Interesting assessment. I tend to agree, though. I never got there because I suck at boss fights. Hence my frustration with LE 1.1 where I already know that it is not for me and that I will skip the season.
Personally I would like LE taking the spot right in the middle between D2/POE and D3/4. And I am sure there is an audience for that too.
Yeah, thatâs why I mentioned âChroniconâ. That game has only some campaign bosses, but after leaving them behind everything beyond becomes a simple DPS/defense check which goes usually in your favor unless you over-stretch to content you canât yet run.
LE is guaranteed to go into the mechanical aspects of bosses since not only has it already stepped into that with the monolith bosses but itâs also the only available option outside of âmany enemies thrown at youâ similar to what we have in the arena currently.
In alternative implementations fun for a few people⌠but the arena style itself is something which usually draws in a surprising minority. I personally enjoy - well done, thatâs important - wave- and mass-mechanics. LE is bad with those though.
Over 1000 hrs played so far all with COF, the grind for certain gear is horrid, such as Frostbite shackles for example or a decent Mad alchemist laddle, which COF DOES NOT HELP AT ALL, makes me walk away from my characters, and try something new, i have never tried the Merchant Guild, but imo it would be so nice to buy that one piece of gear that is needed so badly, Merge the two factions together, let us use both, more items for sale is good for keeping prices in check no? Only people it would hurt are the RMT gold sellers imo.
Bearing in mind that 1.0 & Factions was released on the 19th Feb, thatâs 48 days ago. 1,000 hours over 48 days gives an average of 20.8 hours per day played. You sure about that?
You might have played 1,000 hours in total, but not all of them since 1.0 released. Youâd probably be in hospital if you had (sleep deprivation or something).
Iâm not saying your comment about grind is wrong, but starting off with something that is not entirely based in reality is probably not the best of ideas.
Get some sleep first, with that amount of play-time youâre clearly delirious by now.
Should open up your eyes again after 2-3 good nights so you can actually see the drops and donât run in circles between monoliths. 
The former yes. Because boss drops arenât properly handled in the current system. I have to agree there. Itâs a problem.
The later? No⌠absolutely not.
We can argue that the way the prophecies are handled for weapons - with the large variety possible - is a bad implementation, and I would agree there!
But CoF influences that and if you go specifically for those drops youâll have a 2 LP one in not even a day of effort most likely, unless you got bad luck. Then it happens the second day.
Especially with your amount of time played per day 
Good luck finding a 2 LP frostbite shackle in legacy on MG! They donât exist⌠havenât looked âright nowâ but the last days they werenât there, much like most other 2 LP boss drops.
No, âkeeping prices in checkâ means their value is related directly to the difficulty of acquisition.
A merge would massively reduce acquisition difficulty, hence the rate in which theyâre dropped, hence cause a market collapse for everything below 4 LP⌠and even for those to a degree.
Progression would be a joke, your only limiter being the Rank which then leads you to have perfected gear in a month with no possible upgrade anymore beyond that.
Thatâs it⌠the game is âplayed outâ for this genre in that case.
Thatâs the worst-case scenario in which a properly balanced long-term life-service diablo-clone can go.
As well as the people enjoying a long-term game.
As well as the people which expect a game which has at least a miniscule amount of difficulty.
As well asâŚ
It would mess the game up in a major way for many many people. To a degree that we would wish for RMT to return rather then the state the game goes towards if it happens.
Or at least those which enjoy a game which allows them to play for hundreds of hours would, the casual group which leaves after a month to never return with a high chance? They would be fine.
Hyperbole should be use sparingly or people could think that youâre just trying to justify your point of view by making information up.
Alchemist Laddle is a non issue to farm, I do agree that boss uniques are in a bad place right now, and to add a bit more info about the topic, last dev stream it was said that there are not planned changes for Prophecies affecting bosses, which is sad to hear nonetheless, still there is some hope since they can still make some changes to CoF ranks, or something that affect both factions, time will tell.
yo,
in most points i have to agree!
My main problem with LastEpoch is that the item drop feels too calculated.
I, too, an old, long-time Diablo II player, know the feeling you should have. Just before you give up after endless frustrating drops, you should also get the feeling of being properly rewarded.
The item drop is noticeably calculated up to lvl100 and totally bores me.
Why should I even play if there are no opponents to beat me? A pvp option urgently needs to be introduced.
about- Mule Chars and Stash TapsâŚ
In order to store a lot of loot, I donât see the solution in more taps or characters, but rather a 1-tap interface where I select the item type and I see all of my âhelmetsâ, for example.
a kind of stack system for items.
In my opinion, too much attention is being paid to Path of Exile.
Content has been created that is not well thought out and makes no sense in creating any kind of balance.
I agree that the âstash systemâ is fairly outdated. A storage system which is more focused on capacity rather then the tetris-play and proper sorting options would definitely be preferred from my side. Itâs a more modern take and convenient⌠also I imagine it would reduce the stress on servers actually given the setup they made has a lot of mandatory checks for the UI alone, not to speak of a database system which has proper search indexing is something LE struggles with currently⌠we can see it at the performance of the Bazaar.
Push higher corruption and theyâll beat you.
But I get where youâre coming from, itâs a viable complaint currently.
1.1 will introduce new end-game content, hopefully aspirational actually. PvP though? Thatâs not something which should exist, itâs a worthless endeavor in those games since the disparity between builds and mechanics is so big that it becomes nigh impossible to balance for both PvE as well as PvP⌠even D2 had that problem in quite major forms.
A lot of players do prefer the tetris-play, though, to the soulless âmodernâ systems. That isnât to say there arenât ways to improve it through good auto-sorting systems and specialized tabs. But typically, Diablo 3 and 4âs one-size-fits-all are systems that make the loot more bland for the sake of convenience.
It used to be a standard in the early days of the genre. The genre moved on, and the willingness to do all the same stupid grinding of the same boss is now much lower among players. A great example is D4 Duriel grind for uber uniques - just ask in D4 community, who thinks itâs fun and entertaining.
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You must have missed by statement in the very top, that I played most of such games since Diablo 1. And before there was Nethack. The problem with all of them - at some point grinding just gets too ridiculous. I really feel bad about how much time I wasted with Diablo 2 grinding. So I hope the genreâs evolution goes a bit faster than what I see with every new game. LE makes a lot of things great, so I hope it can become even MUCH better and set the new superiority bar for the entire genre.
I TOTALLY agree with you. Basically the only clientele, which truly enjoys such a content, are the ones who love to run in hamster wheels for all the same carrot. Everyone else gets bored after a while. Thatâs why I really hope that the genre can take on its strengths (action, character customization, progression in power level with items, some decent story etc.) and finally address the negative issues, which are grinding and stupid farming. D4 for example pushed the quality bar for ARPG storytelling much higher than all such games before, and my hope is that LE can also contribute significantly to the entire genreâs evolution.
The D4 community is typically the community we arenât interested in seeing the game cater to. Itâs way more casual than the intended Last Epoch audience.
That being said, please give Last Epoch some time to improve its systems in order to make its systems more palatable.
Another way to say that is that you want the genre to go more casual. I donât think you are the targeted audience for Last Epoch.
Thatâs true and very good for the inventory, where it makes sense.
What LE lacks is definitely some sort of auto-sorting and specialized ways to store items similar to PoE currently.
Also since unlike in PoE where the tabs are functionally very diverse (and a quite old system actually) LE also has no need to store items in the same manner. Having them properly listed while sorting suffices there, displaying items in a grid-like manner rather then just abbreviations of what they are in the inventory.
But the way in which the stash has to be handled (with items not fitting well into the grid) is a bit of an OCD bother and overall mess for searching the right stuff in the end.
I would rather argue that the grinding for the same content over and over has become less liked.
Variety is key.
Weâve seen PoE go the path of removing boss-drop uniques being only able to be gathered from there⌠which not only made that content less viable to run but also overall reduced the retention time of players (with some other factors, but this held true for the good leagues as well).
Since they went along to make every content more unique again it actually caused the came to get back to being well liked and retention staying strong as in the more olden times of the game, %-wise over time.
If you didnât have fun with it you shouldâve stopped by that time instead of moving on despite of it plainly spoken.
I mean⌠I would love for the storytelling of the genre to become a lot better, more immersive, have more impact.
But as we can see at that prime example as well⌠it didnât do much to keep players engaged long-term.
Iâm still of the mind that a mechanically sound game which causes people to stay invested trumps every single âhigh graphics, deep story etc.â games for retention. It just stays enjoyable for longer.
Not to say that a fantastic story canât leave a long-lasting impact on someone⌠but after youâve gone through it once itâs âtoldâ⌠hence finished. The ability to replay a game over and over comes solely from the mechanical aspect, everything else is vanity and just pushes it âthat notch higherâ.
Not only should there be access to both, but some kind of content around the factions should be added for endgame.
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Nope, not more casual, more FUN. And grinding is not fun for most players. If EHG focuses entirely on âgrinding-loversâ, they will limit their playerbase significantly.
Who is âweâ if I may ask? Are you speaking in the name of all 1+ million purchasers of the game?
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Stay tuned for the (real) AI-driven NPCs and AI-enhanced storytelling ;). It will come sooner or later, and this will disrupt also the ARPG genre inevitably.
The ideal system to satisfy both player types - make certain uniques drop with high probability from certain bosses AND make them also random world-drops in addition. The âboss-grindersâ will have their âfunâ time with endless boss kills, and all other players do still have a fair chance of finding the same type of items elsewhere, just by playing the game.
Oh, absolutely! A few years off still, not many⌠but a few.
And it wonât do much if by the end of the day you only get fetch-quests and escort quests⌠I hope you see the point there
Mechanical frameworks are the core of a game, unless itâs solely meant to provide story, âLayers of Fearâ is a great example of a interactive story in game format⌠wouldnât call it a âgameâ though since you neither got puzzles nor anything to âovercomeâ, you just follow a road. Nice storytelling though.
I agree.
The most important part currently is end-game though, hence aspirational content and hence harder bosses/overall content available. People âfinishâ the game in the âexpectedâ manner from the devs far far too swiftly still.
Afterwards going the road of branching out into diverse unique game mechanics is surely something to be focused on, not doing so would be a waste of potential for the game.
But thatâs 1.2 earliest, hence⌠I think 4 1/2 months off?
Loads to fix first, like the factions.
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Iâd say another urgent thing to fix is the ability to sell MTX to offline players. Not sure what their exact worries are, but I think a lot of us are willing to buy a few just to support the game so that they have more chances to get it to a great state, and not having them available offline is a significant deterrent for offline-only players like myself.
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Fully agreed, itâs a bit baffling that isnât there.
A simple online check and then enabling it after server interaction would be fine⌠and if the internet is down you can nonetheless play but simply have no MTX enabled.
Iâm quite surprised that they donât have that handled yet, itâs a major source of income not available for EHG after all.