I think Path of Exile would disagree with you though. These are grinding games by nature.
Youâll need to be a bit more specific. Besides Iâve said multiple times I think PoE has the balance of time/reward pretty good. I donât have a problem with grinding with a good system, the discussion is about the balance of time/reward in LE currently.
I really want you to address this statement. For one, I think itâs completely unachievable for almost every build - if not flat out impossible - even without empowered monoliths. But once you add on all the stacks of empowered affixes and get above 20 echoes there is just no way you can run them this fast.
Also I want to know what builds you do this on. Have you done this consistently across classes and builds? Can you safely accumulate half the instance of mobs and fight a boss with 100%+ damage/health and other buffs?
Following is a video of 27 echo mobs and situations like this are a regular occurrence for me. So why donât I just run past them? Well I have to fight a boss at the end, who has many buffs, and this instance is full of these guys, Wisps, Sirens and Lightning Elementals. Death is a real danger at all times and skipping increases that risk. So the safest option is to kill the majority of the mobs on the way to the objective (except for the first few echoes). This means each one takes about 5 mins, often longer at higher echoes. There is a very high chance of death at least once (usually more) per empowered monolith run as this build (I canât speak for others yet), punishingly decreasing 4 echoes and adding even more time to the tedious process.
You know what is WORSE THAN MONOLITH!?
ARENA, it takes MUCH longer to do and only has HALF the reward of a single monolith INSTANCE.
Arena needs to be buffed to 10 or even 20 times its current reward for it to even be worthwhile for builds that are built SPECIFICALLY to handle Arena.
Arena isnât supposed to be for gearing though. It is the competition to get on the ladder.
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I think you bring up a lot of interesting points. I agree with many, but I also think that, given what the roadmap looks like, theyâll be addressed in future updates . But I did want to address one point in particular:
This is something that we disagree on. For me, the fact that a T7 can drop that might completely change my gearing strategy is a huge plus. A single affix that now caps a resist and opens up an entire blessing slot is a huge upside to the current system. Yes, I would have to go back and refarm that timeline to get the buff, but now Iâm incentivized to do so in a way that makes it clear to me that my build will be better for it.
I think @Jerle hit the nail on the head. What we really need is more things to do/goals to progress towards while weâre working on our blessings, so that it doesnât feel like such a linear progression system.
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You misunderstand me. I think itâs an awesome thing that a drop will affect gearing so much, thatâs the whole point of items. But the result of having to go and farm the blessing again makes it feel like a chore rather than a reward for a good drop. And itâs just a singular example, that could happen many times, with each improved item resulting in potential hours of blessing farming.
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Started to roll my eyes when I saw it was a 2 week old player making a post like this, but I was pleasantly surprised when I read through the entire thing and in general agreed with most of his points.
Blessing farming for me this patch has been incredibly fustrating. They donât want people âzoomingâ through monoliths, but currently on my fastest build, even while zooming it takes over an hour to complete 25+ monoliths just for a 25% shot at a blessing I am after.
While I usually main a few characters in a patch, I have struggled to gear / complete a single one despite maining it for hundreds of monoliths this patch, and I am starting feel the burn out and fustration creeping on. Iâve even tried changing my methods; one day I spent almost 15 hours streaming, grinding the same monolith boss, trying to âforceâ it, yet after an entire day wasted of boring grinding, I did not get the blessing I was seeking, which left a sour taste in my mouth, as I had essentially âwastedâ an entire day and made 0 progression on my character, essentially completely wasting my time for a whole day.
Alternatively, I tried to mitigate this part of the game by only taking one shot at a blessing per day before moving onto other parts of my character, to maintain my sanity. While it sounds good on paper, in reality, my character sheet just ends up all over the place with imbalanced resistances and mediocre gear I have to keep re-crafting and reshuffle everytime I regularly change a blessing for a better one.
In the end I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place and am trying to find the reasons to not lose interest when the first thing I think about doing when logging on, is the monolith blessing farm âattemptâ of rushing 35monoliths which in reality has now become a chore that I absolutely dread.
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Well Iâm happy that you agree. I may be new to Last Epoch but Iâve been playing games for a long time. I can understand and recognise design systems quite easily.
After making this post I actually wanted to give it another shot and really forced myself to farm a blessing, but I had pretty much the exact same experience as you just described. I spent many hours, no blessing, tried to craft some new gear from a bunch of drops but it all just fractured at the same or less power. After about 6 hours I didnât feel like I had gained anything at all to improve my character and logged out.
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maybe they should think about something really importantâŚ
not everybody can play 10 hours a day, if they keep it like this people will lose interest really quickly. they will be stuck with their âhardcoreâ player base and drown like a rock.
i bought the game last week. i have 2 chars, 1 is 74 and one is 94. i unlocked the empowered monos and got the item for my build that i needed. for me the build is pretty much done and at this point i just dont want to play arena.
normaly at this point i would start a new char. but if i think about that it feels like a chore more than fun and i already dont wanne do that. there are so many builds i would like to try out, but man i cant get myself to do it.
but im sure some âhardcore no-life-râ will tell me that im wrong and thats okâŚ
just think about the avarage joe with a job and kids, he can maybe play 2-3 hours days a day at max⌠it would take him a fucking week for one stupid blessing.
It depends what you mean by an average person, 2-3 hours should be enough to get 1 shot at a blessing, if not 2 (but certainly not the 12-36 that @Macknum was apparently getting). Even if you donât get to the boss & you donât have much time to play, you are at least making progress towards it. If itâs taking you 14-21 hours of running monoliths to get to 1 boss, thatâs an entirely different problem & Iâm not sure that âfarming blessingsâ is an activity aimed at that player.
how many weeks do you think that will take to âcompleteâ your char?
thats where you will lose many people⌠maybe im wrong.
What do you mean by complete though? Having run through the normal monoliths (normally when I start getting bored & looking to another character)? Having completed all the empowered monoliths? Having farmed the BIS blessings? Having farmed the BIS blessings with max rolls? Just hitting 100 & blessings be damned?
i mean the point where you think the char is finished and cant get much better.
like i sayed there will be people defending the weeks long grind and thats ok but i dont think the majority has fun with this. hunting for hours for a better roll that i might dont even see for days let alone a âgoodâ roll and then i have to repeat that 10 timesâŚ
maybe you have fun with that can deactivate your brain and grind like a zombieâŚ
and i will promise you there will be tons of people complaining about that.
i know im not elite enough because i dont play 48h a day.
Thats a key point , that feeling of time wasted because you feel your character didnât improve. In some games if you canât get an item you get currency , or you get levels , or you advance your maps , or you do a higher grift , or get some paragon levels, you have weeklys , you have dailies , etc. and those small improvements keep you coming back.
That feeling of improving , whether you played 30 min or 10 hours is almost an art not all games can develop, lets hope LE can find that when we have more choices , we cannot forget its still EA.
I think, that is a valid point.
I personally never had the feeling of âno progressâ in LE, probably mainly because i play solo and gold and crafting shards always feel like some progress.
Also exp is progress and grinding up to lvl 100 actually takes a looong time (which i like).
But i can see this issue you mentioned becomming less prominent, when we get an economy (at least for people that actually play in a trade-enable mode)
Because there will almsot certainly be some form of currency, be it gold or something else that you always collect.
BTW I stand corrected for everyone who wantâs to laugh at my behalf up there :D. Sorry for the mess.
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This isnât something thatâs really supposed to happen in an ARPG like this. The idea with randomized loot and low drop rate items is there will always be something to chase for in order to get a little better if you want to but at the same time, the content doesnât require it. If youâre farming empowered monos, then youâre already doing the most challenging content in the game. Thereâs no need to try and get perfect rolled empowered blessings.
What weeks long grind? I have over 2k hours into the game and Iâve never spent weeks on a character. At some point, it very well may be the case that to do the very hardest content in the game it takes several weeks, but thatâs also the nature of a game that is going to be seasonal and also provide players with a lot of depth. The key for LE will be finding the balance where spending weeks on a character is rewarding, but the content is also still rewarding for players who want to play more casually. If youâre a min/maxer, then yes youâll have to devote many hours into your character in order to really get your gear to a very high level (but youâll still never truly min/max). If youâre a casual player, you may just have to decide that min/maxing isnât a realistically achievable goal, but just like now, there will hopefully be content that is still accessible even if you can only play an hour or two a day.
im sorry but that happens all the time to me because im not the guy who grinds for one item for weeks
i dont think the drop rates for high end uniques will stay the same when the game comes out. if so that would be really funny. because after a few days( ibought the game alst week) i have multiple bank slots full of ârareâ uniques.
i mean yea i get it there are people living infront of their pcs⌠but thats not the reallity for everybody⌠there are people with normal lifes you know?
The amount of min/maxing will depend also on dps calculation tools. Donât know if something like PoB will ever exist for LE , but with the actual tooltip dps is hard sometimes to be sure if a build is âoptimizedâ