Design decisions that make no sense...

[jmotivator]

This is going to be a bit of a ramble....

I have to say, I really do love the core of the game play and character design, but there are a couple of completely nonsensical choices that I can't wrap my head around, and likely drives off more players in the process...

1) Skill Crafting. While in theory the crafting system is interesting, it has no logical flow. For instance, if I use 3 Green Unstable Runes to craft a Skill rune you would expect that the resulting Rune would be Green... no doubt every player in this game has farmed unstable gems for the color of a synthesized skill they really wanted, only to find out those 3 blue, red or Green gems didn't make a skill in the color they inserted... that's just dumb.

Consider that these colored gems also are a carrot and stick achievement in the guild shop... but whats the point of unlocking level 5 for green gems if you can't expect to make green skills from them?

2) Charm Crafting... see Skill Crafting, only take the 33% chance that you get the right colored skill and drop it to... 5% chance to get the right charm type... and 1-in-6 chance it's the right slot.

Compound that further by the fact that there is no apparent way to re-roll the bonus type and it starts seeming an impossible grind, especially when charm drop rates are so low to begin with.

Crafting should have SOME strategy, but the only thing you seem to be able to control, roughly, is the resulting charm's tier. This basically makes the crafting table a slot machine... with about the same odds.

3) Bonuses are poorly explained, namely Crowd Control -vs- Status Effect -vs- DOT

I know from experience and trial and error that they are not the same thing, though I know from discussions on this forum most people don't seem to know that. People are equipping "+% Damage on STATUS EFFECT" on a Poison build thinking it does something when it doesn't.

I learned this only at end game when I started getting Card mission that had the mission "Apply 150 Status Effect" only to find my poison wasn't registering as a status effect... I figured it must be because the Zodiac often pairs them together in the same sign.

For instance, the zodiac "Shepard" (lower left) layout would lead you to believe that DOT is a Status effect, but if you test this on a Testing Dummy you will find you are getting no bump from "+% Damage to Status Effect" on poison alone. I had a "+90% on Status Effect" scepter that I was carrying for a while, and I was sure it was adding a lot to DPS, but after the Chaos Card discovery I went back to the testing dummy with an electricity spell and ran the same DPS test, only after electrifying the dummies (I ended up finishing the Chaos Card by equipping a Lvl 1 Charge Release... and with the Charge Release status effect, sure enough my damage shot up.

So this just leads to endless confusion.

TL;DR

Poorly explained bonuses and a lottery system crafting mechanic makes this game WAY more frustrating than it needs to be.

[Nooberix]

The explanations are definitely something which should be improved. I had to look up item quality vs. tier vs. item level. And how to distinguish prefix and suffix options, authorities...
HP % absorb wasn't clear to me and some "activation on attack" combinations do not work how I'd expect them. And I know already a few examples regarding red essences I'll have to look up when I'll loot the first of them.