I have no expectations for the upcoming season of Last Epoch

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There are so many people working at EHG, yet I still don’t understand how not a single one of them thought about the fact that this game has no real ENDGAME. Even if players make perfect builds, there’s nowhere meaningful to actually use those characters.

If they didn’t know what to do or nothing came to mind, they could have simply created a woven echo called “IMPOSSIBLE ECHO.” Inside this map, you could have random bosses, mobs, and Harbingers. On top of that, you could add a TOWER-style difficulty system, for example levels 1–100. We would play that like crazy.

I really don’t think adding endgame content to the game is that difficult.
You still have about three months ahead of you. Unless an endgame like this is added, all the work you’ve put into this game will end up being for nothing, dear EHG team.

It’s time to slightly change direction from the roadmap you’ve mentioned. The game needs ENDGAME content — there is simply no other way to fix this situation.

Lack of balance doesn’t concern us that much. Bugs will always exist, as they do in every game. But instead of releasing an empty Season 4 like this, I expect a game from you that at least has a proper endgame, even if it’s full of bugs.

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In my personal opinion, the upcoming season will be fully completed within 10–14 hours of gameplay. Uber content does not feel like a true endgame to me, nor to others who share the same perspective. Unfortunately, there are no other meaningful challenges available. As for the Arena mechanic, it is something I strongly dislike and have no interest in engaging with at all.

From my point of view, the current direction of development feels disappointing, almost as if it is not being taken seriously. This leads me to ask: what exactly are we expected to play in Season 4? While balance changes are frequently mentioned, I do not believe the game is being evaluated or played deeply enough by the developers. As someone who genuinely enjoys and supports Last Epoch, I feel that shortly after a season launches, the game quickly runs out of meaningful content, leaving players with nothing to do but wait for the next season.

In short, I believe Season 4 will be a significant disappointment.

However, I would like to offer a constructive suggestion. In my opinion, each class should receive at least one new skill. With these additions, players could freely choose their preferred endgame activities—whether that be Uber content, Monolith pushing, or other gameplay paths. Player freedom and variety are essential. I do not believe it is realistically possible to achieve 100% perfect balance in this game, and because of that, adding new skills would be far more impactful than continuing to focus primarily on balance adjustments.

The newly showcased Rogue skills, for example, do not appear to have a meaningful impact on gameplay and will likely become repetitive and uninteresting over time. Additionally, introducing a mechanic similar to Path of Exile’s Breach feels like a shortcut rather than a meaningful expansion of content. At least for me, it will have no significant impact, and it is not something that will create excitement or a ‘wow’ factor.

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:thinking:

So you belive the season will be a disappointment, but we have very little info about it.

You believe the game has to little things to do in endgame, but you think one new skill per class will be what the game needs? But yet a new skill will not give any meaningful endgame :thinking:

And then you think that one new skill they teasered isn’t good enough?

I am confused :sweat_smile:

We barely have any informations. We got an early sneek peak into what’s coming multiple months before it’s releasing. What did you expect? A fully fleshed out trailer?

I think with what has been announce it is exactly what LE needs and I am very excited. A new mechanics that adds hordes of monsters/monster density to the echoes is what we are truly missing.

All the latest additions all were singular big mobs(Exiled Mage, Nemesis, Primordial Beasts). So with this new Breach-es mechanic it seems to be finally something with many small mobs.

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since there won’t be any good content in the game until season 5, I thought it might be good to cheer ourselves up with a new skill. In an endgame-less game, do you think it’s better to just wait around for a year doing nothing, or at least make the game a bit more enjoyable by trying out a few different skills?

Also : campaign mode: 1.5 hr max
After monolits and empowereds- for Uber do 500c- 750c maybe ( for s4 )
so totaly max and max 10- 14 hr with 1k corrp. what we will do later? no endgame …

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Why would you think that a new skill would keep people around longer? Primordials provided with the single biggest increase in possible builds in the game outside of a new mastery and the retention was still terrible.

So if over a dozen new builds in a single season don’t keep people around for long, why would a few skills?

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The reason is this—let me explain it again. Until an expansion is added, there will be absolutely no content in this game that we enjoy or that can keep us engaged. So what are we supposed to play until that expansion comes out? I’m asking you—what exactly?

At the very least, I think adding new skills would bring some kind of change. Yes, Primordial items introduced new builds, but honestly, the game could exist without them. Because whether Primordials exist or not, is the goal of this game really just killing the Uber Boss for you? It’s not for me.

How many people actually enjoy playing the Arena mechanic? I’ve never heard a single player say, “I enjoy Arena, it’s great.” That leaves only Corruption pushing. And with how many builds can you realistically do that? Without Rogue, you can barely do anything—you can’t really progress.

If new skills were added, we could at least enjoy playing different areas with those skills and with all classes. For example, I could play Mage for 10 days, then Paladin for another 10 days, and push Corruption at least. Because there is literally nothing else to do in the game. And that limitation is what frustrates me.

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Where did you get this info?

Same question with this? This sounds like a lot of opinion and speculation based on very little data or information?

Hold on, are you saying only the Rogue allows you to “progress?”

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I don’t see how you differentiate between primordials and new skills.
New skills would keep people around, according to you, because people would tinker with them to try to create new builds.
Primordials should have kept people around for the same reason, people tinkering with them to create new builds.

So given that the reason why they should keep people around for longer is the same (tinkering to create new builds), why would one be different from the other?

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What I wrote was actually very clear, so I honestly don’t understand what you’re still not getting. For a reasonably good player, it takes around 10–14 hours to finish the game. After that, what are you going to do? I’m asking you—can you actually answer that?

There is no real content in the game. Anyone who plays Path of Exile can already tell what the upcoming Season 4 mechanic is going to be like. And if you look at the Season 5 roadmap, it’s completely obvious how empty it is.

So I’m asking for the third time: after I finish the game in 10 hours, what exactly am I supposed to play?

What I’m suggesting—adding new skills—is simply an alternative for every class. If you have a better idea, then say it. It’s that simple.

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And what I’m asking is what is the difference between adding a dozen new skills or a dozen primordials?
What are you going to be doing with a few skills after the 10-14h to finish the game that you wouldn’t have done with primordials in season 3?

Primordials created over a dozen new builds to keep you entertained after those 10-14h. The retention was still very low.
So what would new skills offer beyond creating new builds? Which is what primordials offered and was clearly not enough.

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Exactly. As someone who has tried almost every build in the game, I can say this: all builds can do Ubers, but none of them can push Corruption like Rogue. Anyone who claims otherwise doesn’t even need to bother replying.

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Then by your logic, we might as well uninstall the game—there’s no point in playing it.

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I assume that was a reply to me.

You said that adding new skills would keep players around for longer. Adding new skills will only add gameplay hours in creating new builds.
Primordials already created lots of new builds and players didn’t stay around for longer. Quite the opposite.

So all I’m arguing is that your argumentation is flawed. Adding new skills won’t help retention. Especially when cycles don’t have exclusive content, so most people play in legacy. Which means they just log to their level 100 character, respec to try the new skill and are done with it in a couple of hours anyway.

Adding skills isn’t a bad thing (although they’ll only add the missing skills, after that I’m betting we’ll get a new mastery before we get new skills for the existing ones). It’s just not the solution for retention you’re claiming it is.

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New skills can not be added just like that. Each skill needs art, animation, a whole skill tree with additional art (though many things are reused), it needs to synergize with existing skills and potentially there’s a unique item for that skill too. Because it requires so much developer time, EHG has not been able to add a large number of skills each season despite a few masteries still missing one. Season 4 is no exception. Don’t expect more than the new Rogue skill.

But you’re correct and I share your apprehension: There’s nothing really challenging in the game for the players that play since launch, except that Uber Abberoth or pushing corruption (*). My hypothesis is that Season 3 fell flat because you could pretty soon buy a huge power-creep primordial item but go nowhere that requires that power (*). Rift Beasts are weaker than some champions. If you know what you’re doing, there is nothing that challenges your skill anymore. Mobs in mono just fall apart and die instantly even in high corruption and you hardly ever die except to buggy oneshot attacks and oneshot ground-pools in Bloodline Glade / Rampant Coast.

I fear that Season 4 will fall flat the same too. The omen breach stuff could be interesting but the echo chains, I’ve not much hope there. They wrote: “You’ll then finish the chain with a related, more rewarding Echo, such as a Conquered Tower”. We’ve seen that? What’s the challenge? Why should we do this? We don’t know of course but that doesn’t sound promising at all.

Multiple new skills are out of the question, so my suggestions to EHG would be:

  • Omen encounter should become difficult quickly (to the S-tier builds, not the homebrew builds you stream with)
  • Retune the mid-level bosses. You’ve added quite a few (two-headed dragon, draal queen, …) and the fights are not uninteresting, but they are just weak. They don’t seem to scale either. There’s no reason to do them except once for weaver points.
  • Bring Aberroth back to pre-nerf levels.
  • Reshake the “meta” completely and rebalance more widly accross the all masteries.
  • Retune all mobs and make them stronger (like pre 1.0). Even in campaign. The campaign is nothing more than a lengthy tutorial right now.
  • Make Resistances matter more again until capped.
  • Scale corruption more drastically.

(*) Overcoming a hard challenge should be rewarded. Pushing corruption is giving you a challenge at some point but has diminishing, none-tangible returns. So that doesn’t count. It’s also boring, because we’ve done that since we’ve had monos with corruption. Uber Aberroth is super hard and very rewarding. But it is the “Uber” boss. It should remain extremely hard. It’s in a good place imo.

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Since they’re going to introduce a new balance system along with new skills, and considering it’s after a season that lasted a total of 8 months… I don’t expect anyone to really enjoy playing the same skills again with buffs and nerfs mixed in. Personally, I definitely won’t enjoy it.

That’s why I wanted new skills. I’ve played almost every ARPG out there, so seeing the future of this game isn’t that hard for me. At least until an expansion drops, I’m pretty sure this game will be a complete disappointment. Without proper endgame, it’s going to stay that way.

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PoE seems to do just fine for years on end without adding any new skill. New skills are fun, but they’re not as important as endgame mechanics.

What LE really needs is more stuff to do in endgame besides pushing corruption. We’ll see what the breach-like and the chain echoes will offer.
New mechanics in PoE engage players for longer because they are usually multi-tiered. You get the stuff in the regular maps which then allow you to explore other mechanic-exclusive areas, which eventually end in mechanic exclusive boss(es).
So far LE has failed to provide that long-term engagement in their new mechanics, excluding tombs.

It doesn’t help that there’s no season exclusive mechanic either. Most players don’t see a reason to start a new character, so they just use their beefed up level 100 character that is farming 2k+ corruption and they’re done with the new content a lot faster than with a fresh start.

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I completely agree. I can also add the following:

If they set the Uber Corruption requirement to 5000 corruption, reaching it would be somewhat difficult, and it would provide us with a real challenge. What we do would have meaning.

A Corruption leaderboard should definitely exist. (There’s no other goal in the game, nothing else to play.)

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i did just 42k corruption. already bored and bored:)

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Imagine chain-echoes were simply existing echoes that you can do without having to go back to the reward-area. That would be a disasterous disappointment. This sentence robs me of all hope: You’ll then finish the chain with a related, more rewarding Echo, such as a Conquered Tower (The one where you fight multiple Nemeses).

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A completely terrible concept :frowning:

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That actually surprises me, if that’s the case. I’d expect corruption to be a int16 variable, meaning it should be capped at 32k (much like delve is in PoE).
The fact that it’s in int32 means that they foresaw the need to go above that and eventually reach 2B corruption. Which doesn’t really bode well for the future escalation of the endgame (the power creeep).

What I understood from that is that each echo in the chain will be harder and will end with a special rewarding echo.
I know you can read it as the final echo being a conquered tower, but what I read from that is simply like a conquered tower. Meaning a special echo that isn’t just the same as the rest of the echoes but is unique.

Otherwise there would be no difference between that and imprinting a conquered tower.

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