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Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 are certainly in the same Action RPG/MMO genre, but the games feel starkly different from each other. Grinding Gear Games often takes huge risks when updating their game - completely reworking major aspects of what they don’t think works well. If that turns out to be a failure, they revert. It’s a game that has a great deal of goodwill in the playerbase, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Blizzard’s D4.
I want it to be perfectly clear that I enjoy both games for different reasons. While I may play Diablo 4 more than Path of Exile, it’s a game that I love for its wild creativity and ridiculous builds. I enjoy D4 as well for its lore, story and action gameplay.
However, Path of Exile 2 is going to rebuild old formulas from the ground up. It's a massive, risky undertaking, and it's one that the fans seem to be pretty excited about. While Diablo 4 is making some big changes in Patch 2.0, it's not something the team does very often.
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What holds Diablo 4 back from making as many risky changes compared to Path of Exile?
Diablo 4’s developers, it seems, often hold back from making risky, big changes to the game, compared to Path of Exile 2. The latter could have picked up the baton, slapped some graphical upgrades onto it, and recycled the playerbase as they gradually sunset the first game.
Instead, what we're getting is not only a sequel but a sequel that fundamentally approaches the Path of Exile character-building freedom from a different baseline. Even though some abilities ostensibly carry over from the first game to Path of Exile 2, it feels so different that it makes sense for both games to co-exist within the same ARPG niche.
So why can't Blizzard do something like this? I feel like there are a few reasons why that might be the case. The biggest one is, honestly, the community. As someone who has been in the Blizzard fanbase since practically the beginning, there are some very loud, very toxic people who don’t handle change very well.
For every handful of players who are excited to see something new, there are those “veteran players” who hate change and think anything new is going to completely wreck the game. They then pass that on to impressionable viewers, who also dogpile on before anything’s actually happened.
We’ve seen some pretty hateful vitriol throughout the various Diablo 4 seasons, and those are temporary. Admittedly, one or two of those seasons didn’t really hit the mark, but that doesn’t excuse the kind of reactions that have been thrown out there. Then you have to consider that, in the past, Blizzard hasn’t always been great about listening to their fans.
Or if they did listen, the action wasn’t taken in an appropriate amount of time. We just have to look at World of Warcraft - it’s had more than its share of misses when it comes to expansions. Despite how much I enjoy that game, if I never have to play through Shadowlands again, it will be too soon.
We just have to look at the cosmetic cost in Diablo 4 to see where people have a hard time trusting the developers. Sure, it’s been a huge success for them, racking in over $150m in cosmetic purchases, but fans worldwide are furious about how much these items cost. It’s just so expensive. The way their fanbase reacts to change could certainly lead to the developers being a little gun-shy.
Another advantage that Grinding Gear Games has over Blizzard Entertainment is that Path of Exile 2 is free. It’s also in no way pay-to-win. It’s a game that is good and fair to its fans, whereas Blizzard hasn’t always made monetization decisions that are fair to the players. One only has to look at Diablo Immortal, which has been called pay-to-win by an enormous number of players.
Players who actively play Path of Exile (and will play PoE 2) likely feel less cheated if the game produces a fairly unpopular major change to the game. On the other hand, Diablo 4 players not only have to buy the base game, but an expansion is well on the way. Those same players could easily just join PoE, and play that and every season that comes with it, without investing a single dime.
Ultimately, this leads to changes that are good, but “safe”. Diablo 4’s upcoming expansion, Vessel of Hatred, on the other hand, is making some huge changes in the 2.0 update. Revamping the leveling and itemization systems are pretty serious changes. There are some players - myself included - who are interested in seeing how much this improves the game. Of course, there are players who hate it before even trying it. That’s simply the nature of online gaming.
However, at the end of the day, these are two different games, with their own approaches to balancing/updating their titles. Blizzard can still be successful by making safe changes to their game - and if that works for them, then that's fine too.
I hope this starts a trend of Blizzard Entertainment taking more risks, and trying bigger, more exciting things for Diablo 4. It’s a fantastic ARPG, and while several of the recent seasons have been fun, there’s no telling what they could do if they simply took a few more risks in the production department.
