There’s great discussion going on here and I think everyone’s arriving at the same conclusion. The Visceral Combat and the ARPG experiences are exchanging time in the spotlight rather than co-existing at the same time.
I believe Tom was correct in identifying some the problematic enchantments that skew the vision for the game. Successfully removing all worry about your finite resources means you’ve also removed the Visceral Combat and entered the realm of modern day ARPGs. Methods to restoring your resources should not be easy and should restore only a modicum amount.
I believe this is a key takeaway. Wicked has the tools to change the existing paradigms of both systems, the Combat and the Itemization. If this game is to not be a simple game, similar to current ARPGs, then the Itemization needs complexity as well. This is not to say complexity for the sake of complexity (i.e. Path of Exile) but rather our items should evolve from the standard.
Special effects on gear is very commonly limited to the highest tier (commonly known as Legendary). I believe our Enchantments should stray from this, at least partially, to avoid the simple stats pitfall of problematic ones like "Focus on Damage Dealt*. There’s been a few threads about this so far that I’ll link here.
WolfieZee’s “OUR Ideas for Unique Enchantments”
Psytoxin’s “Why Gems and Enchantments NEED a boost”
The current Combat systems we have are great for the visceral feeling which thankfully means there doesn’t need to be a large amount of change in this area. The problematic Enchantments are what dial this up to 11 and start creating major issues. Any benefits should be given through effort and these benefits should never fully remove difficulty such as the “X on Damage Dealt”.