Please balance character progression and stop forcing the campaign

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I’ve started trying to write this feedback a few times now. Last Epoch, for a long time, has been my favorite ARPG. However, this season, I’ve found myself frustrated and, to be honest, about ready to move on. Here are the primary issues I’m struggling with:

Character progression is frustrating. I’m the kind of player who, if there’s a skill or class to try, likes to try it out. While leveling though, I repeatedly run into what feels like a brick wall with many skills, that just drop off or are never viable to level with. I inevitably end up following a guide again, usually by level 40-50. At that point, the game loses immersion for me, and becomes just a process of following a game guide, just so I can continue to progress into monoliths. And even with the guides, the frustration continues until level 90+, which is often where you need to be just to find a random drop that will enable a build to work and progress into empowered monoliths.

You might consider that an unfair perspective, but I find that most people who think that are leveling up using a guide to begin with, and most likely playing sentinel. Please consider making more classes, skills, and builds viable. Please also consider making more of the “necessary” uniques available at earlier levels, even if they’re in lesser, but functional form. For a single example (but there are many more), the mad alchemist ladle. The regular alchemist ladle is pointless, and doesn’t work the same.

Also, there are still several multiplayer bugs that occur when playing cooperatively. The game often switches between world states, despite who’s selected as the party leader. It seems to be determined by whoever loads the map first. There are also many progression bugs in the campaign, along with a general difficulty of navigating the maps, locations, and timelines. I bring it up here in “Feedback” because I’ve listed these bugs before, but they have continued. And I think the overall solution is: STOP REQUIRING THAT WE PLAY THE CAMPAIGN YET AGAIN! PLEASE!!

You’ve made a good game, but your campaign is, unfortunately, a b-rate production. It lacks a sophisticated storyline or depth. It was interesting the first few times. However, the dozens of times I’ve played through it since, for every damn character I’ve created, has become mentally abusive. I put it right up there with a parent being forced to watch a b-rate animated movie on repeat with their kids. PLEASE! LET IT GO!! (Disney/Frozen pun intended). For this reason alone, I find myself not wanting to start a new season or character. I just can’t watch it again.

I’m really not sure you’ll see this in the sea of feedback you get. I hope you do. I sincerely think these are the reasons why you might be seeing lower player numbers over time. If others feel the way I do, it’s getting harder for them to come back.

2

Are you playing through the entire campaign with every character?

I haven’t done that with a single character since 1.0.

I just play until the end of chapter 3, go do Monoliths until I get a key to Temporal Sanctum, and then play to the middle of chapter 5 so I can skip to the end (or nearly the end now) of the campaign. I did it this season with a bladedancer without using any guide, the early game is still very easy.

3

I play all my Chars til Chapter 8 in Morditas Grave. Ends up with all passive Points and Idol Slots at around Lvl 45. Takes about 4 hrs (for a Casual, Can do it way faster) and is quite smooth.

4

This is very interesting. I don’t want to devalue your feedback but I have the exact opposite experience with LE sind I started playing:

I think this is exactly the part where LE shines the most among all other ARPG’s. Every damn skill is completely viable (especially during the early stages of the game)

This also baffled me. I think LE already has the best ratio among all ARPG’s for build enabling uniques and “build elevating” uniques. There are very very few build enabling uniques that are super rare or locked behind bosses in very late game.

This example I don’t get. Mad Alchemist Ladle is not build enabling. Any regular wand or Scepter can serve the same purpose with slightly different numbers.

But you don’t need to? Once you reach the end of time in chapter 2 you can go to the Monolith already. That usually requires a pretty good build. But even if you do the bare minimum stuff in the story you will be 15/15 passives and 8/8 idol unlocks by the end of chapter 7. If you do a few dungeons you unlock all of that even earlier.If you don’t like the campaign you can skip some many parts of it already and head straight into endgame.