I’ve currently played roughly 50 hours and I am kind of lost with the gear and idols that drop. The main issue I have is that I feel like I can’t see inmediately if an item would be an upgrade or not. There’s the lootfilters which can hides a lot but even then with the drops that aren’t hidden I feel like I have to do a full study to see if an item would be an upgrade. I like the idea behind the loot, the tiers and that you can upgrade your items or change them but I would really like to be able to check within a few seconds if an item would be an upgrade (or can be when you upgrade it) compared to what I currently have.
With regards to the idols it’s a bit the same thing. I like the idea that you have to mix and match your idols and that you have to make choices on what types to put in but I feel there’s just too many different idols and also here it would be nice if you can see inmediately if the stats are for example nearly max or at a min
I can empathize with this. I’m not fully versed with this game, but when rares have multiple tiers of affixes things can get a bit out of hand. I think the intention in LE is to really farm up on the craftables, while at the same time shattering items that have a good affix to create desirable craftable mats. If your rare starts to feel outdated, you find a new rare of the item type you like then craft on your affixes which will be higher tiers than before due to your new rare base having a higher level requirement than your old rare. If this is how things work, it seems functional.
I know Eleventh Hour plans to implement legendary items shorty before patch 1.0, hopefully these will clearly outclass rares so that we can play until they start appearing, then not worry about feeling undergeared while we deck ourselves out with the legendaries. Not everyone seems to want this but i feel like uniques are currently trying to be legendary with most of them not offering much more than a good rare. If legendaries were to be the same then i ask myself what is the point of having different rarity levels of gear when the rarest gear is no better than common stuff. Maybe they will buff up the poor uniques to be on par with the strongest ones, then uniques will essentially be legendaries under a different name. We shall see.
There isn’t really a tenable game design solution to what you’re currently feeling. There is way too much complexity for the game to surface more information about potential upgrades than it currently does in the compare interface - X stats gained, X stats lost. It’s not feasible to write code that analyzes an entire build, determines its priorities, and then runs a full comparison that boils down the stats of any given item - not just currently, but also its potential in the future - to “Yes Upgrade” or “No not upgrade”. The only way to achieve that would be to cull affixes down to be so generic and simple that they would be boring and no one would want to play.
What you want isn’t something that the game itself can give you - it has to come from you, through your experience, knowledge, and understanding of your build. When you have enough experience to “get” the game, understand where your build is at currently and what it needs, comparing items on the ground to what you have equipped is very easy.
Let’s say you want to upgrade your helmet. Say, you’re a Zombie Necro, and you already have:
- +1 Level of Zombie (T2)
- 73% increased minion health (T3)
- Lightning Resist (T2)
- Physical Resist (T3)
You want a direct upgrade. Make filters like this (in this order):
- Hide all gear of Tier 10 or lower
- Hide all helmets with Zombie Level T2 or lower
- Hide all helmets with minion health T3 or lower
- Recolor all helmets with Zombie Level & Minion Health (both)
So, if you see a helm, it HAS to have both the prefixes you want, and they have to be higher than what you have. The two suffixes have to be T5 or higher (T1+T4, or T2+T3). If you want them to specifically be lightning and physical resist, add that to line 4. Repeat this 10 times for each gear slot, so you have 3 x 10 = 30 rules, + rule 1, + any Idol rules.
I havent currently set up my lootfilters to sort this specifically yet - but zaodon has it right here.
Even just recolouring things based on level ranges will help alot to start.
This is a problem I always had with ARPGs in general: there’s all this loot and often figuring out what is worth keeping takes more time than the actual monster slaying.
I found LE is better than most in that regard, though. You can see the tiers of affixes on the items, a general ballpark of all possible affixes and how many an item could have, and then, additionally, the loot filter system is super helpful for doing a lot of the hard work for you!
Honestly what I did early on is just raise tier requirements until less stuff dropped so I could mentally deal with it, and then I slowly worked out what affixes I actually cared about and filtered for those. At this point I actually want more loot filter complexity so that I can define relationships like “high tiers of these affixes but none of these other affixes”. Or things like controlling for implicits range.
Idols get out of hand faaaaaast, though. Most of my stash is idols. From what I understand idol affixes all only have one tier and perhaps that should be addressed so it becomes possible to filter on idols so I can just pick up the ones near max stat.
this one is wrong as it is a valuable affix shard you can craft over your already existing t2 affix on the helmet.
Be careful not to hide valuable t1 affixes shards like +1 to your skill , damage penetration etc.
As Zaodon quite rightly pointed out, what you are looking for is achievable using the lootfilter.
I too only started playing in May, and although I do spend a considerable amount of hours p.wk playing, it was like any game a learning curve. Once you’ve tried a few builds you soon get used to the types of upgrades you look for in gear progression. It’s then a matter of writing/editing a loot filter to give you that.
The way I approach my loot filters is a layered approach. At the very bottom I basically block everything. Above that I have a section that will colour change anything at all with shards I am low on for crafting of any level, above that when starting a new build I have a section recolouring any normal/magic bases I could use for crafting. These are my “roots”.
My next highest level is each item base category of each type I use that have 1 out of the 4 affixes I need at T4+.
Above that I have all bases that have 2 out of the 4 affixes I need at T3+.
Then above I have those bases that have 3 out of the 4 affixes but with no Tier filter. “Green recolours”
Second to last section is “endgame bases” which have 4 out of the 4 (or 5,6 depending on item) affixes I need, again with no tier requirement. These tend to be quite rare drops, as they are items that require no purging and are good to try just upgrading immediately. These are normally my “Red” colour items.
My top section is “endgame” which have each item group with 4 required affixes that are all minimum T3. To be honest I have yet to see one drop, but when they do I am sure I will be quite excited. These are the items that I know I stand a fair chance of making T20.
Of course, I also have sections for T6/7 and certain uniques I want extra highlighted.
The use of recolour in conjunction with the lowest level of blocking almost everything enables you to simply play around and know immediately what is dropping and how excited to get. The lootfilter is exactly what you make of it. It can be a simple tool, or it can be highly complex and enable you to identify items simply by their colour. Personally I have come to love it, and my filters evolve considerably as I play each character.
Here’s an example of one that I am using currently on my sorceror based on Bear’s ED character.
It may be useful to import this and just have a look at the structure I use and how the layers differ.
Hope this helps.
Yeah, that’s a good call. The problem is you don’t have a good idea of what valuable affixes are that early on, or that they even exist, and when you first look at that list of 652 affixes you may just go “oh no”. Being overwhelmed is generally worse than missing a few good affixes, because once you learn the system and end up playing a lot more you’ll quickly make up for lost time.
But game wise, I think it’s a similar problem to the idols. For + skills in particular, tier is just not as relevant, and I feel there should be something in the loot filter to reflect that, if some affixes are on a level higher than others (and there do seem to be some shards that are much more rare).
I just make a rule and check any affix i need in the Class Specific section (all rare ones are usually there). Then add some affixes I need too like Damage Penetration or Dodge on potion on belts etc.
This is exactly why I am opposed to lootfilters (and the need for them due to abundance of trash drops): you are creating a game for people who like to code. All the rest of us (majority of the population, I assume) are left in the dark and at the mercy of “loot filter makers”. The loot filter is as complicated as comparing items in the game, when looking for an upgrade.
I think a solution would require a huge rework of the system, where you’d have “Major stats” that can be summarized in “Power” and “protection”, and “minor stats” that represent “utility”. The minor stats could be plenty, and be there to create variety in builds and playstyles, while the major ones would be the ones you compare initially to see if your new loot is an upgrade. This would be sufficient for the more casual players, and the more experienced ones could dig deeper into comparisons and filters to tweak/optimize their builds.
Idea: if you want a loot filter for all players, make an interactive one, where you can right click an item dropped, and “mark it as trash”, or “mark as valuable”. Use Machine learning if you need to, it will help. 
I’m hoping LE will not turn out to be a game where you need to optimize to get there (“end game”, max level, final boss, etc.), but where optimizing will get you there faste, easier and with more power. Instead of games like POE, where not optimizing means you’re locked out of any content even remotely approaching that “end game” state,
I mean, I’ve never played an ARPG that didn’t have a mess of loot dropping that you had to sift through. It’s effectively core to this genre. You can remove the loot filters and you’ll still be left with that problem.
Personally, the loot filter is brilliant, but I’ll admit I’m a software developer so I indeed like to code. But I think rather than removing the loot filter entirely, the game could offer some good nice defaults. Most players are already used to, I think, concepts like “I only want to see magic items” from modern ARPGs, which is nothing more than a very simple loot filter.
So I rather think some of the affix areas can be tweaked a bit to more clearly represent a general “power” coefficient so that simpler loot filter settings could then be applied to them and given as defaults. And maybe some understanding that defaults are not necessarily ideal and if you truly want to min max you make your own filter. Us casual players are usually quite fine with “not ideal”.
I think mostly your average player will go through these phases (and just assume everyone wants unique/set/exalted at all times, forever, lol):
- I don’t need normal items anymore
- I don’t want to see any items irrelevant to my class unless they are super shatter worthy
- I don’t want to see items with barely any tiers because no way they won’t shatter before I get anywhere → I think this is something the magic-rare system should be able to represent, tbh. But still kind of leaves the problem of “I still want to see +skill items”, which is why I think that should be systemized in some way
The tough one that cannot be easily resolved is this one:
- I don’t want to see items not relevant to my build
Because the game has no way of telling what your build is. But a lot of really basic stuff would go here, like “I only need to see 2H weapons”.
Your “major/minor” stats idea seems to be an intriguing one and could well have a lot of merit. In fact I think I vaguely remember playing a game many moons ago that used to have different colour stats for this purpose, but I forget which one.
As far as coders etc go, yes I will admit to being somewhat of a geek. In fact I actually do enjoy having a lootfilter system that can be as complex as the one we have. However, it should be pointed out that you can also make very simple lootfilters that also do the job. I think that’s the beauty of the current system they use, you can go as shallow or as deep into it as you want.
There’s always going to be a certain amount of complexity in items and gear. This comes with the territory of creating and giving diversity in any game to enable players to make their own way and style of playing. It’s a part of min/maxing. However, it IS an elective process. If you want to simply play a character, you can play it with any old gear and find things that look as though they would work for you. In order to play at higher levels though with consistently less deaths/more kills you will always have to refine things, finding the right gear types, the right affixes, etc.
Sadly the alternative to this is to have less build options, gear without crafting, possibly gear without affixes altogether. I’ve played arpgs like that in the old days, before things got more advanced, and they can be fun if you play in a guild say with large groups but that was the main focus of those games. Playing solo without build diversity and gear diversity soon becomes very boring.
Sadly, I think it’s a matter of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. The compromise is where you add in all the diversity, but then give the players the tools to either make it complicated or not (and that is what the loot filter system does). I think LE have quite a nice balance of this dilemma thus far.
Revenchule, you worded what I was trying to say far more elegantly than I did. Thanks.
Yes, such statements are exactly what a player is thinking. The challenge is to translate them into code, which is far from trivial. Once you start trying to “code the human utility function”, you find out it’s usually more complicated than initially thought, contains contradicting rules and even worse: that the human in question is unable to actually tell you the exact rules or utility they want. As a programmer you probably experienced the “client vs developer” dilemma product owners live through 
Yep! I think this is a very valuable topic that I imagine developers themselves have a lot of thoughts on. And ultimately it comes down somewhat to collecting user feedback, and I hope they have in mind players of different kinds and backgrounds to see what kind of thoughts and complaints people have. That’s often why you want to hand the game over to a random buddy who doesn’t play too many ARPGs and see what their pure reaction is. It’s not a trivial problem by any means, but an important one depending on which audience you wish to attract.
I just want to say one thing.
The Loot Filter interface for LE is not “code”. It is a User Interface which makes setting up filter rules simple and fairly intuitive. You are playing LE on a computer. You can click the Windows “Start” button, double click the LE Icon to launch the app, put in your ID and Password. None of that is “coding” either. Its computer use. The loot filter is computer use (app use, technically. Using the user interface.) It isn’t “coding”.
Seems a bit pedantic. They said it’s a system that is designed for people who like to code, which I"ll agree with. But it’s a system that requires an application of logic and conditionals, and that’s a big chunk of what programming consists of.
People can flag emails as “Spam” using a UI.
People can have a browser “Remember my password” by using a UI.
People can use Last Epoch Build Planner to plan out their builds by using a UI.
As a developer, using “logic” (in my opinion) isn’t indicative of “coding”.
Being able to write:
function filterLoot () {
var items = new List();
var item = new Item();
for (let i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
item = items[i];
if (item.properties.tier > 10) {
etc…
}
}
}
That’s coding.
Saying:
- Action: Hide
- Type: Helmet
- Affix: Level of Zombie
- Advanced: [checked]
- Total Tier: less than 4
That isn’t coding.
Edit: I do want to say that improving the Filter UI is certainly possible to make it easier to use, so would support that fully. But as I find it easy to use already, I can’t give specific feedback on that.