It’s not though. The skill trees get as much praise as crafting. So does the loot filter. And the factions, especially CoF because no other game ever cared about non-traders before.
What you said is like saying that Half-life 2’s only big difference is the gravity gun. When it’s the sum of a lot more things.
Even if individually you have games that have a few of the features, there are plenty of people that like LE because of the sum of all the features (even some that other players don’t like). Including crafting.
Same goes for PoE. Or even for D4.
Each of those games stands out as a sum of features that collectively work to give the game a unique identity. You just happen to not care so much about some of them, which is fine.
LE crafting never makes me happy. It either fails to disappoint, but leaves me a little annoyed that I’m just leaving FP on the table, or it annoys the fuck out of me by chewing through FP furiously.
It is littered with false choices/gambling. I am in no risk of becoming addicted to gambling because every failure just re-emphasizes in my head how unfairly stacked the table is in the house’s favor. I don’t get a big grin on my face when I finally get a win, I’m usually still more annoyed/remembering all the gambling/failing I needed to do to get here.
I think that is the fundamental difference between the two camps. I’m in the camp that remembers all the failures, and hates the house just a little bit more with each one.
The thing is, just because you (& a friend) quit for a particular reason doesn’t mean that everyone quits for that reason, which is what you’re implying. Some people quit because of the crafting costs, absolutely & it’s probably one of the more common reasons, but it’s not the only reason.
And the skill trees. And that it’s a middle ground between D4 & PoE. And the loot filter. And the factions.
Actually yes, there are numerous posts by people that quit because they can’t play every class as a specific gender.
Not that either because you’re arguing that everyone quits because of the high fp costs which is demonstrably not true.
Yup, Ziz & the other PoE streamers are total newbies who only have a few hours in LE.
Kinda yes, it’d be nicer to have the fp go up faster but that’s because I don’t want to feel like my gear isn’t “finished”. But that’s like complaining that you can’t easily get the affixes you want at good tiers in PoE, you aren’t supposed to without throwing a lot of currency at it. In LE you get limited attempts on any given piece before you crap out & need to find a different item. It’s better than PoE in some ways & worse in others.
Well I’m glad you can admit that the core argument is possibly, or even probably, true. After that, I’m not sure if I stated that it’s literally the only reason. If I did, it was clearly hyperbolic, and more likely, I probably insinuated it’s the primary reason (which I would stand by). We can agree it would be silly to say that the crafting annoyance is literally the only reason people quit, right? So we can agree to push that aside?
Ehhh, nobody plays or doesn’t play a game because of skill trees. EVEN people that say they don’t play PoE because of its intimidating skill tree. Perhaps they use the skill tree to represent a broader reason, like “the game looks too complicated,” but it’s not gonna be a skill tree solidifying someone’s decision. Same with loot filters, anyone can just go download an average PoE loot filter and be good to go. The Epoch filter is easy to customize without needing a third party program, but at the end of the day, we’re all doing the same things with our filters and just choosing different color schemes. The only variances are not really worth mentioning, as they don’t detract from my point.
And the factions aren’t a selling point either. Just like I wouldn’t say Akara is a selling point of D2.
I… stand by my statement. The difference is the crafting. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough on what that fully means: The crafting isn’t just to say the crafting itself. But “the crafting” encompasses, simply, gearing up. Maybe a quitter liked the craft window itself, and everything that takes place in it. But they hated LP mechanics, or LP farming itself. Well… that’s crafting. Maybe I coulda picked a better word. But that’s what I’m trying to say. Crafting is the big difference = character progress is the big difference. Interchange these statements in my case, please.
Okay, come on, this is obviously from the crazies. Let’s not get political in here, lol.
Well, again, refer to our above agreement to push the hyperbole (if I did indeed do that) to the side, since that’s not the argument.
I don’t know or care about how many hours they have in Epoch. They’re streamers. They play niche games. They’re gonna hype those games up because it’s in their own best interest. They can’t sit there and give honest criticism, then nobody plays the game, then they go play Fortnite and continue their success as a streamer. They NEED these games to do well.
… And I’ve seen plenty of Ziz giving positive reinforcement to Path of Exile, a game that CERTAINLY earns SOME degree of criticism, no matter how diehard of a fan you are… and yet, I haven’t really seen him complain about the game. (Not sure if I’ve simply seen too little of Ziz, but if you’re more familiar, be honest.)
So, yeah, the streamers aren’t really a reliable source in my eyes.
I didn’t mind the leveling process of crafting. Not being able to get the next tier up because of level. Gave me something to look forward to, AND to think about.
I more mean… after leveling. While I started typing my point kind of with low level in my mind, my point extends past leveling and into the corruption scaling. An item with 4x t5’s doesn’t cut it. Pretty quickly, not even a t6 and 3x t5’s cuts it. And that’s more of what I mean. You talk about my crafting criteria being too high, but that’s just not true. As I said, and still stand by, my bar is incredibly low. But the goal is just too hard even still. If I’m trying to get more comfortable playing 700 corruptions, I can’t just be okay with some junker affixes. I’ve even lowered myself down to 500 just to not hate playing the game. (Although I’m still not playing, because the whole process is just simply unsatisfactory.) But the reality is that you empty FP on most (95+%) items before you can even get your 2nd t5 on it, with 4x usable/good enough affixes.
What seems to be true is that the only promising exalted items after a certain point come from Nemmies. And I’ve wondered if we need an exalt egg slot on them. But I’m sure that will be met with resistance, so I haven’t even bothered suggesting it. (And I’m sure it’s already been suggested a million times anyway.)
We got a common range of 30-40 FP for most items which are crafted on.
Even with the medium roll of ~7 FP per craft that means we got a medium amount of 5-6 crafts available per item.
While the improvement of Affix tiers works fine this way all other mechanics besides that are a nigh guaranteed fail-state hence.
A Rune of removal costs FP as well as removing total tiers from the item. A glyph of chaos has such a large variety of potential rolls that the outcome is below 50% to ever get the right Affix starting from T1.
The crafting system was created when not even exalted Affixes existed, the ‘new’ crafting system we have has taken over the percentile success chance from the old system without taking into consideration any further advancements in the itemization system.
It worked perfectly when only T1-T5 existed. It started to become a bit wonky when exalted Affixes were introduces as the system wasn’t made with that in mind, reducing chances substantially. And nowadays with sealed Affixes galore, experimental Affixes, Set Affixes and so on it simply doesn’t sustain any reasonable success chance anymore as you progress.
Agreed. It’s the weakest end-game point of the game. The itemization for end-game in LE is one of the poorest experiences comparatively to the options available on the market. It’s fine for progression (up to Aberroth roughly) and then sharply falls off in a very exponential way.
The fact that RNG plays a role for the value reduction of FP means also that over a large amount of crafts getting a high one once is very likely.
Since a common item has high chances to need around 10 successful crafts in a row to become maxed out as a baseline (not speaking of rolls or any special things like adjusting for a experimental Affix, switching exalted Affixes around and so on) it means the success rate is miniscule.
Since it’s a chance-based system we can use standard-deviation to decide the likelyhood for a positive outcome. A common item with ‘baseline crafting’ has ~8 successful crafts available to it for a roughly 50% chance to be finished. This is our ‘mean’ available.
If an item has below 8 attempts needed to finish it the chance rises. If it has above them it gets lower. One Standard Deviation is set to 15% (like IQ to make it relatable).
For our case since the basis is ‘8’ for the base number. a Standard deviation (which causes 16,1% of the total outcomes to be left in that range) would mean any item needing 9,2 tries to get to the top-end. With 2 Standard Deviations we’re already looking at a chance of 2,1% success… which is if an item needs 10,4 tries.
How many items do need 10+ tries to reach the end-result? We’re speaking about the vast majority of items here.
It’s ridiculously low simply. It’s just hidden in a nice and shiny system.
Well, what were the metrics he ran for the system?
Are those upholding with the new crafting methods available as well? The base situation changed after all.
Yes, perception bias plays a substantial role.
The overall outcome does not though.
Path of Exile implemented the ‘Recombinator’ in a deterministic way in their game this league, as a core mechanic. It allows you to put in 2 items and freely combine any Affixes you choose. The higher their tiers and the rare the Affixes the lower the chance to combine.
People complain about the low percentiles seen, like 2,1%, which is a Standard deviation of 2 when in relation to IQ Standard Deviation for example. And that is a high percentile for a top-end craft, very very very strong.
In Last Epoch top-end items often need 15+ crafts though, meaning those items found with 2 exalted Affixes or even 3 exalted Affixes. Getting the right combination of the Affixes needed on the right base in itself is basically a impossibility, especially when we start talking about rare Affixes.
Given that the power behind Exalted Affixes is greater then those at the lower ones which is not the case in many other ARPGs (either the percentile stays roughly the same, is equalized relative to content needs over time or inversed to what Last Epoch provides, hence lower and lower percentile total increase compared to former ones) it means that the power behind those is substantially higher.
A item with 2 T6 Affixes and 2 T5 Affixes is weaker then a item with 1 T7 Affix and 3 T5 Affixes hence. The one with 2 T6 is harder to acquire and harder to craft though, which poses a problem.
Then let’s see what a potential outcome is which I’m searching for.
Let’s take any character… hrmm… a Spellblade chest-piece, exalted, not for LP slamming but as the item itself. So it needs to have all 4 Affixes well done.
My goal hereby is:
T7 Mana Strike
T5 Intelligence
T5 Health
T5 Hybrid crit reduction/Armor
Which is a very ‘baseline’ Armor one can expect to wear as a end-game item, not even deep into end-game… just end-game.
My drop has…
T7 Mana Strike
T2 Attunement
T1 Health (Just to have something fitting, happens rarely anyway)
T3 Cold Resistence.
Now, what should we do to enforce the most likely outcome?
First… we try to seal Cold Res since getting hybrid there is the hardest step. It can likely fail, a failed craft there is a ‘dead’ crafting step. We got 2 tries before we need a removal.
If it fails and we need a removal we got a 25% chance (I think there isn’t weight for removal, right?) to simply brick the item. We got a 25% chance to make our item harder to craft (removing Health) and a 50% chance something positive happens (Attunement or Cold Res get removed).
We’re already potentially 3 crafts in and haven’t even started raising Tiers!
We still need to fix another Affix, we need to raise one Affix 5 times and another 4 times for a total of 9 crafts.
Solely by failing a single step we’re at beyond 12 crafts… which makes it basically impossible to finish the item, the chances are below 0,1% already, it would be a joke to expect it to happen.
So solely from a simple example, not even taking the base of the drop into consideration it’s highly unlikely to happen.
In Cycle 2 we can at least find a T7 Affix base with fitting Affixes already on it, still we’ll need to Havoc it though and have the Affix space for Mana Strike free to make it into T7.
This process is still likely to take 10+ steps nonetheless in total, which means we’re at 2% chance of success.
Hence simply to succeed at a ‘basic end-game item’ with not even amazing Affixes on it (Our optimum would be T7 Mana Strike, T5 Intelligence, T5 Hybrid health, T5 Hybrid crit reduction for example) we’re already looking at quite the ridiculous journey of potentially 50+ crafts happening.
Do you deem that quantity of re-tries and re-searched with the respective amount of Havoc runes (100+) substantiated to allow the success to happen?
How many hours are we working on a single piece out of 11 for our character hence?
This is the reason why LP crafting is so heavily sought after… you get some stats and can substantially reduce the amount of needed Affixes on the base item since you’ll likely get only a 2 LP of a viable piece of equipment… not to speak of the potentially absolutely OP unique Affixes on such a piece of gear.
And your follow-up example is a prime showcase on why the system needs changes.
Thanks.
Which is something that should be explained in the tooltip of the rune plainly spoken… but isn’t properly.
But that’s nitpicking from my side.
But there is only a single optimal route for any specific item to be fair.
So distinct examples or multiple examples and the showcase of the thought process behind it are a good choice there.
In over 90% of the cases the glyph of hope upgrade is more cost efficient then forcing rolls first.
I mean… what’s your goal in a loot-driven game? Getting mid-tier items?
Kinda the point to reach for the stars, if we take into consideration what ‘the stars’ even are.
Is it simply having the tiers of 4 Affixes on the right base? Is it for LP slamming? Do you need specific rolls?
Anything else then LP slamming on lower LP items is a nightmare by design in the current system.
Getting a rare unique with 4 LP (the dream!) mandates to find a item with 4 near perfect rolls for the Affixes on the base item.
Now my question:
How long is it supposed to take to farm for this one specific item. Not others… just this one. After all we won’t see many 4 LP items needed for our build commonly, so it’s likely we’ll only ever need ‘that one’.
100 hours? 500? 5000?
What is the line for that?
In Path of Exile I can go along and say ‘I want a Amulet with +1 level to chaos gems, T1 energy shield and T1 %energy shield’.
I pick a base I need and start. Finding flat energy shield is easy so I’ll have that in masses, %energy shield is harder but doable, and I can expend a few resources and ensure it happening. And the + level is also doable but the hardest, likely 1 hour effort to get.
Then I ‘recombinate’ which is the mechanic taken over from PoE 2 and now in PoE 1 as well, purely deterministic if you want.
After checking I see combining the two energy shield Affixes together brings me a chance of… 21,6%, so I’ll likely need 5 tries at most, which is… 2-3 hours per try at best? Then 2,6% to put them together with the +level.
So, what’s my expected time-investment for that one craft? Since both acquisitions run simultaneously (ES and the level one) we can say 50 tries each 3 hours, meaning after 150 hours of effort I’ll have that item in my pocket.
So… now the question: How long does it take in Last Epoch? Drop acquisition or resource acquisition to create the base-item, crafting chance to create the outcome, potentially re-roll chance to get specific Affixes to a value which is mandatory? (Like crit evasion for example)
We have to take into consideration the respective acquisition time for all aspects along the line, not solely ‘the craft has a ok-ish chance!’ when the drop-acquisition is really really harsh like in Last Epoch. It needs to play together, you can’t view one or the other, you always need to view the whole journey.
Oh, but there are only ‘good’ items and ‘trash’ items for my build. If I got my 2 LP chest finished with the right Affixes and get a 3 LP one… Nothing below the results of the 2 LP one are viable now, are they?
In ARPGs with itemization the world is black&white. There is no gray-area of ‘yeah, but maybe if I encounter this specific mob in this specific situation I’ll use this specific item’… because you use one item for all content in LE commonly, exception of Aberroth with void damage reduction.
If I’m hundreds of hours into a character in PoE then I’ll start to deal with items that are mirror-worthy already, we’re talking about the most complex and in-depth game of the genre with the hardest perceived itemization progression overall.
I don’t think we should have Last Epoch be harsher then PoE in that matter, wouldn’t make sense now, would it? The game is not designed to invite forever players on the level of Standard league crafter in PoE like I am… so why are we talking about metrics which make only sense for those situations? It’s detrimental to have with the game’s position on the market.
That’s because the guaranteed 1 LP slam is a really… really bad mechanic. Just makes stuff easier and solved nothing about the LP RNG itself.
I think the 1 guaranteed slam shouldn’t exist at all but be gated behind a progression system to enforce effort, time and miniscule amounts of planning.
Yes, early end-game is the last bit which the crafting feels fine, it takes a nosedive heavily if you even think about going further though.
The progression feeling of LE is very good early on and absolutely atrocious beyond, worst one comparatively to any other game of the genre outside of D4 which is pure drop-luck for end-game equipment.
You do fail hundreds for exalted items.
A more powerful LP item takes 5-10 crafts at best.
That’s a problem.
Legendaries should not be easier to make and access but harder, they are a step beyond the base item after all, the system is backwards.
For that it would also mandate a rework of minions, because T4 Julra is just one absolutely shit experience with minions for example.
If it would be a ‘fair’ fight for a variety of builds I would agree… but it’s not.
It’s so ridiculously easy for my VK to kill T4 Julra… but my relatively well equipped minion necro is just facing disaster instead.
Agreed, absolutely.
The crafting system is praised to high heavens at the beginning and the further along someone plays the worse received it is.
It clearly has scaling issues with itemization over time, and those will become more and more pronounced as the game progresses in content depth.
Here is an example of a person who doesn’t engage highly with Last Epoch because of the current state of itemization.
I’m a prime example, a forever player… someone which just spent a whole week simply sorting, crafting and using up accumulated stuff in PoE because I wanted to have a tidy stash experience. I’ve had a full free week… I played around 60 hours or so.
That’s what I invest in 3 months of Last Epoch in comparison because it is not as compelling for several reasons.
Reason 1: Trading is shit, the UI sucks, the functionality sucks, the experience is not enjoyable.
Reason 2: The itemization progression plainly spoken is bad at end-game. Aberroth is fine… the journey to Uberroth is just plain shit, can’t say it milder, because you need min-max for that, and since it’s there the min-max process itself needs to be respectively enjoyable.
All useless if you can’t even get your base gear into order.
Havoc and Demise were implemented not for extra options… but to reduce the amount of fail-states.
Same with the attribute switch option. Less fail-states.
So fail-states are a problem, otherwise we wouldn’t need them and they would be a detriment for the overall experience.
They are not though, so they fix something.
Very likely skimming.
Exactly! Thank you for that comment!
That’s 100% what I’m saying, repeating… and it falls on deaf ears non-stop.
There is an issue… but the issue is not addressed because people which aren’t even playing at that stage of the game are saying ‘no, it’s fine!’.
If anyone actively praises MG they should seek psychological help. Just sayin… just sayin…
Ah, that again.
Because neither Chronicon, Grim Dawn, Torchlight Infinite, Victor Fran, Van Hellsing, Sacred or Dungeon Siege exist.
Heck… even in D3 and D4 you can easily not give a single shit about trading and be completely fine.
The only games which have actual issues with trading content is PoE 1 and PoE 2, and that’s because the variety of content is so massive and the respective drop-rates need to be so low for some things hence that it’s just unrealistic to achieve without hefty investment.
And even that… has become so SSF-friendly with the newer implementations that it’s laughable to say you need to trade.
So plainly spoken, nah… not anymore. It’s a ‘back in my days!’ argument by now.
I generally look at concruent design.
Last Epoch is not doing well in that aspect. The best ones for that are Torchlight Infinite actually (shit p2w is the only thing causing it to be below everything else), PoE 1 and Grim Dawn. D3 has better design then LE as well, D4 is worse, failed to adhere to the target audience properly with their mechanics.
Identity alone doesn’t make a game great. It’s how the sum of the features work together fluently. Always was, always will be. ‘Ori and the Blind Forest’ wouldn’t have been so well received if either the graphical presentation, the mostly environmental storytelling or the really well done platforming weren’t on such high levels. It’s why so many games which have great ideas like ‘ZED ZONE’, ‘Necesse’, ‘Starbound’, ‘Dwarven Realms’ and so on and so forth don’t ‘take off’ like ‘Factorio’, ‘Terraria’ or ‘Minecraft’.
The difference is that in those games the mechanics don’t work well together despite some individual ones being extremely well designed… but in totality they don’t create a ‘grand whole’. The game is not ‘well rounded’ but ‘rough at the edges’ instead.
No, that was actually not implied.
The mention was ‘people quit for that reason’, which yes… is true.
It wasn’t ‘all people quit for that reason’, which no, would be false.
PoE has a great lootfilter too.
Grim Dawn nowadays has a very decent one as well, albeit the color coding should be worked into vanilla.
The middle-ground is the major aspect.
The factions do nothing plainly spoken… if you got factions but only a single viable choice and one which fucks you over sideways then it’s not factions… it’s just the game itself at the whole. You either go CoF or your experience will simply be crap.
The skill-tree is really not that great either. It’s designed to showcase high variety which you really can’t viably use since balancing is absolutely crap still, shoehorning you into very clear-cut choices. Which is a shame… I would rather have actual choices rather then ‘you picked wrong’ situations instead because of how severe the differences are.
You would be right if those respective parts were properly designed and so well done that they’re different from the competition. The only difference is the Affinity system for the stash which is above and beyond, that one would be a actual plus to mention.
Then they didn’t join because of a class and left because of it… they did because of the visual presentation The direction was meant for the gameplay aspect there.
Ziz is a HC player and doesn’t give a single shit about crafting even in PoE.
The majority of streamers doesn’t. Why? Because it’s boring to watch, you can’t get good content by sitting around and slapping items together non-stop. You can get results through high-stakes outcomes though since people enjoy watching that.
So obviously the streamers which are successful do the things and enjoy the things which provides simply entertainment for others as well.
Years ago PoE had Standard crafter streams, several people even, and the focus on leagues was vastly lower. But since they never ‘took off’ for obvious reason (far fewer people watch someone standing around clicking hundreds of times while talking) they nearly all stopped streaming, or are dimpling around at 10-40 viewers.
For example a really great streamer is ‘Sefearion’, which usually has 50 people at max in his stream. Humorous dude, casual gaming, not high level since he has nerve pain issues and can only use a controller, hence gameplay skill is also middling obviously. So despite having created a ton of memes and being regularly showcased on the ‘GamerForLife’ PoE Highlights he’s never gotten a bigger audience.
Don’t lean into the fallacy of ‘if it’s not visible it can’t be a thing’. Many many things aren’t visible but nonetheless important.
So yes, Ziz for example is absolutely shit when it comes to crafting, so anything he says about crafting is something I don’t take serious by design, he repeatedly fails to point into the right direction. For example I’m a crafter, I know crafting, I enjoy crafting, I go in-depth with those things as it’s my passion to do stuff with it that others don’t do. Tons of things which have been universally well received are things I’ve mentioned years ago already in the PoE Forum or at times Reddit… and it took GGG years upon years to finally do those things and then it was suddenly better.
Don’t ask someone cooking once a week about catering for a high-society event… you’ll fare badly.
Not since 3.26. Solved too by GGG.
Not better anymore, crafting in LE is comparatively only worse now, it’s lost the simplistic approach even since the Recombinator has been introduced into PoE 1 as a core mechanic.
Itemization and gameplay, yes.
Or better said:
Fluidity of progression.
Solid gameplay.
Those are the 2 main reasons. Everything else are miniscule aspects.
They can.
And they do.
Thought to be successful at streaming you need to have a specific behaviour and type of focus. So things aren’t universally showcased via streamers.
I wouldn’t ask CohhCarnage to speak about in-depth design decisions for itemization systems in PoE… he loved PoE but he’s not the right person to speak about that. UI? Absolutely! Tutotials? Also absolutely! General bits and parts which are details to round out the experience of the game? Also yes! In-depth detailed design choices for a grand system? Hell nah, wrong person
Pretty great write-up! You’ve clearly spent a lot of time in the genre and seem to have a deeper understanding of mechanics/issues.
My own ARPG journey has been Diablo → Diablo 2 → Dungeon Siege → Torchlight → Diablo 3 → PoE → Last Epoch, with hundreds to thousands of hours sunk into each.
I have to say that the layers of RNG in PoE and Last Epoch crafting are absolutely abominable and really kill a lot of the enjoyment for me. Both games have these punishing loops where you spend weeks accumulating stuff, burn through all of it with a low chance of getting even a single upgrade, take a step back, and ask yourself what you’re even doing with your life.
I managed to push through that and get to 40 challenges in SSF on my own build in Crucible league during my 4 month PoE career, but the experience was so exhausting and disheartening that I didn’t even want to play another season of it. I’m proud of my accomplishment there, but it wasn’t nearly as fun for me a D1-D3. Say what you will about them, but every time I sat down and played a Diablo game I felt like I was making some kind of tangible progress with my character. Those games held my attention for many years.
In Last Epoch I’m currently at 500 corruption on my own build and starting to think about Uberroth, but I’m not even seeing tiny incremental steps of progression with this gearing system. It’s been 2 weeks since my last item upgrade, and I’ve only been playing the game for 6 weeks. That’s crazy broken!
They absolutely need to tone it down if they want anything resembling healthy levels of player retention. Re-tuning this FP system would be a great place to start.
Sure they do. Because skill trees in LE give you a lot of freedom customizing how you want to play the skill. It lets you convert damage, or even totally transform the skill to something different.
Plenty of people like that puzzle aspect to their ARPGs. Just like plenty of people like PoE’s passive tree and figuring out the best path.
It’s a lot easier to make a filter in LE than in PoE, even with filterblade. Because filterblade has literally hundreds of options to choose from. And for many you have to google what they mean and whether they are worth it or not.
So you either just blindly download someone else’s filter (which is what everyone ends up doing) or you have to waste hours digging through the options to have a filter the way you want it to.
In LE, it’s much easier and quite straight-forward.
There is a big difference between having a trade economy and having an NPC vendor (which LE also has) and if you can’t see the difference then I’m not sure there’s any point in continuing this discussion.
But I can guarantee you that there are lots of people that play LE almost exclusively because of CoF.
If you want to stick to a single point, then the difference would be skill trees. The freedom you get when leveling up and customizing your skill is the main reason why people like LE and keep making new characters. Because the second character will feel completely different, even if it’s in the same mastery.
There were numerous posts of people that quit because of enemy DoTs.
There were numerous posts of people that quit because of no mastery respec (before 1.2).
There were numerous posts of people that quit because of no campaign skip.
These were all happening recently, besides the gender lock ones. And it’s not political. Some people need to feel identified with the character to play and aren’t able to play it otherwise. It’s as valid as any other reason.
Do more than half the people quit because of crafting? I have no idea, but I would probably say no. Most people simply quit because the endgame loop is still too boring and similar.
It’s because you haven’t seen much of him. On his videos where he reviews LE (even the sponsored ones) he does always point out stuff he doesn’t like as much.
Llama’s point was that Ziz, Ghazzy, etc, are die-hard PoE fans. And yet they all say that LE’s crafting system is the best they’ve seen in a game in this genre.
Not really. I can’t remember the last time I stored a T7 below 40FP. And not because I filter items due to FP, because I don’t even look at that before crafting. But because they drop with higher FP average at empowered, even 100c base.
For the most part, yes. Games in this genre require a lot of grind to get high-tier items and that leads to burnout. It’s the reason why I stopped playing PoE for years.
Getting mid-tier gear is pretty good, has enough of a challenge and allows me to complete almost everything in the game. Why would I want more than that?
Once I have that, I’ll likely make another character.
MG has a UI issue, mostly.
But it should be praised for getting rid of the toxicity of price fixers, snipers and scammers.
Also, factions also include CoF; in case you’re forgetting. And woven tree.
I have no idea why you are including single player games in this and I can only assume it’s to be purposefully disingenuous.
As you very well know, it’s a completely different thing to balance a game around a single player experience or to balance the game around trading.
And PoE is very clearly balanced around trading. Even with all the SSF small change being added to it over time.
Any game that has trade has that issue. This includes D2R, D4, TLI, etc.
They are games that are balanced around the ability to trade. So people that don’t trade are inevitably below the balance line.
Ouch, very very much ouch.
Crucible was not a good time for the game, yeah
It got substantially better since then, with vastly more player agency and better progression overall. You regularly find a NPC in T16 maps which gives you rare uniques, they introduced gold for respec as a secondary method, you can spend that gold to have workers in a town run even maps for you which you wouldn’t want to run personally (T16 8 mod maps with bad mods like reflect on it can be thrown in there with high enough workers so they don’t die), you can ‘recombinate’ items, which is a deterministic system choice system with a low percentile singular roll to combine items together and have the exact affixes on which you want, and league mechanics are setup with the scarab system being reworked since then so drastically that you can run a single type of content non-stop or close to non-stop in SSF now.
It’s become such a strong contender for the progression of itemization long-term to the simple system of LE that it’s surprising actually.
That… is a lie.
You go onto filterblade, you say ‘very strict’ for example, from neversink handled, you click sync with PoE and you got it.
That’s how the majority of people handle their filter, it removes so many items to be seen that it suffices.
And if it’s not enough you go uber-strict and it solves itself again.
SSF generally is a group lower for drops compared to trade since you need the bases for potential upgrades, but that’s it.
Then say 40-50, which is also fine, raises the common number to 9 craft, which makes standard deviation 10,35 and 2 standard deviations 11,7.
And even if we say 10 it’s still Standard deviation 11,5 and 13… which still is really low.
The primary issue is functional.
UI is - surprisingly - only secondary.
The functions for price-checking aren’t there.
The function for priority sorting based on roll-range isn’t there.
The function for quick-listing multiple items where you decided on the same price isn’t there (idols for example)
The function for re-pricing items isn’t there.
Then we get into the core system of progression which is a problem.
Then we get into the Favor usage choices, which are a problem from a design perspective.
Then we get into UI finally actually to make that stuff be easier usable.
Hrmm… if I think about factions I think about ‘Something I can align with compared to something else to have specific up- or downsides related to my choice’.
Which only upholds for MG/CoF.
You don’t choose the harbinger faction.
You don’t choose the Weaver faction.
They’re presented as ‘a faction’, which yes… they are… but it’s like saying ‘The faction system is fantastic because I have no choice in anything in it!’…
What discerns it functionally in any way from a simple game mechanic without any respective lore behind it? Nothing. A faction is commonly a way to deepen the perceived lore of the game, with the weaver we know… well… a few lines of text, that’s all, basically no depth of any kind. The harbinger faction actually is a properly setup faction… without choice though.
If there is no player agency in aligning with factions and there’s not really any depth to them either then they’re shit executed, which sustains for all but Harbinger… which actually has a proper gradually progressing knowledge base attached to it.
Ok… because as you well know, a multiplayer game is primarily designed to have social interactions of some form you know, because it’s a multiplayer game? Otherwise why would EHG pay extremely costly servers for their game?
If you play CoF the chance to play solo is ridiculously high, without any community interaction at all during playtime. That’s ‘dead server costs’ for them, could’ve also played single-player mode then unless you got someone to play with, no difference.
So obviously online games of the genre implement either some enforced socialization method or trading into it, to provide some aspect of social interaction which is enforced to partake in, warranting the server costs to acrue.
Yes, which I also said that the core idea of EHG related to factions is great! Because it provides a choice of gameplay style which is supposed to be functionally equivalent to trading.
It’s no choice when you can go to horse racing and bet on only 2 horses, one is a normal horse and the other is blind and has 3 legs. Kinda obvious choice then.
Also GGG has moved away from trading being a needed aspect ever further, especially since only a fraction of players in trade league actually do trade ultimately.
Their solution? (And plainly spoken a better one)… Material trade which is automated through a NPC, core.
You don’t have material ‘A’? You need ‘B’? You hate trading for the mechanic of how trading happens? Ok… choose Material ‘A’ that you wanna give away, choose material ‘B’ that you wanna receive, choose the amount you wanna receive and it automatically gives you the cheapest available option and auto-fulfills that as close as possible.
If you hate that sort of mechanic itself rather the equipment trade then you’re playing a challenge type content, simple as that, you’re a SSF player, which was meant to be a specific challenge.
There is a distinct difference between grating trading experiences, bypassing progression through equipment trade (like you can in PoE) or instead solely exchanging materials to create any potential outcome for your journey.
Mhmm… so basically you say ‘If any system gets implemented and I don’t use it, then I won’t be the most efficient’?
Yes, that’s true!
Which… wait… actually despite CoF holds true on a fundamental basis in LE too! You know… supply/demand as a baseline.
Just a sad state that EHG made one functioning system with slight grating experiences (like the prophecies and how they’re handled) with miniscule shortcomings (like experimental affix drops formerly, or boss-unique drops, substantially less so by now)… compared to one absolute dumpsterfire… a shit-show… a disgrace of an existing system… something so badly designed that if it were the only existing one I would actively tell anyone to not play the game since their experience would be awful.
If you wanna compare stuff then compare it sincerely at least. Trade obviously creates a disparity between the people using it and those not doing so. Measures can be taken against that.
For PoE as an example they could just remove the ability to trade any sort of item completely tomorrow and with the currency exchange system in place it would be relatively inconsequential by now… besides reaching the absolute top-end. Maybe 20-30% more time investment for the complete progression line with the mechanics which are in store at this moment.
Which yeah, obviously happens when you got a system bypassing that by design in place.
You didn’t make a filter then. You’re using someone else’s filter (in this case, Neversink’s), which is an option you can also do in LE. There are several people that create general purpose filters and many builds have their own filter as well.
What I’m talking about is having control over your options. And it’s much easier to create one in LE than it is in PoE, even with Filterblade. Just because there are so many obscure options that you don’t even know what they’re doing or referring to.
Whenever I want actual control over the filter (rather than take his filter as is), I end up spending an hour doing simulations, checking which rule is showing/hiding whatever I want to hide/show and then adjusting that rule, then going back to simulator, etc.
These are all UI issues. Whether because the UI doesn’t provide you with that feature is irrelevant. It should be in the UI and it isn’t. It’s a UI issue that affects the functional aspect of MG.
Except LE has an offline mode. And the main difference between D2 (which also lets you play offline) and LE is that D2 is still balanced around trading while offline and LE gives you tools for playing alone.
And, you know, because SSF is also a thing in PoE. Not that GGG cared much about it for the longest time.
Otherwise, according to you, SSF wouldn’t even exist, because it shuts down all social interactions.
So the main difference is that GGG balanced their game and said “screw you” to people that don’t want to trade (not even talking about SSF), whereas LE balanced their game around trade and then gave something to non-traders to make up for the handicap.
Also, it’s not “dead server costs”. GGG and EHG make the exact same money whether I decide to play alone or not, and that is with the MTX I decide to buy. I can play alone with CoF and buy MTX because I’m happy with the game.
Not to mention that, even though I’m CoF in all my characters (except for one which I don’t use, mostly), I have often interacted with other players. Whether to help them with some boss, answer questions they have, etc.
So it’s not as clear cut as that.
All that MG needs is a good price checker and some UI improvements to make the experience smoother.
If PoE didn’t have a good price checker (whether via the addon or via the trade page) it would also be a dumpster fire.
Unlike Neversink’s filter which has been optimized over nearly 10 years now in LE you got no clue which one to take and half of them suck majorly.
Ease of acquisition falls into it, if we had someone which is making a name for himself to create good filters and those would be highlighted the story would be different.
But alas… it sadly isn’t… yet.
Which obscure options? It’s just a lot, and PoE needs to streamline the whole system, much like the crafting mechanics which need a universal UI there, but that’s beyond the topic anyway.
Which - by your own words related to PoE, to throw them back - is not designed around that and never was intended to. It’s a nice bonus, but LE is a live-service game.
If you don’t accept that then your argumentation about ‘including SP games’ would be disingenious, you can’t cherry-pick there.
Wait wait… a base reduction of drop-rate by 30% compared to the former state is not something I would even remotely argue ‘it was balanced around trade’.
If that argument would hold true then those changes wouldn’t be needed. But they were, reasonably so.
And the game is definitely not designed around CoF, because CoF causes so many progression issues that it’s not even fun to mention. Like… getting a higher chance for multiple exalted affixes which basically relates to a 5000%+ rarity chance for MG in comparison. To come close to 100c of CoF you would actively need to be in 10k+c in MG, which obviously is senseless to even think about.
What stops EHG to provide that via Steam as a DLC option instead, enforcing that you can’t pirate it easily?
It’s not like those things aren’t existing in single-player games which have a similar amount of focus on gear customization as LE does. What does warrant the live-service aspect?
With PoE it’s obvious. There’s social environments enforced, trading happens in Hideouts, which makes it so people see other people’s hideouts regularly, which causes designs to be highlighted. There’s also a guild Hideout which people tend to come together at times (though that’s a rather failed design I gotta say since nothing viable is in there) and we got the towns.
In LE we only got the towns and the amount of characters showed is also miniscule while necessary things to use are miniscule and far apart, which causes people to not see the models of others.
Overall for optimization of exposition it’s really poorly designed actually. Not to speak of the overall quantity of different MTX available.
So nah… if things would be different I would agree, but they’re not. We’re talking about the ‘as is’ situation in that case and not a optimal or better executed system… which I would then agree with you.
So you’re at the ~1% playerbase doing that, great!
It’s not the norm, which is not possible to hold up a project of that size alone.
The more venues the developer takes the more it warrants it, EHG’s system is not fleshed out at all yet. Will turn better over time… but they have a middling quality in that regard.
No, and I talked so often about that and you seem to have the memory of a goldfish related to that, so I won’t get into it again.
Since you don’t have interest in the topic you seemingly don’t retain the information, so it’s useless to argue there. Either take me by my word or go and re-read my mile long posts related to that topic in the other threads… not like I didn’t regurgitate those things nearly a dozen times by now with ever more and more fleshed out aspects over time by now.
I almost never use Orders. I’ve probably used less than 5 in my life. I was presenting it as an option, while also stating that it is probably not worth it since you need Hopes as often as possible (which isn’t good, by the way, it means FP is so starved that you can’t even use all of the different crafting angles simply because you’ll lose all your FP).
… This I very much agree with.
I have not once ever used Glyph of Order as maintaining a high affix range when upgrading, compared to the effects of Glyph of Hope (or even Chaos for that matter), is very low priority. There’s just not enough FP to go around 95% of times for that.
I honestly think Order is better suited as a Rune rather than a Glyph. For example, something like Rune of Order where you can upgrade any affix, disregarding if you have the correct shard or not (as Runes takes the place of shards anyway), in addition to Order’s usual effect of maintaining that Affix’s range when upgrading. That way, you can still at least combine it with Glyph of Hope to maybe save on FP.
…but again that’s a little off topic.
In any case, it goes to show how integral Glyph of Hope is to the point that you could argue that ALL methods and avenues of crafting as well as costs are designed around it first rather than first designing around balanced cost ratios and Hope being something as a potential bonus.
For example, I wanted to specifiy that my filter was for caster while I was leveling. I know there is some option in there for it somewhere from using it many years ago, but for the life of me I couldn’t find it.
I just wanted it to stop showing me all those melee weapon drops, but I couldn’t because I simply couldn’t find it after 10 minutes looking at all the options.
Except that EHG tries to balance the game around both multiplayer options (trade) and single player options (CoF). They might not achieve all they intend to, but they are addressing it, unlike every other game which only balances it around trade and ignores non-traders.
What drop-rate reduction? Are you serious? MG has no drop-rate reduction at all. If you don’t select any faction or if you choose MG, you have the exact same drop rate.
CoF has a drop-rate bonus, which is an entirely different thing and is meant to address the fact that you’re not trading.
Except if you’re SSF then there’s no social anything involved. So, to save costs, GGG should just make SSF offline, I guess.
To be fair… we always do
But you’re right, gonna steer back again ^^
I would argue that order should be a rune as well, yes. Also… I would argue that Order should not cost FP and be usable as long as there’s 1 FP available, because this allows another potential improvement step that actually is gradual and can pass the timeframe until another base which becomes a decent result is obtained.
You hence use order until the rolls needed are perfect for the range and then slam them, and as a rune it would affect all 4 Affixes at once, making the overall chance for a perfect result lower while allowing longer-term improvement… which still can get to perfect over time.
Because leftover FP feels currently bad, the chance for a negative outcome with a order is high and hence you don’t wanna use it that often even if it would’ve a viable chance to upgrade your gear. So… making leftover FP valuable this way would be a reasonable situation.
The caveat is that in my suggestion it wouldn’t be allowed to be used on any item which doesn’t have maxed Affixes though, so all 4 slots filled, all 4 slots minimum T5.
They don’t. That’s perception bias from your side.
Re-read the patch notes. Base game drops have been reduced by 30% in 1.0 to have MG not be too powerful. CoF naturally counteracts the drop-rate reduction introduced in 1.0
The reason for it was because of MG.
So yes, MG caused a drop-rate reduction.
Yes, absolutely. Agreed. It would be economically a better solution.
Their infrastructure doesn’t allow single-player setup though, you don’t have the data for that on your PC, which is why it doesn’t happen.
That’s a economical choice as well since exploits and cheats are substantially reduced this way, which we regularly see with new ones coming up in LE still, because the code needs to be available offline as well, which lets people datamine the functionality beyond the systems to a higher degree then PoE enables.
Since EHG already went the road of causing those security measures not to be there by providing a offline client it doesn’t make sense to uphold the systems not necessitated in online mode. MTX is a substantial reasoning why server load is higher comparatively to single-player usage, because they’re not available there.
Their choice actively costs the company money every day this way, which is not a economical choice and also not a very good choice for the quality perceived by the consumer.
Maybe you should re-read them. There was never any mention of 30% or any specific number, just an “Overall we have reduced the base item drop rate, especially in end-game” and a “because the item factions will significantly boost your ability to not only find more items overall, but also to find higher quality items.”.
One should note the absence of any % given and also that they don’t refer to just MG but also to CoF.
Which makes sense. If you previously had nothing to help you get gear and now you have 2 different way to get you gear, then you make a general drop rate nerf and then give each faction a way to deal with that.
So no, MG doesn’t have a drop-rate reduction. The game was simply leveled down globally because everyone (whether MG or CoF) have better tools to get better things.
Ah, true, they didn’t write the number down, so only in the interviews then… I need to find that again, it was either 30% flat or ‘around 30%’, I distinctly remember that number though.
But yeah, this changes the acquisition rate and hence progression rate respectively through crafting along the way.
Pre 1.0 the drop-rate was fitting with crafting.
Post 1.0 it’s not for MG, which is to be alleviated through trade after all (if it would function properly, which it doesn’t.)
The crafting issue is even visible in CoF with the aquisition rates being a mess, despite exponential increase in valuable drops through a combination of quantity and quality increasing ranks interacting. This leads to mid-game and early end-game being fine there while in MG it’s a disaster already by that time.
But overall the crafting system needs a full rework for alleviating the issues it has. A review of FP costs, a review of FP values for drops, a review for why and when specific runes and glyphs are used and adjusting values accordingly or even mechanical changes in a deeper manner (Like order for example not spending any FP would be a viable one).
Since everything costs FP in potentially item-breaking amounts it means every single craft has to be optimized or the outcome is nigh impossible to achieve, which sadly makes many many potential options already present in the game simply… not viable.
But they should be, that’s why they’re there. Removal runes are extremely risky for FP and for the potential bricking directly… I don’t see a reason to use FP for them at all hence.
I think the only FP usage should happen when tiers are raised, not for anything else.
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with politics or being crazy, the stated reason for those people tends to revolve around them very strongly identifying with the character they’re playing, like, way stronger than the majority do. If that makes them “crazies” to you that’s fine, but for them it’s an entirely non-political thing they can’t “get over”. It’s a very minor annoyance for me so it doesn’t stop me from playing whatever build I want. Just because it’s not an issue for you doesn’t make them crazy.
Trade is absolutely a selling point for some people. If it’s not for you that’s fine, but it is for some, as is not wanting to trade but also not wanting to be fucked over because drops are balanced around trade (PoE).
It is frequently stated as being a major thing in LE’s favour, the fact that all of the skills have unique and “skill defining” trees. Just like the customisability of PoE’s skill gem system is a major thing in it’s favour (even if there may not be many of the combinations that are “effective” the further you go through the game).
It’s a passive tree, but yes, it’s conplexity can be a turnoff for some. But no, LE’s skill trees can absolutely be a selling point, just possibly not for you.
Yes, exactly, that is the point.
Yes, arpg streamers. They play a lot of arpgs.
Pretty sure arpg streamers don’t tend to play fortnite or fps or other more popular genres.
Yeah, that’s fair, there is certainly an element of symbiosis involved between streamers & the games they play. And while it’s fair to say that streamers have a vested interest in bein positive, if they’re so positive that they’re effectively just a mouthpiece for the developer’s PR they’ll loose authenticity & the trust of their viewers so it’s a fine line they have to tread.
As a native English speaker, yes, yes it was.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The factions have issues, certainly, some in the UI, some deeper in the design decisions, but they’re better than not having them. So while they aren’t as good as they should be, “the factions do nothing” is as “plainly spoken” as “everybody quits because of crafting” is not hyperbolic.
I wasn’t, what did I say in the first bit of my post?
Not the factions. The faction design of LE is plainly spoken ass, simple as that.
The core concept behind the split solo-play/trade-play style setup is fantastic. The execution once more is ass for now as well.
And are nearly only focused on specific aspects of the game. Without fail all large-scale streamers are either HC players, are memelords (quin, cutedog) or are overall simply good players with a focus on high-end content. The only exception I think is DatModz actually, which is middling in skill but just a really relaxed enjoyable to watch guy.
How many crafter streamers do you see?
How many trader streamers do you see?
Outside of Empyrion… how many group-play streamers do you see? (And he only because he makes all the utterly broken strats because of the faulty core rarity/quantity scaling and people like seeing that)
I’ll let good be the enemy of awful though
The factions really really are badly designed. They have fundamental design issues.
And I would argue they’re not even ‘better then not having them’ currently, outside of the Nemesis faction. Weaver has potential… but the core choice factions could just be a simple chosen alignment. They’re overdesigned, underperforming and simply a showcase of ‘form over function’, which is the worst methodology to design anything.
Doesn’t mean you can then generalize afterwards because you deny a generalization at the start That’s not how it goes.
If you want to make your point about not generalizing you need to avoid generalizing… in general
Leading back to the topic here with those answers:
We see the same issues in crafting design as we see in faction design.
The core ideas are great, the details are lacking, that’s a fundamental issue EHG generally has and showcases in many many areas. Be it their Faction design, their crafting, their mechanic interaction… basically EHG tends to design ‘for now’ and not while thinking with future implications in mind. Combined with them rarely re-evaluating older mechanics it leads to a large portion of the current issues in the game.
And that’s not something which is ‘newly seen’ since release, that was prevalent before 1.0 as well, people - including me - just thought that the pre-release phase was simply a testing stage with slutions being provided going forward. Which sadly was not the case.
And since streamers don’t showcase in-depth crafting commonly we won’t see the crafting related issues being presented by them openly. Why? Because their interactions are too little for that, and their skill commonly too high. Crafting has to be designed in consideration with the average joe though, always has been, even in PoE 1 that’s the case, albeit it went ‘out of scale’ for that over time.
So the measurement of streamers in any reliable capacity related to crafting is simply not there, we need hence other sources.
Those sources are people which invest respective amounts of time in that mechanic, min-max players which are prevalent to stay long term, but are not prone to gambling based endorphine addiction… which sadly spoken is something showcased by many of the ‘forever posters’ here. Which to keep in mind is not bad inherently! But it’s not a sustainable method for the vast majority.
Which leads all back to the argument of ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good’.
And I won’t. But I’ll gladly speak up about fundamental issues which need solving yesterday rather then today or tomorrow. Those issues are overdue, they’re not something which can be ‘postponed’ for the future as EHG is so prone to do.
They postponed the balancing pass for all classes before release.
They postponed inclusion of the full campaign before release.
They postponed proper base quality control for the trading faction at release.
They postponed evaluation of the boss-DR rework into Boss-Ward and we hence see a shift in development philosophy behind that mechanic.
They postpone a lot… and it falls on their head.
They can’t postpone crafting as well, because the itemization progression of the game is besides the core gameplay feeling of combat the most important aspect of the whole game, even balancing follows behind in the current state, not far… but still behind in priority.
The system needs to be set up properly, with the current implementations in mind, with the future planned implementations also prepared to not ‘screw the system over entirely’. Which it already is to a large degree since Exalted affixes came out. Which got fixed in a auxiliary manner because of LP introduction, which leads into the 1 LP guarantee which is another mess-up for lacking evaluation beforehand while following faulty design-philosophies behind that.
Overall we can actively speak about ‘bad planning’ by now and ‘bad design’ as well. EHG was known for solid gameplay years ago when the game was in EA, promising, fresh, showcasing exactly which position they wanted on the market.
All of that is getting lost more and more with each new update, diverting from the initial goal and creating more and more grating issues which are unfitting for their setup. And that has to stop simply said.
true, the FP consumption is either too high or we need items that can go way higher.
But it’s still depending on luck
I’m the kind of guy that finds an item with 55FP, tries to move the T7 with Havoc and not only i never hit the affix I want, i managed to roll the T7 three consecutive time in the same wrong affix.
i’ve even given up using the redemption rune, i give the item even worse affixes.
bricked a lot of stuff to get exalts worthy for LP2 slam and the cache spits out brick for at least 4-7 times for the same slot until I get the right affixes
