Problems I have with the game

[Baileyjk01]

I have just hit over 200 hours in this game and just hit level 100 on my VK, I have a level 74, 69 and 66 after this.

Masteries
I still do not see the point in not being able to freely swap masteries when you reach level 100, I understand that the devs want to restrict how much players change their build around (Actively have said this in discord that this is not their goal), But having to make 2 new characters just to try out 2 new abilities and the upper half of passive is just ridiculous. People have counter argued with me that allowing you to change masteries freely takes away the important choice of what direction you want to go, I agree with this to an extent. I chose sentinel because I wanted to play sentinel, that was the important choice I made when selecting what class I wanted. Not being able to try out the other masteries simply because I chose the mastery that I liked the look at first is way too restricting and should be alleviated a bit (Will give a suggestion for this at the end). The second counter argument is player identity, you choose a mastery and that is the identity of your character, I disagree, there is 0 player identity in this game at the moment, every single VK looks the same appearance wise (excluding armour). The only ‘player identity’ there is, is what you name your character, which only shows up on the last epoch site ladder. When classes aren’t gender locked and you can customise your character, come back to me with the player identity argument. The last argument I have heard is from the devs saying they want you to feel close to your character because you made a meaningful choice, again I disagree with this, I do not care about my character at all, he is just a generic VK shaped piece of meat that I will discard when I have no further use for him. What makes me close to my characters is being able to play the ENTIRE class without having to create duplicates just to try out other things. In WoW I play priest, she is my favourite character, why? Because I can play every spec and can invest my time into perfecting each of those specs.
Solutions to these problems are:

1. Allow us to use the other mastery abilities (Holy aura and forge strike for sentinel as a VK), but keep the passive of our respective mastery (if you choose VK you’re stuck with that passive and passive tree)
2. Make levelling other sentinels faster once you reach max level (more on that later)
   As it stands this game is making me only want to play one character and it kills the game for me (there is a reason it took me so long to reach 100 on my VK), So let me freely swap between masteries on that character (All I want is the ability, idc about the passive tree) which will greatly increase my motivation to play because I can play around and change builds.

Levelling
This is a hill I will die on. Levelling takes far too long.
The devs have said that getting to level 100 should be an achievement and not everyone will get it, but there is 0 reward for reaching that milestone, most builds are finished around level 80, with the remaining levels being a very small power spike. However, for some people (myself included) getting to level 100 is for the completionism part of levelling, the power spike I don’t really care about (mental issues regarding not being max level). I would understand how long it takes to reach max level if you could play all three masteries on the one character, but with how levelling is at the moment and you needing to make 15 characters to try out a different mastery, it’s a bit much. The devs are even saying it will take longer to reach max when 1.0 is live, why? A suggestion I have made is make level 80 the max level, and make levels 80-100 cosmetic only (remove passive points gained at these levels), this is so people that want level 100 for the achievement can do so while people who don’t have the time to grind that much can be comfortable at level 80. There needs to be more incentive to reach level 100, because quite frankly, the “sense of achievement” is a poor reason to get there.
Solutions to this are:

1. Have normal levelling for the first character you make, then once it reaches level 100 (incentive here), your alts have increased exp gains, this will allow people to change characters often to try out different builds and to stop them from becoming stagnant.
2. Once level 100 has been reached with EVERY mastery worldwide, make levelling faster due to ‘race to first 100’ will be over.

As a person who gets bored of the one character, being ‘forced’ to play the one character does not want to make me play the game more, I just log off because I cannot be bothered relevelling a whole new character just to try out 1 extra spell. I believe these problems I have with the game are very valid problems with a strong reasoning given, and i’d like to hope I am not the only person out there that feels this way. Thank you all for listening to this long ass essay, to those who disagree with this, I respect your opinion, but cannot agree with you for the reasons listed above. I love the game and the devs are doing a great job, but this will kill it for me in the late future <3

[vapourfire]

Hey…

Probably should have put this in the Feedback section of the site but hey…

Before I delve into your comments, I will say that there are a lot of threads going very in depth on what you are touching on and that it may be worth adding your two cents to some of the more recent ones or starting separate threads for discussion if you wanted to.

You are using some pretty strong language here that could be misinterpretted and while you are providing reasoning for your opinions, they are still your opinions - right for you but potentially wrong for others. For example, I have zero problem with making new characters to try out new abilities and other passive trees - to me it is no-where even remotely ridiculous (your word) and conversely its actually one of the things I like about LE & ARPGs. Neither of us is wrong… its just our opinions… Just clearing the air as some threads can get a little heated with people not understanding that their view may not be everyones (including the devs) view.

So… now to your comments:

Masteries:

When I started playing I found this Mastery choice restriction a little odd but in-hindsight after playing for 800h and having a char in almost every class, I have since realised that its because of not understanding the game and a lack of imersion into the player character as you progress through the first part of campaign… Everything is about the world and the deities messing up timelines and very little is about the characters own evolution and the choices the player has to make regaring the final class.

I think that there is a lot that could be done to “help” the player understand the characters class choice rather than just running through that silly shadow map and speaking to some statues.

This speaks to your last point about saying the devs want you to feel close to the character… If that was true, then I believe they need to work more on the story part of a new character…

Allow other mastery abilities across the sub classes - There are obviously already some that you can use but I think the devs are likely not to like this… There are many many many threads about how they do not want Class identity to become muddled by allowing skills and even particular damage types to cross classes. This is similar to how they have dual-wielding implemented… They dont want mages to run around dual wielding axes but they are ok with swords ala Gandalf style… Obviously this is the devs choice/decision… Perhaps they may mellow and allow a little more skill creep but who knows and to be honest, while I like experimenting with different way out builds in ARPGs that sometimes warrant doing things out of the ordinary I do understand the need to keep certain things separate…

Make additional characters in a completed class level faster… Interesting idea… Its very similar in purpose to the suggestion of having a non-campaign leveling option for new characters… The idea is pretty much the same as yours in end result - quick leveling of a character without having to do the story each time…

As to being able to respec a character later on to test… Well… I can understand your frustration but from the perspective of the game/dev, this is the primary way of increasing playtime/longevity in the game… If you could just change your entire character by the time you got to level 80, then you would have zero incentive to play the game for more than however long it took you to level one primary character for each type… i.e. one sentinel, one mage, one rouge, one acolyte, one primalist… if you even bothered… Personally I have hit this exact issue - I’ll see a great / interesting build on the forum and think… oh crap, I like my Firebrand Spellblade but I want to try this lightning nova option… ok, I’ll make another mage… To me this is not a problem at all and I would do it without thinking… You obviously would not and it just becomes a negative for you.

Levelling

Again, this one has been discussed almost to death and I have only been on the forums since Aug last year… I even opened a thread myself commenting on how dinging level 100 was seriously anticlimactic… From what I gather, the devs are not fixed on the current setup beyond making sure that level 100 is only for the determined few… and yes level 80 is supposed to be the “finished” level - at the moment. Pretty sue that the scaling will definitely be chopped and changed before the game gets to 1.0… and I have a feeling that a lot of this will depend heavily on the content (endgame especially) that is still coming & changing with virtually every patch and how the devs have to balance the skills and classes that dont even exist yet… Multiplayer could obviously have a big impact on leveling too.

Your suggesting of increase Alt leveling speed… Interesting… I have no problem with that… I like the ideas that you are mentioning about giving some reward to reaching level 100… Nothing to boost the character, but a “player wide” boost to make leveling other characters a little faster… Probably dangerous in MP mode (should definitely NOT be implemented online), but in non-competitive offline I dont see any harm…

Not sure I like the idea of differentiating the faster levels by Mastery levels etc… Ding 100 on a single char and get a boost in leveling any and all other chars in offline mode seems more than enough for me…

---

I am sure that there are others that feel exactly the same as you… just as I am sure that there are others than share my opinions… and still others that have entirely different takes on the same things…

I do also understand how hard it would be for the devs to allow for both our preferred playstyles/choices/preferences and still maintain some sort of integrity to whatever goals/ideals they want to achieve for the game…

Thankfully I can confirm that the devs DO read these forums and definitely take the feedback that players include… So we just have to trust that they use this to help make the game great…

Cheers and I hope you dont stop playing too soon…

[Baileyjk01]

You make extremely good points, thank you for providing your opinion. Thankfully though next patch looks amazing so I won’t be quitting anytime soon!