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[Preview] Path of Exile: Dethroning Diablo?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Path of Exile is a game that has many fans of the action RPG niche of the MMO space very excited. Later this week, PoE will enter its open beta phase of development. In the meantime, we've got a spiffy preview for our readers. Check it out before joining the conversation in the comments.
While PoE may initially remind players of Diablo and Torchlight on the surface there is much more going on for those willing to pry deeper than a few screenshots. Character classes are varied and dynamic thanks to a well set up passive skill tree. Basically, you’re presented with a map of orbs and each one leads you down a different path of abilities to augment your character with, such as mana regen or increased health and other such perks. But you can very quickly branch out from what you may consider traditional action RPG archetypes. You can make your avatar unique to your playing type by doing things such as giving your witch life boosts and opt for your spells to drain health instead of mana or augment a marauder in the exact same way and see what the results are. Folks who have played Final Fantasy X and used their orb skill system should immediately realize the potential here and be comfortable with the system.
Read more of Blake Morse's Dethroning Diablo?
Comments
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
once again blizzard shows to be the master of inception. even with a 65% disappointment rate D3 fans swarm upon the PoE forums demanding they add a fucking auction house. sad shit. now it's just a major fucking idea seeded in the minds of ARPG players that the games need an auction house.
i wish blizzard had perfect retention for all their games so their fucking fans would leave other products alone.
Didn't you know? you were only renting the pocket in your pants from blizzard. By the way, they want your pants too.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
lol
Diablo 3 fanbois going to PoE forum is telling you something. :-))
While its not an MMO, its more like a MMO than D3 or Torchlight 2, it is most equivilant to Guild Wars 1. When you log into this game the hunting grounds are for you and your party only. Then when you zone into town there are lots of players around in a hub. You see others running around and can trade. There is global chat as well. So I get more of a guild wars 1 feel than a normal arpg feel honestly. Whether it deserves to be talked about on this site can be up for debate by the admins, but its not out of place for it to be here given recent similar games that are here.
It's really not inception, you've got the syntax wrong. They were responding to demands for an AH. That part of the failure that is D3 is the community's fault and Blizz's fault for not being brave (or smart?) enough to tell them no.
The thing is, Diablo 3 doesn't need a killer, Wilson killed it by making a game mediocre at best, when compared to it's predecessors.
I'm a pretty harsh game critic.
PoE is a great game. Solid. Extremely unique in terms of character builds. They literally made it so that two players cannot be the same.
I mean... look at this thing: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree
I've sat for long periods of time just trying to come up with interesting builds. I haven't even scratched the surface.
Oh its not gonna be a diablo killer, lets face it diablo is doing a good job killing itself all by itself. What has everyone so enthalled with this game is that for the first time in 12 years it feels like the spiritual successor to d2 that we have all been waiting for. Its got a small, young, passionate dev team that made a game they wanted to play. In a time where most indie dev's churn out garbage half done buggy messes, these guys turned out what is the best arpg in the past decade.
Diablo never really held the throne, unless you count D2 ladder, which was a pitiful throne indeed, consisting of 1) players using bots to farm for items, to sell to companies, to sell to players, 2) players using bots to macro baal runs.
Only good thing about D2 was its mods, and dueling.
From the potion system of flasks, to end game Map items, to their currency system (no gold), to the PVP and leagues, the game is just dripping with an immense amount of innovation. Also it is free to play, without pay to win items for sale.
If you were measuring diablo 2's success by ladder accuracy, yea, you may as well say you hated it. I don't know many people that even looked at the ladder after the first few months the game was out. For every person botting there were more than enough real players to play with.
I do agree with you about dueling being fun, and that players would farm items to sell to companies was pretty lame as well.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I don't know about the whole Diablo killer thing. I do know however POE really feels like Diablo3, more so than Diablo 3 does. They did so many things right with this game. From the passive skill tree to the easily removed gems that level up as you do.
Excellent game that I recommend you give a shot. So much so that heres a beta key for someone to enjoy for a day: SHMPQ-YU2CP-C9XEY-QJ2N4 I know It's open beta tomorrow and a free to play game but it'll give you a day of playing.
http://www.straightdope.com/
What is ironic is that the customization of your classes abilities are pretty good but the appereance is not as some classes (maybe all?) are gender-locked. So if I cannot even customize the gender of my avatar then the customization levels for appearence is extremely low. That is pretty bad and I hope they will change this in the future.
My gaming blog
I've been in closed beta a long time and the devs have done alot of things to improve the game so far. There are still things that can be improved and the devs have mentioned several things they want to do but what this small studio has done so far is really impressive imo.
It's free to play and they have been very open about never wanting to sell power/advancement in the cash shop, give it a try and judge it for yourself.
The skill tree with mostly small stat boosts and effects is a lot more complex than it needs to be, to the point of hindering creative building more than inspiring it, imo.
Outside of that, the materia... ahem the skill gem system sounds fun.