What do you think about the direction and priorities the game is taking?

General
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I got this idea watching some parts and reading the comments about latest dev chat resume posted by Action rpg in YouTube.

This particular comment put me reflecting about lot of perspectives.

Blockquote
@Seaturtle:
I’m all about a game being released when it’s ready. But man LE has been redesigning parts of the game that really don’t matter to get the game to release. The priority should be the classes remaining and massive endgame activities. That’s all that matters. The graphical ovehauls, new ailments, that stuff can wait.
Take the entire list of things people hate that’s missing in D4. A lot of them are solved in LE. Solve the rest, then release the game.

And this is my first thoughts about it:
While I can not disagree with most of his points…
I try to put myself in the Devs perspective, they need a product that has appeal to a more wider audience, they need to polish some areas the more experienced player doesn’t care much, maybe for attraction of newcomers, and not only being attractive, but also give some good first impressions and creat a “word of mouth” with the community

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I think there is nothing wrong with expanding the scope of the game and reiterating contiously on stuff.

There was a big shift towards the end of the 0.7.X patch cycle into the 0.8.X cycle in terms if revisting old things and bringing them up to par.

And while they could have released the game with that early 0.7.X standard probably like 2 years ago, I don’t think that would be the best for the game.
While LE has a lot of strong points, first impression and visuals/animations etc do matter a lot for people ,especially to attract people initially.

And the 1.0 release is a HUGE marketing thing.
Even when they release the game faster and then reiterate after that, the initial 1.0 surge of players and publicity cannot really be reproduced at all.
So waiting for that, even though that means pushing the game back more and more, while contiously improving it is fine by me.

At the end of the day, what I want from LE, is a game that I can play and enjoy for 10+ years to come and to achieve that, pushing the release back is fine.

I am also eagerly waiting for the missing masteries (especially Warlock) and while it can be frustrating to get them pushed back because of other stuff, I can only imagine how great they will be, once they come into the game.

I think the release of the Rogue was a very good example of this. Rogue mechanically and visually exceeded every other class and skill in the game. (And that is coming from me, who hates Rogue classes). VFX, animations, SFX, new tech in some of the new skill, everything worked out so well.

As a dev you kinda can’t make it right either way.
Either people complain “game’s not finished, should have waited longer” or “release when?!?!”

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This is an underrated sentiment that will get all of the people who sit on one side of this or not, coming out of the wood work to say, “Well, yeah, BUT…”

No buts. It’s just a true statement. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. Some old codger said that centuries ago.

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@Seaturtle: The priority should be the classes remaining and massive endgame activities. That’s all that matters. The graphical overhauls, new ailments, that stuff can wait.

The new ailments may be a side effect of the final mastery designs.

The early chapters did look very dated and who are we to say improving them before launch shouldn’t be a priority? Those changes aren’t mainly being made for people enjoying the game already, they are for people who will be on the fence about buying a game that doesn’t look great. As well as for reviewers and content creators.

The people revamping the art aren’t the people that would be designing new end game content. Those are separate skillsets.

As far as if they should release the game with the existing endgame content, they may not have a choice.

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Totally fine with what the devs are doing. At 1.0, the campaign needs to look pretty and be some level of fun, there needs to be great build variety (I think we have this know), all masteries need to be impactful, and there needs to be a robust end game.

They cant do all that at 1 time, no matter what incremental patches we get, people will cry because it wasnt focused on what they wanted. I did prefer more frequent patches, but at the end of the day this is how it needs to be to optimize dev time, thats fine too.

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The release this year was a bad descission and I would not change with a EHG dev because they most likely collect a lot of overtime to get stuff done. A lot of stuff was already cut out from the last roadmap and right now I can’t even tell what we get in the future after release or if we get anything else but the missing masteries before launch and when the missing story parts will be delivered. I just can’t bring myself to reread everything and look for it because I’m still bored with LE and hope for some more fun and entertaining options that suite my taste :smiley: .

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Yeah, I think this is the main thing. There are people who don’t like mp and (rightly) complained about 0.9 because they got very little out of the 1 year of no patches (compared to everyone else being able to play with their friends).

Yeah, I agree, though we have no idea how things are going.

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Im one of them! I dont have a single person on my friends list (insert pity here) and have no clue how mp feels. Despite that, I had no bad feelings towards the devs because of it.

The only time I was a bit pissed was the initial implementation of trade which equated to more or less “we couldnt figure it out, fuck it, here you go instanced trading.” EHG then came out with the absolute banger of how to properly go about this, lets just hope it is as good in game as it is on paper.

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Im def in the camp of “campaign is pointless to revamp now”

To me, this idea of “well they are making the campaign pretty for new players and people reviewing the game”

Those people dont matter in the long run at all, its been proven time and time again in recent years that a “bad” launch does not really mean much. Especially in the indie scene.

Make a good game, and good reviews/reviews will follow. Trying to appease people who have no intention of sticking around post 1.0 is a waste of time and just hurts the dedicated players in the now.

pre 1.0 does not mean nothing, the indie sphere runs off pre 1.0, peglin is a good game and is not launched yet, and is still early access. if it was a bad game, it does not matter if it was EA, EA is not really an excuse for a poor product anymore.

Its gonna be a shame when people who have actual desire to sink their teeth in play 1.0 and get to end game and are met with the lukewarm end game the game currently has.

Especially when we consider the devs intent for a live service model. Live service means 1.0 is a meaningless number, live service games need to be fun at every point of service. Thats sorta how they work.

I dont really hate the direction persay but more so the pacing and priorities of what they are doing. The final masteries are gonna launch in 1.0, and probably be rogue level or better in quality and shaman is gonna be sitting there like a sore thumb gross and weak and uncohesive. To me that is a lack of polish. One of the key aspects of this genre is the wide class selection, you are gonna sour so many players experience when they boot up the game for the first time when its “officially” launched and they pick an out dated class and go “why do all these other classes have cool animations and steller synergies and mine feels so bad?”

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I agree with your sentiments, but the sad truth is most players are filthy casuals. Look at what most arpg mainers see as a flop, but in reality was a complete success financially, D4. Having pretty graphics and a fun campaign is what attracts the most people, but you are right, they dont stick around. Its hard to blame EHG for spending so many resources on the leveling experience as its their money and future on the line.

We have already seen there are a lot of people new to the genre thanks to D4, and also thanks to D4, they are looking for something with substance. We all know the depth is here and with some time to cook, LE will be great.

EHG already has us because of the core mechanics. LE needs to put on some make up now, that is what will get the casuals here. I dont like it, but its business. Lets just hope EHG is putting the same amount of love into the remaining classes, as well as doing a pass on the current classes.

LE has a huge opportunity in the fact D4 sold millions and a lot of new people got a taste of what could be, now its on EHG to deliver.

I hope that ramble made sense to somebody :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

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It made perfect sense to me.

We also have to think there are so many many options these days , lot of genres, lot of games, lot of plataforms. Many gamers could give up even before installing the game or playing the frist acts, when they dont see some appeal to the game, something “pretty”. Right now LE has a great core mechanic, it has substance, that many of us know. But many others still dont know what to expect from the game.

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For all the complaining about stuff that bothers me in the game, I will agree to this… I fired up a couple new characters in the past few days, and the campaign has a much better flow now. It used to be SOOO damn frustrating, waiting to complete Lotus Halls/Temple of Eterra(?) to pick your Mastery – usually sitting on 5+ passive points you were saving for something other than the base class tree.

That, and many builds struggled without one or 2 of their key skills that they received after Mastery selection. Yes, I know there are “leveling builds”, but I hate that concept – here, level yet again with the boring-ass leveling build, then swap everything when you get to X level. I prefer to attempt to spec into my final build as soon as feasibly possible, even if it makes the leveling process a little more challenging.

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Which is what you have to do if your desired main skills are in the mastery rather than the base tree. If your desired skill is a mastery skill (Detonating Arrow, Meteor, etc) then you can grab a lift to the end of time to get it at lvl 1 or so, or if it’s in the base class you’ve got less time to wait, but if it’s in the upper half of a mastery (Judgement) then you’ve got a wait ahead of you no matter what.

And from a business point of view its not a hard choice given those filthy casuals won’t be sucking up much in the way of mp-related costs.

Given how much better the Rogue was compared to the previous classes in 0.8, I have no doubt they are.

And that’s fine, everyone will have different desires and priorities.

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Well yeah, I get that. What I mean is those builds specifically meant to bring a mastery to 50-70, so then you can swap everything over. I know that I can’t use skills until I get them – which is why I like the new place they put Mastery selection, because it lessens that time of having to rely on a leveling build/skill, for the most part. But, outside of a few outliers, most builds should be roughly doable WAY before level 50 or 70…in some fashion or another. Maybe not 100% identical to how they play when you have all the gear/skills, but not quite playing Maelstrom Primalist for the umpteenth time to level 70, then switching to Totem Spriggan or Lightning Bear…or whatever.

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They pay for the game the same as anyone else. And you can’t lump late adopters as being exactly the same anyway.

Design wise they are focused on factions and the final masteries. Possibly that emergent content in monoliths as well. Do you want resources taken away from those now to focus elsewhere?

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Yeah maybe we’ve played and tested a build that wasn’t the release candidate build, that’s my only hope. If the latest build we have is the actual build we most likely get a realy bad release and a missed first impression… i would hate this for last Epoch.

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So you don’t think they’re going to change anything? You know the current build isn’t going to be the 1.0 build…

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What change will there be? We get the missing masteries and optimisations and maybe they are lucky and get the balance in line… well at least a bit. What else should be there? I don’t think there is enough time to add meaningfull endgame modes or some other forms of progression that makes the game intresting after level ~75.
I don’t think they have much time to come up with something new and what we got so far isn’t enough… well at least from my point of view. I’m sure there are a lot of people who think differently but if LE goes live with what we got so far in terms of playble content thegame will not make a lasting impression.
The timing can’t be better with D4 doing so bad but I think the bad state of D4 makes people even more sceptical about ARPG Hack and Slash type of games. Then again my inner experienced optimist is a bit to pessimistic… maybe.

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Feel like I posted on an alt account with that response, I 100% agree. PoE had the opportunity of a lifetime to gain MILLIONS of new players, but the response to the new league has been lackluster as there are literally 0 balance changes beyond 2 ascendancies getting gutted. People will read the distraught posts from regulars on reddit, then may decide to skip. Its crazy to me GGG didnt go all out this league, just for once, making the most people happy and capitalizing off it.

Im sure this league with see highest concurrent users, but it could have been monumental imo.

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Birds of a feather flock togheter. I’m pretty sure PoE already finished the theme of the next season and is working on the season after this one. I don’t think there is any dev out there who comes up with something completely new in a 3 month cycle.

I don’t think dev studios can’t react thatfast even if the want to IF coding and developing is such a hard thing as coders and developers say :smiley: .

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