Game is great content-wise, but campaign difficulty is embarrassing

Feedback and Suggestions
1

This patch in general is really good - the new zones look nice, the procedural generation is wonderful, the endgame is full of stuff to do and plan out, new systems work together excellently etc.

But holy hell did powercreep kick in - it is literally impossible to die starting from around the end of act 1.

It isn’t a hyperbole to say that even Lagon can be facetanked while watching something on a second monitor - minor white mobs do nothing and pose no threat, exiled mages are just walking HP sacks that can’t kill you, bosses do these slow, multi-second telegraphed attacks that do like 100 damage to an 800HP 50% armor sentinel that regens life like crazy…

It all makes the game feel like a cheap dopamine rush in the beginning and honestly I feel like the game doesn’t respect the players intelligence at this moment (in the campaign and early monos) - there’s all these skill and passive trees, gear crafting, telegraphs on the ground for attacks… only for the “gods” in the lore to not be able to kill a single dude who stands inside their attacks.

I know you guys at EHG don’t want the campaign to be a grueling test of skill, but come on the game needs to be balanced in order for it to be fun - there’s nothing fun about watchin something on a second monitor for hours on end just because the game is so braindead easy.

A lot of monsters need HP and damage adjustments, older bosses need their damage, HP, attack and spell speeds increased, rare monsters in general need to be beefed up (imho a rare monster should take anywhere from 5 to 10ish seconds to kill on a well built character in the campaign and its attacks should do noticeable but not overbearing damage) and character defences and offence needs to be looked at early game (alongside many forms of HP/ward renewal like Healing Hands for example) - there literally isn’t a difficulty curve at this moment in the game because the game doesn’t have difficulty until empowered monos.

Not every campaign boss has to be at uber endgame boss difficulty, but it needs to at least be able to kill players that actually get hit by attacks.

What’s the point of even designing a campaign where (allegedly) there are these old gods and eldritch horrors of the Void coming to kill everyone and the stakes are massive… when in reality these enemies can’t even kill my character while I go pet my cat for 15 seconds during a boss fight.

This much lack of care for a part of the game - no matter how small of a part the campaign plays, it’s still a part of the game, and a first impression part of the game at that! - is weird coming from a game with so much QoL and understanding of its players.

I know it’s popular for ARPG players to say “duh campaign is the tutorial”, but currently the “tutorial” basically teaches the player to ignore these wonderful telegraphs and attack animations of enemies and bosses and to just hold down left mouse button from the beginning of zones to the end and get rewarded for free - so it sucks as a tutorial atm because it teaches absolutely nothing.

3 Likes
2

This was a fairly common complaint even at launch, and it honestly feels even easier now than it did then.

A couple of the bosses might have been a tad overtuned for new players, but it feels like they went completely overboard in the other direction.

1 Like
3

I wasn’t sure if Lagon was nerfed or Paladin was buffed so much that none of Lagon’s attacks mattered. The boss I feared in early access and launch was just a facetank exercise on a Pally. I am experienced enough to know to load up on Cold resist by then but I never saw my health move on that fight at all. I went into that fight thinking crap, I can’t evade…guess I’ll just see how it goes… Well, now Lagon knows how I used to feel. Even on the Chapter 9 boss…just more facetanking.

1 Like
4

Again the same story “the campaign mode are too easy”.
Sorry bro, you’re wrong.
The game has to me equally for everyone, my daughter with 10 eyers old is playing the campaign.
The guy who never played any aRPG in his life are playing this game.
You can measure how your build is good seeing how fast you beat the bosses.
I have pretty sure the game difficult is good for the proposal.
The campaign in Poe it’s too easy too. And no one complain about that.
I think, getting the campaign more harder only will affect the time to going on “maps” and my opinion will be boring making the campaign more harder.

3 Likes
5

The campaign in POE1 is normal. The campaign in LE is maplestory.

1 Like
6

What might be an idea (just my take on the matter) is that there would be an adjustable difficulty bar.

Which would mean: You could choose your own scaling.
However, lower scaling would mean lower loot, higher scaling would mean better loot or so.
Idk if anybody would be interested in a matter like that.
Advantage would be probably (idk how it is being coded) that it is easy to implement and would satisfy such needs while also giving players a challenge.
Not sure about the rest.

7

Yea the campaign is Diablo 4 on easy mode and that’s almost impossible to achieve.

This is what happens when “the people” always get what they want, though.

8

You seriously did not just suggest the game should balance its difficulty around a 10 year old lol

2 Likes
9

Yep, that’s the thing. Gets worse with each patch.
Campaign has always been considered easier than in other diablo-likes, even long before launch. And every single patch brings more and more player-power, turning what was an easy campaign into a ridiculous walk in the park.
Oh well, I guess some people enjoy it (at least the devs, apparently). To each their own.

As discussed many times in several threads, I am entirely opposed to that.
Some choice in the difficulty is badly (really, really badly) needed, but it shouldn’t bring more rewards. Games doing that end up with “higher” difficulties actually becoming easier after a few levels, and near mandatory for efficiency. It removes the challenge aspect.
Who plays Grim Dawn on Normal, when Veteran is actually easier after the first chapter and prepares you better for the endgame?

2 Likes
10

I 100% agree with OP - the campaign is ridiculously easy in its current state.

This season I started playing with a friend in multiplayer. Since he’s played a few ARPGs in the past, I deliberately didn’t tell him what to skill, what to wear/craft and where to go. My goal was to show him the nicely done areas/environments and the (imo) good story, because I know that he enjoys some lore in his games.

In reality, I never get to show him anything, because it feels like every enemy and boss just doesn’t exist. “In the next area, try to listening to the culstist, they have great/funny voice acting.” Came across the first pack - doesn’t apply as they’re all already dead.

“This next boss is really cool. Remember how NPC XY told us about him. He is here because of YZ and he has some really nice effects/attacks.” Again, does not matter - he’s dead in 10 seconds.

And this is the thread that runs through the whole campaign. White and magic mobs might as well not exist at all, rares die almost instantly and even the new and supposedly scary champion enemies don’t last more than 10 seconds.

To make it even a little bit challenging, I suggested that we wear the champion boots, hoping that it would make the game a game again and not just walk through the zones with 0 danger and 0 exitement, but even that was not enough. For example, we’re strolling through act 5 with no difficulty at all, with 160% monster life thanks to multiplayer, wearing the champion boots, ~20% poison resist, and nothing even touches us. I don’t even have to do anything, he just kills everything on his own. At this point, to be honest, I’m just watching, hoping he’ll see at least some of the enemies/bosses in the campaign.

I know that he’s playing a fairly strong build (Thorn Totem Spriggan Druid) but he hasn’t looked at any guides, he’s just used the uniques that have dropped naturally or through Nemesis and just skilled what he thought sounded good and afaik that build hasn’t even been buffed this patch. And not even bosses are able to kill his totems.

11

The guy who never played any aRPG in his life are playing this game.

Yeah that guy who has never played an ARPG will have “fun” with the braindead easy campaign where he doesn’t have to think about anything or learn any system, and then he’ll get to the endgame and wonder why he’s getting randomly one shot on his 1k HP 20% armor 0% dodge build with no resistances.

That is, if a new player is interested in lore (which rarely who is in this genre, but they exist), then they’ll actually be even more weirded out and hate the game, because the so called “gods of Eterra” that are world-ending threats are actually just loot pinatas - so even these ultra-casual, campaign only players won’t have fun.

If the content is gonna be designed for 10 year olds then the game ought to tell that to its players.

I’m 100% sure the devs are aware of this powercreep - I can’t imagine that any developer would be happy that the content they invested time and resources into is literally dead because it does nothing:

  • it teaches new players nothing (actually it teaches them that standing in attacks and ignoring everything is how the game is played)

  • it makes both lore-junkies and system/gameplay-junkies literally feel nothing - no rush, no excitement, no challenge, no engagement, no caring for the characters or the world, no caring for their own characters they build

  • it diminishes all the systems and crafting since they’re effectively useless considering how easy everything is

  • it wastes veteran players’ time (they can’t even test a build properly before end game since any combination of whatever will steamroll everything)

  • in general it shows a lack of care and polish for something that will be a first impression on players new to the game

  • and finally not to mention that if the campaign stays like this it’s effectively a waste of dev resources since it, again, does nothing and serves no purpose.

The campaign is currently a clicker/idle game - it is not an engaging, build-making action role playing game.

3 Likes
12

I would say some people like it that way just because they can blast their way through it in a couple of hours and get to endgame faster.
I don’t think the devs intend to keep it that way, but there’s only so much time to do things and they’ve been focusing on endgame now. I expect they’ll do something about the campaign at some later date.

I wouldn’t expect many changes in Season 3 yet, though. Maybe when the campaign get new chapters.

13

I was trying to hold back with my reply for a week when every blaster is already gone, but I can’t… The campaign is in a sad state. I remember - was it at launch or early access? - that I had to inspect mob packs and their abilities, e.g. the Void Prophet, Void Horror, Immortal Eye, Desecrated Flesh or Tundra Stalker. I could not just pull all packs at once and had to step out of telegraphed dangers. I want to go back to that. Now I only see their corpses despawning as soon as I enter a zone. It doesn’t need to swing the direction PoE2 went (please don’t!) but this has gotten ridiculous.

14

I guess 10 year olds or new gamers should get shit smeared in the tutorial so that the 40 year old basement dwellers can be slightly less bored blasting the campaign in an hour? lol

The campaign isnt for anyone who has more then 10 hours in the game, it is literally for people who need to stop and ask “how do i craft” etc.

All these threads always just dont understand that the campaign is basically entirely optional, if your power creep is so high, at level 20 simply enter monos and level up and go back to get the idol/skill points later when you can strategically use dungeon skips to get a quick optimal route.

1 Like
15

I guess 10 year olds or new gamers should get shit smeared in the tutorial so that the 40 year old basement dwellers can be slightly less bored blasting the campaign in an hour? lol

What? Let me try to explain in relatively shorter sentences that you may understand, since you seem to be ignoring what is being said in longer-form paragraphs that contain actual critique:

  1. Me personally am not a “blaster” (I know you insulted me calling me a basement dweller, but I’ll let it go and forgive) - I play for a couple of hours a day and have a small marathon of 5-6-7 hours on the night of a league launch. I am what you would call an average player.

  2. The person named “JPI” in this very thread explained how his friend who is new to ARPGs in general was disappointed by the campaign and lack of any resistance whatsoever. I’ve seen a lot of people online say the same → they just bought the game, it’s too easy and they don’t understand where the actual… gameplay… is.

  3. The campaign doesn’t have to be grueling for new players and “gamer dads” just so it can be fun for veterans - these two things are not mutually exclusive - a campaign can be a decently okay challenge and tutorial at the same time which veterans will blast through anyways, but at least if it’s challenging they can test their build in the early stages of the game and see if they’ll like it later on (and new players can actually engage with bosses and enemies and have a fun first time experience, since… you know… the combat is the core of ARPGs).

  4. The campaign is not entirely optional, and even if it was it is still content that me, you and everyone else payed for - it’s a part of the game and development resources were put into it, so saying “just don’t do it and ignore it” instead of allowing us to critique it is stupid. It’s a part of the game and I’m critiquing the game so it can be better.

  5. It’s always objectively better to have a game be engaging and fun all the time - from the beginning to the end - instead of it only “starting at the endgame”, as some people like to tell you (“you obviously didn’t get to endgame because the real challenge is there” - yes that’s the problem, why isn’t it fun before endgame as well?).

Hope you can understand our criticisms better now, wish you all the best and I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, I am too… but I did not enjoy the campaign, not at all - I actually watched a movie and a TV show on my 2nd monitor because of how boring it was getting.

The point of a reward loop in ARPGs is that there is a challenge before a reward - that’s what makes the reward feel good and earned.

16

Rolled for a short while with three people at one point, friend and a streamer I patron. Enemy health was STILL so low that the melee falconer barely even got a chance to hit anything. Straight up nuking things man. IDK what the right fix is, as the game can still be very dangerous. You learn quickly that low void resist can be very bad in Ruined Era, lack of Necrotic in Imperial is dangerous, and lack of Cold when you return to Divine and enter Heoborea is downright deadly.

Make no mistake, I looooove finding the gear and build to stomp shit, but even with ward on major bosses I’m clearing them solo and with friend in <15 seconds. I can’t expect Last Epoch to get as mechanically deep as PoE2 (not until they release a sequel in… 8 years let’s say lmao) but experiencing bosses for longer than a quarter minute wouldn’t be a bad thing. New players are probably juuuust right, but I wouldn’t mind a veteran mode that is Campaign only that brings back something comparable to Masochist mode. That was arguably overtuned (Majasa could just tackle you faster than you could escape or regen, she was impossible to kill on release playing Masochist) but it would make for a cool new ladder if nothing else for those that like the challenge. How fast can you clear Campaign on Veteran? Test your skills and game knowledge, or just enjoy the added challenge!

17

Pre-patch: I’ve just stepped back into playing Last Epoch again after probably four to five years? I just played the game for about fifty hours previous to that when lagon was the final boss of the game so I have some kind of an idea about how the game worked. Pre-patch I loaded up the game and just played a build that I spent probably 30 minutes theory crafting and the campaign was not a cakewalk for me. I probably had somewhere in the ballpark of 30-50 deaths.

Post Patch : followed a Dr3ad guide and went through the campaign with less than 5 deaths

Newish player anecdote with 4k hours in POE : It’s around where is needs to be for newer players but could likely use some more variety of monsters including some that rush the player

TLDR: bad ARPG enjoyer thinks the campaign difficulty in alright because you struggle with mediocre theory crafts when you dont understand how damage is scaled but mob variety would be nice.

18

Yeah, I just got done with it for the first time and everything before about Act 6 was so easy that it was barely even engaging (playing Mage). The relative power of monsters to the player should really be higher in Acts 1-5. I don’t even think it’s possible to die unless you desync before around Act 4 or 5, you can basically tank anything the game can throw at you with just a bit of ward. By Act 9, the difficulty is about where I think it should be for an “easier” campaign: You can still roll most packs but you can’t just facetank bosses and you do have to actually try to avoid damage and deal with mechanics.

It’s weird that I really don’t want to do campaign again on a different character because it’s so easy that it’s boring, which is a totally different type of boring to the recent poe2 boringness where everything is just torturous.