There are two areas of the game where it feels like EHG is telling the players what should be rewarding to them:
By making us always pick up shards
By limiting the loot filter from being as strict as players want (ie. number of LP)
These two things feel out of place for a developer so interested in player feedback and opinions.
While I’m sure some people find it rewarding to pick up shards, I know many don’t. I’d prefer to have the ability to auto loot all shards below a certain rarity. Preferably a rarity set by the player.
The loot filter limitations are actually a bit more bothersome to me as it assumes everyone enjoys the mystery of if an item that dropped is actually an upgrade. But if you’ve been playing a character for a long time, you might be burned out of checking so many items and want to know if an item you want drops. That too me is more exciting.
I’m hoping EHG will be more open to letting players have a bit more choice in these areas.
Edit: This is such a weird thing to take issue with. I suppose it’s better than the alternative, and if this is what people take issue with, we should be glad there aren’t other, more critical things that aren’t a problem and thus don’t require this attention. But I suppose it also shows you can never please everyone. Wild, this one.
EHG isn’t telling players what should be rewarding to them. They’re telling players that this is how their game works and only players that like that (or aren’t bothered too much about it) are their target audience.
They’ve repeatedly said in the past that they don’t want a game where you only see the things that you want to pick up and you pick them up mindlessly, like in PoE. If that’s an issue for you, then LE isn’t targetted for you and maybe PoE is.
Personally, I’d also prefer if I could autopickup and transfer shards myself. But that’s not the game the devs want to make and I can respect that.
By the way, it’s not called removing player choice, you still have a choice. You can either pick up the shards or not pick them up.
There will always be boundaries that won’t please everyone, but that doesn’t mean that all boundaries should be removed. You have your opinion, the devs have theirs, and I have mine which may be the same as your or the same as the devs’, or neither.
They ask for feedback and have changed their stance on many things. So I’ll just go ahead and offer it when I feel compelled to.
I believe that they stated that they want players to view shards more like items. While they may want that, this isn’t reality for me except for very specific shards. So auto vacuuming most shards would be more appealing to me.
As far as loot filters, they may very well reconsider now that the player numbers are much larger and the feedback volume is understandably larger. I’m not sure why it matters to them what players choose to filter. And it will only be super strict if a player is in character found. Otherwise you’ll want to as how lots of items for trading or alts.
With that said, neither of these two things are deal breakers, just annoying. They remind me a bit of the lead Torchlight 3 dev who was adamant about hiding all damage numbers from the screen as he felt they were just clutter. My feedback there was that I thought it was better to let the players decide if they wanted to see damage numbers.
Sometimes devs get in their own ways with how they like things and lose sight of differing opinions.
That doesn’t change what I said. I just said they’re not telling you how you should feel, they’re just targetting a more or less specific playerbase. And yes, that might change and they might eventually decide to target a different one. But they still won’t be telling you how you should feel. They’ll just be making systems that one type of player likes (or isn’t that bothered by) or not.
They absolutely are telling us how to feel. They are telling us all shards are to feel like items. They don’t. They are telling us we are wrong for wanting deeper filtering of loot. I happen to disagree with them there.
Again, it’s semantics, but they don’t tell you that. They have, very specifically, said before: We WANT you to feel that picking shards and items is special. They’re not telling you that you SHOULD feel that way, just that they’d like you to. And many actually do like it. Which are the players EHG is aiming for. And many aren’t bothered by it. And some are clearly bothered by it and LE isn’t the game for them, at least for now.
But there is a big difference between them wishing you feel that way and them telling you that you DO feel that way.
As I said before, I would also prefer to have shards picking up automatically. I don’t especially care about the filter, since I do agree on them that you should have to evaluate drops rather than making a filter where everything that drops you know you want to pick up. It makes picking up good items more special, rather than an automatic action like I do in PoE.
Maybe when they change the shards like they planned (shards drop less often and in greater quantity) it will also feel better, especially if they also make the convert system they talked about.
