Neither inherently true or wrong, it depends on the missing implementations brought out from GGG before release… and even subsequent ones.
The core difference is the lower affix pool (a given since the game is at the beginning), lack of influenced bases (same) and the rework of the passive tree and support gems only being able to be used once.
Support gems only being used once is neither a positive or negative, though given their type of implementation going forward likely a net-negative as it’ll be build limiting. What GGG is supposed to do - and hopefully wakes up to - for longevity of the game is to provide the same type of support gem in a variety of downsides… or very similar ones. Thus allowing to spread them out between skills, putting them together into categories so you can’t double-dip them into the same skill.
Likely won’t be done, but design-wise it wasn’t a inherently bad decision.
The passive tree though… that’s a disaster. Energy Shield nodes galore but nothing for life? Whoever greenlit this should be whacked for their absolute inane design decisions. It changed nothing to ‘fix’ the former downsides of the passive tree and only made decisions all the more important to min-max there, a overall detriment. The system already enforced too stringent choices into the tree, something which majorly gear is supposed to handle with the tree being a basis to build upon through said gear.
Also something which LE does ridiculously bad actually. The majority of player power is in the passive tree, to a degree where a level 100 character can run around with only the boots and a weapon and beat empowered monoliths. That shouldn’t be the case, gear power is so miniscule it’s laughable after the campaign. And even in the campaign you can just slap anything onto gear that even remotely fits and you’ll be golden to beat content outside of Lagon and Majasa. A really really bad state.
First thing first: Never pay into promises, pay into results. Paying up-front before enjoyment is given which warrants a price-tag money shouldn’t be given to a company. The exception is treating it as a gamble with the chance to loose it all with no return, mostly, with kickstarters and similar sites only. Same goes for Early Access.
You’re paying into promises of the future, not the existing product… unless the existing product already is fully functional and worth said price-tag.
Games like 7 Days to Die or Barotrauma definitely are EA-wise worth it, others aren’t. For the base price-tag of 30€ PoE 2 is definitely worth the money, anything further not so much.
As for the video: Starts with SSF mindset, which inherently doesn’t function in PoE 2, so already a bad premise plainly spoken. The game wasn’t design with that and it was seen before EA even came out. So a bad buy-decision from that guy’s side.
Followed up by ‘this is not a fair take’ already de-values a ton by design, but I went and listened to the whole thing, so the breakdown:
Also, as mentioned, I agree, current PoE 2 is bad, hard to say anything else. It’s badly cobbled together, though the individual cobbles are surprisingly well designed individually… just not in conjunction, and it’s worthwhile to dismantle them and showcase the positives and negatives of the parts rather then getting stuck on the complete state of it.
Why? Because then suggestions for other games of the genre have a much higher quality, providing feedback on implementations which failed in other games but were - with respective adjustments - not only good idead but marvelous ones at times. As well as showcasing why it nonetheless fails to avoid pitfalls other games have gone through.
Proper evaluation hence.
Action RPG’s are not inherently defined by ‘killing enemies and picking up items’, that’s a misnomer. What he talks about are looter Hack’N’Slash games. Top-down being only the visual direction as well, you can make the same gameplay style as a FPS and it works great, seen with Borderlands for example.
What’s showcased though is that the focus of design is set on gradual step-by-step itemization with high variance (to provide higher dopamine hits which last longer then alternative methods do) and combat.
A pure looter game focuses solely on the loot, an example would be the idle-game ‘Lootun’ in that category. And a pure Hack’N’Slash would focus on the killing of enemies, ‘Vampire Survivors’ is a prime example of that. Both do well, the genre we play is a combination of the best of both worlds, great!
Also few days ago a very severe re-balance of loot has happened. And it solved this issue nigh entirely. The base drops are good now. Actually functional and as supposed to be existing, with a severe focus on picking up those higher-tiered rares from the ground as they’re guaranteed to have good mods on them now.
So that parts a thing of the past, with GGG able to finally tune into the sweetspot rather then trying to throw a ball through a small hole and missing the entire damn planet!
And yes, GGG unlearned the knowledge from PoE 1, which is why Mark got pulled off to PoE 2 to fix their crap since otherwise they would be utterly incompetent and misguided. I blame it on a bad lead for it, but it could be entirely different reasons as well… but it points in that direction.
As for the sockets: That’s because the current socket system doesn’t hae the inherent power that those in PoE 1 had, adding now stats to the item rather then enforcing you to re-design your whole build which was extremely limiting. Hence that is a thought that’s not… well… thought out 
Also yes, identification scrolls are a detriment from start to finish. At least they got rid of the portal scrolls. It’s outdated design leftover from RPG times where items could be cursed, hence there being a distinct reasoning for those to exist. That reason has vanished, now it’s just pure tedium. And tedium without reasoning is bad inherently.
Yes, the rune system for resistances is awful, agreed. Dumb decision, bad design. Would be good in another context… but it’s the wrong context. What would’ve solved the issue is to focus charms in providing permanent resistances up until you outlevel them, leading to them being a early-game crutch to ensure builds can be fixed up properly while then traversing over to providing interesting unique affixes. But GGG as usual dropped the ball for such implementations.
Armor (the value) is absolutely garbage, yes, LE has a fantastic system for that, one which does the job well, is a fixed scaling and isn’t entirely situational and only helping for non-massive hits… where it would be needed the most after all.
Yes, Level design is also crap. Not a mechanical aspect though focusing on you… that’s the base design of the game which is messed up.
Already mentioned the passive tree above, abomination. Simple downgrade, agreed.
But I’m not praising the passive tree from LE either… that’s… lackluster. I’ve ran into so many builds which simply go ‘where the heck am I supposed to put my points? I’ve ran out of things which actually do something good!’ that it’s laughable. That stuff needs a re-design from the ground up, at least 1/3rd more options there, actually enforcing choice as is mentioned in the video as well rather then ‘Well I guess since everything is bad I’ll invest into the least bad option’. And on the counterside depending on build it’s so brokenly strong that a wrong allocation of a few points will cause your character to become a wet noodle splattering apart from a breeze while otherwise they’re godlike and indestructible killing machines.
That’s bad design too.
As for the downsides on support gems? Yes, detriment, purely so. Bad choice. But that has nothing to do with the core design, that’s values simply… reduce them to 1/4th they have now and stuff feels good while providing the downsides as a meaningful choice rather then a build-crippling menace.
Yes, the skill-shoehorning in PoE 2 is hefty. But that’s a upper-layer design decision, not a base layer. It can be entirely nullified by simply adjusting some values. It’s a low-friction change for GGG. That’s different from fundamental design aspects which need a large amount of effort to change them.
A prime example is the old DR mechanic versus the new boss-ward mechanic. It’s a severe change which needs a complete new design, not only saying 'yeah, DR now works differently with the values ‘xyz’ but instead re-designing annoying crap into another flavor of annoying crap.
If I’m a strong character and fighting a boss I wanna see it melt. I don’t give a single shit - sorry but no milder way to say it is available for that - that the devs want me to ‘see their mechanics’. I don’t give a crap, I’m happy that I smacked that thing down without giving it a chance. That’s the whole power fantasy.
And yes, challenging content and bosses are great, but they need to be respectively balanced with the classes and builds accordingly fitting to that, as a baseline. And extreme outliers being reigned in while underperforming builds are subsequently buffed.
All things EHG sadly doesn’t do properly. They act as if afraid of their own system ‘better not touch it, it might break!’ Break it! Experiment! Reverse it! Make the last darn 2 weeks of a Cycle ‘the big experiment’ and mess up everything as long as you finally dial into the stuff properly! Nobody cares at that point, let it only affect character on the temporary Cycle too, nobody sane starts 2 weeks before a Cycle ends anyway, the people just ‘finish up stuff’ and that’s it.
Crafting is a given, a mess, nothing more to say for that, just… a mess. A actual idiotic mess.
Mind you, I find LE’s crafting also not ‘great’. It functions, it does its job, nice! It’s a severe hindrance for future implementations though without causing base-drops to either loose value severely or become too valuable (as currently is the case).
It’s a weak mechanic currently, not upholding the core principle on which it should function, which is to alleviate drop-RNG properly. Instead it’s more used as an excuse to keep high variance drops not catered towards the played character while causing those to break most of the time anyway!
That’s also… bad design overall.
PoE 1 crafting in comparison is great. The downfall is the complexity… the functionality though is immense. It does at a baseline exactly what it’s supposed to do: Fixing sub-par items to make them worthwile. The end!
But what it does beyond is to elevate items from start to end into god-like items. Knolwedge and repetition will bring you that outcome. What the detriment there is… is the repetition. That crap needs to be automated. Nobody likes spamming 500 alteration orbs onto a ring just to roll over the finally appearing affix because you’ve been bored out so heavily that it happens, loosing focus by then!
Wells… yeah… what the actual fuck? Intern design level. Boy’s first game design choice having never played the genre once.
Charms… yep, crap. Mentioned above what they should do. The idol system in LE is a really good system, it’s an improvement of the original D2 charms giving them a proper place and spreading out item power a bit better. Now we just need to have EHG put actual power on items outside of + level and some other rare mods which are basically mandatory. You know… things which actually matter to give us substantial defences and offences, not solely scaling off of the pasisve tree which is our core potential, being screwed simply if we have a class+skill combo which doesn’t have enough options to scale it.
Chests have been fixed I think. Not tested yet. The exact suggestions have been implemented, with the guaranteed drops
So yeah, the obvious stuff, but not fundamental design issues. Just bad choices which can be fixed mostly fast with a few exceptions.
The major issue is the usage of gold, which is a resource for MG, which is acquired by someone knowledgeable in a really short amount of time. I made 20+ mil per 4 hours of playing when 1.2 dropped because I inherently knew what things would be scarce on the market, simple player knowledge. In comparison I would need half a darn month of playing 4 hours a day to reach 20 mil in CoF without focusing on Gold.
Is MG supposed to have the ability to respec mastery + everything else 20 times a day without issue?
How many builds are in a class? 15? 20? From the ones which aren’t a mess? So… 6 days to get all tomb of the erased builds on lastepochtools being provided there tested out completely?
Where’s the replay value then? You tried everything, you’re done… choices have meaning. Make choices easily changed and they loose value.
It’s simply out brain doing that if we want or not. There’s studies about it. People in dire straits getting help which they’re in dire need of… then it was compared what happens if that help is completely free or comes at least at a small cost.
The people - despite being in dire need of it - which didn’t have to pay at least ‘something’ had a substantially lower success rate. Our mind attaches value to things based on what we have to give up for it. The value of money is so ingrained in our brain since we’ve been children that we have a clear-cut thing showcasing to us that it would be a net-loss if we don’t get in motion.
The absolute same happens when you’re presented with a choice, one which the more limiting it is the more value to that choice is given by our brain. Obviously we try to avert that, why? Because giving a choice meaning means not only taking responsibility for that choice but it also produces anxiety by the fear of picking the wrong thing. That’s something which we can’t avoid… but also a tool for a good game designer.
If we’re stressed out Cortisol is released, which is a net-negative… but when feeling relief then Endorphins are released, which are a pain reliever and stress reliever, also serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin are released at once, giving a massive mood-boost which does far more then counteracting the initially released Cortisol.
So as a good game developer you minimize the options to ‘pick wrong’ but without providing said info to the player. Stress and anxiety are a natural thing happening and only through those do we even have the ability to feel success, which is the feeling of overcoming any form of challenge of any kind. For that it needs to have meaning though, stakes of some form, as miniscule as they might seem, so it’s the most important tool to manage in entertainment.
It’s not unlimited, 200 tabs max.
Yes, sortable needs to be implemented in the outdated system of PoE.
Filters are vastly stronger in PoE.
Categories exist as well.
The only upside as mentioned is the sorting.
We also need to compare how it came to be, the time investment for it and the hoops to go through.
It should’ve been a day 1 fix in 1.0 and it took over a year.
That’s the quality we’re speaking about, and that’s not even tackling the core issues of the crafting system, like exalted affixes de-valuing crafting to a major degree, with runes of Havoc not even remotely making up for it unless their drop-rate is at least improved by 500% or more reduce the impact it has. Which would be disastrous though as the system was made in mind with the utterly crappy base situation EHG has put themselves into. It’s a system designed to work based on a flawed core state, so it can’t function ‘great’, it can only function ‘decently well’ at best.
Yeah, since the QoL of crafting in PoE is missing we don’t perceive the difference properly, as a implementation it’s obviously better, as potential it’s simply sub-par though sadly.
It’s like saying a Ornitophter is better then a jet plane because the average person has the ability to control it.
No, it isn’t, it’s still a shitty thing which barely works. The goal is to simplify the complexity and not to remove capability.
There’s a very distinct and important difference.
Which is… absolutely wrong.
It’s a very widely strewn system simply, one which causes inherent complexity. It can be counteracted heavily by proper QoL, which isn’t existing.
The system isn’t bad, the interaction methods are. There’s also a distinct but important difference about that.
A odd example would be the ‘stay-on-tab’ on aluminum cans for drinks. You know why it isn’t a solid thing? Because it’s made by the design of the inventor still - and nowadays to save on material as well - which designed it specifically in mind to put a strw through it, holding said straw in place.
Obviously an ingenious little addition! Just the interaction sucks… how often do you carry a straw with you after all?
It’s in the same ballpark of that, the mechanic itself is great, the handling of said mechanic is crap, with the ‘stay-on-tab’ it obviously would be by providing a straw at the side of a can… but people forgot why it even exists, in the case of PoE it would be according UI elements to ease the usage of the systems interacting with it.
Automated re-use of consumables until outcome is achieved. Showcase of distributive chance of success, a provided handbook to see where specific craft types can be obtained. A unified UI and storage for all crafting consumables. A one-click mechanic to use them on an item. A option to design your own crafting steps to get piece by piece to the end result.
Tons of options which could be implement but none are. Fault of the interaction, not the core mechanic. The core mechanic is as solid as it gets in PoE 1, the initial design is so well made that it causes nigh all fringe cases of bricking an item to simply not exist… nowadays the only option is corruption to ruin a base completely, and even that has been removed with the introduction of consumables which actually influence those too!
It has for consumables which given that the access to top-end content is part of those (And the ones left out are simply half-baked methods from GGG once more) and hence providing a realiable long-term functional exchange place.
Items are supposed to be acquired personally as well much as possible, RNG is what a market is supposed to alleviate. Crafting is the core mechanic to alleviate said RNG.
Using a market for finished gear rather then personal acquisition is skipping the mechanic supposed to deal with that in the first place! And acquisition of consumables - including content access - is where the value actually is. Gear itself can be clunky for trade, that’s fine, consumables need to be automated.
EHG simply has their system backwards sadly. Which shows as access to items through MG is one utter and entire disaster. Boss uniques at Rank 3? Great, I can buy my uber-aberroth item at Rank 3! A simple exalted item at Rank 7? (non weapon) That’s so mind-brokenly dumb in design I don’t even know where to begin!
Uniques need ranking related to rarity. Boss-uniques need limited access based on personal progression state. LP needs to be tiered as well, with relation to the rarity of an item. Exalted drops need to, based on overall total rarity of potential drop-chance.
That’s the start of it, lemme not get into the nitty-gritty of the details of what else is wrong with it, it’ll actively double my post-size otherwise.
And as a reminder: If you as a developer provide a function then you better make darn well sure that function is properly implemented rather then a half-baked mess. Otherwise? Don’t provide it if you can’t do it, find workarounds to allow people to achieve the result without the usage of a specific function instead.
‘A bit’ is good It needs a boatload of that. CoF is a good start but utterly unbalanced. It double-dips into quantity of qualitative drops together with the quality of said drops. As a palyer in MG I can’t kill Aberroth more often then someone on CoF, hence CoF will get a better outcome for the same time investment to achieve a rare drop from him with LP.
And since the sought after items are not accessible in MG because of demand CoF has a overall higher chance to own a top-tier item.
Also exalted items with a T7 and a T6 on a good base with fitting affixes are a basically non-existent unicorn in MG, you can play for 100 hours and drop not a single one of those for any build at all while in CoF you instead have the same chance of getting a 2T7 item or even a 3T7 + T6 item in comparison. That’s laughable to even happen, the power disparity of exalted versus non-exalted affixes is so massive it makes it defining.
So I’ll state it clearly: It’s fine not to design a game with a specific audience in mind. It’s not fine to address a specific audience and then provide a insultingly bad experience.
Last Epoch prides itself on having the option to either go for trading or for personal progression only… but it actually only provides one functional state. Which is CoF.
Mind you, I’m a trader and crafter at heart. My 2 core premises which bring me enjoyment are collecting items and making stuff better. Despite that I’m currently after switching over to Cof. To reiterate: After investing 600 hours into the game I’ve decided it more valuable to throw basically my whole progress of that time away in favor of switching to another faction. Solely because the experience difference is just that atrociously bad long-term.
And to clear it up: The core design of the factions is fantastic. The execution is beyond abysmal simply.
Oh, they’re a lost cause in that regard, absolutely
Item drop to crafting. Crafting is supposed to alleviate RNG. Their design doesn’t as the base itemization is solely hinged on drop-luck. Exalted Affixes are a completely destruction of any meaningful crafting mechanic.
You could call LE’s system a ‘potential item fixer’ (as not even that baseline which is a guarantee in any other game is one here) and not a crafting mechanic.
Once again, drop-based, the LP mechanic. At first glance a great system until you look at the history of itemization overall and at sets, something which EHG also has fallen into as a trap. Since the conception of set items they always were either worthless or the top-tier items, being hence a waste of design space since they’re unused or so good that it ruins the whole otherwise existing itemization systems. D3 had that as a major issue. Core items becoming useless at times.
LE ‘fixed’ that by simply removing the items… so they could’ve just made them affix shards anyway, right? Not solved, it’s basically realizing there’s a lot of dirt while cleaning up so you sweep it under the rug, that’s not ‘fixing’ it
And LP has the same underlying issue. The more uniques are added in the game the more likely that one is a viable one for a slot not formerly occupied. The more that happens the more likely for builds to ignore item bases of core drops and go for those items instead, making a large chunk of the itemization system meaningless. Also re-introducing the RNG layer which should’ve been solved by crafting (but isn’t properly anyway…) again!
Wolcen had the same issue and it was - one of the many - a reason for its downfall (besides absolute shoddy development bordering a scam, great campaign though! Had in been properly finished at least) and EHG didn’t check that out.
Then we have the market implementation… hooo boy… lemme cherry pick a small bit of the myriad of issues then.
Price-curves, price-checking, sorting by roll-range, sub-sorting by secondary roll-range, affix count system beyond ‘1’, personal sale-list search, repricing.
All the named ones are UI elements and function not implemented and hence completely missing. A large portion of them being universally mandated core functions (like the price-checking and roll-range sorting) simply not existing, making it one absolute barely-functional chore to list items accordingly.
Personal example? I had a quarter inventory filled with potentially valuable idols. So I went ahead to price-check them manually and list them. It took me more then 45 minutes to do that.
Would you consider listing ~20 items for 45 minutes acceptable? That’s a 1 1/2 hour farming session. 2/5th of the time outside of content or the choice of simply ‘throwing them in randomly priced and hoping for the best’. That’s not functioning.
Then we got affixes not listed with their functions (champion - or personal called - affixes are only listed by now. What do they do? Great for searching, right?)
Gold causing a double-dipping through CoF, making switching from one side to the other substantially easier then the other way around. Which is supposed to be avoided after all, we got those severe and absolutely atrociously picked downsides for a reason… right?
Gold breaking the max storage limit.
No viable regular worthwhile gold sink causing inflation to increase very good items to the gold cap.
Items beyond that value being unable to be listed without inherent loss, the top-end is all equally worth the same. A 4 LP red ring is the same as a 2 T7 exalted, the 2 T7 exalted is kiiinda more common though. Causes them to never be listed and only hoarded, breaks the functionality of the market and returns to barter.
Those are the most severe ones.
Any further questions as to te why?
Now we got corruption, which functions but has been implemented in a similar way in PoE 1 very early on, dunno even the name anymore. Content which has no limiter to be played (endless tries like the echos without actual detriments that are worthwhile) causes people inherently to overextent themselves, regular deaths following, that taking away the enjoyment of the game and reducing engagement time.
EHG decided to reduce monster density at failure, meaning you run through a vastly less populated echo which hence also provides vastly reduced rewards, making it underwhelming after being frustrated already. That’s obviously bad design.
No option to target-farm core gear in any way. Pure RNG factor. That’s the D2 way which has since been phased away for a reason. The vast minority of people stays engaged if nothing changes over a substantial timeframe. That’s a psychological aspect which is very easily repeated to ensure it’s a true aspect happening. Loss of interest because no reward happens, hence no enjoyment simply.
There’s actually been a dev-talk about this specific topic for a quite long time, from Chris Wilson years ago by now, stating exactly what is happening.
Basically it’s ‘steps of upgrades’ which is a basic game concept nowadays even taught in design courses.
It’s even showcased in Baldur’s Gate 1 already and implemented as a design aspect there. When you were in a especially long-lasting area/dungeon then the developers put interesting loot there… not at the outcome but already along the road. This made players stay invested since they are given a sense of success.
In LE this vanes extremely quickly. You get constant things you can change early on up until you get into exalteds. Then you have some uniques… the core affixes on exalted items and slamming them more often then not onto a unique… and then nothing for hours upon hours upon hours. In the last 70 hours of gameplay I upgraded my most played character (warpath) in offline mode… once. With an item that was identical beyond a better roll of an affix, 3% extra res… nice! That’s it.
That’s what modern multi-step crafting systems instead alleviate. You get a hefty RNG layer for the beginning step(s) and hence get minor feelings of success even if it bricks afterwards. But the top-end is either allowing items to be ‘locked in’ (suffixes/prefixes done in PoE) or to give a deterministic high-cost top-end to finish up an item. Often with high-risk moves for a step beyond (T0 crafting in Torchlight, corruption in PoE). That’s entirely missing.
I think those are enough examples. Each one of the core bits there have been established from former creators of games in the genre, or general creation of a similar mechanic (trade) in other games. All EHG needed to do was take in this information and take care not to repeat those mistakes. Others have done it for them. But well, they’re trailblazers clearly, even if someone else already did clear the path and showing there’s a cliff at the end!
Yeah, so from ‘not enough’ it switched with the changes (after all 1.2 is a good direction) to ‘acceptable’ to invest your time into.
Tactical gameplay isn’t for everyone, and it’s definitely not for people who are used to blasting through and enjoying that aspect.
And… it’s a bad fit for the genre. PoE 2 has a uphill battle there since they need to combine that and the adhered to ‘power-fantasy’ which is mandatory.
The rolling is a major issue, much better by now, rolling into a wall shouldn’t commonly happen though, the wall doesn’t move
CoF shouldn’t apply to boss drops I would think, though if I can just go and by those drops at some reasonably quick point in MG, I’m not sure. It’s tricky because how busy MG is (aside duping, RMT etc) makes balancing those drops difficult. I think on the whole, it probably works out fairly evenly, it’s not like you can’t still farm bosses in MG while you wait to buy. And sure, tune the balance to bring the drops closer in line, it depends, imo, if it’s making it too easy to progress in CoF with the current benefits.
