My thoughts after Level 25, 20 hours played

First off I will start by giving you a simple breakdown of what games I have played over the last 10 years so you can understand where I got my ideas and so you can understand my background.

3000+ hours played:
-Counter Strike: Source

500+ hours played:
-Halo 2
-World of Warcraft
-Warhammer Online
-FF7

200+ hours played:
-Empire Earth
-Half Life 1/2
-Starcraft 2
-League of Legends
-Age of Conan

100+ hours played:
-Guild Wars
-Diablo 3
-Aion
-Warcraft 3
-Sins of a Solar Empire
-Civilization 1/2/3/4




Okay, now onto the positive and negative things I have encountered/noticed in the game so far (not far, i know)



POSITIVES:

-Great environments
(Some of the best I've played, the ground is littered with objects and the dark dungeons are great, ship graveyard was nice, jungle looks good. Reminds me of Guild Wars with the variety of environments and their complexity)

-Amazing class customization
(Unlimited choices, truly. The passive skill tree is very extensive, very interesting, unique and looks like it will provide tons to do end-game)

-Unique Orb itemization system
(Very fun, and very unique. I like that if you get something that rolls horrible you can reroll it. I also like all the options for changing any piece of gear into a great piece for yourself)

-Well structured loot system
(Never feel like I'm getting screwed or let down, though I don't know what to do with rares I won't use, as they sell for almost nothing to vendors and I can't really trade with other players)



NEGATIVES:

-Clunky mechanics at times
(cant cast spells while moving, attacks hit invisible objects, animations dont sync well)

-Confusing UI
(hard to tell difference between minions and enemies, hard to target moving enemies with smaller hitboxes than their body, map needs serious tweaking, items need to glow with their rarity in inventory)

-Very few scripted/unique fights
(boss fights start with aggro, mini-bosses and unique mobs all feel the same)

-No player economy
(Cant trade, barter system could work, but no support for it now)

-Inventory too small
(Just now I quit playing because its not fun to pick up 5-6 items and be full, just creates more work, makes items/farming not worth it at lower levels)

-Hard to know what skills are available
(My idea would be to have some basic skills greyed out when you are selecting quest reward skill gems, that way you can plan ahead what you will get next time/plan for items you want to keep, the way it is now a new player has no idea what they can do and its easy to get lost)



CONCLUSION:
I give this an A- for a closed beta, as it is better than plenty of much bigger games I have played at launch, but it still has a lot of work before it's ready to release. I know I will continue to play it.

Thanks devs for a great game, and keep up the awesome work!

What do you guys think?

I think you hit the nail on the head.

Only con I disagree with is inventory size: you're supposed to either make choices when picking up loot, or spend a portal scroll every now and then. Being able to pick up every somewhat interesting thing without limitation would be a bad thing.

I really really REALLY hope we'll be allowed to use skills while moving at some point (or at least massively improve on the animations and delays); this is the one thing that truly bothers me about PoE right now.

I agree with you that there should be some sense of decision-making when you are picking up items, but with the very small rewards you get from the vendors, it doesn't make sense to only be allowed to carry 10 or so items if they will combine to net you maybe one orb, possibly two if most of your items are rares, especially since orbs drop themselves quite often. If the intent is for people to only pick up items that could be useful and not to farm these items by selling to the vendor, then you lose a lot of the farming aspect, and this is an arpg. I understand the idea of making it take more knowledge and adding another skill requirement to be an effective farmer, but to me it just seems like they want magic items to be as useless as white items, because they pretty much are unless you are going to spend orbs upgrading them.

I agree to your points mostly.
But I also disagree with the inventory being too small. Should be a decision on what to pick up.
With the stash however...

One point in particular, there's no good thing to do with all the rares. I need to find alot so I can sell two with the same name, to do that I need a large inventory and time to sort.
I'm just at 12 slot stash. So it's becoming a challenge to find those doublettes.
With a larger stash, the task lightens up, but it's still going to be pretty heavy.
I can sell sets of items and get chaos orbs which are even better than alchemys, but thats an expensive trade.


At this point I'd say increase the initial stash size. It's mandatory with a larger size than 4 tabs to have even a basic collection. That's not being true to F2P and closer to P2W.

As it stands now, I'm littered with loot since I got good mf, too much garbage holed up in my stash makes me reluctant to play.
Perhaps even scrap the doublette idea and give a stable alch/chaos shard for rares.
If you gonna keep it, make available recipys shown in the stash somehow, just please.. I don't wanna go all out fascist on my stash just because I have to keep structure, I wanna throw things in and examine them later when I want to. Like this, it's gonna be hours of sorting before I got structure and after that I'm gonna have to continously sort whenever I happen to find alot of a particular item type.
But that's not all of it, I will have to sell valuable items, just because I'm out of space and they are a doublette to something useless.

I just wanna whack some mobs, not sort and evaluate gear until my head explodes.

1) You're right about discouraging farming at lower levels. There is a push to play through the content at lower levels.

Farming is a higher level prospect you do when you need to do it to advance.

There is content at high level created specifically for the purpose of farming.

2) Neither magic nor white items are useless BECAUSE you can upgrade them. For a variety of reasons.

Using +Q% items on whites is much more efficient than using them on a rare, and since whites are more common, it's easier to find a white with good slots than a rare with good slots and quality. There are a few other reasons.

Edit:

3) It IS worth it to pick up and vendor items, take it from someone who has played more than you. You will end up with many more alterations, transmutations, and other orbs if you sell items regularly.



Doesn't wanting 10 stash tabs to begin with for the purpose of storing, sorting, and evaluating gear contradict this statement?

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Spoiler

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turtledog wrote:

I agree with you that there should be some sense of decision-making when you are picking up items, but with the very small rewards you get from the vendors, it doesn't make sense to only be allowed to carry 10 or so items if they will combine to net you maybe one orb, possibly two if most of your items are rares, especially since orbs drop themselves quite often. If the intent is for people to only pick up items that could be useful and not to farm these items by selling to the vendor, then you lose a lot of the farming aspect, and this is an arpg. I understand the idea of making it take more knowledge and adding another skill requirement to be an effective farmer, but to me it just seems like they want magic items to be as useless as white items, because they pretty much are unless you are going to spend orbs upgrading them.

1) You're right about discouraging farming at lower levels. There is a push to play through the content at lower levels.

Farming is a higher level prospect you do when you need to do it to advance.

There is content at high level created specifically for the purpose of farming.

2) Neither magic nor white items are useless BECAUSE you can upgrade them. For a variety of reasons.

Using +Q% items on whites is much more efficient than using them on a rare, and since whites are more common, it's easier to find a white with good slots than a rare with good slots and quality. There are a few other reasons.

Edit:

3) It IS worth it to pick up and vendor items, take it from someone who has played more than you. You will end up with many more alterations, transmutations, and other orbs if you sell items regularly.

"

Deafjester wrote:

I just wanna whack some mobs, not sort and evaluate gear until my head explodes.

I guess you can view white and blue items as "crafting" items, but there is no explanation of how to use these, players are just left in the dark and have to ask in general chat what to do with all the orbs/items/scrolls, which means most players will just attempt to play in the standard arpg/mmo style which is to disregard these items other than for vendoring.

One thing you could do is to have a mini-quest around level 10 that nets you a rare belt/ring/ammy by using various orbs, starting with a white item, showing how different types of orbs, sockets, skills and items interact. Then players will be aware of the value of these items and can effectively build items starting at a low level if they want.

"

turtledog wrote:

I guess you can view white and blue items as "crafting" items, but there is no explanation of how to use these, players are just left in the dark and have to ask in general chat what to do with all the orbs/items/scrolls, which means most players will just attempt to play in the standard arpg/mmo style which is to disregard these items other than for vendoring.

One thing you could do is to have a mini-quest around level 10 that nets you a rare belt/ring/ammy by using various orbs, starting with a white item, showing how different types of orbs, sockets, skills and items interact. Then players will be aware of the value of these items and can effectively build items starting at a low level if they want.

You're right about there being very little in-game explanation. I liked discovering things as I experimented or researched, but I understand that's not for everyone.

That miniquest is a neat idea! I would put it in the suggestions forum.

If your looking for a fully explained beginning of this game, you are not going to get it. The devs have already said that they love how people are just put into the world without any sense of direction so they can figure it out for themselves. It isn't like if you have a question it won't be answered in general chat. There are plenty of people online to help. I for one love it the sense of discovery. You may disagree, but that is your opinion.

Also, your not meant to keep every white/blue item you find. Every ARPG has a certain limit to stash quantities. Torchlight 2 may have the most friendly system with the pet selling items, but you won't find that sense of casual play here. This is a pretty brutal game and it will punish you if you don't adapt.

I for one am a Diablo 2 fanboy and I love the similarity to this game. I'm not really sure what you mean by the map being bad, I feel it is very helpful...

A few more things:

Scripted bosses have almost always never been in ARPGS. Maybe a cut scene after the boss dies, but this is not a MMO where it is suppose to be epic boss intro. The first time I saw Brutus I was like holy shit... Whack dead. I am not sure why your displeased with this as this has almost always been a norm.

There are plenty of people trading in game. It works. The trading system is suppose to be streamlined to work through these forums and we are waiting for that implementation.

Lastly, your first character is not going to succeed period. It won't matter that you don't know what skills are available. I do believe that the quest gem system could use some work, but I would never go as far as to say you should know what gems will be available in future quests. There needs to be a sense of excitement when you get a skill you can use.

The developers haven't stated that a tutorial won't be implemented or that they like the idea of people feeling lost when they log into the game for the first time. Their is a thread dedicated to the tutorial in the beta manifesto thread.

"

Repeats wrote:

If your looking for a fully explained beginning of this game, you are not going to get it. The devs have already said that they love how people are just put into the world without any sense of direction so they can figure it out for themselves. It isn't like if you have a question it won't be answered in general chat. There are plenty of people online to help. I for one love it the sense of discovery. You may disagree, but that is your opinion.

Also, your not meant to keep every white/blue item you find. Every ARPG has a certain limit to stash quantities. Torchlight 2 may have the most friendly system with the pet selling items, but you won't find that sense of casual play here. This is a pretty brutal game and it will punish you if you don't adapt.

I for one am a Diablo 2 fanboy and I love the similarity to this game. I'm not really sure what you mean by the map being bad, I feel it is very helpful...

A few more things:

Scripted bosses have almost always never been in ARPGS. Maybe a cut scene after the boss dies, but this is not a MMO where it is suppose to be epic boss intro. The first time I saw Brutus I was like holy shit... Whack dead. I am not sure why your displeased with this as this has almost always been a norm.

There are plenty of people trading in game. It works. The trading system is suppose to be streamlined to work through these forums and we are waiting for that implementation.

Lastly, your first character is not going to succeed period. It won't matter that you don't know what skills are available. I do believe that the quest gem system could use some work, but I would never go as far as to say you should know what gems will be available in future quests. There needs to be a sense of excitement when you get a skill you can use.

Why would you want to play a game where it is impossible to be successful with your first character? It just depends on what the Devs are going for, a game that will be popular and will stay alive with a lot of users, or a game that is made for a smaller amount of people who think the frustration of making mistakes is enjoyable.

I agree about the sense of excitement when you get a good skill, but wouldnt that be amplified if you see "Awesome ability", but you can't get it until you complete the next quest. That sounds like a lot of incentive to keep playing, which is the "sense of excitement" you are looking for. EX: "Just one more quest, I HAVE to see what this skill looks like!"

Scripted bosses may be too far for GGG to go, but they could certainly spice things up with some ambushes/traps/special events all with some daunting music, just to make the questing seem more unique. That is a feature that may not be in every game, but everyone wants it in every game, theres no reason not to, and isn't that why GGG made this game, to make a new ARPG?

I understand that some people want a serious challenge and true immersion, but that's available on Hardcore servers.