Rethinking the 'developers as gods' design philosophy

Feedback and Suggestions
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Yes it could use a singular difficulty setting to make it easier for some to enjoy - no problem with that feature as its in virtually every offline arpg I can think of

  1. We must be playing different games then, because I’ve never seen this. Please share some examples, I might like to play those games.

  2. I was not aware of LE having an offline mode, I’ll have to look into that. If that’s true, then yes, I agree it’s something they could do for the offline modes without impacting the online server. I like that, that would give both types of players what they want without affecting each other.

Honestly this sounds like a casual couch gamer wanting to change the entire genre of online multiplayer ARPGs to fit himself better…

And honestly, you sound like a insecure tryhard Chad who needs to portray the attitude that your opinion is the only opinion that matters in order for you to feel special. Newsflash: my opinion is objectively as equal and valid as yours is, and always will be, by the simple fact that I am an equal human being to you. We don’t need to agree, and the game devs don’t need to listen to you any more than they need to listen to me. Oh, but we’re only supposed to be attacking ideas here, not players. Maybe you shouldn’t have.

While it may sound absurd to say, I would wager that your assumption of your own interest in this form of playing is wrong.

You don’t have the authority to tell anyone what they want is wrong.

Once those things are achieved, replayability drops off a staggering cliff.

It’s none of your business how many times anyone plays it. If I pay my money for the game and want to complete it once and never look at it again I have every right to do that. I probably won’t, but whether I do or not has no bearing on whether or not you need to like what other people do with their time.

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I am not telling anyone anything that they ought do. I said I would wager that their initial assumption is wrong based on near countless examples. It’s also a logical conclusion if you know anything of logic.

First, I think you are using “Chad” incorrectly here.
Second, you are wrong. Opinions can be wrong if they are based on incorrect or insufficient data. Using the words “objectively” and “valid” further point to the need for verifiable data in coming to your conclusion, even though you call it an opinion.

For example. You could claim that McDonalds Chicken Nuggets are the best thing they offer, but if that is the only thing you have tried from McDonalds, you have insufficient data. If you later try the Big Mac and like it more than the nuggets, you could then come to the conclusion that you were wrong in your initial assessment (opinion).

It is important to the devs in order to keep the game alive. It is also important for the devs if they plan to have income from cosmetics. People need to have a desire to stick around in the game in order to want to purchase cosmetics.

The implied tone of that last bit you wrote sounds like you want the game to fail or are just a troll (considering you joined just yesterday). You want what you want with no regard for others. Maybe try a bit of courtesy. It makes people much more receptive to your ideas.

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@fla_panther - these are some of the best forums on the interweb, let’s keep it that way. We all make an effort to discern the discussion at hand, and not get distracted by the way someone expresses it.

@Darkdeal - Makes a good point. For most people, this prediction would hold true:

Perhaps even myself - But I’ve spent enough time playing Path of Building or Last Epoch build planner, where you literally get every item and skill level with a click (and enjoying it!) That i’m confident in my level of self-awareness on this issue.
Importantly, I’m not married to these ideas, I was just throwing them out there.
The point here, really, is what we lose if these options exist, vs what we all gain if they exist. We do not need to

We could just have 5 buttons to select from at character creation instead of 3. If you ignore 4 of them, just like you currently ignore the masochist and hardcore buttons, you get the exact same gaming experience you currently get.

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@GRIMLOCK9999 - I believe in The Platinum Rule: Treat others the way they want to be treated; they may not want to be treated the way you want to be treated. If Arundel wants to speak like that about other people, he should expect it in return. TBH, since I did notice the board had a message about discussing topics not people, I first looked for a button to flag their comment. Not finding one, I said what I said. I find it interesting that you @'d me and not him.

It’s also a logical conclusion if you know anything of logic.

No offense, but unless you’ve gone to school for formal logic, odds are I know more about logic than you. I know what you meant, and you were wrong to say it not only because of the logical error but also because it’s crossing a personal boundary you have no right crossing -even if you were right.

It is important to the devs in order to keep the game alive.

No, it’s important for the devs to make money. Again, don’t go down the road of the false dichotomy. Do not presume that building offline modes with different levels of difficulty necessarily translates to fewer people playing the game. There are multiple reasons that assumption could be false.

As professor Campbell once said in an interview:

BILL MOYERS: But if one accepted that isn’t the ultimate conclusion, to say, well, ‘I won’t try to reform any laws or fight any battles.’

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I didn’t say that.

BILL MOYERS: Isn’t that the logical conclusion one could draw, though, the philosophy of nihilism?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s not the necessary thing to draw. You could say I will participate in this row, and I will join the army, and I will go to war.

BILL MOYERS: I’ll do the best I can on earth.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts. And that wonderful Irish saying, you know, “Is this a private fight, or can anybody get into it?” This is the way life is, and the hero is the one who can participate in it decently, in the way of nature, not in the way of personal rancor, revenge or anything of the kind.

For all you know, there could be just as many people - or more - who go on to complete the game on the easier mode who then decide they liked the game enough and who say, “You know, I was able to beat it at that level, I think I’ll give it a try at this level now.”

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How would you define “beating the game”? aRPGs are pretty open ended. The “real” end is getting perfect gear. Some players will roll a different character after achieving that, or close enough to it. If all characters were extremely easy to get to that point, the drive to play goes away.

Just to note, I actually do have quite a lot of logic, philosophy, reason, and ethics credits from college. Having a degree in it would do very little to advance ones career though, so I chose to not do that.

These are not mutually exclusive and absolutely go hand in hand. A games longevity is directly related to the amount of revenue from the game. Moreso if the game intends to continue updates for the game.

Lets not go into what “rights” you think I should or should not have.

I love doing these things too, because I love planning. The journey to that point is much different than just having the end goal though. The satisfaction of achieving the goal is correlated to the amount of effort it took to get there. Doing the planning is quite fun. Once you have that final goal though, it gets boring playing with that character really fast. There is nothing left to strive for. It’s fun to go beat up the bosses, but once you do it once with the maxed character, there isn’t much reason to do it again.

This doesn’t take into consideration Arena, but that mode has different goals.

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Then you should know the futility and inappropriateness of trying to debate which beliefs are “right” or “wrong” - except when dealing with maladaptive behaviors, which we are not dealing with here.

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LE is currently offline (with chat, leaderboards & the requirement of logging in), the devs have always said that after they launch multiplayer they will release a “proper” offline mode, presumably without the login requirement.

There’s no need for anyone to get personal.

https://imgur.com/9l5489n

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Unbecoming. Sir.

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Phone + fat fingers.

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Difficulty - Official Grim Dawn Wiki, Difficulty (T2) | Torchlight Wiki | Fandom, https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Difficulty

All have difficulty that impacts the difficulty of the mobs directly though increased/decreased damage or defence scaling. LE doesnt have this simple system at the moment - its just has the single mode, shared stash, single life hardcore and mascochist (the only difficulty mode choice available right now)…

LE is currently ONLY offline mode… the version we are all playing is offline with local savegames and local stash. Online mode only comes in when EHG launched the online multiplayer features. The only thing that is online right now is the game verification login & chat… nothing in the game proper is online right now.

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Hmm. I could swear there wasn’t one there. I wonder if that doesn’t show up for accounts that have not progressed to “Ardent Gladiator”? I could see that being the case, as it would block people from creating new accounts just to flag comments.

Yep, never played any of them. But I’ll consider them in the future, thanks.

Okay, I wasn’t aware this was considered offline, since we have to log in. I would say that to me offline means no internet connection, but even that I’d have to qualify because some games will let you keep playing and then upload progress when you get back online. To me offline doesn’t even have that. It’s completely offline, period. But logging in I don’t really care about. Still, the point is, having such a mode may not impact LE as negatively as some people fear.

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Warning: long writeup

This isn’t a PvP game where fragmentation hurts matchmaking. It matters over there if you need to wait 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds to find an opponent. PvE endurance/speed runs are asynchronous and self-matched by chosen modifiers. A title like “Arena 1000 Solo Masochist HC” inherently carries more weight than “Arena 1000 SC” or “Arena 1000 SC Easy Mode”. Hades has a speedrunning community that checks a pool of 15 endgame difficulty modifiers with up to 4 ranks (heat). Most go high heat but not necessarily max (32) to avoid mods that brick their builds. Some play “fresh file” (SSF, literally fresh install) before heat is even unlocked.

Halo is even more “fragmented”; there’s Halo 5 on console, Halo 3 diehards, Halo 2 Remastered fans, legacy CE players in original graphics, Halo 4/Reach players, Forge custom map players, campaign players, even Firefight endurance runners. Difficulty comes in both traditional modifiers and “skulls” (e.g. Catch On - AI enemies spam grenades). Some people take this all the way with LASO (Legendary All Skulls On); that doesn’t make it the “authoritative” version of the game. Far fewer people would play if that was the case.

So I agree that optional modifiers could add value, just not “prepackaged” or “curated” difficulties. Solo, Hardcore, and Masochist are modifiers, not fully-fledged independent game modes with different content. They change one thing at a time and assume nothing else about how you’d like to play. For example, you can experience Masochist without losing all your items in HC, or go HC without Masochist. Some people will say “but you can’t please everyone”. This is often understood as meaning that you shouldn’t even try; just “pick a lane” - my lane. That is where the forums usually blow up. Even concessions like “optional” and “Hard mode” don’t necessarily get through.

Practically speaking, there’s no stopping people from modding an offline client. There’s no stopping “casuals” from purchasing LE for $35. Those ships have sailed. The real choice is how EHG approaches actual player behavior. They could add an official “Mod” folder or even something like SC2’s map editor or Halo’s Forge. They could neglect offline/customs and enforce a “core” online experience like PoE or League of Legends. The latter is a consolidation strategy for a “winning formula” that’s been mainstream for years. This is the idea behind Riot Games saying they wanted to make League last generations, behind real-life sports, behind those mediocre movie franchise reboots.

LE is nowhere near finished, never mind “winning formula”. Many people play it precisely because it does away with the most unpopular “features” in PoE (flask spam, splinters, doors, gamble crafting, sockets/links, trade balanced loot). It also does things that “go backwards” from that perspective (separate atlas per character, “chase” uniques, gambling, vaal bricks, mana regen). OP and others are suggesting that it doesn’t have to be a binary fork between “full casual” and “Balance Manifesto”. I would even say that both sides are not equal. A game with more of PoE’s “sticks” and fewer “carrots” can’t compete on the same axis. It needs more of the fresh ideas, and they’re harder to find when everyone plays the same way.

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To summarize, the less options there are, the more one group is telling everyone else how to play the game.

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Alot of stuff i read in this forum worries me alot. I really hope the devs have a clear development plan in head and are able to really keep the core mechanics of an arpg alive and wont get influenced too much by what people say or write. Cause some of the stuff people write here is completely absurd.

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to my knowledge, they’ve never made known a public roadmap.

this is a feedback forum, it’s specifically designed to influence what the developers think. also what you think an arpg is supposed to be is specific to you, most people would disagree that your version of design is 100% accurate and good. (from what I’ve personally seen of you, which admittedly isn’t a lot, you have a very unpopular opinion of what this game needs.)

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Typing your opinion into a forum is one thing, but writing something thats so absurd and detached from reality is beyond my understanding. And yes, Last Epoch calls itself an arpg and i expect it to be exactly that.

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Just a friendly reminder to please be civil on forums when speaking to other community members.

Thanks.

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thanks llama, always gotta preface my statements with “to my knowledge” because i know you’re here to keep me straight.

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