It kinda feels like you want a workaround for the “problem” (joyless hours of early and mid game grind) rather than fixing the problem.
ARPGs and the early game will always be at odds with each other. As I previously mentioned, the strengths of ARPGs become evident only after you’re given access to most or all of the tools you need to experiment and customize your character, i.e. the skills and the loot. So unless you make a reverse ARPG where you start off level 100 and become progressively weaker, the early game is essentially an unfixable problem for builders.
Most story-based games and some adventure and open world games are like novels, movies or TV series in that you can still appreciate the early parts of the game even after you’ve “finished” the entire game. You still want to go back to them, watch videos of them, or have fond memories from scenes or lines from those parts of the game.
But ARPGs are like learning a skill. The more chords and movements you learn, the more you will get out of a musical instrument. The more tricks and positions you learn, the more you will get out of a skateboard or BMX. And so on.
You’re essentially pitting a level 1 to 30 ARPG character with an endgame character. Which one will be more fun to play? Which one has access to more skills and equippable gear? Which one has access to more game modes? Which one can take on more ridiculous amounts of enemies or strong bosses?
The only way for the early and mid-game grind to be enjoyable is to again either make a reverse progression system, or to go the Hades route, where the Groundhog Day mechanic is tightly integrated into the game’s story and progression. Unless Last Epoch massively reworks its story and progression, there is no way it can make the early game more than or even equally appealing as the late game.
Again, let me ask you this. If you are not into Hardcore or SSF runs and you want to try out different builds and equip all of the loot you find or craft, is there any valid or defensible reason for why you should spend joyless hours in the early and mid game? We already paid for the game. We already experienced the story. We already and are still going to farm for loot and mats.
Perspectives that amount to “because this is how it was always done” or “it’s just how things are” are not valid reasons. If they were, then we wouldn’t have Last Epoch’s brilliant skill trees.
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I get where you are coming from. But I am not sure giving us “what we want whenever we want” is necessarily the best for us. Because one way for devs to let you try endgame builds within minutes could be to include an item/character editor. This will let you experience all the content with almost zero friction. Does this make the game most enjoyable for us?
Philosophically, we may also ask, if I like candies, are they most enjoyable when I have candies constantly? Or are they more enjoyable when they need to be earned, and given in just enough quantity to keep me yearning for more?
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I also feel and think we should be able to level a character with other ways than the campaign, provided that we completed the whole campaign at lease once before. But we cannot access the real endgame experience with a naked and “ignorant” hero. I know that D3 or Wolcen do this, but I feel there is something wrong.
So maybe it would be nice to have some intermediate system. A leveling activity that could look and feel like an endgame system, but that would oriented towards leveling heroes. Something you could access at level 1 and could not access at level 50, for example. An activity that would take into account the “learning” nature of the new hero.
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People already cheat in this game, they edit their money and probably rollback their character and re-try a craft, theres also straight up modding the files of the game to do what you want - the only difference between someone who cheats and doesnt is they simply choose not to
I completely agree with you. I also have thought about this roguelike comparison many times, and it’s why I spend a lot more time on them in more recent years. I think the best option would be once you have finished the campaign (or perhaps after finishing all monoliths), it is possible to create an “End of Time” character that is level 50 and has all the passives from quests. Then you can go from there into end game.
Note: As the extra chapter is added and the average level increases of getting to the End of Time, this could change. But the idea is the same either way.
I definitely don’t think there should be a character editor. I still want to play the game and earn the loot, but I want to do it at that point. As for the cheating, we can only hope that is going to be fixed once it goes online for real. I don’t doubt it will be.
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Try doing that when the game goes live.
And you’re missing my point. Whether or not there is an actual editor or not is not the point. I suggest you attempt to reread my post.
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Oh definitely. Once again, I am not advocating for us to be able to skip the campaign without having played through it once. It’s a tutorial, especially for players new to the genre or have not played within it for some time. But after that? There’s no reason to force us to keep playing the tutorial. It should be optional. That’s all I want.
There are very significant differences between having access to a character/item editor and an a new level 100 character. A character editor lets you break the game by configuring absolutely optimized or even broken stats. An item editor straight up negates farming. I am asking for neither.
As I mentioned in my other reply, ARPG campaigns are tutorials. All I’m asking is for us to have the option to skip the tutorial after having played through it once.
I respectfully disagree that your philosophical question is equivalent to this scenario. For one thing, I did work for the candy in that I played through the campaign once.
For another thing, unless you are the god of gamblers, you will still need to farm for dozens if not hundreds of hours to make a good build even after the farming time incidental to your first or even your second level 100 character. Access to all skills alone does not give you everything you need to make a god toon.
Finally, games cannot and should not assume that all players have the same set of preferences. If that was the case, then I would already have an ARPG that gives me the option to skip the campaign for my succeeding characters, because that’s how I think and feel about the early game grind: it’s forgettable and it’s skippable. That’s why I’m asking for it only as an option. If you enjoy playing through the campaign as essentially the exact same dumb terminal over and over, go for it. If you enjoy the risk of Hardcore runs, go for it. If you enjoy the challenge of SSF runs, go fo it. But if you’re a builder? Right now you can’t go for that.
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Yeah. Grim Dawn mitigated this somewhat in its later expansions with a farmable set that gave a 40% exp boost as a set bonus. But even that is not enough for me. I still had to go through the campaign to level up a new toon. The way GD locked passive skill points behind totems that you had to physically go to across different maps and across multiple difficulties made the grind even more infuriating.
If they don’t want us to have the option to skip to a level 100 character (which again, for the life of me I can’t think why not), then give us a Monolith of Newbies. After playing through the campaign once, give us a horde mode that starts at level 1. Because that’s essentially what the campaign becomes to me after completing it once: hundreds of unsatisfying obligatory mouse clicks.
Until they added the consumable in Forgotten Gods that allowed you to start in the higher difficulties.
I suspect they are/were of the view that the journey is as important as the destination & that being able to skip to a lvl 100 character means skipping the game.
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You still had to farm the passive totems though, and unlock the portals in Ultimate difficulty, neither of which are my ideas of fun. But you’re right, those relics, along with the lore reading exp trick, also made leveling succeeding toons much easier and I should have mentioned that.
But even with all those shortcuts, I still had tons of activities to do with my relatively quickly leveled new 100 toon. I still wanted to test it against the endgame bosses. I still wanted to try out different skill and gear combos. I still wanted to deck them out in different cosmetics. I still wanted to keep playing.
Only the ones in Ultimate though. All of the totems that gave you points in normal/the-higher-difficulty-who’s-name-escapes-me were granted by the token that you used to access Ultimate.
Thank for indulging me 
While I think we still have a difference in view between what may be considered quality of life changes or something that fundamentally alter the ARPG experience, you have certainly made a case for skipping the campaign in a cogent manner.
I think I dont have issue with your suggestion per se, as long as in implementing it, the satisfaction of making endgame builds isnt lost (I know you dont think this would be the case).
Not realy you want to play the fotm or most broken thing that is there in the cirrent patch cycle and you want to get there in very short time.
If we are realistic: Getting each mastery is done ine 1-2 days. Getting through the story is done in 1 or two weeks. If this is to much for anyone to do I think they should stay away from grind games.
Noone I know who wanted shortcuts wanted them just to test stuff instead they were gready lazy fellas who just wanted to have everything on a gold platter. Sure not everyone is like this but I’m pretty sure most people only greed.
There will be shortcuts in the future after the game is out for a while because streamlining is a thing that most likely happens in the future. Right now everything is fine besides getting level 100 that’s still a lot of gametime that is not achiveable by most casual players in a reasonable time. Outside of this case everything is fine.
Exactly! The thing is with games like these, if the end game is done well, that is the real beginning of the game. Think about how many hours of total character time are spent on mapping in PoE compared to levelling. And in MMOs even, most people (except serial levellers) just want to get to raiding asap - 95% of the playtime is at max level.
How can you just assume that about him? I personally agree with him and that’s not my interest. And no one is asking for full decked out character with all the gear so they don’t have to grind it, just to be at the level to begin end game.
For me I couldn’t care less about fotm builds, I want to fight challenging bosses and push builds that I like in arena. I don’t even really care that much about loot except that it enables those activities.
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That’s a bit of an assumption isn’t it? Unless I’ve not read some of corpobent’s posts, he enjoys endgame but not so much the levelling or campaign experience.
Depends how much time you have to play. Getting your mastery can be done in 30-60 mins of play & through the campaign in some hours.
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I am in the group of players who doesn’t want to have a fast track to endgame or want to skip the campaign to ever be a option. I think maybe in the future if there was an expansion, allowing us to choose in experiencing the new story verse an old would be an awesome addition but that’s it.
I think a lot of this does come down the the journey for me. I actually do a majority of my theorycrafting in builds while leveling and tweaking things along as content and bosses get progressively harder. At the end of the story I can say I am ready for monolith because I went through all the challenges without dying and my damage also is pretty good. I think that experience is very much a beautiful part of the game and I think players really undervalue that. I want new players to also continue to have this experience.
I also think that for hardcore experience (and SSF), the story content can be actually pretty challenging. I have had thousands of hours playing this game and I still die reaching endgame if I don’t give bosses or different zones enough respect or try to rush. Completing these challenges is just as much a part of the game as endgame for me. It shows I progress and be successful in all parts of the game; not just monolith progression.
I am very fond also of watch hardcore streamers during Poe league launches rush their way to level 100, and die a lot in the process, most of which is before mapping. It is content and it’s entertaining hell seeing vets still die to story because of silly mistakes. I don’t see this experience being any different when LE launches their cycles and everyone has to rush in hardcore to get to monolith; I don’t want that experience and future viewer content to go away. I think it’s a very big part of the experience of the game not only the players but viewers of the game.
I never really felt that story and endgame are disconnected but one of the same. The reason you want to be in endgame and that matters is because there is a road block of challenges before you can experience it. Your experience with endgame would be completely altered if everything was just given to you. I don’t think that is the play. It’s one of those things too where if you could magically already get to monolith I bet you players will then start asking to skip to empowered monolith because they don’t want to do premonolith content.
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This is a great point. And difficult to overstate this.
Thinking about my own POE experience. whenever I tried to test a build using my standard character I always feel like I dont fully appreciate the nuances and mechanics for the build to work. Only as I play through the build from the start, obtaining gears as I progress do I get a better appreciation of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the build and what are the key gears/affixes that will allow the build to reach a milestone breakpoint.
I played a lot of builds in this game and how I judge their worth is comparing their successful and power progression in story content. Doing things like “oh my rive build did this mini boss twice as fast at the same level, I need fix something.”
Players need to not undervalue what they learn and how their builds shape up doing leveling challenges. Realistically the challenges in monolith are supposed to be there after your build is pretty much refined enough to do it. Story is a perfect challenge to help a player grow.
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