Once you get to the “endgame” you are essentially grinding out improvements that are not very relevant and diminish as you continue. You unlock every timeline, and you are able to run level 90-100 maps, and then you begin asking yourself, “why?” Like, ok, why would I clear another map? What might I get from it? A 0.05% improvement if I’m lucky? Sure, it may happen, but it doesn’t look or feel any different from you doing the same thing before and after.
You may say that this is what a core ARPG game loop is. You click on things until they are done animating, collect loot, keep the pieces that increase your stats and then are able to click on higher level animated things, etc. in perpetuity. You wouldn’t be wrong. But ideally there is also something that you are working towards at the same time. In and of itself this loop is not rewarding unless you have a very addictive personality type. For the rest of us there needs to be a goal, real or imaginary.
Now, don’t misunderstand, I love the Last Epoch. It’s a great, fun, beautiful game. I’m glad I paid for it even though it’s in Early Access (something I never do otherwise). That said, I haven’t touched it in many months because I’m bored of having no goals. I tried most classes that interest me, I tried multiple builds for each class, but at this point I have nothing to look forward to. I’m actually glad we are got Multiplayer not because I want to play with other people, but because it’s a chance to start anew.
I do dread reaching the endgame, though.
Please, EHG, give us some goals. I don’t care what they are. Doesn’t have to be player power. Maybe make the timeline bosses drop pages from lore books, so we could piece together some ancient history or something. Literally anything is better than absolutely nothing. Make each volume have a thousand pages. That’ll keep us busy.
How about this, so there’s a history volume, right? It has pages 1 to 1000. And once you collect them, the book it put together and does … something. BUT, because of different timelines, many (or all) of the pages can be different. Let’s say page 256 comes in a dozen different versions. When the time comes to combine the pages into a tome, you’d choose a version of the page that you want, which then affects the end result. With enough variation everyone can have a slightly different book in the end. That’d be awesome and also in line with the whole timelines theme. Again, the book doesn’t need to affect player power, could be a cosmetic of some sort or do something silly like change the portal animation/color/size/shape whatever. It’d still be a great goal that a person could work towards for months or years.
