Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 23rd

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What are you all playing!

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98 comments

Diablo 4 with my wife, and replaying GTA V. Both have been a lot of fun.
- How's diablo 4 for a (I'm guessing) casual player? Was looking to pick it up but haven't heard that much positive about it.
  
  I thought the game was spectacularly bad, but I seem to be in the minority. Makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills! It's a very pretty game with super shallow mechanics and it's designed for maximum grind. I can handle grind in an ARPG since it's kinda their thing, but you gotta have some good mechanics to go with it or it's just an idle/incremental game with prettier graphics.
  
  If it's designed for maximum grind I'm not too sure I'll like it. My tolerance towards grinding isn't the best.
  
  I enjoyed the campaign of Diablo 4, but as you mentioned the game has a serious lack of depth.
  It became especially obvious to me once I hit the endgame and realized there just wasn’t that much to do.
  In Path of Exile especially there is so much depth and content around the endgame that it feels like there’s almost too much to do.
  I don’t think Diablo 4 is bad, but I do think it’s far too casual. The combat is satisfying and the graphics are great. But the skill tree and RPG systems are massively lacking.
  
  I, too, enjoyed the campaign. But the campaign alone wasn't worth $70 and once the campaign ended, the game just turned into a boring grindfest.
  I don't even feel like casual is the right word because you can have a deep, interesting game without a game feeling like it requires a huge time and energy investment. Something like Last Epoch manages to have depth while still being approachable to casual players.
  Diablo just seems... I don't know, hollow. It looks great on paper but falls apart in practice.
  
  I really love how Last Epoch approaches skills. Feels like the near perfect balance between casual and complex.
  I wish the game felt a little bit more polished and refined overall, but they have a very strong foundation to work from.
  
  I bought LE ages ago and the progress they've made makes me confident the game will continue to improve in good ways. The designers really seems to understand the genre and what players want. The way they are handling "the trade issue" is a perfect example of that.
  The biggest issue right now is a lack of endgame systems. Once they get that fleshed out a little more, they're going to be sitting pretty.

98 comments