TL;DR: Great Game, but the Dev Team needs to change up the way they're approaching things to make the players happier.

I'm not typically one to bother with forums for a game like this, but I thought I'd come here and sing some praises to the developers, as well as offer some of my criticisms. I'm well over 50 hours into the game now, and I'm starting to notice why some people complain about particular parts of it. I'm Rank 30 as of writing this, mind you, and I've gotten past the main campaign and done the story related assignment after that. Can't rightly recall it's name off-hand, but I'm trying to dodge spoilers for any readers.

I don't know how terrible the grind to 50 is, but I've heard it can be a bit grueling. Now, I personally have little sympathy for people who want to get there as soon as possible, especially considering how new the game is. I personally believe that's a good thing, as someone who enjoys playing a single character typically and strolling through a game casually. I clear most missions completely (unless I'm in a rush for an event, let's say) simply out of compulsion to purge the heretic. Also because I enjoy trying out a variety of strategies and ideas for fighting different enemies in different areas, and doing so allows me to practice quite heavily on my way up to 50. So I'm probably not the typical ARPG player who's going to look at this game, but this gives better context to what comes next.

So I see all sorts of complaints about different things related to the game, but I would like to instead praise a few things that have been done, and offer some constructive criticism based upon my own experience. From here on out I'll be trying to speak directly to the developers.

Praise:

So far in my 54 hours I've absolutely loved the game. It's already gone beyond my "$1/hr" benchmark for enjoyable content, and I'll never make a complaint about buying the game, nor the price I paid for it. That is absolutely certain. I've been playing it most every day, at least for an hour, since you released it on Steam and I've enjoyed most of it. Sometimes it can get a little repetitive, but even that's broken up by hidden rooms and the occasional Relic drop, or a bit of lore. Speaking of lore, you've all done a fantastic job with it, and while it certainly doesn't stick true to how strong an Inquisitor is typically shown to be, I think that's fine. Aside from that small point however, the lore's spot-on far as I can tell, and it certainly seems like you spent the time and effort to really get deep into it, and I appreciate that considerably. The cover system and range of gameplay options, of which I've only seen some of what the Crusader has to offer in full, seems to have all the bases covered with more than enough variety. I appreciate the fact that the skill system is a lot easier to play around with and experiment with on your way up to end-game. Far as I can tell, that's the only time I'll really need to lock in and pick a set of skills, instead of feeling forced to do so right from the beginning, and let me tell you it feels great.

Oh, and kudos to whoever the sound person is that went through the painstaking task of working out the sound effects for walking on infestation/nurgle filth. It disgusts me, and for that, I salute your resolve. It's spot on, even if it's the sound of Heresy underfoot. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

Criticisms:

For a start, stop rushing changes out the door. For the Emperor's sake the Turrets, categorized as Champions, still spawn enemies under certain tarot/event conditions, but drop no loot. I'll take loot, and I'll take loot + spawning enemies, but I won't take no loot + spawning enemies. I'm sure you guys agree too, so that's to the point of what I'm saying here - you really need to consider everything and take your time before pushing a change. If your whole schedule of work is about 1 week ahead of when it's actually getting done, I think we can survive that one week wait to put that into effect, and you'll reap the rewards of having a week to think things over every time from there on out. Bug and Hot fixes sort of excluded, naturally.

Second, I believe you guys need an in-house simulation of the networked game us players have if you don't already, but obviously with some tweaks/cheats. With this I think you guys should go ahead and take your updates and quickly test everything they could potentially break in a very short amount of time. No public play-testing needed to find out, say, relics are broken, or turrets still spawn enemies, or your character's head is now a golf ball, or anything that's relatively easy to notice. I'm certain it wouldn't take more than a week of development time and would cut down on the number of bugs and game-breaking issues by a wide margin, increasing productivity and player satisfaction in the long run. If you have such and aren't using it to it's fullest potential, I strongly encourage you to do so for said reasons.

Third, don't change the game balance drastically from here on out. Huge changes in %'s when the game is otherwise doing alright in terms of balance aren't going to help. So far, playing at and above my level, I've gotten exactly what I expected until the latest update. Gunners definitely needed a bit of a suppression buff, but you jumped the gun and now they're more threatening than Champions in a fight. I quite literally prioritize them above Champions/Elites now in terms of genuine danger, because being suppressed/overwhelmed is far more terrifying than getting a good chunk of my HP thwacked. Maybe walk it back down to a 10-20% increase, and see if that has the desired effect. All I know is that smaller changes may take longer to feel out, but you won't go off surprising your players with them either.

Fourth, focus on getting things fixed that should be working before you worry about adding anything or making anything else. I can imagine you're able to do both at once in some regards - and feel free to - but don't take time off of fixing up broken/buggy mechanics for something less important. I'd rather hear "Hey we're delaying adding a new *insert something here* but we're doing it so we can fix *insert buggy/broken mechanic here*." than "Hey we added a bunch of new content but the stuff broken on release is still broken." I'm sure you can imagine why, as well. I have faith you'll get to it, but I'd rather it be sooner rather than later.

Fifth, Transparency. Tell us more about the plans and when you hope to have things fixed, make it super clear that these are by no means when things will actually get done, and we'll probably be a lot more understanding and hopeful. Mainly this just for broken things, not actual development plans like new areas/races/missions, just mechanics and bugs you plan on fixing, and when you plan to have that done by. This could drastically change how people view things around here, and I think this could have the greatest positive impact for the least amount of effort on this list.

That's all for more generalized criticisms, but to get to some specifics which I've heard and definitely do agree with, these are easily your most glaring issues that really do need to be fixed up to make the game more appealing:

Camera Auto-Rotation, I think we can all agree that'd be really nice to have, even if it's not perfect, it'd be a lot better to have one that's decent rather than none at all. If I can offer a suggestion to this point: Give us options for how the camera does this, ranging from a general "look at enemies" to a specific "focus on Elite(s)" or "focus on movement direction". Options can come later, but I tell ya, they're important if you're using tilesets to build things instead of pre-made maps.

Broken Mechanics - Many are aware that there are perks and skills that are genuinely broken - or appear broken by not showing up anywhere or seemingly having no effect - and this is a serious issue. I don't need to say much else on it, you already hear enough about it I bet, but one mechanic that does need some fixing that I don't hear about is enemies shooting through things you never could. It really kills immersion and the feeling of being in tight/cluttered spaces as the enemies shoot through solid objects to hit you, but returning fire is just a no-go.

Cutscenes/Dialogue/Text - Some cutscenes seem to have issues with audio/video sync, and some in-game dialogues seem to have bugs of all kinds, like being able to dodge some of them by starting the fight prior to entering the area, or just having no audio mysteriously. Just as well, there's clearly still some typos and accidents in some of the text documents in-game, all of which ought to get worked out, but I don't think these are terribly important compared to the others, but they would certainly help to make the game feel far more polished and appealing, and I don't believe it'd involve a ton of work.

Information - Many things are unclear in the game, mechanics not properly explained, that sort of thing. I believe the Tutorials need to be overhauled a bit, and we need a clearer Informational Index that explains the game's mechanics more thoroughly, preferably a page per mechanic. For Command Deck stuff especially, I suggest not only an explanation but also images showing the player what they're looking for if it's not absolutely clear.

This is every criticism I can possibly think of presently, and I'm happy to offer detailed solutions to any and all of them, and more than one of such if desired. This is pretty much the culmination of everything I know about the game and game development, as well as community management and program analysis, so it's the best I can offer in broad enough strokes to be digestible.

I can give more detailed responses and explanations on any of my criticisms if anyone's interested in them, as well as more detailed solutions. I'm a Programmer by trade, but I've dabbled in modeling and mapping as well, so I can get decently technical, though I certainly don't know enough about the programming environment to get as specific as I'd like to.