Some players wanted Last Epoch to have a campaign skip. Other players didn’t. So EHG made a compromise: there is a sort of campaign skip if you do the dungeons, and level up between them.
Are players that wanted a campaign skip happy? I’m not sure the system works as well as EHG thinks it does; IMO, the real “skip” is being able to play on Monoliths from a low level.
Are players that do not wanted a campaign skip happy? Well, the game does have some skips, so…
Looks to me like the compromise just created a middle ground that doesn’t really please anyone.
Some players wanted Last Epoch to have a respec option. Other players didn’t. So EHG made a compromise: we can respect almost everything, but it takes time and gold.
Are players that wanted a full respec option happy? Considering how many discussions about this we get in this forum, doesn’t look like so.
Are players that do not wanted a respec option happy? Well, the game does have some sort of respec, so…
Looks to me like the compromise just created a middle ground that doesn’t really please anyone (other than the usual fanboys, but those would applaud anything EHG did anyway).
Some players wanted a game with trading. Other players didn’t. So… EHG didn’t make a compromise. They created two paths and gave players options: they can play without trade but with a boost to item drops, or they can play with trading (and gold dumping and whatever).
One of those 3 scenarios is very different from the other 2, and far more successful.
For campaign skip, those dungeons may as well not exist for how rare the keys are at the levels you need them. So there is effectively no campaign skip.
I’m pretty happy with the way respec works. You can do it, but it’s not free, but it’s not too bad, either.
For trading, I think the main issue is that CoF kind of sucks. The merchant’s guild was working and probably would have worked better if there hadn’t been a gold dupe working in the shadows for months.
The campaign skip wasn’t intended as a skip for new players, but for alts.
You should have keys for alt characters to skip ahead, so not an issue (skill points & idol slots is a different issue)
Overall a 6/10 for me
As for respecs … this was never really a player request, the design was always cheap respecs, so you can never really brick a character (like in D2) yet you don’t have to hyper-specialize 6 different builds for endgame like in D3.
9/10, just need QoL like full respec on trees, possibly tell in advance which point gets unspecced when unequipping gear.
And Trade was always gonna be an option in the game, the difficulty was to not make it feel mandatory like games such as PoE do. I am happy MG exists, because CoF gives me enough solo progress to not feel I’m hitting a wall as soon as I hit endgame.
8/10
Just to clarify something : almost nobody is saying they want there to be absolutely no respec whatsoever. I am probably one of the least content with the current system (as far as respec being too easy, of course), and my main complaint isn’t about skill points, it’s about passive points, any cost in gold to respec being irrelevant most of the time.
The campaign skip is there for characters beyond the first. There’s at least one automatic key for each dungeon during the campaign if you know what premade chests to look for.
I’d say the game should remember the order in which passive points have been spent, then on removal of skill point equipment, it removes passives starting from most recent it’s able to remove. Then, when you gain back the lost points, it automatically spends them to correspond to the original path, if able to.
