Welcome to arpgs. I don’t disagree with you too much, but.
I am confused. Did you play or experience it by yourself or you just repeating what somebody else said/thinks?
Yes in ARPG’s the major part of your gear/character progression is very fast, but it slows down towards the end.
BUT
These last few % are what keeps you playing the game for an extended period of time, because you want to refine your character, but also it is not needed for any major progression, because, when you reached that point you should be able to do all content already.
Also one thing, that I noted, especially In LE is, that people always shoot for the stars and think that only BiS gear is worth chasing. Only the perfect T7 exalted affix legendary slam is “good”.
While in reality it is incredibly easy to get way easier and faster upgrades, that might not be BiS, but are still progress.
You really should experience this yourself and not just repeat what other people have said.
Then you clearly havn’t followed the game enough and don’t know EHG.
They were pretty transparent and just because it takes more time doesn’t mean they are done. Quiet the opposite. Because they really want to turn all the critique into something to improve the game.
There is a reason why this takes longer and they communicated it.
They are cooking
Will it be enough to redeem all the other shortcomings in just one patch? Maybe not but I am still very positive about the game, because regardless of a few hiccups along the way, EHG always underpromised and overdelivered back in the day.
Only the few latest major patches were a little bit of a bummer. I still think these were growing pains from their initial success.
Give the game some more time and it will be up there.
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Morning. I did experience it all myself, but I’ve already posted this stuff months ago. I love me some ARPGs, I just don’t like how LE does the end game. I like the more traditional loot grind of the item just being very very rare, but when it drops, it’s yours. LEs method of not only finding an item, but one with enough slots, then not only purples, but purples with the right T7 affixes, then Julra dungeon, then slams, and that’s only a chance of success is just too much RNG.
After failing the slams a few times I was done. Getting the item you want to have useless affixes come over is pretty disheartening. We’ll see what develops. The gameplay is silky smooth and I enjoy it. There’s just nothing left for me at the moment.
Which is 100% true and I fully agree so far.
The difference is the how it’s done to have that happen.
D2 for example is a great game as anything can drop anytime during end-game, and you gradually work yourself up with value of the runes as well.
Torchlight Infinite is the same, you gradually work yourself up after you got the baseline item, to optimize it then.
PoE, you also gradually work yourself up, and collect currency worst case to make it happen to optimize your build.
But now comes LE along where that’s mostly non-existent. Because for the aforementioned thing to happen there need to be 2 situations available:
1.) You need enough overall drops to happen to have supply available
2.) You need low enough currency/crafting items to drop to make them valuable enough.
That’s simply not the case in LE currently as we have a starvation for base drops. And it makes also sense as to why, which is what I’m talking about repeatedly: T5 to T6 is massive… T6 to T7 is ridiculously high in power progression. So obviously those need to be more scrace, which leads to a scarcity issue and it makes it feel like 95% of players in end-game need absolutely nothing besides nearly top-tier items. Nothing else seems to have value. No base uniques with 2-3 legendary potential, the majority of T6 affixes on items is worthless (5k or less), T7 in comparison costs for the base item often millions upon millions.
That’s a problem, the cliff between one step and the next is simply too severe, it’s like having a baseline build in poE and suddenly going for a chase item like a Headhunter or similar. You need to put excessive effort into the game (or have massive luck) to make it happen, and before that? Barely yellow-map gear it feels like.
If it is 100% this way or not… it feels like it at least.
There is another way how LE might not die. If April patch will not cause large player’s comeback, EGH could just sell the game to another studio. I don’t know if EGH will able to make LE popular, but I am sure as hell that there are some studios who could, because it is a great base and just needs more practical approach in developing it, with less of perfectionism.
If EHG sells their studio then all the promises from EHG go overboard as well. Given that we could expect monetization to take another direction, which is a prime way to alienate the existing playerbase and also has proven to - sadly - hold true in a majority of times.
Also given that their product is on a massively competitive market the premises to sell their studio is low, they wouldn’t be able to be acquired with a decent price-range, as well as the game itself having been developed because of a personal urge from the lead devs, hence it’s also unlikely to happen there.
The more likely route is that the game will simply die and be shut off from online mode should it fail to garner a reasonable amount of recurring playerbase, which would also likely lead to layoffs best-case (to have the costs managed properly) and a reduction on the release pacing, which is already low at the current time, too low to be sustainable in the environment they’re positioned in… for now.
One thing holds true though, it’s an important update, failing would need them to rethink their whole strategy or go under. Worst-case scenario is a full-stop of development and only true offline being available. Best-case would be a reduction towards small-scale MP (like Grim Dawn has) and a focus on SP.
But selling by low price is still much better than just shutting it down.
Regarding to changes in monetization — sure, it depends on the buyer, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. After all, they will compete with free-to-play games like PoE 1/2, they can’t afford too bad monetization.
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The ‘shutting down’ doesn’t relate to the company in that case, it relates to the servers.
Last Epoch is a live-service game. It’s not a classic Multiplayer Game and not a classic Single Player Game.
Closing the servers means the death of the product as it’s provided, the other things are a bonus, but the plan was always a live-service game, which is what people bought into majorly.
Can it be good Single Player? Absolutely!
Is it ‘substantial enough’ for it? No, sadly not.
Nowadays the expectation of a great ARPG has been set by the live-service games and Grim Dawn. That means substantial amounts of content, with lots of possible time investment solely to reach all the available content. Aberroth simply is not at that stage. 100+ hours to get to those places for a player which has played ARPGs but is no veteran is the norm, in LE it’s around 60-70 hours still.
Oh, I see. Sure, shutting down servers is totally viable option, most people are playing solo anyway. But if without shutting them down EHG can’t really develop the game, shutting servers will not boost their ability to do it, so future will not become bright because of that. It just will allow them to stall it a bit longer without much development. While selling looks more interesting for both players and EHG. For players — because we would have a chance to get a great game, with most potential of LE be released. For EHG — because if they will got to the point when they can’t spend money on servers anymore, it means it doesn’t go well and probably there is no reason to spend more money instead of getting some.
As long as there are some shares left to sell to tencent without losing the majority everything is fine 
.
Sure I think April will be a “Make or breake” kind of phase for LE but I’m sure even if they completely mess up they develop the game further untill they completely run dry. I think at least there will be a offline version of the game before EHG is shut down so I have 0 problems if LE is suprising everyone and becomes the best ARPG over night or a complete trainwreck.
In that regard I trust the devs 
.
Just here to see what is going on and reading some threads. I quit this game after awful Julra rolls as CoF was hard to even get the proper items. I have no desire to play this game ever again if the increased exp requirement for 98, 99 and 100 are staying in the game. I haven’t read everything if this awful change will be reverted, so there is that.
Well then have a good time even if we don’t see each other in LE ever ^^.
All good. There are other games to play. This game is uninstalled from my computer and my Steam Deck. Next step is to just request to have it removed from my Steam library entirely and throw it in the bin with Wolcen.
Comparing a messy but fundamentally solid game with a fundamentally broken game like Wolcen is fairly nonsensical though.
The exp-increase for the higher levels is nigh meaningless for the power level of a character, and with further upcoming content in April and beyond we’ll see the progression curve standardizing again.
Albeit I’ll say that the exp increase was prematurely done, unfitting for the current content and state of the game. EHG needs to still learn when to do their changes.
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As I stated in another post: To some people it’s very meaningfull to reach maxlevel in a reasonable time frame. Let him throw LE away if he’s that angry about it. To each their own .
If you really want to see a dead game, just look at the Homeworld 3 disaster.
Devs abandoned the game, players abandoned the game, no longer support and barely anybody playing it anymore after less than a year.
Last Epoch has seen better times but is far away from dead.
It is more typical for ARPGs that people more play it for a while, then quit, then play again when there is new season or so.
That is especially true for last epoch. If you don’t believe, just take a look at the steam charts.
The highest peak was around 258.000 in 02/2024. However, overall, the game rarely even reached the 10.000 players per month. Before March 2023, it never even reached this number. Of course, this is heavily influenced by Online mode and seasons.
And in the last 30 days, the average was around 2,8k. Not good, not bad either, but actually quite good when we think about the release of PoE 2 a while ago and still no new Cycle for LE.
BTW: I also played PoE 2 for a while and am fed up with it.
LE is still far better in gameplay and also mechanics as PoE 2.
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