Frustrating design on maps/minimap/respawns

Hey team,

Just a suggestion from a couple of guys with years in this genre as a favorite. I’m afraid to admit the likely thousands of hours played in it.

I’ll start with I’ve been in a dozen hours or so and am absolutely loving your game so far. You folks have SO much going in an incredible direction. Your pace of development is tantalizing. I’m hooked and excited with where you’re going.

However, you have a combination of features in this game that is going to be frustrating to the point of turning your target audience away. Its no surprise that the ARPG genre appeals to the min/maxers and completionists. I fit into this role for sure.

As much as I find so much of the game very enjoyable you have one thing that is frustrating me so deeply. its always there nagging at me. Its a combination of design features… all of which I love independently, but together are wretched.

  1. monster respawns - Every time we leave things respawn. No sweat. Thats a design and something that sets this game apart. I don’t mind it in the slightest. Even makes for some good grinding.

  2. Very large maps with an open concept - This is a deviation especially if you were to look at design choices for example between d1, d2, d3 becoming more narrowed and focused and smaller. I really like the larger, wide-open maps but it presents challenges… especially that its easy to miss things.

  3. Very important side-quests not announced till you find them that contain rewards that are critical… namely passive skill points. At least twice in the game I’ve found side quests with rewards like this “to the left” on entering or “to the right” that if I had not circled back I would have missed them.

And therein lies the frustration for a min/maxer or completionist playing this game. Everywhere I go I have to full clear all areas because I don’t know if/when these places exist and missing passive points is too much to pass up. However, every time I zone or town portal the whole place resets. Each zone is taking many, many times longer than it should because of the fear of missing one of these. Or… I live with the nagging, frustrating feeling that I’m missing out on quest rewards that are required to make my toon the best I can.

After hacking this through with my bud. (He and I are anxiously awaiting multiplayer) we agreed that the re-spawning and large maps are nice, but that this frustration was pretty high. Our suggestion… put pips on the mini-map for all available quests and color then as to whether they’ve been touched. Completely hidden quest-lines are awesome fun, but not a luxury you can afford with the other combination of design decisions you’ve made. The value you gain in fun from finding hidden quests is completely sunk with the forever constant sinking feeling that you have to search for them to not miss them for entirety of the game - made worse by the respawns.

That or take critically important rewards like skill points 100% out of optional quests.

Thanks for the game and taking the time to read the suggestion!

-FuzzyWeasel

No, it’s a current technical limitation which they are working to “fix”.

Like Llama8 said, the non-consistent area states are something that’s not intended for full release and the developers are working on a solution for it.

Good to hear. I searched for that before posting, but didn’t find it. Thanks for the info.

Find that just from time on the forums, or is it somewhere in the notes I missed?

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