Bad:
- Ship combat is the most terrible part of the game. It takes forever, you repeat the same things again and again while praying to the god of random numbers that your cannons hit more often than the enemy.
- Ship exploration feels also punishing. Your resources drop fast and its hard to explore even this small part of the world map entirely without your morale dropping constantly.
- We need a better explaination of game mechanics in game. If you look in the in game encyclopedia you should see things like damage and speed formulas with some comment, stacking rules, rules for dots and lashes, and so on. Players should not need to read this forum to see how MaxQuest finds out those mechanics. Remember that the IE games were sold together with a thick rule book full of text and tables. Nobody should be forced to read this, but I would really like to see such info in the game.
- Pure cipher caster are bad at the moment. The damage separation between strengh and resolve made things worse. In PoE1 the advantage of ciphers was that they could cast infinite spells during combat ( at least in theory) when they build up focus while other casters had to rest. Now the other casters can throw their most powerful spells at once and have them back the next fight while ciphers need lots of auto attacks between their spells, plus cipher spells seem rather slow even compared to other casters.
- I put this under bad because I think its a balance issue: Its not that casters are weak but instead a combination of 2 melee classes plus dual wielding is too strong. Any combination of fighter, paladin, monk, rogue, soul blade and even ranger feels strong while pure casters and even single class chars have problems to compete.
suggestion: all class talents should scale with power level, like
rogue sneak attack, paladin FoD and defense bonus,barbarian carnage damage + area, ciphers soul whip, rangers wounding shot, spell effects, shapeshifted damage, and so on increase by x% per power level. I am not sure if it works (because I cannot test it), but at the moment combinations of paladin, ranger and rogue have lots of full attacks with extra damage or penetration right from the start, rogue + soulblade has permanent +90%damage (sneak + biting whip) multiplied with strengh + annihilation skill, fighter + anything gives permanent +50%graze to hit, hit to crit and speed (dual wielding style)
- Tons of game breaking bugs that were present in the first beta are still there, like infinite crits with the monk ability (swift strikes? I mean the upgrade to the attack speed bonus), fighters cleaving stance, citadels spirit lance causes status effects on all targets, monk fist lost on loading, . . .
- profiency system with useless weapon modals
good:
- I like world map exploration. In another thread we have said that could be more interactive, similar to the way the world map travel was in Storm of Zehir.
- I like how multi classing is implemented in general, though some balancing still needs to be done. (see above)
- I like the setting in general. Polynesia and colonisation are rarely presented in games. I also like that the places look brighter than in PoE1. There the world seemed very depressive with soulless children as the main topic, a tree full of bodies is the main attraction of the first town and obscure sects plotting in the darkness. While I like dark settings (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was great) this can be quite depressing if you have it all the time.
- I hope that chosing between factions has a bigger effect on the story than PoE1 (2 quests, a talent and a shop plus it is mentioned in one ending slide)
- I am looking forward to the more reactive relationship with party members, between each other and between them and the player.
neutral:
- The better graphics should be mentioned as good, but I do not play games for the graphics, but for story, exploration and game mechanics (such as combat). I still like to play the IE games, I think that many SNES games (e.g. Crono Trigger) are still much better than most new games and I also support new pixel art games.
- I do not understand why you changed lots of game mechanics that worked well in PoE1 (e.g. DR vs penetration), but I have the feeling the game improved over the different beta versions and maybe it can become good, we will see.