Innovating Design LE is Missing

General
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I want to preface this by I can’t wait for Season 2 and think EHG has been cooking but… I think they often don’t take bigger design risk that allow for more unique Class design and build iterations.

Example - Seen some really cool design recently where a Class has an additional ring slot and a node to increase all jewelry affixes by 25%. (things like this just completey open up a variety of builds, item pairing etc.)

Also I feel very restricted in LE with only 5 skills. Why can’t some base rings grant an additional skill slot? Why can’t a mastery on a Class grant one? Maybe a Unique that grants 1 extra skill? There are several skills in LE where they don’t even need to be on the bar and having 6, 7 or 8 skills we can spec into would again open up player agency to create something.

After Season 2 I really think EHG should take some chances and just expand greatly on design and allow players to break the game with something cool. Again I appreciate the work EHG is doing and realize you gotta walk before you can run. Just really would like to see them greatly expand on design and allow for players to have a lot more customization options.

I could go into a lot of other specifics but don’t want to complicate the message. I hope Season 2 is a hit because other developers are really making some great games and pushing the boundaries in design. Hope EHG can keep pace.

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Saying that LE is missing innovating design is strange to me.

LE is probably one of the ARPG’s with the greatest innovations in the genre lately.

Just to list a few:
Skill Spec Trees
Crafting
Ingame Loot Filter
Item Factions
Legendary System
(upcoming) Set Item Crafting

All of this are fundamental features and the example you are pointing out sound like you want more class specific innovations, which there are less, but still some skills and Masteries have cool and unique things.

But once LE has established a solid foundation I agree that we hopefully see a lot more “out there” designs.

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First of all to avoid a false impression I’m with Heavy in the sense that LE is already very innovativ. It does a lot of cool stuff I quite like.

However I’m with the OP in a sense that equipment skills in LE are very underwhelming. They tend to be nice to have extras but nothing you can make a good build around. In contrast I love how I can make a decent build in Grim Dawn around component skills or unique skills granted by armor, weapons or devotions.
This does not work well in LE because the equipment skills don’t have skill trees. I tried building around the Celestial Doom staff (I think that’s the name) and it’s Void wave effect. Did not go well even though the skill has an inherent damage scaling mechanic. I find stuff like this very disappointing and I hope they will find a way to make builds that center around equipment skills more viable.

Personally I like the “mmo-approach” with skills (skill bars and how many you want and can fit) more than the fix limit of 5 skills + unskillable equipment skills. They almost always have some kind of soft limit on the skills anyway because you need a finite ressource to make them more effective and dividing it up (like skill points) is not always the most optimal way to do things.
However we gain a huge chunk of customization of the individual skills due to this hard limit. It’s a tradeoff. Not having this limit would make managing balance a complete nightmare for the devs.
It is a different approach and that is fine. In my opinion it would be better for them to double down on their design first before giving the option to expand the skill limit.

For example an endgame mechanic to “unlock” another ring of skillable notes for an individual skill with additional skill points to further specialize the skill.
Or certain items/shards that can be used on the skill tree notes to give them additional effects or completely change how a certain node works. Stuff like an item that can drop in a variety for every element and that you can slot into every damage conversion note to change the conversion to the type specified on the item.

And of course they also need to touch up quite a few already existing skill nodes to update them to their new standard. Like they are doing with Sentinel in the next patch I hope.
Before they try to to build upon their strenghts and existing systems they need to clean them up.

And after that having more crazy things happening with mastery designs is something I look forward to as well. But to have them feel real “crazy” or “out there” the game first needs a bunch of working ground to earth mechanics and designs.
In writing there is a phrase in the sense of “Before breaking the rules you need to show that you know the rules.” If you don’t then you don’t get the desired effect from deviating from expectations. I think this applies here just as well.
As you said, they need to walk before they run.

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letting players use an extra ring hanging from their amulet isn’t really innovation. It’s like having an extra shoe for your third leg (cough).

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Yeah, I’m kinda with you on that. I did like it in GD.

Also, @Heavy, skill trees? Not a new thing.

As much as it comes from Abom, I’m not averse to this, depending on how it was done. :person_shrugging:t3: Though it’d probably be more power creep-y since some builds don’t/can’t use an additional skill (Druid transforms if nothing else).

Possibly, but not as much as he thinks.

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Personally the game lives and dies by its 5 skill slots imo

The instant you are able to spec and run say even 7 skills, shit like warlock that can proc all its skills with 0 issues just get 100x better.

I really think its what makes the design good, is that you need to think about how your bar works, and having a movement skill for example eats up potentially an active slot even if you dont spec it.

More skills would just vastly favor proc based set ups because the player only has so much actionable time, while casting a skill you cant use another unless its instant. So like you have a sorc with teleport, flame ward, focus, meteor and lightning blast, what do you even spec here? static? just another button to press in a burst rotation? that isnt interesting, you wouldnt spec fireball, as its a spammable button akin to lightning blast, and you wouldnt spec glacier, as you have meteor for mana dumping.

it really only seems appealing for characters who can proc a ton of abilities.

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Innovation is not about singular specific new things, but how you implement them into the grand scheme.

Skill Trees on an individual skill base level, that are as extensive and transformitive as LE are pretty new and innovative. There are only a few other games that have similar things, mostly packed into different systems that work different but result in similar results.

So for me individual handcrafted skill trees are an innovation.

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One of the many reasons I love that game.

Without a doubt they designed their skills around having 5 slots that includes all the triggers.

Personally I run into another issue. When I have stuff like Flame Ward specced into cast when stunned I don’t have that skill in my bar most of the time. Same goes for Enchanted Weapon and other buff skills like that.
That means I only get to have 4 specced skills to actually play with because this buff skill is triggered automatically in situations where I specifically want it to trigger.
Having a single unspecced skill on the bar feels weird, maybe even bad to me.

I would like to see something like an additional slot that could be used up by specific buff skills like those mentioned. Maybe skills in this slot have restricted access to nodes or their own (maybe weaker) skill tree.

So we still get 5 specced skills to play with but also one “passive skill slot”.

At least I think this may be a good design area in LE without compromising on the original design too much.

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Like more patterns and other stuff for idols :moyai:

Do you have something to trigger it? Because autorecast will not work outside skillpanel’s 5

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Fair enough. I personally wouldn’t call it innovative.

That shouldn’t be happening. The thing that procs a skill needs to be on your skill bar (aka “equipped”), so if a skill is self-proccing, like Sigils on kill or Enchanted Weapon autocasting itself, those skills should be on the bar. If an idol is proccing Smite, the idil needs to be equipped but Smite doesn’t need to be on your bar.

If its a movement skill, I disagree, dps or utility skills, probably.

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Yeah sorry my mistake. Mixed something up (haven’t played LE in a while).

Point still stands though. Having this autocast skill on the bar like deadweight is worse. Don’t get me wrong it’s not ruining the game or something, it just annoys me.
5 skills is already not a lot for me (I like playing my piano builds) and having this reduced to 4 due to an autocasting skill (that also is not much more fun using the regular version like Enchanted Weapon) or sometimes 3 1/2 (when you only use your movement skill outside of combat) does feel limiting to me.

I personally like a way to offset that some more.

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Some utility skills still have utility unspecced. I’d even say most, but I’m not considering them all now, so I might be wrong on that.

For example, unspecced warcry still knocks back and stuns, so it still has its uses unspecced. It’s not nearly as good as specced, but it’s still useful. Same for focus or Rebuke and a bunch of others.

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This is a great post. I often object to appeals based upon power creep, but I think this is spot on.

Also, I agree with Heavy, EHG has been innovated in this space, and you can tell that based upon what the competition is doing/saying.

I would like to see them be more inventive/bold in the passive trees evolution. They started very generic, and have slowly started to experiment with more creative stuff. I hope they continue that trend.

I do want to see more innovation with skills, but I’d rather that classes have even more skills than they currently do (which is a lot of work, given that all skills have skill trees) per base/mastery. I think the runemaster work says that they have the chops to deliver interesting skills and skill interactions.

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Yes and it seems very boring if there isn’t innovation. Which means the game dying if it stays in those 5 skill parameters.

Which is fine. Who cares. Let players use 8 skills or even gain skills from other classes. Just make the game super fun and let us get creative in ways to have fun and break the game.

Is seeing what other games are doing then to 1 up them and do it better. Or innovate on their idea making it EHG.

Maybe like many, I’m just blown away by the PoE 2 Dev stream and I can’t believe how they add so many innovations into their game. Just new ideas reinventing what an ARPG is. It’s just one awesome idea after another and they aren’t afraid to go big and if it’s broken “Who cares” as long as you have fun.

Again really hope Season 2 is a big hit but EHG needs to take some chances and really innovate Class design and player agency so ARPG players say OMG I can’t wait to log in!!! Get players excited saying I can’t wait to play LE because they do Necromancers right or Melee etc. (right now this is missing and likely why LE just isn’t popular)

Right now I the next big update from PoE 2 just hits on all levels. I really want to log in to use the Spectre skill and see what type of monsters I can assimulate into my army. Talk about Necromancer and summon fantasy akin to Jinwoo. It’s just soo innovative and cool you can’t help but want to play it.

LE does some things right, they have a core model but they aren’t doing that extra innovation to get the ARPG players. That’s all. There is an excitement factor missing from LE.

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With how the game is designed right now, without major reworks of all skills more skills will actually lower build diversity.

More skills does not mean it will be better

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I dont buy into that logic personally.

Games are fun because there is rules. You must build your character in the confines of said rules. Gem sockets in poe1 limit the number of skills, and in poe2 there is still a socket limit as well.

This is just poe1, it already innovated there, this isnt exclusive to poe2. This second part of your post honestly just sounds like you vibe more with poe2, nothing wrong with that. but I just uninstalled, nothing they are adding makes me wanna come back.

Im way more pumped for LE. PoE2 isnt imo innovating because they are just using slightly altered design space from PoE1.

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This would actually decrease the builds available. Right now you usually select one main skill, you then use supporting skills for that skill, then you try to fit in a general support skill (that doesn’t support the skill itself but rather supports you) and a movement skill.

If there’s unlimited slots, there’s no reason to choose. Every single build will always have a movement skill and all support skills available, so all builds would do is change the main DPS skill and 1-2 skills that directly support it.

Not even that. D2 started the whole thing with animate dead. PoE1 just made them permanent.

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In how LE is set up sure. As I said it’s designed with these limitations in mind. I also did not advocate for LE to use the “mmo-approach”. I just like it more. I still enjoy LE’s system. And that is why I hope they build upon it first before adding in more skill slots.

However I don’t generally agree with your statement, even though I agree with it in case of LE.

If you look at GD there are a huge amount of builds (last time I checked it was around 25 + some more old builds that did not got updated to the most recent patches but still work fine) that are competitive endgame builds.
They use a vastly different amount of skills. Some up to 12 to 14. If I remember correctly the build with the most buttons I played was a pet build. It had 1-0 on the hotbar full with active skills and I think 3 toggle buffs on the second hotbar. At the same time another pet build on the same Mastery combination has only like 5 or so skills (Occultist/Shaman it was). I did superbosses and deep SR on both of them.

So no, the “mmo-approach” does not inherently decrease the amount of available builds. And that is due to the soft limit I talked about before. Even in games with this approach (like GD) you have some kind of limiting factor. In GD this is the skill point system (and to some degree the devotion system). You can use as many skills as you like but only some of them are really effective because you have invested the skill points that are missing somewhere else then. If you have great synergies and good break points you can spread yourself thinner and use more skills. But you don’t need to if the balance is just right.

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I just take this snippet from you and I don’t aim at it or you directly and take it just as a reference ^^.

So what is innovation and what is just a nicely pakaged slog? I always said and will always say that the PoE skill map is an artificaly bloated useless mess that mimics a ton of possibilities while it’s simply a math test. That isn’t innovation in my book but an illusion.

All trees in LE fall into the same cartegory for me. To little realy innovative stuff with a lot of filler nodes that adda % here and there. With the interaction with items there are some nice synergys but nothing to write home about.

Crafting went from OK to worse for me personaly. The old system was meaningfull and now we have either items with enough LP to work out or simply not. Sure there were intresting and innovative additions but to me the first system was far superrior because you were able to craft good items early on wihtout many drawbacks. To me this is a mixed back and kind of one step backward and one to the front.

Loot filters are nothing new and the LE lootfilter is rather easy to setup but lackluster in many ways.

Item factions are nice on paper but badly executed. The need to put in a lot of work untill I would find those factions innovative because I like practical stuff not theoretical stuff.

The Legendary system is a chore to me. Nothing but a slog that make you jump through so many hoops untill you might finaly get somethign out of it. Reminds me on the “perfect and innovative” system of warforged items in WoW.

This system of set crafting is something I talk about since Vanilla WoW because it’s the best of both worlds. Having nice set bonuses you want on items that have the stats you need not ending up with a needed setbonus on abbysmal gear. Yet there are restriction in place (most likely needed I guess; we’ll see) and we are back to pick and choose and a math problem. If legendary items are better then sets sets will stay dead.

Endgame is a part where most innovation should happen because we all like our engame. What we have is the most braindead and boring arena system I ever encountered and I hate it dearly.
Monolith is nothing but overgloryfied mapping and the new season theme looks like not much will change here in the basic systems and it will be just another kind of mapping.

Dungeons… oh boy… I’m a sucker for dungeons! I LOVE Dungeons! Normaly I can run dungeons 24/7. On a good day I don’t have to step a foor into a dungeon in LE because the dungeons suck!

The campaign is a snore fest that lacks innovation in every corner. Heck even TLI is more engaging then the LE campaign. To me this is a prime example of absence of innovation from the tuorial zone up to empowered monos.

Skill… to be fair I guess every imaginable skill was imagined to this point and coming up with something new and fancy is hard. Non the less the skills in LE are very generic instead of innovative. Sure with item interaction you get a bit more depth but… meh.

Mastery classes are rather generic with a little twist here and there because the themes of the classes differ a bit. The Voidknight isnt a Darkknight so to speak because some elements of the fluff of the classes differ but non the less they could be the same. Sadly same goes for almost every mastery. It’s a bit bland for me.

Damage conversions… oh boy. Once classes had idenditys and damage types that came with the classes. Then the players started nagging and now we ended up at a clownfiesta wehre every class can deal evey kind of dmg. It realy hurts my soul thatclasses become more of a grey mass then outstanding on their own.

As always I think the base systems of LE are nice and worth to build upon but to me it’s not that fancy or innovative. I realy hope LE dares to get more creative and over the top with future innovations and don’t follow the path of playing it save as all other H&S games do and spice up the market.
Then again I look forward to season 2 andI hope LE will be there for many more years and get better and better and more popular.

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oh I didnt know that since d2 is a bit before my time, thats pretty cool.

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