Strongholds
- From what we had, these felt really good. They were challenging, but not impossible. Two opened up towns. I’m not clear on the value of having another town, other than more vendors to check for stuff, but, I like the idea of new towns, new quests, new vendors, new challenges or horses, etc… I love the prospect of encountering new NPCs and getting new stories. It makes the world feel alive IF they have interesting info to offer me. I also like the idea of opening up way points within them or new encounters.
- To the latter, hats off on Kor Dragon. It wasn’t clear at first, but loved the surprise of it not being a town. The camp fire at front threw us at first two. Someone will probably get a laugh, but we were like “Oh, camp fire is a puzzle.” There are things we can click on now in the place, we need to put together the clues from the things we can click on to solve the riddle/puzzle… we likely spent way too long there since there was no puzzle to solve, but the idea of one was cool. Instead we learned that there was a buff from the fire. That was cool. Now with exp buff stacked up to 15 times, I could see where that could come in handy. We also learned of the unique legion event that spawned there. These were cool features.
- For the legion event, it wasn’t immediately clear this was a ‘unique’ group event. I think more clues in the town to tell the tail and why legion events occurring there could be helpful. Graffiti, lore books, signs, NPCs talking of the place after you’ve unlocked the stronghold could all be ways of adding to the fantasy of the stronghold and its events. I really hope you tie into that aspect more bringing the world alive as you unlock strongholds. There’s so much possibility with these and so far, dig what I’m seeing.
- PS - ghost steed, nice touch, lean into that in story / npcs please so much can be done here!
Map
- Big map was gorgeous, loved the asthetic, very dark / ominous
- I’m guessing / hoping it was just act I, but there was very little color in the maps overall
- The fog of war seemed a bit much at times, but never lasted so long to be annoying
- Traversing the world on foot really wasn’t the bother I thought it might be.
- I saw the stables, but wondered how much I’d really need horses - unless they added storage spaces or provided some other equipable benefit to my character progression
- I ran into a lot of ‘hidden walls’, exiting just right of main town, in certain dungeons, and random spots on the map. I’m guessing that’s all just beta bugs that will be fixed.
- Gathering seemed a bit tedious, I’d love for my pet/minion/something to go pick up gold and gather for me after the plant is pulled or whatever.
World Map Navigation
- Generally, navigation felt satisfying.
- The new areas to jump / teleport up and down felt good. I love the additional vertical and aspects to the map. If anything, I was jealous of the barb who jumped over stuff I couldn’t teleport from as a sorc, (however, I saw the zoom out video where someone figured out how to break teleporting, so I’m sure there will be a limit put on that). I would like to be able to teleport to wherever others can jump to, but I get some of that may be left to class differences, by design.
- Minimap felt small with no overlay to main map for navigation
- Map overlays I’m guilty of leaving open navigating dungeons, but I don’t love it as they tend to ruin the beauty of a gorgeously built map and setting, which we have in D4.
- Compromise - I like the idea of an user controlled minimap (my thoughts):
– Maybe a small, medium, large mini-map window size?
– Maybe a user customizable ‘zoomable’ view inside aforementioned minimap window? - It was a surprise to me that you really don’t do anything with the right thumbstick for map spinning or manipulation at all.
- I used the heck out of the pin a spot on the map and navigate to it - thank you for that!
- Any chance I can get multiple pinnings, Like go here, then there, then there. Its helpful for finding things (lilith alters) or communicating to party where you are going to go first then second for questing.
- If there are going to be static events, spawns, things I want to return to, then it would be nice to have a way to mark the map up so I can remember where those things are. Some icons and user definable text for the marker would be plenty.