Character Progression After Level 100

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hello, everyone. First of all, my native language is Spanish, and this text has been translated using DeepL.com, so I apologize in advance for any translation or interpretation errors.

I’d like to propose an idea—one that isn’t new—but I believe it would help extend the lifespan of a season in Last Epoch for dedicated players. It would involve an infinite Paragon once your character reaches level 100

I say it’s not new because it already exists in Diablo III and also in a Korean game called Undecember. We all know how the Paragon system works in Diablo III. I’d like to focus specifically on Undecember since I believe it has the best endgame character leveling system (except for the pay-to-win component, which I’ll discuss shortly).

The Paragon system in Undecember (Rune Master Level) basically works like this once your character reaches level 100:

-You start at Rune Master Lv. 1.

-You continue to gain experience normally by killing enemies (the harder the content, the more XP you get).

-Every time you level up in Rune Master, you earn RM points (Rune Master Points).

These points are invested in a special board to gain permanent stats (attributes, health, resistances, movement speed, critical damage, critical rate, attack speed, etc.), which makes your character increasingly stronger in the endgame.

-The pay-to-win element is that you have a daily cap on the amount of Rune Master experience you can earn, which can be increased by purchasing orbs with real money in the game. Obviously, we don’t want this in Last Epoch!! We simply want to be able to level up with the only limit being the hours played.

This, I insist, would prolong interest in the seasons and incentivize playing more hours to appear on the leaderboards. It’s true that the character would end up being extremely powerful and could one-shot Uber Aberroth. But is that a problem? Fortunately, the game has an infinite progression system (corruption level on monoliths), and as of today, there are already dedicated builds that kill Uber Aberroth in seconds.

Anyway. That’s my proposal for the game. Thanks for reading this far.

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2

That’s been proposed often. Devs don’t want that because they don’t want players to feel forced to reach level 100, which they would if there was still charater power hidden behind it.

Basically they want the difference between 95 and 100 to be almost none and only those that want to chase level 100 will do it.
If you add a system that gives you character power after you reach level 100, then everyone has to reach level 100 to be able to “complete” the character.

2 Likes
3

Well, if that’s the case, maybe they should change their mindset, since fewer people are playing each new season and player retention is also declining.
My proposal is aimed at giving the average player an incentive to keep playing.

4

It’s more likely that the average player does not even reach level 100 currently, so they wouldn’t really care about your idea

2 Likes
5

Well, I see my idea hasn’t been very successful.
Here’s a chart showing the number of players who started each season and their retention rates, where we can clearly see that the numbers have been dropping sharply.
We could do nothing, stick with the developers’ preconceived ideas, and watch the game die—that’s also an option.

https://steamdb.info/app/899770/charts/#3y

6

So you’re saying that nothing to do post level 100 is the sole reason why players leave?

As mentioned before, most players don’t reach level 100, so this would do nothing for them. This would only make them feel even worse and leave earlier.
Your solution is only meant for the hardcode player, the grinder, the min-maxxer. Those are the only ones that benefit from it, just like they did in D3.

The retention problem LE has has nothing to do with no post-level 100 systems, it has to do with not having enough diversity in the endgame to keep players engaged.
Every season adding mechanics that still revolve around doing hundreds of echoes is part of the problem because players already did a mechanic that revolved around doing hundreds of echoes last season.
Every mechanic being kind of just a side-product of doing echoes, being sort of self-contained and not having a more meaningful progression (as in, there really isn’t any variation whether you’re doing your 1st rift beast/omen window or your 1000th rift beast/omen window) is part of the problem.

Lacking a post-level 100 paragon-style system? Definitely not part of the problem.

2 Likes
7

getting 100 is a death sentence for me. all the air fizzles out the ballon

1 Like
8

I think it’s fair to want some form of progression after hitting level cap, but yeah, the lack thereof isn’t why most people quit.

9

Yes, it’s a poorly thought idea. But, more importantly, you make the (common) mistake of trying to give weight to your suggestion by implying it’s the opinion of all/most/a significant part of the playerbase; meanwhile, anyone who could do anything about it understands that no, you have no way to know what large numbers of the Last Epoch players want. Instead, you should own your idea, consider its pros and cons, and listen to feedback from other people here.