Soo… I know this is not as “technical” as some other posts, and just my personal views.
My experience in the first 3 days:
I was actually excited after watching the Campfire; mainly for a few key things that gave me “hope” into using the PTR for what it was meant for. During the last camp fire chat it was mention, the first few days of the PTR was to test the “progression”
Started a new char and got to grinding lvl 1-50! As I started to get the feel for how the new leveling system works, the new gear, skill tree points, I notice there was already a content creator already posting video after video of them blasting T100 pits with their legacy gear! Then, as with most influencers, a lot of people started following their example. I mean really, what was the point? What Builds? ->The builds were already powerful, nothing earned with the new gear, and had nothing to do with what the PTR was about.
Started a new character, and worked my way up from 1-60, finding gear, until I was finally able to do a Pit 65! The progression on the lower tiers felt GREAT, and I felt like I accomplished something and enjoyed “most” of it.
Bad:
• Doing Pits OVER and OVER. Season 6 Theme “Seasons of the Pits”
• NMD – Why do the exist still? Hardly any loot, no Glyph exp.
• Normal Dungeons – Again, why do they exist? Nearly all the good aspects are farmed off gear now vs having to gather them from these dungeons.
• World Boss – Love that they are a real challenge now, HATE that they drop so little loot, 1 item had a GA. Harder challenges should give better rewards, that’s what drives wanting to do them.
• Master working – With good gear really hard to find, the gambling system of “bricking” that item probably had me swearing at my screen the most of the time in PTR.
• Re-Rolling Stats – Without the little demon to give me 99B gold, I would never been able to re-roll gear. Most items took several billions to finally get stat I wanted, and rare stat on neck cost me 8B before it came up ONCE for my Sorc.
• 300 Paragon points? – Maybe when Horde is open this won’t be so bad, but right now doing Pits over and over again was the only major way to earn exp; and with 4+ runs per point at 230 to earn 1 point, I was so bored I gave up, and went to make new characters instead.
The Good:
• Progression - I enjoyed the feel of building my character, how I can feel the difference every time I upgraded my glyphs. I made every single class, tried out every build I could find online, died so many times and laughed hanging out with my friends, changing and trying different things.
• Gear – I LOVE that there are far less stats, and the ones on there seem “more” useful and makes sorting gear much easier.
• Tiers – I liked this idea, up to T1. Felt good getting more powerful and then the better gear drops and more things to do, like boss fights, etc.
• Character Scaling – I like the clean one NMD, No more Mindcage, No more needing matts for uber bosses. This felt much better IMO, and less clutter in my bank / bag.
• Rog – I think I had the most fun since the beta playing the ROG with just about any build this PTR! Please don’t nurf this…I’m beggin’ here!!!
• Runes – These helped A LOT, and I found them really fun.
• Group Finder – This was easy to use, made a few new friends, and didn’t feel “forced” to use in order to play the game.
What’s Needed?
• Sell all button - Gem / Salvage / I’m tired of having to replace my mouse because the damn right click button is worn out!
• Auction house… We need a place to find / trade gear without relying on Trade chat or 3rd party websites. Maybe add a cost to list based on what they charge, or a commission cost like the AH in WoW.
• Fix the horse – The poor pony still runs head first into things and gets stuck everywhere. The big kitty tracks better, but still has trouble anywhere near bridges and paths. Can we get rid of the “3” charges, or increase it?
• Spread out game play - Put something in the pits, something in NMD, something out in HTs, something else in a normal dung.
• Reason for T2-T4 – I found no reason other than to push how hard I can get my character to go to any higher Tier. Same loot drops on T1, good exp, etc… The progression vs drops felt like a bad joke and I was expecting more GAs, more Matts, and maybe a Mythic for World Boss / Boss Summons.
• Runes – More variety, I found myself using the same set on every character. Maybe different sets for different classes?
Non PTR ideas:
• Horse Cost - Lower the cost of the horse armor vs outfits. I think people would feel better about cosmetic horse armor they don’t see as often as outfits, if it was a lower cost.
• Cosmetics - Over all just need reworked, some great ones, some good ones, but I find most of them “Blah” and not worth buying. I own a lot of them, which leads me to the next item.
• Tattoos - Sell Tattoos separately from the outfits. There are a lot of tats I and my friends would love to buy, but we don’t like the outfits tied with them.
• Gifting – Allow gifting items, much like with WoW store, being able to send a cosmetic or pet to a friend or family member was a great gifting idea, especially with holidays coming up.
Conclusion:
In the current state(PTR), there needs to be some changes to the, RNG/GA, and character progression(master working, tempering, reroll cost) … As mentioned above, this will be “Season 6 – "Season of the Pits”
It feels like this season/PTR caters more to the needs and wants of the influencers and 1% hard core gamers that are more about the character “Push”, leaving the casual gamers request and ideas out to dry.
With what’s been shown and what I’ve played; unless the new class and expansion are mind blowing and amazing; I just can’t see myself playing very long after hitting that push (boring) cap; and I predict a bunch of other players getting bored of it really fast as well first few weeks.