Why would it be? It’s actually the opposite.
Since a 3D artist won’t be doing bug fixing or implementing new features, they can actually always work on improving graphics without cutting development time.
What are you even arguing about at this point?
Well, I was responding to that guy
Also, I never asked for full customization. I just wished to use an existing character that I like with all classes - that’s all.
Right. And I responded just to the part where you said that bug fixing doesn’t bring new player in, new features do.
Anyway, we’re going in circles and not really advancing the discussion on this topic, so maybe we should just leave it as it is and move on? 
yeah, no dev’s actions really depend on what we discuss anyway
Define “good”. We have very good example of good visuals and shitty game, it’s poe2 within current state.
It’s not an outdated convention, it’s a alternative approach with upsides and downsides, not solely either.
Usually used in more story centric games with a main character (Witcher 3 as example) but also to represent multiple types of characters with different personalities for the classes (Path of Exile does that) is a common thing to happen.
This demands fixing the design to convey that properly. EHG just does a really… reaaaaally bad job in providing proper differentiation between the classes in terms of design-feeling, the voicelines are miniscule (because expensive), they don’t act very distinct when reaching specific points in the story (voicelines, dialogue, conversation choices even with NPCs) and are basically unused space in the current design.
But saying the other is a ‘better’ approach is absolutely senseless, it depends if people enjoy more to follow the role of someone or if they wanna immerse themselves into being the character. Both are viable but different approaches and they clash with each other.
It does as switching between tasks takes consiberable resources. So streamlining provides a overall efficiency boost.
EHG kinda needs efficiency direly 
But that’s all besides the point anyway, just wanted to point it out.
If you make those 10 renders individually at different times then each 10 times you got a so-called task-relocation timeframe. The common workflow for a person is to see what needs to be done, your mind then does a rough preparation of the workflow and you go ahead to do it before shortly ‘cooling down’ afterwards as well. A large amount of formerly applied knowledge for optimization details is lost each time and hence optimization of the workflow doesn’t happen. When you do all 10 in a row the 5th will be substantially faster then the 1st, not to speak of the timeframe for switching between tasks simply not happening, which makes roughly 30% of the workday of a common worker as much as I remember (could be 20% too, or 40%… just remembered it was substantial which my brain usually goes with a third.)
That’s a ridiculously miniscule effort to do. You simply allow the player to choose if the render of the helm layer does happen or not.
Otherwise fully agreed, any large-scale changes should 100% NOT happen currently, not until the gameplay is polished, the story is finished and the MAJOR issues of the game are solved, namely progression and perception related to that, fluidity of content progress, factions and a full balance pass for all classes to bring them at a general baseline, same with mobs.
True!
Bug fixes save existing users from leaving. Features are a great PR tool… a polished game itself though does speak for itself through content creators which are nowadays the strongest marketing tool in existence.
New buyers always come… as long as you keep it on the radar. Keeping them is the problem, nobody stays and likes to ‘spread the word’ about a piece of garbage unless they’re paid well.
Because they are actually currently at work to get the core stuff handled… like the campaign. Like 3D models, like MTX which is utterly underrepresented still for a live-service game.
That’s EHGs lifeblood for the future, they aren’t in a ‘great’ position for a live-service game, only in a ‘ok’ one. The bar for that business model is ridiculously high after all.
Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud, Project Zomboid, The Long Drive, My Summer Car, Minecraft (btw the world-wide most sold game in history), Rimworld, Faith, Baba is You, Cruelty Squad…
Need I go on? Good visuals never were a ‘key feature’. They are a strong tool to broaden the audience, they are worthless as a standalone without sound design (much more important then graphics btw), a great story and/or great gameplay. A game can survive on a story alone with sub-par (not utterly awful) gameplay for a single time… but no game in history got a long-term staying community without good gameplay.
And your response is a generalization beyond end.
Nonsensical to even argue about it, it’s a comment-killer.
Broaden your horizons and don’t take everything as 100% or 0%, then it works suddenly. Everything is on a scale. Depending on where different aspects are on those scales the distinct action becomes clear if you know what to look out for.
LE’s biggest issues currently are spiky difficulty, badly interacting game mechanics (patchwork job over years rather then a unified vision followed from start to finish), a really bad content pipeline and missing release-state quality/content (balancing and finished gameplay).
As much as I know the current monolith system is a ‘stand-in’ system which was mentioned to be exchanged but never was. We’re missing 3 story chapters. We got a pinnacle boss with jack in terms of distinct content from the moment you enter empowered monoliths to reaching it. We got a broken market. We got bad UI design (mouse click-through, windows which don’t close in conjunction but individually, overdesigned faction UI’s rather then functional ones, lack of cohesive functional - rather then overdesigned - affix listing and searching.) and we got ages old class designs not touches since years and partially even unfinished.
What do you think your 3D designers will work on? Getting the effects of skills into the game, providing storyline content and working on the animations for WASD-control… or rather a character customization system? Which do you actually think is more worthwhile for a game with a primary focus on gameplay? (which looter ARPGs are)
Fair, but really hard to actually do!
The models are specifically created for the classes in mind. Uniques are even designed to work with multiple classes which makes it so hard to implement. A ‘Kestrel’ does look different on a Acolyte compared to a Sentinel.
Your ask hence is ‘EHG, make every single base helmet and body armor model for every class’, that would involve a total of 63 helmets and body armors falling into that category, meaning 252 models each. A total of 504 models hence.
What time investment do you think that is?
If EHG has half a brain it definitely does, because they should have at least 2 workers solely following the information on the Forum, Reddit and Discord to create take away the information from all posts to optimize their methodology related to whichever goal they have for their game to make it fitting with their wanted and/or existing customer-base.
And we saw that balancing makes the whole world there. 0.1 campaign-state praised to the heavens besides the crafting and itemization progression aspect. Gameplay wise? Chef’s-kiss.
0.2? Nearly everyone hates it.
Kinda obvious with their nonsensical balancing approach
The titles you mentioned were the pioneers. If you copy one with the same visuals, you’re setting yourself up for failure. LE might be a solid game, but it’s still just another clone. To stand out, it needs something unique. What does it actually bring to the table that competitors don’t? A bug-free experience? You can’t market that as a selling point.
Look guys, the Steam store description says:
Last Epoch … engrossing character customization
But that’s misleading - it’s simply not true. I almost refunded the game after just 20 minutes because of this. Luckily, I gave it another hour, and I ended up loving it. Now, I’m a loyal fan. But I know I’m not alone - if I bought the game expecting that feature, thousands of others might have too, only to feel disappointed.
I think they mean “character customization” as in “a lot of different skills and builds for one character”, but it is misleading.
To paraphrase:
“A mage survives by being either a hero or a coward. You take a great risk going against one, especially an old one.”
Caves of Qud is a classic campaign based rogue-like with the option to play it as a rogue-lite. The pioneer for that was ADOm (Ancient Domains of Mystery).
Project Zomboid took influx from CDDA (Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead)
Rimworld is based off of Dwarf Fortress actually, not even remotely a ‘pioneer’.
Baba is You is simply a interesting puzzle-game, not genre defining new one. You could call ‘Void Strangers’ also a pioneer in that case, as well as even Lost Ark… absolutely no pioneer in any metric.
Cruelty Squad also is no pioneer but a shooter with simply slightly enhanced long-term management along the way.
They’re simply good games, nothing else, nothing more. Oh, btw, ADOM and CDDA should also go into the ‘great games, shit graphics’ list.
The point of a good game is not to simply be a clone… it’s to excel in quality.
Does LE do that?
Also is LE actually cloning something or is it simply another line in the genre list?
By the same logic we could say that ‘Cubic Oddyssey’ is a clone of Minecraft… despite being utterly different in gameplay feel and mechanically as well, only sharing the style of being a block-based survival game, that’s it.
Alternative crafting system compared to others of the genre.
Alternative treatment of skills vs. passives.
Alternative itemization progression system in total.
A meant split between trading and non-trading players.
Kinda unique in their own respect. Not really especially well handled or even incredibly creative… but that’s their specific aspects that distinct their game from others.
Yeah, out of context that can describe ‘The Sims’, ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’, literally any action RPG with different archetypes and so on and so forth.
In this case character customization is related to the abilities of the character, being able to put them into different directions.
Which becomes clear when you read the whole core feature list very very swiftly.
By the same mention I should be utterly disappointed by ‘Easy to learn, Hard to master’… because let’s be very clear… LE’s system is comparatively to others on the market piss-easy. The combat is very straight-forward and the skill-ceiling is simply all over the place rather then related to mastery. And that comes from someone like me which knows darn well they are very much above the average player but still one utter pleb compared to actual good players.
Edit: Heck… even Minecraft isn’t ‘original’ actually. Infiniminer was first and that is a block-game of the same style… but with vastly less features simply. Which is why nowadays gradually ‘Vintage Story’ starts to take over the place of Minecraft for ever more people since that one is a more advanced Minecraft style-wise and immersion-wise. For others it’s ‘too much’ instead, definitely not as accessible as Minecraft is.
Yes, but good graphics isn’t unique. D4 already does that.
Good graphics alone aren’t enough either. Cyberpunk 2077 certainly demonstrated that.
Character customization isn’t unique either. D4, once again, already does that.
The reason why almost no ARPG has customization is because ARPGs are a sub-niche genre and studios tend to be smaller.
Blizzard has billions to dump on making everything look pretty (even if the gameplay isn’t as good). GGG, EHG, Crate, etc, don’t hvae those billions to dump there, so they focus on what they players consider more important.
And in the diablo-like/exile-like/isometric hack n’ slash/whatever you want to call it, most player don’t care so much about the character customization, rather focusing on gameplay. Which is why games like Hero Siege are (relatively) successful.
That’s not to say that better graphics don’t give players a better experience. They do. But given the choice between gameplay and graphics, the vast majority chooses the former, not the latter.
The strong opposition to including a simple and highly appealing feature in the game is baffling. I attribute it to a lack of understanding of how easy it is to create skeletal animations and attach meshes. As previously suggested, why not replace all models with a cube? It wouldn’t significantly impact gameplay and could free up a substantial amount of resources.
Because it’s not simple - as mentioned.
And if it’s so easy… go ahead, get Unity, do it, Unity is a hot mess in terms of properly handling models
And to repeat: If you stop thinking about 100% and 0% black/white scenarios only then a proper discussion can happen. But utter crap is not worth talking about, it’s worthless argumentation.
Stop that and maybe it could lead to good ideas for a position of when to implement it or how to make it easier for EHG. But don’t be sore that people simply don’t share your opinion… it’s no wrong opinion, it’s just not shared by others, whose opinions on that also aren’t wrong.
Mike has said several times that it’s much faster for them to create uniques than it is to render them, so the 3D department is always running behind.
They’re already so far behind that pretty much most unique body armors don’t have a render yet. And you say that it’s easy to just create new ones.
You should apply to a job with EHG (or any other major studio, they’d probably pay you thousands).
I would have done this long ago and uploaded it to Nexus, but the game isn’t moddable. Also, I don’t get the point about 100% and 0%. I never suggested stopping bug fixes - yet you guys keep insisting that nothing should be done except fixing bugs.
Oh, I see - I wasn’t aware they had issues with this. Unity actually has excellent tools for modeling and animating characters, which is why I was confused.
Have we?
Where?
You really really might want to re-read the earlier posts. You’re suffering from memory loss if you actually read them, or from a disability related to comprehending written things then. Otherwise it wouldn’t be explainable to come to that conclussion if you actually did read those posts.
I even stated that the helmet visibility should be included rather swiftly since that’s a low-effort thing and which can usually be done on the side. I concur to your statements because I know that the effort needed to do what you suggest is substantial enough to not warrant moving resources over to it comparatively to several other things which need to be done first. I never specifically mentioned bug fixing either, I actively mentioned balance and content related things though.
To be fair… every game-dev company with decent models runs behind on 3D modelling. It’s time-intensive and needs a substantial amount of workers, which all cost a boatload of money.
Graphics are the Nr. 1 factor of time and cost in modern games. Which makes it so baffling why so many development studios can’t get their shit together when it comes to the other aspects of their games.
Can you provide just one quote where someone explicitly says, let’s do it?
If your bar is that low all conversation hope is lost anyway.
‘Either you guys agree with me or you’re utterly against it at all!’ is the exact nonsense I’m talking about
If it brings you joy, go ahead and keep distorting my words to suit your narrative