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Hi, I got the game a little while ago and I've been pretty thoroughly enjoying it so far. I've played ~64hrs in the roughly 2 weeks I've had the game and I'm nearing the endpoint for my first character. (Currently lv 96 running empowered monoliths probably just until I get bored and make a new char, we'll see if I make it to 100 before then.) I've previously played a lot of D3 and PoE and some Grim Dawn, so that's my frame of reference for this, although I've got my pros and cons for each of them. The game does some things a lot better than some of them and that makes me excited to see where they can take this for launch and beyond. I thought I'd post some feedback and see what others think. Totally ready to be told some of these are based on things I've missed from the game, but hopefully some spark some interesting discussion.
I'm splitting the points into 2 broad categories: Design critiques/tweaks and Wish list. Basically the first bit is stuff I think could stand to be fixed/made better to have a solid experience while staying in the bounds of my perception of the design goals and resources available for the games. The wish list is just stuff I think would be cool to see in the game but I don't have a reasonable expectation for seeing implemented any time soon.
Design/UX
I'd be nice if the gold and affix pickup process was smoother/more automated. These are things I always want to pick up because they're always useful and don't take up inventory space, but they're not that exciting that I care to look what I got. So I kind of just want to be able to move past them and keep the pace of my game play. Having to awkwardly circle back for gold or try to click on the tiny affix icons isn't that fun.
Easier item comparison UI and/or tools. It needs to be easy to tell at a glance if an item is worth your time and attention to do something with. Maybe add the ability to color affixes on the item UI to loot filters. Maybe as a default behavior, add a star or highlight or something to show off T5 affixes on gear.
Better search and sorting features for storage. Item management is honestly one of the most frustrating aspects of games like this. ANYTHING that can be done to make it an experience that feels more smooth and puts the user in control is great.
UI elements are too fickle to mouse position. I frequently accidentally open or close some menu while trying to craft, vendor, or sort things in the stash.
The game does a much better job than most at giving in game explanations for various stats and mechanics, but from my experience there are still a few holes to patch up. Unclear wording, lack of explanations for some secondary abilities and effects, etc.
I really like the item system in the game. Fewer, higher quality drops means I actually care enough to look at what drops and because crafting smoothly reduces the distance between the base item and the ideal item, finding better items that aren't quite there yet actually feels good and matters as opposed to something like PoE where anything that isn't already what you need is essentially equivalent to a blank item of the same base for the sake of crafting. The exalts existing as chase items beyond the crafting system is cool too. You definitely don't need them, but they enable your build to keep progressing and for you to get rewarded by actually shock, gasp playing the game instead of mashing chaos/exalts/etc forever. I think there are some small things that can be done to make it better though.
Maybe rather than just raising the ceiling for items as you progress in difficulty, the floor should raise as well. I don't really want to get all excited about some high end affixes only to notice they're on some base you could use since the start of the game. Obviously mess with drop rates to compensate, but I just want to actually be unequivocally happy when I see an item with potential. The more noise there is to signal, the more my eyes glaze over when looking at the items I'm getting.
I think I'd be cool if exalted gear had an extra property as it's exalted affix rather than just having it be one of the four. Four affixes per item in generally seems kind of low given all of the more mandatory stats you have to juggle like resists. If those are important to the games design/balance, fine, but they kind of make exalted items a bit less cool since often even if I like an exalted stat, the fact that it's taking up a slot on the item I feel like I need for resists, or health, or something really important makes a lot of them less usable/less of an upgrade than I'd like. If the exalted affix were a 5th property, then it's just pure gravy and you can try to get the rest if the item to satisfy the requirements for your build. Obviously this would make them a lot stronger, so you'd have to compensate with droprates, but I think that's fine. Like I said, you really don't need exalted items to make most builds function in even the hardest endgame content at the moment, so they're fine as pure chase items to put the cherry on top of your build at the end and get super hyped about. They don't really need to be that balanced around the normal progression loop because you're expected to get them so late and so infrequently that you should already be able to overcome the main difficulties the game asks of you.
Maybe the better question here: How many people like devoting large portions of your gear and build to stats you don't have a choice about like resists? Are these really necessary or adding something to the game? Especially because having the resists as these separate stats doesn't really do much other than add more stuff you have to manage. It's not like you can choose to run content that only presents you with some damage types but not others. You just have to assume you will run into everything, so you have to cap every single different resist, so since they all work the same and have the same target/cap, you just end up with a generic 75% less damage taken but in a really janky and roundabout way. If resists are important maybe just collapse them into 1-2 stats at most? Either just damage reduction or maybe phys and magical? Fewer stats to manage and there's a more distinct difference between them since there's armor to reduce phys damage but not other kinds of damage, so given the right options and balance that could actually make the choice of what you want to invest in more interesting rather than being automatic. Although does the game even need resists? It already has other more interesting damage reduction mechanics like endurance, etc that are more conditional to gameplay situations and build strengths/weaknesses rather than something that's universal across all characters and content.
For uniques you get from the end bosses of timelines, maybe just let us craft the affix range rolls or fix them all? As the bosses are right now they're not really interesting or difficult enough to make farming for the perfect roll of the same 1 unique to be that exciting when most of the effort is just trudging through timeline stability to get back to the boss.
I think another solution to the above is maybe just making more interesting bosses that scale in difficulty in better ways, but that's more a topic for the wish list.
Does the rune that removes a random affix really need to add instability? Like it already costs me a finite resource to use the rune and there's an inherent risk that you will lose one of the affixes you do care about. And if you do lose that affix you care about, you'd need to spend resources and take on risk to craft it back on. The added kick from instability just makes me less likely to want to bother. You really don't get a lot of shots to craft the item without bricking it as it is, so every little extra step that adds instability but doesn't seem as cool as adding an affix I like to the item just doesn't seem worth it. Not sure about the math on this, this is more just a psychological thing.
I like SSF. The game currently feels pretty good for playing this way. I know they intend to add multiplayer and trading later. Please don't ruin the SSF experience by balancing the game around trading. Maybe at least make separate leagues or something that have the different balances if you really need the trade economy to be balanced differently? I beg you please don't make the same mistake PoE and launch D3 made. Not when the game currently works well.
The UI for gambling is really slow and clunky. When you need to roll a bunch of times to find an acceptable piece of gear to start crafting on, those animations while you wait for your item add up.
If I swap one piece of gear with +1 level to X skill with another piece of gear with that exact same property, can the skill not de-allocate my point please?
Monolith echo lengths are a) generally too short. b) too variable. I think a slightly longer expected completion time on echos would make things feel a bit better. Less downtime, more time running around with your build. Also, while short echos feel kind of unsatisfying and cause the downtime issue, their existence alongside echos that take a lot longer like finding targets spread out over the map or arena missions makes me kind of irritated when I get the longer ones because the game is just randomly forcing me to work longer for the same rewards and the incentives have set up that little loop in our brains where we crave the next monolith reward, so things which delay that are frustrating. So either a) Lengthen and even out the completion times for echo missions or b) Maybe just get rid of echo bonus rewards as an end of a mission thing? Maybe just have the echos be more likely to drop the thing you would have gotten as a reward for completion? idk. I know how it makes me feel but I'm no psychologist, so not really sure what the best feeling reward scheme would be.
Path-finding could use some work. I occasionally get my character stuck on corners and things. It's super important for the game to feel smooth. Which it does for the most part, these are just some edges that should be ironed out.
Wish List
More structured/interesting/difficult goals at endgame. Loot is cool, but getting loot just so you can up the numbers and get more loot gets boring at some point. See: D3 (Greater) Rifts. One of the things that enticed me about PoE for so long was the allure of super hard endgame bosses and unique maps that were a challenge to work up to just to achieve for their own sake I kept coming back because I hadn't beat Shaper/Elder, etc yet. The monolith bosses are kind of pushovers and when you go to empowered monoliths they're literally the same bosses with higher numbers. One thought I had was to add some kind of threshold of difficulty modifiers you can stack from the echos, above which the fight moves up a difficulty tier and unlocks new mechanics and phases in addition to whatever numbers increases are necessary. Maybe the currently planned endgame systems address this, but it's something to keep in mind.
Related to the above point, I'd love to see some bosses that had some more strategic and gear/build testing mechanics as opposed to more bosses that just have some variation on "don't stand in the fire." I used to really love raiding in World of Warcraft and part of what made that such a fun experience was figuring out how to beat a boss through all sorts of little things like optimizing our builds, gear, making a different strategy, etc. The worst fights were always the "dodge or die" fights because at a certain point a) All of them design-wise are fundamentally the same thing and b) When you can't beat it all you can do is just keep smashing your face at it until people stop dying. When I fail I want to be able to learn from my mistakes and make adjustments. Noting that I should have reacted faster and more precisely isn't really actionable and it can make failure just demoralizing. While there's a place for mechanics like that in other games, I think an RPG should lean more heavily into things that make the player think about their gameplay and want to come back and try something new rather than the face smashing variety of mechanics. Granted there is a difference here compared to MMO raiding. The game is balanced around being able to play solo and with a variety of builds which don't guarantee you'll have access to certain player tools, so you're limited in the kinds of fight mechanics you could design, but with enough creativity and some decisions about what builds should be able to reasonable clear these at the highest difficulties, I'm sure there's a design space there.
Similar to the suggestion about making an extra affix on exalted items, maybe it'd be cool to have a super rare crafting item that can turn an item into an exalted one. So as exalts currently are this would randomly bump one affix on the item up to T6 or T7, or if exalts had the bonus property I suggested, it would add a bonus exalted property. Either way, once added it would still be like an exalted item drop, so you couldn't further craft the exalted property. Basically sometimes I already have an item I feel really attached to and such a crafting item would allow me to add progress to that pre-existing item rather than needing to find a whole new one that's all better than what I already have. It'd need to be really really rare to preserve the importance and value of exalted items as dropped chase items, but I think if balanced right this would mostly be a positive experience for the game. The key is just making sure it doesn't feel like a given or necessary.
Could we get some actually good looking gear as a gameplay reward? I really don't like that there's going to be a cash shop, even if it's just for cosmetics. Cosmetic rewards are a part of the tools you can use to signal to the player and others that they accomplished something worthwhile and locking all the cool looking stuff behind just pulling out your credit card both reduces that feeling of achievement and cheapens the meaning of the cosmetics themselves. The example I always go back to is from World of Warcraft: Only the best of the best got to ride around on Invincible, but anyone who shelled out $25 could ride around on the sparkle pony which recycled Invincible's model... Kinda lame. Also see PoE where if you don't pay even if you beat the hardest content in the game you look like a hobo wearing buckets and cardboard for armor and if you do pay you can be a lv 1 character running around looking like a gaudy god. So far the gear in this game is just alright, nothing special. That's totally understandable if it's just a resource limitation and we'll maybe see more for 1.0, not so cool if it's because they're holding back anything decent looking to be sold for real money after I already bought the game.
Anyway, that's all that I can think of for now. There may have been more but it's late. Apologies if anything comes off overly harsh. Like I said, the game is looking pretty promising. Props to the team for making something this cool, especially considering how small it started out.
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