It can. But it was clearly targetted at a different playerbase that doesn’t like to grind too much and wants a more immediate gratification. So most of its systems are geared to this end. Campaign skip/adventure mode, paragon, itemization, class drops weight, etc, all point towards reducing your grind and having immediate “success”.
LE and PoE are more geared towards a playerbase that enjoys grind (to a higher or lesser degree and more or less well executed) and many of those options would go against the game identity. Paragon is one of these, for example.
I think a good halfway step would be to lower the level of the unempowered monoliths to scale with your player level, allowing you to start them as soon as you pick your Mastery. You still have to do the tutorial area, and then the early parts of the ruined era, but it’s better than needing to get to ~lv40 if you’re only using self-found gear.
For me it’s less than that the campaign quality is low, but rather that the early leveling trickling in skills and specialization slots (the things that makes skills actually fun to use) takes way to long. I was fine with the final spec slot at 50 when I first started, but after so many characters it just feels way too late in the leveling process for your build to finally be “complete” (and it’s really still not due to needing to level the skill itself.) by lv 50 in Grim Dawn my build has already been finished for a while and I’m just fleshing out the supporting passives
How would an alternative method instead of the campaign solve that though?
The spec slots and skills are after all tied to character level, hence the alternative method would necessitate a faster pace of leveling, hence being a inherent upside compared to the campaign.
That doesn’t sound like a campaign issue either but more like a pacing issue for personal character progression. Meaning the initial unlocks should be earlier but the power behind them is in more need of expanding. Hence for example unlocks happening by level 20 completely but the skills are overall weaker as a starting measure and scale to 30 points instead of 20 as a base-max, with the items adjusted accordingly to give respectively more levels for skills if applicable.
I don’t understand, why in every ARPG devs think they have to make campaign. These games focused on the endgame, why wouldn’t focus on it from the beginning? If I would make ARPG, I would try something like this:
You are starting at the Monolith, with some quest like explore maps and find where previous expedition team gone. On some random map, you found tracks of that expedition and they lead to the portal to another epoch. In that epoch you have access only to limited sector of atlas nodes, do some quest there. Then, there would be almost no guaranteed quests, you are just exploring monolith, finding random quests, which give access to some cluster of maps in another epoch. Or something like that.
With spending amount of resources required to make a campaign, they could make a great variety of quests, and there would be no boundary between campaign and endgame, it all would be endgame with a lot of things in it. This way it would be way more repayable, starting new characters would be more interesting.
Of course, playing really good campaign like in PoE 2 might be quite fun too. It’s just not the only way to design an ARPG, but the only one way devs are currently using.
Because the majority of players starting out don’t care abnout end-game mechanics yet. They want to get a feel for the game and a very substancial amount of people also plays those games for the story… getting roped in permanently by the gameplay afterwards. Which they wouldn’t if it didn’t exist.
Also it immerses the person into the framework of the created universe which causes people to be more invested in it.
But the direction of gradually unlocking space tied to a story is a good one which you’ve presented. And plainly spoken… preferred by me as well
Because not having one would massively reduce your potential players base, making your name very niche from the start.
As much as I love diablo-likes, I would never play one without a campaign (I would also never skip, even in games where you have the option to). To me the campaign IS the game. Endgame, as the name states, comes at the end, some fun stuff to do if I really enjoyed my character and want to keep them alive a bit longer.
My point of view belongs to, I believe, a very small minority of the hardcore diablo-like players, but to a vast majority of the general, filthy casual population.
Hardcore grinders are the main target of PoE or LE, and your idea would probably work fine for them. But it means a huge amount of potential firt-time diablo-like players would never try your game.
What you are describing is Vampire Survivors, Soulstone Survivors, Deep Rock Galactic Survivors … There is no campaign, you just play missions or maps or raids or levels … While I enjoy those games, we are talking about an ARPG here with Last Epoch, RPGs have stories.
I don’t think so actually. There’s still the issue of repetitiveness. The campaign offers something ‘different’ in style and pacing then end-game. Sure… we are the majority of time in the end-game but as we can see… people get relatively quickly tired of it since the variety is not there.
Yeah, we have dungeons (which are awfully bland), arena (which is mind numbingly bland) and monoliths (which are a bit bland). But we have nothing viable to do to pull us from ‘bland and simple’ mechanics.
There’s a reason why PoE 1 became ever bigger after they implemented things like Incursion, Betrayal, Delve and Heist as examples. Simple mechanics like Breach, Legion, Ritual and the likes are nice and fun, very great even at times… but they’re ‘simple’. At times a bit more engagement to even that out is nice. And at other times you don’t wanna think and just blast, so having content for that is also nice. Variety is the spice of life.
What I would like is: Keeping the passive skill points from side quests on a new toon as well as the idol slots and make the monolith buffs account wide. So you only need to blast the main quests. This should make the progress even faster. Everything outside of this would be to much for given that those three things would already be a bit craycray.
MOBA, MMO, competitive FPS and gatchas have so few players
You might be feeling bad. Hope you have good close relations to support you during this hard moment
Yes, would be nice to be to start at level 50 with passive and idols. Monolith buffs is more complex as they are tied to build. As stuff will miss, some content (dungeon, monolith, free map exploring, arena, …) may scale down in difficulty.
I think it mustn’t be too much difficult to achieve as campaign always “scale” as you progress.
Yes, let’s compare apples and oranges, cause they’re the same!
Yeah, true. Why not fully decked out as well? You know, the starting stuff, a set of T7 exalted items to get you going? Could also go and simply have everything unlocked right away so you save the time to do it!
Remind me quickly… why are you actually playing the game if a good 70% of the available content is not enticing to you?
Level scaling mechanics have been a flop in nigh every single game to date. It deprives players from the reward of getting more powerful. Showcased well in Bethesda games as one of the most mentioned downsides.
If your random bandit is as tough to kill at level 1 as it is at level 50… what have you achieved in that time? Perception wise… nothing.
Actually, you miss the point. The only reason you even used those terms (MOBA, MMO, competitive FPS and gatchas) is because they are different genres. Which means that players expect different things from each of them.
In the case of an RPG, they expect RPG mechanics and a story. In the case of an ARPG, they expect action as well.
What you said is basically “These genres don’t have a story, so a story isn’t REQUIRED for BG3 to succeed”. Or Resident Evil. Or Batman Arkham series. Or Bioshock.
When clearly, if those games didn’t have a story/campaign, barely anyone would have bought them.
I compare based on given parameters: video game, campaign, success.
very very funny just after previous comparison joke I just suggest to give thing that any player has access and even have already achieved (I’m pretty sure every player has finished its first run above level 50 …). There’s close no fun before this level, and can’t even touch essence of a build at this level.
May be because:
Size can’t be compared to time?
or, just because size isn’t about level design but game one (mechanics, class design, skill, item, …)
My purpose was just about making map/area doable without stuff. As mentionned previously, you can’t start monolith (and may be some other content) with just the minimum level. You also need appropriate stuff for your build.
Sorry I was just pointing out Diablo-like (and Last Epoch in particular) don’t have a strong story. And I think people looking for an ARPG and story will favor The Witcher or The Elder Scroll.
Does that mean you can make caramel oranges like you do caramel apples and they should be as successful (taste as good)? After all, they have a lot in common.
So… you’re making my point? To circle back to your original argument and use your reply: MOBAS, MMOs, competitive shooters and gachas aren’t good games to compare to LE.
So what’s your point even?
