Feedback for 1.1 (as a first cycle player)

[Amplifix]

Will just post my feedback here, “most” of the game is good. This is a write-up of the main things that annoyed me and probably will have to change if you want to appeal to a bigger audience.

Made two characters: Warlock (didn’t do any slamming on this), killed Aberroth. Actually recorded this so can give link to the video. Sorcerer, made it to 800+ corruption (basically glasscannon/elden ring mode), didn’t get any new gear from 200+ corruption as I got stuck trying to slam anything. Most of my gear came from my warlock as I got started.

There is one glaring issue which I will call the main issue with this game:

This game is relying too much on stacked Gamba/RNG elements. It’s what made most of my friends quit and they probably won’t ever come back until this changes. It feels terrible to be playing for 100s of hours and get 0 progress. These systems should be an OPTION and not MANDATORY. There should always be another way to upgrade, even if it takes longer/costs more/is harder.

Personally I have slammed 25+ items (all LP2 or higher), farming like crazy to get a chance on a good slam. Think I’ve spent at least a 100 hours trying to slam my catalyst + wand. Result? 0 progress, my character is the SAME as it was 100 hours earlier. It’s ridiculous that someone would think this could be considered “good game design”. This goes for both COF and MG, I think COF is even worse in this regard.

This system needs a COMPLETE rework. You will NEED to give some guarantees. Let’s take a look at the gamba gameplay loop:

0 - Farm favor (+ items to sell if you are MG).

0 - Farm + gamba your favor away hoping you get the right prophecy for COF players.

1 - Buy the unique/exalted item you want to slam. (MG)

1 - Farm the prophecies, hoping that between all the thrash that drops your LP2+ item also drops. GL if it’s a rare drop as well. (COF)

2 - Go back to 0, now we are going to farm the exalted item to gamba away at temporal sanctum.

3 - Let’s gamba the right stats on the exalted item. Hoping that some forging potential is left to use rune of creation on it.

4 - After the dopamine rush, we now realize we can finally brick our two items at temporal sanctum. The gloom sets in as you walk through the worst designed + performing dungeon in the game.

4.1 - You disconnect as you try to enter the 2nd layer of the dungeon.

4.2 - You log back in and right click the key to travel to temporal sanctum again. Loading screen takes ages and you disconnect again.

4.3 - Third try is the charm right? Nope, you disconnect again as you try to enter the 2nd layer of the dungeon.

4.4 - You disconnect again as you are about to enter the room before the boss fight.

4.5 - You die as you try to defeat the boss. Pathing causes your character to walk around one of the pillars the boss spawns, straight into a pool of void. Sigh, let’s try this one more time.

4.6 - The game lags as you walk through the 2nd layer, you think of why the devs need to spawn this many monsters if the game clearly can’t handle it. You almost die 3 times, but make it to the boss room.

4.7 - Long loading screen makes it seem you disconnected, gamba god is on your side this time and the boss room actually loads. This must be a sign the slam is going to work out right? Finally you defeat the boss and walk to the slam machine.

5 - You try to visualize the end result you want… You put the two items in and press D… Only to find out your item is bricked. You smile as realization sets in that you just lost 4-10 hrs of farm + a lot of gold (if MG) + favor + 4 keys for 0 progress. Sounds good? Yeah, I think not.

You can see how this ultimately causes people to spend LESS time playing the game or quit completely. Let me rephrase this: Your endgame gameplay loop is causing people to NOT want to play your game. You can’t convince me this a good thing.

Let’s look at some other issues I have found whilst playing the game:

• Some of the lock-on attacks seem too tight, even if you expect an attack the monsters sometimes adjust after already starting the attack. Lagon is a good example of this, especially his claw slam attack adjusts at the last moment sometimes. Aberroth also does this with his kamehameha attack.

• Chain stun should not exist, there should be diminishing returns on getting stunned again.

• Spires are very annoying, set a range limit on them. It’s dumb to get sniped across the map. It’s even dumber to get sniped while trying to get items out of your stash for the nemesis.

• Not sure if this is intentional, mobs seem to appear from nowhere after defeating nemesis or trying to pick up loot. Sometimes even from under the nemesis’s corpse (scorpions). Even after standing at the nemesis for 10s before the fight. Mobs I haven’t aggro also appear out of nowhere.

• Revive mechanism is overused, I always ignore revived mobs. I don’t get loot twice, so what’s the point?

• Nagas need to have their movement speed gutted, they always push the player away and it doesn’t help that they’re with many. Died a few times from a naga pushing my character in a pool of death.

• COF endgame is non existent, probably needs a buff. It doesn’t matter how many things you drop if 99% of it is thrash and not even worth picking up.

• MG is too weak early game, also needs a slight buff on early ranks. I think most people are already fully geared once they get to rank 12. Meaning it’s probably taking too long to get to rank 12. Also, the UI is bad.

• The MG gives you a CHANCE of upgrading, because no one in their right mind is going to risk the gamble themselves to sell that perfect item. In other words the item you want doesn’t exist on the MG. Best you’ll get is an LP3 which you can throw away after bricking it. You can see how there’s a flaw with this entire system here.

• Pathing is awful.

• Bad performance overall, I think there’s too many mobs spawning and it doesn’t help that some mobs are targeting players across the map.

• LP1 should be the new LP2, LP3 should be the new LP2, LP4 should be the new LP3. What’s the point of LP4 if no one has it? LP1 feels really bad right now, I rather have it not drop at all at endgame.

• LP4 is unattainable for MG players as the cap to sell things is 1.5B. LP3 items are already 1.5B, so people who have LP4 won’t be underselling it for 1.5B. Cap should be removed.

Conclusion:

I think the start/mid game is fun, it feels good to progress. The endgame definitely needs a lot of work. As it stands now, I probably indefinitely won’t be returning until some big changes happen to the foundation of the endgame.

My suggestion would be to have a “glyph/rune of potential” of some sort. You can upgrade an affix/prefix on an item, so that those stats get priority when slamming. That’s the easiest solution to this problem. How about we get these glyphs as a reward for slamming, each slam gets you a shard of a glyph of potential. But only for LP1/LP2 items for example. So you actually will get guaranteed upgrades at some point and in the best case you are saving up for that big LP3 item. Let’s say that 2 shards is one glyph of potential. Meaning after 4 failed slams with a LP2 item, you actually get 2 glyphs of potential. Meaning your fifth slam will be guaranteed.

It also solves the problem with useless LP1 items lying around, as you now can just slam them for shards. I’m giving a suggestion that 2 shards are 1 glyph/rune of potential, but maybe 3 is a better number. I’m not sure what the best balance here is.

I haven’t played PoE for a few years now, but my friends still play it almost every league. They each have like 10k+ hours in PoE. It is a bad sign if even the friends that love gambling in PoE hate this game. The others are all about steady progress, they don’t even want to talk about this game anymore.

One of them found has found multiple mirrors in multiple leagues and has done all content in PoE with multiple chars in multiple leagues. He is really lucky and has hit all his slams in this game so far. He’s running around with LP3 perfect slammed gear and talking about how this will be his first and last cycle forever. He’s MG and as mentioned before LP4 is unattainable for MG players.

The way I think about it is that Last epoch is RNGing itself. If 100 people play, how many will even get to the slam endgame? How many will even try? How many people get good results out of their slams and will keep playing, how many slams before most players give up? How many people will even find items worth slamming?

The whole point of a producing a game is to get lots of different people liking the game for lots of different reasons. While this game is catering to a very specific type of person. The person who likes farming and grinding for hours doing the same content for a chance of an upgrade, but is also fine not getting anywhere for 100k+hrs.

My recommendation is to look at how other games do it. If you look closely, all the good games always have some options to choose from to progress further.

Examples of (in my opinion) successful games:

PoE, you are always working towards an upgrade. Small drops, big drops you’ll make ends meet and at some point are able to buy that upgrade outright. You have an OPTION of gambling, it’s not mandatory. See how you can get there quick or fast, one method is slow and steady the other is high risk / high reward. Where is this in Last epoch?

Elden Ring, it’s really hard to progress. But again you have an option to return later when you’re stronger. You can upgrade in other ways and make progress, even if the fastest way is straight through that boss. Even without upgrades your skill can make up for the lack of gear. Again, there’s many options and routes to choose from. It’s up to the player which route to take. I understand that this is a completely different genre, but it shows how the player is able to make progress.

[Verminrodent]

I fully agree with this. Game is fun in early and mid-game, but late game you keep running into this endless cycle as stated above by Amplifix. I agree with everything Amplifix said. I will add next to this, a list with grievances i have with the bazaar. Why in the world is the bazaar so badly desinged?

1. Every item you want to check price you have to go to a different char located god knows where in that place,
   2, No way to quickly search for an item in your stash to see value.
2. Filter options to split affixes in different tiers not there making you need to search for just a t7 roll on 1 stat and scroll endlessly through hundreds of items reading all.
3. Being not able to resell items makes it so you cannot even get any money back for your bricked item (which materials you bought, so you cannot sell it anymore) My brick might be someone elses treasure. And the reason was against flipping, but last epoch covers that problem already with favour (how can you flip if you need favour to do that, cant be doing it 24/7, since you need to farm the favour back and legendary items cost a lot of favour.
4. Legendary items with good stats will never show up at the marketplace. Why would you risk bricking something with lp3 to make it better and sell it if the max price of the lp 3 item is the same as the max price for the legendary item. Basically the same thing Amlifix said as to why lp4 items will never be sold on bazaar. The 1.5 billion cap NEEDS to be removed.
5. Your stall (and preferable the whole auctionhouse) should be located at any monolith. Now it forces me each time to leave the monolith for no reason other than to check if my big ticket item finally sold. I just see an item was sold, not which one.

I love the fact that this game has an auctionhouse and that trading is possible. I also love that you can choose also to play COF and tjat you can still play with friends in other factions. I love the boss design and overall builds and mechanics. I love the fact that it is possible to upgrade uniques with extra stats, but it should indeed be way less of a gamble. The worst feeling is just finding and selling your 1.5 Billion item and buying back a lp3 item for it and then bricking it 5 min later in the temple. Start all over again.

I Played anout 150 hours now and farming 700 corruption with my shield bash pala (did not do abbaroth yet). I have about 6000 hours in POE as well and a lot of d2 experience.
@EHG_Mike Please also share with your team. I randomly picked your name (as a new user i can only tag 2 people). This is really meant well as positive critisism. Please look at the post from @Amplifix . As it stands now i would love to see changes on these things or i am afraid i will be going back to POE as well and not touch the game untill this experience in the endgame and bazaar is better. It could and should really be a great game for the coming years to enjoy in the seasons. Please consider this or maybe do another questionaire to ask others opinions.

Regards,

Verminrodent

[Kulze]

@Amplifix

This system needs a COMPLETE rework. You will NEED to give some guarantees. Let’s take a look at the gamba gameplay loop:

Agreed, albeit not quite as it was written above.

I’m against ‘guaranteed wins’ or anything of the sort.

Rather looking over to the most successful system currently on the market (hello Path of Exile) it provides a way to craft in many different ways and allows - for someone knowledgeable - to get several ‘safety steps’ in-between a grand crafting endeavor.

This means instead of having the ‘all or nothing’ situation a player can gradually work towards a big goal of some sort.
That’s not existing at all in Last Epoch currently and in my eyes the biggest long-term weakness for it.

Finding a rare item with a rare affix should be a success, a big ‘nice!’ moment, Last Epoch successfully (beware sarcasm) takes that completely out of the equation. You don’t feel that enjoyment until the item is ‘done’.

The biggest weakness in my eyes is the small amount of affixes in the game, the lack of more hybrid ones or at least slightly complex interactions which make in-depth builds possible.
And the most jarring one from the base design is that there’s only 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes.
There’s a reason why other games of the genre have a 3/3 split and not a 2/2 split. Variance.

This enforces the current system, tied together with the small amount of tiers (5 basic + 2 drop only) leads to situations where the majority of items are basically worthless very very quickly.

This is something which has to change as otherwise the game won’t ever be able to get the traction their competition gets long-term.

It is something EHG should tackle earlier rather then later, this is a issue which will only grow the longer the game is on the market and keep it limited, even if it’s a vast change.

[Irovet]

I fully support Amplifix and I am in favor of introducing appropriate changes. I like playing Last Epoch. The game is “fresh” and there is still a lot that can be improved. I hope that the creators will pay attention to this post.

RNG is particularly irritating:
First you need to get the right unique('s), some of them are pretty rare.
Then you need RNG luck getting legendary potential
Then you need to find an exalted item that has the right T6/7 stat
Next you need to reroll the other stats to be somewhat usefull before the reforging runs out
And finally when you combine them you have to pray you get a usefull stat
Very low roll of the blessing i need, also to much RNG here.

[shad0wmaker]

This system needs a COMPLETE rework. You will NEED to give some guarantees. Let’s take a look at the gamba gameplay loop:

Exactly what I’ve been going through for 50+ hours right now. It’s getting really frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like to grind, but there has to be at least some form of progress…

[GiraffaGonfiabile]

@Kulze

Rather looking over to the most successful system currently on the market (hello Path of Exile) it provides a way to craft in many different ways and allows - for someone knowledgeable - to get several ‘safety steps’ in-between a grand crafting endeavor.

That is one of the major weaknesses of the system. There is no checkpoint.
In a sense, the problem is built into the fact that the main currency of LE is bases and not crafting materials. You spend bases to make crafting attempts in the same way you spend divines in PoE.
It is not intrinsically a bad system, forcing the crafting process to consume bases causes each attempt to be slightly different from the other, which, in theory could give more depth to the system.

In practice however, the system is very frustrating to interact with, because.

1. There is basically no strategy / way of influencing the outcome, despite the fact that each base is a bit different, you cannot really adapt your strategy to the base, and there is little that can be done to improve your chances.
2. There is no good way of farming bases
3. There are too many layers of RNG

@Kulze

The biggest weakness in my eyes is the small amount of affixes in the game, the lack of more hybrid ones or at least slightly complex interactions which make in-depth builds possible.
And the most jarring one from the base design is that there’s only 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes.
There’s a reason why other games of the genre have a 3/3 split and not a 2/2 split. Variance.

I do not fully agree, but the issue on the number of prefixes/suffixes is an interesting one.
The reduced number of affixes impacts the range on how “good” items can be.
Assuming that we are talking about exalted items, a measure of the quality of a drop is basically the number and tier of “useful” affixes that that item has in addition to the exalted one.
So, if you start from just the empty exalt, with zero extra useful affixes, you can get up to 4 other useful stats. The possibility of having sealed affixes counting as the 4 possible useful affix you may get. In a similar system with 3/3 split, the range would be from 0 to 5. Not that big of a difference (and if you count bases I would argue that there is basically no difference at all).

I think that the problem here is that the crafting sytem actively works against this “scale”. It is super easy to get most affixes that you want from the get-go. So there is no progress.
Additionally, the interaction with the system is very linear. Low tier affixes may be upgraded, so once you get the affix, it is very likely that you are going to get it at a high tier.

Ironically, in PoE the chaotic nature of the crafting system means that you are going to have items with a lot of useless or low-tier affixes early on. So there is a lot of room for growth.
In LE the entry level of equipment is so high that there is no growth to have.

That is to say, I sincerely hope that they improve the system somehow. They need to adjust the power curve of the crafting system.
Unfortunately, the excessive power of early crafting is what a lot of proponents of LE really like, so I am a bit scared that they will not fix the system.

[Kulze]

@GiraffaGonfiabile

So, if you start from just the empty exalt,…

You messed up the numbers a bit there

With a 2/2 split you have 4 stats (bar the base), with a 3/3 split you get 6 stats.
That’s 33% more stats on an item basically.
Obviously roll-range needs to be adjusted accordingly but it gives a bigger spread per item and hence causes the system in the end-effect to roll your ‘elemental resistance’ affix with a higher chance then otherwise.
If instead the content is adjusted to fit the current roll-ranges then it affects the base item importance instead.
Currently 20% of the raw power of an item is the base, top-tier bases are far too strong, which is the reason why even a great affix on a low base has no value at the moment, limiting the actually viable items to use.
With a 3/3 it reduces that to below 15%, which is a substantial reduction without removing it to be a very powerful thing to have, just not as ‘overbearing’.

@GiraffaGonfiabile

I think that the problem here is that the crafting sytem actively works against this “scale”.

Oh, absolutely! It’s unfitting for the system they have created.
Both the drop-system is potentially nice and also the crafting system is potentially nice.
In conjunction though? It’s not made for the game, it’s lacking thought, causing a rigid system not allowing you to get rewarded.

Item drops are worthless for the player, only crafting outcomes are for exalted items since the vast majority of power is hidden behind the crafting mechanic itself.

Also, unlike in PoE the Tier ranges are a mess. T6 and T7 are substantially stronger then a T5.
If we look over to how PoE handles tiers we can see that a T1 (highest there) is only a fraction of power increase compared to a T2. The more tiers the less improvement for a higher tier.
Last Epoch does it the other way around, which causes anything below the maximum to be non-viable.

That’s usually a measure to adjust for the increasingly low chance to get the top-tier outcomes put together. So the lowers tiers already put a higher and higher fraction of power to your overall outcome, making the top-tier mostly min-maxing aspects. But that’s a bit problematic in LE as well because of how all of it works together in the end.

Let’s compare it to other crafting systems out there:

PoE: You adjust the affixes on their own, the ‘basic’ crafting from the ground up is to add a affix, then roll for a magic item (since you can do that a lot) until you get at least 2 good ones. Then increase it to a third good one by making it a rare item. Leaves 3 slots open.
Now as a normal player with a bit of currency you just go ahead and craft that you can put several crafts on, pick 2 good ones and that’s it. Your ‘basic’ item which gets you through the whole game is already done. Sure, a bit ‘expensive’ since that costs a bit but that’s all you need, that’s how in SSF it’s done.

Torchlight Infinite: You get an item with a good base and a single modifier you would want on it. That one you ‘lock in’ and then re-roll for a second one. If you get that you’re ‘done’ with that step, optimally having a third T1 on top. Now you only need to upgrade 1 affix to ‘Tier 0’ which is the max and hope it doesn’t remove your other T1 affixes and instead one of the other ones.
And then you’ve got that as a ‘safety step’ which is never changed, all beyond is putting stuff on until you get the outcome you want and re-do it as often as you like.
Also some other mechanics separately to adjust your item and make it better overall.
So it takes a ton of power away from drops themselves as well as initial crafting, instead making it a multi-step process.

Grim Dawn in comparison does mostly work on item drops. You got your item base, your prefix and suffix. a 1/1 split actually! But since you can’t adjust them afterwards that’s a good way to limit the pure amount of items you can drop, hence picking solely the base and going ham to find the one item which gets you the most. Everything beyond is separately put behind exchangeable crafts you can put onto those items then. So the drop itself has extremely high meaning and the crafts need the farming to achieve.

All in all Last Epoch’s system is the ‘weakest’ one out there. We have no stability for the value of our drops, no safety checks and a extreme amount of different drops on top which hence never leads to getting close to a top-tier item which could theoretically be possible.

@GiraffaGonfiabile

They need to adjust the power curve of the crafting system.

Yes, that, they need to adjust the power curve in general. Drop-system, crafting system, Legendary System, all of them plainly spoken. The LP one is the most stable one though at least currently.