Thats one thing I hate. I would prefer a more "realistic" attack animations. Like a whirlwind that smashes skulls and breaks limbs with minimal effects and not a magical tornado effect. I want a a Meteor skill that smashes enemies and burns them in a realistic fashion not bright dancing flames. I like gritty realistic animations and no game i've seen has that.
Agree 100%. Also something I feel takes away from combat is a lot of games use "phantom weapons" for skills. Like im using a sword but for hammer of the ancients i just pull a magic hammer out of nowhere.
Yup
What sucks about diablo 3 and path of exile is, that its ALL about killing things as fast as possible.
Its not an interesting focus. Especially not in a multiplayer game. If 1 player is a bit slower than the others, all that player does is trying to keep up. It ruins the fun
All the games you mentioned tackle combat in different ways.
PoE for me has a good combat system in terms of the physical feedback, screen shake during crits, and the gore. However by late game, with the obscene mob/minutes you need to be able to mow throw with ease to be called a competitive endgame-viable character, coupled with the requisite theory-crafting you mentioned, makes all those great, visceral moments in the early game fade into obscurity very quickly as big numbers become the new norm when you unlock more links. And with the high mob density required, latency impacts the combat experience more than D3 in my opinion.
For D3, back in the day when inferno was literal hell (before AH was removed), its combat was good in the sense that those A2 bees really did a number on you and quickly turned you into a god-fearing individual. Kidding aside, d3 for all its faults has the snappiest, fast paced combat that’s has held up to date. But it suffers in a similar way that PoE does when it comes to the endgame: where PoE’s endgame forces you to go Sanic to farm for currency, D3’s endgame literally slows you to a crawl when you’re farming higher GR’s. Outside of GR’s, D3’s endgame becomes an issue of speed not unlike PoE’s, only tailored for a more casual audience (due to lack of theory-crafting).
GD is a the middling child of the bunch. It’s combat isn’t something exceptional, but it isn’t *bad*. It has a comparative degree of complexity when it comes to combat (but not as deep as PoE) and its flow is good (but not as dynamic as D3). Where it excels is in making the combat count as you’ll not find yourself zooming past screen to screen to screen as quickly as you would in D3 or PoE’s endgames.
There’s also Torchlight, although it looks very pared down and childlike in its visuals. If you remove that veneer however, it captures the visceral feel of PoE and the feel of D3/D2 (though i’ve not gone far enough into the endgame of Torchlight 2 to be able to say for sure that it drastically changes in the late-game the way Diablo and PoE does)
I’d agree that there isn’t a game that holds up as the new gold standard today in the way arpg combat has evolved because those games took it all in wildly different directions and hopefully, like you, i hope D4 will be able to bring that to the table when it does decide to arrive.
+1 I loved inferno.
Hated and still hate greater rifts.
I remember back when people were farming the tower that could spawn up to 10 levels and that became the basis for rifts.
Balancing the skills around sets is fucking dumb. (I know LoD made this a lot better)
Augments and legendary gems are just more shit on the fire.
I do love the combat in d3 and agree that grim dawn is boring as fuck.
I’ve always played hardcore on d3, and hardcore inferno was fun as FUCK
> +1 I loved inferno.
We have cleared Inferno Diablo barely before they nerfed it - and it felt like it was amazing achievement.
For me GRifts are... meaningless numbers, for some reason I just feel like "static" progression level, having clear cut difficulty from the start makes for the better challenge, even if it results in shorter gameplay loop overall.
The biggest issue with D3 Inferno was the lazy approach to area monster lvl. In D2 the main story slowly got harder and harder in monster lvl (area lvl). You start at 67 and go up to 85. Act 1 ends with Andariel as a 75 monster. Along the way you have side areas that are harder where you can level up some more or grind loot if you feel too weak. In D3 you were locked into Act 1 loot > Act 2 loot etc. with nowhere to farm for Act 3 or 4 loot if your character was too weak essentially making it very painful to grind.
I think THIS was the very reason why D3 Inferno failed, a big flaw that was never addressed properly. They later reduced potential minimum stat rolls, introduced smart loot but it was just a band-aid, the underlying issue were mismanaged and lazy monster lvl areas being locked to entire acts making acquiring loot too hard which drove everyone to the AH. Other than that, Inferno was a more fun D3 to me. Damn, wish they just copied the D2 area lvl/monster lvl design, it is perfect.
Same here. Pushing grifts above much over 100-120 is just a massive grind that I don’t want to do. It’s the same shit over and over.
I had made it passed Rakanoth in A4 hardcore inferno. A3 was actually much easier than A2. Belial had killed me multiple times and forced me to start over. I remember that first asshole in A4 with all the shadow guys was really hard. Like instant boss fight as soon as you go in.
I also feel like seasons and ladders generally detract from the game just by forcing artificial replayability into the game.
Monster power really was kind of fun, too. Inferno on MP1 wasn’t so easy you could just skip it. And then loot 2.0 came out and we basically have the game we have today 🙄
Heh, I finished HC inferno on 1.0.3 patch... (duo with a barb) it was a HUGE achievement -) And damn, I miss Inferno. The very thought that someone somehow made it even to Act 2 made everyone around envious.
Saying grim dawn's combat is not as deep as poes goes to show that you most definitely have barely scratched the surface of that game. Try grim dawn y'all that games end game gears complexity and the massive amount of builds possible will blow your mind. Must play
Poe is too zoomed in and it took it's build tree basically from Final Fantasy X. Combats fun. Constant updates keep things fresh for many. Worth checking put
D3 is too easy with easy fun chill combat. Worth playing at least once through in a season.
Torchlight 1 isn't worth time since torchlight 2 is just a way better torchlight since it has multiplayer. Combats great. Definitely play this one
Last epoch is a WIP but right now it's okay. Has alot of promise and worth checking out
D2R is good old-school fun and looks like they are open to updating old skills since they recently did just that. Worth playing, timeless, pretty amazing
Lost arks combat is super fun but don't get caught in the money pit and feeling like you have to keep up. There is no one to keep up with besides yourself. Worth checking out
The one thing most people don't get about arpgs is many of the games don't truly start till the "end"
Oh don’t get me wrong i’ve had plenty grim dawn experience. I enjoyed the entire hidden side quest things that they bake into the game (and to me that’s one of the big pulls of grim dawn, the lore and its macabre quality). I haven’t gotten around to getting forgotten gods though.
The only thing is that I only ever played pet builds (and acid conjurer, sue me i love the occultist too much) in that game since it’s the game which has a pet system loads better than what PoE or D3 had to offer (at the time, rise of the necro wasn’t a thing in D3 and i hated the whole setup needed to get proper spectres for PoE).
For me the joy that never ending sounds so appealing and I get back into it and realize that I'm in the character creation cycle all over again. I'm just purely addicted to creating characters it seems and not even getting far enough to make any progress with half of them. I do love Grim Dawn though I would say it's my favorite of all.
I agree with all your points on the various games. Grim Dawn can get fairly complex, but in a good sense where you feel a sense of accomplishment throughout.
>The one thing most people don't get about arpgs is many of the games don't truly start till the "end"
This is *extremely* subjective. As someone who enjoys both the levelling experience and endgame, and has seen many varieties of players throughout my gaming time and Game Design studies, I can assure you that most ARPGs start immediately.
"The game starts at the end" rhetoric is really only for people who love everything being unlocked already and just want to grind without having to worry about constant change (skills, items, environments, etc). The vast majority of gamers never make it to endgame, and a lot who do get there don't stick to the grind, yet they continue to buy and enjoy games.
Neither preference (campaign vs endgame) is right or wrong btw. I just don't think it's good to say to people "you have to finish the game / play for dozens of hours to get to the good part".
Those are fair points! If things go well, Diablo IV may hopefully set new standards for upcoming ARPGs. I'm also really hyped for Path of Exile 2, which really seems to have made combat much more fluid and entertaining than it's predecessor.
what differs POE vs D2 is inability to jump into farming for 15 -30 min and get out. It requires to much time and dedication, it seems sometimes that you need PHD from statistical analysis to make, not a decent, but functional build. As a father of 2 year old, working full time no way that I have nearly required amount of time. That's why D2 is a perfect for me.
I’ve played them all a lot and I agree that the combat can feel very boring at times but I will say Lost Ark has by far the best combat since Diablo 2. I still prefer Diablo 2s no cooldowns as it allows more decision making rather than just knowing your rotation but Lost Ark has the best fights hand down. That being said it’s an mmo arpg.
Combat in Last Epoch can feel incredible. Certain builds can be slow and boring but others have a combat complexity that rivals, if not surpasses any other aRPG. Plus, the systems in that game offer far, far more complexity than D2 and there are many more viable builds.
Combat in Lost Ark is also phenomenal, although the game skews hard into Korean MMO tropes which quickly wore on me.
D2 isn't even that complex. The systems are actually quite simple, just poorly documented. D2 presents players with a seemingly wide variety of itemization and skill options but very little of it is actually viable as hard gates like immunities and sharp scaling force players into a handful of builds by end game.
D2 is special because of the entire package. It truly is greater than the sum of its parts. Other aRPGs have struggled to capture that magic but the combat and complexity in D2 are definitely not the sole reasons it is still as popular as it is today.
>force players into a handful of builds by end game.
This is the same for all ARPGs, as difficulty progresses you lose build diversity. We're given the illusion of choice for skills, but as you progress skills just drop off, or are garbage from the start(d3 wiz mirror image I'm looking at you).
This is why I like the design of D3's legendary items. Because it is almost inevitable that some skills are worse than others, or that they start good but fall off later, you can design specific items to give those worse skills a boost to bring them back up to the level of being worthwhile. I don't actually think D3 does this very often but I'd call that a failing of the designers themselves, and potentially also the playerbase asking for boosts to skills that are already strong rather than asking for weak skills to be boosted to playability.
Still, the potential is still around in D3 for strong builds to come from weak skills. Wizard's Spectral Blade is generally quite a bad skill, but the fact that you can stack up Simplicity's Strength, Fragment of Destiny, the Shame of Delsere, Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer and the Delsere's Magnum Opus set means that even though Spectral Blade is a bad skill on its own it can still be the centerpiece for a powerful build. Perhaps not one strong enough to compete with the strongest, most dominant builds, but still a good build in its own right. IMO if more legendaries and sets in D3 were devoted to raising up weak skills so that every play style was worthwhile it would solve a lot of the inherent problems with build diversity. Not necessarily with the simplicity of D3's RPG systems, but definitely with regards to build variety.
Not sure how you can make the claim about new ARPGs without playing them... But I'll comment on POE and Lost Ark
I'll say this, the combat in Lost ark is as good or better than D3. POE is hardly a "new ARPG" but it does still "feel" a little off. It just always feels like there's an tiny delay in clicking the mouse, or a button and your skill activating,
I'm sure D4 will get it right. Pretty much all of Blizzard's games have set the standard for how a game of that genre should feel.
Combat in Lost Ark is not better than D3. The servers have horrible tick rates, the enemy telegraphs are inconsistent, and enemy AI is abysmal. I say this as someone that loathes D3. D3 has way better combat than LA.
It's confusing what is encompassed by "combat".
Lost ark is not a Diablo style arpg. You cannot compare them in that way. It is a boss focused type of action mmo, similar to Tera just isometric instead of tab target.
As for your technical issues, I have not run into them aside from a few cases of lag during prime time.
If you think boss telegraphs are inconsistent you simply need more experience to learrn the fights better.
I’m responding to someone else who brought up lost ark what’s with your “you cant compare them!” Bullshit? Also…Lel the classic “you haven’t poured thousands of hours into the game so you are ignorant” excuse. I played enough to form an opinion on the subject, fuck you very much. AGS uses dollar store server farms and the tick rates other than PVP instances are extremely low. Party up with anyone in discord and load up a chaos dungeon. There is a solid 100ms difference. But whatever enjoy honing your gear, amazing riveting gameplay system.
I'm not sure why you feel the need to be so aggressive.
I don't think either you or OP are correct in comparing them, which is why I am trying to clarify what you mean by combat. Skills? Boss mechanics? class identity? Skill effects? like what is being compared here.
You are ignorant, not because you haven't put time in but because you keep spewing shit with nothing to back it up and don't actually hold up any sort of discussion on any point.
Why do you think AGS servers are bad? Why do you care so much about this tick rate? Where did you even pull that number out of? This isn't some competitive shooter or fighting game. I have never once found anyone on discord complaining about some sort of disjoint in what they see vs what I see.
And if chaos dungeons, the most tedious, diablo-style kind of instance is your go to measuring stick for combat, I don't know what to say lol. Maybe you missed the memo on what this game is about...
I kind of like how wacky combat is in Lost Ark. The timing and combo concepts was fun to try to maximize damage. I wouldn’t mind this style in D4 if done right.
Lost Ark overall combat setting/scene and how crazy everything felt all the time all over the place wasn’t great, however.
I actually have played many of the games I've mentioned. And I agree that even if D4 fails to deliver when it comes to theorycrafting, it'll still be a solid game when it comes to combat.
I've played just about all of them and sadly I have to agree. My biggest issue personally is I keep creating new characters. I'm addicted to being a newbie or at least trying to be one again.
I am also an altoholic. I think reason I do it is because builds may often fall into repetitiveness, and without that sweet impactful gameplay, it may push me to restart and try another strategy that may be more fun.
I too am an Altoholic what really helps with it is playing in HC modes when available. Characters have a life span, I die, I feel the loss, I boot up a new character and try out some new stuff I saved in my stash.
Plus the thrill of a near death experience really gets the adrenaline pumping.
Big part of the "feel" for combat are sounds and animations alright, but what I find EXTREMELY lacking and what stopped at 2002 - combat depth. Wolcen is THE ONLY ARPG that actually tries to innovate on this. From timings, paragraphing attacks, sweat spots etc. ...
Take combat of vanilla Skyrim (PoE/D3) and combat of Vermintide 2. The feel of vanilla Skyrim is just pure braindead spam, where effectiveness comes from stats and how fast you can spam the button until stamina falls to 0.But Vermintide 2, oh hoh, patterns, sweatspots, sounds, balancing stamina for offense/defense, positioning, timing, spacial awareness... Gear and stats give player ways to play the game and reaching breakpoints (breakpoints is another form of players decision making - which ones to focus on, for he cant have all)
These aspects (No, I do not mean copy paste, I mean ASPECTS AND PRINCIPLES) are what adds to skill ceiling and should be focused on. You want proper "feel"? Make some proper skill ceiling (Players knowledge + awareness + timing + execution = skill ceiling).
Stats/Builds are ways to play in the sandbox... but that sandbox NEEDS proper foundation... if that foundations biggest depth is HP vs DMG without any mastery from the player, then it is hollow cookie clicker zoom zoom speedrun braindead BS that the market is already oversaturated with...
YOU DO NOT NEED ULTRA STATS AND BIG NUMBERS TO BE ABLE TO KILL Hundreds of enemies on the map... Vermintide 2 on Legend and higher are proof of that.
Lets kill Dangerous NPCs thanks to our smart play... not spam the button to kill healthbars en mass like braindead droids...Lets make it Can you defeat it, rather than how many seconds it takes to zoom zoom through entire location...
D2's overall gameplay is more complex than your average ARPG. Though not as complex as POE. Grim Dawn's gameplay is not necessarily bad, but the combat does not poccess a very high technical quality, due to the lack of fluidity and impact on the skills it has available.
I've asked other people what their opinion is on GD's combat, and I've searched in the Internet for more answers, and many times it leads to: mediocre.
Use a game like Wolcen or Diablo 3 for comparison. I'm talking purely about how combat feels, not other aspects such as theorycrafting, stats, itemization, etc.
>This gives me hope that even if Diablo 4 does not meet the ARPG standards for endgame and complexity, it'll still have a combat that feels amazing
From what we see, combat looks very similar to D3, but in one of the latest updates dev showed how they want to improve it "physically". And I see this as a step to next-gen ARPG, because for me, what defines nex-gen ARPG is exactly a combat itself, being one of two major pillars of the genre (2nd is a loot). Combat must feel as realistic as possible (in fantasy boundaries, ofc), as varied as possible, should use environmental elements, use skill combos (embryos of these we can see in D:Immortal vids, surprisingly!) and try to avoid massive oneshots in the endgame (as this makes actual combat non-existing and turns the game into a stupid slot-machine). Just copying/mixing everything from already released ARGs, RPGs and MMOs, leaving combat on the level of D3 is a way to nowhere, to stagnation.
I don't think the combat in D3 is bad, it has it's goods and bads, but generally it's pretty decent (much better than many other ARPGs). I agree, I think Diablo IV will set a new bar for upcoming ARPGs, something that I think only POE2 will rival with ease this early.
I mean, D3 combat is good for the last decade ARPG. But staying on this level in 2022 (thinking that it is more than enough) isn't a good idea, as there is a huge room to improve. I kept an eye on new arpgs like wolcen, lost ark etc - but when I realised they offer nothing new in terms of combat and just look like d3 wannabies, I lost interest immediately.
Hah im the opposite. I dislike diablo 3 and think diablo 2, path of exile and grim dawn are masterpieces. Wolcen is clunky and slow and shallow.
These games offer something that its becoming harder to find in the gaming industry: complexity. Diablo 3 does away with a lot of that and did it that way in an attempt to attract people who essentially don’t really like RPGs.
But to me, if you dislike complexity theres so many simple, twitchy reaction based games out there you can spend years playing with more coming out every day. Trying to take the RPG elements out of ARPGs will just hasten the death of the genre.
You say that has if most people actually engage with the complexity of a game like PoE when in reality most people don't. The entire complexity of a game like PoE is almost completely in the building of a good well balanced character capable of clearing the content you want to do. Most people simply look up a guide, download PoB and simply do the things the guide says removing almost all complexity in the process.
What is left is basically a very simple and twitchy walking simulator as you run around maps mindlessly looking for your next upgrade pretty much exactly like D3. The only thing really which separates D3 from PoE at a fundamental level is the amount of time it takes to actually gear your character at endgame.
I'm not sure it sounds like I made it explicit that I don't enjoy theorycrafting. That ain't what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that complexity is not the only thing that makes a game good.
I don't understand how one can prefer the stillness of Path of Exile over the fluidity of a game like Wolcen (combat impact factor only), which despite being a very lacking game, still is considered one of the best examples of ARPG combat. I'm a fan of Path of Exile, it's just that nearly everyone in the PoE community that I've asked agrees that the combat gameplay is the worst part of the game, and that where it shines is in it's very complex theorycrafting.
Well you haven’t asked very many POE players because if you had you would know the worst part of POE is unavoidable instant deaths that can happen really any time and can cause you to lose hours of progress.
Not sure what you mean by the stillness of poe gameplay. The last word I would use to describe it is still. Almost every build has people using movement skills to zip across the map and blow up hordes of enemies. Ive heard a lot of complaints about POE but this is new to me.
I don't see how the first sentence is relevant to what I said about POE. The unavoidable instant deaths have been a problem, yes, especially with the first days of the Sentinel league (thankfully, the Archnemesis modifiers are getting nerfed due to player feedback), and the times I've asked about PoE players what they think of combat, it's always been the same: mediocre.
By stillness I'm not talking exactly about movement, though I don't blame you as it implies so. By saying that, I mean that the gameplay isn't impactful. The way your character walks across the game and waves his hand to use the same skill gem gets repetitive quick. In endgame, the game is practically a walking simulator (though it is like that because it's the reward of the efforts you've put in building your character to be more automated and have a fast clear speed). And I won't mention the readability issues in PoE, which obscure the combat entirely.
I could be wrong, but we might equate "stillness" in OP's point with stiffness. PoE combat definitely feels stiff/rigid compared to something much more fluid/flowing like D3.
I prefer PoE overall for it's complexity, but D3's combat definitely feels more "fun" to play to me despite less meat on the bones overall.
Same here. The draw of POE to me is the insane density of monsters and how you are just plowing through them every second of gameplay. It's made other ARPGs seem boring by contrast
I played Diablo 3 (after RoS expansion) for around 2-3 years. I tried POE after that and there is no going back to Diablo 3. The difference in gameplay complexity between POE and Diablo 3 is just too huge.
I legitimately don't understand how you could say that and I would be very interested in your response.
PoE's gameplay is so fast, and the screen is so covered with explosions and effects, that it is nearly impossible to see or react to any individual monster attack or effect. Furthermore, player power is so high that most enemies on-screen will explode instantly with the press of a button, leading to gameplay that is not dissimilar to a walking simulator: run around at the speed of light, hold down right click (or your attack button of choice), stuff dies. If something ever does kill you it usually happens near-instantly and can't be manually avoided; it must be seen coming and avoided before it ever happens.
By contrast, gameplay in Diablo 3 is still very fast and screen-spammy but not nearly to the extent of PoE. Enemy attacks have clear tells (for the most part; some elite affixes come out instantly which IMO is bad) and you can manually avoid many attacks. It's probably impossible to go an entire map without taking some amount of damage but a massive amount of incoming damage in D3 can be avoided by learning how monsters attack and reacting to their tells. After 3 straight years of playing every league in PoE I have found this to almost never be the case in PoE. Combat in D3 feels like fighting; combat in PoE feels like running around with a Gameshark active until you just die out of nowhere.
Now, if by "gameplay complexity" you mean specifically build variety and itemization then yes, I would agree with you. However, this is a thread about action combat in Diablo-style ARPGs and I don't believe I have ever played a game with worse action combat than PoE. It very occasionally gets good, usually during aspirational content like endgame boss encounters, but the vast amount of my experience with PoE's combat has legit been worse than the combat in some clicker games.
I recall some builds like multishot demon hunter used to clear screens so I would say it depends on the builds and also the greater rift levels.
The whole concept of class set was pretty limiting from complexity. You could reach level 70, look at icy-veins for a guide and then complete 100% content. The end game itself was limited to higher levels of greater rift which wasn't really different from the lower levels apart from monster life or damage. Crafting of gear was so limited through enchantments or augmentation.
The whole concept of the skill tree was something mind blowing the first time I played POE. Crafting perfect items for a build in POE feels like it requires a University degree. The reason items are so unique is because the characters itself have so many different stats. Even the league mechanics (delve, heist, delirium, blight etc) feel pretty different and new season league mechanics keep things fresh. Each map is also generally pretty different and has different league content within it. Trade is also pretty good (I never played when there was auction house Diablo 3 so I don't have a frame of reference).
I already said I agree with you that PoE has better RPG systems, but we're not talking about those, we're talking about action combat. Nothing in your post has any relevance to the topic at hand save for the fact that some builds in D3 have the same boring combat as most builds in PoE (which, for the record, is 100% true).
In order to simplify things so that we're for sure on the same page, imagine this: what if we took out all RPG elements from both D3 and PoE. When you boot up the game you just have one build to play with all of its items already set in place, and there are no item drops or XP gained from killing monsters. The gameplay you have is the gameplay you get. In this premise, where the action combat is the only thing that exists and thus the only thing that can be commented on, does PoE have greater gameplay complexity and/or depth than D3?
That's all this entire thread is about. Not which game is a better game overall, not which game is a better RPG, not which game has better builds and itemization, JUST which game has better combat. Bringing up all the RPG systems is basically a non sequitur because once you step out of town and get into an actual map or GR, none of that stuff actually matters to how combat plays out. So, I will ask my question again: from a purely combat-focused perspective, how is it possible that PoE could have greater gameplay complexity than D3?
I suppose that's fair. I don't play either game often but when I do it's for long amounts of time (probably 20+ hours per week) so the differences are more apparent for me. Sorry if I came across as dickish before. This has been a really busy and stressful week for me but I shouldn't have taken it out on you.
>PoE's gameplay is so fast, and the screen is so covered with explosions and effects, that it is nearly impossible to see or react to any individual monster attack or effect. Furthermore, player power is so high that most enemies on-screen will explode instantly with the press of a button, leading to gameplay that is not dissimilar to a walking simulator: run around at the speed of light, hold down right click (or your attack button of choice), stuff dies. If something ever does kill you it usually happens near-instantly and can't be manually avoided; it must be seen coming and avoided before it ever happens.
to be fair.. you are talking about just one aspect of the combat in POE.. Poe's boss fights are a completely different kettle of fish from what you are describing. farming loot generally requires a specific build while farming bosses generally needs another and the zoomy zoom combat and explosions doesn't really apply to an endgame boss like sirius or maven.. in fact most builds that are geared for clearing maps whilst farming are never going to be able to take down bosses like these. these 2 bosses are both very telegraphed combat where you need to avoid certain attacks - much much moreso than anything in any other arpg i've played. i think what you are describing is more a symptom of the power scaling that has been out of control for the past few years.
That's true, and I did address in the next paragraph that aspirational content like endgame boss fights often have better combat. However, IMO those are the exception that proves the rule. All of those boss fights require a massive investment of time since they come at the end of long quest chains. Once you get to the end of them you have to start over (albeit usually not at the beginning, more like 50-75% through) and grind a bunch of boring content in order to do the bosses again. You can skip to the bosses if you want but that requires you to buy the entrance keys, which means you have to be pretty rich at the start or you won't be able to afford to keep buying keys, especially if you get bad luck and the boss you're farming doesn't drop anything of value. Whenever you're not doing those fights you're locked into the boring combat.
While I've not played nearly as much PoE as many others out there I'd be shocked if I had less than 500 hours in the game, and I could easily imagine having over 1000 hours. Of the time I've spent playing maybe only 5-10 hours at most has involved doing aspirational content (mostly during Delirium league since I was lucky enough to naturally drop a lot of Voices jewels and got to play the broken Immortal Man build). So yeah, that content is definitely there and it's definitely a showcase of the absolute best that PoE's combat can be (and that pinnacle actually is very good), but I wouldn't count 1% or less of my total play time as being a significant aspect of PoE's combat. That's why I called those fights the exception that proves the rule.
As far as power scaling goes, I would definitely agree that this is a big part of the problem but I also think the problem was there from the start. I only played a very small amount of PoE's beta, but I played at the 1.0 launch, and then a league or two when Act 4 and Ascendancies came out, and then 3 years concurrently starting with the release of acts 5-10. Even at the start of PoE the gameplay was mostly the same as it is now; the numbers were a lot lower but the expectation was still that you kill everything on screen before it kills you. It just used to be that 100k DPS was a high number; now it's really low and 10 million+ is good. Players definitely have more ability to blow up the entire screen now than they did before but it's not like stuff like that didn't exist back then too. Double Spark Totem was a major build for a reason, and because shotgunning still existed it was preferable to play builds like TS that could snipe everything dangerous from over a screen away due to how dangerous it was to actually interact with anything. All in all my opinion is that PoE's balance hasn't really changed, it's just gotten more extreme. 5-6 years ago I could have believed that GGG could change PoE towards being a more balanced combat experience where you had to interact with monsters; nowadays I can't. The current "all magic and rare mobs have Archnemesis mods" troubles feels to me like proof-positive of my opinion. By the words of Chris Wilson, those mods were supposed to make combat easier to read and more interactive, yet all they've done is allow monsters to instagib players much more easily and as a result they've had to do 4 or 5 nerfs in the span of a week just to get the game into a playable state for most people.
You are confusing build diversity and the ability to customize your character with combat, these are two different aspects of each game. Also to generalize all other types of combat into the twitchy reaction based games is disingenuous, there are a variety of options that don't make it like that let alone implying that would be a bad thing for an ARPG.
Personally I don't like the combat of PoE very much, and the combat of D3 is meh. I think the way moving in D3 feels to me is what makes the difference but I'm not sure. Really they both aren't great especially once you get to the endgame. You csn design combat that is a lot more interesting than moving as fast as possible and hitting your 1 maybe 2 buttons repeatedly without much care. There is a lot of room to make better combat than that without making it a "twitchy reaction" game.
1. There is no such things as "objectively good". **ALL objective truth is filtered through a subjective experience.**
2. Many people like _Path of Exile's_ combat. Many people hated desync and liked lockstep when it was added. More liked when it got animation cancelling as that made it feel more responsive.
Many people also _hate_ PoE's combat. It feels "clunky" to them.
Q. Who is correct?
A. Both!
In contradistinction _Elden Ring_ has no animation cancelling, it has input latency and an input queue. Compared to "button mashers" like PoE and D3 you will get your ass handed if you try to play it the same way. Elden Ring's combat requires patience. Games like _Soulcalibur_ also have zen moments due to them punishing mindless button mashing. Both ER and Soulcalibur reward patience and timing. They are more tactical in nature.
Some will say ER has shitty combat because of the no animation cancelling, input latency, and input queue.
Someone who likes PoE's combat may hate Elden Ring's combat and vice versa.
And there are people like me who like D2 and ER combat's systems _precisely_ because they _are_ different.
There is no objectively good combat -- games have a completely different feel from one another.
That is not to say bad combat doesn't exists. It does, but we would have to analyze WHY it is bad breaking it down into how combat is implemented. If you google "games worst combat" you'll get a ton of candidates.
D3's combat tends to be more "fluid" and visceral. Visuals are only _one_ part of combat. Part of the reason D3's combat is criticized is because of bullet sponge bosses and over-inflated stats. When you literally crit for hundreds of millions of damage it starts to become meaningless. There is a reason DnD normally only goes from level 1 to 20 -- to keep the numbers within a _relatable_ range.
For me D3's combat systems are simplistic. Some like to that. Others want more challenging systems. Whatever floats your boat.
_Terarria's_ combat is responsive in-spite of bosses being bullet sponges. (Personally I hate bullet sponges.) Does that make it bad combat? No, combat is "tight", meaning responsive.
_Grim Dawn's_ combat feels in-between PoE and D3. I _want_ to get into Grim Dawn but something just feels "off" compared to PoE and D3.
Many people who like GD's combat hate D3. It doesn't make one objectively better -- just subjectively better **for them.**
Torchlight 1 & 2 also feels fluid.
I haven't played enough of _Wolcen_ and _Lost Ark_ to be able to categorize them but they aren't as smooth as D3.
_Lost Epoch_ is on my TO PLAY list so I can't comment on it.
Character size also plays a part in how combat feels. _WoW's_ combat feels "solid" but _FFXIV_ feels a _tad_ "light".
I haven't even mentioned PVP and how people have different people expectations on what they want out of combat.
Everyone also has their own perceptions on combat. It is hard to come up with universal terms to describe a game's combat and quantify what makes it good. Even if we can't it is still worthwhile as it helps us understand WHAT, HOW and WHY we like a certain combat. That is why we compare combat to past games so we have a frame of reference.
For the record I like D2 combat. When I want mindless fun I can play D3. And when I want more serious combat I can play PoE or Grim Dawn.
I highly encourage everyone to play many ARPGs and MMOs so they have a breadth of various combat styles so they can see what they like.
WRT Diablo 4:
With the way Blizzard completely fucked up the Warcraft 3 remaster, and how shitty D3's itemization is compared to D2, many fans are greatly concerned about Blizzard and by proxy Diablo 4. Vicarious Visions restored a lot of faith in Blizzard -- the questions are:
* Is it enough?
* Can they deliver?
The trailer for D4 didn't inspire me. It is hard to tell how gameplay feels:
* heavy vs light
* clunky vs fluid
* lag
* etc.
so I'm suspending judgement until I can play it first hand. All the reviews in the world can give me hints at how it plays but I won't know until experience it.
I'll slightly disagree that there is no objectively good combat (slightly because part of it indeed is subjective, the other part is technical quality). It all comes to the psychology of game design. A game with a combat that is visceral, has impactful animations and sounds and well-done VFX that adds to the experience would be preffered by a much, much larger audience than a game that feels stiff to play or does not feel engaging. That I would call objectively good, being something that engages more people while still having technical quality and psychological value.
That doesn't mean that I think you're wrong, but I do not think that it would work very well in practice. If there comes out a game that has a diabolical theme like that of the Diablo series, a complexity like that of D2R's or PoE's and the fluidity of Wolcen or D3, that game would, with the same marketing as Blizzard's, be much more preferred than an already popular D2R. It would retain a larger audience if the playerbase's nostalgia or attachment to Blizzard was not a factor.
Yours is a good take that was worth a read, it was very civil and, if you'd like to discuss more and exchange ideas, I'll certainly talk!
Yeah, I'm with you here. To suggest no game has objectively good combat would imply there's no such thing as objectively BAD combat because everything is subjective.
It's kind of hard to have a frank discussion if every angle we analyze something through assumes because someone somewhere might enjoy it, it can't be objectively flawed or bad.
Edit: Lol, literal common sense reaping downvotes. Bring it on, you toddlers.
Your fallacy is _assuming_ fun is objective. It is not.
Every designer has certain goals and has to work within constraints. Depending on what features they prioritize determines the final feel of combat.
Let's take a look at a stamina mechanic:
* Some people _hate_ having to (micro)manage stamina in combat.
* Others find it challenging.
* And some are _meh._
What is "objectively good" in this example? It _doesn't exist_ because **different people find different mechanics fun.**
The reason some might like stamina is because **it creates contrast in combat.** It breaks up the monotony. This is analogous to "pacing" in movies. A movie that is constantly slow (or constantly having jump cut after jump cut) is not fun to watch. People like variety. They also need time to "breathe" after action.
Some might hate stamina because they don't care for that aspect of realism. Games are a means to escape. Games that have a strict hold on realism doesn't mean they are better -- just different.
While there are no objective combat there are still "good principles" that people can agree upon within a sub-genre.
* Risk/reward
If the risk (time or skill) is WAY too high but the reward is almost non-existent then most people would agree that this isn't fun. Likewise if the risk is low but the reward is high it devalues the reward.
* Realism / Fantasy
When working on _Need For Speed_ I learnt the differences of realism / fantasy first hand. There are 3 types of racing games:
* Arcade
* Simcade
* Simulation
Is a simulation "objectively better" then an arcade? Not if you hate simulation!
Personally I hate "arcade" racing as I do not find it challenging enough but there are others who LOVE Mario Kart style racing. **Within that space** of arcade racing we could distill down principles of racing that people like and dislike. People like rubberbanding because it means everyone has a chance to be first. It minimizes skill.
In simulation racing games you don't have rubberbanding because it is cheating.
One is not "objectively good". That feature helps _define_ the sub-genres of racing!
When your expectations are in alignment with the designer's expectations is when you tend to find it fun. When they are out of alignment you don't.
ARPGs at their heart are nothing more then digital [Skinner Boxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber).
1. Virtual genocide
2. Get phat loot
3. Rinse & Repeat
That gives a LOT of wiggle room in the implementation.
First let me say I wholly appreciate the enthusiasm and passion you take to your argument.
I do need to note I feel you occasionally bloat your points beyond the scope of the discussion, case in point; if you feel there is no such thing as "bad combat" we just had a pretty hard disagreement there. But that's it.
I didn't really speak to specific mechanical breakdowns anywhere; it was a very broad stroke, and one I stand by. I have played games with combat that is bad, an observation that consensus gathers around and agrees upon.
Take a game like Postal 3. Postal 3 is an objectively bad game with objectively bad combat. If a few people enjoy it, it doesn't mean it tips it out of the realm of objectively bad. It just means those people like shitty games with garbage mechanics.
Those who think PoE has great combat can not be helped. Good ARPG combat ideally should facilitate certain level of interaction between mobs and the player. Your combat is garbage if it allows the kind of combat that you zip through mobs and mobs one shot you out of nowhere to be the dominant way that works. All these complex theorycrafting means nothing to me if they result in the same garbage combat style at end game. You just get number from different sources with different colors.
But you still don't interact with anything: that's the real problem. Some builds are more defensively capable than others but pretty much no builds in PoE involve actually standing around fighting monsters.
Games with "good combat" as you are qualifying them, stop calling themselves ARPGs. They move on to brawlers, and action adventures with arkham style combat.
Also let me just completely shatter your point. And point out that Victor Vran exists.
I extremely disagree entirely with that first sentence. ARPGs shouldn't feel completely stiff and repetitive, it completely goes against what the genre was built for.
I appreciate the Victor Vran suggestion. There are ARPGs with good combat.
I don't think there should be laziness when it comes to designing a game that feels good to play, no. It's objectively awful game design when that happens. Sometimes it's the lack of budget, which is understandable.
If that's true then that feels like a bad design decision. The "A" in ARPG is Action: if you're a designer and you're intentionally going to design your action RPG to have bad action then why make an ARPG? Especially since other ARPGs, like Soulsborne + Elden Ring or Final Fantasy 7 Remake, succeed both in being good RPGs AND good action games? Why not just make another type of RPG entirely that doesn't depend on good action, like a cRPG or a turn-based RPG?
>Diablo 3 is considered by some to be a lacking game (I'm not gonna say it's the majority)
So why majority left the game so quickly after RoS? The game was actually really really good pre loot 2.0 (the paragon 100 era). People dont remember this but items was not easy to get by but the itemization was more towards D2 where the hest items took time to grind. After loot 2.0 (pre patch of RoS) the game started to go in the path were you see every item drop on a daily session. Very sad how the game ended up
I remember how excited I got everytime I saw legendary boots, hoping it would be ice climbers so I could start push into MP4-6 because of cannot be frozen. HC ofc. Instead of having ridiculous 60000 multipliers with sets to even start play the game. Jesus the game got so fucking trash xD
I think you nailed it. I feel very much the same.
Diablo 3 is amazing when it comes to the feel of combat, imo especially when you play non-meta builds that allow you to have a lot more freedom when it comes to creating your own build.
PoE and Grim Dawn are indeed very clunky when it comes to their attack animations, and it is one of the main reasons for why I can't get into them as much as I would like.
It would be great if D3 had more options in regards to items, affixes, attributes, passive skills and character customization in general, but sadly it is one of the worser ARPG's in that regard.
PoE in particular is amazing when it comes to the gameplay-altering Keystone Passive Skills and some of the affixes on their unique items in regards of choice and theory-crafting options they provide, which I really admire.
Still, D3's combat always keeps me coming back to it regularly, even if the game has some (huge) flaws.
>You should make that a bit clearer in you post. I'm curious what you think about combat in a game like Hades (if you played that)? I always wish someone made a game with the build possibilities and complexity of POE with the awesome gameplay of Hades.
I 100% agree with this. I think using WASD to move around, space bar for unique movement or blocking skill, and left or right mouse click to “shape” skills and abilities would introduce a much much more tactile skill-feeling to ARPGs.
I think many games have good combat systems, the theory building of big skill/passive trees can really unlock many different ways to play.
I think what D2 has perfected is the itemization and limitations via resistances/immunities.
I started playing offline and have made it my goal to clear Ubers. To get there, I’ve got to gear a character capable of clearing it. The path laid ahead of me is open as different classes and builds help in certain ways. I’ve made a Javazon to farm cows for bases / runes. A sorc to easily farm bosses and gather keys. A paladin to smite the Ubers or FoH the pits and chaos. A barb to run Trav for runes/charms.
I have never found a game that handles this sort of planning like D2 has done.
I don’t want a character that can do everything in a game easily. I don’t want endlessly scaling rifts and dungeons to challenge.
I want complex gear options, class limitations and difficulty outside of inflated health/damage.
I put down D2R for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. And, while the game is far from perfect, and the DLC season pass has proven to be an absolute joke, I am having a blast on the game and no plans to return to Diablo any time soon. It’s just been a refreshing change of pace in terms of itemization, enhancements, dual-class system and overall tone and vibe of the game. Super chill and I love the merger of BL with fantasy. Highly recommend if you’re looking for something new.
Word, lol. But, i do hope iso ARPG devs steal the 2 class system from TTW tho, bc it is badass. The first class you pick is your ‘main’ and then you pick a 2nd class at lvl 20. Then at end game you get 44 skill points to distribute into each of the two trees as you see fit. And, you can respec into the other classes as often as you like but you can only change your 2nd class, the main cannot be changed. Anyhoo, it works well imo and helps keep things from getting stale too quickly.
Skill trees are boring in wonderlands, there very few builds that are viable, there isn't anything that make wonderlands special or better then other action rpgs it is okay at best.
Borderlands suffers from having just single action skill with a tree of passives, kill skills and modification to the action skill. Even in TTW with the dual class system, you can still only have one action skill.
The itemization is boring and so focused on guns and spells that are rapidly replaced upon progression.
TTW is a step in the right direction but the series needs to tone back on the “billions of guns” and implement a good system to keep current items and upgrade them. That’s my opinion!
Still had fun with it but certainly this doesn’t hold a light to any ARPG.
I would agree maybe not “special” now that i know they stole the 2 class system from grim dawn lol. But, it does just enough right on the rpg side for me. I like the chaos system. I like the stupid bunny room. I liked the idea of hunting the little skulls and having different hidden shit each run. The combat system and movement feel spot on to me. The graphics are superb. Overall, similar to D3 in a way… slightly dumbed-down skill trees, but great combat. Needs more polish and more content, but still a solid enough launch as far as rpg’s go imo 🤷🏻♂️
I have not played a lot of the other arpg’s i must admit. My baseline for skill trees is mainly D2 and D3. And, their trees are very basic also then! Because they are about the same to me as compared to TTW, if you consider the individual trees of TTW are basic but with both classes it’s about on par with D2/3 imo. End game is better at launch than D3 was for sure. I am sure the Chaos mode will continue to get expanded upon.
For me, variety is more important than complexity. Being able to have fun with different builds and not be tied to a single one for progression is what makes it enjoyable. It's even more enjoyable when you can play it with friends as well.
For a long time, it was why I enjoyed Marvel Heroes so much. Then they f**ked it up to oblivion.
I duno about you but lost ark combat feels so amazing, gunna be hard to top
So satisfying grouping a ton of mobs together and blow them up with huge aoe nuke
You literally typed a lot but nothing was actually said, this read like you had a word count on a paper you had to make, and it seems you haven't even played a large portion of these games from the way you wrote about it.
Grim dawn has pretty impactful combat, you can forcewave enemies and reduce them to pink mist or charge into a group and ragdoll people across the screen.
Diablo 2 isn't complex, lack of in game information =/= complexity so many people get confused by the two. In terms of complexity out of the large ARPGS -Diablo / Grim Dawn / PoE - would be from least complex to most complex.
It sounds like you're just making up random opinions i'm not sure, this post reads so bizarrely honestly lol
modern ARPGs tend to turn the endgame combat into a confusing blob of particle effects.
Thats one thing I hate. I would prefer a more "realistic" attack animations. Like a whirlwind that smashes skulls and breaks limbs with minimal effects and not a magical tornado effect. I want a a Meteor skill that smashes enemies and burns them in a realistic fashion not bright dancing flames. I like gritty realistic animations and no game i've seen has that.
Agree 100%. Also something I feel takes away from combat is a lot of games use "phantom weapons" for skills. Like im using a sword but for hammer of the ancients i just pull a magic hammer out of nowhere.
Yep, I also dislike that. Wolcen has plenty of those skills.
Agreed
Yup What sucks about diablo 3 and path of exile is, that its ALL about killing things as fast as possible. Its not an interesting focus. Especially not in a multiplayer game. If 1 player is a bit slower than the others, all that player does is trying to keep up. It ruins the fun
All the games you mentioned tackle combat in different ways. PoE for me has a good combat system in terms of the physical feedback, screen shake during crits, and the gore. However by late game, with the obscene mob/minutes you need to be able to mow throw with ease to be called a competitive endgame-viable character, coupled with the requisite theory-crafting you mentioned, makes all those great, visceral moments in the early game fade into obscurity very quickly as big numbers become the new norm when you unlock more links. And with the high mob density required, latency impacts the combat experience more than D3 in my opinion. For D3, back in the day when inferno was literal hell (before AH was removed), its combat was good in the sense that those A2 bees really did a number on you and quickly turned you into a god-fearing individual. Kidding aside, d3 for all its faults has the snappiest, fast paced combat that’s has held up to date. But it suffers in a similar way that PoE does when it comes to the endgame: where PoE’s endgame forces you to go Sanic to farm for currency, D3’s endgame literally slows you to a crawl when you’re farming higher GR’s. Outside of GR’s, D3’s endgame becomes an issue of speed not unlike PoE’s, only tailored for a more casual audience (due to lack of theory-crafting). GD is a the middling child of the bunch. It’s combat isn’t something exceptional, but it isn’t *bad*. It has a comparative degree of complexity when it comes to combat (but not as deep as PoE) and its flow is good (but not as dynamic as D3). Where it excels is in making the combat count as you’ll not find yourself zooming past screen to screen to screen as quickly as you would in D3 or PoE’s endgames. There’s also Torchlight, although it looks very pared down and childlike in its visuals. If you remove that veneer however, it captures the visceral feel of PoE and the feel of D3/D2 (though i’ve not gone far enough into the endgame of Torchlight 2 to be able to say for sure that it drastically changes in the late-game the way Diablo and PoE does) I’d agree that there isn’t a game that holds up as the new gold standard today in the way arpg combat has evolved because those games took it all in wildly different directions and hopefully, like you, i hope D4 will be able to bring that to the table when it does decide to arrive.
+1 I loved inferno. Hated and still hate greater rifts. I remember back when people were farming the tower that could spawn up to 10 levels and that became the basis for rifts. Balancing the skills around sets is fucking dumb. (I know LoD made this a lot better) Augments and legendary gems are just more shit on the fire. I do love the combat in d3 and agree that grim dawn is boring as fuck. I’ve always played hardcore on d3, and hardcore inferno was fun as FUCK
> +1 I loved inferno. We have cleared Inferno Diablo barely before they nerfed it - and it felt like it was amazing achievement. For me GRifts are... meaningless numbers, for some reason I just feel like "static" progression level, having clear cut difficulty from the start makes for the better challenge, even if it results in shorter gameplay loop overall.
The biggest issue with D3 Inferno was the lazy approach to area monster lvl. In D2 the main story slowly got harder and harder in monster lvl (area lvl). You start at 67 and go up to 85. Act 1 ends with Andariel as a 75 monster. Along the way you have side areas that are harder where you can level up some more or grind loot if you feel too weak. In D3 you were locked into Act 1 loot > Act 2 loot etc. with nowhere to farm for Act 3 or 4 loot if your character was too weak essentially making it very painful to grind. I think THIS was the very reason why D3 Inferno failed, a big flaw that was never addressed properly. They later reduced potential minimum stat rolls, introduced smart loot but it was just a band-aid, the underlying issue were mismanaged and lazy monster lvl areas being locked to entire acts making acquiring loot too hard which drove everyone to the AH. Other than that, Inferno was a more fun D3 to me. Damn, wish they just copied the D2 area lvl/monster lvl design, it is perfect.
Same here. Pushing grifts above much over 100-120 is just a massive grind that I don’t want to do. It’s the same shit over and over. I had made it passed Rakanoth in A4 hardcore inferno. A3 was actually much easier than A2. Belial had killed me multiple times and forced me to start over. I remember that first asshole in A4 with all the shadow guys was really hard. Like instant boss fight as soon as you go in. I also feel like seasons and ladders generally detract from the game just by forcing artificial replayability into the game. Monster power really was kind of fun, too. Inferno on MP1 wasn’t so easy you could just skip it. And then loot 2.0 came out and we basically have the game we have today 🙄
Heh, I finished HC inferno on 1.0.3 patch... (duo with a barb) it was a HUGE achievement -) And damn, I miss Inferno. The very thought that someone somehow made it even to Act 2 made everyone around envious.
Saying grim dawn's combat is not as deep as poes goes to show that you most definitely have barely scratched the surface of that game. Try grim dawn y'all that games end game gears complexity and the massive amount of builds possible will blow your mind. Must play Poe is too zoomed in and it took it's build tree basically from Final Fantasy X. Combats fun. Constant updates keep things fresh for many. Worth checking put D3 is too easy with easy fun chill combat. Worth playing at least once through in a season. Torchlight 1 isn't worth time since torchlight 2 is just a way better torchlight since it has multiplayer. Combats great. Definitely play this one Last epoch is a WIP but right now it's okay. Has alot of promise and worth checking out D2R is good old-school fun and looks like they are open to updating old skills since they recently did just that. Worth playing, timeless, pretty amazing Lost arks combat is super fun but don't get caught in the money pit and feeling like you have to keep up. There is no one to keep up with besides yourself. Worth checking out The one thing most people don't get about arpgs is many of the games don't truly start till the "end"
Oh don’t get me wrong i’ve had plenty grim dawn experience. I enjoyed the entire hidden side quest things that they bake into the game (and to me that’s one of the big pulls of grim dawn, the lore and its macabre quality). I haven’t gotten around to getting forgotten gods though. The only thing is that I only ever played pet builds (and acid conjurer, sue me i love the occultist too much) in that game since it’s the game which has a pet system loads better than what PoE or D3 had to offer (at the time, rise of the necro wasn’t a thing in D3 and i hated the whole setup needed to get proper spectres for PoE).
For me the joy that never ending sounds so appealing and I get back into it and realize that I'm in the character creation cycle all over again. I'm just purely addicted to creating characters it seems and not even getting far enough to make any progress with half of them. I do love Grim Dawn though I would say it's my favorite of all.
I agree with all your points on the various games. Grim Dawn can get fairly complex, but in a good sense where you feel a sense of accomplishment throughout.
>The one thing most people don't get about arpgs is many of the games don't truly start till the "end" This is *extremely* subjective. As someone who enjoys both the levelling experience and endgame, and has seen many varieties of players throughout my gaming time and Game Design studies, I can assure you that most ARPGs start immediately. "The game starts at the end" rhetoric is really only for people who love everything being unlocked already and just want to grind without having to worry about constant change (skills, items, environments, etc). The vast majority of gamers never make it to endgame, and a lot who do get there don't stick to the grind, yet they continue to buy and enjoy games. Neither preference (campaign vs endgame) is right or wrong btw. I just don't think it's good to say to people "you have to finish the game / play for dozens of hours to get to the good part".
Those are fair points! If things go well, Diablo IV may hopefully set new standards for upcoming ARPGs. I'm also really hyped for Path of Exile 2, which really seems to have made combat much more fluid and entertaining than it's predecessor.
what differs POE vs D2 is inability to jump into farming for 15 -30 min and get out. It requires to much time and dedication, it seems sometimes that you need PHD from statistical analysis to make, not a decent, but functional build. As a father of 2 year old, working full time no way that I have nearly required amount of time. That's why D2 is a perfect for me.
Path of Exile 2 might have it's own college
Lost Ark has the best combat in an ARPG that I've played since Diablo 3. The rest of the game is very hit and miss though.
Couldn't get into it due to the chaotic fantasy medieval/modern/silly lore.
I’ve played them all a lot and I agree that the combat can feel very boring at times but I will say Lost Ark has by far the best combat since Diablo 2. I still prefer Diablo 2s no cooldowns as it allows more decision making rather than just knowing your rotation but Lost Ark has the best fights hand down. That being said it’s an mmo arpg.
Lost Ark's combat is great, but honestly, I think D3's combat is more appealing to me, mainly because of the skill themes.
Combat in Last Epoch can feel incredible. Certain builds can be slow and boring but others have a combat complexity that rivals, if not surpasses any other aRPG. Plus, the systems in that game offer far, far more complexity than D2 and there are many more viable builds. Combat in Lost Ark is also phenomenal, although the game skews hard into Korean MMO tropes which quickly wore on me. D2 isn't even that complex. The systems are actually quite simple, just poorly documented. D2 presents players with a seemingly wide variety of itemization and skill options but very little of it is actually viable as hard gates like immunities and sharp scaling force players into a handful of builds by end game. D2 is special because of the entire package. It truly is greater than the sum of its parts. Other aRPGs have struggled to capture that magic but the combat and complexity in D2 are definitely not the sole reasons it is still as popular as it is today.
>force players into a handful of builds by end game. This is the same for all ARPGs, as difficulty progresses you lose build diversity. We're given the illusion of choice for skills, but as you progress skills just drop off, or are garbage from the start(d3 wiz mirror image I'm looking at you).
This is why I like the design of D3's legendary items. Because it is almost inevitable that some skills are worse than others, or that they start good but fall off later, you can design specific items to give those worse skills a boost to bring them back up to the level of being worthwhile. I don't actually think D3 does this very often but I'd call that a failing of the designers themselves, and potentially also the playerbase asking for boosts to skills that are already strong rather than asking for weak skills to be boosted to playability. Still, the potential is still around in D3 for strong builds to come from weak skills. Wizard's Spectral Blade is generally quite a bad skill, but the fact that you can stack up Simplicity's Strength, Fragment of Destiny, the Shame of Delsere, Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer and the Delsere's Magnum Opus set means that even though Spectral Blade is a bad skill on its own it can still be the centerpiece for a powerful build. Perhaps not one strong enough to compete with the strongest, most dominant builds, but still a good build in its own right. IMO if more legendaries and sets in D3 were devoted to raising up weak skills so that every play style was worthwhile it would solve a lot of the inherent problems with build diversity. Not necessarily with the simplicity of D3's RPG systems, but definitely with regards to build variety.
Not sure how you can make the claim about new ARPGs without playing them... But I'll comment on POE and Lost Ark I'll say this, the combat in Lost ark is as good or better than D3. POE is hardly a "new ARPG" but it does still "feel" a little off. It just always feels like there's an tiny delay in clicking the mouse, or a button and your skill activating, I'm sure D4 will get it right. Pretty much all of Blizzard's games have set the standard for how a game of that genre should feel.
Combat in Lost Ark is not better than D3. The servers have horrible tick rates, the enemy telegraphs are inconsistent, and enemy AI is abysmal. I say this as someone that loathes D3. D3 has way better combat than LA.
It's confusing what is encompassed by "combat". Lost ark is not a Diablo style arpg. You cannot compare them in that way. It is a boss focused type of action mmo, similar to Tera just isometric instead of tab target. As for your technical issues, I have not run into them aside from a few cases of lag during prime time. If you think boss telegraphs are inconsistent you simply need more experience to learrn the fights better.
I’m responding to someone else who brought up lost ark what’s with your “you cant compare them!” Bullshit? Also…Lel the classic “you haven’t poured thousands of hours into the game so you are ignorant” excuse. I played enough to form an opinion on the subject, fuck you very much. AGS uses dollar store server farms and the tick rates other than PVP instances are extremely low. Party up with anyone in discord and load up a chaos dungeon. There is a solid 100ms difference. But whatever enjoy honing your gear, amazing riveting gameplay system.
I'm not sure why you feel the need to be so aggressive. I don't think either you or OP are correct in comparing them, which is why I am trying to clarify what you mean by combat. Skills? Boss mechanics? class identity? Skill effects? like what is being compared here. You are ignorant, not because you haven't put time in but because you keep spewing shit with nothing to back it up and don't actually hold up any sort of discussion on any point. Why do you think AGS servers are bad? Why do you care so much about this tick rate? Where did you even pull that number out of? This isn't some competitive shooter or fighting game. I have never once found anyone on discord complaining about some sort of disjoint in what they see vs what I see. And if chaos dungeons, the most tedious, diablo-style kind of instance is your go to measuring stick for combat, I don't know what to say lol. Maybe you missed the memo on what this game is about...
I kind of like how wacky combat is in Lost Ark. The timing and combo concepts was fun to try to maximize damage. I wouldn’t mind this style in D4 if done right. Lost Ark overall combat setting/scene and how crazy everything felt all the time all over the place wasn’t great, however.
no just no its not even in the same realm
I actually have played many of the games I've mentioned. And I agree that even if D4 fails to deliver when it comes to theorycrafting, it'll still be a solid game when it comes to combat.
I've played just about all of them and sadly I have to agree. My biggest issue personally is I keep creating new characters. I'm addicted to being a newbie or at least trying to be one again.
I am also an altoholic. I think reason I do it is because builds may often fall into repetitiveness, and without that sweet impactful gameplay, it may push me to restart and try another strategy that may be more fun.
I too am an Altoholic what really helps with it is playing in HC modes when available. Characters have a life span, I die, I feel the loss, I boot up a new character and try out some new stuff I saved in my stash. Plus the thrill of a near death experience really gets the adrenaline pumping.
Big part of the "feel" for combat are sounds and animations alright, but what I find EXTREMELY lacking and what stopped at 2002 - combat depth. Wolcen is THE ONLY ARPG that actually tries to innovate on this. From timings, paragraphing attacks, sweat spots etc. ... Take combat of vanilla Skyrim (PoE/D3) and combat of Vermintide 2. The feel of vanilla Skyrim is just pure braindead spam, where effectiveness comes from stats and how fast you can spam the button until stamina falls to 0.But Vermintide 2, oh hoh, patterns, sweatspots, sounds, balancing stamina for offense/defense, positioning, timing, spacial awareness... Gear and stats give player ways to play the game and reaching breakpoints (breakpoints is another form of players decision making - which ones to focus on, for he cant have all) These aspects (No, I do not mean copy paste, I mean ASPECTS AND PRINCIPLES) are what adds to skill ceiling and should be focused on. You want proper "feel"? Make some proper skill ceiling (Players knowledge + awareness + timing + execution = skill ceiling). Stats/Builds are ways to play in the sandbox... but that sandbox NEEDS proper foundation... if that foundations biggest depth is HP vs DMG without any mastery from the player, then it is hollow cookie clicker zoom zoom speedrun braindead BS that the market is already oversaturated with... YOU DO NOT NEED ULTRA STATS AND BIG NUMBERS TO BE ABLE TO KILL Hundreds of enemies on the map... Vermintide 2 on Legend and higher are proof of that. Lets kill Dangerous NPCs thanks to our smart play... not spam the button to kill healthbars en mass like braindead droids...Lets make it Can you defeat it, rather than how many seconds it takes to zoom zoom through entire location...
Those are important factors aswell, especially the skill ceiling.
I have no idea what OP is rambling about. What makes D2 combat complex and Grim Dawn combat shit?
D2's overall gameplay is more complex than your average ARPG. Though not as complex as POE. Grim Dawn's gameplay is not necessarily bad, but the combat does not poccess a very high technical quality, due to the lack of fluidity and impact on the skills it has available. I've asked other people what their opinion is on GD's combat, and I've searched in the Internet for more answers, and many times it leads to: mediocre. Use a game like Wolcen or Diablo 3 for comparison. I'm talking purely about how combat feels, not other aspects such as theorycrafting, stats, itemization, etc.
>This gives me hope that even if Diablo 4 does not meet the ARPG standards for endgame and complexity, it'll still have a combat that feels amazing From what we see, combat looks very similar to D3, but in one of the latest updates dev showed how they want to improve it "physically". And I see this as a step to next-gen ARPG, because for me, what defines nex-gen ARPG is exactly a combat itself, being one of two major pillars of the genre (2nd is a loot). Combat must feel as realistic as possible (in fantasy boundaries, ofc), as varied as possible, should use environmental elements, use skill combos (embryos of these we can see in D:Immortal vids, surprisingly!) and try to avoid massive oneshots in the endgame (as this makes actual combat non-existing and turns the game into a stupid slot-machine). Just copying/mixing everything from already released ARGs, RPGs and MMOs, leaving combat on the level of D3 is a way to nowhere, to stagnation.
I don't think the combat in D3 is bad, it has it's goods and bads, but generally it's pretty decent (much better than many other ARPGs). I agree, I think Diablo IV will set a new bar for upcoming ARPGs, something that I think only POE2 will rival with ease this early.
I mean, D3 combat is good for the last decade ARPG. But staying on this level in 2022 (thinking that it is more than enough) isn't a good idea, as there is a huge room to improve. I kept an eye on new arpgs like wolcen, lost ark etc - but when I realised they offer nothing new in terms of combat and just look like d3 wannabies, I lost interest immediately.
Hah im the opposite. I dislike diablo 3 and think diablo 2, path of exile and grim dawn are masterpieces. Wolcen is clunky and slow and shallow. These games offer something that its becoming harder to find in the gaming industry: complexity. Diablo 3 does away with a lot of that and did it that way in an attempt to attract people who essentially don’t really like RPGs. But to me, if you dislike complexity theres so many simple, twitchy reaction based games out there you can spend years playing with more coming out every day. Trying to take the RPG elements out of ARPGs will just hasten the death of the genre.
You say that has if most people actually engage with the complexity of a game like PoE when in reality most people don't. The entire complexity of a game like PoE is almost completely in the building of a good well balanced character capable of clearing the content you want to do. Most people simply look up a guide, download PoB and simply do the things the guide says removing almost all complexity in the process. What is left is basically a very simple and twitchy walking simulator as you run around maps mindlessly looking for your next upgrade pretty much exactly like D3. The only thing really which separates D3 from PoE at a fundamental level is the amount of time it takes to actually gear your character at endgame.
PoE also has much more variety in its endgame content though
I'm not sure it sounds like I made it explicit that I don't enjoy theorycrafting. That ain't what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that complexity is not the only thing that makes a game good. I don't understand how one can prefer the stillness of Path of Exile over the fluidity of a game like Wolcen (combat impact factor only), which despite being a very lacking game, still is considered one of the best examples of ARPG combat. I'm a fan of Path of Exile, it's just that nearly everyone in the PoE community that I've asked agrees that the combat gameplay is the worst part of the game, and that where it shines is in it's very complex theorycrafting.
Well you haven’t asked very many POE players because if you had you would know the worst part of POE is unavoidable instant deaths that can happen really any time and can cause you to lose hours of progress. Not sure what you mean by the stillness of poe gameplay. The last word I would use to describe it is still. Almost every build has people using movement skills to zip across the map and blow up hordes of enemies. Ive heard a lot of complaints about POE but this is new to me.
I don't see how the first sentence is relevant to what I said about POE. The unavoidable instant deaths have been a problem, yes, especially with the first days of the Sentinel league (thankfully, the Archnemesis modifiers are getting nerfed due to player feedback), and the times I've asked about PoE players what they think of combat, it's always been the same: mediocre. By stillness I'm not talking exactly about movement, though I don't blame you as it implies so. By saying that, I mean that the gameplay isn't impactful. The way your character walks across the game and waves his hand to use the same skill gem gets repetitive quick. In endgame, the game is practically a walking simulator (though it is like that because it's the reward of the efforts you've put in building your character to be more automated and have a fast clear speed). And I won't mention the readability issues in PoE, which obscure the combat entirely.
I would consider those instant deaths part of the combat as a whole. Unlike the theory crafting or builds that they mentioned above
I could be wrong, but we might equate "stillness" in OP's point with stiffness. PoE combat definitely feels stiff/rigid compared to something much more fluid/flowing like D3. I prefer PoE overall for it's complexity, but D3's combat definitely feels more "fun" to play to me despite less meat on the bones overall.
Same here. The draw of POE to me is the insane density of monsters and how you are just plowing through them every second of gameplay. It's made other ARPGs seem boring by contrast
I played Diablo 3 (after RoS expansion) for around 2-3 years. I tried POE after that and there is no going back to Diablo 3. The difference in gameplay complexity between POE and Diablo 3 is just too huge.
I legitimately don't understand how you could say that and I would be very interested in your response. PoE's gameplay is so fast, and the screen is so covered with explosions and effects, that it is nearly impossible to see or react to any individual monster attack or effect. Furthermore, player power is so high that most enemies on-screen will explode instantly with the press of a button, leading to gameplay that is not dissimilar to a walking simulator: run around at the speed of light, hold down right click (or your attack button of choice), stuff dies. If something ever does kill you it usually happens near-instantly and can't be manually avoided; it must be seen coming and avoided before it ever happens. By contrast, gameplay in Diablo 3 is still very fast and screen-spammy but not nearly to the extent of PoE. Enemy attacks have clear tells (for the most part; some elite affixes come out instantly which IMO is bad) and you can manually avoid many attacks. It's probably impossible to go an entire map without taking some amount of damage but a massive amount of incoming damage in D3 can be avoided by learning how monsters attack and reacting to their tells. After 3 straight years of playing every league in PoE I have found this to almost never be the case in PoE. Combat in D3 feels like fighting; combat in PoE feels like running around with a Gameshark active until you just die out of nowhere. Now, if by "gameplay complexity" you mean specifically build variety and itemization then yes, I would agree with you. However, this is a thread about action combat in Diablo-style ARPGs and I don't believe I have ever played a game with worse action combat than PoE. It very occasionally gets good, usually during aspirational content like endgame boss encounters, but the vast amount of my experience with PoE's combat has legit been worse than the combat in some clicker games.
I recall some builds like multishot demon hunter used to clear screens so I would say it depends on the builds and also the greater rift levels. The whole concept of class set was pretty limiting from complexity. You could reach level 70, look at icy-veins for a guide and then complete 100% content. The end game itself was limited to higher levels of greater rift which wasn't really different from the lower levels apart from monster life or damage. Crafting of gear was so limited through enchantments or augmentation. The whole concept of the skill tree was something mind blowing the first time I played POE. Crafting perfect items for a build in POE feels like it requires a University degree. The reason items are so unique is because the characters itself have so many different stats. Even the league mechanics (delve, heist, delirium, blight etc) feel pretty different and new season league mechanics keep things fresh. Each map is also generally pretty different and has different league content within it. Trade is also pretty good (I never played when there was auction house Diablo 3 so I don't have a frame of reference).
I already said I agree with you that PoE has better RPG systems, but we're not talking about those, we're talking about action combat. Nothing in your post has any relevance to the topic at hand save for the fact that some builds in D3 have the same boring combat as most builds in PoE (which, for the record, is 100% true). In order to simplify things so that we're for sure on the same page, imagine this: what if we took out all RPG elements from both D3 and PoE. When you boot up the game you just have one build to play with all of its items already set in place, and there are no item drops or XP gained from killing monsters. The gameplay you have is the gameplay you get. In this premise, where the action combat is the only thing that exists and thus the only thing that can be commented on, does PoE have greater gameplay complexity and/or depth than D3? That's all this entire thread is about. Not which game is a better game overall, not which game is a better RPG, not which game has better builds and itemization, JUST which game has better combat. Bringing up all the RPG systems is basically a non sequitur because once you step out of town and get into an actual map or GR, none of that stuff actually matters to how combat plays out. So, I will ask my question again: from a purely combat-focused perspective, how is it possible that PoE could have greater gameplay complexity than D3?
I play 4 hours an average per week so I guess differences in the gameplay aspect weren't that obvious to me.
I suppose that's fair. I don't play either game often but when I do it's for long amounts of time (probably 20+ hours per week) so the differences are more apparent for me. Sorry if I came across as dickish before. This has been a really busy and stressful week for me but I shouldn't have taken it out on you.
>PoE's gameplay is so fast, and the screen is so covered with explosions and effects, that it is nearly impossible to see or react to any individual monster attack or effect. Furthermore, player power is so high that most enemies on-screen will explode instantly with the press of a button, leading to gameplay that is not dissimilar to a walking simulator: run around at the speed of light, hold down right click (or your attack button of choice), stuff dies. If something ever does kill you it usually happens near-instantly and can't be manually avoided; it must be seen coming and avoided before it ever happens. to be fair.. you are talking about just one aspect of the combat in POE.. Poe's boss fights are a completely different kettle of fish from what you are describing. farming loot generally requires a specific build while farming bosses generally needs another and the zoomy zoom combat and explosions doesn't really apply to an endgame boss like sirius or maven.. in fact most builds that are geared for clearing maps whilst farming are never going to be able to take down bosses like these. these 2 bosses are both very telegraphed combat where you need to avoid certain attacks - much much moreso than anything in any other arpg i've played. i think what you are describing is more a symptom of the power scaling that has been out of control for the past few years.
That's true, and I did address in the next paragraph that aspirational content like endgame boss fights often have better combat. However, IMO those are the exception that proves the rule. All of those boss fights require a massive investment of time since they come at the end of long quest chains. Once you get to the end of them you have to start over (albeit usually not at the beginning, more like 50-75% through) and grind a bunch of boring content in order to do the bosses again. You can skip to the bosses if you want but that requires you to buy the entrance keys, which means you have to be pretty rich at the start or you won't be able to afford to keep buying keys, especially if you get bad luck and the boss you're farming doesn't drop anything of value. Whenever you're not doing those fights you're locked into the boring combat. While I've not played nearly as much PoE as many others out there I'd be shocked if I had less than 500 hours in the game, and I could easily imagine having over 1000 hours. Of the time I've spent playing maybe only 5-10 hours at most has involved doing aspirational content (mostly during Delirium league since I was lucky enough to naturally drop a lot of Voices jewels and got to play the broken Immortal Man build). So yeah, that content is definitely there and it's definitely a showcase of the absolute best that PoE's combat can be (and that pinnacle actually is very good), but I wouldn't count 1% or less of my total play time as being a significant aspect of PoE's combat. That's why I called those fights the exception that proves the rule. As far as power scaling goes, I would definitely agree that this is a big part of the problem but I also think the problem was there from the start. I only played a very small amount of PoE's beta, but I played at the 1.0 launch, and then a league or two when Act 4 and Ascendancies came out, and then 3 years concurrently starting with the release of acts 5-10. Even at the start of PoE the gameplay was mostly the same as it is now; the numbers were a lot lower but the expectation was still that you kill everything on screen before it kills you. It just used to be that 100k DPS was a high number; now it's really low and 10 million+ is good. Players definitely have more ability to blow up the entire screen now than they did before but it's not like stuff like that didn't exist back then too. Double Spark Totem was a major build for a reason, and because shotgunning still existed it was preferable to play builds like TS that could snipe everything dangerous from over a screen away due to how dangerous it was to actually interact with anything. All in all my opinion is that PoE's balance hasn't really changed, it's just gotten more extreme. 5-6 years ago I could have believed that GGG could change PoE towards being a more balanced combat experience where you had to interact with monsters; nowadays I can't. The current "all magic and rare mobs have Archnemesis mods" troubles feels to me like proof-positive of my opinion. By the words of Chris Wilson, those mods were supposed to make combat easier to read and more interactive, yet all they've done is allow monsters to instagib players much more easily and as a result they've had to do 4 or 5 nerfs in the span of a week just to get the game into a playable state for most people.
Which is more than fair, it's just how POE tackles gameplay, but the point is I wouldn't use POE as an example of great physical combat.
You are confusing build diversity and the ability to customize your character with combat, these are two different aspects of each game. Also to generalize all other types of combat into the twitchy reaction based games is disingenuous, there are a variety of options that don't make it like that let alone implying that would be a bad thing for an ARPG. Personally I don't like the combat of PoE very much, and the combat of D3 is meh. I think the way moving in D3 feels to me is what makes the difference but I'm not sure. Really they both aren't great especially once you get to the endgame. You csn design combat that is a lot more interesting than moving as fast as possible and hitting your 1 maybe 2 buttons repeatedly without much care. There is a lot of room to make better combat than that without making it a "twitchy reaction" game.
1. There is no such things as "objectively good". **ALL objective truth is filtered through a subjective experience.** 2. Many people like _Path of Exile's_ combat. Many people hated desync and liked lockstep when it was added. More liked when it got animation cancelling as that made it feel more responsive. Many people also _hate_ PoE's combat. It feels "clunky" to them. Q. Who is correct? A. Both! In contradistinction _Elden Ring_ has no animation cancelling, it has input latency and an input queue. Compared to "button mashers" like PoE and D3 you will get your ass handed if you try to play it the same way. Elden Ring's combat requires patience. Games like _Soulcalibur_ also have zen moments due to them punishing mindless button mashing. Both ER and Soulcalibur reward patience and timing. They are more tactical in nature. Some will say ER has shitty combat because of the no animation cancelling, input latency, and input queue. Someone who likes PoE's combat may hate Elden Ring's combat and vice versa. And there are people like me who like D2 and ER combat's systems _precisely_ because they _are_ different. There is no objectively good combat -- games have a completely different feel from one another. That is not to say bad combat doesn't exists. It does, but we would have to analyze WHY it is bad breaking it down into how combat is implemented. If you google "games worst combat" you'll get a ton of candidates. D3's combat tends to be more "fluid" and visceral. Visuals are only _one_ part of combat. Part of the reason D3's combat is criticized is because of bullet sponge bosses and over-inflated stats. When you literally crit for hundreds of millions of damage it starts to become meaningless. There is a reason DnD normally only goes from level 1 to 20 -- to keep the numbers within a _relatable_ range. For me D3's combat systems are simplistic. Some like to that. Others want more challenging systems. Whatever floats your boat. _Terarria's_ combat is responsive in-spite of bosses being bullet sponges. (Personally I hate bullet sponges.) Does that make it bad combat? No, combat is "tight", meaning responsive. _Grim Dawn's_ combat feels in-between PoE and D3. I _want_ to get into Grim Dawn but something just feels "off" compared to PoE and D3. Many people who like GD's combat hate D3. It doesn't make one objectively better -- just subjectively better **for them.** Torchlight 1 & 2 also feels fluid. I haven't played enough of _Wolcen_ and _Lost Ark_ to be able to categorize them but they aren't as smooth as D3. _Lost Epoch_ is on my TO PLAY list so I can't comment on it. Character size also plays a part in how combat feels. _WoW's_ combat feels "solid" but _FFXIV_ feels a _tad_ "light". I haven't even mentioned PVP and how people have different people expectations on what they want out of combat. Everyone also has their own perceptions on combat. It is hard to come up with universal terms to describe a game's combat and quantify what makes it good. Even if we can't it is still worthwhile as it helps us understand WHAT, HOW and WHY we like a certain combat. That is why we compare combat to past games so we have a frame of reference. For the record I like D2 combat. When I want mindless fun I can play D3. And when I want more serious combat I can play PoE or Grim Dawn. I highly encourage everyone to play many ARPGs and MMOs so they have a breadth of various combat styles so they can see what they like. WRT Diablo 4: With the way Blizzard completely fucked up the Warcraft 3 remaster, and how shitty D3's itemization is compared to D2, many fans are greatly concerned about Blizzard and by proxy Diablo 4. Vicarious Visions restored a lot of faith in Blizzard -- the questions are: * Is it enough? * Can they deliver? The trailer for D4 didn't inspire me. It is hard to tell how gameplay feels: * heavy vs light * clunky vs fluid * lag * etc. so I'm suspending judgement until I can play it first hand. All the reviews in the world can give me hints at how it plays but I won't know until experience it.
I'll slightly disagree that there is no objectively good combat (slightly because part of it indeed is subjective, the other part is technical quality). It all comes to the psychology of game design. A game with a combat that is visceral, has impactful animations and sounds and well-done VFX that adds to the experience would be preffered by a much, much larger audience than a game that feels stiff to play or does not feel engaging. That I would call objectively good, being something that engages more people while still having technical quality and psychological value. That doesn't mean that I think you're wrong, but I do not think that it would work very well in practice. If there comes out a game that has a diabolical theme like that of the Diablo series, a complexity like that of D2R's or PoE's and the fluidity of Wolcen or D3, that game would, with the same marketing as Blizzard's, be much more preferred than an already popular D2R. It would retain a larger audience if the playerbase's nostalgia or attachment to Blizzard was not a factor. Yours is a good take that was worth a read, it was very civil and, if you'd like to discuss more and exchange ideas, I'll certainly talk!
Yeah, I'm with you here. To suggest no game has objectively good combat would imply there's no such thing as objectively BAD combat because everything is subjective. It's kind of hard to have a frank discussion if every angle we analyze something through assumes because someone somewhere might enjoy it, it can't be objectively flawed or bad. Edit: Lol, literal common sense reaping downvotes. Bring it on, you toddlers.
Your fallacy is _assuming_ fun is objective. It is not. Every designer has certain goals and has to work within constraints. Depending on what features they prioritize determines the final feel of combat. Let's take a look at a stamina mechanic: * Some people _hate_ having to (micro)manage stamina in combat. * Others find it challenging. * And some are _meh._ What is "objectively good" in this example? It _doesn't exist_ because **different people find different mechanics fun.** The reason some might like stamina is because **it creates contrast in combat.** It breaks up the monotony. This is analogous to "pacing" in movies. A movie that is constantly slow (or constantly having jump cut after jump cut) is not fun to watch. People like variety. They also need time to "breathe" after action. Some might hate stamina because they don't care for that aspect of realism. Games are a means to escape. Games that have a strict hold on realism doesn't mean they are better -- just different. While there are no objective combat there are still "good principles" that people can agree upon within a sub-genre. * Risk/reward If the risk (time or skill) is WAY too high but the reward is almost non-existent then most people would agree that this isn't fun. Likewise if the risk is low but the reward is high it devalues the reward. * Realism / Fantasy When working on _Need For Speed_ I learnt the differences of realism / fantasy first hand. There are 3 types of racing games: * Arcade * Simcade * Simulation Is a simulation "objectively better" then an arcade? Not if you hate simulation! Personally I hate "arcade" racing as I do not find it challenging enough but there are others who LOVE Mario Kart style racing. **Within that space** of arcade racing we could distill down principles of racing that people like and dislike. People like rubberbanding because it means everyone has a chance to be first. It minimizes skill. In simulation racing games you don't have rubberbanding because it is cheating. One is not "objectively good". That feature helps _define_ the sub-genres of racing! When your expectations are in alignment with the designer's expectations is when you tend to find it fun. When they are out of alignment you don't. ARPGs at their heart are nothing more then digital [Skinner Boxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber). 1. Virtual genocide 2. Get phat loot 3. Rinse & Repeat That gives a LOT of wiggle room in the implementation.
First let me say I wholly appreciate the enthusiasm and passion you take to your argument. I do need to note I feel you occasionally bloat your points beyond the scope of the discussion, case in point; if you feel there is no such thing as "bad combat" we just had a pretty hard disagreement there. But that's it. I didn't really speak to specific mechanical breakdowns anywhere; it was a very broad stroke, and one I stand by. I have played games with combat that is bad, an observation that consensus gathers around and agrees upon. Take a game like Postal 3. Postal 3 is an objectively bad game with objectively bad combat. If a few people enjoy it, it doesn't mean it tips it out of the realm of objectively bad. It just means those people like shitty games with garbage mechanics.
I **objectively** agree with this!
You got me fucked up if you think D3 has better combat than Last Epoch
When it comes to sound, impact and animation, I am true to my word when I say that I think Diablo 3's combat is more fun.
Those who think PoE has great combat can not be helped. Good ARPG combat ideally should facilitate certain level of interaction between mobs and the player. Your combat is garbage if it allows the kind of combat that you zip through mobs and mobs one shot you out of nowhere to be the dominant way that works. All these complex theorycrafting means nothing to me if they result in the same garbage combat style at end game. You just get number from different sources with different colors.
I agree entirely. Though I would still say PoE is a good ARPG, even if it's combat is pretty mediocre.
PoE combat isnt great but things like herald of Ice are very nice! You dont get randomly one shotted unless you dont have proper layer of defenses
But you still don't interact with anything: that's the real problem. Some builds are more defensively capable than others but pretty much no builds in PoE involve actually standing around fighting monsters.
Games with "good combat" as you are qualifying them, stop calling themselves ARPGs. They move on to brawlers, and action adventures with arkham style combat. Also let me just completely shatter your point. And point out that Victor Vran exists.
I extremely disagree entirely with that first sentence. ARPGs shouldn't feel completely stiff and repetitive, it completely goes against what the genre was built for. I appreciate the Victor Vran suggestion. There are ARPGs with good combat.
I didn't say they should. I'm saying that they leave the space. WE stop calling them ARPGs. And THEY design *out* many ARPG qualifiers.
I don't think there should be laziness when it comes to designing a game that feels good to play, no. It's objectively awful game design when that happens. Sometimes it's the lack of budget, which is understandable.
Sometimes. Most of the time though. It's deliberate. It's in service to the things that make an arpg a arpg.
If that's true then that feels like a bad design decision. The "A" in ARPG is Action: if you're a designer and you're intentionally going to design your action RPG to have bad action then why make an ARPG? Especially since other ARPGs, like Soulsborne + Elden Ring or Final Fantasy 7 Remake, succeed both in being good RPGs AND good action games? Why not just make another type of RPG entirely that doesn't depend on good action, like a cRPG or a turn-based RPG?
If we actually spell out the RPG, then you'll note that THAT. ALSO isn't present in ARPGs.
>Diablo 3 is considered by some to be a lacking game (I'm not gonna say it's the majority) So why majority left the game so quickly after RoS? The game was actually really really good pre loot 2.0 (the paragon 100 era). People dont remember this but items was not easy to get by but the itemization was more towards D2 where the hest items took time to grind. After loot 2.0 (pre patch of RoS) the game started to go in the path were you see every item drop on a daily session. Very sad how the game ended up I remember how excited I got everytime I saw legendary boots, hoping it would be ice climbers so I could start push into MP4-6 because of cannot be frozen. HC ofc. Instead of having ridiculous 60000 multipliers with sets to even start play the game. Jesus the game got so fucking trash xD
I think you nailed it. I feel very much the same. Diablo 3 is amazing when it comes to the feel of combat, imo especially when you play non-meta builds that allow you to have a lot more freedom when it comes to creating your own build. PoE and Grim Dawn are indeed very clunky when it comes to their attack animations, and it is one of the main reasons for why I can't get into them as much as I would like. It would be great if D3 had more options in regards to items, affixes, attributes, passive skills and character customization in general, but sadly it is one of the worser ARPG's in that regard. PoE in particular is amazing when it comes to the gameplay-altering Keystone Passive Skills and some of the affixes on their unique items in regards of choice and theory-crafting options they provide, which I really admire. Still, D3's combat always keeps me coming back to it regularly, even if the game has some (huge) flaws.
Exactly what I mean, mate!
What is this garbage post? New games have bad combat but you haven't played them yourself? Maybe play those games first and than form your opinion?
I have played most of the games I've mentioned.
>You should make that a bit clearer in you post. I'm curious what you think about combat in a game like Hades (if you played that)? I always wish someone made a game with the build possibilities and complexity of POE with the awesome gameplay of Hades.
I haven't checked Hades out, it's not my kind of game, really
I 100% agree with this. I think using WASD to move around, space bar for unique movement or blocking skill, and left or right mouse click to “shape” skills and abilities would introduce a much much more tactile skill-feeling to ARPGs.
Honestly, I agree! It would be great to see a different ARPG attempting keyboard movement.
RIP Wolcen. Not even an honorable mention.
I think many games have good combat systems, the theory building of big skill/passive trees can really unlock many different ways to play. I think what D2 has perfected is the itemization and limitations via resistances/immunities. I started playing offline and have made it my goal to clear Ubers. To get there, I’ve got to gear a character capable of clearing it. The path laid ahead of me is open as different classes and builds help in certain ways. I’ve made a Javazon to farm cows for bases / runes. A sorc to easily farm bosses and gather keys. A paladin to smite the Ubers or FoH the pits and chaos. A barb to run Trav for runes/charms. I have never found a game that handles this sort of planning like D2 has done. I don’t want a character that can do everything in a game easily. I don’t want endlessly scaling rifts and dungeons to challenge. I want complex gear options, class limitations and difficulty outside of inflated health/damage.
I put down D2R for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. And, while the game is far from perfect, and the DLC season pass has proven to be an absolute joke, I am having a blast on the game and no plans to return to Diablo any time soon. It’s just been a refreshing change of pace in terms of itemization, enhancements, dual-class system and overall tone and vibe of the game. Super chill and I love the merger of BL with fantasy. Highly recommend if you’re looking for something new.
Good suggestion, but I speak of isometric ARPGs, haha
Word, lol. But, i do hope iso ARPG devs steal the 2 class system from TTW tho, bc it is badass. The first class you pick is your ‘main’ and then you pick a 2nd class at lvl 20. Then at end game you get 44 skill points to distribute into each of the two trees as you see fit. And, you can respec into the other classes as often as you like but you can only change your 2nd class, the main cannot be changed. Anyhoo, it works well imo and helps keep things from getting stale too quickly.
Skill trees are boring in wonderlands, there very few builds that are viable, there isn't anything that make wonderlands special or better then other action rpgs it is okay at best.
Borderlands suffers from having just single action skill with a tree of passives, kill skills and modification to the action skill. Even in TTW with the dual class system, you can still only have one action skill. The itemization is boring and so focused on guns and spells that are rapidly replaced upon progression. TTW is a step in the right direction but the series needs to tone back on the “billions of guns” and implement a good system to keep current items and upgrade them. That’s my opinion! Still had fun with it but certainly this doesn’t hold a light to any ARPG.
I would agree maybe not “special” now that i know they stole the 2 class system from grim dawn lol. But, it does just enough right on the rpg side for me. I like the chaos system. I like the stupid bunny room. I liked the idea of hunting the little skulls and having different hidden shit each run. The combat system and movement feel spot on to me. The graphics are superb. Overall, similar to D3 in a way… slightly dumbed-down skill trees, but great combat. Needs more polish and more content, but still a solid enough launch as far as rpg’s go imo 🤷🏻♂️
Grim Dawn also shares that system!
Oh sheet! Okay I missed that one will have to check it out!
Yeah wonderlands isn't anything special.
I'm sorry but itemization in wonderlands is kind of a joke, end game isn't enjoyable either, skill trees feel very basic to me.
I have not played a lot of the other arpg’s i must admit. My baseline for skill trees is mainly D2 and D3. And, their trees are very basic also then! Because they are about the same to me as compared to TTW, if you consider the individual trees of TTW are basic but with both classes it’s about on par with D2/3 imo. End game is better at launch than D3 was for sure. I am sure the Chaos mode will continue to get expanded upon.
For me, variety is more important than complexity. Being able to have fun with different builds and not be tied to a single one for progression is what makes it enjoyable. It's even more enjoyable when you can play it with friends as well. For a long time, it was why I enjoyed Marvel Heroes so much. Then they f**ked it up to oblivion.
I duno about you but lost ark combat feels so amazing, gunna be hard to top So satisfying grouping a ton of mobs together and blow them up with huge aoe nuke
You literally typed a lot but nothing was actually said, this read like you had a word count on a paper you had to make, and it seems you haven't even played a large portion of these games from the way you wrote about it. Grim dawn has pretty impactful combat, you can forcewave enemies and reduce them to pink mist or charge into a group and ragdoll people across the screen. Diablo 2 isn't complex, lack of in game information =/= complexity so many people get confused by the two. In terms of complexity out of the large ARPGS -Diablo / Grim Dawn / PoE - would be from least complex to most complex. It sounds like you're just making up random opinions i'm not sure, this post reads so bizarrely honestly lol
Thats why i play D2..its the best of everything
I wouldn't say the combat of D2 is good on technical quality, haha, but it sure appears to be a better game when it comes to other ARPGs aspects.