Originally Posted by
Shinzai
Some things that I'm finding interesting about Diablo 3 in comparison to playing Path of Exile lately:
Most new comers complain about the areas being far too big - they don't like having to spend almost an hour in a single quest area at low level. It takes too long to reach waypoints, or waypoints are lacking in certain areas altogether, meaning that if you die or get dc'ed, you've generally got a huge trek ahead of you. Worse still is when an area that you just ran through resets and you die unexpectedly with no waypoint set, you often end up fighting your way through it all over again.
Also, in Diablo 3, travel speed in general is far higher from the off set - most of the maps are fairly large, but the characters default movement speed is quite fast. With movement speed boots/bonuses, you end up sprinting around areas in minutes. In Diablo 3, you go through a similar sized land mass to Diablo 2/Path Of Exile, but it's far more fragmented - you're allowed constant respite or are just out right sent back to base, almost as though they designed it to be played in shorter bursts.
The Gold AH I still have no issue with and the RMAH is a case of 'whatever' for me - use it if you want, there's no valid argument to suggest anyone's forced to use it. If anything, the Gold AH is a huge boon to the game. I've seen so many people in terrible gear in PoE, struggling through areas, complaining about farming for days with no half decent yellows or legendaries, or getting level 9 legendaries at level 53. Not to mention that a vast majority of the players simply vendor everything, because they can't be bothered joining the spam train that is the Trade channel, or trying to pick out things that may be of use to them from it: Having a singular place to put items that might be useful to other people, or to get items that you haven't managed to get yourself is hugely helpful.
However, on the flip side of the whole AH/loot system, I will say that it's obvious they gutted a much more rewarding loot system from the early beta/alpha demos. Whoever decided that there had to be an AH system ensured that the standard drop/loot system wouldn't make the AH pointless. One of the earliest things Blizzard told us about loot, was that it should be rewarding and you should always be getting good or at least usable items. In the original 20 minute play through they showed us of the Barbarian, they took about 2 minutes to explain that finding loot in game would be a great experience. But whatever, I doubt it's going to change at this point in time.
As to no content past Diablo - that's pretty much what Diablo 2 and all other Diablo clones are all about. Spam running the same bosses or areas over and over. They're designed to be based around farming, almost endlessly. Diablo 3 does have the infernal machine system too now for end game play, for the time being anyway.