As a “casual gamer” who happens to also be a grandfather several times over (there are many more here than you may think), I find this game to be extremely challenging as it is. I have worked on making several different builds (at least one for each available class) all of which seem to do well enough through lvls 50-60.
As a “casual gamer” I do NOT rely on another person’s build guide, because to me that would take much of the “fun and challenge” out of the game. That said, I have not found a build that can successfully complete the five required progressively harder runs (in a row) in the monolith. I have read the forums and seen the posts on different builds and quite honestly, some "meta-builds are so over the top that one would need a degree from MIT to understand. LoL.
Since my current builds are not able to complete the Monolith runs (yet) this tells me that I have not put together a strong enough character (gear, passives, or combination of progressive skill sets) to make it through, and I must find the right combination that will.
IF LastEpoch makes the decision to implement death penalties, where gear or xp is lost, then (for me at least) the Monolith and Arena will become either unattainable, or not worth my time and effort to experiment with new builds and grind out the xp that I lost.
Again, I like the idea that if your not strong enough to achieve an objective then you do not get in. I do not believe penalizing one for not being strong enough and trying to get in is the way to go. I believe that the current penalty system is exactly what is called for to encourage both the meta-end gamers AND the casual gamer like myself. Thanks for listening to my share…
You always address yourself to the experts here. But there are other players like me who can’t cope with Last Epoch 100%. I want to experiment with all the skills and try everything and I can only dream of level 100.
Suggestion : Introduce difficulty levels like in Diablo 3 and please leave it alone with the death penalty because that will destroy the game and you will lose every player as much as I am. By the way, I bought Last Epoch just for that.
Death penalty is what makes me give up on PoE, even though the game has lots of good featureas. It is so grindy that you either treat it like a job or just don’t bother. This, combined with the relative ease to get one-shot, seals the deal for me.
PoE can afford to flirt with death penalty because it is a Free to (Try) Play game and millions of players get exposed to it. Even if a small percentage like it, this is still a huge yield. I doubt that a full price game can afford such a risk.
You’re telling me all pay-to-play (or full price games as you call it. I’m not sure $15 is “full priced”) games have no death penalty? Ok.
I never went to college. Poor choice on my part, but meta builds are still obtainable for us!
edited my previous post for clarity.
Diablo 1 & 2, Sekiro, Dark Souls say hi.
Without a death penalty what incentive do players have to improve their build or their own mechanical gameplay? A good build strikes a balance between offence and defence. If the game has no penalty for death the softcore community would likely ignore incorporating defensive mechanics into their build.
Which is why we have one, so, that’s ok…
Though to be fair, we don’t know what the “proper” end-game is going to look like so maybe the “progress resets on death” penalty won’t be appropriate/work.
But for what we have at the moment, having to restart arena/monoliths from scratch is pretty harsh/effective (delete as applicable).
Huh, I guess I am going against the grain on this one, but:
Make the death penalty harsh. Lose a level every death. We should have to consider whether it is wise to continuing advancing the level of the monolith and the arena. Softcore is fine for learning how to play. But it shouldn’t be the end goal.
I strongly dislike the current softcore PoE meta where players corpse crawl through the campaign in order to get to maps, where they then focus on farming currency to corpse crawl even faster.
There needs to be a loss condition in any game. Otherwise there isn’t any incentive to improve.
For that matter, I’d be in favor of removing every ladder outside of solo hardcore. No reason to encourage folks to play the game on ‘very easy’.
If you die, the void won. Rethink your build and play style so you can do better next time.
I hope you guys make a game, not a dopamine drip.
That’s not entirely true. Just because the game isn’t coming round your house & kneecapping you every time your character dies doesn’t mean there’s no incentive to get better (as a player) or make your build better.
I don’t think you should be conflating a reduced punishment for failure with “very easy”. The game mechanically is the same in HC as SC, you just don’t get punished as hard if you die on SC.
If you enjoy that kind of punishment in your games, more power to you. But most people don’t (I used to play Sacred 1 & 2 HC).
I could say more, but that would probably make @Sarno sad (as enjoyable as that might be).
No, the game is not mechanically the same on softcore and hardcore. When you die on SC, you keep your levels, your gear, your shards and crafting materials. You can just keep grinding. There is never any risk. Your character will always improve and get better.
It’s objectively more difficult to advance a character in hardcore. Especially solo hardcore, where you can’t rely on gear from another character.
Apologies, I wasn’t clear. The mechanics of the game from start to when you die are the same. While I personally wouldn’t call loosing your character a mechanic I understand where you are coming from.
Just because there’s not enough risk for you doesn’t mean there’s no risk in SC. Having to restart arena from wave 1 is frustrating when you’re pushing the leaderboard.
It’s also not necessarily “more difficult” to advance your character in HC, you could play it safe & level in low areas or reset your monolith/arena once it starts to get harder.
Masochist mode is objectively harder, but it’s not mechanically harder, they’ve not (as far as I’m aware) added any new mechanics to it that aren’t on “normal”.
I wasn’t particularly clear, but I wasn’t talking about advancing in level. When I say it’s harder to advance in HC as opposed to SC, what I mean is, it easier to reach arena wave N (any given wave) in SC than it is in HC. You’re right, it would be possible to limp to 100 in HC. Though for newer players, it will more than likely be a challenge to complete the campaign in HC.
Although now that I think about it, I’d be happy to see racing make an appearance in Last Epoch as an alternative competitive mode to arena waves. It would incentivize players to level quickly and not try to limp they way to higher levels.
i would like to see a Gold and Xp death penalty with corpses if possible. just like diablo 2 did but without losing your gear. so u get like half the penalty back if u managed to get your corpses back.
or like adding instability to your gear if u die.
Would be irrelevant if you’re not trying to craft your gear.
in the first few chapters yes but has a high impact later on.
Yes & no. It’s like a Gaussian distribution curve, you don’t do much crafting early on (too low level to get much in the way of tiers on affixes, plus low level bases), you do lots in the middle, then very little at the end (since you’ve got all your gear mostly sorted).