Ok, I could theoretically get behind that. But it’s not set up this way.
You can switch, it just costs you basically everything if you’ve been in one for a while. This creates frustration. Instead EHG could’ve gone the ‘This choice is permanent’ option and it would’ve been fine. Nobody who wants to play a long time will use CoF and nobody playing for a short while will use MG (since it’s not functional for them at all).
But… alas… it’s not the case.
The gold is the issue.
To get a full set of LP 4 uniques (theoretically) you would needs around 200k favor.
How quick is that? That’s a few hours of effort, nothing more. Play tons on CoF, see the other pasture is greener, decide ‘enough is enough’ and buy better gear for cheap there then you’ve gotten your whole play-time during CoF in a ridiculously short time, from then on only profiting.
If the gold is not the issue then favor cost from buys is.
Because as mentioned, 200k favor is enough for everything. A done deal. So, favor cost scaling with gold price. One part solved! You can’t ‘double-dip’ into the mechanic.
And it even removes the necessity to punish people with the gear limitation by switching + makes everything purely time-related.
So either or… you get a better outcome already then currently is the case. While it’s a really really miniscule double-dip mechanic it’s nonetheless one. You dip into getting much gold through high corruption to then use in MG. You can outfit a secondary character purely with MG through those means. If that’s not double-dipping then any other concern is by far laughable with a few adjustments that should’ve been baseline.
It means that if the issue is the needed time-investment into MG through cheap favor costs of items (which is ridiculously low) then just scale favor costs. Hence to make use of the gold the one switching would need to put quite a bit of time into the mechanic to even derive the rewards. As it should be the case as a baseline, not access restrictions
I’ve mentioned all of that in my thread linked above actually with a clear-cut example, all issues I see with the systems currently from both a game-design point, missed functionality and also Economy-based issues which are a recurring issue.
MG is non-usable for a first character during progression, at all. All you get when choosing it is 30% less loot then 0.9 without anything going for it outside of idols until you reach empowered monoliths.
And if the misconception about reputation-gain is cleared up then you also won’t have the utterly over-flooded market for rare items, outside of beginners which get simply ripped off by a badly implemented mechanic screwing them over as you can’t even derive the demand since nobody can friggin access them a lot later anyway.
Yes, after using it a while it starts to work… but it’s one utter failure for the first play-through. Actually a prime way to showcase ‘how not to do it’.
Yes, but that is utterly alleviated by enforcing time-investment into the respective mechanics.
You won’t get good loot unless you rank up in CoF, only direct drops from prophecies. That’s the time-investment though, acquiring favor, using favor, running content to get rewards and acquire more favor.
Nice loop! Works, perfect even!
MG?
Run content, acquire favor, wonder ‘what the actual fuck should I do with this shit?’ since you lack gold. Try to stuff items randomly into the bazaar since you can’t even price-check properly. Undercut everyone else ruining the functionality of it with cheap Favor-items just to gain reputation, run more content to get more crap to list, 50 hours later wonder why the whole market is fucked and you can’t get gold with great exalted items since 50 others have willy-nilly listed them without realizing they got value, solely playing into the hands of the ones playing 20+ hours the first days to be the first to snatch up that nice ‘5k gold 4 LP unique’ on the market leaving you with 2 mil gold from shit-sales by the end while every item actually costs 100+ mil then and the middle-level being utterly screwed over still from people just dumping ‘everything’ for cheap since they want to advance to Rank 8 to get access to items they can’t afford anyway.
But maybe after 1-2 months into the cycle the market might stabilize decently
Great experience!
Yes, a nice example! But feels also shit. You’re bottlenecked now. ‘Make up for the time you already invested’ not only through ranks, not only through favor, not only through - maybe - gold… no… you can’t upgrade a single item but 7 at the same time. Hope they’re still the same value after acquiring those 250 mil gold which an equivalent is worth! Nt to speak of an upgrade.
It’s definitely better… but the outcome is between ‘a steaming dung-pile’ and ‘a steaming dung-pile with a fancy hat’ basically
There needs to be a core solution for the thing. Nr 2 is viable, but also prone to problems by being disgruntled on now being 100% forced to make a character… but at least you know it beforehand what you get into… until you realize the fine print is quite a thing.
Hence why I’m pushing for removal and according adjustment of both systems to manage that. But to be fair… MG needs around 95% of those anyway.
Also fine! But they need to be nigh equivalent during progression to end-game then. Currently MG is non-functional and CoF only becomes that later on. Hence we need distinct changes in MG once again. It all comes down to MG being a mess.
As one point.
It’s the whole design though in many aspects.
A better market situation.
A better listing versus buying situation.
A better experience during your first character.
A better experience when playing together with friends.
A better experience in using the market itself.
There’s so many things which would get better with someone sitting down and actually understanding how market works and then with the knowledge from other game markets adjusting it accordingly.
The core aspects are already there, CoF vs. MG is a great thing! The framework has all the solutions at their fingertip already… the implementation? That one feels like the initial Synthesis implementation in PoE, great system! Shit everything attached to it
Yep, that’s the outcome and it feels shit and is nonsensical, right?
Personally, I hope it never is. I don’t want to have to bother digging through hundreds of affixes seeing if anything is worth selling or whatever.
First, you would have to change it so that you can interact with your shards/runes/glyphs from their holding place.
Second, you know what that actually is: Rune of Ascendance trade. With the occasional glyph of insight. That’s what it would be used for most of the time.
Third, you’d then have to deal with questions like “If I use a RoA that I bought in MG in an item that has the CoF tag, what happens?” Does it get MG tag? CoF tag? None? Both?
Again, this is my personal opinion. I find no appeal whatsoever in shard/rune/glyph trading. Quite the opposite. The idea feels repulsive to me and would probably push me away from MG.
As I said (and you apparently ignored) I did say UI was a mess. It will be changed. But that’s not a flaw with the MG system. Just with the filters and the way it’s presented.
If also needs some tweaks to the system itself, namely rank progression, possibly gold tax, whatever, but the base system design of MG is perfect for me.
Likewise, I feel like the base system of CoF is also good (even though I hate prophecies and I wish we had another different mechanic for it), it just needs lots of tweaks (more than MG does).
No, the difference is that in PoE SSF means you have a crap base drop rate so it really is a challenge mode, while in LE, using this tactic, you’d have a superior drop rate. So it’s not as much a challenge as the reverse. It’s easy mode made even easier by switching to MG at the end.
Again, there is no drop rate bonus in D2 for not trading. So fundamentally different.
It isn’t, though.
First of all because, as I mentioned before, you most likely already have a bunch of players that have both factions at rank 10. Especially in legacy, this number will tend to keep on increasing. And not only will it increase, but it’s likely that these players will keep on accumulating favour for MG.
Second because that argument just translates into “If I play a lot I should be able to get benefits from both, if you don’t play a lot sucks for you”.
Well… in that case what about the direct functionality aspects?
Is it fine that MG can barely be used during your first character?
Is it fine that T6 exalted items are set on a equivalency basis with double T7 exalted items?
Is it fine that common uniques are put in a equivalency basis with rare boss-drop uniques?
It’s even without any UI issues that the mechanic is still utterly awful.
And that’s the exact problem you seem to ignore.
CoF has a proper progression scaling. You get slightly more loot at the beginning and a ton of more loot the further you progress into it.
MG doesn’t have that. You don’t scale. It’s just simply messed up. Access to exalted items is needed roughly in the middle of - basic - monoliths. Access to LP uniques around the end of - basic - monoliths. Legendaries at the beginning of empowered monoliths.
Then it somewhat functions.
You can’t compare progression of a functioning system with one that’s been utterly broken with the implementation. Obviously it’s a ‘superior tactic’ to use the functioning one during progression.
It is, no matter what people say… it absolutely… is.
You’re utterly ignoring that I’m repeatedly saying ‘Access through ranks is nonsense’ hence your ‘Rank 10’ argument is something which doesn’t hold true given what I’m argumenting about, why? Because Rank 10 wouldn’t grant access in MG but like CoF some form of functionality.
Secondly, Favor is the current ‘time-sink’ mechanic of factions, that’s the major nominator. Not even speaking about Ranks but the Favor aspect. In CoF it’s to acquire Prophecies which directly relates to quantity of drops and in MG… well… there it’s… well… ah yes, a market-flooding mechanic to ruin supply/demand artificially! That alone is a disaster, Favor for listing rather then limited listing amounts or any other limiter is nonsensical. I got over 1000 items on the market currently! And I’m quite sure around 600 of them will never sell and just take up database space. And we know how the Bazaar servers fared. Miiiiight be a thought worth to minimize that issue.
Umh… I think you missed a few things.
Currently faction switching relates to ‘You get your ass kicked so hard that you rather should make a new character then try it’.
In a proper situation it’s ‘Here you go, choose your play-style, because that’s what factions are. We won’t stop you but you won’t get any upsides for it either.’
Sounds better, doesn’t it?
And once again… the worry is the double-dipping, take care of how double-dipping works and it’s no issue anymore.
Currently double-dipping happens through the usage of gold, the lack of scaling favor costs for high-value items as well as buying power in MG not being reliant to time-investment into the faction. Those are the sole core-arguments.
So, don’t use gold but a faction-currency for buying items (opens up lightless arbour as a viable content for MG again), scale favor cost is prices and you take care of the third part with those two already as it suddenly is ‘the more time you invest into the faction the more rewards you get from the faction’ compared to now… but to drive the point home further Ranks not being access to items but instead taxation, hence cost-reduction the longer someone plays in the faction.
Then we’re again back at benefits versus rewards. The benefits of a faction get more the longer you invest time into them, a given basically, not the case currently. Rewards are the outcome from the benefits of a faction. Simple as that.
Or to make it more clear how it should be: CoF Benefits:
Access to Prophecies
More base-loot
That’s it, that’s already the case.
MG Benefits:
Dropping sell-able items.
Getting price-reductions.
Half of that is the case, we currently have ‘Get access to the system’ instead of ‘Getting price-reductions’ (taxation for resource sink) currently. That’s the point which needs to be changed.
Currently it not only fucks over supply/demand but it also fucks over your first character in any cycle, it fucks over listings before general access to those ranks are open on top of that. So throw that garbage badly thought-through economy-denying part out and you’re golden.
Rewards:
The items you receive by using the benefits.
So the ‘novel’ concept os using your benefits to acquire nice outcomes is nothing new… it’s just utterly and entirely messed up currently.
It has nothing to do with double-dipping, it’s just fixing current issues while avoiding that as you won’t ever get double-upsides.
By the time you finish the campaign, or reach act 9, you are rank 3 or 4 and you can use the accumulated favour to buy a few yellow stuff to prepare for monos, some uniques you might need to get your build going and even some idols. So I disagree that you can’t use it. You just can’t use it until you reach act 9, which is a stupid decision for both factions, imo.
I didn’t ignore that. I said, repeatedly, that both factions need rank progression looked at.
I have no problem with that. In fact, I’m in favor of not being able to switch at all, just like with masteries.
I think what we mostly disagree about is not that MG/CoF needs work. They both do and we agree on that. Rank progression is crappy for both, CoF is clearly lacking some benefits it should have.
What we mostly disagree on is that you think we should fix that and make it so that changing between factions should be made easier and less punishing and I think we should fix that and make changing between factions impossible or more punishing.
As a general rule I have little to no issues with the suggestion for each faction. I just don’t think switching should ever be easy.
The fact that things are permanent make choices matter. For example, going hardcore in D2 is a big deal. You die, you lose the character. PoE did this as well until they decided to change it so that your character now goes to softcore. LE does the same.
As a result, choosing HC in either is meaningless. Even more so in LE when you have the deathless tag.
You might argue that LE doesn’t really explain the importance of these choices or their consequences. I agree that they should do a better job at that, though we all know that even if they did a mandatory tutorial explaining things, lots of people would still make the wrong choice and then complain.
But I think that we shouldn’t remove important choices from the game. And MG/CoF is one of those. If you make it easy to switch it effectively stops being a choice.
Which is the counter-side actually, the part where it’s needlessly good still.
Yeah, just let me grab this boss-unique I don’t even have access to yet! Hence the empowered-table uniques. Great! I have them during Act 9!
Bad implementation.
Then we progress further into monoliths, you got your ‘base equip’… and now?
No access to exalted items.
No access to LP items.
You’ll have 50+ LP items by the time you can buy LP items. And far over 200+ LP items by the time you can buy all LP items.
This doesn’t correlate with game-progression.
Same with exalted items.
So it’s actually shit in both sides! Doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.
Yes, and that would be fine. Pick your play-style… once!* With the respective warning like the choice being permanent. Absolutely viable option.
Not here alas and hence makes the current state even worse because of it.
Either permanence or removal of punishments is the name of the game.
I personally just think that play-style choice shouldn’t be a one-time limited thing but directly tied to player-agency and switching ‘flavor of the week’ so to say. Choose how you wanna progress whenever you like.
Yes, which is why I’m more opting for the ‘open’ choice there and forcing mechanics into a state where you can’t double-dip with them.
But even if permanence is done then it’s fine since yes… we’ll have people complaining… but no… they have no basis to do that.
Given the factions are properly balanced for progression, both of them. That means CoF need to have the issues about boss-drops and rogue-mages fixed and MG needs to have… yeah… basically the core concepts fixed with the access issues in both sides.
I have no strong opinion on the rest of this (playing offline cycle 1 and building legacy stuff, haven’t even touched online or MG), but I did want to respond to this particular sentiment as I strongly disagree with it philosophically, for a few reasons.
It’s not borne out statistically. Most players quit long before they even approach the content where they would get BIS gear, of course, that’s the nature of things. But of those who are playing into endgame content, there’s simply not a strong correlation between acquiring BIS gear and ceasing to play the game.
It doesn’t actually make sense logically. If someone was saving up for years to get a Lambo, they wouldn’t then get it and never drive again. Acquiring your BIS gear gives you the opportunity to use that gear during gameplay. Most folks are playing games because they find the experience fun, and welcome the opportunity to do so with the items they have been actively seeking for use.
It’s not reflective of the reasons folks give for ceasing to play anecdotally. You’ll see 100 threads complaining that extreme RNG, and the feeling that they do not have a reasonable chance to acquire the sorts of items they want, are leading them to quit the game. I’ve never once seen someone complain that now they have this BIS gear the game is too easy or boring or they have no reason to play. If anything, the closest folks come is complaining they want more things to Do, more content to explore, With said end game gear.
Having multiple RNG checks or significant hurdles associated with acquiring the BIS gear for a given character or build doesn’t incentivize continual play. It encourages narrowing the scope of what you focus on, as doing more becomes unobtainable for many casual players. If it takes them hundreds of hours to get their one character to be the best they can be and see what they’re like with that build, are they then going to want to experiment with other builds, other masteries, other classes? No, in many cases they’ll just rage harder if the one build they’ve invested the time to get even close to what they consider its ‘final form’ gets nerfed because they can’t bear the thought of grinding that long again for equipment for something different. Which, in turn, in my eyes drives player abandonment not retention.
Plus, if the scheme is to have folks continually chasing gear they don’t obtain, it’s a scheme designed to fail anyways. They always have a chance that RNG will give them exactly what they need just a few hours in. What then?
In my eyes the sweet spot is having the gear required to make a given build truly sing, having it fun to play, and having it feel “complete” should be relatively easy with targeted effort. This makes it so folks are excited to explore the dozens of possible builds and don’t feel “stuck” with pursuing just the most powerful build around, as they don’t feel ‘max grind speed’ is something they need to pursue. Granted, I’m not saying perfect inherents, perfect affixes, LP4, the best item possible. But good enough to deliver 95%+ of the power of that and have the character feel ‘finished’. Then those who are truly all about the grind can chase perfection, those who want to experiement can do so, and no one is feeling like the game system (true or not) is deliberately trying to waste their time.
This is a false equivalency. The equivalency you’re making is that players chase BiS items and then never use them.
The correct equivalency would be saving money for years to buy a Lambo and when you get one you stop saving money. Which is true (outside of saving money for some other purchase), since you won’t be buying another one.
If your character already has all BiS items and has nothing that can be improved, for most players that just means the character is finished and it’s time to start a new one. There’s no point in using it anymore regularly.
Both D2 and PoE use that model, where it’s almost impossible to get fully BiS gear. And yet they’re the ones that have survived the longest.
That really depends on the type of player. Most players that are categorized as “D2 players” (which overlap a lot with “PoE players”) like that they keep chasing gear endlessly on multiple characters. They enjoy getting the build online, and then constantly optimizing it with no end in sight.
And these are the types of players that LE is designed to attract. Which are the ones that are usually here in the forums rejecting ideas that just make getting BiS easier. Because, to them, the RNG chase is good when it’s geavily tilted and not in their favour.
The chances of someone getting all slots with BiS gear in a few hours (or even in a few days) is so vanishingly small that the sun will engulf the earth before that happens, not to mention having it happen in multiple characters.
The sweet spot will change a lot depending on the type of player. For example, I couldn’t care less if I have BiS gear. As long as I get my build working and with decent to pretty good gear, it feels complete. What marks my build as complete is “Is it doing what it should be doing?”. Every gear improvement after that is just “Add X to whatever number (like damage or corruption)” and doesn’t change the build.
On the other hand, there are players that will never be happy unless their gear is absolutely perfect, with all perfect affixes, perfect rolls, all 4LP gear, etc.
And there’s also the ones I mentioned that like that they occasionally get another minimal upgrade to their build but like that they’re constantly chasing better ones. And when they do get perfect BiS gear on all slots, the char is finished and they move on and never pick it up again.
All of these are incompatible with each other. No matter where LE lands in the RNG spectrum, some players will love it, some will hate it, some will leave.
So it’s not a matter of “This spot is objectively better/worse”. Because there isn’t one. There’s only “This spot will attract these types of players.”. And that’s a decision EHG has to make continuously in regard to which types of players they want playing LE.
Because no matter what, they will never please everyone.
Not personally a fan of claims involving “most players” without statistics to back them; pretty much everyone feels that ‘most people’ think exactly the same as they do and it’s common to appeal to the majority despite statistics often indicating something different entirely. For me at least, I enjoy playing with the character, and if they’re level 100 with BIS gear then I’m enjoying seeing:
How far I can push Arena
How fast I can clear a given boss
Just running around and making endless enemies explode
Plus the loot I’m getting is inspiring me to try out other builds and other characters. For example, when items like Dark Shroud of Cinders drop and Sunwreath, it makes me interested to go for Lament of the Lost Refuge try the weird Void Volcanic Orb / Fire Aura / Flame Reave build EHG has clearly designed into the game. Do I think it’ll be good? No. Do I think it’d be interesting? Quite possibly!
But having to realistically get 6+ LP2 versions of each of those items to even have 60% of the power of the ‘final form’ of that build and potentially having that not cut it at all and failing to get good affixes on them so I can see what it would really be like makes me less interested. Far, far less interested.
As far as “D2 Players” I just want to point out that sure, there were some items which were incredibly rare. Self Found Enigma would take you quite a while. But the time to get a BotD was measured in hours, days if you were unlucky, not months. Most D2 items to get a version of them was relatively quick. Again, not perfect versions, and folks would endlessly chase that perfection, but there’s a difference between having an imperfect version of your BIS gear and not having it at all, or having a version so bad you’re better off not using it and using a different item entirely which is less RNG dependent.
And of course agreed, there’s all types of players. But that’s mostly my point - very often I’ll see folks put their own perspective on others, and say basically ‘you don’t actually want BIS items, you would just stop playing after’ because that’s what They would do. As you say some players might very well grind with a character and then put it in a shrine once it’s “complete” and never touch it again. I’m just saying there’s very, very little evidence that is true for a substantial portion of the playerbase, to say nothing of the majority. At the very least, the thing I can say with certainty is that it’s certainly not true for me.
I can’t provide them for Last Epoch since it doesn’t have Steam Achievements and thus I don’t have the raw data, but I consider it a commonly known fact; if you google “percentage of players who finish the campaign” you’ll see there have been many studies on it and statements from developers coincide with them, the idea is that generally 20-30% of players finish a campaign if it’s over 10 hours in length. Last Epoch doesn’t have Steam Achievements to make for easy tracking, but PoE does and is in the same genre:
Nearly 50% of players don’t make it to the first boss (I was one of them, fired it up, played like 2 hours total, determined the character building system isn’t for me). Of those that do beat the first boss (so taking that 51% and considering it 100% of remaining players), less than half beat Malachai, the Nightmare (23% of all players), meaning they reached the end of the campaign. And less than half of those (9% of all players) got a Skill Gem to level 20, where they can even start to be considered for BIS items.
I can use other examples if you prefer, there’s plenty of them to go around, both in terms of overall studies and specific examples. Sorry I just thought it was fairly well known already, my apologies, but yeah there’s definitely statistics to back it up.
Not my case, though. To me a character is complete way before getting any BiS gear. In fact, I don’t think I have a single piece of BiS gear in any of my characters. Chasing BiS doesn’t feel like fun to me anymore, so I don’t do it.
My statements come from interacting with the community since D2, including the time I was in a clan in PoE. It’s anecdotal, certainly, but it has a wide enough sample over the years that I feel somewhat confident about it.
And it’s not like there are statistics about it, so far.
This is the sign of a competitive player. One that likes to watch numbers go to the max. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. I’m not criticizing. But competetitive players are a minority in ARPGs.
The vast majority are casuals and mostly just do the campaign. These don’t care about the BiS RNG because they’re never affected by it and the drop rate until early monos is plenty generous to them.
This is another type of player. The one that likes to make multiple alts and experiment. Usually they don’t chase BiS because they keep having new ideas of things to try out. They even rarely reach level 100.
It’s possible that the 2 types sometimes overlap (you’re obviously a case for it) but that’s rare.
Although…
This does make you more firmly planted in the first. The vast majority of altoholics just want to get the build running. If they hit empowered monos it’s already worth it. They push it until they’re happy with whatever personal goal they have, but it’s never not worth trying new builds. Even unsuccessful ones. As long as it’s fun.
BiS means getting perfect rolls as well. Of course you can have whichever runeword you want not have perfect rolls. It works fine. But absolute BiS is near unattainable. In D2, in PoE, in LE.
As for having imperfect versions attainable, so does LE. It’s called 0LP. You don’t need LP to get builds working. In fact, it’s a lot easier to get baseline gear to get your build working in LE than it is in D2/PoE.
Just a small correction: Malachai isn’t the end of the campaign, Kitava is, at act 10.
Otherwise, yes, you are correct. In almost all ARPGs (and many other games that have a endgame post-campaign or similar) the majority of players doesn’t even finish the main campaign.
I would just caution there on self-selection bias. The community for D2 is going to be comprised mostly of folks not representative of the average players. Take us, for example - as people who are visiting a forum relatively often (or even at all) for an ARPG game which has had over a month since its last release or major cycle update, we’re in the extreme minority of players. Even just the collection of the average opinions of forumgoers at this point via polls, while much much better than nothing at all, is representative of the opinions of far less than 1% of all players, and a very specific niche of those players as well. Which is fine, they’re the ones that keep the community going and it’s not like I’m one of those blaming EHG for listening to them / us (what else are they supposed to do, exactly). But we and they do need to be aware of the self selection bias which can lead to a perception of an opinion or perspective being common when instead it’s just common within the niche we are in. True in all things of course.
Thanks for the correction on Kitava, as indicated I never even got close to that far so I took a stab. Not sure if they have an achievement then for campaign end, but regardless it’d be even less than that 23% for sure. Not that it’s anything unique to POE, the entire point of BG3 is to finish the campaign and experience the story, that’s the whole draw and it’s the game of the year unanimously for 2023. Yet only 21% of players actually finished the game.
I am well aware of it. I have interacted with plenty of very casual players. For example, when me and a friend were in a clan in PoE we had a 3rd mutual friend that would sometimes come to play. We already knew what would happen but during 2-3 days we would be boosting him and playing alongside him and then he would just disappear. Then he would come back 6 months or a year later and it would happen all over again.
So I have also had plenty of contact with very casual players over the years. Even plenty of people I didn’t know previously in D2, since I tend to help random people in ARPGs (in fact, that was how I got into the clan, by offering a campaign rush on a whim to a stranger that just wanted to trade ).
Also, it should be noted that most of the more polemic discussions in these forums are about things that have no impact on those players. Changing CoF/MG is something they won’t likely notice. Even if you were to remove them completely, they wouldn’t notice. These are endgame systems discussions, so they’re naturally targetted to us, the minority.
EDIT: This is not to say that I can’t be wrong. Obviously I’ve had varied interaction with many different players over the years, but I’m still prone to perception bias.
However, regarding LE, I feel like I’m more informed because I check the forums regularly, which I’ve never done for any other game, so I’m fairly aware of players’ stances/opinions. This includes a core group of supporters that mostly like the way things are now and don’t want drastic changes and also a core group of… I actually don’t know what to call them. They’re also supporters in their way (with a few exceptions that think it’s all terrible), but they want more drastic changes to some systems.
And I’m also fairly aware of the devs stances/opinions.
Ultimately, my position regarding all these things (factions, RNG, respecs, etc) is basically the same: whichever changes (or non-changes) EHG makes will appeal to some and piss off others, so it’s all about who they want playing their game.
I’m fine with any decision they make. Even if they decide to turn this game into something I don’t enjoy. I’ll be sad to leave, but I won’t blame the devs/players either way.
Look at games which actually allow to acquire BiS gear easily and then correlate it.
Obviously in LE, PoE or Torchlight Infinite those notions won’t be there… because they situation doesn’t happen commonly.
Take the examples from games like D3 or Chronicon, games which have very little progression towards BiS. The general reason why people quit there is ‘I don’t have anything left to do’… which is fine! It’s ‘played out’.
Absolutely! An hour… 5 hours… 10 hours… but it’s the exact same situation as people find in Minecraft creative mode. It just ends there… it has no mental ‘meaning’ which is valued enough to afford going on.
For a live-service game that’s not a state which the devs should easily allow, it’s detrimental for their long-term health. Which is the reason why we commonly don’t see it.
Actually it’s completely common and seen basically everywhere. It’s just not ‘on the face’ like in LE all too often and also better balanced.
The words ‘balancing’ and ‘EHG’ just go badly together.
Yep, so?
‘Casual players’ invest up to 40 hours a league into the game, not more. Obviously they can’t get to the finish line. Saying anything more then 40 hours for being ‘casual’ is vastly beyond being ‘casual’ already.
To balance the game for 40 hours of time in itself would mean that you can’t invest more then 200 of time into it before being ‘god-tier’ equipped as the scaling would simply lead to that direction, luck being taken out of the equation there.
And 200 hours? That’s very… very little.
Seeing as LE - as any diablo-clone game - needs to cater both to ‘single character players’ as well as the ‘variety players’ at the same time it would take the first segment of long-term core audience right out of the gate, and that is a guarantee to fail as a product on the modern market for longevity, you can’t afford to remove those highly invested players as otherwise you’ll only have the short-term engaged people left.
Those though word on ‘the fad of the day’ and hence are generally a risky endeavor to focus on.
Also those are less likely to be ‘whales’ which invest high amounts of money into the game, the more time invested the more likely that someone will want to collect ‘everything’ there is.
It’s been seen in the market since over a decade, both in PC games as well as mobile games (which have caused whole studies to crop up around the subject, leading to the turnover optimization of the mobile market and hence low quality).
So, as a developer you have either the choice to go into a mediocre return and high-investment product, providing quality over quantity… or you go into the quick people-catching low-quality but fast turnover route.
LE obviously is a quality product, meaning they also need to cater to the ‘stable’ part of their community. This always clashes with catering to ‘the broad audience’ and hence casuals.
To go on an even wider tangent there it’s actually the main reason as to why ‘AAA’ life-services games tend to fail majorly, as well as reviews for ‘AAA’ games have gotten so bad. Those companies focus on initial sales primarily, not caring for longer-term investment if it makes back their initial investment. Which is getting harder since even casual players are becoming more aware of that practice, recieving a low quality product after all.
So the answer is ‘no’, your argument doesn’t hold true, it clashes with the general knowledge of the gaming industry and has proven to be majorly wrong with few exceptions.
Nothing ‘then’ because after that you’re ‘done’. You don’t keep playing a game which doesn’t provide something to aim towards. Without goal there’s no investment and hence no usage.
So, it comes down to ‘personal goals’, which is what diablo-clones thrive with. See it like this, in ‘Minecraft’ you are very quickly safe from anything there is as even a mediocre player. Basic enemies provide no danger, food is never an issue, even beating all the possible content existing is not especially hard. It goes down to ‘personal goals’ once more. Building something nice. Making projects, creating farms for your items.
In diablo-clone games it’s the same. ‘That next upgrade’ is what keeps people going.
Otherwise what stop you from immediately putting your mouse/controller away the second you reach empowered monoliths? Nothing, because nothing ‘new’ content-wise is given, at least not until 1.1.
But people persist to upgrade their characters for personal goals. Hence if you remove the option to get more beyond ‘absolute BiS gear’ then there can’t be a personal goal anymore, hence no incentive.
We already have that.
Your gear functions perfectly and can deal with all content after a good 60 hours of time-investment, no matter the build.
You can kill everything up to at least 300 corruption, you can do all T4 dungeons and beat all Arena bosses. How more ‘complete’ do you want it to be?
Hence everything beyond is ‘aspirational’. ‘Aspirational’ things always come down to personal goals, it’s something which is expected not to be achieved by 100% of the players. Hence… some players won’t achieve it simply for the case that their personal skill is too low or their possible time-investment is too low.
Now you got 2 options.
Lower difficulty.
Lower time-investment.
Difficulty is simply explained. If something is piss-easy then people get bored out of their wits and anyone who has a bit of skill won’t play on since the game never provides any form of challenge.
Time-investment is also easily explained. As said above, if you got nothing to aspire towards then enjoyment for already achieved goals vanishes quickly and you leave as well.
So… pick your poison!
Ok, you try it 5 or 10 times. Now you know. What now?
Same, 5-10 times… and now?
That gets old very quickly. A ‘fresh’ experience is something your mind will crave before long. Sure, if it’s enjoyable you’ll come back, play an hour… and leave again.
Yes, we got 15 options for character specializations. This means a baseline of 15 builds and a few ways to adjust the builds, often with using similar items in different builds.
Now with your ‘ask’ the time-investment to provide a casual with a BiS build is 40 hours.
How many items for other builds which are BiS would need to drop during that? That reduces replay value.
Your second only needs 20 hours, your third 15, your fouth maybe only 10… and by the time you’re at your tenth? You’ll likely already have all of the gear right away.
So we’re talking a sub 1k hour investment for the whole game before it’s ‘played out’.
Not feasable.
Zod Rune.
All that needs to be said.
Years.
So no, factually wrong.
Yes, which is the equivalency of getting a 0 LP unique in LE.
Holds true for LE as well.
What is the difference to LE? I would enjoy an explanation hence.
A ‘non perfect’ version of a non-unique item is a 4 T5 item, that gets you through everything.
A ‘good’ drop is a T6 exalted with the perfect affixes, a ‘fantastic’ one is a T7, and ‘god-like’ is double-exalted with the right ones.
For uniques the drop is 0 LP, ‘decent’ is 1 LP, ‘quite good’ is 2 LP and beyond it gets to fantastic and once again god-like.
So… where does it not hold true currently?
There’s the difference between speaking from a personal perspective and a global perspective.
We as players obviously want BiS items. Duh!
Devs never want to give out BiS items so we play endlessly. Duh!
Both are not realistic. So… games walk along the line in-between. If a game gives out BiS too quickly it removes play-time, and to be fair… if you play a game you should generally enjoy it. So the ‘hunt’ for gear is one aspect of fun. Remove it and you remove that fun.
Never achieving it is also a problem as obviously… if a goal is not possible then it lacks to be a proper goal.
Now it comes down to personal mental management (which 95% of people utterly lack). ‘How much time am I willing to invest into a game?’ and hence ‘Will I be able to achieve my goal in it during that?’. If the answer is ‘no’ then why the actual fuck are you here? Go and pick a game which provides exactly that! In the diablo-clone sub-genre we have a wide variety of games providing a large variety of goalposts. Why chose one which doesn’t align with yours?
If the answer is ‘yes’ but it is vastly below your time investment you’re willing to do? Well… go and enjoy the game until you reach the end-point. Then get the hell out instead of complaining for it to become pushed further back for your own sake. You’ve had your fun, what more do you want?
And then the optimum which barely never happens. A simple ‘yes’. Perfect! Welcome to your dream-game of the genre.
So, you’re at the ‘no’ status. So why are you here? There’s games for you out there. I can recommend Torchlight Infinite, Chronicon, D3, D4… wait, the last one… scratch that one, it’s shit even despite that for different reasons. But the others… take em!
Yes, and they’re a great thing to use if you know how to handle statistics.
To be fair, 80% of layers don’t invest more then 5 hours into a game. So… should we make games solely for those 80%?
Would be senseless, don’t you agree?
Should we only make games for the majority?
What is the denominator for deciding how long people play a game?
Is it too hard? Is it too complex? Is it too easy? Is it too simplistic?
Hence why all that garbage can be thrown overboard. You don’t decide by those, you take them as measurement points for the whole thing. Hence… first you pick a target audience.
You check if games exist for your target audience, which people are your target audience and then make the game accordingly.
We got a great game for ‘endless players’ which is called ‘Path of Exile’, high complexity, long investments up to thousands of hours… well, wanna compete with that?
Nah, forget it.
We also got the same genre with low investment and simplistic mechanics. D3. Wanna compete with that? Would also be dumb.
So what do you do?
Oh? there’s not really something in-between?
Heck yeah! Let’s choose that!
And now lets adjust everything to take less long then PoE but longer then D3, make complexity less daunting then PoE, QoL higher then PoE but everything more complex then D3.
Nice! We got a game, let’s call it ‘Last Epoch’ and send it out!
Oh shit… people gobble it up because we know what the friggin target audience is actually!
That’s what we have here, welcome to LE. It’s not supposed to be PoE and it’s not supposed to be D3, it’s the middle-ground which hasn’t been seen on the market.
D2 is a very highly aged (30+) community which a large portion plays for Nostalgia’s sake, core-audience leftover from the time before.
Much like there’s still a surprisingly vast community with ‘Supreme Commander’ nowadays despite being over 10 years old.
The game was good, hence core-players stayed. You can re-play them nigh endlessly and hence people stay.
Remove the replay-value and you won’t see that. Show me the grand community around ‘Zelda: A Link to the Past’ which was a masterpiece for the time. Outside of Randomizers and speedrunners there is no community. It’s swiftly ‘played out’ and hence over, replay value is purely nostalgia and hence enjoyment… but not in the grand scheme of things.
So any game that can be ‘played out’ is not something which exists beyond 1-2 years, it’s just not a thing.
In 20 years games like D2, PoE, LE, Minecraft, Supreme Commander, CS 1.6 and so on will still be there and played likely… but games like ‘Chronicon’, ‘Ori and the Blind Forest’, ‘Zelda: A Link to the Past’ and so on will be a side-note. Fantastic games… you’ll even enjoy someone who’s never picked it up play it, but you personally won’t re-play it 10 times since there’s no ‘value’ in that. The story is told. Everything available is 100% reached with no option for more outside of speedrunning and modding.
Yes, because those are the ‘invested’ people.
Would you enjoy tourists deciding how your village/city is changed? After all they are there once, for a day… so why not? We should take their points into consideration! Sure, you’ll spend there 1000 times as much… but why should you have more say hence?
Same with games. Long-term players have and always should have more say in the matter of the game. Never ever piss off your core audience or your game fails and the franchise itself also fails.
Internal mentions were about 10% of players which play more then 2 hours have beaten Kitava, hence the campaign.
I don’t know if it holds true, but if we go by that all development focus should go into the campaign. Nonetheless we see development focus going towards more and broader end-game aspects, basically pleasing between 1-5% of players on how it’s changed from league to league.
Why?
Because they’re the core audience. The lifeblood of the game.
The other 95%? Needed to come, take a look, spend some money and then leave again as the majority does. If you try to cater to them the game wouldn’t be the same game and likely just die off.
Agreed, 100%
It hasn’t been done to date.
It’s a new thing only visible in LE.
It sucks.
It needs to go.
Either make it a permanent thing or adjust to allow non-punishing changes. Simple as that.
Problem here is switching needs a different penalty and to not ruin a players equipped gear progression
I do not agree with making faction choice permanent as i said before this gate keeps players that prefer to push as far as they can getting there own loot then switch to trade to finish off there build/s
The penalty already does this after while in late end game
Nobody is gatekeeping you, that isn’t what gatekeeping means, and it doesn’t make your complaint stronger to keep using that term incorrectly as an emotional appeal. Gatekeeping is not a synonym for “Anything that keeps me from getting what I want”.
What you’re doing is called a Motte and Bailey - what you want is not to push as far as you can without trade and then start trading. It is dishonest of you to keep claiming that’s what you want, because you already have it. Nothing is stopping you from joining MG and not using it until you’re ready to finish off your build.
What you actually want is just to abuse all the drop rate benefits of CoF to gear up faster while you build the wealth you need to use MG to get your super endgame gear. You aren’t being gatekept, you just want all the bonuses and none of the drawbacks. That isn’t a valid request. Sorry.
Yes, this is totally true, sadly. Although, in their defense, they’re a new studio and are only now learning how hard it is to balance a complex chaotic system like an RPG. Also in their defense, this is exactly the same thing that happened with PoE.
I expect that over time they’ll get the hang of it and manage to balance better, also like GGG did.
This is not to excuse them. The game being totally unbalanced on so many things right now is definitely their responsibility and they should do better.
It’s just to say that, at least for me, they do get a pass (for some time), especially when they’ve done so many things right (or right-ish), especially communication and transparency to the community.
To me, this has an easy solution:
-The campaign should be made with casuals in mind. So that the casuals that only play 5h actually play 10-20h. They should get an incentive to keep playing the campaign rather than give up halfway through.
-Endgame should be made with “hardcore” players in mind. I put hardcore in quotes because it doesn’t have to be the type of player PoE or D2 caters to. It can be more casual (hopefully never too close to D3, but that is a valid option as well). Anyway, the endgame is clearly balanced towards the minority that sticks around cycle after cycle.
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