Dude, this thing about one game killing another is idiocy and a fanboy thing
The only thing that kills a game is the game itself, the wrong decisions made by its developers and the lack of understanding of who its audience is.
That’s why Diablo 2 is an immortal game because what had to be delivered is there and it won’t (I hope) be dismantled by the developers, no matter how much the whiny fans of the terrible souslike keep crying, they won’t contaminate D2 which remains an impeccable RP and one of the best Rack&Slash ARPGs out there. PoE has been totally contaminated since Ultimatum, it’s one bomb after another and these last two leagues have been terrible, and LE… well, LE has a lot of potential but it still hasn’t found a path to what it really wants to be and in trying to please many it gets lost and doesn’t please anyone, the game has 2k players today and is basically a dead game, what can I say it wasn’t for lack of warnings, I’m sorry because the first part of LE is impeccable, the game does very well in the acts and in the first climb of the monolith but it gets lost in the endgame mechanics.
Funnily enough, they were the most successful leagues PoE had. Especially this last one that had more players than any other.
Yeah im a long time PoE vet who is pretty soured on the game, I liked ultimatum and tons of leagues. But didnt like most of the modern leagues after 3.15, but this current league? is actually insane, they did a lot to fix the game, there is still struggles but I played this league longer then most, and melee feels better then ever. Just goes to show, sometimes the answer to fixing skills/archetypes really is just numbers.
And the league mechanic itself was the perfect amount of interaction, I hate crafting leagues, and this league was light on crafting and was really simple to set up and manage. Hell I even set my atlas up for gold farming and did that atlas strat for a good 10 days.
I still much prefer LE and consider it to target me better then poe as a player, but PoE really did hit it out of the park this league. calling this one a stinker is a crazy take.
For the campaign yes. I recently tried to intentionally make a build that was so glitchy it would harm everyone’s brain to read. Gonna post it at some point. Even then I cleared majasa.
Even trying to make a charged puncture run for memes- was rough but def beatable
I’m glad to hear that. Back then it certainly wasn’t worth the money for us. It looked nice but that was about it. The story was okay, we kind of expected more. How they “ended” it felt cheap. Skill tree is a joke. Legendary powers were annoying and item stats sucked (though I heard they fixed that). First (or second? the one with thea hearts and blight) season did not hold my interest for more than an hour or two (even while playing with a friend I managed to persuade to play with me again).
I’ll try the base game again after the expansion drops just to see if the improvements are enough to warrant the price. As far as Blizzard goes nowadays it will be hilariously overpriced again. I have fun with LE, GD and sometimes PoE (for short bursts) so I’m probably not the target audience for D4 anyway. Anything over 40€ is a big no for me.
As far as I know this is not how things work. Engines are hard and very expensive to make. They are a huge timesink. If they did that we wouldn’t have any kind of playable version of LE for a few years at least. Not with the level of complexity needed for a game like LE.
This is also not the industry standard (at least according to my indie/hobby game dev friends). Most games are done in already established engines that support the kind of features the game requires. They take a build, start building in it and then start modifying the engine when new features require things the engine does not support. This is often also the reason why going to a new version of the engine can be a lot of work.
As far as I know there are only two good reasons for an indie team (which the LE team was when they started) to do your own engine. First to learn new stuff. Second as neccessity when the game you want to make requires core features that no engine out there can provide (like with Noita - every pixel in that engine is an interactable material which is something other engines are not capable off while still being performant as far as I know).
So no, it’s not cheap.
As much as I disagree with you about most things, this I do agree with. I also find the thread title awesomely ironic. The OP should have written “this game is just not a Diablo killer”, when what he wrote means the exact opposite. Pure awesomeness.
Yup, you can tell that the player numbers are dwindling so hard league on league.
I took the title as “it’s not just a Diablo killer, but also a PoE killer” given that the rest of his post seemed to be complaining about archaic design choices in PoE then transitioning into points that LE needs to fix. It’s a really confusingly written post though
Either way, there was really no need for any of that. He could have simply made a simple post saying that he loved such and such and didn’t like such and such without implying that D4 and PoE were worse (which, to be honest, they aren’t. Even D4 is a good game, it just targets different people).
In this day and age, I doubt you can have an ARPG that is a “killer”. Players will like one or another more, but they will often just switch between them. I expect the majority of LE and PoE players to play at least 2 of them regularly, and even many D4 players as well (though D4 is one I would say most players stick to only that one).
I completely agree. I mean, I play Titan Quest, Last Epoch, and Grim Dawn. I don’t like PoE, I didnt like the lack of build variety in D4, and while D3 was fun for it’s time the lack of build variety and over emphasis on sets just ruined it for me. D2R was fun for a three act playthrough but it wasn’t fun enough that I wanted to go through it again with a new character (again, lack of build variety lol). But none of them are “bad games”
There’s a game for everyone and while people are hyped for PoE2, I’m hyped for Titan Quest 2 (and Anno 117, but that’s an entirely different genre lol)
I am as well. Both for the setting (I 
mythology!) and the skill system. I hope the changes are positive. They look positive, but I’ve been hurt before. I hope that the itemization is as good. I mean, it wasn’t awesome, but it was good.
hmmm, now that I think about it, I haven’t really found any game except D2 to have really good itemization. But I did dislike just how much farming you had to do.
I’m more concerned about the classic PC game genre going away in general. 24-hour player peak counts on Steam for ARPG’s look healthy across the board until you consider that their total player bases added up is lower than single games in several other genre’s. I can’t help but feel there’s a real possibility the next generation of players aren’t going to care about ARPG’s the same way they no longer care about fighting games, arcades, etc.
The one bright spot is that Baldur’s Gate 3, an isometric RPG, is still a powerful cultural event type game in this space right now, but that could just be the effectiveness of that brand at this point. Its success is yet to be repeated. Here’s hoping Titan Quest 2 makes a similar splash.
I think it’s cyclical, to some extent. But mostly it’s a really stand out game will spawn a lot of copy-cats. Like, we’re getting a lot of Soul’s-like now because of Elden Ring. We’ll also probably get a lot of RPG because of BG3.
If PoE 2 is just awesome, you won’t be able to shake a stick without hitting an ARPG.
Tbh ive been playing PoE since like 2015, and I dont think the genre has ever felt “popular”
D2 was a little before my time as a gamer I was too young to be allowed to play diablo2.
However I did play torchlight and torchlight 2. etc. And none of these games felt… main stream.
PoE is probably one of the most successful arpgs in terms of player numbers and consistency and it is while good, not a top main stream game. Diablo gets huge insane numbers on release then quickly plummets to being midline population.
That does not mean these games are not successful, they are more then enough to be considered very successful games. But they just dont ever break into the main stream like shooters or mobas or what have you. They are just too complex and time consuming for normal people.
Take for example, Northernlion a streamer, he had to explain to someone in his chat how insane it is to have over 1k hours in something, and that he streamed/played a game for his job for like 3 years and still has like 1k~ hours. Normal people just dont sink hundreds of hours into a game. And for arpgs people have 10k hours.
I think arpg will continue to have a niche, despite what it may seem, the FGC is still going strong, and has plenty of grassroots success to continue to be a thing for the people who are interested in it. And almost any fighting game regardless of how niche, you will be able to find a community to play. FGC nerds go crazy and keep their games alive.
im really looking forward to dwarven realms launching out of early access, is janky and weird and poorly balanced? yeah, but its an arpg with a newish take, so it will have a place for a while yet.
I don’t understand why you write that one game can be the killer of another. It doesn’t make sense. Players have a greater choice. Everyone plays what they like. Or all of them if they have that much time. Each game is different.
@TyphonBaan - I really hope that’s the case. I’m not the biggest fan of either PoE or LE to lead that charge because of seasons and mobile-game-like incentives to keep playing. I understand that’s what keeps people engaged, but I can’t help but think “at what cost.” At the cost of constantly invalidating and changing things I like about the game, getting people to play virtually the same game over again with a few new mechanics layered on, etc.
I really feel like that all these types of changes / updates to keep the game fresh could / should be an E-Sport type mode where people can choose to play it but it doesn’t affect the base game, its economy, etc. or preclude true expansions to the base game itself, in the Grim Dawn way of doing things. Maybe even have an open world / base building mode where people can compete in a more Guild Wars-y faction. We’ve see very little of that lately outside of V-Rising. Could also have boss rush modes where players can team up and race that are roguelite-ish akin to Ravenswatch. All of this they could do to capture the PoE appeal without creating the PoE environment where it doesn’t make sense not to play a new character every reset to see the new stuff that got added.
I dunno, TDLR - I hope you’re right, I just see a lot of trends that are annoying to me in that regard also.
@DiceDragon - Right, you’ve noticed then what I’ve noticed, then. It feels like ARPG’s will remain a niche unless and until something changes that. I guess someone could argue to us that PoE’s numbers and the way in which it brings in new players does make it something like one of those more popular games in other genre’s, but I agree with you; I’m not sure the population on PoE is any different from say WoW or DotA. They’re holding on to an earlier established audience that came from games like you’re describing, D2, Torchlight and so on.
I’m not sure personally if the FGC is going strong though. If you compare fighting games to more traditional mind-competitions, let’s call them, like Chess, fighting games have had virtually no staying power. I wish they did, but it’s starting to look like (outside of Smash Brothers) a hundred years from now, the concept of a fighting game will seem like a fad that went away fairly quickly.
Either way, I’d really like to see ARPG’s and fighting games both not be niches but actually be big culture events again at some point. There has to be a way to get people off their phones and tablets and back into more complex and interesting games that make them connect and have fun with content that requires a longer attention span and/or tells a good story. That’s why I was glad to see Baldur’s Gate 3 succeed the way it did, because it kind of did that.
I actually have not tried Dwarven Realms, by the way. Thanks for mentioning that. It’s in my Steam library apparently, but I haven’t managed to try it out yet. I will check that out over the weekend. Looks fun!
Im pretty dialed into the FGC, while I agree, they are not really main stream, they wont be going anywhere. Sajam slam, a tekken tourney featuring all skill levels of content creators had a peak viewership of 94k, yeah nothing so crazy it breaks records, but thats more then the tekken world champs. Grass roots fighting game scene is strong.
I used to play a really old fan fighting game, its still got an active discord of people playing with its own ELO system, and discord bots to help you. its like 10+ years old at this point, yeah its got sub 1k players, but its still got a niche of dedicated players keeping it alive.
I think “normal” people just dont have the mental bandwidth to deal with fighting games/ARPGs, or the time. Both the genres require an insane level of mastery you dont get in a week or even months, it can take years to hone the fundamentals for some people.
Tekken specifically is sorta going through a growing phase where people are picking it up and learning it, SF had a similar spurt when it dropped its newest game. As they are doing a lot to get new people into trying it and learn it.
Hell, I also play dota here or there, It took me like 2 months to actually improve my winrate from 47% to like 51%, and im pretty much still bad. I have 1k~ games, there are people who are still at my level with 20k games, because they just dont have the mental bandwidth to macro to the level needed to improve in dota. Playing support in that game is a mental checklist of setting up everything at every clock interval and if you miss that interval you are just not getting as much map position for your team, a perfect support earns his carries bonkers levels of GPM.
They will always be a niche. Much like rogue-likes are. Or idler/clicker/incremental games are. Or classic RPGs like Wizardry or Might & Magic. Or flight simulators (not combat ones). Or mechs. Or many other subgenres that target specific tastes (like dating sims, for example).
They appeal to a small portion of players that enjoy different things. This is usually because the thing they target is very off-mainstream (like mechs or dating sims) or because they’re more complex than other games.
If you look at the mainstream games, they’re usually simple to operate:
-Start a FPS, just click to shoot. You usually have other stuff in there, but it’s pretty much go in and you’re set.
-Start a platformer, it’s also easy to understand and start playing.
-Start a tomb-raider like, same thing.
Whereas hack & slash ARPGs require you to understand a bunch of systems, including how defense and offense works, how many different skill interact with each other, how gearing up influences many different moving parts, etc.
It’s not just go in and start enjoying. You need knowledge of the genre to even start playing.
That’s true, but you could say the same thing about a variety of activities that are pretty much universal, or were until recently. At the turn of the previous century the majority of people, (at least in North America,) played music, attended opera, played Chess, just read books, all sorts of things. Life was more complicated, so people were more interested in complicated and skill-based leisure activities. That’s my snotty PhD-sounding thesis anyways, haha. To me, it’s lamentable that society hasn’t steered that direction again recently considering how much more complicated it is to just exist and earn a living in this environment. Somehow convenience and the shortening attention span are winning out over that. I spend a lot of time thinking about this and how it might at some point be reversed because I believe it must be, for a lot of reasons I won’t bother to get into right now.
Yeah I think you’re right, I just don’t think it’s a good thing. I also don’t think it’s inevitable.
Yes, this is the main issue. The majority of players just want to start a game and have some immediate fun for some time. And diablo-clones, along with a bunch of sub-genres, aren’t meant to be done in bite-size chunks. They require time investment into them.
It’s also why mobile games have risen in popularity so much in the past decade. They’re good for when you’re waiting (or when you’re pooping 
) and if you don’t play them for a few days or weeks it’s fine.
I really do think it’s inevitable. There will always be activities that are niche, either because they don’t appeal to the majority or because they aren’t affordable by them.
You mention opera, but even 100 years ago it was very niche. The lower classes didn’t go to opera because they couldn’t afford it. That was typically an activity for the upper middle classes.
Likewise, checkers or dominoes were much more popular than chess (and still are) because they are simpler to understand and start playing.
Likewise, D&D was always niche because the theme of the game only appealed to a smaller portion of the population and because the complexity of the game also made it less immediate.
So I don’t think diablo-clones will ever be non-niche unless they change so much that they’re not diablo-clones anymore.
D4 was the first step in that direction, by fusing MMO concepts into it. But change it too much and what you’ll have is another sub-genre. It might be more popular, but it won’t be a diablo-clone anymore.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. Life was shorter & harder, diseases were more common but I’m not sure whether jobs or even life was more complicated. Trying to juggle 2 parents working, possibly high pressured corporate jobs is unlikely to be “less complicated” than working in a factory all the hours god sends because you need to feed 15 children that the wife is looking after. Or maybe you’re a farmer & you’re competing to sell your stuff against cheap foreign imports (or work for a company doing the same) compared to long distance shipment of food stuffs not being as much of a thing “back then” (due to the lack of refrigeration for perishables).