So being a avid ARPG fan and hearing about this game several time I finally bought in last night and just wanted to give my feed back after doing an all nighter last night.
First off I do love the character choices. I actually spent 20+ Mins looking at each sub class because I wanted to play most very fun.
in the end I went with Lich got to level 30 and the skill/passive trees and crafting are all very interesting but the first really frustrating thing I found was the rest of the Map every time I went to town I suppose its a mind set thing from other ARPGās to fill your bags go back to town then decide what to sell/break down or keep. But every time I go back to town all the monsters respawn and the Map resets so I canāt every clear a map in the end I gave up exploring and just ran from quest marker to quest marker which I believe is not a good feel for a ARPG.
Secondly the difficultly Normal is well to easy at least for a lich (I am sure I will put more hours into other classes soon) Spirit Plague Kills nearly everything by itself add a few other DOTs and everything short of a boss is dead barely touching me making the game dull to interact with which is a shame because the premise of the game and its storyline seems great so far. Loving jumping through time on the same maps to solve issues to further your goal of saving reality but after getting to thirty I wanted to know more of the story but could not face the dullness of killing mobs so easily (one button for most mobs).
Now I have deleted that character and started the same character again but on Masochist and have got to lvl 8 before I went to bed I will now see how far I can get tonight with this new difficulty but so far it just feels like the game should of from beginning ofc this could change in later levels
I will say though that at the moment Maybe you should reconsider the name masochist and then reinforcing it with a msg that basically read woah donāt choose this its ludicrously hard which atm is not the case
Gonna look forward to putting in some more hours though overall good game built with solid foundations
Iām sorry to hear that this has been frustrating for you (itās annoyed me too at times).
This is a technical limitation, not a design decision. Weāll be resolving it later this year.
The campaign hasnāt had a substantive change in difficulty for a long time, and weāve been continuing to add new features that have raised the power of characters, such as Idols and the bonuses for the mastery class you pick. Weāll be doing balancing passes at some point to ensure the campaign serves as a good introduction to the game without being easy to the point of being boring. I donāt have an ETA to share for this, but it will definitely happen.
I can think of one particular boss that might make you regret that.
You can disable (but not later re-enable) Masochist for that character at any time through the in-game settings menu. Not saying youāll need or want to, but the optionās there just in case. Just know that youāll lose anything left in your stash at the time of transition.
Or maybe we should make sure the description is accurate?
I really am looking forward to playing many more on many more toons and lets hope I donāt have to disengage Masochist but thanks for pointing out I can
Iām a bit scared about this.
For me, the campaign difficulty was just fine. Yes, itās easy (even if I never completed it without dying at least once), but the objective is to learn about the world and the story, and to learn about the game mechanisms. If you add more difficulty upon this, it may become too difficult in my opinion. BTW I feel a difficulty increase after the Emperor and on Lagonās isle, so itās not purely flat.
For me, this progression is fine and the real difficulty should arrive as it does currently, with the monoliths. The first timeline can be the difficulty progression. But I really hope you will not let aside players that are not ultra skilled. Almost (almost) everyone should be able to complete monolith timelines with time, work and effort, then the Empowered mode is here for skilled players.
Very personal opinion of course, and maybe not a popular one.
I have disagree im not a very skilled player at all but I do understand ARPGās as its my most played genre after MMO (WOW mostly) and if it was not for Masochist mode I would have put the game down for a few months till changes came in because kill a waves of mobs at once with a single click just simply is not remotely entertaining and teaches nothing about skill interaction or the the game
After getting to the Imperial Era in Masochist last night I do feel that masochist is slightly to hard for beginner level and somewhere between Normal and Masochist is probably the correct starting place I do not want to go back to Kill hordes of enemies with a single click rather die 10+ times learning the mechanics then just face rolling everything
For what itās worth, items do not sell for much. Maybe when youāre just starting out it makes sense to pick up items to sell to the shop, but the gold you find on the ground in higher levels/Monoliths/Arena will soon overshadow item gold (other than maybe selling copies of uniques or set items). Also, you can set a hotkey to the Forge and open it in anywhere, including outside of town and break down items on the fly with Runes of Shattering. The only reason to go back to town is to turn in quests.
The game is primarily balanced around the end game systems, not the campaign.
There is no character limit that I know of, so in the future you may want to keep them to test out other build options within the same specialty to save yourself some time.
Thatās highly skill dependend. My Necro canāt kill a whole screen of mobs, my werebear took some skill usages to do so, even my 150k dps spellblade with screenwide dmg needs more then 1 skillpress.
Masochist is just a more punishing game mode and teaches you nothing but āDonāt stand in voidsā and if you have to learn thisā¦ well my old raidlead would shout something like āLKHFSKLJhGFSGFHLKFShN!!!KLFHSLHGLSGHL!!ā and instakick the person who isnāt able to do it regulary. Masochist makes things harder for sure but I couldnt care less about this game mode because it offers nothing to me but more random oneshots from regular mobs that make me scratch my head.
I didnāt play very far into path of Exile tbh. It was not a difficulty thing but just how far behind I felt behind everyone as I joint very late into its life and found the whole thing rather daunting.
But if donāt reach the end game content because Iām bored of the game before I get there then end game balance is useless to me personally
Thank you for this golden nudget will remember for next time
I agree I need to test other Classes balance Vs Spirit Plague, it may just be that one skill needs rebalancing.I assure you Spirit Plague can wipe out most no rare mobs at your level on normal before they ever get close to you on its own and that is dull.
I think you have a misunderstanding of Masochist (maybe because you do not like it you did not play it for long) because while yes there skills that will one shot you if you donāt get out in time also mobs have more health. So using all your DPS and Movement Skills at the right time becomes very important. It teaches you a lot just like playing a DPS class in a raid that has mechanics to follow except the trash has minor mechanics to avoid too
Now after playing 10-12 Hours of masochist I accept to its a little to challenging for some especially on a first play through it I would prefer if the game was some where in the middle but as I only have the option of Normal or Masochist ā¦I will stick to masochist for the minute as I said previously I would rather wipe 10+ times on a boss(like I did for the storm guy on the ship) then one shot it without a single potion use because its that easy
We donāt have all game endgame modes so normal is maybe to easy right now and will get much harder later on while masochistā¦ well is for masochists then. To me itās pretty simpleā¦ I can dodge telegraphed stuffā¦ no sweat so there is not much difference no matter the mod I play. Itās just a time/effort thing at the end of the day because time got pretty valuable to me in the last years compared to 24/7 nolifer state back in the day with vanila wow or EQ or LI2.
but thanks for pointing out I can 
