Probably for all the newbs coming from other arpgs to understand more clearly
sounds great, can’t wait to learn more
There had also been trouble with ‘cycle/season/league’ vs ‘update/patch/expansion’ in the past, when they had this intermediate cycle between major updates.
It caused some confusion and misunderstandings here in the forum, IIRC.
Expansion! Let’s go!!!
The language being used here. Expansion instead of cycle/season as well as what is not being said, that is, the clarification of whether or not this will be a paid DLC very much points towards Krafton already directly putting their hands on how the game is going to go in the future which just goes to show what was already obvious. It doesn’t matters who acquires a game studio. They never have a clue as to how to make a successful business model for whatever game they are acquiring.
So before what seems already inevitable gets announced, let me give you this warning Krafton. You better be prepared to get review bombed if you dare ask money for this or any so called expansion. Don’t take this as me calling for it, there is no need for anyone to do that. It was promised that this game would never do this and any game worth their salt in this genre does not do this so it’s obvious that you will upset your customer base and you will not only fail to reach any appreciable sale goals, you will get as I said, review bombed because of going back on the promise and because you will have the worst business model in the entire genre. But you will also lose so many players over this that you will have dealt a fatal blow to your game.
On a personal note I will certainly move my review to negative because you went back on the promise and because the business model will be disgusting. You don’t get to ask for money for a base game, for the DLCs and then still want to sell cosmetics. That is egregious and predatory monetization and I will not tolerate that.
I understand you feel like you gotta do something to make the game commercially viable, after all you invested money and you want to returns. You should be pressing the Devs to do the changes the game needs in order to be good so let me give you a quick list of what needs to change.
First, all play style must be viable, last expansion before you came in was a joke. The whole update to minions did nothing for them, they are still just as bad so lets start by making sure that what is broken is properly fixed.
Second, smooth out the difficulty bumps. There is a big difficulty bump once Majelsa gets introduced with the minions being far more powerful than others and there is then a huge bump in difficulty going from regular monoliths to empowered monoliths, in great part this is because defenses are dependent on having well rolled grand blessings which can only be obtained by playing in empowered monoliths despite not being powerful enough to be doing them.
The trade is in a bad spot, it requires far too much time investment before players are able to actually trade for what they need and prices quickly get out of hand too but circle of fortune doesn’t allows for good enough farming either as it’s very hard to still target farm what you need. That being very specific bases with specific tier 6 and 7 affixes as well as high LP specific unique items.
Defenses have been getting nerfed patch after patch and the game has only gotten more difficult. People quit as soon as they hit empowered monoliths not because they are bored. Almost no one will quit because they are bored when there is a difficulty spike and at the precise point when they can start to aggressively scale up difficulty, that narrative sold by the top 1% of the player base is just pure BS and listening to this is what is killing the game. People are quitting because they are hitting a massive difficulty bump and they can’t handle it. That is why I always quit short after hitting empowered monoliths. I can’t progress anymore and trying to farm pre-empowered will not help me because loot drops are much worse and I won’t be getting the blessings that are mandatory for the build to even work in the first place.
So once again Krafton. Do not dare to put a price on the DLC or you can say goodbye to your investment. Your player base will be gone, your game is going to get review bombed for having the most egregious monetization and for going back on the promises made when the game was originally sold. If you are going to take control, make the Devs fix the game and the profits will follow.
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Nope. Even david brevik said LoD added in cut content mainly act 5 that didnt make the cut for full release. There was supposed to be 5 acts on launch of the game. D2 wasnt a finished game on release.
Not defending EHG here just correcting misinformation. I do agree tho EHG needs to finish the game first mainly campaign before doing an expansion
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Really??? we have every right to be upset if it ends up being a paid expansion. Dude EHG told us for freaking yrs. They would NEVER EVER charge for content. And the 30 dollar box price gives u all content for free.
They even explained why they wouldnt. Its so u dont run into an issue like say diablo 4 where if i dont own the expansion but u do and we always play together we cant cuz i dont have said expansion. Basically alienating the player base.
They sold thier game on this philosophy even advertised its this way as well
Quit boot licking.
Edit this was also said and advertised in the kickstarter going all the way back to 2018 under pay model.
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I’d say the (undeserved) player drop for S3 followed by the purchase by Krafton made a big dent in my optimism. They aren’t the same company anymore.
The people at the top reached their financial dream and rarely does that not impact the hunger to keep building their dream game. Add in the added bureaucracy and differing priorities between the new masters and the old and you have a recipe for a slowly depleting motivation.
The big question I have is when was the expansion work started and were any developer resources diverted to it when making Seasons 1-3.
A “big” expansion as seen by the devs may not be considered a “big” expansion by the players that left after launch and after Season 2.
I’m 100% positive that Mike was non committal on that topic when asked within the last year(pre Krafton). Was there mention of it in the kickstarter?
Yeah well guess what, things change. EHG doesn’t have full ownership anymore. Quit crying. Either buy it or don’t. But don’t wine when you aren’t playing it.
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POE1 has had expansions and they were free. That is who LE competes with.
Here they are
You mean like the myriad of other things proclaimed in the kickstarter as major aspects and not even remotely visible nowadays?
There were supposed to be 3 different types of end-game content, we got a single one. No, dungeons were not told to be end-game content but simply auxiliary content… which it currently also is. Same as Arena.
PvP (even if only a 1v1 Arena) was also promised, not any special modes… but the basis of it. Sure, I don’t care about it, but a broken promise is a broken promise.
And telling the company ‘yes, it’s fine to provide me with sub-par products as long as I just get more of the slob’?
That’s how the majority of products nowadays are so lackluster in quality, not asking for the quality and effort needed to be invested into the product you as the customer get before it’s ‘accepted’.
Hold your bar a little bit higher please, it’ll do everyone well. A better polished product for you. Less low-quality releases overall and hence enforcing the whole sector to become higher standard unlike it currently is.
We have supporter packs for that.
People paid since the kickstarter for this game and were promised very specific things to be upheld. Nobody needs to care beyond that. If someone promises you something they have to uphold it, it’s their responsibility, not yours as the customer to keep adding to it freely after the initial deal.
So kindly: Piss off with that. Simply said.
‘You shouldn’t be upset’. Obviously people are upset when they’re promised ‘A’ but delivered ‘B’. Only a doormat wouldn’t be.
Maybe the words ‘You’ll own nothing and be happy’ are closer then we thought if that’s a prevalent mindset.
Yes, but it’s not the industry norm and EHG has not clarified their meaning after the question came up. Which should be a immediate reaction up-front on the same day on the same site as the Forum exists rather then possibly anywhere else or not at all.
So until then the doubts are more then viable, especially with the current ongoing history of EHG since - and partially before - 1.0. They’ve lost the vast majority of the goodwill for making one blunder after another basically non-stop.
And exactly those inconsistencies in their terminology combined with their willigness to change core design philosophies (mastery respec is a thing included in that as example) makes it so problematic and worrying.
Hence the clarification is simply needed, nothing more, nothing less.
First of all the empowered monolith difficulty spike is felt and especially so for first-time players. Anyone returning with a second or third character (or successive follow-up cycles) won’t generally have this problem.
Still needs fixing, not the major point.
It’s the repetitiveness and lack of overarching direct goal after achieving to get into empowered. Repeated ‘run this already finished boss again’ system simply is not enticing, especially so if it has to be done several times as it goes on, all to reach a single boss which should plainly spoken be the end-boss of all monoliths to lead into empowered in the first place and a new system being built entirely on top of that afterwards rather then the mess we have currently.
The exact wording in the kickstarter:
The planned pay model for Last Epoch upon release is for the game to be free to all players until level 20 with restrictions on player interaction in order to deter spamming. To advance beyond level 20, players may spend $14.99 to unlock the rest of the game's content and full social features! These restrictions on free players will go a long way to deter spam and botting accounts, which will help keep the game’s community and economy healthy. This one-time payment will be all that a player will have to spend to have the complete Last Epoch experience and be on the same footing as other players.
Which while the 15 Dollar price got changed (acceptable after inflation and time has passed) and everyone backing has access to the game anyway and hence the level 20 limitation being removed having no impact it still words it to state ‘It’s a one-time payment and never nothing more’.
Even if not directly named it is implied and hence expected. Specifically the last sentence details to that.
‘Don’t whine after the product you receive and paid for isn’t what was promised’.
It’s a really senseless notion you’re making there.
How about removing your USB-port and radio functionality from your car post-sale? Just cause? Or how about a season ticket for a pool you bought being suddenly only there to include half the functions mid-way?
Is that fine?
Well, EHG sold their product to us as ‘You get the full experience with a single payment’. So asking people to not find fault with anything failing to adhere to that is nonsense.
4 Likes
Comparing LE to a USB port is wild. Look, the game is now under new ownership. I get why people are upset. Boycott the game I guess.
Why so? Because one is a physical object and the other is a amalgamation of bits?
How does that change the aspect of ownership and/or contracts?
EHG stated they’ll provide a specific thing in their contract. The monetization aspect is a part of said contract. If it’s not upheld for example unter the EU law this is ‘misleading’ and hence makes it ‘payment under false premises’ under the law, which has no time-limit for refund-time actually applied currently and would need to be individually taken into consideration if the company has fulfilled their promises already and a ‘reasonable’ timeframe has passed.
Given that EHG hasn’t provided all the promised aspects of the kickstarter yet and not even the main story of the game is finished this is a very very very negative for them should people be outraged enough to go to the ECC (european consumer center) about it.
To give a relatively timely example of where this became important was from backlash against the game ‘The Bazaar’ which went a 180 in monetization from the promises before release. They had to provide refunds to everyone stating the respective laws or fear of repercussions from the EU, ultimately having to roll back those changes entirely and adjust their monetization system anew.
In the current situation EHG hasn’t done it yet… but we’re talking about the potential situation of it happening, at which they would be in the devil’s kitchen immediately because in the EU a kickstarter with a direct reward is deemed as a contractual obligation by the owner as it’s not a investment hence. It’s a payment. It’s the same under the law as going to Steam and clicking ‘buy this game’.
Mike has been asked about expansions quite a bit on the streams every single time he said the 30 box price gets u all future content dor free.
It doesnt matter if thay was said in the last yr or not. They promised its even at times used the word WILL. The word promise doesnt need to be used for something to he a promise
And yes they did say it in the kickstarter under pay model. Worded differently still saying the same thing.
Here ya go.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lastepoch/last-epoch
If they never where going to stick to what they told the community over the yrs they shouodnt open there mouth about it and keep it shut. No different with ur mastery being ur class then bam out of nowhere its not anymore
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Ur not making a point here. Its the same thing. They explained why they changed it.
League seasons cycle same thing.
Expansion vs season arent expansion generally means paid content
I understand where you’re coming from. However that stuff not being in the game doesn’t mean they can’t one day add it. Unless they specifically state that content is never going to be added it’s in a sort of limbo. Heck they haven’t even completed the main campaign yet and the games been in 1.0 for over a year with 3 seasons under their belt. Them saying we won’t do this and then doing it is very much different than them saying they were going to add something and then not getting around to it.
Who pays if everything is free?
I dunno what to feel about this. We’ll see I guess…
They also said this before they were owned by another company. Now they are. Things change. They needed the funding to keep developing the game at a pace they could keep up with. And now they got it. With that comes added costs and that includes hiring more. So now all bets are off whether or not this expansion will be free. If it’s coming to PS5, my bet is that it’s not free or they would’ve put that in the teaser in big letters. It is what it is. I can get upset about it or just buy and it and enjoy it, or drop the game entirely and go play something else. People getting all up in arms is understandable but you really shouldn’t expect all future content to be free especially with them being under new ownership.
Hi there
This is my 1st ever post (also I just registered to the forum to post this), expecting my humble opinion to be heard 
.
Just wanna say that Im happy to make purchase once more to play on PS5, but pls keep the cross progress live & playable.
Btw looking fwd to the expansion as well.
Thank you for all the hard work!