Things that are out of place and... irritating. [LONG ONE]

Feedback and Suggestions
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Hi there!

First off let me make something clear. I understand this is BETA. I understand we test things out. I saw the roadmap and the phase we are in. I watched the DEV Q&A sessions and their gameplays. I read the patch notes. I understand this is the current state of the game and A LOT may change once they decide to officially launch it.

Taking all of the above into consideration I would like to highlight some of the things that I hope are tweaked before the official release. I make a note of that as most of you are the long time vets who joined at the time Last Epoch was an idea on the KickStarter and may not paid attention to the stuff I have. My perspective is narrow and short - I joined a few days ago over Steam and begun testing the game. Here is what I found out, below, in bullet points to structure this… somehow.

1. Graphics

As of now it is… shallow? I mean this is a 3D word, we have the shadows, lights, bloom, FX effects, whatnot. Cool, great, splendid. However… all of this is… it feels odd. For example breaking the world objects like barrels, tables, cupboards. You can break them all but when you do it looks like they are all made out of cardboard. It is bizarre to observe how the table is blown into pieces that fly all over the place. It is odd.

Same goes for the shadows. There are literally a few places when the shadow is visible. I understand that most of the times we wander the mines, caves, delves, forest where the light is scarce but… should we actually stand by the fire to have a change to see our shadows? Most of the time I feel like the character flies over the map. I lack the depth of the visuals and shadows are the most powerful tool to utilize it.

Changing times/eras/epochs - the full screen animation is somewhat… poor? It could be way better, especially when we get to see that often.

2. Gameplay

This is a BROAD topic and I will try to be as descriptive as possible to give you guys a hint what grinds my gears here.

First off - AI behaviour. I encountered many times a situation when an enemy who wants to kill me on sight runs my direction and… attacks the air only because my movement speed is greater then theirs. This looks ridiculous when you see a bunch of acolytes slashing the air a few meters behind your back. I did not expect something like this. I have never seen something like this in PoE, D3, Torchlight. At least, not to such extent. This makes me uneasy. This looks off. Make them either chase me until they can land a hit or… count those attacks as successful and let me pay a price for letting them come too close. As simple as that,

Town Portal. Did you know you can open the portal right next to the shrine after using it, go to the town, sell the loot, go back to the portal and USE the same shrine you have already used a few minutes ago for another prize? Then you can open another portal and do the same. And over and over again. You can reap the benefits of the same shrine and this happened to me several times making the whole concept of portal… useless. Same goes for the mobs you cleared on the map. After using the town scroll all of them are resurrected. Thanks to that I happened to kill the same boss several times for a different loot on the same map. At the same place. Weird.

Items Rarity. Have you ever, ever used a ‘white’ item? I literally used like 5 of them total. I began to wonder what is the purpose of them in the game? You don’t collect them as loot, you don’t wear them as equipment, you don’t even include them in your filters. Why the hell are they clogging the view? What is the point of those laying around? Same goes for blue items. The drop rate is so crazy that you are flooded with yellow items. I don’t even read or compare the description of the blue items, what for? I am wearing full yellow/epics items, the rest is just for… what? sale?

Gold. What is the purpose of the gold as a currency as of now? To roll back the choices on the passives skill tree? Anything else? Why have I hoarded the gold? I do not buy anything from vendors, I do not have means to spend gold other than gambling… Funny.

Difficulty. I very much like there is like one global difficulty for everybody. However the game has no challenges other than those lore significant bosses. The rest is too easy to kill. My mage runs everywhere spamming Glacier and… watching every mob die. It started to bore me as the pattern is all the same for the most of the game. SOMETIMES I have to cast Glacier twice, lol. That is all for the mechanics I need to survive. No brainer.

Map. Why it sometimes wipes what you have already discovered in the zone and sometimes it does not? For example, I go into the Last Archives. I checked every nook and cranny, I uncovered the zone 100%. Then I go to Pannion’s Library, did the same. Then I move back from Pannion’s Library to the Last Archives only to find that… I need to do all the foot work again in the Last Archives as whole map is uncovered… Letting alone all mobs are respawned.

Items visuals. I feel like I am looting the same items over and over again. Swords look the same, armours too. There are like a few models, that’s it. Leaving alone the looks of unique/legendary items is so causal you could never tell the sword you are wielding is of some greater quality… I miss the blazing effects, chilling effects, armours that are so distinctive you know at once somebody is rocking this unique.

3. Introducing updates

Don’t get me wrong. I understand this is not Blizzard studio having thousands of programmers working on every single detail. I do understand the studio is small and the work is in progress that can take some time. All I wanted to highlight is that this title may never be a version 1.0 official launch. The amount of changes, fixes, content to be added is massive. When the studio works on how to add Multiplayer functionality the number of threads in the Bug/Fixes grows day by day.

I just wonder if you have enough man-power 11HGames to catch up with all of the tweaks and polishes? As of now the list of the things you have introduced and need to tweak them is never ending, I guess…

To sum up. I appreciate we were given opportunity to evaluate the work in progress and the game in the current state. I understand this is not the end product and at the end it may be worth its price.

As of now this title makes me sit and watch what is happening instead of playing the game. Maybe we are used to games so well programmed as PoE, so polished as Diablo, so well thought of as Torchlight 2. Maybe.

Or maybe, I had my hopes up and jumped on the hype train only to come to the title and experience all of the above.

Oh well. Worst I will wait for Diablo Resurrected, Diablo 4, PoE 2… I will be fine.

Thank you for reading this. If you have made it this far, I salute to you my friend. I wish you all the best.

Peace, love.

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Yes i have, when starting a new char i use them until i get blues+, then i hide them in my filter and they dont bother me anymore.

Because they can be quite quite good to craft on or shatter for the mods youre looking for. Rares often have too many mods you cant use, so using a blue with 1-2 mods that are useable to craft on is often better (unless youre extremely lucky with your rare findings)

Before i started playing SSF i had 52 stash tabs, and the next one cost me 470k gold (iirc). So if your collecting gear for more than one character, stash tabs and gambling will easily drain your gold.

Have you tried Masochist mode? did you beat all the empowered timelines with 1-2 click glacier? do you also run Arena 150+?
-And if you have, is it with a build you thought up yourself, or did you just follow a build guide?

As you know the game is in Beta and this will change. Personally i dont have a problem with the visuals atm, looks far better than many other games that is in beta.

So youre comparing a beta game to games that have been out of beta for something close to 10 years?.
Imo this game has so much more potential than all those games, and even now in beta it surpasses them all in gameplay.

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Hi Mister @Cujo !

Thank you for your time spenton reading this and replying to the thread.

  1. Can you explain how can I ‘shatter’ blue items for mods instead of auto-sell them at vendors?

  2. I have not tried Masochist mode, nor have I done the empowered timelines and arena 150+. I am just dashing through the story, got to 20 lvl in 2 hours? Wanted to check if this is… expected and wanted.

  3. Yes, I am comparing the game to the best of the best out there. Why should not I? If this is to be a direct threat for other ARPG /HnS we have to compare… Aim for the stars, right? :wink:

Peave, love.

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You will find “Shatter Runes” as you play further (can be bought at vendors too). Then you open the Forge (either from inventory or at the forges in cities), put the item in there and shatter it. It has a chance to give you a random number of affixes from that item as shards that you can save for later use. (you might wanna read up on how the forge works as im to tired to explain it all right now).

Ok (i must admit i didnt read that you have recently bought the game), but yea the game is somewhat beginner friendly, and most of the story isnt really hard to get through. The Monolith (at around level 50) is where it begins to get harder, and when those are done you can empower them to be even harder. Arena is a place to test how far/good your char is (not everyone finds this fun tho).

I dont think its fair to compare it to games that have had 10 years (+beta testing) to be corrected. We should wait for the release before comparing them, and if they continue to update the game as they have been doing so far, imo it will beat those titles at release.

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i actually advised all my friends that got into LE to buy shatter runes whenever possible.
shattering Blue items can be seen as “not as efficient” as shattering Yellow or Purple, but if it has a mod that you want, even a blue item can have worth

as for White items, it can be a good idea to pickup whites that have high roll implicits, theyre good to make 4x t5 rolled items and last a long time till u manage to craft items with t6-7 implicits

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@ExSea apologies, being pretty new to the game I do not understand much of what you have written. Items with ‘high roll implicits’? ‘4xt5’? ‘t6-7 implicit’?

Care to explain? :>

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Look at my Shaman - Shaman, Level 65 (LE Beta 0.8.1c) - Last Epoch Build Planner for example. You see it got a blue axe in his off-hand? Because the only affix I need for that build on a weapon is %Increased minion spell damage. The rest is irrelevant. And I need 1h axe. Because there’s a passive that gives more damage to minions if I wear an axe. SO there are 7 tiers of affixes. T1 being the lowest (bad) and t7 being the highest (most valuable). t6+ affixes on items are very rare. You can’t craft them they only drop. SO i found a good BLUE axe with t5 affixe with good roll. t5 affix for Minion spell damage can have a range of 89% - 122%. Mine was 120. Almost perfect. That is why it is much better than 99% of yellow axes I could find.

Another thing - look at the helmet on my Shaman. You see +1 to Storm Totem / Inc. Damage of Totems? It is pretty rare affix. And if I find such an item (even if it is no other stats) I can consider 2 ways - 1) craft needed affixes onto it OR 2) shatter it so I have +1 to Storm Totem in my Forge and can apply it any time i like on a better item (base). Affixes on items are not equal . Some of them are very valuable and very rare.

If you press ALT while hovering the mouse over an item it will show you affixes and prefixes and their range. Implicit is a white colored stats just below the name of an item that you cant change . So if you are planning to craft an item you need a base that suits your build. For example, amulet with %minion critical chance and make sure the roll is high enough. If you see the amulet on my Shaman you will see that the implicit can roll from 5% to 35%. Of course a base with as clos to 35% as possible is best to craft on.

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I would say more efficient than yellow, because you have less affixes and then more chance to get the ones you want

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no problem!

lets start with a white item. white item usually has 1-3 “implicit” rolls which means they are always there on the item. for example one of the high level gloves you can get has some armor and 5-35% chance to crit if i recall correctly. when the item drops the implicit is rolled from 5 to 35. so a high roll would be 30 to 35%. a 5% one would be the lowest roll.

as for 4xt5, sorry i abbreviated things too much and expected you to know more on crafting. besides the implicit mod, an item can have 4 craftable mods. there are a buttload of mods you can craft onto an item, and these mods are split into afixes and prefixes. this is done so you cant overload an item with 4 attack mods (like added fire damage, added lightning damage, added necro damage, added critchance) so it forces you to pick something like 2 damage rolls and 2 defensive rolls. I am not 100% accurate on this but just to give you a picture.

next would be tiers. when you forge a mod onto an item such as adding necro damage to a ring that doesnt have it. it will give you tier 1 necro damage. maybe 2-3 damage. you can then try to further enhance the necro damage, each time you add more necro damage onto the item, it will increase the tier, so maybe tier 2 is 10-15, tier 3 maybe 20-30. the best crafted tier a player can achieve is tier 5.

so what i mean by 4 x t5 is having an item with 4 mods all at tier 5. in an essence thats the best you can hope for when crafting.

tier 6 and tier 7 mods do exist but cannot be crafted. when you’re higher level items drop have a chance of having mods of this tier. so the “way to play” the game is to farm gear, get the best high level base items (preferably high roll implicit with a few mods that you want) then try crafting it so it has 4 x t5. then when you continue playing, higher levels you repeat this process but using items that have t6-t7 mods, as those mods really push your power/defence higher than normal crafting.

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Don’t worry. Path of Exile 2 is just more of the same and it’s not even going to enter closed testing until 2022. Diablo 4 is still years away. Also, once Blizzard puts out Diablo 4 it will likely not receive NEW CONTENT updates at all. Blizzard doesn’t want to invest money into something that isn’t a cash cow beyond the initial sales.

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I don’t really have much to contribute here but the fact that you said POE was well-programmed made me lol.

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The fact they didn’t just start over with a new engine built from the ground up for PoE 2 is even more LAWL.

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We don’t know yet, but they said the exact opposite. Then plan expansions and a seasons system with new content. Unsure what level on content though.

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Thanks @ExSea for explanation, you laid this out clear!

@JCourtney to my information Poe2 arrives this year as official launch. Diablo as well. Can you provide some sources of your claims other than personal rants?

@Qair please note I used this example as a comparison to the current state of LE.

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One thing I want to point out is that I think it is downright insulting to lump this company with all the other typical early access stereotypes. I’ve been playing this game on and off and following it since mid-late 2019 and they have consistently and steadily been putting out updates basically at the rate that they always said they would. It’s been fantastic and consistent. They created a roadmap and have steadily been working through it. There is no doubt in my mind that they will reach 1.0 and in a timely manner I believe.

I assume you’ve played the game for like a month maybe? I will agree I wish they would put out updates or at least information slightly faster. But I have no doubts about them eventually putting it all out.

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And with all my heart I wish them well! Let the official launch be this year, fingers crossed!

I just wrote what I have wrote solely based on my previous experience with open betas. I participated in Don’t Starve open beta, Quake champions open beta, Gwent the card game open beta, Pillars of eternity open beta and Torchlight.

Maybe because of the previous experience I expected more and got a little bit disappointed with what I saw.

Peace, love.

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You think Diablo 4 in it’s current state is even remotely closed to releasing? Nah. You’re looking at 2023 for that.

“Several months ago, Chris Wilson commented in unofficial channels that they were behind on the schedule for PoE 2, and that was before the pandemic started to delay things even further. With the current scenario, I would say that even beta starting at the end of 2021 would be optimistic.”

You’re going to be in for a LONG wait.

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Diablo 2 Resurrected will make the pain go away while waiting for other titles official launch.

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No, it won’t. It’s still the EXACT same game. It’s not the graphics that prevent people from playing it right at this very moment. It’s the old grid-style game. It just doesn’t stand up after you’ve played 3D engine ARPGs.

Also, D2 has already been played out. There is no real end game. It’s all just nostalgia of times past, back when you were younger and video games were just more fun in general.

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I understand your reasoning. I hear you. I got it, you see it that way.

I don’t. Check “Project Diablo 2” first. It is not even made by Blizzard yet there are more players at the time on the server than most Steam games. Facts cannot be denied.

Believe me, or not, whatever. The day Diablo 2 Resurrected is live, LE, PoE, GW and ESO servers are half empty. It is not only the graphics that changes. Give it a read, see yourself. I will 100% jump on that train and once again spend hundreds hours with this title.

And the end game? End game is exactly the same as in other titles. Farming gear, doing runs, Uber versions of bosses, ladder PvP. It is all the same, all across platforms. If you cut the cosmetic shit out like decorating a guild hall, farming a mount or upgrading a pet it all comes down to grind. I don’t care if this grind is called a delve, nephalem rifts, monoliths, Uber Tristam, boss raids. Still the same, old good HnS.

If you really want I can update you after X hours spent with those titles confirming (or denying) whether or not I had so much fun with those “not standing up, graphics revamped, old nostalgia games that are no longer fun”.

Peace, love.