[IMPRESSIONS] Path of Exile - (NOW OPEN BETA GO PLAY IT!!!!)

[kaosweilder]

If I had time I would play with you all. I like the ranged bow class.

Doom told me yesterday that Duelist class (melee+range) actually is better than the Ranger (ranged) class for bows

[adoomgod]

The game still has more problems than I thought but is infinitely better than when it launched. I have not reached the end but here are things to note:

Like Diablo 2, PoE has four difficulties that serve as "new game+". You beat one than unlock the next with higher level monsters and loot.
Issues- there are four difficulty levels, beating the game four time feels like a drag.

After you beat all four you unlock "chaos difficulty" which is significantly harder (prepare to die) and where you can find most uniques. Right, so the problem I've read, as I haven't reached it yet, is that there aren't many builds actually viable for chaos. It defeats their whole "super diverse" system if you Àre forced to build a certain way for any hope of survival.

Unique item issues - there are only 66. 66 items, five class, all able to have more or less the same passives. Torchlight 2 - 1400+, four classes, each actually having a significantly different set of skills. They could have worked harder here to make more uniques. However, considering that their spells are still subject to be changed dramatically, there is little incentive for them to make uniques atm. Because the uniques are sort of built to compliment builds, which aren't static yet.

Pacing- feels slow. Torchlight was much faster. I'm not just saying the rate at which you kill things, which is about 2 seconds too long for my taste, (trust me it adds up) but your movement speed is annoyingly slow IMO and movement and combat feels... Clunky. Flinching every time you get hit by a spell is not fun.

The much toted skill system and skill passives. First, buffs and curses are annoyingly short lasting. It makes me want to not use them but you need them in chaos. Second, as mentioned above, certain skills and passives just seem to get no love. I think they're moving in the right direction though and as the skill passives become more unique and deverse, so will viable builds.

For witches it's usually bloodmage/ice/minorsummons or summoner/fire.

I'd also like it if when speaking locally a speech bubble also appeared over the person's character who is speaking. I can't see who is saying what in combat.

Finally, the game just feels a bit lonely! For an mmoarpg I find it strange that you tend to solo thru level 40. Also you can only share xp with people within 2 screens of distance. I'd like this to be 3 given the slower pace of combat.

[Ragnar119]

Like Diablo 2, PoE has four difficulties that serve as "new game+". You beat one than unlock the next with higher level monsters and loot.
Issues- there are four difficulty levels, beating the game four time feels like a drag.

Yup. It gets boring because beta is generally short. When act 3 comes, they will remove one difficulty. But still, i think the game will not be longer than 10 h max.

After you beat all four you unlock "chaos difficulty" which is significantly harder (prepare to die) and where you can find most uniques. Right, so the problem I've read, as I haven't reached it yet, is that there aren't many builds actually viable for chaos. It defeats their whole "super diverse" system if you Àre forced to build a certain way for any hope of survival.

There are no higher chance to drop unique in chaos, only better uniqs will drop in chaos, but not more uniques.

Every build is viable (if you dont f%@# it up), but you'll need good items to go to chaos. Some builds dont need good items. Generally its matter of balance. Chaos should be balance so that you need good items to be possible to play it. And it works for most builds, but for few it doesn't. Viable builds are not builds that are OP and can do chaos with crapy items. Viable builds are builds that with good items can do chaos. If with good items you can't do chaos, then the build is not viable.

Pacing- feels slow. Torchlight was much faster. I'm not just saying the rate at which you kill things, which is about 2 seconds too long for my taste, (trust me it adds up) but your movement speed is annoyingly slow IMO and movement and combat feels... Clunky. Flinching every time you get hit by a spell is not fun.

Yes, its much slower then torchlight, but that doesn't mean it's worse because of it. But the feeling of hitting the ememes is somehow clunky.

The much toted skill system and skill passives. First, buffs and curses are annoyingly short lasting. It makes me want to not use them but you need them in chaos.

Curses last more than 10 seconds if you lvl them, especially if you use support gems.

Finally, the game just feels a bit lonely! For an mmoarpg I find it strange that you tend to solo thru level 40. Also you can only share xp with people within 2 screens of distance. I'd like this to be 3 given the slower pace of combat.

Its not a real mmoarpg, becouse you can solo all alone. Why didnt you call people to join you? At any time there are almost 400 people online.

I have 3 big problem with the game. Things like unique items, balance, more skills, all of it will come with patches. The one problem are random areas, witch are generaly boring, with no random events, random mini bosses or somthing like that, to make it more fun to explore.
Second thing are monsters. There are too little difference, and all have only 2 basic behaviors (a ranged and a melee). The game needs a lot more different monster with different abilities and ai behavior. They are improving this segment, but it is going to slow.
Third thing is spamin of same skill (with few curses and auras). They can easyle fix it with coldowns, but i dont know why they dont wont to implement it.

From the devs log and thing that will be implemented, the game will need a lot of work, and i think we won't see release this year (probably only open beta). If they implement all the things that they said they will, this game will become really impressive.

One thing that i love is playing my summoner. I think in PoE the summoner is one of the most fun summoners to play from all summoners i played in other arpgs. It's even better than my necro from d2. Some people call it boring, but for me, it is relaxing.

[wolfmane]

They can easyle fix it with coldowns, but i dont know why they dont wont to implement it.

That's actually not a great solution so I agree with their philosophy to not give everything a cooldown. Cooldowns will just tend to bog or slow down the gameplay even worse and create player resentment. The problem to solve is why is there only one viable ability to use? If you can solve that problem by providing more abilities that are interesting and useful then you don't need cooldowns. That was one of the mistakes that WoW continually made. They wanted to force people to play a certain way so they implemented cooldown heavy abilities to force you to rotate the abilities around. It's an artificial solution to constrain players into a certain pre-defined or expected behavior that ends up being bland and uninteresting. ARPGS are based on action and cooldowns only interfere with the 'action' part. Cooldowns have their place, for sure, just not in the way you wish they would use them.

Every build is viable (if you dont f%@# it up)

Then all builds are not really viable then, are they? There's a problem with the developer if they build a skill system such that a hidden fundamental game mechanic choice locks you out of accessing the content they've developed. It's self defeating for them to do so and represents, to me, a failure on their part to provide a quality experience.

[Ragnar119]

Every build is viable (if you dont f%@# it up)

Then all builds are not really viable then, are they? There's a problem with the developer if they build a skill system such that a hidden fundamental game mechanic choice locks you out of accessing the content they've developed. It's self defeating for them to do so and represents, to me, a failure on their part to provide a quality experience.

I'm little low on english, but what hidden mechanic? How can all builds not be viabel if you know what are you doing. Here builds are tied by one skill that you will use the most. If you go for cleave,and go for pasives that affect it, it will be viable,if you go for mana and spell passives, normal that it won't be viable. That was I thinking when I sad to fu*& up build.

[adoomgod]

Not everyone knows what they are doing. I see a LOT of people asking for respecs. And again, a lot of the skills serve little to no purpose end game. Summon skeletons, cold snap, all lightning skills. These are not viable. You are just plain wrong atm. Some builds fail not out of poor planning but out of poor balance. They are trying to patch this up though.

[amb2010]

I'm with Ragnar on this one I guess. You sit down, create a class and go with it. If you want to be a claw-ice witch, it works. If you want to be a melee-summoner, you can. If you want to just spam ice spells cause they're OP, you can. Sure they aren't all viable at every part of the game but they work for a majority of it. Obviously if you go claw-ice witch and start pumping points into strength, it's not going to work very well later on because strength doesn't really provide any benefits to a claw-caster but that's just the nature of throwing points around without seeing what it'll actually do. Every RPG skill system allows for that mistake however so you can't really blame PoE for it. I winged a curse-bow ranger and a fire-summon witch and they're doing perfectly fine so far.

I have yet to see a build that simply does not work. Sure there's tons of people running around saying X build doesn't work in chaos, but you need to remember that's content you aren't really meant to solo and that's what people are doing. Just because a class isn't perfect at solo'ing doesn't mean it isn't viable, you just need to get someone to play with.

Doom, skeletons are amazing. People are just using them wrong, they aren't tankers or damage dealers, they are simply cannon fodder. You don't set them down at the beginning of every fight and let them have at it. You place them stategically during the fight. Monster gets past your zombies? Set down a skeleton right before it and it'll get blocked. No choke point to funnel monsters? Place some skeletons and funnel em into your zombies and AoEs. They just require some strategic placing in order to be useful and because they're fairly spammable, the fact they last 20 seconds isn't a big deal.

The game is built around specialization as Ragnar said, if you want to use curses effectively you must build into it. Same for any other skill. Lightning isn't as effective as ice and neither is fire, but that doesn't mean you can't use them if you spec into them. I've seen a lot of lightning and fire witches that do perfectly fine and heck, fire only has 2 spells >_>

Some skills do need to be re-balanced of course and as you said, beta is beta. That's why they have it. The game overall though offers a lot more freedom than your typical RPG and I feel like they're on the right track.

Also wolf, I am curious as to what "hidden" mechanic you are talking about as well? Are you referring to charges? If so those aren't really hidden nor are they "required". If you spec into them, then you spec into them. If not, you don't. Early on they used to be pretty mandatory but they toned that down.

[Ragnar119]

Not everyone knows what they are doing. I see a LOT of people asking for respecs. And again, a lot of the skills serve little to no purpose end game. Summon skeletons, cold snap, all lightning skills. These are not viable. You are just plain wrong atm. Some builds fail not out of poor planning but out of poor balance. They are trying to patch this up though.

Skeletons are one of the best skill that are introduced for summoner,and with support gems and pasives you can have lot of skeletons that are little OP. Lightning strike for a templar is viable, tested it my self, works great for chaos. Spark didn't tried this patch, but before, it was Op, hope they nerfed it. Others can't commit, because didn't used. From this I see, that you didn't create your build very good, or didnt have good items, and because of it you think they are not viable. Dont get me wrong, there are unbalance skills, and need more balance,but your comment was there are little viable builds. Im teling you that there are a lot of viable builds, but there are also some OP builds,that people call viable because they don't need good items

Also people are asking for respect, becouse they want to do chaos with bad items, that can be only done by the OP builds.

[wolfmane]

You guys have clarified some of what I was (mis) interpreting. I was coming from a slightly different angle.

My hidden mechanic was an allusion to Diabloesque stat systems that allow people to gimp themselves because they're following intuitive stat selections that turn out to be sub-optimal. I was trying to make something of a point of why they allow people to shoot themselves in the foot. I understand allowing freedom but I've never understood the principle of allowing you spec into a mana/magic based system but then they still allow you to dump points into strength with no benefit, essentially wasting though points. What's the point of purposely allowing you to ruin your own character? That doesn't seem to be the case though with what you're saying Amb. Ragnar is also assuming knowledge before-hand, which is a bad assumption in my mind. It's also always possible that spells or abilities have additional effects, relationships or scaling that aren't explained clearly in the tool tips or stat panes; hence hidden mechanics that could hurt a player despite their planning. I'm not saying the devs are purposely trying to screw players, it's just that sort of thing is common in a beta.

These are the three primary arguments I was addressing that Ragnar is advocating with the viable build statement he made.

Burden of Knowledge
This is a VERY common pattern amongst hardcore novice game designers. This pattern is when you do a complex mechanic that creates gameplay -- ONLY IF the victim understands what is going on

False Choice -- Deceptive Wrong Choice
This is when you present the player with one or more choices that appear to be valid, but one of the choices is just flat wrong.

False Choice -- Ineffective Choice
Similar to above, except when you give what appears to be an interesting choice that is then completely unrewarding, or ineffective at the promised action.

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417

Those are some basic principles from Zileas' post over on the LoL forums about design anti-patterns. I'm not entirely sure if they apply or not since he's posing in the context of MOBA design but I have a tendency to relate to them as a comparison when I think about a game's mechanics.

Keep in mind I was merely replying to some of the higher concepts Ragnar was talking about and I haven't played the game yet.

[adoomgod]

Not everyone knows what they are doing. I see a LOT of people asking for respecs. And again, a lot of the skills serve little to no purpose end game. Summon skeletons, cold snap, all lightning skills. These are not viable. You are just plain wrong atm. Some builds fail not out of poor planning but out of poor balance. They are trying to patch this up though.

Skeletons are one of the best skill that are introduced for summoner,and with support gems and pasives you can have lot of skeletons that are little OP. Lightning strike for a templar is viable, tested it my self, works great for chaos. Spark didn't tried this patch, but before, it was Op, hope they nerfed it. Others can't commit, because didn't used. From this I see, that you didn't create your build very good, or didnt have good items, and because of it you think they are not viable. Dont get me wrong, there are unbalance skills, and need more balance,but your comment was there are little viable builds. Im teling you that there are a lot of viable builds, but there are also some OP builds,that people call viable because they don't need good items

Also people are asking for respect, becouse they want to do chaos with bad items, that can be only done by the OP builds.

Um. I've built my char just fine thank you. No need to assume something weirdly rude.
Did you make it to chaos? Because when i say viable I mean viable for Chaos difficulty. Everything, as you said, is pretty viable up until chaos.

[amb2010]

-snip-

Following intuitive stat selections that turn out to be sub-optimal? If you intuitively pump points into +physical damage and block when you're playing an ice witch, something is wrong with your intuition. If you're making a build that isn't meant to get hit, then you should understand that pumping a ton of points into health is a bit silly as well even if health isn't "bad" for your build as well. The talent trees are quite clear in what they do as a whole. Sure some skills don't elaborate very well but it's a beta, it would be silly to expect perfect tooltips that explain every single detail of what they do when half the talents are still placeholder talents.

The only way to gimp your character is 1) You specialize into something that isn't balanced well or 2) You don't bother to plan your build or take time to ensure you don't run out of points or what not. In PoE you can't go "Oh I can take X, Y or Z skill this level" or you will gimp your character. You have to sit down and go "Which skill gets me closer to X skill (the one you really want) and is on the path that has the most beneficial skills for my build". The system is built around long-term benefits, not short-term. Sure it's a bit silly sounding to incorporate a system that forces you to make sacrifices in your skills but it makes the system have consequences. You can take the long route that has more beneficial skills, but as a result have less to spend later on or you can take the short route with less beneficial skills but overall have a smaller point investment. I feel the added depth makes up for the chance to plan poorly but as long as you take a couple minutes to weigh your choices, that shouldn't happen anyways.

Take my recent build I'm going with, a fire-summoner witch. Intuitively anything that buffs my minions or fire skills is something I want so at the very start I sat down and looked at the tree and highlighted some chunks I wanted to hit (the ones with the most of those skills). Obviously Intellect had a lot of them but Strength and Dexterity were by no means useless. Dexterity has a lot of "necromancer" skills that help my summoning and of course movement speed (and crit if I wanted to focus on that for +burn chance). Of which I deemed a skill that gave my shield stats to my minions in the Dex tree to be rather important so I plotted a line to it (was only one path to it so it was easy ) to hit first. Strength has some energy shield and health related things so it isn't out of the question either so upon examining it, the first branch at the very start was useless. It had block chance, some health and mostly physical damage related things. However, where Str and Int merge there's a lot of energy shield and fire damage related skills so I can go up, hit those and then go down into strength if need be. Even more opens up if I take the blood mage skill which completely removes mana and makes skills use HP. Obviously +mana is useless from the intellect tree and +health is REALLY important (and life steal) which are in the strength tree mostly.

Sure sometimes I hit skills that were useless to me such as +evasion but as I said earlier, the mentality you pick talents with is "Which skill gets me closer to the one I really want and also is on a path with the most beneficial skills". They by no means "gimp" you unless you, as I also said, don't plan your build and just pick what ever one seems good at the time ignoring what's after it.

However, that +evasion isn't useless to every witch either. That's the problem with saying "They shouldn't let you gimp yourself". There's just simply no way to sit down and go "Witches can't use this skill from the strength tree" because, they can use what ever skill they want. There's no mechanic such as D3's where X class can only use X skills, X weapons and X armor. If you want to run around as a witch with a normal shield, you can and quite obviously you'll want those strength +shield +block skills. The system isn't built around forcing you down a certain path so there just quite simply no way to..force people what skills to take. Changing it so they can force "class"-schemes such as Necromancers never seeing a +physical damage skill then completely changes the games "freedom in class building", and trust me I've seen a sword and board templar necromancer many times so I bet he'd appreciate intellect minion boosting skills as well as +physical and +block skills.

Basically, stupid people will be stupid people. There's no need to dumb down a system or force a game to hold your hand such as D3's "You get this skill and stat only when we say so" mechanic because some people can't be bothered to evaluate skill choices to see if it's honestly something they want. The passive talent tree is up on their site and it lets you interact with it. Sit down and create a build idea such as "berserker" that uses +health and +attackspeed/crit stuff and then plan one. Highlight a few key skill nodes and make a path that has the skills you think would be most useful. If you go that route you really realize just how hard it is to actually gimp yourself. Stuff about "viable builds" is down below...

-snip-

I mentioned it already doom and it's also part of the reason balance is posing a problem for the developers: people are attempting to solo content that isn't meant to be solo'd. Just because a build doesn't work solo doesn't mean it isn't viable, you simply get someone to play with as I said earlier. The game is *not* meant to be 100% solo-able, it just isn't.

Are you going to say WoW should change the Priest Disc/Holy class because it isn't viable solo? Will you demand Blizzard change all the classes so they can solo dungeons your level or because group quests are too hard by yourself? No, you aren't because that's just silly. Chaos is meant to be extremely difficult as you said, no class is meant to just breeze through and solo it. The balance is just out of whack and certain builds are OP enough to let that happen. People then run around claiming X build doesn't work in chaos because I can't solo it and demand X skill be buffed and what not.

[adoomgod]

calm, i was just sayin'.

Also, you are right, dexterity mucho importante. Phase Run is just a blessing to be able to use effectively, and multiple projectiles/greater multiple projectiles can carry an ice witch from lvl 1 thru merciless difficulty with little to no problems.

[DarkTails]

Welp, POE just logged me off automatically and deleted my character, now to wait and see if that was on purpose (which is fine of course since it's beta testing)

[Ragnar119]

Welp, POE just logged me off automatically and deleted my character, now to wait and see if that was on purpose (which is fine of course since it's beta testing)

Report it in beta bug report forum so devs can see it. its a big bug, not a small one.
Anyway there are over 7200 people playing the game, and its also a server limit.

[DarkTails]

Logged in again and the character was back, I guess it just wasn't displaying in the character select screen

Yar, I'll post it on their forums

[EdgeDamodred]

Well here's some first impressions about the game, this is by no means a review as I've only played a few hours and am only up to killing the boss in the Warden's Quarters(if saying that constitutes as a spoiler I am sorry).

Let's start with the positives.

+Pot system- Neat that pots recharge while fighting and some can give you buffs when you drink them. Great way to handle excessive amount of pots in inventory space.
+Passive Skill Tree Depth- It's really neat to look at and can be overwhelming but the non-generic passive skills are clearly marked and help with giving direction.
-However for players who've never played a game that gives you such freedom I'd suggest including a class kit system similar to the one found in Neverwinter Nights 2 to help new players guide them along until they feel comfortable. Basically they could have several recommended builds for the first 30-40 points with detailed descriptions of how these builds shape the way the class will play.
+Potential for multi-classing- Again it feels like the D&D multi-class system implemented in a less strict/hard coded manner. Whether multi-classing is viable later on remains to be seen.
+Barter Trade System-This gives mundane items like ID and Portal Scrolls(among other things) real value, at least early on in the game.

Now for the negatives
Barter Trade System-Basically this requires all trades between players be done manually, disallowing for the inclusion of private shops and auction houses. Yeah it worked for Diablo 2, but that's because we didn't know any better back then and Blizzard decided to never really add new features(or features they originally promised) to that game.
-Lack of Info about...everything!
1. What vendors for what while in the field. Because selling items doesn't give currency figuring out what to pick up and what to leave behind to get the items you want is a total pain as you don't know until you're actually at the shop, what you get for vendoring can even change when you identify an item. Trying to remember what item type vendors into what when it is and isn't identified is tediously annoying.
2.The fact that there even is a multi-class system. When you create your first character there's nothing to really indicate that you're not hard locked into the archetype roles presented.
3. No identifying which weapon is needed for an active skill. Some are obvious(like Shield Charge needing a shield), but some not so much. I played a witch who's description said she dealt in fire, ice and lighting. Well I got a skill called lightning arrow and socket-ed it but could not use the skill. Even tried equipping a bow and it still didn't let me use it. All it said was you don't have the right weapon type. Now maybe the skill can be used with a bow and I just happened to stumble upon a bug, but the lack of information doesn't really give me any indication.
-Lootris-This inventory system needs to be buried 10,000 meters deep and covered with radioactive cement to make sure no one can ever recover it. Why the hell can I not even rotate a sword, which takes up 6 spaces and is already sitting at angle anyways, flat to make room?!!?!?!
-Lack of enemy variety both in type and their attacks-Sadly this even applied to the first "major" boss I encountered. On top of that some areas had enemy packs that made no sense. I kept encountering a wave of thieves, then a wave of undead, then thieves, then undead, thieves, undead...and so on and so forth. Basically all the enemies I've encountered attack-wise fall into run(or slowly crawl) up to you punch and keep punching until they or you die, and single shot ranged mobs. Occasionally I'd encounter mobs that had a debuff on their shots, but not often.
-Shadows feel really off- In interior areas I get the impression I'm looking at the shadows projected onto the ceiling. Which of course is invisible to me so it seems like the shadows are hovering in the area as opposed to being cast against a surface.
-Way too shiny- Someone needs to learn to use specularity in moderation, not even damp surfaces shine like a lot of areas. It feels like someone ripped off a whole bunch of kitchen tile floors and plastered them everywhere and then went to town with 50,000 gallons of Mr. Clean and Turtle Wax(I am of course using hyperbole for comic effect in case you feel the need to point out that I'm being unrealistic).
-Server likes to randomly delete levels I've previously been to in the same game session, even ones I just visited. Oddly enough when I logged off the night before another level was just as I left it when I logged on the following day.

Bottom line, from these first impressions I feel like the designers spent all their time coming up with their great complex passive tree...and then just half-assed the rest of the design. If you're going to give me such complexity of character building, your world, gameplay and interface had better damn well match. I was really excited to try this game...now not so much. It certainly has some neat things going for it, but as a whole the package is rather underwhelming.

[kaosweilder]

-Lootris-This inventory system needs to be buried 10,000 meters deep and covered with radioactive cement to make sure no one can ever recover it.

-Way too shiny- Someone needs to learn to use specularity in moderation, not even damp surfaces shine like a lot of areas. It feels like someone ripped off a whole bunch of kitchen tile floors and plastered them everywhere and then went to town with 50,000 gallons of Mr. Clean and Turtle Wax

I LOL-ed at these But its true

[DarkTails]

[This looks like a huge post but it's mostly empty space]

Interesting stats: +% Item Found Rarity and +% Item Found Quantity

The +% IR makes monsters drop rarer items while +% IQ makes them drop more items in general. Both seem like great stats to have but it seems like players mainly want IQ over IR based on my short time playing.

PoE doesn't have gold, just barter (you trade items only, including NPCs). All those junky items you get can be traded for scrolls and orbs. Orbs do lots of things, mainly modify your equips (socket color, link paths, reroll stats, etc.) so they're the currency of the game, along with skill gems.

Because of that I can see how IQ is good because the more crap you collect the more you can sell to NPCs and the more orbs and stuff they will give you (to modify your items or trade with other players).

But what about IR? Why isn't it as liked?

I have about +10% IQ and almost +50% IR and I'm constantly getting Rares and Uniques. Sure they're not that strong since I'm still mid 20s in level, but eventually I'm going to get something awesome, right? At least I hope so, I don't know if there are any "good" Uniques haha. The vendors don't give you much more stuff for them either.

Feels like IQ is good at low levels because the rare stuff you find is kinda junky anyway and IR becomes more important later on when you can actually find kickass gear.

What are your thoughtssss?

As a side note, I found a Blood Rage skill gem that I don't really want, it seems like many people need them so I figured I would give it away since I can't play after Sunday anyway. I was going to give to a guy who whispered me, I said I'd let him have it by Sunday (so I could mess around with it a little). Instead of a "k thanks" he says "don't waste my time."

WTF, douche? I was gonna level it up a little and give you a sought after skill you really wanted for free and you feel like it's a waste of time to wait a few hours? Man, some people are weird!

If anyone here wants it you can have it, I'm also going to give away all the other stuff I have stored since I can't play anymore.

2.The fact that there even is a multi-class system. When you create your first character there's nothing to really indicate that you're not hard locked into the archetype roles presented.

That is a major plus to me, not a negative at all

[amb2010]

From what I've heard is people favor IQ because of the crafting. The best items in the game are the ones you craft and to do that, you get a high quality white item and then use orbs to buff them up the levels. High IR means less whites and therefore, nothing to use as a base to craft.

Also how would you feel if someone advertised something you wanted and upon saying "I'll take it" they respond "I get it to you in a week". That is a waste of their time

-snip-

Most your problems are summed up with the simple word of "beta" or the short phrase "beta is beta" or the longer phrase of "The game is in beta, expect lots of bugs and lack of information and solid mechanics(especially server related bugs like characters vanishing or levels doing funky things)". If you run into a problem, ask someone. Don't complain about lack of information because you can't be bothered to go to the forums or ask people in game, that's how betas work unless you're named Notch or Redigit.

Some specific comments:
I like the barter system through and through. You're exiled to an island full of monsters so a barter system to me fits AMAZINGLY well with the lore. It's an MMO, how dare they make you interact with other players and not some fancy UI!

I think vendors are eventually supposed to *actually* barter with you, doing quests for them raises rep and then increases barter chances with them to get the items you specifically want.

The "classes" (the witch, duelist, etc.) exist for story. It's beta so it isn't fleshed out as well but think of the character creation selection as being your "race" in an MMO. It's supposed to eventually affect how people treat you and what not.

More monsters are supposedly coming, lootris is annoying but they most likely will not be changing it, some stuff is DEFINITELY way too shiny. As for shadows, perhaps it's a graphics card related thing since to me they seem perfectly fine.

[DarkTails]

Yus, crafting, I've been saving up all the orbs so far since the Uniques I'm finding are more than enough to get me through the levels.

Also how would you feel if someone advertised something you wanted and upon saying "I'll take it" they respond "I get it to you in a week"

I'd be happy. I pay nothing, don't have to do anything, and I have something to look forward to in a few hours, getting an item I really want that would otherwise be costly/pain in the arse.

"Hey, you can have my $100 winning lottery ticket since it'll expire before I can do anything with it. Can you wait until tomorrow to get it?"
"WHAT!? NO! WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU! STOP WASTING MY TIME, YOU WEIRDO!"



It's not a time waster at all, I'm not telling them to wait for me like loyal dog, they can go train and whatever and sometime I'll pop up and give them free useful crap.