If you are curious about the future of LE, here’s just some of what we currently know.
In terms of immediate future, we’re getting an update on trade tomorrow:
Travelers,
Tomorrow (Tues, Feb 21st), our development team plans to share a significant update on the next iteration of Trade, the Bazaar, and what we have in store for the world of Eterra. Stay Tuned!
Thank You,
Source: Discord Link
Patch 0.9 will release on March 9th with the following features:
server authoritative multiplayer
performance improvements
combat feel improvements
item gifting
cosmetic store (as a minimum viable product)
updated story content & UI
updated/reworked skills
updated skill VFX/SFX
update to ailments - both mechanical & performance changes
update to melee, bow, and throwing damage - mechanical change
new Unique items, enemies, NPC’s, armour, etc. – some of which are viewable in this forum thread
the usual bug fixes and balance changes
and possibly more that hasn’t been announced yet
Post 0.9 will see an extended hotfix cycle:
Judd: Plus, our hotfix cycle for 0.9 will probably be slightly longer than the patch cycles we’ve had in the past. But yes, we do know what is causing those and we’re working on addressing them.
Mike: And when we say hotfix cycle being longer you mean that there’s more time that we’re willing to put hotfixes out rather than time between hotfixes?
Judd: Yep, yep.
Source: YouTube Link
Patch 1.0 will see the release the remaining masteries (Runemaster, Warlock, and Falconer), and many, many final touches/additions (such as full controller support) that will be coming out either in the leadup to 1.0 or with 1.0 itself. This patch will also see a bigger marketing push:
Q: With multiplayer release this is a huge opportunity for Last Epoch to start competing with the big games in the genre. How do they effectively plan on marketing this?
Judd: We have a comprehensive marketing plan going into the 1.0 version of the game. Patch 0.9 is going to be a soft launch for multiplayer and we don’t want to put a ton of marketing effort and spend towards 0.9 because, you know, there’s going to be bugs and there’s going to be things that we need to figure out. There’s been studios much larger with much more experience than us have issues on release of a server authoritative multiplayer game. So we expect there to be a little bit of turbulence right there at the beginning, stuff that we will react to quickly, but we do have a comprehensive marketing plan going into 1.0.
I can give a few details there because we do have some fairly exciting stuff going on. We’re working with an agency called Buddha Jones who are incredibly talented, very cool people – they’ve made trailers for lots of games and movies including things like the Mandalorian, a bunch of Marvel and DC movies, and countless games. They’ve done things for like Dark Alliance, Age of Empires, etc, etc. So we’re working with them for the 1.0 release trailer of the game and we’re very excited about that. We are working on quite a few larger video content pieces than we ever have before. We’re working on a lot of like 2.5D cutscenes, we might have a short CGI trailer that actually comes out before the 1.0 release trailer, we’re staffing up the marketing and support team right now, and we’re spinning up a Discord for content creators to share information with them as soon as we’re able to. We’ve got all the traditional social marketing stuff that you would suspect from any type of marketing campaign – of course that’ll be rolled in.
Then, you know, a core of our marketing has always been to just continue to interact with the community on a personal basis. There’s no better way to market than actually having people go in and enjoy the game that you’re creating and then tell others that, you know, ‘the game is good, we like the people creating it’ and so we’ll be doing more stuff like this and continue to engage with the community.
Steelmage: Yeah, I know one of the questions on this list was actually about cutscenes because I know in Diablo those cutscenes were so like – yeah, I love those cutscenes.
Judd: Yeah, they’re incredible. Their CGI team is just absolutely outstanding. If they turn into a movie company one day I wouldn’t be surprised, it’s fantastic. I’ll set expectations – we’re not going to have any like full 3D three minute long trailers that are completely like movie-esque.
Steelmage: Million dollar trailers.
Judd: Yeah, yeah…it’s not in the cards for us at the moment. Maybe one day, but not soon. However, we will have some very cool stuff coming in a stylized approach that we’re really excited about.
Source: YouTube Link
After release we’ll be seeing the first cycle content, that will provide significant updates to the endgame:
Q: What are some items on the top of that priority stack? Any new content? Favor system? Lost Memories? Something else?
Judd: [Mike and Judd laugh] Yea, it’s a very good question though. Ahh, we have a lot of good stuff coming. I won’t get that spoilery because, I mean, if we’re talking about stuff that high level that’s major patch additions that are coming out – there are a number of really cool additions that we have planned to bring into the game at like 1.1, 1.2 that nobody has any idea about. We’re talking about drastically extending the endgame and the item hunt and giving us new axes to work with and stuff like that. Excited to talk about those, but not quite yet.
Source: YouTube Link
Judd: Yea, the only thing to add to that, for me, is that I really want people to understand that after 1.0 endgame becomes a huge focus for us. Extending it in terms of the item hunt, the content available, the systems, adding on just a few layers of complexity – we don’t want the game to be super complex for new people that are coming in, but there’s definitely things that we can add before we get too complex there. Endgame will continue to be a major, major focus post-1.0…and even going into 1.0, a bit.
Source: YouTube Link
Hopefully this helps.
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