I played PoE off and on for around a month once open beta started. Didn’t really put in a lot of hours though (only enough to get up to level 24) since that was around the time when many kept getting disconnected from the servers. Interesting thing to note is that when I did d/c, if I logged back in before the 8-15 minute time frame where game instances reset, I’d reconnect back with the map state intact (thus not having to re-clear an area again which can suck when you are still progressing through content). Thus a big thumbs up for their attempting to handle situations like this. After awhile though, the d/c’s and desyncs just made playing annoying; didn’t log on and play again until just a few days ago.
Everything about the game needs to be taken into the context of the size of the development team and the budget they have though. Thus it isn’t surprising the graphics and combat mechanics are rather raw (D3 clearly is far superior in the mechanics area) and clunky by comparison. But these are things which can be improved with time.
I can’t really comment on the loot aspect since I’m no where close to end game (but this is why I started playing it again now that release is just a few hours away), but the low level stuff I’ve found so far has been decent. I like the skill/support gem idea and how socketing those, allows them to be leveled up (thus gaining power in the process) as is the ability to increase the quality level of the loot themselves (yes, enchanting is coming to D3 but this is an ability that should not have been left out to begin with).
The key thing that stood out was the barter style “currency” system which accomplishes a number of different functions/objectives (use as a trading currency as well as for enchanting/crafting/iding/portal) from their lowest levels. Even though I have found a lot of rares, I still pickup magic items for vendoring to convert them into a usable material that eventually turns into an orb. Right now in D3, it’s useless to pickup white/blues (though this will change for a short bit with transmogrification) and potions (once you’ve already built up a sizable inventory of them).
As others have mentioned, the client/server desync can get really bad and the server will disconnect you on some of these lag spikes quite gratuitously (I know some may disagree but even though disconnects happen in D3; I know, I lost paragon hardcore characters across two regions, the client/server are far more robust at being able to handle high latency for long periods of time).
Being GGG are a small development team, it isn’t surprising they have been far more nimble to adding and making changes (less corporate politics and general mid-level BS to deal with when it comes to design through implementation), as well as being more involved/candid with the community. Budget however limits the production quality (which for some, actually gives the game that raw feel they enjoy). For competitive players, they’ve included all sorts of challenges to keep those kind of players busy. And with release, they’ve committed to content updates every few weeks.
Basically, it’s an interesting free to play hack and slash with quite a bit of dungeon crawler elements; the operative word is free so there really isn’t anything stopping anyone from just playing it for as short or as long as they want. I don’t see myself pouring in a lot of hours into the game compared to D3 (which I only recently hit 1000 hours since I’ve been playing this less and less since 1.0.4; don’t know if I’ll even get any character to P100 before all the changes go live in 2014) though.
Thus it will take me quite awhile to get to PoE end game but that’s ok for me. I just play these kind of games mostly for fun anyway (and just end up playing them less and less when they lose my interest/stop being fun to play). Regardless, I purchased a divine supporter pack as a show of support since it’s amazing what this small independent company has been able to achieve. They have a great foundation to work off of and I can see down the road, the quality level of the mechanics and overall production level, increasing.
