Alright, so, I’ve played the game for 20+ hours and i want to make clear that i really enjoy the game. It’s awesome in so many ways. However, I thought I’d just list a few painpoints I’ve had. First of all, I won’t mention the repairs, performance yada yada. Partly because some of those things just weren’t an issue for me, partly because you’re probably aware of those things by now.
Cerim Whispers - The system just doesn’t seem that polished. Beeing able to teleport to any whisper instead of just your most recent is a luxury that most gamers would expect in a modern day open world. Whilest this isn’t a huge issue during linearly leveling, it does get tedious in the later portions of the game, even more so as the world expands. Also, the way you spawn at the Whisper you last interacted with rather than the closest one is kinda ‘meh’.
The Map - Alright, I get that it’s hard to make a great map over a world which is built with layers on top of layers. However, my issue with that map is not the lack of clairity in the graphic representation of the world. Rather It’s the lack of text for me. Grabbing a Challange or Bounty and having to remember where “Input Location Here” is located, is kind of … weird? This whole issue would be fixed if a simple mouseover would dissplay the name of the zone. As it does when mouseovering Sacrament for example.
edit: alright, I just noticed that you do get a mouseover title of the zone name, you do however have to land on a very precise spot on the map. So I’d expect this issue to just be a simple bug.
Challanges and Bounties - This ain’t a huge thing, but it’s way too easy to dissmiss Challages/Bounties for no reason. It’s the same button for accepting, throwing and completing them. I might just be dumb, but I accidentally dissmissed 3 dailies because i thought, “oh well, I’ve already done this”. Additionally, I’d love to be able to pick up a couple or all of the dailies in order to clear them in one swoop, rather than darting around clearing one at a time. Since the latter will most likelly be pretty tedious by week 3, day 5, if not earlier.
Stats and clairity - Okay, so the gearing seems fine and we havn’t had alot of time with it yet, so it’s hard to make a deepdive on day 3. But it’s pretty hard to know what works and how it works. For example, i would expect a weapon with both a Fire Damage Affix and a Frost Damage Gem to do both damage types. It does however seemingly just do fire damage when I hit an enemy. Also, as of right now, potions that infuse your weapon with an element also seem to override the elemental runes/ gems on your weapon.
So, how does this stuff work? How much damage reduction does armor give and is “increased armor” - affix increasing your total armor or the armor of that specific item?
Items and inventory management - Okay, so this is a big one for me. There is way too many different kinds of items, or way to little space and too small stacksizes. The game really wants you to farm all kinds of stuff, and deleting a random item in order to save some room in the inventory might come back to bite you in the *** later on (I sold 40 fallen embers when i hadn’t found a use for them). I found myself playing a game of managing inventory, which took quite alot of time away from the actual gameplay. This could be solved partly by, for example, making everything food related go in a separate tab. For me, most of the resource tab kept filling up with food materials, which I just had to bring in order to survive. Leaving little room for Bear Claws, Linen etc.
It also doesn’t feel great that the only way to really improve your inventory (atleast before you buy a house and put 10 chests into it) is to upgrade the inventory with materials that you’d really rather use to get additional ring or weapon slots.
Bows and staves - Kind of a minor one, and very subjective. But caster and ranged builds is a fun concept. Most of the enemies in the game already seem to have ways to deal with players, even from a distance (charging attacks, granades, bows etc). I find myself leaning strongly towards swords, pikes, axes etc because of how the weapon-system is built and balanced, even though I’d much rather play some kind of Sorcerer build. Giving staves and bows a shortranged but still ranged attack that generates focus (it can lack abit of damage as compensation for beeing ranged for example), would go a long way. Because right now staves feel like weak melee wepons with average runes, compaired to swords for example, which feels like strong melee weapons with average to strong runes.
I’d also really like to see bow centered builds with a bow as main weapon be a thing. But that’s just really subjective i guess, and might just be me. However it does just feel like abit of a missed opportunity, since it’d make those builds feel way different from all these melee builds.
Appearance - this is another minor one. But, yea, the game has a very niche look, which i love. Some armor does look really trippy, which is cool. However, I’d think that you’d benefit greatly from having some system of altering the appearance of gear in the game. People really do like customizing their look, and some items just went straight in the bin for me, stricly because they were looking too “extra”. A simple “hide helmet function” would even suffice, as a quickfix atleast.
By the way, one thing I love is the experience potions, they feel great, and they feel like a awesome way to get your alts up to speed. I don’t know if it’s a thing yet (my potion dude isn’t that giga), but they should be craftable in the end game to keep crafting relevant throughout the late end game.
That’s it for me! Just thought I’d share since my painpoints seem to be abit different from what most posts are about.
Great game, im sure it’ll be absolute fire by the time full release comes around. The audio, story and art is absolute bangers.