1. I think the loot system in Diablo is terrible, mostly because of the randomness. Even things like set items are actually a bad idea. Having better distinction between items by adding more unique magical enhancements would be nice, but I don't really see a problem with buying powerful items in cities. If the price is set at the proper amount, then there should be a good trade off between doing quests and getting semi-random rewards and saving up gold to buy exactly what you want.

2. Not true. People complain that many level ups you don't gain anything (because attribute and skill points were removed). Also leveling slows down majorly after level 30. This was done to help out casual players who are probably going to play the game only a small amount and then quit.

4. I agree that more visual effects, more items, more visual customization is always better. 

I don't really feel like the RPG mechanics of FE are flawed, but rather the balance between heroes and units is something that needs more work. Diablo isn't the best example to look at in my opinion.

Also, I think you should compare to games you have actually played, since Diablo 3 isn't anything special. 

Yep and many skills and runes are not very useful, because in most cases only more damage is important. Who cares if you can slow enemies with a slow time if you can be invulnerable with a diamond skin and kill them with a wave of force? The attribute points of the equipment make it worse. You get + 3 in your main attribute per level but a SINGLE item increases the attribute by 20+ points and every attribute point increases the damage by 1 %.

How can one compare/bring ANYTHING from lamest ARPG game of the year in this soontobe masterpiece?

I largely disagree with you on all points that aren't already present to some degree.

1. Totally random loot? Meh, I'd rather have really characterful loot that shows up randomly. They already have some cool stuff at higher levels, and I would like more unique gear, but in terms of RNG gear drops. No. Finding a [Serrated] [Broadsword] of the [Holy] [Aardvark] for +2.2 damage +7.3% Spell Resist and +3 [INSERT SKILL YOU DON'T USE] would be really lame. You know those wolf hides? Yeah. They would be really expensive wolf hides.

2. Grinding? Fun is not what I would call grinding. Grinding is the reason that all... ALL... MMO games go from interesting story and some neat levels to... "I have to kill another 42 Umberdroths for my turn in for the Master quest!". They become jobs,  and it is the grinding that is the very reason that I do not play MMOs. Ever.

3. Ease/ Speed of play. See: "Turn-Based-Game". This is an entire genre which is designed with depth of strategy, player choice, and multiple avenues of victory in mind. I think you could argue that good pacing is important (which it is), and it is important that a player can easily learn the fundamentals well enough to compete on Normal difficulty. That said, not only do I think that "Speed of Play" is directly counter to what a Turn Based strategy is, it also runs directly counter to the very presence of that "Fun" Grinding mechanic. Also not really where you see "Click Fests".

4. Design. Yep. I agree. I like having different styles of things, and would love to have some "Armor Aesthetic" choices during faction creation that impact the overall styling of your faction.

5. Characters. Yep. Character is important, and that's why they are giving all champions unique abilities, and they are going through the faction differentiation to the extent that they are.

The problem with suggesting things from Diablo is that the devs can't really see something they like in that game and add it to this one. All the devs have certainly played Diablo, but it is a totally different engine and a totally different game. The loot in this game for instance takes up alot of memory. Each item therefore must be carefully thought out. A loot list as big as even the one in the first Diablo is unreasonable to expect in this game. That sort of game only has a quest and loot economy, while this game has a strategic economy. That means this game would be impossible to balance if we were going through truck loads of loot after every dungeon or battle. It just doesn't translate to this game structure. The UI is also a moot point to bring up.

The developers here are working on improving what we have and will continue to do so. It takes time and they are using a much smaller team. That means incremental changes. Same as the AI and content. They will get added, but a small team can only do so much in a month. Personally I think the devs are working too hard. I say they should all stop working on the weekends. I just know Brad and Derek will be on the forums before Monday, probably reading this. That is how you lose perspective. I would much rather they go see The Avengers 10 more times this weekend and think about adding Vibranium Shield to the loot. Some of my best ideas for the game come from taking a step back.

I hate that crap.  Let me play the game I bought, how I want to play it.  The Total War series has done that too - you have to play one of the major factions before you can play a minor one.  Words cannot describe how much I hate that nonsense.

Yep Stardock could learn from Blizzard that it is important for the player to feel his character is getting better, but i think Stardock is on the right track with the "go big or go home" design goal.

That is a boring game design in my opinion and too many games (Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2, ...) use it to unlock higher difficulty levels and other things, but if i want to play on nightmare difficulty from the beginning in diablo 3 i should be able to.

First off, I like Diablo series myself, but I'm still waiting my Diablo 3 from Amazon 8-) , nevertheless, the huge success of Diablo comes - it is simple to learn, it has addictive elements for the masses, it is clean and polished, it was made for a long... long time... and ofcourse, finally, it was hyped as hell. The latter one being one of the more important points in the success.

Now while I like Diablo, I hate most MMO-s, I love strategy games, civ series are simply my favourites, but the most time I have spent on Civ IV mods, both Fall from Heaven to Fall Further to Rise from Erebus, but also such as Rise of Mankind. I love complex games. And even though there wouldn't be hundreds of millions customers for good slightly more complex games like FE(compared to sims which sold how many copies??? I still can't believe that lol...), then I still believe there is a reasonably large audience for such games, and they are hungering for a polished game for their taste.

To be honest, I enjoy this game more than Vanilla Civ IV but less than Fall from heaven/Fall further, even though the latter had an AI, which had no idea of his tools and power at his disposal, and also not worth mentioning the many crashes on the LAN games, but hey, it was still sweet getting beat up by my girlfriend myself being Hyborem - simply epic.

Anyhows, the problem with Fall further, and currently FE, has any of you ever experienced AI doing Tremor on you? Or Tornado? Or any other really abusive strategy? . The most they have done is occasionally one hit my hero with their hero(crit.). The problem is that hardcore players like myself don't like super powers, if we don't get hit by the same super powers ourselves. That doesn't mean I don't like having such things in the game, I just want the AI to abuse them same way as I do, and that without giving them a +X% bonus to everything. Because this is what wakes me up and I start thinking, hmm, I need a new more refined plan...

Thanks everyone for your replies to my post. Even though many people here seem to find Diablo distasteful this thread didn't devolve into personal attacks and in fact some people have had some really good input for the developers.

This is an excellent community.  (Also the team should take the weekends off, your right.)

Let me boil this down to a more interesting question. Is there a game, with interesting mechanics, that the developer should look at?  Not a 4X game, but something you wouldn't normally associate with a turn based fantasy game.

Just to be clear, I want Fallen Enchantress to be the best turn based fantasy strategy game ever.  Period.  I'm not trying to suggest that the game should be more of a tower defense game or a moba, but game development doesn't happen in a vacuum and a good idea is a good idea.

I do think there's something to learn from Diablo 3 about loot.  Maybe randomly generated loot it s a bad idea, for reasons others have point out above, but I do think that FE could benefit from a massive amount of hand-generated loot.  Gambling is in human nature, and we like to whack that pinata over and over to see what comes out this time.  It can only be a surprise if there's a large pool of pre-generated loot to draw from.

I know you said "not a 4X game" but I'm going to pull out Dominions 3 anyway, which is kind of a 4X game.  The aspect of Dominions 3 I'd like to see FE "borrow" is the sheer craziness in the range of summoned units available.

• A huge list of summoned units in general.  I know 3D art is vastly more expensive than 2D art, but I'm okay with reused models.  Just colour them differently, give them different weapons, scale the unit size, etc.  I'm 100% okay with that.
• Some truly horrific late-game summoned units.
• Unique late-game named summons.  These can only exist once at any given time.
• A random aspect to summons.  In Dominions 3, there are spells like Bind Arch Devil.  There are several, unique named Arch Devils in the game.  You get one of them, determined randomly, and their stats vary.

Go big or go home! 

If you want speed of play then just play an RTS game (that is what they are there for) with the exception of games like Total war which have both TBS and RTS in the game.  Remember your playing a TBS game it is not for ADD people.

EDIT:  Oh and the main thing that D3 can teach FE is what not to do.  FE can learn from other games like AOW, AOW:SM, MOM, CIV, GAL CIV2, Total War, Warlock, as well as others but the one game that it does notneed to learn from is D3.

A year ago you would have never convinced me that I would take time off from a newly released Diablo III, to play a EFE beta. Yet thats what Im doing today. D3 is good but not great, lots of fluff I like substance, debth choices and gameplay. Im hoping that EFE dilivers. So far it looks good.