Except you can play all the content in Legacy when it’s released so there is absolutely no FOMO/psychological manipulation going on (at the moment, may change, nobody knows) in LE.
It does feel like you’re simplifying things a bit too much, to the point where all skills are identical & I’d refer you to your previous comment about kerping things realistic/reasonable otherwise there’s no point in having a conversation.
Nah, that’s just a numerical buff to the spectres, you’ll go from zoom zoom to zoom zoom. No change in play style.
So, use rate, nothing more? You’re still spamming the same skill.
Also use rate, nothing more.
Which is already there since you can chat in MP in GD/TQ already.
That’s just my thought process behind it, not how it’s perceived. I just need to break down things into the smallest possible bits and build up from there to gain understanding. Otherwise I tend to miss aspects that can be rather important.
Just a ‘me’ thing.
It helps with understanding in general though, things are surprisingly similar… and how those similarities are combined tends to create entirely different perceptions.
To address them:
Numerical changes can lead to changes in play-style. It’s a non-direct influence. For the spectres it means focusing on groups rather then strong rares and then zooming. Without it’s more tactical to ensure they stay alive and you as well.
But overall yes.
Combat focus adding DoT is use rate, absolutely.
CC is kinda weird though, because you keep everything the same, but it’s a defensive measure which allows a change in play-style itself.
Ancient Waystones does cause those things to even become possible because the cost can be quite high. So it actively allows alterations to the build in a substantial manner. Unless we define use-rate of ‘0’ as a viable value
It’s not the same thing having a chat that broadcasts to the 1-3 clients you’re playing with and having a centralized server handling communications for 5k+ people.
It’s not that it would be hard to do. It’s just that it’s not worth doing when you have tools that already do it just fine for the few people that care about it.
It would be like implementing a graph in the game menu that shows how many people are playing the game at any given time. It wouldn’t be hard to do. But it wouldn’t be worth the effort of doing it when you already have tools (steamdb and steamcharts) that do the same thing for the few people that care about it.
Plus, like I mentioned, there’s the issue of them deciding to drop the game forever. Right now it would change absolutely nothing to the game, whereas adding these features would cause an “incomplete” experience when they do.
You could say the same about chat in an MMO or aRPG though. You can’t organise anything complex in chat like boss mechanics so if you’re doing that then you’re in voice comms so why bother having chat servers when you could just use discord?
Because MMOs or live service games are inherently multiplayer in nature and so should have social features built into the game.
GD is inherently a single player game that allows direct connections. Not the same thing.
It’s like saying that I can play Portal 2 in co-op, so Valve should create an in-game chat so I can talk to everyone that’s playing Portal 2.
Or any similar game.
The discussion shifted from the ‘should’ to the ‘can reliably and easily do it’.
Which we should - hah - be able to agree on that it’s not a large thing to implement.
Functionality? Extremely little.
Ease of creation? Also very little.
Worth the effort? Still ‘nah’
Sure, but the question is why do MMO’s get chat when they could use discord. And the answer is that in inherently multiplayer games where you interact with other people frequently it’s worth adding (and maybe even voice chat, like some games add), whereas in inherently single player ones it isn’t.
So adding a chat to GD isn’t that hard. Nor would it be hard to add one to minesweeper. But it’s definitely not worth it for those games. Not only because it brings just a small benefit to the game and only for a few people, but also because when support for the game ends, having MP features that no longer work feels different to a player than a game that is still 100% functional.
But if LE didn’t have chat, then it would absolutely be worth adding it to the game.
Like I said, different products, different expectations.
I do the same too. I typically will do all 5 classes and each with at least 1 mastery per season. I’ve been through the campaign so many times and it gets easier on the alts once you get the dungeon keys and skip stuff. Leveling too is much faster with those op leveling items that you can slam in the Julra dungeon.
I understand why they wouldn’t want to do it, but discord isn’t exactly the same thing as in game chat. And the lack of in game chat was just a turnoff. The same goes for offline D2.
Hopefully GD2 has full fledged servers in addition to offline mode. But my guess is that is too expensive and risky for their small studio.
This brings up another question, what do you use in-game chat for? I played pseudo-Offline until True Offline was added and just always turned it off because it was annoying to me, though I also tend to turn off World/Say/Local/Shout chats in MMOs
So before LE had multiplayer I remember they had chat as well. It’s good sometimes for questions/help and game chat, but mostly for just random chat. I play a lot of MMO’s solo these days, often hardcore, and I really preferred having world or guild chat in game as well.
It definitely makes a difference for me and tends not to break my immersion too much unless it gets into politics or offensive stuff, then I just mute it.
coming from POE. i never understood the appeal of restarting from scratch. even now, i detest the very idea. i like permanency and prefer to play on standard/legacy modes.
but the devs enticed players like me with seasonal MTX rewards as well as seasonal exclusive drops that have no guarantee that they would be introduced into the game’s core. this gave players like me a reason to play.
but after playing poe for a decade, i realized the wretched truth. the existence of exclusive stuff on temp seasons AND the fact that you could only get them by starting fresh meant that permanent leaguers were always missing out.
you dont reset? you dont get the stuff. some of the stuff could be traded at the end of the season but usually it could be priced at exorbitant prices since its now limited.
i realized that games that did this with seasonal content, meant that permanent players were ALWAYS at a loss. LE is different where you can access seasonal content without resetting.
i really appreciate that BUT the devs have mentioned they intend to follow POE’s method where you’ll be forced to reset to gain access to seasonal content.
since thats EHG’s stance, moving forward i’ve decided to simply stop playing the game altogether. i’m not going to reset all progress every few months. i dont want to feel like a 2nd class citizen. i m sick and tired of everything being catered to seasonal players.
so nah. not gonna be rerolling every 3/4 months. if you dont enjoy it now. you will not enjoy it later.
you could try and do what i did. but one day you might come to the same realization that the game/devs DGAF about the permanent players since theyre being treated as second class citizens.
theres a lot of people with a lot of justifications on why seasonal content needs to be exclusive and needs to be reset. i dont disagree fully as i do see their points. but even with such justification, it doesnt change the fact that as long as you’re forced to reset to gain access or if you’re time gated by a few months to gain access to seasonal content. the game is not catering to you. you are not the main audience.
More referring to the temporary increased drop rates, or new items / builds that are strong this patch that may fall behind next patch, etc. It’s my understanding that large amounts of content in these games start to get reworked to entice players to change builds and get new items for specs that will no longer be dominant later or be nerfed outright once they’re discovered to synergize too well with other things. The devs create these incentives, perhaps unintentionally in a lot of cases, but each cycle inevitably feeds into the next as the reworked content keeps coming.
But it would probably be correct to say that Schedule Effects are stronger than FOMO, especially if there’s new items to obtain. As long as there’s a new better thing to click until it drops, those who are already schedule reinforced will keep clicking. This is a model that works on humans; that’s why game developers have had so much success with it. (That’s why social media platforms and app developers have had so much success with it also.)
This always felt to me like incentives to play seasonal, but if you have to give your players incentives to play seasonal, is it really worth playing for most of them? Like LE, LE has no discrepancy between Legacy and Cycle at the moment (key words), and some people do play Cycle but I’ve seen them cite the bloated economy in Legacy for online players and ITT people saying that the cycle itself is incentive for them to start a new character that Legacy doesn’t give them.
Players don’t need extra incentives to play Seasonal content if that’s what they want to play. The refresh of leaderboards, hard reset of the economy, and chance to make a new character seem to be all players need. So why all the extra incentives in games like PoE, D3, and D4? Just give it to everyone at the same time like LE is currently doing and make everyone happy.
Edit: Or better yet, follow in TQ and GD’s footsteps and drop the “games as a service” (GAAS) model. GAAS only makes money off of whales and only leads to player resentment if you can’t keep up with the content cycle. On the other hand, you could release a full priced campaign with enough endgame content and replayability for players to enjoy, giving free updates to fix bugs and balance the game. Then release regular DLC expansions to add more content instead of trying to sell cosmetics to whales. Or go the Chronicon route of releasing DLC classes as well as DLC expansions. It’s to late for Last Epoch to change it’s business model now, but I hope EHG takes notes for a potential Last Epoch 2 and drops GAAS as a potential model, then when the game is “done” you can work on new passion projects instead of churning out half-baked “seasonal content” like a hamster running on a wheel. I’d take two well made expansions over 5 years than 20 “seasons” of temporary content that might be fun or might be terrible
Because this format only works if there is no server maintenance. So LE could switch to it, if they shut down their servers and turned off multiplayer.
Also, this model leads to new content only coming out every year or two. Which means the game is mostly “forgotten” in between those releases, with only the baseline player count you get at the end of seasons. And since those players already paid for the game, the studio isn’t making any money in those periods, so there’s even less incentive to create expansions (which is why most games don’t even have expansions, unless they happen to be very successful like GD).
And if you’re going to have server and multiplayer, then you need a constant source of income. That comes from the large influx of players in a new season during the first week of play. That’s when most people buy the MTX that keep the servers afloat.
And if you need players to play for a week or two in order to make money, then you need to extend the playtime. Legacy/standard players will inevitably finish content way sooner than seasonal ones. Meaning that if you can play the new content with your level 100 min-maxed character, you’re done with the new content in a day or two and don’t stick around to buy stuff.
Personally, I also like having content available to both modes. But the fact is that if you always do that, you’re making less money.
Legacy/standard players don’t feel the need to login at day 1 and blast the content. The content will always be there, so there’s no rush. They can play it in a month or two. Or even skip this league altogether.
It does feel sad to say, but FOMO is what drives players back and what generates income to keep servers up.
Without it seasonal realm is left with just a small number of players and at that point you might as well not even have it and stick to just one mode.
But if you look at GAAS as a business model, unless it’s B2P like this game, 90% of the income is from whales and most players aren’t spending anything at all. I would hazard a guess that of the PoE players who have played for more than a year the overwhelming majority have spent less than $50 on the game. So their income is from majority of players spending $8-20 a year ($2-5 per season) and then the 100 or so players spending $80-200 a year ($20-50 per season.
Meanwhile, games like Guild Wars (buy-to-play MMORPG with no subscription that sells additional character slots, storage expansions. and very few cosmetics outside of the base game + 3 expansions) is still operational with servers running after 18 years (though I’m sure the sequel helps cover the server costs now, it didn’t for the lifetime of the game prior to that sequel launching). So selling some bank tabs and character slots was enough auxilliary income for ArenaNet to develop 2 full expansion campaigns with 2 new classes and dozens of new skills and systems + one pseudo-campaign with even more new skills and systems while also competing directly with WoW in it’s prime. I’m pretty sure EHG could get away with using the game+expansions model by selling cosmetics and character slots and still make enough to keep the lights on and provide quality expansions
Which is nonsense.
D2 wasn’t a ‘live service game’ either and handled it well.
They had ongoing server costs and they did it well.
It can be the same verification process style as was done back then, which reduces load significantly and mandates less of a server infrastructure, at the cost of cheating, true… but minimal amounts with the right security measures.
Also the trading can still run over a separate server, optimally better handled then the crap they got going on currently and also group-play wouldn’t pose a problem.
It would also make MTX not any different either because of the verification process happening.
This is simply not a proper argument you provided. We’re talking about a game here which did such a system damn 25 years ago, unless instead of progression of system solely shittification happened then I don’t see a problem with it.
Which is also factually wrong.
Nothing demands this to be the case.
State your reasoning for that. It’s pure nonsense. I can make up stuff without any basis anytime as well.
If that would be a mandated aspect how could ‘Oxygen not Included’ exist? Which gets a relatively substantial update every month or so? Since years now?
Which is also factually wrong.
There’s enough games over the course of the time showcasing this not to be the case. Heck… look at Fallout 76 which is going strong and doesn’t have this issue. Their releases are simple seasonal content which wouldn’t even mandate a multiplayer of any kind, the majority of people plays that game purely solo, and those updates also don’t necessitate a sort of ‘reset’ like an ARPG does, you play your character which is OP beyond end on there.
So nah as well.
Have a proper content pipeline.
Have a proper MTX market.
Have a proper incentive to simply play.
Then you don’t got that problem.
You’re combining things in really awkard ways that simply don’t make much sense.
MTX. Seasonal content without the necessitated online-only aspect but instead verification process regularly (much less strain on the infrastructure).
Provides the same upsides.
Has none of the current downsides.
What seems to be forgotten by the genre is that they are not a goddamn MMO which mandates the interactions for the community aspect, hence mandating the online-only environment.
Heck… even Guild Wars 1 made it better with only towns being online areas… verification process can happen after exiting a town, the seed showcases the potential items that can drop and the potential max XP for example (very simplistic) so diverting from that when returning to the town would make the verification fail, hence a cheater.
Hard to circumvent comparatively to many other systems.
Yes, you either lean fully into the online only upsides or you don’t damn do em!
I don’t get why EHG does this half-assed stuff anyway.
We got no social events of any kind.
We got a chat… which doesn’t mandate online-only.
We got group-play… which doesn’t mandate online-only.
We got MTX, which mandates only server verification, not online-only.
We got no guild halls.
We don’t even have guilds at all!
Maybe they should start properly implementing the baseline of why companies actually choose this model rather then dimpling around in an area they seemingly have no clue about since they use basically zero of what would make them rely on it in the first place.
Then the enforced ‘replayability’ of that kind doesn’t creep up. Your server costs are 5% at best comparatively then. Why? Because of the load reduction.
If solely FOMO keeps your product afloat your company should be fined, shut down forcefilly and you as the creator drawn in front of a damn court for predatory business practices.
Which is my stance on those things.
Commonly 60$ because of the supporter pack.
The general recommendation from every streamer is that pack as it represents the a price in relation to a full-price game and allows you to buy all necessary tabs making your life a massive amount easier at every second weekend when tabs are discounted.
As much as I know the common long-term PoE player spends around 40$ per year, medium. So offsetting the whales and offsetting the non-payers.
this is what i’ve been arguing with people who defend poe’s approach to seasons. to deaf ears. i find it weird that people find the concept of people playing seasonal content because they enjoy seasonal content as something unreasonable.
why did i play d2? tq? dungeonsiege? these games have no endgame nor seasonal content. i play them because i like the game.
i HATE resetting but ironically, if i play a season that i actually enjoy, i play the seasonal content MORE than most season players who quit within a few weeks.
YET, the game devs cater to them more than me because players like me are the minority. my loyalty and enjoyment towards the game is met with absolute indifference. i do not matter.
as for games as a service. i think its still a good idea IF gamers were not forced to reset. let resetters have their reset league but also let permanent players
the devs specifically mentioned they want to adopt POE’s league implementation in the future, probably when they have more content. i honestly felt saddened to learn of this and its one of the many reasons i’ve decided to leave LE.
this is indeed true. some god items such as super rare timeless jewels are sold on standard for 100-200 divines with only 1-2 sellers. those same jewels could cost 1-10 divines on a temp league. also some currencies become worthless in standard such as jewellers and fusings. but usually i m very selective with my leagues. if theres no exclusive gear that i want, i’d just skip the league.
i used to feel the same way until i went keyboard warrioring in the forums.
apparently if you let permanent season players access seasonal content, resetters get mad.
because:
Then people will play the game for 3 days, get bored and quit (the concept of players playing the game for new content is foreign to them)
Economy is wrecked since less players would be incentivized to play in the resets. This is actually a solid point. but i ll be selfish and say i care more about my enjoyment than others. i m not here to be a currency farmer for other players. i’ve done that for 10 years in poe. no thanks. fuck your economy
some players play SSF, some players play hardcore. they get to play the mode they want. all these players actively do not contribute to resetter economies too. and they get to play a game mode they enjoy. but god forbid permanent players actually having fun by given access to seasonal content.
seasonal players feel their achievements are dampened since permanent players can quickly access the end content within a few hours or shorter. a valid argument. but i still feel its weak. ladders and leaderboards can exist for reset leagues specifically. in POE’s case, they even have WORLD FIRST competitions where first boss kills on a reset league can net players with VALUABLE real life prizes.
I can absolutely tell you… they have value… far more value then you would like actually
What has little value there is quality currency outside of gemcutters and chisels. But nearly everything else is actually more expensive, which makes farming currency in trade a lot easier then in a temp league.
Which then directly correlated to the higher prices.
That’s what people fail to understand. The core currency doesn’t show much difference in value, everything besides the core currency (which are alts, chaos, alchs, divs and so on) on the other hand is vastly more expensive since people buy them in massive bulk since they can afford it.
Overall the Standard economy is actually healthier then the temp economy because your stuff doesn’t fluctuate in value, it always stays the same price for the full league cycle, you know exactly what to do to achieve something rather then working towards a goal which steadily moves away from you for example.
Yes, it is a very very weak argument.
Why?
Because them playing from the ground up towards it has more effort invested, which is hence held inherently to another standard.
So the argument is fairly moot and only comes from people which lack the ability to differentiate between those things.
Much like someone belittling the things a player builds in survival mode in Minecraft as they’ve build much larger things in creative… which is nonsensical to compare this way.
