They’ve created a live-service game.
The primary setup for LE is also a live-service game, it only has the option for offline play. ‘True’ offline-play has only been implemented since 1.0 and their goal always was to upkeep the server costs via microtransactions.
So I guess you’re kinda out of luck there.
I wouldn’t since that’s not what was promised by EHG and hence I expect them to deliver regarding to their initial promises. Hence a game which has a one-time cost and gets steadily updated while holding itself afloat through microtransactions beyond the shelf-price.
Which is why I’m a bit baffled that they’re not putting more focus on the MTX department since that’s what will give them the safety buffer to afford upkeeping their model.
No, that’s a wrong statement.
Scale is the factor which decides that, especially the graphical fidelity is a big hindrance for the speed of updates since animations, models and textures need to be created accordingly.
Which is the downfall of modern gaming to a vast degree, graphical fidelity has been pushed and normalized to such a degree that people forget the mechanical aspects underneath as long as it’s ‘shiny’. And that often leads to a sub-par but amazing looking game as we have dozens flying around doing like crap.
Like any other medium gaming has a primary aspect which needs to be upheld to do well. Books need a good story. Movies are an in-between and need either a good story or an amazing presentation to work well. And games? Games need the mechanics to uphold the whole framework for it to work. Games are first and foremost about the mechanical aspects of interaction… just that many many alternative mediums like interactive novels (visual novels often fall into the category, some are actual proper story-puzzles though at least) are often named ‘games’ nowadays. They’re as far away from the medium as possible to barely allow the naming though.
Which I personally think is a major issue.
The game is ‘released’, hence I would expect the ‘basics’ to be finished. But the storyline isn’t.
That didn’t bode well with Wolcen and doesn’t bode well with Last Epoch either, especially since the majority of the campaign is still in a majorly unpolished state in dire need of a rework to their current standards.
PoE 2 has no tank-controls.
Thank controls are set relative to the characters position. in PoE 2 the character doesn’t change position though, it’s always in the middle of the screen. Hence it’s a direct control method and not tank controls.
You move donward when you press ‘S’ no matter if your character looks up, down, left or right.
Tank controls suck, I agree… but the way PoE 2 implemented WASD is actually superior for several classes. You can target related to your mouse-position and you can move with very high amounts of control. It’s better then controller in a lot of situations.
Good thing that both PoE 2 and LE are bird’s eye perspective then and not over-the-shoulder third person.
Why so?
Also utterly wrong. Controller can’t control the distance on abilities which enforce choosing a distance when using them.
Each control schema has a different upside and different downside.
Depending on implementation from the devs some skills work better or worse depending on what you choose, but with all 3 available options there is no superior option currently available on the market.
Which is needed inherently which such games, so they’re a mandatory aspect to take into consideration and can’t be detached solely from movement. Also even then controller isn’t the superior method actually, it entirely depends on the skill level of the player.
The majority of players will fare better with controller.
With sufficient skill though a mouse control is superior to a controller as you can decide the angle of movement with more precision.
That’s flavour, not ‘better’ or ‘worse’. The skill system in Last Epoch is more simplistic and straight-forward but allows inherently less variety. The one in PoE 2 is more convoluted and complex but also gives a higher amount of options hence.
Act 2, yes.
You can lazily walk out of the encirclement with 10% Movement speed boots easily. Likely even without Movement speed boots.
It’s an issue in Ultimatum though, or in Ritual, which both sometimes don’t allow a lot of space to maneuver and needs to be balanced accordingly still.
That’s why Path of Exile 1 and 2 are distinct. GGG specifically made the second one to move away from the modern PoE 1 experience of blindly blasting through maps and returning to a more managed and tactical gameplay.
Some love it, some hate it. It’s flavour.
It gets vastly better - depending on build - in the end-game, but that’s a lack of end-game balancing rather then the other bits. The campaign is the ‘optimal state’ of what they want to provide with their product. Ignoring the mess of the loot system.
Some? All of em 
But yeah, the foundation is solid, now EHG just needs to build up on it.
Same with the end-game. That’s all fairly lackluster still, and the campaign quality needs a complete rework from Act 2-8.
