Introduction
Greetings,
I would like to start by saying, I wish the best for the team and this project. The quality of this game is exceptional, it rivals the quality of blizzard teams. This game is capable of being the next league of legends (in terms of success). While I am uncertain of how it will get to that point, I strongly believe that.
I would love to say that this post is my opinion shaped by twenty-six years’ experience as a designer and a lifetime of dedication to gaming. This is not intended in any way to offend people and a specific part of it may come off harsh but please understand I choose my wording with precision and intention for a desired outcome and effect.
Graphics Quality SCORE: 4.75/5.0
Requirements
The games, gameplay requirements are exceptional. This subsection is absolutely perfect and I would not change anything or recommend any changes to it.
Post Processing Effects
This subsection is near perfect score. The only small improvement I can see here is the option to enable bloom via settings and applying blood to many of the spells and effects. I know some designers do not like bloom, but I love it and think it looks great. Go wild with it.
Lightning
The lightning of the game near perfect levels. The only point of feedback here, Is I would recommend looking into what the poe2 team is doing. They have created zones that are absolutely pitch-black outside of melee range and have a wall of sorts that is a light source that shines into a circle around the player (but not out). This provides a surprise when people face plant into a big elite back. This could be a game changing move for ARPG, or it could be a game killer causing frustration. I am uncertain of it and will need to playtest this too form a more solid opinion. I thought it was worth mentioning,
Game Systems SCORE: 3.0/5.0
Progression System
This area gained a high score. I am personally not a fan of the layout of the game in terms of how scenes are presented to the player base. The feel is overly mobile in nature, though i am uncertain if there is plans for cross-platform gameplay. I would highly recommend you do not take that route. Its a route which significantly burdens the team and reduces a products quality. You would be better off developing a standalone version for mobile or console platforms.
Crafting System
The crafting system in the game gains a fairly high score. I would say that some of the system is not intuitive enough. The major point of this feedback is that intuitively when I go through the game I expect low end gear to be useless later but that is not at all the case. It happens to be that as you progress you get more options. This is exceptional, however it needs a way of presenting that more accurately in the UI.
Examples are low armor items and high armor items. You would naturally think that the higher armor values are more ideal, however it’s not the case. I would recommend some UI based notification that says something like “light armor” or “heavy armor”. This way its made clear that this item is not trash later.
I would also like to add that crafting should grant ranges on them for forging potential not based on quality. It seems to me like some items have a huge range, possibly based on quality and I am not a fan of this.
I would also add that unique seemly are amazing or absolutely useless. I would recommend making them not feel so negative early game. From what I understand, the forge in dungeons is a way to fix this but its providing a major negative feeling to the game.
Social Systems
The lack of clan systems is an understandable thing considering the release of the games online option just recently. Its however an extremely important thing, if not the most important thing. I cannot express how extremely important this is. Most people think it’s just “important”. If we put this into body parts, clans are the brain, heart, and soul of
the game. It’s not an important thing. Its life itself for a game. Its extremely important that this is added as a top priority after stability at this point. nothing in the game will be as important as this, ever, for the entire history of the game.
There are some improvements that can be made to the friends list. A check box option to delete people in a mass is a good feature, one that many games lack. Tooltips that players can set up is a good move. Some sort of activity display so you know who you play with the most, would be another amazing qol option.
Class Design SCORE: 2.0/5.0
Class Direction
This is one of two areas of the game is going to get some major feedback and criticism. Since I am a systems designer class design to me is an extremely ocd topic. I have to say that I find classes generally just changing their flavor rather than their mechanical operation, all the while not changing flavors where it needs to be changed. Example is that tornado cannot be cold, or hurricane cannot be lightning. I would love it if hurricane had an option to be permanent. I find spamming a button to keep it up obnoxious. In this area of the game classes need more mechanical changes rather than just elemental changes. I would recommend first the elemental change, then the swap mechanically. an example of this would be first hurricane changes to lightning and then it can be casted at a location.
G/UI Design SCORE: 3.5/5.0
Overall
Overall, the GUI just needs some QOL improvements. it’s a high score.
Menu
The game needs a menu bar that toggles hide/show when a button (esc?) is pushed. It’s hard trying to navigate all the hotkeys.
Crafting
This area gets moderately low scoring.
The GUI around crafting needs some improvements. Adding tooltips in the inventory window when hovering over the materials area for crafting for each icon so it’s clearer what they are and do. I was very confused about these things at the start of the game.
There are some very annoying toggle & toggle-deadlock issues going on in last epoch. I would recommend avoiding on click-toggle gui features in unity and shifting to a custom script to handle toggling. It will prevent the deadlock related issues.
The biggest issue with this and my complaint about crafting gui is the red “scroll of doom”. That dam thing loves to stay in the upgrade spot and has an issue deadlocking itself as the choice upgrade scroll unless a player slots and un-slots an item before closing the gui panel. please fix this… I have trashed so many good items because of this.
Another major point of improvement for GUI, is the improvements to the layouts of the blessings. I would recommend removing the dropdown list. Its tacky, and a big chore from a gameplay side of things. It needs to be changed to just icons you can click that sort through each blessing type, or just mesh all the blessings below the drop-in area.
The future of the game.
Yesterday, The lead systems designer for the d4 team and I were talking about last epoch. We are both very worried for its future. This is largely due to the upcoming changes to d4. Its a strong belief that I have that unless last epoch has some way to stand out in a significant way, the game may not live the upgrades to d4 and the release of last epoch.
I am not sure how to get to the destination of last epoch being the new league of legends, but I think the game has a very strong possibility of it. When I was watching some friends stream gameplay, I initially had a poor (2/5) review of the game. Since playing it, it has improved to 3/5, and the resolution of the above things would put it at a 4 or 5/5.0.
What I originally was thinking was a more lore-based approach to the game, but I am not sold on if it’s the way to go. At the moment, I find it worth mentioning as an option, but what I will say is if you can find ways to add esports like competitive gameplay mode in here, we’d definitely have a strong chance at that league future.
I wish you the best. I will be here to provide feedback as time go’s on. I hope this initial post will help open things for consideration.
git gud i guess