0.4 thoughts and feelings :)

I've been meaning to write a bit of a 0.4 review for a while now... I guess it's a good sign that whenever I consider it I end up just playing more of the game. I was a bit worried about how easy the game was getting in 0.3, but despite all the people freaking out about the economy, my main concern is combat, and I feel like this has improved with the new league, which I feel like this is mostly about temple and the new effectiveness stat.

I appreciate that effectiveness might need some kind of tweaking, but in terms of how it affects combat, I like it. I've found that when I'm fighting a humanoid rare that has a combined 300% or more effectiveness in temple, I often have quite the fight on my hands, and it leads to some epic fights that I really enjoy. Just the fact that enemies are lasting long enough to fight back, and to allow me to use whatever combo I've come up with for my build makes combat a lot more engaging imho. I can probably upgrade my gear to make it easier, but also I could upgrade temple to make it harder, so I'm fine with it for now. Temple having the possibility of fairly high effectiveness even makes me feel like I'm okay with maps being significantly easier, because then it's like you get a break from the challenge of temple, and on the other side a break from fights that offer no challenge. Mind you, I still think I would appreciate having the option to increase effectiveness in maps a lot further as well.

I also appreciate that without effectiveness I could create this level of challenge by using a weaker weapon or something, but somehow it doesn't feel the same as when I feel like I have decent gear but I'm being challenged by the content anyway. I'm looking forward to upgrading my gear further, but then pushing my temple to higher effectiveness as well to match... there's just something really fun about that for me.

Generally speaking, as implied by the above discussion of effectiveness, I like temple. I think that as a concept it's really cool, I like all the room designs and all that, I like tinkering around with the rooms and making new characters to try out different designs... I guess at some point in the future I'll be thinking more carefully about things like, for X kinda build, maybe I should have X kind of temple... like sometimes I might emphasize more rare effectiveness but other times I might work on normal monster effectiveness, like if I have a more aoe focused build. For now I'm just vibing with it really. I also like the little mini bosses you get from t3 rooms, and the random bosses that means that sometimes you face multiple bosses at the same time.

I did feel like Atziri was a bit of a disappointing fight though... by the time I got up to that the first time it was a real cakewalk; I'd say that if you could introduce three tiers of this fight, like in the other pinnacle fights it would be great.

Btw, bit of a thought-bubble here, but as I said, I'd love the option to have higher levels of effectiveness in maps, and one simple solution occurs to me; what if one of the Incursion atlas tree nodes made it so that temple mods affect maps? I feel like that would be so much fun.

Regarding the campaign, I feel like it gets a bit easy towards the end, as your build comes together. Maybe this is just because I've gotten so used to the campaign and the bosses and everything that I know all the fights too well? It's funny though, when I think of the Ziz interview from a while ago, where he seemed to be saying that because we're doing the campaign over and over, he's not going to want to do some super tough fights every time, whereas for me it's the opposite; if I'm going to be doing the same fight over and over it needs to be extra challenging so I can still get my ass kicked by it from time to time.

However, knowing that I can find a challenge in the temple later cuts through this feeling somewhat. I'd also say that leveling druid, then monk later wasn't terrible in this sense, just a little bit off.

Regarding druid, I really love it, and it seems to me like almost everyone feels this way. I really appreciate all the potential for builds using druid skills. My first character this league was a wyvern focused druid, mostly using oil barrage, with Voll's Protector and Forced Outcome so that I can have power charges up all the time, then my second character I tried a cha-uwu monk with just a tiny bit of splashing into other classes, but now I'm getting a bit more experimental and starting to see what I can do with stuff like a totem focused warrior using the new spell totem, or a fissure focused warrior using rolling magma for the aftershock effect, or a witch that makes use of wolf minions. I also want to try a sorc with the new storm skills, and I've barely touched tornado, but it occurs to me that it's a damage over time effect, so maybe it can combine with witch dots somehow? This is not even getting into the right side of the tree.

I notice that there's a lot fewer complaints about the lack of build diversity now; I think it's the nature of the mechanics in this game that there will be an exponential increase in builds with every skill added, since the number of builds you can have is that skill multiplied by the number of skills it can combo with. However, that only works if combos are possible, which is why a mechanic like effectiveness seems so important to me.

So yeah, this league has really made me a bit more hopeful for the future of the game. It's not like there are no problems left in the game, and obviously it's incomplete, but gg, GGG. You're doing great imho.