Could Last Epoch Fail?

Yeah, I’d rather have them just improve the echo experience than create scarcity, and I’m pretty confident that’s the direction they would go in. The system is already so deeply designed that trying to create scarcity in mapping would be a pretty substantial change. I think it’s still interesting though that the combination of having little to do in an echo plus echoes not having much of any intrinsic value makes them a a lot less worthwhile to spend any more time in than we have to.

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I think now that uniques matter a lot, you could make an argument for killing. I kill just whats in my way on the way to the objective and usually get 2-3 uniques on 200%+ rarity, if I skipped everything I would cut down on my uniques per hour by a decent chunk. of course if you only care about say unique boots, then skipping everything to hit more boot monos per hour would be the correct choice.

I think it will get better when we get more places to farm, the first of many dungeons already gives a pretty good source of a place that really rewards farming the mobs.

I think POE is successful because it embraces economic reasoning and accept that people respond to incentives in their designs. Trying too hard to wrap player behaviour with designs that doesn’t respect that is bound to cause players to find ways to circumvent the design, and ultimately, abandon the game if they cannot find reasonable coping circumventions.

I already said it on the video, anyways I will go a bit further here:

Multiplayer: I hope these one gets done really well. By the dev posts they are fully aware of its importance. The most concerning part is the important bugs (deleting items)/ exploits (dupes) that may appear in a server authoritative environment. If they also keep a really good ping among players would be the cream on top.

Trade: Not very concerned, as long as SSF feels good, BTW we need ways to get those exalted belts/gloves easier, some extra focused farming would be nice.

Arena Leaderboards: I expect that will be online-only, I also expect with the server environment will be no possibility of hacking the system, this one I fairly sure will be sorted out without issues.

Optimization: knowing the performance issues are there since the beginning… I am specially concerned they just don’t have anyone in the team able to further optimize the game.

Balance: I don’t have huge concerns about it right now, we will see once we get near 1.0, with all the classes and all the uniques for 1.0. Right now there are some outliers out there, but any class can do endgame content, so is not in a terrible shape. To me, on a general basis I’m a bit concerned that melee range is not properly rewarded, 2x stuns, generally a bit more recovery and that’s it. Right now ranged can do anything melee does just the same if not better, even the best shield builds are ranged.

Missed Opportunities: Not sure about that, while they must be full aware of their competitors and their schedules, their focus should be only their game.

Current Monolith state: I hope we get some extras here, they are still shaping the endgame, currently is not in bad shape, but is true could be better, I wouldn’t add too much complexity to it though. If the gear progression is solid and there are goals to meet, players don’t mind grinding over and over. Certainly some secondary objectives in both echoes and the monoliths themselves would be a great addition.

Combat feel: I expect this will be geting better as we approach 1.0, skills must feel powerful and impactful, some skills should have several animations on repetition, like multistrike, and gameplay should be a bit more fluid, I am playing rogue right now, and my feeling on it is quite good, but others may need some extra love.

Seasonal content: We will see, I hope they don’t ramp complexity too much with each addition. Still a mystery though.

I mentioned not rising complexity too much twice already, this is because a point I bring on my own: Another important point to me is that they keep current distance to PoE, the current sweet spot in complexity, much simpler that PoE but much more complex than D3 is a blessing that if they choose to keep that way, will help them secure that big spot in the ARPG landscape.

If they come closer and closer of what PoE is (looking at that MP, trade, season focus of lately), they will lose the spot also, the moment you fight for a place trying to get directly into PoE territory, you will fall into direct comparisons, and PoE is a deep and polished game though many seasons.

Also worth to mention Lost Ark, while is a MMO, will for sure draw a lot of attention from isometric ARPG fans, as is the same thing combat-wise.

People will call Wolcen a failure because it didn’t compete with Diablo or PoE. Well I’m sorry most games won’t compete with those games and that’s not always what matters.

I would call Grim Dawn successful, but Wolcen sold what it did in years in mere months. Torchlight 1&2 were also successful games in my mind.

And here’s where Last Epoch sits. Does it want to compete with PoE and Diablo? That’s a good goal but selling copies is more important than that.

I believe it has long term potential and the ability to sell millions of games. But part of Wolcen’s charm was great graphics which LE is getting closer to and fun combat, which I would say LE is also getting there but it’s still clunky in ways. Wolcen also ran very smoothly.

Sadly, a lot of other stuff failed for Wolcen which is unfortunate because it had a good base but needed some more time but they ran out of money and had to release it. Thankfully LE has pushed their game back multiple times to make sure it’s ready when it’s ready.

Might be a way of giving gold value - spend gold to empower specific nodes, to increase drop rates for example or add all kinds of beneficial effects. The higher the corruption, the bigger the effect. Would incentivize full clear more vs the node reward, and give gold a use.

PoE also has the economic pricetag attached to all activities though, which LE will not. Still, gold needs more of a use, and Echoes do need ways to be more meaningful/interesting than just rushing straight to the objective imo.

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Run blessings for increased belt/gloves drop rates.

Already running 60%+ in gloves (don’t recall the exact roll), anyways I am referring to getting mosters/Julra drops more exalted belt/gloves or a purple belt/glove reward on echoes, or any meaningful way to get those drops happen a bit more often. Seems that doesn’t exist so you can’t focus on them in any way other than the blessing, while they are common to all classes, if you focus on a single character, or starting SSF, you will likely end up with worse versions of those gear slots.

They should maybe add something like every 100% Corruption adding an Exalted drop to a Timeline boss on kill, which the % drop rate increase would affect. Would also incentivize higher Corruption again too.

Very nice video and I agree with you.
I would add one thing that EHG does very well and that is very important: communication.
They need to keep a close contact with the players. You made several comparisons with Wolcen so here’s one more: Wolcen Studio chose to communicate only when there is something very specific, like an event or a patch. This is very badly perceived by players. On the opposite, we have EHG who do dev streams, participate on Discord and on the forum, etc. EHG’s communication strategy is very well appreciated by the players.
This must not stop at release, otherwise it could be seen as very negative.

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Every game can fail and LE will most likely fail if there isn’t any viable endgame added. I don’t get it and I can’t point my finger at it but Monoliths are even more boring then rifts in D3. I don’t get a sence of acomplishment out of this.

On top of it the implementation of Multiplayer gets intresting. In a lot of games it’s useless to play in group and I realy hope there will be benefits to play in a group in LE. If I get another “best play alone multiplayer game” I bash my head against the wall.

EHG is making a lot of good stuff but right now the game isn’t that great but very promising.

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Couldn’t have said it better.

I agree with that sentiment. Even though I will probably mostly play SP due to time I still want a great MP experience when I have time. I want to learn new things from other players and expand on my knowledge and maybe even share something with another player without being the Black Knight I am invincible… you’re a looney debate to get into a MP game.

It’s totaly fine to play solo but MP should offer something at least… higher difficulty scaling, more magic find… simply a reason to play MP. If there is none outside of socialising they can scrap it all togheter because I think noone likes this very much because the human brain will only concentrate on things that go south with MP if there are no benefits to it.

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Why more magic find? If the mobs aren’t significantly harder (ie, they have >2x hp with 2 players, >3x hp with 3 players, etc) then you’ll be getting more items per unit time because you’ll be killing faster & that’s assuming the other players aren’t giving you any of their loot. If you wanted to “balance” MP such that it’s not objectively faster/better than SP you’d have to reduce the drops in MP (or buff SP). And bossing would be quite a bit faster (since you’d have a fair bit of overkill on trash mobs but not on bosses).

We don’t know any of it. There was no word of scaling plans, no word if boss shielding is more potent in MP or the hp bar doubbles per player or whatever. I’ve some people to play the game with but without coordination coop in Hack and slays is more stressfull then playing solo if people run arround like hedaless chickens without the slightest plan.

I hope we get mor insights about MP and what plans there are.

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Could Last Epoch FAIL? Well, yes. Most certainly it could and can still do so. Without a doubt.
Many promising titles is and have utterly completely failed. So Last Epoch is certainly not a title that could as well.
But what gives me good faith in this regardless of the fact that it can fail, is the fact that Last Epoch is doing and have been doing so many correct and great things, and over time improved on so many surprisingly great things, that I think Last Epoch unless it is doing too many wrong moves and things, it will be a great title to watch towards. And also it has been done great things with, even though it is still in Early Access. So many saying, this is still in Early Access. Well, yes, it is, and it IS NOT finished, but still it is such a great game to play, even though it is not finished, as in finished. Because that IS correct. A Game is not finished, until it IS finished.

Now I´m off to watch this Video. Yes, believe it or not. I wrote THIS BEFORE watching the Video.

i like this post

I give the game’s failure 50/50 odds.

Either it will fail.
OR
It won’t.

It’s that simple.

Just to add a bit to the combat feel portion, what I always like is seeing the actual effect a certain skill type has when I defeat a monster. For example, something shatters into a thousand pieces being frozen by a cold spell, turning to ash from fire, etc. I also enjoyed (to an extent) smacking monsters hard enough to send them flying in Titan Quest.

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