I think the new chapter 1 looks great. But story wise, I feel that The End of Time comes to soon now. It feels less… epic. At that point in the story not all three shards are collected yet. And thus it feels more random to be sucked into another time. Before the patch, the adventure was longer, the three shards were combined, the Epoch was formed, and then you suddenly arrive in The End of Time. Epic.
Correlated to that, the choosing of a mastery feels too soon for me as well. The player is only getting to know the characters (class) at that point, but now with less passive points invested, less skills unlocked and less specialised skills. Moreover, once a mastery is selected, odds are that the player cannot spend passive points in it yet, since there are not enough points in the class passives yet.
So, my feedback is that I think it would be better to have The End of Time at a later point in the story.
One of the reasons they probably did this in this way is so that you become your subclass sooner in the game’s play cycle? I dunno. I have not had time to play it yet so I can’t agree or disagree at the moment but I hope there’s at least some rational reason for it to work that way. Maybe the overall story after that point improves. Here’s hoping.
End of Time being introduced early does affect the pacing of the story, compared to before, but at the same time, it feels better from a gameplay perspective. I think the devs were wanting to trim down the new player experience since town hubs are a thing now, with End of Time being one of two, currently.
That same logic applies to the early mastery change as well.
The best way would probably be to make a new quest to get your mastery located somewhere in chapter 1.
The lore of absorbing the memories of your alternates pasts or whatever isn’t all that important, especially since the class selection mini dungeon got removed.
On the other hand entering the end of time after the “ruined era arc” was by far the most memorable event in my first playthrough.
The way you hop in and out of the end of time now is more of a “WTF” than a “WOW”.
You do however gain the masteries inherent bonus sooner. Like Beastmasters now get their +1 companion sooner, etc.
But the OP brings up some interesting feedback/points. Thought out and supported. I haven’t played it yet as I’m a little burnt out right no on leveling up characters and have decided to way for 1.0 (or first iteration of seasons whichever come sooner).
Yeah maybe. I dunno. I have heard the complaint repeatedly that it takes too long to get done with the main campaign or that it’s boring. Maybe they’re planning on rebalancing how long it takes to level in general along with these changes.
Personally I’m fine with how it was before. I don’t remember exactly how long it took me to get done with the main campaign and move on to Mono’s, but it didn’t feel like an extremely long amount of time.
The shortest time to collecting all passive points and idol slots probably got a little longer courtesy of chapter 1 being expanded. It gets offset a bit thanks to the new passive point quest.
In my usual route if I do that and the Ancient Hunt quest I used to skip I don’t need to do the Liath’s Tower quest. That let’s me go to monos straight after finishing up in Heoborea.
TLDR:time to get to monos is about the same as before
That said I hope they don’t stretch the story too much with future reworks on the other chapters.
Awesome, thanks for the info; That being the case, I am decidedly neutral on these changes. I wasn’t super excited by the story to begin with, so it being a little off from before isn’t going to impact my enjoyment.
I usually used to stop spending my passive points once I’ve had 20 points in the base mastery. So by the time I had the mastery choosing quest I had 5-7 unspent points which was pretty odd. Now it is better cos i can spend them into my mastery sooner
But how do you do that? You have to click through a warning that the choice is permanent (which is more than you get for your class choice), you can see all of the skills, passives and mastery bonuses before hand to allow you to make an informed choice.
It doesn’t even take long to get to the mastery choice, even if you don’t get someone to give you a lift to the end of time.
Yeah it feels kinda jarring just randomly ending up in end of time, I thought it would be taking us to that old thing we use to have for picking mastery.
I think getting the mastery where it is currently works fine (outside of balance, we’re so much more powerful now, the only part of the campaign that has any difficulty is the starting zones, and from then on it’s just easier and easier until you either start monos early, or go to chapter 8), i don’t think getting sent off to end of time at that point feels good at all, it’s just kinda jarring.
I think this also, kind of EHG’s way of combating all the people who literally pour digital tears it takes soooooo long to the mastery quest after they mess up the first time.
That’s not the issue here, and LE needed at least one form of permanent class choice to push players to trying out new alts and experimenting within their already selected mastery.
Plus there’s a warning before choosing your mastery, anyone who messes up even then sort of has only themselves to blame.
Havent played the new patch but there is a clear issue where you get to 20 points into your base class and cant unlock the mastery due to Temple of Eterra having the highest density area in the whole game prior to you getting to end of time
Also the fact Gaspar can just ‘make’ you a Lich anytime they want means you should be able to respec from them too, let alone having to speak to them to class upgrade
You should read my post properly, you might understand, you got enough points prior to just wait until end of time to dump 3-5 points instantly into your new mastery
