Once a year, I give the LE a try, but I see the same things over and over, which turns me away from it. I like all mechanics in the game (Dungeons, Skills, Endgame (kind of), Crafting, Filter, etc). But the gameplay is not here.
Enemy feeling. The feeling of the character’s skills and movement improved throughout the years, but I cannot say the same about the enemies. They feel empty, transparent, slidish(??? How can I describe it… they don’t have natural movements of how they look, they just slide on the surface), their abilities have no sound or are not telegraphed at all. They turn like they stay on circle platform, which turns them around. Let’s take the Mirror. A lot of happening on the screen, but I don’t feel any damage impact on my health, it just goes down, and I can’t feel/see why, what ability is damaging, who to avoid. There is no sound of damaging abilities. It is not only a mirror, though. It is related to all enemies. Let’s see the example with the first boss I fight, that Emberwing or something. Don’t feel any of his abilities, nor hear, just splashes on the screen. Almost all abilities are not telegraphed, and I have no idea what he is about to do. It is not like I don’t see what is happening on the screen; it is what I don’t feel at all. You need to learn from PoE guys and find out what they are cooking. In PoE, they started to address that thing a long time ago. For example, a Roa problem. They would kill you instantly, and you couldn’t feel it, see, or predict their actions. How did they fix it - Roa, before charging, has sound (squawk!), then you hear the sound of their feet running, then if they bump into you, you can feel it and feel the health impact. Their actions are not instant and have some micro delays, so I could react. And they have this sort of thing for every enemy. Even if I fight those enemies in a big group and there are a lot of them, I still can hear and feel the impact of their abilities. It is not the case in the Mirror, just a lot of flashes on the screen, that’s it. Or let’s take that rogue you can open and fight. It just spamming abilities all over the place and moves like crazy without delays. Screaming something without delays… I fought them a lot and cannot understand what they are doing, how to fight them, or how to determine what is dangerous or not. I don’t feel or hear ground effects. What are those purple circles on the ground? What are they doing? I see it flies to the ground, then stays there. If I step on it, I can see my health go down, but I don’t hear or feel anything. Same for poison. I hope you have an idea. I can keep on and on about it. All enemies have “feeling” problems (Sound, React Time, Impact on health, Telegraphing, Movement, Abilities time).
Difficulty. There was a masochist mode. I liked it. Why remove? In general, the game is too easy. Even easier than Diablo many times. I hope you will realize that this is the retention problem for the game. People getting 100 lvl in one day, then throw it away, since they have “completed” the game. It is not right. After two weeks, no one plays the game anymore. You can see it clearly on the charts. You don’t need a masochist level of difficulty, but it must be something in between.
Only movement on the left click. The reason I need it is so I couldn’t click on anything during the fight and move freely, but it is not the case. I have micro stuns during the fight because my “movement only” picks up items or clicks on every interactable object. Why??? I see the easy fix for picking up items. Let me choose the key that I will hold in order to pick up the item. It will solve the problem instantly. I will pick up items only when I want to do so by holding the button. (In my case, in PoE, it is the space bar). Also, if I hover over my minion, I have his health bar on my screen instead of the enemy. I saw people report it many years ago, and it is still not addressed. Kind of frustrating that you don’t see the enemy’s health bar and don’t know what to do since you can’t see how much damage you’re doing to it or how much health it has left. For clicking on objects, maybe give me some option to hold the same button as for picking up items to interact with them. Overall, this will resolve the movement-only problem.
Disconnect. I play only HC. I lost my character during a disconnect because someone in my network decided to take the whole traffic and download something. Yeah, it is my problem. I forgot to turn the bandwidth restriction rule back on. But I don’t have this problem with PoE or Diablo. If I disconnect, my character never dies even if he is surrounded by a lot of enemies and I have less then 30% health. I return alive every time after disconnect. In LastEpoch, I don’t. I die, and this is frustrating.
These problems are from several years ago, from betta, and persist to the present day. I wish you would fix it. Those problems are turning me and my friends away from the game. But I hope it will have more attention, so we can play this wonderful game in the future.