Btw if I had to generalize everything you people said into one issue. I would say you people are missing a reason(need) to play and to continue to play the game. All the disagreements I would say come from your personal opinions on what you want to fulfil that need.
Still better than PoE1 (where there isn’t even a hint of T16 existing).
Wrong. After 300c there is Aby. There is no actual requirement to beat Aby. You can make a new character, get to level 50, jump to the last mono and kill the harbinger and immediately go kill Aby, without even entering an empowered mono.
If your build is good enough, or if you’re skilled enough, you can even kill Aby then.
500c is the average corruption at which many builds will be ready to kill Aby. But there are plenty of builds that can kill Aby immediately at 300c.
All the quest guidance tells you at that point is “You reached 300c to kill the last harbinger, now go get better and kill the boss”.
It’s like in PoE2 with citadels and Arbiter. You have the T15 requirement to be able to kill the citadel bosses. You don’t actually have a requirement to kill the arbiter. However, if you were struggling to kill the citadel bosses, it’s obvious to any player that their boss will be harder and you’ll need to grind harder, even though there is nothing in the game that tells you that directly.
Likewise when the progression was killing conquerors to spawn Sirus. It was 100% expected that Sirus would be much harder than the conquerors were. So if you were at the point where you were struggling to kill the conquerors, it was obvious to any player that you wouldn’t stand a chance with the boss. Even though this wasn’t written anywhere.
This works that way in every single ARPG.
There is an important distinction:
-In D4 the game decides when my fun ends. I was having a blast with the build, it was extremely fun to play, but now there isn’t a single reason to play. There is nothing else to improve.
In LE I decide when my fun ends. If a build is fun, I can keep playing and I still have the option to keep advancing and even getting upgrades, even if that progress is only marginal at that point.
The difference is who decides when the fun ends, that’s all.
In PoE it’s not an issue because PoE is a behemoth and it’s actually very hard to reach “the end”. That is not the case for either D4 or LE, though. And in that regard, LE’s system is clearly better for some types of players.
As I said before, I’m not arguing that the corruption system is better. I’m arguing that it’s better for some types of players. And that tiers are better for others.
You obviously can only enjoy a game like this if the game points you to a clear endgoal. Simply having fun isn’t enough for you.
I can only enjoy a game when I’m having fun and there’s still something (anything) to do. If there’s nothing else to do, then it’s not fun anymore.
Yeah, this happens every now and then on the forum. Sometimes topics get sidetracked for a bit due to some statement on which someone disagrees. It will eventually get back on track. 
Yes. That is why I have repeatedly said that having a tier system is good for some types of players and having an open ended system is good for other types of players.
However, some players can only see their viewpoint and if it’s not like that, then the system sucks.
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I think your initial post brought some interesting parts up-front. Player-agency specifically there, so yeah, at the basis of it for it.
I’ve always stated that adjusting the content through usable items would provide a good result as it gives more options to the player. So long as it doesn’t become extreme.
EHG avoided to implement such a mechanic on the premise that the ‘baseline corruption’ is endless and produces it directly, but that’s not varied like your system.
Hence I say ‘Your system is already superior as it allows but not enforces options to be taken’.
On the details? It’s a lot to unpack, I rather speak about the core premise of it then nitpicking on specifics.
If I should though then it’s the idea of the loss of reward for the death of the character being seen as a problem. It’s just awfully implemented.
I’ve said it above: Punish the player by reducing already received but unrealized progress for example (reduction of any progression bar, be it XP, be it the next boss being unlocked, be it a progression bar inside a sub-system which gives you a reward) but don’t punish someone by making their future playtime feel worse.
Achievements themselves can potentially be fun. We have functional ones like the Blessings for that already, which is a achievement for beating a boss basically but has a use-case directly included.
The same could be done with other achievements, a bit of ‘busywork’ but without being too much. How long it takes to kill something as a metric… or how little damage you personally take during the fight. Such achievements could absolutely help.
And consumable echo modifiers are absolutely a good idea, I’m for it. Specifically though with them coming with increased difficulty for the reward. A risk/reward balance needs to be upheld, and it doesn’t even need to be extremely tight… some non-essential downsides, some massive ones… randomly combined with some non-essential upsides up to massive ones.
Yes, I agree there, it is the case.
Though the position from which everyone here speaks is different. From ‘this is my personal stance’ to ‘this has been shown to work in other games on a general basis’. Both are valid, though depending on each they can have more positive/negative effects then others.
My stash tab tells me I got a lot of T16 maps 
What do you mean?
And what unlocks from 301c forward?
So ‘After 300c there is nothing’. That’s the position I’m speaking from. And it’s not false. You can speak from another and state ‘it’s not right from this position’ but that’s senseless to do when I specify a metric. You cannot just come up with another and state ‘but if we measure something different then it’s different!’.
Yes, and that’s not optimal, agreed.
In PoE the game does the same, but the ‘end-line’ is already vaaaaastly further back, so most don’t reach it anyway.
Now add both… make a ‘the game decides when my core goal is reached’ like in D4 or PoE… and then add the endless system at the end with the starting point of it there.
In case of LE a far more expanded handholding process to go through, with a variety of different content as you go through. Far more then we have now. And then the corruption system starts after.
In PoE it would be a map-type like ‘T18’ for example which you personally can endlessly increase in difficulty and reward and then run however far you pushed it.
That’s what’s talked about in this case.
Because while you state ‘It’s hard to reach the end’ in PoE and the necessity is less… people still do.
So why not take the teachings hence from how well designed content is taken in for people versus the ability of the endless upper limit and combine em both?
I mean… it’s always ‘this is better’ and ‘that is better’ but it seems the ability to think about ‘use both properly together’ fails to even form.
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I’m not a fan of losing stuff on death especially exp. I just know that the devs try to prevent exploitation and I can see people finding the smallest or biggest(situation depending on what’s better) and just rerun that one echo. Kinda like the beacon exp/favour restart around 70% for max exp cheese.
Yes, and I feel the exact same, I cannot say how many of my non-defensive builds in PoE for example dimple around at Level 97-98 because of the death-penalty.
And I cannot state how much I absolutely detest it every single time my character dies and I have to go through a wasteland of an echo das feels like I’m back in Act 2-3 density-wise.
But we also have to say ‘there needs to be a reason not to die’… and the question is just ‘what form should that take?’.
And the current implementation in LE is awful plainly spoken. If you find a ‘good echo’ and just log out… you can re-do it completely. It doesn’t count as ‘failed’. It’s a full echo still.
Go back in, run the rewarding echo which has great rewards, re-do that endlessly and avoid all low-density ones entirely.
And that’s an atrocious state to have.
So yes, that cheese is awful and comes from the game not having instance persistance, something which EHG states ‘they cannot do because of resources’ while the competition either ignores disconnections entirely and you’re just ‘out of luck’ to sustain the proper state… or have persistence existing so disconnections don’t matter in a major way.
You mean the thing you have to buy with real money in a supposedly free game? One that not everyone will buy? Where will they find out there’s a T16 without it?
There’s the Uby woven echo which has a (wrong) requirement of 500c, so you know that you should push to 500c anyway. And at that point you’re good to go with Aby.
So the only current disconnect we have in the game is actually Uby. Up to 500c you have clear signs in the game that you should progress that far.
Yes, that was my point. Tiers aren’t inherently good, nor is open ended content inherently bad. Some players will prefer one or the other, but that’s a personal preference. And for both it has more to do with how it’s implemented and presented in the game.
In the case of LE we get a clear disconnect from 500c+ because of Uby. Because until then your progress queues are actually pretty clear.
The point of an open ended system is kinda like an idle incremental game (which I personally enjoy a lot). You almost always start playing one before it’s finished. You follow the mechanics until it takes you to some point where progress is hard.
But you still have the option to push that progress while you’re having fun until the next update comes. Which I often do. If I enjoy the game and I’m having fun, I don’t mind wasting 2 weeks on something that will be done in 2 days when the next progression update is released.
In fact, I vastly prefer that than having a barrier where there’s nothing else to play for.
That is how I view corruption in LE. We currently have stuff to do up to 500c. Future updates will give us more stuff to do at higher corruption (like the new boss that will apparently be placed between Aby and Uby) and tools to push that corruption further.
But until they do give us those tools, I still have the option to keep pushing as long as I’m having fun. Because numbers are still going up, even though there isn’t any other goal to achieve.
That’s why some players like open ended games, like me. And I know that some players dislike that because they need to have a clear goal to reach towards.
Personally, I feel like the current main issue is Uby which is very badly placed (and communicated in-game). If we only had Aby, you could set your goal to Aby. After that, players that are goal oriented are done, players that like to keep playing still have things to do.
The only difference between having tiers and an open ended system, in this case, is simply that both types of players will play up to Aby (we’re disregarding Uby, after all) but with tiers everyone stops playing and with an open ended system some players will keep playing.
The problem isn’t the open ended game. It’s simply showing you clearly the goals. And currently LE has a severe disconnect with Uby.
After all, there is no fundamental difference between saying “get to 500c” or changing it to tiers and “get to T16” where T16=500c. So the problem isn’t the system itself, it’s the communication of the goals within each.
Actually, EHG has always said it’s something they’d like to have, they just haven’t been able to do yet. We don’t know what their priority for it is, but we know it’s in the list of things to improve at some point.
I dunno… I can absolutely put them into my normal tabs.
And what the actual fuck does the ‘shelf-price comparison’ crap now have to do with the topic? Not to speak that the 30 Dollar price-tag will provide you with a currency, a map and a fragment tab + 1 upgrade for a normal tab to premium for access to the trading. Which literally is everything you need realistically to play the game properly.
So they’re 1 to 1 comparable, and that’s non-sale (every 3 weeks roughly currently) timeframe.
If you wanna start rambling off random crap then be free, not gonna answer those things anymore, that was the last one.
Same with the absolutely disingenious answer about about uberroth when regularly stating ‘we need to ignore Uberroth’ and hence suddenly it should be included.
You cannot do your random cherry-picking and not be consistent. I adjust my position during a conversation with someone. You’re jumping back and forth to ‘whatever’ position as long as it fits. That’s not good communication, there’s a difference there and by now it’s time to call it out. Like a damn metronome, no matter what you answer to it’s always on the other side again.
Don’t ignore half of the statement please, it makes any conversation - once again - useless then.
I stated that the majority of people through genres tend to follow directly provided goals at a much bigger percentile. I haven’t found any showcase of it being true as a general different state otherwise, and I even included ‘there are very few specific exceptions existing, which are hard to achieve and no known universal ruleset for it’.
The example of incremental games is a good one, though the majority of incremental games has a clear-cut progression system as well.
Cookie clicker has the achievements and maximization of builds. You can make your own goal beyond but that’s the common ‘end-line’.
Clicker heroes has the bosses as direct goals.
Adventure capitalist the unlocking of the different areas.
And so on and so forth.
They’re all guided experiences based on a foundation of seemingly being endless, with more or less content being hand-guided. And many incremental games nowadays aren’t even endless but have a clear-cut goal even.
It’s a nice example but that’s showcasing that even in the most extreme game-type which focuses endless progression the need for a direct showcased progression goal is dire… as the ones which don’t showcase one are generally those which aren’t played a lot as well.
So when even the most extreme example showcases it as a base functionality being sub-par in outcome for engagement compared to a guided experience (which can include the endless progression afterwards) it should provide a very obvious result for action.
And it’s fine that ‘some’ like it. It’s the 1% group though, sorry to say. It’s really not many which actually do those things simply for the sake of it. I enjoy those games too, and one of my favorite ones is still ‘Anti-Idle’ which is a very old idle game that’s extremely varied and has many non-idle aspects while allowing to play through it solely on idling as well.
So yes: ‘The problem is the open ended game design’.
As ‘Open ended’ has no goal to be shown. So you need to show the goals at which point it’s not ‘open ended’.
Yeah, but why keep the disconnection ‘boon’ inside then? It does more bad then good. The situations in which it’s frustrating for a player because they loose the reward are likely a lot less then the loss if engagement through cheesing it as it’s surprisingly widespread.
Consistency is key, and EHG is sadly anything but consistent.
The point is being communicated in-game. T16 isn’t communicated in-game. Up to T15 it is because you see it in the Atlas map. That’s what new players see.
It only has to do with the fact that it’s a free game and plenty of players don’t have the map stash. So they can’t see that T16 exists. So it’s not clearly communicated in-game, only to those that pay money.
What price tag? I’m talking about PoE1, not PoE2.
Yes, but LE also has that clear cut progression up to Aby. It’s only it being open ended after that that is causing people issues. Mostly because incremental games do come to a wall at the end of the progression, while LE doesn’t actually have such a hard wall.
I don’t agree with this. In incremental games you have goals to guide progression. “Reach x points”, “Reach y points”, “Unlock mechanic 1 and start over with better numbers”, “Get x mechanic 1 completions”, etc. And yet it’s still open ended.
LE also has plenty of goals shown. “Complete the campaign”. “Complete normal monos”. “Kill all harbingers”. “Kill Aby”. It’s only after that that it becomes murky. And Uby was very badly placed there.
The only real difference between LE’s corruption system progression and an incremental game’s progression is that in the latter case the progression almost always ends in a hard wall where it’s very hard to progress further and the former doesn’t have a hard wall until much further along, so you end up with a long stretch where you can actually progress but there’s really nothing more to do.
‘Enter the Atlas, you need to seek out the evil there!’ → ‘Progress the Atlas to find the evil there!’ (T1-T16) → ‘Beat the evil to save us!’ (Maven in red maps).
Not to speak of needing to progress to most bosses. Searing Exarch/Eater of Worlds/Maven are T14. So potentially we can state T14 is the end. T16 is though needed for all the other bosses which are side-bosses and clearly showcased. Uber-elder, Sirus, the conquerors. And beyond we even need T17 for the top-end bosses, which is the ultimate ‘progression goal’.
If that’s not in-game communicated I don’t know.
And you see T16 in the Atlas, and you drop T17 in T16 when you do some, rather swiftly even. So you get them thrown right into your face.
Lowest supporter pack price-tag.
And yes, can you not start the game and play it in full? Obviously it holds you back. It goes with the ‘inconvenience’ route for ensuring people pay with the F2P model instead of the ‘freemium’ one like OSRS for example does.
No difference. Is it also bad that OSRS does demand some cold hard cash for their product? I would argue getting full access (and people having played through it this way repeatedly even) is much more lenient then having to pay to access 90% of the content.
True, but it gets very ‘mild’ in representation.
If we wanna compare it: In PoE 1 for example you enter the Atlas. You get a few map layouts presented. You need to run them in ‘magic’ (blue) rarity to get a bonus which improves your rewards… so you do it. You drop T2 maps hence inside there as well which allow you to access more layouts. Those you need to finish to get even more bonus which makes your experience even more adjustable to your liking… and so on, up to T16 (+ unique maps).
That’s a very clear goal presentation through in-game mechanics.
In LE our only goal is ‘re-do this already finished content (through non-empowered) again and raise your corruption in this area 25 above the corruption in the former’.
So each Monolith gives you a longer need to invest time without directly getting a reward for it. Tedium. It’s really bad design even as it’s based on pure repetition without distinct reward for it.
Not to speak that you get no unlocks or meaningful rewards from the Harbingers during that timeframe, you just get their specific loot. The ‘story progression’ is also as lackluster as one can do it. Heck… the old removed ‘intermission’ between the campaign and the Atlas introduction during the time when the conquerors in PoE 1 were introduced was mountains better in engagement for the story then just plopping in another random worthless NPC nobody cares about and does nothing then provide a few text-lines. Even killing one of the NPCs off if I remember night… but it’s so absolutely atrociously made that you get absolute zero immersion. It’s beyond useless from a storytelling quality standpoint.
I’ll take Kirac in PoE 1 (I actually know the name of the NPC cause he matters) running together with you as the player and several soldiers to retake the city from the corrupted and unlocking the Atlas through a questline which makes sense and is actually well told any day. Or to even quote him there after finishing the Harbinger questline my reaction was ‘By the muscular golden arse of innocence, what was that?’. I was as baffled as that dude, just for other reasons.
You’re stating it yourself… ‘they have goals to guide progression’.
The more precise and direct goals are the more you’re guided.
People don’t work well with low-guidance or no guidance at all. You can overdo it with guidance definitely… but that’s the core behind it.
It’s just on completely different levels there. And as I stated ‘To date I haven’t found a single proper general example of unguided experiences doing well in the gaming sector’. If you can provide one… be free, I would love to see some actually where it’s so subtly implemented but still allowing the engagement to happen.
(Edit: To specify… in the PC gaming sector, not mobile. Mobile is for extremely low attention spans made, so the rules differ a bit of what works or doesn’t. And it doesn’t apply to LE’s needs at all hence)
Welcome to the forums bro - soon as @Kulze the guy who doesn’t even play the game, who HATES the game and the company decides to post the thread is fucking gone. Just copy the text into note pad, make a new thread then edit the first post in here to a full stop and change the title to “Kulzes thread” - ill post in your new one with you. This dumb son of a bitch wants changes but makes every fucking thread so diluted with his own hate speech that even the moderators won’t read them.
I wasn’t actually aware that they dropped naturally. It’s been a while since I managed to get to red maps, since I tend to quit playing before that these days (when I do join a season at all).
I thought you had to corrupt them, like you do in PoE2 where T16’s don’t drop, you need to corrupt T15’s to get one. And nowhere is this communicated in game.
And I was actually talking about T17s before, just mispoke due to playing PoE2 more than PoE1 these days.
To be clear, I’m not trying to slam PoE1 or 2’s model. I don’t actually mind it.
I was just pointing out that PoE1 (and PoE2 when it comes out) is advertised as a free game. So it’s expected that plenty of players won’t spend money on the game and thus won’t have a map tab to see that there is an extra tier.
When players reach the point of inconvenience they will either buy a pack for some tabs or they will leave, but the base game everyone buys doesn’t communicate the existence of the extra tier. Although that apparently is only the case for PoE2, so I stand corrected in regards to PoE1.
Yes, but goals grow in magnitudes. You don’t have goals “Get to level 2”, “Get to level 3”, 4, 5, 6, etc.
You get 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, etc.
In an incremental game this is seen from “Get to x points”, “Get to this goal to unlock this mechanic and start over”, “Do the whole thing until the mechanic 3 more times”, etc. You don’t unlock the mechanic and get fed again the same goals you previously had of “Get to x points”.
Likewise, during the campaign you’re handheld all the way. Then you reach normal monos and you just get a quest to do echoes (and progress stability) then you get quests to do the 3 monolith questline echoes.
Then you finish normal echoes and you don’t get fed the goals for each timeline again. You’ve done that, you’re expected to know that already. So you get instead fed goals based on the new mechanic unlocked, which is increasing corruption.
I honestly don’t see any issues with this progression up to Aby. It all seems pretty natural and expected to me.
Now, if you want to argue that Uby has a huge gap and is poorly communicated via the 500c unlock requirement, I’ll fully agree with you.
But up to Aby I feel like everything is pretty well communicated.
You don’t need to have the exact same goals repeated to you over and over again. That gets tedious. You already know you need to kill the mono boss. You already know you need to kill the Shade to increase corruption (he naturally shows up as you’re exploring the echo web). You don’t need to have those steps repeated over and over. A simple “Get to 125c” “Get to 150c” is enough. You already know what to do to get there.
If there is one thing Kulze has taught me in my time on the forums, well shit. It was today. I did not know I could fully ignore someone forever. I am in heaven! Ngl.
They always did. T15 has been increased to T16 as the limit. And since then T17 included as well which drops naturally. There is no ‘hidden progression’ in the game.
The only exception what you mean is ‘Vaal Temple’ which was the first - and a special - T16 map which has a special boss-trio at the end but no exclusive loot. It’s just a side-thing.
So yeah, now I also understand where the comment about the map-tab comes. Would make sense then.
Yes, and that’s a big point there.
In LE it ‘grows in magnitudes’, similar to what incremental games do a lot.
This is not the case in PoE for the core progression, which is the one I’m trying to compare here.
OP is quite right that a directly influencable goal-driven system would improve the overall situation of LE substantially. The achievements are a good idea for that, same as filling the ‘tedium’ of the ‘empty’ progression (I know it’s not empty but you don’t get a direct immediate reward for progressing towards the next major goal) would be alleviated a bit.
What I wanna point out is that every single new map in PoE is a progression in similar magnitude like beating a boss in LE and getting a new blessing. Not numerically but from the premise.
New tiers unlock the next tier. Every individual new map beaten in the way told to do so gives a ‘passive point’ for the Atlas tree. And even as you progress you’re given even despite those steady direct rewards new goals presented along the way. The game isn’t story-driven but driven by small steady rewards back to back to back.
In LE we need to run for the whole progression towards Aberroth… 100 echos? A few more? And we get a total of 10 goals presented to reach Aberroth itself, actually 9 since the first is a random surprise boss on top of the normal one when unlocking empowered.
In PoE you got over 100 distinct goal-points plus a full-fledged storyline which in itself is as ‘small-scale’ as what Aberroth progression feels, but that can be ignored this way since you got other distinct goals which are clear-cut to follow. Along the way you get introduced to 2 new bosses, a new mechanic (The influences of Exarch/Eater with the altars in maps) and also get a mild progression for the main storyline through bossfights in a small short arena-style match.
There is just a lot more going on. It doesn’t feel ‘empty’ but is choke-full of more and more goals. That’s how the game functions in end-game there after all, throwing tons of goals at you and having you complete them gradually, and you’re never looking forward to ‘when can I do the next thing?’ as instead you’re always catching up with ‘I still have this and that all to do and I’ve now even got another 3 things on the list!’
That’s just a completely different result for the player experience.
I understand what you mean. But personally I dislike having all those 10 quests open that are done concurrently. I feel tired just looking at them. I prefer to have sequential goals that I can clear at a time. Having 10 goals at the same time just makes me kinda despair because each of them will take hours to clear.
And my compulsiveness doesn’t let me ignore open quests. I even do the Einhar/Alva/etc quests during the campaign, even though they’re useless to veteran players. Most of the time I even do the side quests, if they pop up on the quest tracker.
The only way to have a clean quest tracker in PoE is reaching the end of everything, meaning maps, exarch, maven, sirus, etc. It’s too much and too open. I like having simple “Go here” “Do this”.
Likewise, I hate that in PoE2 the interludes are done in any order and the envoy (or whatever his name is. Unlike you, I never memorize NPC names in these games, even when I use them dozens of times. I often don’t even memorize most boss names) keeps having a quest notice above his head. It triggers my OCD to have that.
That is also why I always preferred to play the campaign in D3 (because it gives me clear Go from A to B to C directions) rather than adventure mode which just told me to do whatever.
So, again, this is a personal preference thing. You prefer to have a dozen quests telling you stuff to do at the same time. I prefer a more linear progression.
Wide horizontal progression like in PoE often just makes me quit the game. It’s why I never finished GTA4 and why I never played another one since.
I thought about remaking post but I don’t want to get in trouble for spamming forums with a repost of same thing. I already post “too much” in suggestions
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Yeah, I understand that.
It’s not about being overwhelmed with quests here, just about the ‘empty time’ in content.
You need several echoes to get to Orobyss, you need several echoes to be able to actually start the boss. And that’s all ‘preample’ to get the there with ‘nothing to do in the meanwhile’.
That’s what OP’s solutions would actually fix as well. The ‘juicing’ of echos allows to increase the danger and make them challenging potentially when progressing through that. And that would make it more stomachable.
And the ‘Achievements’ allow for side-progression to also fill that empty space.
Yes, but I was never against the OP’s suggestions. I just pointed out to a different person that tiers also have downsides to them to some players, like open ended has for others.
And I did make the effort to make it clear that neither was good or bad, just that some preferred one to another.
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