20 mins into the game...

I've tried to be objective about this game and not see it as a D3 clone and give it an honest view and by doing that I realize what a fantastic game Diablo 3 actually is and how extremely polished the game was before it even hit beta-stage.

I do know that GGG is an indie studio and it needs to get the funding and hype of this product rolling asap but that won't detest me from being honest: This game has been my worst gaming experience ever and after 20 minutes of gameplay I find myself not even wanting to log on. To be fair, this is about as much time that your avarage gamer will give the product before deciding if they want to keep playing or not.

* Outdated graphics. In this day and age I as a gamer have come to expect more, I'm not talking about Far Cry 3 level of graphics here but there is a certain standard that one expects from a product these days and PoE is _FAR_ from it graphics-wise. Unproportionate design of both character models and monsters.

* Weak to no colors at all on more or less everything. Could you possibly make a more boring visual world to travel in. I get it, the starter area is a beach, but hell I'm having problems even seeing monsters against certain backgrounds because well they simply just look like whatever debris is already laying there.

* Interactive objects and hitboxes are a complete swing and miss. Hitboxes are hard to hit, too slow to respond, doesn't stick onto the cursor once you've finally found one and holding the mousebutton clicked on it making my character more likely to run past the mob than hitting it. A complete overhaul of targeting mechanics would be in order.

* Information about what is actually happening... On several occasions i saw fireballs fly straight through mobs and explode behind them or simply vanishing into thin air. Sometimes they'd just explode mid-flight for no appearantly reason, stuck on some invisible roadbump not appearant to the human eye. Did my ability miss, bug out or what happened? Some combat interaction messages would be nice so I know if I'm actually doing the right thing.

* The combat engine is even worse... Sluggish, unresponsive unimaginative in how skills and soells work. Abilities are laggy, graphics have variying casttimes depending on angle you throw them in. An attack speed of 1.3 should give me the same rate of attack no matter where I cilck on the screen but that's not the case.

* Servercapacaty is appauling. Running the download for the client via a 100/100 full duplex line gave a stunning 600 kb/s download rate... That won't go over well on launchday.

The only thing this game had going for it was that it was somewhat interesting in it's skilldesign but that hasn't got a snowballs chance in hell to make up for all the glaring and obvious problems the game has in general.

If i were responsible for this product it would never see a public release in it's current shape and form.


I'm hoping this feedback will help you improve your game because I honestly would love to play it and support you. I run my own software development company and have been doing so for a few years and know how hard these things are to get right. But it's harder to recover from a poorly made product than it is to tell clients that it's not good enough _YET_ and take a step back and really think about what you're doing here. I think that I've re-invented our products atleast 10 times over before we finally hit to market which also let us become the leading software dev company in our field.

Best regards,
Cath

The gameplay seems slow to start but once u get higher lvls with movespeed ect it is a far better experience (is like this with almost every game), as for graphics i dont know how u find it to be so bad this is one of the main things i like about poe over d3, i guess its just personal preference

somebody never played D2.

you run software development and think D3 had better graphics?

which game did u play?

Don't feed him guys.

I don't think 20 minutes is a fair play length for any game. Unless it crashes at the menu.

Well if D3 is so fantastic why not go back to it? I could write an ellaborate post on how the majority of your points mean next to nothing in any game (a closed beta one mind you)that stays true to the very definiton of "game". You sir, are the modern generation of gamer. A generation that spawned countless unimaginative, shallow and made for 6 year olds gameplay mechanics. A generation that says a game is bad because:

- bad graphics
- bad colours
- only DL at 600k

This is what makes a bad game. Right. And all in 20 minutes.

Sorry mods but...

GTFO, dont come back. Either if you are a troll or actually serious, this community doesnt need players like you, and you are NOT this game's target audience - quite obviously - and I dont want you jamming my game on Open Beta launch.

Interesting thoughts - Personally I have no idea what D3 was like before beta.

your opinion based on 20mins of gameplay is both accurate and informative.

Well 20 minutes of playtime is like... playing the first 5 minutes of Skyrim and then writing a review.