The game doesn't leave a good first impression for a new ARPG player

[Darthelmet]

I have my own set of thoughts on the game as someone who has been playing it and these kinds of games for a while. But I want to talk about the game from another perspective:

At 1.0 I got my friend to try the game. He’s played various kinds of RPGs and games with build-making elements, but never a diablo-style ARPG. (We really need a better genre name btw. It’s hard to distinguish these kinds of games from the wide variety of action games with RPG elements we have today without specifying it’s like Diablo.) So I figured he might be able to enjoy it since he likes making builds and things and I hoped it could be another game to add to our co-op roster.

Unfortunately, things just really haven’t gone well. The game at 1.0 was so thoroughly broken that we gave up trying to play multiplayer, and by the time the game was supposedly stable, we had just moved on to other stuff.

So we tried again when 1.1 came around. I’ll split this up into two parts, technical and gameplay:

Technical:

Despite what seems to be general improvements to server stability, there are some underlying technical issues that have made the game frequently unplayable for my friend. The game often stalls out or straight up crashes at various points during start up or connecting to the server. I’ve tried looking for answers on this and even posted a thread, but I couldn’t get any useful information to fix the problems. We already have a pretty small amount of time we can play together, so this reduced it even more in a way we couldn’t predict from night to night. It’s probably an issue specific to his computer, but there are plenty of modern multiplayer games he runs just fine.

When we were able to play, we ran into a number of issues that created friction in the experience beyond the bugs I was used to playing offline:

• The game frequently put us in the wrong instances and we had to use the portal to other player to fix it. With long-ish load times this wasn’t a trivial speedbump.

• We ran into weird situations with items that dropped from Nemesis that couldn’t be gifted even though we were both right there for the kill. Sometimes it did work though, so no idea what caused the issue.

• The few times we tried doing a dungeon together, we ran into problems with just entering the thing. I still have no idea what is the correct sequence of actions necessary to make sure the door opens with multiple players there. It seems like there is some kind of interference if both players click on the door, or maybe it needs confirmation and the UI isn’t showing up right, or idk. Eventually we managed to make it work after trying a bunch of things including reloading the area a few times.

• When we were running Soulfire Bastion for the first time, my friend died. When he respawned and tried to teleport to me, the game brought him to the instance, but in a void missing most of it’s textures completely separate from the rest of the map. I don’t know what the intended behavior is for multiplayer dungeon deaths since normally you die and can’t get back in. But if you’re supposed to be able to rejoin your friend it’s not working and if you aren’t supposed to be able to do that, whatever mechanism is meant to stop you from doing that and inform you about it clearly isn’t working right. This is actually the moment that made my friend finally give up on the game. The straw that broke the camel’s back.

Gameplay:

I think the biggest issue was the disconnect between planning a build and then not actually getting to play the build before slogging through a lot of boring gameplay first. He actually probably spent more time theorycrafting funny builds he was never going to play than he actually ended up spending playing the game. He seemed really excited about that part of the game, then you actually get in the game and you spend your first like 10+ hours slowly plodding around hitting things with a basic skill and none of the cool interactions you were excited about because those need a few uniques and max level skills before you can even try them and even then sometimes you need way more gear than just the baseline uniques before the build feels like what you imagined it would. This is made worse when you only have like 1-2 hours a night to play, so it feels like it takes even longer to have any hope at seeing your build come to fruition.

Another issue with the gameplay that’s specific to multiplayer: I’m just not sure that the game really is any better, or even as good, in multiplayer compared to single player. For a few reasons:

• The game already fill the screen with particle effects that can make visibility challenging, add another player’s on top of that and just forget about seeing things. I was playing a shaman and whether it was my storm totems while leveling or my avalanche at endgame, it made it really hard for us to tell what was going on.

• Builds end up having very different paces. Different movespeeds, different amounts of damage and clear, etc. That can make you sometimes feel like you’re not really getting to do stuff. He was playing a tanky build he made that didn’t have particularly well optimized damage and I was just following a guide for a build that just deleted stuff even without very good gear. Also I was ranged and he was melee. So there were a lot of times where I’d just see things at the edge of my screen, cast on them, and they’d be dead or basically dead before he even got there. Even if doing damage wasn’t the fantasy, he can’t even really live out the tank fantasy either since he’s rarely getting to the frontlines while it’s relevant.

Lastly, while LE does better than say, PoE, at explaining mechanics, there’s still an unbelievable amount of ambiguous, unintuitive, confusing, or just plain lame interactions. There were so many times during build-making that my friend would ask me some mechanics question and not only couldn’t I give him the answer, I couldn’t even find the answer myself. For some I did know, and the answer was usually “no, that doesn’t work in the cool way you thought.”

Conclusion:

How things ended up: By act 8 he was asking if we were almost at the end of the campaign. When we finally finished it we did a few monoliths (didn’t even finish Fall of the Outcasts) and 2 dungeons before reaching the point of exhaustion with the game. At this point I kind of doubt we’ll end up playing together more before the season is done if at all. Which is a shame. Like I said, he gets really into the buildcrafting and I’d have liked to have been able to play and chat about the game with someone I know. But there are just other games that work, respect your time, and are fun from the get go. It’s kind of a hard sell to spend a lot more time and energy struggling with a game that barely works and won’t get good for a while.

As much as I want new content and stuff as a long time player, I feel like EHG really needs to spend more time fixing tech issues and polishing UX, features, and the first time leveling experience to remove these issues that make it hard to get someone new into the game. Some of this stuff even annoys me beyond how it’s affecting my ability to recruit friends to play. The little things add up. Item tooltips go off the screen. The affix menu for crafting sometimes just closes when trying to scroll through it. I’ve had items refuse to craft on a certain affix slot for seemingly no reason. Dodge roll still sometimes bugs out and send me back into danger. Etc. For all the good design in the game, it’s lack of polish just really hampers what could otherwise be one of the best ARPG experiences on the market.

[WeAreViledNation]

Thanks for speaking about your experience. I tend to agree. I hate the its gets good after 100 hours played brain rot that a lot of gamers now accept. A player should be excited in the first min playing the game. As vast majority of players, wont ever reach midgame or end game content. First 5 hours should be a strong thrill ride. I speaking from personal experience, i had viewers on my channel told me they refunded at the door to the first town, when error l.61? Just did not let them play. And others never got past first 2 hour mark.

LE start experience is abysmal and slow. Leveling should be 10X faster

[Kulze]

@Darthelmet

We really need a better genre name btw.

Diablo-clone.
Describes a game which has RNG-based affix systems, which includes PoE, Diablo, Last Epoch, Torchlight and several more.

I use it for that exact reason. ARPG alone can mean anything (and many don’t even know what it means) and diablo-style ARPG is just too long.

@Darthelmet

The game often stalls out or straight up crashes at various points during start up or connecting to the server.

This sounds like a local issue. Either system-based or routing. The first you can solve, the second… you’re screwed, plain and simple, nothing you can do.
The servers of LE have actually been stable during 1.1… maybe a few minutes of hiccups in between, less then PoE by far.

@Darthelmet

The game frequently put us in the wrong instances and we had to use the portal to other player to fix it. With long-ish load times this wasn’t a trivial speedbump.

Yes, EHGs net-code for groups is a disaster beyond end. It’s shoddy, it’s a disgrace plainly spoken.

This answer also applies to all the other points on the technical aspect. All the same sole issue of EHG not knowing how to handle it seemingly (otherwise it would’ve been fixed as a focus by now)
And as a customer we don’t care, simply said.

Stuff works - great!
Stuff doesn’t work - dev gets the stink eye.
Stuff persists to not work - dev gets called out, bad game, negative review, warranted.

Simple.

@Darthelmet

He seemed really excited about that part of the game, then you actually get in the game and you spend your first like 10+ hours slowly plodding around hitting things with a basic skill and none of the cool interactions you were excited about because those need a few uniques and max level skills before you can even try them

The campaign is the segment easing the common player into getting proficient with the game. You can’t remove it. People already struggle with sudden difficulty spikes like Lagon. Imagine how bad it would be without it.

A new player also doesn’t get the idea to simply skip the whole thing and just start playing monoliths to advance early (After Act 2) and level there. Veterans do, they skip and come back to rush through T1 dungeons, grab all the idols + passive points and then have their build ready in 4-5 hours rather then 15+

The main issue is that the story is in no way/shape or form engaging. It’s a lackluster experience still. Much effort went into it and instead of being engaging you feel like you’re just ‘tugged along’ rather then doing things yourself.
Which is a shame since the story premise itself is fantastic and has tons of potential that’s not realized.

PoE for example does it a lot better. Yeah, you go through the campaign… but unless you just wanna smash stuff you swiftly realize that your character isn’t tugged along but the initator all the time. ‘This dude messed with me, I’ll slap him’ leading to ‘that guy was behind the dude and didn’t do anything against it? Let’s slap him!’ leading to ‘That god is the reason all of it happened? Let’s slap him!’ and so on.
Feels different.

@Darthelmet

I’m just not sure that the game really is any better, or even as good, in multiplayer compared to single player.

It’s objectively worse.

Visibility and enemy positioning gets worse.
Network issues.
Drops being split.
Builds not empowering each other.
Scaling of enemies is a mess.

@Darthelmet

At this point I kind of doubt we’ll end up playing together more before the season is done if at all.

Play Legacy together and don’t care about the cycle. Enjoy the game simply rather then enforcing a timeframe. This way your friend can come back for a while when the burnout from the game is over and you can start right back off from where you left it, advancing rather then re-doing things.

@Darthelmet

I feel like EHG really needs to spend more time fixing tech issues and polishing UX, features, and the first time leveling experience to remove these issues

Yes, Last Epoch is not 1.0 worthy yet. Which I tend to remind people about regularly.

Technical issues which are long known.
Bad balancing.
Half-assed mechanical implementations of core mechanics (factions, especially MG)
UI issues are massive.
Several QA disasters in general.

@WeAreViledNation

I hate the its gets good after 100 hours played brain rot that a lot of gamers now accept.

Nah, never did, never will. I found the experience of LE engaging from step 1, it just stops after a while into end-game, which is a shame.

This game is not a quick one to increase pace but it does provide a good experience for loot-based games even in the earlier stages.

@WeAreViledNation

LE start experience is abysmal and slow. Leveling should be 10X faster

It should be ‘faster’ definitely. 10x? Nah, by far not.
2-3 times would suffice, and we can take the still missing Acts 10-12 into account for that as well. The pacing is not well done.

[Darthelmet]

@Kulze

This sounds like a local issue. Either system-based or routing. The first you can solve, the second… you’re screwed, plain and simple, nothing you can do.

Any idea how we can troubleshoot this or at least determine if it’s in the solvable category? We’ve tried the really common stuff like verifying game files and turning off his VPN to make sure that wasn’t interfering with anything.

@Kulze

Diablo-clone.

But that has the same problem Souls-like or Metroidvania has. It means nothing if you don’t already know those games.

@Kulze

The campaign is the segment easing the common player into getting proficient with the game. You can’t remove it. People already struggle with sudden difficulty spikes like Lagon. Imagine how bad it would be without it.

I do get the idea of easing people in to the game to teach and give that contrast of power, but for the most part, I’ve never really seen an ARPG campaign that actually accomplished the teaching part. Very little ends up challenging you until endgame and the kind of choices you have to make early on are really low impact, so it’s tough to get any kind of feedback about whether what you’re doing is working.

I actually find the Lagon thing kind of funny. I never really had an issue with him and on our playthrough we stomped him. I guess it is what it is if it’s giving people a hard time. I’m assuming it’s just a resistance problem? I guess that’s precisely one lesson.

I guess perhaps more to the point, I don’t think the problem is even necessarily the campaign content itself. Like if you ignore the story it’s not that different than monoliths. But what sucks is not having access to cool things to do/try. I think it could be nice if they found a way to front load some character progression so people can more quickly try out builds that interest them instead of needing to use like one or two leveling skills per class.

Now that I’m thinking about it, is there that much of a value to gating skill availability until you’ve leveled up a lot? The skills are meant to all be balanced options, (lol) so in theory getting access to something like Meteor or Black Hole isn’t really a power spike compared to just using the Fireball skill you started with. I get doing some complexity gating, but the passive tree and items do that and for skills you can only use/spec into so many of them at any time anyway.

I guess the problem with such a change in LE specifically is the way other mastery classes need to spend points in the tree to get access to the skill. So you’d have to do something about that if this change was made, but idk.

Maybe that specifically isn’t a good idea, but you get the gist. Get players to the thing they came to the game for sooner: Making a cool build.

[DJSamhein]

@Darthelmet

But that has the same problem Souls-like or Metroidvania has. It means nothing if you don’t already know those games.

That is a common issue with genre tagging in multiple medium. Like in music, saying that it’s Gothic Metal means nothing if you don’t know what it is. Or Acid Techno. Which is why you have a sort of catch-all category (ARPG/Metal/Techno) and a subcategory (diablo-clone/Gothic/Acid).
You might even say that even the categories mean nothing to someone who doesn’t know them. If someone doesn’t know anything about games, ARPG or even RPG is something that doesn’t tell them anything. Likewise, if they never heard of Metal or Techno. You have to go into families (Game/Music) first to teach someone.

So there’s nothing wrong with the name. It’s just that for any given category, subcategories are only meaningful for people that already know it.

[Llama8]

@DJSamhein

So there’s nothing wrong with the name. It’s just that for any given category, subcategories are only meaningful for people that already know it.

Or can google it.

[Kulze]

@Darthelmet

Any idea how we can troubleshoot this or at least determine if it’s in the solvable category? We’ve tried the really common stuff like verifying game files and turning off his VPN to make sure that wasn’t interfering with anything.

Taking a second machine to his location which allows to connect reliably is the go-to method for that.

You then connect it to his network, try and if it shows no problems it’s the machine.
If it shows issues it’s the network.

Then you can check if your ethernet cable is ages old (and has low throughput limits) which can cause heavy connection errors.
If that’s not it you check your modem/router.
If that’s not it you’re screwed.

@Darthelmet

But that has the same problem Souls-like or Metroidvania has. It means nothing if you don’t already know those games.

No term means anything until you’ve been shown the meaning of a term.
So yeah, obviously.

@Darthelmet

I’ve never really seen an ARPG campaign that actually accomplished the teaching part.

Path of Exile does.
LE does it in a mediocre way.
Torchlight Infinite is decent.

You have to discern between handholding through a tutorial and organic learning methods implemented by forcing you through specific content.

For example Lagon is such a bad experience because he has several mechanics which will likely one-shot you at the time, or close to it. To avert that EHG needs to implement a small boss beforehand with a single easy to avoid one-shot mechanic. You learn to position yourself. The next boss after has a more tight one-shot system, you need to be a bit better. And then you’re ready for the fairly tight fight with Lagon… and if that’s not enough you add a 3rd boss which is in between the 2nd and Lagon.

That’s organic learning. Every game does that. LE is on the lower spectrum for that though in comparison to the competition.

@Darthelmet

I guess it is what it is if it’s giving people a hard time. I’m assuming it’s just a resistance problem?

RNG for equipment, build, doing it solo (and hence halving your DPS likely) and so on. As mentioned, the scaling of enemies related to groups is a mess. That plays heavily into it.

@Darthelmet

But what sucks is not having access to cool things to do/try.

Yes, that’s a problem because of the low variance in affixes and tiers. Mentioned by me several times here (The forum) already. Also it’s a issue by building up skills through a low amount of points invested and while branching… a fairly much railroaded system. Then take into account that very few synergies actually exist (a vast downside) in comparison to the competition still and you have the current state.

Otherwise no progress would happen. It’s another - but far smaller - weakness of the game. Implementing complexity without costing accessibility is one of the major design issues for games.

@Darthelmet

is there that much of a value to gating skill availability until you’ve leveled up a lot?

No, there isn’t, outside of a sense of progress.
Which I think is less important then variance in this area.

[DJSamhein]

My point was just that, much like people that don’t know/care/like metal don’t know/care about which subcategory it is (which is why you then have mainstream media saying Gojira is a “Heavy Metal” band, or even worse, “Hard Rock”, when it’s anything but), players that don’t like ARPGs don’t care if it’s a souls-like or a diablo-clone.
Whereas someone that likes ARPGs will know the distinction between them, even when they don’t like one of them.

[Kulze]

If you wanna have gamers create a immediate genocide then come with the term ‘rogue-like’ and ‘rogue-lite’ and you can see hell break loose

The most miss-used term in gaming history likely.

[DJSamhein]

Indeed. Over time, my take on those terms are simply that rogue-like means perma-death whereas rogue-lite means a sort of meta-progression in between deaths. Meaning that a rogue-like will always start exactly the same (within the same choices and randomness of monters/layout, of course), whereas a rogue-lite will have an easier time of it over time.

This is usually reflected in the game design where rogue-lites aren’t actually meant to be finished at the first try and are often impossible to do so, whereas rogue-likes are very hard but fully possible to finish at the first try.

But other definitions seem to include rogue-lites as rogue-likes with other genres mixed up.

[Kulze]

Yes, which is an issue, fully agreed.

The problem is we have a term called ‘permadeath’, so why do you need ‘rogue-like’ suddenly?
That’s when you realize to call it ‘rogue-like’ you need to have other aspects + permadeath or otherwise it won’t stay true. Those terms are not freely interchangeable.

Same with ‘rogue-lite’ and ‘meta-progression’ because both terms have a different meaning.

[DJSamhein]

Technically, a rogue-like would be a procedurally generated, turn based RPG with permadeath. I was only talking about the differences between them the way I see them, having accompanied the genre ever since pretty much the very beginning. Even though I rarely finish one, I do play them a lot on and off and own several of them.
And I prefer rogue-likes, as I’ve described them, to rogue-lites, as a rule.

[Darthelmet]

For me, the important other aspects of what makes a roguelike (or at least a good one):

• Self contained run that could be completed in a single play session.

• The runs are varied based on random or procedural elements.

• You don’t need to do much or any prep to just start up the game and play a run.

This disqualifies games that have a hardcore option (like say, ARPGs) but are otherwise not built around it and are meant to be played over many play sessions for one play through.

This also puts some games into a kind of fuzzy area, but I think I lean on them being outside the roguelike circle. For example when having this discussion with a friend, they asked if Civilization was a roguelike and I decided it probably wasn’t by this definition just because games of Civ can last many many hours.

Then there’s an even more on the fence example: Noita. If you only considered it’s “core” run where you go through the 7 vertical levels and beat the boss at the end, it’s straightforwardly a roguelike. However, (I don’t know if spoiler tags are a thing here, so spoilers just in case.) the rest of the world is out there to explore and doing so can easily set you on an adventure lasting 10+ hours depending on what you want to accomplish. You invest a lot of time and energy into such a run and it’s absolutely draining when you die randomly. Noita is the only “roguelike” which I’ve backed up a save for because I didn’t want to lose a god run I had going. So is the entire game a roguelike… eh… it’s complicated.

Finally, the last point on that list is what makes me not enjoy roguelites as much. (Still some I kinda like, but they all have this same problem.) Some of them, like say, Hades, have a lot of setup you have to do outside of a run before you step in. So it greatly increases the start up cost of me just booting up the game to play a run or to do another after I finish one.

[Kulze]

And the next definition for someone.

Well, a rogue-like is permadeath, true.

Also a rogue-like is a RPG, any other genre fails by design since that’s one of the absolute non-discussable aspects of a rogue-like (like rogue… should at least share the genre)

It’s turn-based and grid-based. Which is also very much not for discussion as it is the core aspect of the type of original game.

It also is a dungeon crawler, that’s a but if a ambiguous one, since games like Cataclysm: Dark Days ahead, Caves of Qud or Ancient Domains of Mystery are all rogue-likes as close to the game as possible but offer partial or even majorly world-maps.

Everything else is up for discussion to include or exclude. Much like a Metoidvania can’t be anything then a platformer, can’t have any other progression then one which needs backtracking and unlocking new areas through new acquired mechanics and also has some form of gradual progression which is RPG style, but in the old Zelda-systems which were still close to adventures without levels, inventories and so on. Unlocks you can call em.

The definitions are rather clear when looking at the games they’re derived from. Hence diablo-clone fits the bill the best. Otherwise we can include games Vampire Survivor since they would easily fit the bill in most aspects… and I hope we can agree we shouldn’t compare that game to Diablo

[DJSamhein]

@Kulze

Otherwise we can include games Vampire Survivor

Vampire Survivors actually spawned its own sub-genre, survivor-likes. They’re basically ARPGs with random level up rewards and bullet hell and/or massive horde mechanics.

[sifuedition]

@Darthelmet

The game often stalls out or straight up crashes at various points during start up or connecting to the server.

I had a similar issue with D4. My video card was listed as supported and fully up to date, but it was one of the oldest “supported” cards. Replaced the card and D4 has been extremely stable since.

Obviously, D4 is not LE, so it’s anecdotal AND not even the same software, but if he has any options to at least test with a different card, it might be worth it.