I took some days off for this one, and boy have I played it :)
60 hours on my Monk - and I’m now very close to act 2 Inferno. I feel I’m ready so speak about the game from a more informed position.
First of all, I really love it. It’s fantastic and I intend to play it for quite a while. With that out of the way, I’ll focus on the negatives - to point out some rather unfortunate design issues. Now, this is just my opinion - and not set in stone or anything.
1. Loot design
They chose to make rares the best items. I know why they did it - and I agree with some of their reasoning. But their choice have made legendary items ultimately inferior. They will be nothing but prestige items or something temporary. Big mistake.
You don’t make legendary items inferior, and you don’t make them inherently superior.
What you do is make them EQUAL in power, but with unique aspects - that don’t necessarily have to do with power. This is one area where WoW loot design shined - because legendary items (or the stronger epics) had unique properties that made them stand out and be desirable.
Personally, I would have made legendary items have a higher chance of being superior - but have rares be equal when rolled with ideal stats. Aside from that, I would keep unique procs and fun stuff for the legendaries - so as to make them more interesting without being more powerful, necessarily.
2. Zero replayability for each individual class
Yes, this ties into their handling of skills. I know everyone loves the flexibility of the skill system - and so do I. I think they did this part right. But they messed up on longevity.
The way they’ve designed it now, means that there’s absolutely no reason to play again with the same class (not talking about hardcore mode) - and what’s worse, they’ve effectively eliminated ALL lower level items (including legendaries and set items).
There will never, ever be a long-term reason to care about legendaries or set items if it’s not a max level superior item. That’s a real shame.
It’s a real shame that the sub-60 game will be completely dead for everyone once they’ve levelled their classes of choice to 60. They’ve made the game be 95% about Inferno level and max level loot.
I’m not asking to go back to D2 skill system, because that sucked majorly in terms of implementation - but I can forgive that due to it being the first of the genre to even have a skill tree like that.
Smart thing would be to make a “talent tree” ala WoW - that mostly affected skills passively - and without major gimping (keep it in the 10% range). Just a way to customise and maximise the performance of a particular build or playstyle. This way you’d have a reason to level alts - and you’d have a reason to care about lower level set items and legendaries. It would keep the economy a lot more interesting - and it would extend the life of the game A LOT.
3. Bad balance between Bosses and “Packs”
The difference in challenge between bosses and elite/champion packs in Hell+ is ridiculous. Bosses are much, much easier - and if you’re used to raiding in any challenging MMO - they’re inevitable pushovers.
Elite/champion packs, however, are just stupid when they spawn with unfortunate power combos. Stuff like “Walled Arcane Molten Desecrator” is completely ridiculous if you’re a melee character.
Yes, it’s doable with a lot of hard work and boring kiting - but that’s just NOT good design.
It’s even worse design when you can just skip the vast majority of them, and run straight for the boss kills instead. This is how people defeated Inferno so quickly.
4. Ranged vs Melee
Once you reach Inferno, this becomes blatantly obvious. Yes, they tried dealing with their poor pack design with a 30% damage reduction across the board, but it changes nothing.
For melee characters, the game because a constant kiting/praying experience - because you just CAN’T take the punishment.
IF you can reach a level of gear where you CAN take the punishment, then the game will change into a completely trivial auto-win, because then you don’t have to move or do anything when tanking.
I’m sorry, but that’s not very well thought out.
Instead of making spawns have totally random attributes, they should have designed them more, and have some packs be a pain for ranged (like pulling them close) - and some packs be a pain for melee. This is not how it is in the game currently.
Those are my major complaints - and though it seems like major bitching, please remember that I really love the core gameplay and especially the potential of the game - if they wise up and change a few things.
