New player impressions

[SayyadinaAtreides]

I just picked up Last Epoch, and I’m looking forward to learning more about the game, but here are some initial impressions and suggestions.

• Subtitles: the lack of subtitles available for voice lines and the intro cinematic is a major accessibility problem that I hope will be fixed ASAP
• Font: The font used is not that clear. In places with large text size and capital letters, like the Inventory screen, it’s not a big problem, but in the Game Guide all of the entries look blurred. I think part of the issue comes from the fact that it’s a serif font, but the serifs are so small compared to the thickness of the main stems. A serif font fits the aesthetic of the game well, but this is not a good one. (Having the entries be fully justified instead of left-justified is another mistake, in my opinion, so the odd ‘blurriness’ of the font and the uneven word spacing combine to make the guide entries look and feel unfinished.)
• Inconsistent formatting: The major place I’ve noticed this so much was in the Game Guide, specifically in the article about increased, added, and “more”. Decisions about when to use quotes around words and when not to are inconsistent. Elsewhere, they’re used primarily for quoting an entire affix line; they should not be used in that title at all, unless they’re used on all three words.
• The hotbar menu: I appreciate having the hotkeys to open each of the other menus/windows clear. However, the menu that opens next to the mana globe feels somewhat disorganized and unclear. The extra spacing between option ‘groups’ sort of helps, I guess? But it also feels odd. I would reorder some of these options so that the most frequently used are together at the top, and put less-used or less gameplay-related ones together at the bottom (social, ladder, cosmetics are the main ones that feel out of place). It’s also very odd having the main menu linked from the hotbar menu, and then when you bring up the main menu, some things (like settings and game guide) are on both menus? I would strip a good chunk of the hotbar menu items and move them entirely to the main menu to make the hotbar menu less cluttered and more useful.

There also still seem to be some animation issues even with settings at ultra (things like the idle animation on the rogue’s sword appearing as if it has antialiasing settings, and the character creation screen generally), but I assume those will improve as the beta continues.

[SayyadinaAtreides]

NPC issues:

• It’s very awkward that, after talking to a vendor and having the shop and inventory tabs opened, you can still click on the vendor between the shop/inventory screens. His dialogue comes up and you can click answers, but of course they’re all hidden behind the shop/inventory screens. Either disable the ability to talk to him again while the shop tab is still open, or close the shop/inventory screens when you click on him.
• There is no visual difference between NPCs who have dialogue options you haven’t seen, and NPCs you’ve seen all the available lines for.
• Similarly, there is no visual difference between a new dialogue line that you haven’t chosen yet and dialogue that you’ve seen before while talking to an NPC. Both of these should be made visually distinct, ideally through font color changes.

Item feedback:

• An item in a shop or inventory that you cannot equip should be indicated more clearly. If done with the x in the bottom right corner, it should be larger and it should be red. More clear would be to move that icon to the center or the upper right corner, if concerned about obscuring the art, while also making it larger and red. Alternatively, the entire item could be given a red border–tinting the entire item red would also show clearly, but that has the downside of hiding the color indicating the item’s rarity.
• There is no visual distinction in shop items that you can and cannot afford. Ideally, this should be made clear in the overall shop screen, but at the very least the purchase price should be red when you mouseover it if you cannot afford it.
• Probably not an issue at higher levels, but it’s aggravating to not be able to directly vendor an equipped item. If this really is something you want to keep, then add a message of some sort telling you to unequip it first.