S
AFKing in games - its a huge issue in the beta. Im not talking about a random person afking in town during bounties, you can vote kick that. Im talking about people who hang around games, AFK or other wise, after the game has been completed (all bounties and rift completed). When you try to find a new public game, you just repeatedly get thrown into the same game over and over. Creating a new public game doesn't work well either, because every one else just keeps getting dumped in that other game as well. You basically have to get lucky and hope it fills up briefly or that every one finally leaves. Now, this is a larger issue in beta because of the small size, but i know it happened to me as well on live from time to time. With out the ability to name games and pick your specific public game you want to join, your at the mercy of the que. I doubt we will see named game lists any time soon unfortunately, but what would be nice is a way to prevent you from getting the same game over an over. Maybe check box when you leave game that says "do not let me que into this game again".
I would like to see some options to deal with getting back into a private, single player game after a disconnect or game crash. it sucks almost finishing up a bounty run or rift, then crashing or DCing and having to start that over. On live it sucks too, but at least 5 stack NV takes very little time by comparison to get back your time, this is not the case with bounties and rifts.
gems and affix diversity - Right of the bat, something needs to be done about weapon sockets. They are too powerful, plain and simple. I know people love their emeralds, but lets face it, if a weapon doesn't have a socket, its probably not going to be competitive, unless it has some very over the top legendary effect. And the problem is only getting worse with RoS as there are now new ranks of gems. Im not sure what the best solution is here, but its alot like the skorn problem on live, other 2hnders just dont compete with it because it by default rolls a socket and upto 200% CD. Yes we have the option to re-roll for that socket, but is it really interesting or fun when it becomes that in order for a new weapon, or any weapon to be useful, you have to either have the socket, or roll until you get a socket? not to mention that there's no guarantee you will ever get that socket, and eventually the cost will simply become prohibitive. Its simply to important of an afix to have in the weapon slot. Chest and pants also suffer from this to a lesser degree, but their problem is more one of the limited afixs they can possibly roll in the first place, on top of the gem problem. but back to the weapon gem slot. Maby it just needs to be taken out, or emeralds re-balanced. being able to add a gem slot would help, but then it would make a gem slot afix it self a bad roll as it eats up a primary that could have been something else. Im not sure what the best solution is, but i think it needs to be looked into
People have been saying it for a while as well, gems and sockets in general should be more interesting. Primary stats are boring, effective, but boring. People like them because they add substantial power and are another thing they can upgrade their gear with over time, but they are boring, expected on these 3 slots, and tend to be more powerful than other afixs on the same slot for example, you get a chest that's got significantly more stam and str than your old piece, but no AR or sockets, but has Armor and some other re-rollable primary the clear and only choice is to roll for 3 sockets, nothing else competes, because you can roll AR, but only 100 at best, where as 3 gem sockets will give you potentially 210 or more fairly easily come ROS. Your also more likely to hit 3 gem sockets re-rolling than you are that 100 AR.
you can get more STR on gear, but stats like crit, ias and CD dont get any higher, and are just as strong on lvl 60 gear as they are on lvl 70 gear/ This sort of % based stats that could not be dumped on items in higher quantities was a problem when wow went from vanilla to BC (all that high end gear had % crit, hit, dodge, parry, etc on it, and would be hard to replace even with higher primary stats, sounds familiar...) they solved it by moving to ratings that required higher amounts at higher levels to get the same amount of crit. im not suggesting this as the solution, but it may be the only real way to do it with out having these % based stats just climb higher towards 100%. Right now, there are a few d3v items that will likely be overly competitive against ROS items, some may think this is ok, even good, but i disagree, i want to be able to find upgrades, that's whats fun and refreshing about an expansion, feel free to debate this though. But stand outs include mempo and Witching hour. Both of these roll high amounts of stats that you can simply not get in their slots. Maby some legendary items will come along and out do them, or we will finally see their lvl 70 versions drop (which by the way, there are a lot of d3v legs that don't seem to drop at lvl 70, weather this is intended for live, a bug, or intended for testing, I don't know.) But for instance, i have a middle of the road str witching our. its nothing special in the STR department, but i made sure to get one with 50% CD and 9% IAS, i have yet to find a rare belt that can out do its damage, even with a perfect str roll, and since there are no other major DPS stats on belts, i dont think it will be possible to replace it with a rare. I can even re-roll the str to make it even more competitive. Maybe a legendary that has a very nice proc or similar off slot stats. The only real gain i can get is increased defense, which maybe i will need eventually, but right now its such a large dps loss, and other than some particular afix's, more def wont help me much in any level of torment, only more damage will. Thats a whole separate issue though. The point is, it shouldn't be so hard to beat out a lvl 60 item with lvl 70s. Sure, i can understand it having some staying power, and that being ok, but a few items are well beyond that, and lack of possible affixs in certain slots and the new 4 primary stat max sure dont help any.
there are still some non-competitive stats. life regen is still just pitiful compared to health pools, thorns at least (supposedly) scales with primary stat and has items that may make thorns builds a thing, but still, it cant possibly stand on its own with out those set and leg items. with no more life steal, and much higher life pools, we should be seeing higher amounts of life on hit on items as well as the life on resource spent. This gets tricky as well, as with the new limit of 4 primary stats (though it looks like legs and some crafted legs can potentially roll more than 4), you quickly get a list of what each slot Must have. this was a problem in d3v, not going to act like it wasnt, but it seems like more of a problem in ROS. Its intended to make you make decisions instead of just wanting trifecta or quadfecta in certain slots, since those arnt possible, but what it really does is pushing out stats, and then limits upward growth as its much easier to get those "bis" stat sets when you only need 4 as opposed to 6. where vanilla was a bit to much randomness, ROS seems to have swung a bit to far the other direction. unless higher torment levels can drop items with better stat ranges (IE, items capable of rolling say, higher strength than what i can get in normal) then it dont see how i can make much more significant stat gains in any of my slots with out just finding slightly higher rolls of the same stats, in most cases thats just str or vit. With ranges much smaller (an over all good thing, just there are compounding problems), the difference is pretty nominal. a perfectly rolled version of say my gloves, is honestly not going to give me much more in the way or stats. and i was able to get most of that gear simply through gambling until i got a 4 primary stat item with 3 or the 4 stats i wanted, then re-rolling the 4th. Now, i don't see any upgrades again, nor do i see it as being feasible with rares unless something is done in the higher levels of torment. So im left only hoping for legendries which can have higher ranges and powerful legendary specific effects.
further, there are certainly some cool new stats, like resource cost reduction and cool down reduction, but with space so limited in items now, they tend to get pushed out. its an odd problem, there is both not enough stat diversity in some slots, and too much slot diversity in others with the limited 4 primary stat rule. These cool stats, get pushed out for more effective ones. some builds may end up liking them, which is great, and adds diversity, the problem is that since they fall in primary, more often then not they get pushed out by other more effective stats even in those situations.
there are alot of cool, competitive +skill stats, again though, they have a tendency to further push some stats out though. again we come back to some slots being too barren of good stats, and others having too many (See a repeating theme here?), and the 4 prop limit exaggerating these issues. Im not saying that i should be able to get all the best stats on every piece of gear and not make choices, but 4 prop feels to limiting. at least with 6, you need 5 good rolls and 6 props to have a very good item, something far less likely than with only 4 props.
i also wonder if long term, elemental abilities will out pace physical ones. This is because of the "your fire skills deal x% more damage" and their kin properties. with how they are calculate, and the lack of a physical, it could become a problem.
The drop rate on legendries is too low now it seems, though it may also partly be that we are seeing far too many plans drop in the legendary loot pool at the moment. I like what i see with crafting, and the mats that seem to be farmed from specific areas/monsters/bosses, but i cant hardly craft because im not getting legendries to DE for the legendary mat. and then if i need to re-roll an afix, i cant again because i need more legendries to re-roll it. F+F was certainly too high, but there should be an acceptable middle ground. With NV, MF, and MF from Paragon gone, players cant increase their drop rate in any way except doing high difficulties, which currently don't seem to be increasing this in any significant way. This causes more problems with going longer and longer with upgrades the further in you get. Other than some torment specific items, there isn't a lot of incentive to run torment, and their drop rate is abysmal to boot, so this causes most people to want to just run normal mode bounties, with every one working on different acts at the same time for quick bags. Its a boring way to farm, but its currently the most effective, and as blizzard has found out, players will do what is most effective over what is the most fun more often than not. they need to work on this cost/benifit ratio so that what's fun and challenging is more rewarding that the tedious boring but easy route.
gold income and expenses are way out of proportion right now. Its not getting a lot of talk for some reason, my guess is a lot of people in the beta have large pools of gold, and while they notice it, it hasn't been a real problem yet. You simply do not make enough gold at lvl 70 to support the crafting at lvl 70. lvl 70 items sell for only around 4000g. You cant trade gold, and legs are BOA, so there's not selling off a really good drop to get more gold, so the only way to get gold is to play, but regular play isnt supporting the gold cost sufficiently.
well, thats what i can think of for now. There is more im sure, but these were some things that have been nagging me. ROS is alot of fun, the new abilities, ability changes, legendary effects, set bonuses, bounties and rifts are all great. I feel its a very large step in the right direction. I have been having a blast actually finding upgrades (but as my post states, this hits a wall, and something should be dont to smooth the curve out at the high end). I hope to see them work out some/most of these issues before release, and that they continue to add awesome legendary items and new game play modes after release.
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