About Diablo 3 and Path of Exile

So as of late I have found myself playing both of these games quite a bit.

Path of Exile recently released their 1.3 patch in which they added lots of new uniques and pvp. Diablo 3 just recently released their patch 2.1.2 which includes new items, new set bonuses, new goblins and balance changes to boot.

I have played far more Path of Exile than Diablo 3 as I write this, although I have gotten to paragon 360 or so on Season 1, which isn't terribly high, but it isn't low either, it shows I've played a substantial amount of end game.

Anyway, before I get all bogged down in facts and figures, I wanted to explore design elements in both games and some observations I have made.

At their core, both games are about getting loot to build cool toons, to get more loot, to build even cooler toons, to .... I think you get the point.

At some point or another, people who design games figured out how dopamine works in the brain, how random rewards are so very addictive to people, put two and two together and began to release games that act as pseudo dopamine reward systems. Action RPG's fit this formula exceedingly well, and loot driven gameplay, that is, gameplay where one of, if not THE primary focus is to obtain new items, is exceedingly addictive and profitable.

With all of that intro babble out of the way, I want to talk about Diablo 3 and Path of Exile in more detail for a moment. As I write this, I must get one thing out of the way, I love Path of Exile and I only sort of pseudo like Diablo 3. My biggest gripe with Diablo 3 is the shallowness of the itemization, how uninteresting I found items, and how so rarely I found an item I would qualify as 'good'. If you do rifts in T6 with other players, you will find a set or legendary item every couple of minutes, and in some cases, several per minute. The loot literally rains from the heavens, and this seems pretty awesome, until you actually identify the items.

When you do this, you realize that because no items (including uniques and sets) have a fixed set of stats, you're basically rolling another set of dice when you actually find the item to hope that the right mix of stats have rolled on it. Some items are particularly ultra rare in this system, as such finding one of those poorly rolled...must be even more frustrating that I can imagine, although I don't know as it has never happened to me yet, I have not found a Furnace and the one SoJ I found was pretty well rolled (near perfect in fact...).

Regardless, we all know that the gameplay in these games is largely REPETITIVE. You're basically doing the same things over and over, and yet people continue to play these games for months or years at a time. The reason is the loot grind and the epeen and <insert your own fringe motivation here>. As such, if there is a long term appeal in the game, people will continue to play DESPITE the repetitive nature of it. As I write this, I find myself unable to find the long term appeal of Diablo 3. This would be why I can only bring myself to play it in short spurts here and there.

And then there's Path of Exile. The combat isn't as good as Diablo 3, the group play isn't as smooth as Diablo 3, or as coherent. The feedback and user interface are clunkier, the experience of managing the game is more cumbersome, and yet, the mechanics are so tight, so finely tuned, the reward system is so subtle, carrot on a stick sort of thing perfected to give you the feeling of advancing without giving you too much at once. The items that drop are mostly bad, much like Diablo 3, a good item is HARD to find, but when you do, it's even more exciting. Build diversity is much higher, there are many many more interesting build enabling uniques (as opposed to six piece set items in diablo 3, which limits your gearing options). I like the fact that I can get lucky and find a good trade on path of exile, I like the fact that if I do boss runs for an hour straight and luck out on a sweet item, I can try to find a buyer for it. The game has more in it to learn, more to master, more to discover and try, this is why I like it better.

This may have to do with the fact that I'm 32 and I'm used to hardcore games and that I find casual easy to pick up games with little depth uninteresting quickly. I suppose my palate is more attuned to finer tastes, but perhaps this is becoming a thing of the past? I am not sure. Blizzard does not let you make a bad decision anymore, they try to avoid punitive aspects in their game, Path of Exile gives you MANY opportunities to make bad decisions that would literally render your character useless and unable to progress any further. Diablo 3 is on rails, Path of Exile is a sandbox. Diablo 3 optimal builds can be discovered with trial and error and a little time, to do the same in Path of Exile would require tons of time and hundreds or thousands of Orbs of Regret.

Pete Sampras has a great serve, Andre Agassi has a great return. Yin yang, etc... I guess you can't have one without the other, who knows.

I don't think any of this that I wrote really made sense, except to say I like games.

In conclusion, I like games.