So you're advertising your game as finished 21st February but 3 chapters of story missing on release

General
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The issue is not that the story is not finished, I think it’s the way the current end is handled that is a problem.

I agree now with the points made that you don’t need a warning at the start of the game, as above.

The issue, I feel, is that you don’t clearly feel like you just had a big ‘boss fight’ and cinematic to let you know you’re at a critical point of the story (and chapter end). I mean, there kind of is a fight, but I don’t feel like it’s highlighted well to the player that you’re at some kind of key dramatic event.

Need to enhance the drama of the fact Apophis just broke stuff real bad, world’s in trouble. How it is, it’s kinda just mundanely stated that “oh her, yeah she made stuff bad and we don’t know if it can be fixed, but hey, go have fun.”

Perhaps it’s the event itself that needs enhancing with more NPC reactions etc added, a change in music score, some things moved around. You have to feel like this event just broke stuff, not just ‘oh goody I’m off to MoF.’ Sure, there are considerations around effort and budget etc to add to it, but currently it’s a very flat feeling key moment of the game, hence quite surprising when your story just halts there just talking to a new NPC who so far means nothing to you, and as far as everyone else in the world seems concerned, nothing happened.

I hope in future we do get some more polishing added to the story, give oomph to the key moments and transitions. I know there are some new cinematics coming, I hope they help emphasise the story.

For the people exclaiming that who cares about story or character development through campaign: you be you, go have fun in your endgame, stop telling others they shouldn’t care.

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148

Go back to diablo then - we won’t miss you promise - I’d play / buy this game with 1 chapter active… ITS 30 DOLLHAIRS - ffs.

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Why would you be worried that you cant speed run the story as you like? lol. Not sure why everyone clings to story when its all about the gameplay. If there was no gameplay, you wouldn’t be buying it. If that was true, reading novels would be your thing. This is why I never once look at story in any games and just play, because after you beat the game, the other 5000 hours you put in the game is GAMEPLAY. This must be a new generation thought process or oldschool world of warcraft veteran complaint about story… I’m never sure why ppl care about story knowing damn well if they are gonna speedrun, whats the point?, and if you’re gonna wait for expansions to play the game, clearly you doing it wrong. Either way, thank you for buying their product and making them profit off your misery.

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150

It’s kind of a glass half empty, glass half full situation.
The half empty take is that the game shipped incomplete, there should be more in here, the story is unfinished and the game isn’t a complete product.
The half full take is that the game is launching with 9 story acts, and that players will get 3 brand new acts for free as post-launch support. That sounds better, doesn’t it? They can both be true!

Then it gets more complicated when it comes to how the story is written. Diablo 4 ending is a cliffhanger, big bads that are still out there are teased to return, it is by definition an unfinished story, but it was also written as a conclusion and is clearly marked as such. Would simply adding a credits screen to the end of chapter 9 in LE signal it as a conclusion? How about an ending cutscene? The content wouldn’t change, maybe perception would.

If the devs said they planned 9 chapters and not 12, would that change the outcome? Or would then the story get criticized for not being satisfying enough, as opposed to the PRODUCT being criticized for being “unfinished”?

Either way I think the devs are playing a dangerous game by not making this clear enough in the store fronts. Not everyone browses forums/discord, and if you leave it unclear then that opens up a real space for other actors to influence perception and build up narratives about the game, and narratives on the internet can get really damaging at a game launch.

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Man, you really want to be mad at something. I’m glad it was something innocuous as this.

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I’m not jump on the Last Epoch Critique here, because in context of it being a Live-Service i would argue there is a ground / argument to be made that they are build modular. As long as the foundations fits or work, i’m okay with that.

But, and that’s where i’ve to disagree with you, there is just a difference between a game which is open for continuation by having an overarching plot, but finish it’s actual mainplot, versus a game with a geninue cliffhänger where it axe the mainplot right before the end and you’ve to wait for the alst 2-3 chapters.

Diablo 4 finish it’s mainplot with lilith, but have an overarching plot to continue on and that’s quite a difference than to say → Game get’s launched but 2 - 3 chapters are missing with the final boss of the ‘mainplot’. It’s like - and i never imagined out of all possibilites that i draw exactly here an example for this: Thor or most other Marvel-Moviews weren’t incomplete or whatever, just because aufter the mainplot finished and the credits rolled through there is a small short hint for a few seconds what might next coming up. Maybe for Infinite War / Endgame it would be more comparable to the cliffhanger idea, but than again also for this example it feels more like they had to split it into two movies than cut cliffhanger up right at the end and it miss something.

And again i didn’t enter in this topic to sh*t on LE and act like a dramaqueen. I just find it disingenuous when you compare the situation of LE with D4 (or as someone throw the example of Grim Dawn and other games like that…).

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Finally made it to the bottom, only to wish I had just had those tasty looking muffins…

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Where are the muffins?!

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I agree 11th Hour and Larian do have similarities and I’ll add another company in Crate entertainment (Grim Dawn). All 3 of these companies due to the games the produced, and the way they listened over the years have earned my respect and my money. They reminding me of what Blizzard of old USED to be despite being a shell of their former self currently. For that reason that have my support whatever they make until if/when they go corporate like Blizz.

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Late to the party…does anyone have a Maxroll link to this Storm in a Teacup build…? :rofl:
(I prefer my daily home-made raspberry/white-choc muffins, as do our Shih-Tzus :).

Ok, not to pile on, but no offline LAN co-op and the fact that the forums were hidden behind a pre-ordered Steam account link irked me more. Then EHG turned my into a newt! I got better… :wink:

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Nah, the recipe has bad instructions. “two cups of flour”. What cups? I have cups in different sizes. That’s like saying “put points in the Marksman skill tree”, but not how many in which node.

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The game is not finished, it just releases.
What even is this thread?

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It’s about muffins.

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I hope you brought more butter. These muffins have lacked butter for to long just as this thread has been without merit for too long.

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Aww you poor thing!

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As someone who will enjoy the game and has no interest in drama or posting troll bait, I have to agree that it’s strange at some point of development any mention of the rest of the chapters being released stopped, and had no idea it was going to come out without all 12 chapters.
Heres two mentions implying that the whole campaign would get released before 1.0:

I think the developers should be more open and transparent about what is going on and what the future plans of the campaign are. Are we talking about one chapter per season? Per year? Are all chapters going to be released at once in like 3-4 years or in an expansion?

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What stuff? And to which film, I’m now slightly confused.

Depends what end of the scale you’re looking at.

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Global scale hence we are competing in the pretty expensive one.

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This is gold lol

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If the game’s campaign is a work in progress, that should be pretty readily available information right on the storefront.

On the other hand, this game does not have any cutscenes or anything like that. This isn’t a story game and players don’t get to select “Campaign Mode.”

The OP asks “Where you draw the line?” and that’s where I’d draw it. I’m trying to literally answer that question.

This wold be like complaining about Witcher 3 being released without Gwent in a finished state. It’s a major element of the game, sure, but Witcher 3 isn’t a card game, it’s an RPG.

Last Epoch is a Diablo clone Action RPG where you create builds and level your characters and chase loot.

All that is 100% here. That’s why this game is at 1.0.

It’s not Baldur’s Gate 3 (nor Witcher 3).

Anyway, yes, the devs should disclose this more readily. Is it shady?
Meh

Nobody is buying a Diablo clone (LE) for the story. Diablo 4 possibly somebody did…but it has cut scenes and 3 other games’ worth of lore to build on.