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[da dwarf lord]

Off topic: karkov is your avatar solaire from darksouls?

[Karkov]

Verily!  Used to be avidly into Dark Souls, still am.  Waiting with bated breath for 2.

[aristabulus]

...

Note to self: Get more health. >_>

Either get more health or stack up on ES. Also have resists as much as you can.

Additionally, get magic flasks that suit how you play.  Flask mods that have synergy with your style can be the difference between picking over drops and a respawn with expletives.  I burn a lot of my early low orbs getting good flasks.

[nenjin]

I like having the "Recover instantly when low on life" health flask as my primary. It's a good oh shit button.

And yes, resists. They're relevant on normal, even more so on higher difficulties. Good resists (50%+ on Normal) will spare you from getting almost instantly fragged by a ring of skeletal mages, those weird spitting lizard thingies, ect...

[ragnar119]

Well this is my review.
I played the game first time in closed beta, than little after it went in open beta, and again now.


WHAT I LIKE:

-character customization: I think there is no need to explain this, it is just mind blowing and no arpg in diablo style have anything close to it. With implementation of the trigger gems, the game got one big additional layer of customization. And the core how its implemented makes it possible to add more and more things. Skill design is also impressive, mostly because of how you can make very interesting skills thanks to support gems. From a normal boring fireball to a multi chain bouncing one. A lot and lot of possibilities.

-graphic/art style: The art is very dark and grim and I like it. The end of act 3 has one of the most dark/sick atmosphere i played in a diablo style game. The texture quality, special effects of skills, shadows all this things actually look good. The item and armor are also not more boring as it was. Some skill look very impressive, especially the ones you can buy (shock spiders, cold hand and similar)

-itemization: the itemization is done in a very deep way.A lot of uniques have interesting designs that caters to different builds. You can make builds around some uniques. I still hope with the new proc gems implementation that we will see proc uniques in the future, would love that.

-boss fights: when i was in closed beta, the boss fight sucked. But now i must say, there are actually done really good. The act 2, piety and act 3 boss are done different and work really nice. Even the simple brutus or weawer fights are not that bad anymore (but merveil still sucks for a act boss).

-lore: the plot is nothing special. Its not good, but its also not that bad, but the thing that i am surprised, and that actually a lot reminds me about d2 is the lore. And there is a lot of it, you can read a lot of option lines from npcs, and if you use some new terms you will get new dialogue options. Love the new lore places that are in act 1 areas or act 3 library, and the best thing is almost all of them are voiced over. It is little hard to grasp it all, especially as not everything is told through same dialogue so you need to connect it yourself. The setting is also somewhat unique with actual explanation for gem use in the lore.

-sound/music: its good, nothing mind blowing. There are some new tracks before the act 3 boss fight that are really good, but the thing that is actually maybe little mind blowing is that the voice acting is very professional,and I am surprised by it as GGG after all is still indie.

-leagues/races: interesting concept that will make a place where GGG can test out new things. I am not interested in ladder that much, but small new rules in this leagues do make things interesting and little new

-PvP: not a fan of normal PvP, but capture the flag is actually really fun to play with friends. Its not something that will keep you playing only PvP, but it is a nice short break from normal PoE progresion, and as GGG said they will implement new mods, this may be first arpg where i will actually like PvP.

-small things I like: flask system, currency system, map system


WHAT I DONT LIKE:

-character customization: this may sound strange as i said a positive things about it, but there is a side that I am not a fan of. The way core customization is done is not that much of my liking. The problem i have is it depends too much from items you are wearing. Because how sockets, color and links work, it actually can hurt you more, and prevent you from making the build you want, and limit the customization in a way. Too much item depending compared to other arpgs. The only actually progression of your character not counting items is the passive tree, and that is too little for me. It also makes geting good items very hard as it needs to have sockets and links that you need.

-death animation/combat feel: The animation of character are ok, but actual reason why the combat can feel bland is lack of good death animations. I mean, when they implemented the new scavengers, with the more interesting death animation (that is actually best death animation in the whole game), the game punch and combat feel a lot better when fighting them. (a gore microtransaction is a must buy and does improve the combat feel a little). Also some skill animation when repeating do look bad, as the character is using same animation over and over and does not change it.

-dungeon/area design: The problem i have with this is it just feels bland mostly in act 1 and act 2. Act 3 just blows away first two acts, and you can see that GGG actually got more funds to develop it more. If first two acts where as diverse and interesting as the third the problem would be smaller. There is almost no reason to explore the huge areas (with implementation of rogue exiles its little better, but not that much). There are no random quest, events, secrets, points of interest (something like torchlight 2 did really good).

-economy: I do not care about economy, so this aspect of game is for me a negative one. The reason it is negative is because of economy the drop rates are tweaked and they are much lower compared to games like tochlight 2 or TQ. The game is more balanced around investing a lot more time to grind or to trade, and I dont like that. They have a system to change it, but at the moment GGG doesnt want to, but i hope in future they will see and change their mind the same way they did for party/individual loot.

-small things I dont like: always online/lag, some balance problems that are normal for all arpg, the game is little short event with addition with new areas in act 3.


With all that said i would give it 8. The game has improved a ton from closed and open beta, and i have no doubt it will continue to improve

Now maybe the biggest positive thing not directly related to the game are the devs. And they are actually one of the best devs i have followed. A lot of communication with their huge community (now its probably bigger than 3 million accounts) and a lot and lot of patches and updates. The game will also continue to be like in beta, new updates every few weeks, bigger balance and content additional every 4 months, new acts a year and so on.

The reaction of people and number playing it is also really good. On steam its every day from the release (for a week now) from 20k to 30k. GGG posted that peek was over 60 000 people, and around 50 000 on weekends and that is a lot. I am really glad that at least the release is huge success and hope it will continue like that.

Anyway will be playing the game in the future. Have around 30 characters made on two accounts, most of them are level 1 from closed beta (so i can have all the names xD) that are waiting for their build to be planed out xD.

[Biowraith]

I'd agree with most of that, certainly all the positive points (well, I don't care about the PvP). 

I'm not really feeling the negative point about character customisation, but that may just be that I've not played long enough. 

Death animation/combat feel is a bit of a mixed bag for me, e.g. I really like the cold shatter death effect, but there's a few others that feel kind of flat (in some cases I continue attacking for a few seconds, not realising a target is actually dead).

I'd like a bit more variety/flavour in the skills to cover other themes than the 3 elements - stuff like nature, shadow, etc.  I suppose there's a certain elegance to the current setup, but as an altaholic I love variety on that front.

I definitely felt the itemisation point on my summoner witch - by the end of act 3 I was still using stuff from act 1, but I'm not sure how much of that was due to being a summoner build and so less gear dependent (and +minion gear apparently being in short supply in Normal difficulty).

My pet peeves are:

Desyncing/lag, especially since so far I've only been playing solo (so "shouldn't" have to deal with that sort of thing).

The map - I'd like an option to have it in the top corner, or to adjust the translucency (edit: possibly I can do that, despite it being a pet peeve I've not really investigated the options), as I find myself wanting it on all the time else I get a bit lost and/or try to run down dead ends too much, but on the other hand I don't really see or take in the action as much because my focus is on the overlaid map (so I miss a lot of the art and animations).

Zones resetting when you've not been in them a while - I'm guessing hardcore veteran players probably like this for whatever hardcore veteran reason, but it bugs me when I die far from a waypoint/portal and in addition to having to trek all the way back (which I accept as a penalty for dying without having set up a portal first) I find the area I have to trek back through has not just respawned, but completely re-randomised and re-fog-of-warred - I essentially have to play that level all over again to get back to where I was.


Overall I'm really liking it though.  The character customisation is the obvious big draw, and I hope they expand it even further with new skill types, item types, and so forth.  At this point I've probably spent as much time planning and tweaking builds as actually playing the game (despite not having experience of later difficulties to be able to plan properly).

[Descan]

There is a map option, yes. You can increase/decrease transparency, and put it in the top-right corner (Though I haven't found if I could move it from there, I CAN make it overlay my screen just by pressing tab, if I need the detail)

[Aklyon]

Zones take 15 minutes (unless its changed at release) to despawn. (side areas take less, but they are side areas.) Unless you have no waypoints nearby and no portal scrolls, barring superlag, you can almost always get back in 15 minutes.

And it you can't, you get more experience anyway.

[nenjin]

The gear thing ragnar is talking about does come in later. Like I said, the late game becomes about farming for the right gear, and the crafting mats, to make it what you want. The gear you want is behind many layers of RNG and it takes farming to get through them.

If you're not obsessed with maximizing your gear, it's not super frustrating. But it does come up. Where you've gotten a sweet weapon but it needs more slots, different colors and better links. Eventually you end up settling because you don't have the mats to try for more.

So there's part of customization that does feel like it's not entirely in your control, that you're at the mercy of.

[kcwong]

Yeah, at least on paper, I find spectres pretty underwhelming.

Have you tried voidbearer and flame sentinel spectres? Raise two and you can proceed to melt faces.

And you can get more spectres from passives. It's up there with Static Blows.

[TherosPherae]

Like I said, the late game becomes about farming for the right gear, and the crafting mats, to make it what you want.

Well, I guess it sort of does, if you want to grind about a thousand times more. If you don't, endgame is all about finding shit you can offload to some other sucker for orbs, with which you can get (usually) worthwhile gear; since you can easily afford something better than you could roll with a chaos orb or two.

Also, I saw someone mention selling regrets and fusings to the vendor for alchs and chances earlier - I recommend you don't if you want to get the most out of your stuff. If trading with other players is anathema to you, go ahead; but otherwise you can usually find someone willing to give you a chaos for a regret or a couple fusings, making those orbs far more valuable than the alchs and chances you would get otherwise.

[Karkov]

Zones take 15 minutes (unless its changed at release) to despawn. (side areas take less, but they are side areas.) Unless you have no waypoints nearby and no portal scrolls, barring superlag, you can almost always get back in 15 minutes.

And it you can't, you get more experience anyway.

Zones last from 8-15 minutes.  No I don't know why it's arbitrarily this way, and I also have no idea what determines how much gets what time.  I assume main thoroughfares get 15 minutes and everything else gets 8 or some random number depending on how big the zone is.

However, a rather interesting fact is that if you hold control and click on the portal to a new instance (even on the waypoint map), you can actually create new instances right there.  Really good for farming areas that you don't want to wait for the map to despawn on.

[Biowraith]

Zones take 15 minutes (unless its changed at release) to despawn. (side areas take less, but they are side areas.) Unless you have no waypoints nearby and no portal scrolls, barring superlag, you can almost always get back in 15 minutes.

And it you can't, you get more experience anyway.

For me it's mostly been when there's a level with a waypoint followed by one or more levels with no waypoint.  If they're fairly large levels I can easily use up those 15 minutes exploring to find the exits of the waypoint-less level(s) and then some more trying to find the next waypoint (edit: and hey, I might go make a sandwich or something too), such that if I die far into that process it turns out the original waypoint level has reset.  And if I'm really unlucky in exploring to rediscover the exit I sometimes find the waypoint-less level(s) have reset too.

Possibly I'm just not fast enough at getting through the levels.  I do try to remember to set up portals at the start of each level, but if things are going well I can get caught up in bashing/blasting/stabbing heads and forget.  It's not a huge problem, just an extra layer of frustration I'd rather do without.

[kcwong]

Zones take 15 minutes (unless its changed at release) to despawn. (side areas take less, but they are side areas.) Unless you have no waypoints nearby and no portal scrolls, barring superlag, you can almost always get back in 15 minutes.

And it you can't, you get more experience anyway.

Zones last from 8-15 minutes.  No I don't know why it's arbitrarily this way, and I also have no idea what determines how much gets what time.  I assume main thoroughfares get 15 minutes and everything else gets 8 or some random number depending on how big the zone is.

However, a rather interesting fact is that if you hold control and click on the portal to a new instance (even on the waypoint map), you can actually create new instances right there.  Really good for farming areas that you don't want to wait for the map to despawn on.

You can also Ctrl-click when you return to town. That allows you to see which player is in which town instance, so you can meet up with your friends.

[nenjin]

My no death streak has ended. Died once to the Act 2 boss, which I kinda consider a BS death since it was the tentacle slam.

But then I went all kinds of stupid in the Catacombs. Suddenly jump 4 levels of enemy difficulty, added to them ALL being frost based, and me tired as shit, and I died three time in the same level.