1.) Hi, I’m 41 and I have a 3 year old son. I’ve been playing games my whole life since i was 5 years old. played nintendo, snes, atari, playstation, xbox, eventually getting into pc gaming around 11. I’ve played 1000’s of dif games literally. When I listened/read about all the games Thomas worked on / is inspired by…wow. Are we the same person? as a child im sure i put 1000’s of hours into final fantasy tactics. 100’s of hours into ogre battle and too many to list here. I’ve played every ARPG out there for 100’s if not 1000’s of hours. Thats me and wow, I am so hyped to have somebody like Thomas in charge of this game. It warms my heart you are so passionately making the game you wanna make. Rarely do i watch an entire dev interview , but i from start to finish watched the entire interview with DM ( darth microtransaction ). <3
I have a large group of gaming friends, and all of us agree that the best games come from A.) a passionate dev who loves the game he is making but also B.) a dev who is willing to stick to his vision and not compromise too hard on his game. Its good to get feedback and listen to the players, sure. but if you try to make everybody happy you end up making nobody happy. if you ever need to choose between making players happy or making your game the way you want, you’ve done amazing so far and I hope you continue to make your game the way you want it! I’ve played 1000’s of hours of poe over 12? leagues now, and i think they are quite notorious for doing exactly as i stated above. and even “bad leagues” that piss off the players, they still have a die hard following of players who come back every league and still play the “bad leagues” for 100’s of hours.
2.) Any game that has hardcore, I tend to always play this game mode exclusively. For me its just a way to squeeze more content out of a game. If i was softcore i would have beaten this game in a couple days, been done with it maybe a couple more days after that. As of right now , it took me about 10 days to beat just the campaign. I played blind ( no google no youtube ), just pushed blind , exclusively on hardcore. This was my first time playing this game. I lost probably 20 dif characters so far lol. My first guy, I died about 5 minutes before the twins boss, i fell to my death trying to make the huge jump into the water below lol. Other notable death was , my lvl 27 died, fell in the lava , right before the final boss of campaign lol. Of the 20+ characters i have lost im confident , 16 of them were to fall damage. My favorite i will never forget…My character decided, instead of climbing down the ladder he would rather jump head first 100 feet down.
If there were some option, maybe when we get custom realms? if there was an option to toggle both hardcore and Fall death’s cannot happen. I would be so happy from a hardcore perspective. In softcore i think the fall death’s are great 
Anytime you can punish softcore players, i love it!
Other then that I wouldnt change a thing. Not one complaint. Your game is incredible. I find it funny GGG tried to make “meaningful combat” for poe 2 , but NRFTW i think is a shining perfect example of meaningful combat. after 100+ hours and 20 character deaths i can say, every , single , fight , I am on edge and excited / having fun. This game has a ton of replayability to me for that reason. every single mob i kill is satisfying / different every time. where you fight makes a huge difference. 10 dif locations fighting the same 1 or 2 mobs = 10 completly different encounters with so many variables i need to juggle. The monster variety is great. the dif fighting styles of the various monsters are all great. even the monsters i hate, I hate them because they make me terrified as hardcore player, not because they’re poorly designed or boring.
3.) My one critique I would offer is the boss fights don’t quite feel…“boss like” to me. I would say, last epoch has some GREAT boss fights. poe 1/2 has some pretty cool ones. for NRFTW, 1st boss seems fine as introductory, the lost huntress fight i liked alot , but the otheres were a bit boring / uninteresting. and the current final boss of the campaign is really dissapointing / anti climactic. I think the crucible boss is great however. very challenging.
4.) I imagine as time goes on , there will be more to upgrade in your town / more to do in your town. As of right now it feels a bit too quick and simple to max out your town.
5.) combat feels amazing. I really love every element of it. wouldnt change a thing. I’m confident as time goes on the game is just going to get better and better and any tiny nit pickcomplaint i could raise, i think just remembering its EA and you guys have done a great job so far, I’m confident this game is going to be incredible.
Eagerly awaiting and watching all development for this game,
Thank you so much!