I play online characters because I want to have the option of playing with friends sometimes, not to be subjected to a bunch of random strangers running around my instance of town whenever I return there. As much as I’ve continued to support and play LE through every content drought and questionable decision (like inserting more RNG into gearing), this has been making me question whether I really feel comfortable playing anymore.
For now, my solution is to get into and get out of towns as quickly as possible, and afk someplace I’ve cleared of mobs instead of the End of Time, but what’s really needed is an option to always create a private instance. This is a win-win, as it also means the people in multiplayer town instances will know that the other people there chose to be there, i.e. might actually want to group up rather than simply being annoyed by any attempt at interaction.
I don’t know the logistics behind this but they have very much stated that this aspect of Town areas is something they do want. They want everyone to see others to feel like part of the Epoch multitudes.
That said, the area in Heoborea where the dummies and arena are located have never seemed to have anyone in it, as often as I go there for testing and stuff, I’ve never seen anyone else. So maybe this IS an individual era. If it is, what might be a simple solution would just be to allow the player to set a ‘base’ location that is used when you log in.
I never really understood why people hate MP instanced towns. I’m someone that almost never interacted with strangers in any online game and it never bothered me. I’ve played PoE for years and I was fine with MP towns. And PoE is even more annoying with the constant apparitions.
And yet, you normally spend so little time in town that it doesn’t really matter at all. And when you AFK… well, you’re AFK, who cares?
Not to mention that if you want a calm place to chill, you can just go to monos. That works kinda like the PoE hideout where you have your own instance and that is available as soon as you first reach the end of time. You don’t have to do echoes, just walk right when you reach it.
Ultimately it’s a game design decision. I don’t think they will change nor do I think they should. If that is the factor that makes you quit the game, then maybe you weren’t having fun with the game regardless of that. I very much doubt there will be anyone that will stick around if they weren’t having much fun just because they have the option to stay alone, much like I doubt there are many people that will leave if they were having fun. Plus, it’s possible we will, at some point in the future, get some PoE-like hideout, so that will be moot.
As for gear RNG, LE actually doesn’t have that much as it is now. Have you ever played PoE? Maybe you want deterministic loot like in D3/D4, where almost all your drops are for your class and you’re fully geared up in a day? Now THAT is something that can really drive people away. I know I never played D3 much more than a couple weeks into any season and the same is bound to happen with D4.
In sum, after years of PoE (and all the diablos before that as well as most major ARPGs), I have to say that towns don’t bother me at all and gear overall is looking pretty good in LE.
The only problem with this is no access for respeccing passives. That’s why with a solo area that already has all that stuff as well, just being able to set a ‘home base’ might be an easy way to do it.
I as actually talking about going AFK, rather than going to the extreme of going into an area and clearing it to AFK there.
As for monos, they kinda already look and feel the way PoE hideouts are. I expect with some “easy changes” (which would be actually pretty hard to code, I expect, but might be the easiest solution) EHG could add an hideout to each so we can do monos from there instead and that could have chest, shop, respec and dummy for you to customize as you want.
But you’d still have MP towns as you moved through the campaign (like PoE and D4 do)
Once you open Champion’s Gate it’s always clear. You don’t have to keep clearing to AFK. It’s the area you go to to access Arena’s and to use dummies for testing.
Personally, I’m doubtful EHG would provide this option for the reasons Mike describes here:
Of those listed, reducing server costs is likely the biggest reason and would certainly be a huge motivator for implementing such a system considering how expensive it is to run a live service operation. This is probably why they’re not looking to add a system similar to PoE’s hideouts anytime soon as it would further separate players and thus increase server costs.
Yeah, I remember this. And was pretty sure they didn’t have any current plans for it. But Champions Arena is still there. It might not be a ‘customizable’ hideout but it is essentially a ‘solo’ hideout. It has everything there, INCLUDING the dummies for testing so if they ‘simply’ (i have literally no idea if it would actually be simple) gave a way to set your login spawn location between the two, that would solve it for people who don’t want to see everyone else running around.
Personally I don’t care one way or another. I do however really really want them to fix chat preferences so they don’t reset. They finally fixed Disable and Enable but now, it doesn’t remember which chat groups you’ve selected or unselected so you have to redo it every time.
I would rather prefer improvement of gameplay and introduction of stash tab affinities, to spend less time in current mono “hideout”. And I don’t mind towns being multiplayer, just fix loading times. Game feels livelier that way, and I can surprise other players with my low life primalist build.
If we get hideouts, I’m definitely buying one. Players get fancy hideouts, devs get the money, everyone is happy. Right now there are other things to focus one, but I’m hoping hideouts are added in the future. Maybe even customizable ones.
This is very good to know; I never gave that place much attention before. At least there’s a place with NPCs where I don’t have to be around other players to access them. Not a solution, but a helpful workaround.
Having opted in way back during alpha testing and 3000 hours on Steam alone say otherwise.
Being around anonymous strangers online makes me very uncomfortable, yet that appears to be the steep price the devs now want us to pay to maintain the option of playing with friends. It’s sad and has turned towns I used to enjoy running around and exploring into places to be avoided at all costs whenever possible.
Are you sure about that? A couple of times I’ve been at EoT I’ve had people pinging me to join mp with them. I have chat disabled. If you right-click them you get a pop-up that allows you to do requests and stuff.
I haven’t had it happen in a few days but I also tend to port to monos the moment I log in.
I would opt out of multiplayer towns just to get rid of lag zoning to and out of them. So far no player bothered me in towns. Maybe i did not notice, maybe my avatars are not that interesting
Yeah, this is certainly one big reason it’s hard to just ignore them. An “ignore everyone unless I specifically whitelist them” feature would be very welcome, though still a band-aid solution for not having to be around them in towns at all.
My theory is they do some kind of server disconnect and reconnect during zoning to/out of towns. Same lag on login screen. Used to be dreadful, now it’s better, but it’s still there.
It’s probably for load balancing purposes and live patching. Some time ago login screen was quick and so where the towns. Then server zone selection got really laggy, like waiting for every one last server to ping back before allowing us to select our preferred, fastest one, and then it was the same length of lag for town zoning.
So i’d like to opt out of that thing, unfortunately linked to multiplayer towns. No point doing it every town visit.
From a resources point of view, you should actually have less lag this way. The way loading zones works right now is that when you change zones the previous one is unloaded and a new one created for you to go in. If you have MP towns, the town is already loaded most of the time (unless the previous one is already full and a new one is needed, but that will happen way less often). So going into town with MP should actually be faster. At least until the system changes.
