if someone doesnt find starting new characters fun… they simply wont. There no value or estimation to speak of.
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Thats interesting because I never did the normal monos more than once each per character… i.e. I rushed through them like part of the campaign with my aim to get to the empowered versions as soon as possible… I am sure that I would have gone absolutely bonkers doing normal monos 10x over - especially because of the relatively poor drops & xp gain compared with empowered ones…
obviously I then hit a brick wall because my chars were in the 70’s and 80’s trying to do level 100 content but that made the end-game challenging for me and the loot quality was subjectively great at the higher levels…
for me, the hamster wheel turning comes with pushing corruption & trying to min/max… but most of that for me has been when my char had already dinged lvl 100… and yes… after climbing to and farming 250+ corruption, monos can get damn stale because the only thing you really are looking for is that 1 in 100/1000/10000/100000 and eventually 1 in a 1000000 drop to improve your build…
even with Dungeons added recently… there isnt much more incentive once you reach that point…
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I like to create new chars. Playing monolith for a few days on a single character, creating a new one and starting over feels like a relief. This makes me realise how “empty” the current monoliths feel.
I haven dozens of dozens of very promising characters that might or might not have the potential to clear empowered in a decent high enough corruption level.
My LE play record is very long. I’ve joined since the EA and have - as a more casual player - invested around 1.6k hours. There’s no other game I ever put so many hours in (vanilla WoW maybe). My next steam game sits at 400h.
The main time sink for me was creating new characters. I like the monolith on every character only for a few hours. Around characterlevel 90 I lose interest. In my whole playtime I didn’t bring a single character to level 100.
I’ve plenty in the 90s, highest is a 97 VK. I tried to farm corruption, but my highest corruption is around 180 on this character. I think no other characters corruption level comes close to this. Most of my characters barely make it to empowered.
It’s not because I’m bad in building characters. When we do our community challenges I’m doing fine compared the time spent. I’d say I’m playing relatively effective.
But the incentive to play a certain character just drops at some point. All my highest/best characters are the one I created during the challenges when there was some kind of competition that pushed me. But I did not really feel like playing these characters after those challenges (they last around 1-2 weeks real time). I feel exhausted after it and need something fresh. Often this is when I start a different character then. Sometimes I also take a LE break.
Here’s what i think the reasons are:
- Charakters feel good to play untill they reach a certain level. Around 70-80 there come several things together:
- Gear progression gets a lot slower
- Build is somewhat finished (Skills are maxed, the most important passives are there)
- The difficulty curve gets flattened as you are too strong for normal timelines, yet you haven’t access to empowered
- When I reach empowered it feels a bit refreshing for a short amount of time
- Difficulty gets more challenging
- Loot and monolith gets more interesting
- But I have to force myself to get to that point
- There’s “just” the to reach empowered or a certain corruption level to show off
- What not happens to me is that I just play a character for the gameplay and for the fun. I’ve never had a monolith play session where I lost track of the time and though “oh, so much fun, just one more echo” where I’m surprised at the end how far I got. The exact opposite is the case:
- I look a the echo web and I see boring stuff that I have to do to get to that targeted corruption level. Everytime I kill a Shade and the web resets I’m kind of pissed because I need to regrind the web and start all over.
The solution may seem very easy: Stick with one build and push it. This way I wouldn’t need to repeat all the grind to empowered so often. But playing a single character for such a “long” time is just not for me. And if I have to force myself to do something to reach certain goals, I think there is something missing.
Warframe does things very similar and is grindy as hell, too. Propably even more grindy than LE. But in Warframe the actual gameplay was/is so much fun to me that I don’t pay attention to my goals. I know what my goals are so I choose the content to maybe farm a specific item. But the way to that item, the moment to moment gameplay is so much fun that the time playing is the reward. The drops common top.
In LE the endgame doesn’t feel the same. Echoes are hurdles to overcome and progress. You don’t finish an echo and say “Oh man, already over? It was so much fun, I wished it lasted for an hour!” Despite we all rush through them as fast as we can to make the main gameplay to last as short as possible.
Why is that so? Maybe when the moment to moment gameplay would be much more exciting, more crunchy and impactful. But still then, the monolith concept is not to spent much time in single echoes. It’s to complete as much echoes as possible in the shortest amount of time. Everything else feels like wasted time. And isn’t it remarkable when the actual gameplay feels like a waste of time?
Wow… this sounds so negative. Why am I still playing this game? Maybe because I already spend so much time and don’t want to admit that this might have been spent better in another game? Maybe I also see the potential of LE in the future.
I’m really looking forward to MP. And I hope for some interesting Arena mods that make playing it in a party a lot of fun. Maybe corruption pushing in a group is more exciting.
But there has to happen something with the moment to moment combat and the sense of progression around level 80.
If killing monsters in general would add something. Like I put a special item on and while I kill enemies a progress bar (or faction reputation) fills up. At the end I can choose rewards like adding a flat amount of corruption to a timeline 8f my choice. This way the the gameplay element of killing mobs would get a bit more rewarding and would not be seen as an obstacle between you and the end of an echo.
Cheers!
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No, I disagree. I actually think both the other more recent ARPGs I play (POE, D3) have fun endgame play. Mono in LE is just in a weird spot - as much as I think LE combat doesnt feel punchy, it is still fun enough. But in mono you just feel like you’re wasting time if you’re engaging too much with the “trash mobs” and not rushing to finish the objectives.
As much as this is something I would be interested in, EHG has made it very clear they wont have mandatory MP content like this. I still wish they would consider content that would strongly encourage grouping (because I seriously think no one would consider public grouping otherwise).
In any case, as mentioned in the earlier para. I dont think the problem is with ARPGs gameplay. And an ARPG doesnt need to pretend to be something else in order for us to derive fun from it (though I am not suggesting they shouldnt try to incorporate gameplay elements from other genre, as POE had done).
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Agree. But the way POE solve this is 2 folds: (1) trying to make gameplay fresh by incorporating gameplay elements from other genre; but more importantly, its (2) layering additional complexity in itemisation and game systems with each expansion such that there is always something new to learn and interactions to discover, even for veteran players.
While this is necessary for a game to have longevity, as you explained (which I agree btw), you end up with newer players who come in frustrated with the incredible depth of a mature game.
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I think this kinda thinking just means that the people that need that to stay hooked simply are not big enough fans of the genre.
As a friend of mine says “if you are bored of maps, then you are simply bored of poe.”
And that rings true to most complaints for me of being bored of “repeatedly grinding the same map” thats what defines the genre, and you can spice it up here or there for sure with extra content, different layouts etc. But if you are tired of killing monsters and farming for the 1/1000 loot drop, then you are bored of the genre.
You have to remember, games like LE/PoE/Diablo are not mmos, they are designed to be played for a grueling amount of hours, they are not designed to be virtual life spaces like MMOs with minigames or social spaces.
People who play this genre specifically generally would get extremely mad if the devs wasted time adding puzzles and minigames I feel like.
The end game currently does feel like abit of a slog fest. If anyone’s played torchlight 2 with the synergy mod there use to be a “raid” like content where you go into the dungon with hard mobs and can target farm specific uniques from the different boss rooms. even grim dawn you complete a few random map runs you end up in a boss room with a grp of randomly generated bosses/mutations to fight. The bosses in LE needs to be more easier to reach rather than slogging through 30-50 echos and fight it once, didnt get the drop…repeat.
The echoes themselves definitely need to reward more for killing rather than just rushing to the objective. There needs to be some incentive for killing mobs in the echoes.
Endless wave arenas is always a turn off for alot of people, myself included. Grim dawn again have done this pretty well in the form of crucible. it’s not endless it has a limit plus each wave may contain unique enemies, bosses or even nemesis to make it that much more interesting to fight. one can even set up defences in the map to mix things up.
Just hope LE will have more interesting endgame planned as it’s the most crucial part of an ARPG’s longevity.
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For me, the monolith progression feels too gated on repeat playthroughs. Don’t need gear, I have my attic full of hand-me-downs and leveling uniques. Don’t need levels, a well-built, decently-geared character easily outscales the content at the pace it’s presented. Farming for the sake of farming feels inefficient because rewards are better in empowered.
To me it feels like the only play that makes sense (aside from maybe making some Legendaries as a side activity) is to beeline through the monos and by the time I hit empowered I feel done with the character or get distracted by another build idea. Basically, there’s such a long stretch of an uneventful slog that I feel like I never get around to playing the endgame.
Edit: I wonder if the core issue is that the monolith progression is so linear and quest-driven that it plays like an extension of the campaign. That certainly matches the way my mind seems to treat it: the early monos are something to get through on the way to the actual endgame.
OK, but why and how?
I won’t tell about PoE, I don’t play it.
I’ve played more than 2K hours of Diablo 3 and for me it was fun. But basically: open a rift, have such a powerful build that we can blindly kill everything without even seeing the types of mobs, kill the boss. Repeat X times. I can’t see where the fun is. One unique kind of activity, meaningless mobs. I had tons of fun and I don’t know why. And I’m sure next time I play it I’ll have fun again.
Only reason I see, which is only part of the explanation: the combat feels good. Very good. Better than in Wolcen (where it feels very good), better than in Last Epoch (where it feels good for me). But there must be another reason?
Why and how is Diablo 3 so fun to play?
Imho, it’s mainly the echo design. Making the quest at the end the only winning condition just makes everything between start and the quest marker meaningless. A lot of uniques and very good rare/exalted come from killing mobs on a map. But for this to somehow feel rewarding you need to go through empowered monos with decent corruption.
The dungeon has a relatively good approach to this. All mobs get increased drop rates for specific exalted items. This is great. Clearing is not a waste of time, it is rewarding because you really feel the increased drop rate. While the modifiers on mono are just so little drops that they only feel like meaning something after a decent amount time spent on a timeline.
Some things to improve the current mono from my pov:
- Lengthen the echoes by also increasing the stability/corruption gains (and adjust rewards), resulting in a comparable playtime to complete a timeline but requiring less number of echoes (=less loading screens)
- or/also make killing enemies meaningfull by adding timeline specific rewards to it
- each timeline is its own faction with its own vendor selling items gated behind reputation that you get from killing enemies within that timeline
- make enemies drop timeline specific booster items that grand a flat amount of stability and others with corruption (decrease the stability reward at the end of the echoes)
- Add conditions like 50% stability increase for completing an echo if you cleared 90% of the map, 25% increase for 50% clear
- drop items that grand stability/corruption (or make them avalible at the timeline vendor) that you can use on other chars or your account as long as they share the stash. This way we could collect them for twinks to get through the monos faster.
- add random encounters with special rewards that only have a chance to appear when you have cleared (90%) the echo you are in. Make them really challenging so it is not given you get that reward
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I agree with this.
The drawback is, for me, that the dungeon itself is not fun at all. The way it is built makes it unpleasant to walk by. I always try to find the shortest way. When I see the two possible doors, I go to the closest one and don’t check the other to compare modifiers. No pleasure being in the dungeon for me. So I know that some people go there in T4 just to find items, but I won’t. 
Lets not forget the context.
D3 has the most fluid gameplay out there, but was done by a AAA company, with millions of budget.
PoE has an incredibly deep and rewading group of systems at endgame, but, to me, is a mechanic and content bloat, absolute hell for newcomers who want to understand the game instead of blindly following a guide. PoE has been out doing seasonal content and updating mechanics for 10 years?
This game is made by an indie company, and is still on early access.
I am sure we will get more content and additional layers of complexity in the monolith progression (I could be mistaken also), I can only expect they don’t end up like PoE (a bloated mess).
Every people has a slightly (or big) different way to have “fun”. I am strongly pushed by grear progression, so even if the path it is somewhat boring, the drive is strong enough for me to get into it.
Not everyone is made for these type of games, not everyone has the mindset to grind for hours on end for meaningless upgrades, for whatever is the gear ceiling, is only natural it gets harder and harder to improve.
One issue is the progression cap is pretty low and the progression rate is really slow. Once you have enough gear and play roadrunner, blaze a trail to the end then rinse repeat.
The stability was increased to make the available content seem longer than it is, which compounded the problem.
The story is now in a disjointed mess with Majasa’s blessing earned and Apophis running loose. The epoch should grant us some ability, call it focus, for lack of a better term to earn double stability points per run or something like that based on epoch’s ability to rebuild the timeline.
I think you misunderstood me. I don’t run them multiple times, per character, but having to run them all again, per alt (10, 15, 20+ alts) makes me not want to bother getting the alts into empowered.
Ok. Based on that I did misinterpret your description…
Personally I dont find it as bad as everyone else does for alts to run the same path… but then again, I only usually create 1 version of each possible class/mastery… so currently 12 different characters (eventually 15)… I rework each individual one through multiple different build ideas to find the build that suits my playstyle AND is capable of pushing high level end-game… so I never get bored by the content - I am concentrating my efforts on building a viable character in each different class (and experiencing each classes skills to a theorycrafting level) which is far more fullfilling than just creating multiple alts and getting them to mono levels…
Even though it doesnt bother me as much as, I do empathise with players who do not play in a similar way… I think and would like to see something like the Corruption boost (currently if you have one char with a high corruption in one timeline, you get bonus corruption in other timelines) working across Alt characters… I think this would be the fairest / most logical way of making it easier to get alts into end-game without just leaving it totally open… Get one char completing all level 100 monos and it gives you a boost for Stability points on alts that means your alts monos will be quicker to reach the timeline end because you will have to run less islands to build up the required stability.
should be fairly easy to code and depending on the boost amount, it could very well solve everyones problems (imho.)
Well, way better end game than most other ARPG’s, POE endgame in my opinion sucks…love this one. Atleast I can play and get to all content, unlike POE. Different opinions I guess 
well if they do not perfect the endgame they will be in trouble, the main story is very slow paced and far too easy people will lose interest and fast without a solid endgame at launch. POE endgame is amazing, but it is not beginner friendly or easy to play by any means. POE though has been out for many years and have worked on their endgame so much longer. LE has potential for sure, in it current state it needs a lot of work.
Yes, this is a known “issue” with the campaign, they’ll most likely do a balance pass closer to 1.0 (or even 0.9 for multiplayer 'cause that’s certainly going to throw a cat amongst the pidgeons!). They have been increasing the difficulty of the newer chapters as they release them, there were many, many threads complaining how difficult Lagon & Majasa were when they were released, but finding a sweet spot where most people find the campaign challenging enough to be interesting but not too much of an obstacle to progression is probably quite tricky.
I love that idea. Right now I feel like I spend roughly 50% of the time in a menu screen clicking on buttons, comparing rewards and modifiers once I get to monoliths.
Therefore, I usually prefer starting a new character because there I get pretty much non-stop gameplay.
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i lost interest in the game after 12 hours, which is sad as i think it has quite a bit of potential. I guess i am still interested but this is definetly early access and i am not a fan of this censorship goin on on this forum, discord and in game chat. People way to sensitive