Ran my character up to Monos and wanted to leave some feedback on the overall player experience for Acts 1-9. This will be fairly short as the team has really nailed the campaign at this point so I will mainly address pain points or things that stuck out instead.
Sound/ Animation / Level Design
The LE team has once again knocked this category out of the park. Levels felt a lot more vibrant, combat animations and sounds were punchy and satisfying, and the music always felt appropriate. That 3d effect as you descend into the Dreadnought was really cool.
Enemy Health / Damage / New Abilities
Enemy health felt a little to high this time around. I’m not sure if that’s because I was leveling with sword and shield mostly or what, but I was caught in quite a few slaps fights this go around. Even after transitioning to dual wield I needed some fairly decent swords to get the ball rolling. In fact I was looking to upgrade gear every few zones which is a first, as I usually never start to upgrade gear until Heborea where the damage taken begins to spike.
Maybe the health needs a tad decrease or we could look into leashing some of the health modifiers for later in the campaign (Heborea Acts +)? The OX mod was especially obnoxious.
Damage wise most mobs were at were the needed to be and none of the new abilities seemed to problematic. The tree monsters you fight in the sheltered wood were especially cool. The main problems monsters I faced were Archyrean(queen raptor), Smoldering Lishrac, Ascendant Ember Mage, Soul Cage.
Archyean
The Archyrean was the only thing that killed me in the campaign. I’m not pointing the finger at it for that reason however , but more because of how the death happened. I was playing a Forge Guard. A class specialized in hit based physical damage reduction. I had about 70% physical res, 35% damage reduction from armor and 600 health.
That’s about as good as your going to get going through the story at the time with loot off the ground, and most classes would be much worse off defensively at this point in time. Despite that I got dropped in 2 hits. BAM BAM dead. This mob hits just a bit to hard in the campaign and quite frankly doesn’t get much better as you go up in monoliths.
Smoldering Lithrac
This mob was insane before it got buffed. I don’t know why it got dialed up at all. I tested my 100 forge guard in about 150 corruption against these things and he was losing 90% of his HP from the pellet burst attack if not outright dying. They do way to much damage. There needs to be way more time on the explosion if it going to be doing that kind of damage or it needs to get cut by at least half.
Ascendant Ember Mage
This is another mob that hits a bit to hard. They remind me of the white Osprix that drop the white meteors except there’s come out twice as fast and appear to do as much if not more damage. Even worse as you go up in monos they spawn in way bigger packs than the white birds meaning the one shot chance escalates very fast. These mobs need to be treated like elites and only spawn 1 at a time like some of the other bigger mobs or they need way less damage.
Soul Cage
Its soul cage. Its the breath attack. Its always been the breath attack. It hurts and lasts way to long. Was getting tipped by that thing at 75% necro res in the campaign and lost 50-75% of my hp.
Quality of Life
A few small mentions here and then I’ll wrap it up. The Emperor’s Remains fight explodes with loot at the end, but the loot should be put in a chest away from the Shard of Time. The loot covers up the quest item making it hard to see and interact with. If I hadn’t done it so many times I may have not even known how to progress. Also picking up loot near a quest item that takes you to a new area is always dicey.
Drawbridges still need some type of prompt or they need to automatically drop when you get near them. Its a small sticking point but could add just enough friction that a first time player gets frustrated and just puts the game down altogether.
Conclusion
So that’s about it. Enemy heath was a bit hit or miss. There are still some outlier mobs with to much damage. The campaign ran about as smooth as it could minus the 2 friction points I mentioned. All in all a great job as always. I am enjoying every second of 0.9 and look forward to more in the future.