I am Manoka, a 30 year veteran of video games, specifically focused on ARPG’s since the release of the beloved Diablo franchise (Not 3). I have been a part of many alpha tests for games including path of exile, and this game. I usually reserve my opinions and suggestions to games that I feel have developers that actually love the game and are receptive to suggestion.
I am not a professional gamer, a game developer, or anything of the sort. I am just a long time ARPG veteran that has a feel for what works in these types of games and what doesn’t. I have about 35~ hours in the steam version of the game, all in hardcore mode. My highest toon made it to about level 50-52ish, so my feedback will be focused on my experiences thus far.
Really Important Points
The game loop
The game loop of ARPG’s is fairly short, you perform skills, kill monsters, loot, sell, accept and turn in quest and that’s about it. That is why it’s so important to get the following bullet points correct in an ARPG, otherwise you can have as much content as you want but it will always be a mediocre experience. Here is my suggestions for Last Epoch:
Monster death animations need more impact. Most monsters I kill feel like I defeated them in a pillow fight and they just fall over. Add limb decapitations, corpse explosions from critical strikes, elemental deaths from say fire burning them up, lightning frying them, or poison distilling them into puddles of goop. Something needs to be done with monster death animations so that it doesn’t feel like I’m killing them with pillows.
Monster death sounds. Where are they? I have my volume all the way up and most monsters don’t even moan or yelp as they are getting ravaged by arrows, swords, spells. You need to really put in some epic death sounds for monsters that adds to the monster death animation.
Super stiff character animations. I assume these are currently work in progress but man is it hard to watch my character run around or perform skills. It’s like a socket puppet being dragged across the ground. A big percent of resources should be allocated into character animation and graphics.
Ailments on enemies - kind of a ring around back to the death animations of enemies, however, it would be nice to see ailments we perform on enemies manifesting on the character model. If we shoot fire at them, they should burn a little bit, if we hit them with holy magic perhaps they should get a shining scar somewhere on their body, with poison maybe they should get some poisonous bubbles over their head, if they bleed they should start bleeding profusely on the ground etc… this all enhances the short game loop.
Destructible doodads blend in with indestructible doodads that your character flops around like a fish out of water. Remove or make it more clear what is indestructible and what your character can destroy. It doesn’t make sense to have barrels you can and cant destroy looking very similar in very similar places. It should be instantly clear something is indestructible vs something that is destructible. Add more visual cues to things you want us to destroy in the environment and make it abundantly clear the things that we cannot destroy.
Pathing in the game, especially around tight spaces, inclines etc… is not very good. I had my character stuck at least a dozen times where I had to restart the game because they couldn’t move or perform actions at all. Sometimes it happens while trying to destroy undestroyable doodads and my character just freaks out and gets themselves stuck.
Terrible choppy framerate issues with big packs of monsters. Pretty self explanatory, makes it difficult to dodge telegraphs on the ground when the game spikes down to 10 fps because of all the effects on the screen. Needs addressed ASAP. (Hint: it isn’t my computer)
Bugs
Phew now that we got that out of the way, I ran into a few bugs that could be addressed
Pressing enter to chat renders your character unable to move until you press enter again. This is especially dangerous in hardcore and cannot see this being intended.
NPC overhead chat bubbles, especially the white letters, are transparent and can be manipulated by running behind them with your character, making it look funky and unprofessional.
Sometimes (randomly) entering new areas displays the mana globe as empty even while being full. This can be reset with casting anything that costs mana and it fixes the issue.
Sometimes (randomly) the “NEW” display from the quest log shines through the inventory screen.
Lesser Gripes
Armor art in the inventory looks very unpolished, especially the starting armor boots etc… I assume these will be touched up
Special monsters need special indicators. Currently the only way you can find out what a monster does is by wasting precious time moving your mouse over their body and reading their affixes. Monsters should have graphics on them to indicate what levels of dangerous they are. Are they regenerating? show us on their animation. Are they berserk or frenzying after taking damage? Show us on their animation. Don’t be afraid to turn monsters different colors or sizes to give the player incredibly important information about what he is about to face. Does the monster have an aura? Why am I not seeing something under their feet to indicate it so? To go back to diablo a bit, you all remember how hell was so intense because you would know a fanaticism/conviction pack was a lot more dangerous than just an ordinary monster pack. Give us those levels of visual cue instead of having us mouse over every monster to see what they do specifically.
Monsters use too many skills. Weird one to complain about, I know, but listen. I will be referring back to diablo a lot because it was one of the best ARPG’s of all time and there is no shame in using good ideas right? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just use formulas that work. Currently monsters just do all kinds of crazy skills that I haven’t come across in any of my characters during a play through. What diablo and path of exile does is give most monsters and enemies the skills the players usually use. Fireball, chain lightning, whirlwind, etc. etc… This makes it easier to read and understand monster intention and functionality rather than getting off screen 1 shot by the 300th version of a different telegraphed AOE spell that a monster can use. Save the special stuff for the truly bad guys, the act bosses and so forth. Regular monsters should be reserved to using regular skills and spells known by the player.
Requirements to wear armor. I Don’t see any? Anyone can wear anything at any time? I would add vitality/strength/int requirements to wear certain gear. This to me is a staple of an RPG.
Refine the character skill trees. There is a lot of bloat that just adds 1-5% to damage, 1 to vitality etc… these are not exciting or fun. You already have a really great system in place where you can customize your spells, keep that for sure. But your passive skill tree needs a lot of bloat removed to make it more impactful. Less nodes with more impact will go a long way in making putting points into your passive tree feel rewarding and fun.
Too many elements. You got lightning, fire, ice, void, poison, necrotic etc etc etc. Too many elements (in my opinion) to properly gear for even if vitality is just an all res stat. I say stick to the basic lightning, fire, ice. poison and add an element that cuts through most defenses, you could make this void. This was true damage in League of legends, magic damage in diablo 2, and chaos damage in path of exile. Reducing the amount of elements allows us to focus on specifics to beef up our resistances. Currently there is just a sensory overload of everything your toon needs including physical damage reduction and all the other elements I described. Doing less is offering more in this field I strongly believe.
Back to elemental resists, take away the raw number values, they really serve no purpose. Instead, give it to us in % form. This piece of gear gives 10% to cold resistance etc… raw numbers only serve to confuse and add a middle man to a formula where it doesn’t need it. Again, Diablo 2 and path of exile did this and its a lot easier to understand and frankly more interesting to play with.
Monster variety. Personally this game sometimes feels like a love note to H.P. Lovecraft with all the purple tentacle monsters within it. I know variety gets better once you get further into the game but I would personally love to see more zombies / humanoids to kill.
Crafting in the game is okay but very basic. I would add sockets to gear to help further customize your character. I personally never understood why people don’t just follow the formula that blizzard gave them with diablo (Closest came path of exile). Give us sockets and literally have rune drops with increasing rarity that you can fit into the sockets to give the armor special customization. Dare I even suggest runewords? As far as I know, that idea isn’t patented and it’s partly what made diablo so god damn replayable and fun. It also adds a significant dynamic to loot drops as you’re always looking for those rare runes to drop. I’m not saying copy paste it over from diablo 2, however even if you did I really wouldn’t mind as it is SUCH a great idea. Why don’t modern APRG’s do this?!
What I Do Like
UI looks great
I love the spell leveling and customization
Addition of Idols was a fantastic idea, it is basically charms from Diablo 2. Give the man a raise who came up with that idea
Environments looks good, even great sometimes
Closing notes
I know I made a lot of parallels to diablo and path of exile in this suggestion feedback, however it isn’t without good reason. Diablo was the progenitor of modern ARPG’s and still stands today as one of the best ARPG’s of all time. Hell, even I play it still after 20+ years! There’s a reason for it and I tried to distill some of those ideas and conclusions into this suggestion thread. I hope this reaches the developers and they can toy around with some of the suggestions I offered. I sincerely think it would make this a better game.
-Manoka
EDIT:
Additions Requested
Give us a 2nd hotbar, perhaps accessible with an alt or ctrl modifier
Skill damage/DPS would be appreciated (esp. on over-mouse hoover on hotbar on the skill that I would like to examine).
Change the static nature of the maps for the story. Procedural maps are way more engaging and re-playable. I’ve played through the beginning of this game 30+ times now and it’s getting monotonous. Procedural maps = more fun.
Allow us to view skill specialization skilltree without having to actually specialize that skill in a slot. Currently if you are in your skills tab and click a skill, it just exits the skills window.
The effigy of oblivion in the Lost Refuge zone seems way under tuned compared to the monsters within the zone.
Great points. Especially those on polish. I agree with all of them but would give the devs some latitude to work on those eventually since I assume the focus now would be to expand the amount of content and start polishing once things are more settled.
On your point about (element) protections, I also tend to agree. I think someone else have brought up this point before which is that with the wide range of protections required, it is currently quite difficult to balance the offensive needs with the defensive affix taxes given that the latter is as varied as you have pointed out. I wonder if this is deliberate on the devs part and what is the philosophical consideration for that.
I agree on most of it except requirement to wear items. That’s the thing I hated most in D2, wasting attributes just to use my items. Its fine the way it is now with lvl requirement.
I am glad we agree on most points. The reasoning for the requirements on the heaviest armors is that it doesn’t make sense for a 90 lb necromancer to wear the heaviest 200lb armor without any investments put into strength from an RPG standpoint, atleast that is my take on it.
Nice post, I find almost all of your points agreeable. Especially your comments on elemental resists, way too complicated with no payoff in my opinion.
The problem with adding element resist % on items is the fact the % changes based on how much life your character has, since thats how the formula works. Would have to be a floating % on items that changes as your health changes, idk if that works.
And since ward counts as health, the more ward you have you will notice your % resist drops, so again floating % number on items…
In poe its different, 5% is 5% and has no other influences.
Elemental resist should be based on a % overall, which is different from wards @Boardman21. Wards can resist damage up to a flat value, which is fine, however resists we get from gear, items etc… should be based on a flat %. Ward basically acts like a temporary energy shield from POE. This is a different mechanic than innate elemental resists of a character.
Welcome to Last Epoch! I, too am a veteran gamer and have beta and alpha tested many game incl. WoW and D3. You have made some very insightful suggestions yet I feel like this is an in depth dissertation on how to make a Diablo clone. Last Epoch is one of the most innovative and groundbreakin ARPG’s to hit the marketplace and I don’t feel that the developers need to, or should kowtow to Diablo, PoE or GD. Let’s keep the growth of Last Epoch going strong and in a fresh direction. Don’t forget that this is early release beta and the dev’s are constantly improving and tweaking gameplay. < sorry for the edit- cat on keyboard interaction!>
Hello @dharma! Welcome to the discussion. I feel there is a fine line between making a clone and just using proven systems that work in an ARPG. Last epoch already has a skill system that is very unique to the genre including the whole time travel esque story arch. I’m proposing tidying up some of the foundational aspects of their game which would make it a more solid ARPG not necessarily a clone. Look at path of exile, no one claims its a d2 clone and yet it uses so many of the foundational systems that made d2 as good as it was. It’s the same principal I would like the developers to apply to last epoch. There are many facets to make a game unique and stand out. However, as listed above, those systems are tried and true and would, in my opinion, objectively make this a better game.
Thanks, @manoka. I am still of the mindset that the Last Epoch developers should focus on innovation, not imitation. I’m sure they can “tidy up” the game without having to dig too deeply into previously marketed product. They have been the most approachable and community involved dev team I have had the joy to interact with, and I see them hearing and utilizing much of our input. Let’s give them a chance at not having to pay homage to other ARPGs in an imitative fashion. Go, go Gadget-EHG!
Most of these I agree with. I’ll outline the few I disagree with/have hesitations about below, but I first want to complement you on your write up, it’s very well thought out, constructive, and incredibly clear in the positive direction that your ideas take in improving the game. As with most continuous development in games there’s a lot of negativity thrown around every time something changes so this is a refreshing read.
Onto some notes from your points (these are mainly in the Lesser Gripes section):
Monsters Using Too Many Skills.
I actually like the fact that enemies can use different skills than the player can. For me, it feels immersive that a giant poison plant can lob blobs of poison to kill me, or a necromantic minion can use a soul breath or death aura. It shows that the creatures in the world around us the player have developed abilities or created abilities that fit their natures. That doesn’t mean I want the plethora of instakill AoEs you mention here:
Getting off screen 1 shot by the 300th version of a different telegraphed AOE spell that a monster can use.
Requirements to Wear Armor
I’m about 50/50 on this one. On the one hand, it does make sense that full massive plate armor would be heavy and require strength, or that a mystical diadem infused with arcane energy requires a magical statistic, i.e Intelligence or Attunement, to use properly. On the other hand, the way the stat system is currently implemented it’s not only difficult to gain certain stats on certain classes (like strength on Mage or Acolyte, or Int on Sentinel), but it would be a waste of potential on a character that would otherwise be fine. Stats in this game aren’t like normal RPGs where almost any character can benefit from any stat, and that may or may not be a failing of the current stat implementation. A Sorcerer has quite literally no ways to gain Strength without investing an affix tax on his equipment, so that would be gimping that potential character just to equip items.
Too Many Elements
I agree for the defensive side of elements for right now. Last Epoch runs the side of Grim Dawn on this, but lacks the ability to shore up these defenses as thoroughly. In GD, not only could items roll with protections, but you could craft with both components and augments to further increase them, letting a build pretty easily cap your resistances even with the difficulty change reductions. In LE, it isn’t really possible to “cap” your resistances per se, but even with that it feels lackluster to invest into defenses outside of certain fringe cases (like Aura of Decay and Poison Resist).
For offenses on the other hand, I heavily enjoy the breadth of choice offered to me both thematically and gameplay-wise. Difficult line to tread there.
Crafting
This is a pretty difficult topic to discuss because technically, the crafting system isn’t even fully implemented yet. From what the developers have discussed, they intend to add some sort of socketing method and/or rune type system, on 04/25/2019 Hackalöken stated :
“We don’t have a system exactly like runes/runewords planned but we definitely want to provide that sort of experience in game, we really like the idea”.
I have no further concrete details on that. The Eternity Cache system, per the website here supposedly is another method of crafting items, some sort of item synthesis.
I will note, the reason most ARPGs don’t have runewords is one of 2 reasons:
They don’t want to be criticized for copying Blizzard, being directly compared to Diablo 2, criticized for not innovating, etc.
As great as runewords were, it was somewhat poorly implemented, with some being near impossible to find, others being as close to mandatory as you could get cough Enigma cough
All of this said, your feedback does have incredible merit and I do hope that EHG keeps an eye on this thread for future implementation of features, improvements and fixes.
great analysis too. It will make sure that the developers pay special attention to your super constructive suggestions and criticisms! and please just see me as a moral supporter here, I work a lot and I don’t have much time to set up a detailed analysis of the LE but we have you, who are veteran players with good gameplay perceptions. please SARNO have a special affection in these analyzes.
One thing about this section. I get your point of view but without restrictions or benefits noone want to miss everyone will most likely use the item with the most armor in every slot. Sooner or later everyone will look the “same” so to speak. I realy think there should be some kind of method to vary item useage per class but somehow I doubt this will happen and we’ll end up with monotony. I don’t have an idea hoe to fix this to be fair outside of making light armor more beneficial for spellcasters or something arround this lines I don’t know.
That’s where I think it’s more of a stat implementation problem than something I would rule out entirely. I like the concept in point, PoE uses it pretty well for example. Just difficult for LE to do in the current portion of development.
Stat implementation might be flawed. First of all we don’t know if the highest tier of aromer chestplate is wearable with 0 STR for example. We don’t know what materials are used and so on and so forth.
If they implement attribute requirements how do you want to balance it? 0 STR for cloth and then already 3 for leather because leather already is coumbersome? I think the attribute requirements would be all over the place or meaningless.
I still think armor choice should have pros and cons that come with it. Like plate armor is bad for magic users and only offers physical protection. Leather is benefical for attunment casters with medium armor and cloth just offers imense benefits to int casters. Sure everyone would still wear the “best” armor for his build but you could still see Spellblades in plate for example if they don’t use spells or Primalists in plate if they don’t use spells and so on and so forth. It’s a bit of class idendity vs a completely useless itemasation choice because right now, outside of uniques, everyone is wearing the item that offers the best defensive stats for the build played without a second thought because there are no downsides when it comes to armor.
They changed Polearms drasticly without even touching the raiders axe just to remove the potency of the weapon but they never changed armor or offered something realy outstanding of an base type that made sence to change highest possible def vs mor offensive options.
PoE is needlessly overcomplicated to offer the players the illusion of choice and is flawed in many ways from my point of view. I don’t think it’s a good idea to take PoE as an example and make more use of well thought trough P&P RPGs out there that offer plenty of ideas starting from materials an item is made of to restrictions that come with certain armor types.
Just wanted to pop in and say the dev team has read this and agrees with the vast majority of it and are discussing others. Many of these are already being worked on and its just a matter of our small team prioritizing what is worked on first.
Thank you for your feedback, we love these types of posts and the discussion that follows.
