First of all, i must say Last Epoch is probably the first game after about 20 years of gaming that i feel so glad i pre-ordered and supported from the get go.
Now my only concern and the only remaining factor that will decide its longevity for me, is the multiplayer aspect of it. It also is the only reason why i never got to seriously delve into PoE in the first place.
I implore you to implement a multiplayer feature much like Diablo 3 or Warframe (my personal game heaven for the past 5 years), in the sense that you can quickly and automatically queue and find a party within the game and play alongside others and actually have a meaningful impact on synergies between classes and gameplay.
Let us assume roles of Tanks, healers, ranged and close combat DPS, and in the long run make some spells and tactics work alongside each other. Im not talking about some raid-type synergies, but dont forget that we choose online games not only for the anti-cheat mechanics but to find a sense of community, to be able to ask for help (and in fact easily find some) in order to overcome a temporary obstacle etc. and to be able to trade with each other.
Which brings me to my next point, trading. We all love to hate RNGesus and the only 100% safe-proof mechanic to unintentional poorly optimized system is the trading feature. It is so frustrating to have a build that you wanna expand upon (or build around lower level items) and be unable to find that single item that makes your build work and have to spend countless hours grinding for that single piece that will make it tick by not playing the way you actually like to play.
Looking forward to reading the communityâs and developerâs thoughts on the matter!
Stay safe and make the best out of this messed up year!
I feel exactly the same way (and I also play Warframe and D3).
I really hope there is some incentive to play multiplayer so it doesnât end up like Path of Exile because I get bored of games really quickly when playing solo. When people group up together it should be a more efficient way to farm because of teamwork and skill synergy.
I also really hope they change it so you can have multiple characters with the same name before multiplayer releases like Diablo 3. I really hate having to put numbers and symbols after my name.
I would like to make a prediction, healers will not exist in multiplayer LE. All classes have way too much access to sustainability on top of the fact that once you push to a sufficiently high arena/monolith, itâs just a matter of time of getting oneshot. They would really need to smoother the scaling for healers to be a thing.
I personally belive that there will be no strict tank/heal/dps meta coming out of the MP aspect.
What i can think of are builds that focus more on the defensive side and builds that go a little bit more âglass cannon styleâ. Also there is the possibility of some âsupport playstyleâ, because there already a handful of skills that interact with allies, like heals, buffs, aura, ground effects etc.
I would love support playstyle be viable and actualy contributing to the groups performance, especially in combination with above mentioned tank and glass cannon playstyle.
But LE already has a good foundation for meaningful multiplayer interaction. Alot will depend on the scaling of the content when playing in a group.
Of course, that is practically unavoidable in all kinds of multiplayer games. Now in a PvE focsued game the only thing this is âreallyâ important for is leaderboards and stuff.
The question now is, how well will be the bottom end and the top end balanced, that is challenging for the devs.
Letâs take our favorite example D3, while i donât played D3 myself very much or competetive i do know that most of the time the leaderboards looked very silly, basically top X thousand group setups basically looked the same, with some very very few different setup sprinkeled in there.
I am not even 100% sure if that was because it was that unbalanced or most of the player bases didnât even bother finding âother setupâ.
Now D3 is a game that had a little bit more restricted classes compare to LE.
So my point here is, if you try to make a variety of builds viable for endgame on a competive level, how far apart would they be.(We need some really good measurement for that, which are currently not present in the game).
I am ok with Group Setup X is âthe bestâ, as long as Group Set Up Y, Z, XY, XZ are at least âclose to itâ power. Of course there will be large differences between various builds, especially one that might not even try to be competetive.
The mistake D3 made was letting you view the gear/build of players on the leaderboard. If you wanted to know which build is best then you just copied whoever is at number 1, then before you know it almost everybody is running the same build. It was made worse by the fact that you could change your skills whenever you like with no penalty.
I really hope we will be able to view other players gear in Last Epoch when they are in your game, but not on the leaderboards.
I REALLY donât want this to be the whole point of multiplayer. How boring.
I would prefer multiplayer bring some new dimensions to the game (as in new ways to play). Multiplayer just being more of the same as solo, but faster, is pointless. There needs to be things that require more than one person to accomplish, and I donât just mean via difficulty. I mean dungeons that have paths that split and require the party to split up to open doors and such. Bosses that are invulnerable unless 3 pressure plates are stood on at the same time. I want some actual strategy to be involved in multiplayer. Not just faster grind.
Implement multiplayer, but donât go the D3 route of making it exponentially better than playing solo.
Implement trading, but donât balance drop rates around it to the point where players who donât want to trade are screwed.
In other words, make these systems truly optional. Not the version of âoptionalâ that translates to âyou donât NEED to join a group/you donât NEED to trade, but your experience is going to suck if you donâtâ.
On one hand I like the idea of having bosses that are more mechanically complex that require multiple people. But on the other hand, I know that that will just piss off the people that canât (or wonât) play with others. I donât think thereâs any good way round itâŚ
The problem with trade in a loot-focussed game is that if the game is balanced around trade, people who donât trade are screwed (D3 pre-RoS). If itâs not balanced around trade, then people who do trade will gear up much faster than people who donât (probably PoE). And Iâm not sure if there is a way to balance the two. Maybe players get an mf buff until they use trade?
Item progression in LE feels perfectly tuned right now. If you allow unrestricted trading between the player community it is going to be too easy to progress items, creating other serious issues in the process:
items are going to be meaningless within a week of season release [this comment is based on the LE item system as it currently is - with a strong crafting system and 4 item affix limits for rares];
you are going to have 1000âs of bots spamming players to pay-to-win;
without item progression as a long term goal most players will lose interest in the game quickly (item progression is a primary attraction in ARPGs).
My recommendation, if you insist on allowing players to trade then at least include the D3 limitation on trading and only allow trading of items within the group that found the drop and only for a limited period of time (e.g. 2 hours).
I understand everyone wants something different from a game and you canât please us all. For me, a game has to be difficult or I will get bored of it quickly.
As for multiplayer, I look at what POE and D3 each do right and wrong. POE does a lot of things right and as a game Iâd rate it as far superior to D3 in just about every aspect EXCEPT multiplayer. High-end mapping group play in POE is ugly (huge frame drops, 1000s of trash items on the ground, players donât take any damage due to the amount of auras, curses, etc.).
D3âs greater rifts system and game balance is much better aligned to a multiplayer environment. If you want to do a multiplayer system, recommend you consider something that better resembles the feel of greater rifts
IMO, trading in POE is necessary for the same reason trading in D3 and LE is not necessary.
It has to do with the item complexity (4affix max vs 6 affix max etc.) and the crafting system (LE lets you make an item from scratch with all the correct affixes - granted the tiers may not end up all that high, but the affixes are correct which is what really matters most).
The item system in LE allows players to easily build a core item set and continue to progress that item set without any help from others - this is a good thing. Hope you donât change it too much.
Yes, though if trading can only be done via the AH/bazaar with limited slots and no âbuy nowâ functionality, that would significantly reduce the ability for bots to **** with the economy or gold farmers to sell their gold for RMT (unless they allow gold trading between people, or the good old fashioned âdropping gear on the ground to tradeâ). Its not perfect, but it would be a start. Or, as someone mentioned above, only allowing person to person trade with people who have been on your friends list for a certain amount of time.
When we speaking about trading now, i think even when the old economy dev blog is outdated, as long as devs didnât do a complete 180° turn and change their mind on all aspect that whole thing sounded like they had some solid plans.
As @Llama8 said, if they introduce the AH/Bazaar thing remotely as they described it in that, the system would at least make alot of the more common ways for trading(and there for real life transactions etc.) alot harder.
Just so summarize some of the key points, even if some changed or wont make it in, whole thing was really promising for me:
Allow direct trading between player that are already befriended for a reasonable amount of time(depending on the itemâs strength). I imagine that ranging for a couple of hours/days for T0-10 items and several days/1-2 weeks for Tier 11-20 items, maybe even longer for the newly introduced T6/7 affix items
Limited Sell Slots with some kind of fee involved. Also just bidding, no instant buy, no options to remove a auction once put in.
Those two thing together with LE being a B2P Title will already reduce the amount of real life trading immensly.
There will be always gaps in system and people will find ways, but as i said earlier, i think devs have a very good vision in mind regarding the whole MP aspect.
Even with drop rates balanced around trade, those who trade are going to gear up significantly faster than those who donât. Itâs a built-in part of the system. Either you grind gold until you can buy the thing you want, or you grind gold until another great item drops that you can trade for the thing you want. Either way, youâre getting the thing you want faster than youâd have gotten it through grinding, no matter how the drop rates are balanced.
If you choose to engage in trading, you forfeit the right to whine about the pacing of the âloot/gear curveâ because youâre intentionally bypassing that curve.
Balance for people who donât trade. If the traders want to whine about their stuff ânot being worth enoughâ, theyâre literally whining that other players arenât being pushed hard enough into buying their crap to increase its demand, and I have a hard time being sympathetic to that.
When I say balance around players who donât trade, I donât even necessarily mean to make gearing up as easy as it is in D3. However, with that said, I prefer gearing up in D3 to gearing up in PoE, and the latter is balanced around having an in-game economy. Grinding for hours to get enough gold/orbs/currency to trade for gear isnât satisfying for me at all, which is why I rarely do it.
The only almost safe way to implement trading without gold/item sellers outside the game is to sell from the official shop in-game premium currency that can also be obtained in-game. In my opinion, and since i never had any problems paying a developer for a good game, i dont mind that. BUT, this is something the devs said they will never do, and also it is a fact that most players find premium currency a money grab.
