Feedback (before maps)

hi,

wanted to give my summarized feedback on what I think works/doesnt work in the game for mainly the standard campaign experience (im at the end of curel act 2 rn). I'm focusing on the general gameplay experience and skipping the more granular balance and presentation of information bits because its week one of EA. For some context, I dont usually play loot or progression based games, I enjoy problem solving, pressing the action button and exploration. What made me try out the game is that it looks gorgeous as a dark fantasy experience (and Jonathans candid interviews). The 3 acts didnt disappoint. If the quality of that content keeps up acts iv-vi, i wouldnt have minded paying full price just to do the campaign and never start it again.

what works:
- mob variety is great. i actually cant believe how many different mobs there are and how few recolors.
- lighting, spell effects, world is all great. most of the skills are very satisfying to use. my favorite has been ice comet. you do a little twirl and extra bonus points for the long cast time on ice comet so you have a tradeoff to be mindful of.
- class variety/class fantasy is great.
- bosses are great. all of the boss designs are unique and interesting, some of them are also mechanically great.
- i love exploring the giant passive tree and the wide variety in skills and support gems
- voice actors are great
- the trial of sekhema is a nice change of pace and modern roguelike node pathing is very interesting to me
- some maps had a nice mob composition that allows for varied skill use
- ultimatum forced me to reevaluate my spell loadout, itemization and passive tree. it is a big jump in difficulty tho, as its a giant AOE dps check that has no precedent in anything that happened before (the reason for this is that in all mass based maps like end of act 2 you can create spacing with spells like bone cage).
- the social elements being there at the left was fun, it gives a nice early massively multiplayer game feel
- there was no interruptive nudging to the store. meanwhile ubi launcher popped up 3 times telling me about star wars dlc.

what doesnt work:
- maps are too big and the move speed is too slow compared to the size of maps (mostly act 3). this is my main complaint. i think maps should be at least 30% smaller and/or base movespeed should be at least 15% faster or both. but even if youre faster, youre doing too many of the same type of encounters on a map. especially if youre unoptimized with slow clear speed it gets grindy. i liked the map size in act 1 the most. how about this: give the player a ~35% speed buff when out of combat for 3 seconds to eleviate the pain of back tracking map branches.
- ui feedback on health loss is bad. i think getting hit or getting a big hit or losing too much life needs a distinctive audio cue, breaking your shield could use an audio cue, at least if you have a big shield.
- screen readability is bad, especially with all the fireworks. i died a buch of times where i didnt even realize im getting attacked (thus i wish for the audio queue). i put the healthbar on and still sometimes missed it.
- with that, i wish i could display icons for active spells over my healthbar, so i know how many firewalls or solar orbs i have active, when my next auto spell triggers etc. i dont really have time to look top left. it might even be cool to have an audio cue when my demon form cooldown resets. (maybe a system where people can choose their own on event audio cues? probably not but it would be kinda rad).
- bosses are great but a lot of the boss difficulty is "dont step on the red circle". this in turn makes me look at the floor the whole fight, so i cant appreciate the boss design. i would prefer having more bosses that force me to look at their character model, so i get to experience more of the fight.
- boss fights are quite polarized in that you might bumrush them but you might get one shot. im unsure about this type of difficulty. a war of attrition feels better in terms of skill expression and boss fight experience.
- i dont like the new audio cue on big boss attacks. its interruptive, too loud, sounds like the item drop and is in somewhat arbitrary relation to the attack animation and damage hitbox. i would like to be able to turn it off, if you keep it as is. there should be a better solution to this tho.
- i would appreciate more skill slots. a lot of the loadouts i come up with would need 1-2 more active skill gems being placed.
- i wish i could experiment more with 'builds'. my main fun is exploring game mechanics. resetting your passives is a big deal and feels needlessly punishing and something you have to plan for, so you cant really explore the passive tree and builds. in turn, the more punishing character progression is, the more people will just resort to guides, reducing play style variety and polarizing issues on balance. which is an extra shame with how cool all the skills look. a big benefit of having flexible point distribution is, you can use that to create challenges that require the player to adjust their approach.
- completely unrelated but i think you should make one of those vampire survivor games with the poe assets and systems or even better a real run based, hades like experience, where you draft skill gems and passives etc.

thats about it for now. so far, i had a blast with the game!