Last Epoch Hotfix 1.0.4.2 Notes

Patch Notes
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Hello Travelers,

In today’s Hotfix, we are reverting the change to the cost of Despair Glyph Prophecies.

With this, we wanted to talk a bit about why this change made it into the last patch, similar changes, and a bit more about our specific reasoning behind them.

Glyph of Despair Prophecies

This change (favor cost for despair glyphs) didn’t have anything to do with Merchant’s Guild (MG) - at least, we weren’t aware of a significant issue being caused by MG players swapping to ‘abuse’ this. We believe MG already has a very good pathway to Despair Glyphs with Vault of Uncertain Fates, so wouldn’t have been benefiting from this prophecy by swapping.

This was actually something we had decided before 1.0, that the favor cost was too low for this reward along with other adjustments in a late pass. However with the post-launch changes/fixes, this was as soon as it made its way through the pipeline with other priority fixes pushing their way ahead of it. So this was purely in regards to its own balance within Circle of Fortune (CoF). One of the discussions this has started internally is regarding review of these delayed adjustments.

Our previous pipeline didn’t include design looking at the final patches when they went out, so unfortunately we missed this change and re-evaluating it. We have adjusted our pipeline to try to catch delayed changes so we can be more mindful of them and consider if they should go out, or be delayed to the next cycle. It’s highly likely this change will still happen with 1.1, but it may not be to the same cost as it was in this change.

TLDR: The change was made before 1.0, got stuffed in the pipeline, and just finally got out without further design review on timing. We’ll be keeping a better eye out for delayed changes like this.

Arena Key Sell Prices

With the Key value nerf, the impetus for it was as we had stated, that it was being leveraged by MG players with swapping factions. However, this was a change we had planned for some time, and it was really just the final push needed to prioritize the change. With the key values, originally they had a higher value on them so it gave them some value for players who didn’t have any use or interest in them (never played arena).

Keys were never intended to be a source of gold farming, which is something which crept up over time with them being easier to target in the Monolith. With the interactions in CoF, it was the straw which broke the camel’s back, so to say. We definitely agree we did not sufficiently communicate reasoning behind this change, and that’s on us creating that misunderstanding. We’ll be making an effort to include bigger picture reasons behind changes such as this, rather than the immediate reason, as we had.

TLDR: Arena Keys were never meant to be a method to farm gold, and it had reached a point of prominence that even MG players had begun to feel the need to swap to CoF to leverage it.

Mid-cycle Changes

In regards to mid cycle changes, we had approved these changes as they don’t impact moment to moment gameplay, and won’t suddenly cause a build to not be able to clear a certain difficulty of content it was able to previously. The survey we had previously gone through was about those kind of build impacting changes, rather than general systems. We should also mention this is our guiding star, not our railroad. In specific scenarios we may decide another route is better, such as this Despair Glyph change not being enacted during this cycle. For these kinds of changes, we will use our best judgment, and will always be receptive to hearing feedback on them.

We have also seen some feedback regarding the survey not covering bug fixes which result in buffs. The reason for this is that we have always had the intention to follow through with bug fixes that result in buffs mid-cycle, and did not feel that was controversial to be surveyed. We won’t be holding back bug-fixes that result in buffs.

TLDR: Our intentions with mid-cycle changes from the survey is to avoid nerfs to the power level of characters, or moment to moment gameplay. We will still do changes that are buffs. These are guides, not rules - we will exercise discretion.

Thank you

As always, thank you voicing your feedback to us - it is sparking discussions about the timing of these changes, as well as communication regarding them. We hope we can clear up that both these changes were things we had been discussing for some time prior and were not just due to abuse, and help to put to rest some of the conflict we’re seeing.

Changes

  • Reverted Favor cost increase for Despair Glyph Prophecies

Please Note that for approximately three hours after the patch goes live it is still possible to connect to an old server which will charge the old costs. Please wait until after this timeframe before visiting the Observatory for specifically purchasing Despair Glyph Prophecies

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Thanks so much for the transparency and insights into your philosophies EHG, never change that :slight_smile: Looking forward to future updates!

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So what, then, are players supposed to do with their (dozens or hundreds of) spare keys?

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if u dont run them, why have them ? or pick them up

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They should still have a sale value, just not high enough to make focus farming them a ‘key’ strategy.

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Thank you for the excellent ongoing communication!!

Speaking only for myself, these felt a lot like balance changes.

Once a league begins, I want to have a general sense that whatever is discovered and pursued will be consistent and reliable.

Legit bugs/brokenness - have at it!

But the rest… that’s the playground you’ve provided us with :slight_smile: Doesn’t feel good to have our toys taken away :wink:

Looking forward to 1.1, and still loving 1.0!!! :slight_smile:

3 Likes
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so far you guys did a decent job. But just want to remind you that, a solution doesn’t have to be always polarized towards the majority of the survey. If 30% players think one way, 50% players like another way, and 20% players don’t care, if I were a dev I would consider addressing those 30% players is as valuable as the 50% players. Sometimes(if not 1%~99% or 10%~90% ofc), I just don’t think take very polarized measure (in game or gone) according to survey numbers is a good choice. Not to mention survey doesn’t cover everybody for sure. Some softer manner could be better. (In my opinion not doing the survey at all is better then having it, sometimes have to do what devs think is right and have some judgement… but if you did the survey, make sure to value everybody took part in it.)

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What if monsters and prophecies instead dropped a “token” that you could exchange for either arena keys, dungeon keys or gold? This way this reward is always useful no matter what content you want to play. If gold creates issues as 1 of the 3 rewards, perhaps random rare crafting materials?

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As always, the transparency is much appreciated. :slight_smile:

While I do agree that the “new” cost of Glyph of Despair prophecies felt a little too high, I’ll take this opportunity to voice my (maybe unpopular) opinion that I do feel like their original favor cost, to which they are being returned, felt a little low compared to their power and rarity, and it did feel a little too easy to stock up 50-60-70 glyphs (in my humble opinion).

I respect the arguments offered by the community, of course. I just thought I’d voice my opinion about it. :slight_smile:

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Is game optimization on the to-do-list?

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I didn’t have any issue with the change to the Glyph of Despair; I wasn’t even aware of it until today. None of my characters are MG and I have accumulated enough glyphs to successfully play and advance.

I do have an issue with how this change occurred. A couple of weeks ago you sent out a survey to the players (a good thing!) and the results clearly showed that mid-cycle nerfs were not something people wanted and that any changes should be announced prior to the actual implementation. The LE concurred with these results and stated that they were in alignment with LE’s own intentions. And then you did this.

Trust is hard to earn, easy to lose.

2 Likes
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Any update on fixing the flurry/multishot for rogue. It doesn’t proc the shots half the time

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I appreciate and understand that concern, but personally, their current value is too low for me to bother picking them up at all when they drop in an echo, or as scripted reward for an echo I “had to” go through to navigate the echo web - which, in my humble opinion, feels like a sign that it might a little too low.

I know that balancing is deceptively hard, and that, when it comes to gold balancing specifically, situations where a gold farming strategy becomes far superior to others can probably arise surprisingly fast; but I feel like the current values might be a little on the low side. (Just my two cents as “one player” of course, I don’t claim to speak for the community in anyway)

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If some change was meant to happen before 1.0, but didn’t make it into cycle, is it a bug (something that works not as intended)?

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Lets be real here people. You are nerfing your player base instead of fixing the game. Oh no this node give me more ward??? At least it is unlike half of the other talents that don’t function properly period. Playing with your buddies??? Not gonna happen. But thank god we can’t sell our keys anymore PHEW. You nerf things that give us purpose and drive. Hamstringing your players at every turn both monetarily and power level wise is a true weakmindedly move.

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Have not seen this kind of transparency with balance adjustment since ghostcrawler wow days. This game is very quickly sealing itself as top arpg for me.

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A change/fix being set forth prior to a patch release is unrelated to this distinction I would feel - It may or may not be a bug. As long as there isn’t an underlying bug, purely changing balance would be a change, as under this assumption, the numbers had met the intention at the time.

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I feel like you didn’t read original post…

I don’t think there was any type of malicious intent.

Very plausible and easy for me to imagine that someone had a list of changes on their to-do list. Came into work, was able to implement them, and they were rolled into the game.

They’re letting us know here and now that community feedback has led them to rethink what should and should not be rolled out mid-cycle.

They’re people. They too want a fantastic game and happy community.

Your frustration very much comes through… I am wondering if perhaps the Blizzards of the world have jaded you so deeply that you no longer recognize/trust good people attempting to do the right thing?

2 Likes
19

So, what is the justification for actively disabling the Monolith Echo Reward upgrade no longer working on XP Tomes? CoF levellingspeed is already so much slower than MGs and this was working as advertised.

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THANK YOU.
Dunno why people were trying to use this as a “gotcha” against the survey when the answer to such a hypothetical survey question would overwhelmingly be: “DUHHHH, of course!”

1 Like