D3 vanilla had yellow items, which were much better than legendaries, problem was their drop rate. iLvl 63 of yellow item could be godlike and best what game had to offer at that time.
I can understand your line of thought. I do not agree, but I understand.
A few things I want to point out. I do not think most gamers are against death penalty. How do I come to this conclusion? Pretty much every action game (with exception of lego games) has death penalties. Most gamers like some form of challenge, without overly challenging, which is a balancing act & depends what type of gametrs you are tailored to.
Death penalty is neccessary IMO at every level because it is important for gamers to improve & play better, & prevent glass cannons at any levels. If I am level 96 (or 100)& said I stop caring about leveling. WIthout meaningful a death penalty, what is stopping me from converting my toon to a full glass cannon?
The last points, what other penealty are more impactful than xp lost as death penalty?
Other than your character dying like HC. I doubt so, but impactful not necessery means better.
If my son did badly in his math test, making him to sleep in garage for 3 days will be very impactful. But is it the best thing to do, compare to say give him more math excerise to do?
Most action games uses progression gate (say beat a boss to progress to next level)/ restart from checkpoint on death, often both. They are popular as they work. Balancing between challenging while not overly fustrating.
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It is really hard to come to an agreement on this topic, i can tell you that from literally dozens of discussions here on the LE forum alone.
This topic has been discussed numerous times.
I think the devs have insane amounts of input from the community and we have to see what they make out of it.
I am genuienly curious and we might get surprised with what they come up with.
I am totally open for trying out new things, if they work.
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I’m with Kiadaw, I’m against exp lost when you die, I think losing some echoes like now is fine. It sets you back but not all the way back.
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Setting back echoes is an atrocious system design. I cannot imagine they are supposed to replace each other.
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I’ve played PoE since February of 2013, and was part of the alpha during the period when the fourth act and associated content was being developed (item filters, jewels, etc.). I’d estimate I have about 5000 hours played in it, or so; I have 1400 hours on Steam, but much of my playtime was a) before the Steam client was released, and b) on the stand-alone client in the last few years. So that should give you some perspective on my history.
One thing that has a big impact, in the things you describe with PoE but also with whatever we see coming out of Last Epoch’s further development, is how small mechanics relate to large-scale design issues. What you look at in a game and expect to find may not be what the devs intended. When discussing how a specific mechanic works, you absolutely have to keep in mind what that mechanic was intended to do. That doesn’t always mean that the mechanic is solving that problem correctly, but there’s a difference between “I don’t like the design decision behind this mechanic” and “I like the design decision but I feel it’s being implemented poorly.” That is something I feel like you don’t really address in your posts at all.
Let’s take the penalty on death: for you, you feel like it’s wasting your time and stopping you from getting to max level sooner. But in Path of Exile, Chris wanted things that way. It’s not like WoW or insert 90% of other games here where you’re expected to hit max level, and your build must be planned around that, and you’re possibly locked out of some content because of it. Getting to level 100 was intended to be nearly impossible. So if you’re having problems with it, good. You should be. Of course it’s changed over the years, as more and more people (especially streamers) no-life games and larger communities lead to more optimized play, so now it’s much more common than it used to be. The amount of experience needed to hit 100 in PoE has been increased repeatedly. Most builds should not be capable of hitting level 100 without truly immense levels of investment in time and gear. This is a mechanic that is doing what it is intended to do, and doing it well. You may not like the core design decision behind it, and that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean the mechanic is inherently flawed. What is that xp loss costing you in PoE? A few passive points, perhaps, so your build isn’t as good as it could be later. It’s not locking you out of content, it’s not affecting your item drops; really, anything beyond level 90 or so in PoE is just icing on the cake. It does not change your core gameplay experience; I think it’s the expectation of being able to hit max level that causes more of the dissatisfaction than the death mechanic itself.
A lot of your other complaints with PoE (and I’m not saying they’re invalid, some of them frustrate me as well) come from a similar place: you disagree with the core design decision, not the way the mechanic is implemented. The current trade system in PoE is crap, I will certainly acknowledge that. But back in the day, it worked. Chris wanted people to interact with each other in trading, and that actually happened. Trade chat was something you actually looked through and read; a number of good friends now were people that I did actually meet and talk to through trading in PoE, who I would not have met otherwise. That was a design decision, and the ‘mechanic’ of not having an automated trading system worked well. Unfortunately, that is one mechanic (and, possibly, design decision…it’s hard to say) that did not hold up well over time. What works when you have 1k or 10k players doesn’t always work now, when you have over 200k concurrent players at peak.
So what’s the lesson LE devs should take from that? It’s not that an auction house is necessary (other people have commented appropriately on that issue, so I won’t). It’s that whatever trade system is designed must scale well.
Most of your complaints (and my complaints) about combat in PoE stem from the same issue: design decisions and mechanics that were insufficient to handle the changes that came to the game over time. The pace of the game was far slower when I started playing in Feb 2013. Rare monsters and bosses telegraphed the only one-shots that existed very clearly, you always had time to read what modifiers were affecting rare monsters and prepare for scary combinations like extra crit and extra damage. If monsters exploded on death, you sure as hell didn’t have the dps to kill them all at once and then die to the resulting explosion stack.
However, as new skills and items were introduced, power creep inevitably came in, and especially the last few years (with influenced items, fossil crafting, etc. etc.) the power creep got really out of control. Now everyone expects builds to go super fast, and GGG can’t ‘turn the clock back’ to slower gameplay without losing a lot of people who prefer the fast play. So, they added new mechanics to challenge these crazy-fast, high dps builds. That’s why one-shots were added, because life leech in PoE can heal you immediately past anything less. That’s why on-death mechanics were increased, because nothing else could threaten a build that clears the screen in one or two clicks. Yes, these mechanics feel really shitty as a player, and I hate them too. But once the power creep got so far, what else could they do? PoE has always been designed for the top 5-10% of players, to keep challenging them. These mechanics stem from that design decision.
So, how does LE avoid those same pitfalls? Go back to the core issues, not the specific mechanics you’re complaining about. Keep power creep under control. Be aware that players will always find ways to make builds/characters better than you expect. Be careful when adding new mechanics that could greatly imbalance, say, gear availability (this, imo, is the big source of power creep in PoE).
The way that crafting is set up in Last Epoch will, I think, help avoid the issues with both trade and power creep. Trade in PoE often feels essential to players who aren’t deliberately playing SSF because trying to craft your own high-end gear is a terrible experience if you don’t have a ton of currency. You can pretty easily craft things to get you through white/yellow maps, but beyond that, the investment and knowledge required to craft nice items is too much for most people. At least so far in Last Epoch, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Of course you’ll ‘need’ to trade to reliably get exceptional items, but you also don’t really need those items to experience most content.
I think if I had to pick one lesson that LE devs should actually take away from PoE, it wouldn’t be anything about any of these mechanics you’ve mentioned. It would be to always put the long-term health of the game above the hype you get from adding the next new shiny thing. GGG used to do this–and the community used to support them in it, during closed/open beta. But as the game gets more popular, as you get more players who expect different things, as your fora or subreddit or whatnot get overloaded with the loudest voices, it can be damn hard for a company to stand their ground and stick to their core design principles. And it can be hard to see when those principles start to slip, until it’s too late.
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Well said my friend.
I appreciate the detail post,
There is some misrepresentations, like reason for my crotic for XP lost death penalty.
I have detail breakdown on the problem of PoE combat that lead to the one-shot design, but I intended to not overwhelem the alraeyd many pint in this thread.
You made some good points. I just wanted to add recovery being too OP is alos the reason for the one shot design, since you recover so fast, only a big hit, or smaller hits but simulatiously cann kill you.
I am happy so far that LE recovery is not broken yet, with a nice balance between potion & recovery.
You can add freshness to a new season without power creep.
Fortnite does this well. They add new stuff, they will also remove old stuff, & each season has a theme,. This sesaon is Primal, where weapon upgrades required you to hunt animals to get crafting mats to upgrades. You can also combine grenades & bow to make explosive bow!
To balance, they removed rocket launchers, powerful weapons.
And they wrap a story around the theme too that revealed over the cause of the seasons & over to next.
In context of ARPG /LE. LE can have a season where a corrupted angel well corupted the land & the stroyx evloved until you finally fight him in final battlenear end of season. While the sesaon is active, normal items can be corrupted that can give powerful effects on items, but once the season is over, the corruption no longer stay & you have something different took its place, say ability ot have a 6 skill.
So you add freshness, & the mini extra creep only stay one season, & another took its place the next, keeping the game fresh while not induces massive power creep where one power creep get added on top of another like PoE.
Unpopular opinion:
i dont want an a auction house or at least not instead of a player to player trade, this is for a simple reason, i want to be able to trade my items only to my friends sometimes, maybe even “gift” them for a very low price, soo i would need a player to player trade or the option to do private ¿polls? (i am not sure how is called because i am not native), anyways sometimes i just want to gift my items without fees or slow mechanics, if they implement an hybrid system i would be really happy like Wakfu and Dofus does, there is auction and 1:1 trade.
another point i think is a must to be discarded is the “soulbond”/“accountbound” items or bounds after trade because what happen if i buy my (irreal example), Rainbow gloves of wisdow in the auction house and later in game i drop another one with better stat %, i am probably gonna get rid of the older one but sell to the blacksmith npc for a shitty amount of gold is really sad, so probably i would give it to other player, but if is bound to my account i cant do any of that.
This last point is one of the 2 reasons i only play diablo III on ps4 there i can trade in softcore with anyone drop anything and do what i want with my loot without restrictions. (the other one is the live service, i hate to have to pay to only be able to play online).
I’m also in the group that doesn’t think that LE needs an XP penalty on death. Losing echoes is fine as a penalty.
I usually reach around level 93-94 in PoE and then it becomes far too grindy after that. I find that all I do is save up all the challenging content with the highest risk of death until I’ve just gained a level. Bash through all that without caring if I die and then run easier stuff until I level up again. I don’t think this loop an XP penalty creates is very fun to be honest.
I agree that there needs to be a penalty but an XP penalty is not the best solution.
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I hope EHG sees this post and mine specifically too. I am playing this game after leaving POE that I couldn’t even reach Elder or play tier 10 maps. I enjoy LE because its not too complicated and the softcore is not punishing with the level penalty. I think people that are for XP penalty needs to play Hardcore or SSF. Softcore should be a place for players like me; I don’t have time to play this game often enough. I just hope they keep softcore friendly for all players for all sorts of people with life management.
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I would like exp loss as a penalty for death in LE. I think back at one of the things I love to watch during PoE league which is the watching the race to 100. IMO no exp loss would make softcore/ SSF SC races a lot more insignificant. Echo loss is annoying and I hope as the game progresses this isn’t a game design finalized feature to replace exp loss death penalty like people are coining it to be.
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Then have it only for racers then. I am fine if so, or make race HC only. Easy. you die, you are out.
MOF will not be the only endgame system.
We don’t know yet, if all of the different endgame systems will have the possiblity of “progressloss”, depending on how exactly they work.
I really would like to have somethign thatis globally punishing, across all endgame modes.
The different between a exp penalty or any other grave penalty and hardcore is soooo big, losing a character (potentially with an very rare drop unique or anything else that is super rare) vs losing a little bit of time investetd is a massive difference.
Also I play SSF almost exclusively AND i would life to have a exp penalty.
Yea I think it could be good in SSF but casual players like me needs softcore to have no penalty, otherwise this would just be another POE to me. Like I said before some of us needs to manage our own time to play game. I welcome any addition to softcore as long as EHG would consider novice players like me.
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I really do ackknowledge different perspectives and it’s hard to please all player types, that’s why my suggestion would be a penalty that (mostly) affects high end level range, so you are not locked out of build possibilities or content.
I’m not sure if this is possible though Heavy and may not even make sense to try and force all the different end game systems to have the same punishment. What works in one system may not work in another.
Losing a little game progression feels a lot easier to swallow than character progression in an ARPG, but I can understand all the different opinions here.
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We’ll have to see.
If there are specific other penalties for different endgame mdoes, that might work.
But if there is not other penalty incoming i would at least have empowered monoliths to have a greater penalty, since 4 echoes is almsot nothing.
The veryfirst iteration of MOF was losing all progress in a given timeline, which was very hard, maybe too hard.
The 2nd iteration was 7-8 echoes progress lost.
I think this could return for at least empowered monoliths, if there is no other penalty incoming.
But i still think a exp penalty would work for all game modes.
I am not at all in favour of losing XP. If they need a way to distinguish the better players from the masses then give them a positive reward of some kind rather than punishing those who don’t play as well. These kinds of issues are game breakers for me it’s that simple.
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