I can't wait to try this game out!

How are you liking the skill tree? It just looks so daunting... I can't wait to mess around with it.

I can't wait to try this game out!

How are you liking the skill tree? It just looks so daunting... I can't wait to mess around with it.

How can something be "completely free" these days?

@Jeust: I'm buying a new computer on Saturday and can't wait to give it a try. Is it optimized well? I'm getting a Surface, and I know it's an isometric view game, so I wouldn't think it'd be too hard on a system.

@Funkydupe: One of the guys did a little interview/play session on Gamespot and they explained that they have basically set it up so that you can buy a lot of shit that does not affect gameplay, but that looks really awesome on your guys. Of course, there are still awesome things to find in the game too.

Also, people will pay in donation and stuff for a really good game, which is what seems to be the case here. The game has been in development for a while (like 6 years or so) and they've been able to keep themselves afloat from this model, which will surely boom once the proper game is released. They received over 2 million bucks during the closed beta alone.

How can something be "completely free" these days?

@Jeust: I'm buying a new computer on Saturday and can't wait to give it a try. Is it optimized well? I'm getting a Surface, and I know it's an isometric view game, so I wouldn't think it'd be too hard on a system.

This game is extremely boring and repetitive. At first me and my friend were loving the game because its very similar to d2 and we are hardcore d2 fans, but after a many hours of play, we are quite done with the game. POE has many good qualities but overall it suffers from having no heart/soul. Unlike d2 there is nothing to "wow" about. All the enemies are basically the same, theres not much variety in their attacks or movements, most areas are basically layed out the same, go in a big circle around this big lake in the middle or around the outside of the map. Boss fights are not epic in the least, half the time you don't even realize this is the boss at the end of the act because its just the same as any other boss you come across. The towns are extremely small and it makes it not exciting to get the next town in the next act. Most people i have talked to in game have said that the music almost puts them to sleep and they have to put on some d2 music or something in the background. They are not realizing that its the boring gameplay as well with the combination of the music that's doing it.

Feel free to give it a try, i didnt mention any of the good qualities of the game, and it does have many but to be honest this game just doesnt have that wow factor thats going to have you keep coming back. Now if this is just because its Beta and the final release is going to be extremely different then i will definitely give it another shot, but I highly doubt that.

I had no idea this was free. Thanks for the info!

This game is extremely boring and repetitive. At first me and my friend were loving the game because its very similar to d2 and we are hardcore d2 fans, but after a many hours of play, we are quite done with the game. POE has many good qualities but overall it suffers from having no heart/soul. Unlike d2 there is nothing to "wow" about. All the enemies are basically the same, theres not much variety in their attacks or movements, most areas are basically layed out the same, go in a big circle around this big lake in the middle or around the outside of the map. Boss fights are not epic in the least, half the time you don't even realize this is the boss at the end of the act because its just the same as any other boss you come across. The towns are extremely small and it makes it not exciting to get the next town in the next act. Most people i have talked to in game have said that the music almost puts them to sleep and they have to put on some d2 music or something in the background. They are not realizing that its the boring gameplay as well with the combination of the music that's doing it.

Feel free to give it a try, i didnt mention any of the good qualities of the game, and it does have many but to be honest this game just doesnt have that wow factor thats going to have you keep coming back. Now if this is just because its Beta and the final release is going to be extremely different then i will definitely give it another shot, but I highly doubt that.

I've only played about 2-3 hours so far and my first impressions are mixed.

On one hand i like the systems involved, or what i understand of them anyhow. I like the skill tree, i like the way gems work, how you can improve the quality of your gear etc. Presentation wise it's not half bad either. Graphics are fine and definitely look like a more modern take on the D2 visual. Of course it's a lot rougher than what a Blizzard game would look like but whatever, it's free. Menus and UI all look pretty good.

On the other hand i think the combat feels terrible and unresponsive. I'll be the first one to trash D3 for almost everything it does but one thing Blizzard nailed down is the combat. The fluidity, precision and responsiveness of the combat are in a different league. It was one of my major problems with Torchlight 2, that the combat just didn't feel as good as in D3. In PoE it's even worst.

This leaves me in a tough spot. I don't want to play D3 again because of how unrewarding the game is, i don't want to play T2 anymore because the combat doesn't feel as good and the rest of the systems and gameplay mechanics aren't necessarily better overall. It's sort of a toss up between D3 and T2. And now i'm just not sure about PoE. I like a lot of what i see in its systems but if the feel of the combat doesn't drastically improve i just won't want to put much time in it in the end.

EDIT: Oh and unique character names (not account name)? Fuck that. At least i was able to register DukeLaCrosse. :D

I can't remember the last time the design of a game made me as angry as PoE. And I put in 14 hours so this isn't a kneejerk response.

I don't know why I'm posting in this thread. It's great if you're enjoying it. Rgh, it just makes me so mad!

So I love Diablo 2 and thought Diablo 3 was good but disappointing. I tried Path of Exile yesterday and hated it. I wanted to like it, but couldn't.

Fine since people keep saying to try it I'll go check it out. Although I did watch Star on Youtube play it and was pretty unimpressed. I don't know how a action RPG would work as a free to play without being totally broken.

I wholeheartedly endorse this blog with my seal of approval.

@scottsinger13: Every complaint you just mentioned can be applied to just about any ARPG out there.

@triple07 said:

I don't know how a action RPG would work as a free to play without being totally broken.

The cash shop just has silly pets and alternate spell effects. Cosmetic stuff. It breaks absolutely nothing.

@project343 you obviously missed most of what i was talking about.

I think your salespitch should be more "Do you like Diablo 2?" than 3, because PoE is basically a refinement and expansion of D2.

Path of Exile is the actual Diablo 3.

You should all play it. And give them money while you're at it.

I did, you should too.

@Jeust: to note, there are no seperate servers, merely the gateway you connect through to optimise your ping. however if you are in a group with an american say, and they enter an instance first, you will enter through their gateway giving you a worse ping.

@xyzygy It runs at about 100 fps on my piece of shit computer maxed out. You'll be fine.

@Pr1mus I would like to point out two things that Torchlight 2 does, that PoE doesn't:

1. Torchlight randomly stops attacking your target when you hold down M1.

2. When targeting a spell that you can channel, if you're not selecting a target you can aim the spell freely, but if you select a target you cannot change the aiming, even if the target dies.

Think about those horrible, almost game breaking combat problems.

Go play PoE instead.

Path of Exile is the actual Diablo 3.

You should all play it. And give them money while you're at it.

I did, you should too.

@Jeust: to note, there are no seperate servers, merely the gateway you connect through to optimise your ping. however if you are in a group with an american say, and they enter an instance first, you will enter through their gateway giving you a worse ping.

@Canteu: This guy is clearly someone who's trying not to feel dumb by giving them his money and is trying to get you to throw your money away like he did. and honestly i dont know how you spent money on a free beta lmao.

Either way, do not listen to this guy. This is not the diablo 3 d2 fans deserve, it could have been but it fails on many levels. I personally have not played diablo 3 because i do not support companies who only care about making money, but i have a few friends who played it and they said it held there attention much longer then path of exile does. This game will continue to get hyped up by people like this guy and then fall flat on its face if many things arent corrected, im lookin at you swtor fanboys.

I can't get over the uninspired boring art. It looks like a game from the nineties, technical prowess or not.

I like Diablo 3 but not Torchlight because I found the skills system Torchlight employed to be quite poor as it discouraged experimentation and was full of decisions whose impact I just couldn't perceive anyway. Also I was bored by it and it did a bunch of other needlessly complicated things Diablo 3 fixed. Now let's have a look at those screensh- Jesus Christ! That skill web is crazy! I agree with the previous person who said you should specify Diablo 2 instead of Diablo 3, I think that'd be more accurate than saying liking Diablo 3 means liking this.

@scottsinger13: This guy...who has 4 posts, hasn't played D3, probably played an hour of PoE...solid opinion base.

You should listen to this guy.

I didn't particularly enjoy Diablo 3. Torchlight 2 was boring. I also don't like the art style of Path of Exile. This genre really needs an overhaul for me to get back into it. I guess I'll download it and see what's up. I just have a feeling that this huge tech tree will be unbalanced to shit.

Seems like there will most definitely be a build to rule them all, which just makes me look at that huge tech tree and think it's a waste of development time.

@Canteu: what does me having 4 posts have to do with anything? I stated i played D2 for many many years and I have not played D3 cause that game sucks just as bad as this game does. You sound extremely mad and your really scraping the bottom of the barrel arent you LOL. Again, Don't tell people to spend their money just because you were dumb enough to. Let them play it for FREE and make up their own opinion.

I blinked, and all of a sudden I'm up to lvl 43. Sure first run through the game can be repetitive, but it's on the easiest difficulty possible. On my second run through, things are a little harder. It's the large amount of theorycrafting/potential metagame that's making this really fun for me. If you like options for making builds, it's a great game to try.

@thabigred: There is the possibility this genre is just not your thing. Might have been at some point but not anymore.

@Jeust: Tried registering and it kept giving me error messages.

@xyzygy: It's just the sphere grid from FFX (roughly the same size, less customizability); the reason it looks daunting is because it's a pain to navigate; but once you find the useful stuff it's not too hard to plan a route for your next 10-15 levels et cetera.

This game is solid once you reach cruel, the slog through normal is pretty bad and the loot system is 12 years old bad. There's only a handful of builds that work for soloing so you'll want to group up, doing so will lead to ninjafests galore unless you play with friends; how much you can tolerate that is going to directly correlate to how much you like the game. As much as D3 gets all the small stuff right and all the big stuff wrong PoE is kind of the opposite; low production values, tedious early levelling, promising endgame and excellent economy.

Huh, looks interesting and I do love myself some Torchlight 2. I'll probably get this...IF there's a viable ranged class that doesn't involve a build that just spams mage-like abilities.... God damn fucking glaive.

@Fredchuckdave said:

@xyzygy: It's just the sphere grid from FFX (roughly the same size, less customizability); the reason it looks daunting is because it's a pain to navigate; but once you find the useful stuff it's not too hard to plan a route for your next 10-15 levels et cetera.

This game is solid once you reach cruel, the slog through normal is pretty bad and the loot system is 12 years old bad. There's only a handful of builds that work for soloing so you'll want to group up, doing so will lead to ninjafests galore unless you play with friends; how much you can tolerate that is going to directly correlate to how much you like the game. As much as D3 gets all the small stuff right and all the big stuff wrong PoE is kind of the opposite; low production values, tedious early levelling, promising endgame and excellent economy.

Saying that there are only a handful of builds that work is not at all correct.

Look at Kripparian for example. During the closed beta he had about 15 characters, all over level 60 and all with different builds.

It's absolutely fantastic!!! But that skill tree isn't really a skill tree, it mainly consists of intelligence +10 and such. Skills are obtained by collecting gems, still a brilliant system though! Also no currency! You barter your items when purchasing, awesome!

@TobbRobb said:

I can't get over the uninspired boring art. It looks like a game from the nineties, technical prowess or not.

I have this problem as well. Which is a shame because I want to like it.

Also I'm not really feeling the combat so far, oh and is there a map or something? Or have I completely missed it?

@mordukai said:

@thabigred: There is the possibility this genre is just not your thing. Might have been at some point but not anymore.

No it's not that. It's just that the games aren't for me. I actually really enjoyed Krater. I think I'd rather just have a Diablo RTS, I don't see why someone just hasn't made that yet.

Also the signup servers are down for me too.

@Village_Guy said:

@TobbRobb said:

I can't get over the uninspired boring art. It looks like a game from the nineties, technical prowess or not.

I have this problem as well. Which is a shame because I want to like it.

Also I'm not really feeling the combat so far, oh and is there a map or something? Or have I completely missed it?

There is a map. There is a button for it in the interface.

@mordukai said:

@thabigred: There is the possibility this genre is just not your thing. Might have been at some point but not anymore.

@Jeust: Tried registering and it kept giving me error messages.

I'd say try registering after a while. Websites sometimes run into errors and all kinds of mayhem. ^^

The only thing I didn't really like about the game was the feel of the combat. Maybe if I leveled up movement speed a lot or something, but it feels too stilted and slow. Not as fluid or quick as Torchlight 2 or Diablo 3. There's a nice flow to those.

Otherwise, the game is ok to just shoot the shit in. Which is basically what Diablo 3 became anyway.

@Dezztroy: I don't mean identical builds but similar builds that take advantage of specific spheres that are much better than others. Anyway one need only run a few public games of the Pyramid in Cruel or Merciless to discover just how many viable builds people have discovered (hint: they all die 10 times a run). Please never ever ever cite Kripparian for anything if you're trying to make a non satirical point.

I gave it a go, and its definitely worth checking out. This game's somber atmosphere adds real character to it, I do like how run down and damp everything looks and how all your gear looks rotten.

Also it has to be said, unlike all the other free to play games in the known universe, this game does not hamper your process at all if you dont buy any of the DLC, in fact all the DLC are cosmetic upgrades.

@thabigred said:

@mordukai said:

@thabigred: There is the possibility this genre is just not your thing. Might have been at some point but not anymore.

No it's not that. It's just that the games aren't for me. I actually really enjoyed Krater. I think I'd rather just have a Diablo RTS, I don't see why someone just hasn't made that yet.

Also the signup servers are down for me too.

I actually don't know why EA hasn't yet made DA RTS. Origins left that door wide open imo.

Funny this topic came up at this time as i recently got into Torchlight 2 and right now I am playing through Diablo 3. Got to admit that I feel like Torchlight 2 is the stronger game of the 2. Frankly I would be happy with a Champions of Norrath 3, or a HD collection of Champions of Norrath and Return To Arms.

Well I only played to level 3 with the Shadow and Witch classes so far, but I'm loving it. I really dig the whole atmosphere. gives me Game of Thrones vibes. Only huge complaint is that i've been getting pretty bad lag, where it'll take half a second for an attack to register on an enemy. Spheregrid and barter system are also nice surprises.

@Dezztroy: I don't mean identical builds but similar builds that take advantage of specific spheres that are much better than others. Anyway one need only run a few public games of the Pyramid in Cruel or Merciless to discover just how many viable builds people have discovered (hint: they all die 10 times a run). Please never ever ever cite Kripparian for anything if you're trying to make a non satirical point.

@Dezztroy: Well genius boy, in the fine art of left clicking and right clicking one need only left click and right click to succeed; if there are viable builds they will be found by virtually anyone; if there's only a handful then they won't. D2 was relatively playable back in the day when there weren't really any guides on the internets nor dumbasses like yourself that copy someone else unless it was a direct friend. Anyway it's fun to fight Vaal and watch everyone else die 30 times in the process of the fight for comedy purposes; but ultimately it's also a sign of bad design.

@Dezztroy: Well genius boy, in the fine art of left clicking and right clicking one need only left click and right click to succeed; if there are viable builds they will be found by virtually anyone; if there's only a handful then they won't. D2 was relatively playable back in the day when there weren't really any guides on the internets nor dumbasses like yourself that copy someone else unless it was a direct friend. Anyway it's fun to fight Vaal and watch everyone else die 30 times in the process of the fight for comedy purposes; but ultimately it's also a sign of bad design.

@Dezztroy: You're a fine example of the charm of this playerbase and their propensity for screwing each other over; well done sir. A build makes your clicking better, you click to make the build. I could easily make a nigh invincible build wherein all I had to do was put up a couple of auras by not clicking and then click for the rest of the game and be successful.

ARGH EVERYONES INCREDIBLY STUPID WAAAH THIS MAKES MY POINT VIABLE DOESN'T IT!? Smart guy.

@Fredchuckdave: ??? every single one of Vaal's attacks can be dodged. You could probably kill him naked if you find a way of killing the adds cleanly.

Maybe you played with shitty people? Hardcore mode weeds most of those duders out.

@Forderz: I personally never die to Vaal but the lag is pretty bad in this game so it's not like a fluid arena style combat in D3. Maybe they wanted it to be that but it doesn't work out; even apart from everything else the homogenous colors and how similar his arms look are also quite problematic. Anyway just run a few public games of the Pyramid on Cruel or Merciless; it will entertain you for sure but at least think about why it's happening. To be fair D2 was a lot like that as well where the attacks came out a bit too fast and everything was a little janky and lag would screw you over but there were ways around that depending on your build.

Also I'll say this, I think Diablo 2, game made in 2000, looks much better than this game visually.

its diablo with materia and a sphere grid .. stfu and play it

@envane: Oh I do play it, but the reason I play it is because it's a prospective market and the loot system is easy to break in your favor.

@scottsinger13 said:

@Canteu: This guy is clearly someone who's trying not to feel dumb by giving them his money and is trying to get you to throw your money away like he did. and honestly i dont know how you spent money on a free beta lmao.

Either way, do not listen to this guy. This is not the diablo 3 d2 fans deserve, it could have been but it fails on many levels. I personally have not played diablo 3 because i do not support companies who only care about making money, but i have a few friends who played it and they said it held there attention much longer then path of exile does. This game will continue to get hyped up by people like this guy and then fall flat on its face if many things arent corrected, im lookin at you swtor fanboys.

Here we go. Let's start a fuckin' flame war whilst we're at it.

@Dezztroy said:

You use pubbies as a way to get your point across? I don't even know if you're trying to look stupid or not.

Biggest dickhead of a response i've read on this website. Well done my good sir, you have received the giant douche award.