- After nearly 2,000 hours, I need to write a bit about the game’s current state. Before those 2,000 hours, back in patch 0.4, the game focused more on crafting; items were harder to find (which was a big plus), and the gameplay was addictive—you wanted to keep going, hoping to drop the unique item you were looking for, and so on. Now, having basically always played hardcore, I feel like I’m playing a game on easy mode—items are dropping by the dozens or hundreds on a single map, which is excessive. Currently, I don’t feel even the slightest challenge on hardcore when it comes to items; for several seasons in a row now, right from the start, opponents deal insane damage, and then it takes + -2 weeks to detect and fix it… Since patch 0.6, I feel like nothing in the game has changed. As far as the endgame goes, it’s still the same, and the addition (new content) is just more items and a 30-second event on the map—it doesn’t improve my experience of the gameplay, because seeing the same routine as the map I finish in a few seconds just makes me shrug. Character balance since patch 1.0 has been terrible—I’ll explain: the constant top picks are PALADIN, VK, FALCON, and BLADEDANCER—and let’s throw in 1 mage and 1 beastmaster.
The skills that were supposed to be reworked aren’t really working out—the first examples that come to mind are Disintegration, Avalanche, and many more. For months, I’ve been hoping that the loot system would be changed—that significantly fewer items would drop from enemies—so the game would become more challenging and crafting would regain its momentum like it used to, rather than how it is now: either we make an Exalted item and convert it into a set piece, or we take a Unique item and turn it into a Legendary. As for the endgame in Aberoth, it totally doesn’t work—there’s nothing here to keep a player engaged for long. The combat itself is okay, but it’s the same thing over and over every season; it doesn’t make sense. And examples of a poor approach to the start of the season include the loot filter we get the moment a new season starts on the server, which is strange to me because the servers are down 24 hours before the new season starts anyway—so what’s the problem with making that loot filter available one day earlier so we can calmly implement changes? I’m hoping for major changes and a “seismic shift” in Last Epoch because, looking at people’s interest in this title, it’s declining, and I don’t want that to happen because I really like this game and the people working on it, but things aren’t going in the right direction.
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You could maybe try asking for a new mode. Let’s call it “scarcity mode” where item drop rates are significantly lowered but you gain extra experience from mobs.
As you play HC if I read correctly I think reducing the drop rates but increasing the experience gain would be solid for those who have to restart if they rip. And if you’re getting less loot to gear up with the difficulty I believe it would help balance and round things out. One side of you gain too much exp and can’t keep your gear relevant you have a higher rip chance as levels after a certain point have a diminishing power gain return. And another side with it being HC and if you rip a lot I think extra exp gain would help with the increased restarting from ripping more.
Plus if you make it a game mode I believe you can just affect those who want it without hurting those who don’t. You could play HC SSF SM or just HC SSF.
No need to increase the amount of EXP—I’m already leveling up too fast. In just one day, I can hit levels 95–100 on Hardcore. It doesn’t make sense.
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Sounds like you want to play a different game.
While I agree the loot is excessive, its not the ground loot that is. CoF can print 500 swords in minutes for example.
The loot that drops in monos is worthless until you are in the higher cof ranks where you start to print exalted items like crazy.
This game has always talked itself up as a game less complex and less extreme then path of exile, but more grindy and complex then a diablo 3. And it still firmly sits there. Balance is just shit is all.
also, I dunno about you, but if you dont pick the op classes, its night and day, it takes a minute to obtain enough gear to move up in corruption.
but nerfing the ground loot is crazy, if anything they need to nerf MG/CoF and buff baseline ground loot.
There really isn’t any way to buff ground loot without also buffing MG. There’s no real way to buff/nerf MG outside of the current restrictions like no reselling.
If more stuff drops, more stuff gets sold and more stuff is available to buy. That is the whole basis of trading.
perhaps true, guess I dont care cause i dont play MG.
But man CoF is really boring. I wanna fight monsters and get items. and instead I get a spread sheet of prophecies and kill 4 exiled mages and watch 500 unique swords drop.
Ground loot is the least of the games worries tbh.
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I agree with this. I dislike prophecies and all the time I have to spend not playing the game just to get random lootsplosions.
I’ve suggested a few times in the past that I would rather have a more passive system where I can influence item drops directly. So that you can say stuff like “Drop more helmets”, “Drop less boots”, “Don’t drop melee affixes”, “Drop more minion affixes”, etc.
With a system like this, you never stop playing the game. You keep killing stuff and every once in a while you get a nice influenced item.
The way LE is going with ground loot is the same way PoE has been going for years, where all the loot comes from mechanics and not mobs and that’s a big issue. You stop wanting to kill a mob because it might give you a good drop, but instead you start ignoring any mob that isn’t related to some mechanic that can give you a good drop.
Honestly, I don’t know how it’s possible, but the game in versions 0.6–0.9 was more playable, and I spent more time on it back then than I do now. For me, the game’s current state is a disaster—I say this with a heavy heart compared to what it used to be—and if this doesn’t change, many of my friends are telling me they’ll quit the game for good (I don’t blame them, because reaching max level in just two days and getting all the necessary items practically on the first day is ridiculous).
There’s nothing here that makes me want to play—even dungeons are now, for me, “almost” a forgotten mechanic in this game.
And I’m waiting for real character balance, not the same old thing at the top for over 3 years.
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This resonates with me so much. I have posted and replied in recent weeks with critical and emotive language. I came to LE 8 years ago because 1) it had a proper crafting system 2) its skill and passive trees are awesome in design 3) you are not forced to play season all time and 4) you can gain items via playing the game and not forced into trading as only viable way of getting items. It just so sad that we are now in this mess at the moment.
For me personally it is ok to get to max level quickly as i personally only want to play multiple builds in high endgame so campaign and early game is a pain. Similarly getting “basic” items quickly is also ok since without those items 99% of builds don’t work. The problem for me is “what now”. We reasonably grind for higher tier legendary items because of the exalted item bottleneck and even with that there is no meaningful power progression through the grind. Too much power comes through skills and passives and not enough through higher and higher tier items which are attainable.
My 2 cents for what its worth
I recently wrote down what has “gotten worse,” “stayed the same,” or “is a nuisance”
a) Leveling used to require some skill it wasn’t just about constantly pushing forward; you had to check what challenges lay ahead in the end-game areas you were entering
2* it took time, which was a huge plus for me because the game felt alive; there was no room for someone to finish the content in 3 days and go play something else. Back in the day, hitting level 100 took over a dozen days of playing, which was beautiful (yes, I’m an old-school player who loves that)
3* Knowledge of enemy mechanics (currently, enemies are often just “one-shot minions” due to poorly designed damage scaling for our hero)
b)dungeons
Seriously, who else does dungeons just for the sake of getting a legendary item?
The idea of dungeons died somewhere around patch 0.9, and since then, in my view, it’s been a dead mechanic that adds nothing to the game.
Arenas are just repetitive, BORING content where you basically stand still, use at most two skills, and everything drops like flies before they even get close to you.
c) The enemy damage scaling is terrible. What I mean is, let’s say I have a character with 3,000 HP, high armor, a high block rate, and a chance to block attacks. I can breeze through one map without any trouble, but on the next one, every single minion can one-shot me. (Oneshot is the key word here, because out of the 2,000 hours I’ve spent in the game, 99% of that time I’ve been playing only HC SSF)
The damage balance and defensive stat balance in the game are completely messed up
d) I’ve written about this many times before, but certain character classes are just too overpowered—the Paladin, for instance, has been a top-tier character in every season and even before that, and the same goes for the VK, Bladedancer, Falconer, and so on. I get the impression that these characters have never seen a balance update in their lives. There’s more to it, but it’s too big a topic to get into here.
e) VOID-type damage why is VK the character who uses it? I once had an idea here that, when you have a skill tree for a given skill, you could immediately choose one ability for free whether that skill becomes, say, fire, ice, lightning, poison, etc. Obviously, not all these damage types would be available for every skill, but we’d have a choice such a void practically doesn’t exist.
f) For many patches now, Ward has been poorly designed.
I get the impression—and I’m not the only one—that characters with Ward can be built to be essentially unkillable in the end game. I had a character that generated over 600,000 Ward; obviously, that’s not feasible now, but it’s still easy to build characters with Ward exceeding 8,000–10,000. Those values are too high.
g) I won’t comment on passives. The introduction of passives—“spend 5 points on a passive and gain an additional ‘x’” ability" killed off the older character classes for me—the ones nobody wants to play because they’re too slow at clearing maps and bosses, have survivability issues, and lack mobility. The introduction of these types of passives has broken some classes to the level of GOD.
h) loot … “REDUCE IT, for crying out loud!” I’ve heard those words countless times during my streams, and I agree with them 100%. Loot is currently the worst thing in the game. I know what I’m about to say is radical, but do you remember the OLD Diablo 3—right at the beginning, when dropping a single legendary item took a day, two, three, and it might have been weak? But that kept people hooked on the game and gave them joy from the items that dropped—“Will my character be able to equip this?” If you got a legendary, congratulations! But after the patch where they started dropping one after another, nobody cared about those items anymore. The amount of loot that drops from enemies is insane—I’d reduce unique drops by 90%, Exalted item drops by 30–40%, and focus on crafting.
i) I don’t want to go into detail about the endgame and overall balance because you could practically write a master’s thesis on the subject
Summary
While my satisfaction with the game in patches 0.4–0.9 was at a 9/10, it has now dropped to a 3/10 from 1.0 to the current state of the game and even that is a generous rating, simply because I like the team behind the game.
I hope that whoever reads this will share it with others to show the problems we’re facing in a game I used to really enjoy, but which is now becoming less and less important to me.
All told, across all the H’n’S games I’ve ever played, I’ve racked up over 15,000 H points, and I’m feeling more and more disappointed even though I always hold out hope that this might be the season where everything changes.
Nah, levelling was always very easy, with a bit of a bump entering the divine era & then Lagon & later Majasa. When the Rogue was released I ran up through to & killed Majasa with an average gear level in the single digits with no levelling uniques (fresh start), minimal crafting & not even picking upgrades off the ground (with possible exception of my weapons) & this was before legendaries allowing multi-t7 affixes on starter gear.
I’m not sure doing dungeons other than for the legendaries or specific uniques was ever a thing. And now with the weaver node that adds dungeon mobs & their drops into monos you don’t even need to do that anymore.
Many years ago I said that due to enemy damage, player sustain, defences & the like, you’re either on full hp or dead, there is virtually no time spent in-between & this reduces the tension.
Yes, class balance is way too varied, but bladedancer hasn’t been “top tier” for a long time. It’s only the release of Shadow Rend in a busted state that’s pushed it up this season.
Theme. They just haven’t added any void-based archetypes. Though they have added a few uniques that add/convert to void.
You mean on release back in 2012 that was then thrown out with “loot 2.0” to great acclaim & love/happiness in 2014? People hated the drop rates of pre-RoS D3.
If they did that they’d need to rework crafting as there’s way too much rng currently for there to be significantly less drops. I’m not saying it’s an unreasonable idea, just that you’d need significant other changes to support it.
100% @Llama8 . The loot design in LE of multiple layers of RNG to get the slammed 77 legendary requires lots of loot to drop. Dropping far less loot requires a big change to that overall system. You also have a loot filter to show only what you really want to see. I have no problem here other than the inability to currently get enough 2t7 exalted to drop to make 77 legendary items worth grinding for. D3 didn’t require lots of loot drop (even pre Loot 1.0) because all you needed to “craft” was re-roll a single stat. Totally different loot design can’t compare.
I was misunderstood I was talking about the feelings I had when a certain item dropped from a monster
The Prophecy interface needs an overhaul. I honestly would prefer a slot machine at this point, because selecting prophecies, rerolling prophecies, etc. is tedious and unfun. I like the concept of looking to the stars at constellations for good luck, on paper, but the execution is not fun. At least if prophecies UI was a slot machine I would get a lil dopamine hit from using it.
Open to better ideas than a slot machine, but honestly the UI is a lame chore.