[quote]My friends got me into D2 long enough to tide me over for PoE 3.25 tomorrow. It's been fun, and it's similar to a few different games I enjoy playing, but different enough to stand alone. I played enough to reach 2000 power level and solo Warlord's Ruin after tons of deaths. Overall I'd give the game a 6.5/10. Here's some feedback: 1. Learning curve is steep. I understand there's content bloat, but still something I wanted to mention. 2. Difficulty is all over the place. The jump in difficult seems to be due in part to simply 'turning up the dials' on health and damage, but also on enemy AI. As I tried more difficult content, enemies seemed to continue to be aware of where I was even behind cover, and would continue to fire large, AoE rounds into the ground next to me making it impossible to run and impossible to hide. They also became deadly accurate, with the ability to follow whatever zig-zag pattern I tried to run. This could just be something I need to learn to play better as a new player, but it was very often frustrating. 3. PvP nearly made me quit. The PvP modes have draw to them due to 'Pinnacle' rewards, but as a new player (not a new gamer) I consistently saw myself paired against players I found to have thousands and thousands of hours in the game. I don't personally enjoy PvP, and I know I won't always find new players like myself in matchmaking, but it seemed much more common to simply toss me in with the wolves. There wasn't a single moment of playing PvP I can recall enjoying. 4. Defense/defensive options seem pointless. Again this could simply be me not understanding certain mechanics, but I got to a point where I decided to try to be as tanky as I could outside Song of Flame. 100% resilience, amplified with artifact, facet of protection, transcendent. It feels to me like I'm being asked to play a lot of minigames in order to achieve a state of tankiness, but even when it's all there, I still simply get 2-shot by some large void cannon, or even 1-shot by a sniper I didn't notice due to lack of game knowledge and awareness. It was [b]incredibly[/b] disappointing and dissatisfying to find out just how delicate I was even with every buff up, as I thought I'd worked quite hard as a new player to identify and achieve these things. 5. Stats should scale linearly or scale better as they get higher, not worse. I'm not a game dev, so this one doesn't come with all that much thought put into it, but when I first started playing and recognized that stats have a cap of 100, I figured that with no 'soft cap' they would simply scale in a linear fashion. I don't feel like I should be punished for investing in CD for my grenade if I want to use it more often, because those 10 stats mean :06s off the grenade, but they could mean nearly 2min off my super. There are a lot of methods in the game to min/max around getting to the next 10 value of any given stat, but it feels more like I'm forced to put 100 points into X stat simply because I don't have an easy way to reset my grenade/melee/super/ability, but I can do it for all my other things.[/quote] Unfortunately, you're joining a 7 year old game that has a specific audience in mind and new players aren't them. Every point you made is valid and while a lot of it does get easier when you get better, a lot of it doesn't either. PvP requires a MASSIVE time commitment if you want to get good at it. Like, so much so that PvP players often lack in PvE skill because they're always playing scrums or stacking in unranked PvP to sweat it out. You will always be fragile. We used to not be, but some high end players with 10000 hours of game play wanted the game to feel "hard" all the time so they could feel like they're playing the game for the first time again and Bungie listened. That's why everything is tuned the way it is. The game is fun, and it gets easier when you get more experienced, but you'll always be fragile and PvP will always suck. This is a twitch game, we might as well not have a health bar for all the good it does us lol.

The ads can be very... not sure what the word is. When your health gets in the red, they will immediately turn away from another target and gang up on you, shoot around corners, spam attack you. I'm surprised you didn't mention how big of a failure Bungie is at guiding you to and through tasks. It's literally impossible for me to figure out what to do sometimes without looking it up online. The game just doesn't explain it as well as it should.

1. Learning curve is indeed very steep and very much requires that a new light player have a veteran guide them through much of the game mechanics. Bungie still not very good with tutorials 10 years later. 2. Higher difficulties gradually demand better positioning, game knowledge, game sense, and target prioritization. Clearing rooms and arenas become more methodical, but also imo allows builds to become more important and rewarding when every enemy doesn’t die from being breathed on. Cover is your friend. You’ll get there with time. 3. As a PvP main, my best recommendation would be to stay away from PvP as the matchmaking has been rough on new lights for a long time. As a fellow warlock player, I can give a few exotic pairings and subclass builds that may help ease the pain for when you feel like you’re being forced to play PvP. 4. Traditional tank roles don’t normally exist in Destiny outside of a few very specific builds, or you are in certain supers. You’re on the right track, but not quite there yet. You’re focusing on damage reduction, but not giving yourself a way to quickly recover health to survive follow-up attacks. Look more into incorporating solar restoration and/or void devour in your gameplay loop. The Recuperation mod for boots is also a huge godsend if you can create orbs semi regularly. 5. I haven’t thought much about stats in so long so forgive me for not having as much input here. Just gonna add my two cents. For warlock, the big 3 stats that you want the highest in are resilience, recovery, and discipline. Grenades are what usually gets an engine going for warlock builds which can allow for ability spam situations to happen where you don’t even need to use your weapon.