First impressions: problems of the game and tips for solving them

If you running out of space well theres a few things:

  1. Grey items are useless waste of space. Next to no gold at all and cant break them into shards for crafting.
  2. Get shatter runes and break down items to turn affixes into shards during a run.
  3. Some magical items can be next to useless poor affixes and low gold value, AKA floor trash.
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Yes, you very well expressed all my thoughts, to which I came in a dozen or so hours of play) For now, inventory is the least problem of the current version of the game compared to its other flaws, so I don’t want to single it out as a gamebreaking

A1. No. Movement should stay as it is with maybe small improvements. Giving movement skills with no CD or real cost, will result in a playstyle that other games already excel at. Let people complain on this one. We saw the effect fast movement might have on endgame.
2. Everything in an arpg is about decisions. Having limited inventory makes you decide what to pick and what to leave behind. Imagine how much easier it would be to acquire gold if you could pick and sell everything and the implications it would have in the economy.
3. Because trading.

B4. I don’t know how to respond to that. Decisions and balance. Simple arpg fundamentals.

C. Keeping you on your toes, alertness. You shouldn’t have everything on auto and just focus on dealing damage.
C2. Although the area reset is gonna be fixed at some point, I totally agree about minimap. What I would like is a really small minimap that I can check to see what paths I left unexplored, without the need to press tab.
C3. I would prefer better density as well but it might have implications with game balance and mechanics like ward retention.

Worst post I ever saw in those forums.
You clearly dont know how to live in society sir. All the points the guy made are very valid, and he have the right to do that, as you have the right to write bad words like you did.

Actually i agree with Sirris. A lot of these post lack knowledge of the game itself. Many of the complaints have been acknowledged. With just a little forum research many of these would be answered.

At this point i feel like we are beating dead horse. People should do some research before pisting these so they can slim this stuff down. There is for sure some valid points. However they are the same as all other versions of this post.

As far as being mean that is meh. You just did the same thing. We should all refrain from this as it turns into an argument rather then a discussion.

Good luck in LE

Tweezus

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I must say that there’s a lot of truth in all you’re saying. But I have several quick remarks.

I guess, it would be easier / correct to increase base character’s movement speed than to make this modifier basic for every boots :slight_smile: . Also I heard that devs have some plans to decrease location sizes (not sure about this). At the same time, I personally don’t like the idea of “running through” all enemies straight to the target. Because of that the whole locations seem wasted and needless. Though I agree that their current design / mechanics is not perfect, I believe it’s a matter of time.

  1. Current functionality is not finished. Event this one is added not so long ago. I’m sure we’ll some improvements in the future :slightly_smiling_face: .
  2. Same as 1st, but I just wished to say that there are several discussions about that.
  3. If I’m not wrong, the material stash is account-shared, unless you play Solo mode :thinking:.

In my opinion “action” itself is based on the number of player… hmm… actions :slight_smile: per time period. Most existing skills have no cooldown or have something between 3-10 seconds. So, on average, with 4 non base attack skills on the panel, players are able to act 1 time every 1-2.5 seconds, or make a 2-3 sec skill combo once every 4-10 seconds (movement excluded). I’m pretty sure it’s quite fast gameplay (when you get full panel, of course), and I’ve seen some posts that the game is HARD (I’m not judging, just stating). I mean, I just don’t know why you may need this :blush:. Even if you get all skills on the panel, you won’t be able to use them all, because every skill has its cast time. And having them all just in case… in all cases… emmmmmm… it seems… not… right :blush:.

It will be reworked. Ice Ward also. And some other skills :slight_smile:.

And what does your post add to this discussion? Sirris is correct even if he’s being a dick about it. Pretty much all the “reviews” I’ve seen so far are people who haven’t paid attention to anything the devs have said and it’s like they are rushing through an hour or two of the game to get something written.

Why people should be specialists on a subject in order to give feedback?
Its the company’s job to filter and gather important stuff, but feedback can be given from anyone and is always welcome.

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Spending 100 hours ingame won’t Change the fact that you will still have missed earlier Dev-Posts…

And I agree with most of his Points, many Things have been said before (map/Location stuff), but some Things simply are bad design.

For example the crafting materials. You don’t Need to put them in the inventory first, put them in the crafting stash immediately and add a “take out of stash”-Button in the Stash window if you want to trade them.

The shift-rightclick also caught me off guard a bit, it’s Preference and ideally configurable. But an Option to always Display your equipped item next to the one you mouse over should be Standard by now.

Also that the Teleport Button does not work… fair Point, rather unimportant for the gameplay, but very important for a good first look, polish is important.

Active Slots I like the reduction and Focus on less, but more diverse Skills, personal Preference.

Movement+Strike, very much yes. Make it a modifier with Shift+Rightclick to either stand and attack or move and attack (what is Standard should be configurable in the menu). Especially the early melee fights feel incredibly clunky, first Impression.

I’d like to add a lootfilter Option, was probably said before as well, but I think lootfilters should belong in every ARPG by now.

PS: I also agree with the General Buff design Point. Either make them permanent, or make their cooldown longer than they last. There is no Point in having to recast a buff every 20 seconds when mana cost and cooldown don’t prohibit me to have it permanently on anyway.
Well working alternatives IMHO: In PoE auras cut your max mana pool. In Grim Dawn, they cut your max mana pool and slow your mana Regeneration by having small, permanent mana costs themselves.

Or, if you want a more active style, make the buff permanent, and give it an extra “Thing” when activated, same as Primalist Pets now. The first cast puts the buff on, new casts trigger function X at manacost Y and cooldown Z. This can either be increased stats of the buff, AoE attacks/debuffs, a DoT/Debuff cleanse on yourself or what have you.

Alternatively, you could make the extra “Thing” something big, that eats up your buff. For example on fire shield: Fire shield is permanent, and you get “Detonate Shield” as Skill on Fire Shields place. (For multiplayer just make those buffs Auras if you could cast them on teammates to avoid not being able to cast them on teammates)
Detonate Shield deals massive one time AoE damage, but removes your fire shield and has for example 20 seconds cooldown, so that you have to decide if and when to cast your “nuke” and being at more risk afterwards.

I do not expect to have to read any further posts similar to those quoted below.

Keep it on-topic and civil, please.

Summary
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Hey @HermesTrismegistus – I’ve added my thoughts and opinions to some of the points you made in your post. For the sake of brevity I’ve omitted things that I think are obviously on the dev’s to-do list and shortened some of the quotations from the original post.

Here we go :slight_smile:

The first thing that catches your eye is the incredibly low speed of the hero’s movement around the location.

I think the base movement speed is OK. It is on the slower but it doesn’t feel like your character is walking in quicksand. After finding a pair of 10% movement speed (MS) boots and a couple of +5/6% MS rings things felt much smoother. Once I got the Acolyte’s Harvest skill node which grants +10% MS per point if you’ve crit recently (2 points max) I felt much more comfortable. For me getting more MS is always an immediate goal and I think the base MS inspires this goal enough without being overly slow or punishing until MS gear is found.

… provide players with a universal mechanism for fast movement: a crafting component (for example, for rings and amulets), which would endow any character with the ability to Blink or Dash.

I like the idea of each class having a thematic movement skill or two, and I think I like the idea of gear providing a movement skill too.

I’m in the 30’s with my Lich and the Transplant skill is just utterly amazing not just because its so useful but its also so thematic to my build. Playing a Harvest Lich and teleporting around the map like a crazy vampire is so damn fun.

Tiny inventory size … In the case of Last Epoch, limited inventory is just a reason to constantly distract from the game and teleport to the city to sell your loot…
How to fix: increase the number of inventory cells, add additional slots.

I think the inventory size is about right. If players don’t want to sell items constantly then they shouldn’t pick up so many items. It is definitely an ARPG concept that most loot is garbage, and I do hope Last Epoch doesn’t fall prey to the ridiculous amount of useless loot that other games have. For me I only pick up upgrades for my character or legendary/set pieces to stash and I rarely TP to town just to stash.

Thank the devs for auto sort.

… why not immediately make for all characters (except Solo mode) a common storage in which they will place components for crafting? Why make each character manually transfer another component to another when you can simply combine the common pool of these components on your account?

Agreed that crafting mats should go to some account wide storage tab, either immediately upon looting or after depositing to the stash.

A surprisingly small number of active slots. The player has only 4 active skills + 1 active skill on the right mouse button. Visually on the screen there is still a lot of free space - why not use it? In the current version, the interface can be easily expanded to 8 slots (say, 1234 + QWER). I understand that most players will not use 9 active skills at the same time - but it is important to leave everyone a space to experiment and create their own builds.

I like making the hard decisions of which skills to slot. So far the 5 ability slots (QWER + right click) seem to work very well in keeping things open for experimentation while also requiring build identifying decisions to be made.

Having 4 button skills also somewhat dictates the pace of the game. With just 4 buttons skills the player can be expected to respond with the correct decision more quickly since they have less choices to iterate through mentally.

One final thought is that as skill bindings increases build variety decreases, since a single build will be able to perform a larger variety of actions.

Differentiation of the buttons “Movement” and “Strike”. In all hack’n’slash games that exist today, the “Strike” button works comfortably and intuitively, combining the function of moving around the location and the basic attack on the enemy. Yes, if desired, the player can assign the “Walking” button to her place (which may be useful in some cases), but this is just one of the options.

Why do I think this is a problem? Players are accustomed to the fact that, starting with Diablo, the mouse buttons allow them to make the most basic gaming bundle: the “Go / Attack” button + the active skill button. And now players are forced to use only 1 button, either under attack or under active ability, since one of the buttons will always be occupied by the movement function. Given the previous point (a small number of active slots), this system further limits the capabilities of the characters.

Can you further elaborate on this point? I don’t see what the issues with move being bound to left click.

Autoloot mechanics. In the current version of the game, the player needs to literally “step on” the character model on the object in order to pick it up. Often in the thick of battle, or as a result of the screen being loaded with icons with the names of the dropped loot, this can be very difficult to do the first time.

How to fix: significantly increase the radius of the autolooting and add the option of automatic selection of components for crafting and things of a certain color.

Agree.

Each location (with the exception of a few starting ones) is a huge maze in which there is absolutely nothing to do. Dozens of branches from the main route lead to nowhere, extremely rarely rewarding the player for research with at least an ordinary chest (in which, as a rule, there is practically no interesting loot).

I agree with you that the alternate paths through levels don’t feel very rewarding once you have some half decent gear. I think chests, rare mini bosses that drop decent loot (and are a fun challenge), randomly spawning hidden side areas, etc. would all be a welcome addition down to road.

It would not be such a big problem if … Locations were not updated with each new entry / teleport. I do not see a gameplay excuse for this, but this fact is incredibly frustrating. Sometimes even the layout of the location changes, which is why the character finds itself at a completely random point and has to try again to navigate the terrain - which is almost impossible to do, since all the assets, as has been said, are exactly the same. And that brings us to the second big problem.

I thought that the maps during the story line are all hand made (vs. procedurally generated) so I don’t know if the layout changes. But the devs have stated in another thread that zone persistence is on the to-do list.

Enemies and their location. In general, I pay tribute to the efforts of game designers, who presented the game with various types of opponents with their own attack strategies. However, the “density” of the monster resettlement is very uneven. At the very beginning of the game there are so few of them that you can be bored frankly - they do not pose a threat at all (and this despite the fact that the game does not punish you for death at all, but only teleports the player to the control point). However, at some point the level of danger of enemies increases so dramatically that the character will die in almost every battle where there is a more or less powerful enemy or miniboss (this is especially noticeable in the lands of the undead).
Hack’n’slash is a genre built on a cheerful genocide. Paying more attention to the location and the number of monsters (especially in the initial stages), you will make the process of engaging in the game more intense, which will attract newcomers and keep the existing audience.

So far I’ve found enemies to be somewhat wildly imbalanced (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, read on!). I’ve been able to steamroll some zones, move to the next zone, and then get utterly obliterated… repeatedly… and I kinda like it. I like that some mobs are overly dangerous and should simply be avoided. It reminds me of older RPGs where some monsters just aren’t worth fighting. I like that there’s some enemies that are just plain tough and make you think twice about engaging.

Somewhat tangentially I also love that you can mob train fairly easily in Last Epoch (at the peril of you character and FPS). Its super fun to group up 30 enemies, cast Marked for Death, Transplant in the middle of the pack and AoE them down with Harvest.

Thanks for reading!

But in a game where you can only specialize into 5 skills, having 5 available skills makes sense. Some people want left click, and they can go for it.

I also wanted to add my two cents on this:

I’m confident we’ll see more enemy variety as the game grows. I’d bet part of the current monster choices are their ease in development from programming to the art and animations.

I agree with you on the jelly part, some jelly is ok if it looks freaky, but I hope the void enemies are more demonic/shadowy/death figures than grape jam :slight_smile:

What’s not to love about these adorable jellies? :slight_smile:

I believe something a bit similar aswell; you all have been right to a certain degree so far.

Key point its absolute: its the Devs job to filter and discern wheter opinions are good or bad, useful or useless, substantiated or not. That doesnt mean that some opinions are more valid than others, as im sure all are going to be heard and taken into account. Howewer, we cannot deny the obvious; the opinion from somebody who has spent 100+ hours in the game is going to be, on average, more grounded and meaningful than the one coming from who has spent 10.

In this particular case, im leaning a bit more towards the opinions of Sirris and Sacamano; yet i like and share some of those stated by Hermes.

And in my personal and particular case, im having already a blast with the game as it is, the only thing that is really missing for me, is the lack of armour and weapon skins, and the lack of external, cosmetic personalization. Im aware nervertheless, that this is going to be implemented in future versions, but stil is the only issue that troubles me. And i have spent 50+ hours so far, finished the available story quests twice and spent my good amount into Monolith and Arena. So, as you may see, we all have very different opinions :wink:

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Porings in iRO beta were the first MMO mob I ever faced.

Edit: that is to say, I will always fear and respect these beasts

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I agree that feedback about mechanics, powerlevel of certain skills/builds/classes etc. is more valuable from seasoned players. But QoL things, optics, general “feel” of the game are universal things where beginners can add VERY valuable input.
Because in the end, the success of Last Epoch will rely on players who are not “hardcore fans”, most normal players won’t play 100 hours before deciding if the game is worth their time. So the first 2-10 hours are VERY important for any game, and anything that seems weird, unfinished, clunky, will quickly cause players to leave.
If you already spent 100 hours in the game, and then come across some bad things, or realize some synergies work too well or not at all, you’re already invested in the game and more likely to stay around till it is fixed.

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You too? I knew I wasn’t the only one. RO blew the doors open to a whole new world to me. I started on day 1 of the beta, and I’ve been playing off and on since (as recent as a few months ago).

Yeah my buddy showed me iRO in 2003. We had a few other friends in high school that played briefly together too. Good times :slight_smile:

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