So I just want to say I’m loving this game. It’s probably the best ARPG I’ve played in terms of customization and fun. The enemies are great, boss design is promising, the items are cool, the classes are interesting, etc.
However, my one great concern for a game like this is that people may reach a point in trying to develop a build and become disheartened when it doesn’t work, get frustrated, and quit.
My suggestions for this would be as follows;
Similar to the Last Epoch Website; have some in game means of showing short gifs or clips of skills so players can preview skills in use.
Consider showing people a sampling of builds or sets of skills that create effective combos.
Give added information on the mastery specializations detailing what the classes can excel at, and what they do not excel at to remove misguided player intentions about making a build that simply has a low chance of working or achieving reasonable success.
I don’t think we need to hold people’s hand or give them complete build guides or anything. I just think we may need some resources outside of the forum that can point people in the right direction. In my opinion, nothing makes people quit these games like having their heart set on a specific build or playstyle and hitting a roadblock of not being able to make it work, or even more important, not understanding why it doesn’t work or how they can make more effective builds.
I really don’t want to see the game become unpopular because the community views that only 3 or 4 builds are “end game worthy”. Half the fun in this genre is making your own unique character. Whatever we can do to give information to the player and better educate them on the game’s mechanics and systems, the better.
Yeah, this could be a nice addition to the beginner tutorial. The player could get an info in the skill tags right from the start, explaining that he should pay attention to these tags in order to scale them successfully.
Just give some examples on the first playthrough and point players towards the game guide.
Fortunately there is good support on the discord channel from the likes of Boardman, Rimed, LLama8…etc. For an early access game there is a good base of knowledge out there from some very experienced players.
Yeah, its a great site. However, I’m still concerned. Skill calcs and builders help people perfect things, but I don’t want to see this game struggle because it caters to the people who are willing to spend outside time on external websites or forums. The in-game experience can’t be overstated here. It’s make or break for lots of casuals whether or not the in game experience itself can provide enough tools and information for them to enjoy the game.
Once people are “hooked” these external tools are great, but what I’m concerned about is losing people before then. If people get the impression this game can’t be enjoyed without (hyperbole for example’s sake) “hours of research” we’ll in the current situation PoE is in where it has a problem getting new players who are intimidated by the complexity - only worse cause it will happen right out of the gate.
Unlike PoE you don’t need to use outside sources to understand how to play or to make a build that does damage. Yes, these resources are available but they aren’t necessary for hopping on and having fun. I would say that isn’t really true for PoE, you can completely brick yourself without a huge chunk of knowledge.
While I’m with you in the general concern to make the introduction of new players smooth and easy I also like a game having some deeper mechanics that need to be explored rather than just handed over.
In it’s current state LE has a good new player introduction. As you stated this could be improved further. But it’s also not that bad currently.
Having outside resources of knowledge like guides, forums, build planners and so on is a nice addition to dive in deeper and master the min maxing. It encourages people to engage with the community. Take part as a user (leeching knowledge) and forcing conversation about mechanics that may be unclear.
I’ve seen it a lot that when people went past the first hurdle and asked their first questions on the forum, they are impressed by the amount of help the community provides. They get warm with it and take part in more and more discussions.
So complexity that forces community engagement also keeps the community alive and healthy. Give people something to do. Give them topics that are worth having guides about.
If 100% of everything is right in front if you there’s no incentive to talk about anything. So imho there should be some room for community work
