Combat/ Gameplay consistency and challenge

So i have spent over 70 hours into the game and i love a lot of things about it that are unique to it … at the early hours at least.

Much like Lamni’s thread down below i really loved the first dozen of hours of the game and it was challenging, tactical , involved a lot of positioning and timing to survive and land hits. The more the game progressed the more “Diablo” like it became.
I enjoyed the crafting and gathering system , don’t mind the way “healing” with food works tho i think it would need some rework to maybe make it heal over time or make heal items with longer cooldowns ?!?

What really brakes the gameplay from lvl 15+ is the item affixes.
Health % on damage dealt / Focus % on Damage dealth should not exist.
It makes for skill spamming and infinite healing gameplay, making it possible to facetank any mob or a group of mobs , steamroll bosses without even bothering to dodge at all or them not even being able to reach you because they die under 10 seconds.

Item affixes need rework for the game to stay true to it’s initial challenging first hours of your adventure.

HP/Focus % on damage dealt affixes should not exist unless we want this to be a hack&slash RPG.

2h weapons feel inferior to 1h by a large margin as they do similar damage per hit but are 2x/3x times slower than the 1h counterparts and much more difficult to use without getting hit.

Some people have been complaining about drops on gems. Well those are probably the people who expect this game to be Hack&Slash RPG with tons of loot all over the place.

The more common drops/gems are the less of a Reward factor there is.
Again more loot equals more “generic Hack&slash ARPG” and less unique gameplay. Loot should be rare and will feel greatly rewarding when you finally get it.

At the moment Attack speed/overall speed affixes on items do not work. However if they did a player would have been able to stack close to 100% bonus attack/movement speed which again… The gameplay will become nothing like the initial challenging and unique several hours of the game when you first began. More speed equals more Hack&Slash. Now a 15% overall speed buff might be acceptable but 100% speed bonus will be steamrolling everything, able to dodge every single attack coming your way without effort or perma stagger mobs before they even land a hit.

I’m sure there’s more affixes that are completely broken that i can’t think of right now or don’t know about, but the more OP the player can get the more generic H&S ARPG this will become.

I really hope the game stays true to it’s core and it’s first impressions from the beginning.

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Yes, yes and yes.

Hope the devs would come down here to give their thoughts aswell. I think this sentiment is strong with most players who have made it far enough in the game.

I ended up playing with white gear without affixes because I enjoy it more this way, I don’t know, maybe they also need some inspiration from nioh nioh 2 wo long in terms of gear and stats.

You can also end up being broken in those games but they also offer new difficulty modes. If I remember correctly, for example in Wo Long, in the first run, the equipment you find does not have a bonus for completing a set, but in the second run it does, so you can look for more and more power.