Which highlights how the only difference, even from your point of view, is the “end of it” - in other words, how masteries cannot be changed and ascendancies can.
Same idea. You are assuming the developers’ design choice cannot be changed.
Thank you.
this is not entirely true, there are ways to get an ascendancy node from other ascendancies from within your base class (witch can be necromancer and get primal aegis)
I would have tried many more builds and had more fun, if I could switch mastery. And I’ve seen two times already, how new players choose a mastery without realizing what it does, then regret their decision after reaching level 30-40, and prefer to play another game than to level from scratch.
By the way, devs said LP filter will never be part of the game. But many people have asked for it, and here we are. So yea, bring this up more, with every thread we are closer to what we want
Are you really comparing a gameplay QoL issue (which was annoying to some players but most just ignored it) to a game identity issue that is divisive?
Might as well say that the devs always said that LP wouldn’t be in the game and now it is, so keep asking for that god mode option.
But to your point: devs have always steered away from the D3 side of ARPGs. So yes, there is always a chance that they will change their minds and turn LE into D3 2.0. But it’s very unlikely.
Especially because, as has been determined in this thread, changing something so fundamental to the game identity would lose them many of the players that are loyal to them.
Also because at that point it wouldn’t be the “game they would like to play” and would just be a game trying to please everyone, which is already Blizzard’s territory.
EDIT: This is not to say that you shouldn’t give your feedback. Because you should. But you should be aware that this is a game identity issue, not a QoL issue.
I think I understand your point of view.
I really liked the original Guild Wars. But, being (kind of) a MMORPG which was released more or less at the same time as World of Warcraft, and with WoW being by far the more popular game, the GW community was filled with people asking the game to be changed to be more like WoW. Usually those requests were not only completely against the spirit of the game, they were also asking for things that were very much the reasons we were playing Guild Wars and not World of Warcraft in the first place.
That was incredibly, incredibly annoying.
But in the end, those players had a right to share their opinion and say what they wanted. To me personally it’s silly to see the same person asking for the same thing over and over, but we had a constant influx of new people saying they wanted those things.
Here, it’s the same - we WILL get people asking for an easier respec system, for changeable masteries and for WASD movement control. I would like the former, don’t want the latter and don’t really care about the middle one, but that doesn’t change how we will continue to get people asking for those things for as long as Last Epoch gets new players.
It’s incredibly annoying for us to see people asking for the same things all the time, but to them they’re just sharing their opinion, and, as you have said, it’s their prerogative to do so.
I’m just happy Diablo 4 isn’t that popular, or we would also have a lot of people asking for mounts, even though those wouldn’t make any sense in a game like Last Epoch.
(The Guild Wars developers eventually released a sequel, and in it they finally gave people all those things WoW has - Guild Wars 2 has multiple playable races, a huge crafting system, grind to get better equipment, raids, mounts, etc. I heard the game has far, far more players than the original Guild Wars had.
I’m just not one of them.)
I don’t put as much stock in the respec system for people not using it for bossing as you do. I think it has more to do with build and skill setup. Most of the skills work in both AoE and Single target, and therefore remove the need for two different types of builds. Even with two different types of builds, I have yet to see enough of a power gape between a PURE single target or bossing build vs a PURE mapping build.
Hmm from my experience playing lots of games, dev’s tend to try to remove any systems that create friction as it is usually a pain point for players and they want to retain the player base.
Whether or not they are trying to “Prevent” players from respecing to do bosses or not does not matter. While what you speak of in regards to friction mechanics is no doubt complex, this particular mechanic of respec is not.
It really comes down to whether they want you to or don’t want you too. Curently regardless of how difficult it is, it is possible. If the dev’s don’t want players to swap (Which from what I understand has been their stance) then find a way to stop it completly.
Oh and most gamers will just see it as a poorly designed system, they are not going to look at the philosphical side of it. Poorly designed systems = bad dev’s in the eyes of most (Not saying that this is the case but perception matters). Better to have a rigid stance and rigid system rather than something that looks like it was half way designed and they went “Whelp that will do”
Yes, which is after all the intention.
You can focus on one of both aspects for several skills though and hence enforce it to become distinctively stronger there… which EHG wants to avoid to be ‘abused’.
So it does what it is supposed to do there actually.
Yes, which for example makes it so baffling as to why Path of Exile based their trading mechanic purely on the aspect of friction to hinder interactions. It’s meant to frustrate you. And that’s… fairly insane in my eyes for an auxiliary system.
And that’s what’s not needed.
It can be done but it’s not only bothersome but also provides no tangible upside. It makes you use more time and more resources to achieve. So while ‘theoretically possible’ the practical application is not a thing as it increases the range of errors as well as time investment while also being more bothersome.
People go the path of least resistance unless the one with more gives a clear-cut obvious upside. Some test it out anyway and when they realize it doesn’t switch back again. The leftover ones actively want to challenge themselves or are insane by definition, either/or.
A system is poorly designed if it doesn’t do what it’s meant to do.
Which here… isn’t the case. It might seem poorly designed but that’s a perception issue and not one which is actually existing when it comes to using it. The moment you test it into detail you realize it’s actually a very well designed system.
And yes, perception matters, it’s why UI design is so important, as well as terminology in diablo-clone games. Prime example on where that’s messed up is Reputation gain from Favor in MG with people thinking they need to sell items to have that happen and hence list for ‘0’ gold. That’s a prime perception issue which warrants a change. Here? Not so much the case as the outcome isn’t affected by the perception, you can’t abuse it when knowing how it works and you can’t without knowing how it works.
I think people are not angry becsuse they would like to switch from one skill to the other before a boss fight.
They are angry because they cannot quickly switch between one node, or between seveveral nodes, in order to find wich one works better for them. This makes playing with slightly different configurations very cumbersome and decidedly not fun, because you have the nagging feeling that your build could be better, but you just cannot convonce yourself to go through the trpuble of actually figuring it out.
Then add to this the fact that we have no reliable way to determine our DPS.
Yes, exactly!
And that’s why the removal of the mechanic is not even a thing which can be discussed though. Why? Because it does what it’s meant to do, exactly.
So what does that leave us with?
Here you go. Now onward to the actual suggestions for that instead of the repetition of the repeating repetitions of it.
I still maintain that changing the arena dummies area to allow full free respec (including mastery and class) is a good one. Just turn it into a theory-craft zone where you can do all the experimenting you want. Make it accessible from the start menu so you can even go there before you make your first character to help you choose what you want to be.
It would be a lot of effort, but I believe it would be a benefit for LE. Right now PoE’s theory-crafting ground is path of building. LE could have an actual in-game one with no downsides to it.
Yes, that would be absolutely great, after all it’s meant as a testing environment… so implement it like one!
100% agreed on that.
Why have it after all if it has basically no function. Since after all when you change skills you’ll be weaker then before by design.
R1ng0 was correct in his assumption as to why it’s annoying people like me, you however are wrong that it can’t be talked about.
People are annoyed at being railroaded into one of 3 paths and never being able to go back.
I was also roughly right in my predictions about the player numbers. The weekend “peak” never happened, instead it was around 50K, which from my calculations is less than the 70K of patch day… Yesterday’s (the end of the first week) saw a peak of 38K. At that rate, we’ll be 20K next week, but I’m predicting less than that as drop offs tend to increase in pace. This coming weekend we may see 40K, but I doubt it.
So in the end, this first major 1.1 patch only brought a brief spike in player numbers, completely reset the economy, and completely reset player progress. In addition, there were zero meaningful QoL features in this patch at all, meaning the pace of getting back into the game is roughly the same as it was before reset. /golfclap
The easiest solution to this is to allow people to change their Masteries/skills in town freely. There are practically no story implementations to allowing us to change our Masteries, especially with all the time-looping shenanigans going on. It’s up to EHG to either choose to listen to the few “hardcore” players who have ample time to waste, or the larger casual playerbase who actually have money to spend.
So far, of the 5 of us in my group who excitedly played the game at launch, I’m the only one to return to it post 1.1. The rest dropped off about 2 months ago. I’ve already gotten to the point that I see no point in launching the game anymore, despite having bought every pack that was available to me pre-launch when I got into the game. So trust me, I have time and money invested, I’m just not dumb enough to fall for the sunk-cost fallacy and keep spending both if the product doesn’t get better. For a wider stat, I have a total of 24 Steam friends that own the game, only 3 have been on LE in the last 2 weeks…
Read the whole text and it clears itself up that I’m solely talking about the removal aspect of it, not the whole topic of respec itself.
It absolutely did, we had a 4k increase in people during the weekend.
Evereything else is ‘on par’ with ordinary expectations. Nothing odd to see there.
Yes, that was suggested with re-working the old training dummy into a separate area which is meaningful as a testing environment.
The skill respec is a mandatory aspect to stay though during content as items change passive points on the fly, so the ability to adjust them needs to stay with the current system at least.
As for progression… yes, 1.1 is not a big one. It mostly did balancing for specific skills while missing some major ones nonetheless, very major ones. The new mechanic is definitely worthwhile on the other hand and the bosses are as well, overall a good patch, substantial in terms of content but not visible permanently like the mechanics which are shoved down your throat in PoE.
Each of the cycles which work in a similar manner as this one for content - unlike in PoE where the majority of the league mechanic tends to fly out the window by now - will make the game permanently bigger and more expansive overall.
Agreed, respeccing in town would address the issue of not being able to quickly and iteratively optimize “configurations” while still preventing abuse.
Granted, in theory there could be a potential abuse related to group play, e.g. leaving the group before the boss, respeccing and then rejoining the group, but I doubt that many groups have the patience to endure this.
Also this should be fairly easy to implement.
If it was only about avoiding respeccing in the middle of content (and I know some people advocating to keep the restrictions put it forward as the main argument, when it isn’t), I would agree. There is also the fact that the commitment to a build is something that a lot of us out there are looking for. It doesn’t have to be a 100% commitment with no ability to change at all.
Just that if I can instantly switch from my frost detonating arrow marksman to a Hail of Arrows poison one, and then a Multishot bleed build, then there’s really no difference between my own self-crafted marksman and any other marksman out there. I could just as well use a friend’s account, take his character and change everything on it.
At the base, one part of the community’s want to commit to their character and its build is fundamentally at odds with another part of the community’s want to have all builds at the same time.
To me, the ideal solution would be another option at character creation : to have an actually costly respec system or not. Players that want instant change get to have their instant change whenever they want, and players like myself that like the commitment do have a system that actually pushes towards commitment. This doesn’t mean that the second group wouldn’t be able to respec at all, just that the cost of respeccing is high, making choosing a build an actual commitment.
I get what you mean.
Personally I am not interested in changing an entire build in an instant. Last cycle I even leveled multiple Paladins. Plus a Void Knight and a Forge Guard.
But for me the current mechanic discourages experimentation within an existing build and that is a shame because it should be part of the fun and not anti-fun which is what it currently is, at least for me.
I mean, the way it worked in PoE was always ok for me. But only because I figured everything out in path of building and then executed the result in game without further modification.
100% agree on this as a new player. Honestly i don’t care about the Mastery Lock in even though it would be nice, but im getting severe headache on the Skill Level Reset. It’s a gamebreak for me, turns a 10/10 game into 1/10 instantly.
There is a clear solution, since i assume there is a divided opinion when it comes to freedom and fun in ARPGs. At the character selection, there simply should be checkbox for a) I wanna waste more time b) I wanna have flexabilty and not waste unnecessary time (eg. no Skill Reset, Mastery Freedom). Done deal.
This is a dishonest argument because options aren’t always the best solution. Players that don’t like free respec would still leave even if it was an option.
Much like if you make an option for “God mode” it would still be an option, but everyone would leave because it would kill the fun of the game.
That’s the same argumentation line as to why ‘FromSoftware’ doesn’t implement a difficulty option of some form.
That gameplay element provides - albeit small, but noticeable - a distinct difference in how content is perceived.
Also as a secondary thing… free respec would necessitate to break up the specific game-modes further, you can’t put free-respec and the old-respec group together in any form of competitive environment. This includes leaderboards as well as MG, MG is a natural competitive environment by design albeit often not perceived personally as such.
