And if a minority player does have time for two hardcore lifestyle games at once, what are the odds they will be playing D4 and LE rather than POE or Dota or WOW? Pretty optimistic.
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As someone who plays as many aRPG as possible the issue for me is purely timing and the fact I only play seasons/leagues and never play ‘standard’ normally and the key point: I wont even play if the game doesnt hit these points:
- play when the league launches or very close to the launch
- have enough time to achieve my ‘goals’ which honestly is usually doing all content and some level 100 grind
If I cant do 1/2 then I simply will not play that game at that point, if that continues then ill never play it. LE/Grim Dawn were different on early access as they didnt wipe and werent released
PoE has dominance over my time, they tell me when their league launches and ill play. Torchlight Infinite is now second as its a fun game and mirrors PoE type both of them are 3 months usually
Then D4 will come, then apparently LE, so 4 games doing seasonal content, plus playing other games to get away from aRPGs like the 5th Valheim run im doing; first time in Mistlands for example
Combine that with working 8-10 hrs a day and you are pretty pressed for time
edit: one thing to point out though, if on PoE you just wanted to hit lvl 90 do a basic build and do a few pinnacle bosses you could play for less than a week and be done easily, or even a nolife weekend. The only reason my playtimes are so much higher is the 40 challenges/lv100 shit
If D4 doesnt have a compelling end game people will be done in sub 2 weeks even on a fresh game
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Nobody is saying that literally every single player is playing both games.
Path of Exile is already released for 9 1/2 years (+ another 1/2 year longer including open beta).
How did PoE get so many players? Continously working in the game, keep drawing new players in and let existing player return with fresh new content.
That is what I was talking about in my first post.
Last Epoch exists in a Beta/EA State for ~4 years now (a little bit more if you count in Kickstarter and alphas)
The roadmap and milestones are a little bit different then PoE, which went from Closed Beta testing into “only” 1/2 a year open beta before releasing. (Not sure how long exactly PoE was develoepd prior to that, but probably also 2-3 years at least)
LE will earn its own spot, but that will take time. Especially right now LE does not have as many players because the game deliberately titles itself a Early Access/Beta Game, which is something a lot of people, especially today shy away from. (For a plethora of reasons).
And that is ok.
I am saying it again. not every palyer will play the game “hardcore lifestyle”.
I am still unsure what you try to achieve with your post overall?
Yes D4 is a big thing, yes PoE 2 will also be a big thing.
But what should LE do about it? Cancel the game, because of competition?
If anything having a few more simialr games that cater to different audiences is overall good and not bad.
Especially competition is a good thing, if people are unhappy with a particular patch of any of these games they have decent alternatives.
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Everyone is different. We all have our own priorities in life.
I’ve got a lot of weeds at my house. One of my neighbours called the fire services as it was bushfire season. When the fireman came to my house, I asked him “Is it a fire hazard?” to which he responded “No, if you can live with it, they aren’t dangerous. You do you.”
Now this was pretty fucking funny. Still makes me laugh.
Point is, my family had a pile of real problems to deal with at that time. Could I get out there and weed my garden at night instead of playing video games? Sure. If I thought it was dangerous or was advised as such, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. But gardening is a fucking afterthought to me.
Maybe some people only want to play one game. Maybe others want to play more.
I’m confident EHG has a plan and know what success means to them. Heck, their plan might even work. I certainly enjoy the game and am glad to have played it and continue to do so. I even told some friends. But at the end of the day, it really isn’t my business.
After all, it’s not my garden.
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Nothing is going to ‘compete’ with D4. I’ll wager even PoE2 isn’t going to ‘compete’ with it.
Just like an indie film isn’t going to compete with Marvel Ad Nauseum Sequel #12. And it would be a massive mistake for an indie film to try because they’ll never be able to do it.
But there’s still a market for them. People still like them. Watch them. Recommend them. Share them.
Same with the game. You either will or you won’t.
None of that is going matter to LE in the long run. What will matter is if enough players like the game on its own without some sort of weird need to say, "Hey, if Shazam 4 is coming out, no way in hell I’m watching Morganville Super Highway.
You can quite easily watch both.
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It’s a deliberate troll. We’re feeding it, which is fine because you know the argument is done and now it’s just sputtering when the troll starts resorting to ‘shaming people’ for how many hours they spend in a game, ‘cause we smert paple have rill lievs.’
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GGG made maybe 190M profit in approx 3 years and it all MTX sales, all optional. I last spent more than $5 on PoE about 4 years ago as I have all the special tabs/almost infinite stash space
D4 is going to have to sell millions of copies at $60 plus also have some other bullshit financial strings such as P2W or overpriced MTX to keep up
Do realise GGG released a 480USD supporter pack only this league which gave people the option of adding a Voidtouch unique into the game with their own personal message and they sold a few thousand alone of them
I doubt it but they may announce a date at Exile Con this year.
As far as D4, it seems weird to use a LE official forum to talk about the financial impact D4 and POE 2 will have on LE. EHG has zero control over how popular those two games will be. All they can do is work on their game and try to release big updates at the best time available within their window.
As others have stated, there is more than enough room in the genre for multiple season based games to play. LE updates will just need to be careful not to overlap too much with the bigger games in their market.
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Like me you mean? I have 3 kids and a new job (with a commute, unlike my previous job where i was working from home for 3 years). I get to game 3 evenings a week per agreement with my wife (all domestic arrangements are different) and some time during the day at weekends if i don’t have to work (I’ve worked the last 3 Saturdays in a row and as a corporate accountant i should really only be working office hours) and feel up for it (due to the aforementioned new job, i haven’t). So yes, I am very well aware of what it is like to have a family and a full time job that do not give me much time to game. And yet when I do play I decide what games I feel like playing or I see what my friends are playing and join in with them, possibly switching between two when they come on.
I can’t gainsay how much time you have to play or whether you prefer to stick to a single game for a while or not. But you choose what to play and that’s up to you.
You probably do 'cause you don’t know how much time I have to play, you’re making an assumption that it’s a lot (it’s less than I’d like).
Ok, if you think that the relative handful of people who leave reviews are reflective of the “normal” amount of time average people have to play then you’re either being deliberately disingenuous or what you concider “normal” is way off base.
Because it’s been around for, like, a decade? It didn’t start with those numbers. Being “free” to play also helps, especially on the more casual end of the market I’d imagine.
Yay, I’m average!
Is this what having a discussion with me is like?
Please don’t compare profit with revenue, they are two very different things. Also, GGG doesn’t have anywhere near the overheads that ActiBlizz have so they don’t need to sell millions of copies at full box price.
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Its profit not revenue according to the stats I read a while back, you dont have to be an accountant to know the difference
I paid 60 for D3 and then 30 for Reaper of Souls, so $90 for 8? years now of gaming as I can login right now to D3 if I want to play with no limit to play time and no way to give them more money
So unless D4’s has another business model other ‘pay the initial price and we keep the servers open forever and pay us nothing more’ seems like a good deal to me
I played Ultima Online when I was a kid for about 4 years, that game was $40-50 initial buy and then $20 a month which would of been around 960 or nearly 10 copies
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I’m not questioning the GGG figure (I’venot checked their statutory accounts recently and TBH, i cant be arsed, so I’massuming you are correct), merely that you think it’s appropriate to compare it to something that’s clearly a revenue figure. But as you say, you don’t need to be a qualified accountant to read a set of NZ stat accounts (they’re almost identical to ones produced by UK entities, even ignoring IFRS) and pull either a revenue or profit figure (especially for a simple company like GGG, but the stats should make it easy enough to do that even for a more complex company).
Edit: but i certainly don’t blame you for not wanting to delve into a US company’s stats to find a reasonable margin % to apply to the box price to come up with a decent comparator.
I’m not excited about D4. The priestess on the Announce trailer is making the hand sign for Baphomet, a satanic icon, the beta trailer has runes inscribed on the undead wolf’s skill that look like they’re from the Ars Goetia. I’ve had some encounters with satanic people that have given me the heebeejeebees, I don’t need that level of realism in my enemies and I don’t need my daughters exposed to symbols of witchcraft if they’re casually watching me play the game. I’m not enthused. Also, I think everyone is going to hate gearing unless they massively changed it from open beta. That weekend won’t be long enough for most people to see the issues.
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It won’t affect the game revenue with respect to those who already bought LE: we already paid out share.
I tried to understand your point of view but even if i try hard i couldn’t understand it. You play a game with demons and diablo but you don’t wanna see witchcraft symbol. It’s like loking at Dora the Explorer but don’t want to see the monkey. Regarding your daughter, i don’t thing the symbol will hurt more than the blood, the execution, the pressure etc.
Btw the game is for 17+ so under this age she shouldn’t look at it, and after that age she might have see much more things than you would expect. She will have already strange friends or have seen the D but not the capital letter from Diablo 
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I think he meant that the symbology used was a bit too close to reality for his liking given a previous encounter with proponents/adherents of that particular or related real life religions.
Yeah, its interesting how that can work in different cultures/religions, how some things can be “ok” ish (the blood and violence) but others are a step too far (religious symbols, sex, etc).
My kids are 16, 14 & 12, I really don’t want to think about what they may or may not have seen (especially when I remember my own teenage years, but then I turned out “ok”.)…
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I’ve been burned enough times by AAA games/studios, so I’m NOT pre-ordering anything. Unlike EHG, Activision is an established company and it should be able to finance whatever games they want without me needing to upfront a single $.
I’m not sure I’m going to play the Open Beta either. I remember (disclaimer : my memory sucks) playing D3 Beta, and the game was greatly different at release. On the one hand, the Open Beta feels like a free demo, but on the other, the Beta is only the first zone, up to level 25 and I can’t be sure how faithfully the demo is going to represent the end-product.
A lot of the fun in these games come from the endgame loop and funky builds you can create once you have access to better gear. Under this light, the D4 Beta is in a state even less “finished” than Last Epoch. But again, who am I kidding, Activision would need to royally f**k up to prevent my nostalgia factor from making me buy D4.
Ultimately, the game I’ll be playing (and potentially spend more money on) is the game I’ll find the most fun. The same argument could be made with PoE2. I’ll probably try all of the new ARPG available. So, while Last Epoch don’t want to be the only game not ready when the party is on, them being the first to release wouldn’t stop me trying other games. But, being the better experience will make me stick to the game.
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I believe that is just the hand sign for the benediction she says “Blessed be the light”.
Also, I think everyone is going to hate gearing unless they massively changed it from open beta
There has only been closed beta so far. Is your concern with gearing related drop rates not being good enough given that trade is limited?
I’m not a troll, I came here because I was looking forward to trying the game after its full release but now I’m wondering what is even the point after Diablo 4 releases. I was received with:
- My post (which is more about the future of LE than Diablo 4 itself) was put into off-topic
- People were asking me “why are you even posting”
- Literally dozes of “everything is fine it literally has zero impact on Last Epoch” replies
- “It’s a troll”
So sorry if I eventually started treating this forum as well as you decided to treat me. You are all literally delusional, only one person so far among 40 replies has said “this might raise some issues”. I have never seen this much copium online and I was around when people were defending the initial launch of Heist league for POE.
I guess everyone with a little bit of common sense in them has left the forums already.
I find it intriguing that someone’s first, and only, post after joining any forum is to immediately see how the company who runs the forum is responding to something a competitor is doing. Not “how is the game?” or “what sort of endgame stuff is available” or "what do you all like about the game?.
Nope, it’s “WHAT IS LE DOING ABOUT D4???”
Demonstrable action suggests clear intention here.
And, even then, many of the responses actually tried to understand why you would ask this. As well as pointing out a myriad of facts about why it doesn’t have any real bearing on LEs plans or longevity.
But instead of moving on, knowing that the general consensus didn’t see it as an issue, it only resulted in more pot-stirring from your responses by actually attacking people personally.
So clearly, even if we provide benefit of the doubt and say this didn’t start out as a troll, it quickly degenerated into one.
You have been fed.
Now, if you’ve got questions about the game itself, or since this is off topic, want to discuss d4 as it’s own entity, I’m sure everyone would be glad to discuss what they’ve seen about the game because, as has already been demonstrated, people can play more than one game.
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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:
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:
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:
After release we’ll be seeing the first cycle content, that will provide significant updates to the endgame:
Hopefully this helps.
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