Before I share this I want to make it very clear that I support this game and so far I have been very impressed by it, but this one thing is really weighing on my decision to keep playing so I wanted to share it here. I downloaded Last Epoch as an alternative to Diablo IV. Right away, I was impressed by the game’s visuals and combat. It’s bright and colorful, the spell effects are satisfying and the combat is much better than I was expecting with all of the reviewers constantly saying D4 has it beat in that department. But there is one thing about this game that is ruining my experience, and it’s the fact that you are forced into playing someone else’s vision of what your character should be.
Sure, that makes sense in an offline, story driven game where the centralized characters have enough personality that they cannot be customized. But it makes literally no sense in the format of Last Epoch. I aboslutely HATE that in order to play Mage, I have to be an old man. Warlock looks like it’ll be a lot of fun and is very interesting, but I’m not going to play as a goth woman. It’s just not something I can immerse myself into. And why restrict anyone into playing a specific avatar when it’s not important to anyone but the developers? My wife wanted to get into this game, as we enjoyed playing Diablo 3 together, but was put off by the fact that she always plays Druids in every game but would have to play as a muscle-bound bearded man if she wanted to be a Druid in this game.
I’ll site here a couple of points as to why this should not be the case in your game, and why it would make the game infinitely better if this were rectified.
#1. In an interview with one of your lead developers between him and DM (DarthMicrotransactions) he sites the reason for not being able to reroll your mastery as to make that character “special” to you. He even goes as far as saying “We want you to feel like if you have a Fire Sorc that is YOUR Fire Sorc”. Well if that is the case what an odd decision to avatar lock all characters, given that now if I want “MY” Fire Sorc and “MY” Lightning Spellblade they have to look like the exact same dude. That is literally the opposite of how you make a character “special” to the player.
#2. It’s a terrible feeling when you go into a town and see 3-5 other characters that look exactly like you. Of course to some degree with armor sets etc, you can never truly avoid this. But seeing avatars that look EXACTLY like you ruins immersion.
#3. It adds an immense amount of replayability to a game. I know that seems stupid but I can’t tell you how many times my friends and I have rerolled on video games to change our avatar’s appearance on various games.
#4. It provides you a way to make money to continue the growth and development of a game that has a great amount of potential. You can sell avatar changes in your cash shops. These are non game-effecting and harmless money makers that no developer should feel shame in selling. Being able to change your avatar makes complete and total sense in a world where magic is real and abundant. This is simply an all around win for the developers AND the players.
#5. However few, you will definitively lose players because of the decision to avatar lock classes. I can assure you that my interest in the game is already waning because of it, my wife already decided not to play because of it, I see many people online complaining about it and it’s something that is a readily accessible feature in your biggest competition, Diablo. And before people flame me for comparing to Diablo IV, please remember that D4 has the same concurrent player count on STEAM alone. That is literally only the people that have Diablo IV on Steam, which has got to be an insanely small percentage of players compared to people that have the game on battle net.
#6 It’s not a time consuming or costly feature. Female/Male avatars can use the same skeleton. Meshes and textures are fast to create and easy to implement. This is something that could realistically be done in a few weeks, to add at least a bare bones character creator. Gender/Hair Color/Hair Options. They could even be minimal. Literally ANY customization is greather than none.
. Those changes maybe will happen if there is ever a big expension of sorts and I realy realy realy hope EHG fixes more important things first before the give the people the opportunity to have a toon with pink hair and a boob slider.