Creator here! Thank you greatly for watching this and helping my channel grow. This has been a truly life-changing experience and I’m super excited to continue growing and improving. Tala moana, exiles!

And they had the audacity to do a survey asking people if they’d be down to spend $100 on a dlc lol crazy

Diablo 4 destroyed itself before it was even out.

The music for The Grand Arena, especially as you go through reading Daresso's story with the amazing voice actor for him while you fight through arenas of baddies on the way to kill him, is probably one of the coolest ARPG experiences ever.

“They’re making video game for other people who make video games.” Nailed it.

D2 has just this super vibe. For example when you fist enter Harrogath, holy.. the windy winter dark ambient and then the sublime music kicks in. Holy shit you know the evil is cornered and it shows in the vibe.

Whatever game Asmon talks about, he seems to always say they should simplify it more. As long as the game is successful and growing, there is no need to streamline it. Being a bloated, hilariously complex mess that somehow still works is what makes PoE so damn charming.

It all went wrong for blizzard when they announced the "new" Diablo Immortal for mobile only back in the day. Now fast forward a couple years and we get Diablo 4, originally intended to play on your smartphone.

Maybe whenever someone has a great idea in blizzard they say "that's so good that... we should save it for the sequel in 10 years"

When Asmon was talking about Blizzard spending hours at Blizzcon talking about how they researched and agnoized over the authenticity of the culture of this one character and shit, the first thing that came to mind was; GGG is a New Zealand company, and like half of their entire fucking game is lifted directly from Maori culture and uses the art, language conventions, and inspiration from that culture. And you know what? They never once got up on stage and said "Hey look we put this weird old non-white culture in our games, aren't we so cool and progressive and deserving of praise?" They just fucking did it, because it's part of the life that the people in New Zealand grew up with, and they slotted it into the world they designed. They didn't do it for good-boy points or praise from Twitter Woke people, they didn't do it to hold over people as a virtue signal. It's just there.

36:00 The skill tree wasn't what made me quit... When I found out that I can't reset talents freely... that was a red flag for me. I like to experiment and make mistakes - I HATE to create new characters just for a new build.

Would be awesome to have some of your creative minds come together for a regular supercast debate about these games. The community can help development if there is loud enough feedback. No team develops a game in a vacuum. Unfortunately budgets restrict some choices as per any game, but bring something like a community roundtable discussion to light and maybe we can eventually have a titan of a game that breaks all expectations.

*Asmongold reacting to someone's reaction to his reaction* "I look like a fucking idiot" Truly wisdom of the ages...

Something really fun it happened on the first days of D4, when we still enjoyed the game: My brother was playing and streaming, and was facing Lillith, but we all though the ambience felt kinda off, that it lacked voices, music, and so on. So we used a Discord bot to play the Searing Exarch OST for everyone and my brother so he could actually feel it like a boss encounter lmao. This aged really well.

Torchlight Infinite actually does a good job in terms of slowly introducing more complexity. They have an extra ingame menu with beginner friendly builds and guide you through it, until you reach endgame.

Diablo 4 gets destroyed even from Diablo 2 Remastered...

I love Path of Exiles website, looks just like how the original World of Warcraft's website used to be. Hits you right in the feels.

The funny part is that any normal company would see the next 6 months as an opportunity for improvement. Blizzard only sees the next 6 months as the last opportunity to overload the shop with cosmetics and other things for you to buy.

Asmondgold reacting to his reaction is an inception moment every time.

I love that the skill tree looks scary but if you realize that every class starts somewhere It doesnt seem as bad.

You know what D4 did best? It made people who played it want to go back and replay D2 again

10:47 truuuuue, it's the best part of so many games, just being able to see all of your work culminate in something amazing, like in vampire survivors, getting a weapon to 10k+ damage that hits. all enemies on screen when they just spawn 👌

Only two games i've ever massively experienced Bots/AI impacting an in-game market were PoE, and old RotMG, both of which were incredibly positive for the average user. They quite literally amplified access to progress and desired items/currency by magnitudes, not just percentages.

Lol, I started playing POE like 8 days ago. I started with a maruader, started building standard strength build, but I had skills with no items that had sockets for them. Ex. club with three green sockets and a helmet with a blue and red socket. But then I found green gems that actually complimented a counter attck build. So I started doing that, which led me to building more life regen. Now Instead of a standard damage build, I have a manaless, life gain on hit, aoe chain, counter attck build. I'm pretty much wolverine now because when 22 enemies attack me my health regens as soon as they deal damage and when I get elemental damage that knocks my health low I just smash them with my life gain on hit skills and regen my life with in a few hits and I also started building stun support with items that help bring down enemies stun threshold. So right now, every fight feels like I'm fvkn wolverine just going beserk, but I have to work for it since I have meh damage. Eventually i get jumped by 30 monsters at a time and I'm in the thick of it. I'm playing yet watching a movie at the same time lol. With other games (Lost ark) I get to the point were I'm loggin on for an hour and for an hour I'm doing tasks. Like wtf, I wanna enjoy myself, I have enough chores IRL lmao. One day I was just like, wtf am I doing and I uninstalled Lost Ark.

I wanted to love Diablo IV, I really did...it was when leveling up started to mean nothing that got me bored...and upset.

I just wanna say, props too zack and his editors for being one of the best reaction content creators out there. Link and creator immediately in the description. Video length is tripling the orginal video, thanks for doing it right.

I agree with him, I need my big damage numbers. There's just something incredible about seeing the physical bump in power of your attacks that just isn't there with games that have none. It also helps you figure out what's working and what isn't.

Couldn't agree more about the crafting. For me POE is overcomplicated to the point where I've never crafted an item from the ground up. I've only added simple crafting bench stats to an item. I really liked the system in Last Epoch, I think that is perfect. Also agree the horrible random stats in D4 need to be removed. "Damage done on a Tuesday" kind of stuff.

"Diablo IV is just there to make PoE2 look better."

Level scaling ruined D4 for me. I actually was enjoying it... until I realized the monsters were changing levels as I progressed.

Diablo1 had the best looking skeletons with the best skeleton-death-animations. I will die on this hill.

I so cant wait for PoE II, never got into PoE I cause of the zoom really pisses me off as oldschool D2 player, but man D4 is such a flop it died before birth... i have a void to fill and this looks like the piece that does the job.

I honestly just find diablo 4 very boring

D4 feels like it's been out for 10 years already.

The missile knows where the ball is because the missile knows where the ball isn't.

Free Trading and interesting itemization are the big points d4 is missing. but actually the whole game concept needs to be reworked for it to become a good arpg

17:22 I'm pretty sure that some point long ago, GGG said that most people who try the game did not get past Brutus (and that was probably with his old moveset). The campaign is actually really good for making you interact with bosses; it's maps where you generally just DPS them down without thought.

I think the biggest problem is mentality. Some of these game companies have this mentality where their customers are somehow these unfair judges who are always the reason the game fails in any way, shape or form. They are trying to put the responsibility of the games success on YOU the player when they are the ones with all the tools and manpower and the rights to the IP. It's their job to make a game and it's their fault if that game fails but they refuse to accept this and it's created this weird lazy attitude where they stop trying because it's not their fault, it's yours. It's hard to articulate this right now as I'm candy drunk from Christmas but I find it insane to think this way. Look at the meme that is "Don't you guys have phones?". It wasn't Blizzards fault for making a mobile game it was YOUR fault.

36:00 This passive tree looks big for a new player right? Fun fact It's actually small for experienced players. Newbies think it's complicated and hard and big when they look at the tree for the first time, but our pov is like 'we want more diversity, we want more options, we need a bigger tree' it's not because we like playing hard games, it's because it gives us a lot of different play styles, options to choose and customize our characters and play the game differently. Even when I don't play the game regularly, I make new builds with an application called "Path of Exile Building Community" to play in the new season. I enjoy a lot to make my own builds and try them in the new season. I made a lot of builds just for fun, I didn't even play them yet, they're just sitting there and waiting for an opportunity. 53:00 They made dungeons less populated, reduced the monster population in the first month. It was like walking simulation, come on man we're here to play and kill some monsters. After that, I just couldn't take it anymore and quit. 1:05:55 y Poe took years to make it great and they made it right? Blizzard had years as well, what did they do? Nothing. Diablo 4 is a good story game, nothing more, just end the game, kill the Lilith and stop playing for your own sake, cuz it's not worth playing.

36:00 I started playing PoE on the release day of essence league and i was so lost in the game, i didnt know what i was doing. i didnt know there was the cntrl+ click for making new instances, so i always waited 10 minutes for a area to dissappear and i didnt realise there was more difficulty options than normal at that time, so i leveled a blade vortex character i made myself with a absolutely horrible tree to lvl 70 in dried lake on normal mode, and people came to my livestream and asked me what the hell i was doing :D

One thing that really was bad with trading in Diablo 2 is all the loot ended up being sold on websites for nickels and dimes....

06:42 Watching him struggle using food analogy is really satisfying to me.

They know pretty well that they released an unfinished game. They said it in the very first camp fire " We promise you that we will make the game super polished" Hello???? ITS A $100 game IT HAS TO BE SUPER POLISHED BEFORE RELEASE.....

diablo 4's issues to me is they tried to reinvent the wheel when all we wanted was diablo 2's mechanics improved with better graphics and continuing story. Diablo 4 feels like a mini mmo which is not diablo, diablo is suppose to be a DnD lite styled Arpg dungeon crawler.

What I'm missing in PoE in relation to the skill tree, is a training room, like Trixion in Lost Ark. An area where you have the maximum amount of skill points you can get in the game and where you can just build stuff with the tree and try how it works on a target dummy. Then you have a tool in game that lets you build instead of having to rely on third party websites.

I'm glad that i'm not the only one who sees no issue with stash space after fixing the aspect cluttering. You don't find that many items actually worth keeping to fill even half your stash. After playing 2 classes, you got 4 pages full of aspects tho

Watching Diablo 3 prerelease trailer back in the day I thought "Oh cool! they're gonna use what they've learned from WoW and put some boss mechanics in D3!! AWESOME"(I think they ACTUALLY said it). FF 11 years later and I've accepted the Blizzard I grew up with is no more.

D4 was such a letdown I decided to install PoE after all the “PoE does it better” Instant uninstall after a few minutes on the beach, no way in hell I’m dealing with that Ui.

We are in the era of early access game disguised as AAA full releases.

D4 is a $2 steak, not bad. POE2 isn’t just better steaks, it’s an entire restaurant with 40 different meals

The first Diablo had the most awesome background music!!!!

Part of why D4 is silent is because you have cross play. You can talk as much as you want, but don't expect a PS5 or Xboxer to plug in a keyboard to respond to you.

Its because POE actually had an alpha and a beta. Blizzard doesnt do those anymore they just scrap stuff together and toss it to the public as the alpha.

20:35 Dude is absolutely right. I still remember how amazing the Alysrazor music was in Firelands. It would always start up right as the fight started and the boss screamed at us. I can remember it even today over a decade later.

If Diablo 4 didn't have all the earlier Diablo franchises to pull on, it would have gone like Wolcen ... heck, it damn nearly did !

Crafting: Diablo 2/10 POE 8/10 Last Epoch 10/10

I work full time and go to college full time and I just got into PoE late game (past act 10 activities) over the past couple of weeks and that's like 2/3 of the game... idk why people make the you cant have a job and play PoE argument, just dumb imo

I am a gamer dad, but I grew up playing video games. I think there is a difference between gamer dads now and gamer dads even 5-10 years ago. I bought D4 and quit around level 40. Was bored out of my mind (ended up playing D2R for awhile though). No way in hell I'm wasting another penny on D4, ever.

they split their ideas between d4 and immortal.

The town in Act4 in D2 was the best - Cain, Stash and 2 traders providing potions, repair and gamble - everything just a few meters away.

The could make character customization like Hideout customization, you can speed hours setting it up messing around and then save those setups so you can continue tweaking and trying new things. So they can make character customization an option that isn't required to get into the game and isn't a time sync once you've settled on a number of designs. Then they could sell a "hide item on character" skin. lol

When passion meet greed. It basically sum up POE VS Diablo 4

I'd like to point out that while PoE2 seems like an epic game, the whole point about the devs saying it's in "Alpha" is kind of moot. Alpha/Beta schemes have become essentially a marketing term. It's used by greedy companies to soften the customers views of poor quality content, and decent games like PoE2 COULD claim the game is only in alpha, despite viewing it internally as a beta phase, to build up hype for how much more content and polish the game will have on release. So when a company says a game is in Alpha/Beta...it's likely just attempted manipulation of public opinion, so don't worry about that. Look at the current progress achieved, and the supposed release date, and base you opinion on that.

The thing is that PoE is the game people love to love and diablo/blizzard is the thing people love to hate. That's why Talkative's best videos in recent months has been Diablo 4 hate videos, while PoE's videos have been blowjobs to the devs. PoE has $500 microtransactions, yet that's never really criticized. Cosmetic packs locked behind a $500 dollar pack, instead of selling individual packs. Yeah it's free to play, but don't act like this is an indie company. Performance issues out of the wazoo. Losing loot because of crashes, scammers, outdated textures, visual polution, there's a lot to criticize. What made PoE great was the devs willingness to change the game for the better over the years, not abandoning it and adding good/fun mechanics. But the same can be said about Diablo 4's development so far. They've improved a lot of the game between pre-season and season 2, but this isn't a game you'll hear people say it's good in 2 years, even if they improve as much as PoE did.

To condense Asmon's analogy, Diablo IV is not bad, it's just not good enough. One thing that shows the team doesn't care about the player experience at all and they only focus on monetizing the game is that they still did not add WASD movement, something that was in Diablo Immoral (which is a mobile game mind you) from the very start.

The Poe skill tree actually isn't too complicated once you break it down. The skill tree is split into 3 sections. Intelligence is the top 1/3 of the tree, Strength is the bottom left section, and dexitery points are towards the bottom right. Whichever character you choose decides where in the skill tree you start out. For example, if you pick a witch, your character will start towards the top of the tree(INT). A rouge would start in the bottom right(DEX), and a marauder in the bottom left(STR). Once you break it down this way, you can start to figure out what direction to head, I would still suggest following someone's skill tree online by looking up your class "PoB" online. (Aka build guide). Once you're in the game, each skill gem you get will have a color: red(STR), blue(INT), or green(DEX). Each color coensides with what type of skill it is. You can use any low level skill gem, but to upgrade it you'll also have to increase the stat that it corresponds with. Anyway, that should get you started, hope this helps someone. Edit: All this being said, I'm hoping POE 2 makes the skill system a lot more intuitive and how the stats effect your character more clear. However, after trying the game for the first time a few months ago, and completeing the campaign easily in 2 weeks based off a screenshot I took, it's not as ungodly complicated as people make it out to be.

I prefer games that do their own thing. If you try to appeal to everyone it either doesn't work or it does until and your original fanbase gradually becomes the minority. Then the new community gradually shifts the game further and further away from what it was.

@36:00 a solution is simple: Fog Of War in that massive skill choice menu. Only let players see a couple options ahead.

The issue is that AAA developers don't care. If you're an average employee you will be laid off whether the game does good or not. If you are a higher up your game will make money no matter what. The teams are so bloated that you don't even know most of your colleagues. There is no clear vision besides what the marketing team says. No one has passion and no one cares.

Bro path of exile 2 then ashes of creation after.... This summer is gonna be the first ray of sunshine in a longtime.

I agree damage numbers are almost mandatory for me. I like when I work for something and it = number go up

There's a very simple solution to the aspect problem and it's already in game. All they have to do is add aspects to the codex. When you extract an aspect, instead of getting an item in your inventory it's added to the codex and it gets updated as you find better rolls. So you when you get a bad roll and add it to the codex, then when you find a perfect roll, it updates the roll on that aspect in the codex. No more 20 perfect rolls of the same aspect in your inventory

Last year i start playing poe, and like other people do i want to watch a guide for poe. And holy shit idk a guide can be 1-2 hours long just for a starting point. Like wtf, but i enjoyed it tho, so it’s not a problem for me. But on the other hand, my friends already give up when i told him about the guide being 1-2 hours long. So asmon is right, poe it’s the game where the game filters the player before touching the game. Nb: sry if my English is so bad. Still learning

They should let us use gem dust in d4 to improve crafting. Things like, locking one stat and rerolling the entire item. Or enchanting one stat, and then upgrading it by one level. Or, crafting one affix, then locking it with dust allowing you to roll another affix. Or ither various things. Something that takes materials, cash, and gem dust to sink into. On a seperate note, i'd love to see another progression path like gear/paragon/skills. Another horizontal progression. Though i would also like some kind of use for experience gained after level 100 as well. I dont know about anyone else, btut it feels pointless killing mobs after hitting 100, when could just run past them and get more for it. EDIT: guessing asmon doesnt know you can build around light radius? There are more niche affixes, and less used affixes, but i dont think there are actually any bad affixes in poe.

1 thing I give credit to Diablo 4 for is their town's feel alive and look like actual towns vs what we have in PoE and older Diablo games / ARPGs

PoE offers SO MUCH content and replayability. The variations of the skills allow for SO much diversity and original designs, the unique items (most) have ACTUAL unique effects and grant special modifiers to gear that you often can't find on rare items. The customization to skill trees and abilities are what people love, chasing that power fantasy of forever being stronger but and this is HUGE and I think most people miss this, PoE allows those with power to juice their end game and maps to such a degree that its genuinely worth investing and playing the maps when you can juice them to be harder and more rewarding. You don't have to just FARM bosses and in most cases simply farming bosses will not be as valuable as juicing maps and running those. PoE gives you so much more incentive to play and come back and make someone new and D4.... gives nothing but "world visuals"

I knew that D4 endgame was... what endgame? But i did get the game because i heard that the campaign was worth playing. Basically level until you are max lvl and got all the gear, and then stop playing. But i bought the game, let it install, played 30 minutes to see what class i wanted to play, and once i had my class i was going to start playing, 'soon." And somehow, i still haven't started playing a half year later. It now went from 'soon' to 'one day'. Somehow there is always something else to do.

6:51 Asmon's editors, you know what to do with the analogy in this clip... something something steak

Bro Sirus' voicelines for me is BANGER, the way his voice changes from normal to his projection form, is simply marvelous, i often get myself quoting "feel the thrill of ANIHILATION!"

6:47 I appreciate the correction in favor of burger king

the dodge mechanic is the best thing about d3/d4 so much so that grim dawn, and poe2 are opting to include that mechanic as well

Imagine when he plays MHW, the music there is insane... You can play it in theaters and no one would think it's music from a game, mindbogglingly amazing

The Diablo IV armor aesthic looks like someone stapled corpses to their chest. I hate it when there's no clean/shiny armor to contrast it. It's cosistently dirty/vile looking. Give me a paladin in shining armor for contrast.

Something about this difference between d4 and poe2's capability shown in alpha makes me think that poe's team must have a great company culture and atmosphere, in an okay workplace people most likely would only give the minimum required effort but if one curates the vitality of the workplace and build a team around it then not only would the people enjoy working for the business but they'll also be able to achieve something truly amazing and complex.

outside of all of this the items were designed to be boring so that you would *want* to buy cosmetics...

One thing most people forget in term of itemisations is that fact that in poe, its true items have a lot of cluter mods like light radius and stun and block recovery, but GGG understands that thoes mods are there to more or less in a way control item power but also understands that thoes mods can be good if they give players ways to use them like a unique item that makes u scale with light radius (which already exists) or create skills/support gems that builds on thoes stats. And in my opinion what makes the way GGG make their game interesting and very fun to tackle in a way.

Neither the crafting system nor the skilltree in PoE are "complicated", they are easy to understand but hard to master. Its just that ppl are scared by looking at too much information at once, it is just that, nothing more, if you would hide all parts of the skilltree the player cannot reach yet anyways (in a fog overlay for example), it would change EVERYTHING about it for a new player, he would look on a tiny bit of the tree and think "yes, sure, thats easy and simple, i can handle that".

15:39 exactly. I called this out during d3 development. They made it a point to drop a line about d2 being different from d3. I think they said if you want to play a game like d2, go play d2. D3 was their "vision". What an absolute smack in the face & Asmongold is right; it's just egotistical

I have never been a POE hardcore player, but I have like 600 hours because I like to play the campaign once in a while. It's pretty good. And it's fkng free.

D2 towns gave a last resort feel, that matched the setting.

@2:22 lmaOo Hommie Rolled up that bugger and wiped it on his shirt 🤣

Played Diablo 3 a few years back and didn’t really like it. Didn’t pick up Diablo 2 Resurrected (yet) or Diablo 4. But I downloaded Path of Exile on PS4 to try it out. POE is not a game, it’s an addiction. The skill tree alone is a work of art. Currently an early game rogue with turrets and clones and it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had lol

Blizzard indeed knows where the problem is with Diablo 4, they're just unable to find a solution that works with their extreme monetization creed.

Why can't you make the colors not blend in with the ground? ANSWER: Because group A made the level and were told by a lead what the theme and color palette the dungeon has. Team B makes the boss and effects and is told the theme and color palette. Nether team ever talks to each other beyond a figurative circle jerk and no real QC play testing happens before we get a mess that is just the byproduct of modern Game design streamlined by team management in isolation.

Im thankful for Diablo 4 for one huge reason....it got me into PoE!

When you select your character, you should be presented with an option, New, or Advanced. Easy mode has a different skill tree, its more basic you cant zoom out you see limited options per point. Then when new players open the tree they wont be bombarded. They wont be able to fine tune builds like an advanced player would but limiting the view and options helps new players build. They could introduce League Starter blueprints for new players where its a blueprint to mid game.

I can't wait for path of exile 2 to come out so all of our lives can be changed!

All builds don't have to be viable, what matters is the choice to make that build and experiment.

Agreed with everything except the Wow boss fights being overdesigned. Between LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic the variation in compleximity is extremely high. Some boss on LFR is almost a dummy target with 2 mechanics and the same boss in Mythic has ridicilously tight mechanic. So pick and choose the difficulty you wanna face off. If it's too hard for you then that's that. Game is designed to be beatable in every step.

I played Path of Exile for a few weeks & loved the complexity of the leveling system with how different you can build your character from someone else playing the same character. But eventually I dropped it due to not having any friends who also wanted to play it & other games coming out that I also wanted to play.