We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

Hello,

Overall I'm very impressed with this game so far, and it's a lot of fun. The freedom of character customization is great, and little design decisions like having the shopkeepers barter instead of using a currency, or the ability to enchant potions, are very pleasant surprises.

One thing that still eludes me, however, is how to handle the item linking feature in chat. I see in global chat people linking various treasure they've found, but all of my attempts to view the details of that treasure have failed. I've tried clicking while holding down various combinations of keyboard modifier keys, all to no avail. Also, I don't know how to put item links in my own chat messages. I imagine if I look through the forums, I'll be able to find the answers, but I'd prefer to be able to figure it out intuitively, or through a minor bit of trial and error, or a brief tutorial, etc.

Also, after losing my most promising hardcore character after an interesting discussion on build optimization in global chat caught my attention, I decided I needed to remove the distraction. Props to you for including an option to hide global chat! But, fyi, if there were an option to hide the global chat only while in combat areas, I would pick that over the always hide.

Lastly, I often find that doors, area change portals (including both town portals and zone exits), and treasure chests don't highlight and can't be clicked without holding the alt key. This was very confusing at first, though now that I've discovered the workaround, it's not too bad.

Thanks for making such a great game!

Been playing for a week or so now, I've gone through the base difficulty with one character and got to various points in Act III with several others. I'm a bit of a build butterfly, and tend to play lots of similar characters with different approaches.

Firstest impression was a little dodgy. I wasn't keen on having to pick a character name in a global pool, rather than picking any name and being identified to other players by account name- it meant it took a LONG while to find a name I liked and the characters like to repeat their intro speech which started to get annoying! As a self-confessed G.I.R.L. I'd have also liked a gender change option, but I deal with that by building weird Witches and Rangers that hot-foot it to where I actually want them to be in the skill grid in short order.

I love, love, love the passive skill grid. I would suggest the addition of a search of some sort to aid build creation, especially to find unique nodes like Golem Blood.

I'm slightly less fond of the skill gems, since if you play weird builds like me it can be a real job to get hold of the critical skills. I did a little dance when my Staff Witch found Leap Slam. Of course, this issue is fading as my stash fills with junk.

On a related note, I'd suggest an alternate system as an UI option to distinguish gem and slot types. A friend of mine is colour-blind and couldn't tell the difference between Strength and Speed gems, for example. (This is an emerging issue in gaming as a whole)

I have to say the single most glaring omission so far is the lack of a 'hide helmet' button. It's basically trivial coding wise, and many people, like myself, really like to have it. It would be simple enough to also have an option to override other players' hidden helmets on one's own screen, so those people with the (to me mystifying) utter hatred of this option can see the helm regardless. I'd be happy to buy a 'no-helm' microtransaction in all honesty- I'm not into bling or pets, but I like to see my character's head. Of course, this also makes customisation of hair styles and/or colours available.

Gameplay comments: Melee skills miss too much for inexplicable reasons. Cleave, for example, will happy go off even if you click empty space and your character bumps into a monster, but doesn't seem to ever hit anything if this happens. Frenzy is another big offender for that one. Charges could do with a more noticeable warning that they're about to expire, since keeping Frenzy topped up whilst constantly looking up into the corner of the screen to check it's refreshing is a pain, for example.

Ranged damage in general is over the top, I feel. I have two melee Rangers (TH sword and Dual Rapier) who both do very well at it, but can still often clear a troublesome room by switching to bow and spamming Ice Arrow into it for a few seconds despite having no skills improving their archery anywhere. Likewise, I find ranged mobs with Multiple Shot are more dangerous at short range than their melee counterparts. Elemental damage has a similar problem, in that even with 75% resist to Lightning I was finding bosses who used Lighting attacks (eg Oversoul, Piety) were doing far more damage than melee based bosses like the General. In fact, for 2/3 of the game as it stands Lightning Resist might as well be called Boss Resist.

In part, of course, the melee/ranged balance suffers from the usual problem that ranged mobs can shoot through each other, whereas melee mobs cannot walk or attack through each other, allowing the ranged mobs considerably greater concentration of force.

The skill control interface is good overall, but IMHO should switch with weapon swaps. This is a particular issue if you replace your basic attack with a skill (eg my Staff Witch uses Double Strike as her LMB attack) since as soon as you switch weapon set the slot resets to basic attack and doesn't switch back. Having two separate skill configurations for the two weapon sets would allow casters to have, for example, a 'fire' set and an 'ice' set, or allow other characters to keep a modified base attack after switching out to a bow and back. On a related note, support for binding additional mouse buttons would be nice- at the moment I'm using a programmable mouse but that really shouldn't be necessary.

Oh, minor bug perhaps- it seems a player set to DND occasionally sees trade channel messages if someone sends one whilst the player is using a vendor NPC.

Anyway, these are all intended as constructive criticisms, I'm really enjoying the game overall! I don't know if there's an Act IV coming, but if so I look forward to it!

This game is an awesome breath of fresh air to computer gaming.

However, there are some major, glaring issues that need to be properly addressed. I don't need to list them here. The forums have done a great job of that.

I would love to see this game hailed eventually as one of the greatest of all time. It DOES have that potential... minus the major issues, of course.

1. Story is IMPORTANT. For those only want to spend about 30-50 hours playing a RPG, not replay the game multiple times, a good story is absolutely important. I haven't play the whole game yet, but the thing that stops me playing is the impression from the forum that: there's no story.

2. Challenge on normal difficulty is larger than a lot of ARPG, such as diable 3 and TL2. A very nice setting.

3. Another thing that I don't like is the motion of the enemies don't react well enough to my attacking, making me feel I am attacking a bunch of wood with some DPS. Diable 3 is far better in this aspect. And this is the very basic thing that make every battle enjoyable--I kill an enemy, I feel like I 'kill' it.

4. It's so f** difficult to see the loot on the ground.

5. The mini map looks very very cheap. I don't like it.

6. Haven't try trading. But I don't think no currency is any improvement.

This is how I feel about the game.

"

maki1300 wrote:

First Impression.

VISUAL:
-UI needs improvements, make it more modern (it feels 90s) and readable. the color palette on the menu (character, options) lacks life and text needs to pop out more. (color-blind people might find it hard to read)

-Duelist spend too much time working out on his upper body, we may want to re-model that.

-improve movement animation ( a little more, make it more fluid and natural)

-improve some skill animations/fx (eg: cleave's "slash" fx)

-improve chat interface. if chat boxes w/ friends are possible (or something like that), that will be great

-the world is beautiful but make my character stand out. (i guess the crown cosmetic could help me here)

Gameplay (nothing much to say)
-boss fights are tough and fun but lack personality. (i've done act 1 and 2, havent reach act 3 boss yet)

-competitive PvP??? rank-pvp, pvp game modes: free-for-all death match/team death match/etc (maybe add this in the future)



Business Model
-better cosmetic items
-add taunts
-male/female class options ??

This

I currently have a level 8 Templar using a mace and shield and I have found the melee system cumbersome. There doesn't seem to be auto-targeting when you mouse over a target with the right mouse button held down. When you attack a target it doesn't show damage numbers or health bars or more importantly whether the target evaded your attack or you completely missed its hitbox. If you hold shift to try and pivot and hit targets infront of you often they are out of range of your attack even though they look like they are in range but since there are no damage numbers you can't tell if you hitting or not. The only dependable way I find to hit targets with melee is to individually click them. This is cumbersome when there are many targets to kill. The abilities look great. Playing a templar I can shield charge in and out of battle to recharge my energy shield.

I set default attack to Q and spam that while mousing over targets without any mouse buttons pressed and it works. It's a lot of spam though. Are there plans for right click mouseover auto-targeting for the default attack.

Scratch that. Are their plans to enable targeting while you have the movement button held down. If I release left mouse I can acquire targets and use my abilities individually. But when I have the movement button held down(which I have set to left click) I can not acquire targets until I release it. Compared to say spamming Spark which doesn`t require you to acquire targets this seems like extra work for melee. You have to hold down left click to move, release, then mouseover a target, then use an ability. I have always played action rpgs by holding the mousebutton down and moving it around my character to make my character move in that direction. I have never been a point and click to go somewheres player which seems like it would work better in this game.

I made another improvement. I set the move only key to q, default attack to left click, and Shield Charge to right click.

So after that synthesis which has made the game more fun for me are there plans for mouseover targeting while the movement key is pressed.

16 Templar now. I think I have the controls down. Left click for default attack. Right click for movement ability. Q to move. W,E,R,T for other abilities. S to stand and pivot. Lots of fun.(My S goes with my directional aoe which is on W).

Ive been playing since the weekend (saturday) and have to say it's great! (now lvl 29)

It took me awhile to get used to the build, gems etc but i got there in the end and found out what is what.

The only thing at the moment that i feel needs some tweaking is the walls etc of the map. What i mean by this is that when i'm behind the object (wall, tall tree etc) i would like to see a silhouette outlined or something like that as well as when fighting behind the wall etc there tends to be more than one mob and when i was starting out i ended up dying due to not been able to see a silhouette outline of some kind when i was close to the mob.

This is all at the moment that i see needs tweaking a little, other than that the game so far for me is great!

keep up the great work

EDIT (5th march): ive just got to Act 3 and have noticed that the map and mini map looks un finished. I am on about the "triangles" (see mini map in picture below)

GGG first and foremost - Job well done and thanks for the beta invite!

COMBAT

Grade B

- Overall I think it needs more polish in terms of fluidity
- Beginning combat is lackluster (this may turn some people away coming from games like T2, D3 or even Darkspore)
- Hit detection on certain moves seems really inconsistent (Glacial Hammer & Heavy Strike are examples)
- Impact from weapons should be tuned to become more brutal (2h seems to be a lot better than a 1h)
- Some attack animations could use some refinement or tuning (i.e. Templar trailer video 1:25 - biggest culprit here)
- Could use DEFENSIVE visual cues to help with Stats and Passive Skill Tree building (Block, Evade, Miss, Resist, Absorb float downward below your character)

AUDIO

Grade B+

- Not enough voice overs or taunting during combat
- Sound effects seem to be lower than all other despite me turning them down

GRAPHICS

Grade B-

- Creature design is really lacking (Monkeys, crabs, squids??? )
- Some of the textures are a bit off (Why is the sand on the beach shiny?)
- Gore seems to be lacking (No dismemberment, corpse explosions could be more gruesome)
- Many of the 1-h weapons look way to small
- Only issue I have with the UI is the map...it's not good (I've become accustomed to it but first time players will more than likely say wtf)

With that being said still a really fun & satisfying experience - GGG great work, keep hustling!

Started playing yesterday, and im having a blast. Can already see a devotion and consideration to this game/genre, that i didnt see in that -other- game (which shall not be mentioned), which disapointed so many fans.

Would be nice to eventually see both gender's for every class, and hopefully at least 2 more world area's, with area's added to the one's we already have. The only other suggestion i can think to make right now would be WP's in EVERY area, so we dont have to eat time running back thru place's we already cleared for that run..

Hello,
First i would say, that's nearly a week i'm on that game, and all i can say is that's a very good and addictive one, and i'm having plenty of fun running around and trying builds !

But i found something who could be quite irritating, the way the loot is handled when you're in a party with random people.

As a big newbie without a huge list of friends online to play with on that game, i don't have much choice than joining public parties on cruel for having a chance to survive (and it's funnier with a party than solo imho).

Problem is, i often found myself having to run in middle of dangerous mobs, just for securing the loot dropping for me, and quite often also, i found myself killed and/or someone in my party is camping on that loot waiting the timer run out for stealing it right under my nose.

I know that people answer that by saying "play only with friends or kick people having that behavior", but that's something so frequent in public parties that you would nearly always have to kick someone in your team each time (and if you happen to be the leader, that is not always the case).

I'm sure that giving enough time, i will get enough friends for not being bothered anymore by this, but as a first feeling for a newbie, it can be quite irritating to have to focus more on grabbing your loot in time than on strategy or the fight themselves, specially when you badly need to grab the required skills gems for trying new builds out.

I will be honest, i'm doing this post because today, i once again seen someone grabbing a quality added chaos damage gem that dropped for me, because he was standing on it and clicked a millisecond earlier than me.

Just my two cents, would it be possible to maybe change in a minor way the loot is reserved, at least in public parties :

Option A : timer a bit longer, but as i was asking around about what people was thinking about it, i heard a lot of "that would slow too much the pace of play, and spoil the fun for people who are playing with trusted friends". I agreed, but maybe allowing an option for setting how much seconds you want your loot to be reserved, so you can let it fast if you're in a friendly environment, and longer if you notice some kind of bad behavior from people in public parties. Or maybe just a fast timer for privates parties, and longer for publics.

Option B : They're a part of shared loot with no timer as usual, but the reserved loot is never visible to other people, so if you leave it, it stays and is lost for everyone. That would surely lead to change the loot dropping ratios, and would require some big changes from the devs, so that's maybe not possible.

Option C : As usual, but timer is longer, and you can right click on any reserved item for clearing the timer and allowing anyone to pick it up. Backside is all the micro when you're not specially interested by most of the loot and having to free for your mates, that i'm sure most people would not bother to do. Maybe it would be better if combined with a customizable timer delay as in Option A.

About the customizable delay, would be some kind of slider in option panel ranging from 5-30 seconds (or some generic choice like 'slow', 'medium', 'fast' affecting timer in a multiplicative way as it seems the delay is already affected by distance from the player), and maybe a few checkboxes allowing to apply the delay to only a few categories (blue, yellow, skill gems, orbs)

I know that would add quite a lot of work to the interface when the devs are already focusing on adding new stuff every patch (that's already awesome), but from my humble newcomer experience, that's really the only little thing i could say bothered me when playing that game.

I hope i wasn't too long and enough clear (sorry for my probables mistakes and grammar errors, but i'm not a native english speaker), and wish you the best for that game, who is already a great piece of fun and very enjoyable.
Keep up the good work guys !
Wham.