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.
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.
@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.
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
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.
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.
@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.
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?
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
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?
First of all, of those 250k at least 125k would have never returned. Even if LE was the best game ever.
Secondly, the outlier isn’t that LE had a peak of 75k this cycle. It’s that it had 250k at launch. Those numbers were totally unexpected and solely the result of the pre-launch hype on social media promoted by streamers.
If this cycle was the first one, everyone would be raving that 75k was an awesome number for a new ARPG.
I seriously doubt PoE2 will be casual enough to attract the D3 crowd. It will remain complex, with some QoL added (mostly because they were forced into it by the competition) and with some new systems. But I don’t expect PoE2 to be even as accessible as LE is. Not from what I’ve seen so far.
No matter which way you choose, over time only the same players will come back every time. In D3, only the same players came back every time. In PoE, only the same players come back every time. That’s why PoE has a stable playerbase for years. There are variations, which is why PoE now has more players at peak than a few years ago, but the difference isn’t too significant.
So all that remains is what EHG wants LE to be. And they’ve shown repeatedly that they didn’t make LE just to make money (though of course they want to) but also to make a game that is fun for them. It’s not just about getting the most massive numbers possible, but making a game they’re proud of and that still has a good playerbase.
D3/D4 already exist and Blizzard is much more successful at making them than EHG will ever be. Why would EHG want to directly compete with them instead of offering a different product?
So, I imagine this comes from a lack of understanding about retention time, retention rate and circumstantial issues like peak numbers.
First of all… LE wasn’t played by many people and promised to release something which ‘wasn’t seen before’ in the genre with their release. A huge… a massive promotion basically about a split system between SSF style playing and community style playing. Hence CoF and MG.
Now we got a whole slew of players available in the sector. Those from PoE which complained about non-automated trading for years. Those from D3 which went in with the promise that it’s a casual game ‘just like D3’, not one with is PoE ‘sweaty’ style.
And then we have it being released. So it’s now polished to a decent degree and has the most prominent features in it, right?
So… everyone and their grandmother comes and checks the game out. Does it uphold the promises? Is it good?
And yes, it’s well received!
And then people left. Why?
Not casual enough for the majority of D3 players.
Not enough content for the majority of PoE players.
The usual.
So now we have more then 100% increase in ‘floor numbers’ beyond that point. Massive success, game doubled players. That’s a important measure there. 4,2k every day at the end of a cycle still? Fantastic compared to 1,8k or so before!
Cycle 2 begins, 1.1 A lot of people look in to see what’s new. Some leave right away. Others enjoy a single playthrough. Playthrough is not all too long, Harbinger system isn’t keeping them, they leave.
Nonetheless… 70k return at the start! Another massive win!
It’s the most prominent mistake… mis-reading the actual statistics and what they mean.
What would be needed to get in more people permanently? Content… some extra content. More content.
We got a barebones end-game with 2 special mechanics. A single mechanic to reach a single peak boss. Baseline gear which has few ways to adjust.
It’s no PoE ridiculous 150 different ways to obtain bases through dozens of mechanics and only there to then use it with other mechanics to make something baseline to improve with other mechanics and adjust with new ones to have an item. It’s… simple still. You either push and enjoy progression or you don’t.
So more content.
It’s not skipping content. It’s not accessibility functions. It’s not making it more or less casual. It’s solely… and only… content and quality control. All the game needs to flourish.
The only effort taken away is the bad merging of factions and favor as well as the bad decision for not bringing over tabs. That should be handled better.
All your stuff stayed in Legacy.
What was taken away? You’re still through the content and you still got your gear and characters.
A really miniscule amount of people care about that. Not important.
Use monoliths after Act 2 and you get tons of experience really really quick. Progress there then rush through the campaign. Reduces time investment massively.
As a PoE player? Every 3-4 months.
As a D3 player? Every so often, dunno their cycle for ladder resets.
As a Torchlight player? I think also 3-4 months.
So generally… every 3-4 months
Yes, because why would I do the stuff I have no interest in?
Is that some kind of weird masochistic notion to do things you’re not interested in?
Why do I need to do all the other stuff when I have a fully functional character able to experience at the ready already?
And if not… it’s my first time after all, so why would I skip it?
It’s fine to discuss, but games should target a specific demographic, and I don’t think EHG needs to adjust LE to be attractive to every possible demographic. Not every game is for every player.
How should we objectively measure a game’s success? Sales.
I can appreciate if people want to suggest updates to the game. I just don’t support skipping the game as a useful feature for the game… That’s why I said “Just play the game. If you don’t like the game, that’s ok.” because the OP suggestion was “skip the game so we don’t have to play it”
I don’t think removing the gameplay is a cure for the gameplay …
I think maximise the part of the game that is enjoyed.
I still don’t have heard a reason why the leveling of the campaign over and over again should help to increase attractiveness and enjoyment for players.
Spent hours is not the measurement but positive word of mouth and money spent.
That’s why the focus of development should be put towards the end-game content, since that’s what people enjoy the most. Expand it, improve it, polish it and the game will succeed.
It does for quite a few actually.
You see, a new cycle is basically a economic reset. New content on the side it brings people back to re-play as a new class/build and see how far they can get that time or how much time they take in comparison to before.
And if you don’t wanna do that you got Legacy there for you to enjoy and spend the time just as you personally want, no need to replay everything since EHG doesn’t go the route of PoE or Torchlight currently where you can only and solely enjoy the new content when you join the cycle/league/whatever and re-play the campaign. No, you can do it simply as a already pre-made character from before and see what it’s all about.
Actually it is. High time investment correlates heavily with money spent as the inhibition for spent money is lower the more you’ve invested yourself into something.
And no need to worry about positive word of mouth… more then enough of that going around and from far more influential people then us. From the streamers which’ve come over from PoE it’s gotten very very high marks overall as well as ‘return commitment’ from many of those.
So that alone definitely brings in tons of people, money and play-time all in one.
Your post looks poorly written to me, very strongly so.
You begin by saying you have some ideas about how to improve the game, and then you go on a tangent - the part that begins with “A QUESTION TO THE” (in which you do not actually ask any qyestion) - and only then you cycle back to what your ideas actually are.
You also claim multiple times to be speaking for other people:
But the reality is that you don’t know what a significant number of other players think. You don’t have the data or any way to accurately survey what a high number of Last Epoch players think.
In other words, you only speak for yourself.
If, from your point of view, it’s “obvious” what other people want, it just means you lack the self-awareness of how you are just projecting your own thoughts and feelings on others.
Also, replying to people by editing your first post is awful - not only you cut the flow of the conversation, but you are replying to points without clarifying what those points were, and you only end with a very long post that discourage people from reading the whole thing.
Fair point brought out, hence let me help along if help is wanted there, if not… ignore it @Theratok
Here’s an example of how to handle multi-person input over time from different sources and relate them back to the initial post. It’s a big topic about Factions which I set up a while ago and kept running until 1.1 released:
