I am saying because of the userbase difference it is unfair to compare the two. AFAIK Last Epoch has at most 1/10th the players of POE1. So even if they adopt POE’s model they wont be able to compete in revenue that POE gets, not but a long shot. It is just the way it is.
The game has to make money too or its unsustainable.
I actually do
Man, I wish I did. The basic premise is interesting enough, but the actual storytelling has been incredibly lackluster. The player basically has zero stakes in the story, and even the characters you encounter are so mindnumbingly flat and forgettable.
For example, is anyone actually supposed to feel anything except indifference when Alric is killed? What exactly is supposed to have endeared his character to me?
Yes but it’s still not a great comparison. PoE released free to play, with no barrier to trying the game. It’s easy having big numbers when you don’t have to play to try the game.
Comparing it to PoE2 early access, at least the price point is the same (for now), but it’s a rough comparison too because there’s already a developed base from PoE.
Would you assume that the average PoE1 player spent $30-40 bucks in the game? I wouldn’t. So the people who wouldn’t spend $30 on mtx in a free game probably aren’t going to spend $30 to buy LE. There’s a bias towards numbers just because PoE doesn’t have an upfront cost.
Well, at a size of 1/10th users you would expect the company size to represent that to a degree.
But EHG expands still, tries to bring in new people (anyone accepting a job at EHG in the current state wouldn’t be intelligent, massive red flag) and bleeds money left and right.
Instead of making the company bigger… how about making it work? That would be a start.
Then we can still talk about comparisons, but inherently any company has to at least sustain itself before it’s even viable at all, and EHG has the playerbase to sustain itself. Heck… it’s the second biggest ARPG franchise on Steam (D4 might be bigger off-steam definitely, but not on steam)
I am very against a paid-for class. Cosmetics are a choice the players can make to support the game while getting something glitzy to play with. Putting a class behind a paywall moves the dial from a choice and pushes it towards pressuring players into a transaction because people want to be able to play the things.
As someone that’s paid for the top tier supporters packs each time - a choice I made - I will skip this class on principle. No matter how cool. Somehow, I feel this decision will tarnish your rep with the players, EHG.
Well I don’t disagree with that. But some of my favorite moments is getting to zones you’ve been to either in the past or the future and seeing what it was like before / after. The setting itself is one of the strongest points which I don’t think monos do well.
The premise of altered timelines in the monos is a really cool concept, but it doesn’t actually get reflected in the monos other than the 3 story parts you only do once. I kind of wish those had been filled out more personally.
To drift of the topic a bit, you cannot sustain unless you are at least viable to start with…
They need to expand the team to make it work because obviously a limited team can only do so much, the more you have the more you can do, and yes there is obviously a cost involved in that as well, the money has to come from somewhere, and while I think we can all agree the current cosmetics leave a bit to be desired in both style and amount, a larger team could also allow more time to make said cosmetics increasing $$, it could also bring out content faster keeping more players involved to purchase those same cosmetics etc.
I am not sure how I feel about a class to be behind a paywall at this point, need more info first really
Being at most the third ARPG, doing this kind of thing doesn’t help grow the community and therefore sales. Krafton keeps doing its own thing. It’s a shame, I hope I’m wrong, but Rest in Peace
Whats really funny is that ppl on the Diablo forum think this is a good idea and want it too (more classes). Maybe they will replace some of the ppl leaving here. lol
Yep. I’m gone.
And nonetheless single developers created top-end games in a few years, including graphics, mechanics, engine and music. Stardew Valley is a prime example, and not the only one. We got Palworld, we got Undertale, we got Minecraft, Hollow Knight, Silksong.
Yes, the genre is competitive beyond end, but the first and foremost thing is a proper plan, a cohesive goal and a proper content pipeline if you wanna go beyond ‘this small group of people coming together’.
EHG has nothing of that.
Slow. Low quality. Great ideas though. Failure to be goal-driven but instead re-iterrating the same content repeatedly. Lack of focus, overall lack of organisation.
You don’t need a friggin 100 sized group of people, you need a plan to bring it out with good mechanics and a ok-ish presentation. Cohesive, showcasing what it can be, that’s your first showcase. Then you finish it this way, then you work over to improve stuff and polish it, rinse and repeat while adding the ideas you get.
It’s always been this way and will never change. The people at EHG got ideas… but they’re many things… but cohesive? That’s not one of the things they are or ever were.
With the quality they provided? Heck… that’s a intern job for a week per piece, you wanna tell me the footprints need any sort of major effort to create?
Or the weapon models which you literally cannot see 90% of the time as they got no effects highlighting them?
Come on… at least basic quality is the minimum.
To sell MTX you need to have MTX.
Sit down a damn single worker making nothing else then MTX models and effects and you can fill the damn shop in half a year to what it is in total today. It’s pitiful, it’s actually enraging with how little they’ve done.
We’re talking about comparisons to other games in the genre. GGG was as big as EHG around 2017. Let’s see what they created, shall we?
Breach, Legacy, Harbinger.
I remember Breach, dozens of new mobs, a new effect, as many enemy types as a full chapter in LE. MTX? 5 complete armor sets. Besides the supporter Packs.
Legacy was just a repeat. Their supporter packs + weapon effect packs + 2 auras, a stash and a frame.
Harbinger. Not only once again several new enemy models but also their supporter packs again.
Now… let’s check how many peak players GGG had reliably during launches at that time?
Ah yes, 80k, every single time. Outside of Abyss which went to 68k, Delve and Blight which went towards around 75k.
How many does EHG have again?
Ah yes… the initial 260k at release. 70k at 1.1, 150k at 1.2 and 80k at 1.3.
So… not only do they have up to triple the players but they cannot friggin support their own game studio?
If that’s not a pure failure on terms of EHG providing value to buy then I don’t know what else it is. It’s clearly not the playercount lacking, is it? Not profitable when PoE stated around that time ‘we can survive for years on 5-10k players’?
Man… that’s pitiful to compare even.
That’s how bad their MTX is. That’s how much the ignored that. That’s how much a cohesive completed game weights. Issues or not… if you feel it’s half-finished then why buy into it? Also… that’s how absolute awful the supporter pack value is.
So don’t bring that stuff… it’s crap. They had everything needed at a silver tablet provided. Word of mouth, players flocking in… and they squandered it entirely.
No. I am not convinced that the solution is to throw more money at the monetisation. Offering new/more MTX is worth NOTHING when your playerbase is too small to support your model in the first place.
If this is the case and as a result you find yourself in a financial hole, every person showing up to help is actually just one more shovel digging you that much deeper, that much quicker.
They need more long term, enthusiastic, and solvent CUSTOMERS. Say it with me: New. MTX. does. not. achieve. that. Improving the quality and user experience might. MIGHT. If it’s not already too late for the overall opinion of the market to be anything other than abject apathy.
I love to see new content especially new classes, BUT I’m very disappointed in the monetizing of classes. I remember watching a dev stream where mike had been bombarded with requests for more skins/mtx and his response was something along the lines of “we’re making more, but don’t worry EHG has plenty of money” This was prior to the krafton acquisition. If you guys want more money, make more things that your player base has been asking you to make that you already sell. Do mid season mtx releases. Something other than pay gating the content. I’ll buy it, but i think its unhealthy for the game long term.
edit: didnt realize the deal about the experimental “paradox class” depends on what that means. I just want another class. If its something weird and too different, i might not buy that.
i thought they would pull this shit way down the line lmao, Krafton works damn fast, it was good while it lasted EHG, toodles.
Free to play PoE 2 with 12 classes and 10 times more content than LE will ever have or B2P with P2W classes and with still very little endgame content the game will die within a year the last season already had massive decline in players was fun while it lasted got my monys worth out from it
So I decided to reread the kickstarter terms to check the “pay model” section:
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.
It seems like paid classes would break these terms as much as paid expansions. And so this hints that they could have made paid expansions instead.
Planned
It’s an aspiration that didn’t work out, since they claim they haven’t had enough buy in from MTX to run profitable.
Now, we can certainly argue if EHG messed up their whole business strategy by delivering subpar MTX with ‘bad’ supporter packs.
I’ve said this before in another thread, but the pricing model they have in the kickstarter isn’t even the one they settled on. It’s not a FTP with a progress paywall anymore, nor is the price they stated the actual price they asked on release. So as far as being able to sue / refund / whatever based on the kickstarter project which didn’t have accurate information to begin with is probably not likely to succeed.
yeah sorry I’ve added a missing sentence saying that they obviously chose paid classes over expansions. Which I think is odd. I’d much rather pay for a good expansion than feel nickle and dimed by new exclusive classes.
Well first of all only backers can sue for kickstarter terms imo. And nothing that changed post kickstarter hurt them until now.
Star Citizens devs preemptively allowed refunds for a limited time after drastically boosting the scope of the scam/game.
I’m just curious what their official stance is,
