One of the many strengths of Last Epoch is that it supports the expectations, interests and play styles of players with varying amounts of time in different phases of their personal and professional lives.
There is little bullshit, most things make sense and player time is largely respected.
If someone is into competitive playstyles and wants a leaderboard, maybe for a hardcore character, or someone just loves the road to max level or the grind, they can play a new season / cycle.
Someone else with a demanding job and / or a family that keeps them busy, or someone who doesnât care about leaderboards, maybe hates the grind, the leveling, or dislikes the idea of being shown what a waste playing games is when their âprogressâ is invalidated with every season, those players can play in legacy.
A few days ago, there was a stream where it was mentioned that EHG wants to shift to cycle specific content and which I found disappointing to say the least.
I donât care about seasons / cycles, they are largely a waste of my time and on top there are way too many games that rely on this model.
For me that would mean that I wonât come back to play the heck out of new content, and I am damn sure that I am not alone.
And frankly, I donât understand why this is being planned, unless this is the first hint of upcoming additional monetization via battle passes or some other bs.
If this isnât the reason, it shouldnât matter for EHG if people enjoy new content in cycle or legacy and it shouldnât matter for cycle players if other play the same content in legacy.
Even the fact that playing new content in legacy âgets oldâ quicker than in cycles shouldnât matter, because a shorter lifetime of new content is still better than players not returning at all.
But if the upcoming content is mostly relevant during the leveling phase: Then we are f*cked anyway.
Basically, if cycle and legacy contents are the same, youâll get less and less cycle players over time. Youâll only get a small minority that likes the fresh start/leaderboards race, which isnât enough to keep cycles alive. And in live service games, cycles are what keep a game fresh with constant new content.
Ultimately, as has been shown before, seasonal content is the best player retention model for these types of games. Yes, some players wonât like it and may leave, but it will attract many more. Itâs a system that works better than non-seasonal one.
It sucks if you donât have time or donât like the 3-4 month grind (I donât mind the grind, but I donât have much time to play a lot lately) but itâs the best for the longevity of the game.
Yep, and you still wonât need to care.
It depends entirely on how EHG will set it up in the future, since weâre not there yet we donât know it actually.
Will content go âcoreâ every time?
Will legacy players have access to the new content as well right away?
And if itâs just a reset of the ladder and a fresh cycle economy⌠why would you care in the first place?
So why wouldnât you come back if the above mentioned things are upheld? Makes no sense.
Well, thatâs a lack of knowledge from your side rather as the issue and not the system itself.
Cycles provide a âfresh startâ for people, it wipes the slate clean and allows for competitive people to once again start from scratch with a ladder.
Also it allowed for a âfreshâ experience for the economy, which is something many enjoy.
Immediately snatching onto âitâs a sign for menetization!â is beyond nonsensical.
We might not know the details, but when someone from EHG states that they want to shift to âcycle specific contentâ when asked about differentiating cycles from legacy, then that means less content for legacy.
And that should pretty much explain, together with my post, why I wouldnât come back.
I rather find your explanation nonsensical: You explain the advantages that cycles bring to one group of players without acknowledging the disadvantages to another group and further completely skip an explanation why cycle and legacy shouldnât offer the same content.
And I pretty much acknowledged all you stated in my post already, so it seems you didnât really try to understand it and instead delivered the default ARPG apologist answer.
Basically, if cycle and legacy contents are the same, youâll get less and less cycle players over time.
How do you know that?
But if true, wouldnât that also mean that most people donât like this system and only put up with it because they had no choice?
To my knowledge no game of decent size has ever tried to deliver the same content outside the seasonal mode.
The people who like the full reset and race for the leaderboard position or generally like the whole leveling part will stay.
The ones that donât like it shouldnât be forced into it in the first place.
Youâll only get a small minority that likes the fresh start/leaderboards race, which isnât enough to keep cycles alive.
Undoubtedly there are a lot fewer people who like it.
Would you still force the majority of people to accept something that they donât really like or even hate?!
And do you truly believe that there would be so few left that they canât even fill a leaderboard?
Or that the merchants guild would collapse?
Not to mention that many would play CoF anyway or if need be?
I think that argument wouldnât hold up.
And in live service games, cycles are what keep a game fresh with constant new content.
I didnât advocate against new content, or did I? I just want to see the same content in legacy as in cycles.
Ultimately, as has been shown before, seasonal content is the best player retention model for these types of games.
âbest retention modelâ for a company that wants to make as much profit, for the players, or the game?
Undoubtedly, itâs the best model to increase retention to increase profits, and luckily that is not yet a model that EHG has adopted.
But Iâm not aware of a single case where this specific model, time limited content with a complete reset every few months, was in the best interest of players.
Seasons can be great, but they should be designed to have value on their own, not only in the context of a reset, and they should ideally become an integral part of the game.
Everything else is wasted development time.
Yes, some players wonât like it and may leave, but it will attract many more.
How so?
What do you think attracts more players?
New content only for the people who accept a full reset in a cycle
New content in a cycle for people who accept a full reset in a cycle PLUS the same content for everyone else in the legacy mode
I bet itâs no. 2.
So, this was more time than I actually planned to put into this feedback.
Thank you for your opinion though.
Some very good points have been made on both sides in this thread, I would just like to add another thought: I think the temporary character of a cycle allows for more experiment.
Of course, it doesnât apply right now: pinnacle bosses, campaign chapters, endgame development, all belong to the core game and should be in legacy and cycle at the same time.
But further down the line, knowing it is only for a couple of months would allow a trial of wilder ideas, more innovative mechanics. The spirit being that if they donât work too well, they can just disappear after three months and the core game is unharmed.
For example, PoE and their tower defense thingie a few years back, I donât think they would have gone so far in creativity if it was straight away in the permanent version of the game.
Houlala says something along the lines of what I understand. Legacy players generally either donât like starting over every few months, or want more stability in their game, or both.
Cycle mechanics are ways for developers to introduce new and (hopefully) exciting new ideas to the game. If it goes over well, it can be integrated into the main game, including Legacy, after the cycle. If it doesnât go over well initially, it can be adjusted. Either way, if itâs not really a big hit, legacy characters can keep playing their game, while cycle players get their new ladder and be a sort of new testing ground for new ideas. At least this is what it seems to be with PoE, and what I think is happening with LE in the future.
Actually no, it means legacy gets content 3 months later and the cycle people are downgraded to beta-testers
But sure, if you canât simply wait a little bit longer and are so impatient that you need to have everything âright nowâ then I imagine youâll have to go into the cycles to experience the stuff.
Or you could just experience it a little bit later.
Plus EHGs comments about cycles were not all too clear to date, having stated that they want to have cycle and legacy players have access to the same content at the same time while also in other areas speaking about giving cycle specific content⌠which makes no sense as both are not compatible systems to each other.
Letâs start there: Youâre not âdisadvantagedâ by it. If so, explain why. To gain an advantage you would need to compete against someone else in the first place, so unless youâre in any sort of competitive environment this doesnât hold true.
And since cycle players usually donât stay into legacy the economy also is no argument for that one.
Actually very easy!
Because it brings in people.
If you provide a 3 month-based cyclic content influx which can only be accessed by the new economic status in the game and hence enforcing the creation of a new character to experience it âin fullâ early on then that means players will need to spend more time to do that.
In legacy? Youâll be âthroughâ the new content in 2 hours, in cycle youâll need 20.
Should be fairly self-explanatory, so I didnât even mention it, especially since the whole genre of diablo clones which are focused on the life-service aspect do that⌠actually I donât know a single life-service diablo-clone which doesnât do it.
Yes, exactly. Now think about the reason for your own statement, youâll have the answer to your own questions this way.
That on the other hand is a far better question!
But thatâs where humans are odd creatures. We do things which arenât especially enjoyable but we know how itâs to be done over starting something new.
So it simply leads to higher retention numbers and retention time for EHG, which then relates over to more sold cosmetics, puts them higher in game-metrics to compare to other games and that again leads to a higher influx of new players which keeps the life-service not only alive but able to make more quality content by keeping the whole dev-team employed.
So unless you find another system which lets them compete reliably on the market - many searched, many failed - then using this system is basically their only choice.
If you donât like it and quit because of it? Well⌠it leaves not a single diablo-clone on a life-service basis for you, so you gotta decide whatâs the less evil part.
Yes.
Unless a company skews it especially into one direction (Hello D4 for example) then that single word suffices.
Define âbest interest of the playersâ.
Because Iâll argue here that âkeeping the game aliveâ is a major âinterestâ of the players in the first place. Then comes quality content, then comes content quantity.
I dislike how in Path of Exile they shifted over towards more and more âthrowawayâ content and I hope EHG will not go the route. Itâs wasteful and bad development habits which are often excused by saying âbut people will get choice paralysis!â.
Which is a viable point until you realize that situation can be fully averted since choice paralysis solely happens through an overabundance of immediate choices. Hence a gradual introduction + parallelized implementation rather then enforcing interaction in a serialized manner as PoE handles it not only makes the game bigger but also averts the âbloatâ mechanics since youâre not bogged down by them unless you personally choose to use them.
The upkeep is just a bit higher there, the results on the other hand are exponentially higher.
Because, when all things are equal, most players will follow the path of least attrition, which in this case means legacy (no resets).
No, it means there is a minority that will always play legacy, there is a minority that will always play cycles and the vast majority of players will go to either depending on what the incentives are. If you give them cycle-exclusive content theyâll go to cycles, if not theyâll default to legacy.
There are games that donât follow the seasonal theme, like GD. What happens is that instead of getting new stuff to play with every 3-4 months you get new stuff to play with every 2 years.
Theyâre a minority. As said before, the majority will shift according to what you give them.
Youâre not forced into it. You can ignore FOMO. There are plenty of people in PoE that do so. Theyâre a minority (about 10%) but theyâre there.
Theyâre not forced. If you give cycle-exclusive content, they will go there of their own free will.
The amount of competitive people is, by itâs very nature, small. If you have a leaderboard that has 1k spots, you wonât get more than 10k players competing for it. There is no point in having more because the least competitive ones donât have any chance of making the leaderboard, so they give up.
As I said before, without a seasonal model, youâll get new stuff every couple years rather than 3 times a year.
Are you aware of what retention means? For all 3, of course.
If players keep coming back and playing, itâs in their best interest. If you let the content go stale (no seasons), theyâre not coming back as often, so theyâre not having as much fun.
No. If you make the same content for both at once, what happens is that you get a level 1 trying out the new stuff in cycles at the same time that you have a level 100 already finishing that content in legacy.
That means that almost all players will leave cycles, and cycles will die out. And weâll get new stuff every couple of years.
Seasonal content canât be balanced for both a fresh start and uber-characters. So legacy players would become extremely bored with it, because they would clear it in a couple of days and leave. And cycle players would become frustrated because legacy players already cleared the content while they have to struggle, so they will leave.
However, if you give cycle players something to chase that they canât have in legacy, theyâll be happy. Thatâs all there is to it.
The current character âlife timeâ is roughly around 50 hours of time-investment. Some builds a bit more, some less. Thatâs already put fairly high from my side actually.
With that you reach the expected goal of 300 corruption for builds as a mediocre player.
Which leads to⌠if you donât have 50 hours of time in 3 months then youâre fairly casual towards the game, which is fine. Just take into consideration that cycles are not made for casuals and shouldnât even be.
Go legacy then, no rush for you.
Cycles donât and shouldnât give a single shit about very casual players⌠heck⌠the whole genre doesnât care about them, itâs the enjoyment of the genre to have a long-lasting game where you can push on even after putting in hundreds of hours. Thatâs the enjoyment for those people who like this type of game after all.
The whole market doesnât need to be copies of 50 variants of âChroniconâ (great game, recommended for ARPG fans) all being done after 30-40 hours of gaming where youâre at the absolute possible maximum.
If youâre talking about a common unique with common affixes then youâll have them by that time.
If not you did something quite wrong.
Anything beyond though? No⌠because thatâs the point. Theyâre not needed. Theyâre chase-items⌠they hence should be treated that way.
Itâs baffling that chase-items cause such an outrage, itâs not like a fully build-defining unique like a Shaco in D4 which is hid behind a 50000 hour grind. Weâre talking about 50 hours here, a few hundred for fantastic gear and those 50k+ hours for several âgod-tierâ characters by that time.
A âperfectâ character on the other hand is and always was a dream situation in nigh any ARPG that is a proper diablo-clone⌠because thatâs how it goes, you play for playing by that time rather then progressing actively.
I was talking about a very clear statement made a few days ago during a live stream.
Itâs irrelevant what they said in the past.
You really try hard not to understand it seems.
Nonsense.
Offering the same content in legacy would not reduce the amount of players.
In fact it has the potential to bring in even more players that wonât play with seasonal resets in place.
As for content length:
If the content has to stretched with wasting time on leveling, itâs bad or not enough content
Content can be designed to be relevant for the endgame, but might take more effort to come up with something. Depends on the developers willingness.
Of course it will be shorter, but what do you care, when you can always play in the cycle?
âThey do it, so there is no other, potentiall better wayâ.
Great argument.
Am I glad someone had the courage to try and cook food or invented the wheel instead of using sledsâŚ
What is wrong with you people?!
Are you a Kafka chatbot?
You make a claim, I tell you that I doubt it because it has never been tried and you come back with âSee? Do you understand now?â
You still havenât provided a single valid argument.
We are not talking about personal self improvement here, trying out or doing something new to grow personally.
We are talking about doing the same thing over and over again in a game.
A game that should be fun in every regard, not artificially made worse for some or most players for no good reason.
Didnât you tell me previously âImmediately snatching onto âitâs a sign for menetization!â is beyond nonsensical.â? And now you make it an argument yourself?!
Again, a lot of assumptions here.
It might be true that the total time played in the current system might be higher, and therefore higher total MTX sales, but in the end, nobody really knows if additional players that wouldnât have played the game otherwise wouldnât compensate.
You pretend that the game would die because they offer their content to more players, who might play a bit less, and forcing them to waste their time is the only option.
I disagree. There are tons of people who used to play hours upon end during their younger years who simply canât afford to invest the same amount of time anymore because they have a demanding job and a family that keeps them busy.
And many of them would play games like this, or other genres, if it wasnât for this quasi mandatory time sink.
Personally, I would rather see the same content behind a paywall in legacy than being forced into cycle:
Free in cycle, carried, as you assume, by MTX and supported by artificially prolonged retention
Optional $5-$10 for seasonal content in legacy for those who just want to play the content without all the timewaste and loss of whatever sense of progression they might have in a game like this
Unconventional, yes, but it would completely blow the monetization argument out of the water, and just like the almost equally contentious âCoF vs. MGâ discussion it would be an interesting experiment: I wouldnât even be surprised if legacy made more money that way, because a lot of people are fed up with the status quo.
This isnât about other games.
Itâs about this one.
This wasnât a yes or no question.
Itâs also not about the question if fair MTX should be used to generate money to keep the game and development alive.
Thatâs like saying we donât need soda because we need water first.
Of course I agree, but we are not talking about keeping the game alive unless the currently dominating model is the only one.
We agree on that one at least.
Also true, but also a consequence of how seasons are designed.
If a bunch of random stuff is thrown together, it will clearly get out of hands as any player in PoE will realize very quickly.
One possible better way, for example, could be to have a year long theme or topic, that then will receive additional content and mechanics with each season that would build and interact with each other. â A bit like Conan Exiles is doing it, though hopefully better with less throwaway content.
That could largely prevent the overwhelming experience for new players, and result in much more robust and fun systems.
I play legacy. I have no interest in Cycles. I love this game and played thousands of hours of it. I am with the OP.
Obviously we do not know yet what things will look like in the future, however the day I hear that there will no more new content for legacy is the day I move to another game. Itâs just that simple. If PoE2 is out by then, itâll be that. Otherwise itâll be Grim Dawn and its new expansion (another ARPG Iâve invested thousands of hours in). Heck if D4 is sorted out by then, it might even be that! So I am fine.
I always need an ARPG in my life, but it doesnât have to be this one. Shrug.
Cycle content doesnât mean no new content for legacy. Just that legacy will get that content later, thatâs all.
Most of the time, cycle content is there so you can test it on a fresh state and see if itâs broken or not. Then you balance it and introduce it properly to the more stable legacy format.
If you donât test it first though, youâre constantly breaking the supposedly stable environment of legacy and casuals wonât like that either. Itâs the reason why PoE usually re-balances mechanics before placing them in standard or sometimes doesnât even add them.
Cycles are a standard way of testing how new stuff behaves.
Which is why I chose my words carefully. I never said I cared about Cycle content coming to legacy, just whether legacy would stop getting new content.
I donât think that will happen, though. In fact, I donât understand why Blizzard does that.
If you look at PoE, sometimes standard doesnât get the league mechanic, but thatâs usually because itâs a broken one or players said it wasnât fun. However, the vast majority of league content becomes a part of core/standard.
If itâs about content which is âthrowawayâ after 3 month similar to what PoE does since a while Iâm on your side, I find it appalling to develop a game in that manner.
But⌠thinking itâll be the case is an assumption on your side, not what the devs have talked about yet.
Then provide said link to it, itâs your job as a poster to do that, not mine to search through possibly hours of a livestream.
Factually wrong and proven over the course of the time in which ARPGs have developed.
The first similar game from which the whole system was derived was Diablo 2, their method to implement new - albeit miniscule amount of it - content was in a cyclic manner. Each new ladder reset brought in less and less people, leaving it with the baseline playerbase after a while rather then a fresh influx.
Then PoE went along and did the same, going with a more distinct mechanical difference between their âladderâ play-type (leagues) and their common play-situation (standard). They specifically made it so their leagues got the stuff first and then when it was fleshed out they put it into the base game permanently.
This caused the player influx at the start of a league to massively spike compared to what a D2 ladder reset with their additions did. Which is the first sign.
Then D3 tried to come up and do the same in a smaller degree, giving people general access to stuff though⌠didnât go as well.
Since then all games which are focusing on a life-service basis go along to do that, also having learned cross-genre from other games which have tried different models out.
Itâs a lesson in game-history there.
If you donât enjoy the progression itself then the genre isnât for you in the first place Iâll argue.
Itâs what 1.1 will be, as they stated repeatedly. 1.1 is the end-game update since thatâs the most lackluster part currently and least fleshed out aspect of the game.
But you wouldnât if itâs not necessary to do so, hence retention time sinks.
Itâs not some marvelous new concept there, itâs a go-to thing to do.
Well, LE never was intended to be this âutterly new and massively innovative product on the marketâ. Their distinct goal was to provide a game which has a similar feeling like the classics while also providing it a modern take and without the massive convoluted mess that PoE has become over time.
Would say they reached that goal! Letâs see how it goes from there.
But if you come from a perspective which is utterly nonsensical in terms of the actual goal which wanted to be achieved then sure⌠it might seem âoddâ⌠but well, thatâs simply not the game LE strives to be.
To understand why itâs done you need to understand human psychology to a degree.
Itâs arbitrary to talk about the topic if you donât know how the human mind functions. Otherwise you get those âinnovativeâ games which nobody gives a shit about or ever plays beyond the vanity of the first 2-3 hours.
Why? Because they suck and failed to provide our lovely very basic mental needs which our brain just loves to have sated for even a few moments.
First of all, âmonetizationâ is not bad, itâs the âhowâ there.
Or how the actual fuck do you think theyâre paying for server costs? With their measly 40⏠price-tag from buying the game?
If you think that suffices youâre not fit to even start an argument about monetization in the first place, you have to go and learn the basics of the basics for how upkeep costs in a company work.
You never calculate potential, you calculate expected outcomes. Doing otherwise is a prime way to go bancrupt.
Oh, nono⌠not âdieâ. It would just be a game which has their 5k player-count, a 50 people dev-team that brings out 1-2 updates a year which are not substantial at all and becomes stale rather swiftly hence.
Itâs a prime way to be taken over by the next game coming out.
Which is the way it usually goes and thatâs fine. But if your business model differs from it (which life-service does) then you need to be viable all the time.
So?
Who cares?
Think itâs any different for me?
Do I bitch around that games need to be made for me specifically hence?
No you donât. I play this game because I find it fun, itâs exactly the time-sink game which I expect, I wonât ever get to the top of the top⌠but I have the same enjoyment nonetheless.
If simply for that fact that âyou donât have as much timeâ you want a game to adjust to you then plainly spoken Iâll tell anyone who argues that way to âfuck off to cookie clickerâ and leave the people which enjoy these types of games as we have her the fuck alone.
It has a name for that âTarget audienceâ.
Theyâre not those people.
EHG doesnât cater to those people.
Would they make more money otherwise? Sure! Guaranteed even short-term!
Not the game they wanted to create though.
See, thatâs for example a suggestion which would make me leave the game right away.
I canât access the new content because Iâm playing legacy? Fine⌠just gonna wait. Having to pay for it though? Get the fuck out plainly spoken once more.
Why would I? I support the game by paying extra for cosmetics to upkeep their business model, I bought into the game⌠and now my friend which plays the same âleagueâ (legacy) has access to more content because they pay for it, leaving me unable to play together despite having chosen the same game-mode?
Itâs a horrible business model to do that, a prime way to get stomped - viably so - into the ground by disgruntled players.
MG vs. CoF is not an âexperimentâ but a badly implemented faction mechanic.
They had all the abilities to make it good available by looking at the competition, went with a new system that took care of the old-existing problems while messing their economic implementation up big time⌠and forgetting to also include boss-drop uniques in the CoF mechanic properly.
The later is excusable, the former not.
And nonetheless itâs the fitting answer!
Odd how the world works at times, right?
Gotta say⌠oddly fitting example!
Cause⌠try it out and see how it goes!
Until then⌠go ahead and come up with a functional model and we can talk again about that part
Yes, which leans on the aspect that a lot of content gets implemented in a short time which leaves little time for optimization and future prospects to handle it well.
Nonetheless made the game more content rich in Standard then several competitors of the genre have together at the same time.
Would say a overall âplusâ there for that one!
You mean like Guild Wars 2 tried to do and fucked up since itâs a really really hard thing to do well? Much more so since every aspect then hinges on the basic systems implemented and all need to be thrown into the gutter when one turns out âbadâ in the end?
Imagine if you have to wait a year in-between it, would probably let you forget the game exists by then or rather stay in another one sating that urge more commonly.
So I have to agree there.
Which is a overall âplusâ for the cycle system again.
