I have several thoughts on the design of the endgame, and perhaps the game systems are too engrained with the current momentum leading up to the 1.0 release to make any immediate changes, but perhaps these things can be considered for the future when designing additional content for the game. Most of my feedback will be from the perspective of a single-player experience, and thus some of my suggestions may need to be adapted to account for multiplayer.
All in all, I absolutely love what I see from Last Epoch so far and really enjoy the game and I look forward to more content. Despite my suggestions and criticisms, I do continue to play Last Epoch in its current state because I think it’s an overall fun game. In fact, most of my suggestions I think go hand-in-hand with expanding the content in the game and increasing play time by improving the gameplay loop.
The Monoliths should have more identity. It hasn’t been clear to me if each map in a Monolith is from a unique set of maps for that Monolith, but it’s not immediately obvious thus perhaps they could use more theme/identity. This could potentially apply to the pool of map modifiers as well (perhaps related to the pool of Blessings?). There will need to be a balance between keeping things interesting and giving each Monolith its own identity, but I think making a Monolith distinctive enough so I remember which Monolith I’m actually running after dozens of Echos in a row could be a good thing.
I would like to preface for my following feedback that I think the dungeons and boss fights have been an exceptionally fun experience in Last Epoch, and I cannot wait for more of this content. I really appreciate the dungeons have unique mechanics with their dungeoun-specific skills, and boss fights which posses many attacks patterns, mechanics, and phases. I personally find dynamic and interesting combat one of the most enjoyable parts of games.
That being said, I think the dungeons and boss fights should be the benchmark which establishes the motivation to grind in the game, and what to grind in the game and boss fights should not be gated behind grinding Stability. Instead, the boss fight is the challenging benchmark which informs the user they need to grind more. If a player has both the skill and the build to take on a boss immediately, they should be able to do so freely. Drop rates may need to be adjusted to accommodate this, but I think the gameplay loop would be more satisfying this way.
Aspirational content should not be pushing Corruption as high as possible, but I reiterate, boss fights and dungeons should be the aspirational content. I think Last Epoch can take inspiration from the recent and overwhelming success of Souls-like games and the Monster Hunter series. Ultimately, the main source of difficulty of the game should be increased by progressively adding more content to the game. I realize that while boss and dungeon content is minimal in the game’s infancy (or balancing adjustments still need to be made), Corruption is an inexpensive way to increase play time.
Perhaps Stability and Corruption should be used to change and upgrade Blessings directly instead (the Blessing for the Monolith could be unlocked the first time you beat that Monolith’s boss (e.g. Maybe you only grind stability the FIRST time to go through the Echo quests and unlock the boss fight to get the God’s blessing to farm that Monolith and as you do your favor with him increases allowing you to upgrade the Blessing, as opposed to grinding Stability every time to access the Boss fight to do it)). Ultimately, grinding Stability and Corruption from that point forward would just be a means for taking on the next challenging boss or dungeon.
Related to the preceding feedback, the current boss fights and dungeons should potentially be more challenging the first time you encounter them. I personally breezed through the non-empowered Monoliths with my first character. Now, I do not know if this is because of balance, intention, I just got lucky, or my experience with previous ARPGs really carried me through the process. But once I fought all the bosses and completed all the dungeons, what’s the motivation to do it all over again with the only difference being the numbers are higher? Personally, that’s not very interesting and from my perspective, I’ve already experienced all the content in the game. I don’t want to min-max my character just so I can bump up the difficulty setting, I want to min-max my character so I can take on the next boss, dungeon, or new Monolith.
This suggestion is going to be highly dependent on multiplayer vs single-player: Consider modifying the the experience penalties both for being under- and over-leveled. Being over-leveled could have a much more aggressive penalty to experience than it currently does so that grinding easier content is more about min-maxing gear at that level. On the other hand, consider removing the experience cap if you’re able to complete harder content (there are two factors to this, being able to actually complete it thus receiving the echo rewards, and also the time it takes to complete it, i.e. you may be able to complete it but not in a time efficient manner). I do not see the need to limit the player’s progression if they are skilled enough to take on harder content. This need for under-leveled xp penalty may only be a symptom of a lack of content or balancing of the game/itemization/progression relative to the content.
And just for fun, here’s a TL;DR of my post generated by ChatGPT:
Your feedback on Last Epoch suggests that the Monoliths should have more identity and theme to distinguish them from each other, and that the dungeons and boss fights should be the motivating factors for grinding in the game, rather than Stability. You suggest that the difficulty of the game should be increased by adding more content, rather than pushing Corruption as high as possible. Instead, Stability and Corruption could be used to upgrade Blessings directly. You also suggest that the current boss fights and dungeons should potentially be more challenging the first time you encounter them, and that the experience penalties for being over-leveled should be more aggressive to encourage min-maxing gear at that level. Lastly, you suggest that the need for under-leveled xp penalty may only be a symptom of a lack of content or balancing in the game.