Almost all skills in D2 had 3 sinergy skills. That meant that everyone that used that skill would always take all 80 points. So that left 20 something to assign for required skills and whatever else was left was put into support/QoL.
This meant that a guide was mostly advice on the order to take the skills for a smoother leveling, sometimes advice on the rest of the skills and also optimized gear.
But the fact that almost always those 80 skill points are mandatory (plus a bunch for required skills) means that there is little left to be different from an optimized build.
That was basically my point on the difference between them.
I’m not saying PoE’s system is bad. Just that it’s much much more complex. So complex, in fact, that almost everyone has to check PoB to know if something is an improvement over another thing.
Even experienced build creators do this.
I still play D2 every now and then, usually a couple weeks per year. Either D2R or PD2.
In fact, retention in season 3 was higher than in season 2. Cos the developers disnae cut anything, they only adden. And with each season there will only be more content. It’s a pity, of course, that they didnae add an uber boss T-Rexx or something, but it is what it is.
That’s not what steamdb says.
Season 2 had 150k players in week 1 and 136k in week 2.
Season 3 had 80k in week 1 and 60k in week 2.
So not only did they lose more players percentually, they even lost more players in absolute numbers just from week 1 to week 2.
So yeah, season 3 retention was a lot worse than season 2. That is just a fact.
lol i forgot that happened. it was both the best and worst thing to happen. on one hand it incentivized players to level up basic skills. on another, to min max you’re railroaded into the 80 points tax.
then again, thats how blizzard ended up. they make solutions that help weaker players but with the unintended effect of railroading builds. their item sets are a prime example of this. 800% increased damage bonus to X skill if you use this set? its a no brainer if you use that skill. you must get that set.
i m not implying that you did, but personally i think its unnecessarily too many different defences. interesting yes, but it is a headache to balance. if i m being honest i think blizzard does this better in a sense that people dont worry about defences too much.
i used to do that. tho i stopped because i kinda prefer GD/TQ a whole lot more if we’re talking older games.
D2 despite being ancient, is really good just that it lacks some QoL and build flexibility that GD/TQ has in great abundance.
I never got into TQ. Never enjoyed it, for some reason. I do like TQ2 so far.
But I also regularly play GD every now and then as well.
Hell, every few years I’ll even boot up D1 for a week or two and I still have fun with it.
If you don’t plan to play a game for a month in a row, the lack of QoL in the older D1/D2 isn’t too noticeable. And you can always use a mod offline (or PD2 added lots of QoL as well).
mods are a huge can of worms. i try to avoid them even tho i know they bring a huge amount of content and make the game objectively better. the main reason why i dont is the idea that i m playing the game in a way that the devs didnt intend nags at me. i used to mod d1. it starts very basic with qol. then later it goes into tweaking drop rates. then after some time i just hack items in directy. and yeah i know thats on me. but its how i m weird. i usually avoid all that by just sticking pure.
i liked tq because back in the day d2 had no successor for years. i also liked it because of the “dual class” system which was a step away from being truly classless. another thing i highly enjoyed was how monsters carried and used whatever loot they were meant to drop. which could be frustrating OR exhilarating whenever they came decked out all shiny and hit like a truck. target farming was a thing too. in fact if tq1 had been updated to have more qol, i would even prefer tq1 over gd.
it also was so damn beautiful back in the day. D2 had pseudo 3d but tq was in fact 3d. i am heavily biased for tq. i especially love the theme/setting.
Technically the game is NOT finished so really it can’t have end game because it hasn’t ended hahah just teasing.
LE has was early release 2019, POE1 beta was like 2011 - thats 8 years of extra dev time for end game content, like I said in another thread give it time. You’ll get better end game and more end game, people still waiting for the last 2 chapters I reckon that’s taking a ton of resources to do. Once that’s done and all the focus is on bugs/end game/mechs then you’ll get some juicy shit.
I’ll stick around. If you don’t that’s your choice just like being dissapointed.
Just do what I am doing in the mean time - level up your masturbation skills. I’m closing in on hand corruption 17000 (feels like a complete stranger who does brick laying as a job, so rough)
