I was getting back into LE as I wait for TQ2 early access and planned out 5 builds (one for each character). They’re all lv 22 and early in the story, now Season 3 is announced and will release a little less than two months from now and I now have no desire to continue my seasonal characters because I’ll “need” to restart once Season 3 launches. I use quotes, because I obviously can continue in Legacy, but this question is for people who play Seasons.
How do you do it? How do you stay motivated to restart your characters every 3-4 months? Or stay motivated to continue playing once the new season is announced.
Non-seasonal games like TQ and GD I don’t have this problem with, and at least LE doesn’t lock Legacy out of Seasonal content (despite many people asking for it), so I’ll probably just stay Legacy, I’m just curious about how people stay motivated
Most people that play seasons regularly don’t play for the whole season. Usually they play for a month or so and then jump to another game’s new season. They rotate their games.
Personally, I’ve always preferred the leveling process. When you start getting into super-endgame it gets boring for me, so I either make a new character or I move to another game.
In the case of LE, since there’s no difference basically between both I play in legacy always, but I still do start new characters frequently on a new season.
My motivation is basically that it’s fun to play and with a new season you get new stuff to play with.
And once you’re experienced enough with a game, it doesn’t take that long to reach endgame anyway. For example, in LE you can easily reach empowered monos in a day if you know what to rush and what to ignore.
I have the opposite opinion I dont know how legacy enjoyers do it.
why would I ever make a new character in legacy? just have 5 maxout outs, swap to a build instantly… then do what? grind out monos? that sounds boring as heck.
like for me its the same thing, you wanna replay a game you enjoyed, do you boot up your previous playthrough save to reroll the credits and X out the game? no, you make a new file and start over.
To me ARPGs are more like single player adventure games where you play, “beat” the game to whatever standard your okay with, then leave and come back when there is a new “DLC”(Season) and restart and try something new.
Legacy to me just sounds like an MMO with 0 content, id rather just play an MMO.
This pretty much how I enjoy ARPGs, which is why I’ll stick to Legacy from now on. And since I play offline it’s not like the bloated economy matters to me. I just noticed that my kneejerk reaction to the S3 announcement was immediately “now I don’t even want to continue playing” before I was like “but there’s always legacy”
The same reason you’d make a new character in Grim Dawn or Titan Quest, to play through on a new character. Though, LE’s recent mentality on character permanence being non-existence, there really is no point to making a new character when every build for every mastery is available to you on a single character compared to GD and TQ where one character is 1/45 (soon to be 54) possible combinations for GD.
I play Legacy.
I don’t need to restart.
I play what I enjoy at the moment I enjoy it. I start a new character when I want, not forced to a date. I delet characters I absolutely dislike… or since I’m beginning to name them in a generic manner simply re-build them entirely.
I store top-end equipment with proper rolls in tabs named after the respective build should I have the urge to come back to it.
Since I don’t enjoy the progression of levels and gradual content progression but instead the process of character improvement directly (don’t care if it’s 200c or 3000c as long as the character gets better and can beat more bosses or do more rewarding stuff bit by bit) I can do that.
Season/Leagues/Cycles work as well. If I pick a build I haven’t played before. Then improving on that build is my focus, and I can do it in a Cycle or in Legacy, doesn’t matter.
This is how I’ve played for over 8000 hours in PoE already and nearing 1000 hours in LE. As long as I haven’t reached the absolute peak there is (5 T7 in LE, perfected gear in PoE)) and the realistic possibility to upgrade is existing I’ll keep on doing it.
The more avenues of improvement the game gives me the more likely I stay.
In LE it’s idol collecting of perfectly rolled idols and improving the count of LP on gear, the exalted farm is crap since it’s not realistic and reliable, the rate at which I get feasable items there is not high enough in cadence to make me feel like I can get success at any second… with it actually happening from time to time. Farming for max rolled blessings is also in that included, but the visual feedback of which ones I don’t have yet while choosing is off-putting a bit.
In PoE it’s collecting Cluster Jewels, Eyes, Heist equipment, fracturing bases to craft on, improving the rolls on the unique collection of mine, double-corruption the uniques which are perfectly rolled and I have 2 of em, collecting all gems in the game gradually with double corruption in all versions on them (normal and vaal version) and so on.
This is the way I feel a repeated amount of progress in the game.
Yeah the early progression is far more rewarding than late game progression.
Also, as a a mostly online ARPGer, I found GD to be pretty lonely. I always thought they should have added a global chat of some kind for people that wanted them. Since most people are connected to the internet anyway.
It sounds to me like you try to do too many things at once - planning out and playing 5 characters at once, but only getting each one of them to level 22 (which is rather early in the campaign) is a hugely complex task. That would overwhelm my brain and I wouldn’t get anything done.
Personally, I prefer just focusing on one character at a time, and not minding the overall larger “seasonal” structure. Playing one character lets me focus entirely on that characters specifics skills, how to scale them, what mods I should consider, and really lets me deep dive in a specific niche. All the while, I also completely ignore the overarching “seasons”. I’m a long term Path of Exile player, and while playing that, I learned to avoid a few things that are not fun in my opinion:
Forcing myself to play every season just isn’t for me and burns me out. I don’t wanna no-life the same game every 3 months. I’d much rather no-life once or twice a year tops.
Forcing myself to care about the meta isn’t for me and annoys me. I much rather just pick a fun looking interaction and roll with that, completely blind without a guide. That helps me feel a deeper connection with my characters.
Forcing myself to care about trade and the state of the market (what uniques are currently worth seeking out, what could I run for profit, what items can I buy without spending too much while still improving my build?) is also not fun.
Thankfully, LE enables me to go completely nuts and I can have my fun on my own terms, so as long as I don’t force myself to play every 3 months, I think I should be good to go with this game.
Hope that info helps you find your own playstyle! Remember, games are supposed to be fun - if you force yourself to conform to something you would much rather not deal with, it’s not going to be fun long term.
That would require a server, though. Which would require maintaining it, and that is just a step away from MP anyway.
I’m guessing there are GD servers on discord you can use and it achieves pretty much the same without increasing their costs or effort. You can even set up MP sessions if you want.
Well, I started them like 2 or 3 days ago, and it’s not too bad if you plan the build ahead of time and break it up into sections (i.e. get to the council chambers | get your mastery | clear the cultist camp). 5 is also nothing compared to the 12 Defense+X characters I’m playing in TQ1 lol.
I stop periodically to swap to desktop mode (since I play on Steam Deck), usually between characters, to make adjustments to the planned build
It’s not every season. If the season is adding something interesting, or I haven’t played in a couple seasons, I’ll play. Otherwise I just wait for the accumulated content of several seasons. D4 is trying really hard to make me never come back by adding stuff that is only for one season… let’s see how the works out for their wallets.
And since I may have been away for half a year to a year, I simply have to come back at level 1 to figure out how the play the game again. And, as DJ, it’s the leveling that is fun. I think that 0.001% drop rates are stupid, so endless end-game grinding is not for me.
I am simply motivated because character progression, especially early and mid-game in LE is super fun and satisfying. You unlock all pieces your build needs very early and can go with your desired endgamebuild from the getgo and don’t have to play Build A first to then respec into your desired Build B at later stages of progression.
So even playing the same builds, I already played its always fun to do it again, this time with other loot drops and making the best out of what drops.
I have a few builds I am cycling through that i havn’t played for a few patches and I wil leventualyl return to all of them at some point. Throw in a couple more new build opportunities with new skills, unqieus etc on certain patches and that enough variety for me to keep me engaged and motivated.
Not at all. I have not played the game more than maybe a couple of hours since seasons / cycles began. This is because I personally recognize that they are designed to manipulate psychological tendencies like schedule effects, FOMO, etc, in addition to providing some legitimate entertainment from new content.
I’m a much bigger fan of the 20$ expansion model and thought we should’ve stuck with that. If you just start discounting it to 10$ six months before the next expansion comes out and then roll it into the base game when the new expansion comes out, that’s essentially like paying for a new “season” but instead of having the play the whole game over again, you get all new dungeons and monsters that are at that similar end-game level / difficulty.
Somehow Everquest figured this out in April of the year 2000 when they released their first expansion but 25 years later somehow we can’t figure this out anymore. It’s really sad to me what social media and mobile games have done to videogames since then.
My “RNG Runemaster” is crying because all my other characters have the core parts of their kit now at lv 22, and my Runemaster can’t use Runebolts or Glyph until way later. I’m making do with Fireball spam into Runic Invocation, but the build gimmick is Runebolts to randomize the runes while Glyph is used to consume runes for a chance to cast Invocation and then Invocation to refill the Glyph charges. So it’s gonna be a while until I can enjoy that playstyle, I want to say it was mid-40s early-50s when I got the build working on a previous character (super fun, highly recommend)
yea I’m in the same boat with my runemaster in hunting endgame items. It can do 400 corruption but I need some more ward pieces to make it better. COF has been helping immensely though.
I would agree with that except for build defining uniques, like wraithlord. You can’t really play wraithlord until you get the helmet and that’s level 65. Or Naal’s Tooth at level 64. Or Aaron’s Will at level 75.
By then you’re already doing endgame before your build can come online.
Even without that, some skills require 55 passive points to unlock. That means you’ll only be able to use it at the very end of the campaign. And that is if we don’t need some nodes further on, which can make your build only come online in the level 60-70 range.
If we compare with other games of the genre like PoE (or D4), the same doesn’t happen. Your build is pretty much always online by the end of act 5, at the latest, which is when you have all gems available to you.
Granted, this is because barely any unique in PoE actually changes the skill. Uniques are mostly just empowering the skill itself, but they don’t change how you play with that skill. They just give you buffs, better numbers, more survivability.
LE has a lot of these as well, but there are also plenty of uniques that change your skill in a unique way, so your build is “gated” by their level requirement, which can be quite high.
Obviously there are always exceptions but LE has very very high endgame uniques that are actually requried for certain builds. A lot of these builds can already build into the direction and then the uniques will just elevate them.
55 passive poitns is not at the end of the campaign, that is like Chapter 6-7.
There are also no passives that are required that would enable a build at level 60-70.
PoE has dozens and dozens of buidls that are not functioning until you have invested enough into them so much so that you woudl never paly that build right from the start ocne you have all the gems available. just because the skill gems are avaialble doesn’t mean the build is functional.
I stick to my point and say that LE ahs the best progression and most smooth build transition of all arpg’s. Pacing is great, unlocks are nto gated too far behind, basically msot buidls are functional once you have all skills available.
I suppose that depends on what you consider a build is. For example, running a single raptor (or a single golem) isn’t the same thing as running a pack of them. They’re different builds to me.
Likewise, running something like nova hammers or orbiting hammers is also different because they cause me to play differently (with one I’m running into monsters and with the other I’m trying to snipe them before they come close).
I have never needed to run another build in PoE after act 5 at most. Whatever the build was I was running it by then. It might be slow and ineffective, but the same thing happens in LE with plenty of them.
Usually by level 24 I’m running any build and it only grows and doesn’t change until endgame.
I do agree with you that LE’s progression and pacing feels pretty good. It’s my favorite ARPG to level up with, excepting the builds that require high level uniques.
Especially in PoE it does… there’s a reason why there’s ‘starter builds’ and secondary ones followed up.
Many many of the high end builds which people choose that start later in a league are absolute dog-shit beyond measure without being ‘online’, hence having specific combinations of items present that even cause the skill to function properly.
For example Ghazzy’s Skeleton Mage build doesn’t work without at least a ‘Fleshcrafter’ to ignore elemental resistances of enemies, which makes a difference of commonly 20-60% DPS alone, also it doesn’t work without a cluster jewel that has ‘Blessed Rebirth’ on it, which is solely found in maps and hard to acquire the base for, and even harder to acquire the base for a 4 passive sized one which is mandatory to have enough points available.
It also needs basically ‘Divine Flesh’ for anything more then mediocre playing experience at all, which is a legion jewel, glorious vanity that changes nodes in the area, which demands having a decent one to not scuff your build entirely with only worthless outcomes.
While uniques don’t change the skill in PoE uniques absolutely do cause the execution of mandatory defensive or offensive layers which are demanded by the content of the game.
Mana regen for a meteor mage.
Mandatory basically.
But yes, LE has very very few builds comparatively which aren’t ‘just start off as that’. The concept of ‘Starter build’ doesn’t yet exist.
Pacing is great?
So… a surprisingly hard introduction boss in Act 1 (for a beginner) followed by a static worm doing jack-shit is ‘great pacing’? Or do we wanna look further towards Lagon? Lagon is absolutely ‘great pacing’ isn’t he?
Or do you wanna look at the progression from the current campaign state into the current Monolith state? Also surely great pacing to suddenly have Act 7 mobs running at you when you just beat Act 9.
It’s also clearly ‘great pacing’ when we got not only a 10 level jump from monoliths to empowered but also 100c immediately stacked on top. Absolutely not grating.
If LE has ‘great pacing’ then PoE, Torchlight Infinite, GD and even D4 are seemingly a ‘gift from heaven’…
All things you could mention that are good about the game and you pick the most atrocious badly designed piece of shit aspect of the core gameplay.
What it is is piss-easy without providing a challenge for any reasonable experience ARPG fan until it suddenly does and smacks you left and right for seemingly no reason.
At least mention good design points rather then weaknesses.
let’s see how the works out for their wallets.