Dude, whatever you are doing… keep at it.
I am IT developer myself; 20 years on the road and all you said here is golden. Merry Christmas for you and all the team. You deserve it.
LE is among the best games in the market and you should DEFINITELY feel proud of it. Looking forward for April 2025.
okie doke, sounds good
As has been said, if we had a magic wand we’d have WASD movement given the sheer amount of work that is required to add that to Last Epoch.
As a player who also has low-level arthritis/raynauds and plays a click-heavy Rogue build, fingerless compression gloves help a ton as do controllers (though I do understand that each person experiences health issues differently so controllers might cause more issues instead of solving them).
It’s also worth looking up gentle hand stretches, I double up moisturising my hands with massaging/stretching which has been helping too 
The question I have is how would you implement WASD if you could. Twin-Stick style of “aim at cursor” could work, but it’s 8-directional movement so not only would you have to redo all the animations and control systems, you’d have to redesign every map to work within those 8-directional movements or you’d have areas that you’d have to stutter step through.
Alternatively, there’s tank controls with A/D being “turn”, which is what PoE2 does, but it feels absolutely terrible imo. The turning speed would need to be customizable because “too fast” for someone is “too slow” for others, which is another whole thing and again, redo animations.
Lastly, simulated mouse movement is the third option and is how the controller works (if I understand correctly) but again is limited to 8-directional movement at which point just using a controller is better (strictly speaking on movement controls and not overall comfort).
I genuinely believe that people asking for WASD in an isometric ARPG aren’t considering that 90% of the WASD games they play have full range of movement because they have control of the camera to direct their character with just W. And any game with Tank Controls + Strafe on Q/E will have strafe rebound to A/D 99% of the time because turning with the keyboard feels awful (and I’ve never met anyone who said they prefer to turn with the keyboard, I don’t doubt they exist though).
So, I’m not a developer and I could be missing something but I just don’t see a way to implement WASD that feels good without requiring you to rebuild the game from the ground up by giving over the shoulder with camera mouse movement or entire map redesigns to fit 8-directional movement.
the QWER movement is a lot easier on the hands than 1234. I can play LE a lot longer than say a Diablo game without any pain
Er, that’s not the default for wasd in PoE.
Having not played it myself (no interest), I was basing that off this comment:
Which Tank Controls are A/D to turn in every other game.
Edit: after reading up on it, it seems like WASD in PoE2 works like 8-directional twin-stick. Aiming at the mouse at all times while you can move in the 8 WASD directions.
Yup, you get to choose between mouse or 8-way WASD.
That sounds so clunky, but I guess they designed the map to make 8-directional movement work
For me, POE2 is what I expect from this type of game. An absolute masterpiece that brings Hack and Slash games to a new level. However, it does not change the fact that LE gives another equally great experience and right after POE2 it is my number 2 game of the genre that I will play. I am waiting for changes and for the 2nd season.
PS. Also, make sure to finish the game. Because the game came out as incomplete. Up until now, when you put on the equipment, its visualization on the character does not always change.
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I look at it differently. I think what LE has to do in order to semicompete with D4 and PoE2 especially is to find a good window of opportunity to release the next season. They should prolly also add 2 seasons worth of content into 1 season. I am okay with them releasing every 6 months if that’s the plan and if that gives them the best way to release it without standing in the way of PoE 2 and D4. Don’t try to compete for players every single season but just 2 times a year and it is fine. I agree with that if thats the intention.
That’s completly understandable. Thanks for your reply.
I completely understand, and it’s pretty much the case. In regards to controller, I used to be a hybrid between the 2 input methods, but since I’m on MnK 100% of the time. I might dig out & dust my controller off and will try to give it a go, but to me arthritis is kicking on the finger bents, so those gloves are useless. I do stretches in general anyway, tho tbf it’s not much help either (for example my left pinky is pretty much fixed at 90 degree angle at max stretch out on the 1st knockle). Non the less, I appreciate your reply & suggestions. Thanks.
To your point, or rather against it, as much as I don’t like D4 for various reasons, the WASD system is perfect for me in regards.
It’s not a zero-sum game. Why do people keep thinking it is.
People who play D4 also play PoE, PoE2, and LE (probably also GD). I, personally, play GD, TQ, and LE. They dont need to “compete” for players, they just need to provide a product that players want to come back to. Because EHG decided to go the seasonal route, all they need to do is release a season whenever it’s ready with enough content that people will want to play it. They could do yearly seasons and people would still come back. They could release a week after PoE2s seasons and some PoE2 players would hop over to LE immediately and others would hop over when they’re “done” with PoE2 for the moment. Some will flip back and forth multiple times a day.
If you have 100 people and 50 are playing PoE2. You could still have 70 playing D4 and 65 playing LE in that same group of 100.
This is the only part i disagree with. tempo is really important, think about it this way, imagine you have LE with yearly seasons, that means in 10 years of service you would have 10 seasons.
Many of the people who played LE at launch have already forgotten about it, and when news comes out they are like “huh thats cool” then go continue playing something that is actually iterating on itself and providing live service.
The core audience of LE is pretty small currently. it has less average players then GD, a game thats been out for a long time that isnt even live service.
I think the game can probably survive with whatever it gets from seasons assuming they sell mtx well, I dont know if they do or not. But the game has a lot of potential it just needs iteration, and they will never be able to do that on yearly patches.
I really hope this is the last “yearly” patch… Ive been playing for al ong time and its my favorite arpg i dont wanna see them fumble so badly when they have a golden egg.
when people get to end game mapping in poe2 the honeymoon will be over. the death penalties are draconian to be modest. until then, it’s always greener 
I am looking forward to season 2 very much
Because they’re tribal & have difficulty getting their heads round things that aren’t.
Yeah, but what are seasons offering that a traditional arpg isnt?
GD is 13 years old, yearly seasons would put it at 13 seasons. Meaning 13 resets. I’ve already made and “reset” over 100 characters in GD.
LE is less than 2 years old and I’ve beaten the campaign with 10 different builds. Tying resets to a yearly major update with new skills/classes/sets would be enough to bring many people back to try new things. I’m not saying LE should do yearly seasons, just that having a cycle with 1 character for 3-4 months isn’t much different than having a cycle with 3-4 characters you play for 4-3 months (giving each equal time in the cycle.) You just have more time to try out new builds in the same season instead of being locked into one character.
I also play True Offline Legacy instead of Cycles due to Cycles only having a fresh economy that I can’t partake in anyway lol. So I’m not the target audience, that’s just how I view cycles.
Edit: I should also say that D2 had 6-7 month seasons once it got into the steady rhythm like 5 years after it started seasons, and those seasons only included resets with no seasonal mechanics. Adding new permanent content will always be more interesting to me than a half-baked gimmick that lasts 3-4 months. What will bring me back between patches is balance updates, new classes/masteries, new items, and more quests. Just deleting/moving my character and having a fresh economy isn’t enough to make me want to start a new character if the only new thing is some gimmick of that season. I tried seasonal in D3 once and then stuck with my non-seasonal characters, came back for Necromancer and that was about it because they only nerfed fun stuff instead of making other builds better