I believe it could be really good for the game, especially if there’s no FOMO involved — for example, if players could still purchase the pass after the season ends, even if it costs a bit more.
I already buy every single Support Pack, but lately I’ve been feeling like there’s a lack of good opportunities to spend money on the game, especially when it comes to the overall value you get for what you pay.
A Season Pass could be a great way to offer more consistent value to players while also giving us something exciting to work toward throughout the season.
I personally would be against any form of season pass (even fairly done without fomo) because of the negative conotations attached to it.
Maybe better way would be to create smaller “packs” of similarily themed cosmetics which are in game already and maybe steadily release them (once a month could be fine cadence)
As it is now, you get cosmetics with supporter packs, get a little of currency and maybe spend it, maybe even purchase more to add some concrete cosmetics, if there were rotating small packs with 3-5 items in it, that could maybe scratch the itch and allow us to support LE while feeling good about it.
Yes it could be also a great idea! Maybe adding something similar to PoE where we can buy loot box of items for a smaller price, and after the loot box end all the skins within would be release to be purchased directly from the in game shop.
Just to clarify i do not matter about loot boxes and season passes if done correcly without FOMO or Gacha mechanics. I want to spend more with the game to support it, but it’s hard to purchase anything without felling like i wasting money by not waiting for the next support pack.
Pick one. We already have Support Packs, which are FOMO by their very nature. Lately, I’ve genuinely started questioning the sanity of people who are practically begging companies to add even more monetization. No, thanks.
I remember when this entire forum practically exploded at the mere suggestion that people might have to pay for an expansion or new classes — content that took thousands of man-hours to create. Yet somehow, people are perfectly happy to throw money at yet another monetization system.
In a single-player, non-competitive game, no less.
People who ask for cosmetics/monetization stuff in games are people who have too much money to throw away.
If a game decides not to bring any to the table thats totally fine and to be appreciated in this day and age.
LE has cosmetics and enough of them are really nice. If the game would be more than average at best then people would be glad to spend money into a game they love playing. Issue is not with cosmetics issue is with “Why would I throw money at a game that I have no clue given their past if it will ever improve” and I do not mean 1 step forward 50 new bugs holding it back.
If there is a game you really like, but none of the things or methods to support the game or get somme cool goodies are your kind of thing, I totally understand the desire to have something added to a game, that gives you some things you like, while also supporting the game.
I had that in quite a few F2P games, where I really would like to support the game, but nothing spoke to me so much that I ended up not supporting the game other than playing or supported way less, then I would have if there would be more things to my taste.
I personally like season/battle passes, if they have a very strong theming that ties to the other “new content” that comes with the patch it was introduced in and the free track of that needs to have the majority of things, while the premium track should only have a few select items.
Judging by the badges on your profile, you’ve already supported the game with at least $1,350 through supporter packs. Don’t worry, I’m guilty of the same thing.
Did you know that some of those supporter packs will never be sold again? I guess they were so popular that the design department simply couldn’t manufacture enough copies of those digital skins to meet demand.
That’s really my point: we shouldn’t be giving developers the impression that artificial scarcity of infinitely reproducible digital goods is somehow normal.
A battle pass is even worse in that regard than what we have now. You pay for it, and then you’re expected to earn what you’ve already paid for on someone else’s schedule. Once the money is spent, there’s an incentive to keep playing even when you otherwise wouldn’t, simply because letting the pass expire means losing something you’ve already paid for.
And I seriously doubt anyone in their right mind would decide to replace supporter packs with a battle pass. They would run both systems in parallel, which would shift even more development focus toward cosmetics at the expense of actual content — in a $35 non-competitive PvE game.
And please, let’s not use PoE as an example, where supporter packs, a battle pass, loot boxes, and a premium store all coexist. First, it’s F2P. Second, even by F2P standards, that’s too much.
So I’d rather we didn’t turn a problematic but potentially good game into yet another monetization dumpster fire. Krafton already has plenty of those in its portfolio.
For transparency, its way over 2000$ just from my 2x Ardent Creator Supporter Packs (I have two of them, because of the Uniques Design Collab).
So the vast majority of my support was from a time when the packs didn’t even give you immediatey “value”, because MTX were not even implemented (even some pets were not in the game).
My example was not for LE, but in general. I did play and still play some games that I spend very little or no money on, even though I like the game, simply because many things don’t speak to me on a level that I want to buy it.
Funny enough everything after the Ardent Creator Packs mostly were packs that I don’t even liked the content of that much, but I still wanted to support EHG. I disliked and still dislike most of the MTX, because especially the first few waves of MTX are very lackluster or outright bad. (The first MTX is truly adored was the Arcane Duelist Armor Set, that was the 2nd or 3rd batch of mtx they released way after release and I bought these with my remaining points, so I didn’t evne spend “more” money on them, because I had the points already).
For me the main perk of spending that much money was the Unique Design Collab, because that is one of the coolest and best ways to imprint something longlasting into a game you like.
Anyway, what I am saying is, that I totally understand people that want certain kinds of MTX, because they want something they like or deem worthy of spending money on.
We can do the endless debate if battle or seasons passes are good or bad, but I think if done right its is an absolutly ok method.
Do I personally want to see that specifically in LE? I don’t care that much.
I rather want more high quality and cool MTX Armors, Skill Effects etc.
Not to be pedantic, but those packs were precisely $1k each, so 2 of them were exactly $2k.
I know where you’re coming from but I’m not sure it’s the art team holding things back, so I’m not sure that them doing more mtx (which the game needs) would hinder the season release schedule.
It’s a fair point about the box price, but would your comment be any different if LE was a competitive PvP game & they were putting out battlepasses/etc?
To OP: IMO the terms season pass and battle pass are too vague, because different games include different things in with those concepts. Since they’re vague it would be better to specifically state what things (that other companies have included in their season passes and battle passes) you’d like to see EHG offer.
On one hand, if you can give specific examples then EHG can decide whether or not they want to make those things, independently of season passes/battle passes. On the other hand, if you can’t offer specifics then I don’t see why anyone should judge EHG negatively for not being able to read peoples’ minds.
Some of the other commenters here have given more specific suggestions (MTX, skill effects, etc). If you could give more specifics too then maybe EHG can consider those.
This is me, as well. I’m a bit of a minimalist and I like more ‘practical’ designs and very few of the MTX skins have been things I’ve wanted. I don’t mind a few of them for things like effects (the foot steps or evade looks) but most of the weapons and nearly all of the armor sets in LE have never been my cup of tea. It’s kinda odd, I love a lot of the landscape/creature design and details they’ve added over the years but it doesn’t, for me, seem to carry over into the character MTX designs.
No FOMO aspects to be added.
It’s bad enough that there are already some of those existing, doesn’t need to get more.
The less there is the better for long-term stability.
Thanks for sharing your perspective on supporting games. Getting the opportunity to help create your own unique item must be a much more memorable experience than simply buying another skin.
And I understand them. My original criticism was specifically about the way skins are obtained in a primarily single-player game. If the OP, for whatever reason, thinks that skins from a potential battle pass would somehow look better than what we have now, then I think that’s a misconception. The value of an MTX doesn’t come from the way you obtain it — unless, of course, its availability is artificially limited to a three-month window.
I understand your point of view, and I respect it. As a final note, I’d just say that there are perfectly reasonable ways to implement battle passes. Deep Rock Galactic, for example, doesn’t make its rewards disappear when a season ends, and now even lets you go back to any previous Performance Pass and progress through it at your own pace. Halo Infinite takes a similar approach, with purchased Battle Passes that don’t expire.
First of all, you’re the one who interpreted my words as saying that the art team could somehow hold back development. If you reread the part you quoted, you’ll see that I was specifically talking about a shift in development priorities.
Adding yet another ongoing monetization system inevitably requires resources both to create and maintain it, while also creating a need to regularly produce new content for it. And a battle pass involves far more than just the art team. There’s UI/UX, backend, integration, QA, analytics and, most importantly, reward and progression design.
I’d like to focus on that last part for a moment. The job of a game designer responsible for such a system isn’t to figure out how to let every player comfortably collect every reward during the season. Their job is to tune the progression: how much XP you get, how long the pass takes to complete, how difficult and time-consuming the challenges are, and how rewards are distributed across its levels. All of this is designed and optimized around metrics, not around making sure you get the cosmetics you happen to like.
If a player doesn’t manage to get everything they paid for before the season ends, that doesn’t necessarily mean the system was poorly designed. It probably just means that next season you’ll be a good boy and make sure you get your money’s worth out of that battle pass.
Secondly, let me clarify what I meant here. I mentioned the $35 price tag and non-competitive PvE specifically in the context of Last Epoch, not as a list of conditions under which a battle pass suddenly becomes acceptable to me.
If Last Epoch were a competitive PvP game, my opinion of battle passes wouldn’t fundamentally change. I don’t think FOMO-based monetization makes any game better in the first place. Systems like these usually appear not because there isn’t enough money, but because there’s an opportunity to extract more revenue from the existing player base.
No, it was the bolded section that I was referring to:
I don’t think the art team is the primary reason why it’s taking them a bajillion months to push out seasons.
It’s a primarily online game though, if you play primarily by yourself (which I do) then you only see the MTX when you go to a town.
Which is awesome & definitely should be the way they’re treated. I think Helldivers 2 does that as well?
True, but I’d imagine that once the system has been implemented the non-art part of it is probably relatively light touch once it’s a mature system (which may well take longer than I’d imagine, especially for EHG).
I absolutely agree with the first sentence & the second, if cash weren’t an issue then they wouldn’t have sold themselves to Krafton & may not have made the new class P2W require a purchase.
3D-models for Unity are counted as the ‘harder ones’ to make related to different engines. UE has supporting tools which significantly ease the creation of ‘decent looking’ ones which can be used for a professional product.
And I’m saying this in the hopes that the coders aren’t utter incompetents, because their job comparatively is miniscule time-wise for LE. EHG fell years ago into the universal trap of ‘fidelity at or above priority of mechanical quality’, which can be seen at the release pacing of content closer to the start, changes in terms of fidelity and how it then affected further release-schedules.
EHG also doesn’t have many ‘creative heads’ in their studio sadly which are focused on ARPG mechanics and the necessary complexity and variety in those for a expected seasonal (or near seasonal) model.
But that’s primarily hopes from my side that this is the case or the situation is even more dire compared to what I’m already voicing out regularly.
Sadly ‘no’.
That’s the second biggest complaint (the biggest is Sony being Sony) I have related to that game.
It’s well done, it’s fun, it’s fantastic overall.
But it has a massive FOMO aspect with a skin rotation which is time limited, their ‘passes’ are fine, they are permanent, but the other stuff sadly not.
But if season passes come in the way that Helldivers 2 does it and not with the added other baggage then it’s more then fine and I would agree to it.
Depends if you deem ‘art’ as the texturing or also as the modelling.
If it’s including the modelling I’m 100% on your side there.
The code-related aspects are laughable in comparison, we’re talking timetables which are 50-100 times in magnitude commonly for modelling+texturing compared to everything else.
