Patch Review 0.7.8

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Here there,
So it’s been a few weeks since the huge patch version 0.7.8 and a couple of hot fixes got released.

The first impressions settled down, new buildguides start to spread. Here is some feedback regarding the changes.

While I try to be objective I know that I am biased at some point. I play LE for a while now and I really like it at its current state. So everything that is an improvement feels great. While viewed from some distance changes may seem mandatory.

I am in no way easy to please. I have high requirements for a good loot game. LE just clicked at some point and just absolutely fits my expectations. The direction of development so far is on par with my own expectations. Imho you’re absolutely tuning right spots.

Chapter 8

The New Chapter is awesome. I like everything about it.

  • New enemy types with new skills. Very good animations and sounds. I love the Sirens and those things that hop out of the water when you come near to the sea.

  • Bossfights are very nice. Multiple phases with different mechanics. Looking forward to what you do with the coming and also the old bosses.

  • The quests are also ok. Rescue some people, collect some eggs. Nothing complex but solid.
    Regarding quests I have a little suggestion. I saw some complaints about difficulty spikes during story. That was exactly my experience, too, when I started with LE. I think you could add class specific quest rewards to aid the player to be prepared for the next chapter. Give players a choice of items with some random and a fix stat that suits the coming tasks. For example during the Ruined Era you grand items with Void resistance. At the end you get something with necrotic resistance. At the end of the Imperial Era you get something with fire/cold resistance and so on. This prevents the difficulty spikes between the different chapters. At the end of the story the player should have gotten some gear to start endgame without getting ripped.

  • Leveldesign really is great. I made a post about level design some time ago where @rik_dawson replied to. It’s great to see the leveldesign improve. Very good job!
    Chapter 8 nailed it for me. Lake Liath and Lagons Temple are new highlights. The seamless entry into Liath’s Tower is nice. This is something we’ll see in the older levels, too, I guess. Entering small dungeons or buildings would be very nice.
    Destruction of structures is nice. Love it when pillars break. This also was added to older chapters (with 0.7.7 already I think).
    What could see some improvement is Tetima. When I entered that level in Chapter 8 I realised for the first time, that this is a city. When you walk through Imperial Tetima this is not obvious. At least not for me.
    Now Tetima is presented as a city. But it still lacks the city feeling. There should be more action. Kids chasing each other, merchants arguing about prices or the quality of their goods. Theres so much that’s supposed to happen. Big crowds of NPCs, musicians, taverns (the lack of taverns in this game is very obvious, beer only is a very rare drop and can’t be used actually :grin:), beggars, pets like dogs and cats, goats. This brings me to another topic…

Critters

I really like that you added some small creatures. Though I don’t find them very present. I have to admit that I have not seen any of them. I can’t remember. There was no moment when I thought “Oh, look! What do we have here.” Maybe there should be many more of them. And they could be more obvious. When you would ask me if there are critters in the game, I could not answer. If you have to search for them most people won’t be aware that there are any.

New Items

Having class specific items with class related implicit stats and restrictions what affixes can roll on them is a huge improvement in my opinion. Its easier to gear. As a new player you are more guided in getting proper items for your class. The new affixes add a lot to this. These changes are awesome and theres nothing that can convince me otherwise.

Adding new 2D (I think 3D art as well?) so items on character fit the pic in the inventory makes a difference. It’s a detail I wasn’t aware of that it bothers me, untill you fixed it. Weird.

What I’d like to know is if we get item models with more ornamentation. Badass, fierce looking stuff. Right now the models look plain. Is this something you consider for the future? Or is it a design decision to be more on the realistic side? Or is this badass stuff only available via MTX?

New Skills

The skilldesign of the recently added skills is very nice. You created interesting skill tress with a lot of variety. While some of the older skills have only one useful route, the new ones offer different directions that encourage experimenting. Really nice so far. Death Seal has become my favourite skill atm. I think it’s a bit too powerful in comparison to some other skills, but that’s something that can be tweaked easily. All the new skills feel good.

New Passive trees

You did a good job with the passive trees. The base trees have been buffed quiet a bit. Theres nice stuff in there that makes me spend more points than needed. So propably exactly what you wanted.

Changes To Ward

This may be the most controversial point. Ward needed a nerf really bad. And now it’s here. The result is that the pre patch ward users have a hard time to adept to the new behaviour. People talk a lot about that the nerf was too hard and their class is unplayable now. This is not true I think - I mean the “unplayable” part. Mage and Acolyte still are great classes to play. They got a bit more squishy and you need more awareness to play. People got lazy with Flame Ward on autocast playstyle and now struggle because they can’t facetank anymore. Many people stated that they liked that caster classes in LE were not that squishy glass cannons like in other games. Well now it’s more a traditional role distribution. But that’s ok for me. Mage archetype is supposed to be a damage dealer that’s drawback is his lower survivability. Its not good for the game balance when classes are best in tanking and damage at the same time.

This said, the ward nerf was to hard I think. Maybe it’s intended. I thought about how I would get people to try something different.

Ward builds don’t work anymore. So people try new builds and have to make other things work. And see: Suddenly health and protections is viable. Where does this come from? There was no change in the way of how protections and hp work. It’s exactly the same as before. The changes in items and some new affixes make it a bit easier to build this defences, but mechanically nothing changed. Only that ward isn’t present anymore.

So this very hard nerf as a result forces people to build other defenses they did not use before. They realise that it isn’t as bad as they thought it would be. And when ward is buffed to be viable again, people know that they could build either way or combine both defensive mechanics with each other. If you would have nerfed ward only a bit, people would not have respecced and tested the limit of other mechanics. It would not have been necessary. So I assume you did this for this exact purpose. Defenitely a pro move :wink:.

Actually we have the exact opposite in comparison to the builds pre patch 0.7.8. Only viable routes of skills and passives were “all in ward”. Nothing else. Now all these skill routes and passives got obsolete. People use other routes and mostly skip everything regarding ward.

I tried a low life Lich build with lots of ward retention and Exang. I get a decent eHP pool with a lot if base ward that also regenerates very fast. But additional sources of ward generation did not work for me. I tried Rip Blood and Soul Feast with a lot if ward in hit. It did not work. The ward decays so fast that I don’t have any advantage in using these skills as ward generators. Perhaps you get a good amount with BiS gear what I don’t have.

So I am curious how the story about ward continues. In summary I think it was a good move to nerf ward that hard. Now we can improve it step by step and we players learned that theres is more than just one way to build defences. This knowledge will still be there in the future.

Endgame Meta

One thing is changing in a direction I am not sure if I am confident with: Clearspeed of endgame maps and the change of viable builds. Whereas it was important to have good defensive stats to be able to survive higher endgame runs/waves its converting into a more DPS based style. Enemies are hitting very hard so the best defense is to kill them as fast as possible. Glass cannon is more viable than before.
I’m no POE player, but I tried to watch some streams recently. It was awful to watch. Gameplay is like 4x ffwd. Also I’ve seen many POE players comment on the speed of LE that they like it and hope LE never changes into POEs speed meta. Now LE is far from being like POE but the speed is increasing imho.
Is it just me? Are you aware of this? Is this intended?

Questions

I have some questions about some details of your actual plans regarding class balance:

  • What classes do you consider being best polished and what classes will get a overhaul?

  • For example there were some hints about the Sentinel getting changes in the future because it’s the “oldest” class and feels less intuitive to build. What would be your goal being addressed by an overhaul?

  • Same for necro. What’s are your plans regarding the lack of build diversity on a Necro summoner? Is this an actual issue for you?

  • Mage and Primalist seem relatively complete in regard of how the class mechanics work. Or are there some changes for them on the roadmap?

This are some relatively open questions and I would be happy for any kind of information you are able to share.

  • Can you tease us a bit? What are the features you are most excited about to get implemented? What’s it that you think will blow our minds?

In the end I am very positive about the changes and hyped for the things to come. LE community is increasing noticeably. That’s great.

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That is one well written review. Pretty much agreed with all your points. I especially liked this one:

For new players this is a perfect way to prevent them getting rekt in every new chapter due to new resistances they have to build up. I also experienced a lot of deaths back when i started with the heavy hitting necrotic hits, later fire and then the huge difficulty spike in chapter 7 & 8. The only part where this ‘‘system’’ alrdy excists are the low level leather gloves giving you up to 30 void protection in chapter 1.
Class specific quest rewards as an idea i really like to choose between the missing protections for the next chapter.
Now that you mentioned it, i haven’t seen any critters aswell :smiley:

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Excellent review. It goes in details.

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Nice review. I agree with many of your points and would be interested in a response from EHG.

I would like to add that I get the impression that more than half the skills in game are unused. Most skills are weak without 10-15 skill points invested in them and by end-game, when you could have skill points needed to make them seem worthwhile, the game is already favoring a narrow subset of skills and build diversity is non-existent - at least without purposely handicapping yourself. To add to this point, the mastery specific skill unlock feels underwhelming for many builds when I feel like it should be desired in 80% of builds.

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Nice review. I enjoyed Act 8 a lot and am excited about all of the little visual details they’ve added, of which many you mentioned.

My biggest question is why we can’t get to our Stash Chest in Tetima.

And before anyone laughs at me, if I’ve somehow managed to miss it being there after going though Act 8 three or four times already then when you point out where it is, I will just preempt your directed derision at my lack of perception by saying I must have rolled a ‘1’.

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Yeah. That’s a good point. The question is if the mastery skill should be a class defining skill. Should it be that powerful that you will pick for sure? This might shrink the build diversity. But also the skill should be that good that you definitely can make a viable build around it. This is not the case for every mastery skill. And everytime you don’t plan to use it you feel a bit handicapped because you don’t get something useful for your mastery. So you aren’t that hyped for the sorcerer mastery when you build a lightning sorc.

Just thinking of possible solutions:

  • Maybe there should be a choice of 2-3 skills for every mastery. Downside is you won’t get these skills that you skip. Very hard restriction.

  • Skip unlocking a skill. Add more impactful passive stats. The actual bonus is a cool thing. Maybe add some cool stuff that also has a direct impact like “When you get stunned you freeze all enemies around you. Has a 30 second cooldown” or “for every hit that does not crit chance in increased by 1%. Resets on crit.”. Maybe also give the players a choice between 3 of this bonuses.

  • Add something cool that makes obvious what mastery you chose. For example as a violet smoke to the character model for Void Knight

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Now LE is far from being like POE but the speed is increasing imho.
Is it just me? Are you aware of this? Is this intended?

I don’t feel like the speed is increasing, the damage however is ramping up a lot, i agree, and that’s why you need a lot of damage to kill enemies quickly just like you said.

There is also some enemies mechanic that were added in 0.7.8 and that are not healthy on the player side in my opinion (winged fire laser and mortar attack of siege golem off screen that OS you, with visual prompt that are very hard to notice for some build (meteor and shield throw smite build comes to mind)).

I agree about the fact that LE pace is almost perfect atm, not too fast (like poe), and not too slow (like grim dawn).

However, health scaling for rare mobs feels off for me… It shouldn’t take me 2 min to kill a siege golem and on the other hand being able to kill in a few seconds the unique boss of the map… It feels very bad.
Plus, i don’t think it’s healthy for the game to have 1 random rare monster that have so much health that it will take you the same time to kill it than to full clear the rest of the timeline/map…

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I agree with many things said.

But for me the most important thing is that the game remains “skilled”. By this I mean that the player’s competence to use his skills remains fundamental.

Where to teleport, when.
Which enemy to attack first, with what fate.
And the speed of execution.

So I know that we are not in a tactical game like divine Divinity original sin 2. But personally I think that a good experience of the game requires a combination of skills and theorycrafting.

However, I observed many builds which were almost no skill: the player puts two spells in auto cast. And for the rest he just walks around the monsters. Or, a melee charcacter just nags in melee, also spamming auto-cast skills.

I don’t like it, and I would much prefer that Last Epoch encourage more nervous and skilled gameplay.

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I agree especially with the increasing pace of the game. It’s still fine now but it’s heading to a worrying direction. Ward characters like Mage and Acolyte can’t even generate a good amount ward anymore, so probably it’s better to go with other defences and maximise damage.

Class specific affixes are nice, but they kinda invalidate unique items on chest and head slots.

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“However, I observed many builds which were almost no skill : the player puts two spells in auto cast. And for the rest he just walks around the monsters. Or, a melee charcacter just nags in melee, also spamming auto-cast skills.”

I wonder what are those many build you’re talking about. Only the zoomer build of thyworm match this description from what i know…

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So there are a few builds that use autocast very extensively. The Zoomer is an extreme example. But Sentinel uses RoS and Devouring Orb on autocast. Acolyte has wandering spirits on autocast and you can put wraith on autocast, too.

As a Beastmaster its viable to put your pet skills on autocast.

But I can’t call out a build that’s completely working automatic (besides the Zoomer), I agree.

But @Jojo_fr is right in terms of the “reactive” playstyle. Mostly skills are cast as soon as they are ready. Most builds consist of skills that are either the main damage source or a buff ability that’s permanently active. Actually there no room for a some utility skills that are saved for certain situations. There are some. But when you look at the top ladder builds there is mostly no slot saved for that kind of skills. Everything is optimised for max damage output.

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Your analysis is more thorough than what I said.

“But when you look at the top ladder builds there is mostly no slot saved for that kind of skills. Everything is optimized for max damage output.”

That’s exactly what I meant, and what I fear most in the evolution of Last Epoch’s gameplay. This is a real problem, an impoverishment of the gamig sensations. I wonder if the devs agree with what that.

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I don’t mind auto casting one or two support abilities, you still have to manually use your “main” damage skill and some other mobility skills…

About the reactive playstyle, a lot of sentinel builds are now using Volatile Reversal, it’s an utility skill saved when you’re out of mana, boardman did very well with it at high waves of arena.

I never played D2, but i played a lot of other arpg (grim dawn and poe would be the main ones), and i’ve never seen the “skilled and nervous gameplay” you’re talking about.

Arpg are not really about execution but game knowledge, if you want execution, “skilled” base game, you might be mistaken about the arpg genre, and be better off playing other games like Dark Souls and Hollow Knight (which are both master piece).

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First of all let me commend you for taking the time to send through such a heavy, solid block of feedback text. When people bother to contribute ideas and suggestions in such a vast way, both in arguments and volume, it should simply be appreciated.

Now back to the excerpt I quoted from your second point. It bothers me a lot!
Simplifying a game is never OK for me. I don’t agree with the class specific loot. I think it’s a big step towards dumbing down what so far has a been a free-build game.

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Thanks for the kind words.

I don’t think the changes simplify gearing or reduce build diversity in any kind.

Before the patch every affix could roll on every type of armor and helmet. So you got a crest with strength on a Sentinel or a gladiator helmet with intelligence on a mage. Perhaps exactly the stats you searched for. But not on the right item. The implicit stats on those items had less impact so it was viable for a mage to wear a plate armor and for a Sentinel to wear a robe. But in the end everybody used the armor with better implicit stats (=armor values). Nowhere did this enable any build diversity. It just felt inappropriate.

Now the armor class fits the character class. And its “easier” to gear. It’s not less “complex”. Theres a huge difference in what I meant with the term “easier”.

You get better fitting gear with implicit stats that are tuned for your character class. New players are guided better towards a working build. Also the rng got decreased. That’s a good thing. It’s hard enough to find the right items with the right affixes with decent tier level on the right base item. It’s frustrating when you see good rolls on the wrong base item. The pool of base items is decreased now (only for helmets and armor) so you will certainly get a base item that has synergies with your class / build.

With the new items and also class specific affixes the power level of players is increased. But min/maxing your build is not “simpler”. It got spiced up a lot.

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We can also prove the theory of chaos by following acute order brought to the extreme.
What I mean is that, we don’t need to overword this.
We both noticed the gear limitations and restrictions within the patch and you recognized it as easing new players into the game. I already explained how I feel about it.
Regardless of our opinions the game has suffered limitation within the gearing and looting aspect.

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Perhaps you could explain in what aspects you think it limits the players gearing options? What builds and possibilities got nerfed?

I get your opinion, but I don’t understand the reason why you think so.

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I suppose it’s difficult to see how things will turn out. But at the conceptual level, the obvious concern is curtailing the possibility of off-class and unusual builds.

But this is a clash with EHG’s philosophy fundamentally as they have made clear class identity will be a defining aspect of LE.

It’s a trade off I’m willing to accept as long as there are still interesting and varied ways to play each class. But I’m still concerned about the smart loot system especially once the economy kick in.

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Excellent review indeed and excellent patch (depsite some issues).

Regarding the ward part, it’s not unplayable of course but the change imply a lot of news stuff to survive and probably a change of defense (well, the most impactful effect on your gear).

I have a pre-patch fire mage (dodge+ward). As said, the ward now need a lot of investments to be “just” useful ( and having sufficient DPS) if we compared it to resistances.

But, the second effect of the patch is the new enemies. I die a lot against them, especially because you can’t always avoid their attacks (sometimes they’re off screen), and even with high dodge (70+), you take all the (massive) damages.

So i think the “ward complains” with the patch is that the combo Ward-Dodge (the classical one) had been slapped :slight_smile:

That being said, the fact that exsanguinous is overused may be one of the problems for adjusting the ward parameter. Without it, the amount of ward for a mage (i mean the basis, without flame ward buff) is quite low (even with the passive points in the trees).
But maybe it’s different for the lich :slight_smile:

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I think that smart loot will somewhat curtail or ameliorate the usage of trading since you’re more likely to find gear that your (current) character can use while still providing for the possiblity of finding gear that inspires you to build an alt around (since whether the drop is a unique is the first roll, you can still roll “off-build” or “off-class” uniques).