I dont have early access yet, so i can only comment what i read here.
Larian, please make sure that the loot system in the final game will be above all rewarding. I played numerous RPGs in past 20 years and i can say that bad loot system can be extremely frustrating even if the rest of the game is very good.
Few specific points i would like to mention:
1) Make sure that all sources of loot can provide quality upgrades throughout the whole game. Drops, crafting and vendors should all be viable till the end. I think the best template is that the final sets of BIS gear for various classes are composed from:
a)very powerful items from bosses, which should be hardest to obtain but also very rare and cover only some slots per each class spec.
b) random drops, which are abundant, but not too many. Its important that the random stat generation is made so as little as possible of trash items are created. For example make part of the stats on each item fixed, so there are at least some useful stats on each item. There are ways to do this. Try to get inspired by other games with randomly generated items and learn from their strengths and mistakes.
c) Crafted items should be good but not too good to overshadow drops (especially unique items and boss drops). Its fine that a crafted item is BIS, but this cannot occur for all the slots.
d) And vendor system should be made so you wont be abusing vendor stock refresh to try to get the best gear from them (this was the case of the previous game).
2) Randomly generated loot should be limited somehow as i mentioned above. You dont want 10 items to drop and only 1 of them being semi useful. Higher the % of useful loot is, the better.
3) Crafting system should allow some kind of upgrading, at least for some items. It would be good to have very rare unique items, which drop from bosses which can be upgraded throughout the game and perhaps some other items.
These are my thoughts. I suggest the developers to take a close look to WoW loot system and how its balanced. I know its different type of game, but i cant recall any other game who had more time to perfect and improve its loot system.
