Agree. But I’m not sure when you started playing POE. When POE first launch their closed beta support packs and signally their intent for POE to be played forever, the game ended at Act 2 (i.e Vaal oversoul). So LE actually has more content at a similar point of development.
I take your point about the skill trees in LE though. LE skill trees ensures supporting customisation can be tailored for each skill but it’s difficult to see how to expand on that without making the trees huge and unwieldy. Most of us are looking towards idol and unque affixes as avenues for future creative skill customisations.
It’s actually only 2 for the beastmaster (summon raptor & flanking strike). The Necro has 3 (summon wraith, abomination and dread shade) while the other masteries have 2 (except the Void Knight, Shaman and Druid as previously mentioned). IMO it’s good for each mastery to have ~3 locked skills as well as the more powerful and (potentially) interesting passives above the half way line.
As a pedantic accountant, it is entirely possible to keep a company going for x years solely off the initial box sales, this is essentially how a pension works. All that matters is how much cash they get initially, their burn rate, the rate of inflation (which would be similar to the discounting rate they would use in any long term forecasts) and the interest rate they’d get on the invested cash. Getting all the cash upfront would make their accountants (and probably Judd) more stressed as they try to manage it, not to mention the current state of affairs may not be the best to invest right now (though I’m sure that’ll change when things get back to normal).
Having a constant cashflow makes things simpler, it’s not necessarily better and it means you can get away with being less successful initially.
My “concerns” about a shelf-life are more centred around the limited number of skills each mastery has as I prefer to make new classes centred around different skills & if EHG aren’t going to add new skills (after they’ve finished off each class’ roster of skills), that static number of skills is, effectively, a shelf-life (for me).
I don’t agree with the bad “Cross-Mastery Synergies and Skill Diversity” arguments, but there is always room for improvement.
As for the monetization, I don’t have a problem with MTX (unless it’s a visual masterpiece, I don’t have plans to acquire).
For me, the worse in this game is by far the writing. No wonder a player created a post trying to understand “what the heck is the game history about” because it’s very confusing and for the post parts, the players don’t pay attention.
One thing for me that I also don’t like in the game and wasn’t mentioned is maps that are just transitional (pass the map as quickly as you can to reach a more important map, that has side-quests or is for the main history to progress). For me, they could “cut” those maps or at least put some side-quests in them (make them more interesting).
Yeah sure, it’s “possible”. I think that’s a given. The question really should be centered around how likely it is and how realistic it is for a game with these parameters to assume they could be successful for ten years that way. I don’t see this as being a particularly realistic strategy, and the more successful the game is at retaining players, the less realistic it becomes.
Yeah, this would definitely be a shelf-life, and it would be a terrible long term decision on EHG’s part. I think it’s safe to say new skills, and probably even new classes and masteries, will be added to the game after 1.0.
Retaining existing players doesn’t hurt future sales of the game. They have already bought it, yes, but an active playerbase is more inviting for new players—and convincing new players to buy the game is how sales continue over time.
I took that to mean that having a large on-going player base means you need more servers & support which costs money so you burn through your big pile of cash quicker than if you have a smaller player base.
Yes, that would be the long tail, which is unlikely to extend things for much longer (my impression, not supported by any numerical analysis or industry knowledge.
I would hope they introduce more skills (or more ways to use the skills that already exist) rather than adding new classes. But yes, I assume they would add more “player-stuff” in addition to PoE-like leagues.
That’s a fair point. Upkeep costs matter. It’s one of the things I failed to consider when I mentioned Slime Rancher in my initial post, as McFluffin pointed out.
Just want to point out Izaro that your worries about coming off as standoffish or elitist haven’t materialized. This has been an enjoyable, and dare I say productive discussion, and I appreciate your perspective
" One of the big things I am hoping for in 1.0 or sooner is the ability to skip the story on a new character."
… Man, I have been waiting for this day for so long, before this game even exists … I hate the fact that Last Epoch followed the concept of POE and put skill points in the story. I don’t understand why compelling the player to remake the story every time they create a character; following the same steps, it’s so boring. I’ve already lost hope of seeing POE change that, I hope Last Epoch can create an option for this problem. I love creating builds, but the evolution process is tedious, so I end up spending a lot of time on the same character, and I end up getting sick of him; what remains as an option is to take a break from the game and return a while later. I never played more than 3 characters in a league in Poe, very frustrating.
Hey dude,
While I agree with a lot of your points, I disagree on the cross mastery thing an monetization.
Cross Mastery
The Sorcerer example is correct. But almost all other classes have builds that benefit from cross speccing, especially Sentinel. It’s not the same for every mastery or every build. But it’s defenitely there.
Monetization
I get that people become suspiciously when they see box price and MTX. For me it’s ok as long as the MTX is 100% optional and only for cosmetics.
Nobody gets forced to pay an additional fee for getting all the content the game offers. So it’s up to you if you choose to pay additional money on top of the box price.
You will find an example for any monetization model working for a game. But that’s no guarantee for being a successful model.
Let’s talk again when we see the pricing of the MTX stuff
I see that a lot. Is it only the story you get annoyed by? Wouldn’t an alternative mode get annoying, too, when repeated several times? Should the alternative mode provide a faster character progression compared to story playthrough?
I’m a story guy. I like the immersion. That’s a big factor for me. While I agree with @Izaro that theres room for improvement to story telling, I like the current story and the potential. I like the world they build, the theme and so on.
Why should ARPGs have a story in the first place? Theres a lot of effort going into campaign. All this work could easily be put into other stuff. Without campaign LE might be already released.
I like being led through a campaign to progress and grow stronger. Just running random maps from level 1 isn’t my cup of tea.
But don’t get me wrong. There seems a relatively huge demand for an alternative leveling mode. It won’t bother me if there’s one, so everybody is happy. Just the leveling progress should not be faster than story, so this isn’t a shortcut.
it does for PoE. Spent hundreds on the game when they needed it, not financing them further after merging with Tencent - sure let me just also donate my hard earned money to Coca-Cola, Microsoft etc who also apparently need it too
I am not buying anything else off EHG as I already PAID $40 for the game itself.
I cant believe this game is going to actually sell MTX…
Sadly D3/Grim Dawn is the only aRPGs ive played in years where there actually was no bullshit attached, you buy the game/xpacs and you get all the features
Ok. So somehow GGG as a startup could command a few hundreds from you because they “needed it” but EHG didn’t “need it” because they have a box price? Cool logic bro.
Yes you get all the features. But their features will never be as rich as POE’s. And soon enough, LE will eclipse them because EHG actually has the ambitions to rival the best in the genre.
Good luck with that. GD runs on far weaker machines, is fully featured has working multiplayer, and has mod support which is also supported in multiplayer.
people dont buy GD to play a game similar to PoE. if EHG want to chase PoE, id be better off just playing PoE since it runs better and at the cost of LE i would have bought all the important stash tabs (which i have).
Ill repeat it as many times as i need to. Games that cost up front should never have micros end of story.
How can you possibly think you know that much about the game and classes after 100 hours. I’ve played ONE spec (but different variants) 1-60 about 7 times. 5-6 hardcore deaths with resets and a lvl 90 softcore. I am still learning things about the spec and the pros and cons of different choices and gear changes. I agree with a few of your points but honestly I stopped reading when you acted like a single example of a game i’ve never even heard of (slime rancher) proves that having cosmetic mtx is a bad idea. The most popular game in the world uses cosmetic mtx (League of Legends) which I stopped playing for reasons other than mtx. The only thing most gamers have an issue with is pay to win. By the way 3 million copies of a game in a global market is not impressive. Steam doesn’t even change their sales cut until $50 million in sales. Games cost alot of money to make and alot to continually develop after release (in order to create seasonal content or expansions or w/e) Many people are willing to pay cosmetic mtx just because they know the game will get more development funding. I paid for this game in alpha because I loved the concept. The download was a zip file lol. By the way nobody cares if you repeat yourself a million times, up front you are paying for the game. They could simply not make the cosmetic additions and not have mtx and that would please you for some reason? that makes no sense you don’t have to buy them.
oh look another “its just cosmetics” apologist. PoE having micros is acceptable because its F2P. anyone who uses a F2P model while taking an entrance fee is double dipping.
i have never found it acceptable and it will never be in my opinion. if it has an up front cost there should be no micros. want micros? it should be free to play.
I understand your concerns about the game but I don’t really agree with the argument that this game lacks replayability or future complexity. Maybe I am bias because I enjoy ARPGs and I been here for a while. I have thousands of hours under my belt playing Last Epoch. It’s one of those games for me that is really easy to pick up again, try something completely new, and play long hours. I keep constantly theorycrafting trying out different node/gear combinations which keeps me coming back each content patch. I found this game to have massive complexity that at first glance I think new players really miss (need to play and experience more classes and skills) and the best part is, it’s not even the finish product yet. Also I would love to add that the developers of LE are extremely passionate and I am always blown away at the amount of changes they make and interesting things they design. I keep being pleasantly surprised over and over again. I personally feel like the developers have set up a great system to continue to push complexity in the directions they want to in the future with idol system and even adding more nodes into the trees for the future. Just adding a node for example to convert some physical damage xyz could completely change versatility of a skill, open up many unique combos and synergy with other skills. That foundation is fantastic! I really don’t understand players saying that the game in the future has to worry about becoming static; I really don’t see it.
That being said the only thing I have concerns about is not the skills/nodes/skill combinations, it is the future of the mastery tree system. I feel like that could be the only part of the game where I feel could become very lackluster and static as time goes on. Yeah I could see them adding more masteries but the trees themselves lack potential to grow outside of that; which could possibility become boring. I feel like a skill tree system opening up more to being like a PoE (open design where classes nodes can link and have synergy depending on their location) /Wolen tree (possibility of creating more synergy with nodes depending on how you choose to flip or move the mastery wheel) where different masteries could link or have weird node synergies later on would be better and more interesting for the future. It would also allow for future growth and expansions. Right now the trees are limited in the sense that they are boxed in and unless you make the nodes super small you will get to the point where maybe you want to expand and there wouldn’t be an option unless you completely rework the design. Maybe in the future this is something they could think about, right now with balancing and working on a solid foundation is the most important thing though.
When it comes to price and MTX I could care less about spending 30$~ on Last Epoch because I look at it this way: normally every month I would buy a game or two for 40$-60$ and play it for around 20~ hours or so and next month do the same. I have played last epoch for over 2k+ hours, the money I have invested into this game with how much replayability it given me well surpassed any game I have ever played and paid for itself x times over. I would say it’s probably one of the best game investments I made for the time I have played it. If they also stay true to only providing MTX cosmetics and not any P2W things I would easily spend the 40-60$ I would normally spend every month on looking fly as hell IG verse spending on another game release. I think players go way too much into this money rabbit hole on what the developers need to do price their game; it’s little cringe. Because all that happens is players throwing around arbitrary numbers on what they think is the actual cost to run a game/server/people/future development/events etc which could easily be so far far from the truth. At the end of the day its never going your choice what the price of LE is, LE set up a system that works with them with their budget, you either respect that or don’t pay to play. Either way with how expensive games are, from my personal opinion, I think the price is reasonable as hell.
You don’t know anything about the pricing of MTX in LE, yet. PoE is free to play and has very expensive MTX. Also they gate QoL features behing a fee (stash tabs).
Let’s talk again, when we know the pricing. Then you can asume if box price + 5 MTX items in LE is more expensive than 5 MTX items (without a box price) in PoE.
PoE makes you think that is acceptable to have expensive MTX because they let you play for free. With that attitude in mind you might pay more money during a year than you’d have planned. That’s marketing.
In the end for me LE will save me money. I won’t have the time to play other games, so I won’t pay for them.
Also you sound surprised by the pricing model. That’s wierd, because box price + MTX store without p2w was announced forever. Nothing changed besides the box price.
Titan Quest 19,99 € (34,98 € for complete bundle - 14 year old game!!!)
Grim Dawn: 24,99 € (+66,45 € for all DLCs)
Borlderlands 3: 59,99 € (+ up to 219,84 € MTX stuff)
I could go on endlessly with examples of games with box prices the also have MTX / DLC stuff. All this stuff is optional. But some things like content DLCs are kind mandatory if you wanna keep playing.
In LE you will get content updates FOR FREE! Just because there are people who buy that MTX stuff. So you will be provided free additional content if you refuse to use cosmetic MTX.
I can’t see any flaw within this model. Contentwise the LE box price is absolutely justified if you look at games like Wolcen, Torchlight and Warhammer that only have a glimpse of the content and replayability of LE in its current beta state. LE has more diverse enemies and tilesets than these 3 games all toghether.
Absolutely! LE is the game in my steam library I’ve played the most hours ever…
