Are you tired of grinding the story out every time you want to try a new class out or when you make an alt? Are you sick of having to constantly slap Lagon around like the dirty lil sea-cucumber that he really is? Me neither, but I am exhausted with constantly renaming Rat City and always helping these poor merchants getting killed on the side of the road.
Mastery changes respect our time, but the story doesn’t.
Why do we have to keep doing the story to unlock idol slots, in a game who’s whole purpose is the end game? We didn’t come here for the story, as cool as it is tbh. We came here for endless loot and big numbers getting bigger.
Can we finally just have a story skip on alts? You really want us to see the story? Fine, make us do it once per season and then our alts can just skip that and get their passive points and idol slots without having to spend hours on our main farming out gear, or hours grinding the story and doing dungeon skips in dungeons…it still takes several hours for the average player.
Doing the story again adds absolutely no value to our play experience. It doesn’t make us more enamored with the characters, and we all know that because pretty much everybody just rushes the quest dialogue to get the rewards as fast as possible to get through the story as fast as possible because, big shocker, the game is still designed for end game content, not the story.
I see absolutely no reason to keep this outdated nonsense.
I advocated for years to change mastery, and they did. So lets get another thing going and push for a more positive player experience that allows us to actually play the game instead of going through a bunch of convoluted nonsense to get to the same ending…
Respect our time, and we tend to give you our money more often…and you know that.
when the campaign is set to easy by default it kind of defeats the purpose of making players run it? I know about the boots in the cave thing, but that’s an easter egg, no new player will know about that stuff. Might as well just have adventure mode and low lvl echos at this point.
still more than nothing. Still our time being wasted on a story we already know, in a game designed entirely around end game play. Imagine if you had to install the engine and put on new tires every time you went to work…you’d get real tired of it real fast lol.
I had no idea that was a thing lol. That’s part of my point. Things like that are fun and add to the game, but if you have to rely on some niche speed tactic, then it’s not really a core player experience, you are correct.
It’s one of maybe three things that I think every ARPG needs to have, a story skip. Optional, of course. let people play the story if they want, and then let me skip it if I want. We have toggles for everything else, so just make this a toggle.
Hell, do the jerkwad thing and make us pay gold to skip the story if you really want to sink low like they did with mastery changes…we got what we wanted, but in the most extra way possible lol.
I just think we all could benefit from being able to just jump into the end game content on our alts, expecially since many of us have multiple alts running corruption content lol.
Well, I feel like to have a honest discussion about it, we need to get to the same basis.
And according to your statments you need to do way more of the story, than you actually have to do. So that would skew the discussion.
Also the game is not designed entirely around endgame. Many many many players never even get to endgame or have neglectable playtime in monolith.
Your metaphor also doesn’t hold up and is really bad.
I know where you are coming from, but I think LE among all other ARPG’s has the least problems with this particular problem, because I think the progression and pace in which you unlock stuff and grow into a build you want to play is so fast, that I don’t care if I am doing the story or not. Story or monolith doesn’t really change much. You go to zones and kill monsters.
You can go to monolith once you are in the End of Time (around Level 20-ish)
i wouldnt mind an optional campaign skip that just awards you all the points and slots. warhammer inquisitor martyr offers this.
i also wouldnt mind if they put the character intros back, offered an auto conversation progression when NPCs are talking (not when you need to click what your characters are saying to them).
replaying the campaign though is definitely too repetitive.
Again, too much is too much. An inch or a mile, too much is too much.
It doesn’t skew anything. You operate on your own personal experience, vs looking at the reality that most people don’t want to do the story over and over. IT’s the most common complaint across most arpgs when they do this.
It’s entirely designed around end game. That’s why we have story skips and not end game skips…Even the developers already know what we are doing. And many many many many other players do the end game and do lots of monoliths.
You also forget that there might be a reason why most people dont do end game content…there is a reason why we were down to like 100 players…and one of those factors is how much time was being wasted with mastery being locked, and the developers saw it as well.
WE know they already see the problem with doing the story by teh fact that they have skips available to shorten the story, because again…they know the game is about end game.
Many many many people arent doing the end game, likely, because the end game is convoluted and they kind just throw you into it and expect people to remember that there is a game guide, which most games just simply don’t have. It leaves you blind and most people dont like that.
I figured it out. You figured it out. Many of us figured it out. But many more didn’t and it every factor must be considered.
You don’t know, and neither do I, the reason why people don’t do monos as much, and you don’t even know that either. You assume much. As do we all. WE both present anecdotal evidence to support our claim, the problem is that the player numbers said more than either of us can put into a singular message.
And this bit got me…
can. CAN. not will. You argue against your own point. Most people aren’t doing monos at 20, they are looking at the monos saying “level 58” and don’t do them until level 58 or until they beat the story. WHich often leaves people undergeared and the game does a semi bad job of explaining for the common folk, how you are to go about getting gear. Many of us figured it out and use the in-game tools, but many don’t. They get to level 52, the story is over and the only thing they can do is go to the end of time and…what? Try and “beat content that is like 5 levels above me? that sounds impossible”…then they ask a question in our toxic in-game chat and get (often) trolled into oblivion for asking a question that most would consider common knowledge, then they don’t want to play anymore. Nobody wants to play a game where you have just as good chance of getting trolled and never finding your answer, as you have of getting somebody to ignore you or give you some snarky answer.
Forgiving, our community is not. Quick to flame, they are…
Most people aren’t doing monos at level 20 unless they have already done monos before.
all that to say that there is a pretty good chance that many many players don’t do monos because the instructions are convoluted and the scaling in the game is backwards. I can do monos at level 32 with my necro, but she can’t do a level 20 dungeon to save her life. IT makes zero sense because of teh way that scaling works with dungeons vs monos.
So then when people do try the skip and then get their faces smacked around by the dungeon that is weirdly scaled, they just ask “why am I even playing the game”.
So we need some slightly better instructions for certain kinds of people, as well as a skip to save time and reinforce teh idea that most of this game is about the end game.
Can’t recall ever hearing even one person say “hey, I love the story so much I just keep making new characters just to see the story again and nothing else”…All i see in the chat is people asking about their monos.
IN-game evidence trumps your personal opinion, as well as mine. Mine just happens to line up more with observed chat, player interactions as well as teh various forums for this game.
One of the memes in the chat seems to be people saying it should just be “Beat Majasa” and you can get your points lol. Honestly, even tough it’s a joke, it’s actually a pretty solid solution or at least an alternative.
that’s actually a pretty solid idea. Not sure how they would automate the dialogue though, unless you are just okay with whatever response and aren’t worried about that.
im not worried about the responses since the characters dialog isnt even voiced. they could just choose the longest or shortest path on conversation and just give the option of automate long path or automate short path.
Im guessing they had plans to flush this out along with the campaign chapters but they had to shift to end game activities. Hopefully they will put some scaling mechanisms in at some point along with corruption levels for dungeons.
Is the over-all grind to end game / max level still around 60-80 hours? When I was playing the game, it was 40 to get through the main story, 20 to plow through monolith and then another 20 or so to get through empowered monolith. (Unless I’m misremembering and it was actually much longer.)
I’ve criticized this as being too long almost from the beginning. If you have a 30-40 hour main game, it should take you all the way to max level. I don’t know why we as gamers need a treadmill to blow 100+ hours of our lives on before we actually get to play the endgame content in a game. It seems senseless to me and always has. Leveling is fun, but I can make a new character and level again whenever. Let me get to the other fun part of the game already.
If you use dungeon skips you’re taken to act 9, you don’t need to kill Lagon.
Those quests don’t really give anything. I haven’t done them in a long time.
If you use the dungeon skips you play almost none of the story and get all your passives/idols.
If you’re an experienced player, you can even finish them all in under an hour. Especially considering that experienced players run the full campaign in under 2h.
If you’re not an experienced player, you can still finish the campaign using the dungeon skips in 2-3h.
Also, as soon as you unlock the end of time you can jump to monoliths. I often do on alts. I start grinding them at level 25-ish. Once I’m level 60-70-ish, I speedrun the campaign for the passives/idols and go back to monos.
Except that we also have those:
-Alts can unlock empowered monos right away, since all monos from the previous character are unlocked.
-You only need to raise corruption on one mono, then the other monos have catchup mechanics to skip having to raise corruption on them as well.
-You even have a way to immediately unlock the highest corruption your other characters reached.
So there are plenty of endgame skips as well.
What would you do with a campaign skip in that case? You’re level 1, mono is level 58. You have to go back to the campaign maps to level up anyway.
People got to level 100 in less than 24h since the season start.
Only the slowest of the slow players take that long. Campaign is 10h-15h on average for someone that doesn’t skip everything.
Call me crazy, but if I ever win the lottery, I will hire a bunch of devs and tell them to make a loot RPG with no campaign. I have no issue with great stories. I have very fond memories of D2 and D3. But, when you get down to it, we all want just to kill stuff and typically do not even read the storylines. Maybe the first time, but not after that.
You already finish the campaign, as it is now, around level 55 or so. With 3 more acts you’ll likely end at level 70. At that point, you can simply jump straight to empowered monos right away, since that’s the point most people do.
You just need to make sure that the difficulty scaling in the last 3 acts make the curve smoother.
Not really, just that the mechanical aspects there are lackluster compared to end-game.
Also no, I do the same in end-game after all.
And that I agree with. More straight-forward quest solutions, less backtracking on the map or side-quests leading off the beaten path. Those things would be nice.
Mastery changes are crap and have nothing to do with ‘respecting your time’.
They mastery choice being fixed has been there to ensure gameplay variety is still locked behind a time-investment, allowing long-term engagement which otherwise falls away since switching is too easy.
Acceptable with relavant amounts of content which LE is still missing.
As for the story? I mean… if you don’t like it use the dungeon skips, they’re doable even on a first-time character, you’re skipping vast amounts of it there.
Albeit there’s some distinct unpleasant parts of the storyline. Like… activating the drawbridge, which leads you to running blindly around a huge area to use 2 levers in another time to then backtrack and go forward. The backtracking should be removed, this segment needs a complete rework simply.
A few other parts are also still issues, like the ‘defend’ part before Majasa which is simply just waiting for enemies to spawn quick enough… while without a decent setup you’re overwhelmed immediately.
And the overall story difficulty is a mess, as well as class balance, leading to vastly different experiences for players, which is a bad thing.
Because the whole purpose isn’t end-game, it’s progression. Sory is a part of progression. Unlocks are a part of progression. Blessings are a part of progression. Harbingers are a part of progression.
Yes, some bits there need to be optimized to not feel ‘exhausting’ but the overall premise holds true.
The core idea of the story is great!
The execution is a mess.
And yes, we go here for loot and rising numbers… hence progression! Every step being something unlocked, something improved, something making our character stronger.
Idol slots kinda fall perfectly into that
We do, there are dungeon skips reducing the whole story segment to basically 1 hour.
So we don’t see the story there anymore and only segments which provide is with something. Majasa is still there for the Attribute increase, we go to the town to have access to the factions and beyond that we get the intro, that’s more or less it. You skip Lagon even.
If you need ‘hours’ grinding the dungeons to use the skip you’re doing something quite wrong.
Quite a shame given it’s a detrimental and premature change! Not against doing it at all, just when and how. And that’s like prime EHG being a mess
Your ‘positive player experience’ is actively leading to reduction of obstacles (at times annoying ones) without anything to make up for it, actively reducing the time investment into a good product to below expectation standards.
As a half-decent experienced player you already reach Aberroth in 10 hours. I ignore Uberroth since that’s extremely build based unless you want to play 30 minutes flawlessly without RNG luck screwing you over by overlapping attacks.
Your time is respected.
No, retention reduction tends to reduce the amount players pay into a game.
And I hope EHG is not so misguided to have no clue about that. Though I fear they are since some decisions showcase a lack of in-depth understanding of those aspects, making me worry about the long-term development of the game.
Also it double-dips into the difficulty by removing the option for movement speed, which is nonsense given that movement speed is basically mandatory to avoid several of the end-game attacks.
This makes it a non-viable option for end-game to actually adjust difficulty since it takes away the ability to actually properly deal with the content there through skill, you just get screwed over.
The boots have always been a really badly designed mess.
Would I? If I got tires specifically designed to focus on the forecast weather of the day to provide me hence with the best grip on the street as well as hence the best safety and also least amount of fuel consumption… I would do it.
Give things meaning and they aren’t a chore.
Fully agreed there.
Online play is a competitive environment the second you take a step into MG.
Hence since that exists it’s mandatory for EHG to treat it with a competitive background in mind.
If they don’t do that they’re plainly spoken crap developers not knowing what their own game design does, and I don’t support low-quality devs. I do support inexperienced devs, creative devs and devs which produce top-end quality. But I don’t do those which have no clue about the basics of design.
Mind you, first character position. For the alt position we have dungeon skips which put everything right on a railroaded way to finish it in one go without being sidetracked majorly.
With skipping you don’t even fight Lagon btw.
If you speak from a different base premise… yes… yes it definitely does skew things.
That’s the definition of how things get skewed Unless you’re arguing in bad faith, which would make it intentional.
So yes, getting onto the same base premise is basically a mandatory step to provide proper comparison.
And nonetheless those games which actually did not include any sort of story generally ended up as being said to have ‘not enough content’ or being ‘too reptitive quickly’. There’s a distinct reason why it’s there, and yes, you can remove the story by the time the sheer mass of content is there to take the place.
But for one part it does introduce new players into the mechanics.
For another it provides the necessary immersion to keep engagement active until mechanical details tend to take over that job.
And it also allows to create lore-focused content above. Yes, the majority of players don’t care about lore… but nonetheless everyone playing PoE 1 knew for some reason that Zana was finding out that the Shaper is her father and has his memory corrupted by the Elder, hence giving it a quite urgent twist which otherwise would’ve not kept attention for as many people in the timeframe needed to achieve setting the respective bosses up and seeing the conclusion.
You might not like it… and people might talk against it often… but as often people got no clues about the details of how their own mind works and why it does it in that way.
Your position is one of ‘I want to reduce the things sidetracking me from the core gameplay experience’ which is viable. But it only is when you got enough options available to give your mind a rest to recuperate from the repetitive task at hand, hence allowing it to stay long-term engaged with the product as that’s a necessity for survival of a live-service game.
Factually wrong.
Story skips also are solely intended for alt-playthrough, not initial. They are designed in a way no new player could realistically skip through there in a feasable manner.
Yes, the primary reason is actually known! Which is attention span. The genre demands a high attention span which is why you see a substantial amount of autistic people in this genre. Highly structured, high cadence of successes, high amounts of things to achieve beyond when already focus is heavily on it.
In comparison you see a ton of ADHD people in competitive FPS environments, those provide short bursts of dopamine in highly stressful situations which is an environment in which those people thrive. Actually if you want to look for a specific job where those people come together then it’s the ER! High throughput, quick decision making and no in-depth long-term engagement is like a dream come true there.
So keeping in mind which types of players play beyond the campaign (where the vast majority of players stop simply, as they’ve finished the story, we’re talking ~70%) keep engaging with your product is a mandatory aspect to make design with the specific mindsets in mind.
Actually we don’t, since it’s a method to specifically use with secondary characters, not your first. Which is a method to allow unlocking the content gradually without sidetracking like a first-time player will experience and actively enjoy… since it’s new and the first time.
Faulty logical chain and hence faulty conclusion.
If that’s your reasoning for end-game issues then that’s actually baffling.
LE provides one of the most straight-forward end-game experiences of the whole genre. Taking that part as a detriment to support your point going actively against it is absolutely wild.
What end-game is though is highly repetitive (which isn’t for everyone) grind-heavy (which also isn’t for everyone) and also unguided (since the guided aspect is over, it’s to keep people engaged beyond a singular playthrough).
Factually wrong conclusions once more.
First of all you didn’t.
Second of all you’re not in a position to state what other people think, you’re saying it like it’s a given. Guess what… you’re hence inherently wrong. It’s a reductionist statement done to support your argument, invalidating any other line of thought to make yours stand in a better position.
What it actually does for anyone knowing this method is to undermine your argumentation line there and make it worthless. This method only works for those not educated on the technique and if educated then unwittingly at best and because of a lack of mental processing ability worst.
As for every factor being considered… absolutely! 100% agreed!
Start with it!
And then prioritize them with potential likelyhood.
Then fact-check with other products if that likelyhood upholds.
Then re-evaluate it again to see what the respective differences are between the positioning of each aspect.
Then once more fact-check by reducing the potential influences happening which can skew the presentation into a more positive or negative place.
Then you start to get an inkling of the actual situation rather then a reductionistic view which only adheres to a miniscule amount of reality.
Your arguments work actively against that though.
Ah, that’s an interesting one actually.
First of all, we don’t know the absolutely specific details skewing the numerical amount. We absolutely do know the core reasonings though as they’ve been established over ''the last 15 years of the genre with multiple examples showcasing quite specific differences even.**
So don’t say ‘nobody knows’. You don’t know because you haven’t gone into ridiculously in-depth research about ARPG.
I did, I spent roughly 2500 hours to date on listening to game-design interviews, game-design methodologies and over 1000 hours into theoretical game-design foundation, without the specific code-based development included, which is another ~750 hours to be added.
Why did I do that despite it not being my job? Because I’m hyperfixated on it. Creation, production and gaming are my 3 core hyperfications.
Do you know what sort of timeframe that is? If you learn game-development professionally the usual course-time is for short-term 30 weeks, for in-depth it’s 2 years as the common one. Very very few exceptions up to 4 years exist.
With break-times this would roughly be a full-time job of 40 hours per week at around 35 weeks per year.
That comes down to 2800 hours in total… which has a fraction of the speed happening for information intake compared to individual learning behaviour as well as a fraction of the focus being purely put on game-design. A large portion includes specific coding languages, engines and auxiliary tools related to game design to provide a broad spectrum of potential jobs being taken afterwards.
So when you go and actually get yourself this ridiculous amount of time investment to understand the detailed introcacies related to game-design first… and then following up to the specific niche genre it applies to then we can maybe start talking a bit more in-depth about it.
Until then I recommend to keep your mind simply open since you’re extremely likely to be wrong related to the core reason.
Umh… what?
LE player numbers state the game to be a massive success by the way.
So by that logic we shouldn’t do anything, since it’s great!
As a first-time player obviously? You don’t know if you miss out on something and the experience is a novel one?
I mean… what’s your argument?
As a experienced player you can absolutely do that! I prefer to unlock campaign related things first though for example. I also did the early monolith route too.
Just found out that going back to unlock things afterwards feels like backtracking to me, so I don’t do it and hence unlock first to alleviate this personal feeling. But both routes are an option.
If you don’t realize that you can do this after… 2-3 characters then it’s your own damn fault plainly spoken, it means you haven’t even looked at the options presented properly, or you likely lack the ability for proper problem solving in such a way that it would’ve brought you to it.
Pure oversight with a facepalm moment is a rarity in comparison.
Yes, for a whole of 5 seconds until you go in and stomp everything into the ground effortlessly.
If that’s what you’re hung up about then that’s a fundamental perception issue from your side solely. There’s a 100 vastly more pressing issues then this, which also is by now way normal to get through at level 52 nowadays for a new player in the first place… and also subject to change with the missing 3 acts (that should’ve been in the game with 1.0 EHG… not after… core content to count as released, you pulled a Wolcen) which are still coming to the game. Why would you change a system which is future proof against one which you need to adjust every single time again? That’s against any successful design philosophy, especially in a game which is supposed to have such a high-cadence release schedule as LE. Despite not having it, which is already causing problems.
First of all… you’re trolled for every question in an in-game chat of a large community. That’s a given.
Secondly, the majority of the people asking haven’t even attempted it first to see if it even functions. So yes, that’s a viable reason to make fun of someone. First try, if you fail then ask. This is not something everyone has learned in life and is actually a decent way of ingraining that into someone. Unless there’s something on the line first try and fiddle, then ask. You don’t lack guidance at that time after all, quite the contrary, any more obvious and EHG would need to put a neon-sign up to state ‘yeah, go there’. And that’s condescending as ARPGs of this style are not commonly a recommended first game for a reason.
You know, coming back to the aspects above mentioned, with a focus on specific player types and how our mind is set up.
I’ve got a surprisingly - and luckily - large group of people I know. Around 95% are on the spectrum, either ADHD, autism or AuDHD, so I know of both sides. One side can’t turn away from things they start and get lost in it. The other side has ridiculous problems staying on task, or following guided experiences at all.
And heck… even they can take in what the game in a multi-step process repeatedly conveys in various ways for you to do. You get stranded… so you likely will have to do something there. You’re told that your journey ends there, so you even are told again ‘it’s here’. Then you go to the next NPC actively stating ‘do this on the side there, that’s your next step’… which once more is actively telling you ‘yeah, do this crap there finally, what are you waiting for?’
Missing it beyond that is solely deft, proper guidance in a game is mandatory… but when the guidance surpasses vastly beyond the point where someone needs basic guidance to basically wipe their ass then it’s too intrusive, so it’s not done. And for damn good reason.
Which yes, if they haven’t done it before then they’re also not supposed to in the first place!
Obviously it works hence! Task achieved for an optional method supposed to not be taken by first time players!
This one got me hard, utterly baffling argumentation line.
Nope. Stated above why.
Does it?
I mean, I kill level 20 base mobs in the dungeon as easily as level 20 base mobs outside.
Don’t see a major difference there.
The boss is another topic. But you know… that’s because it’s… a highly mechanical boss, meant for end-game experienced players? Set up even that you likely won’t even get a key for access before reaching that point, so you won’t even be able to skip?
Kinda works I would say.
Your whole argumentation line is just utterly backwards and nonsensical by now, it’s devolved into pure nonsense.
This for example is a viable option, non infringing upon key points and definitely a way to ease it up a bit.
That’s how you argument and make suggestions properly @EmperessPotatoe
It surprised me as well, but it’s a good addition. Would be nice to have the mention in-game that skips are supposed for second characters only as well as what they provide you with. To cause a better distinction.
Non-intrusive and showcasing the design decision to someone like OP better.
For a new player around 15-20 hours for the campaign, first time and experiencing it while learning.
For a experienced player it’s… first time 3-4, secondary characters sub 1 hour if you rush even, but mostly 1-2 hours rather.
It’s the shortest campaign in the genre comparatively when you know what you do.
It’s the longest when you don’t know what you do.
The campaign portion is highly knowledge based related to what is mandatory or not - side quests - and also when to use skips.
Has been done, ‘Eternium’ is one. The campaign is basically maps that are roughly the same end-game.
Also we got ‘Dwarven Realms’ which focuses purely on the mechanical and looting aspect. You solely act inside a Arena too with hordes of enemies. It’s the absolute reductionist aspect of the genre.
On the opposite end stand for example ‘Grim Dawn’ which is purely campaign based or ‘The Ascent’ which also is basically only campaign. Especially Grim Dawn is one of the best contenders of the whole genre, being so high up it contends with live-service games which have a severely higher need for high cadence content drops.
Yes, something in this direction will be needed, with Act 9 it’s already become a little ‘tight’ for normal monoliths, but it’s not ‘quite there’. With 3 more Acts a re-work of the end-game to allow a smooth progression will be quite mandatory.
They changed it some time ago. You only need 1 now. Which means that now you do backtrack, since before you just did a square around the zone.
I honestly had no idea about this and I’ve played PoE’s campaign hundreds of times.
Then again, I never could focus on how they deliver the story, so I always ended up skipping every dialogue.
I still enjoyed doing the campaign, though.
Undecember would like to disagree. A LOT.
And probably PoE2 as well. Both of those campaigns are pretty long, although GGG took some steps to shorten it a bit.
Even PoE1’s campaign is longer than LE’s. If you know what you’re doing you speed run LE’s campaign faster than PoE’s.
I haven’t actually played the game regularly since it launched, so I was wondering about that. Good to know.
I pretty much never use optimal builds. I almost always am just doing whatever I want to do or what I think is cool to try. I also virtually never play the same class or build twice when I’m leveling in an ARPG. I level one of each. So this is correct, I’m pretty much never working with meta spec or perfect knowledge of what to do.
I think ARPG’s need to balance creativity and playtime better for this reason. That’s been my experience in a lot of them, not just this one.
