Right now I have a few issues with game play. I am sure some of them have already been addressed somewhere, just putting em out there.
1-Leveling is too fast and XP is too high for everything. I am level 2 right after I crash and level 3 in the grove. Barely a chance to try out the new level before I move on. Consider lowering XP gains and only giving XP for the characters that are in the group when earned.
2- Inventory...my god the junk. Listing something as "Wares" has no real practical effect and just wastes time. If you collect all of the stuff on your journey then you will have an epic amount of garbage. Items should be categorized from the start (Crafting, weapon, armor, trash/wares, potions, consumeables, etc). Even normal weapons and armor should be separated out.
3- Vendors- Two issues really. First is that they should really only barter for all of the garbage you want to sell them, not offer you money. Not much of a "Barter" if they are just buying it anyways. Second, If I have a bunch of dishes, cups, and bottles that I have collected...let me add them ALL with one click. Not having to scroll through screen after screen of stuff. I should be able to roll into town, hit the vendor and select "Sell all Wares-Junk. Sell all Common Weapons, Sell all containers, etc". like 5, maybe 10 seconds tops. Item management should not have to take that much time.
4- Vendor exploit - I can drain my inventory of the 1000's of items I picked up along the way and sell them to a vendor. As long as it is one of the ones that die in the grove, I can get it all back when I kill them or let them die in the big fight. Fix? Wares should be trade only, no cash value. Vandors should refresh their inventoryand remove all but their core items and anything of value (Magic, quest items, consumables, etc)
5- Make it harder to long rest. There is only 1 area where I felt I may actually need to worry about taking a long rest to get my spells and that was the hag fight. Basically I can go into every fight at 100% every time, so why bother.
6- Too many consumables. I mean...like WAY TOO MANY. And with the ability to rest whenever you want, you never really feel like they are needed. Sure...sorta fun to have an extra burning hands, but you never get to where you are trying to decide if you really need to save it or not. And with about 50 different types of food to eat, you never get tired of eating things like Garlic and apple cores!
7- Books, letters and correspondence - Too freaking much. I don't mind reading a bit every now and then...but come on. Books picked up should go to your journal to peruse at your own convenience and not take up inventory space. If it is a book or other item that is tied to a quest line...then fine keep it in your backpack. Then you have an idea as to what you need and what is fluff and lore. (Did I mention how much I hate clicking on junk in inventory)
8- Movement and pathing- Nothing is worse than taking your fighter and trying to move around a mob they are engaged with to get behind them, only to find out you decided to run around the room and get an AOO from everything. Even a prompt (You are about to move out of XXXX's melee range, Continue") would help.
9- The Journal - Consider making it easier to go through quest lines (available or completed). A big long list is really boring and doesn't really help much. Games like Dungeon Siege II had a pretty good setup that was easy to use and intuitive. Also gave you an idea when you missed something because there was an open section of the book. You can do a LOT with a journal setup and tabs. Like a library for all the books and letters you picked up!
10- Please debug your random number generator. I have never had sooooo many criticals in a row. I get crit misses and they get crit successes back to back to back to back. The game should be called You Are Gonna Critical Fail.
11- Why the heck am I AFRAID OF EVERYTHING? Nearly every encounter I am somehow frightened because a monster is close to me. If you want to give me a disadvantage, use the other mechanics. Auto-frightened is lazy coding and really cheap.
12- When my guys make a perception check,,,go to that character! Nothing worse than moving around, hearing the dice roll and having no idea what just happened. Even on successes it is so hard to find what you just noticed that I have to reload and focus on the terrain to see what I am missing.
What I think is right and going well!
First...Scenery. I really love looking around and seeing what is hiding out there. I have found a few places that are new and some really well done picturesque stuff. Things like the dog in camp are a bonus!
Lots of interactions with PC's. Give you a feeling that there is more in the world than just quest givers. Good MMO's do it as well and it lets you run around and talk to people and see what you can learn.
Characters and models are really slick and give you the ability to do a lot of fun custom stuff. My daughter even played around making all the different faces and tattoos just because they were neat. Some are creepy...but I guess that is good too?
Meta Gaming! There are tons of us out there that want to do ALL the little things. I want to pick up all the stuff I can sell/trade. I want to be a murder hobo. I want to get all positive reactions. And there are a lot of them!
Fighting on lots of levels. Man I love having my warlock way up on a ledge raining blasts down on people and getting advantage. And blowing them off stuff? Heck yeah...just gotta look at the damage cause I have blown people off some really high stuff, and made them go VERY far...and they take 3 falling damage. Hit one goblin so far it knocked him out of combat.
Effects and spells are cook. Half of the visual fun is seeing the spells doing what they are supposed to. Eldritch Blast hammering things. Explosions...we got em. Magic missiles screaming around and hitting things. Make it visual!!!
Feel free to blast away. Still enjoying the game, just wanted to get a few thoughts out there.
Genma
