Continued...
Q: Is this game only playable through the Steam client?
A: We do have a standalone client that use can use if you’ve purchased through Steam or our website. You can play on Steam or through our standalone client. You do not need to have purchased it in any one location to play it on either platform. It is openly playable for all people who have bought it on both platforms. I will tell you this though – the Steam one updates way faster [Mike laughs]. So unless you have a real hate on for Steam – which I know a lot of people do – I would probably recommend using the Steam version.
Timestamp: 52:12-53:20
Q: In continuation to the question about the passive tree. Can we maybe get an opt-out to confirm point allocation for speed running?
A: Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why we didn’t put it in initially is because a lot of people will just want to slam those points in as quickly as possible. That sort of thing would likely come with an opt-out option, in a sense.
Timestamp: 53:22-53:42
Q: What are your thoughts about the ability to get 100% critical strike avoidance?
A: I think that getting 100% of anything that is a binary stat once you have 100% of it is – it can quite often be a fun thing to get to and work your build towards and achieve. I think it should be something that is difficult to do and there should be sacrifices along the way. If you’re incidentally getting 100% critical strike avoidance by doing something else – I think that’s not great design. I think if you’re able to really focus on it and maybe you have to give up damage or health or resistances or something like that – you have to give up something – and it’s something you really have to work towards…I think that’s a cool thing.
This is especially true of different classes – and on theme as well. Something like a Sentinel I think would be more appropriate to get 100% critical strike avoidance than an Acolyte.
Timestamp: 53:44-54:52
Q: How does the Rogue make shadows?
A: There are several different abilities that create shadows, and you kind of need to look through them all to find the ones that do it. My advice to you would be to keep leveling and come into here [Mike has a skill tree window open] and search “shadow” and it will highlight any nodes with “shadow” in their name or description. There’s quite a few – I’m trying to remember the names of them because we changed a lot of the names part way through the development of the Rogue, and I still call them by their old names [Mike laughs]. Umm…yeah, just look through them. There’s a bunch that do it – most of them are Bladedancer specific.
Timestamp: 55:00-55:46
Q: Can you make it so that if your belt is full of HP potions that they won’t be picked up from the ground as HP? It’s killing my low life character.
A: Yeah, we’ve looked at this a few times. Honestly I can’t remember the exact reason why we haven’t done this yet. However, I will say that if you’re at full potion slots the potion drop rate is significantly reduced. I know it’s a tough thing to do, but there’s ways to convert potion health into ward instead so there’s a few gameplay ways around it. We’ve definitely considered it, and it would have to be an opt-in system and be on a character by character basis. Ahh, no immediate plans I don’t think.
Timestamp: 55:55-56:44
Q: The auto-cast feature is mostly about auras. Maybe you can add a mana usage similar to PoE to be always enable instead of auto-cast?
A: Ahh…yeah, there’s a reason we weren’t – we talked about having a reserved system, but I can’t remember the exact reason why we avoided it. It was some system that it conflicted pretty heavily with. Sorry, that was a long time ago that we talked about that…we’re talking years.
Timestamp: 56:50-57:18
Q: People compare it to 100% delirious maps in PoE and I think while it’s a natural comparison to make, the endgame here is Arena, Monoliths are there to farm gear to push arena. So I actually rather not have insane density.
A: Yeah, it’s something that we work on and having players be able to – one really positive thing about giving players a way to specific opt-in to more density is that certain builds that do really well with more density can then stack the deck in their favour a little bit which is an interesting thing to do. There are typically certain map modifiers you need to avoid for certain builds and that, in a sense, is the same thing but it’s sort of the inverse so it doesn’t feel as good. But yeah, we’re still looking at it.
Timestamp: 58:08-58:52
Q: Will you surpass level 100 on a character?
A: Very, very, very unlikely. If anything we might stretch out the leveling a little bit more – make it a little bit harder to get to level 100, that sort of thing. I know that I really like the idea of almost never hitting level 100. I played so much Diablo 2 that I had characters that I finished them…completely finished them, but it was over the course of like years.
The difference between having a level 99 and level 100 character is really tiny. It’s one out of 113 passive points, and once you’ve unlocked the highest skill point you are going to use in the passive tree – really every skill you point in there afterwards is less important than the one you put in before…by a percentage of your damage and likely just how good it is for your character. So that amount that you’re getting each level actually slows down as you progress. But level 100, that’s the max.
Timestamp: 58:56-1:0052
Q: Are there any plans for more in-depth stash/storage organization? Like the ability to dictate which items can go into which tabs, or better sort functionality.
A: Yeah, so having items go to specific tabs I think is a really awesome that PoE just added. There’s a few other things we’re looking at doing with the stash – like reorganizing it better. I was lying in bed a couple nights ago and I think I figured out a way to do it, so that’s good [Mike laughs].
Timestamp: 1:0053-1:01:22
Q: What are some of the biggest pitfalls of PoE that you’re trying to avoid?
A: That’s a really tough question. I don’t think there’s any really big PoE pitfalls that we’re really trying to avoid. PoE is a different game. First off, I think it’s a really great game overall – they’ve done fantastic stuff with it. A lot of the systems we have wouldn’t work well in that game, and a lot of the systems they have wouldn’t work in our game. They’re different games – we each do things differently.
I think we are trying to keep things a little bit slower, a little bit more deliberate, and that’s really difficult to do when you’ve been extending a game for ten years. I think we’re looking to keep things a little bit less trade dependent. It’s really hard to say because we don’t think of things in terms of, ‘how do we do things differently than PoE?’ We look at things in, ‘how can we do things best for our game?’ Our experience from playing PoE does come into those decisions, but it’s definitely not the starting point.
Timestamp: 1:01:25-1:02:44
Q: Is there any kind of rough timeline for when multiplayer will release?
A: I don’t have anything I can give you on a timeline for multiplayer. Every day it seems we have some kind of big internal breakthrough of tech that’s getting better for it, but it’s a really incredibly complex thing to do. Until we’ve got a really clear – like this is what we’re going to release, this is roughly when we’re going to release it and candidate builds almost – we’re kind of just saying, ‘when it’s ready’. I can tell you that the community testers are not testing multiplayer yet. They don’t have access to it, so you don’t have to be that jealous of them yet [Mike laughs].
Timestamp: 1:02:48-1:03:45
Q: Is there any timeframe for the next big game update?
A: Ahh…yeah, I think it’s – I know I’m saying this live on the stream – don’t quote me on this [Mike laughs…and I’m sorry Mike but I am
]. I think we’re roughly, approximately, about a month out…maybe more – question mark. I think Sarno may have actually said something at some point that actually said more accurately when it was so that’s why I’m being super vague. If someone saw that comment, please repeat it.
Timestamp: 1:03:50-1:04:28
Q: What will happen to my SSF HC character once the game goes multiplayer? Will I have to remake my character?
A: All characters that are being made right now are in what I’d call ‘offline mode’ – they are not multiplayer characters and you will not be able to play them in multiplayer on our servers when multiplayer goes live. This is mostly due to security reasons and partially due to wanting to have everything be a fresh start when multiplayer goes live. So they will not be able to be played online, I’m sorry. I know it might feel like you’re playing online already because of the ladder, chat, and things like that but no they are offline characters for the moment.
Timestamp: 1:05:38-1:06:24
Q: Any plans for an Xbox release?
A: I think an Xbox release would be awesome. However, we will not be doing it before we launch the game.
Timestamp: 1:06:24-1:06:40
Q: Are you guys still on track to release co-op before end of August/Q3?
A: We’re not ready to put dates or timeframes on it. I don’t know where you heard that date or time, but it was likely a guess from someone.
Timestamp: 1:07:04-1:07:15
Q: Any plans to add or update Legendary items? A lot of them seem kind of bad or not super helpful, especially at lower levels.
A: So there are no Legendary items in the game yet. We have Unique items in the game – that we will be adding more to and updating as we go along. I wouldn’t say that there’s that many ultra high-end chase items in the game yet. Honestly, there’s a lot more leveling Uniques, I’d say. We are adjusting their power level and it’s a tough thing to get right because if Uniques are too strong then it kind of invalidates crafting for the most part, and if they’re too weak then it makes crafting the only thing possible. We do plan to have that balance be a little bit more even than it is now because I think people generally rely on crafted items more than anything.
Timestamp: 1:07:17-1:08:05
Mike brings a concept design for the new Skills & Specializations panel on screen:
Oh, what’s this! This is a concept art for an updated skills layout – it’s a little bit clearer. [Judd messages Mike saying, ‘NO, NO, NO, DON’T SHOW THAT!’ Mike quickly takes the image off the screen and begins to laugh hysterically as he realizes he’s been had. Judd replies in chat, ‘Got him
’]
[Mike puts the panel back on screen] Here’s the skills panel we’re working on guys [Mike is still laughing]. We’re working to keep things clearer – we’re doing away with some of the…oh, I’ve got to calm down a little bit…doing away with some of the extra screens – so like when you click to specialize a new skill, instead of it taking you to a new screen it just highlights the ones you have available here. There’s going to be a search bar in this screen that lets you look into skills a little bit more clearly. It also lays out how you unlock them a little bit better – so the ones that are unlocked through your passives and the ones that are just from your character levels.
Timestamp: 1:09:00-1:11:12
Q: Are there plans to streamline crafting mats? e.g. auto pick-up/auto stash?
A: No immediate plans at the moment, but we’re still considering it. It’s a really easy thing to – as far as player reception – it’s a really easy thing to add and people would be happy about it, but it’s a really hard thing to take away and people wouldn’t be very happy about it. So we’re still considering it, but no immediate plans.
Timestamp: 1:11:26-1:11:49
Q: Are there plans to update skill tooltips to show how much of what damage type it deals?
A: We did actually consider having it split. We really want the tooltips to be useful at a glance instead of requiring too much reading. So if there was a little thing that popped out that said Alt for more info and it had the exact details of all the damage types or something like that – we considered that. I think we’ll likely be putting more of that in this screen [Mike has the Character Stats Sheet open].
Timestamp: 1:11:52-1:12:34
Q: How does ignite work, and what is the affix chance to ignite with fire skills on hit for the Mage class because they don’t seem to increase my ignite chance on my character sheet with spells like Fireball and Meteor?
A: Okay, so there’s a few things here. Usually the ignite chance – if you have ignite chance listed in a skill tree it will not reflect in your Character Stats Sheet. If you have ignite chance in your passives that is global it will reflect in your Character Stats Sheet. The ignite chance in your Character Stats Sheet is a global ignite chance –so if you have ‘melee ignite chance’ or ‘spell ignite chance’ it won’t show up here. That’s something we’re looking to expand as well. The base damage does not affect your ignite chance – so if you have Fireball and you get ‘increased damage’ or ‘+20 fire spell damage’ it’s not actually going to increase your ignite chance at all.
If you have over 100% ignite chance it will potentially apply two stacks of ignite – so if you have 101% ignite chance you have 100% chance to apply one stack and 1% chance to apply a second stack.
Timestamp: 1:13:35-1:14:44
Q: Are there plans to add increased functionality to the loot filter system? Such as showing items with at least the chosen number of selected affixes?
A: Ahh, not specifically that immediately, I don’t think, but that is a request we get enough that I’d say the chances of someone working on it pretty soon are pretty high. We are going to be expanding the loot filter functionality – possibly getting some more logic in there, some AND’s some OR’s…things like that. We know people are creating humongous filters with so many rules to get specific interactions to work and it’s a little tedious sometimes. We’d like it to not be that tedious.
Timestamp: 1:15:00-1:15:43
Q: What are the differences between purchasing from your store vs the steam store?
A: The Steam store does have, I believe, region specific pricing on it – just because we go through Steam’s purchasing system – and I think that’s about it. I don’t think there’s any other major changes. By default, you’re presented with the Steam launcher rather than our standalone launcher, but if you buy from either place you get access to either launcher so it doesn’t matter.
Timestamp: 1:15:48-1:16:22
Mike shows off the tooltip for a new skill being added to the game, Summon Storm Crow:
Here’s a tooltip sneak-peek for a new ability coming. Someone last stream asked me if there’s any new summons coming and I said, ‘I know there’s at least two’ – well here’s one of them.
Timestamp: 1:17:05-1:18:12
Q: Will you have a system against multi-boxing planned for multiplayer? Because I think it’s kind of damaging for the game economy.
A: I agree. Multi-boxing is not great to have around. We’re not really going to go in-depth on this sort of thing – on, I guess, network security things we’re talking about – but yes I would agree with your sentiment, that multi-boxing is not great to have. Especially if it becomes rampant and then it becomes where it feels it’s required to play the game. That would be bad.
Timestamp: 1:18:15-1:18:51
Q: Any ideas for like “dungeons/raids” kind of like Lost Ark has but most aRPG’s seem to avoid? Basically content bosses designed for multiple players.
A: One thing that we do really want is that we don’t want content to be mandatory to be in a party for. However, I think content being more interesting in a party or slightly different in a party is a really cool concept. So having something like a boss that gets new abilities or maybe a boss who, when you fight in multiplayer, like part of the arena comes to life – I’m literally making this up on the spot guys so please don’t think this is something we’re working on [Mike laughs]. So it could be a big boss that you fight in single player, but in multiplayer part of the arena itself that you’re fighting him in stands up and starts fighting you as a second boss simultaneously. I think that’d be pretty cool.
Timestamp: 1:19:00-1:20:00
Q: Is there an option to have NPC dialogue put into chat?
A: Not right now. We do have pretty tight functionality for adding – we do have functionality for doing things like that already built in so it’s not out of the question.
Timestamp: 1:20:02-1:20:32
Q: Is there a benefit to full clearing a Monolith vs. just rushing boss? Are there going to be any map/UI improvements to better track map completion?
A: There are advantages to clearing a map for gear – as you clear more enemies in the Monolith you do get more gear from that Monolith. It’s not linear and I wouldn’t recommend full clearing it, but killing stuff on your way to the destination is probably going to give you more stuff.
Timestamp: 1:20:48-1:12:38
Q: Are you guys going to add new skills regularly or going to stick to a core?
A: We’re going to keep adding more skills. We don’t have an exact timeline on it, and I’d say after release we’ll likely end up in a scenario where some classes have more skills than others. Though, at release each class will have the same number of skills. Yes, we’re adding more skills. I think new skills are a really interesting way to add more content without adding more content – if that makes any sense. Having new ways to do existing content I think is a lot of fun, and this game focuses a lot on – well, the whole genre – focuses a lot on different build options and the amount of build options expand with each new skill.
Timestamp: 1:21:40-1:23:08
Q: Will you allow people to change their Mastery?
A: We have no plans of allowing that at the moment. I will not guarantee it will stay that way, but we have no plans at the moment. I would consider picking your Mastery more akin to picking your class at the start of the game, if anything else.
Timestamp: 123:18-1:23:36
Q: I have come to notice that Acolyte is pretty awesome, but in some ways it feels like to do relevant endgame content it pretty much forces you to go Reaper Form and Death Seal. Would you agree? If so, any plans to change this?
A: Yeah, I think Reaper Form is a little too intrinsic to Lich specifically. I think there’s lots of ways that the Acolyte can do endgame. Reaper Form is what is focused around the Lich, in general, partially because it’s something that you can still use your other skills in. It’s a pretty core part of that class – maybe a little too core for most of the builds.
Timestamp: 1:23:58-1:24:44
Q: Will there be a death penalty? I think PoE is too steep, especially the last 4-5 levels. It discourages players from doing challenging content because you can lose hours of gameplay from just 1 death.
A: Umm, I think my personal opinions on this differ from a lot of the other designers here. I don’t think we’re adding a death penalty of experience loss anytime soon.
My personal preference would be to have some experience penalty. It is really frustrating when it does happen. It’s kind of like having a soft hardcore mode, if that makes any sense, where you have this penalty for dying so you really don’t want to and it creates that tension a little bit. I don’t have enough free time usually to constantly be playing hardcore and lose all that progress, but I really do love the tension that it brings. Personally, that’s why I enjoy it. We know adding experience loss wouldn’t be overly popular and it might not be mechanically relevant, really, so we’ll see what happens.
Timestamp: 1:24:46-1:26:00
Mike shows off a teaser for an upcoming area:
A little teaser of an upcoming area coming to the game.
Timestamp: 1:26:18-1:26:25
Q: Poison stacks that reduce poison resistance, how does damage work for each minion (like if one minion reduces the resistance for -10 and the other for -20, they both deals damage for -30 resistance?)
A: Yes, that is how it works.
Timestamp: 1:26:28-1:26:40
Q: Is this game aiming to have endgame content like PoE? I mean, a final boss or something after completing some sort of requirement.
A: Yeah, I’d say the hardest challenge coming from Last Epoch is not available yet.
Timestamp: 1:26:54-1:27:12
Q: What about adding AND/OR to the filter rules?
A: Yes, we’re working on it. It’s not available yet.
Timestamp: 1:27:30-1:27:34
Q: Why did you decide against a specific slot for lower body armour and instead went for a full body armour slot?
A: That’s a really long meeting. I’d have to get the notes for it [Mike laughs] and then the eighty meetings after that. I guess it partially boils down to reducing complexity a little bit – would be the short answer I guess.
Timestamp: 1:27:36-1:28:04
Q: I see that you’re team is huge Zelda fans. What we can find in LE that was inspired by Zelda?
A: Ah, there’s a node on – there’s actually something directly inspired by Zelda that I know of because that was brought up in the meeting – ah…I’m trying to remember the node. There’s a node in Rive that if you’re at full health there’s an energy wave that gets shot out and that is an homage to – in a lot of Zelda games, especially the old 2D ones, where at full health there’s a magic energy wave that comes out of your sword. So there’s a little node to Zelda in there, a single node. I would suspect that the amount of Zelda that I’ve played – yes I do love Zelda, my wife got me this [Mike points to Link’s shield hanging on the wall] for Christmas – I think just by the nature of being human that things from your past…the games you’ve played will slip in subconsciously.
Timestamp: 1:29:00-1:30:14
Q: Will Tempest Strike get an update in the upcoming patch?
A: There’s no major changes to it planned right now. We’re looking at other newer skills, trying to get abilities – Tempest Strike, I agree, is not as awesome as other skills such as Swipe. Part of that has to do with the interaction it has with other skills. I believe there’s some interaction from Tempest Strike coming – not this patch but the next patch – so that there’s some incentives to use it by those interactions. I’m sure we’ll be updating it in general, but haven’t made any huge changes to it. The skill tree isn’t…I do like the skill tree, but it didn’t ever click so we’ll be reassessing and reorganizing it and probably be doing a few passes on it. I do think there’s other skill trees that might need love first [Mike opens the Summon Sabertooth & Summon Bear skill trees as he says this] before we take a look at Tempest Strike. Wink, wink, hint, hint [Mike laughs].
Timestamp: 1:31:10-1:32:10
Q: Thoughts on having melee skills stop when a target dies? It feels a bit awkward on Werebear when you use mana by accidentally swiping too much.
A: There’s a lot of stuff done for performance sake in the ability use – like mechanics and holding buttons down and things like that. There’s a lot of things like if you’re just holding a button down and you go to a zone exit it will just click and take you through, or if you hover an NPC as you’re running past it will start talking to them – and those are actually the same problem as what you’re talking about. We’re working on things like that still, because we want that to feel really good. Having the combat feel tight is like the most important thing in a game like this.
Timestamp: 1:32:13-1:33:02
Q: Do plan to add any specific skill panels with more details in the Character Panel so I could see specific on-hit chances instead of just global stats for say the Meteor skill?
A: Yeah, so having like, ‘this is your poison chance for this ability’ [Mike opens Character Panel and hovers over poison chance]. Yeah, we’re going to add more detailed information in the Character Panel – I think that’s not this patch, but next patch is the plan there.
We’re doing a ton of UI work right now. Shout-out to the UI designers – it looks so awesome, like so awesome and I’m really excited. I’ve been working on implementing it. It looks and feels a lot better. We’re kind of taking a pass over almost everything.
Timestamp: 1:33:04-1:34:00
Q: What is the planned release date?
A: We do not have one [currently].
Timestamp: 1:34:37-1:34:40
Q: Will the cosmetic store be out before 1.0? I would love to support this game more and look good doing it.
A: Yeah, I think the cosmetic store is something that will be – we still need to work out the details on how that becomes available. Any time there’s extra MTX in Early Access games we have to be careful about how that’s presented and all that sort of stuff, but once we have more MTX that looks awesome – because we have a separate MTX pipeline that’s working really hard to make really cool stuff for everyone to wear. Once we have more of that that’s ready to go, and likely when multiplayer is in we’ll be looking at doing that more. They’re not directly tied to each other, but I’d say it’s more likely to happen closer to that timeframe.
Timestamp: 1:34:42-1:35:42
Q: Any reason for the Captain’s Ring that’s on the ground in the starter area? Has like 90 something stun avoidance and is always in the same spot. I haven’t found another static item like that.
A: There is one other static item like that. If you kill the first beetle looking enemy – it’s like the third enemy in the game – it always drops a bow. This is specifically so that Rogue’s can start with a bow from the very beginning. It’s a bit of a hint – so a lot of people were having problems with being stunned early on and we wanted to be like, ‘here’s a tool to help with stuns, and this tool’s in the game’ So it’s basically a hint, hint, wink, wink type of thing. It’s part of the tutorialization. It’s a little subtle maybe, but that’s why it’s there.
Timestamp: 1:35:54-1:36:51
Q: Will you be able to duel friends when multiplayer drops?
A: Yeah, PvP is one of my favourite things in games like this. We are working on PvP. I would say there’s likely – oh, I don’t know if I want to say that – there’s probably conditions under which PvP happens that’s a little more static than just, ‘hey you, fight me!’ but we’re still working out those details so I don’t really know for sure what it’s going to end up being.
Timestamp: 1:36:58-1:38:10