Wrong impression?

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but from the raving reviews, I expected the game to have a lot of depth. However, after some hours I'm Lv27, in the Mage Tower and have effectively 2 skills (plus the spacebar one that doesn't do that much).

Items have mostly miniscule stuff like +3% exp or +1% elemental damage, which doesn't exactly cause happy accident in my pants when I see them. My Reaper is supposed to evolve at some point (?) but it's Lv22 and so far just has been gaining gradual improvements.

Same goes for the Ancestral Legacy skill tree. The stuff is either a passive aura giving a couple % of something like 10% Magic find at max level or skills with massive cooldowns and no payoff or their own skill tree (Frost Quake).

Unlocked some NPCs, some of which allow me to reroll the 1% elemental damage into +30 thorn damage or improve it to 1.3% elemental damage... yeah.

I like the game's humor and style and would love to enjoy it, but does it get any more depth than that?

[softeach]

Your feelings are valid if you just started the game. Gameplay loop is simple, not a lot of active skill at the same time. This won't change much. But it improves alot in other ways.

Depth lies in all other systems, and the builds you manage to put together. Gear gets more and more impactful and diverse. You will unlock more and more things as the time goes on. I could spoil them for you but can't be bothered.

End game has bunch of different ways to progress and empower yourself. If you want you can check the previous roadmap and see what they were adding to the game ...

Or you can just play couple of hours campaign is not that long. After that its the real fun for me.

[Peredur]

To see some builds, the devs have share a bunch of shorts recently on their youtube page (but they didn't advertise them much). The community builds can show you some fun things that can be done.
https://youtube.com/shorts/dsNE8JpVl-E


Beginning of the game can be a bit slow as a lot of things are not unlocked yet and you don't have much ressources (goldus, slorms and materials) to really start a build.

Skills get stronger with the mastery and with the upgrades you select (and improve).

Items get stronger as you progress, with stronger stats, more things on them and particularly the legendary effects. The blacksmith is a great help in having the required item (but you need the ressources).
Moreover, the reinforcement strengthen even more the items.

Then there are attributes (with some fun greater nodes to get once you have enough points to invest), ultimatum (slorm temple), runes (great forge).

There is also the ancestral stone to get after each act (with the nodes further from the center that can be quite impactful).

And there are the slorm reapers (with the affinity - great forge + blacksmith - to strenghten them even more).

Quite a few vectors to make your build.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Alright, thanks, guess the intro is just overly long then!

[TheLightningYu | Mike]

Just my two cents, but for me it's quite the opposite direction. When i got the Game back then, and esp. now revisiting it at the release, i honestly didn't expect much. Just something chill and casually, and i was surprised (21 with bowclass right now) how much depth the game already have, esp. for an ARPG on the lighter side. I mean is it a Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, or Last Epoch? Maybe not, but if you compare it to other lighter ARPG's in the genre it does have quite some meat to it even early on.

I'm not sure if i'd would agree with most of your points... considering that the Genre is pretty much build on the Idea that you can play it pretty much with a mouse and a few skills (david brevik in one of his interviews mentioned when he created diablo he wanted to have a game which even his mom could play with one hand), the fact that you get 2 mainskills (out of 8) which are quite customizable, 1 (out of 3) Spezialization/Ultimate Skills which also have a quite large Tree itself, and the Ancestral Legacy Tree (which is cross-class sure) with 4 active slots for them (as well as it seems for some items which might give you skills), i wouldn't claim it lacks in terms of depth. And that's not even adresses the attribute-system which is surprisingly for this genre also quite fleshed out and that you have handcrafted weapons / slorm-reapers which are also playstyle-defining and adds with the levelsystem to the loop.

Originally posted by Hex: Onii-Chan:

Items have mostly miniscule stuff like +3% exp or +1% elemental damage, which doesn't exactly cause happy accident in my pants when I see them.

I'm not sure if i'd call that miniscule, esp. considering that the Game (atleast what patchnotes told me) have a levelcap of 100. Maybe it's really that due modern Games like Diablo really cultivated us players to just see big numbers, but such % can easily stack up fast.

Originally posted by Hex: Onii-Chan:

Same goes for the Ancestral Legacy skill tree. The stuff is either a passive aura giving a couple % of something like 10% Magic find at max level or skills with massive cooldowns and no payoff or their own skill tree (Frost Quake).

I mean i would get that point if we'd talking about an MMO, but i'd argue esp. ARPGs which for the most part aren't about piano-builds but rather focusing as few skills as possible, stuff like Auras or passives are highly skilldefining and part of it's depth. And i'm not even sure if it's really that few skills. The bit i tinkered around i had some options with even just 2 stones. And about "high cooldown" that's also a crux in this genre, considering that as pointed out above this genre tends players to focus on few skills as possible and digging out mainskills, it can be counterproductive if you have skills which you can spam nonstop - because than you sit with 5 skills which you can't use at the same time anyway for multiple reasons, mana included. That's why to have a bit better split for utiltiy or banger-skills with high CD besides the class-specific skills which you can spam out more regularly have a better flow. And (to stick with two examples) even if you use the first lighting or ice skill, that can already have an impact on combat - the seal of lightning which blasts enemies permanently or the ice spikes which froze enemies. There is utility to it.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by TheLightningYu | Mike:

I'm not sure if i'd call that miniscule, esp. considering that the Game (atleast what patchnotes told me) have a levelcap of 100. Maybe it's really that due modern Games like Diablo really cultivated us players to just see big numbers, but such % can easily stack up fast.

I've played most popular ARPGs like PoE1 & 2, Grim Dawn and Diablo 3 & 4. None of those managed to make +1.5% to elemental damage exciting, nor did they try to. It doesn't need to be +123809% either, but amounts below 10% won't be noticable.

So if I have two pieces of gear, one of which gives me 1.5% to one stat and the other gives 1.5% to another (neither of them being base crit or sth like that), the stats may as well not be there.

[Peredur]

The +% stats are low at the beginning and increase as the ilvl increase and you reinforce the item.
But they won't do much until you have enough flat stat (even if they were bigger). So it's better to ignore those anyway and focus on flat + stats at the beginning.

[We Are Finally Cowboys]

yea feeling like this is a "it gets good 50 hours in" type of game and these responses do not help that. isn't it bad that the game lies at the very end game and that none of your choices or skill investments early on matter

[Peredur]

You don't need to spend 50 hours to get a build.
But the question was about the depth the game has to offer (and not on when it starts getting fun).
You won't see its depth until you can start playing around a bit with every systems present.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by Peredur:

You don't need to spend 50 hours to get a build.
But the question was about the depth the game has to offer (and not on when it starts getting fun).
You won't see its depth until you can start playing around a bit with every systems present.

I mean, I do have a "build". Same one I saw on the steam page and the same one I see anyone have who plays the caster - Summon clones, clones fire missiles, everything dies. I wanted to do something else, but at least at that stage, there is absolutely no reason or comparison. The clones cost no mana once you are down to 40%, they proc everything on-hit / cast and they are invulnerable. And even with the reduced cast speed, three of them still put out more than one of you. And you can cast something else with the 40% mana you have.

I think the issue is that the game doesn't give you any glimpse into its endgame possibilities. Atm I'm in the kitchen area and I don't feel like I'm moving towards something cool, like with the constellations in Grim Dawn or more links in PoE or complex interactions and badass uniques like in Last Epoch.

So yeah, while the game itself might be good, the onboarding is horrendous.

[Hyon D]

As you said, it is mostly because you are still in the "intro". During the campaign, most mechanics are pretty basic and common, because not every player is an ARPG veteran, so we also have to introduce things bit by bit.

After the campaign, things start to build up and you unlock more mechanics, more layers of customization and more impactful stuff. And at the 10-15 hours mark you should start feeling a bit more of your build potential.

We definitely understand that for most veteran players, the early game doesn't feel exceptionnal, but it is maybe 6 hours long. What you described being fun in other ARPGs are not very early game as well if I recall correctly.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by Hyon D:

As you said, it is mostly because you are still in the "intro". During the campaign, most mechanics are pretty basic and common, because not every player is an ARPG veteran, so we also have to introduce things bit by bit.

After the campaign, things start to build up and you unlock more mechanics, more layers of customization and more impactful stuff. And at the 10-15 hours mark you should start feeling a bit more of your build potential.

We definitely understand that for most veteran players, the early game doesn't feel exceptionnal, but it is maybe 6 hours long. What you described being fun in other ARPGs are not very early game as well if I recall correctly.

True, though they usually also don't tell you to just "go farm some levels or whatever" after those 6 hours with the Trials board :P

Still, so many people can't be wrong. Gonna keep grinding.

[Ashtarte]

Much like POE or Grim Dawn feels incredibly slow the first time you play it as you come to grasp everything the game gives you but once you understand what you are doing you can balloon in power much earlier when you know how to muck about with stuff. It could also depend on the character, as personally I found Knight takes way longer to come online and be fun than Huntress who gets fun abilities really early on.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Okay, so I understand now fully what the issue is (I think). The way it goes atm is:

- You finish the campaign around Lv35-38
- You get told to finish the trials, but there is nothing new for you to do, except kinda Battlefield, which was already there.
- The new mechanics / areas only unlock past Lv40 and nothing really tells you about it
- This leads to feeling like you played through the game and now just supposed to grind for max levels or arbitrary challenges

My suggestion would be to maybe make Elder Slorm drop in the last Campaign map in a small, guaranteed quantity and once you got some and talked to the NPC, it can drop anywhere.

Should create a much smoother transition that doesn't require to either blindly grind 3+ levels or google what's going on.