First Impressions of a PoE SSF Addict

Feedback and Suggestions
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If this game is to rival PoE (meaning I’m supposed to be playing it A LOT) then the game desperately needs some sort of randomisation to the campaign or endgame system to keep me hooked and playing. Considering the game developers think this product is worth a similar payment model as PoE, I do expect it to be on the same level as PoE (as in a great designed game I can spend hours and hours playing without being bored.) when it leaves Early Access. I know It’s still Beta/Early Access and things are subject to change, so…you know.

CAMPAIGN TROUBLES
I’ve ran through the campaign 3 times (Necro, Void Knight, Lich) and completed 2 storylines in the Monolith. I’ve only about 70 hours in the game but I’m already noticing the same map layouts, enemies and bosses. Most maps feel like either hallways that connect to hallways or hallways that connect to rooms. The minimap makes you very aware of this. There’s nothing to find outside of the beaten path outside of Shrines or chests. Chests and Shrines I’ve done for more than a decade in games now, so I find this really subpar and if I’m honest a bit lazy combined with the “no randomness” stance on the campaign. I can’t say I’m looking forward to level my fourth character through the campaign again, because the maps will hold no surprise and the gear won’t either.

Monolith of Fate is just the campaign levels with sometimes different enemies. My brain recognized the ‘level-blocks’ siitched and pasted together after my 2nd Monolith quest. There was nothing to surprise me in these levels.

THE ITEMS
Items aren’t interesting enough. Chris Wilson (CEO of GGG, Creators of PoE) has a GDC talk about designing Path of Exile to be played forever in which he briefly touches items in games. Why do people sink thousands of hours into Diablo II/Path of Exile, but only dozens of hours into Titan Quest, Grim Dawn or Wolcen? Going in-depth into items is a whole multi-paragraphed topic on it’s own though. To quote the GDC talk “If you make your random items good, you make your game replayable. In these kind of games your items are your progress. Nobody cares that you got to level 96 or 94, people care about the items they find on their way.”. I don’t hold the magic formula for making the itemnisation good though, but I know that currently it’s not it. Personally I feel crafting is too easy and rare items are too limited with only 4 affixes. Implicits are cool but they seem to be randomly distributed over the gear, they don’t really add or change anything except ‘more defense’ or ‘more attack’ in direct forms, with no overlap, making it straightfoward/stale in terms of upgrades.

ENDGAME

The Monolith of Fate is a cool concept, but the execution is underwhelming. A choice that’s too much “monsters have more defense” and “monsters have more attack” and often copy-pasted levels. And the Arena is endless waves. I’m going to assume this is a placeholder for the actual endgame system.

I look at the website’s endgame page and see 5 options, pretty cool. But maybe it’s better to focus on 1 big, chunky option and making that not only interesting but engaging to play with/progress in.

CHARACTER CUSTOMISATION
Overall classes feel greatly designed and have interesting skills. But I am worried that with offering strong class identity there’s going to be less diversity. I have a couple of characters that use the cyclone skill in PoE and they all use it very differently. I feel like there may be 2-3 ways you could play Warpath per class which, ultimately, might be more than PoE allows. But it feels like I’m going down a path that is crafted for me rather than making my own path. But I guess that is a matter of personal taste. Great gameplay for dozens of hours, but not for thousands of hours.

PILLARS OF AN ARPG
There’s 5 pillars that an “action RPG” should have if it wants to be:
Visceral combat: Very good 8/10, mobs might rely a little too much on stuns sometimes but overall I’m a big fan.
Random Level Design: N/A. The game really needs some form of randomness to happen/occur to vary up going from corridor to corridor.
Item Design: Crappy 4/10. Items feel too much like they are there to support the character both gameplay wise as I feel design-wise. You need to rethink your item game if you want to hook players for thousands of hours. You need to rethink it hard if you are going to not seriously invest in randomness.
Online Economy: N/A (yet). I mostly play SSF, but us hermits are affected by item economy aswell. Without any form of leagues or economy resets planned (at least I haven’t seen the dev clarify this) there’s going to be power creep both for levelling new characters (I can already deck out a new Primalist at lvl 22 and not worry about gear until endgame) and older characters. This is a big concern.
Deep Character Customisation: 7/10 great system, but feels like I’m going down paths rather than making my own.

CONCLUSION
Overall it’s a great little game worth playing for dozens of hours potentially hundreds. But I think the development needs to really work on replayability through the forms of reworking the item and item progression system as well as adding replay value in the levels, be it through randomness or other systems. I don’t think this will have a long, sustainable playerbase unless these things are fixed, but I really hope that the game proves me wrong.

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I must say I 100% agree with the items being boring in this game. There is an Item update slated for phase 3 so I hope some of it is addressed.

For example suffix/prefix mods do not even affect the base item. Like if you add +physical damage to a 16 dmg sword it stays 16 dmg. Or if you put increased attack speed on the weapon the base attack speed never changes. Crafting mods onto rares in other ARPGS is fun/interesting because you can see the damage/IAS of your weapon increase with nice rolls. Currently in LE you just get the flat SINGLE base dmg number that never changes no matter how godly the weapon is which is super boring.

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Most of the points are valid. But please be aware that you compare a new developed game of an Indi studio with a (now) big player, that has a multi million dollar publisher and hundreds of devs. PoE gets new content every few months for years now. There is no way that any game could ever reach the same amount of content, only if PoE travels backwards in time.

LE will defenitely release with a lot less content and optimizations. It will evolve if people give it a chance. But it will never get close to PoE. EHG is lacking years of development. PoE was announced 2010 and released 2013. If you just take the announcement as the start point there are 10 years of work between these 2 games.

It’s absolutely legit to compare these games, but its unrealistic to expect that EHG can compete with the Leviathan, that PoE has become.

Comparing PoE 1.0 to LE is a more realistic approach.

Just out of experience with LE, theres more depth to itemisation and builds than it seems on the first look.

There’s much room for improvements and I can see more different and interesting affixes being added in the future as well as additional affix slots on items, runewords, enchantments and so on.

For the Endgame mode there was an interesting conversation I saw in a LE podcast (think it was Last Traveller with Lizard) where they covered the Monolith. It was refered to as Campaign 2.0. It’s more of a secondary character progression system that a real “endgame” system. It’s like if you are through the monolith, you really reached the endgame.

I can’t agree that the MoF feels underwhelming. The mods may be more basic and here’s room for more creative ideas, fir sure. But the MoF offers leveling, farming items, target farming boss drops and permanent character blessings. Imho, this is an outstanding system!

Arena indeed is a placeholder.

Besides my points, I think you make really good points, content related.

:wink:

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It’s not about releasing with more content and optimisation than PoE, it’s about having equal or better systems in place. What makes PoE great isn’t the 3-month content they release (although that is a factor) but the replayability that it’s game systems offer, hence why I focused more on critiqueing the gamesystems than the content. PoE 1.0 already had the core system implemented (map system, items, etc) but not the content to match. If Last Epoch launches with content but no core systems I don’t think there’s much player retention. That’s a shame.

Saying the MoF offers levelling and farming items is kind of a moot point as that is the core gameplay of the game. There’s no difference compared to the campaign or arena. Compare the system to the map system of PoE.

In PoE I can run a white, magic or rare map. Every layer adds random axis that influence my gameplay, and actually have an influence on wether or not I run the map. Do you really want to run that Elemental Equilibrium map when you’ve focused on lightning damage? Are you sure you can take that extra 67% lightning damage and Elemental Weakness aswell? Compared to the MoF where it’s “you want 39% damage” or “you want monsters to shred armour”? Sure, both are a choice but I feel like it’s obvious which system is the more engaging one.

I know that it’s a newly developed game and that it’s a beta. But here’s the thing. Path of Exile started by a couple of guys in a garage aswell, and they wrote their own in-house engine. The reason PoE became so great because it had seriously deep, well thought out systems (items, character progression, map system) to back their promises. If you have those you can release with less content, because your game has a lot of replayability. The content doesn’t matter here, you know? What matters here is how good the foundations are on which you build that content.

When it comes down to items and replayability these foundations simply aren’t there to me. You could release it with triple the content of PoE but without those foundations then you’re just going to have your average ARPG playernumbers. Which is fine, but, you know, why not make the best ARPG out there.

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I want to point out some stuff you mentioned here

The campaign is really old at some parts and gets updated regularly, so except the campaign becoming more immersive and engaing. At some point we might see more voice over, eventually cutscenes, overhauled areas(they already announced some in the upcoming patch)

I agree, but as RAW already said, this game is developed by a very small company and stuff like procedural map generation is planned at some point i think.

BUT stuff like this does come with a huge investment in development time, while not changing the core-gameplay that much.

I personally prefer well thought out character progression over more “map variety”.
Which brings us to the next point

I really disagree here. Even in LE’s current state the customization is huge and diverse, more than any other similar game, except for PoE, which is almost on par already, while still being way more accesable

I am sure that LE will become a bit more overwhelming and complex with even more systems added, but generally LE did a far better job of introducing game system/mechanics to the player, while still having stuff like the “Game Guide” accesable INGAME.

There are so many ways you can play the same mastery, hell i think i have each mastery 2-3 times leveled up and they play totally different.

This is the only point i kinda agree on. But i don’t think making “the perfect item” is to easy.
In LE it is really easy to make a medicore items, which just affixes that you need comapred to PoE. And having “just” 4 affixes gives mroe weight to each affix. I think that is good.

The patch that brought us class-specific body armor + helmets was already a great improvment.

And i think adding more interesting affixes and more bases with more diverse effects will just improve the diversity, but i think LE’s item system is not in a “bad spot”

I disagree, there are some implicits on certain bases that are not always “the highest base” that are highly desirable for certain builds. I think we can of course add even more, but implicits are NOT straight defense or offense upgrades all the time.

EDIT:

Most of internal game system added over the course of PoE’s lifetime were league mechanics or adaptations of those.

I don’t say PoE 1.0 had no content, but even when ignoring the “seasonal content” itself. PoE 1.0 had sooooo much less foundational systems in place

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So you’re saying that introducing randomness to levels doesn’t change the core gameplay that much, or is a huge investment compared to handcrafting levels? Well that is objectively wrong.

It takes a PoE designer about 20mins to make just over a hundred maps with the system they have. How long do you think a handcrafted level takes?
And how often have you run through it? 20 times? 40 times? Last PoE’s Endgame grind challenge was killing Argus 1k times in Lab. Imagine doing that when the layout is the same every time. Every. Single. Time.

You can’t imagine that because you’re already playing another game lol.

I really disagree here. Even in LE’s current state the customization is huge and diverse, more than any other similar game, except for PoE , which is almost on par already, while still being way more accesable.
I am sure that LE will become a bit more overwhelming and complex with even more systems added, but generally LE did a far better job of introducing game system/mechanics to the player, while still having stuff like the “Game Guide” accesable INGAME.

You take 3 Impale cyclone builds from 3 different characters and while they may be somewhat the same, they will always be different because of the way the systems work. Having it’s main nodes being percentages is amplifying to the abilities you have. In LE you have straight up +2 void damage in talent trees. You can’t go a Void Druid or a Poison Mage because the system simply isn’t designed that way. If I play a Void Knight my options in what damage type and how I am going to deliver that damage is limited.
Of course you can prove me wrong by linking like a lightning void knight, necrotic beastmaster who’s getting to like arena wave 100. I agree with saying the customisation is huge and diverse, but will it ever be on par or even eclipse PoE? Highly unlikely.

Also it’s funny you say that LE does a far better job of introduing game systems, because while PoE gives me a bullshit number at least there IS a number with most abilitites :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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But what do we compare ? Beta LE with an 8 yo Poe ? Of course not.
Beta LE with 1.0 PoE ? not so sure.

You have to compare equivalent situations to make the comparison relevant.

Tooltip DPS is going to be implemented before release (at least that was in the road map). Again you are comparing a game in beta status vs a finished game and using the beta status as an argument against it.

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Not speaking for Heavy, but I assume he meant the development time to create the system/tool that would enable the development team to procedurally create these levels.

Sure, it might take a PoE designer a short amount of time to procedurally generate these levels, but how long did it take GGG to develop the system behind it? Doesn’t appear to be a fair comparison.

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But what do we compare ? Beta LE with an 8 yo Poe ? Of course not.
Beta LE with 1.0 PoE ? not so sure.
You have to compare equivalent situations to make the comparison relevant

I know. That’s why I said ‘ever’. As in in all of existence. What I mean is that the core foundation of LE will not allow it to match or transcend PoE in terms of depth. But again, happy if I am proven wrong on this. But I’ve been playing the genre for quite some time and I’d wager money on it that PoE(2) will remain the better system because of it’s foundation.

I guess saying “it’s funny” and the smiley at the end weren’t adequate clues as to the joking nature of the statement. I feel like I have to stress this for you, but I’m talking about the basic foundations of the game, not the amount of content. Please try to understand.

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For this to be true, there needs to be a foundational system in place that works fine to create those procedural levels, which is not present in the current game (yet).

System like this are not so easy and cheap to implement. There is alot of stuff that can be bad about those created levels, if the base system is not great.

I still stick to my statement. core-gameplay does not change. Sure the repetiveness is not as bad, but i am playing a aRPG for deep customization not for “non-repetive” content, this is just a nice bonus thigns for me.

And even with procedural generated levels, there is still alot of repetition, which is fine for me.

Just refering to “different damage types” for buidls diversity is not even a fraction of the diversity i am talking about.

While your statement is mostly true atm, there are some crazy “un-intuitive” builds that kinda do stuff you mentioned (void damage mage for example),

And i am still saying that PoE 1.0 didn’t had THAT much customization, hell there weren’t even ascendacy calsses in PoE 1.0.

I woudln’t call “showing” numbers a introduction to any game system.

I see what you are meaning, it’s hard to comapre stuff in LE, but at least you have trainings dummies.

I still think LE does a tremendous job of introduction relatively compelx systems to newer players

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The time it takes to create a random tool might be long, you will ultimately win in time over the long run. Why is this even an arguement?

The point is less about the random levels but more about the replayability. The devs have stated that they don’t want to implement randomness to the campaign? Fine. But I’m not going to run through the same thing over and over. Most PvE players don’t do that. Nobody plays through the Black Ops campaign first with the Sniper Rifle and then with the Shotgun. I feel like this is so obvious why am I explaining this.

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I had to pick between sarcasm and genuine irony. Picked the wrong one it seems. My bad.

Back to subject why LE should transcend PoE in terms of depth ? Why LE should be a clone of PoE or trying to fight on this aspect and not trying to do things differently.

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For me this is an argument, as i said i take more deep progression/customization systems over random generated content anyday.

I agree, i already suggested some stuff to make creating multiple chars easier.

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Yes and no. In my opinion the game guide for instance is too vague or not precise enough on the most important aspect of the game : the damage calculation.

That’s exactly what you do in PoE though. You play the same campaign over and over every new character of every new league. And the maps layout (at least when I was still playing it) were identical. A bog map layout would be identical to another one. So if you wanted to farm a specific item (div card or other) you had to spam the same layout 10/20/100 times in a row.

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There are some interactions that might be not super obvious, but damage calculation and mitigation is in the game guide, pretty precise written down.

I don’t say the game guide is perfect. But it’s already a very solid abse system that is available INGAME, no other game has anything remotely similar.

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Not saying it should be copying PoE to the letter., the game has flaws too. But there’s a lot the game does right. And does it SO right.
Also;

  1. PoE is the best ARPG out there and to me and many others the standard of the genre. That an Diablo II (but I’ve played way more PoE so it’s easier to compare).
  2. It’s a product that’s competing directly with PoE, down to the MTX-model. Argueably even less P2W with stash removal.
  3. They mention the title as a direct source of inspiration.

Works in PoE because of all the random axis. Replayability is so much more than just the random map layout though. For example that Bog map might have an identical layout, but one’s a white map and the other’s a rare one. They’re going to feel and play massively different. Even two rare maps can vary wildly from how you play them despite being identical. Random maps is ONE aspect of randomness you can do. Modifiers is another. The game has none of these ‘aspects’ if you will. The whole game consists of you doing things over and over again. PoE realized this and tries to make doing that same thing overt and over again very fun. LE feels that it doesn’t get that right on a foundational level (yet), but as I said in my original post I fear that without some serious item rework and added replayability this game won’t live very long.

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That’s where I’m not totally agreeing. If you have enough experience of the game and use a good build you’ll erase white maps the same way you’ll erase the yellow and the red version.
Fullscreen dying instantly in whatever version of the map you are playing.
If you are playing a subpar build then yes you’ll see a significant difference.

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But that’s more like a problem PoE has than a value LE should incorporate, wouldn’t you agree?

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Visceral combat: I actually disagree on this point. The game lacks the “oomph” you usually get from other ARPGs. It took me quite a while to warm up to LE because of how the combat feels.

Random level design: I think this will be covered. Again as you mentioned the game is in early access/beta and not in full launch.

Item design: Can you elaborate on this? You said the items aren’t interesting enough and talk about how the game becomes replayable if the random items are good. The class specific affixes introduced for the helm/chest pieces are “interesting” for me as they really power up specific builds and they are usually hard to find. I don’t understand your comment about random items being good. I actually find a lot of random items that are “good”. As a matter of fact, random items are the basis for a good item. Get a good base with the right affixes at a high enough tier to craft on. As a matter of fact, too much randomness is actually a problem as there are quite a number of combinations that are possible, which makes it impossible to find the perfect item without having to involve crafting in some form or another.

Deep character customization: I agree with this although you are starting to see variations introduced (void sorcerer via unique item combinations). There’s a lot of customization with classes. You have a set number of elements that is possible by the skill tree and passives. But certain elements are not supported at all. You can see EHG starting to tackle this with the void sorcerer assuming it was intentional and I imagine it had to be considering it’s based off of fire aura = void damage.

Your feedback is great and I agree with a lot of it. But while you acknowledge the game is still in development, you are discounting the fact that it’s… in development. Meaning the core foundation is still being developed and it’s hard to come to any sort of conclusion on how it will hold up as an ARPG in its current form. Let’s look at your pillars of an ARPG (which is like a constitution of developing core systems for an APRG). Visceral combat is being worked on (improvements to Sentinel’s animations for example). Random level design has to be worked on (to be delivered phase 3 I believe?). Item design is still being worked on (crafting system updates, T6/T7 items, class specific affixes). Online economy is probably low on the priority list right now, but I can’t imagine this not being tackled. Deep character customization is being tackled (introduction of void sorcerer).

You’re dissatisfied with the current core systems (and provided constructive feedback) when the game’s core system is not fully fleshed out. When other people are saying don’t compare LE to POE (since POE’s been out for a lot longer), it’s to point out that LE still needs to develop the core systems. I agree that having a good core system is not dependent on how long a game has been released. But it is not a fair comparison to make when you’re comparing POE’s core systems that are fully fleshed out versus LE’s core system which is still a work in progress. If you provided this review on a fully launched game then you have a great point. I would parrot your sentiments on Wolcen for example (shallow and flawed core system). But you can’t knock an early access game for not having the core system finished. All you can do is provide feedback and monitor how they are implementing changes (my opinion so far is very positive). I didn’t start that long ago, but the patch preview posts they are making gives me the confidence they are working in the right direction and that the game will look drastically different in the new patch. I imagine it’s been like that over the months (new patch = new look and feel). Give LE some time.

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Totally agreed