Early Game - The Early Game experience in LE is rough. The characters overall feel very weak, some more than others. It’s basically a walking simulator and slugfest trying to get through the very early levels till you can enhance a skill. In comparison to POE, where you get swarmed right out of the first town and you can quickly level up a couple times. You also get a support on your main skill + a speed flask early on. So LE in comparison is much much slower of a start, and this can feel especially bad when trying to create multiple different classes. It’s okay the first few times around, but it REALLY starts to feel bad and make me not want to create new characters till there’s some massive content updates, or a fresh season. Its just too damn boring for me and there’s no easy way for me to speed through this process. Again I will use POE as a comparison, where players can acquire many many powerful early game uniques. There are even boots that gives 50% movement speed that players can put on at lvl 1. Rerolling in POE is easy and fast, and people still really hate it even with all the early game uniques that exist. So LE will have even more people annoyed, with it’s slow early progression.
Suggestions for Early Game Improvements - I would start off by introducing more low level uniques. These uniques should be designed for improving the process of rerolling alts to be a much faster/smoother process. Uniques that possibly scale with your character or prioritize movement speed. I would also advise that EHG try to move quest portals closer, if there’s nothing but empty space. There is no benefit to making someone walk to get to a zone when you can make it an instant transition. Don’t forcefully waste time. Either put mobs there so I feel like I’m fighting my way through to the checkpoint, or just remove the empty space altogether. This is much more of a problem early on, than it is later in the campaign.
Campaign - The campaign is pretty straight forward and it’s good that the zones that contain the quest objective are viewable on the map. There are checkpoints in most of the zones, not all of them though. Overall I feel like the progression through the Campaign feels okay.
Suggestions for Campaign Improvements - Sometimes I was spending a great deal of time looking for a Campaign objective, and the location wasn’t popping up until I got extremely close. An easy way to improve this is to always display the Quest Arrow(that exists already), to point players in the generic direction they need to go. None wants to run through a zone and be told to backtrack through the entire area cause they missed something that they couldn’t see… It will be a great thing for newer players or people who are more nooby at ARPG games. I don’t think it would hurt the experience at all, again you don’t want to waste people’s time.
Quests - Specifically when it comes to the campaign, there are too many random side quests that exist. When looking at them they will say they give a passive skill point, but they don’t if you’ve already reached 15/15. Some of them include a ton of backtracking and huge zones, it really doesn’t feel rewarding to do side quests after you’ve unlocked all the idol slots and 15 passives.
Suggestions for Quests Improvements - An easy way to improve Quests would be adding better quest rewards and simplifying the quest. Quests should also correctly reflect that you do NOT get passives or idol unlocks if you’ve already gotten them from other quests. I didn’t realize I had 15 points and I was like oh snap this quest says it gives me another passive? I spent my time running it and didn’t get a passive. I then realized after that the reward on the quest was wrong, and that 15 was the maximum passive points someone can get from the quests. Just make it display rewards correctly and this wouldn’t be an issue for anyone. A simple check is all that’s required to solve this… if player has 15/15 don’t display passive point reward on a side quest etc.
Skills - The skills are a huge con to me. Skills are locked behind points invested on a specific tree, and passive trees have limits based on which mastery you choose. Since Masteries cannot be interchanged, this can result in players making big mistakes that brick their characters. If you make the wrong selection for your mastery, oops you gotta relevel again. All of the skills have very specific restrictions that don’t allow for custom build creation, but rather only specific options. I feel like currently this greatly limits creativity and build creation. An example of this, is that Thorn Totems can only be played 4 different ways (Assuming it is your main skill).
Suggestions for Skills Improvements - Skill trees should be made more generic and less specified, while Uniques and Items should get more specifications and build creation options. I think every skill could use a pass of generic changes. Let players have more customization and options. Otherwise you lock yourself into X amount of builds per skill. Let’s take Thorn Totem for example. How many ways can you spec Thorn Totem?
I see only 4 options. Cold FrostBite, Crit, Poison Totems and finally Explodey Totem (Which is kinda just Frostbite/Poison but instead of summoning as many as you can you suicide them to get more burst? But its far far weaker than just summoning 9 totems… So I wouldn’t really say this is currently a viable spec. But it still is one of the 4 ways someone can build Thorn Totem).
Before you call me crazy here’s how simple my concept could be implemented to create FAR more builds per tree.
I will specifically use Thorn Totem as an example.
The node - Venom Tipped Thorns - Grants 20% chance to poison per point.
So you lock in players to ONLY this ailment right?
Here’s a way of doing it that would result in ANY ailment being usable on totems.
Ailment Tipped Thorns - Grants 20% chance to inflict X ailment of which ailment type is greatest on totems.
Now Totems can be played as ignite, frostbite, electrify, bleed, poison, time rot, doom, damned.
All that players would need to do is invest into specific ailments onto their totems.
So there would ALSO need to be new affixes that say Minions have chance to inflict “X”(Ailment).
So if you had 1 of those mods, following the logic of the “Ailment Tipped Thorns”
You would get 20% additional chance to inflict that ailment per point in “Ailment Tipped Thorns”.
I think the skill trees can be WAY more customized and generic, to allow people to really create their own custom builds.
I’m advocating for more build diversity and giving players freedom. This may require EHG to create many new affixes, but I think that the skills 100% need it. The game will get stale and boring very quick once you’ve played a few hundred hours. EHG has locked themselves into a system where they can’t just add new skills.
So if you play VoidKnight now, you will have those same skills in the future too. Same specs, same builds, same skill trees. This forces EHG to either constantly change the skill passives just to keep the game alive… which signs them up for a ton of extra work for every skill… OR… you can just make skills more generic and let players customize them via gear choice and affix selections.
That’s my suggestion and advice
Items - The item system in LE is okay, but it’s very limited due to a lock of 4 mods per item. 2 Prefix and 2 Suffix. Since I last played sealed mods are now a possibility, giving players a chance to have a 5 modded item. However, this doesn’t work if your item has 2 exalted prefixes or 1 exalted prefix + t5 of a mod you want. So in many scenarios you cannot take advantage of the sealed affixes and suffixes are very boring at the moment. I think Uniques and LP are a fantastic system. Set items are cool but need buffs to their set effects or ways to enhance them. Rares are okay in their current state. I do think there needs to be way more affixes in the game, more customization for build creation. I expect that obviously, in time, EHG will release more Uniques and Set items.
Suggestions for Items Improvements - I think there are skills that barely have any uniques items that modify them. I know the game is in Beta but I would say one of my suggestions is that the amount of Unique and Set items needs to go way up. I think Set items are okay but could use some love and improvements. I think Exalted mods need a way for obtaining them via Crafting. I will add this to my crafting suggestions. There is also a video called - Biggest problem in LE. Where a player removes all his gear and is still able to perform very well. Items do need more power, and skill trees/passive trees need less power. The power of builds needs to be shifted to be on items FAR more than it currently is. EHG has already addressed they wanna do this, but so far In the last year I have seen none of this take place yet. So hopefully this is something they will address in the future.
Crafting - So the overall crafting system in LE is great. I however don’t like the system of there being ZERO ways of obtaining exalted mods, besides as a drop. I also don’t like that you cannot duplicate an item unless it has forging potential.
Suggestions for Skills Improvements - I think that the Rune of Creation should be insanely rare and be able to duplicate an item, even if it has no forging potential. I think a way to prevent a player from making infinite copies is to allow only 1 copy to be made. I think if someone finds an absolute god tier item it should be something they can share or duplicate once its finished crafting etc. This would mean that the Rune of Creation would be a highly sought after crafting material and would be a chase item added to the game that can drop from anywhere. Kind of similar to how POE has the Mirror of Kalandra. Which is an iconic item for POE players. LE could also create an insanely rare iconic currency item that all players hope to one day drop. Currently, there is no chase currency besides Rune of Ascend which is just a random unique drop of an item type. A way to allow players to obtain Exalted items without locking it to a drop only, is to give it a tiny chance of occuring during crafting. EHG already has this in the game called “Critical Success.” Which enhances the tier of a mod. Well I think it would be WAY more interesting if while crafting there was a tiny chance that a t5 mod could be upgraded into a t6. T7 could remain as a drop only mod. This would encourage more crafting, because you’d be going for that jackpot outcome. Currently t5 is the highest you can craft and I feel like already items are currently in need of more powerful mods.
Monolith/Echos - - I think the Echo system, the first time through, is not bad at all. However, it’s horrible that every single character you make starts with 0 progression through the Monoliths. The Echo’s themselves however, have extremely boring and tedious layouts and quests. There are dead ends, lots of back tracking and sometimes the boss direction is hidden until you’ve cleared enough mobs. I found that I started falling asleep because of sheer monotony and boredom I started to feel when doing the same Echo zones over and over and over again. With no real objectives besides being sent in various directions in the zone.
Suggestions for Monolith/Echos Improvements - I think that for starters, Monolith progression NEEDS to be shared between characters. Once I unlock empowered monos, all my characters in that “season” or “server” should have it unlocked. I should be able to just farm whatever zones I want until I am ready to go into empowered echos on my alts. Having to redo ALL 10 of the Monolith zones ON EVERY character and redo ALL the quest Echos is complete garbage. This system NEEDS to be changed by the 1.0 full release of the game.
End Game - There doesn’t really feel like there is any end game. Monoliths are pretty early and mid game, Arena is just something people push for leaderboards, and all you can really do is just keep pushing your corruption # up higher and higher. It kinda feels like Diablo 3 and just going from GRift 1-140+ etc
You do Monoliths, then you do Empowered Monoliths.
Same bosses, same zones, same quests/obj in the Echos…
It’s extremely repetitive and has no sense of real progression. I think there needs to be some super end game activities and things you wanna work towards. Once again I know the game is in a beta state, but I currently don’t think LE has a real END GAME yet.
Suggestions for End Game Improvements - There really needs to be a reason that players want to improve their characters. Currently if you can do T4 Julra, that is basically the only end game boss… there is no reason to really continue playing that character.
I just don’t feel like in the current state of the game, that there is anything I can call “End Game Content”
Balance - Currently many skills and archetypes feel like absolute crap. There are a handful of meta skills that are outperforming others at such an immense level. For example In my own experience I tried to play a Frostbite Spriggan build. I was following a guide that had, before the .9 patch, been able to farm 1000 Corruption bosses and content easily. Now? I was struggling at 100 Corruption. The build creator himself said it doesn’t work anymore, and keep in mind he had a lvl 100 character with lots of min/max gear in perma offline to test the build with. On the other hand there is a skeleton build that hits for 20k dmg from a distance in empowered monos, more than 10x my Cold Spriggan. My friend came to join me on a character that was 30+ levels below me and was hitting for 3-4x my dmg( Cold Dot Werebear).
Currently the balance in LE is horrendously bad…
It doesn’t really matter if you get amazing gear, the biggest problem of LE still is very much a problem in LE.
This is the video im referencing Biggest Problem in LE
This is very much the case still in LE
So your gear barely matters, as much as the skill and passive tree you selected…
This is the greatest sin in an ARPG
Items currently don’t really matter in this ARPG
An overpowered skill will be made greater by gear
A bad skill cannot be saved by even the most amazing gear
Thanks for Reading
I got a good amount of gameplay from my purchase, but for now I will have to put LE down.
The overwhelming amount of bugs, multiplayer issues, and lack of content over this last year is putting me off of the game for now.
Hopefully EHG is able to take player feedback and continue to build and improve LE.