Yes, you can. Not every game appeals to every player. It’s ok not to like some.
Again, that is because you’re from D3. Character identity has nothing to do with the way the character looks or if it’s mentioned in the story. A big part of it is feeling that your choices matter. Which they don’t in D3, where, as I’ve said, every character is every single build at once, with a touch of a button.
As I said, you should go check the threads open about this. You have said nothing new so far. So the devs are already aware of your feedback and have been for a long time. Some of those threads even have replies from the devs themselves saying why mastery respec won’t happen and why it’s actually a class.
LE is actually positioned between D3/D4 and PoE, though closer to PoE.
Once again, not even remotely suggested in the OP.
All that’s suggested is removing Mastery lock-outs and converting skill leveling into slot leveling, allowing you to more freely change up your build as you level up and find gear. Or at the very least, allow us to swap Masteries in town or something. Right now EHG are kneecapping their own game and driving away the casual audience.
Lastly, at no point did I suggest, or anyone suggest for that matter, removing classes entirely.
That is one of the reasons why mastery respec won’t happen. Because then meta would be: do the campaign as Paladin, then change to Void Knight for monos and use Forge Guard for endgame.
And that’s going to negatively impact the game, the playerbase, and their income how? Ask yourself that.
What you just said tells me that if you want to do Monoliths, don’t level a Paladin or Forge Guard. What even is “end game” to you then if not Monoliths? All I’m hearing is that depending on what you want to do, 2/3 of the Masteries are useless/sub-par.
Keep in mind, you may be happy with a game tailored to you and the 500 other “hardcore” players that will be left in a year, but will EHG be happy when they can’t keep the lights on because the decisions they made drove 99.99% of the p(l)ayerbase away?
LE already has the biggest variety of possible builds and playstyle within on single mastery class compared to any other similar game.
Mastery are an extension of your class selection and are meant to be character defining. You can do dozens of different builds within Paladin.
But you have become a Paladin and you can’t (and shouldn’t) switch to do Void Knight things.
LE offers tools for hybrid builds already but what you request is simply moving goalposts.
It is not hours, it’s minutes. It is not “wasting time”.
It is putting effort into testing a slightly different setup.
Most skills and builds don’t need full level 20 skills. The minimum Respec level usually is enough to get core key nodes.
I wouldn’t count on that. EHG is always listening to feedback and that is the reason this forum exists, but that doesn’t mean that they will necessarily change some aspects of the core design.
Things like Mastery Respec, Skill Releveling and Auto Pick Up are hot topics of discussion for literally years already. And regarding skill respeccing they already did one reiteration of the system with the addition of catch up exp and minimum respec level.
And for auto pick up they implemented vaccum loot for crafting materials.
This shows that EHG is listening and tries to do middle ground solutions where possible.
Still EHG has not fully given in into requests to completely remove these restriction and I am very happy that they stand strong on these design decisions and don’t give in.
Class Identity is something that is basically completely lost in most other ARPG’s and I really like how it is preserved in LE for the most part now.
I really hope EHG does not change this aspect of the game.
You clearly don’t understand character identity because you have a D3 background, which is clearly targetted at casual players. Maybe LE isn’t the game for you. LE is a game for people that like multiple alts and anything that takes away from that is something the devs don’t want.
As I said before, you’re not saying anything new. It’s all been said before. I don’t feel like constantly saying the same things again, so I’ll do your work for you and link you the biggest thread about this, which includes dev replies.
EDIT: The key part of why it won’t change is simply this: in LE choices matter and some are permanent. In D3 they don’t.
Ah, okay, so I know nothing about hardcore games because I played D3. Got it. I also mentioned I played PoE. Wolcen? no. Grim Dawn? Yes. Since we’re talking about character identity and who’s hardcore and all these other dumb concepts: I’m also a huge Souls-like fan, I have over 1.5 years of logged in time on just my Prot Warrior in WoW that I’ve played since Vanilla, I’ve run multiple game servers for TF2, Battlefield, etc., ran gaming clan websites, and have been gaming since I was a child.
But I played D3, so I don’t know anything about “character identity”.
Once again, you may be happy with a 500 person playerbase, but I’m sure EHG will love not having money in their pockets after driving away 99.99% of the p(l)ayerbase.
Core design decisions in a video game are not always lead by what would make the most amount of money or what would attract the largest amount of players.
Also your complete hyperbole with the numbers doesn’t make your statements any more meaningful, quite the opposite.
While I know there are a significant portion of player that are not 100% happy with mastery and skill Respec, they are far from the large majority. You and me and probably not even the devs have exact numbers.
But there is also a significant amount of people that are actively happy and enjoying the implementation as it is right now and don’t want it to be changed.
We don’t know how these numbers are relative to each other.
And then there are other people that don’t care either way.
It has nothing to do with hardcore. It’s a character identity thing, which D3 doesn’t have. PoE does have it, but to a lesser extent, especially with allowing changing skills on the fly for AoE vs boss setup.
D3 could be casual and stil have character identity if only choices mattered in that game.
Mastery respec will make mastery choice meaningless, which is something the devs and many players don’t want.
The game launched to a resounding 250K players, it hit lows of 2.5K just months later… Sorry, that’s a 99.99% drop since launch. Sure, we’re back up to 70K, but we’ve already lost 43% of that playerbase in just 2 days. It’s not hyperbole, it’s reality. A live-service game, as this one is, can’t subsist on a active playerbase of just 2.5-5K. Here’s the best part, if we have a 99.99% drop again from that 70K peak that just happened, we’ll be at a magnificent 700 players!
Also, you said "While I know there are a significant portion of player that are not 100% happy with mastery and skill Respec, they are far from the large majority. "… What “large majority”? The “large majority” that exist on these forums? There’s a reason my post count is so low, I don’t frequent dev forums as they’re usually filled with the most try-hardy, loyal fans of whatever product the forums are for.
I come from the outside, the real world, where I’m the only one to return to LE out of the 5 or so people in my group who were excited for its launch, because everyone is tired of how the progression system is handled.
Steamcharts. SteamDB. They have this data. While it doesn’t reflect the actual numbers perfectly, it gets the percentages pretty spot on. It’s based on who’s profiles are public.
Game launched to 250K players, in 4 months time it dropped to an average of 2.5K players with occasional peaks of 5K. That’s around 0.01-0.02% of the original playerbase, around a 99.99% drop.
Also, I stopped playing Grim Dawn is hardly similar, it’s a dual-class system for one. Just bacause it’s called Masteries doesn’t make it the same thing as what LE has. That’s a true apples to oranges comparison.
Actually, you should check your math. It’s 99.00%.
Also, like I mentioned, half of those 250k players would never return. This could have been the best game of all times and half the players would still leave after the first few weeks. It’s just how gamers work these days.
Man, I tell you what this is some major goal post shifting. This is like seismic destruction and we have to pull the entire stadium down completely kinda goal shifting.
Let me preface that the OP is aimed at the devs, not the few “hardcore” players who frequent the forums and bang the “this is a hardcore game” gong over and over.
Those statistics aren’t available as far as I’m aware, at least not consistent ones like what you can find on SteamDB or SteamCharts… That said, look below…
Wow, I’m like, less than 1% off. I’m trembling.
For a game launched in 2013, the fact that the Leagues are peaking at 185K still is pretty good (even if that was the full picture, bc it isn’t), and I’m not sure about you, but 6K is more than twice 2.5K if my eyes don’t deceive me. Now I’m not certain about historical data for PoE, but if we’re going with a League comparitive like the recent 1.1 patch…
250K → 70K → 72% drop from release to the first big content push (1.1) with only a 4 month gap between. That’s still pretty damned bad. If that repeats again we’ll be at ~50K for the next big patch, ~35K for the patch after that, and so on. But usually things drop faster than that. I suspect next patch will be more like a ~20-30K peak.
Side note: You got the PoE data from SteamCharts or SteamDB clearly, mind you, PoE has far more than that though. There’s a website called ActivePlayer that has those numbers, their reporting indicates 55K right now, in comparison to the cited 6K from DJSamhein. MMO-Population has a DAILY playercount of 517K. The data from these places are pulled from the various platforms PoE is currently running on (of which Steam is only one). Last Epoch however is only available on Steam.
Hardly. Two games, two different systems, both called Masteries. One is a dual-class system, the other is a single-class system. Also, I never said Grim Dawn was good, did I? Or are you just assuming?
This has nothing to do with a “hardcore game”.
Even casual players can enjoy and prefer a game with meaningful choices and clear character identity instead of playing a meaningless husk that can be everything with a few button presses in some menus.
This is a grand case example for not understanding causation & correlation.
You use the numbers this way, because they fit your narrative.
Okay, so the logic here then is it contributes to the hardcore nature of the game how? (It doesn’t) and it could easily be replaced with leveling the skill slot instead to avoid the nuisance of having to relevel it. And yes, I’m aware, most don’t get that far though. Whether it takes 10 minutes or an hour, it’s still an inconvenience for the sake of inconvenience. May it change the meta? Sure, I guess, but by the same logic all it’s doing is adding time to that meta.
Also, the fact that you’ve said it a dozen times on other threads only proves my point. The OP, once again, was aimed at the devs… Not the tiny fraction of the playerbase on these forums beating the “this game is a hardcore game” drum.
this is some major goal post shifting. This is like seismic destruction and we have to pull the entire stadium down completely kinda goal shifting.