While there are some amazing core designs and cross sharing of monetized items (they could’ve easily raked in more money by not honoring cosmetics and stash purchases being shared across what will now be two separate games), the casual potato part of me says nope. I played PoE early on including being one of the higher tiered open beta supporters (I have my t-shirt, poster, the Chaos Orb keychain, and a bunch of other physical merch somewhere, as well as credits I haven’t completely spent from that package), but eventually dropped off around 2014ish.
It’s not the overtuned gameplay which they had some content creators take part in. Despite some conjecture that there might be some attempt to make the game a bit more casual friendly, I saw/heard nothing of that sort. Yes, I know this isn’t something the core demographic cares about since they like the absolute complexity of what currently exists, and would prefer to keep the game free of casual potato players like myself (though I used to be part of that RPG grinder crowd). The graphics do look better, but still has those rough edges (I mean that shield on the health globe looked terrible). There was really no insight into overall character customization (like are character models still going to pretty much look like they were created with someone beating them with the ugly stick), whether or not trading would be better facilitated with an actual in-game auction house, whether or not the skill tree wasn’t comprised of a lot of filler nodes just to look big, etc. The flask system looks the same (how about innovating away from that?). No cooldown (non-iframe) dodge rolls isn’t innovative; it’s just interesting in that it removes the usual designer imposed strategic decision making that players have to make a choice when evading mobs (I’m someone who doesn’t like cooldown designs in ARPG’s so I personally like this).
I do realize the strategic value of showing off what is still a work-in-progress game that has grown in scope compared to what they announced 4 years ago given that Diablo IV just released, and how another ARPG like Last Epoch, is in early access (so better to give some stuff for people to chew on for the next year when they expect to do a beta). But I didn’t see anything game play wise, that appealed to me. I know some of the Diablo/Diablo II designers are there at ExileCon (the Schaefer brothers + Brevik who does consulting work on the game) but I also realize a lot of that is kept in check since GGG has their own designer visions that may not always align with the ideas that Max, Erich, or David may have. I’m also cognizant that their past success was of a different time and includes a lot of other people (so their ideas may not be as ground breaking today). I respect them for what they brought to the masses back in 1996 and 2001, but also don’t put them on this “cannot do no wrong” pedestal.
Again, I’ve grown apart from ARPG’s over the past couple of years, and I also take a lot of the marketing hype, trailers, and game play footage for games in general with a grain of salt. To be fair, they live demoed portions of the game play, and it didn’t wow me (it has nothing to do with it being overtuned either where the combat itself looked slow and boring). Yes, it is also still way too early since they seem to be working on getting the core systems working correctly. My point is that I still see something that has no intention of trying to cater to folks like myself that would just like to play and progress into end game content without having to break out a guide, a spreadsheet, have to do mathematical calculations, and have to jump through hoops to trade items.
I guess we’ll see in June 2024 how things are.
