There is two more things I want to point out in addition to all the paragraphs. They’re not paramount, they are arguable and impactful, that’s why they don’t fit into the list, but they deserve mentioning for important reasons. I stumbled upon them, while searching for links and communicating with people at the forum. The first one is a subject, which unexpectedly for me people cared about very much. The second one is a very controversial topic, people have diametrically opposite opinion about.
Firstly - people demand cosmetic items. I was surprised how much people cared about them - not an insult in any way. It seems the majority of people concerned about cosmetic droprates are VT1 players. Seems like it was a big part of that game. As for me, I do not have time to care about skins, since the red items droprates is such a big problem now.
But overall, I think cosmetics is an important part of the game. In the future, there needs to be a system for veteran player motivation: a set of skins and keep decorations, which you can only get by playing on high difficulty for a long time. Let me emphasize - high difficulty. It shouldn’t be given for time spent in the game, the way it works now. And it should be obtainable only by playing the game - no real money involved. There can be a separate set of real money skins, but there should be a decent amount of progression-only skins, and they should also look decent.
The rarity of cosmetic items should be that of current red items rarities, so even the majority of vets should not be able to get all of them. This will make them more valuable. The system should be either non-random or semi-random. Offhand, there could be tokens for Legend and Champion chests, that could either be used to a) to craft these items b) roll character skins, weapons or some keep decorations. In the latter case, there should be no duplicates, or the crafting system should also be present.
But first things first. I think there is more important stuff to be taken care of.
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and more.
Secondly - there seems to be a disagreement between players on current Legend difficulty. Talking to people in the topic about Legend melee combat and going through the forum later on, I was surprised by one fact: there are two diametrically opposed opinions about current Legend difficulty. A lot of players say it is way too difficult, while other people, and there is even more of them on the forum, are confident, that Legend should be made even more harsh. And almost no one is satisfied with Legends’ current state. All that makes me think, that one more difficulty is needed. Champion currently can be viewed as Normal difficulty, while Legend seems to be something between Hard and Nightmare, and it fails at both.
I think another difficulty should be added, to meet the demands of the veteran players, and Legend should be made a little less punishing at the same time. This should not be achieved with straightforward enemies’ HP or damage reduction, but rather by other things like lowering stagger resistance or adding a delay on regular mobs attacks… or fixing melee combat, at least to some extent. The new difficulty level should also be made harder not by simple stat numbers and bigger hordes, but by other fun things, like sudden minor waves, waves that come at you from all sides, groups of specials, double bosses (2nd boss comes, when the first one is brought down to 50% HP) and other fun things. But these are just offhand ideas.
Pro easying: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Pro hardening: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Finally:
Criticism is welcomed, but with some reservations. I am pro constructive criticism, so please first and foremost focus on specific suggestions, not on details. Details can be argued upon indefinitely: wrong priority, poor argumentation, unsuitable links - there is dozens of them. However, all this stuff doesn’t matter, if you generally agree with the suggestion you’re arguing about. This way you’re only wasting my and yours time and flooding the topic.
And even if you do not agree with something, please focus on the important stuff and suggest something in return. Criticism for the sake of criticism is just waste of time; I am not going to take part in it.
Your suggestions are also appreciated. Although I should warn you in advance, that I do not intend adding any additional paragraphs to this topic. Coming up with a list of changes, selecting the most important things, their substantiation, translation, edition, fact checking, link searching and doing other less important activities took me more than 100 hours. I am burnt out. I don’t have any desire or energy to polish this topic anymore. I am not going to distance myself from it though, and If there are going to be any decent urgent suggestions I’ve missed, I will gladly take them into account. But I will add them to a separate topic and will not work on them as thoroughly for sure.
Also, when writing suggestions, please don’t be very specific, unless that’s really important. For example, if you suggest adding 5 damage to 1h sword, that is very specific and there is a very big field for arguing here. Saying that all 1h weapons need a damage boost is less specific, though it’s arguable that some do not need any buffs or need non-damage buffs. But saying, that most weapons need buffs, like stagger power, attack speed, cleave and others, is ideal, since it is hard to not agree with this statement. And the exact numbers should be discussed in the separate topics, if at all. Maybe it is better to leave them to devs.
Though some things need to be very concrete, like green dust problem for example. It is a part of the crafting problem, but I had to emphasize it, because that’s one of the most important problems of the game right now imho. So when you need to be specific - do it. Post one, maximum two options, you’re confident in, not over 9000 ideas how to make 1h axe great again.