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.
