Preface edit: Yes I spread misinformation and lies. Frankly it doesn’t matter, because the person that you want to argue against isn’t me. It’s the numbers in this chart. Path of Exile is growing from strength to strength and Diablo 4 is also doing well, in both cases it’s far better than it looks because the majority of their players use their own launchers, not steam. Where is Last Epoch now in comparison?
I preface this one by admitting that this is only partially some feedback from me and a friend who really wants to see LE survive to 1.4 (and far beyond; I personally hope to see a LE 1.10) and all 11 chapters fully releasing (or was it planned for 12?), and also actually partially a question to the developers.
Currently, Last Epoch is perceived VERY NEGATIVELY outside of a small dedicated player base, who I personally believe (since stats are unavailable) have been playing since long before things like all 15 masteries, factions, and dungeons. This is unsustainable both for the health of the game and for the continued survival of EHG as a company (I believe; haven’t seen or read anything to convince me otherwise – devs would need to correct if in fact EHG is doing ok financially).
Among other things, this means that outside of a small number of us, I have seen that most people who have played Last Epoch actively discourage others from trying Last Epoch. This means that the principal perception of Last Epoch is that it is grindy, buggy, boring, imbalanced, and unoptimised because most reviewers and players describe this game to others exactly this way. This means that I would be very surprised if there has been much new players at all and indeed I believe the devs acknowledged that the 1.1 reception was extremely subpar with many players not returning despite delivering on a much-requested “the endgame”.
Among other things, this feels like a game and a studio that is currently in a death loop. The negativity surrounding the game causes new and on-the-fence players to be primed to find and see faults, which then confirms and reinforces their negative perception of the game. Then, these converted players quit the game permanently and contribute to the spreading negative perception of the game, which further discourages new players and primes those who do try to look out for all the problems to confirm/reinforce their beliefs.
So then, before I move into my suggestions, I pose this question to developers: What is EHG’s development strategy or design philosophy? Beyond just “being responsive to player wishes”, what exactly is “the vision” that EHG has? When there is a conflict between the direction the developers want to move the game toward versus player demands, how will developers pick and choose which battles to fight in the name of their design philosophy and which to concede? In short, I want to know what is the final form of the ARPG that EHG actually wants to make, disregarding player demands (which when taken in toto renders the game merely a simulator for a buildmaker spreadsheet program).
For my suggestions:
- For the sake of the health of the game and EHG, I think EHG needs to concede to player demands regarding the entire thing about MG design. Which means:
- MG and COF should NOT have symmetrical designs. In fact, MG should have LESS ranks and it should reach max rank by Reign of Dragons and several “powers” currently gated behind low ranks (e.g., listing magics/rares/idols? Honest to goodness IDK I have never played MG and likely never will) should be unlocked by default from the get-go similar to how COF can do prophecies (without lenses) right from the get-go.
- Whatever MG players say they want about the design of the bazaar, just concede as much as you can without eating excessively into developer time for other priorities and new content.
- Find a way to move away from gold as the trading currency and instead just make it a gold tax to list or purchase items on top of the actual trading currency. Because a gold duplication bug WILL occur again in the future either because of a reversion error, or a new bug, or some insane combination of incompatible libraries/functions that make this possible through something to do with the networking logic or how Last Epoch syncs data between client and server or whatever.
- Create a better gold sink (something crafting related would be most viable) to stem inflation.
- Not MG related, but to stem complaints about COF being not deterministic enough EHG should heavily signpost new players toward MG. I think a lot of inexperienced players don’t realise this but MG isn’t so much the “trade” faction (because frankly asynchronous bazaar trading is really more like just purchasing from an NPC shop rather than MMORPG-style trading) but rather is the deterministic item drop faction. Every single interesting drop and every pile of gold you find under MG is for all intents and purposes actually shards of the dream item for your build. I think this can be done by having Zerrick heavily recommend MG in his dialogue, adding more hints to the tooltips when players are deciding between the 2 factions, and putting a HUGE button linking to the in-game guide where devs can spell out in detail that MG is the deterministic item drop faction where every drop builds up toward your dream item with 100% certainty.
- After 1.2, commit to 4-month cycles as much as possible (I would say hard commit, but…). If the entire wishlist cannot be implemented within that timeframe then so be it.
- The game will never be finished/perfect whereas player demands are infinite because what they really want is the perfect game tailored to their own exact preferences and specifications, not the game in front of them. Perfect is the enemy of good and released.
- Patch numbers 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.3, … exist. There is precedent in D4 and POE where mid-league/season patches added significant amounts of content or revamped mechanics entirely. This means if planned features (that are not the main cycle mechanic) are near completion at the time of cycle release, delay the release of those features, not the cycle.
- Commit to whatever it was that you have planned to release for that cycle, instead of changing your minds/priorities as happened now with 1.2. The reason is that switching priority order is likely to delay the time to full release of all planned features without having added more features or resulting in higher quality features, and it’s not like players appreciate EHG any more for being responsive to player demands because then they get angry instead at how long features take to release.
- Consider deprioritising story chapter development and delaying release of story chapters until maybe 11 is near-completion.
- Most player complaints right now are about the end-game and unfortunately for a subgenre of RPGs, its main player base basically does not care about the story/lore. You will read of a million and twenty-two reasons why Last Epoch’s delivery sucks or how to do it better or whatever. Those are all extremely thin self-justifications to convince themselves that they are really lore connoisseurs, but they are just lying to themselves. Tl;dr, for all intents and purposes nobody cares about the lore/story. For the survival of LE/EHG at this moment, it is more cost-efficient to update the end-game.
- Even if 10 is released on time, if 11 is still in development then you will again see the rise of complaints that “the story is too convoluted” and “the story ends abruptly”. Unfortunately the player base has something like an object permanence cognitive disability, where if chapter 11 is not shown in front of them then that means that the developers decided to end the story there for some reason, instead of being able to read developer posts to realise that it is still under development.
- In fact consider making the full story completion a major release, like how POE went from version 2 to version 3 when Fall of Oriath finally completed the non-atlas-related storyline. The reason is to make it a cut-off point in the sand to say that “this era that everyone thinks is bullshit is behind us, now developer energy is 100% on gameplay and end-game”.
- Concede the debate around legendaries crafting and the Temporal Sanctum (but I have no concrete suggestions as to what changes to make, because honestly I much prefer for the Temporal Sanctum to remain as-is, but I recognise I am a 0.01% minority in this case), so long as the revamp again doesn’t drain excessive time away from new mechanics, which are much more important.
- The problem here is and will always be that this mechanic (which I remember what problem it solved – I started playing LE before dungeons, sealed affixes, and crafting potential were things) led to power creep and over time as players got higher on the hedonic threadmill what was once considered an end-game chase became expected minimum power levels. Once this perception sets in, it becomes a losing battle to argue for locking this power behind the trouble and effort of dungeon keys and the dungeon run because the 2 sides of this debate are no longer operating on the same shared assumptions.
- There will be future opportunities to stop power creep/end-game chase mechanics from becoming baked into baseline player expectations, so just take the Temporal Sanctum as a lesson learnt. Another place where LE may want to take lessons on how quickly players climb the hedonic threadmill is the uber bosses and Tier17 Maps complaints currently in POE – from something that the devs likely intended to originally be end-game challenges with some rewards thrown in for the effort, it has now become “the farming strategy” which then makes the original end-game (Tier16s) “feel bad”.
Essentially I am suggesting for EHG to concede what I think are unimportant battles but which are currently impacting perceptions of LE negatively. EHG needs to stem the amount of negativity coming out of the community at the root cause first because otherwise I am not convinced EHG will not go bankrupt before all 11 chapters fully release. Once the negativity is stemmed and the top 100 posts on forum and Reddit aren’t all “buggy mess”, “unoptimised garbage”, “imbalanced trash”, or other such wonderful compliments and instead everyone is talking about “the base game is great” (whatever the flying dog cow chicken fuck that means), then I would say the game is probably in a safer spot and not in danger of disappearing from the ARPG landscape in the next 12 months.
Finally, I know there is a small minority who argue that if MG is made too easy, these players will simply finish their builds on day 2, roll the entire end-game on day 3, then quit because there is “nothing left to do”. However I take the perspective that this is great! Fantastic, even!
- Players who quit early because they’ve completed all that the game has to offer at the moment at least quit kind of satisfied, as opposed to quitting because “it’s too grindy” or “the bazaar is shit and buggy”.
- Players who quit like this are more likely to come back next cycle when EHG promises that there is new content/mechanics to enjoy.
- Players who quit early reduce operating costs for EHG and when this happens it’s best if they quit satisfied and ready to tell their friends to come join them in the next cycle.
- I suspect MG players who quit early due to “finishing the game” aren’t any less likely to spend money on MTX, and in fact it seems like many players treat buying MTX not as a matter of “do I like this item/visual” but more of “do I want to support this company”.
- Importantly, players who quit early likely would have quit early anyway and are just looking for the most convenient self-justification for their decision, so it’s for the best if their self-justification is that “I finished the game and it was satisfying” rather than “I didn’t enjoy this buggy, unoptimised mess of a so-called game”.
Long post sorry and most of this is just personal opinion and suggestion. Last Epoch + COF provides me a playstyle that I really love and have found lacking for a long time in POE so I genuinely wish this game and EHG remains healthy for another 10 years, and if it means MG plays a completely different game where one day their main complaint is that “the game is too easy” then so be it.
