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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
), so you’ll have to choose.