They brought this mess upon themselves by not producing the things we were supposed to purchase to support them.
If there aren’t any MTX to buy, what then?
“Support us by buying MTX, but we won’t provide any that are worth the kind of price we ask”?
At this point, fire their CFO and bring in a fifth-grader and see if they can’t figure that one out.
By the way, Diablo 4 revealed the paid class and expansion and everyone seems okay with this, not to mention that they haven the store. But to Last Epoch is not allowed to do this. lol.
Yeah blizzard is a soulless mega corp and everyone knows it, the mobile diablo that was p2w as shit also had tons of players.
Because blizzard is so big and so evil, they can get in trouble for workplace wrong doings and everyone just… forgets.
So yeah, I guess if our goal is to be blizzard, we got there LOL
I mean… you can absolutely compete with D4 and hence Blizzard on their own playing field. Which is mass acquisition of casual players which don’t think about what they consume at all.
There’s a limited amount of those people available though. Think LE can compete with D4 when it comes down to it? 
Sure because Blizzard never promised stuff. People didn’t belive in Blizzard. People already thought “D4 will be good in 1-3 expensions” in Beta. People knew they get overpriced crap because it’s Blizzard.
Then there was the new hope of H&S players, a new dev team took of. Players who wanted to create a game for players, to produce a game only payed for once, ending the greed of big companies, the new arbiters of cummiunication who value player feedback and interaction… well it turned out to be a shitshow and people are mad because they thought EHG can be trusted and they finaly get something awesome for once. Now We got Krafton and the EHG from the past isn’t recongizeable anymore.
as much as i prefer it if companies kept their words to their kickstarter backers, in EHG’s case, the company that everyone supported back during the kickstarter campaign has essentially ceased to exist. and with it, all the old promises.
theres a lot i can mention how LE will face difficulties trying to compete with D4, POE or even TLI. but all sum it up by saying LE needs to really narrow down and be its own thing. but currently its too similar to POE so thats a difficult ask.
The toxic positivity crowd strikes again. People like me tried to give feedback when it mattered, but got crowded out by folks like OP who thought constructive criticism of a game was an attack on themselves. Guess what, guys - it is as true now as it was then: no amount of telling people they are wrong when they offer their feedback on the subjective experience of the game will cause those people to pony up and stick around. You are now finding this out the hard way.
Now even when someone like Wudijo tries as hard as he can to be informative, he still gets dumped on by the same crowd. Well, you get what you deserve. Enjoy being farmed for MTX by EHG’s new owners!
Bo hoo fanboy. If people aren’t happy it should be made know why so they can improve.
Blind/toxic positivity leads to a worsening product.
I’m not happy with how things have gone with the game, and Krafton more or less pushed me out.
This game IMO could have been amazing if they made it more along the lines of Grim Dawn or Titan Quest (ie. offline with optional co-op). It didn’t need the online/seasonal nonsense that it has.
Personally the game moved into Wolcen 2.0 territory (although I believe even they made the game completely offline now).
Anyone that do not think people keep playing Blizzard games over the past 3 decades (they are celebrating 35 years next year) NOT mainly because they DO enjoy the games is copium, and not base on reality.
No one is asking people here to like their game or company, but some imaginery copium why their games still so popular other than the obvious (player enjoy the games) is well bias.
And like D3 they’re bleeding customers left and right. Their upside is that their game is based on short-term engagement… at least for the genre.
There’s only a specific amount of people in the world which enjoy Hack’N’Slash looter games… and there’s not enough of them there to allow several products focusing on the same target-group. And Diablo 4 is decently working to keep those players happy.
20-40 hours of gameplay… that’s it for D4 with the vast majority of people. Path of Exile focuses on very long-term engagement, 150+ hours per league, the other extreme.
The issue here is that EHG’s game sadly only has potential for the short-term players, hence it competes with D4 in longevity. It was targeted at mid-level engagement though, hence 60-100 hours, and there it’s extremely unstable already, at the base mechanics.
So yeah, D4 is popular because it’s the best game for that target audience, which are many people, that’s their premise, gathering tons and tons of people which don’t stay long.
LE cannot do that.
From my personal experience and my friendlist I can tell the following. 90% of my B-Net friendlist hates playing Blizzard games but still play them because of commitment. Everyone I know said “D4 will need 1+ expension to become a good game.”. Even people who don’t play D4 got this message. All but 1 friend I started playing D4 with stopped playing D4 not because they think the game is bad… nah just because thy got exactly what the thought they would get… forgetfull story and gameplay with 0 skill involved.
Noone is unhappy and everyone got what they wanted out of D4 at least in the group of people I keep contact with. Sure D4 is most likely the most casual friendly game arround this time if we don’t count older titles. That’s why D4 is in a rather good state because all other companies have forgotten that unskilled players with little time make the majority of the playerbase.
D4 actually has similar retention rate as Poe 2…
People has overlap the steam chart and the half life is similar, about 2 weeks (50% drop)
People who play 100s of hours into Poe league are not the norm.
It is faster to get a character to online in d4 for sure, but d4 make it very easy to make multiple characters /builds and it’s not uncommon for people to make multiple characters and builds prolonging playtime. Also it has a clever seasonal design which I am surprised others did not copy, which is the seasonal journey with carrot at the end.
It is a series of challenges over many chapters ( of escalating difficulties and progress ) and it give a season a completion. A casual player will take a couple of weeks or longer to complete it and it have a feel good when done. It say congratulations for finishing the season. Keep going if you enjoy it or some back next season. It’s important that someone finish a season happy.
They usually have a pet and titles for completion.
I have not played much Poe 2, but my experience as well as from the baldy mouth himself ( Chris Wilson) that most players quit around mid yellow map.
So most people quit when they got bore, which is my personal experience, though occasionally I pushed over a month or so if I am enjoying a league or build.l the longest e I played in a league is 1.5 month.
lE by comparison has half- life of 1 week base on last league. ( see steam chart) .
There is alot of talks here about more end game, but I think it is not remotely the most critical issue when the retention rate is so fast.
I don’t understand the more endgame crowd. The game has issues and people want more issues on top of existing issues.
More endgame is only good for advertisement so people talk about the game. Most people don’t play endgame a lot others not at all.
To me it’s all about the league mechanic. Abyss in PoE2 was fun and added to the game without it beeing as badly implemented as a comercial brake. The new PoE2 mechanic is painfull. Mapping alone in PoE2 isn’t cutting it for me that’s why I stoped playing once my bear druid was at a point when I said “It’s playable.” .
Seasons rise and fall with the quality of the season and how engaging it is. The last D3 season for example was a boatload of fun.
Two very important points.
LE is ignoring completely the “fun factor” of a game. Which is fine, making a serious game for serious gamers is a valid choice, but it obviously limits considerably the potential players base, and the retention rate.
No achievements or goals whatsoever, be they Steam achievements or seasonal targets.
No seasonal mechanics (apart from “PoE makes money doing seasons so it must be a good thing”, I have no idea why LE even has seasons in the first place).
No temporary events or bosses or anything seasonal and fun.
None of these are huge priorities, but all are easy to implement ways to increase retention and attract new players. Much more, I think, than additional complex endgame mechanics, and less costly to develop.
I think we are about in agreement LE has not manage to nailed the °fun° in the game.
The one week half’-life retention rate should be a indication that a significant amount of players quit well before any meaningful end game interaction.
The fun progression of character is what is needed most. Crazy take. adding MORE stuff do not attract people to returned to a game, when people do not enjoy the gameplay progression.
I played the PoE2 season and it was fun as long as i had to toy arround with my Druid. Once I was done with it PoE2 was just PoE2 again. Oustanding in so little ways annoing in so many. Then a friend said “Let’s play D4!”. What should I sayß It’s just a fun smooth game for some brainafk happy hours.
Difference is I have 0 expectiations for D4 because Blizzard is clownfiesta. I had some expectations for PoE2 and they undelivered here and there making it more a meh experience. I had high expectations for LE and was there almost the whole ride and liked many things and I had high expectations. Then 0.8 hit and everything after and my expectations were crushed and then ground to dust.
maybe I’m so unhappy with LE right now because it was so awesome in the past and now I would rather play D4, Superfuse or Undecember instead of LE and I dislike the last two games a lot ^^.
Oh? Does it?
How’s the daily flooring count?
How’s the overall playtime invested?
I would argue D4 has more players playing short term.
Yes, that’s true, I agree.
But that’s where the moolah comes from. The lovely gravy flows… where the dosh exists.
It’s a universal psychological law that when you engage longer-term with something your barrier to paying something is respectively lower.
You mean the 6 total viable builds in their game you’re through with in a single league? Maybe 2? As a relatively casual player?
What reason do you have to come back? Anything ‘new’ there to make you enjoy the gameplay again?
Because it’s not clever?
It’s absolute garbage? Always was?
Semi persistence which screws over competition is a major blunder.
Altars of Lilith staying unlocked? Who thought that up? It’s the decision of someone utterly incompetent.
Yeah, and that’s fine!
Leaves a ton above to come back to.
As you state… they leave when they get bored (quitting from vanity fading, hence repetition setting in) rather then lack of goals.
That’s how you get people coming back, you provide a ton… and the more experienced you are the more you can accomplish in that timeframe.
Yes, and those need to be fixed first.
Coherent enjoyable gameplay throughout the bank is mandatory for a product to do well, agreed.
Actually no. It’s how you keep the people which are long-term engaged potentially… well… actually engaged.
Those people have a relatively loose bank account compare to the short-term players.
Yep, absolutely so. That’s very much agreeable here.
And that’s also a important point playing into it.
Buying a Blizzard game will get you a forgetable experience to use a bit of time. Not good at all… but acceptable indeed!
Much like a Bethesda game will provide you with a broken janky mess.
Or a Ubisoft open-world game will provide you with mediocre trash and loads of tedium.
If you know what you get into then it’s fine to not have the top end… you knew it after all!
EHG promised the world though and delivered a puddle.
I think Your bias against blizzard has affect your perspective.
At the end of the day, if a game is not fun, people will not play or return.
If you look at the subreddits for d4, poe2 and last epoch, you know Reddit, known for the most toxic entitled people . D4 sub is significantly more friendly than Poe 2 and LE.
You can go to wow and its Sunshine and Rainbow. I think it regained its throne over ff14 as mmo.
Not sure about overwatch 2 , last I checked it was hit hard by Chinese game marvel heroes .
The point is blizzard has a successful formula ( fun) that attract the masses and have people come back regularly to play.
They regularly give discount, give out free stuff, engage with players , takes to content creator have test realms for testing.
The player housing in wow is absolute hit. I barely play wow but it still amazing to look at other housings. They do not juts t add hosting, they made entire region of neighborhoods.
You would be surprised how many psychological factors play into people playing vastly beyond fun.
Competitive games especially are prone to that, actively causing people not suited for it to mentally deteriorate even.
But it’s still upholding for games without competition, sunken-cost fallacy for example does the job really well in ‘keeping you beyond fun’.
Yep, that I agree with! And it’s only underlining my position actually.
The more ingrained people are with using it long-term the more likely it is to become toxic. Extreme stances, rigid thinking… needs time to build.
If your similar game has a lack of extreme stances despite no significant moderation differences then it actually showcases your game’s not doing well in terms of player retention.
You can universally look around… Tarkov? Toxic. Dark&Darker? Toxic. Poe 1/2? Toxic.
Nigh every game which is based on either competition or has a distinct metric for success included is becoming toxic.
Why?
Because it’s human nature to have a pecking order. Social status matters for people and hence superiority is a big thing. Playing casually? You won’t reach the end… hence you’re not doing it ‘right’. The fun is put to the side, it’s goal-deriven, not fun-deriven suddenly.
You sure?
WoW has the low results again, showing a downward trend towards BfA times.
Starcraft 2 is basically dead.
Hearthstone is also only limping along.
Overwatch 2 is going decent… because they have literally no competition in the direct genre. Their biggest competitor is TF2 basically.
D4 is their second half-way decent producer.
Good enough.
I wouldn’t ever try to argue ‘Blizzard has a success formula’ though… because if that’s one then I fear for gaming overall.
Just sad that a ton of stuff has turned into shit instead.
Also player housing is always loved, nigh universally. Be it PoE 1 Hideouts, be it the Lost Ark island, be it Everquest 2 housing… wherever you watch ‘we offer player housing’ has been nigh universally well received.