This is probably going to get a bit rambly, so I’ll start with the tldr. It probably won’t make much sense without reading the rest though.
tldr: Last Epoch should add Auto-Cast functionality in order to reduce the amount of Auto-Cast in the game.
Confusing? Probably, so on the the longer version.
I just hit empowered monoliths for the first time, having created my most enjoyable build yet. The catch - it’s an Auto-Cast build. I didn’t set out to make a build around Auto-Cast, it happened organically as I played the character. I started by trying to build around various active skills, but I found one that was much more effective than all the others. Basically, if it was off cooldown and I wasn’t casting it I was just losing DPS. There’s no decision making, casting that ability whenever possible is just always the right choice.
Eventually I decided to give the Numlock trick a try and the build just started playing much better. Since I no longer needed to spend any mental effort on casting my primary ability whenever its cooldown elapsed, I could focus more on my secondary abilities and positioning. Paradoxically, the build actually became MORE active and engaging when I automated my most mindless skill and instead focused on everything else. I’m targeting down tough enemies with a cooldown ability, using CC to interrupt dangerous attacks, paying more attention to my positioning, and dodging telegraphed attacks. The build feels amazing, and it makes me a little hesitant to even write this post because I risk drawing attention to it since it seems to go against the design philosophy Eleventh Hour has discussed in the past. I’m only doing this because I think there’s potential to learn from it and make the game even better.
Now there are two main reasons that I can see a developer wanting to avoid auto-cast. The first is bots, the idea that adding auto-cast will make it easier for bots to automate farming and ruin the economy. This is a fools errand, as scripting tools are too good and minion builds can be automated more effectively than any build using auto-cast anyway. Auto-Cast doesn’t help them by any significant amount, but not having it just makes it more likely that honest players trying to smooth out an inconvenience in the game will get caught up in attempts to ban bots. Basically, the “popsicle stick” issue from PoE if you’re familiar, which they’ve finally started trying to address by giving players in-game tools to smooth out the thing they were resorting to out-of-game tools to bypass.
The second reason is the desire to keep the gameplay active, and that’s the one that Eleventh Hour seems to be going for. This is a reasonable goal, as long as its not taken too far. If a significant number of builds become focused more on Auto-Cast than their active skills, then the gameplay will become more passive as a result. The thing is, some people don’t want to cycle through a 5 skill rotation so having some supporting Auto-Cast skills can actually get them more engaged.
So why do I think that adding Auto Cast will reduce Auto Casting? Data! If you implement a very simple in-game Auto Cast feature, you also get access to information about every single player using it. You can look at their builds, check trends, and compile data about every single skill that someone wants to Auto-Cast. This then lets you go back and look at those builds and see if there really is a design issue that needs to be addressed.
If a particular skill is being heavily Auto-Casted, you can pull those builds and get a very good look into why they’re doing it. Are these builds fun and engaging to play? Is it a skill that is too strong when Auto-Cast and needs to be redesigned? Does a build lack good options for its 4th or 5th skill slot so players are just slotting some random thing in and Auto Casting it because there’s nothing better for them to do with their skill bar?
So my suggestion is to continue the approach of trying to design your skills such that actively using them is optimal, but also implement a basic numlock style auto-cast so that you can gather data on the skills that don’t meet that standard. We already know that implementing the equivalent of always holding down a key won’t somehow break the game, because if it could then the numlock trick would have already done it. It just lets you take something that people were already able to do through out-of-game tools and bring it into the game proper, which then lets you learn from and control it directly.
