Alright, guys. Thanks for everything. I think I'm out

[Unlovable]

[Ramble warning.]

You guys have been helpful any time I had questions. And the game was fun for enough of the playthrough. But I just… am starting to enjoy it less and less. Looking ahead down the road, the path isn’t fun, and just turns me off from wanting to load the game up. In fact, I just got one-shot by a telestomp and I Alt F4’d.

Infinite scaling is fine. In fact, it can be fun.

It can be fun to get through a level, high intensity, butt clenching battles, trying not to get hit, maneuvering around, dishing out damage when you can, etc. This is what I loved about D3, was the greater rift leaderboard pushing.

What’s not fun is a telestomp attack that one-shots you.

It can be fun making a character. Planning it all out is half the fun, god knows I’ve spent hours on PoB when I played PoE. Figuring out what skills you enjoy the look & feel of, then figuring out how to make them play well.

What’s not fun is bricking all the stash tabs you hoarded over the course of the last month or two. Or trying to make LP0’s or 1’s something other than 0’s and 1’s. Or merging into an LP2 and getting the absolute worst thing you could have, and needing to start the month+ process all over again, all for a temporary, intermediate-at-best placeholder item.

Maybe ARPG’s just aren’t for me??? I don’t feel like they’ve always been like this. Diablo 2, the obvious reference point of the genre because it’s a timeless classic, didn’t feel like this to me. And I’ve played Remastered recently, so I know it’s not “nostalgia.” Top-end PvP gear is pretty obnoxious, but it’s not necessary, and so D2 indeed does not feel like it had all of this artificial “engagement milking.”

Marvel Heroes, to me, was the greatest ARPG ever made. And it absolutely did not have this issue. I stayed engaged in that game for years upon years, because I had so many characters to try out, with depth to try to master, and various different ways to test myself, all while getting to enjoy the play of the characters. (And the interactions between the Marvel characters made the world really feel alive. Seriously, this game was beyond S tier. But anyway…)

If you see what you wanna do… and it looks fun and great, and you’re not even sure if it’s gonna work, but you can’t wait to try it out…

https://i.imgur.com/IRn1ouK.jpeg

But then there’s this giant WALL blocking you off…

Do you really feel motivated to climb it??? Or, perhaps, more likely… you just push through it anyway, despite it being there, rather than because it’s there.

As you collect all your items and throw them into Stash Tab 576, are you really thinking to yourself, “I love this so much”? As you lose 25 forge from a single craft and the item bricks at 0 before you could even get a t5 on it, are you really saying, “thank god for this shot of disappointment, that way when my craft goes well someday, that shot of dopamine will be amplified”? Have we, collectively, as gamers, really become crazed addicts like that??? I watched a video earlier today, some LE streamer was crafting on a weapon. He lost 25 forge on first craft, went from 40 to 15, and he was like, “RIP, this is bricked.” But he kept going just to try, and he Hoped like 7 times in a row with some crits, and got 3 affixes finished.

… And the comments were like, “I love this game’s crafting, it’s so satisfying when you pop off!”

And I read that like… what??? It was so weird to me, how people accept and even PRAISE such game mechanics that, to me, are an obnoxious obstacle in the way of actually playing the game. But I guess in this gamble-stream generation of gamers, they LOVE it? It’s so weird to me.

Am I in the minority here??? Maybe I certainly am, here in the LE forums itself, but… I dunno, man. Games just aren’t what they used to be… to me, anyway. Do I need a new hobby, now, at the age of 37? Has this one changed too much?

To me, the designs like what I’ve talked about feel like cheap engagement tactics. Like, needless game time extensions. Instead of letting the player get to what they want, and risk them achieving everything too fast and then quitting because of it, they want to try to stretch it out by any means necessary. And so it’s weird to me when those stretch tactics get praised! And I wish companies stopped trying to over-analyze these types of things, and just made a game as good as they could, with ZERO thoughts or notions about how to milk some more money out of it. Especially because, for me, those game time tactics turn me off from a game, and end up becoming why I no longer play it entirely… rather than I keep playing through it, forcing myself to come out the other end, thus extending my game time by however long the mechanic is designed to add.

… Okay. I think I’m starting to go in a circle now, so I suppose I’ve said my piece. I guess it’s back to Marvel Rivals for me. Even though, over there, they throw bot games at you if you lose Quick Matches, while hiding that information from you, because it makes you feel better to stomp a victory and - dun dun dun - it keeps you engaged and extends your game time… (I just can’t escape it, can I?)

Remember when an insanely great game was crammed into a 64 bit cartridge, and had no battle passes and required no patches or content updates?

[Llama8]

@Unlovable

Have we, collectively, as gamers, really become crazed addicts like that???

We always were, D2 didn’t have any crafting to alleviate the brutal rng of drops. What were the chances of a high tier rune dropping? Were there any ways to target farm them (ignoring the one shot from a quest I think)?

@Unlovable

But I guess in this gamble-stream generation of gamers, they LOVE it? It’s so weird to me.

Have you tried PoE’s crafting?

@Unlovable

Remember when an insanely great game was crammed into a 64 bit cartridge, and had no battle passes and required no patches or content updates?

It was always floppy disks for me, or CDs. But both games and players were much simpler back then.

@Unlovable

it keeps you engaged and extends your game time… (I just can’t escape it, can I?)

No, I don’t think you can from a “triple A” studio. Slormancer’s pretty decent & it has pity mechanics in crafting (you won’t get a previous affix until you’ve gone through the list of possible rolls on that slot but it does reser if you leave the crafting screen) & any currency (slorm) spent upgrading skills gives you damage regardless of whether the node you’re putting it into is being used & you can respec whenever you want however you want.

[DJSamhein]

@Unlovable

Maybe ARPG’s just aren’t for me??? I don’t feel like they’ve always been like this. Diablo 2, the obvious reference point of the genre because it’s a timeless classic, didn’t feel like this to me. And I’ve played Remastered recently, so I know it’s not “nostalgia.” Top-end PvP gear is pretty obnoxious, but it’s not necessary, and so D2 indeed does not feel like it had all of this artificial “engagement milking.”

I’m just going to address this part to sort of make a summary reply, since you wrote a Kulze novel long post.

You could reach the end of Hell difficulty in D2 without min-max gear, but if you wanted a shot at uber diablo or of participating in an uber tristram raid, you definitely needed to grind for ages.
The chances for the rarest drops were extremely low and what there was of crafting was even more extremely RNG.

LE is kinda like that. You can easily reach 300c with pretty much anything, if you want to push it requires a lot of grind. Even though LE gives you more tools to play with, while D2 was endlessly farming meph or a couple more mobs.
Basically, the endgame in D2 was make a game, kill a few mobs in 5-10 minutes, leave that game and make a new one, rinse and repeat forever.

I don’t think ARPGs just aren’t for you. I think you just enjoy the casual side of it more than the endless endgame grind, which is what many players enjoy.
D4 is probably a good option for you. It’s definitely more casual and offers many things D3 did.

Slormancer is probably a good option as well. It looks arcade-y, but it has plenty of fun systems.

Ultimately, it really depends on what you want from a game in this genre. For example, I enjoy just making new characters/builds. Once they reach empowered/300c, I tend to lose interest in them and create a new one.

You don’t have to push the character and try to do 1000 corruption and uberroth. You can just play until you feel it’s no longer as fun and make a new character. There are dozens of different builds you can try out.

[Heavy]

@Unlovable

In fact, I just got one-shot by a telestomp and I Alt F4’d.

@Unlovable

Marvel Heroes, to me, was the greatest ARPG ever made. And it absolutely did not have this issue.

Funny enough Marvel Heroes has a lot of telegraphs and they are absolutely devastating early on, but you can outscale them very quickly to the point where they become irrelevant except some very few true “1-shots” like Rhino and Juggernaut charges.

My question would be: Do you not like telegraphs at all? Or do you just want a game with a power fantasy that lets you outscale everything?

I love Marvel Heroes, it is to this very day may most played games ever, but it is a very very different game comapred to LE. It has basically no challenge towards the later end of the character prgoression and it was just about grinding and min-maxing.

LE has good challenges along the way without feeling like you get your loot handed without doing anything to it.

@Unlovable

… And the comments were like, “I love this game’s crafting, it’s so satisfying when you pop off!”

And I read that like… what??? It was so weird to me, how people accept and even PRAISE such game mechanics that, to me, are an obnoxious obstacle in the way of actually playing the game. But I guess in this gamble-stream generation of gamers, they LOVE it? It’s so weird to me.

If you look at an individual craft, you can have a very frustrating and unstatisfying outcome yes, but the RNG systems in LE are already designed in a way to not give you the full wrath of the RNG all the time.

Items and progression in these kind of games are usually a progress across multiple attempts and not that one singualr attempt.

And if you look at it from that perspective LE does a fantastic job that many have praised in the past and still are praising today. (Especially after the crafting/FP rework a long time ago)

@Unlovable

… Okay. I think I’m starting to go in a circle now, so I suppose I’ve said my piece. I guess it’s back to Marvel Rivals for me.

You can also jump back into Marvel Heroes, there is a 95% playable version out there (PROJECT T.A.H.I.T.I.) I can recommend it for the nostalgia at least.

[Unlovable]

@Llama8

Have you tried PoE’s crafting?

Yeah, that and - of course - the oneshots are why I’m not playing that game anymore. Epoch has definitely been infinitely better than PoE, for sure. I miss my Cospri character, but I don’t miss putting SO MUCH itemization into survivability and still dying to random things, then watching everyone else just ignore defenses and shoot for 500 million big aoe DPS and turn the game into a meme, and I’m left sitting there like… “Oops, guess I was playing wrong.”

I’ll stop short before I end up ranting about PoE for 35 minutes.

@Llama8

It was always floppy disks for me, or CDs. But both games and players were much simpler back then.

You know, I don’t really think either of those things were simpler back then. Just because PUBG might be 3 billion terabytes doesn’t mean it’s more complex than CS 1.6. (I know that’s not a cartridge or whatever, but you get my point in regards to game size equating complexity.) And I don’t think gamers were simpler back then, either. We were sitting there playing Brood War and managing ~200 units, or Red Alert, you name it. But nowadays? RTS’s are dead. SC2 is technically alive, but it’s only holding on because of its comp scene. But generally, nobody plays RTS’s anymore, and they are one of the most complex genres. But nobody nowadays has the attention span for it. Nobody wants to stop moving before they shoot in CSGO, they just wanna jump around and hold their LMB in Fortnite. Nobody wants to play Doom and look for secret keys and unlock the demon laser gun, they just want heavy metal music playing while they, again, hold LMB and play melee execution animations every 8 seconds.

Some new age stuff might be fun, maybe in some cases better, but I wouldn’t make the argument that they’re more complex. I think it’s neutral, most likely, but also possibly the case that things actually became more simple up to current day.

[shrug] Interesting to think about, though.

@Llama8

No, I don’t think you can from a “triple A” studio. Slormancer’s pretty decent & it has pity mechanics in crafting (you won’t get a previous affix until you’ve gone through the list of possible rolls on that slot but it does reser if you leave the crafting screen) & any currency (slorm) spent upgrading skills gives you damage regardless of whether the node you’re putting it into is being used & you can respec whenever you want however you want.

I think I have it, but only tried it for a few minutes and was like, OOF what a slow start… Although all ARPG’s have a slow start. Maybe I should truck through the beginning.

@DJSamhein

D4 is probably a good option for you. It’s definitely more casual and offers many things D3 did.

If D4 has greater rifts, then perhaps. That’s what I loved about D3.

I wouldn’t say I prefer a casual approach. In fact, what I loved about D3 was pushing competitive greater rift leaderboards, and I used to be top 100 for a period. But what turned me off from D3 was when I couldn’t push top 100 anymore because I was falling behind in the gear grind. And then they released “ancient” uniques or whatever? Which were just the same exact item, but with boosted stats, and were super rare. So it was just… “Farm your gear all over again, and now everything is even rarer, and you gotta hope they have the right affixes all over again.” Completely unnecessary play time extensions, which had the opposite effect on me.

I just want to play. And I also like to plan the builds. But I cannot stand all of the garbage that’s in the way of this, in any game. For a counter-example… Guild Wars 1 had very minimal stuff in the way of just being able to play a build you wanna play. That game held its playerbase just by being a great game itself. So many builds to try, both for yourself and even for your team compositions. And people loved the actual gameplay. Nobody needed some “satisfaction” from farming any particular skill to capture, or gear affixes to farm (no such thing, really only cosmetics to farm, WHICH were good enough to scratch that itch for those that had it).

Another thing I see as being “in the way” is chaotic RNG. Both, from crafting/farming/etc, or from the actual gameplay itself, like dodging, critting, etc. It’s funny that in LE we have an entire stat based on removing an aspect of RNG from the game, and it’s considered a required stat to max. I would say… a good example of controlled RNG is… WoW. Procs might have reliable proc rates but come with cooldowns, so you could expect a healthy average. Nothing felt like “5% chance to instantly lose,” unless something was temporarily unbalanced of course, lol. WoW was and is a game that has RNG absolutely everywhere, and YET, never felt like things were thrown to chance. You could live long enough to survive bad streaks so that eventually the RNG evened itself out almost every time. Crit chances typically fall somewhere like 50%, effectively becoming a healthy average that you can expect to go both ways, and nothing lived or died based on whether any one given thing procced their RNG.

But anyway…

@DJSamhein

You don’t have to push the character and try to do 1000 corruption and uberroth. You can just play until you feel it’s no longer as fun and make a new character. There are dozens of different builds you can try out.

Yeahhhhh, but then, I’m thinking… that’s a whole new army of stash tabs and item hoarding, and items that are going to be bricked, and LP’s I have to hunt, and etc, it’s the same thing all over again. Looking down that road, I just say nahhhh…

@Heavy

My question would be: Do you not like telegraphs at all? Or do you just want a game with a power fantasy that lets you outscale everything?

I don’t mind telegraphed things (as long as you have time to breath). But a telestomp is not a telegraphed attack. It’s an enemy that’s on the corner of my screen (god forbid they have the damage reduction bubble and reduced cooldowns), or maybe OFF my screen, that, as soon as combat starts, teleports on top of me and hits me with an instant melee attack for 20k non-crit damage. Some of them are big guys with a slow wind-up slam, but they teleport at the END of that wind-up so that the slam instantly hits on top of me. Other times it’s that snake lady, I just had it where she shot a multi-projectile shotgun at me from medium range, then she teleported on me and tapped me hard which stunned me, and then the shotgun finished me off. So that wasn’t a true oneshot, but it was effectively. (There are many true oneshots that happen from teleports, so I don’t really feel like I need to write down every time it happens.) And as for an update on my stats, I can usually sit at 10k Ward and I have about 44% armor. Why is this oneshotting me? Why do unavoidable sources of damage ever oneshot me? There should never be unavoidable sources of damage in the first place, dare I say ESPECIALLY because of the infinite scaling.

@Heavy

If you look at an individual craft, you can have a very frustrating and unstatisfying outcome yes, but the RNG systems in LE are already designed in a way to not give you the full wrath of the RNG all the time.

Well of course, but like I said (here? or elsewhere?), I’ve gone through a stash tab and everything bricked. And that’s rings, a 1x1 item. I mean, I had a couple things that I stopped working on and put them aside, cuz some other class or build could still possibly use them. But for the most part, every item became useless in some way. Maybe a t5 troll stat (minions and dodge come to mind), maybe 0 forge with a couple t1 affixes still, or what have you. But that’s a LOT of time spent picking items up, sorting them, stashing them, all that jazz… and then for no reason at all by the end of the process. Time wasted. Runes and glyphs wasted. It’s just pointless. If we’re being HONEST, our chokepoint is finding high LP’s and then ALSO getting lucky with the Sanctuary merging. Why are we getting choked at the crafting, too??? Our chokepoints have chokepoints. It’s just tedious. And like I said, maybe I’m in the minority, but I just don’t see how this adds any layers of fun to a game. It just doesn’t click with me, I guess.

@Heavy

You can also jump back into Marvel Heroes, there is a 95% playable version out there (PROJECT T.A.H.I.T.I.) I can recommend it for the nostalgia at least.

YOOOOO, don’t even TEASE me!!! If this isn’t legit, I’m gonna cry!!!

[DJSamhein]

@Unlovable

But generally, nobody plays RTS’s anymore

This isn’t true, though. Hearts of Iron IV has over 50k players daily. Crusader Kings 3 has over 20k players. Age of Empires IV has over 10k. Age of Empires II has over 20k. Warhammer III has over 20k.

And this despite it never being a particularly popular genre. At least, not compared to FPSs, adventure/survival like Resident Evil or Tomb Raider series.

@Unlovable

If D4 has greater rifts, then perhaps. That’s what I loved about D3.

I think it has something that was greatly inspired by it. Dunno if it has a leaderboard, though.

@Unlovable

Yeahhhhh, but then, I’m thinking… that’s a whole new army of stash tabs and item hoarding, and items that are going to be bricked, and LP’s I have to hunt, and etc, it’s the same thing all over again. Looking down that road, I just say nahhhh…

Again, as long as you’re not pushing for min-max, you can just play until you’re happy with the build. No build requires LP to function. With 0LP, all builds can reach at least empowered monos.
After that, just keep playing until you feel you’re not having much fun anymore. Then switch to another build that seems fun. Probably from something that dropped while you were playing the previous one.

From what you’ve said in this and other forums, it seems like you’re having fun playing LE. It just stops being fun when grinding for BiS gear. So just stop before that and make another character.
Plenty of people (including me) play that way and are perfectly happy that way.

I don’t expect I’ll try kill Uby for quite some time, or even likely reaching 1k corruption. And I’m perfectly fine with that. I just want the fun gameplay of making new fun builds and when it start slogging down, I just switch to something else.

[Kulze]

@Unlovable

… And the comments were like, “I love this game’s crafting, it’s so satisfying when you pop off!”

And I read that like… what??? It was so weird to me, how people accept and even PRAISE such game mechanics that, to me, are an obnoxious obstacle in the way of actually playing the game.

I agree with that notion.
LE’s crafting mechanic is simplistic and straightforward.
But it’s not fun at all.

I enjoy crafting mechanics either by having endless tries (PoE 1) so you can ultimately reach your goal.
Or those which provide basically deterministic outcomes (Grim Dawn) so you get exactly what you want after getting the materials.

I don’t enjoy those half-assed RNG hells which make you go through the hoops of acquisition, then RNG-based outcomes to repeat that over and over. It’s the korean style crafting methodology behind it… and that one sucks simply. Just a threadmill to run on near endlessly. As you said, artificial inflation of engagement time since they couldn’t get it handled to provide methods to make the time long-term enjoyable.

@Unlovable

Do I need a new hobby, now, at the age of 37? Has this one changed too much?

Nah, just the right games to make you feel enjoyed.
There’s a massive variety out there.
Mine are loot-based ARPGs, since I love the looting and slow-paced steady progression. Which plainly spoken LE is ‘mediocre’ at sadly. I also enjoy survival games with crafting of all sorts. Minecraft, Vintage Story, Starbound and so on. Basically either collecting stuff or creating stuff.
If you enjoy the style itself I can recommend a small game. Not the frantic action style of ARPGs… but the loot system is marvelous. The game’s called ‘Wayward’. Heavy recommendation.

What I simply do is switching between the specific genres with whatever my mood is the most leaning towards.
So I do come back regularly to each of those games.

For some I don’t have complaints… only enjoyment to look forward to future implementations.
Some I have some gripes with, since they have long-standing issues never addressed which can be addressed nowadays (PoE 1 is an example of that, getting better though).
Some I have many many gripes since they’re great at the basis but really badly executed in too many areas (LE falls into that)
And below that I don’t play a game since I give up on em. Not worthwhile.

Which is to be distinct from ‘it’s simply not a game for me’ which I can easily accept. Sports-games? Not for me. D3? Not for me. But the issue I see is that LE is for me, but it has just many crappy aspects which shouldn’t be there, especially not in a release state and in 2025.

@Unlovable

And I wish companies stopped trying to over-analyze these types of things, and just made a game as good as they could, with ZERO thoughts or notions about how to milk some more money out of it.

Welcome to live-service games! They actually need to have these thoughts or their game fails with basically a guarantee

Don’t play live-service games if you don’t wanna see any content stretching. There’s only a single one on the market which I know of that doesn’t have that… and that’s Warframe.
Sure, you need to re-do content, and you got a time-based limit on progression speed basically… but you can circumvent that when you know how, getting finished ones instead.

So my overall recommendation? Take a break, come back in a Cycle or 2. See if it feels better… do that until the game works well for you.

@Llama8

What were the chances of a high tier rune dropping?

You combined lower ones to get the larger ones. Gradual progression, not pure gamba addiction.

LE doesn’t have that though, which is a distinct issue.

@Llama8

Have you tried PoE’s crafting?

PoE’s crafting is less RNG heavy then LE’s crafting. The acquisition rate of crafting materials and the methodology being known to achieve your goal will cause less time investment then many many items in LE.
A fully outfitted build with close to top-end gear can be achieved in 150-200 hours through acquisition of materials in a SSF-style. In LE I’ve yet to find a single T7 Erasing Strike chestpiece. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours play-time, never dropped a single one.

So there’s a very very distinct difference.
Unless you wanna get a +5 gem bow or something insane like that. Then you’re going to invest tons of time. You can nonetheless know exactly how long that’ll take as overall drop-rates always stay the same, and you can also target farm basically everything in existence.
There’s very very few exceptions, namely Headhunter, Mageblood and so on, the ‘free range chase items’ are the only things which are highly RNG locked. Everything else you’ll get without fail several times over in that respective play-time.

@Heavy

but the RNG systems in LE are already designed in a way to not give you the full wrath of the RNG all the time.

Ehhh… very… ehhhhh…

There’s tons of options to alleviate the RNG issues, EHG didn’t take a single one of em.
LE has the exact same issue which PoE 2 has, and which PoE 1 doesn’t.
You get a ‘single try’ at your craft, that’s it. So you gotta get the base again. Which leads to picking up items over… and over… and over.

So you don’t pick the item up because you feel ‘wow! Such a great item dropped!’ but rather because you collect them for ‘yeah, something to craft on and maybe get a result’.
That takes heavily away from the enjoyment of the drop itself. Only uniques provide that respective enjoyment… or the extremely rare lucky combination of top-tier exalted affixes on a top-tier base which you can use ‘as is’ instead of LP-fodder.

PoE 1 averts that via providing highly sought after bases, which make the base itself valuable, and hence you enjoy picking them up because you got the immediate ‘success’ feeling.
Grim Dawn has no crafting of affixes. So what you drop is what you get, which causes you to feel elated when something nice drops.

They do the same thing in different ways to avoid the reduction of enjoyment from actually dropping something, while reducing the amount of ‘crap’ you gotta pick up. Albeit to be fair… the crafting materials in PoE 1 take the place of ‘crap’ instead… so 50/50 there

@Heavy

Items and progression in these kind of games are usually a progress across multiple attempts and not that one singualr attempt.

True!
But it depends on how those attempts are designed to derive the proper enjoyment hence.

@Unlovable

Yeahhhhh, but then, I’m thinking… that’s a whole new army of stash tabs and item hoarding, and items that are going to be bricked, and LP’s I have to hunt, and etc, it’s the same thing all over again. Looking down that road, I just say nahhhh…

The point of multiple characters is that while you need more tabs you also will generally get ‘more success’.
Because if you need wands and two-handed swords you pick up both and hence have basically double the chance for a good base.
The same goes for uniques, rather then solely needing a specific one you enlarge the scale of possible items you need, hence the chance for an improvement dropping is substantially higher.

You play your rogue and drop a unique with high LP for your sentinel? Great! You play the sentinel then since it feels fun to try out the improvement power, so you drop something for the acolyte you needed, also great! And so on and so forth.
It reduces the downtime substantially in terms of upgrades.

@Unlovable

Our chokepoints have chokepoints. It’s just tedious.

Yes, layered RNG like EHG does is a detriment.
I’ve said that repeatedly.

Some of the RNG layers need to be exchanged with gradual progression system. Not all… some.

@Unlovable

RTS’s are dead.

Not really. People just stay with the old-school ones.
Age of Empires 2 is still going strong.
Supreme Commander with the ‘Forever’ community modpack is still extremely active. Thousands of matches per day.

It’s just that no company has managed to provide a properly balanced game which isn’t already out currently to make up for the ones existing… which have been balanced over a decade by players through modding to make them into what people are actually expecting in a competitive gameplay environment like a RTS is.

Besides that there’s some more PvE leaning ones out there, like ‘Men of War’ or ‘Iron Harvest’. Great games!

[Heavy]

@Kulze

There’s tons of options to alleviate the RNG issues, EHG didn’t take a single one of em.
LE has the exact same issue which PoE 2 has, and which PoE 1 doesn’t.
You get a ‘single try’ at your craft, that’s it. So you gotta get the base again. Which leads to picking up items over… and over… and over.

That is actually incorrect. You get two tries and take the better result. Any FP consumption is rolled twice and takes the lower result.

@Kulze

So you don’t pick the item up because you feel ‘wow! Such a great item dropped!’ but rather because you collect them for ‘yeah, something to craft on and maybe get a result’.
That takes heavily away from the enjoyment of the drop itself. Only uniques provide that respective enjoyment… or the extremely rare lucky combination of top-tier exalted affixes on a top-tier base which you can use ‘as is’ instead of LP-fodder.

I agree that the dopamine and excitment is shifted heavily in LE, but I guess that is a price for a good crafting system that does what it does in LE. If items are dropping to good, LE’s crafting would be severly overpowered.

[DJSamhein]

@Kulze

You combined lower ones to get the larger ones. Gradual progression, not pure gamba addiction.

Even combining and with longer ladders, you still wouldn’t get to zod naturally without trading, not unless you were very lucky.
The required combinations until you reached one, even having as a starting point the mid-runes, was just too huge to realistically achieve by combinations alone.

@Kulze

PoE’s crafting is less RNG heavy then LE’s crafting.

I don’t think it’s less RNG heavy. It’s just as RNG heavy. It just lets you craft on the same piece indefinitely, rather than having to acquire new pieces.

@Kulze

In LE I’ve yet to find a single T7 Erasing Strike chestpiece.

I’ve shattered at least 2 before 1.2. Now I’d probably save them, even if I don’t intend on playing one, because of the new runes.

(EDIT: submitted by mistake.)
It’s even easier to get one in 1.2. Just get a T7, slap a T1 erasing strike and havoc it.

@Kulze

You get a ‘single try’ at your craft, that’s it. So you gotta get the base again. Which leads to picking up items over… and over… and over.

Yes, but PoE2 doesn’t have the drop rate that LE does. So most of the time it’s not an issue when you fail it because you pick up more.

[Soulo1st]

Im not gonna lie Im not enjoying this patch much as well. The whole end game is meh tbh could have been fitted without the need of involving the echos and the balance is questionable. Especially all the champions balance. Being telestopm from the other side of the screen and one shotted is frustrating as hell and i feel like the ratio between the danger and reward is close to nothing. I cannot name one time i had a good drop from a champion yet every encounter fells way to hard comparing to the timeline corruption value. Its like easier to clear regular 1500 corruption echo ( and safer) than having a 500 corruption champion on you.
I might just wait untill the next patch instead of forcing myself to fight the existing game setup

[Kulze]

@Heavy

That is actually incorrect. You get two tries and take the better result. Any FP consumption is rolled twice and takes the lower result.

I meant the visible process, not the background mechanics there.
But true.

@Heavy

If items are dropping to good, LE’s crafting would be severly overpowered.

Yeah, 100% agreed there!
But that’s the task of devs to provide a enjoyable mechanic which works properly together. In what way is not important… but it should provide a ‘great!’ effect in some area. Currently the drops are ‘ok’, the crafting itself feels annoying though since you fear your item breaking steadily, the more valuable/rare the more you fear it obviously.

In total that means no ‘wow!’ effect is there. You go through the content and always feel… ok… never excited about base drops and frustrated at best at crafting. Same with LP items since they’re not finished yet, so the same applies. Great, got this 2 LP red ring! Oh no… it took the worst affix… so it’s garbage now.
Just feels not nice.

@DJSamhein

Even combining and with longer ladders, you still wouldn’t get to zod naturally without trading, not unless you were very lucky.

I mean… I did 3 times? But it takes a long-ass time, that’s true

@DJSamhein

I don’t think it’s less RNG heavy. It’s just as RNG heavy. It just lets you craft on the same piece indefinitely, rather than having to acquire new pieces.

Yeah, but perception wise? That means you don’t get the ‘fail-state’. You just get a ‘pause state’ at worst.
Unless you’re at the first steps of crafting still or do something really risky crafting wise.
Or have no clue about the mechanics But that’s another topic.

@DJSamhein

It’s even easier to get one in 1.2. Just get a T7, slap a T1 erasing strike and havoc it.

Yep, that’s true. It’s definitely easier. Also imprints to get them naturally. But overall still very high RNG based drops there.

I mean… we got RNG heavy drops. We got RNG heavy crafting, all of that followed by RNG heavy slamming of those RNG heavy drops which have been RNG heavy crafted.
Somewhere there needs to be an outlet, a piece of the puzzle which just feels nice, one which makes you think ‘Nice… I progressed!’ rather then having fail-state after fail-state after fail-state possible.

That’s why I still see PoE 1’s system as ‘better’ (different but more enjoyable in some aspects, worse in others). If you find a level 86 base item with 30% quality you’re elated! It’s extremely rare. You can’t craft it, it’s a ‘unique state’ for the drops, it has value for you!
The same happens with some crafting mechanics following up. You can’t realistically drop many many outcomes. a triple T1 attribute item? Good luck! A + level with T1 life and crit multi? Dream item. But with some crafting mechanics nigh deterministic to achieve.

Obviously at the absolute top-end the options get less and less, and repetition is to be expected. But no individual step in itself is overly taxing. It’s not a ‘all in one’ situation in most cases.
I’ve mentioned that repeatedly, you got so called ‘safety spots’ to return to. Your 30% level 86 base? You need a really really rare affix on it as a basis? Slam it until it does! Then you ‘imprint’ it. You can always return to that state hence and re-imprint for a cost. It’s not ‘lost’ unlike the ‘one chance’ crafting of LE.
While it enforces higher RNG overall into the system it also allows to not ‘loose’ progress as much. Month 1 it’s that magic item… month 2 it’s turned into a rare item with 3 T1 suffixes/prefixes on it, month 3 it turns into a top-tier one-of-a-kind item. Piece by piece.

If EHG can combine the ‘safety spots’ aspects with their straightforward crafting design then it would be perceived a ton better overall.
High effort to keep on crafting, but guaranteed fallback states. To a degree where finding a new base at times can take over the spot rather then continuing… but it leaves ‘something to do’ open at all times.
You never ‘run out of chances’ this way, you have that item always in front of you, seeing it progress in some way over time.

@DJSamhein

So most of the time it’s not an issue when you fail it because you pick up more.

The ‘picking up’ part is what people actively detest. It’s not as much of an issue if you pick up 300 chaos orbs which you shift-click into auto-sorted or pre-determined tabs. But if you have to do the same with 6-slot non-stackable items it becomes a massive chore for people. Half the potential stash space taken up. Loads of individual clicking. It’s annoying.

As comparison why exactly that’s the case, we take 20 ‘tries’ for the same thing. A white item which is supposed to get a specific affix and only that affix, no other:

PoE 1: ‘up to’ (can be less) 20 clicks to pick up → ‘up to’ 20 clicks to put into stash → shift-click once to put onto the cursor → 20 clicks on item.
Item pickup: 2 clicks (pickup + transfer). Total max = 63 clicks (without movement and stash opening stuff)
Medium amount it’s happening though? Usually 2-3 per pickup, let’s say 2. Usually 5-10 per map, let’s say 5. So it’s commonly 10 clicks, 4 clicks, 1 click, 20 clicks. Total: 37 clicks with item.

PoE 2: item pickup is 20 clicks. Transfer another 20 clicks. Currency is commonly 20 clicks for now, transfer is medium 4 clicks again, application is 1 click onto cursor + 20 when you stored up the items.
So it comes to a total of: 85 clicks.

More then double the clicks. Not to speak of the inventory running regularly full, constant tab switching to put them into the right place. Potentially drag&drop or multi-key shortcuts to transfer them.
It’s bothersome hence. You wanna reduce clicking amount as much as possible for out-of-combat interactions.

The same issue is happening in LE. Individual pickup. Individual crafting per item… and then repeat. It’s at times hundreds of clicks for the effort to achieve it. It accumulates and feels hence ‘bad’ comparatively.

@Soulo1st

I cannot name one time i had a good drop from a champion yet every encounter fells way to hard comparing to the timeline corruption value.

They can spawn lizards through the weaver tree interaction. That provides a guaranteed unique and tons of exalteds and idols. So they’re worthwhile this way.

If you don’t use that combination they’re just crap, yes. As I promised already before the patch dropped. Champion affixes are generally worthless Extreme rare exceptions, hence only bother implemented for the common player.

[DJSamhein]

@Kulze

I mean… I did 3 times? But it takes a long-ass time, that’s true

Most likely because you had lucky high rune drops.
Starting from the last mid-rune (Pul), you need 12288 of them to reach Zod. And Pul is already a rare drop.

@Kulze

Yeah, but perception wise? That means you don’t get the ‘fail-state’. You just get a ‘pause state’ at worst.

That depends on the player. I feel more discouraged if I’m working on the same piece over and over again and I have to annul it for the 50th time.
With LE gear drops like candy, so you don’t have an attachment to them. They drop, you craft, most fail, you throw them on the ground and keep playing.

As I said before in one of our many back and forths about this, I don’t think PoE’s or LE’s are better or worse. They will just appeal to different players.
Which is why such fervent PoE fans like Ziz and Ghazzy say that LE’s crafting is better. It’s not because LE’s crafting system is actually better. It’s because they like it better.

And both are fine for who they target, IMO.

@Kulze

I mean… we got RNG heavy drops. We got RNG heavy crafting, all of that followed by RNG heavy slamming of those RNG heavy drops which have been RNG heavy crafted.

Again, this is no different from PoE. You have the exact same steps (in this case corrupting would be equivalent to slamming), except that you can usually just annul the same piece and start over.

But this is only for CoF (which also applies to PoE. Even if they have new tools to help, it’s still really hard to get any BiS).

For MG, it’s really easy to get it. Even more so now. Buy a bunch of T7s (for almost free) with a free affix, place erasing strike on it, havoc. It should be really easy to achieve really.
You’re just limited in how many Havocs you can get, but I’m sure LA could provide you with a bunch.

So in MG it should actually be much easier to get your T7 Erasing Strike chest than it would be to get the equivalent in PoE.

And for CoF, well, people that join it like the extra layers of RNG. It’s actually designed for them. It’s the old D2 drop feeling.

@Kulze

The ‘picking up’ part is what people actively detest.

It’s what some people detest. It’s also what some people love.

Again, it’s not one system being better than the other. It’s about some players liking one more than the other, that’s all.

[Kulze]

@DJSamhein

It’s what some people detest. It’s also what some people love.

Again, it’s not one system being better than the other. It’s about some players liking one more than the other, that’s all.

It’s about the quantity of it.
You can’t tell me you would enjoy it better if you had to click on every affix shard and gold pile on the ground individually now, would you?

Because that’s the bit of it.

Meaning has to be put into clicks, the less meaning the more they turn form enjoyment to chore. As with everything.
Especially so in a game where limitations of inventory are there for a reason, to not bring out too much stuff at once, so you got to choose what to bring. That inherently limits you with how much you can return, making obviously a crafting material which is not only 1 slot sized but also stackable doing the same thing as a 6-slot item base non-stackable far more valuable for the same functionality.
If for example you pick up items in terms of ‘bases’ solely… so when ‘Eternal Gauntlets’ drop 3 times then they still only take up 4 slots up to a max amount… that would alleviate it. But it’s not the case.

This issue is actually currently present in LE as well with prophecies. A single prophecy ‘juiced’ to the max provides 12 unique pieces… which could potentially be 12 two-handed axes for example. Which is 100% of the inventory space available.
So now you’re forced to only ever have a single prophecy for the potential situation that all 12 of them have any sort of value… ignoring even the base drops of a boss encounter for example… or you gotta leave things behind as there is no persistence of areas yet implemented.

So either or… it feels like you ‘miss out’ as you can’t prepare for the limitations of the inventory beforehand. 12 two-handed axe uniques which none of them is at 4 LP in your storage yet but each drops with at least 1 LP? That’s at worst 12 potential turtle gambles, right? So each has value, each wants to be kept… but you can’t.
This issue isn’t arising with exalteds or idols. By the time you get to content where the sheer quantity of exalteds would outpace inventory capacity you’re likely to have acquired a ton of them… and hence are able to reduce the bandwith of what to pick up. Same with exalteds. T6 exalteds are simply not worthwhile by then… so you reduce the viable options to pick up naturally.
With uniques in 1.2 this has been turned upside down. Formerly you would filter out the respective uniques with lower LP, reducing the viable pickups… now? Unless you got a 4 LP it means you’ll pick up every single one with LP. For rare ones 0 LP too because of LP chance through Nemesis.

The topic - sadly - isn’t as simplistic as ‘I like picking up things’ or ‘I dislike picking up things’ it’s about how stuff is positioned. And yes, some of the things you mention in your post come down to personal preference, absolutely! 100% agreed with the RNG layers versus the progression based mechanics!
But you gotta ask yourself what LE actually should provide. The two core groups of loot-based ARPG players are either the ‘collectors’ or the ‘gamblers’. Which… both are viable.
But… do you wanna make it a full-scale glorified slot machine?
Or do you want it to allow the collectors to also have their place?

If it’s the first then sure, viable, but you’ll only get endorphine junkies basically playing it long-term, because it’s a extremely strong (albeit gradually vanishing) way to provide enjoyment. The issue with that is… they leave in frustration generally. Extremely few stay long-term and simply… stay. The majority of people get less and less enjoyment and get a negative outlook.
Or… do you wanna provide the second too? Collectors. Which are those people which wanna ‘complete’ things. Not switch from ‘A’ to ‘B’… but actively stay with something and stay with it until it’s ‘done’ to their personal perception of ‘I’ve completed my collection’? For this there needs to be something else then pure RNG. A viable ability to even out the spiky situations possible to appear and hence causing either the journey to end too fast… or get substantially drawn out without any progress at all. Neither state is good for them.

So, which ones is the game built for? Or should be built for? Those are the core audience groups of the genre.
PoE is a mixture, leaning towards RNG.
Chronicon is pure collectionist approach.
Torchlight Infinite is RNG before being collection approach to returning shortly to RNG for the absolute top-end again.
Grim Dawn is pure collectionist gameplay.

You either need to go ‘all in’ or provide a proper mixture which at least fulfills the needs of both sides. EHG has no clue related to that yet, their positioning and PR showcases a mixture… and the reality is a gambling game with very… very few deterministic avenues for the moment.

[Llama8]

@Kulze

You combined lower ones to get the larger ones. Gradual progression, not pure gamba addiction.

Yeah, but you required 3 to upgrade & that ramps up fast.

@Kulze

In LE I’ve yet to find a single T7 Erasing Strike chestpiece.

True, but there’s also the glyph of havoc to shuffle that t7 affix onto Erasing Strike, so getting that t7 Erasing Strike is easier in s2 than before.

@Kulze

So there’s a very very distinct difference.
Unless you wanna get a +5 gem bow or something insane like that. Then you’re going to invest tons of time.

So you’re ok with the topest of tiers gear in PoE taking “tons of time”, but not in LE? And having to invest significant amounts of currency (unless you just RMT the currency).

@Heavy

That is actually incorrect. You get two tries and take the better result. Any FP consumption is rolled twice and takes the lower result.

Only on “lucky crafts” which has a roll for in itself, it’s not every craft. Same with crits.

@Kulze

@DJSamhein

Even combining and with longer ladders, you still wouldn’t get to zod naturally without trading, not unless you were very lucky.

I mean… I did 3 times? But it takes a long-ass time, that’s true

Ok, so how many hundreds of hours were uou spending grinding high end content?

@Kulze

That means you don’t get the ‘fail-state’.

You always get the fail-state unless you get a decent item out of it.

@Kulze

Or have no clue about the mechanics But that’s another topic.

Ah, so you do support punishing the new players or those who have yet to gain the knowledge! " "

@Kulze

I mean… we got RNG heavy drops. We got RNG heavy crafting, all of that followed by RNG heavy slamming of those RNG heavy drops which have been RNG heavy crafted.

Sorry, are you talking about PoE or LE? I’m confused because that statement fits both.

@Kulze

Your 30% level 86 base? You need a really really rare affix on it as a basis? Slam it until it does! Then you ‘imprint’ it. You can always return to that state hence and re-imprint for a cost. It’s not ‘lost’ unlike the ‘one chance’ crafting of LE.

Yeah, that’s fair, though the “lost” bit in LE is only if you try to remove a specific affix, or you reach the end of your FP without getting the desired state, but I’d argue that’s the cost we have for having more control over the affixes while crafting rather than throwing RNG-currency at a base in various prders to see what sticks.

@Kulze

If EHG can combine the ‘safety spots’ aspects with their straightforward crafting design

Yeah, that’s fair, though how to do tjat without it becoming an item editor?

I mean, they could just copy PoE’s imprint with a rare rune…

@DJSamhein

That depends on the player. I feel more discouraged if I’m working on the same piece over and over again and I have to annul it for the 50th time.
With LE gear drops like candy, so you don’t have an attachment to them. They drop, you craft, most fail, you throw them on the ground and keep playing.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel too. I don’t get particularly attached to the items unless they’re pretty good already.

@DJSamhein

As I said before in one of our many back and forths about this, I don’t think PoE’s or LE’s are better or worse. They will just appeal to different players.
Which is why such fervent PoE fans like Ziz and Ghazzy say that LE’s crafting is better. It’s not because LE’s crafting system is actually better. It’s because they like it better.

Yup.

@Kulze

This issue is actually currently present in LE as well with prophecies. A single prophecy ‘juiced’ to the max provides 12 unique pieces… which could potentially be 12 two-handed axes for example. Which is 100% of the inventory space available.

Yeah, that’s fair & why I’d like to either be able to summon my stash (a la Sacred 2) or claim prophecies in town where we have access to the stash or something.

[DJSamhein]

@Kulze

So now you’re forced to only ever have a single prophecy for the potential situation that all 12 of them have any sort of value… ignoring even the base drops of a boss encounter for example… or you gotta leave things behind as there is no persistence of areas yet implemented.

That is not an issue with crafting, but with zone persistence and/or how prophecies are triggered. Different issue.
If you drop 12 two handed exalted axes, for example, then you don’t have to leave anything behind as you can immediately craft on them and know if you succeed or not… Most likely, you’ll leave most on the ground.

@Kulze

But… do you wanna make it a full-scale glorified slot machine?

That would be CoF.

@Kulze

Or do you want it to allow the collectors to also have their place?

That would be MG.

Even though you can’t craft indefinitely on the same piece of gear for hours on end, you can easily get your required pieces for slamming from MG. Even more so now in 1.2.

[Heavy]

@Llama8

@Heavy

That is actually incorrect. You get two tries and take the better result. Any FP consumption is rolled twice and takes the lower result.

Only on “lucky crafts” which has a roll for in itself, it’s not every craft. Same with crits.

No, FP consumption is always rolled that way.

[Llama8]

Then why has Mike talked about “lucky rolls” vis-a-vis crafting in the past if FP consumption is always lucky?

[Ondrashek06]

@Unlovable

Marvel Heroes, to me, was the greatest ARPG ever made. And it absolutely did not have this issue. I stayed engaged in that game for years upon years

Wasn’t that game only available for 2 years until it shut down permanently?

[Kulze]

@Llama8

So you’re ok with the topest of tiers gear in PoE taking “tons of time”, but not in LE? And having to invest significant amounts of currency (unless you just RMT the currency).

A +5 Bow is an equivalent of a 3 LP Red Ring.
So yes, that’s fine.

Having the same happening with basically every rare unique though is kinda a bit overkill. And having it happening with basically every chest piece and helmet is also kinda overkill.

It’s the magnitude of it. It’s fine when a sweatlord game which has no qualms about positioning itself as a sweatlord game does it… because it’s a sweatlord game.
But if a ‘mid-tier’ game does it then it becomes a blatant problem.

So yes, I have no issue when PoE does such stuff as they say they do such stuff intentionally… while LE does want to discern itself from that and not be as sweaty… so I expect that to not be the case

Same like I don’t expect Chronicon to have a deep in-depth crafting mechanic which is complex, because it’s a casual endless progression game and while it has a story it’s primarily focused on ‘explode loads of stuff as quick as possible’ as a primary gameplay loop.

@Llama8

Ok, so how many hundreds of hours were uou spending grinding high end content?

Few hundred, roughly 1k hours I would say.
Which isn’t ‘that’ much in the grand scheme of things.
But after that timeframe I got top-tier stuff for several characters and basically everything ‘decked out’ to extreme degrees. In LE I also have that… for a 2 Uberroth characters which are specifically picked for Uberroth and not anything else since the others wouldn’t even be able to get close to him.

@Llama8

Ah, so you do support punishing the new players or those who have yet to gain the knowledge! " "

Knowledge progression is a viable progression metric for a game.
How much it fits into PoE with their setup? I would argue they overdo it substantially.
But I wouldn’t ask for example ‘Wayward’ - which is all about exploration and the player collecting knowledge about the mechanics - to avoid it, quite the contrary.
Would also not ask ‘Blue Prince’ to explain their stuff… because it’s a mental task which makes it fun.

It depends entirely on the game-type and setup. And I’m repeatedly saying ‘Last Epoch has set itself up in a position it does not develop itself towards’… which is a problem.

@Llama8

I’d argue that’s the cost we have for having more control over the affixes while crafting rather than throwing RNG-currency at a base in various prders to see what sticks.

I don’t agree with this. In PoE you got control over your crafts nowadays. And with yesterday’s reveal even more so.
You can personally choose the pool of crafts it can even have. Base pool and influences… so you don’t get overwhelming amounts of different outcomes in normal crafts which would reduce your chance substantially. And with smart planning you can actively reduce that to a minimum.
Then you got crafting mechanics like the ‘recombinator’ which is a deterministic but chance based combination mechanic. So you can gradually upgrade items with distinct Affixes on it to reach a top-tier state. Yes, they break… but you progress through a distinctly given line with it… and can use all other ways of crafting on top of it.
Then you got harvest crafts which are a guaranteed type of result. Like a chaos roll. Could be chaos res, chaos dot, chaos flat or even chaos level depending on item… but usually you got at best 1-2 outcomes, so highly deterministic and it’s re-doable as well.
Then you can even go along to influence items and have specific currency related to that, allowing actual distinct crafting. Only removing one suffix/prefix with guarantee and allowing otherwise risky crafts to become guaranteed ones and so on.

In LE we got no ‘determinism direction’. I have to give some kudos to EHG for 1.2 and the first implementations of that though. Havoc, Demise and the imprints are a fantastic start of it.
Enough? By far not.

@Llama8

Yeah, that’s fair, though how to do tjat without it becoming an item editor?

I mean, they could just copy PoE’s imprint with a rare rune…

There’s a few options available, adjustment of RNG ranges primarily to ensure a ‘general timeframe’ is established.
The whole itemization system suffers from a ‘lets see what sticks’ approach. Which in a massively overcomplicated itemization system like PoE? I can understand. But LE’s itemization system and even the character building system is comparatively piss-easy. Not at a state where I would expect that to be the only reliable way unless you got workers with several thousand hours of experience in character building on top of that under their hood.

@Llama8

or claim prophecies in town where we have access to the stash or something.

Yeah, that would be the optimal as well as I see it.

@DJSamhein

That is not an issue with crafting, but with zone persistence and/or how prophecies are triggered. Different issue.

It is a issue with crafting.
The turtle is a distinct crafting mechanic which causes this issue.
In 1.1 you could drop 36 uniques and be fine… since you wouldn’t need 90% of them.
In 1.2 you need 95% of them as the only ones worthless would be 0 LP ones… since you’re likely to have 50 items for Nemesis stacked up and hence no need to stock up on that.
But 1 LP ones? All valuable as they can become 4 LP, leaving them is hence ‘a waste’.

@DJSamhein

That would be CoF.

@DJSamhein

That would be MG.

Yeah, but sadly neither is Which is the issue.

EHG needs to either distinctly work with that in mind… or make a mixed bag and then expedite the respective bits to be improved through the factions.

[Heavy]

The game went through multiple name changes as part of bigger updates. (Marvel Heroes, Marvel Heroes 2015, Marvel Heroes 2016 and Marvel Heroes Omega)

But it was available for a totality of ~4 1/2 years. Released in 2013 and shut down in 2017.