Hi! I’m a long time gamer (PoE among many other things) that recently started playing Last Epoch. I’m liking the game and I love a lot of the things you already did, such as the crafting system, the “what killed you” message, the in-game loot filter and many more. While I still have a lot of game to go through and still haven’t reached or tested the end-game, here are some things that I think can be improved about the early game or more general things:
New player experience
Not all classes are as easier to start with. I tried the Sentinel, Rogue, Acolyte and Mage. The Mage was great until lvl 15 when it started dying to everything (now I know I should play it from further away and use wards, but that was the feeling at first). With the Rogue I picked a bow, but the damage seemed lackluster against the rest, and it kind of lacked a good AOE skill, so it’s still level 6 xD. The only one of this I have actually played is the Sentinel (following a guide, Void Knight by now) and the rest are still low level, so I’m not talking about the actual classes, just their start.
Introduce crafting earlier (and better). I think around level 15 would be good, definitely should be before fighting the level 25 boss. I saw that there is a quest, but is after that and is just kind of “there is crafting!”. A step-by-step side quest before that gives you a good item could be good (think the blacksmith in Skyrim).
Remove all respect penalties until level 25. This is probably the main thing I think should be changed. Respeccing passives is kind of fine, but respeccing skills is SO punishing at low levels, which is when you want to test the most. I ended up just deleting my lvl 15 Mage and making another one because after a wrong respect it had really low power vs what my new Mage has at the same level (I know that I could have just farmed some map with the old one to gain exp, but it felt really slow). I think that until level 25 the skills should respect at their max level, so that you can try without pressure, and then have some pop-up at 25 clarifying that this would no longer be the case (basically just change the “Minimum Specialized Level” progression to match the leveling of skills until that point).
Game
Don’t reset the map on TP. I read that this is temporary, but just to reinforce that’s really annoying to go to the town to sell something and when you are back every monster has respawned. I’m currently trying to avoid using TPs unless is the start of a zone :p. Also, this kind be abused by farming something that appears in the same place.
Don’t remove TP on waypoint to another area. I’m guessing this is related to the one before, but if you use a TP, go to town, and then forgot you had a TP and use the Waypoint, then the TP disappears.
Select quest to track. This would mean that I can select which quest or quests the map shows. Sometimes when I want to do “old” side quests the map still shows the guides for the main quest.
Login in the last town you’ve been in. I don’t know about the endgame yet, but when leveling is really annoying to log-in in at the End of Time since I kind of have to remember what was I doing by looking at all the eras. Logging in the last town I’ve been in would do this much easier.
Stashes in all towns. Similar to before, there are places with vendors and waypoints but no stashes. I think all this places should have one, since theoretically I can just teleport to a place with a stash, but it’s a waste of time.
Going downwards is annoying. Here I’m not actually telling what to do because nothing is easy xD, but just so you know, when you go straight down and there are monsters there, it’s kind of messy.
UI
Show “timers” for all the different buffs related to the skills. This is weird because it seems to show in some cases and not in others. For example, when I use Lunge I see an icon indicating Initiative, but when I use Smite I can’t see anything about Righteous Flurry
Change the “Leave Game” name for something else. Basically, the current name doesn’t really match what that button does. Something like “Go to Character Selection” would be better. Also, the confirmation can be bad for someone who is trying to get out of being killed in-game, but it’s probably better in all the other scenarios.
Map zoom keybinding. I think it would be useful to zoom in and out of maps a bit easier some times.
Allow us to change the order of stash tabs. This is kind of self-explanatory. Love the stash search :p.
Add a confirmation button to Passives and Skills. Basically to prevent adding the wrong skill or passive due to a misclick. The best way would be similar to PoE, where you can add as many “phantom” points you want (and have), and then a button that allows you to actually assign them all at the same time.
Accessibility
Add subtitles to the videos (at least in English). My first language isn’t English, and while I mostly understand it, subtitles help a lot. Obviously this would also be great for people with hearing loss and, once translated, people who doesn’t know English.
Change or add some way to skip or disable the rift screen. I mean the “loading” screen when you enter a rift. Personally I think it is a bit too trippy, and while I don’t have epilepsy or something like that I would like to skip it if I could. Also, some times you are actually teleporting inside the same map, so then is even more skippable.
Nothing more, keep the good work!
, but still, I think that is normal for a new player to want to do something like this