that’s what people said about unlocking mastery…
Strange how a few people think it’s pointless, yet they changed it anyway???
Your logic is flawed, at best. Only a small portion of players use the UI scaling, should we take that out too?
Unless you’re advocating for a power boost (skipping campaign and getting X free levels), which is something that shouldn’t happen, then he didn’t actually waste any time.
If you had an alternative mechanic to campaign, you’d still have to level from level 1 and it should take about the same time.
So getting to monos in roughly X hours doing the campaign or getting to monos in roughly X hours doing some alternative mechanic wastes the same time.
Unlocking mastery is a design choice that required very little development time. The respec NPC was already there, they just had to add the option to respec mastery as well.
Creating an alternative mechanic from level 1 requires a substantially higher development effort for something that you’ll spend 5% of your time on.
You logic is flawed, at best.
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no, you fully miss my point. I got kicked off the forums for a while because of the topic of me requesting unlocked mastery, literally suggesting the very same thing you just said, almost in those exact words.
I was called every name and slur you can imainge in-game and in the forums and even on reddit.
They said it can’t be done, that nobody wants it…LITERALLY all the same arguments I see in this tread.
Yet they still did it.
All they have to do is make Monoliths be scalable to level one, just like Diablo 3 did with their entire game. Again, if they can do it that easily, there is no reason for any excuses here. This game is still being developed, so guaging the general reaction of the community and spreading awareness that people are even talking about the topic is how you start a movment.
it’s why I pushed for a year to get unlocked mastery, despite the many people trying to lie to themselves about how much time is being wasted.
Same thing is happening here, almost to a T. So I know I am on the right path.
Nothing will ever change or get better if people stay silent.
So I don’t.
We agreed to a certain amount of time being wasted by the very nature of even playing a video game. Nothing more, and nothing less. Too much time is being wasted beyond the original agreement.
Again, respect your time and speak up when things aren’t going that well. You aren’t the only person playing this game, and neither am I.
I know from 18 years of playing WoW, most people don’t even use the forums and they rarely actually speak up anywhere except in-game and the devs of any game rarely actually look for feedback there…for obvious reasons.
I can’t imagine that it’s much different here.
I can’t talk about reddit, but on the forums the discourse was always about mastery respec being an important part of the character identity. And it was generally acknowledged that some people wanted it and some didn’t and it was part of the game identity.
The devs themselves were the ones that said it was an important choice and then backtracked overnight for some undisclosed reason.
If people insulted you that sucks but some people are idiots. And there were idiots on both parts of the argument.
However, campaign skip isn’t the same thing. Pretty much no one would be against it (other than some fundamentalists) as long as it’s done properly. Meaning that the alternative campaign mechanic would have to be on par with the campaign itself in terms of time investment and effort.
Not what D3 and D4 did. They introduced adventure mode which was extremely more effective than campaign and forced every player (again, other than the most fundamentalist) to run it for efficiency, even if they liked running the campaign and feel the game was worse off that way.
So yeah, as long as the alternative mechanic is on par with campaign, most people aren’t against it. What most people would be against is doing it now, considering it to be lower priority than other much more pressing issues like more endgame, better balance, etc.
That being said I wouldn’t be surprised if EHG did that very soon. Lately they’ve been caving to every request, even when it’s harmful for the game.
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And I also would advocate for the same system, just as a toggle or option. That really did kinda dump on a lot of the D3 players when they did that.
like what? I really don’t know.
I would hate it if they did it that way. I actually liked D3’s campaign, but after that change I never ran it again, except once or twice in over 5 years. And that’s because you could reach level 70 in 8h with the campaign or you could reach level 70 in 1h with adventure mode.
That is too much of a difference and what it did is that it basically killed the campaign. No one (other than some fundamentalists) ran the campaign anymore, ever again.
I’m all for an alternative mechanic to the campaign. But it has to be one that is fairly equivalent in time/effort required. Otherwise the campaign becomes useless and might as well remove it from the game.
They always said they would never put LP on filter. Players complained. They caved.
They always said they would never do mastery respec. Players complained. They caved.
They always said LP slamming was supposed to be random. Players complained. They caved.
Super strong builds need to be nerfed. Players complained (saying everything else just needs to rise to their level). They caved (strongest builds get token nerfs and keep overperforming since launch).
Just a few examples. Not saying it’s all bad things, but lately they have a track record of going back on their decisions.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a full campaign skip very soon. And loadouts. And pets picking stuff. And autoloot.
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This was productive. Thank you, genuinely.
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I would lmao if they came up with a some mix of the discussions here as a pseudo adventure mode, but then further cut off boosting 
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Eh, I’d say you could save an hour or two by just having monos start from level one. No quest backtracking, no running through entire zone without even touching an enemy because the experience gained just isn’t worth it compared to speedrunning the campaign and levelling in monos at level ~45+, even lower if your build is decent, etc. I wouldn’t mind monos scaling from level one and getting an idol slot and skillpoint every few monolith zone levels.
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Sure. I wouldn’t mind if something that requires 5h has an alternative mechanic that requires 4h. Or something like that. It’s equivalent. Sure, it’s faster, but not significantly so, as opposed to D3’s campaign/adventure mode.
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The point of games is not solely to enjoy the result but to enjoy the process.
If you cannot enjoy the process itself then solely competition-based aspects (against others or yourself, the second is important not to forget) exists.
Which… fine! But in that case speedrunning is a more viable avenue to do.
But saying ‘you could’ve achieved so much more in the same time!’ is just a completely nonsensical comment. The question for it always is ‘did you have fun during that time?’. If the answer is ‘yes’ then it’s perfect.
And you would be surprised how many answer ‘no’… so… why are you playing a game? Something which is supposed to give you enjoyment… when it doesn’t provide that? Do something else then.
No, nobody argued ‘it’s pointless’.
The argument of mastery respec was ‘It’s actively detrimental to implement’.
Which yes, is the case still!
The game struggles from content variety and depth, hence any action to reduce existing variety and depth is non-viable by design.
And as a follow-up:
With respectively increasing content variety and depth those formerly non-viable actions can become viable.
It’s hence a timing aspect first and foremost, flavor second.
But the flawed argument of DJ sadly is there, agreed, and I totally missed that!
Hence:
Sorry for missing that, I would’ve answered right away to this specific paragraph otherwise, as it’s a really really bad one this time.
‘spending a lot of time on a mechanic that will only be used for a small portion of player-time’.
There’s several problems in that:
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engagement time itself is different from quality of entertainment. A single story aspect in a story centric game can cause it to become ‘peak’ or ‘garbage’ despite everything else being ‘ok’. This follows in the same segment, though live-service does cause changes there.
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despite being only a small portion of game-time it is also a mandatory one. This means investment is as mandatory there. Coherrent quality from start to finish. A broken foundation has a hard time upholding a top-tier roof.
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priority wise it’s also not properly argued. The campaign of any game presents the foundation of future engagement. A bad campaign state removes long-term player prematurely. After PoE 2 0.2 this should’ve become clear again for the current times, so it’s a bit surprising that this is ignored.
Great! Same stance still here.
Mastery respec was one of the poorest decisions from EHG for the longevity of their game.
This decision actively harmed their product as engagement was already at rock bottom and hence removed even parts of the leftover bits struggling along.
True!
And the path to hell is paved with good intentions as well.
It goes both ways. Don’t advocate simply for ‘yell out whatever’. That’s the height of nonsense and actively detrimental.
‘Think before you act’. This includes proper research into a topic before barging into it, with analyizing the variety of standpoints and the reasonings for those.
You’re utterly ignoring that here.
And no, I’m not saying ‘stay silent unless you know 100% everything’. I’m saying to make the effort beforehand and then re-evaluate when something seems to be extremely off for some reason.
People were absolutely right to create the backlash towards the mastery respec, so don’t position yourself as the ‘martyr’ there.
Your actions have not caused a positive change, they caused a negative one, that’s not to celebrate.
As well as being detrimental given the current amount of content in the game, reducing the time where people engage because they can sidestep it.
Yes.
I’m currently against it.
In 0.9 the timeframe to progress your character was larger then in 1.2… which is a problem. Especially since in 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 quite a decent chunk of content got added.
So it being less time to reach the perceived end-line without outrageous time-investment needed to reach the next possible step? That’s not good.
If a more effective option is there then the competitive aspect of a group-based game comes into play which creates a disaprity in ‘viability’ perceived between people.
Or in easier terms: One would be perceived as an idiot of not picking the easier choice inherently.
Mastery respec for example.
Implementing a pinnacle boss despite a lack of long-term stable content.
Trivializing the experimental affixes by addressing the CoF acquisition issue for those in a extremely mediocre manner.
LP on item filter (though that’s a good functional and important change, but they caved nonetheless)
LP slamming being now deterministic for 1 Affix. Which is one of the dumbest non-thought out backwards shit-design patchwork solutions I’ve seen since ages. Whoever greenlit that internally should be jobless already, including if it was one of the top-brass… without questions asked. That bad design wise.
The whole campaign only takes 2-3 hours with dungeon skipping.
Hence the monolith aspect can’t save 1-2 hours or it would be substantially stronger.
I would argue that investment and preparation should come with a rewards, hence a rough following overview:
Campaign commonly takes ~10 hours for a player which doesn’t rush, more for a first-time player.
Campaign dungeon skip does take around 2-3 hours.
So any ‘easy’ and ‘simplistic’ method without preparation needs or knowledge should take 5-6 hours.
Hence inferior to the existing method is a viable state. If it’s the same it’s already a failed design.
I don’t disagree with your points. And if it were PoE, I would fully agree and wouldn’t have said that.
But LE already has mechanics in place where you can skip the majority of the campaign. If they simply add passives/idols to the mono quests, you won’t even need to go further than act2, when you reach the end of time.
So given that there already exists a mechanic that skips 80% of the campaign, creating a mechanic to “compete” with it isn’t high priority for now.
That would be part of the “it’s not a high priority right now”.
ARPG campaigns are never great imo and I’d rather they just add a mechanic to skip them completely, after the first time, than try to improve them. But that’s just me.
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Yes, which as said… for a second character to have ‘some’ method is fine.
But this thread doesn’t sound like a overall ‘second character’ aspect first of all and we already as you said… have a method available for follow-up characters.
So what exactly is asked for here?
That’s true, but I’d say the conversation shifted to a complete alternative to campaign, including the first character in a league. That would definitely save time. Also, even for a second character, this type of content would provide a much smoother experience, even if no time is saved (which would be unlikely once people figure out how to optimize it).
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Including the first character - Exactly that is non-acceptable
Secondary… fine.
First? Nope, the second that comes I’ll uninstall the game and never pick it up. I’m here for a coherrent ARPG experience and not low-quality slob.
EHG has failed to provide a gameplay with variety for the moment, until that is fixed this solution is solely ‘repeat your singular mechanic endlessly’, which is not good for the majority of players for long-term engagement.
Any other game has the same issue when variety isn’t upheld, you simply get mentally exhausted, the brain wants variety.
The only exception we currently know is when someone has autism or other monotropism-based disabilities which are commonly physical setups of the brain happening either in preconception developmental stages already or in really really really rare cases severe trauma. And while the second large monotropism-based group (ADHD) would theoretically fall into that as well they’re nonetheless excluded because of the dopamine needs which only variety creates (the ‘focus issue’ aspect outside of hyperfixation).
Hence for the vast population this would cause a reduction in play-time for a game which already has that as the core issue since nothing upholds keeping people long-term inside.
As a reminder… this is a live-service game and has live-service game demands, which means long-term players. ‘Forever players’ basically in some form, either by repeated return at fixed timeframes by providing a substantially different experience or via steady engagement for months… years… decades (OldSchool Runescape is a great example for a working design structure of that).
The common play-time is not surpassing 100 hours for the vast majority of people, per Cycle. The majority of ‘big spenders’ are also the ‘forever players’, those have been found to overlap.
So reducing the timeframe does actively cause a monetary problem for the company in this case, one which is entirely created through wrong management and comes at a loose-loose outcome situation.
Not to speak that the price-tag of 34€ for the base edition without a comprehensive campaign or vast mechanical variety is not acceptable. If I’m searching for such a game I’ll play ‘Dwarven Realms’ instead. That provides a similarly deep experience to Last Epoch when we remove the story aspects (and all which can be created around it immersion wise) for a price-tag of 9,75€, which is a fitting price for it. And that one is mechanically more deep even when we look at end-game variety…
Coming soon to the suggestions forum or a topic thread in the General forum: “Why can’t I just start empowered monos with freshly created level 70 character that can wear the gear i have already collected!”
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It takes like 3 hours at max to skip through the campaign. Please stop trying to turn our game into D3 Blizzard Slop. Just stop.
I like the idea of an “Adventure Mode”, just to break up the leveling process. I’m fine with leveling up and enjoying the mechanics and RnG of a new character, but being routed through the story line over and over can get old. An “Adventure Mode” kinda solves that.
On a side note:
I really hope EHG has plans to polish up the campaign npc voice dialog as some are just plain bad. I know voice actors are expensive but I can literally tell the same person voiced over multiple of those instances, like they were reading a script in real time. It would be nice to redo some of those and really polish them up. Not critical but nice for future players who have not played the game yet.
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I used to be on the story skip train - but what you’re asking for is already there. There’s dungeons that push you through, and most players who play every season can be blasting in monos after one good session of a few hours.
Trust the process! Plus, new seasonal mechanics are going to be popping up during the campaign.
If they let you skip, where would you level up to get powerful enough to start monos?