(commanded, urgent and critical!) Greatly, feedback, advice, suggestions and commands for LAST EPOCH online (online to offline), superbly

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Firstly, (commanded, urgent and critical!) Greatly, mastery respecialisation that each one (everyone) could respecialise it as many times as each one wanted (infinite times) by paying 0 in-game gold superbly demanded (feedback, advice, suggestion and command for LAST EPOCH online)

Commandly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, I greatly demanded mastery respecialisation by spending 0 in-game gold, superbly. Commandly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, find a path to change&respec&switch&reset&swap mastery in a selected class (Goal is to be able to try a selected class’s every skill possible.). Commandingly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, patch, update, and expand LAST EPOCH online mastery switch&respec&change&reset&swap option, greatly; superbly.

A relevant image, https://imgur.com/a/usWks9P

Thanks for the image.

Secondly, (commanded, urgent and critical!) Greatly, active skill respeccing option that each one (everyone) could respecialise it as many times as each one wanted (infinite times) by spending 0 in-game gold to refund every active skill point (20 active skill points, every point) superbly demanded (feedback, advice, suggestion and command for LAST EPOCH online)

Commandly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, I greatly demanded active skill respeccing option by spending 0 in-game gold to refund every active skill point (20 active skill points, every point), for example you spent 0 in-game gold to respec an active skill you wanted, therefore you got every active skill point (20 active skill points, every point) of the active skill returned to you. Goal is for more convenient to try active skill you want. Commandingly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, find, update, patch and expand LAST EPOCH online the option, greatly; superbly.

A relevant image, https://imgur.com/a/FYLxOZY

Thanks for the image.

Thirdly, (commanded, urgent and critical!) Greatly, character saved game transfer option from online legacy to offline legacy superbly demanded (feedback, advice, suggestion and command for LAST EPOCH online [online to offline])

Commandly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, I greatly demanded character saved game transfer option from online legacy to offline legacy because of no occurred cheat (Not character saved game transfer option from offline legacy to online legacy because of occurred cheat), superbly. Goal is each player (every player) can have transferred saved game from online mode to offline mode, therefore each player (every player) can continue to play offline mode with online saved game. Commandingly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, find, update, patch and expand LAST EPOCH the option, greatly; superbly.

A relevant image, https://imgur.com/a/6JAfAF4

Fourthly, (commanded, urgent and critical!) Greatly, I superbly demanded a pathway to pick every dropped item up in ‘monolith’s every dungeon’ and 'every key required dungeon’ (feedback, advice, suggestion and command for LAST EPOCH online)

Commandly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, I greatly demanded a path to pick every dropped item that I had wanted up in ‘monolith’s every dungeon that I had fought’ and ‘every key required dungeon that I had fought’, thereafter I would have sold and/or kept every dropped item that I had wanted in ‘monolith’s every dungeon that I had fought’ and ‘every key required dungeon I had fought’, superbly. Goal is ‘Each one (everyone) can have picked every dropped item up in everywhere, thereafter each one can decide what each one wants to do with your every kept item (sell it, keep it, drop it, salvage it, etc.).’. Commandingly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, find, update, patch and expand LAST EPOCH the demand, greatly; superbly.

Relevant images, https://imgur.com/a/6zmp1nV

Thanks for the images.

Lastly, (commanded, urgent and critical!) Greatly, I superbly demanded mastery point allocation respecialisation that each one (everyone) could respecialise it as many times as each one wanted (infinite time) by paying 0 in-game gold (feedback, advice, suggestion and command for LAST EPOCH online)

Commandly; urgently; critically; assuredly; inevitably, I greatly demanded mastery point allocation respecialisation by paying 0 in-game gold. Goal is ‘Each one (everyone) has had more convenience in respeccing it (0 in-game gold, infinite time).’.

A relevant image, https://imgur.com/a/lJnrUox

3

Won’t happen, demanded or not. Goes against the design philosophy in a major way.

2 Likes
4

The devs have put it like this when they were asked about this topic: “No!”

1 Like
5

Actually, Mike once said “Maybe when we have 5 masteries per class we might consider it. Until then, I don’t see a reason for it”. Paraphrasing but it was something similar to that.

2 Likes
6

you get to pick pretty early, it’s not a big deal to make a new character

1 Like
7

Especially if you’re in MP & cadge a lift from someone to the end of time…

Gosh. What a novel thread. I’m so glad we have a new one rather than posting in any of the other ones. Especially when a new perspective is brought to the table in the OP.

5 Likes
8

yeah if it was like a lvl 50 thing i’d be more sympathetic, but now, its like a few minutes of play :wink:

1 Like
9

I remember when mastery picking was in chapter 4 before it changed to chapter 2.

Way better now than it was before

1 Like
10

I don’t think it’s completely off the table. I’ve sent this as a DM to OP already when I deleted the several duplicate versions of this topic. I think more persuasive feedback would be in the form of “when x happens, I feel y.”

I’m personally on the fence about it at the moment. Doesn’t mean I’m right or that anyone agrees.

What do you think the benefits of adding it would be? Are there any issues it could create? Are there ways to mitigate those issues?

1 Like
11

I remember when you didn’t even have to choose a mastery, you could just put points in the trees as soon as you had the points available.

1 Like
12

Personally, I think the benefits are mostly for altoholics that don’t have enough character slots.
It will also be good for people that just want to respec into anything without having to make a new character (like in D3 where you have a single character in each class).
I don’t know if it outweighs the loss of character identity for those that like it.

Allowing a simple mastery respec will pretty much discourage making more characters, even for altoholics. It will change how players view the game identity. At least in my case.
It will also be one less important choice you have to make in the game, which is also important for some players.
Even players that like making new characters will feel like they have to use mastery respec in order to be efficient, which isn’t good.

So it depends on how you do it. If you make it so that it has a hefty cost (so you can’t just respec mastery like you respec your passive tree) or a relatively long quest associated, I think that the people against it won’t oppose and would still rather make a new character than to change mastery.
Basically, if the effort/cost of changing mastery is significant enough that it outweighs the need to use it to feel efficient, then those that want one have one and those that don’t want one won’t feel forced to use it. Although no solution will please everyone, so you’ll still have people that want instant respec and some that want it gone.

But if you make it as easy to respec as it currently is to respec your passive tree, then people that care about character identity and an incentive for making multiple characters will probably leave.

So the bottom line, as it’s always been is:
What type of players do you want playing your game? :slight_smile:
Because you definitely can’t please everyone (please don’t be Blizzard :laughing:), so you’ll have to choose.

3 Likes
13

I don’t think it would really HURT anything, but you’d need some lore or quest so it made sense to do

14

The post is my final judgement, critically. Trust me, whoever is preventing Last Epoch to have mastery respec option, you are destroying Last Epoch in long term, critically.

15

As I said in my post, it’s not about destroying LE. It’s about what type of players they want playing.

If they implement a free instant mastery respec that has no cost, some players will leave. I know I will.
If they don’t implement a free instant mastery respec that has no cost, some players will leave. I know many already have. You probably will.

Any point in the spectrum between those 2 extremes will simply change which players stay and which leave.

EDIT: So what you actually mean isn’t “you are destroying LE” but instead “you are destroying LE for me (and others like me)”.

1 Like
16

Critically, I assuredly believed that mastery respec option would hugely bring more buyers, more players, more gamers, more customers, and more consumers to Last Epoch, inevitably. Critically, mastery respec option would also bring Last Epoch higher competition scores, too, assuredly. Every skill can be changed/respecced in Diablo II Resurrected, Diablo III, and Diablo IV. In Diablo II Resurrected, Diablo III, and Diablo IV, you do not need to create another/two same class(s) to try every skill that a class can cast a spell. Goal/Objective is ‘a class can try every mastery skills without having to create other two same classes again for trying other two mastery skills.’

17

Changing LE into a game like Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc would bring more of all of those things, but it wouldn’t be the type of game that EHG want to make. More popular is not necessarily better.

3 Likes
18

Thanks for answering in here!

So since it’s not 100% off the table I wanna put my thoughts into as coherent sentences as possible, so it’ll be a slight read likely.

So to get into those:

  • Benefits:

The benefits of changing masteries would definitely be more flexible testing for characters, as well as the ability for players which haven’t put much time into the game to enjoy other types of playstyles as well, without re-doing the campaign.
While yes… picking the mastery at Act 2 is a good thing and happens early nonetheless to realize how it works one needs to unlock the skills for it still, as well as nodes for those skills to get the respective behavior and at times even some specific uniques to cause the interactions to fully shine.

That’s a decent amount of time investment which often gets oversimplified by saying ‘But you can just re-do it by Act 2, it doesn’t take much time!’ but… it definitely does take time.

  • Issues:

Loads and loads of different variety.

The first and foremost issue I can see is that we currently have 5 ‘core’ classes. The ability to respec mastery would mean that those are all which exists. You need 5 characters and you’re done.
Given that Last Epoch is a life-service game and while - luckily - ever further they move away from ‘keeping people playing endlessly’ this doesn’t mean that long-term choices which will need a while to switch between are unnecessary, quite the contrary.
Because… what would me have come back to the game unless I can experience something at least mildly ‘new’? And that’s for many people to try out another class for a new cycle. No more classes left and it becomes a detriment to people actually engaging in the game I can imagine.

The next issue it would create is that it actively reduces character identity. Which ties heavily into the issues for itemization progression currently though, I’ll get shortly into it.
But first, character identity is important for quite a few people, some more then others, and it plays a big role in how people perceive ‘how deep’ a game is. A prime example for a game to showcase this issue is ‘Chronicon’, which is a SP diablo-clone. It has a good amount of content but since you can fully respec every aspect of your character with basically no limitations you don’t ever get the feeling that the game offers variety, switching builds is a matter of minutes at times. Hence… everything feels kinda ‘the same’.

Which brings me to the itemization issue which plays into that. Last Epoch has a ‘backwards’ power progression system currently. Tier power gets higher exponentially with each tier. A single T4 modifier is stronger then 4 T1 modifiers, this causes power-progression to be ‘frontloaded’ and hence makes power disparity at the later stages immense.
This leads to singular lucky item drops causing a player to find more power for a potential new build then their current one in one singular step, and with each progressed item the time investment to improve the current build over another potential one - if solely for play variety - becomes massive.

In comparison we can again look at the competition of the genre (or adjacent), 3 prime examples there again: Chronicon provides extremely swift and easy item progression. You can finish outfitting your character quick… and then you just grind for points. This makes it very repetitive as gear is procured in moments. Dwarven Realms provides a more varied approach already, but ‘locks’ you into a build direction since you can permanently improve stats… but you have to choose which stat to improve. Using fire will mean you other elements are worse off, and catching up is a very very long-term task.
And last but not least we got PoE which approaches itemization the other way around then LE does. Which is to frontload immediate power but enforce - through their content balancing - to upgrade all gear equally and gradually. Higher (or lowered numbered there) tiers are not as important individually, but since the disparity between a T2 and a T1 is lower then between a T3 and a T2 a ‘balanced’ itemization is enforced, the limitation not finding items through sheer luck but instead on picking which upgrade you want to invest into nest… be it through the market or through crafting. Last Epoch lacks this method in a very extreme measure given the rather broken state of MG as well as the limited approach to crafting itself.

  • Mitigation:

That’s extensive in terms of work but easily said.

To alleviate the issues coming up there’s 2 potential ways to go about it. The first is regular short-interval updates of the game which provide substancial amounts of content. Similar to how PoE provides it. Which is simply not feasable for your company as the in-depth framework for testing and ‘content churning’ isn’t established, and it’s a constant catch-up situation which simply can’t be won against such a monolith on the market as they’re already quite close to the peak in terms of efficiency there.

Which only allows the second option, which would be broad balance changes to core systems. Everything which enforces long-term time investment into the character to tackle a growing amount of content, hence ‘always having another possible goal ahead’. And that doesn’t mean ‘endless content’ but distinct challenges like Abberroth, which was a great start in the right direction!
This includes reduction of power increments between tiers, increasing the affix count on items to allow players to have a higher chance to get a planned ‘middle ground’ of power early on… with effort needed to acquire upgrades after… as well as increasing the ‘number of times a characters changes gear until the end of progression’.
Next up there also needs to be taken a look at the crafting system in-depth, neither the old system with the instant fail-state nor the new system with a nigh guaranteed upper limit is optimal for the long term. Incremental power improvement of items to their upper limit… with exponential need of resources invested is a viable way to go. Last Epoch’s system is far away from that.

As for things people have wrote before me and after you here:

  • The ‘altoholic’ aspect:

Yes, that one is important. Currently Last Epoch provides no option to give people playing long-term the ability to play a variety of builds in a variety of masteries. As someone falling into this category as well I personally have a mental conundrum of ‘I want to play dozens of builds’ which gets countered by ‘I only have 25 character slots’ which immediately is off-putting and actively stops me from trying out a variety… and hence makes me stop playing.

This gets even worse since the changes between factions are massively punishing for - in my eyes - no sensible reasoning there. I can’t switch from MG when the market crashes… and it is a constant crash… and I can’t find reliable upgrades after dozens of hours of playing in CoF since rare exalted mods on the right base are a unicorn and not remotely reliable to get. Could be after 1 hour… could be 1000. Not fun simply if there’s no goal ahead to ‘work towards’.
I wanna play a game and progress, not play slot-machine non-stop for everything in the game.

This is a prime example as well, which is why I actually quoted something.
The ‘casual’ versus ‘in-depth’ style of player. Which position does Last Epoch want to go with? Casual like the Diablo Series has become? Or in-depth like Path of Exile provides.

I would argue the middle-ground is the best option there as the others are already filling the market, with monoliths of companies which are hard to compete against.
Which brings me to the question: What position does Last Epoch actually try to put themselves into? Because plainly spoken the progression in the different systems are a hot mess there. It caters to everyone at some point… which causes it to cater to nobody properly.

What I want to hence say directly to you @EHG_Mike is: Decide on a core audience and stick to them. Primarily balance with those types of players in mind, let the others be a positive afterthought.
The game had a massive success at launch but fell off heavily again, still sitting at a healthy playerbase but in the current state with no chance of recovering. Long-term single-character progression is a chore, so those players aren’t fully happy. Casuals can’t get through the game and re-visit it regularly without pulling the slot machine to actually get through… so those aren’t catered to either. Variety players which want to try out every possible build can’t do that properly because of the character limitation, hence they aren’t catered to either. It does give everyone ‘a bit’ but not the full experience, hence why from 100k+ players we now don’t even have 10% at a major patch anymore.

1 Like
19

Where do you get this from? LE only had one major patch so far, with a 75k peak. That’s more than 25% of the 1.0 peak of 250k.

1 Like
20

I personally don’t understand the “demand” for Mastery respec when you can have one of each Mastery and then respec within that Mastery as much as you like.

Identity in a game is important. Many will cry about not being able to do one thing or another regardless of how it’s done. Not doing this will not “destroy” the game.

I for one like the fact that there is a difference and making the Mastery respec possible just erases the identity of a Mastery in the first place for me.

5 Likes
21

Totally forgot about that. So long ago