhunter dropped, no mageblood drop. am i going to put myself thru the same hell in poe2? i honestly can say for certain.
- in diablo 4, its only sometime within the season and i have enough materials to CRAFT an uber unique. dropping a 3 GA or even 4GA gear wont feel the same as a divine drop but i doesnt need to. i feel happy with the gear i m dropping. getting the "best gear" is not really required but can be a good improvement to my build. i can quit the game, play something else and come back. i never want to feel the way i felt playing POE ever again. oh shit i have 3 months to farm up X item before the league ends. i need to hit maps within 1-3 days. i need to get to red tier maps asap. i need to get my void stones asap. i need to farm 1500-3000 fusing asap.

no man i m done. i want to enjoy the game when i want to play it. i m DONE with artificial scarcity. i m done with progression tied to pure RNG.

i definitely would try POE 2 and i might like it. but i m so done with POE's itemization and droprate.

i m now a bloody casual and i m enjoying being a casual. i dont have time to burn as i used to nor do i want to burn that much time anymore.

lol 2 years later i might be one of poe2's most diehard fans. but before that happens, these are my current thoughts.

I don't think we played same game, or did you run only a campaign? I played it for almost a week, did solo uber ubers, pit 100, to a point where I had 3GA gear and almost 1B in gold.


-In d4 most items are shit. I didn't even pick legendries if they didn't had GA, and even most of those were trash, because you're geared in ONE day.
-Uber Uber Bosses in d4 are a joke, but are mandatory if you want uber uniques.
-you have 6 chances to get bonus stats on your item, if you fail in those 6 rolls, your item is bricked, you can't even resell it, because it is bind to account.
-trade is managed by private discords, forums and websites. ENTIRELY. There is no official trade in-game.
- cost for bossing (uber ubers) is forcing people to run them ONLY in 4man party, cause of 400% more loot.
- in d4 you don't learn bosses because it doesn't matter.
- xp penalty wouldn't matter because you CAN'T DIE ANYWAY, and leveling 1-100 takes few hours, so who cares about leveling if it is nearly instant?

d4 is a walking simulator, game gives players everything without effort instantly. Quit it out of boredom.


EDIT: forgot d4 BAD
EDIT 2: forgot that pit boss fights go to a point where boss will one-shot you, or you will kill boss without being hit.
EDIT 3: WELCOME BACK

^

Bro stop hate playing D4, or admit you like the contrast with PoE1. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME GAME.

It's almost like you feel shame in playing D4 but can't stop. You will be the guy playing the expansion day 1, paying for a preorder, then complaining that you played for 72 hours straight and have nothing to do. 1 billion in gold, and decked out in full greater affix gear in less than a week? Really dude? Take a break.

D4 is in an absolutely good spot at the moment, for most people at least. The hardcore 40 challenge PoE elites are never going to enjoy D4 at all, or at least not for extended periods.

Thank fucking God.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

^

Bro stop hate playing D4, or admit you like the contrast with PoE1. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME GAME.

It's almost like you feel shame in playing D4 but can't stop. You will be the guy playing the expansion day 1, paying for a preorder, then complaining that you played for 72 hours straight and have nothing to do. 1 billion in gold, and decked out in full greater affix gear in less than a week? Really dude? Take a break.

D4 is in an absolutely good spot at the moment, for most people at least. The hardcore 40 challenge PoE elites are never going to enjoy D4 at all, or at least not for extended periods.

Thank fucking God.

Stop hating others constructive feedback and just accept that d4 is bad even if you can't get it of your tongue.
All the trying here ain't gonna chance peoples mind about this game, it's just bad and going to stay just bad even with a expansion.
Bliz would have to do a lot of work in a way different way to salvage this mess, which is likely never going to happen.

"D4 Bad" is constructive feedback? On the PoE forums no less? Please.

Spare me the indignation.

These boards are fucking toxic for literally anyone that isn't a die-hard Exile, and have been for some time. The echo-chamber is amongst the worst in gaming, which is both sad and ironic given how amazing the forums were early on.

Its often not even worth posting anything here any longer because of how defensive and elitist the remaining folks are. Again pretty sad imo. The traffic on the PoE official website is fractional to what it used to be and there is a reason for that.

"

Nomancs wrote:

-In d4 most items are shit. I didn't even pick legendries if they didn't had GA, and even most of those were trash, because you're geared in ONE day.

GA is the end game, we definitely dont pick up anything thats non GA. we CAN get fully geared in 1 day with decent gear. but that would need some dedication/time and probably not exactly too good gear. if you CAN get "maxed out gear in 1 day", D4 really isnt for you, POE is much better as you can spend years not getting what you want or suddenly getting the best item 1 day out of the blue by pure luck.

personally, i geared up in 1 day too. but to get gear with GA and GA that hits the spot takes time. i havent got all the stuff i want even with playing 1-2 hours a day for many days. using the pit to upgrade the gear also takes me time as i m not strong enough to do pit 61.

regardless your point is valid as your personal experience and personal opinion same as mine. i like how it is and you dislike it. its fair.

"

-Uber Uber Bosses in d4 are a joke, but are mandatory if you want uber uniques.

objectively wrong. you can get uber uniques from ANYWHERE, just the other day someone found one in a level 100 dungeon from a random chest.

you can also get resplendent shards from various methods to craft WHATEVER UBER UNIQUE you want. theres no uber ubers in d4 as far as i know. theres "pinnacle level" where you summon the bosses normally, and uber pinnacles which require torment stones and triple materials. the only difference is the uber version is level 200 and has 5 times drop rate, while the normal one is practically the same boss but level 100? no new movesets so if you're new theres a natural progression to learn and challenge yourself. totally optional.

"

-you have 6 chances to get bonus stats on your item, if you fail in those 6 rolls, your item is bricked, you can't even resell it, because it is bind to account.

true, a lot of d4 players are bitching about it, myself included. i would like this changed too, perhaps make it resettable similar to masterworking.

"

-trade is managed by private discords, forums and websites. ENTIRELY. There is no official trade in-game.

true, and it sucks so much ass. makes me wish d4 made an ingame trade function or do something like what POE did (except skip the p2w premium stashes required for poe website trade to work).

"

- cost for bossing (uber ubers) is forcing people to run them ONLY in 4man party, cause of 400% more loot.

as someone who plays mostly single player, i wont say it's forced but it's HIGHLY recommended to do this. if you have 3 friends, its ALWAYS BETTER to run pinnacles and ubers.

if you're coming from the "SSF" mindset, you're getting the same amount of loot whether or not you have a party.

personally i feel that the only way to balance this out is by having the uber uniques that drop from this encounter become account bound.

"

- in d4 you don't learn bosses because it doesn't matter.

if you one shot everything or can withstand all the attacks this is true for all games. but i can assure you, most players are not that level yet.

"

- xp penalty wouldn't matter because you CAN'T DIE ANYWAY, and leveling 1-100 takes few hours, so who cares about leveling if it is nearly instant?

if you're blasting everything and everything dies before they can touch you, of course death doesnt matter. but not all builds/players achieve this.

i agree with the pit being BS with its 1 shot mechanics. the clutter can be terrible and a lot of pit boss deaths can feel extremely cheap.

really hope it is rebalanced.

i disagree with most other negative things you have to say about d4 but its fine to not agree on things. different people have different tastes.

i've come back to d4. and still will be d4 ing. POE is my "home" and i just hope me sharing here could help shape POE2 to be less daunting and more casual as i want to enjoy POE2. i've more or less given up on POE1 at this point.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"D4 Bad" is constructive feedback? On the PoE forums no less? Please.

Spare me the indignation.

These boards are fucking toxic for literally anyone that isn't a die-hard Exile, and have been for some time. The echo-chamber is amongst the worst in gaming, which is both sad and ironic given how amazing the forums were early on.

Its often not even worth posting anything here any longer because of how defensive and elitist the remaining folks are. Again pretty sad imo. The traffic on the PoE official website is fractional to what it used to be and there is a reason for that.

there are many toxic people on this forum.

its quite ironic, that there are many of them that relish in their elite level of gigachad "POE supremecy" that they are quick to criticize anything that they feel is a non issue to them not realizing that they are so far detached from the majority of players.

its very frustrating as many people criticized POE1 for a myriad of things. melee as a really good example. there are a number of forummers or even redditors that have the mindset that MELEE IS FINE.

they would go out of their way to check the profile of anyone that complains and criticize the player's build for being weak rather than acknowledge other players are not enjoying melee.

its bloody ironic that melee is SO BAD, that GGG themselves GAVE UP ON POE1 to make POE2 which has a HUGE LOT OF MELEE IMPROVEMENTS. they knew that there would be a huge backlash by the older players who play standard that would feel betrayed by that separation of the 2 games YET THEY STILL DID IT. MELEE IS JUST THAT BAD.

yet, there are forummers here would laugh and point at any "melee is bad" posts.

as asmongold would put it. these people love to gatekeep and keep the game harder because making the game better would devalue their achievements. they dont want things to be easy. they want everyone to go through the same steps that they went thru even if it means other people have an inferior experience.

as done as i am with poe1, i've changed how i react to such forummers. say what we need to say then ignore them.

i've tried being civil and giving 1001 reasons, case studies etc but you cant change the opinion of people who do not want to change their opinions. its a big waste of time.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

^

Bro stop hate playing D4, or admit you like the contrast with PoE1. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME GAME.

It's almost like you feel shame in playing D4 but can't stop. You will be the guy playing the expansion day 1, paying for a preorder, then complaining that you played for 72 hours straight and have nothing to do. 1 billion in gold, and decked out in full greater affix gear in less than a week? Really dude? Take a break.

D4 is in an absolutely good spot at the moment, for most people at least. The hardcore 40 challenge PoE elites are never going to enjoy D4 at all, or at least not for extended periods.

Thank fucking God.

See below.

I tried to explain to this dude why DIV has good writing. It went about as well as you would expect.

---

At exsea: I am glad you don't have a lack of interest in DIV. :)

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

^

Bro stop hate playing D4, or admit you like the contrast with PoE1. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME GAME.

It's almost like you feel shame in playing D4 but can't stop. You will be the guy playing the expansion day 1, paying for a preorder, then complaining that you played for 72 hours straight and have nothing to do. 1 billion in gold, and decked out in full greater affix gear in less than a week? Really dude? Take a break.

D4 is in an absolutely good spot at the moment, for most people at least. The hardcore 40 challenge PoE elites are never going to enjoy D4 at all, or at least not for extended periods.

Thank fucking God.

See below.

I tried to explain to this dude why DIV has good writing. It went about as well as you would expect.

---

At exsea: I am glad you don't have a lack of interest in DIV. :)

i m pretty happy with DIV (weird u dont call it D4 lol). in fact i m even happier that they "fixed" the game mostly before their 1 year anniversary so that i'd actually get to enjoy their upcoming goblin event that they're having this weekend.

d4's writing, can be debatable but if anyone is gonna say the campaign or story is bad, thats just being hateful.

its still way much better than whatever paper thin excuse we have for POE. sure POE has tons of lore, the lore is doing a lot of heavy lifting to compensate the lack of story in POE.

i usually have an unpopular opinion that FF7's popularity is driven by nostalgia and FF hype. the story has no drive. you start of as a terrorist, bombing an enemy "coz they say theyre bad". but your main hero is antisocial, edgy AF. after blowing up the place you end up in town and have to "walk around until something happens". then once you're finally out of town you're just supposed to wonder in the world map. wheres the urgency?

D4, shows you in an awesome cutscene how lilith returned. then how you got imbued with her blood but managed to survive. you had a reason to move on. the mystery and how it affects you directly and how the world is being affected by lilith and her followers. you push on wanting to know what happens next.

POE in comparison, you're sentanced in oriath, dont even get shown you get sent off on a ship. dont even get shown the ship wrecked. ok fine, survive and get to town. then what? theres nothing "urgent". why do we want to keep going forward? when we meet piety, why do we care? she seems to be amused with us for some reason, but we dont know who she is, we dont have a reason to fight her. theres no real drive to actually do anything once we reach lioneye's glare except "help the people out".

anyway, you've been here since the begininig of POE, i m pretty sure that you've had your fair share of experience with how biased forummers here can be.

its frustrating

Oh but d4 is prty shit game, and they did probably hired students to write the story, as it is flat like road roller had few rides on it. I already explained why it is bad.

"

exsea wrote:

objectively wrong. you can get uber uniques from ANYWHERE, just the other day someone found one in a level 100 dungeon from a random chest.

and it is so rare to gett uber unique outside of uber ubers, they write about it: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/news/world-first-uber-unique-found-in-helltide-diablo-4-season-4-341091

You can use the exploit and farm iron wolves with multiple characters. Remove, repeat, so you don't have to farm the bosses.

"

exsea wrote:

if you one shot everything or can withstand all the attacks this is true for all games. but i can assure you, most players are not that level yet.

d4 core audience are casuals, ofc most of them don't one shot everything, but most average players do.

"

exsea wrote:

theres no uber ubers in d4 as far as i know. theres "pinnacle level" where you summon the bosses normally, and uber pinnacles which require torment stones and triple materials. the only difference is the uber version is level 200 and has 5 times drop rate,

Those bosses at level 200 are called uber ubers. Now, 5x loot, imagine if t17 would give 500% more loot, some even now think they're mandatory. If you run in a party and share, you effectively end up with 80x (x5 x4 x4) more loot than person who does only lvl 100 boss solo.


In the essence, d4 is just reskinned d3, with same flaws, greater rifts, buffs all the time to give players the illusion of getting better. So each season they would get that 1000% dmg buff to their skill so they could get that 10 more pit levels done and lie to themself that they improved. It is a pity mechanic brought to extreme. D4 is treating players like they couldn't think for themselves - handling everything for them, making it as easy as it can to a walking sim.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Bro stop hate playing D4

I already stopped, got bored out of it, there is literally nothing to do. It is a bad game, and I played it because I had it for free. Otherwise I would regret spending so much money on it.


D4 still bad, hoho

EDIT: also a warning for everyone: don't get d4 for full price, or even discount, it is for free for anyone who have game pass.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

^

Bro stop hate playing D4, or admit you like the contrast with PoE1. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME GAME.

It's almost like you feel shame in playing D4 but can't stop. You will be the guy playing the expansion day 1, paying for a preorder, then complaining that you played for 72 hours straight and have nothing to do. 1 billion in gold, and decked out in full greater affix gear in less than a week? Really dude? Take a break.

D4 is in an absolutely good spot at the moment, for most people at least. The hardcore 40 challenge PoE elites are never going to enjoy D4 at all, or at least not for extended periods.

Thank fucking God.

no it isn't LMAO I'll shame it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVshNDyBpyE

game last for 3 days omegalul