These are farming/trading games. The only difficulty should be in coming up with a good build. It should not take “skill” to play the game. If you want that type of gameplay then go and play a MOBA. With the best gear and build you should be able to face tank the hardest content otherwise what’s the point.
Just look at other successful ARPGs like PoE and Grim dawn, if you die on the boss its health is still at the same place when you return and the only punishment is that you have to walk back there. Nobody ever complains because nobody cares.
Unfortunately there’s a group of people (mostly Twitch streamers) that are trying to turn this into something other than what an ARPG should be. It happens in every beta but come release they will be outnumbered significantly because that’s what always happens, we’re already starting to see the shift in that direction.
Lizard can rant on Twitch and make threads about how everyone that disagrees with him must be a noob that doesn’t understand the game, but in reality he himself doesn’t understand what the majority of people want from this type of game.
How is GD farming/trading and requires no skill exactly? Have you actually tried its latest expansion end game?
I think some people think that all arpgs work like PoE and that this is the standard. D2 required no skill? Even D3 requires skill to push its end game.
You don’t play the biggest games in the genre like PoE, Grim Dawn, and D3, you said on your stream yesterday that you came here from MOBAs, perhaps it is you who is in the wrong place here?
But people here don’t care. You need to make logical arguments on a forum. Even if lizard is an elitist that likes mobas, your definition of what is an arpg, is very narrow and you also seem to think that you express the opinion of every arpg player and that is that they want a 2nd walking/farming/crafting/trading simulator.
I dont play them cuz they are trash combat. and do not represetnt the games we loved, D2 and Titan Quest.
Devs are making a diferent game, not another one of those.
This game is a D2 inspired ARPG, not a D3 POE inspired arpg, its on their freaking official statmeents. Its not my opinion, its the develepoers statements.
Some of those statments by game director:
“We like the pacing in Grim Dawn - we want monsters types and abilities to matter. We’re going to try to combat builds that can just clear the screen hyper efficiently and zip to the next screen to do it again.”
“Having challenging content with more deterministic rewards is something that we plan to have via monster/boss -specific drop tables. I think the Epoch’s Call and the Monolith system may fill this role decently.”
“Set’s will not overshadow very well rolled magic items(magic covers what you think of as rares in the Diablo series) or uniques. Diablo 2 did sets best in our opinion.”
“Faster clear speed is often what players in these types of games strive for - I don’t see that being any different in Last Epoch. If we see a skill that can go from screen to screen in a split second destroying everything in an area that is supposed to be challenging it’s safe to assume that we’ll combat that build in some way. A big way to prevent this up front is to build skills that do not hit the entire screen instantly. We’ve also decided to make mana matter much more than a lot of games by not introducing mana potions and giving powerful abilities high mana costs so you can’t easily use them back to back.”
“I will not let our game become movement skill > screenwide kill > movement skill > screenwide kill, repeat. If you notice that happening in the future, copy and paste this comment to me and I will ensure it gets fixed. ;)”
This are not my opinions and what I myself want, this is what I got promised.
Maybe I just misunderstood what the game is supposed to be.
Do your research before you talk, I did mine.
I agree with everything the devs have said they want for the game. I really enjoy the game and I like the direction it has been going in. I just very strongly disagree with some of the things Lizard has been saying. As long as the devs continue their current course and don’t listen to Lizard I’m happy. Since apparently I’m being misunderstood I’m going to stop posting now because I don’t wish to argue on a forum.
The problem I see with the balancing around the top 1% is that it will inevitably impact the struggling players in a negative way.
I give an example. Let’s say that you are breezing through the top endgame content because you are using a busted mechanic or synergy that gives you I don’t know 100k ward (random number just for the sake of the example).
Now the devs see that and say “Ok we need to nerf this interaction otherwise there is no difficulty for this content. Let’s nerf ward generation/retention whatever”.
Now you will have players that are playing builds based on a different set of skill/masteries that uses ward and that already struggle to face the content they are dealing with. Now they get slammed with a nerf to their character without really understanding why because they are already struggling.
In my opinion balancing around the top 1% never works we saw that in PoE.
They even add on death mechanic (in delirium) because they had no clue how to deal with the top 1% players.
The top 1% always find a way to breeze through the content. Otherwise they would not be the top 1%.
So why do you balance the whole game aroud them ?
Some said they play the game for the achievement of finishing hard content, some said they play to vent off after a stressful day. But you still need a sense progression for all those players otherwise they will just leave the game because it will be boring.
As some said I would prefer that for example all the monolith bosses were “accessible” to all kind of players. And then you add a mode that make the content accessible only for the top players with top gear. This way everyone could experience the content and there would be still a distinction between players not through content but through “options”.
That is an example of bad balancing though and I agree that this can become a problem. The initial design though should not change dramatically because balance is a headache. That’s what happened more or less with poe.
And that’s the big contention point so far , trying to define what is accesible to everyone and what is not. And how that would impact the way the game is balanced.
I think it has been a really nice discussion, we will just have to wait for the developers to show us their decission, and then it’ll be on us the players to decide if the developers vision is good and if the game will be succesful or not.
If you nerf, you nerf what the player is using (skills/items/masteries) therefore it impacts the whole game.
If you buff, you buff the content. And then it doesn’t impact the whole game, just this small portion right ? Problem is the more you buff the more top players will have to rely on busted mechanics that will inevitably lead to a nerf.
I don’t agree. There are ways of nerfing and buffing stuff at the same time. Make it stronger early game. Keep the same at midgame and nerf it endgame.
