Such a beautiful game, but I have some issues and ideas. Thanks for the forum to do so. The armor, weapons, traits and stats are all reasonable, but they are much too obtainable. That process should be at least a little more drawn out. You should have to go to every single area of the map more than once at run speed to accomplish things.
Possibly itemize zone areas, DE’s & camps more specifically, similar to materials? ie I need, say, an arm upgrade, or a rune or something… I need to visit some part of the world, and be level appropriate, and spend time there, in order to obtain it, but with no guarantee – otherwise all those poor NPC’s are going to be very lonely and much too alive soon.
-Attack skills seem way too easy to unlock. With the simplicity of the casting/firing/autoattack system, I’m not sure how I would approach this, but it’s just too simple to get every ability unlocked. There are just no surprises. It seems geared toward grandparents in it’s current form. The encounter difficulty seems fine for the most part, if not too easy for level 65-80, but the 1-40 game is just a high speed blur.
-Skill points and traits are way too easy to get. There should be (have been) 1/2 the skill points available in the 1-60 zones, if not less. Most of them are unremarkable and present no skill or challenge, and just hand people lots of decisions quickly they have no real use for until 40 minimum, but really 65-80. There are so few decisions to make with elite skills and traits that these need to be locked behind more content, level and gold. Lots more. Ten times the current amount if not 50! Ok at least a little.
-Faction! For example, a human should have difficulty in starter zones that are not friendly due to decisions based on character creation and personal story. I don’t see why every single race should be able to just go anywhere in the game. It seems perfectly natural that a level 15 human might have a bit of a difficult time traversing Plains of Ashford unless he made some choices that would make it difficult to do the same in say, Metrica Province. The hearts could boost you from 1-100% faction per zone, or slowly per race, whatever. That would make world completion much more of an accomplishment.
-Dynamic Events. I think a fairly simple solution to making them actually dynamic is to make things random within parameters. Take the Tank DE in Straits. Those waves always spawn in the same place and are the same size, and that is capitalized upon by the highest power, highest FPS players. (I’m high enough power and FPS to get gold in 95% of zergs, I’m not complaining) Could you just make the location and size of each wave random within the possible sizes and locations?
It doesn’t have to change based on the number or level or dps of the players. Just something that can’t be immediately foreseen. Something that a smart player won’t just set a trap on, then wait for the zerg to finish off while they set the next one 45degrees to the left. (Of course, if the wave could vary it’s AI and DPS to player count and DPS, that would be great too, but I know that’s difficult, I’ve done my share of trying.) Also… take the hearts off the map from level 15 up (until found).
-Crafting. You should have to gain 20 levels to gain the next of each 4 tiers (100 levels) of crafting. If you get the first 5 from crafting that tier great. As for recipes, crafting difficulty, materials difficulty, etc that’s difficult to address, but needs much balance, particularly drop rates. It’s probably too late for anything but dmg control. Full servers reset and 3 gold free! =P