Initial thoughts and feedback about the game (long)

keogh1

This is a post focused on my personal thoughts/concerns about the game so far and essentially feedback for developers should they read.

I play a Control wizard and try to participate in as many of the events as possible. No aspect of gameplay is ignored.

*Class*
Overall the control wizard performs fairly well with good damage options and decent crowd control. Some of the powers could use some tweaking and description enhancement. "Class features" like "Evocation" clearly explain the first point spent but further upgrades are just "+5% buff", does that mean the buff now adds 10% total damage or that the 5% buff gains a 5% increase making it a total 5.25% increase?

~Storm Pillar is essentially useless, I was thrilled to get a new at-will until I put it to use... The charge time vs damage is so skewed it's out-shined by other at-will powers easily, the damage output is ridiculously low and its only advantage I've noticed is the anonymity factor in PVP, people who perch can cast it without revealing their location. Making it a channeled ability similar to "Ray of Frost" with a burst effect in place of frost's freezing effect could make it useful or changing it to throwing lightning bolts and 3rd arcs/bursts could also be useful.

~Chilling wind (another at-will) has inferior damage output to your very first at-will, the burst to nearby enemies replaces magic missiles 3-hit mechanic but with inferior damage all around making it a weaker choice. The circumstances of having enough mobs close-by to actually be more efficient than magic missile is insignificant. If it's supposed to be an upgrade/stronger power as it's much higher level then it should actually be more powerful. Why are my 2 first at-will powers still the best 50 levels later?

~Icy Terrain is an encounter power that looks good on paper but when you think about it is a waste, pretty much no damage output at all and crowd control benefits (freeze) only happens if the crowd is kind enough to stand still for 6 stacks, there are much more efficient powers that are much less niche to have slotted.

~Storm Spell doesn't list the damage it does, how am I supposed to make an informed decision about my build without basic information? How am I supposed to decide if a 10% increase to damage is worth investing points in if I don't know the original value (If the base is 100 damage and upgrade is only 10 more damage it's worthless to waste points upgrading for 10 damage only 10% of the time)

~Steal time vs Shard of the endless avalanche... Both have similar damage output and both have crowd control effects but shard only works for a 10 degree cylinder as opposed to steal times 360 degrees, shard doesn't look like an upgrade at all.

Feats are OK, there appears to be quite a few worthless choices which tends to lead to much more cookie-cutter character building. Nothing game breaking but a good selection of more useful feats could go a long ways towards in-depth character building instead of deciding which feat I'm forced to select is "least useless" to progress to the next rank.


*Auction Hall*
I am a big fan of auction systems and use them extensively in all MMO's, this one is currently in rough shape.

~Search functions are chaotic at best, level restriction is ignored entirely and "useable by me" sometimes removes more than it should cutting out items that should be legitimately listed.

~Sorting is completely non-functional

~Bag of holes needs to simply be removed from the game or flagged as "Misc" instead of "Bag", this is allowing people to scam others who think it's a container.

~Bids screen doesn't show quantities, if I'm bidding on a stack of items I can't see how many is in the stack once it's in the "Bid" tab so I have to go find it again to figure out if it's worthwhile to bid again.

The auction system needs quite a bit of work, there are some categories that are near impossible to search because something low level is flooding the market, control wizard blight armor comes to mind... makes it impossible to find higher level items because there's literally 500 of the low level robes for sale and search only goes to 400.


*Mail system*
Needs some work to bring it up to modern MMO standards, being able to select multiple messages or the entire column and delete at once is important for people who get lots of mail. Also more mail boxes... coverage is abysmal and being 5 outposts into a map and needing a mailbox is extremely inconvenient at best to have to travel all the way to the enclave and back.


*Daily quests*
At first I was quite content with the setup, then I started enjoying PVP and quickly started not liking them...

~Leveling too fast means uncompletable quests and partially completed quests. Often through the 30-50 range I have received the "Complete X 2 times" and done one and outleveled the range into the next and can't complete. some dungeons I haven't been able to do at all.

~Level ranges for skirmishes and dungeons needs to be relaxed a bit, a dungeon only being available for a couple levels is pointless and makes finding a group harder if the pool of players to choose from is only 2 or 3 levels.

*PVP*
PVP is fairly enjoyable, there are some balancing issues and afk'er problems galore.

~More maps please

~AFK'ers are a serious problem, essentially it's griefing your team making them fight 4 vs 5. Would like to see some serious repercussions for repeat offenders (temp ban from PVP and/or the like). I don't know what measures were put in place during the patch but running PVP matches afterwards I had AFK'ers in 2 of 4 matches and saw an opposing team member repeatedly jumping in their respawn point suggesting an automated circumvention that's rather simple for anyone.

~Point balancing... I am quite often out-scored by the rogue who just hides next to the pillar until it's taken then takes it back and does nothing else. That happens 10X and the rogues score is 3000 without lifting a finger while others are fighting, doing the hard work for say 10 kills and 20 assists and a handful of pillar conversions... 10X50=500, 20X25=500, 5X300=1500 for a total of 2500 points. The current scoring system encourages this behavior of letting your pillar be taken so you can convert it back for points. The shear quantity of points from pillar conversion also encourages bad play in the form of entire teams rushing to the first pillar for their 300 points instead of sending 1 person and rest to middle, they are more worried about the points than winning.

~Remove the "Pay-to-win" from PVP, mount speed is an advantage/disadvantage in movement around the field and chasing people down, same as everyone in PVP is a static level for fairness so should mount speed.

~Handicaps for lopsided teams are laughable (I have heard people say there is a handicap otherwise I wouldn't think there is one)

~Better *safe* area design for respawn would be great, I have seen rogues infiltrate both maps, I actually logged a kill today before the match started from a rogue getting into our respawn area before the match countdown was finished.

*Queue system*
The group finder system is grossly inadequate and can be a major source of grief and cause of people missing content. The queue doesn't match up classes well, it is not all that uncommon to sit in a dungeon queue for 30-40 minutes only to get in the group and it's 3 rogues and 2 control wizards... not tank and no healer. This situation combined with small level range windows for certain dungeons means I personally missed a few dungeons due to this. People bail on groups when they get in and there's no healer. PVP is affected heavily by this as well.


*Misc*

~Rogues in PVP... I'm guessing about 85% of my deaths today were from rogues hitting me with an attack that does 2/3rds of my entire HP bar worth of damage. I haven't played a rogue but whatever that ability is, if they get it off they get the kill. Seems a bit overpowering for PVP, I understand PVE where bosses have a million+ health

~Zone events don't pop up with the little quest-bar notifier with rank/score unless you zone in after the event starts, anytime I'm already in a zone it doesn't pop up I just get a chat message. I wondered what the deal with all the spies was in one of the zones until I re-entered after a skirmish/dungeon and it popped up.

~A group-vote kick option would solve many problems with AFK'ers in PVP and "Need" abusers in dungeons.

~Time frames for finding a group on dungeons could use some serious attention, PVP matches are extremely short wait and skirmish is pretty reasonable but dungeons is insane with 30+ minute wait times where you can't do much else. Trying to knock out a foundry and joining the dungeon completely resets foundry progress... which brings up the next issue...

~Foundry quest items don't auto-remove from inventory when you exit via the queue system, this can lead to people thinking they are actual quest items that are needed.

Sorry so long, while this is more of a "soft" launch than beta... it still is beta and player feedback is contributing. My apologies if I've hit on issues already beaten to death.