For my part, I’ve been checking the forums off and on even though I quit months ago. I didn’t even know the date for 1.1 specifically. I didn’t get an email about it. Not sure if anything was done on social media, but I don’t have a presence there. Only reason I knew about it was the occasional post about it here.
It’s installed again on my pc, just waiting for when us legacy plebs can access the “cycle only” content to give it a go. See you all in game soon.
Bugs, gold dupes are all killing the game, the level of unpolishness is atrocious, the economy is in shambles, the amount of trolls left unchecked on these forums, that go around annoying playerbase, saying that issues are not real (employees undercover).
Your tinfoil hat’s slipping a bit there.
There is one person here ive accused of being a pissed off dev on an alt account, read my post history if you want clarification
it makes perfect sense they can vent on this account and all their replies are focused on other players feedback and how the feedback is generally shit or wrong
It was me you accused of doing that and it makes as much sense now as it did before. Especially because I bought LE months before launch when the forums were actually pretty great and positive overall.
It was just with launch that all the negative and (most importantly) all the insulting people came.
So unless you think I’m a dev that made an account way before there was any need for it so that I could use it in the future, I’m afraid it’s just another tinfoil conspiracy theory.
The reason I argue with you (and others) is not because I’m a dev, but because I’m someone that actually loves the game as it is.
I’ve said before that EHG could stop working on the game as it is right now and I’d still play it for years to come.
So naturally I will defend it when people want to change the game in a way that would make it worse from my point of view. Like implementing mastery respec, which would simply make me stop playing LE altogether.
Your problem is that you apparently don’t grasp that some people might actually really like things you don’t find fun. And it’s easier to simply dismiss/insult them and accuse them of being a dev in disguise rather than admit that your “fun” solutions would make the game less fun for them.
I’m glad that you love the game as is but to me it’s flawed, which is fine, I’m a reasonably grounded adult who has a moderate grasp on how real life operates, the game will get more content and more polished & I don’t feel the need to pitch a massive hissy fit because it’s not perfect. But i don’t enjoy the game as much as I used to, possible because I’ve already spent so much time playing it.
Yeah, it’s fine that you think the game has flaws. I also happen to think that it has flaws (and I have pointed many of them out before), I just don’t think they impact on my enjoyment of the game.
I do think the game can improve, obviously. And I hope it does. My point was just that the way LE is right now I have fun playing it. And if it died today, I’d still have fun playing it for years to come.
This is not a “things must not change because I like them the way they are” argument, it’s a “I’m having fun with the way things are right now, so obviously I’m going to defend the game”.
A very interesting question indeed…
I think many factors interact here.
Of course, an important one is
Absolutely true for some.
But there are other reasons why people are obsessed by checking the numbers instead of playing. Among them:
Some people come on the forums only to pour as much venom as they can on EHG. They follow the numbers closely, hoping they will go down and it will be their “I told you so” moment.
It sounds very sick, but it has been a very, very common attitude since 1.0.
Another fact is that many players only came to LE because their favourite streamers told them to do so, again especially during the huge social-media buzz of 1.0. They are here to follow the trend, to be “part of the big event”. The game doesn’t really matter to them, it is just about following the cool kids.
That makes numbers extremely important, as you cannot feel like you are part of something big if, well, it turns out not that big.
Yeah, me too, I still feel like 0.8 was the golden age.
But I agree with you that most of it is probably just me having played too much.
And even if they don’t affect me, reading all the rants and the problems all created by a multiplayer/trade system I never wanted in the first place is tiring.
I don’t really blame the game, I never expected to play it for life anyway, I don’t believe in eternal live services games (well, I believe they exist, not that they work for me).
looks like peak was on the release day and the week-end didnt help.
from 258k peak at launch to 71k peak on 1.1
dont draw the graphic it doesnt look good 
we’ll see next cycle if it gets better or not.
This is a bit disingeuous, but also the fault of a way more successful launch than anyone expected.
If 1.0 didn’t happen and this was now 1.0, everyone would be raving that 70k on launch would be a great number for a new game.
The fumbling of the economy will likely lead another reduction in retention next cycle. As much as I hated some decisions Chris Wilson made regarding PoE, he acknowledged how important the economy was to a trade based experience. They never should have added Merchant’s Guild if they were confident in their ability to react to dupes and exploits. This exact same thing happened in 1.0 and they made 0 changes and allowed it to repeat in 1.1
Every game will have exploits, yes. But how the devs react to those exploits is everything. Unfortunately for Last Epoch, it appears every exploit receives the same response. “Patch the exploit, and do absolutely nothing to mediate the damage of the exploit”.
In my opinion, they should remove the option for Merchant’s Guild in future cycles until they are confident they can provide a stable economy when exploits are found.
This is the thing though, they thought they were. Just like they thought they were ready for launch, they’d done their scalability testing & all that jazz that a competent developer should do but something unexpected happened & fucked things up good & proper which then cascaded out of control.
This is the problem with doing something new, sometimes the universe just throws you a grenade shaped like a ball which blows up in your face despite all your previous preparation. Hindsight & being on the other side of the desk is wonderful when it comes to throwing shit at other people/companies but it doesn’t mean that they didn’t prepare.
You don’t know that. You appear to be assuming that they are either lazy or incompetent or don’t care & that’s driving your viewpoint.
Yeah, I hope they’re working on developing the tools to more easily view the scale of the problem & determin how to react (ie, remove duped gold without fucking over everyone who didn’t trade with the affected individuals).
Well, yes, that’s like saying that Oxygen is important to respiration.
I think an important test to Last Epoch will happen next week, with the release of the next Path of Exile league (and it appears to be a juicy one this time, unlike Necropolis).
If Last Epoch loses too many players, maybe it would be a good idea for EHG to put more distance between LE’s new cycles and PoE’s new leagues.
What test? Do you actually expect LE to retain 10k players at best? I don’t think anyone does. We’re down to 20-25k players right now and I don’t expect to end the cycle with more than 5k players around.
Nor do I think it’s a bad sign. LE is a new game and needs to build up its playerbase.
As for the cycle timing, they had to delay this cycle due to not being properly prepared to tackle multiple seasonal content. They thought they had enough time to start working on cycle 2 once cycle 1 was stable. This was admitted by Mike in his stream and he said that since then they changed their methodology and actually have several teams working on several cycles at the same time, so they can stagger their efforts better.
And they might try to stagger their cycle release with PoE/D4 later, but for now they’re more focused on getting critical content in (according to their roadmap), so they can then build up the rest from there.
As anyone knows I’m a big fan of Last Epoch but even I don’t seriously believe they’ll start getting better peaks/retention numbers until at least 1.3 and the mono reworks. Nor do I think they’re terribly worried about it for now. They got a nice financial buffer with launch and now they can focus on making the game better (according to their vision).
If they make a good enough job with the next few cycles, with more and better endgame content, growth will occur naturally after that.
Amount of horrible „feedback” and takes on LE socials since 1.0 is atrocious.
1.0 was such and overhyped and inflated launch because of D4 bad and coverage from a lot of streamers it overwhelmed even EHG. When I discussed it on discord people were telling me I am and idiot and thought 150-200k will be peak at 1.1 Most people that played then never reached empowered monoliths.
70k we got now is still great success in ARPG genre, there were many Poe players that played LE as a waiting room for new league and they left already mad they can’t play the market. Core base of Epoch players now is probably around 40-50k which is great for new game. 1.2 will probably doesn’t change gameplay much and will have even smaller numbers. Don’t expect 100k + unless we get proper cycle mechanics not base game additions.
For me less people whining about grinding faction, harbingers the better. Epoch is grindy and I love it because it’s different from Poe and d4.
Reading the first part of this thread, people were WAY bullish and reality hasn’t been anything like that has it?
I’m a long-supporter of LE and I think 1.1 is a serious disappointment - 1.0 was a flawed but interesting experience and 1.1 is - erm - not much further on?
I cannot imagine anyone who didn’t get 1.0 enjoying 1.1 and I think the next cycle will need to up the novelty factor or EHG will be in trouble
They could also throw more MTX into the store - what’s there is WAY limited and people LIKE that stuff - they buy it every league - it’s how GGG survive - learn from your competitors etc.
One thing which shocked me is the number of streamers/YT creators who supported LE before and into 1.0 but who aren’t playing/doing guides etc for 1.1
Skimming YT for news/ideas/updates I’m seeing the same faces who do D4 and PoE who’ve popped-in for 2 weeks only - that strongly suggests there wasn’t enough interest for people to keep focussed on LE and that’s a bad sign in itself…
D3 was kept alive by people like Rhykker and Raxx and Wudi - D4 is carried by those people now too - PoE has a huge community of creators who work closely with GGG and build HUGE hype around every announcement and LE has - erm…
LE will not thrive if the content creators only pop-in for 2 weeks - hell, even Dr3ad has said he’s doing PoE 3.25!!)
Most just came because LE was next popular thing and joined on hype bandwagon to forget about it next week and join another hype train.
D4 was exactly the same.
I doubt the devs here comment in the thread on stealth accounts. Anyone here would immediately pick up on it, as people type the same way they talk.
No point of arguments about player count. As the devs got 4 years of income saved. I will give them about a year to get their act together, and continue to call out any bs i see. About all i can do.