Should I continue playing or try Diablo 4 or something else?

[Sandro]

Hello everyone.

Since the start of the game, I have played about 200 hours (minus 40% of the time when the game really irritated me and I just left it running and returned to it when the anger passed). For me, this is a lot of game time, I usually can not spend it so much. I tried several different classes, different play styles, but in the end I settled on a sorceress in the cold specialization.

I am a complete newbie in POE, I did not know (and still do not know) many features of the game, I did not watch guides and did not use top builds. I wasted a lot of good currency, without getting anything in return. It was also wild and incomprehensible to me how in 2025 you can use an external site to buy in-game items, without which it is simply impossible to complete the game, since all possible crafting offered equipment with completely useless attributes.

Finally, having reached the endgame (I reached level 78 and am trying level 9 maps), I finally used the trading site, updated my gear for my build and started playing the atlas maps. I understand that this is early access, and playing through such boring and incredibly long maps is exactly what the developer can offer for now. But I was very surprised that over the past two weeks the cost of items (I want to note that they are far from the best) has increased dozens of times, from 1 exalted sphere to several divine spheres. During the entire game, I only got one divine sphere. And as I understand it, it will only get more expensive.

In this case, I simply have nothing to do further in the game, since I simply will not be able to buy anything. I watched some reviews where people told how they easily earn 20-50 divine spheres a day from various places in the game, but at the same time you need to farm 15 hours a day. I do not have such an opportunity. The situation is similar to the old raids in WOW. If you miss or don't have time to equip well, you will never keep up with the progress.

As a result, I have several questions for knowledgeable players:
1. Is there any point in continuing to play, spending 2-3 hours a day? And how much time will it take me to get to places where you can get a decent reward for the time spent, including these damn divine spheres? From which maps or bosses will this start happening?
2. Go to Diablo 4 (while the discount is valid)? At one time, I really liked Diablo 3, but at the moment it is already outdated, and visually Diablo 4 looks much worse than PEE2, a very strange plot, plus too primitive in mechanics and gameplay. I played the free weekend, and the feeling is that D4 is much worse than even D3. What can D4 offer that D3 did not have, except for stupid random game events on the map?

(Sorry for my bad google translated english)

[Kostil Vyaliy]

Dont waste your time on unfinished game. Try it and go do something alse.

[Panic]

As for divine drops ,your wasting your time in trying to save for things that are now way out of reach of any normal folks game play, The fraud , rmt and item flipping involved by nefarious means by criminal enterprises and no lifers, this game for standard players is a waste of time.
Solo self found may be better, but if your looking for it to rain divine drops, unless heavily juiced maps and clearing league mechanics is the only way, but the chicken and egg thing, you need good gear.

[AFC_HIGHBURY]

Honestly it's like any league, move on to another game untill update etc.
You'll get a little play time out of D4 but just to warn you from my experience D4 is very average, Poe is definitely more engaging.

[Carian Champion]

I play only campaign. Finishing 6 acts means game completed for me.

[fx!]

Trading basically means you realistically won't find any upgrades on your own. There are plenty of very cheap items (<20ex) on the market, which are enough to clear everything in the game but you still need to know how to build your character.
Simply don't play if you don't enjoy it anymore, nothing wrong with that. Trading league encourages you to optimize for currency, which might also inadvertently optimize the fun out of the game. The "inflation" is not that different to what happens in poe1 trade leagues.

D4 is fluid, faster paced and will shower you with gear everywhere. There is still some gear progression through getting rare mythic items but majority is pure randomness of getting relevant greater affixes (similar to D3 ancient items but proc'd separately for each item stat instead of whole gear piece). It might be worth while it is on sale but the gameplay might be a turnoff, all you do is grind the same exact things over and over. I think your assessment is pretty much spot on.

[Mom's Spaghetti]

Originally posted by AFC_HIGHBURY:

Honestly it's like any league, move on to another game untill update etc.
You'll get a little play time out of D4 but just to warn you from my experience D4 is very average, Poe is definitely more engaging.

D4 is fine for the moment. on the other hands POE2 in this state is not fine, for people that cannot engage in 8-10-12 and more hours in a day playtime. The game is straight over after the boring 3 acts on 1 more repeat.
If you want to play a real good game, go play D2 or Grim Dawn.
Here if you ask the poe/poe2 community - they say d4 is bad. But actually d4 is fun for 20-30 hours and move on. And that is what blizzOrd -activions is looking for. POE2 and POE are games for people that dont have anything else in their life.
The best thing to do is get a new game - get 20-30 hours of fun and move on. Go to CS2 or Elden Ring and stuff, there are so good games, that you are missing them, becasue of POE2. POE2 can get better after its release. No it is just a never ending time waste, with 0 rewards.

[placeholder]

Dont play to reach something, thats just artificial social reputation in your head. Reflect about it and how that interacts with capitalistic performance values as well as social reward feelings.

Play for fun in the moment. Be it the loot drop sound notification, or the challenge and success in other games.

It s always best to start games that are short and you dont have to "invest" hours to get somewhere which wont make it more fun, just to get more on a infinite scaling system.

[否]

just google

"poe2 rmt" & "diablo 4 rmt"

you can see which one better

what i see in diablo 4 you not impacted by rmt, because you got your items easily

while this game...

[Stu]

try last epoch

[RawMeatDiet]

> Is there any point in continuing to play, spending 2-3 hours a day? And how much time will it take me to get to places where you can get a decent reward for the time spent, including these damn divine spheres?

This will never happen in the current state of the game. If you can only play 2-3hours, you will only get further and further behind. Economy is terrible currently and developers have shared no intention to do anything about it. Try again when it exits EA.

[GirthQQuakes]

I really sympathize with your experience trying to buy things on an external website. The lack of an in-game auction house is a very bad choice from the Devs, a choice they made a decade ago and are too stubborn to reconsider I'm afraid. For console players it's the worst, trying to use the website from your Xbox is absurd. But even for PC players it's a clunky and a frustrating experience.

Hopefully they change, but I'm afraid the GGG bosses are too stuck in their ways to reconsider, no matter what their players are saying.

I do have some advice for you at your level.

First, at level 79, your main priority should be to continue to level up.

Eventually, perhaps by your mid 80's you want to be getting all (3) of your ascendancy's done. It's a pretty good challenge, but also will make your character MUCH stronger, without spending Divs on gear.

After leveling, getting your ascendancies and making it to T14-T15 maps then I recommend doing another pass on your gear. If you know what items to pickup, such as Stellar Amulets, you can make very good orb currency. High item level stellar amulets were selling for 80 exalt last time I sold one, and they are probably more expensive now. They must be normal rarity (white).

Once you're feeling like T15 maps are no problem, you can progress to finding and beating citadels in your Atlas. Done right, you can get 4 shards from a Citadel boss, each worth about a Div when traded with Alva.

Let me repeat that, for killing 1 boss, in a T15 Citadel map, you can get 4 divs. These Citadels have a red or blue light beam on them in the fog of war on the Atlas.

The inflation is really out of control right now, but you'll still be able to find some major upgrades by this time.

Don't worry about how much you can play per day. The game is all about having fun and there's no need to compete to be the best at this point. It's less competitive then other MMO's, there's no PVP and no guild achievements. The only reason to feel competitive is in the beginning of a league when you're trying to possibly stay ahead of the market (IE. being able to sell your items to lower level players easily.)

POE is a complicated game, and you'll probably find your next character progresses much faster than your first.

Finally, I strongly recommend a loot filter. It will help you identify valuable items while saving you time in the map.

[AFC_HIGHBURY]

Originally posted by Mom's Spaghetti:

Originally posted by AFC_HIGHBURY:

Honestly it's like any league, move on to another game untill update etc.
You'll get a little play time out of D4 but just to warn you from my experience D4 is very average, Poe is definitely more engaging.

D4 is fine for the moment. on the other hands POE2 in this state is not fine, for people that cannot engage in 8-10-12 and more hours in a day playtime. The game is straight over after the boring 3 acts on 1 more repeat.
If you want to play a real good game, go play D2 or Grim Dawn.
Here if you ask the poe/poe2 community - they say d4 is bad. But actually d4 is fun for 20-30 hours and move on. And that is what blizzOrd -activions is looking for. POE2 and POE are games for people that dont have anything else in their life.
The best thing to do is get a new game - get 20-30 hours of fun and move on. Go to CS2 or Elden Ring and stuff, there are so good games, that you are missing them, becasue of POE2. POE2 can get better after its release. No it is just a never ending time waste, with 0 rewards.

I do think d2 and and grim dawn are good, poe2 does also have it's issues though but overall I've put more time here than I did in D4 and that was over two playthroughs lol. Yeh time Vs reward is something I feel GGG may need to look at.

[xXBulletJusticeXx]

Originally posted by Sandro:

I wasted a lot of good currency, without getting anything in return. It was also wild and incomprehensible to me how in 2025 you can use an external site to buy in-game items, without which it is simply impossible to complete the game, since all possible crafting offered equipment with completely useless attributes.

This is just you not understanding what is available to you. Don't worry, you aren't alone on that. Better tutorial would be good, to explain HOW to progress easily with the systems given to you.

Thousands of people play SSF (no trading) and do fine. So basically... if you take the time to learn the various facets of the game, you can be just as good as them.

Like many games out there, not everyone is going to be a rockstar or top tier player. Not everyone is able to get to the top 100 list of all games, if they could, then there would not be a top 100 list/ranking in the first place.

[Sir Loin]

While I wait for this to get some more polish on it i also wanted something to scratch the itch and I decided to go back to Diablo 2 for nostalgia reasons. I have enjoyed it more than I anticipated and in my opinion is just easier to stick with than Diablo 4. PoE2 will get there but am actually happy I put it down for now to revisit one of the greatest games of my childhood.