Game feedback

Hey, I'm the guy who wrote the Chrome extension. I wanted to provide some feedback on the game, because I don't expect to be playing it much any more and I want to get this down while it's fresh.

Before I go on, I'll just say that these statements reflect my personal preferences. I understand that other people prefer different things, and this is not a judgment on those people. But to give honest feedback, I have to factor my preferences in. I also understand that this is a beta, but in order for the criticism to be useful I can't really pull punches or omit things because, "It will be fixed <N months> from now." That said, I will try not to comment on anything that the team has already set on their roadmap.

Graphics: Meh. The characters are all ugly -- why can't I look sexy as the wizard, dashing as the duelist, or hulking as the marauder (and I don't mean cave-man hulking like the current model)? Ability particles and other aspects of the graphical presentation are similarly meh. The environments feel quite muddy and unpleasant too.

I'm not saying everything needs to be rainbow-colored, but I'm also not going to want to spend very much time in such a relentlessly grimy game world.

It would be nice if the light radius was more gradual. It would be nice if the light wasn't above your head (I don't want the tops of walls or enemies on the other side illuminated).

Stats and the skill tree: The skill tree is interesting. I like aspects of it, but respecs are too expensive. I don't want to have to spend twenty to thirty hours of gameplay to try out a burning arrow ranger, especially if I have to spend it again to get back to my PA ranger. I understand that I have the option of doing the math ahead of time, but what if I want to see how it feels? Respecs in this game are far more expensive than in Diablo 2, and they weren't cheap there.

I also felt the tree is a little too sparse. "But just look at it!" you say, and I admit there's a lot of stuff on there. On the other hand, I felt like I spent a lot of my levels just trying to get to things I wanted to incorporate in my build. I think the highways on the skill tree should use fewer skill points. It took me seven dex nodes to get from the useful part of my build over to IR on my last duelist. During those levels you barely feel any power gain from your levelups. I'd rather have fewer levels and each one be meaningful than a lot of levels most of which are a giant bucket of meh.

One other minor point. If you touch the central node of another character type. it should connect you to the other nodes that character type is connected to. Currently those central nodes act as massive road-blocks across the skill maps. I don't think that is intentional, but it is very frustrating.

Items: Too many useless items. For any given character, let's look at the breakdown: mixed armor: useless. 80% of weapon types: useless. 2/3 of single-type armor: useless. A significant portion of correctly-typed armor is also useless, by being a tier or two (or more) behind where you are. Why is the game still dropping tier 1 short swords when I'm on level 40?

Even correctly-tiered, correctly typed items are useless a significant portion of the time. And it gets worse if you have a build that needs specific affixes. PA rangers need +1 to bow weapons on a bow with at least two connected green sockets. That means that of correctly tiered, rare bows, I could only use a tiny fraction. I found my first +1 bow mid-way through cruel. Between then and when I died half-way through merciless, I found only one other +1 bow, which was unfortunately worse than what I was already using. Through about a dozen attempts at creating one, I never succeeded. So basically, I went through the game twice without getting a weapon upgrade. (Although this may speak more to PA's defective design than it does to itemization options, but it is an example.)

Even unworn rares can only be used through tedious recipe builds or rare name matches. My tool helps with this, but it's kind of weird that one of the only ways to use most items is so boring that it needed to be automated.

It does not make sense for a loot-focused game to generate useless loot to such a greater extent than useful loot.

Gameplay: I found it difficult to select enemies with a fast-moving, melee character. That was a little annoying. I wanted to use shift-attack to hit enemies when I made slight misclicks, but shift attack seems very finnicky about when it will hit an enemy. IMO, the range on normal attacks and most melee abilities needs to be increased.

Skills: Variety seems lacking. For rangers, there are curses, auras (which are basically just extra passives in spell form), and arrow enhancements. Nothing that really feels much different from normal attacks. For melee, so far as I have leveled, there was Cleave, and then a variety of normal attack enhancements like dual strike, double strike, heavy strike, and viper strike. The support gems add a little variety, but in the end they are mostly just stat enhancements of what amount to slightly souped up normal attacks.

And done.

OK, that pretty much covers what I wanted to cover. I did enjoy this game. It was worth the $10 I spent on it. I don't anticipate playing it again after Diablo 3 comes out, but it made a good appetizer. I am happy for those of you that feel this game hits all the high points. If you're in that category, play on, I say! But I felt I owed it to the devs to give them my take. Thanks to all the nice users I met, however briefly, while playing this.

I know the entire thing is based on your preference but I want to touch on this

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HouseAbsolute wrote:

One other minor point. If you touch the central node of another character type. it should connect you to the other nodes that character type is connected to. Currently those central nodes act as massive road-blocks across the skill maps. I don't think that is intentional, but it is very frustrating.

I'm pretty sure this is intentional. Point near starting location for each class provide obvious and scaling bonus. This make sure that your class choice matter in terms of starting position, more than just model and base stat. You will have to make sacrifice to get that obvious high bonus, or you can just invest fewer point for lower bonus somewhere else.

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MaxTheLimit wrote:

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HouseAbsolute wrote:

Items: Too many useless items. For any given character, let's look at the breakdown: mixed armor: useless. 80% of weapon types: useless. 2/3 of single-type armor: useless. A significant portion of correctly-typed armor is also useless, by being a tier or two (or more) behind where you are. Why is the game still dropping tier 1 short swords when I'm on level 40?

Could you justify some of these numbers by going into more detail how you formulated this opinion?

By all means. Let's do the calculations separately for weapons and armor.

For weapons, let's say that I'm a ranger.

Probability of dropped weapon being a member of the current or previous weapon tier: ~ 60%
Probability of dropped weapon being a bow: ~ 10%
Probability of dropped weapon being a rare: ~ 2%

Total probability of weapon being a usable dropped bow: %0.12 (around one in a thousand)

And this is not factoring in issues like having better or worse affixes, correct slots, decent quality, etc. Mostly these last ones can be remedied by currency if you are rich enough.

For armor, let's say that I'm focusing on evasion items:

Probability of drop being a member of the current or previous tier: ~ 60%
Probability of drop being pure evasion: 1/6 -> %17
Probability of drop being rare or really strong magical: ~4%
Probability of drop having sufficient +evade% to exceed current item: ~50%
Probability of reasonable slots: ~75% (or if it doesn't, I can slot things in another piece of equipment I already have)

Total probability of a given armor drop being useful: %0.2 (two in a thousand)

On +evade%: I notice that a good portion of rares have this affix, but if an item lacks this affix it's not going to be able to replace one that has it, even if the one that has it is significantly lower tiered.

Overall, that means about one and a half of every thousand dropped items is a keeper if your build doesn't make special affix demands like +1 to bow skills. That's pretty dismal in my book.

So, that's where I'm coming from on this point.

I think you make a good point about the gear. Currently, my main is a Templar (level 51) and I'm working my way through Merciless. I'm finding though, with him being a hybrid, it is really difficult to find gear that he needs to be effective.

As you've already stated, trying to find a base item that serves as an upgrade is hard enough, but if your character is tailored to a more specific playstyle it gets even more difficult. The problem I have is that I'm using the Str/Int chainmail gear and staves for equipment. I'm running a Cold based templar though, which means I need at least some green slots to be able to gem everything properly, and I'm finding that to be quite a difficult chore.

This weekend I blew over 60 chromatic orbs just to try and get the right combination of socket colors I want, and since Str/Int gear is more likely to get red/blue sockets, I had a hard time getting any greens to show up in the first place, much less to get 2 or 3 like some of my preferred setups require.

I do realize that part of that is me trying to use dex gems with gear that is Str/Int based, but I didn't realize that when I began the character, and now it would cost too much to try and make him anything else through the respec system.