General feedback

Feedback and Suggestions
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Hi. I’m an ARPG enthusiast since Diablo (1) and have picked up Last Epoch in July (Beta 0.8.2I). I think the game shows a lot of potential, and since it’s still in early access, I’d like to provide my two cents. It’s a mixed bag of things I noticed, big and small.

Things to keep and watch over

  • No visual overload like PoE
  • Skill mechanics are not overly complex

Things to add

  • Subtitles for all cinematics and NPC lines
  • DPS for skill of choice in item comparison
  • Show status icons below target’s HP bar. (Current stack of bleed for example.)
  • Zooming in/out on the full screen mini map

Things to improve

  • Items need a more distinctive rarity glow in inventory.
  • The in-game Game guide is not comprehensive at all. Examples: missing haste, doesn’t mention that bleed stacks. A possible solution might be to just integrate the wiki instead.
  • The quest log should clearly state in which epoch the next quest step takes place.
  • Quest reward dialogue: display the relevant quest title.
  • Early game experimenting is discouraged because switching skills causes xp loss. That’s a shame, because every class offers a lot to discover.
  • Long term: more build complexity/options. I was expecting more based on what was advertised. In terms of complexity, right now I feel the game is above Diablo III, but way closer to that than to PoE. (Which I realize is not a fair comparison at the moment. Hence, long term.)
  • Quest ‘An Ancient Hunt’: plunges one into a prehistoric world. Afterwards, Lerinne mentions that the player went to “a time before civilization”. On the map however, we can clearly see a floating city. Maybe obscure (that portion of) the map until a later point.
  • Unique items’ usage should not be limited by limited stats like damage. They should offer unique mods that complement or even alter builds, and shouldn’t be not viable just because they can’t compete with highest tier items. Allow players to upgrade the “core” stats of a unique, such as damage or armor.

EDIT - I forgot to mention my thoughts on the upcoming Cycles. I’m actually not knowledgeable on the plans for this, but I assume it will be similar to PoE’s leagues or Diablo II’s ladder seasons, which I generally enjoy. I’d like to request two things:

  1. Please, please, please don’t make us play the campaign every time a new Cycle begins. This gets old quickly, at least for me. Please provide an alternative, such as the option to simply skip the campaign and start in the end game environment with a pre-leveled character and basic gear. Or (even better) extend the end game mechanics to lower levels. Personally I’d be fine with gating these options behind the requirement of having completed the campaign at least once. Also, I’d like to stress that this can and should be made optional, for example by launching variants of the same cycle, much like PoE’s HC/SC/SSF leagues.
  2. If Cycles will include (cosmetic) rewards, please ensure they are obtainable by players that have a limited amount of time to invest. I realize this is subjective, but I’m sure stats like average (median!) play time per player could help. Also, this is not an appeal to not cater to players who do have a lot of time to invest. Rewards like (incremental) titles or PoE’s totems are a good way to reward longer grinds.
1 Like
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First and foremost: Welcome to the LE Community!

Always great to see new people coming in and giving short, concise feedback!

I agree with most things here, but I just want to touch on a few things.

This is just an assumption, but I am very sure, stuff like this will come, once the story is finished.
This is also the reason why we don’t have any localisation yet. Parts of the story are still changing and EHG wants to wait until the story is totally modernized and finalized. (They constantly rework/overhaul older parts of the story)

This is very complex, but the devs already said, they intend to add a more detailed dps tooltip at some point, this could potetnially include a dps comparison, whne comapring items.

This is a commonly requested feature, but the devs also stated multipel times already, that they do not intend to add every buff/debuff as a visible indicator in the UI.
This would unnecessarily bloat the UI.

It is really important to think about, would the actual stack number of any Ailment change you behaviour? In the majority of cases, it will very likely not change your decision making and behaviour, so this information is just “nice to have”, but doesn’t really change anything.

It is vital to only show information, that is crucial for moment to moment decision making and combat behaviour.

There is a slider in the option menue. But I think a bindable hotkey for this would be handy.

The game guide is already really comprehensive, especially compared to every other similar game IMO. I don’t say it’s perfect, but it’s very good already.

The Game Guide does mention that ailments (Which bleed is) do stack and that you can apply multiple stacks at once.
It even does give specific exampels with numbers.
https://imgur.com/QbUb8Or
Haste is not mentioned, that is correct. It should defintely be added, but most sources of Haste do state, what Haste does, when you press [ALT] for an advanced tooltip.

That is one of the hottest discussed topics on the forum.
If you really feel this way, that good feedback, but it’s also important to understand, that the whole releveling aspect was already way more punishing a few patches back.
I personally think it’s entirely fine to switch and experiment with skills during all stages of progress, from early story, to end story to endgame.

There are minimum respec levels and exp catch up mechanics in place, that did not exist before and even before I think the system was fine.

We still miss major game systems, like endgame modes and itemsization systems.
But also adding complexity, for the sake of adding complexity is not the way to go.
Every bit that get’s added to the game, that brings complexity, should be justifiable.

I am not sure, how much experience you have with the game yet and how many uniques you discovered.

There are definitely a lot of uniques that are not that crazy in terms of “unique effects”, but there are also A LOT other uniques/set items that enable crazy stuff.

I just commented recently on some1 saying that LE doesn’t offer build enabling/build definign uniques and i solely listed pre-083 Uniques, because just patch 083 alone brought like 20+ build-defining/enabling uniques.

Here is the post I am talking about:

But thank you for the great feedback and keep it coming!
We need more people that can articulate their thoughts this well.

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The experience loss is minimal and very rapidly made up for. I have never felt discouraged from experimenting by it. In fact, how easy it is to respec and relevel skills has encouraged me to experiment.

I honestly think that the fact that this keeps coming up is a problem with general player attitude and not the design itself.

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Thanks for your clarifying answer. I just added some thoughts on Cycles, if you’d care to comment on that.

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I somewhat agree, but I think it is problem that game needs to solve not player mentality. I think it would be better if the min leveling system kept you 1 level behind when your skills are level 5 and 3 levels when they are level 10. Then it reaches the half mark around 16.

It is a problem in perception and changing doesn’t take long but the perception during that time is important. Especially for leveling where experimenting should be encouraged.

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I can imagine (and hope) the system gets less punitive while you progress through the game. I have only played a little over 13 hours. But during that time, I felt restricted to experiment. While I feel that early game is the best phase to do so. Not sure that constitutes an attitude problem :wink:

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AS far as I am aware, the devs said, they don’t have immediate plans for any alternative way of leveling a character, but they are not entirely against it. But it’s not within the 1.0 scope, so if there will be alternative ways in the future it will be added post-release.

We don’t have a ton of details, but they basically already confirmed a “standard mode”, where all old characters, including the ones we will create in MP Beta, get moved into.

I guess it’s save to assume that they will ahve SC and HC, with each having their Solo enviroment respectively.

We don’t have any detaisl on that, but I am sure the devs do listen.

Generally LE does value the time of players way more than many other simialr games already IMO.

I am sure, that many of the rewards, if they are any, will be fairly obtainable.

But I think it’s also important to have very hard-to achieve goals too, for the type of player that just is so dedicated.

But I am a fan of incremental rewards too.

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I think it’s vital to understand, that you don’t need to have the exact same points in a skill, to fully judge if you like the skill or not.

For example:
You have 3 skills on ~lvl 8 and respec one
The respecced on will be lvl 3-6 for a few minutes of your playtime (let’s say 15 minutes)
Within this 15 minutes fo playtime, you will be able to determine, if you like the skill or not.
The skill does not need to be lvl 8.

Also you always have several specialistion slots.

You can always keep 1 or 2 of oyur “main skills” if you are happy with them and “experiment” with the 3rd or 4th slot.

You will rarely need 2 or 3 skills synergising that early, to fully function.

My tip to any1 playing through the campagin is: Keep 1 or 2 skills that you like and know as high as possible and do experiment with your remaining specialisation slots.
During the story you will not need every singel specialisation slot, for defense, utility or offense.

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I think that it does. The respec system in LE is very permissive, and while there is a loss of power when switching specialized skills, it’s pretty low - in fact, I’d say it’s lower at low levels because the absolute numbers are lower.

The attitude issue is that some people can’t see (or won’t look) any further than “number got smaller”, and can only view that as “punitive”. They have been conditioned by other games that are not forgiving of experimentation and the poison of “min/maxing” as a broad video game meta to do this, and I’m not saying it’s “their fault” - it’s just applying pattern recognition. But IMO it is still a matter of attitude rather than design, because that pattern isn’t actually present here.

The reality is, the system itself does not, in actuality, discourage you from or punish you for experimenting, and it’s pretty clear to me that it’s not intended to. If anything, I’ve felt more free and welcome to experiment in LE than I have in other ARPGs. I’ve done a ton of respecing on a ton of characters in the low-mid level range and from my experience the actual difference and loss of power was pretty much unnoticeable. But for some people, “number got smaller” is the beginning and end of it, and that’s an attitude thing.

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Not exactly. During early levelling, specialization unlocks on level threshold. Personally when I first play LE, the timing when I feel the most impulse to try out (unlocked) skills is when I only have 1-3 skill slots, and there are so many skills that got unlocked. Which is why I feel the early level skill xp catch-up need to be accelerated more to encourage experimentation.

There is also relative comparison with the “main,older” skills where if you experiment with skills, the level disparity between new skills and the main skill is larger and larger which contribute to the perception that the penalty is heavy. Now, that I am more experienced with running alts, that feeling is not there anymore with more knowledge but as a newbie, that penalty perception is definitely there

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I actually think that because changing the perception doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) take long once you’re actually engaging with the system, the perception during that time isn’t important, and the game is actually helping to solve it already - by putting up a system that isn’t going to kick you in the genitals for trying something new, and giving you the opportunity to learn through experience that it doesn’t have to be a big deal that the number went down temporarily.

The real problem is that many people are walking into that scenario with too much FOMO to take the first step. Your suggestion wouldn’t fix that, just sidestep it. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad suggestion, just that it doesn’t solve that particular problem.

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I absolutey agree with both of your points. Hope they read it.

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Your first 2 slots are basically instantly unlocked and the 3rd one will be unlocked before choosing the mastery.
4th one will be very soon after you unlock the mastery and the 5th one is basically the onyl one that takes a decent amount of time.

Even 3 slots are enough to experiment.

The bolded part is really important. I think a lot of people do not realize how easy and fast you can relevel skills. Relevleing a skill during the first 10 or 15 levels might be slow, but it will become faster and faster and faster.
So people that might tried it very early, are kinda afraid to do it again and that’s the reason they don’t try it anymore.

It’s all about perception and maybe EHG can do something to really communicate that releveling a skill does takes mere minutes.

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From my point of view it should be far easier and faster to get the first ~10 levels of a skill and things should slow down drasticly after. I’m okay if the speed to relevel skills in monos is higher or like it is now but at the end of the day the game balancing isn’t hurt that much if you can progress your skills fast untill a certain point when it slows down.

More points or faster aquireing of said points early on don’t hurt that much because damage numbers will still be low untill your gear and passives offer more dmg. Then again there are some skills that realy start to shine if you put 12-15 points in it when you finaly overcome the filler skills. Take Warpath as an example… first few points always go into cost reduction. An experienced player might know the outcome and how strong warpath can be but the first time I used the skill I threw it out 5 after 5 minutes of testing because it felt like poop. Now I level my Sentinel to 75 with warpath without a second thought because it’s easy and effective but you might need some points in it to “feel” it as a new player.

That’s why I think it might be good to get early points faster. I won’t care to start mono at skilllevel 13-15 but I would love it to throw points arround while leveling. Warpath example again: Good 2 handed weapon change the skill to twohanded nodes, good DW setup drops get rid of 2handed nodes and skill something else, want to test the smite interaction on the skill because you think the tooltip is nice and end up hating it is reeeeeealy frustrating :D. I’m all for a faster start and a lower mid to end leveling speed.

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It’s not isolated issue with the number of skill slots. Limited skill slots = replacing old skill with low level new skill. More of the new specialized skill is already lower level compared to the first main skills. There is already perception/feeling of wanting the new specialized skill to catchup with the main skills. To then experiment with another skills and reset those skill levels excarbate the perception

Agree. Maybe add PoE style gem exp bar on the side with the skill exp multiplier x2,x3 etc marked for the laggard skills.

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And that’s what already happens.
I think the game needs to better explain and present all the different systems, that are already in place, so people understand that all skills will catch up to the level of your highest skills.

There is already a very good UI within the skill spec window.
I think tutorials and new player guidance just needs to be improved.

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This UI while very good, does not help to reduce the perception though since it is rarely opened. Players only see staticbexp bar and accelerated text without any inklings how much accelerated it is. Adding small skill bar exp in main screen helps player visualize the rate of increase. Toggle-able in settings for experienced player. At least that is my idea on how it works.

Good tutorial and player guidance can definitely be improved as a solution. However, I fear it can become too hand-holdy if it is excessive. Had too many such experience in modern games. Please no implementation like “you only need few mins in avg to level up skills after despecialize”. Breaks immersion.

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