To any arpg vet I would hope this obviously does not read as some weird jab at LE. Blizzard made a fun game, but its not the game a lot of us imagined, or rather, hoped it would be. I did enjoy my time with beta, I only played the sorceress, and I did not look online at all during my play time. My god, with little thought, and little gear, I made a monster.
Last Epoch began as an eye sore with very basic game play, and has transformed into a game with tons of diversity. We are only in beta btw! How many hundreds of hours of some of you clocked in so far? This is the game D4 should have been if it cared about what its franchise was, and not just the bottom line.
I will buy D4 and enjoy it, but this past weekend has made me realize just how far LE has come and that we should be thankful to the devs for what they have made thus far. I enjoy having my synapses firing, and this is now my go to when I have PoE fatigue (which sets in quickly).
So ya, thanks Eleventh Hour Games, this is going to be something great in time. Remember, PoE took YEARS to get any sort of depth, I feel LE is doing a damn good job.
I like the rest of your post, but I believe this line to be completely wrong.
This is exactly the opposite: Diablo 4 cannot afford to be as complex as PoE or even LE, BECAUSE of what the franchise is. They have to account for millions (literally) of casual RPG players who donāt care about ARPG technical aspects and will just come for a bit of casual fun. Most of my MMO / CRPG friends have already pre-ordered Diablo 4, or will buy it, but they would never touch PoE.
EHG, on the other hand, is fully focused on a very specific audience of ARPG fans, who enjoy creating complex builds and digging deep into game systems.
I absolutely agree with you that they are doing a fantastic job. LE is in my opinion the best skills / character build system in the ARPG market right now. But it is also one of the worst in terms of immersion: short, very easy campaign, no achievements, no lore notes, zero exploration incentive or collectionā¦
Different target audiences bring different developping priorities.
I am not saying one or the other is ārightā, they are just different.
You are right, but the degenerate in me wants the Blizzard of old. I literally laughed out loud when I opened the skill tree. I do have to congratulate Bliz on making an extremely intimidating to look at tree for the uninitiated, yet unsurprisingly more limiting for vets, than D3. I hope the post 50 mechanics are more engaging, I never imagined D4 would be a 1 and done for me. If dungeons represent endgame like rifts did for D3, no ty.
Well for me it is, I want something different and Lost Ark sucked. D4 is a fun game but it isnt really anything like LE or PoE theres no comparing them games at all
In LE/PoE you race to maps to level/gear up etc. in D4 although it was only beta you could stay in A1 for hours and hours collecting shrines/doing quests, getting reputation doing dungeons etc, completely different scaling
You say that but PoEās tree is fundamentally the same just more nodes in your face, Blizz cut it down to make it more bite sized and easier to digest which I dont even care, you also forget at Level 50 you cap your tree on points then get 1 Paragon per 25% to 100 so 200 paragon points to spend on who knows what
Also there was plenty of min/maxing going on even in the beta, I played on Veteran mode and had to completely change my defensive setup on Barb to beat one boss that giant Frost Mauler, you only get 1 life on the bosses and they can deal significant damage to you, you blow your cooldowns/pots
I also did the world boss 3 times, once with my Brother who was on console and 10 or so others, all you do is go to the boss area when its about to spawn, have a 10 minute engaging boss fight and hope you win, we actually failed the first time as our group was too weak, next times were far better
I bought the game as I do any aRPG now that has controller support, spent a fk tonne on it, probably the most expensive game ive ever bought, had zero expectations and played it the entire weekendā¦biggest issue I need a clone to work for me so I can play games just 24/7
Justā¦ No. Is not the franchise, is the publisher and interests behind.
D1, D2 and D3 were 95% gameplay. Diablo was the father of all ARPGs.
They went well outside their roots to provide a different experience, story cuts, more immersion, top graphics and animationsā¦ To get as much casual audience as possible.
Donāt get me wrong, Iām not against it, but I also expect some innovation to the ARPG genre, we got what most ARPG fans feared: even more casual friendly than D3, and lots of non-ARPG stuff to hook as much people as possible to at least drop 70 bucks.
WTFā¦ each extra node that is not in straight line adds exponential complexity. Just take a look at the entire node board of PoE. What are you talking aboutā¦
Yesā¦like any generic life based Necromancer tree right, once you add in jewels that modify the tree, allow you jump to different areas, it can get more complex but other than that you search for efficient nodes and path there the cleanest, its not rocket science. Late game is based off certain uniques etc, leveling builds for example are basic as
D4 could of just smashed every skill node in your face on one screen to make it look more complex and pathy but its not needed, also theres probably a Paragon tree anyway
Ive never heard anyone say the PoE Atlas tree is ātoo complexā at all and its exactly the same system
Whats casual anyway? because I played LE to 100 on the MP launch half a day late and was 97 by the end of the weekend where I played a fair bit, then i casually after work for 3 hours did monoās and hit 100 on Thursday last week and have fairly decent gear, definately lacking but very decent and farmed uniques for another build, got ALL my blessings. Seems like a lot of progress in one week. Not sure what even casual is? because a casual player just gets less of everything
First, is not easy to know what is priority in PoE. Thereās a lot of check boxes to fulfill, and this can be done in many ways, not only passives.
The game is very tight, thatās why youāre heavily recommended to follow a guide, as you need to get things done it in a efficient way: this could be a notable that change some rules so you can abuse certain synergy, gear that provides lots of X resource without spending X point to travel to that resource, etc. The game is designed with that in mind, and not doing it will make you fall short.
Well, when I say more casual players, is the barrier of entry, many people came from work and maybe get into a game for an hour or two and thatās it, most of this people will want a easy to digest game.
LE is fairly intuitive, more so if you have prior knowledge of RPGs, ARPGs, or PoE in special as it borrows a lot from it. Still to a more casual gamer, the game is absurdly complex and thatās why ARPg is a niche genre, even if it has one of the strongest ways to hook players: RNG and rewards.
Has nothing to do with you beating the entire game in under 2 days, weeks or months.
I am worried for last epoch. they both share a similar level of complexity. the d4 beta is one of the most polished betas Iāve ever played. Itās gameplay is good. performance is good. Not a single bug. Itās level of polish is incredible. a rare thing these days among even aaa developers.
They didnāt reinvent the wheel. they donāt have to. everything about it is solid.
I will play both but wow.
i play last epoch with my brother but the current state of d4 is way better than last epoch.
Well then I have to disagree since we didnāt have the same experience at all.
Honestly, I was worried for LE few months ago that D4 would take a very large part of audience, and maybe a small part of regular LE players, but after the beta weekend, I have to say that they are 2 completely different games, and what I hoped D4 would be (closer to D2) is not at all.
As someone who really enjoyed D2 back then and almost havenāt played D3 since the launch and the game at the beginning was so bad, I really imagined that we would get a top notch game, especially after 10 years of work, but I have been really disappointed and refunded the game, as many friends I know.
This is just my opinion and I am going to list what I enjoyed about it and what I disliked.
The game has several qualities :
Darker than the previous one, which adds a nice feeling when you play, rather than the bright cartoon colors from D3.
Game is slower, I enjoy more the pace of it compared for example to POE where it rapidly transform into screen cleaning at the speed of light with tons of effects, and give the impression of playing arcade game.
The story seems interesting and give a real density to bosses and tension when you face them (Lilith for exemple), which I find it really lacking in LE, because the story doesnāt build the tension around big bosses and do not show them along the game.
Dungeons with some nice atmosphere that we had back in the days, even if very repetitive.
The downsides :
MMO type of game which totally breaks the immersion for me, it looks like they tried to please the largest community from MMO player to ARPG players to try to sell the most important amount of game.
Strange and repetitive quests also breaking the pace of the game
Flat NPCs
The global design and graphic effects of the game which seem already outdated, we could have hoped better for such a big company
Repetitive dungeons
The monsters level at the same time than you, which means you donāt really feel the improvement of your char until a long time.
I played the Barbarian which felt absolutely sluggish and slow, just like if he was fighting under water.
The worst of all is definitely the skill tree which is just a huge joke, honestly it is so limitative and boring, I canāt even describe my disappointment concerning it. Maybe the Parangon will solve it later on but right now it left me a very bad feeling.
And I got almost the opposite impression. Compared to D4, LE (and even PoE to some extent) feel like arcade games, or at least old-school NES games.
D4 feels like an actual game world, when I log in. Even with the limits of the beta, it feels like each log-in could have some real progression, or goal. Not just āwelp, guess Iāll go mindlessly grind rifts, or monoliths or maps for no real progressā.
Iām sure that could all change, because WoW daily quests actually felt fun when first introduced, and now they are worse than chewing glass shards.
But yes, they are completely different games. But did you expect anything different, honestly? LE is closer to D3, in end-game offering. D4 feels like a hybrid of D2 and WoW. Not necessarily all the best elements of each, depending on what youāre looking for. Iām not one to give Blizzard much credit, due to how they normally botch any balance passes they do (and their āwe know more about what you want than you doā attitude rubs me the wrong way), and I was totally wanting to hate D4, but actually think it shows a ton of promise. Will just have to wait and see what long-term offering it has.
i played sorc and barb to 25. rogue to 20. Your complaints about scaling really wont matter to anyone really. Iāve heard them before. played both types of games and it works well for d4. Barb is fine just not overtuned like sorc.
you are right that last epoch does have a little more complexity. I like both of them. there are things about d4 that many people might not prefer. I donāt think anything stands out as objectively bad. i think they nailed it if they want to compete as a more accessible poe.
as a fan of d2 i feel they made great decisions with d4. at its base its great. They have something that they can easily add on to.
Of course. Blizzard is trying to appeal to millions of players. Not just a handful of squeaky-wheel tryhards on a forum who feel any level of QoL is bad, and infinite levels of RNG-gating makes for compelling gameplay.
I like both games, but right now, if I had to choose oneā¦ I would pick D4. And I really was determined to hate D4. Fortunately, I live in a free country and can play bothā¦ depending on how I feel at any given moment.
Every single thing you said in that post aligns with how I feel, from my initial worries way back when of D4 making LE obsolete, to your proās and conās. Good post.
Have you seen the paragon preview? Thatās already most likely more complex then EVERYTHING in LE.
D4 and LE are 2 different games and Iām hapy about it. To me there is no better better or worse game here becasue both games arenāt released and I havenāt played both games from strat to finish. The early experince in D4 is 100x better then LE to be honest.
LE seems to be better when it comes to the skill talent trees but then again D4 has little options in the skilltree and little options in the itemisation butthen again with this view points and items you have a whole LE skilltree with little affort. There is a lot of the same stuff ingame in D4 and LE but in a different package.
So far I played the D4 like a maniac and every minute of it was fun most likely because it was a new game. The dungeons were ass, always fighting the same few bosses is ass and the rather slow pace of D4 is something you like or get used to or hate pretty much.
D4 goes a new way and a way that most likely is the future: The ARPG as a game as a service in an mmo style. When I look back at other hack and slays I bought D4 is one of the better ones as far as I was able to play it and it WILL have a big success because they cater to the broad market and the masses of medium skilled players. D4 is setup in a realy smart way and if it getās better in the following acts D4 will be realy big.
PoEs skilltree is a bloated mess. You pick a third party software that showes you the shortest ways to the keynodes you need for your build (aka the only very little ammount of worthwhile nodes) and you simply opt your way and take the mathematicly best nodes on the way because 95% of the PoE passive tree are generic increases that are boring af. PoE sells the illusion of complexety as well as D4 most likely will do with the paragon board.
LOL I had some bugs and other people I played with mentioned some as well. D4 is in a pretty good state yes but they have some work left to do when it comes to zone switching because every time you move from one part of the open world map to another things can bug out a lot.
barb is completely overtuned when it comes to bosskilling. butcher in 4 secondsā¦ yay ^^.
Thatās the beauty of it they have totaly modular system they can ad stuff to like whole skill branches or passives as they please. Same goes for the world and zones.
All in all arpgs have their pros and cons and an audience and fans that plays the games. Then there is seasonal content and people jump from game to game to fill their free time and everybody is kind of happy. Sooner or later we might have to much hack and Slays and need to choose the best ones to play but right now the market leaves enough space for a lot of hack & sloay games and different seasons.
I also like how they constantly ārefineā the tree, but many builds have the exact same skill tree they used 3+ years agoā¦ just some nodes are in different places.
The trick is to know what major node is where and what it does and if you need it. Everything else is achive the most with the least points spent. Iām not the sharpest tool in the shed or good in math but understanding the PoE skilltree was always a joke to me.
