Extended Feedback [WARNING: WALL OF TEXT]

PC General Discussion
1

DISCLAIMER:

  • These are my opinions, based on how I play the game. I go out of my way to have an untarnished experience without it being contaminated by streamers/metas/guides.
  • This is feedback, not looking for validation/discussion.

Feedback:

MULTIPLAYER:

  • Other people have absolutely ZERO positive impact on my game.
    1. They either ruin my game by killing my mobs or I ruin their game by killing everything before they can participate.
    2. Other players allow me to just sit around and AFK while they do all the work. I think this is bad game design.

Suggestion:

  • [POE ROUTE] Give an option to remove other players from my game entirely, except for seeing them in cities.
  • [ELDEN RING ROUTE] – Let me see their ghosts/death animations/funny messages they can post / summon them to my game if I want… but don’t let them interact with my world unless I summon them.

ADDITIVE DAMAGE:

  • All of the damage in this game seems to be additive when indicated with a “+” and multiplicative when indicated with an “x”
    1. The game doesn’t do a great job of explaining how important that distinction is.
    2. All these damage types just create confusion, and the illusion of depth.
    3. They also just create additional tiers for players to get screwed over with bad RNG rolls.
    4. The game does a terrible job of showing you your combined additive damage vs what damage is multiplicative.
      • The ONLY reason to not CLEARLY display the relevant multipliers/additive pools is to confuse new players, obfuscate powerful combinations and create artificial difficulty.
      • This increases the barrier to participate in the real end game.

SUGGESTION:

  • Combine all of the additive damage types into one “Damage” nomenclature. Get rid of Distant/Close/Wednesday/Vulnerable/Crit Damage/Whatever. If it mathematically goes into the additive pool, just call it Damage.
    • This will also collapse some of the tempering options, so instead of having a 1:5 chance of getting screwed, cause most of these damage types could just be merged.
    • If we’re going to increase the effectiveness of a multiplier, do that… All these additive damage types are just deceptive.

TEMPERING:

  • Tempering having the ability to brick an item is an exponential waste of time. The kind of players who want this, are playing PoE.

SUGGESTION:

  • Make the temper system work just like the aspect system. That system is great.

RESOURCES/LOOT:

  • Almost everything we get is vender/salvage fodder. Near as I can tell – everything that isn’t an Ancestral Legendary with a * affix is probably not worth equipping once you get into WT4.
    1. Why are we wasting time with the inventory simulator on items that are just gonna get salvaged/sold.
    2. All this does is make me waste time going back to town to clean my bags, instead of enjoying myself irradicating hordes of demons.
  • Everything that requires gold is really expensive.

SUGGESTION:

  • Just auto convert useless items to gold/materials, that way we still get the loot explosion, but we don’t have to waste as much time going back to town.
  • Auto pick up temper manuals / use them. They don’t need to go in my bags.
  • Auto pick up potions.
    • It’s literally just a waste of my time to stop and click on anything that isn’t armor/weapons I should care about.
    • Psychologically the more time I’m clicking on stuff/dealing with inventory stuff is less time I’m having fun. It disrupts the game flow, and takes me out of the zone.

SUMMONING:

  • Having to farm items to summon bosses adds nothing to my gameplay. It’s just another barrier to entry. If I wanted this kinda gameplay – I’d go play POE.
  • Why are summoning items going into my alchemy bag? Again we’re just wasting time with inventory management.
  • Why do I have to run through a tiny boss summoning dungeon in order to get to a summoning altar for it to tell me I don’t have the mats? Then I have to memorize what summoning items I need, port back to town, run to my storage, find the summoning mats I had to cram into storage because they were eating up space for potions/nightmare dungeon sigils… do some inventory management… then run back to my portal so I can play the game. It’s a massive waste of time for absolutely no reason.
  • Tracking down the mats to summon a boss is just a really irritating process.

SUGGESTION:

  • Redo these summoning rituals to work like Nightmare Sigils
    • That way players can just craft the thing, use an item in town, then port to the boss…
  • Summoning resources should just go into the same global inventory as your salvage materials.
  • If you’re still going to make people run to the dungeon and perform the ritual – at least let it pull the ritual items from the global storage, so you don’t need to run to town to dig through your stash or whatever.
  • If we want some kind of process to summon hard bosses, make it an actual formal process… have a central place in town where players start a quest where they are guided through the process of collecting the ritual materials as quest items so they can track everything… instead of just having to dig through all the item descriptions to try and figure out where all these things drop.
    • If the gameplay loop makes me want to alt tab and look it up – the ingame process isn’t well defined/explained. So just fix that. I shouldn’t need to look stuff up on the internet to figure out how to play the game. All these convoluted game design mechanics are just a waste of time.
    • If something is supposed to be a secret, that’s fine… but if it’s part of the end game theme park then it should just be transparent.

HELLTIDES:

  • These are pretty fun when I’m just running around smashing hordes and hordes of demons – but using the resources you collect on chests feels like a punishment.
    • I’m not sure what happens to these resources when the helltide expires if I don’t use them – they seem to just disappear – So I feel compelled to run around using them on chests before the helltides expire instead of smashing more demons…
    • This puts more strain on the annoying inventory management/forces me to port to town more often, and eats time I want to spend smashing demons.
  • Other players just incentivize me to AFK level or irritate me by killing my mobs. They also incentivize me to play builds that are hyper efficient, instead of builds that are actually fun. – so I can kill the mobs before they do.
  • Whenever I’m not being swarmed by demons, I’m annoyed that it’s taking too long for hordes of demons to come fite me. The game is at it’s best when I feel like I’m fighting the armies of hell, and getting to use use my build to feel like a lawn mower eating them up.
  • I’d rather have to lower the world tier because my character is weak, than have to run around looking for enemies in a hell tide. I CAME TO HELL FOR A FIGHT. FITE ME MFERS.

SUGGESTION:

  • Get rid of the items to summon the boss in the helltide. It does nothing. Either you have infinite of them or you’re sad cause you can’t farm the boss.
  • Get rid of the resource you farm from killing enemies in helltides to open chests, and make it so whenever you get another star/box of helltide threat/heat it spawns a demon that gives you a ton of experience/loot when you kill it.
  • MORE MOBS
    • SO MANY MORE MOBS
    • I want to feel like I’m doing lines of demon coke constantly. Send the demon FBI, the Demon Army, the Demon helicopters. Everyone. Also more loot goblins

THE HORSE:

  • The cooldowns on the horse just annoy me.
    • If I jump off my horse to fight something, then jump back on my horse and try to jump off to fight something else but can’t do my cool “Jump off the horse move.” because it’s on CD – It makes me not want to get off my horse and creates an awkward couple seconds where I just have to either get off my horse like a pleb, or sit around waiting so I can do a cool move and it completely kills the vibe. It ruins my entrance, Blizzard. IT RUINS MY ENTRANCE.
  • If I’m trying to get somewhere, I need my horse to not feel like I’m getting snagged on every jagged edge of every invisible wall.
  • When dash is on CD the horse feels like a snail. It’s awful.

SUGGESTION:

  • Make the dash CD shorter than the duration of dash.
  • Get rid of the CD to jump off your mount and do a cool move.
  • Just make the horse fast all the time. I’m literally only using it because I want to get from point A to point B. Getting stuck on demons/terrain isn’t fun gameplay – it just annoys me. I don’t mind getting yanked off the horse and forced to fight sometimes – but it’s just really lame when it happens cause you get stuck on some small mobs and dash is on CD. At least make it a cool mob. Like – in a helltide if the demon cops wanna give me a speeding ticket or something.
  • The terrain / jagged edges need some lube or something while on the horse. I want the horse to do some parkour to jump over corners/not get stuck on everything.

NAVIGATION:

  • There is nothing more annoying than trying to spam dash to move quickly, and then have your character do a 180 to turn around and climb back up a ladder you just climbed down. What even is that, I’m actively moving away from the thing…

SUGGESTION:

  • Give me a means to cancel/reverse the animation for climbing a ladder/rope.
  • If I’m moving away from a ladder, don’t climb the ladder when I hit dash.

BASIC ATTACKS:

  • Most of the basic attacks in this game suck.
  • Attacks that don’t hit multiple enemies aren’t fun to use in a game where you’re fighting waves and waves of enemies.
  • It sucks when you have an ability that doesn’t feel functional until you have a bunch of aspects/tempers/whatever.

SUGGESTION:

  • If an ability sucks in it’s base form, or needs an aspect to feel like a functioning ability-- just incorporate that thing into the base move.
  • Basic melee skills need to cleave by default. Every single one.
    • If it feels like the basic attacks are too similar, add some movement/different cone effects/omni directional/whatever for flavor. Example: A rogue basic attack could allow you to move without interruption while attacking in a small cone. Or do a short teleport to behind an enemy and do a small cleave or something. Basic attacks should be fun to use, and great for clearing weak enemies.

ENEMIES:

  • It’s really frustrating getting CCed as a player. Most of the times I have died have been because I was CCed, stuck on a mob, or from some on death attack.
  • The spiders/exploding zombies/enemies that put up physical barriers/slows are UNBELIEVABLY IRRITATING.
  • I’m all for having difficult content. I play lots of punishing games. I REALLY enjoy Souls-like games that reward skillful spacing/dodge timing/etc. When I play bad, I wanna die. Kill me, please. Make me a better player.
  • What isn’t okay, is when I CANNOT MOVE MY CHARACTER… and I have to sit there and watch while I die. Or when my character is smashing everything, then get’s stuck on something… that was hidden inside a huge pack of enemies, and it blows up in my face and one-shots me.

SUGGESTION:

  • STOP USING ON DEATH EFFECTS. The trash mobs in the pit / nightmare dungeons are more dangerous than bosses and it’s ridiculous.
  • Stop CCing the player/trapping the player in structures that can’t be destroyed in tight corridors full of exploding enemies/enemies that drop lightning orbs on the player.
    • There is a fine art to crafting combat that is fair, consistent and punishing to create difficulty. Spawning a bunch of random crap that just can wombo combo the player ISN’T that.
    • Generic trash mobs don’t need to be dangerous. They SHOULDN’T be more dangerous than bosses.
    • If you want to spice up the trash, create more special monsters like the Butcher that are a whole event on their own, that can show up and ruin the players day.

CONCLUSION:

  • Difficulty in this game is basically non existent. The game is either easy, or your character doesn’t work. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. It’s just an observation.
  • Personally I haven’t experienced anything in this game where I felt accomplished for prevailing. I either annihilated the content and it was satisfying, or I died because of some BS, or I died cause my character build is weak. It’s never been like "Oh man I just barely squeaked that out, I need to go walk the hype off and ride the dopamine high from beating a hard boss like in a soulslike.
  • There is a fine art to creating fun difficulty… and I don’t think there is the slightest iota of that in this game. I wish there was, but I’m not even sure how you do that in a game like this. I think if I had to suggest anything it would be to just embrace it, and focus on letting people have fun obliterating demons.
  • I think there is something fundamentally wrong with designing content for players who are going to going to play the game like a full time job so they can create content for the game. All they do is normalize the most extreme aspects of the game, and it ruins the game for anyone just following their own intuition.
  • This game has a bunch of completely pointless time syncs/attempts at appeasing players who are gonna get bored if they can’t break the game in a way that normal players will never experience… while simultaneously trying to fill the role of the casual ARPG.
    • I’m not sure why D4 doesn’t just embrace being the casual ARPG… It’s like they’re afraid to not appease streamers… so instead of just making a fun intuitive hack n slash for casuals to print dopamine… they’re trying to create a bunch of fake depth / obfuscate things to create a barrier between what streamers do from what normal players are going to naturally do.
  • Casual players aren’t morons… so it’s not like they want the game to be completely brain dead? They want options and the ability to theorycraft… they just don’t want to waste time or be gatekept from playing the actual game… or all the game calculations to make absolutely no sense without watching an hour long break down of how stupid the math is.

This is like an 80% brain dump on my feedback for this game. I just wanted to get it off my chest on a platform where the devs can capitalize on it or ignore it or whatever. There are probably some other things that I think need work, but if I spend one second longer looking at this wall of text I’m gonna pull my hair out.

TL;DR: Season 4 is a huge improvement. The game should have released in this state, but I think there is a lot of work that still needs to happen before I’d give this game a 10. I’m just a random crusty old ornery hermit though so take it for what that is worth.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Have a nice day.

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