I wouldn’t really call GGG consumer friendly. The loot boxes and always adding new paid special stash tabs don’t really qualify as consumer friendly. People just don’t care because of how much content they get compared to the competition.
You are not forced to buy anything in PoE. I even know a handfull of masochists still sitting on the 3 standard stash tabs refusing to spend a cent on PoE.
Stash tabs offer a lot of QoL and I think they are worth spending some money on. I once cashed in 50 bucks and that was enough to get anything I wanted aka all the new stash tabs to keep my chest clean. Given the hours I spent in Poe and the stash tabs transferring to PoE 2 it’s kind of a good deal.
So I wouldn’t call it utterly consumer friendly but it’s very consumer freiendly at the end of the day.
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PoE has 4 tabs by default and I recently saw a madman on Reddit with 40/40 challenges showing off his loot stashed in those 4 tabs so it’s defo doable to not purchase any.
And that’s sad. So far, there’s nothing particularly good in the announced changes, and these are supposed to be their best ideas, since they showcased them.
The current Spellblade is a whacky mess, whose “viability” clings to absurdly ridiculous exponential attribute scaling, like DEX-stacking Shatter Strike or INT-stacking spell damage. Everything else about the subclass is just meh. Fixing this would take quite a lot of effort, and what I see in the announcement, both regarding the season and the subclass changes, doesn’t inspire that much hope.
Actually you can now
You’re waiting 3 more months anyway. Quit worrying.
By the way, I just realized you guys said you were “thrilled” to announce that the next season is in March… You guys seriously couldn’t wait to tell us that you’re skipping out on yet another season? I was fine with the Krafton stuff and DLC class stuff, but this really made me stop bothering with this game. Now I really don’t regret not buying the packs, you guys still haven’t earned it.
I never expected anything resembling a reasonable release schedule anyway, so in that regard they didn’t get a chance to dissapoint me.
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A step in the right direction for sure. Awesome.
Rogue & Primalist again ?
I’ve been a supporter of the game since day one. Not even the paid DLC bothers me as much as it bothers others.
But…you really should take a look at the classes that need it.
Forge Guard…in my opinion, it’s the worst balanced class ever. This class feels like someone tried to combine 100 classes into one and only took the worst parts.
Rework the minions, remove the Dex scaling, and finally give the shield throw more power.
For the update itself. March 26, 2026 is…well. To long. Its been another what ? 7-8 month between the seasons ? Tune it down to 4-5 month per. Just speeking for myself.
And yet, PoE’s presence on console is small, compared to PC. And what is LE going for? Console next. Where does Diablo 4 have probably the largest footprint not on their own PC platform (and one we cannot really see the analytics of)? Console. It is accessible. YOU might think it has no overlap, but it does, despite the clearly biased opinion that it doesn’t matter, just on the merit of the genre having a mostly PC presence, and much fewer console offerings.
Path of Exile is niche in the genre, because it is never-ending depth of mechanics that take whole wikis to explain. That alone will drive more casual players away. And given that Steam’s records for it show a sub-250k all-time peak concurrent playerbase, does raise question to popularity. Yes, it’s known, and most people have played it at some point, but clearly are not coming back in hundreds of thousands of droves every few months.
Last Epoch’s goal at being in the middle-ground of PoE’s depth and Diablo’s accessibility, means it does need to entice players from BOTH, like it or not. Diablo holds a very large market share of the ARPG market, because it is accessible, easy to play, and doesn’t require a game mechanics bachelor’s degree to play at a higher end. And for literally millions of players (as they’ve sold over 25M copies), that is all it needed to be. It may not matter TO YOU. But that does not mean it is not a huge part of the equation for EHG and Last Epoch to consider. Frankly, it’s PoE that has likely a far lower target audience overlap or competition with Last Epoch than Diablo does.
Your dislike for the game and franchise, does not change it’s presence in the market. And we are likely getting an expansion announcement this week for it, which will provide another huge future impact in 2026. Could even really cause issues for the PS5 and Orobyss release.
GGG also sells game QoL commodities and honestly it’s VERY difficult to play without some of them even if you are a casual.
LE offers everything in-game already. I’m not judging GGG business model, I’m only saying that basically LE is the only ARPG that “lives upon cosmetics” and it’s clearly not enough (unless you think EHG is lying and that’s legit but it’s another story).
Yes, actual cosmetics are probably not enough and they could add more but they have the metrics and probably make a calculation resulting in cosmetics purchases not being enough to sustain the game development regardless their number (also, creating nice cosmetics is a cost, you can’t just recolor an actual set and sell it).
Because, also, a lot of people like myself care ZERO about cosmetics, I’d rather pay an expansion or a class or a pet that picks up stuff rather than a cosmetic.
It’s not an easy situation, the now HAVE to make us pay something to survive, it’s just a matter of choosing the best of the worst options.
I actually don’t know when the last time was they added another special stash tab.
I think it was 4 years ago or so by now. Besides that it was QoL ones… which I would argue are fair game comparably.
Don’t like the special tabs… should be basic functionality… but not the worst.
Same with the lootboxes, GGG at least guarantees that after the lootbox listing ends they’re available in the shop by now. So you’re not enforced to gamble in outcomes, you gamble for exclusive early access. Makes it better.
And don’t get me wrong… I like neither, but I definitely differ between how ‘severe’ specific things are comparably. How much ‘urge’ is put on the customer.
And yes, content and quality plays a major role obviously in how monetization is received.
A mediocre game cannot provide aggressive monetization… one which is top-notch though? It’s ‘worth it’ in comparison.
Yes, sadly so.
But the interactions are relatively fun. I just find it baffling that EHG takes one of the few half-way decent defensive nodes away to make it a offensive one. Sure, they mentioned defensive ones are coming… but at what scale? Would they make up for the loss there even remotely?
Spellblade lacks in both defenses and offenses… not as severely as other classes which commonly do in one area… but it’s at least half-way decently balanced between both, it’s even. Which makes it worse overall though 
Yes, because the UI and controls of PoE on console absolutely suck. All the major upsides are lost there sadly.
Also true!
But that’s future talk.
I wanted to solely talk about the current condition.
I don’t know how well they manage the console port, or how well they manage their marketing. So it heavily depends how much shelf-price income they’ll make. I cannot argue there.
And yes, in the future D4 will be a substantial issue for EHG… on console.
As a reminder, console for the ARPG market is primarily leaning towards highly casual people, so LE is prone to not do well… positive surprises are hoped for, but I don’t think it’ll make up a substantial share of their total sales, I actually think it’s a loosing strat.
Look at the player floor in comparison.
LE offers a 2k player floor off-season, PoE a 8k one.
It’s a long-term game which plays into staying power rather then repeated returners.
Comparatively D4 is extremely into repeated customers, LE as well, but substantially worse as it’s loosing massive amounts of players from Cycle to Cycle.
I don’t dislike it?
Well… I dislike the company, but the game itself is fine?
I just argue about market position, and the overlap is currently not here yet. Future talk, yes. Current talk, no.
The items in loot boxes are added to the shop after the lootboxes rotate out.
You never have to gamble on lootboxes.
Supporter packs are more fomo then lootboxes.
As far as a F2P title goes, PoE is probably the most consumer friendly.
For the box price of LE, you get some dress up(thanks supporter pack) as well as enough points to get all the basic stashes you need on sale.(They run the sale on a set pattern so you can know exactly when the next sale is.)
Hell TL:I the most p2w game on the market does not lock characters behind a paywall, after the initial season the character is free for everyone. So EHG could go with that route, but at this point krafton is going to wring the company dry of any money it can then leave it to die.
I am so excited for new LE seasons but they’re way too far away. Wish we were getting new content earlier.
Undecember… just sayin… wanted t get that out 
I did mention the stash tabs for poe. Basically said they are mandatory if you actually want to play the game. $30 is enough for the basics you need. It is more like an endless free trial then buy some tabs. I do not like that stash tabs must be bought with real money in POE. There should have been more basics integration.
That being said if they add this they will need to refund a lot olf people or people woukd get mad.
I believe EHG has not been making enough money, though i dont think selling classes is the way to go. The 1st thing woukd be to make consistent leagues even every 6 month’s but people need to expect it.
They also need to make the supporter packs more appealing. Though at the end of the day, GGG make money of stash tabs yes. Though not that much you can compare that to say the cost of buying last epoch.
Most people buy support packs just because GGG keeps giving us good stuff.
The community will support EHG if they do roght by them, they will leave them in the dust if they dont.
EHG isn’t behind this move, i guarantee it is Krafton. That company is horrible and will kill the game. Genuinely makes me sad because Last Epoch was the only true alternative to POE.
As a fan of ARPGs i want them all to be good. I want more games to play outside of POE we all do. The reason we “complain” is because we care. The reason I care about the paid class isn’t because it costs money but feels bad. Feels like they are leaving things out if the game forvextra money (they are). It feels like day 1 DLC where half the game was cut out just to make extra cash. I get they need money but this isn’t the way and will kill the game super quick.
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You will actually have to produce cosmetics if you plan to live on them.
EHG has barely produced any.
I’m perfectly willing to buy cosmetics if they look good, which existing ones mostly don’t.
So they have neither sufficient quality nor quantity. Things were even more dire when the game released, which was the best sales window they had.
I would also be willing to buy an expansion, provided the game is in a finished and polished enough state, which it is pretty far from being.
Paid classes? No, not with this track record.
I will not continue to support this kind of mismanagement, especially now.
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One lenient way to do it would be to provide people with a basic setup of tabs, hence increasing the current ones. The 4 basic ones now, currency, map and div-card tab + 1 merchant tab would suffice for everything meaningful, leaving the specialized ones and convenience ones available still without serious repercussions for GGG.
Hence no refunds needed, instead people get a bit of extra stuff, doesn’t hurt existing players, brings in players because they wouldn’t have a rather atrocious organization-mess right away.
Exactly.
It’s kinda weird. The Prodigy passive is completely broken when combined with Controlled Destruction, so if your build revolves around spell crit damage in any way, then offensively Spellblade suddenly becomes S+ tier. There’s a catch though: not a single Spellblade subclass skill can make any meaningful use of that, because for some bizarre reason a subclass with spell in its name barely utilizes spell damage in its own skill kit, to the point that Mana Strike is better at dealing spell damage than all Spellblade skills combined.
Defense-wise… there’s not much to say. Ever since Lost Knowledge got nerfed, Spellblade lives and dies by Flame Ward charges. Its survivability isn’t even close to caster-based Mages with Twisted Heart.