Sorry, but it is.
I don’t want to upset you with this provocative topic, but I think it needs to be addressed.
First I was an acolyte, I found that I could cast a stone golem and pretty much do nothing. At level 25 I stopped and rerolled a mage because I hoped it would be better.
I enjoyed the first three levels when you gave me fireball, lightning and snap freeze. There was a reason to change between skills, unlike acolyte when I could just stand still with Harvest and use a life on hit skill and pretty much survive anything. In the first few levels of mage I had to dodge and move and stun and fireball, that was fun. Then you gave element nova, which basically meant I needed zero skill. I switched that out of my skill bar so that it was impossible to use, but then you gave me Glacier, which is another minimal effort kill everything skill.
Everyone man, woman and their dog wants to compare this game to POE and Grim Dawn, but really you have to look at the best combat systems in arpgs which have been in Magicka and 9 Parchments (many will dispute this, but that is not the focus here). Those games kept you entertained because you had to move and you had a reason to change skill. It is not fun to stand still and press Elemental Nova and watch everything die. It is not not fun to cast a stone golem and press harvest and wait for your golem to kill everything. It he dies, no problem, just cast him again.
I tried to play melee mage to make it difficult, but to do that I need to really restrict myself and some of the available skills don’t make sense. For example, lightning seems like a micro second stun, but what is separating it from freeze and fire? Freeze stuns longer and fire?? Fire is almost the same power. Lightning should be a micro stun but also an interrupt, which it isn’t. Imagine if freeze prevented movement (but not ranged attack), lightning stunned to interrupt and fire was pure damage. Now you have a reason to change attacks. But you don’t, you can just cast glacier and the job is done.
On the chat, I asked when it would get difficult and people told me level 80. How many people are going to wait until level 80 before leaving?
So the game is boring because the combat is boring. My wife loves it btw, she just plays void knight and walks through everything like she is indomitable. Except, I just read this message to her and she said that at level 30 the boss fight was simple. Compared to POE, which, in her words, ‘would piss me off because the boss is too difficult’, there is really something that needs addressing. She likes your game because the graphics are great (like Divinity), but even she says the bosses are too easy.
I suggest you look at the skills. Early mmos were fun because you looked at your skill bar and you had a rotation. Both Rift and Swtor, for example, were dependent on you rotating correctly or you were dead. That at least gave you something to focus on during the battle. What are you trying to achieve in your combat sequences here? Do you want us to move? Do we need to switch skills? I hope you don’t simply expect gear to win (please not this one).
With your big emphasis on the skill tree (as opposed to the passive tree), which is an idea that I really like, and the points that people attribute to them, my suggestion is that people need to have legitimate reasons to rotate skills on your skill bar. This is a really big thing. You need to have different skills that are actually useful; otherwise, why do I even bother with the skill trees? When I posted this in chat, not a single person disagreed and told me that they used multiple skills, they simply stated that it was normal to use one button in arpgs. I’m not sure if they were taking the pi$$, but the longevity of this game depends on quality combat and I hope that it can be improved. I am bored. I am sorry to say that, but I am.