So, Path of Exile 0.2.0 update drops on April 4. Last Epoch Cycle 2 launches April 2. Diablo 4 Season 8 is expected April 29.
I’m not here to complain about the launch date controversy, just to note that it leaves me in a quandary: what to play?
D4 is a released game entering into its 8th season. As most of us know, the first six seasons were utterly disappointing and D4 lost a lot of market share as a result, mostly to the PoE franchise. But then Season 7 came along and it was actually a very good season that met with good reviews and I found it fun as hell to play. And Season 8 is looking ever better. So that complicates things. (I know, I can already hear the chorus of “d4 is crap”, yea it was, but it’s not anymore, go play it and find out what all the ARPG fans know). I’m not a partisan, I enjoy all 3 games.
Last Epoch is a year into release and just about to enter its 2nd season with a huge update, mostly to its endgame and testers are giving it great marks. That launches on April 2. Because of the controversy, a number of players have committed to playing LE on April 2 and waiting for Poe2 to get its act together.
What to do? I lean toward going to LE and playing that out and then, when that’s done, looking over the PoE and D4 landscape to see which looks more appealing at that point.
What about you guys? What are you all planning to do? Let’s try to keep this a civil and productive discussion, please. Thanks!
You forgot No Rest for the Wicked at the 30th as well.
Personally, I’ll be playing LE. PoE2 isn’t going anywhere and the first couple weeks (as we’ve seen already) will be for a bunch of patches and hotfixes.
I’ll likely give LE a spin and start PoE 2 a bit late, I’m a ‘Standard’ or ‘Legacy’ player anyway, I have less urge to start right the day it begins, there’s more then enough time in my eyes.
Also I’m more curious about the LE changes and if it’ll actually keep it as a relevant game for me compared to PoE 2, which I know will stay a relevant game to me simply. The stakes for my own perception isn’t that high there… and I would simply like to know if I should put effort and excitement into waiting for future changes earlier then later.
Oh? That does release something as well? That’s actually above LE and PoE for me since I wanted to experience more of that, was a bit short still the last time, looking forward to it. But more then enough time at least to check out the others until then
You’re right, I should have mentioned that one, too. I didn’t actually forget it, I left it out because a) I’m not familiar with it so it didn’t register as being in the same league with the 3 others; and b) I presumed (too much) that others might not recognize it, either.
It’s a very good game, but doesn’t quite fall into the diablo-style ARPGs. It leasn more towards being similarily paced as a Souls-Like, the world building also following a similar style with hidden paths and loads of secrets (which are all nigh meaningless though sadly still).
I can heavily recommend if the Souls-Like style is liked, and absolutely not… if not
Both. PoE will be in EA for a very long time and LE has a new season start. I don’t realy care that much. On top of it 2 days in LE should be enough to get to emp Monos anyway and if the endgame hasn’t changed big time I don’t see any need to play LE for long.
Not being a close follower of LE, I don’t know much about the dev’s track record on this kind of thing. What leads you to those expectations, do they not nerf OP builds shortly after release?
I play all 3 of them , but have no issues with them launching so close of one another. I’m more excited about the new LE content than PoE2 0.2 at this time, since I don’t expect many differences between 0.1 and 0.2 .
So 1-2 weeks of LE before even deciding if I want to try or skip 0.2 , depending on what others report as changes. Then surely D4 will last me 1-2 weeks more. Alternate with some WoW 11.1 and hopefully some TQ2 EA if I can get in , and I think I’ll have lots of stuff keeping me busy for at least a couple of months, until some day PoE1 3.26 or GD expansion launches
It’ll surely be a good ARPG year
Yeah well, the people who are interested in playing op builds will be like “okay so what if a bug has caused my skill to have the decimal moved, thats a nerf, you said no nerfs”
So really the caveat is “op skills that are op because of poor balance are fine” but “op skills because of a bug will be fixed(aka nerfed)”
So its not really clear cut to some of these gamers
Healing hands remained for the cycle because that was just an uhoh balance wise, but the profane veil got fixed because it was a bug with a value
Builds that were nerfed mid-season due to bugs still overperformed, so that shouldn’t be an issue. The exception was profane veil and that was because all the build(s) did was abuse profane veil to be immortal. Every other skill they used was secondary.
Probably, but they did warn they were going to nerf/fix them a week in advance. If you have an OP build and a week in advance, you can certainly farm/prepare easily to switch a build.
Personally, I’d be fine with balance fixes in the first week and after that only game breaking bugs, like dive bomb melting servers. But I’m guessing that’s mostly due to EHG still being new at this and not as prepared as GGG is these days.
After all, there were plenty of times when GGG nerfed stuff 2-3 weeks into a league (and even beyond) before they got their system fine tuned to answer these issues fast. Same as with dupes.
Even though balance changes in the first week is still something that affects leaderboards, so that would still be an issue to some people (usually the ones that only play OP bulds).
It will always be an issue. People often see a nerf & react emotionally rather than logically. PoE is a prime example of this, with people complaining that nerfs to a build make it “unviable” & that it “might as well ge deleted from the game”.
I have hard time making up my mind as well, POE 2 or LE. I will not touch D4 again, uff. I will decide when GGG show us all the 0.2 content that is comming.
What would make me want to prioritize POE 2 over LE would be addition of the Druid, Templar or some kind of minion build other than Witch.
LE is my favorite arpg of all time, so no hard decision for me…
you see this bad move from POE to ruin their competion (while before they were saying they are friends with EHG) and that’s want me to support EHG even more.
when i playe POE 2 on beta release i got bored pretty quickly from that slow combat, so it is not a game for me anyway …
I am playing and supporting LE .
I think this is true. But in the case of the “cast on X” (specifically freeze) support gems they really just gutted them. I tried a bunch of different things, and I just couldn’t get them to a place where I thought they were worth the effort. I thought they felt bad unless you are scratching your head for something, anything, to fill a skill slot. And the respec costs at the time were absurd, so I rolled a new char, … and then they dropped the respec costs.
Sure, EA, I get it. Didn’t make me any more of a fan of GGG though.
