It has been reported that the initial cycle content from LE cycle 1 will also be added to legacy. I think this is a very positive and fore-sighted decision by the devs. Personally I expect there will be a far greater demand for legacy in this game than in most ARPGs, simply because we have been in beta for so long that many of us have worked hard to make a ton of high-level Alts to play around with and own many stash tabs worth of great items, shards and gold.
For me, and I guess many other longer term players, there is little attraction in playing cycles because we are not really interested in the any of the main reasons that people typically enjoy them; namely:
Leaderboard
Fresh economy
Starting over with nothing
Seasonal rewards (cosmetic I assume)
So my question is this, to the devs. What is your longer term plan for cycles and the future of legacy? I heard you say that after the first couple of cycles you might rethink the strategy of cycle content automatically moving to legacy, and this is very concerning to me. I can see a few possibilities:
You maintain the approach of adding all cycle content to legacy and keep legacy balanced. (whether this occurs before or after the cycle completes is another question, though not so important).
POE style cycles, where the âbest bitsâ of the cycle content are moved to legacy.
Some new model: Such as any new endgame content that would sit alongside doing monoliths and arena, would always be added to legacy, but cycle-specific mechanics (like D4âs Season1 special socket gems for example) would not.
D4 style cycles: None of the cycle-specific content will ever move to legacy and when the cycle ends, everything it added to the game is gone forever.
So I am wondering what people think (and hope) for the future. Personally I find the last option of D4-style cycles to be the least satisfying. I think Blizzard have made a major error in the design of their seasons and this is one reason (among many others of course) that D4 has lost so many players since launch. Their cycle model is terrible and completely alienates legacy players. The concept of adding mechanics to the game that players may grow to really like (such as build-altering mechanics), only for those mechanics to be taken away after 3 months is horrible, and I would not want any part of that.
What are your thoughts and opinions (especially if you are a dev )
Just because I donât like to be lumped in, as someone with quite a few hours in the game Iâm excited for cycles, a refresh of my stash and potentially seeing the trading economy.
I think keeping cycle content releasing to legacy simultaneously will only work in the short term to allow time to add more mechanics and systems. In the long term doing a dual release will somewhat kill the nature of new content. Being able to immediately try to new content out at level 100 with a maxed build will make it feel lackluster. This will also hurt the monetization of the game in the long-term since the cycle duration would be extremely short for those with a min-maxed build.
First thought: if new content doesnât scale in some way (and at the very least to a level 100 char), then it isnât worth a damn really.
Second thought: just because a player plays legacy doesnât prevent them making new Alts to try new things if they feel the urge to experience new content in that way.
Iâd argue the opposite, that keeping cycle content moving into legacy at regular intervals would in fact boost monetisation. For those with min-maxed builds (aka legacy players I guess), there is no cycle duration. By which I mean that legacy players play constantly regardless of cycle boundaries. In fact more constantly than cycle players, who are (by definition) fly-by-nights (come and go per cycle). So Iâd argue monetisation would either not be affected at all or greatly improved.
However if you lose all your legacy player base because legacy no longer gets any new content, then monetisation would certainly be affected negatively. I played PoE for thousands of hours and I sank many hundreds of dollars into it, mostly to support the devs. But that was ONLY because their seasonal design was legacy friendly and thus the game kept my interest.
At the end of the day, you will never be able to convert a legacy player into a cycle player. They would simply move to another game that is more legacy friendly like PoE or Grim Dawn. So the ultimate question is: do the devs care enough about their legacy players sticking with the game? Some math:
Cycle content moved regularly to legacy = cycle players unaffected; legacy players stick with the game
or
Cycle content no longer moved to legacy = cycle players unaffected; legacy players quit
In my mind, (2) delivers more monetisation in the long term.
I donât think that is what he was arguing about. In PoE you get league exclusive content that standard players donât get. Once the league ends, that content gets moved to standard (most of the times) in a watered down version. So standard players never play the full version of it and they get to play it a few months after the league players.
In LE the cycle content is the same for legacy players, immediately. At least for now. Whatever content gets released in the cycle is also always available to legacy.
So, in PoE you get players attracted to seasons because of exclusive content, fresh start/economy, leaderboards and season MTX rewards. And you get the standard players that just want to play at their own pace and donât mind missing out on those things.
But LE doesnât have MTX rewards and they wonât get exclusive content, so there really is much less incentive for players to join it. If you donât care about leaderboards race or the fresh start, you donât really have a reason to play cycles.
So in your math thereâs also:
3. Cycle content is the same as legacy = legacy players happy, cycle players leave.
And without players constantly joining cycles there stops being a reason for cycles existing in the first place.
That being said, Iâm sure the devs will come up with something to keep both modes enticing. Itâs just the first few that are getting core stuff added.
Agreed, I donât think people realize how much work this can turn into quickly. You have to then maintain the checks and balances of the said âLegacyâ content.
A larger team would be required and potentially two teams with notably one lead/senior/etc who understands how to implement these changes.
But Iâm not against having further Legacy content as well.
Er⌠isnât this the same as my (1)? Why would cycle players leave? They are getting new content every cycle plus all the things they like from the cycle model (leaderboard etc).
Because most people donât care about leaderboards and fresh start. The only reason I joined PoE leagues was because there was a fresh mechanic that standard never gets to play fully (or sometimes at all, when it doesnât get moved to core) and because of MTX rewards.
Since LE doesnât have that, why would I bother playing a cycle?
I think this is why the PoE model works so well. It all depends on the type of content. If LE devs were to add a new endgame mode - letâs call it Delving for sake argument - I would hope and expect it would also be added to legacy. However cycle-specific mechanics which would impact builds and also be transient (such as the S1 special socket gems in D4), are better NOT merged to legacy because the balancing would be problematic (as legacy would accumulate a bunch of build mechanics that had no business co-existing with each other).
I personally would love that because itâs the new endgame Delving that matters to legacy players, not crazy or cycle thematic build-altering mechanics that only last 3 months.
I donât think youâre understanding the difference: EHG has said that every new cycle content gets added AT THE SAME TIME to legacy. Not after 3-4 months like PoE does.
Of course. And so would the vast majority of players. And PoE would end up with 1k players or less each league and would soon quit making leagues.
The main issue here is that there is a small number of people that enjoy the challenge of a fresh start/fresh economy and an even smaller number that cares about leaderboards. Then there is also a small number of people that like the continuity and leisure of an eternal realm. And the majority of players stand in the middle and will go for whatever appeals most.
Poe leagues have a lot of players active (more than in standard) because they give players reasons to join their league, by providing them with things standard players donât get. If PoE were to get rid of MTX rewards and if they released the league mechanic in standard at the same time, their leagues would be mostly empty because the vast majority of players would rather stay in standard.
There will be cycle exclusive content, but even the devs donât know what exactly it will be, and they will be collecting player feedback and experiment.
Exactly. That was my point. If PoE didnât give players incentives to play seasons, most wouldnât and seasons would just end. And new content would start coming just whenever.
One of the main reasons PoE is what it is is the season model they came up with that gives players more incentives to play seasons than standard.
I donât know what the devs are planning and it seems like they donât know it yet as well. Iâm sure whatever it is it will be fun. But I expect the first few cycles (while theyâre just adding core stuff to the game and both realms get the same thing) to be much more empty than they otherwise would.
Borrowed Power. Thatâs the ultimate reason for seasons. Itâs the same reason MMOs have expansions (specifically WOW) and ARPGs have their leagues. You can increase player power, add new design decisions and build opportunities, add items that create interesting interactions, while keeping everything temporary.
Borrowed Power is a pivotal system for keeping a game active and interesting, and itâs also one of the major opportunities for game developers to introduce monitization methods on their game since the borrowed power invites players.
What youâre advocating for is an increase in player potential cycle over cycle. Adding a new crafting mechanic, new affix slots, a new boss with rare drops. All these things can elevate the total raw power a player can obtain and it can also invalidate older content and rewards within a game. These things are necessary right now in the life cycle of Last Epoch but they wonât be forever. Eventually there will be a tipping point where the developers will need to start introducing power scaling that will fade, especially because of the rate at which new cycles will come out.
One of the most important thing for cycle to me is challanges and cosmetic rewards for them. Because that keeps me engaged and go out of my way to do different stuff to get those awesome rewards. Which feels fresh because challanges are different each league/cycle. Seeing that F2P game such as PoE does it i hope and believe Last Epoch will do this system in their cycle content. Canât wait for the future of LE. So exciting!
Not really. As I tried to differentiate above, itâs endgame activities (like PoE Delve) that Iâd hope to see moving to legacy. Transient stuff that is some seasonal mechanic that affects builds (the âpowerâ you are talking about) they can keep to seasons. In fact Iâve said above that trying to regularly add all new âpowerâ mechanics to legacy while keeping it balanced is almost impossible. If I may quote myself:
Plus, as a player, Iâd need to keep 20 level 90+ Alts updated to stay relevant with this new power. Even I, as the worldâs biggest Altaholic, find that prospect daunting.
I doubt many legacy players would care if that type of build-altering âpowerâ content stayed in seasons - legacy players are NOT interested in transient content that will be taken away from them after a few months - that defeats the entire purpose of legacy (gradual min-maxing and long term attachment to characters). And just look at the reception D4âs seasons are currently getting⌠it isnât pretty, and D4 has also lost all of its legacy playerbase as a consequence of their poor seasonal model. Legacy players would care if an end-game activity was kept exclusive to seasons.
Iâm in favor of new content there and there at the same time. Let the player himself choose where he wants to develop his character, in the legacy where everything is already there or on the cycle with the new economy and equality.
I think that the very possibility of such a choice is another unique feature of this game.
In poe this is not the case, there the player has to start a new league every time otherwise he will not see the new content.
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