My thoughts after playing for awhile and being a “rookie” in the series sort to speak.
-Just on a macro level the game is super fun. Just walking around and killing stuff and not having to be amazingly skilled like a FPS shooter is nice.
-I’m someone who just plays a game to play my way and enjoy it. I hear “meta” builds all the time and still have no idea what it means really. I googled some things to wrap my head around all the skill options but ultimately I pick what looks cool. In F076 I use an archer build and people always hate on it. I’m using a Druid build.
- I saw a lot of people complaining about seasons and how you have to start a new character every time. I actually really really like this method. I tried to play ESO for the first time a few months ago and was just overwhelmed with everyone so high level already and also the story being confusing on how to just play the regular “story to start” and get through that first. Everyone resetting is kinda cool IMO.
-Overall I won’t sink a ton of hours into this though. I’m going to finish the story and maybe play a season or two in the future and hopefully they add DLC stories to be played.
-All the gear and inventory management is definitely a lot sometimes. I know it’s the nature of the beast and it’s just the style of game, but I definitely spend more time than I want sometimes sorting and getting rid of gear. Not a big deal though.
A cool game for sure and right now im almost done with act 1. I hear the Druid build sucks but I’m having fun with it.
I think Druid is one of the stronger late game builds at the moment. The meta builds are for hardcore players who are looking to get all of the rare gear and fight at he highest levels possible. For what you're doing it really doesn't matter what build you go as long as you're having fun and not getting hard stuck.
The reset will suck if particular things are reset because of the time suck (it's not skill based for the most part), specifically the renown. I haven't looked into what will or won't be reset so I have no idea if that'll happen or not.
They are definitely releasing two expansions so that'll add some more fun later on down the road.
Inventory management is just weird at this point and they don't seem sure what to do with it. Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 really emphasized making decisions on gear. There was a rubik's cube element to it. Players figured out a workaround to the inventory management in Diablo 2 and at that point it seems like Blizzard tried to lessen the burden of it since it making tough decisions wasn't really part of the game anymore with the workaround. Now they seem stuck halfway. They haven't offered nearly enough space for people to keep all of the cool gear they find, especially if it's shared for multiple characters. I also find the sorting function to be completely useless and needs improvement. I find the towns and spacing of the different vendors to be really annoying as well and I'm not sure why they did that. At this point I wish they'd scrap most vendors and just allow me to sell things from my inventory. Having to constantly go back to town to salvage or sell is obnoxious and doesn't add anything to the game besides being annoying.