[2020] First Impressions

I pulled the trigger a couple of nights ago. Overall I'm pleased especially considering that it's in beta. The pros certainly outweigh the cons to this point.

Thus far I'm playing a mage. Here're some early thoughts.

Pros:
* I love the means of character customization. Talent trees for each individual skill are really interesting. This feels like a good balance compared to the PoE tree, for example, which overwhelms you, or the D3 rune system, which is a bit simplistic. While I'm sure that some builds are better than others, you really get to throw some self-expression into the way your character works.
* The music is really atmospheric.
* Gameplay generally feels good.
* At this point, the world feels large, and not just because of time jumps. I also like how clearly you can see how things link together on the waypoint map.
* The idol system is a big step forward from how D2 handled them.
* The stash starts out at a good size and it's not tough at all to add the first few tabs. As an ARPG Horder, I appreciate this.
* I like that you earn initial abilities quickly. You are able to feel like a hero from the get-go without becoming OP. In general, it feels that you earn things at a reasonable pace, a pretty good carrot to go with the stick.

Meh:
* This is in between pro and con so I made a category for it... I like the player character vocalizations but they come at odd times. I'm sure that's super low priority but it's something I noticed.
* It's not clear enough where I can and cannot teleport.

Cons:
* Casting time feels a little off. For example, the wind-up for Snap Freeze feels longer than its animation would indicate, which has absolutely caused me to die when it wouldn't pop off in time.
* The color palette is just too drab. I'm not talking about darkness, I'm talking about vibrancy. Even markers in town (currently Council Chambers) blend in too much. At one point I missed a quest marker because it simply blended in too much. In general, if everything looks like a dull wasteland then nothing does.
* You get a LOT of crafting materials before you have any idea of what to do with them, and some of them look way too similar to one another.
* I'd like the ability to zoom in/out of the tabbed map a bit more. Or, alternatively, to have an area map that you can scroll around on. Since you can’t do this you sometimes have to backtrack an entire area just to find the branched path that you missed. Extremely frustrating.
* As much as I like the music, it needs to change on encounters. It's a little jarring to maintain a smooth atmosphere when you have a big baddie to fight during a story event, like early on with the councilor who has the shard and turns into a void thing.
* As a sometimes-MOBA player, the way that left/right click work is a little unintuitive. I at least wish that, if I right click something out of range, it would move me into range. Right now you're basically forced to stutter-step across the map and that feels wonky.
* Super minor, but I don't like having the extra click to get into the shop characters. It's a little QOL thing... I right click the person, then I move my mouse and left click the "yes I want to shop" button and then I can shop. It's an unnecessary step.

Questions for the Future:
* When I asked about respecs recently, the dev comment mentioned wanting players to connect with their characters. To that end, then, will any appearance or gender customization come to the characters? I don't think it's a priority for right this minute, but I didn't see anything about that on the road map.
* Further, what about equipped armor appearing on the character?
* Will we get a simpler way to track the level progress of skills we spec into? Would be nice if there was an easier way than opening up the tree for that skill.

Keep up the good work!