Can there be too much loot in a loot driven game? Yes it can! Too many exalted items!

Feedback and Suggestions
1

So after playing roughly 150 hours since Patch 0.9 released I can confidently say: The current loot is too much.

At first I instantly was sceptical, but still had hopes that this might be just a “good luck” streak or some wrong first impression, because of the “fresh start”.

But after playing more and more and realising how many of my different chars had multiple exalted items by the time they reached Empowered Monolith it become clear to me:

My excitment for playing a longer period of time on the same character was impacted negatively by this abundance of loot

There currently is no real content that needs that crazy gear (excluding scaling content like corruption) and having too good gear to early in your progression just takes a way a lot of the fun of min-maxing a build.

Previously most of my characters had 0-1 exalted items by the time I completed my first few empowered timeline because I usually prefer T15-T20 items with perfect bases and perfect crafted stats over some T6 or T7 with medicre bases or unoptimal stats.

But all of my gear was very statisfying to get and craft.
And once I started grinding empowered every exalted drop that actually was useable truely felt great.

There were instances of clearing several rare mobs on oen screen, where 3-5 exalted items laid on the floor.
To the point where I actually wanted to further filted exalted items.

The legendary system also gave us a way to utilize good exalted items on bad bases (because the base does not matter for legendary crafting), which in itself is a good thing.
But with the current loot drops exalted items get to a point where they are annoying.

I have several exalted items ready for some legendary crafts as soon as the desired uniques drops.

Previously it was the other way around for some medium rare uniques. Where I actually farmed exalted items for specific Uniques that I already found.

This whole situation gets worse in conjunction with the overtuned echo reward spawn rates.
I already made anotehr post about that as well:

The current drop rates would be ok, if we are farming 400-500 corruption, because at that point you will already have a character that “deserved” that good loot. At that point I also would not feel bad for filtering out exalted items, because I will be hunting for very specific things that late into progression.

But finding good exalted items left and right, before even having my most important passives specced out feels bad in my progression.

TLDR:

  • Too many exalted items too early
  • Getting rewarded with too good loot for too little effort
  • Makes playing one character for extended period of time less attractive
  • Makes grinding into later progression kinda pointless, because there is simply not the content that requries that good gear
6 Likes
2

Were any of them useful or were they junk?

1 Like
3

On the particular example I mentioned not for direct use, but very good ones for legendary crafting.

4

Mr Heavy.

Love a long form feedback. Also read your other post and totally get where you are coming from.

Quick question though, as a newer player, how much of your feelings do you think are impacted by your prior experiences in Last Epoch?

5

I don’t know, I guess it is impossible to detach my prior experience from my actual feedback.

But I am at the point where my characters that completed a few empowered timelines basically have most of my desired gear (all desired affixes with desired bases) with only a couple of potential upgrades with some numbers.

And I didn’t even push into corruption yet. The only upgrades are some potential legendary crafts.

I just feel that I reached that point of “min-maxing” too early for an ARPG.

Of course this is tainted by my previous LE experience, but I liked my previous LE experience and right now I do have less fun playing LE because of the abundance of loot.

1 Like
6

got to agree.im not picking up very many t6 exalts except for health%.
barely picking 1-2lp uniques either
and on the echos ive seen 4-6 unique glove echos in a clump multiple times.
maybe i like grinding gear a bit more then spoon fed

1 Like
7

So, we know, based on dev streams and other commentary, that EHG wants to make gearing more relevant. We’ve also had ailment changes (to mixed reception it seems).

I wonder if we are seeing some early signs of a big balance pass here.

Are there other changes you think could change your perspective (as alternative to reduction in drop rate)?

8

It’s partly as you say.
A lot of T6 drops from which we managed to make quite a lot of bases for the transfer to uniques.
But I dropped very few T7 bases, and those that had potential broke quickly.
Personally, I played 90 hours on one character. And from 50h to 90h of playing I couldn’t find any upgrade for my character. I stopped playing for the moment (to 1.0 probabaly).

To sum up my adventure:

  • 0x Shattered Chains drops (had 1 potential transfer exalted)
  • 0x Apathy’s Maw with LP (no useful exalted axe for transfer dropped either)
  • 0x Darkstride with LP (had 2 potential transfer exalted)
  • had 3x Siphon of Anguish with 2LP (2 terribled roled also), but all came out weaker than 1LP.
  • weak exalted relic for T6 all res while channeling only.
  • all other where T20 rare that I luckly got early in game.

So yes purple droped like crazy, but not enough to keep me in the game.

For people that like playing mainly 1-2 build game will be boring very fast without more endgame system like paragon, RNG driven item hunt is not enough. Friends dropped out almost instant at lv100. Also my 40h without upgrade is good example :).

1 Like
9

You just described immersive and compelling gameplay, according to some on these forums.

1 Like
10

1.5% of exalted items that drop are worth trying to Chaos or rune of removal.
98% of exalted items that drop are literal trash, so I don’t see the issue with their drop rate.
The last .5 % are worth crafting on as is.

7 Likes
11

I think the problem here is, that boss uniques (for the most part) did not really change that much. I think some uniques that got adjusted might changed their drop rating a little bit (like Wings of Argentus).

But Uniques and especially boss uniques do not really drop that much more compared to Exalted Items.

My concern was mainly focused at exalted items.

Also most of the stuff you listed were Uniques with LP, which is something that should come very late in your progression. Unique and especially Unique with LP drop chances are totally fine, its whats before that that botheres me.

If you would need a little bit longer to gear out the rest of your character you would ahve way more time on a given character.

Getting Uniques with LP is already in the min-maxing progression.

12

Seeing all of your posts, it seems abundantly clear to me that we have very different perspectives on the game.
Out of curiosity, what would be the ideal gearing progression in your opinion?

1 Like
13

Yeah, I commented on reddit some days earlier, not sure about the rewards from echoes, but definitively you can average 2 exalteds per echo run to the objective killing stuff in the way. And that’s from L90 monos. The curious thing I didn’t feel a noticeable increase in drops later on empowered with the increased rarity, or maybe is my impression because I was already bloated with loot.

My character was already in min-maxing phase, with a few half-decent exalteds by level 82 or so, finishing normal monos.

Those extra exalteds on the runs, really add up, and you end up getting already some exalted upgrades quite early.

My late game progression was carried mostly by empowered blessings and some swaps here and there.

Is probably an unpopular opinion, buy I have also reached a very similar conclusion. The drops are even more generous than before. Getting part of your future gear through killing mobs on your way is great though.

I guess they are messing with the values, or even they buffed the loot to compensate for the MP delay or expected things to polish, who knows :slight_smile:

14

I can’t say I agree.
Exalted items, although common, are mostly bad and sit in the stash collecting dust waiting for potential future usage. It’s not like I’m running through monos getting decked out.

Maybe the progression curve they want is that you should have a couple of pieces of t6 exalted items before you hit empowered? Empowered is a pretty big difficulty jump. I see absolutely no reason why loot should be changed from what it is now

2 Likes
15

I don’t think they would do this intentionally as some form of compensation or apology. I am pretty sure they do fiddle around with this type of stuff and try gathering feedback from people who notice it.

These kind of changes are best to not be declared in patch notes, since that would distract too much.

This together with something @psychodrive mentioend earlier is happening I think:

I am pretty sure that EHG is fiddling with the loot because of potential coming changes to loot with Merchant Guild and Circle of Fortune.

And that is totally fine. I just really dislike if games are too genrous.

Big part of the fun for me is trying to make the best out of the limited things that I get.
Having to make hard decisions, like equiping that unoptimal exalted item that I dropped instead of a perfect rare gearpiece where it is not clear which one is objectively better.

But currently I just get showered in upgrades. That is not fun to me.

That is really hard and is probably very build dependent. (Some builds want/need way more specific gear than others)

But a very rough breakdown would be:

  • By the end of the story: T10-15 rare items with 1 or 2 desired stats and 1 or 2 non optimal stats
  • Early-Mid Normal Monolith: T15-T18 rare items on suboptimal bases with at least 3 desired stats and one suboptimal or very low stat
  • End of Normal Monolith: T15-20 rare items on desired bases
  • Empowered Monolith 100 Corruption: T18-20 rare items on desired bases with maybe 1 or 2 good exalted items with some suboptimal stats or base types
  • Empowered Monolith 100-300 Corruption: Full T20 rare items with all desired stats and 1 or 2 exalted items with good bases and affixes.
  • Empowered Monolith 300+ corruption: T21+ Rare gear with some good sealed affixes and 3-4 exceptional exalted items

Everything regarding Uniques and Legendaries is very build dependend and can’t be generalized (Some uniques can be farmed with LP without corruption pushing, some can’t be even farmed before having high corruption)

2 Likes
16

tbh then it sounds like I can live with an exalted nerf if they buff rares rates cause you are smoking some good stuff if you think this is how the curve should be since that is not my experience at all.

Ive been looking for correct base rings with correct affixes for 100h. I dont even want them exalted.

I want an opal ring with healing effect/ele dot/flat health/poison res. id even mirror a t15 of that.

I have my filter set to show every single opal ring that drops I still have yet to find one that actually hits more then 1 of those affixes.

Yeah I have 6 tabs full of exalted most of which I probably shouldnt even pick up. but I def dont have rare gear I want.

My belt I want is armor base, ele dot/cleanse/cooldown/hybrid.

I also show every single item with hybrid health that drops, I have a whopping 12 hybrid health shards right now. I drop an item with hybrid health like once an hour tops.

Also id just like to point out that having more exalted drops has actually made me engage with my loot more personally. since now im looking at and reading exalteds more often. lets say you drop an exalted every 5 minutes~ in the past, you just picked it up, reading it? why you have plenty of space just hoard it worry about it later.

I get like half a dozen in an echo now, I actually need to read them since im already entering mega hoarding level of stash tabs and many of them I dont need. Ive started to pick up less exalted, but engage with the loot system more, sorta an interesting change imo.

Id also like to point out that regardless of how much loot you get, this is still true because you didnt get infinite loot. just a bit of a pedantic but true point if you will.

Even if every item that dropped was exalted, there is so much potential for loot, you would still have loot choices to make. The same actually imo. it would just create a very high power floor.

But that was not brought up in your point. I feel like once you get used to this new norm, a change in loot back down would be a shock too.

1 Like
17

That some RNG punishing you for no reason, I got plenty of opal rings, even a few in T20 that I cannot equip because resistance coverage, I currently have most of my gear in good/ideal bases, but half of them are T20, other T17-19… Not that bad.

I may think you are too specific in what you’re looking for, you have to adapt and adapt again with what you get (you probably know this, but anyways…).

Yeah, totally true… the trick here is adjusting the drop rates patch after patch with barely noticeable differences, until you get the point you’re happy with. Very few people commented about the quite noticeable increased loot we have right now. Sure many didn’t pay attention or didn’t notice at all.

With season/cycle mechanics it could be even harder to detect.

18

Yeah im using less then optimal ones and its fine, Im not struggling or anything. The base itself is the most important since im cooldown based.

I just dont really see that many opal rings! Though im farming ring blessing rn, it was something else while i farmed that slot. So maybe that will probably make a huge difference :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
19

I concur.

I also hold suspicions they will be introducing some new end game mechanic at 1.0, but thats just me

20

Painfully difficult and slow. Ideally with people screaming at you.

2 Likes