New Player Feedback

General
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Hello,

Just want to start out by saying that I am enjoying Last Epoch a lot and want to thank EHG for a good game. I added LE to my Steam Library on June 28th and have probably played it about every day since. A few key things I have enjoyed about it so far is:

  • Minion control is particularly good for an ARPG, the minion command buttons is a nice feature that most other ARPG games neglect
  • Item filtering is easy to use, I have sufficient technical knowledge to edit the files directly, but the interface for doing it in game hasn’t made me want to dig into text editing the filter yet.
  • For the end-game content I have experienced (I am only level 90), it is more engaging than other ARPGs I have played.
  • Works excellently without modifications on Linux Mint using Steam.

I wanted to start out with some the things that will probably keep me playing LE for awhile, and when I do take a break, will likely have me pick it back up again. Though, as a new player I may have some perspectives that may be helpful, and atleast I want to start a discussion on before I forget.

  • WASD Movement - keyboard movement is for me atleast, very enjoyable. I play an OOPS All Minions Necro build and just walking around is enough to do what I need to do. However, it completely breaks sometimes. At random times, I can’t really discern any particular zone, type of zone, or event that triggers it to break, but it does just stop working correctly sometimes. I’ll be walking and suddenly my character will stop moving, but will still show the walking animation like they ought to be moving. I may be able to move in a different direction, but attempting to go back in that direction will prevent walking. I can use evade or a transport spell to move in the given broken direction, which is odd. I can usually “fix” the problem by toggling back to cursor-moving and then back to WASD movement.

  • Something that would go well with WASD movement is an interact key. For reference, an interact key similar to WoW’s would be awesome. I would imagine walking up to a chest, a showing item nameplate, exiled mage cage, or etc. and performing the interact that a left click would perform would make my reaction time and convenience much greater. This would help because of my next item, or well the next item kinda explains the reason for this desire.

  • Scalable or customizable cursor - I am a somewhat middle-aged old man now, and my eyesight is getting worse. I also happen to have an ultra-wide monitor, so I tend to loose my cursor. The UI as a whole is scalable, but the cursor size is not. I would also love to make it the color of it customizable to some color that really stands out. The goldish color of the cursor is hard to see sometimes above all the fire and glitz of some areas of the game. Being able to scale and modify the cursor would be a huge accessibility feature.

  • UI scaling - it is fine. It is fine, acceptable, maybe even adequate, but it could be better. Some of the elements of the UI are off center on my screen’s resolution. It doesn’t impact my ability to play, it just isn’t as polished as it could be.

  • Movable UI Elements - I would like the option to move the spell bar close to the center of the screen, instead of being anchored to the bottom. I really only have one CD to track, Summon Volatile Zombies, but if I pick up a more CD spec or class, I could see wanting to keep my eyes closer to my character rather than the periphery area that the spell bar is at. As a minion master though, having some way to track my minion count towards to center of the screen would be great. Possibly the minion count bar movable, or add a counter to the proposed movable spell bar.

  • Block all MTX elements - This will be a hard pill to swallow, but I would like the ability to block all MTX elements. Nobody will ever succeed in getting me to perform a microtransaction. Sure, have it on by default for new players, but for someone who will never buy any horse armor, advertising it to me only annoys me. In the 10-20ish years that microtransactions have existed, I have never made one. I will never make one. They just aren’t a good value to me, and I don’t have have a compulsion to pay to play doll dress-up with my characters. As I said earlier, I am middle-aged and I remember when you bought a game, got a copy of it that couldn’t be revoked, and that was the whole game, cosmetics and all. Again, telling me to visit the in-game store only irritates me, it will never succeed into making me into a sucker. Allow me to know what will and won’t work for me, and allow me to turn off all MTX interactions.

Thank you for Last Epoch, it has been fun so far.

Edit: 7-13-25

  • The character sheet tab “MINION” lacks a “Increased Minion Bow Damage” field. There are “Increased Minion Melee Damage”, “Added Minion Melee Damage”, “Increased Minion Physical Damage” fields, but it lacks one for “Increased” and “Added” Minion Bow damage, which are distinct stats that can be on gear. It is safe to assume that minion melee won’t affect bow damage, and that bow damage probably is increased by minion physical, but won’t necessarily include bow damage.
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First of all, welcome to LE and glad that you’re having fun.

This is most likely caused by some coding in the map that’s triggering WASD as if it were an obstacle. This used to happen a lot with channeled movement skills. It’s much better now, but there are still issues like this.
I’m guessing if you were using one, like shield rush, it would have stopped there as well.

The best thing you can do in these cases is to use the in-game bug report tool (assuming you’re playing online). It sends the game data along with your issue and it will help the devs fix it much faster.

Very requested, not possible to do because of Unity limitations.
You can increase the size of the cursor with windows settings and it will translate into cursor size in LE as well.
For changing the cursor itself (colour, render, etc) you can use Yolomouse. You can buy it on steam or get it for free from their github. Devs allow the use of this because of this exact limitation.

If Unity ever allows this to happen, they will put it in the game (but it’s been requested for years and they (Unity) haven’t yet, so don’t get your hopes up).

Same as with WASD, you should use the in-game bug report tool. It sends a screenshot, so you can send it and detail what the issue is, what is misaligned, etc, so they an try to fix that.

LE isn’t very heavy on cooldowns. But it’s still a good suggestion. Probably not easy to implement either, but devs check the forums, so at least it will be on their radar.

Also very requested. No official stance on this yet, but they are aware of the player requests.

I just want to say that I do understand your point of view (I’m also old and rarely buy MTX), but MTX isn’t just playing dress-up. Many times it’s simply a way to further support devs.
I’ve only ever done that in PoE and in LE because I believe the devs deserve the extra support.

Also, you used to buy the whole game (and there are still many games that work like that), but the game didn’t evolve continuously over time like LE or PoE does, with new content every 3-4 months. Making new content 3 or 4 times a year and also keeping servers afloat isn’t as easy.
Also, EHG has said that they will never release any paid expansion in the future. You paid the box price, every new update until 10 years or however many it lasts you will still get for free. So MTX is a way to support that.

Anyway, you seem to have played WoW, so you didn’t spend money on MTX but you spent it on a monthly subscription (which is something I would never do).

I’m not criticizing you (I kinda reread it and realized it might sound as an attack when that’s not what I intended). I’m just trying to point out that different games can use different development or growth models and they don’t have to be right or wrong.

And that you can buy MTX not for the MTX itself but simply to support a studio for a game that you love.

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i will highlight that games that are supported by additional purchases such as mtx tho it is something i hated, but i learned to embrace it as it keeps games alive for way longer.

i think of it as buying the devs a beer and asking them to give me new stuff to do in the game i love.

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I don’t know if I’m playing the game wrong, but I haven’t seen any intrusive advertising for LE’s MTX… So far I’ve only noticed the “Store” option on the radial menu and some NPCs in towns opening the store.

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Perks of playing offline, I was like “what? The only MTX I’ve been shown has been when Steam’s discovery queue decided that I really wanted to ‘discover’ the LE Supporter Packs” then I remembered that you can’t use cosmetics offline and was like "oh, maybe they try to advertise cosmetics in Online?

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Yet. They are working on it.

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I hadn’t heard that lol. That’s good to hear for those who paid for cosmetics and can’t use them offline.

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it can seem weird but its more of an authentication/trust issue.

its easy to “buy a game” on steam. steam checks your account’s purchase to verify if you bought the game then you’re allowed to install/play it.

but for offline mtx, EHG hasnt figured out a way to tie in those purchases in a way that players cant abuse (cheat to get all mtxs) offline.

the very nature of offline means theres no real way for EHG to authenticate mtx ownership properly.

personally i think EHG could just throw offline players a bone and just enable all mtx for offline players. i m pretty sure they’re the minority.

there is one other way i can think of, but it would be clunky.

make a separate LE game on steam. LE Offline. then the devs have more flexibility on how mtx’s are sold there. a “sloppy fix” could also be applied to this offline version via abusing the achievement system. purchases simply unlocks specific achievements that unlock the mtxs in game. i saw pirate software talking about this where instead of using a save game system, a game just relied on achievements

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The problem is that this can’t really be done. If it’s available at all (as opposed to currently where the offline client simply doesn’t have those MTXs in the code), then it will be datamined, reverse-engineered and hacked.

So the issue becomes a balance between 2 important factors:
-Knowing that some players will hack all MTX but some will still buy them anyway (win for EHG)
-Not making it so easy to hack so that legit players won’t simply think “Why would I bother buying them when others can simply hack them all for free?” (loss for EHG)

It’s not an easy thing to balance/achieve properly, which is why I think they’re taking their time with this.
But I do hope they do find a way soon, because I think that, overall, it’s better for them to have MTX offline than not.

At the very least, the false offline (the one that still connects to the server and allows chat) should have them.

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Server validation.
True offline can’t ever have MTX without abuse.
But a secondary non-mandatory system to validate the MTX available when loging in is viable.
So when you’re ‘true offline’ then the MTX simply don’t validate and don’t display.

It’s a ‘online only’ without being actively ‘online only’. Functionality of the product isn’t hampered but security for the company is provided.

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but Grim Dawn can be played entirely offline and has cosmetics by selling them as DLC through the Steam Store Page rather than an in-game shop. Couldn’t EHG just release “Offline Cosmetic Packs” as DLC with a big banner on the page that these are for offline players?

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And pay 30% to Steam.

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That could be a way to solve them going forward, but it would do nothing for the MTX you already bought.
There are plenty of players that have bought supporter packs in the past and that are now playing offline and they would like to use those cosmetics.

Even though that would simply lead to LE having thousands of DLCs very fast. Just look at PoE and how many MTX they have. Each would have to be a DLC, plus a bunch that would aggregate them together (packs and sets).

Personally, I think creating a key that hashes the MTX product+your steam account would be enough. It would be cracked, but any solution would (you can get pirated DLCs easily anyway) and it would be simple enough that you could use it offline with your character and complex enough that it would require 3rd party tools to pirate, which many players would be loathe to do.

No solution will prevent piracy. So a good solution would be one that would prevent simply using a key from a key list from a site and would require an actual “personal” code (being linked to your steam account).

Another simple and more effective solution would be to require steam to validate adding MTX to your offline client. You need to use steam to update the client anyway, so this would be a sort of single-use where you validate the MTX’s you have and after that you can launch the game offline as usual.

As I said, EHG are looking into it. And I’m sure they’ll come up with a way to allow this while incoveniencing just enough that most people wouldn’t bother looking for a 3rd party app to unlock this (although these will for sure exist).

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Absolutely fine I would argue given that it’s the difference between the protection of your goods versus sudden wild wild west of the internet :stuck_out_tongue:

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Still wouldn’t protect them, though. Like I mentioned, it’s not hard to pirate DLCs.
Even when LE was in the 0.9s versions, where they required a server connection, it was still pirated by setting up a fake server and letting you play offline that way.

Plus, like I mentioned, it would just lead to LE having thousands of DLCs. Just see how many MTX PoE has.
That is an untenable situation.

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Yeah, I’m just saying there’s other costs & they aren’t trivial.

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And nonetheless it’s not universally done.

The task is not to stop piracy, the task is to stop rampant piracy.
It’s been a proven aspect that games that can be pirated and have a good quality actually cause more sales and revenue then non-pirated games comparatively.
Why? Because the community aspect is strong, so playing together or at the same time to have something to talk about with others that play it as well, and that then leads to sales from those which can afford it.
As for those who can’t afford it anyway… they wouldn’t make a difference anyway since they couldn’t buy it if they wanted or not.

Piracy only matters if a person has the means to get the product but doesn’t use those means in favor of piracy.
Without the means they’re actually a net-positive as they do expand the community still. I personally know several games which have a extremely easily circumvented DRM system so you can pirate them without any effort but they especially run well because people had the chance to test em out and broadened their audience because of it.
A great example of that would be ‘Starsector’ which is a fantastic game, a Youtuber relatively well known about his humorous game reviews actively put in his own key into the video for public access and thousands of people used it, which caused that game to become popular.

We don’t need a 100% failsave system, we need one which solely hinders enough, that suffices.

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Sure. But you presented the option as a way to prevent it. Like you said:

But, as we’ve concluded, it doesn’t protect your goods, along with having other downsides, like the aforementioned huge amount of DLCs you’d need to create.

So overall it’s not a good solution. Especially when you can create other solutions that will basically achieve the same result, but with less clutter.

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Then don’t do it via DLCs but a in-house verification process… or one of the available third-party verification processes, I’m more then sure that at least a few companies provide microservices for that.

I’m not very knowledgeable about DRM methods in general, but even I know a few which have worked surprisingly well from a few tidbits. Like fractional values as a failcheck to ensure it’s a legal version versus a non-legal one impacting performance in a very neglicible way but being very solid against piracy. It can be implemented with true offline - in a less reliable way but still very reliable - as well as a verification process one-time at a server.
I mean… nowadays it’s mandatory anyway to connect to a server to download games, not like they’re provided in a physical disc anymore, or even USB, so you need to have connection at one time anyway.
Inclusion of updating the status to allow the existing MTX to verify once and updating it online when you buy new ones should be a given.

In what way it’s done really doesn’t matter. Be it DLC - which gets messy through steam - or microtransaction in-house, or a third-party service. Whatever is taken is commonly fine.

But the current state of ‘it’s simply not available more then a year after release’ is just not acceptable once more. EHG provides a single-player experience while allowing you to buy MTX you then can’t use as in offline while it is otherwise a identical game. It is also nowhere stated in ‘on the nose’ warnings that shove that information literally down your throat so even with hefty inability of comprehension you would realize it.

Actually, when I clock ‘Shop now’ and go at the website onto the ‘Shop Cosmetics’ section I have not a single mention of it being online-only use while - since I have no points - being transferred over to the site for buying them.
So, that entails several issues.

Issue 1: Premium currency. Why? Outside of obfuscation for the real-world value equivalent it poses absolutely zero function. The real-world price equivalent is not stated at the microtransactions and via the guidelines (not law yet) of the EU (which is my area) it is deemed as a bad business practice that shouldn’t happen. Premium currency is viable but only with a) incremental payment options fitting every item in the store perfectly (hence a Crimson Fang for 25 points while only being able to pay for 50 points is a big ‘nono’, same as the 150 points for Eterra’s Messenger Wings… at least a 50 and a 100 point option is available there so it’s a gray area we can say) are available and b) the real-world pricing is directly displayed together with the premium cost for a direct correlation.
This is not happening.
Issue 2: There is no appropriate warning available for in-game purchases related to the offline mode. This means someone can buy those things at their website and then be ‘stuck’ with the purchase. Does EHG refund those things at a 100% rate without any complaints? I don’t know, but having to even go through that process because of false premises (a lack of information is false premises by EU standards) is a problem.
Issue 3: Even the Steam payments directly (Supporter packs for example) do in no way represent that those payments wouldn’t be available in offline-mode. If you go onto the specific site it even states ‘Singleplayer’ on the side and the only requisition is ‘owning the base game’. No description, no nothing. This is counted in the EU as a predatory business practice and actually not lawful, this is actively illegal. But it’s provided to me as a EU citizen in this way.

So plainly spoken I don’t care about the how because that’s EHG’s responsibility as a business to properly correlate with the respective laws of the area they sell their products in, not mine. I solely care it is done properly and I even care further beyond that with a showcase of proper customer service of going ‘the extra mile’ in doing those things properly.
The minimum requisition is proper presentation and showcasing ‘you can’t use our crap if you don’t have a online-only connection ongoing’ and the optimum is the pricing aspects being adhered to. The non-plus-ultra would be direct-pay with regional pricing directly implemented.

And now don’t tell me that’s not possible, Steam offers a automated system for pricing related to other areas and you as a developer can directly copy their rates worst-case to have them represented with geo-location accordingly, otherwise mentioning that geo-location is mandatory for prices to be shown. Those things are core aspects of business nowadays, not some wizardry that’s ‘out there’.

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That is the issue, though. The offline client was made with the promise that it doesn’t need an internet connection at all.
So you need an offline solution for it.

Not that online ones are effective either. There are a bunch of games that require servers to play and hackers just create a pirated version of one and let you play there (like what happened with the Vemintide games).

But there are acceptable ways to implement this. They will be hacked for sure, but all you need to do is to make sure that the average player won’t want to do it, mostly because they’d have to use a 3rd party tool.
One way, like I mentioned, would be to generate a hashed key of the MTX+your steam account name. This will create a unique code that you can use to unlock.

It can be reverse-engineered, but players would have to use a 3rd party key generator, which they likely wouldn’t want to do.