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Path of ExileIn-Depth Game Analysis by:Matthew Bassett'Diablo Clone' has been a type of game since the emergence of the first Diablo game in 1996. There have been many games that copied its style, some have succeeded and others have failed. Blizzard has also released two follow up games, Diablo II (2000) and Diablo III (2012). The top down action/RPG (Role Playing Game) style of game is a popular medium and now there is an indie company Grinding Gear Games throwing their hat into the ring with Path of Exile.Aside from the gameplay that will be discussed later, there is plenty that sets Path of Exile apart from moth others in the genre. It is a Free-To-Play game, meaning that it is totally free to download and play without a single cost to the player. This may seem odd in such a genre but the way Path of Exile has succeeded so far is from donations from players as well as a microtransaction shop that sells purely cosmetic items. What this mean is that players can get different looks for items such as weapons. This is a great and popular way to bring in revenue as long as it stays away from a 'pay-to-win' model that other games might do, where players can buy themselves in game 'power' with real money. Oddly enough Blizzard itself has done this in Diablo III with the Real Money Auction House, where players can buy in game items with real money. This is a great way for Blizzard to make money through the game, but severely unbalances the game as people with real life disposable income can buy the best items in the game and leap ahead in power in game. By sticking to a strictly cosmetic approach companies can still make money without unbalancing the game for people who don't have the disposable income to buy the cosmetic items or just are not interested in them.Path of Exile is also not 'officially' released as they are still in Open Beta. What this means is that the game itself is not completed, but the game's mechanics and world are done enough for people to play the game. This is a popular tactic that games are doing ever since Minecraft had such a huge success with having people be able to purchase and play the game at the alpha (very early development). Another unique design idea is players that supported the game with a $1000 donation would be able to work with the team to create a 'unique' weapon for the game. Having players who are passionate about the game involved in being part of its creation is a great move on their part and has generated them a lot of praise and money. Gameplay Mechanics:Grinding Gear Games has also done something Blizzard was popular for doing with their most popular game, World of Warcraft, and has taken great systems from different games and put them into theirs. This kind of tactic can be a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes it is not always good to use certain systems in certain games and knowing what systems work is difficult.Path of Exile's leveling system is very much akin to Final Fantasy X's Grid System. This system has each class beginning at a certain point on a large area filled with 'nodes' each node increases certain stats or will give players special passive changes. The way this works is that each level, and as rewards for certain quests, players are given points to place on the grid. Now this style of leveling has a deeply customizable and offers a lot of options. An example is a very melee weapon focused class can be played as a spell caster. It all depends on how to move around the tree. This is a great example of the depth that the game has under the surface as well as making the tree easy for new players to use at the same time.Another system taken from another Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy VII, is the skill gem system. The skill gem system is how players get and level skills though the game and works much like the Materia system from Final Fantasy VII. Items in the game have sockets of three different colors that correspond to the three colored gems in the game. Each of the colors also show the three stats, Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence, that the gem is mainly using. Sockets in items are also linked and skills can be linked to support gems that modify skills. This expands the amount of different types of skills and ways players can fight in the game. Both of these systems add a lot of customizability to both the character itself as well as the play-style. The skills also level up from experience the player gains throughout playing so as to level up the skills with the player to keep them on an even difficulty as they progress through the game. It also adds the dimension to the game of taking out gems from one character and moving them to another. This can be done if you no longer like your character and build so that you can use them on another character. A usual system in 'Diablo Clone' style games is the use of both mana and health potions. Path of Exile keeps the potions in the games, but changes the disposability of the items. The potions are there and have a certain amount of uses, but the uses refill as your character kills monsters. This makes the game fast paced and works well as it doesn't overpower the character but also doesn't hamper the character either. It is a creative way to get rid of the time sink of picking up potions and making them an equipment style of item and not a disposable item.By far the oddest mechanic in the game, but one of the best, is the currency. The game does not have the usual gold that most fantasy and action/RPGs have. Instead there are items in the game that affect your character and items. What is great is that all the items are useful and also disposable. This is a great way to solve inflation in a game that uses gold. An example is Diablo III, where gold has steadily become less and less valuable because the market becomes saturated by it because it has nowhere to go. Other than buying items from players gold's only other use it to repair items, something that doesn't happen too often or isn't too expensive. So instead of the gold leaving the market it just changes hands back and forth as more gold enters the market, making it less and less valuable. By making the currency for the game different items that are used keeps the market in flux and keeps it fresh. Also, the fact that most of these items are chance based is great as well. Items will always do something but the outcome is random. An example is one of the game's most used currencies, the Orb of Alchemy. This item turns any normal item into a rare item. It always does this, but, what stats you get on the rare is totally random. So the item itself might be good and it might be bad. To add to this is another item called the Orb of Chaos, which 'rerolls' a rare item. So if you roll bad stats you can use this item to change the properties at random again for another try.By keeping the market fresh and making items that are useful in game but are also the main currency for trading is another game in itself. This is something that was quite popular in Diablo II, but with the addition of the auction house in Diablo III, trading almost no longer exists. Also, having the skill gems themselves being a sought after item adds another side to the market, along with quality gems. Skill and support gems in the game can have a certain 'quality' to them making them better in different way. The only way to get quality on a gem is to either have it found with the quality on it, or by using a currency item, Gemcutter's Prism, to add 1% quality to it (out of a maximum of 20%). This adds a great side to the market to improve character's skills though trading as well as having certain skill and support gems only available from dropping off killed monsters making them more valuable.Another odd thing in the market is that socketed items with no rarity are actually very valuable when five or six sockets are linked. The chances for these links are low and therefor very valuable as they are great for skills. Since you can have say one skill with five linked support gems you can make one skill very good or maybe have two skills with four shared support gems rounding out two skills very well. These are almost required for character builds in the late game as they want to get the most out of their skills. There are other such objects that players look for that would seem worthless but arte actually great, such as high item level normal, white, items. The item’s level is important, not really the tier of the item. It could say be a ‘rusted sword’ but if dropped at a high item level it can get really good modifiers. This can make it better than what normally a player at that level can get, though most of the really good item modifications do have a level requirement and could make its required level to use to high. Also, almost every item has a use due to the vendor system. Since there is no gold in the game, vendors have to give you something when you sell them items. Depending on what you trade to a vendor determines what you will get back. Most of the time, it is ‘shards’ of a regular currency item. When the player has a certain amount of these shards they make that currency item. But there are also more useful vendor recipes. One includes getting 3 identified rare items of the same base, like ‘rusted sword’, and trading them to a vendor. This gives the player one of the Chaos Orbs that was mentioned earlier. This makes even ‘trash’ rares have a use. There are many of these types of recipes and is one of the things that makes the economy work as most any item is useful in some way and helps make up for lacks of an item in the economy by making most of them able to be crafted by players and not just bat:The game handles combat very similar to other games in the genre. It is a ‘hack and slash’ style combat dealing with lots of monsters and lots of loot. Most actions are done with the mouse controlling three actions and a hotbar of actions and a few other buttons for potion uses. This is standard for this style of game now, combat focusing on a few skills and being mainly done with the mouse with the rest of the spells, melee, and ranged actions bound to a few keys. What makes the combat fun and engaging is both the active skill system as well as the passive skill system. There are a few flaws in combat, one being a finicky targeting system making it hard to target one enemy in a group and also the unbalance of ranged vs. melee combat, melee being very underpowered.Other Notes of Interest:Grinding Gear Games has done a great job at fixing issues that have come up in the game and listening to its fan and customers. One of these is that if you were playing with a character that focused on summoning things to fight for them it was very hard to target the enemy. They fixed this by being able to turn off friendly targeting, a simple fix that helped out an annoying issue.Grinding Gear Games also has been updating the game with more and more content. As of the moment three out of the five acts planned are available, and the third act isn’t even finished. So what this means is that they plan to add load of more areas and story for free to their already existing game. They have also already been adding more skill gems and reworking passive skill trees for balance. The team seems very keen on working with their fans and taking constructive feedback from them and doing something with it.Another thing of note is that the game is much darker than one would think. Around the third act it gets very dark in its theme and adds a lot of gore to the scenery. This is something that the Diablo series was known for, but is now not as dark in art or theme as it once was. I see this as an opportunity to see that a company without the pressures of a large publisher can take risks with their style and make the game with the type of theme they want as well as their fans.Path of Exile is one of the better experiences in the action/RPG market and is giving its main AAA (Triple A) competitor Diablo III a run for its money. If things keep going well then there might be a new king in town of the action/RPG market. I look forward to seeing where the game goes and what Grinding Gear Games might do next. ................
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