S4 Feedback – From a Casual (Older) Gamer

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I wanted to share some thoughts on the current season of Last Epoch from the perspective of a more casual, older player and someone who has played right from the beginning many years ago

I’ve genuinely been enjoying the Season 4 mechanic — it’s engaging, fun and I love that shattering sound and up to now each day I have had a reason to log in and play. The continuing quality-of-life improvements each season are very noticeable, which I really appreciate.

That said, every season it feels like I hit a progression wall and more so this season I’ve hit that wall earlier than expected. It feels like there’s a barrier that suddenly appears, and instead of motivating me to push through, it actually has the opposite effect. If I want that experience I would play POE1/2 but that’s the reason I play Last Epoch over POE as up to a point I feel you do execute many of the crafting and mechanics much better. Now on the same hand I’m not saying the D4 direction is the way to go as that is the polar opposite.

A big part of this is how complex the progression systems have become. There are so many mechanics, layers, and decisions that it honestly feels like I need a PhD just to understand the “correct” direction to take my character. As someone who plays casually, I simply don’t have the time (or desire) to watch hours of influencer content or dig through multiple guides just to stay on track.

Right now I find myself hitting a corruption cap which I feel is much too early and now logging in feels like just mundanely having to run the same corruption without being able to craft or reasonably farm my way further forward as too much of what I need to progress has either been nerfed or walled behind insanely absurd rarity

It’s a shame, because up until that point I’m having a great time. But once I hit that barrier, my enthusiasm drops off pretty quickly, and I find myself logging out instead of pushing forward.

I’d love to see progression made a bit more intuitive or forgiving, especially for players who aren’t min-maxing or deeply plugged into the meta, I feel you have not yet hit the sweet spot and are running the risk of entering POE levels of complexity more and more and by the same token do not want to see it going the D4 route, but there is a middle zone you have yet to land on. A progression wall is fine but for me the bar right now is set far too early and needs to lift considerably if you are aiming to retain seasonal player engagement.

To retain my engagement and I would suggest that of the largest % of any ARPG player base we need to feel that if we log in and spend some of our time in your game we need to leave that session having felt we achieved something there, right now that achievement curve drops off far too quickly.

Thanks for reading — still rooting for the game and the direction it’s going in overall

2

What corruption is giving you trouble? You are talking about numbers and not the vaal thing, right? The game is scaled at 500 with Uber. No real point in going higher unless you want marginally better xp and drops, but then you go slower, so it evens out. Most of my timelines are between 500-600.

The seasons in LE are pretty long. It’s not like you have to wrap it up in a week.

1 Like
3

I feel like your write up is pretty good, but is lacking some context.

What corruption are you playing? What’s given you the msot trouble? survivability/dying alot? Is your damage lacking? Do you not get any better LP Uniques? Do you not get any better exalts for crafting Legendaries? What have you done already successfully? What have you not done yet?

Are you at 100c? 200c? 300c? 500c? 600c? Have you done Aberroth, have you done Omen’s Veil/Fractured Prison Woven Echoes?

All of this would put all your statements in a lot mroe context.

Because depending on what level of corruption and progresasion we are talking about I would have vastly different approaches to try and understand what’s wrong with your progression.

I don’t know how much/how far you played already before this season but this statement really resonated with me:

This statement really encapsulates how I feel about ARPG’s

BUT

Part of playing and learning games is a learning curve. And even with the same player skill, but a littel bit more game knowledge sometimes this can change a lot. I am not talking about looking up guides, but playing more and maybe even playing different characters/builds and sometimes you just understand certain mechanics way more to the point where you can then make more/quicker progress the next time.

Returning to the game each season and then pushing further each season is kinda what I like about ARPG’s.

I am not saying you are wrong, but I think there might be more progress you can make, you just don’t know how (yet).
But this also heavily depends on which corruption level we are talking about.

2 Likes
4

Hi and ty both for taking the time to read and respond, as suggested I’ll try to give some more context and some specifics. ARPGs are my genre with 1000s hours over the years so know what I have signed up to.

VK Bomber with all Resist max and a loot filter set up as best as I can to hunt what I need

Harbringers done but not Aberoth

My damage is fine but its those survivability crafts that I need to get on my gear to progress towards 300 - 500 and this is the wall I’m hitting - see notes below

Right now 300 corruption and playing CoF at Rank9 about to tick Rank10

Weavers Rank 7 or 8 but loosing the will to farm Amber via Folly etc (see Prisons below)

Prison Woven Echos
Have played every day since release of 1.4, killed hundreds of mages and not yet seen this drop which I am targeting for my gloves for some sustain. Right up until yesterday I have sunk considerable time into setting up Follys to farm Amber to progress ranks to be able to buy more Wovens, only to read yesterday these ones are not purchasable from the vendor so at this rate I may never see one and right there I feel that a craft that I still have to put work into is denied to me behind a wall.

Havocs
These to me are far too scarce. Again I have given myself what I believed to be the best chances to improve drop rates, Prophecies with lens etc and for days targeting mages with a point in the Weaver Tree in Cems and Tombs to “help” the chances. After days of never seeing a mage spawn I did then find out that there is a known issue that the Weavers Passive is not working. I get that bugs happen but until its fixed drop chances should be tweaked etc.

Imprinting
From previous seasons this appeared to be much more rewarding in the past but finding it is very hit and miss to date and don’t get me wrong I have no expectation of landing a x2 T7 - I’ll be happy with a decent T7 on an item base I need to craft on.

Crafting
Crafting feels much harder work this season with it seemingly much easier to brick your item and when those T7s do drop there is much less forging potential headroom. In fact I don’t think I have managed a decent target craft this season with one T7. Yes ok the set affixes are nice but again not yet been able to max an item for my level to my liking.

Crafting generally right from the off this season while levelling to now feels really flat and unrewarding. I can count on one hand the number of crafting crits I have had this season with Hopes and forging potential very much seems to be rolling the higher end of the scale when crafting.

I have touched on those 4 specific areas for now and in doing so this in part describes how I feel right now, its like I have to micro manage so many mechanics under the bonnet rather than actually just play the game, and to get the best out of them I have to read up on so many strategies and guides that you could again actually spend more time trying to learn the best way to setup those for success / progression than actually be in game

Ofc I fully accept I could be doing it all wrong and I recognise everything I am doing is based on what I have hunted about for which may or may not be fully accurate.

Right now I’m feeling inhibited by the game and so many mechanics, its getting to the point when a half decent T7 drops I’m reluctant to craft it with the assumption I’ll just goof and brick it. The game is feeling more and more like work, something that I play to get away from and more and more seems to cater only for those who have the “Uber” knowledge.

Ta in advance

5

That’s what I am talking about, now we can have some more founded discussion with some context.

Max resistance doesn’t really tell anything. Resistances are only a tiny portion of a characters defense.

Loot Filter “as best as I can” is very hard to gauge. The feeling that you don’t make progress could stem from either what you expect from a game, a loot filter that might be too strict for the progression level you are at or you not understanding/utilizing all the game systems properly yet. (or a combination of all of these things).

Have you attempted Aberroth a few tiems already? I think regular Aberroth really is more a player skill challenge than actual character/gear challenge, since you can basically do him without getting hit decently easily with some pratice. And as soon as you are able to survive the Cone Slams the room for error is very very big.

So you either climbed corruption very very fast or you don’t spend your favor a lot. Remember spending favor does level up your faction as well.

I think by the time of reaching 300 corruption and finishing the 10 harbigner I always was CoF Rank 10 at minimum.

I see where you are coming from, but these added complexity is something I personally for example really like they finally adding to LE. Having all these systems working hand in hand in paralell to each other feels very great and rewarding, oncce you understood how you optimize it.

Very interesting, with the point of progression you are in, I feel like you might not use Rune of Havoc very effectively then.

I personally always have more Havocs than Items to craft them with, because usually before even attempting to craft havos on an item you try to craft it into a state where its worth using Havocs for. (add all affixes you want, possibly removing some affixes first) and then getting all non exalted affixes to the same tier to improve you chances of succeedign with the Havoc.

Its very hard to judge, but I think this might be a compounding issue with you not fully optimally using all the mechancis the game offers yet.

I get that, but do you not get the feeling of acquiring some more knowledge yourself by playing continously each season? Even as a not so hardcore player and not watching guides or looking at what other people do, do you not feel like you accumulating some usefull game knowledge and improve each seasons?

I want to reemphasize that I think your feedback and feelings are really valid, but I think its very hard to pinpoint what or where the main issues stem from.

You do say you don’t want it to become mroe like Diablo. But would you want them to make existing systems easier to interact and learn? Would you want them to not add many new things to not overwhelm?

One part from you main post:

The thing with LE is, even though there is a learning curve to it and you can really master all the systems and utilize them to theri fullest. There is nothing wrong with just using them and try to learn and understand them, even though that means you will sometimes not use them 100% optimally. LE is very forgiving in that sense. And when you keep interacting with the systems you will eventually learn them more and more and better understand how they work togehter with other systems.

6

This might be one of those issues that Heavy pointed out about better knowledge on how to use the game mechanics. I see a lot of people that don’t actually know the most efficient way to use them.
This is not an issue with the mechanic itself, which is very explicit in what it does, but with understanding the math behind it.

Since Havocs state that the affixes get shuffled around and that it will never remain the in the same state, this is a combinatorial problem. What you want to do is reduce the number of possible combinations.

In practice, this means that you want all affixes at the same tier (except the exalted one, of course).
If you use a Havoc on an exalted with affixes 7543, you have 1/23 chance of getting the affix you want.
But if you use it on an exalted with affixes 7555 (or 7111, or 7222, etc. They’re all the same chance), then you have a 1/3 chance of landing the affix you want. This is because the possible combinations for an item like that are 7555, 5755, 5575 and 5557. Since it will never stay in the same state, it will have to change into one of the other 3 combinations.

This means that the best use of an Havoc is after you’ve crafted enough so that the affixes are all the same tier.
Using this strategy would mean that you waste less havocs on gear that has unlikely combinations to give you what you want.

Basically, you should be using your havoc if you’re trying to get that exalted affix because you don’t have it yet, but once you do have it havocs are usually close to the end of the crafting process. Only once your gear is in a good spot should you be trying to havoc it. Which means most gear will reach a fail state before you start spending them.

Hope this helps a bit.