Currently in Last Epoch, the early stages of gameplay offer a very limited selection of skills, resulting in a lack of variety in combat. Despite this, the time required to level up is excessive, forcing players to endure repetitive battles for extended periods, which easily leads to a sense of monotony and boredom.
In the hack-and-slash genre, the core appeal lies in the tangible feeling of character growth and the excitement of experimenting with new builds. These elements are crucial for sustaining player engagement. However, under the current design, it takes too long for players to experience meaningful growth, significantly increasing the riskâparticularly for new playersâthat they may quit the game before truly experiencing what makes the genre enjoyable.
To address this issue, I propose the following measures:
â Urgent Adjustment to Early Experience Tables
I strongly recommend substantially reducing the experience required to level up, especially within the first 20 levels, and continuing to ease the progression curve up to around level 50.
This adjustment would allow players to unlock new skills more quickly, expand their combat options, and feel the joy of character development much earlier in the game.
By offering frequent and noticeable progress through level-ups, the risk of players disengaging due to early-game monotony would be greatly reduced, leading to a significant improvement in early-stage engagement.
The early-game experience in a hack-and-slash title is critical to shaping the overall evaluation of the game.
I sincerely hope that prompt and positive action will be taken to ensure that Last Epoch continues to earn the support and enthusiasm of a growing player base.
Really? Am I doing it wrong 'cause combat in LE tends not to last too long, especially early on. Are you upgrading your weapon frequently? What do you call "extended periods?
In my experience the very early game goes by pretty quickly, not dissimilar to PoE.
What game are you playing because itâs definitely NOT Last Epoch, leveling and campaign is fast. The only thing is if you only want 1 skill for the build that is at the very end, but thatâs a very peculiar situation and not so troublesome. Itâs your choice and definitely not a problem of the game.
That, tbf, does suck, or if thereâs a required unique (like the squirrel helm) that has a relatively high level. And the level of that particular helm is why Iâve not made a squirrel build despite really wanting to, I often start to get bored in the 60-70s.
So you propose to ruin everyone else leveling experience so you can enjoy 1 endgame silly build ? Why not just respect one of your high level character to use the item ?
Getting up to the helm level is not the trouble. The trouble is that the helmet is too high level to use it as a leveling fun piece in the first place.
Each class has a minimum of 3 skills by level 3, 5 skills by level 5, 7 skills by level 10, and 11+ skills by level 17. Mage has even more than that.
Thereâs 5 starting classes in the game, so thatâs a minimum of 15 available skills by level 3, 25 skills by level 5, 35 skills by level 10, and 55+ skills by level 17 âŚ
Why you would consider having over 55+ skills available to you before level 20, as a âvery limited selectionâ âŚ
It takes 30minutes to reach the End of Time and select your mastery class. 1hour after creating your character you can be about level 20.
How much faster do you want the first 20 levels to go? If 1hour is too long for you, what amount of time are you suggesting? Should players reach level 20 after 30minutes? 15 minutes?
I appreciate your perspective. However, when I referred to âlong combatâ and âmonotony,â I was not solely discussing the length of each individual battle.
Rather, I was referring to the lack of meaningful progression over an extended period of gameplayâmeaning that players are engaging in battles that feel very similar for a prolonged time before gaining new abilities or experiencing noticeable character growth.
Thus, it is not just about individual battle duration, but about the perceived pace of meaningful change and variety within the early hours of gameplay.
While it may feel that both leveling and campaign progression are already fast for experienced players, for those who are new to the ARPG (hack-and-slash) genre, it can still feel noticeably slow.
To make the game more welcoming and accessible to a broader audience, I believe it would be beneficial to further speed up the early-game progression.
For example, Diablo 4 offers a faster early experience, which helps newcomers quickly grasp the fun of character growth and skill experimentation without feeling bogged down.
Opening the door wider to new players is crucial for the long-term success of any game.
Thank you for your feedback. I would like to clarify a few points.
â First, the discussion concerns the experience within a single class. Players can only access skills from their chosen class; therefore, aggregating skills across five classes is irrelevant when evaluating early-game variety.
Second, âearly gameâ is better defined by when players gain functional build diversity, not by a specific level like 20. Until specialization and passive synergies are established, many skills feel basic, and gameplay remains monotonous regardless of level.
Finally, while many skills technically unlock early, practical variety remains limited due to slot restrictions, resource constraints, and the lack of impactful specialization early on.
Thus, it is consistent to describe early gameplay as offering âlimited choicesâ despite the total number of skills available.
⥠Reducing the experience required for early levels to around one-half (1/2) to two-thirds (2/3) of the current amount would strike a good balance.
This would maintain the sense of progression and achievement, while alleviating the feeling of stagnation during the early stages without trivializing the gameplay.
Thank you again for the opportunity to clarify my position.
within a single class - every single class - has about 12 skills available to them before level 20 ⌠How is that a âvery limited selectionâ ??? How many more unique skills do you want added to each class then? Iâm just not sure I understand the sheer volume of skills that you are requesting here, for the very beginning 30minutes to 1hour of gameplay.
No, thatâs not what âearly gameâ means. And what exactly does by when players gain functional build diversity mean to you?
Are you referring to the amount of skill slots on the hotbar? Which resource constraints do you mean exactly?
OK, so you want to be level 20 after only playing for 30minutes effectively. And level 50 in about an hour? Gaining 50% of your available levels in the first hour or so of gameplay would ruin the feeling of progress. Players shouldnât be halfway done leveling, halfway through the steam refund window âŚ
I have completed another round of test play. Reaching level 5 was very smooth and took about 10 minutes. Therefore, I would like to partially retract my earlier statement that the range of skill choices in the early stages of the game is âextremely limited.â More accurately, while the number of available skills is not particularly high, the significant penalties associated with respecializing skill specializations make experimentation especially difficult for new players. As a result, the range of viable choices feels substantially restricted.
Next, you mentioned that it takes about 30 minutes to reach the âEnd of Timeâ and select a mastery class, and that a character can reach level 20 within an hour of creation. In my actual playthrough, it did indeed take about 10 minutes to reach level 5, as you stated. However, the subsequent level-ups took 10 minutes, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes, and 8 minutes respectively. It took exactly 60 minutes to reach level 13, and I have yet to reach the point where I can select a mastery class. Based on this pace, your claim seems somewhat unrealistic.
In light of these resultsâas well as the penalty tied to skill specialization, the importance of enabling trial and error for beginners, the need to ensure smooth early progression, and the likelihood that level-ups beyond level 13 will take even longerâa more balanced and realistic adjustment would be to reduce the required experience to about two-thirds. Spending nearly 10 minutes at the same level during the early game feels tedious.
Personally, I would like to see a story skip feature implemented for second and subsequent characters, to allow faster access to the Monolith. The essence of an ARPG lies in battling enemies and strengthening skills and equipment. Given that the story is currently incomplete, unnecessary dialogue and excessive traversal only serve to create frustration in the gameplay experience.
Finaly we come to a point. Respeccing early on feels bad. I always said skill specialisation feels like it was turned arround. From my point of view you should have an easier time early on and a much worse time later on.
Right now you have more points after respeccing the higher your level is and you level skills faster. In my little perfect world the system would be turned arround. You gain points faster early on and keep more points after respeccing while respeccing in endgame takes much much longer and more effort.
Outside of this the points you brought up are rather⌠weak. The leveling phase in almost every H&S game is boring and revolvs arround little skills to use while you run it down. I personaly shiled charged through complete zones because I was overleveled and couldnât be bothered to fight in a zone where I get nothing out of like the most zones before Monoliths.
The only good leveling experience I ever had was in Wildstar because you needed to be active from 0 to hero. But that was a different time and genre.
Ok, so obviously you dont have a lot of experience with the game at all if you retract your opinion after testing the first 10 minutes again.
What significant penalty for respecializing skill ??? Did you actually try to respect a skill and see the actual effect ? not simulate it, experience it. I did a lot of respect on my Rogue run because I am unsure about what way I want to go and itâs easy and not bothersome AT ALL.
Also you are leveling far too slowly. Especially on a second run with a character that have access to CoF and shared stash. Rush the first area, donât explore, donât try to kill everything, if your goal is to get one peculiar skill i a mastery run as fast as possible to the End of Time, the extra exp bonus from monster level will help you to catch up easily.
If you have extra dungeon key, the first dungeon (that you can enter very fast) will also level you quite easily.
But frankly, reading you, it simply seems you need to play the game moreâŚ
This argument has been going on for years, the loss in power on account of having fewer skill points is relatively low compared to just upgrading your weapon.
Revisiting the first 10 minutes and partially revising my opinion does not mean I lack experience with the game. In reality, I noticed that while reaching level 5 is very smooth, the time required for leveling up increases dramatically afterward. I updated my wording to more accurately reflect this. Most of the actual playtime is spent in what I would call the âsluggish phaseâ beyond level 5, and my earlier statements may have conflated the very early game with the broader early progression due to focusing on that slower portion.
Regarding the respecialization system, Iâm not speaking hypotheticallyâIâve respecced skills multiple times in the actual game. That said, while the system may work fine for veteran players who already know what builds theyâre aiming for, it can strongly discourage experimentation for new players. Even though respeccing itself is easy, the fact that respecialized skills must be releveled from scratch becomes a barrier to trying different options. Especially in the early game, just leveling a skill a few times can feel like a significant investment, and many new players may feel they canât afford to make mistakes. So yes, respeccing is easyâbut the system still feels cumbersome. And there are specific reasons for that.
As for leveling speed, I completely agree that itâs possible to progress much faster by following an optimized route, skipping exploration, using shared stash gear, or leveraging dungeon keys. However, my feedback isnât about what can be achieved under ideal conditionsâitâs about how the game feels to players progressing at a natural, unoptimized pace. If achieving a smooth sense of progression requires skipping most story and combat elements, that raises concerns about the fundamental design of the ARPG experience.
Lastly, I genuinely appreciate the suggestion that I âneed to play more.â Thatâs because the goal of my post is to identify potential barriersânot just for veteran players, but also for newcomers who are just starting out. If I came across as a beginner, then that means Iâm successfully seeing the game from a beginnerâs point of view. Embracing different perspectives and playstyles is key to building a better game for everyone. Thanks for your feedback from the veteran playerâs side!
Iâve always felt the same way⌠Why punsh level 20 players for wanting to try out the spec trees of different spells?
skill-minimum-level should be exactly at the skill-max-level early on, and only the divergence should increase⌠currently the âtime to earn a pointâ decreases as you get into endgame, meaning its more punishing to low level characters, which is backwards IMO
Thatâs why I said it feels bad . In theory you can play to emp monos without even picking a spec and everything would be fine. Still it feels bad . First time I was facing the respecc mechanic in LE it was realy a âMeh!â experience.
The only thing that bothers me personaly about it today is that respeccing in the late game is far to easy. Itâs so easy and fast they could simply gave all the points back at once because running down 2 echos tops is kind of a joke.
Oh thank god⌠backwards⌠I try to remember this term the whole morning and it slipped again and again. Backwards it is. While the campaign content is so easy you donât need any points for sure it is a feelsbadman system from my point of view.
I would cahnge it the other way arround so you can always respecc 10 points untill you are lvl 50, from there on you get less and less untill you have only 2 points left at level 90.
The point is it being easy enough that if you actually want to change your build itâs fine and no big deal, but if you want to change your build all the time to cheese bosses, then itâs annoying enough that barely anyone will do it.
I do agree (and so do most people) that the respec experience at lower levels should be improved though.
Even if it was completely free switch with 0 downsides I wonât touch it because I donât see the need for it. Then again I guess the blasters would show again how to do it and because snapshotting is a sad thing in LE minion builds will most likely abuse it to the max. I still wouldnât be bothered that much personaly.
On the other hand in the endgame everyone should know what they do so respeccing can be an easier approach but I still think itâs strange how easy this works later on vs early on.
. In theory you can play to emp monos without even picking a spec and everything would be fine. Still it feels bad