Which is fine for singleplayer games, but for competitive games, buying your power is still regarded as cheap.
Even worst, companies like EA take full guilt in these ploys and milk the players for all they have, all the while making what you get randomized, and potentially (certifiably) exploitable.
If I will not play a game where power can be purchased - chances are other people will not too.
At the very least it can piss off MASSIVE amounts of the fanbase and hurt all future games for the company like lootboxes did. Star wars battlefront flopped because of selling player power.
All games, even MMOâs, can be argued to be single-player. I digress. Just know I agree with you.
Personally, as someone who plays currently in hardcore, what i think would be cool is to create a new hardcore mode(or change the current one) where you have more than one life. What i mean by that is a system where:
1- You start with one life;
2- You get an extra life whenever you complete a certain goal, for example finishing the campaign, unlocking the empowered monoliths, killing a 300 corruption Orobyris, reaching wave 300 in arena, etcâŚ
3- The lives around content flags would be once per character, while the lives from repetitive content would be one per goal (as in, if you still have the wave 300 arena life, doing another wave 300 arena will not net you another life. (the lives would be tracked like the blessings in monolith in their own UI). And always the last life that you got is the one that is going to be spent.
This would maybe convince more people to try out hardcore, which unfortunately is a dying mode in Arpgs (even thou i believe it massively enhances the arpg core experience).
While I havenât played Last Epoch enough yet to offer any meaningful feedback on the game as it exists today, I can say that there are directions that I hope the game doesnât go.
First and foremost regards the multiplayer implementation. In my entirely subjective opinion, ARPG games are far more enjoyable when played solo. For me, itâs about the power fantasy of a lone hero slaughtering hordes of baddies (while rifling through their pockets) in an effort to save the world. As my view is, of course, subjective, I know others will have a different view and Iâm all for the inclusion of multiplayer. What I hope the developers do not do, however, is make any effort to push players into one or the other. This, back when I played PoE, was one of the chief sins of GGG. That company is made up of people who prefer multiplayer and their design reflected that to the point that they listed some patch notes indicating that playing in a group not only meant you got increased item quantity, but also increased item rarity (weâre not only going to give you MORE loot for playing the ârightâ way, weâre going to give you BETTER loot too!), all while the CEO publicly acknowledged that the game was objectively easier in group play. I hope to not see that here.
Secondly we have crafting vs trading. As I understand it (having only downloaded this game less than 48 hours ago) trading is not yet implemented and there is ongoing debate about how it will/should be. This is another sin of GGG. In PoE crafting is a reward for trading, as opposed to the alternative to trading. In their efforts to âremove goldâ from the ARPG equation, they instead decided that the gameâs currency would be crafting materials. This led them to limit the drop rates of currencies to the point that, when combined with the RNG nature of their crafting system (which, on paper, I like), makes crafting an upgrade all but impossible for anyone relying solely on currency they find through drops. The only way to reliably craft an upgrade is to acquire your crafting materials by trading with other players for it. This is all well and good for players who enjoy the trading game, but quickly saps enjoyment from those who donât. While my cursory glance at the crafting in LE suggests that this is not an issue now, I am hoping that this will remain true when trading is ultimately implemented.
Lastly is micromanaging the meta. Again, this is (was) a failing of PoEâs developers. Their choices to buff a skill that was already viable and competitive to the moon while completely destroying another were always incomprehensible to me. It was almost as though they sat around the office saying things like âRighteous Fire has had itâs day in the sun, letâs do Ground Slam nextâ. While it is needed for the health of the game to do balancing passes to keep over-performing skills in check and to offer a boost to under-performing ones, dictating what is to be the new flavor of the month is not the way to go about it.
Anyway, enough of my âI donât want to see PoE hereâ ranting. While PoE is not the only ARPG Iâve ever played (Iâve done a lot of them dating back to the first Diablo when it was actually new) it is the one that most embodies what, in my own subjective assessment, is the wrong way to go with the genre (at least at the time I played).
I wouldnât mind playing hardcore, i do think it makes you realize that every action you make or build you try have true meaning. The problem is that most of my tries were cut short not because of my lack of awaraness nor understanding of the game, but server side/lag/connection related. Iâd say those are most of the common reasons people are ignoring hardcore gameplay.
First point: Iâd say most ARPG games focus too much on the A aspect and forget the RPG when implementing multiplayer settings. In most RPGs there is the damage dealers, supporters and healers (to be very generalistic), but in an action game, everyone does damage, everyone can, in some way or another, support themselves and heal teamselves, so the RPG aspect boils down to âhow the damage will be dealtâ, being it melee, ranged or with magic. If multiplayer is ever to be implemented in a meaningful way, at least in my opinion, there shouldâve be more distinctive ways for each player to help each other. Or itâs just everyone going their own way in the map and calling it a âpartyâ (in a random setting).
Second point: i wouldnât even consider PoE âcraftingâ as crafting. You roll the dice and hope you hit what you want or some dead stat. Their core issue is that they consistently and persistently add more determinist ways to craft, but also want their core crafting to be random, and as a result keep strugling with their âvisionâ for the game. Harvest is a prime example, fully deterministic and no real draw backs, just had you interact and sink a lot of time to make your items perfect. Now? Completely nerfed to enter in line with their âvisionâ. The trading aspect just made things worse, as since exalts are way too rare for actual crafting, normal players literally just hoarded them and bought what they needed to make their build viable. So yeah, on that aspect, LE seem to alredy have dodged a bullet.
Third point: i only have played sorcerer so far, so i donât have many insights as to how they are dealing with the generalistic aspect so far.
Well, donât get me wrong, PoE gameplay is awesome, itâs fast, engaging and can be very hard if you choose to. Itâs just that the core aspects and directions that they took in the aspects of crafting, trading and build diversity were simply not made to be enjoyable to the regular player, and honestly, the level of commitment they expect from their players is far too unrealistic to how much free time people have.
Yeah i concur dying to external factors is always a feelsbad moment and is probably the biggest complain (totally legit) for hardcore in online games.
Thatâs why i believe the game mode i proposed can at least alleviate the issue a little bit by giving you more than a single life to work with.
Personally iâve never been a big fan of pve mmoâs. And arpgs, for me, are a genre that was created to be played alone or with a small group of friends. Which means i will probably play more the offline version of LE than the âmultiplayerâ one. Specially since i donât give a shit about the economy aspect which is 99% of the multiplayer aspect that PoE cemented to the ARPG genre, so in the end multiplayer for me is just to play with my friends, which indeed can be really fun!
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