I don't think I've ever seen the Avatar write so much o.O. I'll do a commentary of reading his commentary, it's tense and awesome!
Yeah, I tend to keep things short and concise, but then again, I don't use quotes like I will in this post, and that doubles length.
And the "never forget quest requirements" thing - the devs really, and I mean really really really need to implement the damn in dungeon quest refference feature. Maybe in the character portrait or wherever, but it simply has to be there.
I believe that the devs said they would, but maybe I'm just remembering us asking for it repeatedly. Either way, something that warns you or just shows it somewhere on your panel. Even a little icon like a red circle with a line through it over a fireball for warmonger. Just something simple like that.
Also, Avatar - don't ride the poor guy so hard on mentality - it's a game not a job

I know taking it seriously has enormous benefits once the margin of error starts getting lower because of the rising difficulty, but I'm much sloppier at gameplay than you and I've managed things that made you go O.O every so often

(@Jay - do listen to Avatar, good habits in the game pay off imensly, and bad habits lead to frustration. )
Sorry if my commentary was too intense/harsh, I just want to help. And yes, I do tend to take games seriously, but I think that makes me better at them. Also, I was a bit harsh on mentality, but mentality is huge. If you inwardly give up, you effectively destroy your chances of doing so.
Also, there's meme material in there PICK THE MEATMAN! It's like listening to a radio broadcast of an old-school Balkan soccer commentator with an incredible emotional investment in his team :_D The tension!
Yeah, started going crazy at 1 AM when he kept picking the zombie. Looking back I actually started laughing at my commentary. I must have been really really tired, but it is pretty funny. Great analogy, I seriously lol'd when I saw it.
Gods are scaring the crap out of people - why, why doesn't anyone important listen when I say they need an god friendly class among the intro bunch? "No, no, design decision, having indulgences on a priest would confuse newbies, yadda, yadda". Well guess what, now the priest doesn't confuse anyone but gods do -.- Crap, it took me half a year to consider touching GG with a 10 foot pole after the initial bad experience and they plop his altar down where you're most likely to encounter him with a potion spiker -.-
Yeah, but it makes sense that gods are scaring the crap out of people. You take a couple of bonuses thinking this is going to be good then make a little mistake and your game explodes in your face. Painfully. You don't know that is was because of your zeroed piety, you just think doing that action screws you. Usually it is a generic action too, like drinking a potion or casting a glyph, so you think that makes you way to afraid of choosing that god. The puzzles help a little, and the codex/library (they are still making that right?) will too, but my suggestion is the first time you do each piety changing action it immediately jumps you over to the piety tab, so you can see what happened. Jay was losing piety occasionally and not even realizing it.
Also the belief that you need high levels to fight the boss makes way more sense than what we're doing. The high-end gameplay, at least the important bits of it, are completely unintuitive and pretty much the opposite of what makes sense. I'm not sure exactly where and when it really became that way, but the "mid-fight lvlup full heal" mechanic itself looks more like an ascended glitch than a natural feature that you're supposed to weaponize. And if you level up you can't use it, you only level up to the point where you can tank a hit (or do a bit more damage), and ding to victory.
This is quite true. Fortunately, most of DD is intuitive (it was great watching Jay figure out how to use spells a lot and how great they are), but this is definitely the hardest thing to get along with popcorn bowling. If you realize it, it makes sense that it is best once you figure it out (you start at level 7, and still get your level 8 hits rather than just the level 8 hits), but realizing it is rather... difficult. I'm not even sure when it occurred to me. It was an accident. I was 3 exp from leveling and started the fight, knowing my potions would win it for me. Before I used a potion I saw I could level up, and I figured the extra damage could only help. Then, once it refilled my stats I realized how great this could be if I used it enough. The problem is you can't rely on accidents to teach people stuff. It might be worth adding one or two puzzles into the academy about it, but it doesn't seem like people check out puzzles (look at Jay), so I'm not sure if that would work. They really need to make it obvious how useful puzzles are. I think it would help immensely.
We made an expansion and it is awesome. Really, you should check it out, especially if you're looking for some extra challenge.
Download over at ddmod.weebly.com!