My feedback for devs after 200 hours played in LE

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hi,
I’ve been playing Last Epoch for a while during Season 2, and here’s my feedback focused purely on technical aspects. I won’t cover game content, as others have already done that far better than I could. I’ve organized the feedback based on my own subjective priorities and perceived importance.

High Priority

Poor Optimization / Unstable FPS Performance

I’m running an i5-11600K, 32GB RAM, and an RTX 3060, playing in Full HD. It’s not a high-end rig, but I’d still expect it to handle any modern ARPG at over 100 FPS on decent settings—especially at 1080p.

Sadly, Last Epoch struggles to deliver consistent performance. While I sometimes hit my FPS cap of 136, most of the time—especially in Monolith maps—I’m stuck between 50–100 FPS, depending on the environment and combat intensity. For me, anything under 100–110 FPS significantly worsens the experience: loot readability while moving drops, the image feels sluggish and blurry, immersion is broken, and eye strain increases. With a setup like mine, I believe the game should maintain 100+ FPS 99% of the time on something like the “High” preset (with medium shadows), unless the screen is absolutely flooded with enemies.

Also worth noting: changing graphical settings doesn’t usually have much effect on my FPS, which further indicates optimization issues. Stable and scalable performance on mid-to-good gaming setups should be a top priority for any modern game.

Bugged Melee Hitboxes

I often play melee characters and enjoy close combat, and while melee in LE is generally solid, it suffers from one critical flaw: hitbox issues.

Because of a physical handicap that affects my right hand, I often use “move and attack” on left click for easier control. Unfortunately, this setup makes hitbox bugs even more noticeable. Some enemies can’t be targeted with the mouse at all, others have poorly aligned or too-small hitboxes. This makes targeting inconsistent and leads to frustrating encounters—especially during boss fights, where a misclick due to faulty targeting can put you in danger when trying to retreat.

Gender Lock / Basic Character Creation

I’ve seen this discussed before, and I’m aware of the challenges involved, but for me, this really matters. I have a hard time enjoying ARPGs if I’m forced to play a female character. I get that LE has a narrative, but it’s not a deeply story-driven RPG. I play ARPGs to create my own character—and as someone who isn’t a girl, it feels off to play as one.

This is one reason why I’ve spent a lot of time in Diablo 4: it lets me play any class as male or female. I’d love the option to play a male Rogue in LE as well. Even just a minimal character creator—gender, skin tone, hair color—would be REALLY nice.

Normal Priority

UI Clickthrough Bug

Occasionally, clicks go through the UI while I’m in menus like settings, inventory, or crafting—causing my character to move. It’s not game-breaking, but very annoying.

More Advanced Graphics Settings

Some options seem to be hidden behind detail presets. Please give players more granular control over graphics settings.

Player/NPC/Monster Outlines

It would be great to let players customize outline color and thickness—for accessibility, basic orientation during action and personal preference.

Low Priority

Cosmetics

  • Allow armor recoloring (like in Diablo 4)
  • Please include some less flashy armor sets, weapons, cloaks and portals
  • Introduce a loot-pickup pet with simple filtering options (e.g., what rarity or item types it should collect)

Visual Style / Visual Clarity

At times, characters look like they’re made of shiny plastic—too much light, too many reflections. The visual style can feel off or sterile. This somewhat connects with other points like antialiasing, lighting, and general effects.

Also, the game sometimes lacks visual clarity - sometimes I need a second, two or three to tell whats going on, wheres the enemy mobs and so on, this should imho never happen.

Antialiasing

FXAA and SMAA aren’t very effective in LE and TAA just turns everything into a blurry mess during motion. We need better options that reduce jagged edges without killing image sharpness. Also, support for DLSS 3.5 (Transformer) and FSR 4 would be highly appreciated. this being said - DLSS or FSR4 shouldnt be the only way to get good AA.

Volumetric Lighting

Some areas using volumetric lighting look oddly washed out / lack depth. This could use some fine-tuning.

Character Deletion Confirmation

Why is typing the character name before deletion optional? This should always be enabled to prevent accidental deletions.

Gore & Combat Feel

A bit more gore, blood and visual impact would go a long way. Combat also needs to feel heavier and more impactful to immerse me into power fantasy.

1 Like
2

Yes, one major point. Especially item generation is still a bit iffy at times, also sudden FPS dips happening from time to time.

This is more because they’re extremely small and unclear. You’re prone to missing, pronounced with daggers extra so, and not in a positive way.
A small amount of auto-target helping to ensure when in the general area of an enemy you actually target an enemy would be more often good then bad. Just needs to feel natural which is the biggest issue.

How is that ‘high priority’?
Is the game broken without that top-layer function? That’s a low priority thing, even if you personally depict it as high priority.

How so? Provide a few examples for what specific thing.
I’m always for UI optimizations… and LE can use them really badly at times, but the ‘how’ and especially ‘what’ is the point.

Agreed with the safety feature, baffling it’s not always on.

3

Which means you wouldn’t play:

  • The original Diablo
  • Diablo 2
  • Path of Exile
  • Path of Exile 2

The idea that you play action-RPGs to make your own character is kinda weird, considering how many games in that subgenre do not allow you to do that.

2 Likes
4

Like I said in the beginning - its my feedback and subjective. I consider being able to immerse into the game - and in ARPGs into my character a very important aspect of the game.

Texture resolution is certainly one thing, but there must be others - if I for instance use very high preset and turn every single other setting to low, game still looks better than on low preset. Also most of the graphical settings have minimal impact on performance and some do minimal changes or no changes (volumetric lightning - theres a clear difference between very low and low, but after that?.. atleast they should make a tooltip what it does and wheres the difference…)
I would like to control texture resolution, sharpness, more steps in gamma, particles, amount of simultaneous effects, also wish theres was some dynamic scaler for effects with FPS threshold - for instance, keep the game above 90 FPS by removing some effects, reducing shadow quality, reflections and so on.

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I respect original Diablo and Diablo 2, but for me I have never played them, I was never interested in them, even when they released - and I guess its for the same reason, cant immerse myself into them - for me, even as a kid, they always looked off and outdated…
Ive had my fair share of games back then and it was enough, I really dont have the need to relive it - its 2025 now and what I want from games evolved. I consider gender lock in ARPG thats like post-2015 release a major negative, especially if it is live service and not one and done title.

As for Path of Exile 1 - i have 1500 hours in it - but yes - playing 99% of the time duelist and shadow - would like to play male ranger or necro, but same problem as with LE. Tried it and it just doesnt work for me, I must force myself into playing it instead of just enjoying it.

Path of Exile 2 - played it for few hours and thats it - game is truly Early Access and to be honest, without Chris Wilson at the helm, I feel like theres a good chance game will fail somewhat. Feels to me like devs underestimated their own community, dont know where do they want to take the game in reaction to players. Too early even for early access and they clearly took too much on their shoulders trying to work on both PoE 1 and 2. For me its just a mess thats currently floating on a lot of good will from previous times with a solid chance of sinking and playerbase reverting to PoE 1. As for characters - same problem, yes… For now… I will just wait for 1.0 version and make my final opinion then…

6

Mind you, this genre is not immersive, it’s focused on mechanical execution and loot acquisition. More recent games include more aspects branching out (which is overall good) but it’s not the focus.

So you expect companies to invest double the resources per character base-class to make the relevant animations, voicelines and models a major negative?

That’s kinda… odd.

I mean I get the immersion part, and I absolutely accept that, but expecting it to exist is a bit beyond definitely. When AI is far enough to take over those types of work reliably and with respectively high quality then sure, until then just ‘nah’.

I have the same feeling actually :joy: Albeit it seems more like Chris has also been a bit… heavy leaning towards a few things, still don’t trust the ‘we split amicable’ as otherwise he would’ve at least provided info to the community, ya know, a 1 minute ‘goodbye’ video would’ve been kinda the minimum.

7

Which is interesting. Considering only Last Epoch, you:

  • Cannot use magic
  • Are not a mass murderer
  • Do not live in Etera
  • Cannot time-travel to the past
  • Are not a woman

And yet only the last of those statements breaks your immersion. Why is that?

3 Likes
8

Because perception and priorities for people are different and quite severely so at times, created from how you were treated and experienced the world up to this point.

So it’s acceptable to be the case and nosy to ask for the exact reasoning behind it (as that’s private information by then, leads into very private topics usually) but expectations to be fulfilled in those cases to be realistic are another topic.

9

Its not early access anymore, game had a major success, so yes, more than a year after launch I expect that. There are also other solutions - like use microtransactions for this or using already finished models, just fine tune them - like use sentinel model but with rogue abilities.

Sure, thats why I support the game and have no problem to wait for some things - but its year after release and to be honest, I would hate to wait 5 years for character customization - I also do not require anything too complicated - just give me to choose atleast between male and female - would be nice to have like skin color and hair color, but thats it, dont need anything more. If they have time for supporter packs and cosmetics on top of that, im sure they can find a way. Also they have the resources now, its not like they sold 10.000 copies, have a playerbase of 2000 and theyre done.

10

You realize that this is the amount of cost 3 Acts of gameplay (which should actually be there in 1.0 but we still don’t have it) would cost? We’re talking about roughly 150000€ here, if not more.

Do you think this feature would cause the respective influc of people making up for that cost? And which otherwise important improvements would you push down the list? Acts? MTX which provide ongoing revenue? New mechanics to add more breadth to the game… which it still needs after 1.2, just not aaaas direly?

What would you sacrifice for it? Resources are always limited after all.

That’s the biggest part which is hard to do though! I mean… I would like the choice too, but I know what sort of effort is behind it. As said, roughly 150k€ is to be expected for models, animations and voicelines there.

I’ve done the math a while ago, unless I missed something they got roughly funds for 2 years from now on unless a major revenue intake comes. Given the count of workers as well as usual server costs (which have been set extremely low in my example). More likely that it’s actually less. I would need to find the topic it was discussed in though, don’t remember what it was initially about as it went on a tangent.

11

The answer is quite simple - I like fantasy, scifi and also enjoy dark, gritty, and bleak stories, worlds and so on. I also like to project myself into games, power fantasy, imagine myself as a powerful character and I play games to have fun and somewhat fulfill my fantasies about these things. In reality - sure I dont like conflicts, any sort of fights and so on, but in games? I like gore, fights, dark stories, complicated characters and so on… but in any case I dont fantasize about being a woman.

2 Likes
12

I do realize that its not an easy thing, but they can also hide it behind microtransaction to get some costs back - and they can use already completed models - add hair there, change skin color there, fix some animations, and there ya go. Its not a character customization in classic sense, but those who want it have atleast some way to enjoy game on their terms.

Also - i dont want it to look selfish - but its not my work to figure “how”, I am a customer and I merely say my feedback and what I want. Sure, Im just one guy and I know my place, but yeah on the other hand, If I could swap gender of my chars, It would surely mean more playtime for me and also more money from me.

What I would sacrifice? For me personally, I would rather wait longer for continuation of campaign, have a month or two delay for next season to get to some customization and more stable FPS performance in the game. But I realize that delaying seasons too much is not good for the game, so realistically, I would just like to see that something is in the pipeline and will be ready lets say at the end of the year.

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It’s not as easy as that, the item bases are distinctly different between classes, it’s mostly about voicelines and animations for the clas-sspecific armor and helmets, well… armors mostly. They’re not made with a male character (or female character vica verse) in mind and would need to be re-done.
Knowing several people doing 3D modelling I know just how finnicky that stuff is, that’s tens of hours of work-time included there.

Fair, but knowing the ‘how’ adapts the expectations accordingly.
Much like I for example don’t ask the maker of ‘Ostranauts’ (a new EA release one-man indie title which is really early) to have completely functional mechanics for a colony-sim… because it’s his second game, his first was great but he got absolutely ‘0’ clue on how to make a colony sim yet and it shows mechanically.

The same with LE, they were a small indie company for a long time in EA before growing, having not adapted their content-pipeline properly yet and should still be in EA actually. They did release though and hence they get quite harsh reviews and asks from me for the mechnical aspects as those are mandatory aspects of a release canditate, as well as having the content-pipeline prepared properly, initial hiccups allows but definitely not those they produced :stuck_out_tongue:

That for example is acceptable as a personal part, and plainly spoken… I personally don’t give 2 shits about the campaign. But I know that the campaign is an important tool for ‘catching’ player long-term, and a lackluster or ‘wrongly balanced’ experience is extremely detrimental to the long-term health of such a game. Which is why I’m asking that to be done despite knowing it won’t provide me personally with something good I care about… but it’ll keep a game alive and thriving which I actually do care about :wink:

But I agree with the stability and balancing, those should definitely be up front.

And I’m all too fine with it coming the moment the core issues of the game are solved. That means we having a smooth progression, proper scaling between end-game content and campaign, a finished campaign and at least baseline breadth of content for end-game so people can theoretically play a year non-stop without running out of things to progress and builds to improve… realistically improve in some way rather then ‘in 500 hours might a potential craftable item drop’.

Then I’m fully on board and would really enjoy immersive additions.

14

Well, I think they can do both now - improve the game - add more content, improve optimalization, work on bugs and on second rail someone can work on some basic character customization - I mean, I know its not an easy task, but also - now they know “how”, its “just” do more of it, also they have more resources and its not like team cant work on many things - in many cases different people work on different stuff.

By no means I expect miracles and I also dont want game to fail, but im giving this feedback so that devs know, that there are players, which care about this stuff a bit more - in hope that someone will prioritize this a bit more.

Also, to be honest - skins and so on make shitload of money. One horse in World of Warcraft made more money than Starcraft 2. People care about looking good (and many times they care about that more than they say publicly or even realize) - sure, dont milk it too much, but this is also a good way to sustain the game and its development. For example - give me male Rogue, some less flashy, bit more “realistic” armor sets and so on and I will buy them - I like the game and have no problem to buy some more cosmetics. I like good games and I also like nice graphics. Were in 2025, devs can do both. :slight_smile:

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I’ll trust in their ability to split their focus between 2 things properly when they prove that… because currently they didn’t even get their 1.0 content up to par yet… so my trust in that is not there for the moment :stuck_out_tongue:

Would be nice overall though.

Also comparing WoW insanity with the overall gaming world is not really helpful, there’s been some really ‘off the deep end’ players there, and that’s coming from someone who’s got over 8k hours in PoE 1 since it got released. It’s not common for companies to make that much money from individual MTX unless it’s something really special by now.

16

Did the devs state that?

Which would still require the majority of the work to be done since the animations would need to be reworked/redone.

I suspect that since they’re still focussing on getting all of the “core” stuff for the game in that they’re prioritising that over other things. My concern is that prioritising gameplay/content over this could be used to continually kick that particular can down the road continually.

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Knowledge of pricing and time investment related from people working in similar fields and being personal acquaintances. Unless the price-range is especially different over there or they’re cheaply cheaply outsourcing it should come at least close.

Which for a while is fine, but definitely not permanently.

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18

The thing is, the playable (male) characters in Last Epoch already are not like you. You are already using suspension of disbelief in order to ignore those differences. For example:

  • The Sentinel is (relatively) young and the Mage is old, so one of them is not like you
  • The Sentinel is black and the Mage is white, so one of them is not like you
  • The Primalist is heavy-weighted and the Mage is light-weighted, so one of them is not like you

And yet those things apparently do not bother you, you just overlook them.

Why is it, then, that specifically the character’s gender bothers you so?

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I#m childish inside but a old man on the outside… so how dare you! I’m both clearly! :joy:

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To be quite honest, those things bother me too, but I am trying to find middle ground - I cant reasonably expect fully featured character customization in ARPG, so I am focusing on the main thing for me - gender lock. I can somewhat imagine being old, having different skin color and so on, but cant do that with woman and also simply dont want to - I feel like some kind of weirdo… There are some boundaries to my imagination.