I've been grinding impossible with my friend for the past two weeks, and we've identified what we consider to be significant problems with the game.

1. The upgrade mechanic is too chance based.

On impossible, you are REQUIRED to upgrade your weapon to +10 before you can even kill millennium snow demon in a timely fashion. If the game decides to fail multiple times, your run is done. The Protection Stones simply cost too much for what they do.

My suggestion would be to make the protection gems cost more, but guarantee the upgrades won't fail. On average, this would cost less than having multiple failures occur in a single upgrade chain. The Very Important Pot could do the same thing for upgrades past 10.

2. Gold is too hard to acquire in large amounts quickly.

This is more of a symptom of the upgrade system problem, rather than a problem by itself. Nonetheless, all the mobs give basically the same amount of gold throughout the whole game. Starting wolves give the same as divine generals; it doesn't make much sense. The only real way to get money is to farm trial demons and sell their drops, but that identifies another problem.

3. Boss respawns are too long.

Even with playing with just 2 people, it's easy for boss overlap to occur. With 5 people, it's a nightmare. Everyone needs to kill fishie king/tota king/xingtian/etc, the respawns shouldn't be 45 seconds or more.

4. Warlock quests

Again, this is a symptom of the long boss respawns, but warlock giving you the same quest multiple times in a row is a run-killer. Having to kill tortoise 3 times in a row is bad enough, but what if someone else also needs the kill?

Simply reducing boss respawn time would go a long way towards improving this, but having warlock simply not repeat requests would be a bonus.

5. The points system.

As of right now, Huan Yuan stones can only be acquired with TD points and Boss points. That's fine, but both are far too limited to be able to realistically afford enough stones in the lategame. 100 boss points or 300 TD points are both really difficult to get, especially in games with multiple people. If you get bad luck with Warlock weapon drops, you're also forced to buy weapons to craft the Saint tier weapon.

My suggestion for improving on this would be to make harder bosses give more points. Having Fishie King give the same credit as Monkey King or Queen Mother of the West makes no sense. For TD points, the big mobs should give more points, maybe 10.

6. Cloud's Specializations

Why are Cloud's skills based off intelligence when his class set and weapons clearly prioritize agility as his primary stat? It just seems wacky that his damage is so gimped for no clear reason. Cleave isn't that good in this game, since most bosses simply aren't stacked on one another. His E skill has terrible uptime, especially considering it's basically the same thing as Rondo's W, which has far better utility and damage.



Closing thoughts:
I think this is a fantastic example of what custom games in dota should be. It has replay value, the developers are active in updating their game, and it's fun.

RNG isn't a bad mechanic, and often adds a lot of variety and replay value. It's when every single aspect of the game relies on luck that it ends up being frustrating more than fun.