Suggestion for Leveling next cycle

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hi all
This is my first real suggestion. I love to relevel over and over again this has more to do with my anxiety and it is a way for me to calm down. But many understandably don’t like to do this and many that dropped off the game complained about it. I thought a bit about it and might come up with some ideas. Would like to hear your feedbacks and as always please in a civil matter.

A QUESTION TO THE ONES THAT SAY IT TAKES AWAY THE EXPERIENCE
Imagine the new season starts and you play no other game at the moment. You have a choice - wait a week so you can skip the campaign because as casual you would get the new bosses and content only after a week beceause in Softcore and Hardcore they need to go for each cycle once through the campaign for the leaderboard.

I am quite sure you would grind too and I am quite sure most casuals too - Why? You want to play cycles and games when they come out and for the others who still are hesitant of the game the can just go to the more “fun part”

if you now bring in stuff that makes each cycle the campaign more special - like Nemesis, it would give them even more incentive to do it too.

To have 3 kind of brackets
a) Hardcore, Softcore and Casual
For Hardcore and Softcore with the new season, you start to level new from the start - to have leaderboards and for the blasters without any shortcuts.
But for the people that would love to do the new season but normally drop off cause they don’t like to relevel you just start at the finish of the storyquest The real end content will only be unlocked in a week or when Hardcore has finished it.

b) As soon you leveled one character in the new season to the end of the campaign. Make it possible to buy with gold so the second character can skip the campaign and with each new character make it cheaper.
This way you give the player the thing they love to do creating alts and try out new builds.

!!!ADVERTISE THIS IF YOU DO THIS IN THE NEW CYCLE BIG TIME!!! It will bring many players back.
Because you won’t win players by letting them spend time they don’t want to spend. This will only turn them away. If you give them the chance to enjoy the positive aspect of the game
a) the wide variety of builds
b) the forging of unique items
c) the new content
in a time effort they find ok they will come back spend more time and money.

Dear forum would like your feedback if someone already said something similar sorry. will delete this post when to many say it already exists.

STUFF I ADD AFTER THE REPLIES
a) What counts for longevity is the word of mouth and money spent - If many are pissed about doing stuff again - also redoing the loot filter every cycle they mostly won’t come back and give bad feedback and something that is complained over and over again is poison for a game.
b) to skip it doesn’t make it less fun. Most players if we would do a survey love to test out new builds - not grinding the points out till they can try it. You still have to grind if you want to kill Herbringers and Aberroth. So for this you need corruption and this takes enough time but then you play with the build you want.
c) Dear Development team - For the success of your game only counts two things

  • do the players have fun
  • do the spent money

Invested time is not what makes long-term success if it does not lead to the two points!
It doesn’t matter if they only play it for 10 hours or a hundred of hours. What is it useful for you when one player players it hundreds of hours and does not spend money or advertise the game I bet even for streamers it is more fun to show grind to Aberroth where you could more likely die and show the lottery of creat unic weapons then redo starting area.

d) Stop saying it takes away the effort
For people that like to show off accomplishments you always have a leaderboard and the Casual would not get to a Pinicalboss a week later or when it was killed enough times on both Soft- and Hardcore mode where you do once each season a new leveling for the leaderboard. So even if one killed Aberroth it is different if you do it Hardcore, Softcore or Casual if you don’t think so you maybe never play Hardcore. Cause for Hardcore and Softcore it still would be not skippable at the beginning of a new season to have a Blaster-Leaderboard.

ABOUT THE ELDEN RING COMPARISON
Yes, you should not kill off your core supporter by opening up the game for a bigger audience.
BUT
Each game is more layered than only one aspect: Elden Ring is not just difficult, the story the atmosphere, the graphics etc.
So to say to make it skipable takes away a core element of the game - This reasoning I still have to find an argument for.
For me this sounds more like gatekeeping: I have suffered multiple times through the story mode so I will be pissed when others don’t have to suffer too.
a) You still need to grind corruptions and I would say this is a bigger grind than the storyline
b) The biggest draw of such games is always

  • creating builds and testing them out
  • have challenges (Hardcore & get the grind till you reach Aberroth)

So if you have people who are already put of by doing the whole story over and over again they will never give it a second look. Even if they only do one build and skip the story every new cycle at least they would come back.

2

I don’t think a solution to some people disliking the gameplay would be to remove the gameplay. Right now, I can get a level 1 character to level 50+, skip the campaign, and have all passives/idols unlocked in ONE play session, and not a very long one either … A few hours play session, or two short play sessions.

I love starting new characters, and if they add a “skip to the end for no effort” button, everybody will use it. ARPG players notoriously optimize the fun out of everything.

Just play the game. If you don’t like the game, that’s ok.

3

Question dear Makszi - How do you know how you skip it? For me and you, it is easy but I think many maybe casuals don’t know or don’t bother to know it and this is a big part of the group.

A) did I say in any part of my comment I don’t like the game - I spend about close to a 60-75$ on cosmetics to support the game
B) it is not a skip to the end button - The Softcor- and Hardcore players won’t have the option so you still have this for the ones that want it.
C) You make a game not successfull if you cut out a player base by not allowing them how they want to play it. I don’t mean change your gameplay is (which means don’t make 100 different game types) but the accassability.

Thanks for your feedback.

4

1 The map tells you that you can skip it
2 Interpret my statement of “you” as “people”
3 You missed the part where I said if a button is available we will all push it, because APRG players optimize the fun out of everything. If the button is more optimal, it will be used. Which in this case it is more optimal, because it saves time.
4 You are forgetting the fact that the game is already successful because if someone bought it to try it, and didn’t like it, they still paid EHG the same as everyone else who bought it and liked it.

5
  1. You would be surprised how many people still complain - they have to do it. Many people don’t seem to able to see the obvious.
  2. sorry if you missunderstood you there
  3. Yeah it is successful - why not keep it being successful - The more accassable the more successful it is without reducing the gameplay.

But each their own opinion.

6

This isn’t actually true. For a significant part of the playerbase, being too accessible means less challenge and it drives them away. Which is why many people dislike D3. It was very accessible. And many players found that boring.

LE’s target playerbase falls within that demographic. If you make things too easy, they will leave. So this is not a QoL or accesibility issue, it’s a game identity issue.

7

“Just play the game, if you don’t like it it’s ok”

Well no, if someone don’t like something, and this is a recurrent topic, I guess should be pointed out and discussed about it, and even the thing regarding the people that don’t like the game but have buy it and so the game is still successful, well, no, this thing is completely wrong, these people will not advice the game to other people, will make bad feedback about it, and other thing that will not help the game in the long run, the thing that actually count the most in these type of games, that it’s definitely not fine.

8

It is about the fun of the content.
The possibility to skip it is there already - so why not to make it clearer and to do the leveling over and over again. Might be ok for some but definitly not for everyone.

The fun part of rpgs is killing monsters and testing out builds - This you still have - the time of getting to 100 is not just as simple done. So there you still have a certain grind and not every player is a teenager with time but a dad with money but little time.

But hey if eveyobody thinks similar ok fine then I am wrong. I just thought I see a problem. But hey if I am wrong then everything works fine and the game will still grow. So I am happy with it. For me it is fine either way - As I said I love the game spend alread money and will surely support the game even more

9

You currently have ways to skip parts of the campaign, not the whole thing. You still have to play and level up and you get to the end or to a high enough level that you can then go to monos.
If you were to implement a way to start a character at the end of the campaign already, at level 1, you would also have to implement some other way for this character to level up, because at level 1 you can’t do anything other than the campaign.

This might become a thing later, but I wouldn’t expect it anytime soon, if ever.

10

Counter example:
Many people don’t like pizza hawaii. Does that mean we should make it something else instead?
No, we have other types of pizza, not every pizza needs to be hawaii or the other types of pizza. We can have both existing side by side for those which enjoy their respective flavor.

Welcome to the arguments between D3, LE and PoE. Eahc provides ‘something else’ and hence are viable in their niche. Remove those aspects because you don’t like them ‘availability for D3 as an example’ and people will leave. Simple as that.

Yes, that is very very viable and wanted.

Yes, and there are games for a teenager with time.

There’s also games for dads with no time.

Pick the one which fits you. Don’t try to make the teenager-time game into a dad-time game or the other way around. It sucks for the people enjoying it specifically because of the time investment related to it.

They’re mutually exclusive. If it doesn’t fit you… pick another game! No other solution present.

11

@Kulze my answers for the points is in my edit topic thread. It is easier to answer or give my opinion on the topic there so new readers don’t have to go through all the interactions. Hope this is fine for you.

12

Totally agree, but following you example, by the way I’m Italian so I actually don’t know how a pineapple can taste good on a pizza, but joke aside, if your dish is for a certain public, and this public it’s to small to keep your team on work, and actually also don’t provide to that public the content that they want, this team will fail in the span of few years, so at some points some compromises also with the big audience should be done.
Another example, I don’t know if you play other games, but From software with Elden ring, a masterpiece universally acclaimed from both critic and public, it’s become much more friendly with its public, also the casual one, but still don’t betrayed all the thing that had done with its previous works, but have opened the door to a much large audience, and have made if possible even a better game.
So, I’m not pretending to say in this particular topic that the campaign skip it’s for sure a better thing to do, even if I think in the long run will actually be a good thing, but let’s not set some dogmas that are unnecessary for the soul of a game, and that keep away some public for no real reasons

13

This isn’t necessarily true. PoE clearly targets a more hardcore playerbase, their systems are obscure to casuals and their accessibility to the general crowd is close to non-existent. And yet they have done quite well these last 11 years. And are even thriving despite new stronger competition.

That remains to be seen. The core crowd of fans FromSoftware had didn’t like Elden Ring and left. And the casual crowd they attracted aren’t as loyal, so another similar title might not have the same success.
So we’ll see if in the future FS will lean into the Elden Ring formula or if they will make Dark Souls 4 even more markedly souls.

14

Sure, good for new readers to put up there, did the same with one of my topics which was a mega-topic of about 15k words or so, so I know how that goes.

Which leads to this answer from you:

But… it does!
It’s not about those things, it’s about personal perception for those things.
Many don’t care what it’s like for others, they care about that ‘this piece there is enjoyable for me because of how it’s made’.
So, you take it away and they obviously become unhappy.

Now, we can only do a ‘big numbers game’ and play that, saying ‘the more people play the more viable it is’ which is a fallacy though.
More customers doesn’t mean more longevity and the other way around.

You can have a well received but short-lived product or a badly received but long-lived product. Which… doesn’t seem to make sense at first, right?
But if you look at it in terms of niches then it absolutely does! A dedicated customer-base is the do or die of any product. You can have a massive revenue today… and tomorrow it’s gone, the next ‘trend’ coming along. Or… you can make your product with dedicated people in mind, targeting specifics which haven’t been done by the competition and hence being ‘safe’ until someone else comes along to copy this exact aspect… just better. And the longer it takes to do that the harder it is to take people away from the established product.

That’s why D3 stays healthy despite other products doing the majority better nowadays then they do, in terms of their niche? Being especially casual. Few ways to ‘screw up’ and ruin your character. You can easily and quickly re-do everything.
Others don’t do that and flourish.

LE doesn’t flourish because they’re accessible, they do because they provide things which aren’t done in others. More casual then PoE, less then D3. More meaningful decisions that have long-term or permanent impact on your character then D3, less then PoE.

There’s several such things, all of them are flavor. You can’t argue about flavor well since they are never compatible with each other, by design. Mutually exclusive.

Yep, so that means LE needs to double down on their exact things which pulled in the people initially, kept steadily growing and ignore those which want to change them… while improving on the agreed aspects around that one specific product they provide.

Right?

So hence LE needs to improve content quantity, uphold content quality (and improve it) while doubling down on the specific flavors like ‘respec system’ or ‘crafting system’ and the likes since those are the specific ‘specials’ which make it a different game then the competition. We don’t need a PoE 2 alternative version… we want Last Epoch after all. We also don’t want a D3 redux but… Last Epoch.

It’s fairly simple when seen like that.

Wait? It did?
All I saw was that they refined their process on how they tackle their content while still keeping the core aspects. No difficulty slider to enforce environmental storytelling through that specifically at times. No designed shortcuts to pass by any sort of especially hard pieces of content. Surprise deaths and so on.
But… they definitely did do it so you get eased in more and learn through the environment a lot more. Like… avoid enemies you can’t handle well with the first knight boss right after the tutorial. Explore and find stuff to the backtrack to the things you struggled with. And so on and so forth.

So they doubled down on the pieces which make their game their game at the core… ignored everything saying something against it but made everything else around enhancing that… better in many cases. And the few things which weren’t upheld? Well, the shitstorm about it was and is fairly open to read up on, because they messed up. If they follow those trends then they’ll go bancrupt, if not they’ll stay as the makers of masterpieces in our books.

15

@Chomp96 My answers to stuff that comes up in the thread will be in the edit title thread. So it is easier for new readers and also for you to see my opinion.

16

Nah, for us it’s a menace to keep up. Copy your answer into it, answer both ways. The extra effort is worth it to keep fluidity of discussion up.

17

I think I have a really short question that answers the discussion about takes it away the effort.

Let’s say the new cycle comes out and there is not another game you playing at the moment.
But when you skip the campaign you have to wait a whole week to get access to the content the other players have that in Softcore and Hardcore have to girnd the campaign to get to the new content. Would you really wait a week just to skip that or would you grind it too?

Now imagine your a casual - how likely is it - because every gamer wants to play a game when it comes out - that they would wait or do the campaign again even if it only for one time?

18

I would wait a week and play Legacy.
That’s what Legacy is for when I solely want to access that mechanic without everything around.

If I want the new economy and hence another take at the full game I choose cycle.

When I just wanna play on and make ‘perfected’ characters I play Legacy endlessly.

19

Sadly I don’t agree almost on everything you have said, for the Elden ring example, I really don’t thing you have play it, or have play the past games, becouse in some aspects, the more clanky ones, they have done a huge amount of changes, as an actual map, I path to follow, the npc on the map, the invocation as the super powerful mimic, all thing that doesn’t exist in any dark souls game, clearly they keep the soul of the game, but they have cut down a lot of the unnecessary gatekeeping things of the game, but Elden ring its not the point.

Returning to LE, I don’t understand your logic, if the start was really good, and it was for sure with over 250k concurrent player, and now the number of the peck are divers by four, and basically no change in the accessibility have been done, in what way this should be seen as, let’s keep pushing on the niche things? I only see a lot of people at the start curious for a new arpg, also for the bad state of D4 at that time, and now with the new cycle almost any of the more casual players that were the majority of that 260k come back, and this situation will go only worst in the future with D4 apparently bright future and with PoE 2, btw @DJSamhein GGG almost made poe2 only to gain a new casual player base that at this point in the original Poe being to gatekeeping they will no more had chance to catch.

Ps. if only the same few players come back every time, and no new players come in the game, EHG don’t make any money, we can buy all the supportive pack out there, this will not be healthy in the long run

PPS. For now I’m done, I’m in the middle of the monolith farm and I’m behind the roadmap

20

But it would be your own decision - the effort would not have been taken away from you.
It does not take away the effor but it gives you a choice and it even gives you a reason to put in the effort.
Different leaderboard, different stuff you get experience erlier and more in the campaing, & You say that know - how often you really wanted to start playing a game that is coming out - do you would really wait a week and even than. If you not so into the game that you don’t want to play it instantly would it not be more an insentive to get directly to the part you interested more then the stuff you already know?