Introduction:
I’m a 26 year old player, who has played Path of Exile in waves (like most other people) ever since 2.2, though for fairness, lets be honest and say that i didn’t quite understand and play the game “proper” before 2.6 came around.
Diablo 3 never enticed me due to the never-ending rift mechanic, at least Path of Exile has some variety to it, though you had to run the same 4 acts 3 times.
Currently i also have my eye on Wolcen, but regardless, my point of giving an introduction was to create a sort of basis for people to understand and interpret what i say/mean.
PS. currently have a LVL 49 Necromancer
Thoughts and notes
So here goes my initial thought, impressions and notes i took during my first playthrough.
The list is compiled in a chronological order, as i just wrote down while playing through.
The list is noted with X.Y.Z.
X being the initial thought/note/impressions.
X.Y being the comment.
X.Y.Z being an after thought, after having finished my play-through
1. The Primalist slam at the character select screen strikes me as a bit slow
1.1 Some slight clipping of rocks at the feet of Primalist during the character selection
2. Kind lacking an APPLY/CONFIRM/OK button for the settings that can be accessed through the character select
2.1 Just to ensure one that the changes you’ve made are accepted and actually changed
2.1.1 It appears as this wasn’t specific to the settings menu that could be accessed through the character selection.
3. The using abilities tooltip at the start of the game covers the “mana” bar
3.1 Don’t know if you call it mana
4. The tooltips are quite big compared to the text they contain
5. Liking the auto-loot of gold
5.1.1 Why aren’t crafting materials auto-looted? I just wish for some consistency, either have crafting materials and gold be auto-looted or have no auto-loot at all. Each option comes with pros and cons, which i’m sure of, that you as developers are aware of.
6. The player arrow on the minimap could be more visible and a brighter color instead of darker color
6.1 Much like the quest arrow
7. A better introduction to let players know about more basic things such as “This is your HP, this is you mana, EXP bar, etc.”
7.1 For example i don’t currently know what the 0 above my health number is.
7.1.1 Later learned this it is my “ward”, similar to a decaying energy shield (PoE)
8. Could be nice to fade the “Press enter to open…” after inactivity.
8.1.1 This relates to the chatbox and i later learned from a friend of mine, that i could just disconnect from the chat all together, though i feel like that is a patchwork solution
9. The icons for summoned skeletons are quite big
9.1.1 Icons in general seem rather big and perhaps their identifier shouln’t be the shape of an icon, but the color scheme and overall shape, much as you have a color scheme for the void monsters. I suggest taking a look at the Coca Cola logo, that is recognizable by color and general shape, you don’t have to read the actual letters before you know what it is.
10. Remove dialogue icon above head after you heard what they (NPC) had to say
11. Let a dialogue exit, if you enter dialogue with another
11.1 Example; If i speak to Isfarger, i have to say goodbye to her before i can start another dialogue
12. Why is Trader Peartron going from standing still to combat ready and back while i speak with him?
13. Remove transparency of overhead icons on NPC
14. Might wanna rethink where the text “Hold shift and right click an item to buy or sell” is positioned, i tried a lot of other things before i read that.
15. Please change the description box to be static in position when hovering an item, instead of the those incremental movements that it can make when moving the mouse just a bit
15.1.1 By far one of the most annoying things i encountered while playing the game, it really slowed down the pacing of the game and in general felt horrible when i wanted to compare items
16. While i for now may like the feature of not having to click a door or the like to enter a new zone, i foresee that it might also be source of some frustration in the future, where it possibly screws you over more than it would help you
16.1.1 Can confirm after i’ve “finished” that it is source to much frustration, especially combined with no instance retention (i can’t leave a zone and immediately come back without it having reset)
17. A description tooltip when hovering stats on the inventory screen would be a cool and welcomed thing, if possible just make it a shift+mouse hover thing or something.
17.1 But for now i don’t know anything about void, necrotic and poison, i can imagine what it is, but what i think may not be right
18. World asset transparency
18.1.1 Noticeably many examples of world assets like tree or other structures obscuring my view of my character
19. Please include a confirmation passive point allocation
20. Debuff text for “Mark of death” on enemies would be nice, textual below their health, like Path of Exile
21. In the"Skills & Specializations" menu, when hovering a skill it says “cost: 3”, but 3 what? I can imagine the blue text color refers to mana, but would be nice to have it spelled out, especially in an ARPG, where clear understanding of the text is often key to understanding different interactions.
22. For the “Marrow shards” skill, change the mana cost from 0, to a red 9% health or something, instead of only showing mana, let it show the cost of whatever ressource and then add mana or health to the end of it.
22.1.1 Example “Costs: 0 mana” to “Costs: 9% of max health”
23. Mark of death visual needs to be more accurate with area of effect
24. Remove the minimap when the overlay map is enabled
25. Just realized there are destructibles, might wanna have a tool tip about that or something
25.1.1 Please note how many notes i managed to take before discovering this.
26. Please align the position of the “Unallocated skill points &” and the “Unallocated passive points” next to each other.
27. Why is the HP bar above minions and own bar a gradient of green, and not just a solid color?
27.1 Why have green bars, when the health bubble is red?
28. Please consider including a colorblind color scheme for the game upon release.
28.1.1 I for one am red/green colorblind
29. When getting a HP bar for the enemy/ally, when hovering over them, please make it prio. Enemies
29.1 Boss>Elites>Rares>Magic>Normal, or whatever naming scheme you use in last Epoch.
30. Storywise, i’m just kind thrown in there, i don’t know why am helping this girl and the fact that i would just grab a relic (the shard) of such power seems a bit off, but that might just be me
30.1 In a way, i just seem like a complacent idiot without my own ambitions, if the character ambitions could align with the quest, sure i would buy into the acolyte taking the shard for more power or something, but right now, its just “Please save my girl, yes sir, saves girl, here takes this artifact and guard it with your life, yes maam”.
31. Please have the “Summon skeleton” tooltip upon hovering to be dynamic. It says i can only summon 3 skeletons, but through the specialization i am now able to summon 6.
31.1 While in the topic of descriptions, please add a damage description to the tooltip when hovering, one that specifies how much damage the skeletons do on hit, preferable one for each type (archer, melee, caster)
31.1.1 A general note for the game
32. Thank you for not including ID scrolls and TP scrolls!
33. Retain explored parts of the map when going from zone A to B and back to A
33.1.1 Ties back to my comment on 16.1.1
34. Pressing C, cancels the overlay map
35. Perhaps phase minions, so i don’t get stuck or get lowered movement speed
36. Much like PoE, a distance resummon of minions would be cool, since they sometimes fall significantly behind
37. I get the grim dawn-esque looting of crafting materials, but why do i have to pick them up and why are they not auto-sent to material stash?
37.1 We autoloot gold, but not crafting mats, gets kinda irritating at some point
38. I like the fact that i don’t need to tap the portals to activate them, like one has to in PoE
39. Would like for the world map to be moveable
39.1. Mainly so that i can see the quest log along with exploring the map.
40. The zones are rather big, but i’m not sure i think this is a bad thing
41. Please remove the ability to click the chat line to enable text writing
41.1. It overlaps with NPC dialogue options
42. NPC dialogue options selection is wonky
42.1. Doesnt visually need to be a long bar, but would be nice with a long bar for each option, to select it
42.2 Example, sometimes if i hover the option text, i can’t pick it, but if i go to the right of the option, it then highlights and lets me pick it
43. Please differentiate between stats
43.1. Increased minion damage AND increased minion spell damage both display 126%
43.2 Logically, i would then believe i have 126% inc. min. Dmg AND 126% inc. min. Spell dmg.
44. With the big areas/zones, the quest markers/direction guide are much appreciated, but i don’t know if they should be part of the game, allowing for some sense of exploration.
44.1 The game can feel very funneled with the markers, discouraging you from following anything else, which i think might be a shame, but if you remove them, the zones will have to be smaller or else you just get lost and spent to much time searching for the quest.
45. Loading into “The Maj’elkan catacombs” took such a long time that first time i tried to get in, i thought the game was frozen and terminated it through task manager.
46. There seems to be a"lag-spike" whenever multiple enemies fire a projectile simultaneously
46.1 Might be made worse with my skele-mages firing back.
Encountered (possible) bugs.:
1. The chat box “text line” flashes at the start of the game, untill one has pressed enter twice
2. When hovering over items in the shop menu of trader Cordin, i suspect all traders, the items on the top row may have their description go out of bounds, please change so that description text is always displayed on screen and not some of it out of screen
3. Double transparency on the minimap and “area level: X”.
4. Can’t open a portal while mouse is hovering over the inventory window
5. Some zones dont have overlay map
5.1 nor minimap
6. Some zones aren’t named on the world map
7. It’s possible to summon wraiths out of bounds
7.1 Happened behind the railing in a lvl 27 zone (Imperial Thetima)
8. Summoning two golems, has one of them being small and other at regular size
8.1 Upon resummoning, i believe it happens the first time you skill into the two golem thing and summon the second golem
So this concludes my first playthrough notes and i want to end post with some final comments.
I had no focus on skill balance nor could i, having nothing to compare it to.
Overall i think the game has a solid foundation onto which a lot of cool things can be done.
I like the principal idea of the crafting, but then agian, i played a lot of PoE and thus i’m discouraged from crafting, since crafting in PoE carters to the 1%, so i don’t have that many comments on it.
Of course there is a lot of polish needed for this game to be on some 2017/18/19 standard and not graphically but also under the hood. The game runs fine, but could definitely do better in terms performance, only had one crash throughout my playthrough and that one other time where i terminated the process myself.
I like the core concept of the skill system, but there needs to be a lot of innovation done in regards to the passive points. I wish for it to feel more impactful, than just stat boosting, i wish for it to be more build defining.
If any comment lacks some elaboration, please let me know and i will try my best to recall my comment and expand on it.
