Thoughts after watching the announcements/interview

For my initial impressions watching the announcement, my first two thoughts were that I was initially pretty disappointed by the lack of a new character class/weapon, and I know a lot of people disagree with me here, but I'm a bit concerned that there's a lot of power creep in this upcoming patch. As more of a veteran player, I hope that I'm not going to be sprinting past most monsters during the campaign. Ultimately though, I guess we're getting the classes at some point, I just have to be patient, and regarding the power creep, I can see that this is a major concern that the devs have as well, so that at least makes me want to try it out before saying that these are bad changes.

The trade changes seem pretty cool, but weirdly, I'm not feeling all that hyped about them just yet. Maybe it's just too abstract for me to feel it right away. Still, at least from an intellectual standpoint, I think this is going to have some pretty far-reaching consequences. It would mean that it actually makes sense to sell a bunch of cheap stuff which previously I might have said, 'I don't want to bother leaving my map to sell something at this price, therefore I'm going to put it up for 5 exalts and if no one buys it, I'm vendoring.' In turn, with other people no longer saying that to themselves, it'll be easier to experiment with builds and potentially make the league last longer, since you can buy stuff from people who have abandoned the game.

This version of abyss looks solid, I get a feeling like it might suit my preferences more than the other league mechanics so far. I really like the idea of abyss monsters being empowered by whatever's nearby.

The changes to supports is probably the major place where I'm worried about power creep. I guess I should reiterate why I'm concerned about power creep, though I've said this many times, I doubt anyone is following my posts to know this, lol... basically, I really like the concept of combo skills, and my concern is that if a skill is powerful enough it stops making sense to use any other skill with it because why would you press two buttons when just one does the job?

So I mean... I hope all the support buffs aren't simply going to mean that skills are really strong to the point where you don't need to use more than one except for the occasional boss or rare. The reasoning for making it possible to use support gems in multiple places seems solid; I'm more concerned about support gem levels. That being said, it seems like the devs share my concerns about this kind of thing so I feel like I gotta try it before making any judgements.

The new act seems great, I was actually saying a while ago that it'd be great to have a more open style of campaign so that people can go where they want, almost like maps, but maybe not on the same level. I'm looking forward to the boss fights of course, and more story.

The interludes seems like a decent way of removing cruel, and I'll be interested to see the extra world building. I don't think GGG should remove these after acts 5 and 6 are added in, I think there's a bunch of possible uses for them. I guess I'll make a separate post with some of my ideas.

So yeah, not as excited as I thought I would be after the announcement, but still obviously going to be playing, and we'll see how I feel after the league starts.