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Polish Polish, detail detail, polish.
stormseekaz
Member UncommonPosts: 168
The latest patch that came out.... May 8th? I believe? is quite significant. I had heard that this patch was supposed to change some mob AI and change around some of the skill tree, but I was shocked at everything I saw.
The game added a shit ton of new ability gems, the 6th class, new item graphics both on the character models and in the inventory for about half the game's items, added tons of detail to lots of terrain.
I took a break from PoE to do a single playthrough of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 to get ready Lore-wise for Diablo 3. And I ended up beating Diablo 2 the day after the POE patch came out. So I wasn't able to get a night and day change of the patch like others were able to. But from what I can tell changed, it is so significant.
This game has just so much polish and attention to detail it is rediculous.
Little examples are things like:
1. A new ability called "Whirling blades" is kind of like Whirlwind from Diablo 2, but you spin axially while flying forward like superman instead of spinning like a figure skater. The animation for this ability is just amazing. It looks like it must have taken a long time.
2. Some skeletons cast elemental spells. The fire casting skelies have hands with glowing hot embers / fire on them. And when they are standing far outside of your light radius where its pitch black, you can still see their glowing hands.
3. Totems were added to the game, much like WoW's totems. One of the small details I noticed was when you cast a totem, it comes up out of the ground, and there are about 6 small chunks of earth that pop out around the totem just before the totem itself. So its a detailed animation showing how if a totem is coming up out of the earth, its goin to have to displace some chunks of earth to force its way out.
4. When you shoot flaming arrows or cold arrows, or cast elemental spells, there is smoke and cold air exhaust from the projectiles and your hands or the enemies hands. The particle effects are just rediculously top notch.
5. I dont know if this is a new thing in the patch or wether I just never noticed it before, but when you cast an aura, 3 orbs flow around you in a ring, and the orbs have very small rune inscriptions on the spell effect circling around them, and then the ring itself has rune inscriptions all across it. Imagine a transparent Lord of the Rings ring, made of fire instead of gold.
6. The game allows you to zoom in down infront of yuour character now. From doing this we are able to get alot closer to the textures and character models, and they are rediculously detailed. I zoomed in at the Warden's chamber, where there were alot of wrecked book cases with books strewn all about. And I zoomed in and each book had its own detailed textures, and it appeared that the books were hand placed. (As in, each bookshelf was not a copy of another, all the books were in unique spots, piled up, laying on eachother, half falling out, etc.
I preordered Diablo 3, and I will be playing that for a few months until I get burnt out on it or PoE goes live release. So this is not a "play POE instead of D3" thread. I just want to give credit where credit is due.
So I want to say, this is hands down the most polished, and detailed game on the market right now. The animations are all fantastic, the spell effects are the best, the lighting and shadows are top notch, even the way you hold weapons is different. A dagger and sword and mace and rapier all swing with different animations, a dagger is held backwards in the hand. There is just so much detail.
I'd call this patch the Super Polish patch. Because it just put icing on the cake in every aspect of the game. the interface and buff/debuff icons just became perfected.
Ok well thats all. I will stop rambling now, and get back to playing PoE. Enjoy the beta weekend new people. And remember, YOU CAN PLAY BOTH D3 and POE. They are not MMORPG's they are just online ARPGs.
Comments
Yeah was a great patch
More impressed with this every time i play it
was well worth donating to help them out and get access to the beta 
I am not apart of the regular beta and this is the first weekend event I have participated in. I'm in love with it. Playing a shadow w/fist weapons and its just a blast. Since I havent pre-ordered Diablo3 yet I'm going to have to decide which to invest in right now. Obviously there wouldnt be time for both lol.
Same here, except am playing a Witch - and impressed as hell with a game I thought would be a poor copy of Diablo. Any idea on the release date? And am thinking of donating when I can.
Currently bored with MMO's.
Path Of Exile quality is exceptionaly high, if you take into account that it will be F2P and that no one heard about this studio before. No release date announced, but the game is going to be in open beta really soon (the last patch is 0.9.9)
I am very curious about the game's payment method. Do you have to buy the game? Is it free to play with a cash shop?
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
From what I've heard it should be going into the "no more character wipes" mode in June or so. Most free 2 play games have their open beta phase treated like retail subscription games' full release. There are usually no character wipes in F2P open betas, and your cash shop becomes functional, so this open beta phase should be very soon.
If I had to make a choice between PoE and Diablo 3 it would be PoE hands down. But fotunately, I can afford both games, and by the time I burn myself out on Diablo 3, PoE will be fully complete and waiting for me. (Fyi, i spent only a few months playing Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 when they were released, so thats how long I expect to play D3. I'm not one of those people who gets characters to lv 99 lol.)
The game is going to be free 2 play, with a cosmetic and convenience cash shop.
For example, you can buy a little pet that follows you around for show. It does not provide any stat boost or bonuses. This is a cosmetic item.
The other items are convenience, such as more "stash" (bank) tabs. The POE character inventory is about 150% the size of Diablo 2's invo. And the stash (bank) has 4 tabs, each tab being about 4x the size of Diablo 2's stash.
Every non-paying player will start out with 4 stash tabs, so thats effectively about 16x the inventory space that Diablo 2's stash gave. All of your characters in a particular league (ladder, cutthroat, hardcore, etc.) share the same stash.
I played 5 different characters up to lv 60+ before the last patch and I can assure you, 4 stash tabs is plenty to hold everything you need for all your characters. The only way you would run out of room is if you were hording items, and procrastinating selling them.
I payed 10 dollars for a a closed beta key, and received 10 dollars of cash shop credit, which I spent on 3 more $3 USD stash tabs. So at 7 stash tabs, I was content with that amount for all my characters