Eleven Hour Games doesn’t inspire trust in the future of Last Epoch

General
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Last Epoch was first released in Early Access all the way back in 2019, with a full release planned for 2020. The game was actually released on 2024, still unfinished, still without the last campaign chapters, and still changing major mechanics like the introduction of a dodge move. To me, this screams “indie developer than didn’t manage its finances properly and was thus forced to release whatever they had ready”.

Then we got the first roadmap, which quickly derailed. Notice how the May 2024 roadmap was talking about the fourth big release, which we only got in 2026 – almost two years after the roadmap itself.

We got a somewhat lacking 1.1 release, a very good 1.2 release, then a very lackluster 1.3 release… And things went spiralling down. Eleven Hour Games were sold to Krafton, and then admitted Last Epoch was not profitable.

They announced an expansion that we have no idea in which year will arrive, announced paid classes, and then released the (deservedly) much maligned roadmap, basically saying “yo, we will release stuff in the future”.

This entire thing was a mess. Krafton is well known for being inconsistent and making poor business decisions (arguably, buying EHG was one such decisions). What point was there in announcing an expansion when EHG haven’t even finished the game’s main campaign? If the idea was to excite players, the lack of any tangible information (forget release date for the expansion, a release year would have been a novelty) and the announcement of paid classes had the opposite effect.

And we arrive at the present. With EHG still following a very slow update cadence (“small indie company!”, right). And, after months, releasing another lackluster update (basically copying Path of Exile’s breach and corruption mechanics). But I want to focus on one thing:

“Hype Week”

We had the first announcement on March 16th, then one on March 17th, then March 18th, March 19th. Patch notes on March 20th and… The announcement of microtransactions on March 25th, with the season’s release on March 26th.

WTF was that gap between patch notes and the season release? Did EHG honestly think building anticipation and letting it rot before release was their best course of action? Why didn’t they announce the season’s new microtransactions between the reveals, so more people would see them?

Plus, the announcements of “Hype Week” were released on the game’s forum, on the game’s subreddit, and shown on the Steam library page of people who own the game. None of those is a suitable place where to get new players. By this point in their trajectories, the creators of Path of Exile were making big press tours, so new people would learn about the game. What is Eleven Hour Games doing?

This is what concerns me the most about the future of Last Epoch. The game has a lot of potential, combat is fun, but Eleven Hour Games does not inspire trust – honestly, it doesn’t look like they know what they are doing at all. It isn’t a matter of scope – the good old “poor little indie developers” excuse doesn’t cut it here. Poor decision after poor decision have left me wondering how long until Krafton just gives up and closes them down.

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so dont get me wrong, season sucks.

But this is the new trend. GGG released the full patch notes for mirage on feb 26th, then launched mirage on march 6th, basically a week later.

This is so people have time to comb the notes and “theory craft” etc

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I don’t think so, I think this season is great and I’m happy for any new content we get after all the negative backlash from the community. EHG and Krafton are committed to this game through the expansion and PlayStation release at the very minimum.

EHG is hiring and expanding their team while other studios are laying off developers or closing studios altogether. We should be happy we still have much to look forward to with Last Epoch.

I missed the part where we are even paying for these content releases, at least until the paradox class with the expansion and even that won’t be expensive compared to almost everything else in life :slight_smile:

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Would you care to expand on why you think this is the case? Regardless of your opinions of our objectives, releasing seasons that ‘suck’ surely isn’t something we want. We’d be happy to hear how we can improve!

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lmao to this topic.
EHG already failed (financially). but theyre doing their best to keep it going.

id rather cheer them on rather than pour water on them.

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Season would be an 8 maybe 9 out of 10 for me if you guys hadn’t absolutely gutted 2 things.
1: Imprints
2: Explsoive traps
As it stands now its about a 4 - great new content, I even like the corruption but man imprints 2-3 days and not a single 77 item it’s actually ridiculous for people who are more than casual but get 0 payback for the time and effort they’re putting in now. Gutted.

Rule of thumb with nerfs is like that of spicey food - start low and increase over time IF needed.

Buffing umbral was excessive and not needed but I don’t play it so ya know, still sad to see people 3 second 1 shot kill the pinnacle boss of bosses. Should make you guys feel a little silly too that you don’t have good play testers.

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The thing I agree with is that the communication was/is one of the main problems of EHG.

I still think the multiplayer implementation was the key element that went wrong in the development cycle. When they started working on this and hat 2 builds of the game simultaneously this was too much of a struggle. Things went down from there. Too many bugs, missed release goals, everything went slower.

The struggle with trade was a big controversy as was the selling to tencent and then krafton. LE lost its Indi bonus that protected them from bad reputation for years before.

For me LE is a great game and I’ve played it a lot since EA on steam. It has a great spot between PoE1/2 and D4 (while D4 is definitely not a great game for me personally).

The new season I like better than the last one. The improvements are all very nice. But it feels like they’re still on the road to 1.0 and bring all the systems in line.

What I like the most is the skill system and the faction system. The progression curve from start to finish is very good, imho.

The “new” skills if this season are a downer for me. They don’t add any meaningful variation to the gameplay. Bladestorm has its own skill tree now. While this is okay and a good decision, this adds nothing to the gameplay we had before. Just developing a bladestorm build is a bit different now with some more options. And Shadow Rend is kind of a version of a variation if Synchronized Strike. I struggle to find synergies that feel really smooth.

Endgame gets more interesting with the additional stuff. New items and corruption system (which is far more interesting than corruption in Poe 1/2) are nice.

LE has far more meaningful Uniques than other game where 99% of uniques is garbage even for leveling).

I hope that LE becomes profitable to carry on. The pricing in the cosmetics is absolutely fair. No selling of power or even convenience. Until this day no shitification.

30k players is ok if it’s enough to pay the development. Warframe had this kind of numbers for a long time, too. LE doesn’t need to compete in numbers. It’s great to get a growing player base but pretending that the game is dead with 30k players is absolutely not valid.

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It’s clearly NOT1

EHG literally came out and said they were finnicially not viable. Which are Kind Word to say they are losing Money…that was when the player counts were far more then now.

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410#1y

Now Look at warframe,. I think when warframee had 40K, they were a smaller team, also they were on an upward Trend in Player Numbers.

Also, unlike LE, and in fairness every arpg, the Graph is more stable with every high Valley number. unlike arpg where its a big sin curve. Also barred a few weeks of Season, LE number dropped to 4 figures for most of the time.

What I will say, in line with your Point , is that LE need to build their Studio to be Financilly profitable at 30k+ Peak, and 2 week „half-life“, at a 3-4 months Season cycle.