For reference I’ve probably played between 400-500 hours now. (I play probably 60% of my time offline, which isn’t something I can track.)
I just completed the primary campaign and the first plague started. Here’s my thoughts so far…
Completion level: 26
Completion time: guessing 30-40 hours (this is about average, I always have wiped on the bigger builds)
Harvesting / Town upgrades: Do not like the changes
Previously I’d do harvesting ‘along the way’ while doing the exploring and quest steps. With this most recent build (I hear costs were doubled for town upgrades) I often felt like I was forced to farm resources. In order to match my previous ‘city upgrade’ times I was spending 1/2 of one “play session” every other play session. So, of roughly 5 hours played (I play 1-3 hours per session) this means I would have to do 1-2 ‘full runs’ of a resource tier area and NOT focus on progressing story. This made upgrading town feel VERY tedious. I much prefer the old method of it taking hours to upgrade the town for a couple of reasons.
First; for not just me, but the average player, consider the average play session is closer to 1 hour than not, and that happens a couple of times a week. Someone isn’t likely to be very happy being forced to gather resources for their entire session over leveling or exploring.
Second; even with 2 or 3 hour sessions, when I triggered a town upgrade it felt like the ‘town was doing something while I leveled, quested, and explored’, like it was ‘going to be ok on its own without me.’ It was a mental separation of ‘I’m doing my thing, they are doing theirs,’ and it didn’t feel like everything fell on my shoulders. Also, even with playing roughly 4-5 hours per day on back-to-back days it felt like this wasn’t a big deal. I’d trigger it to start, then on the next play session that day, or starting on the next day, the upgrade would be ready.
Here’s the thing; I really think doubling the resource requirements and removing the timer is COUNTER to the intent. I think for the vast majority of players the real time lost being spent doing in game resource farming is far more than the wait for the town to do the change. (And in terms of old school immersion I even wouldn’t mind if the station got a tent put over it and was inaccessible for the time it was being upgraded.)
Crafting: I couldn’t do very much.
I don’t know if this was changed in any way, and I guess I never do much, but this felt extremely limited. What’s worse, is that of the maybe dozen items I did craft on my way through the game, all but I think one was ruined by the RNG of getting item facets. (The majority of them aren’t ones I’d use.) While items ‘ruined’ by RNG of enchantment can now sort of be fixed by the void embers, you can’t void item facets, so if you get a bad roll there, there’s no saving the item.
I’d prefer a bit more control as per my suggestion over here; Controlled crafting: Basic / Advanced / Focused - Wicked Experimental Branch - No Rest For The Wicked
Embers and Enchantment: Not sure the improvements are for me.
I get why you want to control getting the perfect item. A player only needs the ‘perfect item’ once ever. (Assuming they don’t change their build, and only have a single build.) But I think RNG on RNG is… not great. And while the new embers do help, I don’t think they are for me.
Here’s what I think I got in my time leveling to end-game, and an explanation per ember.
Fallen ember: Love them, maybe got a total of 2 dozen? It felt like I could have used at least +50% more than I got.
Awakening ember: I got maybe 6 in the entire play time? Love them since I pretty much just use magic rarity items. Prroooobbbably a good number, but certainly would have liked more.
Void ember: These absolutely help when the enchantress bricks a crafted item. Completely not at all enough of them. I got maybe 4 total.
Essence ember: I used one of these once ever, and still have not applied what was extracted. I could see how these would be useful, but I’d guess that would be deep into end game, or someone who has 100% decided on a build. Since this is restricted to the rarity and exact item slot it came from, I just don’t see how I’d find that helpful. Always needing to look for an exact match to an exact armor spot isn’t something my brain wants to fixate on. Even if I had used some I only got 11 total in my time, so, sure, that’s some options, but I don’t know if that’s enough, especially if someone isn’t sure about their build.
Corrupting ember: 6, never used them. I avoid purples. I think in my possibly 500 total play hours I’ve only used about 4 purple rarity items ever. The negatives have always been far too punishing. (Especially since I’m hybrid between Stamina and Focus.)
Radiant ember: Hard to get a feel on this one. I probably don’t feel great about it since it randomly applied to an enchantment. I only got ONE during my entire play time so far.
Honestly, for me, these changes don’t really fix the issues I discussed in my ‘want to vs. need to’ topic. I would still really prefer if Fallen Embers, when applied, allowed you to choose from a list of replacement options. Limited reroll - a difference in feeling of “get to” vs. “need to” - Wicked Experimental Branch - No Rest For The Wicked
And once I went to the enchanter, she purpled an item, I wiped it with a void ember, and she purpled it again, with something like 2 of the positives and the negative being exactly the same (just a different percent), so again, bad feeling RNG there.
Also got a random drop shield (and one during the experimental time that was the same), purple rarity, with the negative that you can’t block. Which was hilarious both times.
Exalting: Mostly space saved for a later update.
I have a feeling I’m still going to prefer the old method. I exalted 2 items during the beta test of Together and didn’t like the randomness at all. I greatly preferred the certainty that each thing would improve, and the item would improve overall at the end. I just got to end game just now, so my feelings on this may change, but if this section is unchanged when you read this then my opinion hasn’t changed and I prefer the certainty of the old exalting system.
Edit: Mostly exalted an item now, partly one other. Yeah, this just doesn’t feel as exiting as the original exalting. I think it’s because this is all random now. While you could argue that needing to each one one time ‘forces’ the player’s hand, I’d counter with the fact that you have no idea what thing will be hit with random. Unless you absolutely love all the enchantments you have, then you’d likely prefer it to hit the ones you like more, so if it doesn’t it feels like a disappointment. Whereas before you knew the ones you weren’t a super fan of would get a bit better, and for sure the ones you liked would.
Maybe it’s just about the aspect of not feeling in control. I know it’s not quite to this extreme, but I’d say for a majority of the things I’m looking at exalting I have a similar feeling of ‘hope for something better’ completely rerolling the enchantment as I would exalting. Even though I know exalting will only improve it, that ‘well I don’t know what will happen’ feeling is about equal in both of those two cases.