Not to mention new monsters
I think we've already establish on this forum that the combat lacks anything interesting., so I don't think that counts tbh. The only monster if found interesting was that bird-mecha-thing that appeared in boss zones sometimes.
Some of the newest stuff (like the infestation stuff, which sort of acts like environmental hazards) and some of the recent enemy types are interesting.
TBH, I'm not really sure why people are saying combat as it is now is deeply flawed (not saying you are, but others have).
Yes, there is a lack of variety in effects (ways they can impact enemies or the environment, not art effects), and I do think the "low total number of frame" animations on character attack animations combined with momentum usually not showing itself very well on firing of spells (though for many spells, it is very evident on hit) makes the combat "feel" stiff, but these do not require major redesigns of the system.
All of these points I mentioned about combat have been discussed in other threads too.
Plus, the current system and spell selection still gives a pretty decent variety, even though it could certainly use improvement.
spells you couldnt get before (usefulness seems to entirely depend on the player),
I only new spell I used was Ride The lighting, since it was useful to me. Things like launch meteor were just not useful at the time to due to high mana cost or that it's too weak, since it couldn't lower the amount of hits it took to kill a monster
See my point above about the acknowledged lack of variety in spell/damage effects, but there have been some clever new proposals too. One of the cooler ones (that admittedly would be difficult to balance right) is to allow some sort of projectile interaction. ("shooting down" enemy projectiles, allies combining projectiles into something even more powerful, things like that)
The second one could imply a major redesign of the balance of projectiles and enemies, but just adding new spell effects wouldn't. In any case, if new mechanics are added, some of them should definitely be "backported" to the some of the basic spells, because the basic spells are what are used in "everyday combat", and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon, and the basic spells are what people get during their very important first impression.
the Ice Pirates
A useless addition that either does nothing at all or cheapkills your JtP mission. Maybe if they were more threatening other than cheapkills in very specific missions, or there was a reason for getting rid of them.
Already acknowledged, even in 1.000 (read the pre-release notes and you'll see they had to delay some of their plans for them due to the upcoming release dates)
Also see
Sky pirates: what are they and how do I make them get off the continent?and
Make ice pirates more interestingI'll repeat my point though that I think they should probably be taken out until the missions involving them can be implemented, as by the dev's own admission, right now they are an incomplete map event.
I wouldn't really mind if the game was still in beta.
But it's not. It was released. That's the real problem for me, it just feels so unfinished. So I stopped playing the game till it has more focus.
Agreed, this game still feels beta, and frankly I feel it was pushed into 1.0 too soon. But this particular point has been debated to near death by now, so I'm not going to write a long post about it like I would otherwise be inclined to do.
