Slowly grinding my way through a Pokemon Red Professor Oaks Challenge(Yay, switch-training Magikarp…), and when my brains to the point of melting from that, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Kitsune Bladebound Magus, happily traipsing her fluffy way down wherever Desna may guide her.
May the Gods have mercy on the crusade she’s going to lead.
They can be fun for a bit. I tend to get overwhelmed with all the crap I loot. I have the same problem with games like The Elder Scrolls series. I’m alway afraid I’ll accidentally sell something important or useful, but I usually end up with a lot of junk. Lol
While I had some fun playing torchlight 2 with a friend back in the day, in reality I never got on with the entire genre (or its sibling the Looter-Shooter)
It’s like
Every video game is on some level a skinner box, but arpgs and lootershooters are the most transparent and cynical about it, idk. Well no, the SECOND most transparent and cynical about it, MMOs still take the cake.
Some thoughts on Diablo 4 (D4) as per your question. In terms of ARPGs, I came from Diablo 3 and, way back in the day, Dungeon Runners.
From my feelings as a player, as well as reading from the community, the primary criticisms from D4’s launch have been the way it handles items and endgame content. At original release, I know a lot of people who tapped out around level 75-80, with level 100 being max.
I am personally quite pleased with how the latest season addressed these issues. With the elimination of yellow (rare) gear as candidates, good drops feel a bit rarer (more time spent playing; less time scanning items). Reviewing loot can still feel a bit tedious at certain points in the game, but you eventually reach a point where a legendary item needs to drop with an asterisk before you look at it, again allowing you to focus on playing over sorting.
You said in a comment that you are in it for the progression. I find character development rewarding but skewed; the early game is fast paced and incentivizes rushing to get to the final difficulty level, when progression peters off and becomes rather marginal. In Diablo 3, you wanted to play higher difficulty levels to have better drop rates. In Diablo 4, it’s not so much the drop rates as the quality. Items from the highest tier completely outclass items from even the second-highest tier, meaning you have to keep starting over from scratch as you move up. I’d rather it be balanced in terms of drop rates, thus still having a small probability of carrying a midgame item all the way to endgame.
Some endgame activities are more enjoyable than others, but they have different rewards that encourage you to have some gameplay variety. Boss farming is probably the most tedious endgame activity. It is done to get the most valuable and rarest pieces, the uber uniques, but requires you to also grind bosses that realistically won’t help your character other than to get materials to summon the higher chance bosses.
My friend who plays PoE and has tried D4 is well described by @Neuromancer49’s post; the lack of complexity turns him off. If you’re okay with trying something simpler and are at all interested in the campaign/story, I think it’s worth getting. I know there’s a vocal group that prefers Grim Dawn and the Diablo 2 die-hards seem to dislike D4, for what it’s worth.
Lastly, the art and sound design team did a spectacular job if you like Diablo’s aesthetic.
story is usually an important part for me! it’s one part of PoE that never impressed me. I might still check out Diablo 4, and I’m glad you laid out a lot of things for me. most of the stuff I could find online was still harping on previous issues that I now know some have been addressed.
funnily enough, I used to love running “lab” (I believe it’s short for “labyrinth” but my memory is shot and it’s been a long time) in Path of Exile, which was running through traps to rush to a boss. they nerfed that route shortly before I quit, too. but you got a lot of rewards at the end that had the potential to be good, and a blessing on existing equipment that you picked. a shame that boss farming in Diablo 4 isn’t as fun, but it’s something I’ll keep in mind when a sale rolls around.
sorting was probably one of the things I disliked the most in PoE, I could never grasp what was worth using or selling that well. goes hand-in-hand with my inability to roll with theorycrafting builds, so to hear Diablo 4 eases that some is nice.
Ah, the labs sound similar to a type of dungeons that were part of last season’s theme. I liked them too. There’s a new pit mode that is similar to greater rifts in Diablo 3 if you remember them. Not quite running through traps, but running through procedurally generated dungeons to reach and defeat a boss as quickly as possible. Those bosses started out with some cheap one-shot kills (now nerfed), but I find them pretty fun and prefer this mode of dungeon + boss to the regular boss rushing.
As Grim Dawn has been on my list, do you mind sharing why you couldn’t get into it? Anything I should know going in?
Torchlight I & II are easily my favourite ARPGs. I wish Runic also did Torchlight III but sadly the studio is closed and its just an abomination with Chinese mobile game aspects.
I already have M vs C 2 for my Dreamcast (both Japanese and US versions) and I bought the 1up cabinet with almost all the games in this collection on it.
But I’m still in for this collection to have a much easier way to play these games whenever I want. These bring back VERY fond memories of my arcade days.
I get the charm of a console for gaming. Just switch it on and go. Still prefer a PC at the end of the day though. For once my preferred genres are very unrepresented on consoles and since I dabble in DIY I do not have that level of freedom on a console or mobile phone. Well, do some extend. Fiddling around with key remappers that hijack on the accessibility system is horrible. Anyway, I enjoy tinkering and this is not really something consoles are known for, no?
This said it is very amazing that I can just e.g. fire up Waydroid nowadays, connect an X360 controller and play AmongUs with the little one on my Linux PC. That level of possibilities is mind boggling.
Not exactly playing, but learning my way around the GECK to create a few personal radio stations for New Vegas. I’ve learned how to do most of it, I just now need to sort the audio files and add them. Too cold to sit at my desk and finish this, so I’ll do all that later.
(Before anyone says “why not just use the mod that lets you add your own music files”, it’s because I need separate radio stations with unique names that I can switch between, each with their own chronological order, rather than one giant one which basically works by saying “random bullshit go”.)
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