First off I’d just like to tip my hat to the devs. Very fun game and obviously I’ve sunk way too much time into an EA that really only has maybe 20 hours of content!
Combat, story, art, voice acting, level design, boss design, graphics, animations, sound-all top notch at least through main story line. The game becomes too easy once you figure out the meta. WAAAAY too easy. If this is a problem of lack of zone level scaling then disregard (I believe by end of main story the mob levels are 20?).
Current meta: Get focus on damage dealt and health on damage dealt on weapon as high as possible. Use focus rings or get enough focus to about 2-300. Put topaz gem on pants (gain 5-15 focus on focus use). Increase Equip load stat to wear full plate (this varies depending on affixes with weigh decrease or equip load increase). Use a rune that hits multiple times and has a net gain of focus on focus use.
Proceed to steam roll all content.
Fire throw, ice throw=should not be spammable. You can sit at distance and just stun lock the bosses or one shot all other mobs. Blink should probably be restricted to staves and perhaps single daggers/wands if you want to have class archetypes-it’s really too powerful-cost is way too low.
Bow-cone shot, (and I believe multishot-have not used) are too powerful. Again, I don’t think they should be spammable. You can one shot most mobs, 2-shot elites and stun lock bosses.
Staves, all of the multi shot runes have same problem as bows.
Perhaps if the AI was smarter or had ways to apply pressure to the ranged player this would be less of an issue. Currently can kill everything before they even attack except for the EK boss. Again, too easy.
Multi-hit runes: These probably should not give focus back PER hit. The other issue is if a dagger gives 10 stagger per hit but hits 5 times you generate stagger VERY quickly. Because these skills become spammable you then have a stunlocked boss. Lighting Assault is another one of the runes, but most of the multi-hits are probably too powerful.
Stamina: It’s just not a thing to worry about. Maybe the non elemental runes could use stamina-kind of how you did with the bow? Make the elemental runes (fire throw, ice throw, etc.) and all of the runes that Eleanor sells use focus (blink, heal aura, etc.)?
Focus: There are many ways to retool this. Perhaps use the stamina runes/skills as focus generators to allow casting of the Runes that use focus (all elemental and the special ones like Blink, Damage Surge, Health Aura, etc.). This is typical of ARPGs, Generate focus with ‘basic attacks’, Special skills spend the focus. If you don’t want to do the builder/spender method I would suggest at least do not allow the multi-hit focus runes to give focus back on each hit, just make it a flat % based on focus gain IF you hit the target. Then you can rebalance all of the runes easier.
Enchanting: I don’t like that enchanting removes rune slots. I think removing gem slots is fine. Loss of the Rune slots=less diverse play style. Loss of gems=no problem because the affixes generally are the same as the gems.
Toggling between weapons: I think we need a fist weapon that can be slotted there and if there are no fist weapon equipped, the blank weapon slot should be ignored. This makes it easier to switch between weapons.
Realms: I’m fine with the concept of realms. It’s just very open to abuse to get around systems you have put in place. For example, if you have trees that only respawn every 12 hours in real time, you can just make a few realms then farm constantly. This begs the question, why are the trees on a 12 hour real time respawn if you can just make 10 realms and go back and forth? Seems to take the player out of the immersion. The other issue is duplication of materials. Probably would need to remove having multiple realm saves to prevent this? Still, I’m sure once you have multiplayer people will find a way to duplicate materials just like is done in other ARPGs. Or, allow multiple Realms but tie a character to a Realm permanently. Perhaps with a reset realm to certain Acts if things get corrupted?
UI: Please put poise and stamina as bars around health area or somewhere else more visible (bottom of screen perhaps). I just can’t see them where they are now and rely mostly on memory to know how much stamina I have (but let’s be honest, it’s just a rune spam fest at this point, stamina not need apply).
Again, love the game so far! Can’t wait to see where it ends up for 1.0 release. Keep up the good work!