I agree that some things should be easier. Especially in Beta.
I cant test load of things because of some systems in this game which i already made threads about just today and a few weeks ago. Some things i would like to be permanent but beside that it seem like you need a lot of patience and time and/or your preference should be to like a more “hardcore” approach.
I still wonder why they don’t make a seperate system were these kind of things are so punishing so every type of player can enjoy this game well still mainting the vision of a game not being to easy.
I disagree about giving everything.
You should test the whole proces so also the “harder” parts. You can’t give feedback on that if you didnt experienced it if you know what i mean.
I experienced some things that i dont like at all because of it and some things that i really like. So while giving everything might seem tempting and has it benefit it also has downsides.
It might be a good thing to let a small group test the game like this so you get input from two different areas/perspectives.
While I would like it from a testing point of view, at some point they need to make sure the drop rates/fracture chances/etc are where they want them to be and that kind of testing can take a while to come to an acceptable balance (as people find unintended consequences that need to be dealt with).
Players generally seem happy with drop rates and crafting fractures - there is very little complaint on the forums about them and the loot filter has sped up item finding.
Neither of these aspects would change - they will still be tested in exactly the same way they are being tested right now.
Having the ability to buy items would not affect drop rates or crafting results. Unintended consequences will still be found at the same rate, if not quicker. Players will still run Monoliths for better items to craft and Blessings. Players will still farm for t6 and t7 items to upgrade.
Fracture rate has had it’s own threads and discussions for a few months and no amount of additional player testing will add to the millions of simulations runs performed by EHG to determine if they need tweaking further. They’ve already said they are happy with their results.
One thing that is near impossible to test right now is what happens if all items have, say, 2 t7 rolls on them and all the other affixes are just what is needed.
Let’s say I drop a good 7/7 item that I then upgrade to 7/7/5/5. If I could re-buy items to use it immediately and re-balance my affixes accordingly then I could keep on repeating this indefinitely. Making the char more and more powerful and testing the upper limits of damage and defense. Which we just can’t do right now.
This would be good for testing drop rates, crafting, min-maxing, damage balance and defense balance.
From a testing point of view, I think it’s a win-win.
You’re assuming that the priority is feedback on the former in beta testing. The thing is that the acquisition is part of the required test loop.
The devs aren’t trying just to shape the build mechanics in beta. They are shaping the overall experience of the game. Otherwise, they could have easily given us an item editor, which btw, was actually available in early alpha
I understand about the overall feel of the game and about item acquisition being a major part of testing - but this wouldn’t be affected, like I said. I’m still playing and enjoying the item hunt etc.
Getting build mechanics right is very important though, to identify imbalances early on and to test the upper limits of builds to make sure it aint broke.
When protections, resistances, armour, mana generation, ward generation, skills and passives etc all change at once as they did last patch it can be very time consuming to rebuild your items, that’s all I’m saying - and making it a bit easier to create test builds would not detract from any other aspects of the game.
I heavily disagree with this. Having full access to items distorts the gaming experience. If EHG wants to test specific builds or interactions, they can do that in a targeted setting. Part of beta testing this game is testing the experience. How does progression feel? How does the item chase feel? There are a lot of testing to be done on player experience that can’t be done with the method you described. And also let’s face it, testing this game is also a way for us to play the game and have fun. Let me buy all the items and I’ll be done in a week because the gaming experience has been distorted for me. Leave the full testing to internal testing (with specific goals in mind that require easy acquisition to items, skills, etc to save time and increase frequency) and let the players provide feedback on how the game feels as a whole.
While we are in Beta let’s get the data needed for a smooth launch without issues on that topic ^^. I understand the wish for limit testing but I think it’s more important to get viable numbers. EHG had so little wipes and because of this I’m concerned about the rates for new players even more thou after the resi changes.
I realy hope they take a good look at ssf people for a relistic view on rates rather then on people who kept stuff like 50+ dmg lvl 4 weapons and such ^^.
I think a PTR type system from D3 is best - increase XP / rarity drops by a huge amount - everything is wiped, then on release adjust the numbers. huge problems with losing players to this though
but an item editor is bizarre idea - you dont need insane gear to test things and provide feedback
You forget about the “Everything was different in Beta and you changed all this stuff and made the game… (blablabla) reeeeeee[*babyrageenabled~]!!!111…” People. Every beta that had changes in droprates, mechanics and other stuff had a big ammount of people that ere frustrated after the launch because X changed.
An example I remember pretty well was the respeccing in WH40k Inquisitor Matyr… in Beta and EA yo uhad free respeccs and after launch it waas gone and you had to farm items that reset one point per item and the crowd went mad… like batshit crazy. This change was communicated and obvious but a lot of people who didn’t care went all bonkers in an instant ^^.
This might apply to LE as well if the introduce stuff that isn’t there after the launch. So far I think we have some pretty good community tersters and I’m almost certain they give a lot of good feedback. Right now I don’t see any need for changes on the regular Beta client because in LE you get a ton of stuff dropped to toy arround with anyway.
Too long to read but it seems your title speak for itself so… buddy here you did forget something ! We HAVE to test the RNG systeme too… the item are tested in the dev phase so its unlikely for us to try them… even during an alpha i never seen any game just give the item to the player to test them by themself…
BUT !! (yeah i know every time i post i came with an idea about the topic xD)
We can have a private room for our character where we can try different build… a sort of creation mod (for those who have played BDO the testing character session where we can pvp have access to everything (item and talent) and try our dmg on different dummy limited to an arena and limited to 3 character)…
This thing can be a good tool for everyone even on the game release !
I should have saved a lot of time and just written a “Can we have an Item Editor” thread - lol at myself!
I wasn’t around for Alpha and was unaware EHG had already been through an item editor phase.
As I mentioned above, nothing else would change, RNG would still be tested as it is now - it wasn’t forgotten.
…
Anyhoo, I still think there will be areas of the game that will remain untested if players have to recreate the testing tools they need every patch and we can’t test the damage/defense boundaries properly, separate to how the “game experience feels”.
It is very difficult to tune and test a car when the road keeps changing underneath.
I’m happy to concede that there are good reasons for not having an editor, as people have posted above. Thanks for the feedback and your viewpoints
But I reserve the right to say “I told you so” if we get day 1 patches or very quick re-balancing patches after release because of OP builds that could easily have been discovered during testing but were not tested due to a lack of testing tools, rather than lack of players, time or will.
During testing we need less restrictions, not more, imo.
This is going to happen no matter how free/easy to get stuff is in beta so that’s not much of a “reserve the right”. That’s kinda liked saying I’d e I go to a football (American) game i reserve the right to say I told you so if they start with a kickoff.
A side effect of this that people may not see is balancing the games difficulty. If everyone can just buy BiS gear, that will SERIOUSLY skew peoples view on the games difficulty and character progression.
It is nice to see your completed character come to fruition, but at that point, the game is over for many people.
I am hoping, through additional game mechanics and development, that BiS gear becomes much harder to acquire.
No, you don’t reserve that right. You’re automatically assigning a cause for the effect when in reality it could have been something else. All games launch with issues regardless of whatever testing systems they have.
It is a sad fact that some games get released because of a deadline and get negative reviews on Steam etc because people think they were released unfinished, or in a beta state etc … the forums are full of dissatisfied gamers not because the games are really bad but they were released unfinished or did not meet players expectations.
Look at the feedback on Wolcen and the years that was in development. I’ve been waiting 2 years for Aquanox and it’s been met with a very cold reception - not what players were expecting.
The key point is this - the more testing is done, the better for the final release, simple. The less chance of a wave of negative reviews at launch and post-launch insta-patches.
I can see the idea of an item editor is distasteful to some (many?), but the fact that with it we could test aspects of the game which are pretty much untestable right now (builds with perfect gear) and test them far quicker by not having to farm the gear first, is undeniable.
Dont think that you can see the futur because its already the present we already have a proper game (althrough its a beta the game should be this way more or less in its realease) to test and its already the case some build are completly broken whithout a /give item and when the game will be release we (the player) will have more way to find broken thing as the content of the game expand so of course it will be… + dont lie because we all want it a creative mod where we can test our build (because of course if they agree to your suggestion it will be in this way and never on the game itself)
And now we will talk about the real reason of why it is a REALLY BAD IDEA for you to understand
The game as it is now is not a testing program were people who buy it on steam agree to have a dev testing tool rather than a proper beta game ^^ let me explain…
Right now you buy Last Epoch to play it in its beta version so you buy it to play the game even if its not completed yet… What you propose here is to give people the way to become proper game tester by /give item… The thing is if you do that people will simply buy the game /give their item laugh 1 or 2 minute with a build that bordaman21 have find to break the game then refund it and forget about it because there is nothing else to do… i mean you litterally propose to cheat on a beta for the sake of testing the game dude thats totally why its a bad idea xD… let the broken build be in the release at least we can farm for it then farm with it before the dev nerf it then retry with another build in a new char <= this is also a part of the fun in ARPG you know
haha for sure. It was tongue in cheek. And Wolcen omg. You brought up my blood pressure. That game was 2 years away from being in a releasable state. We all agree more testing is good but what we disagree on is the allocation of resources. Unlimited editing power is used to test something at high frequencies. A great example is what one of the staff (I’m sorry can’t remember your name!) did for crafting success rates. Just run the algorithm/whatever they had and see what the percentages are at a good sample size. That’s something he/she did to validate crafting success rates. That can also be done with gathering data from player attempts. Having the power to edit doesn’t do anything to increase the sample size in an impactful manner because the sample size has already been achieved.
Build testing is also being done by the community and there has been some very creative builds. Builds that are in the outlier (overly OP, vastly underpowered) has always been in games. Heck, even games that have been released for YEARS still go through that problem. Sample size is not going to solve the problem of outliers. It’s ubiquitous throughout the gaming industry and even in the real world in general. I’m a BA and test new functions and fixes as part of my job. I can’t count the number of times we thought we had an airtight testing only for it to go to production and something just breaks. I’ve had small fixes go through without any hitch, but I’ve never had new functions/improvements go through without something breaking. All new systems (think of healthcare.gov or any State system for Obamacare) will go through massive problems with or without good planning. It’s just a matter of degree. The same can be said for new games. The best games released have small problems here - no game ever releases perfect or close to perfect.
Stop comparing with wolcen guys you will bring the malediction here… they cant resolve their server issue the game itself is good but they technically dont have the background to backbone their idea right now they should have lauch the game in solo mod (in french interview the compagny owner admit that with a beer in his hand xD)
But we can agree on that giving a /give item during the beta of wolcen would not have solve his issue ^^
we already have a proper game (althrough its a beta the game should be this way more or less in its realease) to test and its already the case some build are completly broken whithout a /give item and when the game will be release we (the player) will have more way to find broken thing as the content of the game expand so of course it will be… + dont lie because we all want it a creative mod where we can test our build (because of course if they agree to your suggestion it will be in this way and never on the game itself)