It's a matter of opinion, but if you don't like many of D3's changes to its aesthetic or streamlined character skill trees, then Path of Exile could be your logical alternative choice. Instead of having mainstreamed skill trees PoE boasts a robust and very deep skill web that allows any character to do an almost infinite number of different builds for any class and the art style and persona of PoE simply feels like it went where I had initially expected D3 to go, but did not. This does not mean I don't like some of D3's new changes, I just feel like some of the changes are more indicative of other Blizzard titles and don't fit the mentality that Diablo should exude quite as well.

The skill web in Path of Exile is generalized to every character class and has literally hundreds of passive abilities that every class can reach. The only thing that differentiates one class from the next is where they start on this giant talent web. All of the skills on the web are passive abilities, but they add great depth to your character's build.

It's the Skill Gems that give your character their actual utility talents, they don't come from a tree or point allocation. Gems drop like any other piece of loot or are given as quest rewards. As long as you meet the gem's requirements and have an open-socket in your gear that matches the same color as the gem itself, then you can use that ability. So, my Templar was able to 'raise zombie' if I had an open blue socket, or he could do 'whirling blades' if my character met the dexterity requirements and equipped two one-handed swords.

The skill web in combination with the skill gems makes for an extremely flexible character creation system. It reminded me a bit of the Guild Wars of Diablo. Seriously, you can do anything you can think of with the points and skill gems allotted to create your character.

Check out this character, he's like a paladin thunder-striking, necromancer.

Full story, Source

I'm still waiting for access to the beta. I played during the open weekend and it was very tempting to pay the Kickstart minimum fee to keep playing. I loved it. Better than Diablo though? I don't know. They're both great without doubt.

Its not about having many builds, its about having many GOOD builds. In a month or two people will find 2-3 good builds and that will be the end of it. I hate people who don't realize the core of the RPG experience, when you first start out a character you have something in mind, so classes make sense. This whole one tree skill for everyone adds lots of choice but efficient builds remain the same, this is because you cant cast magic and attack at the same time, so by very definition the best builds will always be those that follow specialized characters. And having this open skill tree might trick idiots but if your not retarded you discover its pointless.

To demonstrate, lets say you can choose to be good at magic or fighting. If you specialize in fighting you will be attacking enemies for about 100dps(damage per second). If you specialize in magic then you will also be hitting for 100dps, or maybe more or less depending on if its more or or less high skill, this is of course assuming the game is balanced. Now being versatile on the other hand, will make you do less damage per second because you can't do both at the same time. aka you might slash him and then hit him with a fireball, but since your not specialized they will do less damage each.

I think the beta is pretty shitty compared to Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2.

Is Diablo III popular?
*quick google search* alrighty…
this game shits on Diablo III!

Just givin ya a hard time OP

Despite its rocky Beta release, I generally enjoyed PoE much more than I did Fellatio Simulator 2012, and I didn't get into TL2's beta, but I loved the final release.

I find it interesting that the PoE developers have made videos of good builds that people have made that most people wouldn't think of, that were really good.

Like this one, the wand marauder. Seriously? Who would think "Oh hey I got a great idea guys, let's make a marauder, and give him a WAND."? Nobody who wasn't trolling around for goofy builds. But it turned out to be a really solid build. I've seen so many good builds, and all the good ones I've seen haven't been recycled that often in the leader boards for the top players either. So, in a nutshell, I think the skill tree mechanics in PoE are better than the build-system in Fellatio Simulator 2012.

Also, Fellatio Simulator 2012 didn't really HAVE a build system. You just picked skills you already had and then put them in order, and wore some gear that increased your power. Boom, done. I think part of the adventure I liked in ARPG games is making a character and knowing I can't just clean-slate it to improve my build, that I would have to think it through before just derping around the game.

For those confused, I have bestowed Diablo III with the moniker "Fellatio Simulator 2012" effective after the first two weeks after purchasing it.

@Sackmanjones said:

Is Diablo III popular? *quick google search* alrighty… this game shits on Diablo III! Just givin ya a hard time OP

Even though he was joking, that will be the outcome of this topic. D3 has a lot of hate around it cause...well just cause. People played it for 30+ hours and decided it was the worst game of the year.

@Gonmog said:

@Sackmanjones said:

Is Diablo III popular? *quick google search* alrighty… this game shits on Diablo III! Just givin ya a hard time OP

Even though he was joking, that will be the outcome of this topic. D3 has a lot of hate around it cause...well just cause. People played it for 30+ hours and decided it was the worst game of the year.

More like people played it for 30+ hours before realizing that the game doesn't really have any of the things that made Diablo 2 so good.

D3 is not a bad game, but it's a terrible Diablo.

@Dezztroy said:

D3 is not a bad game, but it's a terrible Diablo.

That is probably the most accurate means of expressing my feelings on that game. I liked it. But it neither justified the 13 year wait I spent fantasizing about how nice it would be, nor the 60 dollar price tag.

@Gonmog said:

People played it for 30+ hours and decided it was the worst game of the year.

I played it for almost 300 hours hoping to find some shred of what made Diablo 1 & 2 fun. Needless to say, I want my 300 hours back.

@dcsenn said:

@Dezztroy said:

D3 is not a bad game, but it's a terrible Diablo.

That is probably the most accurate means of expressing my feelings on that game. I liked it. But it neither justified the 13 year wait I spent fantasizing about how nice it would be, nor the 60 dollar price tag.

@Gonmog said:

People played it for 30+ hours and decided it was the worst game of the year.

I played it for almost 300 hours hoping to find some shred of what made Diablo 1 & 2 fun. Needless to say, I want my 300 hours back.

So...you liked the game, but you didn't enjoy the time you spent playing it. You realize the problem with that statement, right?

Path of Exile, even in beta, is personally superior to D3 in every way. The barter system makes trading and vendoring far more dynamic than gold systems in other games. The fact that you get your abilities through the gems you socket into your gear, and those individual gems level up with the experience points you gain throughout the game, is probably one of the best things ever. The skill tree is MAGNIFICENT, very much akin to the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy XII. So many ways to spec your character out, easily some of the best customization ever in an ARPG. The world has a solid atmosphere and feel, the difficulty can ramp up pretty hard to offer a solid challenge, and the gear can look downright BAD-ASS. Hell, even the way they handle potions - single vials that recharge over time but the vials themselves can also have stats attached to them, making healing/mana/rejuv potions MATTER EVEN MORE - is great.

Mechanically and systematically, the game is sound in so many ways. I played quite a bit of the beta. Right now, I'm holding out until the full release version so I don't burn myself out on it and can see some of the surprises they put into the game later down the line.

It hits everything that Diablo 3 hits. Without awful narrative or auction house stuff standing in the way at every turn. That, to me, changes everything.

Not to mention the fact that you can get real creative with the builds in the game.

Getting run over is better than Diablo 3.

@dcsenn said:

@Dezztroy said:

D3 is not a bad game, but it's a terrible Diablo.

That is probably the most accurate means of expressing my feelings on that game. I liked it. But it neither justified the 13 year wait I spent fantasizing about how nice it would be, nor the 60 dollar price tag.

@Gonmog said:

People played it for 30+ hours and decided it was the worst game of the year.

I played it for almost 300 hours hoping to find some shred of what made Diablo 1 & 2 fun. Needless to say, I want my 300 hours back.

I'd like to see what you think of PoE after 300 hours. If you actually play that much of course.

It seems I've been waylaid by two people who don't seem to understand what I'm saying.

@Turambar said:

So...you liked the game, but you didn't enjoy the time you spent playing it. You realize the problem with that statement, right?

No. I don't. I can like a game for being a reasonable game. But I can also regret the amount of time I wasted on something that really didn't make me as happy as I think it should have. As a fan waiting for it for over a decade, the disappointment was greater than the enjoyment. Far greater. I was hoping it would be enjoyable as the difficulties progressed, but it slowly just turned into something I disliked instead. Not my picture of a good game.

@haffy said:

I'd like to see what you think of PoE after 300 hours. If you actually play that much of course.

200 hours, and not a single one do I regret.

Not to mention I pitched in about 60 dollars in donations for PoE because I enjoyed it so much. As opposed to the 60 dollars I wish I hadn't spent at all for Diablo 3. One of them I willingly gave my money to something I knew I liked. The other, I had to throw 60 dollars away on just to find out I thought it was garbage.

D3 softcore is still hot garbage but the changes they've made to drops and difficulty have made hardcore relatively playable and interesting (before the only way to succeed in HC was to farm literally 100k treasure goblins and nothing else) and since death actually means something it makes the game sort of tense and interesting. Additionally barely anyone plays it. So, as much as the softcore audience quickly dropped from 5 million to 100k there's got to be somewhere in the region of 5k-10k people actually playing HC so 0.1% of the initial population or so; and thus there's not enough people (nor an RMAH) to ruin the economy as of yet.

@gamefreak9: chew on this for a bit and tell me what you think.

the only argument youll ever see a POE fanboy make is "its better than diablo 3!!" the game has no legs on its own so every single mention of this game has diablo 3 tacked on with the hopes of banking on that games interest rather than generating its own

beta tested this game a long time ago, and just like diablo 3 there is no amount of patches that will fix the core design flaws of this game.

@videogamesarenotart: Strange that this troll would pop up and do a nice necro when the game just went open beta few hours ago.

@Canteu:

yup its all a conspiracy

or it was the 3rd thread in the forum and i replied to it

I tried the open beta with a friend for a little over an hour last night. So far, I enjoy the mechanics, items, and map randomization a lot. This game really is the closest you could get to a Diablo 2 experience without actually playing Diablo 2, and to me that's a good thing. The main problem I have is that the combat and animations feel somewhat disconnected. They aren't bad, per se, but they don't feel very meaty or solid, which is probably the one thing I feel Diablo 3 did very well. Punching a zombie's skeleton out of its own flesh feels fantastic, the combination of sounds, screen shake and character animations made it great and I just feel PoE lacks that same feeling. Now, that's my only complaint out of the way. Despite that, I love the art direction and am stoked to finally see a Diablo-like created in this art style (away from Torchlight and Diablo 3's vibrant or pastel styles). I feel this is nearly what Diablo 3 would have looked like if Blizzard North's 2005 version of the game was not scrapped, judging from the screenshots back then. And I don't know if this enthusiasm will drop off later as I play more, but the currency system with all the unique single-use items they have in this game is pretty awesome. As if finding an item that will re-roll a blue or guarantee a rare of the item type of your choice wasn't good enough, it can be traded or combined into something better. The passive tree is cool and I'm eager to figure out what builds I want, but the lack of any EASY means to respec will probably suck for first-time playing. If you discover a build that is branched in the opposite direction, chances are you're going to have to re-roll your character (Which I probably won't mind doing). The amount of interesting and well implemented mechanics in this game are overflowing. I'm eager to get back into the thick of it and level myself into a screen-clearing monster. Diablo 3, while it may be different now after a few patches, left a bad taste in my mouth where lengthy searches in the AH were the only source of equipment upgrades and a rather shallow stat and character building system that felt too unimagined to stem from its long developement time... Not to mention the horribly boring or non-existant randomized maps, where the puzzle pieces of their tilesets were literally repeating grids or large fields with a chasm or background tree placed in a new spot. I feel PoE will finally satisfy my hunger for a Diablo 2 sequel.

Neither of them appeal much to me. Hopefully Grim Dawn will be good.

Six character classes; isn't it better to have no classes and let chosen skills and abilities define who you are?

If my D3 Barb takes all his shit off he's the same as any Barb, in PoE its not like that your items make you better but they don't make you.

@Funkydupe: The classes all use the same tree, the classes just start you out at different positions on the tree.

@WAR4HA said:

If my D3 Barb takes all his shit off he's the same as any Barb, in PoE its not like that your items make you better but they don't make you.

That's deep bro. It got into my insides and jiggled them about.

@Canteu: tell me about the jiggling

@Nasos100: There was an old woman. Who swallowed a fly.

I don't know why she swallowed that fly. Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a spider,

Who wriggled and jiggled and tickled Inside her.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don't know why she swallowed that fly. Perhaps she'll die.

@Dezztroy: convoluted design and poor balance =/= better

As soon as there is a proper release, youll see over 90% of the playerbase jump ship like they always do with these kinds of "exclusive" "beta" games. Their life span is as long as its in beta, and the devs knows this.

That is why they were charging ridiculous amounts of money for people to get into the private beta for the past year.

@Dezztroy: convoluted design and poor balance =/= better

As soon as there is a proper release, youll see over 90% of the playerbase jump ship like they always do with these kinds of "exclusive" "beta" games. Their life span is as long as its in beta, and the devs knows this.

That is why they were charging ridiculous amounts of money for people to get into the private beta for the past year.

@videogamesarenotart said:

@Dezztroy: convoluted design and poor balance =/= better

As soon as there is a proper release, youll see over 90% of the playerbase jump ship like they always do with these kinds of "exclusive" "beta" games. Their life span is as long as its in beta, and the devs knows this.

That is why they were charging ridiculous amounts of money for people to get into the private beta for the past year.

Ridiculous amounts of money? You could get in the closed beta for 10 dollars...

It certainly scratches that d2 itch better than d3 ever did. And, weirdly enough, until PoE servers got hit with a DDoS attack, i had no server issues.

I find Path of Exile to be a really bland sort of boring name. I should probably check it out though.

after messing around on it in the open beta I didn't pay one dime for..... -_- I find it isn't half bad. Long term there will be "optimal" (read munchkin) builds, but they won't be completely dominating weirdo's like me either. For example I am making a "shadow" class character who uses two handed sword and wears evasion armor with a stupid huge dodge chance. Of course he has no actual armor... at all... so when he actually gets hit it hurts.

I found Diablo3 boring as fuck, Torchlight 2 underwhelming, and Titan Quest uninspiring. I'm still waiting for an isometric-looter as good as Diablo2.

@dcsenn: "Fellatio Simulator 2012" sounds like the best game ever!

I've been playing PoE solidly for weeks now, and it's become a complete obsession in a way that I don't think I've experienced since WoW back in the day. I've already spent about $100 in support so far, purely because I wan't Grinding Gear Games to have my money!

Needless to say, I love the heck out of it.

I really enjoyed the time I spent on D3 with my Witch Doc, but it became apparent the more I played, just how fundamentally flawed the game's mechanics are on almost every level. Combat aside - which IS better that PoE admittedly - I think it has all kinds of issues with it's loot systems, leveling, flexibility, economy and longevity that frankly, I find it crazy that anyone still plays it beyond getting a character or two to 60 (if they really like the combat). I don't resent it 's existence. It was fun for a time.

Take a look at the PoE skill tree, and wonder why any other would suffice: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree

The skill gems, the insanely random loot drops (I have some lvl 1-10 items that easily outdo level 50 in bonuses), the currency items that you can trade or use to provide random bonuses. I think it's all pitch perfect with PoE. It's a theorycrafting dream come true, with an actual endgame.

Everyone into ARPGs should try it if their PC is capable. Everyone.

@TehPickle: I totally agree with everything you wrote and there are only a couple of things I would want to improve in PoE. The combat (as your wrote, the combat in D3 is the best in any ARPG), the camera in PoE is too close to the action, and the graphical variety isn't quite there (it's also a bit blurry sometimes, but I guess that is the engine's fault), imho. Other than that... it's pretty close to perfection.