This seems to be the place to post it, so hopefully I can help the developers see what I found to be points of frustration for a newcomer so that, if not by next week's launch, these things might be ironed out relatively soon after release for better ease of use (There are a few items not directly related to the PC controls, but ):
- The myriad controls are a bit overwhelming and not satisfactorily explained; during the guided practice, there's no stamina bar and the topic is never brought up, so it's unclear what to consider when managing your stamina. Similarly, you're taught how to execute the moves, but not what they're good for - can the stun interrupt an oncoming move? What attacks have "priority" over others? Can I block a combo in progress (it seems inconsistent)? In particular, character-specific movements are only explained in video form, with no easy way to jump to a specific explanation in the video and forcing the player to clunkily jump between video and practice to figure it out. Guided training courses for each character akin to the more general course would be a much more effective way of learning the ins and outs of each character.
- As noted by other players, the mouse controls for blocking feel slippery and imprecise. Half the time I make a gesture with my mouse in the desired direction, coming to the end of that gesture results in a very slight pull that isn't corrected for and frequently leaves my guard in an undesired position.
- Having all progression tied to each character seems really frustrating, and is already forcing me to pick and choose which heroes to use and which to abandon to avoid progression turning into a grind. It makes sense for gear to be character-locked, but the leveling system granting feats and cosmetics seems to only be locked to a per-character basis in order to force players to learn a new character before changing their feats. I think there's probably a way of handling this that doesn't result in the player having 12 different experience bars. (For that matter, "renown" isn't explained except in a pre-match tooltip from what I can tell. The inclusion of the term at all seems superfluous if it's just a stand-in for 20 experience levels.)
- The chat/pairing system is super frustrating to use right off the bat. I was told that "We should team up" by a player in chat, but there was no apparent place in the player-specific menus where I could add that player to my party, no obvious way to do so under the social tab (you're limited to "Friends", with no apparent way to add new ones within the game?), and when I wanted to check the chat again to see if I'd missed anything explaining how, I couldn't find a way to look at the chat history. After I left the match to fiddle in the menus I couldn't find a way to look through the players I'd recently encountered, either. Games like Overwatch have the social aspect down to the point where it's very intuitive to interact with other players; please take a cue from their designs if you have to, but it shouldn't be this hard to talk and party up in a multiplayer-focused game.
- The "griefing" reporting is far too vague and doesn't allow the user to make any notes. Allowing even a one-line form for the player to make a note (e.g. "Deliberate idling" or "abused emote to perform obscene gesture") would probably help you deal with resolving reports and would give players peace of mind that their feedback is specific enough to be acted upon.
Some of these things resolve themselves in future releases (especially the poor clarifications on controls, which might fix itself with the addition of a single-player campaign), but as things stand these are the biggest obstacles between me and a better enjoyment of the game.