Strangely enough, “bugs are bad” is not a particularly contentious issue.
This, however, is not the objective thing that you believe it is due to
With the popularity of third-party apps like Path of Building, I’d imagine that to be the case for the core audience of ARPGs, lol. There’s a 100 better games to play than LE if you want to focus on the role-playing aspect of things.
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ARPGs aren’t just about numbers-go-up. They’re about loot chase. They’re about grind. And more importantly, they’re about combat gameplay.
You can do all 3 without feeling like you need to hit max number and, in fact, most players do. It’s just the ultra-competitive ones that use those numbers as their ultimate goal and anything that gets in the way of that objective, like grind or gameplay design, need to be removed.
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What’s the point of loot chase and grind? Number go up. Combat gameplay - sure, but it’s more engaging with bigger numbers. Without better loot that makes number go up, the combat gameplay is fun for a few hours at most.
Nobody is talking about hitting max number. Just aiming to improve the current one’s as much as you can. ARPGs are held up by number chasers, not by those that consider ending campaign beating the game.
Also, the guy isn’t talking about grind or gameplay design, but narratives and worldbuilding - if you think that number-chasers are rare, then wait until you hear about people who care about these in ARPGs. Not to mention that generic “soldier who was fighting for faction X and deserted after seeing them do bad things” is not a very engaging story.
Dopamine hits. ARPGs are basically gambling games. You keep gambling hoping for that big drop and when you get it you get a dopamine hit.
If you make the game too easy to get drops, the dopamine hits don’t come, much like in D3.
This is much more important than number-go-up. And that is why ARPGs have innate friction and layers of RNG.
Yes, but there are different degrees of “numbers go up” - Some have an actual gameplay purpose, and some really don’t. For example, “Numbers go up so I can take on this hard boss” or “Numbers go up so I can get this achievement and unlock this season’s pretty hat” are real gameplay purposes.
“Numbers go up so I can farm faster so I can sell more so I can buy bigger numbers so I can farm faster so I can sell more so I can…” is what @Tree and @DJSamhein are talking about. That’s not really playing the game anymore, that’s playing a calculator with pretty colors.
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lol both sides here so bad faith, how about just let people enjoy the game how they want XD. as a “power gamer” that refuses to play anything non-meta, i dont mind if casuals enjoy the game how they want, so let us giga grind till our eyes fall out and our e-peens feel good (i fall in the camp of being willing to do sanctum every time if thats required, not gonna like it, but i have to do it even if its trivial at this point, the goal is make number go up and nothing will get in my way besides bugs that wont let me finish sanctums). no need to try and moralize how people should play arpgs. just seems like jealousy.
Frozen again for the 348th time…Is there any communication at all to WHAT is causing this or IF there are planned fixes coming? I just don’t get what is happening with the game. It worked better at launch.
So something new now when I switch dimensions I hear a bunch of noises and start taking damage yet nothing is on my screen. I switch back and I’m teleported out of bounds to the far right outside the room standing in the void goop.
That seems more like corrupt files than actual bugs. I would tell you to have steam verify your files, but you have me blocked so I guess you’ll have to continue playing with bugs.
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Regardless of what position you hold on the process of LP use through Temporal Sanctum, it is utterly insane that a bug that completely locks off the system altogether for a not-insigificant proportion of the player base has survived as long as it has without a work around.
If it is a bug that EHG can’t easily fix, the system should absolutely be moved to elsewhere in the game, even if temporarily, until they can. You simply cannot have a system as central and core to the loot paradigm of the game locked behind an activity that even causes 1% of the population to crash, let alone what seems to be an appreciable amount more.
To be clear, I don’t crash at all, and I don’t have any horse in this race; I’ve happily been running Temporal Sanctums since release with no issue whatsoever. However, there is no objective way to look at the current status quo and argue that it is ok - completely separate to the discussion of the content in and of itself. You must move the Forge to another location in the game unless you imminently have a fix for people who cannot reasonably complete it through no fault of their own.
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This is nothing about moralizing or “telling people how to play the game.” I am simply pointing out the chasm of difference between what “casual” players expect from a game and what “powergamers” expect (and yes, I’m a bit harsh on the powergamers because I have not seen any powergamer here who provides actual feedback on how to make their characters better, just ‘lulz bad design.’ Pro-tip, repeatedly saying ‘bad design’ over and over doesn’t help the devs figure out how to make good design. Even if the Temporal Sanctum worked flawlessly 100% of the time, I’m near certain we’d still hear ‘lulz bad design’ because it takes 3 minutes to get to the boss instead of 15 seconds)
On one side, if the devs are catering for a more casual audience, they want to provide good world-building and combat flow so that their numbers go up have a meaning to them. They want their boss battles to have a crescendo to them so that the players’ entire journey of leveling up and obtaining loot to be worth it in the end. To the powergamer, anything that takes away from darting from point A to point B in the “meta-flavor of the month” is just tedium timesink and utterly boring.
On the other hand, try telling a new player that “yeah, you can play as a Lightning Mage, but you don’t have any actual fun unless you obtain this boss unique that drops 5% of the time, but not only that, but it has to have at least 2, preferably 3 LP (so 1% out of that 5%), and then you have to read a guide on the exact affixes to slam with it, then you beat this boss battle (if you’re not reading a guide, good luck, it’s meant to be tough), and then through all of that, you have a 50% chance of that 1% of 5% drop to be not complete garbage for your build. Good luck!”
The ideal balance is to find a level of gear appropriate so that reaching one threshold provides a fun and engaging experience (hence the “300 corruption” benchmark the devs have clearly stated), and then provide an interesting way to take those builds further beyond. I genuinely hope the bugs are fixed, but I’ll reiterate, even if the dungeon worked flawlessly, I doubt it will stop the complaining about how boring the dungeons are. I hope there’s some sort of roundtable on how to improve dungeon design so that people can pitch their feedback and make it an actual engaging experience.
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And where is that dopamine coming from? From the possibility of upgrading your build (so again, number go up). Don’t know where the difficulty of getting a good drop came from.
I’m sure 100 other people have told him that, including moderators. It never fixed anything for me. This is “just restart your pc” type advice, works on rare occasions. People report this bug to still take place after file verification as well, even reinstalling the game.
Of course it is. But dopamine hits are all about a curve. Make that curve too easy and you don’t get dopamine hits because it happens all the time(D3). Make it too hard and the frustration offsets the dopamine hit.
Each player will have a different tolerance for this. So if it’s too grindy some will like it, some won’t. If it’s too easy some will like it, some won’t.
Wherever EHG draws the line, some players will like it, some won’t. So it’s up to them to decide where they want the line and what players they want to appeal to.
This request is simply “I want this to go away so the line is on the easier side (closer to D3)”, which is not EHG’s stance on the issue, rather than “I don’t enjoy this, so please give us an alternative to do the same thing with the same time/effort but which I find fun”.
2nd one is something that might happen in the game, 1st one is highly unlikely to ever happen.
I’m not OP, I don’t complain about that. I think the curve present in EHG is pretty well balanced. I disagree with the legendary forge being unlocked once and forever. It should be locked behind a “hard” boss like Julra. I just don’t like the dungeon since it’s a time waste, and while I don’t mind the design of 2 rooms before we reach the final boss, but with the current state of such rooms I’d much rather just take on even buffed Julra instantly instead.
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Let me describe the powergamer’s pov regarding Julra.
Our endgame loop consists of running high corruption monoliths to find better and better gear. We get high LP uniques and corresponding exalteds from that.
The Julra problem is that we have to PAUSE our endgame activities to go back into a tedious low lvl area. Calling that “difficult” is kinda silly regarding characters at that power level. It’s just an interruption of fun gameplay.
You can alleviate that a bit by collecting dungeon prophecies, but how many powergamers are there in CoF? 
Supposedly every one that refers to themselves as powergamers? Since it’s common sense that SSFHC players are the most of what “powergamers” can be… Among those, anyone who plays trade are casuals, so…
some questions that come to mind (not just for the OP but it helps a bit.):
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What specs is your PC running on? because while I do know that there are bugs in LE, some bugs tend to be more visible and prominent on PCs that may not be as well built and some specs even leading to the aforementioned freezes/DC’s that you may well be experiencing. also, +100’s of times? definitely seems a bit over exaggerated ain’t it, contextually also depends on the tier TS is done on in each run too.
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why would you want the eternity cache to be unlocked permanently outside of of the Temporal Sanctum after a single run?
from my perspective, all that does is remove the replay value that TS currently has and if the EC was unlocked permanently, ask yourself how many players would go back to play it? what would EHG think of this in context? as I’m pretty sure there are some players who do not want dungeons that fulfill a particular purpose to be rendered into obsolescence.
and most importantly: do you know that you don’t actually have to do tier 4 all the time for specific uniques in TS? (I can’t read minds here.)
just for reference:
Tier 1: uniques lvl 50 or below with LP can be used in the EC.
Tier 2: uniques lvl 65 or below with LP can be used in the EC.
Tier 3: uniques lvl 75 or below with LP can be used in the EC.
Tier 4: uniques lvl 100 or below with LP can be used in the EC. (essentially removes the level cap to some degree and leads me to believe in some particular philosophy where the true reward is more often “in the path” than the end destination but that’s just me.) -
Have you considered taking a step back from LE for a little to take a break and come back fresh, or even to take the time to reevaluate the situation? how often do people play to the point of maybe unknowingly burning themselves out from playing LE. (again, cannot read minds.)
I’ll explain it from my perspective as a primalist druid for this particular query: I can reasonably do 100+ corruption up to about roughly 150 because I’m still fine tuning my build, but I cannot reasonably do Tier 3 TS due to mechanic based constraints, I just need to do it enough times where I know I can do the mechanics since I have a repetitious learning curve (I can do tier 2 just fine though.) so what I am doing is taking a step back, reevaluating my build and seeing where I am going wrong, and using what I have currently, finding ways to make it work and working towards an ideal outcome which I find to be invigorating as it will eventually result in an outcome of pure joy when it eventually comes to pass, but if I am getting a little disheartened from being tamperined by lagon a few too many times (I get a bit of a chuckle just looking back at it.) or even by standard mobs, again, I take a step back, reevaluate, and eventually just enjoy playing as a Druid Werebear when I get that itch again.
and PC specs-wise: I’m basically running Last Epoch’s “Online mode” with an NVidia Geforce RTX 4060 TI so most of the issues other players may have run into may not be as visible to me than it may be to others depending on how others run their copy of LE, and if such issues arise, then it is “up to the player like myself, others and even you” to bring such issues to the forefront in a constructive format where it matters most and EHG can Duly note in the long run when the time calls for it. (like the current cosmetic issue/bug with the kermode’s cage unique chest not changing the werebears fur white which may not have a high priority since it is a cosmetic issue and has, in no way, shape or form, any impact on the actual gameplay of LE like the potential bugs the OP is explaining with Temporal Sanctum.)
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No it isn’t. I’ve been talking to people that have run Temporal sanctum in chat 300+ times already this season. They are really demotivated by the bugs, fact that you constantly brink LP 3 items over and over and can’t get a build rolling.
Now we will have to do this all over again not just this season but next and next? It’s a core mechanic for Last Epoch that is not just annoying but grueling and gets worse with time.
Just like regrinding MG just to trade every season and favor farming. Just seems like a lot of really really bad time-sinks that are in the way of ARPG players enjoying the game.
- I don’t think EHG or any Dev needs to create time-sinks to waste players time. Just make a good game and gamers will happily want to play endlessly.
You get to remove a time-sink that takes away from playing the game. If the forge is unlocked after hours and hours of farming and finding some exciting items to slam. We don’t have to run a horribly bugged dungeon and waste our time. Ruining the excitiment of getting these items.
Again it’s 10-15 mins per run or longer with bugs. Then multiply that by 100’s of times you are doing TS. Why do we have to waste all this time instead of actually playing the game and doing something we are looking forward too.
There is no replay value. It’s a pointless time-sink that is badly designed and one of the worst things I’ve experienced in a video game. It’s so unfun I curse everytime I’m in there and have to do it 100’s of times which just makes me want to quit playing LE instead of creating something awesome and being excited.
Players would go back an play it if there is loot they need. However if they removed TS from the game I’d be fine with that too. (a lot of players would)
- Realistically TS should be a CHOICE either way. Not a time-sink mechanic you are forced to do that ruins LE.
Why not just let players Unlock the Legendary Forge and then focus on activites they enjoy with their 1,000s of hours of playtime? Players will stick around longer when they get to do this.
As soon as we get a Legendary forge unlock players would start playing, theorycrafting and trying more builds/alts. It’s just better for the game and highlights a part of LE that is fun.
How does this fix TS or other poorly designed time-sink metrics? If I leave and come back which I already did. I quit after launch and Alt F4 in temporal sanctum. I couldn’t take it anymore. Was away for 2 months till 1.1. The same problem is here and it’s worse this time.
Nothing wrong with that. However I’m farming 700-1,000 corruption because that is the sweet spot for most players to farm. Some with giga builds will stay at 1k+. Then after some farming we gotta ruin our day by going into TS.
Please fix it again. Its broken again… 
getting extremely demotivated by now.
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