My thoughts after Level 25, 20 hours played

You are missing the reasons why almost every first character fails.

1. You don't have very good gear and will likely start to die by mid Cruel difficulty. Without farming a significant amount, you will lack the ability to combine support gems with your main skill gems to see them shine. Also, you don't have a good grasp of a good support gem combo with your skills. I hardly used support gems with my first character and it really showed. I sucked...

2. You don't have a good grasp of how to use the passive skill tree. Without planning prior to making a character or having gear specific to what you want to do with your build, you will likely make poor decisions in what to specialize in. This can normally be seen when people go towards pure damage builds. They forget about defensive needs as this game ramps up significantly towards the end of Cruel.

3. You are given 24 character slots for a reason. You are encouraged to learn from your mistakes and start over. Yes you can completely respec your character with quest points and Orbs of Regret, but after 100+ hours of playing I only have ~15 regret orbs. It is very difficult to get enough resources to "redo" your character. It is much more sensible to just start from scratch or try a completely different build.

You may get the chance to undo your character when they do the next passive skill tree wipe come the next patch. I took advantage of the last skill tree wipe with my first character that couldn't make it past A1 Cruel. Now 8 characters later I feel that I can handle these problems accordingly.

If I listed all the food I've eaten, does that make me a chef?

Obviously not, so it is interesting to me that because you've played some video games, you're suddenly an expert on an entire game that you have have barely touched in terms of the depth.

Reviewing a beta is like reviewing a movie that might have finished filming, but is currently being edited. It is a flawed idea.

Level 25 is in my opinion the start of seeing this games potential, and my character is lvl 40. No great feat, but there IS a difference in character development and playstyle even in those 15 levels.

I'm sorry if this comes off as offensive, but your "thoughts after level 25..." are not as inclusive as you seem to think of them.

You don't HAVE to organise your inventory until your head explodes...simply use the chrome plugin and check it periodically.

It will do the hard graft, you just find the items named on the tabs named, take them to the vendor and job done !

Skills available are all listed here.

You might not know this, but the quest rewards dont offer ALL the skill gems. Some of them are only available as a rarity from monster drops. The best way to get them is to trade with other people in game (trading features are not yet implemented but they ARE coming). I think you should review what skills you see on the forums page & then choose the ones you think are good.

Personally I cant be bothered to trade and I just use what I find, its more fun for me that way because I dont know what skills I will be using in a few levels.

Of course its not IMPOSSIBLE to have your first character succeed, but its definately not probable (especially if you intend to play in the hardcore league). For default players even if you create a character that dies a lot, there is still potential to refund badly used stat points. If you feel you are dying too much, refunding 8 points & using them defensively could go a long way. (By level 45 I had a whopping 8 refund points solely from quests, which can make a big difference).

If your character is too broken to fix, he probably wont reach that high a level. That would mean that it would be fairly easy to create a new character. In a party is possible to reach level 25 or maybe even more in 3 hours (true for Closed beta 0.9.10)

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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.

As you will later see, it's not about what the vendors give you, it's about what your fellow players would give you. Forcing you to be choosy about what you pick up and prioritize certain rares and uniques allows the trade market not to be flooded. Eventually Portal Scrolls drop like every other kill. I currently have 80+ but it could be because I never bother to go back to town until I have an inventory full of rares. Even then, you're NEVER far from a Waypoint.

@OP: I think you should had read the FAQ, Beta Manifesto and other important forum thread first before starting this thread...

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turtledog wrote:

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.

Unless you are playing on the HC server, there is really no way for your character to fail. You can always respec out of your choices, you would have to really try to screw up a build so much that it was impossible to progress imo... players have cleared normal (at least) without allocating a single point.

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draevin wrote:

If I listed all the food I've eaten, does that make me a chef?

Obviously not, so it is interesting to me that because you've played some video games, you're suddenly an expert on an entire game that you have have barely touched in terms of the depth.

Reviewing a beta is like reviewing a movie that might have finished filming, but is currently being edited. It is a flawed idea.

Level 25 is in my opinion the start of seeing this games potential, and my character is lvl 40. No great feat, but there IS a difference in character development and playstyle even in those 15 levels.

I'm sorry if this comes off as offensive, but your "thoughts after level 25..." are not as inclusive as you seem to think of them.

Where do I claim to be an expert on this game? Where do I claim that my thoughts are "inclusive"?

It clearly says my thoughts after 20 hours.. If you think players will pick up this game and stick with it in the current state after a full release you are kidding yourself, it definitely needs to be more user-friendly in order to be popular. The goal shouldn't be to see this games potential after 20+ hours of play, it should be to see that potential and realize it from the get-go.

I don't appreciate you posting a bunch of condescending rude comments just because you think the game is perfect and I must know nothing, it clearly says my thoughts, and if everyone disagrees with me that is fine.

If this game doesn't revamp the learning curve so that people dont throw their first 20-100 hours of playtime away, it will probably maintain a small following and have a great community, but it will never pull players from bigger games and be a hit long term, in my opinion. That said, I read the beta manifesto before I posted this thread, and they seem to want to make the player have more knowledge early on, thus meaning the first character will be much more viable.

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Repeats wrote:

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.

Gem by way of quest rewards is a mess. Period. My main atm is a lvl 50 Templar. I didn't see Lightning strike till like 35!
And Enfeedle? A guy wanted a god damn Gemcutters Prism for one!
How many times have I gotten offered the same darn 5 gems as a reward. I've lost count.

Definitely needs work

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turtledog wrote:

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.

I support this. Having the player experience the mechanics through a sample quest ensures that he understands at least the basic orbs/upgrades.