Socially responsible gaming idea

Feedback and Suggestions
1

If you want to do something very different, even as simply an extra option, create a league where playing is time gated. There are lots of reasons why having this option is beneficial.

  • Its socially responsible: Having kids play 8 hours a day is not healthy for them and the competitive nature of leagues, racing to the top, encourages that unhealthy approach.
  • Very attractive for a lucrative market: The older players have money but no time, they simply can’t compete with someone putting in 10x as many hours but its a competitive game by nature. You lose engagement with that key market and for cosmetics just because someone plays 10hours a day rather than 1hour doesn’t mean they get more real benefit from that cosmetic transaction, they will be just as emotionally tied to their characters if they are racing home from work to play etc.
  • Huge flexibility in implementation: You can take different approaches, X hours a day with ability to build up time so people can join a league late and catch up. Or simply start decreasing rewards as your ‘energy’ runs out, so after X hours its no long beneficial. Lots of ideas here and I dont think its hard to implement.
  • Works for everyone: Players could still run several characters and put in 10 hours if they like, it just spreads their time out so keeps things even (separate stash per character).
  • First in the ARPG space: Extra advertising opportunities as genuinely not seen it before for this type of game. Responsible developers etc, good image.

I think this would be a really strong deliver on many fronts for the game.

2 Likes
2

Hi Sinderland,

Well, if i understand the philosophy, it has imho a huge blind spot.
If you play during the same limited period, the difference of time needed for loots (if it comes) hence build efficiency annihilates the meritorious/competitive part you see in the ladder with this configuration :wink: (it’s even more unfair as time decreases the probability of being totally dependant from bad items. Actually, long period tends to give everyone the chance to obtain all the basics needed to his build).

Time is always relevant if you have non-oneshot character (or global system designed with partial progression modes).
Farming is part of H&S in every system for that reason.

Nevertheless, i like the concept (and the healthy approach) and it could have been interesting if the evolution of your character was unalike the actual one. I don’t know, a reincarnation system where your chara dies and has to re-build his power before dying again etc… With implementation karma points, deities etc… Well it’s not LE atm.

Anyway, i’m not sure you can keep the core of a H&S game and make it “healthy” with a competitive agenda (even if, after the quarantine, i will probably have playtime issues too).

P.S :
I had an idea trying to input a more casual-mode, outside the classic leveling/season (rookie character with points to put in the passive tree, partial points for skills, drafting base of equipment and limited number of maps to do before ending the mode) but it had a lot of flaws too.

3

Hello Sinderland,
You mentioned this on another topic. While you make you points clearer now, I am not sure if I would like this Idea personally.

I copied my reply to the previous post:

Please don’t get me wrong on this. I am a family man, too. But I don’t understand your attitude.

What’s the problem with playing in the same league with hardcore gamers? Why do you want to be separated?

To generate a healthy player base for a game it is important to not split the community to much. There already are several fractions:

  • Online / Offline
  • Hardcore / Softcore
  • Solo Self Found / Shared Stash
  • PvP / PvE

Every faction has other recommendations for the game. To split this even more is not a good idea I think.

The amount of time you can spend playing the game does not change. You cannot compete in ladder races, but this also won’t change with separating. How does playing in the same league with hardcore players affect you and your play style and gaming experience?

The game lobbies will be separated. May be there are public quest hubs. But perhaps it will also be an option to stay solo, I don’t know. There is no open world where overleveled players could steal your mobs or loot or kill you. You will be able to play online with friends, solo or public. This will be your choice.

So other players will get better items and higher levels faster than you. But these players will stay all around you anyways. No matter if you play in a casual league. They are on discord, steam, forums, twitch, youtube,… Why does it bother you?

Please don’t take this as an offense.

My opinion how to stay healthy is to get along with the fact that you can’t compete in an online game when you don’t invest time. This goes for all situations in live. You won’t be able to learn a new language, playing an instrument or become a better table tennis player without time investment.

I have accepted that fact long ago when I could not participate in wow raids regularly. I was a casual player in one of the biggest guilds on my server. I quested with those guys and girls but the hardcore endgame content was not for me. I got to know how some of them prioritized gaming over their reallife. I wanted to have better gear, but I did not want to let my reallife fade away. So I made a decision that last until now.

So I live with the attitude that I never will be one of the top tier players in any game. But that does not hurt me. Also I don’t want to be seperated from the hardcore gamers. I want the community to be as big as possible with everybody in the same game modes.

If you feel distracted by hardcore players you certainly can join a sub community. Create or join a guild for casual players. Even men 40+ only or a gay only guild. This all is possible without any boundaries the devs could implement. But please don’t vote for seperation. This propably will create this “we” and “they” conflict.

Limiting the playtime can also hurt yourself. Let’s imagine your league has a limit of 3 hours a day. What happens when you accidantially have 3,5 or 4 hours of time. Creating a new toon in the same league to fill the additional time does not sound desirable for me. You can’t progress with you main char. That feels bad. So when you are a casual player your won’t start spreading your precious time.

And what’s the correct duration per day? 1h, 2h, 3h? I may only have 2h availible. So I always would be behind unless there’s a league with a 2h limit.

In my opinion your suggestion creates more issues than it solves.

Wow. This has become a hell of a text wall… :upside_down_face:

5 Likes
4

I’m kinda with Raw on this one, I think it would split the (online) community too much, plus I don’t really see the benefit…

1 Like
5

I agree that the important part is just to let go (you can’t invest time, you can’t be top 3 player, it doesn’t matter) and i think H&S isn’t really competitive by nature (except if you’re an hardcore theorycrafter) compared to other genres.

I mean, of course, you’ll have a ladder but it’s not an direct opposition based on direct skills only (like a Quake-like for instance).

The very competitive games aren’t often that fun to play for occasional gamers in ranking system (because time brings you a lot of values), so LE will be very sweet for everyone even with the classic dichotomy hardcore-casual :slight_smile:

6

Unless a sizeable chuck of people really do want this option it wont impact the community and who would you be to deprive them if they do? If you make great games community size easily takes care of itself.

I think suggesting people give up on competitive elements of games just because they can’t commit to several hours a day is a little condescending and lacks imagination. Its fine if Last Epoch try new things. While ARPGs have not tried this out much many other related branches have, like MMOs, have. An example is level caps that increase as time passes with the main purpose to allow the community to grow closer together are common, energy features too. This is not a new concept here, its a tested and proven successful technique to stop people racing ahead in content and spoiling the fun for others.

Ultimately these features wouldn’t physically impact the gameplay for many people because they have real world limitations on their time, this would simply be developers giving a portion of the users the ability to play strictly alongside other users in a similar life situation so they can have a balanced gaming experience. I dont expect it to be for everyone however. It also would help people fighting with gaming addiction.

Don’t forget this is optional. Similar to hardcore mode, its not for everyone, typically only a small number play hardcore strictly but I think it would just arrogant to suggest not having it available, just as hardcore plays suggesting softcore shouldn’t exist is selfish. Killing off either makes a ‘bigger community’ but not a better game.

7

POE has races during seasons that last only 1 or 2 hours. This game could do the same. They could have one and two hour races in the Arena. Winners would be those who got the farthest.

Could be really neat if they introduced a PvP “battleground” type system too. A capture the flag, a MOBA style, and a team brawl just to name a few types.

I really don’t know how it could be done, but there could be another short competitive thing that really takes advantage of the Chrono Trigger like nature of this game. Very hard boss fight maybe in the very distant future (or outside of time, something neat storywise). The rift is unstable and can’t be held for long. After a time limit (like 5 minutes?), you are ripped back.

If you wanted it to be even more unique, the boss could be unkillable. Make the boss hard. I see a Cthulu like boss (for flavor), that does Stuns, Confuses (you roam around unable to control your character for maybe 2 seconds), does ground effect DoTs, and Summons/Raises minions. The battle is a fight for survival, and “loot” is increased based on the amount of damage done to the boss (damage to minions doesn’t count). Just as an example, maybe every 10k damage done to the boss increases item rarity by 1% and every 25k damage done increased item quantity by 1%. There could be a leaderboard for the amount of damage done.

There would obviously need to be some balance changes done or everyone would just abuse poison mechanics. Maybe just make the boss outright poison immune.

8

I don’t want or care about any form of competition in this game. Its a single player offline game and that’s all its ever going to be for me

I play PoE since 2013, I do 40/40 and 100 grind every 3 months. I am awake at 4am to begin the new PoE league every 3 months. Ive gotten a few #3 Ranks in my class (working FT, not sure how) and I used to push ladder in D3 and have a few top clears from old Seasons. The last thing I want to do is do this in another game as its fkn exhausting

I couldn’t care less about cheaters/leaderboards/how much you play/your progress or anything to with this game. I just want to play it when PoE is on downtime (which is about now…wheres the beta release?) for a few weeks then go back to PoE on a new league.

This game wont even have a population enough to run any form of timed competition that I can see, so why worry

9

It was not my intention to be condescending. I just told you how I get along with this.

This example does only work in an environment where all people share the same lobby, as you say, in an MMO. When you are seperated in a league with a time cap this is not necessary, because of the said time cap.

This I doubt. Your suggestions says this is optional. Why would somebody with an addiction choose this league unless he he forced to? Why would he stop playing after the time cap? What would prevent him from rolling another toon?

What do you think about suggesting gamemodes that fit your special circumstances of life?

10

I’m sure POE had always been the ARPG with the largest population, right?

11

Afaik, people that preordered for the april release have gotten beta access. Also as Ardent Gladiator don’t you have already access to LE right now?

This is a very negative opinion. Why do you think this?

LE already has a larger Twitch audience than Wolcen :sweat_smile: And when I look at the numbers of steam player peak of Wolcen during the launch phase I get the idea there may be a huge number of ARPG fans that are starving for something new.

2 Likes
12

I dont know why he is wasting time trash talking the game here when he’s so much in love with POE.

13

They’ve not done hourly races for years though, and when PoE did, they were a lot smaller than they are today. Not that I have anything against the idea. I think there’s someone in the community who’s already doing something like this?

14

Zizaran had some funding backing to do a race to be first to kill Sirus 8 on Hardcore last league I think. Don’t know how it turned out.

15

yeah, at this phase, there is absolutely no need to worry or become a masked vigilante who enforces single-player regulations
but… wouldn’t a game need some form of competition to attract competitive players?? how can this game grow if there is no online competition at all?

16

i agree, ladder grinding makes no sense at all, we should at least be able to save our progress!!! it doesn’t change the difficulty and makes life much much easier

17

Yeah, but that took several days, they even had a race at PoEcon. All I’m saying is that PoE generally doesn’t do the very short races anymore, along with the mayhem events.

18

they did that race and up to 30k was divided in the community. Was a fun event to watch and follow, lasting almost a week.

19

They did a race to level 80 3 days ago. And I think today there’s another. These races are casted by ZiggyD etc, take around 5 hours, seems like something cool right?
And that’s in PoE, a game with massive dev work done. A race in LE for the campaign for example, wouldn’t take 5 hours, not even at launch I don’t think.

20

Races are a bit of a tangent to the tread as the goal here was kind of the opposite, a race crunches the action into a small chunk of concentrated gaming where as I was more looking for something that stretches it out over a very long period but played over small intervals.

I definitely think races and alternative events are a great idea for some players and I hope Last Epoch dev team find a way to put their spin on it and not just repeat POE. For example they could make mini quests which take maybe 3-5hours to compete but you have to play them hardcore/self-found with a new character and they are super super hard, but you can try any time and as many times with the first completion giving you a rare unique item for your main account stash.

The comments about the community being small I think are unfounded, its a Beta and priced at a premium to the games release price. The developers therefore are intentionally keeping the player base fairly small for this phase of the development cycle. I can see no reason why at launch the community will not be huge, POE has kindly created a big market for ARPGs and there is plenty of room for multiple games to co-exist with it being miles from market saturation.