No, someone misread the post & thought the change from talking about PoE to talking about LE happened a sentence earlier than it actually did.
But yes, I’ve not read all 460 posts.
Rip Last Epoch.
At least I only bought one supporter pack. Time to minimize the losses.
I don’t. The CCP enacts direct supervision and control of content. They have party officials in the offices of all their major media companies whose job it is to dictate party guidelines and report back to the party infrastructure. They also use their applications for spying on foreign governments. All of this is well-known. If Tencent has majority control over a game, that is effectively an agency or proxy of a foreign power that is dangerous at best and quietly considers itself to be at war with the West at worst. The CCP is doing the most horrific things imaginable to the people of Xinjiang and props up the horror show of North Korea. They are also actively adding 100 nuclear warheads a year to their arsenal, while building silo’s in the desert because they want to run the world by force eventually. And every state-run Chinese business, like investment firms and videogame studios, helps to drive revenue towards that regime.
I might be too principled for my own good, but I think not buying a game or two that they get revenue from is a small price to pay to push back on them. (Admittedly, I have bought a few, but I try not to.) And I certainly don’t trust the software they want to put on my devices. (Tragically, almost all of the devices are at least partially made there also, but that’s an unavoidable problem at this point.)
Is xenophobia allowed in these forums?
Xenophobia alludes to the fear of the people of other countries.
Not to the governments of those countries. Which is a very important difference.
Still is not a topic to be discussed in a video-game forum unless it has a direct connection.
In the terms of Tencent it has to be mentioned that this oversight exists… the follow-up though is unnecessary. Too in-depth.
But - sadly - also not wrong information as much as I personally know. Which is why people dislike Tencent so much without doing any - active - harm to the industry. They still represent something that actually does harm.
Edit:
Kinda like Nestle not doing harm to the their customers - outside of providing really unhealthy products quite a lot 
- but they nonetheless stand for the damage they do in countries.
Nobody likes Nestle for a reason… and I love using them for those examples as it relates to the same reasonings.
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I am often criticized for going too in depth, yes. Unnecessary though, I’d have to disagree. If people (not you specifically) are allowed to blow off criticisms of Tencent and their trustworthiness as a company, I’m allowed to be verbose about it.
And yes, nothing to do with disliking Chinese people or China in general. Really insulting when people play that nonsense. The CCP did Tiananmen Square against China. If you care about what happens to China and its people, (and you’re rational, I guess) you’d have to oppose them.
The day all those root kits from the anti-cheats turn on and start DDOS’ing everything, I will be nice and cold in my comfort. lol
Yes, I understand where you’re coming from, and the ‘depth’ I’m speaking about is the topic-range simply.
This still is a video-game forum, not a politics forum. Real world events which don’t directly have impact on this product or this company… and at best for the sector it relates to (Which are Exile-likes… now I said it… not diablo-likes, exile-likes, take that diablo! ) then it has no place for it.
People come here to get away from those things. Math is only relevant when it relates to game systems here. Company setup only when it relates to how EHG is handled or the companies in direct competition with EHG. And so on.
Chinese real-life incidents have clearly no place here, unless for example EHG holds a competition of some sort and a competitor is directly influenced by that, then it becomes a topic.
I’m also not opposing you here, I’m just saying ‘this is the wrong place for these types of discussions’ simply.
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EHG’s investors are fair game, though. If they’re shady actors with connections to a regime with a sordid history, people should talk about it. It’s depressing but y’know, that’s life. It’s also depressing to me personally that people consistently avoid serious discussions because the topics are depressing.
If anything positive will come from EHG and Last Epoch in the end, it will partially be that their audience was forced to take a harder look at investors like Tencent and Krafton, who they are and how they’re choosing to behave in this industry.
Please, don’t sell out.
I don’t understand — you already have a finished game, how did you manage to increase expenses so much?
Another thing, your skins need a lot of improvement if you want them to actually be appealing.
You need a new model. I’d rather pay a subscription than have all these third-party companies involved.
It’s simple: offer a subscription for those who want to play the seasonal content and support the servers — those who don’t can just play offline.
Yes, that’s the direct instance.
Yes, and they do.
But that’s second instance.
Second instance is one too far for a video-game forum.
People do talk about it, it’s all over the internet and visibility is very high.
So the general thing:
First instance interaction = yes
Second instance interaction = no
You got the reasoning wrong.
It’s a principle aspect to follow.
This is a entertainment product, unless directly necessary as it relates to the content of the game directly it is to be avoided.
This means for example a takeover or buy-in from a investor of any kind is opening the discussion about the investor directly.
It also opens discussion to who they interact with… if it has direct effects on the product or the reasoning for interaction with the product.
If we don’t uphold going only into a specific amount of instances into details then discussions of history would become fair play since that shaped the outcome which allowed the creation and success of the named publisher and hence relates to the game directly.
So you gotta draw a line which is ‘acceptable’ to go in-depth for and one which isn’t.
And the depth for a entertainment product used to get away from real-life events specifically (which video games are often used as after all) is the direct interaction with it. The china-stuff is indirect interaction.
Yes, that is also true, for the future, and that in itself is fair play.
Albeit it has to do with what things are directly acceptable in the first place. Hence the interference in the product first and foremost. And the direct politics attached solely to those companies. Not the politics attached to the second-hand institutions of any kind beyond those companies.
It’s why talks about initiatives like ‘Stop killing games’ are valid argumentation points to be made while the economic warfare which naturally goes on world-wide (and if you think only China does it then that’s naive by the way, they just do it in a more blatant manner) is not.
By increasing from 20 to 100 people working on the product.
By avoiding to provide any proper monetization system which works long-term. Ignoring MTX nigh entirely which makes their quality sub-par while having the same price-tag as competitors which have vastly more detailed ones which at times are very heavily animated on top.
By sheer mismanagement which utterly starved the content pipeline.
Those are the 3 core aspects.
It’s over, that was a possibility before, that has been mentioned by me since 1.0 and they screwed it up.
No effort worthwhile to cry over spilt milk, it’s only useful to dismantle the reasons of why it happened so other companies don’t make the same mistakes by properly researching (which EHG didn’t do) and for customers to avoid those pitfalls (which many here didn’t do and now are pissed).
I just recently started my journey with LE, about 2 weeks ago. Having fun, not everything is completed but it has it’s own style and potential. Just when I get interested, wrote a review and wanted to support them via some skins or edition upgrade - this. I’ve seen it before and have no illusions, it’s just a matter of time.
On the bright side, I just did not spent enough time here to get really involved and emotional, but I can feel you guys. You can call it “xenophobia” but Chinese expansion in all areas of life is terrifying. It impacts my work, my hobby, my entertainment and nothing good has ever come of it - for me or the Chinese people. Trade war has reached it’s peak in history between China, Europe Union and US. I think you cannot avoid discussion about it here.
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As has been stated numerous times in this post
Krafton has a histroy of doing this. Even with srudios that are making a profit.
This is all based on thier track record. Theres nothing in thier history that would suggest anything different.
So why would this game be any different. Why this game why now. Nothing shows it would be different. Theres nothing that would back it up either
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Alongside Kulze’s response, welcome to “games as a service” where the game is never “finished” and is sold to the customer as an incomplete product with the promise that a never-ending treadmill of content will follow!
Sadly, the “game as a service” model is really hard to pull off, which is why there’s only a handful of GAAS games that I’d genuinely call successful with the next best scenario being like Last Epoch where it’s doing slightly better than breaking even. The problem is, when a GAAS model works? It’s arguably the most profitable model for the developers: they make money hand over fist and never have to actually finish the game. Get it “good enough” and then keep delivering on promises for future content and improvements. But again, it’s almost impossible to do successfully. Off the top of my head are: PoE, the big 4 MMORPGS (GW2, FFXIV, WoW, ESO), and Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode. I’d consider D3/D4 and other midly successful MMOs, like Rift and Aion, and Batle Royales, like Apex and (ironically) PUBG, as the Last Epoch category of “it seemed to be working on the surface” where the content treadmill couldn’t keep up and the games either shut down or sold out. Apex is at least still going strong it seems, but I don’t hear much about it compared to Fortnite, and for D3/D4 (this is tinfoil hat territory) if it wasn’t for the constant revenue from WoW as a successful GAAS model game then D3/D4 would be dead or sold out like LE
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Very true.
One major addition to the list though: OSRS (OldSchool Runescape).
Wildly successful and their model is a very functional one. The follow-up game’s mistakes have showcased what people want and how to make a game succeed in this model.
Sadly the sector has entirely forgotten about it it seems, despite a living legend of a game which sports around 150k consecutive active players, of which Steam makes basically nothing and the majority are based on either the officially allowed and supported ‘RuneLite’ client (not in Steam, hence that shows so little usage) and the option for using it mobile on your phone.
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I don’t know how I forgot OSRS lol. I’m not a player myself, though I have had my bouts of being one, but I follow Settled and his insane escapades and Alien Food’s “Unguided” series
The unfortunate reality is that OSRS is basically propped up by the rampant MTX in RS3 and since RS3 is not doing well, the writing’s sort of on the wall. It’s just a matter of when at this point.
We’re talking 150k consecutive players, around 400k paid accounts active total from estimations.
That’s a monthly revenue of ~3,2 mil pre-tax. Taking only the cheapest option for payment into consideration and no other.
For a game which needs a rotting potatoe as a server.
We don’t even need to put RS 3 profits into it which are not easily estimated because not only does it have a subscription basis but is rampant with MTX, which is actually gradually reduced a bit since the game’s numbers are hurting severely because of it, even said by the devs themself that’s the case. They realized how dumb their system is.
This is a wildly profitable product which likely does produce more profits in percentile to effort then any other service-structured game on the market, including Scam Citi… I mean Star Citizen, WoW, Destiny 2 and so on.
It is the most successful live-service product on the market as much as I know, especially in the Freemium section.
Just a reminder that EHG hasn’t responded to either this thread or the Reddit Post linking to this thread since it was posted 6 days ago.
While I know it’d be PR bullshit, I’d still like for them to acknowledge our concerns with something more than a handwave dismissal of “that doesn’t concern us.”
Maybe give us a deeper dive into the circumstances that lead to this decision, reassurances that it wasn’t just because Krafton offered the most money (I really don’t buy the whole “their ideals aligned with ours” narrative when Krafton, a notoriously anti-player company acquires a game that was marketed as “a game by players, for players”), some kind of remorse that they ended up in a situation that hurt their fans expectations, anything!
The fact that Judd (or was it Mike?) straight up said “if the game ever adds cosmetic pets that buff you, stop giving us money” says a lot. I read that and think: “there’s a possibility and he knows it”
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To be very clear-cut here:
If this situation happens don’t only do that, go further.
If you’re in the EU the ECP (European Consumer Protection) upholds business promises. A kickstarter page and clear-cut communication like ‘ever’ are legally binding in the EU.
Given that several aspects promised in the kickstarter page - which is protected under the obligations for providing goods and services since it’s a so called ‘reward based crowdfunding’ - aren’t adhered to yet this means at the minimum legally EHG is not allowed to implement any form of microtransactions outside of cosmetics. They are only allowed to provide ‘actual transactions’ which are full expansions to be bought only through Steam and not available in-game in any way (as that would be covered as microtransaction).
So in the case of any functional non-cosmetic monetization happening I recommend going forward to ask for a refund and directly write to the ECP about contract breach.
This has precedent already, and while answers can take a substantial amount of time it’s about the quantity of complaints which would happen in such a case.
This wouldn’t be the first - or likely the last - time this causes further EU-based regulations which ensure a fair and transparent business environment which is neither hindering providers nor consumers to doing proper business.
Just leaving that here for the potential future case.
Legal basis for complaints at the ECP already exists related to the 1.0 release but is not legally fully defined and hence likely not worthwhile to pursue.
The microtransaction aspects though absolutely are defined in clear-cut ways.
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