You should check out path of exile 2 it seems like they might be addressing a lot of your concerns with the genere. And GGG (the makers of poe2) are actually a really good company to support
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?
I’ve really enjoyed the ARPGs that I’ve played (D3, a bit of Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, and hell as of the recent update even D4) but I find that I am terrible at build crafting - and the really bad brain fog that I’ve had for over a year now doesn’t help that at all.
I find that I just constantly hit a wall that I can’t push past, and then run into the “Now what?” - every now and then I’ll play with some build guides online and tinker with them, but for me that isn’t as fun as coming up with something completely on my own.
That all being said, LE has been my favorite as of recently - it’s definitely still a light on content (1.0 just released this year), but over time I think it’ll be very high up there on everyone’s list.
I feel like I had a much easier time understanding the systems in LE than the other games (except for maybe D4 which was a bit too simple, though they’re starting to change it up a bit with the recent patches) but LE’s item and skill systems also clearly have a very high ceiling of what you can do with them.
I guess for me, what I really liked about it is that even with all the brain fog I could still get into the systems and pick it up quickly, yet also still see where it can certainly get more and more complex as you push your builds higher and higher, even if I’m not completely at that point yet.
I hope some of my ramblings made at least a little bit of sense 😅
I too have brain fog and memory issues in general. I’m glad to hear that systems seem simple to understand but have the high ceiling, I love that kind of thing. I just need to push on I think and try LE again, when I get my desktop back.
No problem! I’ve really enjoyed Runemaster so far since I’ve always been someone who favored magic based classes. With Runic Invocation there are so many different spell combinations that you can pull off (I can’t possibly memorize them all, I think there’s around 50 of them?) which is really fun!
I need to try out Spellblade at some point, that’ll probably be my next class that I try out. Their new season (“Cycles”) launches at the beginning of next month (July 9th IIRC), so I haven’t decided if I’ll try to wait till then or if I’ll try to give it a go before then.
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.
Grim Dawn is easily the best commercial (which is to say, not free like PoE) ARPG out there. If you like PoE, it's probably the closest you'll get to something similar in that character builds are more complex and customizable than in other games.
I’ve played Last Epoch, PoE, D1/2/3, and a LOT of others, and Grim Dawn just knocks it out of the part for me. I really want more from Crate, once Farthest Frontier is wrapped up.
I enjoyed the D4 story for my first play through and the recent changes for season 4 have made levelling to endgame much more enjoyable. It is much simpler than PoE and I play it knowing that as something fun that I can pick up and put down at will.
Last Epoch I’m playing to try out each mastery. Even though it’s now a 1.0 release it’s still a bit barebones. Give it a couple of cycles and it’ll be more fleshed out especially in the endgame. I think of it as a middle ground between the simplicity of D4 and complexity of PoE. I like that I can easily try off meta builds through passive refunds and make my own builds.
PoE scratches the D2 itch for grinding. I’m an addict who like spreadsheets.
I don’t think I was very good at the start at making my own builds in PoE, I think the tectonic slam build magically functioned somehow despite that, hahaha. I do miss the game, I played for a really long time. but it’s not for me anymore.
I’m glad to hear that Last Epoch is still going strong with new stuff. I backed in on Kickstarter long ago because I wanted more PoE-like games, so I’m glad it’s succeeding. I’m hoping that giving it another go will make it stick, because it being the “in-between” sounds like it’ll be just right.
I mean, it’s no Diablo but I love the Hades games. If you’re in it mostly for the progression and build construction than you won’t have a great time, but if you’re looking for SOLID arpg gameplay they’re a good fit.
There’s a lot more focus on clean movement, it’s very much an arpg through a roguelite lens rather than an mmo or pure arpg.
Strong recommend, I’ve already put more hours into the sequel than I did the first game. Nyx’s mirror is replaced with a card system that allows for a bit of build customization, you might really dig it!
I fell hard into diablo 3 when it launched on ps4. that’s my baseline and I haven’t found any that play as well on controller.
torchlight 2 on console comes close (very annoyed I can’t play this way on pc).
path of exile is also okay, but I can’t stand the drop rates and market. ftp cosmetics bug me, but online markets ruin a game.
I’ve also dabbled in a few others, mostly with poor controller support or clunky combat that just doesn’t feel good to me.
overall though, I’m just tired of sorting loot. love the grind, love finding loot, hate sorting. games like backpack hero tell us some people love that aspect, but I’d like to see more options with unlimited storage and a good sort/search menu
thanks for the suggestion! I have started before and it didnt click. maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. I think I’ll give it another chance next time I get the arpg itch, if I don’t just pick up tl2 again
Just so you know, if it’s been awhile, Crate came in and did a pretty big overhaul on Grim Dawn, and are prepping for the “final” expansion that’s supposed to come sometime this year.
Dodge roll mechanic, potions are now a recharge resource versus pickups that take item space, the next expansion is adding potion customization, prettied up the old world to be more in-line with the quality the previous two expansions brought, tons of little tweaks.
It’s not exactly a “whole new game” experience, but it’s much more smoothed out!
Well if you liked PoE I doubt you’ll like D4. It’s a much simpler game. Sadly my only advice is to try GD and Last Epoch again. I’ve got hundreds of hours in the former and I just got 10 hours into the latter.
Last Epoch feels like a more approachable PoE. I thoroughly enjoy how the skills interplay with one another, but I still prefer the itemization in Grim Dawn.
The only reason I’m not playing GD currently is because I have too many QoL mods installed so my cloud saving doesn’t work, but I can cloud save for Last Epoch for my steam deck lmao.
Season 4 is a lot more fun, but I still think D3 is a better game. But if you compare D4 to what D3 was like at after release, D4 is in much better shape. It’s definitely heading in the right direction, and I suspect that the expansion in August will make it much better, similar to how D2 and D3 did.
Back to season 4, I leveled to max level, maxed out the battle pass, and experienced all of the content and that was good enough for me. I want really interested in sticking around to switch to better build and get the best gear.
Finally! The return of MvC2. I bought MvC3 when it came out and I was so disappointed. Not because of the smaller roster but because they reduced pretty much every player to the exact same move set. So it didn’t matter who you chose, it was always the same.
I never had a Dreamcast, but this was always the game mentioned in the same breath as Smash Melee back then when we were all getting competitive. These days, I’m a Skullgirls player, and MvC2 is a huge influence on it. The Fightcade implementation has issues, but even if the main player base ends up there for online play, it will be nice to learn the game with a better training mode and to boot it up without emulator jank. It’s worth noting that cross play comes with its own downsides.
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