40 Hours in and already disengaged

Feedback and Suggestions
8

A well written piece, thanks OP.

Am I the only one who challenges the assumption that this is the only way a game can be developed - grinding?

Last Epoch development and player comments all take this as a starting point. “But of course we have to grind…”

Now for developers, the incentive is very clear - If I can find players that like grinding, then convince them of a reason to do it, I’ve just stretched my last 6 months of development a long way. Hooray.

For players, the incentive is less clear. I’ve quite simply never been able to get my head around it’s appeal. Investment bias? Does it provide self-actualization? Why do players fight so hard for grind when they could fight for variety, for the opportunity to reach their goals faster, or for more respect of their own time?

In any event, the path of grinding, everyone agrees, has to work really hard to strike a balance of some really arbitrary things to keep a really small player base happy. It seems to me like a really risky strategy for developers.

Alternatives include:

  • A wide variety of ways to reach power, with lots of incentive to test out combinations, and no grind required to find out which ones work better than others
    (see the game ‘nova drift’)
  • A small amount of build variety, with variable and unpredictable progress toward them (see game ‘slay the spire’)
  • Very easy to balance gear and power, with optional farming of currency, and really tailorable spell system and lots of puzzles/riddles (see four crystals of trazere, a really old game)
  • Very easy to balance combinations, with subtle interactions appearing based on player choices (see game ‘minion masters’ - you don’t have to grind much to get cards, but it can still take a long time to try all combinations, keeping you engaged without arbitrarily dragging things out)

The key point to all these examples being that if you do not base all your decisions around grind, you increase your chances of providing fun content to a much wider variety of players (including those that like grinding!). You make it far less likely that hours of development are wasted because you didn’t accurately predict how they fit into the grind balance black box. It becomes far less costly to put a variety of content in the game because new content that is unappealing is not gating players from trying what they really enjoy.

New content does also not need to be balanced with an ever increasing amount of old content, so that cool item you think of does not need to be cross checked for interactions with every other item and passive ever made.

Consider a new, really OP item. Of course only a few players should get it, and they should be forced to work really hard to earn that chance, right? Well if you choose this philosophy, then you really want to check the new items interactions with every existing passive, skill and other item. And you really want to get it right first go, otherwise you’ve made people grind for nothing, and they will complain about every change you try to make. That is a lot of pressure - better hold off on releasing this item! Now you have a game with 3 years of development and only a few item sets, and a huge fear over getting new items right, hence, very little options for players to actually choose a variety of items, hence boring gameplay with a lot of grind.

An alternative is you make this new item easily accessible. Hardly any grind required. Every player gets the choice of using it to gain immense power, in the short term and there is freedom to nerf the crap out of it at a moments notice because no one had to grind for weeks to get it. Now there is little stopping you from releasing 100 of these items. Players might start saying things like “yeah, I know Eterras blessing crows are crap, but I already played that OP build with that OP item, so now I don’t care if they nerf/fix it, I want to have fun with this new item/skill and see if I can get to the end of campaign with it. It’s not costing me too much because I don’t have to grind for weeks to find out just how much it sucks. I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to try a freezing, stunning leapslam build? Oh, you are grinding to see if you can find all purple items - have fun, I’m really glad I’m not forced into doing that because I don’t like hard work for no reason. Gee I love this game!”

Imagine.

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9

There are some games where grinding is fun though. Most of the new games make it seem like a job and it is tedious. I still remember playing Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3. I would start the game and the moment I got to venture into the world, I was doing a circle in a forest to grind. I was grinding for levels and for gold to buy the next weapon/armor upgrade. Gold in those games was static, monsters always dropped the same amount of gold and exp. You were able to easily calculate about how long it would take to grind the thing you wanted. There was a defined finish line you were working towards.

I don’t know what it is, but pretty much ALL old school rpg games and mmorpg games had fun grinding. Even WoW grinding was fun. For whatever reason, aRPG grinding ALWAYS seems like work. Maybe its the complete randomness of items things can drop that make grinding suck (Monster Infrequents make grinding fun!). You slaughter countless faceless monsters because anyone of them could drop the thing you want, so its all about numbers. Maybe mobs should have loot tables. That makes things more interesting because you are hunting for specific mobs.

Just look at what people farm in LE already. People target farm certain bosses/echoes because of the boss’s loot table or the echo’s blessing loot table. People like the feeling of knowing they are “in the right place” to get the upgrade they are seeking, be it item or otherwise. Maybe all LE needs to fix the grind problem is more “target” farming and less ubiquitous loot.

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10

I don’t think the campaign is as easy as people say. There are really dangerous zones, especially if we don’t have the correct void/necro/phy resistances.

I agree we can craft gear too good too soon if we compare it to PoE. And maybe that’s because LE max affixes are 4 and not 6 as in PoE.

I’m not sure if I agree with the 20th skill point being more meaningful than the 15th. In PoE around level 85-90 your build is done and some more SPs in the tree won’t improve your char very much.

Good feedback so far. Regards.

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11

Yes agree. Generally I find the campaign harder than the monolith, especially after I get my T12-16 gears.

There’s probably some truth to this. But I think it’s more because of the targeted deterministic crafting and the abundance of shards more than anything else.

We first gain the 20th skill point around the early 80s iirc.

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12

I remember a discussion about the anticlimactic feeling of skill leveling.

This has 2 sides:

The current implementation:

The current implementation grands enough room for very flexible building. You can focus on rushing that one neat playstyle changing node and get it somewhere between 7 and 12. This is the climax of skill building, rest is optimizing the skill. I don’t say that the last points after that one node are useless or just fluff. Theres a lot of stuff still possible after that, but it doesn’t feel that impactful.

For me personally there are only about 3 skills in the game where have the feeling that it doesn’t matter what to do with more skillpoints. Most skills force me to make decisions and that means theres more interesting stuff in the trees than skillpoints availible (that’s a pro for me).

A more climatic skilltree similar to passive tree

The devs would have to gate skillnodes behind a minimal skillpoint investment in the tree. So you could only choose key nodes at lvl 20. This would make maxing the skill very impactful, but also make skilltrees one dimensional. What about choosing 2 or 3 key nodes within a tree? Not possible anymore.

Currently we have some key nodes having follow up nodes that exclusively buff the key mechanic unlocked by that key node. You would have to put that support nodes into an order so you have to unlock them before that one key node that you need to take advantage of that support nodes.

Or you have to put the key note behind only 15 points and have the last 5 points if your skill being not so exciting.

Personal Conclusion regarding skilltrees:

I really love the current version of the skilltrees. I take the anticlimactic progression as a minor drawback for all the great options it offers.

I’m one of the player types that tries new builds before min/maxing a single build. And the skilltrees with different branches are the main selling point of LE for me. No matter what you do to try to “enhance” the progression curve of skills, will come with a downside.

For me the current implementation is near perfect.

Maybe there could be some augmentation skillpoints that you can collect by beating empowered monoliths, that opens up
a new branch of the skilltree you can spec in, improving effects that you have skilled in.

But the base skilltree is just near perfect as it is right now - mechanically. Indeed there are some skills that could need an overhaul to have more viable build options. But the core system is great!

13

Loving all the discussion ( it is a breath of fresh air to be completely honest )

As far as grinding goes I do think that replayability comes in many forms. I personally like to min/max characters. I still know all D2’s breakpoints by heart to reference what kind of a player I am and that the current version of LE isn’t exactly in my wheel house. At the end of the day however I think the goal here is going to be to create an experience that will keep players engaged for as long as possible and to do that you really do need to add depth to go along with all the width. Width in LE is at a good place. 15 broad archetypes and plenty of skills will be enough to engange a lot of players for a long time but it doesn’t ensure longevity. I would welcome more width but it is ok where it stands today. It is fun to be able to “finish” a build quickly that will also mean that people will “finish” the game quickly and that most players won’t stick around for long. A game like this needs some form of depth. Something that will make it enjoyable to play a single build for 100+ hours without forcing you to. I am not saying that LE needs to force people to grind to achieve something. they just need to figure out how to make grinding worthwhile.

As for the skills. I enjoy the skill trees as they are. It is a nice fresh take but unfortunately their design and the way the passives are constructed really don’t help with rewarding reaching higher levels. This again ties in to the entire width vs depth issue I mentioned above. They are great if you like to make loads of builds but you need to be critical and consider how long it will take a player that makes many different builds before they too become burnt out.

Personally I would prefer a system that gives you a skill point for each level up rather than levelling the skills seperately. This makes each level up more impactful but retains a lot of the flexibility the current trees have and pushes your “finished” point to a slightly higher level which again motivates people to engage with the end game content. You could still get all relevant keystones in all used skills by lvl 80 ish but wouldn’t max out all skills until lvl 100. Now the grind from 90 to 91 gives you a passive and makes one of your skills better and makes grinding past level 80 ish ( I heard this is when your skills max out ) worth it.

In the end you do have to consider why a player would engage with something repetitive. Currently there isn’t really a good reason to. Yes you can quit your build and roll a new one but that well dries up very quickly and LE will die as a result. You want to balance depth and width.

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14

Deterministic crafting is one of the best features of this game. Ofcourse if its not your first character the camapaign especially in the beginning seems is easier. You can easily get blue items with tier 4 affixes. ( you can always switch to ssf mode to see how it feels when you dont have crafting mats). But when you starting running middle monoliths (not even talking about empowered ones) this is the point of the game where you really starting optimize your gear. And trust me its not easy at all to get perfect tier 20 items , and good exalted is extremly hard to get. In arpg games noone really cares about campaign. In last Epoch currently there are 2 end game systems: arena and monoiths. Empowered monoliths can be compared to arena wave 150- 200, depending on modifiers, If you were patient enough and get to those systems you will sure understand why and what you need improve in you gear. There are multiple defense systems. And by the end of campaign people probably max out only resists. Also high content requires high damage. (without modifiers lvl 100 mobs mitigate around 85% incoming damage).

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15

Yes I am aware that there is a point at which the content gets harder. Issue is I never got that far because getting there was tedious.

In all honesty I might still be playing if there was a way to fast track it to a level where the content was challenging and the drops were better. You are given the ability to craft gear that is good enough to walk through lvl 75 monoliths as early as level 50-55. The entire process of grinding through the early monoliths with no realistic chance of improving your build while doing so is tedious enough to start wondering why you are doing it. If the answer then is to get to do harder versions of what you are already doing then it is very easy to get fed up. I spent a few hours playing from level 58 to level 68 ish in one sitting, doing the same thing over and over and felt like I had achieved nothing at all. No sense of progress, no sense of accomplishment and with no clear goal.

Again I am not trying to be a downer here. Just trying to explain my experience and why it falls flat in its current state because I do believe many people will have a similar experience and in order to be a success these issues need to be addressed.

I have already decided that I will be revisiting the game once the end game is updated. It has done enough to prove it is worth playing for sure. They just need to figure out how to make the end game grind worthwhile. ( worthwhile for players with similar tastes to me that is )

P.S. As stated in an earlier post I do believe that a longer campaign that drops you in to the endgame at a higher level will resolve much of the issue.

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16

Maybe it’s also that the story currently leaves you with no real clue what to do.

Are you aware that monolith bosses have boss specific loot tables? Every boss drops specific uniques that you only can get by beating him. The loottable gets extended for empowered bosses.

Are you aware that killing monolith bosses gives access to a timeline specific pool of blessings? That blessings (I.e. resistances/ crit chance, increased XP, idol drop rate, …) are permanent and work everywhere and can roll in different ranges. So you can farm bosses for specific blessings and also improve the rolls. Empowered monoliths grand higher rolls on these blessings.

The game doesn’t tell you this explicitly. Its somewhere in the game guide but not really obvious and easy to miss.

Item levels of gear that drops also is tied to area level. So you need higher monolith timelines to get gear with higher bases or specific high level uniques.

So there is a lot of stuff to chase already (that will get expanded for sure), that might be not that obvious.

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17

Yeah I got several blessings but never really replayed bosses because I wanted to push the difficulty as quickly as I could.

I think this ties in with the general first post where I mentioned short and long term end game questlines. The difference between just getting dropped in and getting blessings or getting a quest that literally tells you to get a blessing is pretty big. An npc that shows up when you beat a boss and get a blessing that kind of quickly explains what they are etc. More npc guidance in general to help new players get their barings after the storyline would be nice. Much of what you mentioned isn’t very clearly explained.

In POE every new bit of content is introduced by an npc that has different dialog and information. You basically feed the necessary information to the player when they first encounter it. This spreads out the learning curve and doesn’t make people go looking for the information.

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18

This is one of the biggest issues i have with the crafting system and drops in general.
Way too easy to reach good base power level for the time,risk and investement.
Harvest lovers and PoE refugees will disagree but it is an item editor for the most part, even more than PoE benchcrafting

It makes most items that drop afterwards vendor trash, except for crafting glyphs and maybe idols.

Adding T6,/7 is a meme at this point as this much power is not really needed in an already broken crafting system + power player curve.

Monolith is as one dimensional as D3 greater rifts, and T6/T7 is reminiscent of ancient/primal +. If they intend to copy the endgame system then its okay i guess if they have no better ideas. But i would rather play the original than a worse version.

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19

Yes, crafting is very powerful tool and can give you chance to create or upgrade your gear. But i dont think its ruining or its too powerful. Maybe its just me but you need those defensive mechanics also updated. When you get very high dmg item it can also reduce your resistances, crit avoidance, endurance, health. Etc so you really need to grind those empowered monoliths to get best drop rates for powerful base gear and so it will have to also need to include affix you desire. So that crafting is neat thing to have so that you have chance prepare better gear.

I understand if you have some build and you get all defensive /offensive mechanics maxed out in lvl 60 (which i personally think its impossible or atleast very tiny chance to success)

TL;DR i dont think crafting is too powerful they need to buff those weaker enemies so it comes sooner that point you have focus on your defensive stats/mechanics.

20

This is exactly my problem in endgame aswell!
The only thing i want to add is the lack of random events that happen in the echo areas.
I would love to see the chance of stumbling onto a special pillar which holds special monsters or something with special loot that you only can get from that.

This would make exploring maps more interesting and actually worth it.
Now i know i just have to rush to the boss asap instead of actually exploring the echo itself for potential secrets/goodies.

21

Please allow me to ask one question… do you read the description of the timelines?
It is clearly written that we explore alternate realities, when events did not occur as we know they did. It is written, in not complicated language. I feel - and I must be wrong - that anyone who reads it would understand.
Each timeline is a different story. They’re not related to each other, but each one is an alternate story from the original story exposed in the campaign. “What if Heorot won against Rahyeh” sounds very clear to me. “What if Rahyeh attacked Lagon’s domain” also. And so on.

22

Yeah you are right. If I would read all the text I would know what the story is about. What you are 100% wrong about though is assuming that everyone will read it. If more than 10% of the players read them I would be surprised.

Story is one thing, how you deliver it a second and how it drives you is a third.

The story is threadbare whether you can read it or not. The delivery is non existant and this is where LE fails right now. I don’t mind being given more background through optional text but you can’t deliver every bit of story through written text alone and going forward the voice acting is something that will be very important. That being said however I do think voice acting for every single alternative story represented by a monolith would be a huge waste of resources. This for most players will be an auto skip as is the text provided.

I don’t really care whether the story is any good or whether or not is complex and layered. They never really are in arpg’s and to be quite frank 90% of your target audience doesn’t really care all that much as long as it falls within what is acceptable. I also don’t care that there is no delivery as it is in beta. I am sure once the voice acting is implemented it will become a lot better at deliviring its narrative.

The main issue is how the story drives the player. A story and a narrative drives a players actions. Sure fine we are experiencing alternative timelines but why? What is the actual point of doing it? What is the impending doom that threatens us all unless you, the hero, puts his/her life at risk to prevent it? This is D3 all over again. The endgame is aimless. Grinding something to be able to do the same thing but harder doesn’t motivate a player long term.

What LE really needs in the endgame is a clear questline that you can follow. At first you have to explore alternate realities to find the one that contains a boss. A player will be triggered to look for said boss. Once you kill the boss you expand your story and tease the player with the long term story goal and give them a set of quests that they can focus on short and middle-long term.

You can have pulitzer prize story material but if it fails to drive the player, if it doesn’t lead to goals for the player, it is wasted.

Full disclosure I do not like the choice of theme in this game. This is personal taste but because time is non-linear it makes it very hard to instill agency in a player and makes the narrative more complicated that it should really be. It’s a cool idea and all but it comes with a specific set of new challenges that I don’t feel are handled very well in the games current state. The more complicated your story becomes the better you delivery needs to be to keep players engaged enough to make the effort to understand it. The fact that there are endless alternate timelines implies that there are timelines where the players efforts and accomplishments also count for nought. You spend a good 8-10 hours finishing a quest that in the bigger picture has very little implication ( at least in the current version )

Again. I am being quite critical here because I really want the game to succeed and in my personal opinion the issues I listed require some attention if the game is to find long term success

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23

I don’t assume people will read, I just regret they won’t. :wink:
That’s the problem with HnS games: people don’t read the story then may struggle when they don’t understand it.
I’m a little biased because I’m totally story-focused, but when I play a game I want to understand what it is about.
Or maybe one day we’ll have a HnS with no story, just activities about killing monsters and looting stuff. This would be efficient and could be fun, but it would be sad.

You’re critical, yes, but in a positive way. That’s good!

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24

Really wish the story had been structured like this. I feel like the monolith system would make a far more interesting way of delivering the story than the railroad system we have right now.

It’d solve the issue of the campaign’s lack of randomness by letting the player choose which timelines to explore. There’d be a lot more mystery to the whole world too.

Edit: Also think it’d be kinda nice if you didn’t know what timeline was the “right” one too. It’d be up to the player to piece together the story.

25

This right here. To my friends I have always been known as the one who likes the games that you have to read aka “rpg” games. So I always assumed that the rpg genre drew in people that enjoy the reading and imagining and immersing. Which is what the target audience ends up being and the game is structured around.

But then you get zippy mczoom zoom who can’t be bothered to read cuz tldr, and he wants the entire genre changed because of it lol. The entire foundation of rpgs was built around the environment telling you the story and giving you clues where to go next. If you didn’t want to read, you wasn’t goin nowhere.

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26

It’s not that I dislike storytelling or reading. I have a book set in D2 lore at home that I have read a few times and quite enjoyed. I also ended up reading through most of the lore in POE.

You need to be realistic about these things. If you decide to use only text format to deliver the information that is required to engage your players then your game will flop. Just hanging on to the good old days , however noble, makes very little sense. There are much better ways of creating immersion and delivering content. Failing to adapt will ultimately lead to failure.

In my personal opinion you need to strike a balance here. Deliver your story and plot through a combination of proper narrative and gameplay. Enough to tell players what is going on and why they are doing what they are doing. This is Audio, visuals and gameplay. Then you expand your lore and universe through other information that adds depth and flavor and can be explored through text.

LE forces you to read the story if you want it but gives you no reason to actually read it other than out of sheer interest. The game literally gives you an arrow at the start of your zone that points directly at your objective. You don’t even need to explore a zone to get to your quest let alone read the text.

I am just being realistic here. There are a lot of things that I think used to be better than they are nowadays. But as a business you need to adapt and evolve. A game with just text that requires a lot of reading may be amazing for you but it will not be a success. I do not believe that it is well suited to the average Arpg player and it’s target audience.

Just because something used to be a certain way doesn’t make it better than what it is now even it that is your personal preference. Being able to point your finger at zippy mczoom zoom for not reading the text when the game dies after just a few months will do the developers and the game a lot of good…

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27

I agree with you, I believe visual and audio delivery of a story makes an even stronger impact. Cut scenes at crucial moments can add a flare and dramatic angle that can leave a lasting impression. I’m all for that.

Voice acting is a beast in itself to tackle. As a small team I’m sure they don’t have ready access to someone like Morgan Freeman to drop in and deliver an ace narrative. And my very limited, small experience with game development in things like unity and game maker, have taught me that sound files eat up a tremendous amount of resources. If your game is limited on what it can push, audio has to take a backseat.

I have a more positive outlook on this games future than projecting failure onto it before it’s even out of beta. I have a feeling there are more than enough people that like the direction it’s going in that will keep it alive. Zippy is more than welcome to join the adventure. He might even learn to slow down and enjoy the scenery for once.

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