My comprehensive feedback and suggestions on Last Epoch

Feedback and Suggestions
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Hello Travelers & LE Developers,

This is going to be a list of my general observation and feedback on the game and an attempt to provide suggestions (or rather inspiration) to the team.

I would like to pre-face everything by saying I love Last Epoch and that is the exact reason I am writing such a long list (If Raxx can get away with it, so can I lol - ily Raxx<3).

I have been playing each season for at least 100 hours and more, soon clocking it in Season 4 as well and I want to see the game grow as I do think it has lots of potential and the core of the game is just really good. I’m not going to talk about Krafton or any of the past announcements around the Expansion and the announced Paradox Classes. I purely want to provide feedback based on the game’s current state and hopefully some inspiration to the Team developing this fantastic game.

Feedback and Problems with the game

There are two major problems with the game right now:

  • The first one is performance, which I can’t say much about, but I do feel like the game still has issues even after the numerous improvements. It certainly feels better, but it is not perfect as memory leaks still happen. High density, such as Omens have a ridiculous amount of rubberbanding which makes them difficult to enjoy or even complete sometimes - yes, even on a high-end PC.

  • The second issue is Player Retention which stems from multiple problems. The first is Gear Progression. Gear progression is a sensitive subject, because getting 1LP items can be really easy for the most part, but there is a very large gap between 1LP and 2LP or higher items, because they are significantly harder to get and get the correct affixes on a slam. This is not a problem, but when a Player gets a 2LP or higher item of the rarer type, they usually wait for “the perfect” item to use, usually a triple or quadruple exalted item of the wanted affixes, resulting in not being able to slam said unique in over 150 hours of gameplay. Fishing for items is good and healthy for the game, but some aspects of gearing should be more deterministic and less time consuming, excluding chase items, of course. Exalted gear also needs more character and force the players to make a decision in gearing.

  • Player Retention is also low because there is little to no depth to the game and what currently exists can be frustrating to deal with.

I also think that the Last Epoch development team needs to find a balance between adding small QoL option and making large and impactful additions and changes to the game. Based on the 1.4.0 and 1.4.2 Patch Notes, it feels like the emphasis is more on the QoL side. The game needs more depth and more variety and also more player agency to the game and should be the main focus on Season Releases and larger mid-season patches should also focus on major bug fixes and adjustments to aspects of the game that were incorrectly tuned (excluding character build changes as the team has stated they will NOT do this besides bugfixing). Smaller mid-season patches then could focus on Quality of Life improvements that are not groundbreaking but still make the game more polished.

Suggestions

General Gameplay and QoL

  1. Shrine effects should be possible to be cancelled.

  2. When portalling out of a dungeon, the portal should automatically teleport the player to the entrance of the recently completed dungeon. This reduces unnecessary friction and frustration when a player accidentally teleports out as a result of autopilot behaviour.

  3. Less seasons should focus on introducing new Idols. We currently have 3 type of idols, of which the original idols are very rarely used other than class specific idols. Instead, new idol affixes should be introduced or a new way to interact with, or enhance already existing idols.

  4. General monster density should be increased, ideally doubled to improve player satisfaction.

  5. Memory leaks are still present even after the improvements.

  6. The jump between Level 90 Monoliths and Empowered Monoliths is way too high and feels really bad when a character is too strong for Level 90 but too weak for Corruption 100. Players should have more agency selecting their entry level to the endgame by adding an option to start at 50 Corruption rather than 100. Daring players still can select 100 Corruption if they want. The first harbinger beyond the entry level to Empowered still should only spawn at 100 Corruption.

  7. The Shade of Orobyss fight is very outdated, and there are certain attacks, such as Blackhole Explosion that are almost impossible to get around on high corruption, especially if the Player Build is very visual-heavy and the attack cannot be seen.

  8. The game is currently loot driven and the player power comes mainly from items for the most part. This is good, but gear progression needs to be much more deterministic. Both item factions have their flaws on this part, as Circle of Fortune turns the game into a slot-machine simulator and Merchants’ Guild has a scarce supply of high tier multi-exalted items. I will touch on this point later on in the Factions and Nemesis points.

  9. An exalted item should only be able to have up to two exalted affixes: This eliminates the craving hunger of looking for a “perfect” item and adds more character to existing items. It allows for more decision in gearing as players would now have to choose which affixes they want to have as exalted. This will result in improving gearing and resolve a lot of friction and also frustration in the long term.

General UI

  1. There should be a “Return to Character Selection” option. Currently you are required to always log out and log back in whenever you would like to switch characters.

  2. The recently introduced setting that force stops the character should be a changeable option rather than an enforced decision. Alternatively, when a full screen window is open the game should also Pause while said window is open.

  3. The Transfer button on the bottom left of the inventory should be removed as the option to manually transfer runes, glyphs and shards is removed from the Settings.

Trading

  1. I really do feel like that Merchants’ Guild is a good faction, but it misses the point and the way it exists in the game adds some frustration and A LOT of friction to the game. Merchants’ Guild should be completely revamped and available for all players. I will touch this point in the Factions point to discuss further.

Nemesis

  1. Nemesis Egg UI [hyperlink picture] should have a “Do not show again” option available when you insert an unique item for improvement.

  2. The Nemesis Egg system should be expanded in the Weaver Tree to improve deterministic gear progression while remaining true to Last Epoch’s gameplay loop. A node to the Weaver Tree should be introduced that allows for a new Egg type to spawn where players can incubate ‘Magic’ or ‘Rare’ items, in hopes of upgrading said items to exalted with the wanted affixes. The limitations of this should be that One item can only have up to three affixes and may have other limitations.

  3. To further improve deterministic gear progression, a new imprint node to the Weaver Tree should also be introduced in the Nemesis section where players can imprint a specific item type and base (such as Leonine Helmet). This will drastically improve the Nemesis to have mainly headgear and also improve the chances for the imprinted base type by 10%…

Omens

  1. Omen Windows very often spawn in awkward corners or tight corridors where the area of the zone overlaps with walls or falls off of the map, significantly reducing the spawn rate or making the completion of it frustrating. Suggesting to amend them in a way that they prioritize more open areas to appear at similarly to Gates and Beacons.

  2. Omen Idols to be included in prophecies in the future. Their drop rate also should be improved significantly.

  3. More agency to form an Idol Altar via Weaver Tree or a new type of currency. A proposition would be that an Idol Altar can be re-corrupted 1 to 3 times to partially or completely reforge it. Once reached their potential limit, they are no longer modifiable.

  4. Performance in Omen Windows significantly drop and “rubberbanding” can be experienced, especially if a higher tier window or the Omen’s Veil Woven Echo is activated.

Rift Beasts

  1. Rift Beasts with Crystallized Hearts often shoot projectiles and/or their other evolution line attacks after they die.

  2. Ancient Era zones entered via portals often still take too long. Density of this area should be significantly increased for long term player satisfaction or the length of such zones should be slightly reduced.

Tombs and Cemeteries

Tombs and Cemeteries are currently not very interesting. The novelty of introducing them in Season 2 has faded and unfortunately, they are just as tedious as The Ancient Era zone when you are evolving a Rift Beast.

  1. A Weaver Tree node should be introduced that provides more reroll or reforge capacity for the player when they interact with the forge in Tombs or Cemeteries.

  2. A Weaver Tree node should be introduced that when allocated, it increases the probability of rolling affix values on the higher end when reforging an idol. Alternatively the node should unlock a third option at the forge to keep the affixes but reroll the affix values within their tiers (similarly to Rune of Refinement).

  3. Cemetery of the Erased echoes should begin within the Cemetery. Allow Rift Beast Portals to spawn in Cemetery of the Erased, but not in Tomb of the Erased. Rift Beasts (including Ambush Rift Beasts), Ambush Orobyss, Nemesis and Exiled Mages should always be possessed when they appear in a Cemetery or Tomb.

Weaver Tree

  1. The Weaver Tree is a nice addition to the base game, but it feels very dry and not too significant. It should be re-designed (expanded) in a way where a Player could specialize to a certain mechanic much more than the Tree allows right now allowing them to decide what they want to target at a certain time.

  2. The imprint nodes should be redesigned entirely and each of them should be balanced separately, rather than collectively. It feels like the Woven Echo imprints also have been nerfed, even if the 1.4.0 patch note did not mention this. This is something that needs immediate attention as even in a 10-12 hour long session, a player only encounters an embarrassingly low amount of imprinted echoes of most of them.

  3. The Woven Echo Imprint nodes in the Weaver Tree should show how much % chance there is for said Echo to spawn in the Monolith. This is to have a more deterministic planning when setting up farm strategies.

  4. Weaver Tree templates that could be unlocked at certain levels within the Weaver Faction to allow multiple Weaver Trees to exist for quick swapping.

Factions

  1. Circle of Fortune is really tedious to use as of now. Favor is gathering slowly and has a cap of 999.999. The cap should be removed and the way prophecies work should be removed. If this or a similar iteration of CoF remains, more than 48 prophecies should also be allowed to be picked up to reduce friction.

  2. Merchants’ Guild is something that sounds really good and I enjoy the faction from time to time, but it is not something that fits an ARPG in the modern sense and feels like this game mechanic would make much more sense in an MMORPG where gear progression and loot drops are much more streamlined and deterministic. Trading should be available for all players and not only with gold but item for item basis and also allow resources to be traded as well. Gold could act as a tax rate or could also flow freely in the economy but this raises a concern if the RMT problem cannot be resolved.

A New Faction

If trading is allowed for all players, a new faction still could be introduced in exchange for Merchants’ Guild. This Faction would ideally focus on crafting.

A draft iteration of this is that the Crafting Faction will have increased chance to drop affix shards of the rarer kind (for all classes). Their forging potential of dropped item bases also increase as they Rank Up and they could also have a way to manipulate what kind of items they would like to farm (such as helmets).

The Crafting Company would have the ability to turn a Magic or Rare item into an Exalted item with a new resource “Rune (or Glyph) of the Exaltant”, costing a high amount of Forging Potential and allowing 1 random affix to become a T7 exalted and allow a second affix of the opposite side to become a maximum of T6 exalted affix.

If The Crafting Faction and the global trade market is available in the game, the two factions balance and compliment each other where the Circle of Fortune guild can target farm unique items, set items, rare runes, idols etc. very efficiently and the Crafting Guild can provide high quality crafted items in exchange throughout the endgame.

An in-game trading function still should be maintained where the players are able to communicate their supply and demand. This will overall increase player interaction, incentivize people to play Online if they can and creates an economy in seasonal gameplay.

If you got here and read all of this, I can’t thank you enough and if you’re a developer, I’m really glad that something has made you click on this post.
I thrive to see the game grow to it’s full potential and beyond, and I believe that Last Epoch can be one of the greatest in the genre.

Thank you,
The Freljordian

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I agree with most of the points in this section (not sure about #9), but loot in arpgs is supposed to be rng with crafting & other systems existing to help ameliorate the rng.

If that was the case then players who didn’t want to trade would feel either left behind or forced to trade. MG does need quite a few changes (the use of gold being one of them), but forcing everybody to use trade if they don’t want to be left behind isn’t one of them.

I think the random encounter versions could also do with being somewhat smaller, akin to PoE’s vaal side areas, with fewer offshoots.

Apparently both factions are being reworked in the next season.

Very hard disagree on this. I absolutely hated PoE’s trading before they introduced the merchant tabs (& IMO, these should just have been the previous public/sales tabs converted & available much earlier in the campaign.

Bartering is an abomination that was rightly left behind by humanity thousands of years ago & having to whisper a person to meet up for a trade is just hideous 'cause unless they’re playing the trade lord class, they want to be killing mobs & if they are playing a trade lord then the don’t want to be dealing with chavs who can’t afford multi div items.

Using gold as the currency is part of the problem MG has, as is insufficient numbers of players going MG, inflation & a while host of other things. But forcing trade onto people who don’t want to trade isn’t a viable solution.

While I think the addition of a crafting faction is reasonable, I very strongly disagree with your implicit assertion that it serves as an alternative way to get loot compared to CoF. CoF/MG are trade/non-trade dichotomy, CoF isn’t for people who don’t want to play with others (though it is the only faction that makes sense for them), nor is it a faction for people who don’t want to craft, it is merely a faction for people who don’t enjoy trading.

Also, how would your crafting faction handle the universal pain point that is legendary slams?

I agree with most of your other points though

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That is something I missed, so it’s good news. I knew CoF was going to get touch-ups as it has been mentioned in one of the more recent Dev Streams, but I was not aware MG is getting changed as well.

While I would normally agree, there is SSF and SAF introduced to the game for the very reason if a player chooses not to interact with the trading system. For example if I wanted to craft and trade as well, MG isn’t suitable to me either, because the loot is much more scarce compared to CoF.

An example why I think a trade system should be established usable by everyone is where you have been farming for a rare unique, let’s say Ravenous Void. It is arguably one of the rarest items in the game, but all you drop is Red Rings and couldn’t get a pair of this gauntlet for hundreds of hours. You hit up Trade chat and offer whatever amount of Red Rings in exchange for just one 1LP Ravenous Gloves to finally save yourself from eternal damnation.

I agree that this may have flaws in the iteration I have proposed, but I do believe that the game designers of Last Epoch could refine a similar system that would make sense in this game.

It is not just an alternative way to get loot, but a system that can be tuned and refined to rely on crafting and playing into the economy. The idea I was having is that the Crafting Faction would be trading mainly slam-ready exalted items in exchange for unique items with the CoF and/or further resources such as rarer Runes and Glyphs.

If you would be playing SAF, you would still be able to access the guild’s perks just as you could join MG on a secondary character right now, but for solo players it would mean double the work - but results in a more reliable gear progression.

The main way it improves The Legendary Slam problem is by providing a higher demand of “good” items. This is a multi-step thought process and would require removing Triple and Quadruple exalts from existence entirely so people stop craving these items with perfect affixes before slamming. Creating or getting a T7T6T5T5 item is still something most people don’t ever see with the right affixes and this would incentivize settling for a T7T5T5T5 slam in most, or all cases. On an item like that, you can already reliably ensure that you would be happy if any of the affixes are slammed onto your 2LP chase unique.

I do not deny that some points may have flaws in the iterations I have listed, as I am not a Game Designer but I am more than happy to discuss them.
Some of these could also be absolutely invalidated in the near future as Season 5 and Season 6 / LE:O releases.

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No. You are confusing trade with playing with other people. CoF is for people who don’t want to trade but do want to play with other people. This is a common misconception by people who don’t seem to grasp that there’s a difference & that not everyone who plays online or with other people wants to trade.

SSF/SAF is separate from CoF for a reason.

Why do you think people might not want to craft as well as trade? You can absolutely craft on items you’ve bought & if MG was actually functional, it would likely be better for crafting (or at least not worse) since you could buy the right bases with the right affixes & craft them up. Or if you were trying to craft an item for your build but it didn’t work but it’s good for a different build you can sell it.

Yeah, I know, that’s the entire point of trade (though barter is still an abomination & should never be implemented in a game), but some people don’t like trade, they prefer to drop items themselves, possibly while playing with friends.

Also, direct player to player trade is one of the main ways to RMT, which is why EHG disabled it 2(?) seasons ago.

The demand for good/useable items isn’t the problem, it’s the supply (& not enough people playing MG, inflation, etc). I agree that a crafting faction is a nice idea, it just has to be available to CoF players as well because crafting is just as needed by them as it’s needed by MG players.

Even ideas from professionals have flaws.

But one of the basic things you appear to need to accept/understand is that CoF players like/need to craft & like to play with other people as well, they just prefer to not-trade rather than trade.