Last Epoch’s Season 4 and Beyond: Expansion, Paradox Classes, and Roadmap

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525

So basically they don’t have enough time to play and that makes them less knowledgable. Keep on moving those goal posts.

I’m going to explain why your bias is factually problematic, and I’m probably going to lose you cause it’s going to be using math. I’ll keep the numbers nice and round and I’ll fudge the numbers a bit in your favor.

We know there are more than 3 million copies sold. Without specific numbers let’s use 3,000,000. There are on an average day 1500 players, and being as this is fairly consistent let’s assume all of them have lots of logged hours played. Where I’m going to fudge it is lets round up to 3,000. Not only does that mean more experts (in your favor), but it makes a very easy round number.

So 3,000 players out of a total 3,000,000 makes 0.1% of the total population.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+%25+of+3%2C000%2C000+is+3000&oq=what+%25+of+3%2C000%2C000+is+3000&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRifBTIHCAIQIRifBTIHCAMQIRifBTIHCAQQIRifBTIHCAUQIRifBTIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRiPAjIHCAkQIRiPAtIBCTEzNTUxajBqN6gCFLACAfEF-xcMBQ2RHOw&client=ms-android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

I even googled it for you cause I doubt your ability to do the math. So with just this, right now, you are saying that 1/10th of 1% of the population should have a greater sway on the direction the game is making based on expertise. I can stop there but now I’m going to scream into the wind and try to explain what a bell curve is.

A bell curve, or normal distribution, is a symmetrical, bell-shaped graph where most data points cluster around the center (mean/average), tapering off equally on both sides to represent fewer extreme values. It’s fundamental in statistics, describing natural phenomena like height or test scores, and indicates that roughly 68% of data falls within one standard deviation of the mean, 95% within two, and 99.7% within three.

Why is this relevant? It’s safe to say you cannot listen and implement the ideas or suggestions of 3 million people, you wouldn’t even get through reading all of them. So it’s much easier if we axe the extremes and try to focus on the average customer, saves a lot of time and represents a larger percentage of the population; after all marketing is most effective when you reach a bigger customer base. It’s impossible for me to calculate what the median is, that data is solely something EHG can track. I could guess that the extremes are probably starting at hours played (not uncommon, there are games in my steam library I haven’t played yet), and the extreme on the other end is probably our 1000+. I can be fairly confident in this based on the maximum possible people playing and the current number of people playing being such a far cry off. Would you, as one of the 1000 hours played, feel slighted being cut from thr curve because you are at an extreme? Definitely, so why are you trying to do it on the other side too? Being in a minority doesn’t mean you are wrong, but it does mean you can be overlooked.

So, as a company, do you want to know what the 0.1% have to say and discard the rest because “they just didn’t get it and aren’t experienced enough to know what they like” or do you listen to the people who quit after 20, 30, 40 hours of game play and try to find out why?

You aren’t just saying “yea, sometimes people with less experience get passed over”, you are defending it.

There’s a saying “you learn something new every day”, and I gotta tell you it’s not a limit. In the case for you it might be, maybe read this post once a day until you learn something.

526

Which goalposts?
Don’t be utterly incompetent now. You can’t throw around terms willy nilly to try and underline your argument which is based on lofty nothingness.

‘Substantially’ includes it already.

Once more, your comprehension.

Consecutively online, which you multiply by roughly 4-6 times for the actual individual playercount.
Which is why the player numbers of D4 always seem so huge when anything is revealed, they use daily individual players, not concurrent numbers.

Yes, obviously.

Now I know you’ll immediately go absolutely ham after those 2 words above, but keep your brain turned on for a few moments longer:

First off, 50% of players don’t make it past Act 1, hence we’ve already a different percentile.
Actually… expected around 70-80% of players won’t have even the campaign finished, ever.
Then from the leftover 20% we get around 50-60% into empowered.
And from those around 30-40% (purely estimated by now as the former numbers skew it heavily) will beat Aberroth… and from those around 5-10% at best Uberroth.

If we take a normal long-term game distribution here.

From the long-term players (which are between 5-10% of the total playerbase for this genre, those reaching beyond 100 hours total playtime invested) we’ll see roughly 10% being ‘forever’ players of some sort, those which actually do spend intense amounts of time. The so-called ‘1%’ which is often talked about.

Those are further split into 2 core categories. The single-character players and the ones which are altoholics. Few are purely in one category, the majority leans simply into one direction, more or less severely.

We can commonly start to take into serious (hence not solely glancing over it to see if a rough point at least is being made) consideration the mechanical feedback for those which fall into the ‘long-term player’. This is around the ‘Sigma 2’ category. So going into it in detail:

Yes, called ‘Sigma’, hence ‘Sigma 1’, ‘Sigma 2’ and ‘Sigma 3’.

The following also applies still:

So far so good.

But then it falls apart:

And that’s where you’re failing this example actually!

You gotta realize one thing here… first off, the long-term player by definition is not the ‘average joe’. Never was, never will be.
The long-term player is the type of player keeping the lights on.
Since the long-term player provides the funds needed you cannot ignore them, quite the contrary.

If it were a consumable product with repeated usage you would be right, but a long-term service is not a consumable which is used up. It’s a repeated increase of steady payments into it.

As you state yourself… per normal distribution we can start with the ‘Sigma 2’ area for viable longevity in live-service products. You might not like it but it’s how those games are mandatory to be designed.
A proper live-service design is based upon including those below the ‘Sigma 2’ area just enough to keep them coming back, to provide a large area of social environment for the leftover 5% above, they ‘leech’ off of their state via comparison to be exact. Be it via a market, social standing in perception of success comparatively… that’s the norm.
Once more… you might not like it but it’s how the human psyche works.

Those 5% past the Sigma 2 distribution though are those which actually matter. They provide 95% of the revenue for the company outside of shelf-price, which for a live-service game is mandatory. Shelf-price doesn’t matter. You don’t have endless people providing that. Only ~15 games world wide in the history of gaming have sold enough copies to sustain a live-service concept of this size with solely shelf-price. And none of them is a live-service game.

Which brings us to the next aspect, the middle of the curve.

Do you actually understand who the middle is? The absolute average joe in reality? I stated it above, but it’s so important to repeat it clearly:
50% of players owning a product won’t make it past the first 2 hours of game-time, inconsequential which game it is.

Now my question:
Are you actually stating that we should design the game around those? We should take ‘Sigma 0,5’ into consideration?
That would be insanity.

So we can go to ‘Sigma 1’, right?
68% of people.
Who are they exactly?
Commonly between 20-30% finish the timeframe needed for the campaign, hence those are the people which haven’t even gone beyond Lagon… or Majasa.
Obviously not feasable either to design the game for those, live-service tourists.

So you reach towards ‘Sigma 2’ for decisions commonly.

Now now though… you got definitely a point still!

Obviously not!
But you fail to see the world in anything but ‘it is’ or ‘it isn’t’.
Black&White thinking doesn’t help here, we need to be a bit more refined then that.

The less experience the less expectation of value.

What does that mean exactly?

That someone with less experience can provide a reasonable point, but the chance for it to happen drops substantially in scope and for the areas they can provide it.

Hence you’re absolutely right, you take in the considerations of those people! But only for the respective areas they can reasonably provide it.
And that’s it.

That was - and is - the whole argumentation line which has been said.

What you do is trying to argue for the ‘average joe’… but tell you what… the average joe is actually worthless for a live-service company. And I mean that literally.

527

What? What the hell are you even talking about? This is exactly what moving the goal posts mean. You want to know the big difference? They have their own bnet server. The number of players on it aren’t entirely represented by steam numbers. They also are forced online. LE is entirely on steam, hence the most accurate account, not mumbo jumbo multiplications just because someone else does it for completely different reasons. Let’s give you a very shallow win and multiply that number by 10. Still a whopping 1% of the group, and even in that group is the silent majority. So you are getting a minority of a minority to dictate your business.

I literally said you would cut off both extremes. That includes the 0 hours. And literally all of your numbers are statistics made up on the spot with, as reliably as ever from you, 0 evidence. It’s not even 10% retention. It’s not even 1% retention. It isn’t even 0.1% retention because I rounded the number up. Making sub categories in sub categories has nothing to do with the argument. It’s basically just you throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

The long term player isn’t keeping the lights on. That’s a fact. We know it indisputably. Once again just making shit up on the spot. If they were, then Krafton wouldn’t be involved. If they were they wouldn’t be changing their monetization policies. Retention is important for consumable and non consumable goods you donkey. If people don’t go to McDonalds repeatedly they close down. If people don’t buy the MTX repeatedly here they close down. Bigger retention means bigger sales. It’s not even complicated, but for some reason you think doing everything possible to hold on to the smallest minority is a good business strategy.

Based on what. Where are you getting this number? What sources are you able to cite? Is it some magical blanket one size fits all? Where are you getting any of your numbers? Are the sources exact in their math or are they just editorials that feel like that’s how it is?

“It’s not black and white.” Literally what I’ve been saying this entire time. More hours does not mean more correct or more of an expert. That’s a black and white comparison you are making. I’m not arguing for the average joe, Im arguing against elitists who think they are better than others, and therefore have more to offer, based entirely on a self-satisfying worth of “I’ve wasted more time than you.”

Your entire closing argument is black and white. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, you swooping in to defend a position that quite frankly shouldn’t be idolized is just you being a hypocrite with a savior complex. All of your arguments are speculative at best, made up at worst, and lack any sort of experience that an education should be able to provide.

Opinion: you are an idiot. We don’t agree. I can point to your gross misunderstanding of the law, your absurd over reliance on bad faith argument, your complete lack of evidence to support any of your arguments, and your inability to defend any position that uses hard facts, going straight into if I ignore it it isn’t real. That being said I admit, when it comes to people who know you personally or longer I assume they have much better expertise in how you’re an idiot.

Hell, let’s give you a couple more days of something new to learn.

Hypocrisy
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.
“People.with more hours invested are clearly more experienced than those without. I also, having no experience in law, know I am 100% right about it.”

Condescending
having or showing a feeling of patronizing superiority.

I’m being condescending by giving you definitions and examples of things that should be easy enough to look up on your own because I don’t trust you to be able to do that.

528

I moved nothing.

I just provided extra explanation related to the total sales you stated. I still worked on the same premise.

At least be able to discern when someone actually tries to argue against one of your points, hard to converse with you if you’re even failing at that.

Check the steam achievements from H&S games on Steam. Path of Exile for example provides a good showcase there, albeit it’s a bit ages from how long it exists.
Grim Dawn also provides a similar situation.

Those are the biggest 2 examples with achievements available which provide a total overview of what people achieved that actually used the product.

That’s because there is barely any MTX to buy.

No offer no sale.

Also stated repeatedly.

Oh, just established knowledge accumulated over time from interviews, database searches and so on.

Like this:

Now imagine your ‘3 million sold’ amount if you take ‘every customer’ into account, when at average over 50% of games in the list of users is unplayed?

Obviously countering that this includes to a large portion bundles and subcscriptions providing keys, and as much as I know LE wasn’t included in any of the major ones, hence with a substantially higher userbase actually.

So instead of a 50% chance of unused we can reduce the amount and say 20% of paid copies were never started.

Then we got the relevant achievements from other games in the segment which showcases not only average playtime but also overall willigness to complete a product. Steam Achievements are nice since they only count people starting the product at least once. Hence it removes the already paid but unused percentile entirely.

GD for example shows 27,5% finished the base campaign.
PoE has 14,7% campaign completion.

Hence we can positively say ‘30% campaign completion is realistic’. Easier then PoE, shorter then GD. The low number in PoE btw is because of F2P and hence more people starting and stopping early.

All other estimations can also be provided hence accordingly on data points of Steam player-stats and achievements. Be it playtime or be it completion of content.

Which was agreed and you ripped further into it because you lacked comprehension.
Yes.

You’re just making a point to be angry for the sake of being angry.

529

way to go pay to win EHG… just done killed your own game. also wont see this till 2028 anyway.

530

:broken_heart:

531

Please add some bundled cosmetics as well with discounts. Stuff like a ‘minion set’, a ‘void knight erasing strike set’ etc. This could have all the gear alongside the pets, portal, and skills cosmetics. You could do them in tiers so that when somebody upgrades it only costs a fraction with the discount etc.

532

He’s talking about POE release dates, not POE inspiration man. They really need to avoid PoE and PoE 2 release dates.

533

when this game was released, I advertised the game among my friends, many bought it… now I’m ashamed in front of my friends

534

i actually recommended LE to many of my friends. i really liked what LE had to offer. it was a breath of fresh air, actually being able to craft my own gear (during campaign).

the few friends that liked d-likes gave LE a fair try. many did find the mechanics as pretty cool. but all of them couldnt stand the artstyle. i was the last one among them that stayed loyal to LE until i lost interest.

535

Out of curiosity, what kind of art style do they like?

536

whatever poe1/2/d4 is having, thats it. tq2 is also having a similar style.

its pretty generic but it works

537

Blockquote Not what’ll be the content of it even? Thanks for this marvelous information… that’s beyond disappointing, that’s downright insulting.

I like how nobody knows anything about anything on the new class(es) system, cost, what it means or is, and just demolishes it. The review bombing is absurd. People were fine with paying double for D4 when it released as a half finished game.

Jesus Christ man it is a free expansion. Get off your high horse. All the haters seem to feel entitled to everything.

If this DLC keeps the doors open, fine I’m getting it! Just like I’ve bought plenty of the packs to support the devs. Funny how all the people complaining have none of those.

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538

Yeah so it’s the right time to talk about it before things go south.

As in most cases of review bombing. On the other hand people are mad because they were told unresonable things and they hold EHG accountable because they lost all the goodwill they ever had. So like most review bombing there is some truth to it as well.

As I said somewhere else: I knew what I was buying into when I bought D4. The beta stage was awesome and since then things went down the drain but get slightly better aka pla is op af and it’s fun to roflcopter through the game.

Yeah and we were told everythng after the initial purchase would be free of charge. So the devs don’t stay true to their word and people are angry. No high horses in sight. Not much haters in sight and not much entitlement.
Suuuuure everyone who had high hopes this will go smoothly most likely things Santa will come by each year (like me!) because their vision was unrealistic to begin with. Non the less they screamed it into the web and now it’s coming back to them.
So yeah saying one thing and then doing the opposit wasn’t going well most of the times.

Right now I’m pretty much done and need to be bored out of my mind to spend another dime on EHG. Then again I hope the doors stay open because so many people have a good time with the game. I’m just slowly moving from the “frustrated fan” place to the “I don’t give a rats ass anymore” place.

Now you sound silly or like somone who has realy troubblesome issues with eyesight.

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539

Yep, it’s odd definitely. But given the premises we have seen from EHG historically it makes still sense for many people. Unless they show a distinct change in quality related to their releases that notion will overall stay… viably so at the moment still.

While the part before was fine… this one makes no sense.

First off… people also were fine with paying into what EHG said… but unlike D4 which provided the stuff they talked about… just not as people wanted it… we got EHG which hasn’t even finished a good chunk of what the initially stated they would provide.

So obviously any ask for money in functional form will be met with verbal asskickings for a reason. It’s to be expected.
The devs surely aren’t happy to have produced this situation… and the customers aren’t happy that this is happening.
The difference is that as a customer you don’t have control over which situations happen internally… that’s the responsibility of the devs… so obviously they get flak. A given.

First off… this expansion is free. Nothing said about future ones, there were vastly better ways to provide this info to the community, they messed the communication up simply. Happens… serious outcomes hence.

Secondly… yes, until the things already promised and paid into aren’t fulfilled obviously people feel entitled to it… because they actually are still.

We can talk about unreasonable entitlement when it goes beyond the absolute basics of making a business contract, as every single customer did with EHG.

Funny how neither there are any shown for you… don’t throw with stones in a glasshouse.
Also… why? I mean… sure, your personal stance… by why the actual heck do you think to be in any moral position to enforce this thought process which is dangerously detrimental if universally upheld by a person onto others?
‘If it keeps the door open I’ll buy it’. Sure… you do you, that’s fine!
But think about what it states, because actions have consequences. The message as a customer here is ‘I don’t care about fulfilled promises, you can keep breaking them as I’ll keep on providing you with money either way’.
Where is the incentive to do well? Outside of pure goodwill and being in the position to do it while not being lazy… all at once. With the alternative being a harsh stance with the ‘risk’ of more products failing but enforcing each individual one to provide top-notch results at any time.

Ask yourself which is more important long-term and what it leads to. We see the route clearly since 2 decades and the results severely nowadays.

540

A handy trick to enjoying the forums: don’t. This topic has been going on for half a year-ish. The brigaders have patted themselves on the back for a job done, the exact same discussions over it happen ad nauseum. You will never ever change their mind. It’s like trying to play chess with a pigeon; no matter how clearly, often, slowly, carefully, or completely you explain the rules, the most you should expect is for the pigeon to strut on the board and knock the pieces over while shitting everywhere.

I never thought I’d say it, but just be on their discord. You don’t have to even read anything other than the news section they post because really it’s the only thing that even matters.

Devs said new season will be end of March. If you are enjoying LE you have 3 more months of the season left to do whatever it is you enjoy doing in it. If you are burned out because it’s been a super long season, there are way better uses of your time than trying to have a discussion here.

541

Pidgeon 1 person who trys the same thing again and again who is hoping for a different outcome 0 . You can try to throw shade on peoples concerns and belittle them them. All this shows is that you are as empathic as a brick through a windshield.
people are angry and concerned and fear for the future of a game they are fans of. If they were indifferent and don’t care about it the would be gone and don’t voice everything that riles them up.
At least we can agree on something… the whole discussion has gotten useless because I guess everything is said and the devs should’ve got the message and the ball is on their half of the field. This whole Thread could be closed and nothing would be lost or won because things can only go two ways from now on.

1 Like
542

Pretty much.