I understand gamers love to complain and hyperbole gets clicks, but what is up with everyone saying the campaign is a snoozefest?
What game are these people playing? Even on my tanky “I don’t want to die” sentinel if I look over to my second-monitor content for a split second sometimes I go from 100-0 in a second, maybe 2? And potions drop like candy sure, but you still run out of them on Exiled Mages or the bosses from rituals, or hell even a boss or rare. Sure you can chug four potions and stand in the fire a little bit…but unless your defenses are maxxed early game I just don’t see it?
Is this just gaming discourse doing what it does? Is it not 1 death and you lose a dungeon like PoE2 (the new hotness) so everyone is comparing it to that? Also, what’s wrong with having a more laid back game? Does everything need to punish? Isn’t the hunt to perfect your build enough? And what’s wrong with a game that is good for introducing beginners to the formula? If you think PoE1 is the perfect ARPG after 10 years of QoL (that the devs don’t even like themselves, looking at how much has been taken out of their second game) then just go play that? If anything the devs have already cow-towed to people plenty with the whole MULTIPLAYER addition…which works great in my experience…so good on them, small team and all.
I guess I’m just easy to please. I am appreciative of what we have, not with “what might be.” Being so focused on some future version of the product is weird to me. We have a game to play. Is it perfect, nope, but no game is. I think the game is a damn fine achievement for a crew of this size. They are obviously responding to feedback and are working to improve the game. What more do you want?
God if I believed everything on these forums this game would be barely functional with no fun gameplay loop at all. Damn.
Maybe I’m just spoiled. I come from Grim Dawn (which is a damn fine game in its own right) and from the perspective of a GD player, LE has so many QoL features. The fidelity is sky high comparatively. The build paths and diversity is great in it’s own way, without going to such complexity overkill that I can (maybe) get a new player into it. Doesn’t that have any value?
Both Exiled Mages and - albeit less so - Nemesis have a highly mechanical style. You can fully avoid ever getting hit by anything outside of nearly non-damage skills from them. It’s rare that a skill surprises you after killing 10-15 of those.
Bosses beyond the Act 1 boss - and partially still Act 2 end-boss - are extremely easily outscaled even without knowing what the heck you’re doing, it depends entirely on what class and skills you pick, to a ridiculous degree.
I’m not any sort of ‘god-tier’ gamer or even remotely such a thing. I’m mediocre at best, one which struggles with fights like Aberroth (albeit that’s a dumb fight throwing some really frustrating combos at you) and many many bosses in other H&S games.
Compared to PoE 1 you have a vastly easier time simply ‘out-scaling’ the content without even putting effort in. The bosses are a lot simpler designed then in PoE 2 and they act slower and with much more tells then in Torchlight Infinite.
From the beginning of Act 3 to the end fo Act 8 you shouldn’t die a single time… outside of the wonky damage variance happening which can cause you to get crit for 400 damage or 3500 damage from the same enemy. So a portion of luck plays a role definitely and a single missstep does punish you at times.
Those types of punishment aren’t ‘difficulty’ though but simply awful design. A random number being magnitudes higher then the baseline once is just bad luck and has nothing to do with personal skill or the equipment you have, it’s just RNG… and loosing through RNG (if ‘on the nose’ like that) is not fun.
PoE 2 is too punishing for what they provide at times.
LE is the opposite. You have no punishment at all unless you play HC. Only the campaign of PoE 1 does worse with bosses by not even resetting their health, letting you wittle them down by throwing your corpse at them.
Nothing, it just wasn’t designed this way initially, hence the expected pushback.
Does it? If so then why does Lagon exist in the way he does?
Really nice ‘easing in’ to provide nothing challenging beforehand and very very suddenly ramping it to a top-tier mechanical fight out of the blue. One which is actually the hardest mechanical fight out of all end-game bosses even besides Aberroth.
That’s simply bad design.
You mean the core mechanic the game was promised to be built entirely around since the kickstarter?
Clearly know-towing when devs say ‘we’ll make a live-service game’ and then… well… make a live-service game.
People are generally easy to please when they ignore all circumstances surrounding them. Yes.
If not people start to ask questions.
I appreciate to be provided with what was more or less promised initially. Some adjustments are fine, some deviations over time are also expected. Switching the style of gameplay over to an entirely different core-audience in large portions of the overall gameplay-time is not ‘ok’.
It’s because the currently provided product is sub-par to all the competition on the market. LE has ‘potential’ but falls short to every… single… other H&S live-service game on the market, including D3 and D4 which both have a bigger content depth… and that’s a harsh thing to say when the most casual games of the genre provide simply ‘more’ then a game which isn’t catered towards the casual audience.
Nowadays ‘middling’ gameplay doesn’t cut it anymore, too much competition. Unless it’s a completely unique experience not really seen in that way before.
EHG is 100+ people sized by now. That’s not ‘small’ that’s actually a large company.
Them fixing the long-term standing issues and providing qualitative implementations without utterly invalidating large swaths of their existing content while doing so.
Or as EHG did with 1.0 invalidating larghe swaths while also providing 50% of their core implementation that time (The initial factions) being baseline not usable.
You’re not speaking about a Single-Player game though, you’re talking about a live-service game. The demands to make one of those work is multitudes higher then a ‘normal’ SP or MP game in comparison. Hence the demands are allowed to be fittingly higher without it becoming unreasonable.
GD is very old by now… and one of the design masterpieces of the genre with so sooooo many top-tier details causing replay value to be high and longevity to be high that LE can’t even reach what they provide with their pinky yet. EHG has the framework for the whole arm… and most of it is not properly used yet.
LE has less build variety currently then Poe 1, 2, Torchlight Infinite and your beloved Grim Dawn… which has less demands to suceed as it’s a SP game.
Given the perspective of the competition on the market? No sadly. But it can. Which is why people are so vocal about things. Because it doesn’t - yet - life up to its potential in a major way. But… it has the potential.
Damn bro with a friend like you I’d hate to see your enemy. Sorry you’re so hard stuck on being right with your opinion brother. Maybe that works for you and you actually are happy on the inside, but you definitely don’t seem it on the outside. Cheers. Thanks for sharing a wildly out of pocket opinion. I’ll be happy to enjoy what we have and not listen to your nonsense. “Doesn’t have any value” my man you are so deep down a rabbit hole you have no idea, do you? You’re speaking opinion like it is fact. You’re wilding! xD\
edit: in case it wasn’t obvious, your reply is so dripping with condescention, passive aggressiveness, and general hostility I can’t really be bothered to intereact with it. I’m glad you know so much about the game though. You almost told me something useful but just went for the insults. Very welcoming attitude. Thanks!
You wrote a good chunk of blatantly false information. Which is fine, but you’ll be called out for it obviously.
You now mentioned you’re rather new, so you’re actively going into a community speaking down onto everyone which has paid into a large swath of promises and made the game even possible to exist while undermining that the things which have been initially promised have value, trying to normalize that the game has distinct aspects which completely divert from what was either promised or showcased throughout years of development… and you expect people to give you a hug and welcome you?
In what world are you living?
Maybe if you’re sitting in a glass house then don’t start throwing stones first and foremost… passive aggressive… after saying that the devs cow-tow for players, that players should be happy with casual gameplay despite years of non-casual gameplay being highlighted and that the community is overly negative.
Maybe you should start thinking first and foremost about your own ways of communication before going all ‘pickachu face’ when you get in return what you dish out.
It’s a common complaint from those who play tourist with ARPGs and only want to do the campaign. From that point of view it’s a fair criticism.
I don’t care about most ARPG campaigns and just want to get to the end game activities. So I’m not looking for a challenging campaign. Which means I have little interest in games like “No Rest For The Wicked” or POE2.
I’ll just focus on this line. Sometimes I’m lazy or I want to read the news or watch something while playing. I did this on every toon and every mastery without any issues. the only times I feel the need to realy care about what I’m doing is Lagon and the snake. I say this as kind of a mid skilled player.
Everything dies to quick to do dmg
Resis and a bit of armor is enough to life through everything in the story.
Get decent HP/Ward
that’s all you need to do to spin2to win with a VK for example. Or to swipe with a primalist even Manatrike sorcs can be leveled this way.
If you feel spicy remove all gear besides belt, weapon and boots and you are still able to get through the story of the game without much issues.
There is is a very broad spectrum of player skills out there that I only grasped 2 decades into gaming. There are people with 0 talent, time that put in no effort and fail 24/7 (while they still have fun somehow) up to people who do things in game I never imagined possible that make me wonder if they cheat. Imagine a toddler in a boxing match vs Tyson.
With this in mind you get different feedback while most people deliver information and the least ammount are bragging. Sure you get “git gud!” (in whatever variation) a lot but to me that’s a fair thing to say if it comes from someone who is good ^^.
LE story is the easiest story part I played in a H&S. Even TLI is harder at certain points and that speakes volumes.
The real issue is the not existent difficulty increase of LE. We have brain dead boring mechanics and that’s why most people struggle with the squid because all of the sudden there is a oneshot mechanic. LE has a very long way to go to reach a state where you have a short tutorial while stuff is slowly getting harder. I don’t talk about increased numbers for mobs but adding some mechanics into the gamewhere you are unable to put one hand in your pants while playing and watching po… news.
A fair question.
Difficulty is of course an extremely subjective subject, everyone has their own perception.
Everything I write below is therefore highly personal.
My experience:
My very first character (no guide, just going blind as always with a first character) died on Lagon, only because I didn’t spot the red eyes thingie in time. I recreated the same build (a classic, boring spin to win paladin) and it went deathless all the way through normal monos.
Maybe I was just lucky with my build choice, but I have never known another game I could finish with zero deaths on a first self-made build experiment.
After that, I played around 10 different builds. All of them reached monos easily. I finally managed to die to Majasa for the first time around build 12, when I tried my first sorcerer (I suck at magic).
For comparison, it took me 4 characters to complete the much longer Diablo 4 campaign on HC. Grim Dawn, 4 characters as well IIRC, but that’s only counting the first round of campaign, doing all 3 difficulties deathless is really tough. PoE, probably around 7-8 characters, that was when you had to repeat the first acts three times, the bosses on the third run were quite deadly.
I will agree that Exiled Mages are tough at the very beginning, but they are the exception. I simply avoid them in chapter 1 and I am fine fighting them afterwards.
I shall leave the conclusion to Macknum:
PS: I am just trying to answer your opening question. You make some good, nicely written points in the rest of your post, but unrelated to campaign difficulty.
I don’t think players or their skills are to blame. LE does a realy terrible job increasing the difficulty and to give players the needed knowledge beforehand so they can react to unfamiliar things like:
The pace of the game is a mess and while I get it that balncing and stuff is an ongoing story I still feel like we got the least viable product in this regard. To be frank EHG does a terrible job from my point of view on this topic.
I always advocated for a smoother new player experience and introductionary “quests” or whatever to give the people the needed knowledge. There are plenty of options like the forge guard in the early stages of the game. Use another NPC there that offers you an item that increases your fire resi with an explenation that you need resis to handle specific dmg types better.
Use a time travel zone and put an enemy in that explains the good old “don’t stand in shit” and wind up to one shot mechanics.
LE has so much room to implement this stuff but is focused to put in only the much needed endgame stuff. As I said multiple times noone is helped if said stuff is built on a flawed or broken foundation.
People would have a better time with a bit more explainatory content that could be put in everywhere. The short tutorial isn’t helping anyone in the long run. If you inform people that certain things are needed to have a better time they keep it in mind.
On the topic of exiled mages… they have patterns that are so easy to dodge that these enemys are a non issue if they aren’t spawned in a bad spot. If you’ve fought tehm 2-4 times you should know what each of them is doing and dodge accordingly if you haven’t already gobbled up enough gear to simply face tank them and make them look a random mob.
I guess campaign might have some challenges if you are playing it first time, but how many time average LE player have to finish campaign? If it’s like 10 times, than 90% of the time it will be just wasting time to unlock endgame, if campaign itself doesn’t have any interesting gameplay after the first run. In other words, without challenges campaign doesn’t have replayability, which is crucial for seasonal game.
For some players it is, for example Poe 1 gameplay is literally what you are describing here and a lot of players are still enjoying it. But imho, without challenges there is no point to make it as ARPG, could just make some clicker game with complex progression, would be much easier and more resources could be focused on making progression more complex and interesting.
I played LE many years ago, from what I remember it had some endgame challenges (in particular, Arena mode. Though it did require keys to play it, which you needed to farm in maps, which were very boring back then. And difficulty increased too slow in Arena. I wonder how it will be in Season 2), but replaying campaign was long and pointless from my point of view.
Yeah, long-term the foundation needs to be rock-solid, that’s absolutely true.
I agree with EHG though to focus for 1.2 on end-game mechanics, since 1.2 is the short-term solution direly needed after the long waiting time… with 1.3 hopefully focusing majorly on balancing existing content in the earlier stages and having a mechanic as a league implementation rather then extremely animation heavy bosses as 1.1 had.
The PoE 2 campaign is a great example of how a campaign is ‘well done’.
It offers at least somewhat of a challenge even at character 5 or 10. Sure, you’ll be having a lot of an easier time… but you still need to focus on the game unless you’re a very very good player.
That’s how the complaints about ‘the campaign is boring’ get reduced to basically nothing.
Because… at Character 10 you’ve already done end-game 10 times, haven’t you? So why is that enjoyable but the campaign isn’t? You’ve spent way more time there then the campaign… so the campaign should be enticing even. But the part is that progression and at least some form of challenge needs to be existing to excite us, and the campaign of LE simply doesn’t challenge you most of the time in any way and then throws curveballs on top of that (Lagon) so you get frustrated along with being bored.
Yes, it’s the only ARPG where I am exciting about them to add new acts and make campaign longer. In other ARPGs I tried, seeing developers to adding 1 more act always hurted my soul.
To be fair, you wrote a comment on the internet & someone disagreed with it. For the vast majority of it, the campaign does have no challenge. If you’re happy with this then I’m happy for you, games should be enjoyed for what they are now as much as what they could be in the future.
You may wish to avoid the internet then. I know I skimmed his reply, but I didn’t think it was particularly hostile. Real life is full of people who don’t share our opinions & we need to be able to accept that & not be overly sensitive when they are fulsome in their disagreement with us.
I’d say middling, but yes, certainly not-small.
I think it’s a bit of both. Some players want to just chill & run around mindlessly killing mobs & getting loot (which is fine), LE does do a bad job at increasing the difficulty over the campaign, the devs have acknowledged this over the years. The latter but I’m less sure about, there’s definitely some that like to figure things out themselves & some that like to have their hand held & both viewpoints are entirely valid.
Yeah and people who want to find out stuff on their own skip everything so nothing would be lost ^^. I don’t talk about forcing people to anything but to give tutorials on basic stuff people have problems with aka having cold and lightning Resi against lagon is a good idea and to have poison resi in the last chapter you never needed before. It’s not a big deal to implement a “mind your defences you need them” tutorial so people arent dumbfounded at a certain point.
Yes, but the game has an in-game game guide that people don’t read & are supprised about when they get told. Why is it not obvious that in order to protect yourself against the god of the sea who uses water & lightning attacks that you’d need cold & lightning resists? Do you want the game to auto pause & a Mr Clippy to pop up “Hi, I see you’re fightning Lagon, do you need some assistance?”? Are people that incapable of making such basic leaps of deductive logic that fireballs need fire resistance to protect against, or snakes to poison damage? The skills are even colour coded (broadly) for the damage types they do!?!?!
Should we also tell those people that maybe they should breath through their noses instead of their mouths? And that the Earth isn’t flat, it just looks that way 'cause it’s really freaking big?
Yeah, also in general Last Epoch does a really bad job at preparing you for upcoming content.
If areas are focused on specific defenses… then please… as a dev… just put some guy with a small quest there which asks for something but also tells you ‘this area is filled with xyz’ so you can actually have a way to prepare first-time.
Yes, because it’s not immersive and direct conveying of information.
A game conveys information properly when it becomes ‘natural’ to understand it. ‘Hey, I lost my hammer in this swamp, if you’re already wandering out there… can you bring it back? Make sure to pick up something protecting you from the xyz there… oh, and mind the zyx too, I heard they’re patrolling there!’
Natural information dump, you get actively told, you have a reason to engage with it… it doesn’t feel like having a goddamn wiki open to play the game.
Mr. Clippy for example is inserting himself, that’s why everyone hated that thing. But if it is happening in a reasonable way people have no problem with it, actually holding it in high regards.
No, we should just deal with normal human psychology rather then ignoring that it exists.
That’s basically all.
We don’t need to go on a hyperbole for the topic.
It’s simply bad implementation and the existence in-game is better then outside of the game already. It’s by far not ‘there’ yet though. Besides my ‘on the nose quest design’ there also tons of natural in-game design allowing you to convey the same information. For example finding a chest with a note that mentions what the struggles of the guy were and he left it for the next guy coming through. Or making overly clear-cut presentations for the first type of mob you encounter, showcasing the respective damage type, and hence resistance type you’ll need there. Such things are all possible.
Doesn’t help. People don’t read and then complain about things they were told about. A classic example is the warning that mastery choice is (was) permanent. It was clearly stated there, but no one read it and were then surprised when they couldn’t change it.
Could be actually fun if before hard boss game would tell “Make a few deep breathes through your nose. Remember, nothing bad can actually happen to you, it’s just a game…”
It could make people nervous in the fun way.
Like skills being colour coded based on the damage they do?
But that already happens in the game but “people” don’t see it or understand it.
Pot/kettle/black.
Exactly. The game already has plenty of warnings, this stuff is obvious & it is already in the game.
If a quest directs me to a swamp area, I’m probably not going to be surprised if there’s mobs that do poison/cold damage or are undead or animals. If there were animals that spewed blue stuff & that did fire or void damage then yes, I’d be confused, but the game is reasonably consistent in this regard at the moment. If a mob does fire damage, I think it tends to have a red-ish look to it? Or it’s attacks are red-ish?
There already is one, though it’ll only tell you what the last tick of damage that killed you was, not what took you down from 100% to 1% in one shot & then you got tickled & died…
It’s generally the same as the colours on the resists on the character screen. Purple = void, red-ish = fire, etc.
