before glazers call me out why am i even here i want to say i like LE alot i play LE/PoE/PoE 2 all the time i only play trade league my joy of playing is farming gold for build and droping high value items to sell them that gives me dopamine but if there arent many people playing merchant guild the items have little demand and its hard to sell items wich ruins my joy of playing im sure thats how many merchant players feel like so i want for LE to be succesfull as much as possible but the numbers dont look good this league they had even less than previous cycle only 40k concurent they need to do some kinda miracle content patch to get back their playerbase but how?
2 Likes
I feel exactly the same. I absolutely love trading in arpg games - even in Last Epoch, where it was somewhat limited, it was still really fun for me. Season 2 felt great, and I was happy thinking Iâd have a second arpg game to rotate with Path of Exile.
But all those bad decisions and the long gaps between cycles have made the game start to die. I didnât come back for Season 3 because the patch felt absurd after such a long wait. I wanted to play Season 4, but the league in PoE is a total banger right now. On top of that, seeing fewer than 40k players online at peak kind of speaks for itselfâŚ
I was really rooting for it, and itâs sad to see - but Last Epoch is dying.
1 Like
(post deleted by author)
Truth be said, in the last seasons the peak of concurrent players was not on league release, it was on the following weekend. So this number may still increase a bit.
But itâs not really surprising. The sale to Krafton, the announcement of the âexpansionâ with paid classes that wonât be here for years, and the lackluster new season didnât exactly bring a lot of community engagement.
Now all we can do is wait to see if Krafton will continue investing in Last Epoch and give EHG time to try and turn this around, or if theyâll believe itâs best to just pull the plug.
It actually wasnât. Peak was still day 1. We expected it to improve during the weekend but it didnât. It just kinda matched (though a tiny bit lower).
I donât expect this to change either.
Explained my opinion on it here:
2.5k hour player here- Dumping the game on its ass on day 1- Peace - General - Last Epoch Forums
Donât expect devâs to get past their hubris and consider that their systems in place for development, approach to balancing and priorities to be wrong.
I recall one time when I suggested that arena having boxes and tiny loot to click on every 5 waves was âdetracting from gameplayâ and suggested that that the loot chests should be condensed to every 25 or 50 waves, so players could focus on the actual challenge of what they are doing, and that a bigger loot explosion at set milestones to reach for would be much better dopamine.
Got brushed off with a âuhhh okay dude, thanks for ur suggestion?â type response.
Yeah i only have 2.5k hours, played most of the arena tournaments in early access and reached the top of the arena on multiple occasions type experience, I only played the shit out of it for years in early access for them. But I guess my suggestion might not be important or something to them.
Iâm fed up with the lack of feedback engagement and the continuing downward trend they seem to be making no effort to deviate from. Repeat this a few times more, people wonât bother coming back again to âtryâ another season, because they will expect more of the same and more of being disappointed.
1 Like
Is this actually really important to you, though? Iâm just asking because you say that PoE2 is a much better game but Simulacrum (closest to Arena and the inspiration for it) does the same thing.
The closest PoE1/2 has to this is running the breach boss where you get the full âmapâ to get to the boss and get the drops all at once at the end.
And Iâm pretty sure if you suggest the same thing in PoE youâll get the same brushoff. Not to mention that GGG never ever replies to anything.
Doesnt really matter, we are a couple hundred of thousand behind even a game like Diablo 2, its really gone downhill for LEâŚ
And i understand it, so much of the game is bugged as f, graphics is different from nearly every area you go to, monolith system seems to have gotten no really change other than the new tree and dungeons, but they also get super tedious quickly.
But we have gotten an extreme amount of loot filter updates, stashtabs updates and all kind of absolutely shitty updates, that often ends up being buggy as hell for a month or two.
The company needs to fire those in charge of seasons, and simply fire devs that isnt living up to the expectation.
Then they need to build most of the game from scratch and stop focusing on fucking stash tab QoL, i couldnt give 2 fucks⌠Most games doesnt even have any stash QoL⌠We want nice content, updated bosses, updated assets, updated dungeons you name itâŚ
If a new ARPG cant overtake a 25 yr game in terms of numbers, it has failed and should consider thinking if it even should existâŚ
I sadly dont even think this season is profitable for them either, and then at some point krafton is gonna take over this sinking ship instead.,
1 Like
To be honest LE is in between POE and D4. as a more âcasualâ player, i hate POE. it was so hyped when it launch and I actually paid for the early access and after played to Act 3 there. I canât control due to unable to commit that much time to farm it. Same goes to LE, I can finish the game which i think its great but i never really played until a stage that it goes to the complex slamming unique items. I like D4 for the simplicity. I can finish everything in that game as a working adult with family to take care. At the same time i like LE as well for the ability to play offline. Now D2 ROTW launch, that actually cannibalize the market the LE have for offline play. I played my D2 ROTW now as LE has no update for quite a while. 1 thing i would like to highlight is, if the game wants to have appeal to âcasualâ market, it needs to be less complicated and make finishing a build easier to achieve. If it needs a phd or master degree to learn how the items crafting and maximizing the gear works, we will just skip it entirely (like the slamming legendary potential items in LE), weaverâs will item is fine.
As a business, I think its better for you to focus on this group of people. You can try to please those steamers and hardcore gamers all you want but how many of them are actually in the market? The real people that are willing to spend are working dadâs like me (and those in my situation). we have the cash but we lack of time to commit 10-20 hours a week to grind. at most we can commit around 3-4 hours a week. I have been supporting LE for all the seasons by buying the cosmetics package they offer and will do so for S4 as well as I respect what they do and hope they can continue the great job but as above if the business wants to stay afloat long term, i would hope they can focus on creating more contents that are âachievableâ and donât listen to those streamers which keep shouting they want more end game, difficult and challenging contents⌠focus your resources on creating something everyone can achieve like a new class, new campaign zones etc.
Dude youâre miserable, your dopamine receptors are malfunctioning already, thatâs why you couldnât keep playing poe and came here just to complain shit. The fact your goal is to sell stuff is already an indicator. Why dont you go sell drugs instead, maybe stock market could be your thing too.
1 Like
Whatâs so complicated about legendary slamming? Itâs actually pretty straight forward. You have a unique with LP, you have an exalted item, you combine both. You can even guarantee one of the affixes.
Itâs one of the simplest mechanics around to understand.
i think you need to do a dungeon or something like that to slam it. seriously i didnât bother to explore how to actually make it work and resort to only getting the weaver will items or those red from the boss where you juice it up a couple of times when you see them on the map.
Yeah, you need to do Temporal Sanctum, itâs the reward at the end. But you can use portal charms to skip directly to the boss fight anyway. Itâs not complicated, just requires a boss fight (which is accessible to almost all builds these days, even on higher difficulty).
The only complicated phd stuff LE has are imprints, where having exalted prefixes or suffixes, sealed affixes or primordial ones, free affixes, etc, all chance the chances of what drops. That is some PoE obfuscation level s**t.
Other than that, crafting is pretty straight forward and does what it says on the box.
Makes those Imperial Uprising Event numbers look pretty good, huh
1 Like
Yes, a fair competitive platform in this game is important to me, whether it comes from arena, leveling (racing), events, or corruption ladder. Without some reason to compete or measure yourself up against the other players, a huge chunk of the playerbase leaves out of boredom. Ever look at the only time similar ARPGâs spike up in viewership (outside of obvious league launches)? Thatâs right, its when races or events are on, like gauntlet. Otherwise the viewership stays low until the next season starts in 3 months or whenever.
The reason that nobody enjoys arena is because they have neglected and ignored it since it was added to the game 5 years ago. It has had very few variations or improvements done to its systems, they havenât placed much (or any) chase item or mechanic there as a reason for players to go there. Annoying features like the loot chests every 5 waves (which should have been condensed to every 25 or 50 waves and increased in size like a loot explosion in which you get to âchooseâ what type of chests would spawn as a milestone reward for reaching X waves) has never been improved, and if youâre a die-hard arena pusher you just ignore those chests entirely as they slow down and distract from the flow of pushing quickly and focusing on playing well.
Every other ARPG game that has different parts of the game added have also added reasons for players to venture there, whether for some chase item or some mechanic or needed crafting currency or item of utility / reason to visit that area of the game. Arena still has basically âno rewardsâ (Why?) for your time despite the time investment and extreme challenge at higher waves, because they have brushed it off as ânot important or not a focus of the gameâ.
Theres a reason why it sucks and its because of their lack of priority in making it better. Thatâs why even people who âlikeâ arena are bored of arena. How is this not looked at as a huge glaring issue that should be addressed a long time ago? Why have things in the game that are going to be âunfunâ and neglected in the first place?
Like I said. Its a symptom of a problem of their development systems they have in place, which season upon season since release, has resulted in a loss of ~50% of the playerbase between each successive league.
I watched some streams today but didnât play as Iâve been playing the Marvel Heroes emulated server. But it didnât look like theyâve done anything to address my boredom with monos. I bet Iâll play this season eventually but thereâs literally no rush considering how long their seasons are.
Oh anyway, 40k is way lower than Iâd expect.
This is a null point and simply wrong. To âignoreâ the top end of the game (the peak arena builds/ peak racing builds / peak corruption ladder builds) because they are âhardcore gamersâ who donât reflect the average player; Let me ask you this:
Where does the average player go to for build inspiration and viewership? Oh thatâs right, they watch the streamers, who are playing those so-called âpeakâ leveling /arena/ corruption pushing builds. And they check the ladders if they were playing spellblade, they might want to look at the top spellblades and see what they are doing, so they can get some ideas and maybe adapt some of their tech into their own builds.
So by extension the top end of the game (or the âsteamers and hardcore gamersâ) are actually setting the precedence and leading the crowd, they are literally being followed by the majority of the player base and steering the direction of build diversity as a whole. In fact it can be argued that they are the leading, major sole decider on the direction of the crowd that plays Last Epoch.
So to say that they are not important or that part of the game is not important is completely asinine and void of understanding. Because when you deem that part of the game as ânot importantâ that not important part of the game which becomes builds that are A) bug abusing/development oversights B) extremely overtuned, C) boring to play (hiding behind a pillar, building 100% block builds), D) cumbersome to reach and obtain/setup, guess what the crowd direction is going to be?
If the top builds have zero skill ceiling, diversity, lack enjoyment to create and are unfun to play, then the crowd direction is generally going to follow suite. Especially when said builds are the only things that can break through the threshold of higher difficulty to reach higher corruption or arena waves, then that gameplay becomes the standard and the entire game becomes dogshit.
Trust me, Iâve been on the recieving end of this for a long time. I would LOVE to play something high skill capped like fireball runemaster or turbo vengeance sentinel. But guess what, they simply ARENâT VIABLE in high arena waves or high corruption because you get your face blown off reguardless of how well you build, gear, or pilot your character.
You donât even get close to being competitive on those builds and what you are left with, are the builds at âthe topâ as future build pivots, because those builds can ascend the arena ladder or climb corruption, and players want to play something that can actually reasonably achieve what they want to do on.
Completely neglecting this part of the game and dismissing it as not important because it only applies to âstreamers and diehard/hardcore gamersâ is just simply wrong and setting up the trajectory for the entire game to become, as a whole, bad.
Because how can the majority of the game be good when the top builds that set precedence that people will generally begin to follow over time, are bad? Its not possible.
You are hypothesizing that focusing on these parts of the game will somehow detract from the rest of the game, when in fact the opposite is true, it would improve the rest of the game, as a roll on effect, in a very big and impactful way.
I have to reiterate this point once again; there is a huge and glaring problem in the processes EHG have in place for developing the game, making balance changes (or lack of) and generally steering the direction of the game. They donât seem to want to âhear itâ via player feedback, and I guess they want to continue on their 5th season, which I think if this trajectory continues, will be another ~50% net playerbase loss down to a peak of 20k players next season if we are lucky.
One point I always made in the past, was that their approach of âaddressing and âpulling into lineâ the overperforming buildsââ as their priority approach to build balance and diversity, is fundamentally wrong. Because while it is mandatory, it should not be the priority, as this process only results in the culling of builds from circulation. Instead the #1 focus and priority should be upon the numerous underplayed and underused skills and passives, which NEVER see even basic base number adjustments between patch to patch, since forever in their development history, yet this is never seen as a problem to them. When in fact if they focused on this point, we would have more build diversity, more options for players to theorycraft and âcreateâ builds.
Instead we have whatever this is;
Shattered Omens Season / Hardcore / Level Ladder - Last Epoch Ladders
Paladin, paladin, paladin, paladin, paladin, paladin
Yeah because judgement paladin is the only thing that is hardcore viable, because it has a million defense layers and recovery options that every other build does not have.
Want to play something else? Have fun getting your face blown off for no reason or fault of your own, other than the fact that you didnât be a clone and play the same âmeta buildâ that everyone else was playing; judgement paladin.
I didnât mean that. I get that you like to compete. I meant if having rewards every 5 levels or 25 levels is that important to you.
Because Simulacrum in PoE1 gives you rewards every level and you need to initiate the next one manually.
In PoE2 Simulacrum even forces you to move around and search for the next zone.
And you did say PoE2 is your favorite, but that doesnât seem to bother you?
Like I said, if you were to suggest in PoE forums to get all the rewards at the end, you might get the same shrugging and brushing off you supposedly got here.
GD also has a theoretically infinite system similar to arena and they also give you rewards every 5 levels, although you do fight bosses for the rewards.
Iâd say Arena might have issues, but giving rewards every 5 levels seems pretty standard when you look at other games, tbh.
You canât just compare it to simulacrum and say, because simulacrum does it that way, thatâs simply the best way to do it. They are fundamentally very different things, despite their differences.
First of all, the simulacrum is only 30 waves in PoE1, and only 15 waves in PoE2 (for now, until they add more). Secondly, we donât have to click 10 times on boxes to spawn the loot, it simply just drops. And thirdly, simulacrum is much different to arena, because simulacrum is the pinnacle of difficulty there and only attempted after you have for the most part completed most of the upper tier of endgame mapping, and you actually have to pay attention and read the modifiers that the next 5 waves include, because some modifiers combinations are potentially deadly and you have to decide whether you want to continue or leave.
Arena does not have such things, it is a scaling linear challenge.
This would not be an issue to you unless you became a serious arena pusher and played it on many builds for a long time. When your arena pushes are several hours long and the difficulty ramps it is important to stay focused on how you will manage the waves and your position / the current arena layout, clicking boxes and reading affixes/picking up loot simply detracts from this thought process and game flow completely.
I can guarantee you that 90% of the very good, serious arena pushers donât even bother with clicking the boxes and picking up random things most of the time, not only because its a distraction, but its extending what is already a very long and demanding process even further for a reward that is essentially, 99% of the time, basically nothing, some scraps.
There would be no impact on the game to condense this loot into every 25 waves instead of every 5, in fact if they condensed it and buffed it to drop more (perhaps with some selection options upon reaching that 25th X milestone where you could choose some modifiers to apply to your chests to make it more interesting, players would probably try that little bit harder to reach that next milestone and get some satisfaction from what they anticipate could be some good rewards (they could scale the drop quantity and quality higher as the wave completed becomes higher) and it would be a net positive that would improve the overall enjoyment of arena without detracting from anything else.
My point is that arena, similar to underplayed skills and passives, has for a long time been neglected for I donât know what reason, that it isnât âimportantâ or âthe focus of the gameâ, which does not make sense to me. Either put things in the game that are good, or just remove them if you donât want to maintain and improve them. Because otherwise you end up with things in the game that people think suck, and then that adjust their opinion of the overall game toward things sucking.
People donât enjoy arena because it hasnât been improved in 5 years, simply maintained with some new layouts. There are many novel ideas or adjustments or features that could be added to arena to make it a more enjoyable experience, and if some thought and effort were put into it, I am sure many with the opinion that arena is boring could have their opinion of it changed for the better.
I believe we need more discussion on these topics, and more perhaps occasional âengagementâ from the devs on their stance and ideas/thoughts going forward on these things. The general notion that balancing the game with the top end in mind is going to detract from the rest of the game and is catering only for the elite/diehard/hardcore at the cost of everyone else is simply completely false. If anything, if the top end of the game were good, if the best builds that pushed past the upper thresholds of arena/speedleveling/high corruption were deverse, varied builds that were fun, had high skill caps and build customization/variations and room for player expression, we would see the rest of the game follow suit in time as the general crowd always has and always will look toward streamers, build guides/videos and the top players of X class on the ladder (usually the same class they themselves are playing) for inspiration toward crafting their own builds.
Just like a skill balance / passive balance shakeup approach with an emphasis and priority on making small ADJUSTMENTS to all the least played skills / skill trees, least allocated passives and least played ascendencies would result, in the long term, more build diversity, more options, and eventually more player engagement and enjoyment as players find that they can âtheorycraftâ and create more fun things.
But we are not seeing such developments or trajactory in patch notes, development posts or announcements. We are seeing more of the same, which has not worked for the several past years since release. Arguably it has never worked, and we have gone from successive season to season while losing 50% of our entire playerbase each time, despite the gap between seasons being almost/over a year in some cases.
I canât be the only one that thinks something needs to change or what is being done is not working, yet I feel like I am the only one who does because I feel like I am the only one who is speaking so passionately about such things.
Its not because i hate things or Iâm angry, but because Iâm disappointed and I have nothing to enjoy here, because everything I want to pursue is either neglected or gutted or deemed âunimportantâ. I wonât end up staying and bickering on deaf ears, I will simply move on like I have for the recent past time since 1.0 (the game had its glory days in EA imo, during the time arena tournaments were plentiful and active) and simply play other games which offer the things I am seeking.
Last Epoch Arena Ladder: A Casual Playerâs Thoughts : r/LastEpoch
I am not the only person who comes and goes and has these feelings. Hereâs an example I saw today. That person expressed interest the same things as myself, Arena and competition, the mode that has been neglected for so long, and sadly we likely wonât see players like him come back again once they have experienced an anticlimatic and unsatisfying competitive platform which was empty and devoid of competition.
And that is a shame and another source of lost player retention. If that reddit post isnât concrete proof of an example of what I am talking about, I donât know what else to give you guys. A newish player with 150 hours expressed interest in that area of the game and competition, a few players told him that section of the game was boring (kinda true in its current implementation) and others commented how the rank 1 guy was using a bugged item so there was no point in bothering to try and compete. Another poster said there was nothing in arena to incentivize people to play it; also somewhat true. Then that player probably left and did not return again.
And so we have once again a barren arena landscape with no compeition because everyone left, because it was boring, because there was no incentive to compete, because the best builds were abusing some bug and no point to try compete, because arena is a neglected afterthought that isnât getting any love or development, whatever.
Ultimately its just a shame and disappointing.
Honestly, this is the biggest reason why people donât enjoy arena. Not the rewards (or lack thereof) every 5 levels, not the lack of aspirational gear or anything like that. Itâs because if you want to push arena, you have to do a several hours long run and most players hate that.
The arena keys of memory only give you half your levels, so as you push youâll eventually have to do hundreds of ârepeatâ waves over and over again just to get to where you were before.
If arena had a more incremental way to climb where you could just do 30min runs to improve your previous spot, then many more people would enjoy it.
Personally, Iâd be fine with Arena only dropping stuff at the end, like PoE1/2 do at breach boss runs. You keep getting loot âin the backgroundâ and when you decide itâs enough (or you die in softcore), you get the stuff you earned in all those waves. Or even in a special reward chest next to yours when you leave, which you can pop open at any time.