Hi,

First of all, despite the fact that - sadly - I find myself among the many critics of the early release of Wolcen, I want to thank the devs for all the effort that went into the long process of developing this game. Even though I share the very common opinion that the game is nowhere near ready and should not have been released at this time, I recognize the potential it has and would like to contribute and help it reach that potential in the future. THerefore, I'd like to share a few observations from my 50+ hours with 1.0.2.0-1.0.4.0.

I don't wanna talk about the obvious stuff - bugs and server issues - but it cannot be left unsaid that these should be priorities. I want to talk about a few details of gameplay and balance.

1) Targeting with Left Mouse Button. Default autoattack is hard-bound to LMB. First, many builds don't use the default autoattack but would love to make use of a spam skill there. Secondly, LMB is naturally used for movement. Some more advanced aRPG players move by clicking the ground and then quickly repositioning the cursor to the most advantageous position so they don't mind that. But most players move by holding LMB, and this creates a big problem for builds that do use autoattack. Unlike many other aRPGs, Wolcen features no transition between movement and attack. When I approach an enemy with LMB held and hover the cursor over him, attack will not happen. The character will run in circles around the the enemy. In order to initiate an attack, I have to let go LMB, break my concentration, target and click on the enemy anew. This is a huge thing, especially with many small and mobile enemies. Forced attack is a crutch. But why need a crutch in the first place?

2) (Rather) useless non-hybrid casters. I only played a few dozen hours and haven't tested everything - so correct me if I'm wrong - but I got an impression that staves in Wolcen are useless. The problem of never having enough Willpower and having to lose DPS (and often - life) by using zero-damage super-slow staff autoattack - this makes casters always wanna hybridize with Rage skills (especially when they realize that Bleeding Edge is stronger than all Willpower casts combined). I don't want this to turn into BE rant so I'll leave it at that. Do something with those staves. Autoattackreplacer with more AoE for the ailments or significant DPS, maybe? (Also, I skimmed the build section of this forum and I suspect that staves are not the only thing that feels - to many players -very very far behind the most prevailing build choices.)

3) More variety in endgame. The town infrastructure thing is brilliant and is a nice motivator for farming. But the farming itself is very limited. Expeditions always revolve around the same thing. Maps (the drops to use in the Expedition menu) provide some variety. Imo the game needs more of them. More maps with more different options and modes of gameplay. Also, a separate survival mode could be developed where builds can speedrun and measure their strength (something like Crucible from Grim Dawn, maybe?). Much of aRPG fun is about choosing what's best for my build, correct? But in Wolcen, I don't really have a way to clearly verify if my choices are right or wrong.

4) Filters. There should be a search box in the passive board as well as in all inventories. After writing a keyword, all items/nodes containing that keyword should highlight. Vendoring at early endgame is a nightmare. There are no affixes in the names of the items or special shapes of the items so that you would know you won't need it and can auto-sell it quickly. You gotta read a few dozen lines of stats every time. Personally, I like it. I also like exploring the passive board. But I know for certain that many people don't. It takes good 10 minutes to find all the nodes containing +max ailment stacks, for example. Many people don't find that fun.

I got more but let's stop here. Thank you for reading. Looking forward for the next patch.