If over-healing was a thing, these would be definitely be defensive skills. (this is not me picking on you, this is me telling EHG that I think these skills become more relevant if over healing is a thing.)
… over-healing is not a thing, is it?
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I don’t think so. But the healing auras of spriggans and totems are handy to recover health mid-combat, so they’re defensive as well. They’re just not protective, but there are different types of defenses.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
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It’s been a feast for gamers in the last few weeks:
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Oblivion: Remastered shadow drop
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V Rising 1.1 Oakveil update
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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 release
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Guild Wars 20th Anniversary update and celebration
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Baldur’s Gate 3 final update
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Lords of the Fallen 2.0 update
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No Rest for the Wicked The Breach patch
And I’m sure that there is more. But the above is competing for my time and I’ve been splitting my time with Oblivion, V Rising, and Last Epoch. I’ll fold in the other games when I lose interest in one of the previously mentioned three.
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More casuals left to play Season 8 of Diablo 4.
I think there’s a couple of reasons:
PoE2 has a large, pre-existing dedicated fan-base and as PoE1 has nothing happening right now, they’re coping in PoE2.
LE is still building up its content scope and variety. I entirely disagree with the complaints that it’s because the campaign is too easy, I think that comes from a minority (but vocal) perspective. If content is fun, people will blast it, even if it’s easy (hello D3/4) and find challenge later. The blasters probably just need to be able to get to difficult content earlier i.e. tweakable difficulty modes or something.
PoE is a gambling game. You drop shiny currency and then play the slot machine to hopefully luck out and get your 6L or perfect rolls etc, or win the market. We know how much people stick around for gambling even if it’s not healthy. LE is more straightforward RNG with a lot of controls to guide it. LE rewards your time, PoE2 hates you but you’re gambling, so…
While PoE2 might get the higher numbers (also remember it’ll be FTP as PoE1 is), I think LE’s retention will be ‘healthier’ as people enjoy the game for the content and systems themselves, not dropping shiny currency so you can see how many divines you make this league.
But content and systems in LE is about looking how shiny items are dropping, so I don’t feel the difference. In POE2, however, higher retention can be caused by people enjoying the gameplay, the combat.
IMO, if they slowed it down the only way to do so that would be acceptable is for campaign to be harder. Really though, I think more people would play longer if there were more viable builds. A look at the player distribution. Even though I wanted to play certain builds, my goodness 50% of the player base is playing Sentinel. So I could not bring myself to keep playing it.
Also “No Rest for the Wicked” also came out. Unlike PoE 2 people more or less had very good things to say about LE. Many of them said they were also going to play No Rest for the Wicked (also as other people said D IV season 8). Just bad timing
Lack of balance between classes also makes it impossible to introduce the difficulty in the campaign/normal monoliths, until you can choose difficulty yourself by the corruption level. Because, it would be easy for some class and too hard for another.
It should affect POE 2 retention in the similar way, so releases of other games probably can’t explain it.
PoE 2 just had a major patch with big loot boost. People are testing it out.
Also, LE made a big mistake by letting MaxRoll and other sites map out all the best builds, and it was pretty darn accurate. In PoE you normally see Starter builds then about 2 weeks in you start seeing the real heavy hitters of the new patch. Mystery really helps in retention.
It only changes numbers for the last few days, not explains the overall trend.
It’s not like they could somehow stop sharing information between people. But launching new league with new balance without people played it before helps, I agree. Doesn’t help in balancing though 
Potential play-time. Simple as that.
PoE has deep complex systems which are so deep that they turn off newcomers substantially through overwhelm. The counterside is that long-playing people will not enjoy the game for as long as they would in PoE in comparison (talking about 1, 2 is not released and one major mess still).
You can see the same thing happening with Diablo as well, short massive bursts of customers swiftly tapering off heavily again.
Yes and no.
You don’t ‘slow down progress’ you instead ‘increase long-term options’. That means improvements on mechanics which cause longevity through repetition for example while staying ‘rewarding’ (the limit for that is different for everyone, but there’s good example baselines of what work) or increasing ‘breadth’ of their content, hence branching out and needing more time to do everything without stopping to reach the end-point directly in a substantial way.
Things that work this way are side-mechanics similar to what Path of Exile 1 has, meaning Delve, Heist, Blight and so on. Variety of gameplay content which causes the player to experience different takes on the genre.
That’s not something which is available in LE currently, we got monolith running and that’s basically it. Sure, the monoliths have been expanded upon (very good) with the weaver content but the breadth of content is basically non-existent. We got Arena (nearly nobody plays it and it offers no unique rewards worthwhile to grind for) as well as Dungeons (generally skipped with the charms and extremely badly designed for pre-boss content in them). and then the choices already end there.
There’s other important factors and one you’ve mentioned with the follow-up question already:
That’s because of the itemization majorly. In LE’s system you basically drop everything (outside of boss-specific uniques) before even reaching empowered monoliths. Progression-wise you can only increase quantity of those high-quality drops happening… but there’s no ‘step above’. If you’re lucky you can get your end-game item never to be upgraded as the first drop potentially. This reduces engagement heavily since there’s ‘nothing beyond’ as soon as empowered monoliths are unlocked. Corruption is a detrimental progression system psychologically as it takes away clear-cut frameworks to establish in our minds 'this is where I need to be exactly to get ‘xyz’ ’ and instead makes drops ambiguous. This leads more swiftly to a lack of stable dopamine production compared to a tailorede system like those in Path of Exile or orchlight Infinite as examples.
Also the progression rate itself is extremely rapid. A well versed player (which isn’t speedrunning) can reach empowered monoliths with their second character in sub 5 hours. Materials to achieve this are plenty and setup time is miniscule as item progression in LE is substantially less intensive then other games of the genre, only in D4 there’s less perception of progression for the live-service titles on the market.
The more regularly a player is enforced to change equipment and the more stringent (without becoming overwhelming) in terms of acquisition needs is existing the higher is the retention rate. In a game where you switch each individual item 2-3 times it’s substantially lower when comparing it to one which enforced the need to switch a similar slot 10-15 times during a whole playthrough. Upgrades are the main goal of a loot based ARPG after all, hence each time it counts as a ‘success’ when it happens and keeps the player engaged. The fewer it happens the less success mentally is presented to the player, even if actual progress happens.
The ‘faster progression’ happens because of people having lost the ability to enjoy the gameplay loop itself compared to the goal, meaning nothing besides a single goal has meaning… or substantially less meaning then it’s supposed to have.
A well designed gameplay loop itself does cause no burden of completion on the psyche, that only happens when the accomplishment of learning new things wanes and repetition sets in.
Asian titles are often masters in postponing the onset of this feeling by causing a drip-feed of game mechanics over time. That’s a big reason why non-gacha based titles from there tend to do so well with western audiences compared to games which are produced in the western areas.
A prime example of such a drip-feed method would be ‘Dave the Diver’ for a western game. The core gameplay loop is immediately established. Dive down, get expensive fish for your restaurant, play a minigame to service customers… get rewarded to afford more progress this way.
Beyond that though throughout nearly the whole game over and over and over new mechanics are implemented, even to a degree where it happens when 3/4th of the game are already over. Alternative ways to acquire resources, side-games, collections… non of them being enforced to be used but all fleshed out well withing the framework of the game. So even after 100 dives which are all ‘the same’ basically you don’t get an onset of mental exhaustion.
In Path of Exile this happens to a degree as well, but there it’s a sudden bomb of content happening first at the half-way point of the campaign… then when reaching end-game (maps) and during that providing a layer above with improved mechanics to challenge the player from each of those implemented systems. Betrayal has a major boss beyond repetition happening, Incursion has the temple nexus mechanic to create specific items (which is badly designed though and hence rarely engaged with), Delve has the semi-rare ‘cities’ with massive loot-drops and specific bosses inside, Heist has the blueprints with unique rewards changing the gameplay cycle, blight has blight-ravaged maps which are changing the active playstyle to a enforced tower-defense base don knowledge (outside of a few specific builds) And so on and so forth. Layer upon layer upon layer providing new things to deal with or new enforced ways to deal with an established system.
In Last Epoch we don’t have that. The first monolith is the same as the last monolith, there is no difference existing.
It has, and the answer to ‘why’ is also simply.
The genre itself is one enforcing a high knowledge base on mechanical aspects which causes two sub-sets of people to come inside it and being initially interested. The players wanting to get through content, having low retention by design as they stop when content ends… and those which want to min-max and see progress in alternative ways, optimizing and finishing everything to a high degree. Uber-Aberroth killing players fall into that category for example. The more venues to achieve that there are the more likely it is for a player to stay invested simply, a single avenue does easily ‘miss the mark’ for a higher quantity of initially interested players compared to a game which gives you ‘everything at once’. The chance for ‘something’ of that to ‘stick’ is simply higher.
That’s how games like Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Minecraft or Barotrauma (as a few examples off the top of my head) handle it well. You build however you want in Dwarf Fortress… focus on surviving against harsh conditions? In it! Building a floursihing well decorated and design fortress instead? In it! Be a singular adventurer roaming through the world and completing dangerous tasks? In it! So simply a lot of variety. CDDA is the same. Settling down? Being a stealthy survivor avoiding combat? Becoming a wanderer always on the move? You can play it how you want and it’s not ‘wrong’, the game offers those choices. Minecraft the same, simple building? Nice. Exploration? Also there, min-maxing and progressing all the systems automating stuff to get everything whenever wanted? Sure! And Barotrauma is both a campaign game for co-op, a single-player game and a multiplayer PvP or ‘traitor-style’ RP game. Each substantially different in playstyle.
LE doesn’t have that yet. It’s not fulfilling those seeking for a great story (as it’s not even finished), the people seeking clear-cut progression (as progress through monoliths and corruption feels very unclear for how well you do) as well as those wanting to min-max (as itemization progression is very barebones long-term). This leaves a substantially smaller sub-set of players which stay interesting hence.
That’s because the core combat itself is more engaging and fleshed out. Yes, balance is a mess… but the combat itself is fluid and enjoyable. Movements feel fluid while LE’s do feel a little ‘choppy’ in comparison and variety of skill-styles is high. Active Minion builds, passive minion builds, ranged builds, melee hard-hitting builds, a variety of medium to swift melee skills, totem playstyle, trap builds… it’s a whole slew available.
In comparison LE does ‘shoehorn’ you into a direction when picking a class. There’s not a high variety of builds available. Take the mercenary in PoE 2 as an example compared to a Sorcerer build in LE. In PoE you can go for lightning with galvanic arrow… for grenades, for a bell-build by combining the monk into it, a ballista build, a spear-based throwing merc, melee merc… that’s a good variety there, isn’t it?
Sorcere in LE is mostly either frostclaw in some way, mana blade, lightning blast, static orb or elemental nova… there’s not really more available. It’s all either direct-cast (AoE effect) or high-hitting melee… or ‘ranged melee’. You cast or hit in the direction of the enemy and it does. That’s it in different flavors of it basically, which it ultimately boild down to most builds overall.
No ballista setup which is half-passive debuffing rather then active damage dealing. No clustering of enemies for effect as more then a single dangerous enemy in LE has a combo-potential to ‘one hit’ you with bad RNG itself easily. And if you got that then those skills have a hefty cooldown which makes you fall back to… lightning blast, frost claws, mana blade, static orb or elemental nova. All direct attacks.
I saw a single black hole focused build and the author itself said ‘yeah, it sucks compared to everything else’ despite being a really fun mechanic.
That’s the core reason.
It’s the cumulative issues LE still has compared to PoE which cause it.
There is no ‘this is the one thing!’ it’s 10… 15… 20 things which all together make it ‘not as good yet’.
As mentioned, itemization, MG being broken inherently, more clunky combat feeling, shoehorning into what feels a small sub-section of skills, progression perception, lack of breadth of the game, unfinished story, less progression-time overall… all small non-essential parts on their own which can be avoided… but if you run into ‘something’ that irks you regularly you stop.
Both an entirely different genre though. Sure, overlap… but even then PoE has retention rates which are fairly stable. LE has not… maybe ‘yet’ maybe never, can’t say.
Because Uber-Aberroth is so far ‘away’ with repetitive grinding where you have to hope that the right thing drops (rather then actively targeting and working towards it) that it’s often not worthwhile to consider for many people.
The boss is great! Nice challenge! But the core systems of LE actively are detrimental to achieve even tackling uber-abby. So he has far less effect then he should’ve.
Arena is highly repetitive, miniscule in scale and extremely unrewarding outside of leveling (as it gives a substantial amount of experience).
Only a very very small set of people are enjoying Arena content.
It’s good to exist as a bonus but not remotely enough in breadth to give people variety.
If I dare to guess then poeninja, which only takes into consideration characters with level 70+ as GGG also deems anyone below as a ‘tourist’ simply. Non-essential one time players unless the experience itself in some way turned them away. (And they still do jack to fix the early game experience in PoE 1 nonetheless, but that’s another topic).
Exactly that basically.
If LE wants long-term retention then their game needs to have long-term playability available.
Ongoing steady goals which seem to be ‘in reach’ no matter how far you’ve progressed.
And very few people enjoy it because it’s repetitive, miniscule in scale and also has said issues.
If you fix one part more people enjoy it.
If you fix all parts even more people enjoy it.
And for their focus on improving those things (kudos on how well they did it beforehand) the itemization progression overall in the game is - for that level of effort at least - sub-par.
Same here, the only one worth repeating if available is the barnacle king, for loot lizards. Everything else is just lackluster. For target farming the Harbinger which drops a timeline unique… but that’s basically it.
Brewmaster only if you need the belt, otherwise a waste of time, the low ones offer nothing at all even, worse then a normal echo since the amount of weaver idols dropping there is far lower, reducing the chance to optimizing the rolls on the side without any respective reward that can’t be provided easier in other ways (prophecy for CoF counters it entirely and in MG you want to focus on champions and weaver idols with good rolls as well)
The block-count is quite low, yes. Connections, mini-boss rooms and reward rooms, with the worst one being the multi-normal-chest room that’s a mini-maze.
No special things that are respectively rare, no side-gimmicks to break the repetitive gameplay, no nothing.
Good content… but not great.
The campaign fo D4 in 1.0 was extremely well received. The end-game atrociously since it was a disaster simply.
Combat was well received as well. So I would argue ‘no’ on that point. Their balance was a mess though with severe differences in the core ability to build the different classes… and a lackluster implementation overall for build variety… there is basically none. Also the drops in D4 were awful, weird stats, useless resistances, extremely hard to properly scale as it wasn’t ‘straightforward at the core’ which is a basically mandatory aspect. Yes, after understanding it easy to handle… but a bad implementation simply.
So they did well there, as little as I want to say anything good about Blizzard. But well, they went ahead and steamrolled everything entirely anyway in proper Blizzard manner, hence making a game needing some distinct changes substantially worse by weakening their strengths and not being able to fix their weaknesses anyway 
That’s sustain, not defenses.
It helps getting back up from hard hits, not to mitigate incoming damage.
That enforces a limit on how much you can handle at a lower limit then a character having mitigation, based on personal skill. The higher your skill the worse a sustain build becomes in comparison as you only need sustain when the count of mistakes is high, if it’s low you get no results from it.
Unless sustain outpaces nearly all incoming damage sources (happens in some cases in PoE builds) then it is a sub-par building method. Meaning the more one-shots exist the less meaning it has, and since corruption scaling in LE with guarantee outpaces your direct defenses it looses a massive amount of value before long.
I’ve actually been ‘caught’ by a indie game called ‘Ostranauts’, which is from the maker of ‘Neo Scavenger’, a fantastic niche indie game. EA and extremely buggy/unfinished but so soooo much long-term fun.
A high input gambling game mind you!
You need to be very active to see the results, hence much much tedium involved to make it happen. That counters investment massively.
LE is not much better in terms of gambling for MG, a bit for CoF definitely though! But the difference is you only need to do your core gameplay and that’s your RNG layer.
PoE 1 does substantially better because of the in-depth crafting mechanic. Also gamba… but first of all a deterministic time-based system as you’ll get your upgrade… just repeat the same click respectively often… while LE’s system is pure luck, top-end drops are respectively rare and non-enforcible for exalteds that all meaning of actively obtaining it wanes away, leaving it only as a great bonus to happen ‘on the side’… while it’s the only way to progress though.
And being screwed by RNG is nothing you can influence through your choices, it always feels bad.
And more engaging. The current combat system simply doesn’t allow that, and it would be a substantial change at the core aspects to not be a viable option anyway.
So other avenues to increase engagement have to be taken.
I disagree here. PoE2 does not have that variety, unless you like suffering. In PoE2 you end up with most builds feeling the same if you want good end-game, which, problematically, is in the direction of PoE1. The design GGG bolted on to PoE1 and transitioned to PoE2 is a contradiction at its core and I have no doubt at all that PoE2 will end up being just a very polished PoE1 enhancement. Which cool, a lot of people will be happy with, but also, then why make PoE2 and not just do it in PoE1. The things PoE2 does different are the things people don’t like… so far.
What sets LE apart, is very clear and unique class design (plus great QoL like stash/crafting/loot filters). Look at the skills and classes in LE vs the other contemporary ARPGs and they’ve done a great job of creating their own identity.
EHG just need more time to cook, they’re showing a strong grasp of implementing systems that fundamentally respect the player and provide flexibility. Once they start branching out the content more and increasing build diversity (Sigils?) they’ll really grow the base, much as PoE1 has done with it’s interesting and unique leagues over the years.
PoE2, I don’t see the long term retention growing so much, especially if GGG intend to keep supporting PoE1 with leagues. PoE2 has fundamental problems with its new ideas and the rest isn’t different enough to PoE1. I think they’ll have to can PoE1 support at some point along the way and the community won’t be happy no matter how they do it. It will be a very interesting comparison between PoE2 at 1.0, PoE1 and LE. It’s great for us players, there’s more options than ever available to us for quality ARPG fun.
In honesty, I found LE quite boring before 1.2 and have just jumped in an out over the years. But now I’m really enjoying it, playing a number of builds and getting new ideas to try too, which didn’t happen in PoE2 (I tried a few builds) and certainly didn’t happen in D4.
Do you mean in terms of monster mechanics or how skills feel? Because playing Runic Invocation, I’ve never had such entertaining and engaging combat, as an example. Sure there could be a bit more danger at times, but moment to moment it’s immense fun.
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This is why I wonder why POE 2 has higher retention. Obviously, LE can’t compete with amount content in POE 1. But it should, in theory, easily be able to compete with POE 2 in its current state.
I agree. First, I though POE 2 obviously can’t have much more end-game content than LE, but actually, I guess it does, looks like EHG failed to introduce diverse content over all those years of development.
Yes, exactly. Progression can’t be slowed down if there is nothing to enjoy all that time. In POE 1, they are filling it with amount of content. In POE 2, they are filling it with more interesting combat, with gameplay — thing which barely exists in most ARPGs. I think, second way is potentially much more efficient, because it doesn’t require to make game as bloated with content as POE 1. I think EHG could improve LE a lot even with limited developing speed they have, if they would focus on this part instead. People would just enjoy playing it, they wouldn’t need to play the new content at every step of their journey in order to have fun, existing content would become much more replayable. I think, this is the main reason why POE 2 is more replayable.
Yeah, I like idea of Arena, thought I might enjoy that mode, but in reality, it didn’t even feel much different from the mapping. It doesn’t work as good as it potentially could.
Though that’s not entirely fair, PoE2 has a large content pool from PoE1 to refresh and reuse. What new things is PoE2 endgame doing that isn’t in PoE1 that people really enjoy?
Arena needs to test your build. I.e. Crucible in Grim Dawn. It should be aspirational, not just something you do to pass time, otherwise there are better things. They just need to get balance sorted and then look at difficulty options (i.e. you use a ‘special’ arena key to unlock ‘hard-mode’ arena, pinnacle bosses show up in the hardest ones, etc).
LE will get there, the game’s come a long way already and they still have the story campaign to finish. I think the core end-game and systems are there now, so they can start adding variety at an accelerated pace.
I think, trying to transform LE into POE 1, I mean feel that void by overfilling it with content, will not work good enough for EHG. Not only this is not very efficient way overall, but also, GGG are very good at adding new content very fast, while EGH are famously not. But EHG could be, potentially, good at polishing things like combat.
A large percent of players that play Last Epoch come from Path of Exile 1/2 or Diablo 4. Those are their main games. They like Last Epoch but it isn’t their main game yet. Last Epoch is a much smaller studio, but doing tremendous job.
Basically Last Epoch is competing against he big boys and now No Rest for the Wicked and Torchlight are both doing well. aRPG have some amazing games.
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Definitely, I don’t want LE to turn into PoE1 either. PoE1 is a sandbox game where you can math to your heart’s content and blast your way around all the balance jank because they have good content experiences. PoE2 is more a curated garden, not sure where it’ll end up.
I want LE to be that perfect gap between PoE and Grim Dawn. PoE has end-game galore with multiple content types to explore, Grim Dawn has wonderful itemisation and campaign progression encouraging altaholics like me.
I want LE to have different challenges in the end-game, through types of Echoes, pinnacle bosses, proper dungeons (with levels and modifiers, kinda like Grim Dawn’s dungeons but expanded like the community leagues there do). I also want more side areas and bosses hidden/placed within the campaign too, so I can revisit ii if I want to in interesting ways. EHG have shown they are able to bring new innovations, so I hope they’ve got some cool creative ideas on the roadmap for content that isn’t just trying to be PoE.
Just thinking, a ‘corrupted’ campaign could be an interesting concept…
I’m not taking the awful balancing into consideration, I only speak about the core elements of build diversion.
They exist in PoE 2 the same as in PoE 1, but they don’t in Last Epoch. The game is inherently designed to not have them.
No matter how much you twist and turn it… the amount of skill combinations is very limited in LE by design, you have those available in your class, that’s it.
In PoE I can go and make a boneshatter based witch. Sure, will suck… but I can, and the design allows for a potential unique or interaction to exist which makes it not sucking… but either viable or even overperforming.
This is a core design decision which allows a higher variety in build creation. Because at the end of the day unless substantial changes are made to the core system then a Spellblade in 1.2 will be nigh identical to a spellblade in… let’s say 3.0.
This is not the case in PoE, a prime example being Marauder builds, which are tanky melee characters as the base trope. Even going with a single skill, namely ‘Cyclone’, which is the Warpath equivalent. First it was either pure physical and you increased base AoE or you used a specific unique to trigger lightning based skill, so jumping into an enemy in melee, starting up and triggering effects which were usually meant for witches, hence the melee character becoming a spellslinger. This allowed a aura (heral of thunder) to trigger on top which makes it a poor direct DPS build but a great clear-skill back then, completely off-kilter from what the ascendancy is designed to do. Similar builds are still in existence. Alternatively you could build with the same item as a extremely hard-hitting close-combat guy causing multiple overlapping explosions… or go into DoT based damage as well via bleed.
That’s 4 builds with a single skill, with a single ascendancy, offering already 2 completely different playstyles.
There was even a short time when you could put the same skill as a marauder into a totem, while the chieftain is generally more used for totems this was an absolute exception hence, showcasing what I mean that different changes can affect classes and create builds which completely break out of the norm.
So instead of being a melee build you created those totems inheriting your abilities, which was the creation of charges, which caused explosion and triggered skills. This led to totems spinning away from you and doing the same lightning casts as mentioned above.
Such interactions simply can’t be implemented by EHG currently as it would necessitate multiple behavior changing uniques in tandem, we only have a very seleted and limited amount of them available, one being Jhelkor’s Blast Knife turning Detonating Arrow into a melee skill, and in my opinion? It’s one of the best designed items in the game and vastly more of that type need to exist.
I find it an utter shame that since the introduction of it basically no new additions severely changing the baseline of a skill has been introduced, mostly focusing on making numerical changes or adding synergies which slightly adjusted the limited playfield you move inside. That’s a detriment in comparison for build variety.
And I’ll repeat, I’m talking not about balance (which you include directly) but only the baseline mechanics and their potential.
Yes, they have! And they utterly ruined it with mastery respec to take away a large portion of said identity. Usually you lean into strengths and make them a defining aspect of your creation, not demolish them. So that’s a net negative.
If you don’t lean into your strengths they stop being a strength but tend to become a limiter instead. The distinctly created design space which causes a class to work in a narrow framework could’ve been expanded upon via affixes and uniques that severely change the interaction of skills to cause completely different outcomes. Instead without that happening it’s just ‘less’ already, and with the identity aspect being so harshly taken away they’ve become a detriment for variety only.
As for stash… which QoL? You mean not being a paid feature? That’s not QoL, that’s a design choice. It’s a good way to take what another game has and removing the downside… but functionally the tabs are mostly the same.
If you’re talking about the ability to auto-sort into tabs specifically by narrow paramenters? Yes, that’s a good QoL! Kudos to EHG, I’ll praise where praise is due after all.
It gets reduced by the need to have those in the first place though. In PoE it would be a fantastic addition since the variety of crating types enforces a high variety of storage tabs potentially to make the best use out of those systems… since they’re not readily and immediately available.
We don’t have such things in LE though outside of the LP system, and that’s a detriment having to keep tens or hundreds of items solely to wait on a potential counterpart to drop… rather then being able to forego collecting them and targeting an outome more narrowly.
Crafting? You mean with the lack of auto-stashing shards until finally it happened now in 1.2? Or do you mean that the system is simply entirely different as a baseline compared to what PoE has? From a design philosophy already?
The core issue of PoE’s crafting mechanic is a lack of QoL, most like the majority in PoE is… bad explanations and lack of features supporting their mechanics. But the core mechanics themselves are substantially more in depth and offering more potential then what LE offers.
Imagine a crafting screen in PoE… you put in your item, you state the conditions for a positive outcome… and do a single click and it starts, only stopping upon reaching the mentioned conditions or running out of consumables needed. Voila… you got a system that is as good if not better then what LE offers. It’s the tedium which breaks PoE, not the functionality itself.
Loot filters the same, actually LE’s loot filter is only better because it’s in-game and can be handled by a ‘normal player’ without major knowledge. Once more… supporting systems missing. Not only did a whole site supported by a single guy needed to be created first to give proper access to players but also it’s still not up to snuff for ease of use there. And a part of that is that the conditions existing in PoE are just more plenty because vastly more content exists in the game. Imagine PoE 1.0 with a similar loot filter system as LE has now, a lot more accessible immediately. Imagine it expanding over time related to new implementations over 10 years.
Just once more… proper supporting struts for the stability of the core pillar missing.
Do they?
I’ll always fall back to the implementation of MG and overall player factions then as a counterargument.
How is punishing a player by removing their farmed up equipment rather then using alternative limiters a ‘strong grasp of implementing systems’?
How is the lack of core functionality mandatory for a market system with high variety a strong grasp?
It’s majorly dropping the ball instead.
The weaver addition also is fantastic short-term but really worrysome long-term. As was their crafting system change… or the introduction of LP items.
As a baseline really nice additions now, at this moment. But we’re here talking about a live-service game. Something which needs implementations for years to come and hence the question of longevity being in mind.
Crafting is circumvented by adding more FP, but that causes baseline drops to become even easier acquisitioned, making it lean ever more and more purely towards drop-based luck rather then alleviating the drop RNG… which is the core goal of a crafting system. Alleviating the RNG layer of a high-variable drop-system to return a medium outcome to it rather then a extremely spiky spread.
LP is a core limiter, the more uniques are implemented the less viable ‘exalt is best’ cases will exist. This leads to mandatory unique setups over time as BiS, reducing value of rare items.
Those are issues which PoE already had to deal with years ago, and the lessons from there have not been learned.
The strength of EHG lies in the introduction of solutions for issues other games have.
That’s their upside.
But…
The weakness of EHG lies in the re-introduction of formerly solved pitfalls the systems of other games showcased.
EHG is quite bad in genre research for design-methodology but they’re good in storming forward with solutions for aspects otherwise negatively perceived.
Is that good or bad overall? It’s a really really sketchy position to be in.
Cross-interaction adds to franchise power.
That’s something which has been seen regularly, it’s why after ‘Terraria’ we’ve seen ‘Starbound’ being so massively succesful… despite being mechanically actually a rather mediocre and shallow game, and also perceived as such when compared to each other. Same situation there… solved issues from Terraria haven’t been implemented in Starbound, thus causing for example the combat to feel utterly lackluster while in Terraria it’s the core pillar sustaining the whole game. No matter how well the progression is, if all the new weapons wouldn’t be based on a combat system that feels great then it wouldn’t have worked so well… and still does today.
PoE 2 has re-introduced the issues PoE 1 had, has failed to deliver on the premise given before release and has changed development direction substantially from the showcased baseline. No surprise it’s reviewed so badly.
Not a bad game at all, it has really great plus sides… but as a overall project it’s currently a failure. Not revenue wise… but definitely as a culmination of the goals initially provided.
So you agree that the core gameplay loop of LE is too limited to be enjoyable long-term before? And now with the weaver addition basically the variety has increased enough to at least short-term alleviate that and make it actually enjoyable?
Yes, that would be my bit to that as well, EHG needs to expand their game content and have supporting functionally long-term systems existing. It doesn’t work well with a ‘properly paced’ release schedule if they need to re-invent their mechanics to a substantial degree with every new addition. Systems need to stay solid for years before encroaching shortcomings can be fixed via re-imagining it from the ground up, allowing the time to create a proper system without the pitfall formerly showcased and not introducing new ones to come into existence.
Otherwise we get another ‘Boss Ward’ mechanic which fixes a few things and introduces as many different flavored issues which suck as much but for other people simply. And that’s shitty design in my eyes.
Both, the enemy AI doesn’t allow for much more and the skills also are based in relation to that. Completed by the actions of them. One thing which would increase the perception of it substantially is if a character just doesn’t ‘stop’ and then does their skills but have in-built animations for each one. More advanced mechanics based on the current animation state hence is something fixing that. One option is to create a more ‘combo-based’ gameplay, but not in the PoE 2 style (which is just crappy enforced implementation without understanding what it means) but in the already otherwise implemented way games showcased.
More of the Runic Invocation style (which is in my opinion the best designed skill in the game). So for example if you’re in melee with a swift hitting weapon like daggers - coming back to Jhelkor’s Blast knive there - it means the perception is ‘I’m a darn speedy swift-hitting character’… so make use of that! The current ‘issue’ of the general gameplay feel is the lack of flexibility it has. You need to keep the mouse cursor on the mob when attacking, and you attack in the direction, not ‘the mob’ itself.
A better option would be for the character to ‘lock onto’ the hit enemy when the first hit registers, ensuring that you don’t ‘phase’ through the enemy and suddenly hit air - a common issue with the hitboxes and the short range of daggers - as well as hence including the ability of adding follow-up combos this way. After all when the game registers you’re in the ‘state’ of attacking an enemy directly it allows for this flag to cause alternative interactions to happen which would usually cause base behavior.
Let’s give an example: Currently when you keep the left mouse button pressed then there’s a miniscule time of a few frames between attacks, this causes your character to move forward a little bit… but you don’t want to let go of the left mouse button since incoming attacks can be fatal, hence reducing reaction time substantially when not needing to ‘switch’ between the usage of the buttons.
The first thing the skill hence should already do - but doesn’t - is to ensure we don’t move unless we let go of the right mouse button, period. The second which it could do - with the said targeting state achieved hence - is for example to allow after the first attack to use the left mouse button as a click option to disengage swiftly… as one could expect from a dagger user anyway, having the need for it.
For example a backflip to get out of range for a wind-up attack hitting the space we just occupied.
Things like this, those ‘details’ create in the mind of a player the feeling of ‘smoothness’. GGG does put extreme emphasis on that aspect, having designed their core combat system meticulously (and extremely well) to take into account as many situations as possible. It’s a masterpiece plainly spoken there, just the follow-up systems ruining it.
Enemies blocking the player? Already existing in PoE 1, but it feels bad there and you don’t experience it commonly as you blast through everything. Invulnerability in Delve on the other hand showcases that mechanic. It exists in PoE 2 too! And with the roll avoiding those clusters it’s supposed to feel good. What they changed was reducing the hitbox of the player to a pixel to get through the narrowest gaps when used, which is good and feels great. What should’ve been done instead to make it even feel better - and hence why it’s sometimes ‘grating’ to the player - is to guarantee a ‘roll-through’ when used, which it doesn’t… but it’s supposed to feel like it does, right? So instead they should’ve made the placer ‘phase’ through the mob, and if not succesful because more is there adding a extremely short micro-stun with an animation for it of stumbling at the end, showcasing directly what went wrong and why… because in our mind ‘it makes sense to happen’.
A lot of gameplay design is about the mental state of the player perceiving things as ‘it makes sense’ and filling in gaps often, but when realized it feels bad. So good design ‘plugs those moments’ to ensure we have more options to fill in those gaps mentally.
Core combat system. That’s extremely well designed and better then PoE 1.
The balance and mechanics building up on that are grating though.
Hadn’t they dropped the ball with enforcing nonsensical extras on top and adjusting mobs according to player capability properly (AI wise especially rather then simply ‘bunching up’ as they do now) then it would’ve been a world-class game without competition.
Yes… yes they did.
And I mention it since 1.0 already.
PoE didn’t introduce those things for a while either, but they started soon-ish with Breach for the first major game-changing one on a small scale. Unlike all before which were just ‘additional gimmicks’ inside the map (like shrines, or strongboxes, or in LE’s case loot lizards) there suddenly was a distinct ‘shift’ in mentality. You stopped, you had to switch your gameplay loop up since behaviour was different (stay inside the circle, kill enemies faster then they appear, wave-defense style gameplay) and it caused massive extra retention. The first ‘genre breaching’ mechanic was introduced, on a really small scale yet.
Then the next one came with ‘Abyss’ 3 leagues later, which was a better copy of the Rift system in D3, following the ground breaking up, killing or avoiding enemies before a big gap appeared and they swarmed out. You had to stay close and follow it, potentially bringing you in dangerous situations before sudden high-intense fights with masses of enemies broke out that had unique mechanics like phasing implemented.
And from there it just went on. Bestiary, complete side mechanic in a large scale! Incursion as well, then right after Delve. Then Tencent acquisition and upscaling, directly followed by Betrayal, one absolutely humongous shift in content depth for design, Synthesis, sadly the memory game being removed as it was really fun (if they weren’t idiots limiting pieces to 10 max possessed. Should’ve been at least 100.) Legion with a layered mechanic suddenly, Blight, also layered, Metamorph, also layered (but annoying core game wise). Delirium changing the core gameplay but by choice, more danger for more reward… since Harbinger every league was a shift in style, a banger design-wise. Not always hitting (some were awful, like the kalandra league) but always creative… and allowing another type of player to enjoy content.
Yes, but that also leads to repetition. That’s why MMO’s have such a variety of things to do. Be it events, dungeons, random farming, side-mechanics like life-skills and so on.
It’s to break the monotomy but still staying inside the game client during that. The more avenues a game offers the more likely players will stay.
That’s why I feel all too baffled when people complain about how someone plays. If a loot-based ARPG player wants to mostly handle the market because that’s fun for them? Let em! Nice! More stuff despite not being the core gameplay loop! Someone only farming Sanctum, hence basically a rogue-lite style mechanic? Nice! Great! More of that!
In FF14 for example it’s jumping puzzles and chocobo racing, people take ‘mental time off’ from the high intense combat gameplay otherwise seen this way. It allows the mind to recuperate, to not get ‘burned out’ on something.
Yeah, first is lack of presentation. It’s an Arena, show that it’s being watched! You’re putting on a show after all for people! Introduce ‘micro-games’ besides the monotone ‘monster comes to you now instead of you to it’ style of gameplay.
Intorduce combos for better rewards! Kill-speed for a reward multiplier. Special mobs to adjust how the viewers react to you, like some you need to avoid killing, others you should focus on, for buffs/debuffs. It doesn’t matter what, simply ‘something’ basically. For more replay-value? Add optionality to it overall, more modifiers more reward… more risk and more things to look out for at once! Limited rounds, endless mode, time-attack, boss-rush… whatever, so many options!
What’s chosen from all the posibilities? The most lackluster one anyone can imagine. It’s shoddy, it’s awful, it’s simply lazy. And that’s a general trope going on with EHG sadly ‘lazy design’ is a really bad habit they have. We can see it throughout the whole game.
CoF and MG could’ve been genre-breaking… but it was ‘lazy designed’ for MG.
Loot Lizards could’ve been a major addition too, with the tails being collected and leading to a special boss-fight, maybe a lizard-stage so to speak as a little secret and homage to the forefather of modern ARPGs, Diablo. All lovely! Instead they’re just walking loot chests which look nice and are great to kill… but nothing beyond.
Dungeons? Let’s not even start with that stain of existence. ‘Yeah, throw in lizards so the shit design there is at least covered with some loot’ and it wasn’t even enough to warrant it anyway! Temporal Sanctum is such a hassle to move through, pure absolute tedium without rhyme or reason that you’re not even inclined to add the lizards there.
The best place to do it is Soulfire Bastion solely because you already full cleared that… despite the outcome being crap beyond end, never having been adjusted to the progression of the game. Rewards for Tier 4 buying should’ve at least a 500% higher rarity modifier there to even make it worthwhile… and also a massively increased chance for LP outcomes. But nah, just… depricated content. There and potentially great but just… barren, lifeless… abandoned.
The weaver dungeons being ‘procedural’ are a great thing! Great first iteration. And I say first because they need to expand on the concept from now on in that exact mechanic.
It’s a bad and absolutely insulting habit of game design nowadays that developers have turned to introducing something, clapping themselves on the back and never touching stuff again. Mechanics have to evolve steadily with additions to the game. More mechanics is more work… but as they become enough in numbers you can leave out more and more, reduce the amount of new implementations and rotate between enhancing those core directions steadily.
Yes, design wise sure. Implementation wise Breach is entirely different though.
First of all it’s not the same engine and hence had to be re-created from scratch. What hinders EHG to implement a breach-style mechanic into their game? Or a delve style… or a betrayal style… or a… you get the gist. Plagiarism in games is not bad, quite the contrary, don’t darn re-invent the wheel every time, use what others did well and improve upon it.
Secondly, even Breach has been substantially adjusted. Kill-speed of monsters causes it to stay open longer. Ultimatum is completely different in style. Sanctum has been made into a proper rogue-lite game basically. Those are substantial changes.
I worry if they will ‘get there’ properly.
The last cycles have shown me that EHG is failing to address old systems at favor of implementing new stuff and ‘shiny things’.
Graphically the game is so much better in 1.2… but if I want to have nice things to look at I’m going to watch a movie, a series or look at pictures or short animations. All great!
I’m here first and foremost for well executed ARPG gameplay… and if that isn’t up to par then what am I here for? The unfinished story? The lackluster Dungeons? The repetitive Arena? The nearly unreachable pinnacle boss? The missing progression guidance after stepping into empowered monoliths?
If your game-guidance giving you new exciting way to interact with the game after what substantiates 10 hours of active gameplay - for a non-newcomer - with their first character (and not speedrunning it too) stops right there then something is vastly wrong still. And until that’s fixed the retention also won’t improve.
Let’s say a newcomer needs 10 hours for the campaign… and goes to unlock all monoliths. What is that then… 20… 25 hours total play-time? And then they’re more or less told by the game ‘congratulations, you’re through unless you do that extremely repetitive annoying progression mechanic for the Harbingers’?
Obviously people leave then, screw that So retention time is 25 hours.
In PoE you got Tier 16 maps, a clear-cut first goal to reach while new stuff is introduced to reach beyond and seemingly also achievable. You need a good 80 hours as a newcomer to even get to T16 maps, that’s nearly 4 times as long without ‘stretching’ any content. Baseline, not even core progression boss (Maven) killed, not to speak of uber-variants… which seem achievable after having tried all the normal bosses by that time.
Nah, that won’t work as mentioned. Not with the existing baseline and the benchmark they have to compete against. The combat benchmark currently is PoE 2 in 0.1 during campaign. Which was fantastic, nigh uniformly agreed upon.
That’s not something you can compete against if your system is not set up from the start to handle this, it’ll take several years for EHG to achieve something close. In that time the game would die.
So the other option is to provide something which either other games do as well… and position yourself in a place they don’t occupy yet… hence more demanding then D3/D4 but less so then PoE 1/2… or by branching into directions which others of the genre don’t do well, which is extremely high QoL and polished and improved mechanics otherwise.
The core complaint about PoE 1 is that leagues get ‘neutered’ after core implementation, if EHG can manage to implement content ‘non-neutered’ generally, increasing variety this way massively that already puts them into a winning position for a large portion of players.
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This is one of PoE2’s problems, it doesn’t allow the flexibility of PoE1. GGG have put a lot of restrictions on that sandbox that PoE1 is so loved for, as I mentioned earlier it’s a more manicured garden now, but the balance and mechanics don’t work well (yet at least) within that restricted arena. I think this video sums up my thoughts with PoE2 well (after I bought one of the higher supporter packs too, I’m pretty disappointed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZZWAi0mYQw
I get what you mean with LE, but that’s not a negative so much, PoE1 is the exception in ARPG’s for class openness. For what LE has it does a pretty good job of providing flexibility within the skills themselves, they just need to expand more with item modifiers and skill modifiers in future (hopefully!).
I’m ok with that. Let PoE1 be the wacky sandbox.
I don’t think so. I like to think up an idea and run with it as far as it goes, then start a new one. Other people don’t want to start again so they’ll use respec. I won’t, but I’m ok with it existing.
Unlimited, sortable, customisable, filterable, two layers of categories. It’s great.
So, it happened and it’s good. Let’s not go back to the early days of PoE to compare, we compare what we have now.
So, it’s just better then. Requiring major knowledge to configure a loot filter, imo, is not an indicator of a good underlying loot system. And I think that’s because GGG never spent time refining itemisation or content, they just add, add, add. Balance is secondary because the players enjoy being in that sandbox experimenting with things to solve the jank. It’s a feature, but not one I want in LE.
Making a market work effectively is slightly different to gameplay and content rewarding the players’ time. I mean, if that was easy PoE would of course have an in-game market system that works,.
I agree here. I like luck based drops, but I also like some determinism and a target to work to with crafting, not just ‘better RNG.’ Again, I think Grim Dawn does a great job here: clear blueprints and lists for craftable items and it’s up to you to farm the ingredients, iron and blueprints to create them. You can’t get everything with crafting, but for some there’s vendors and others target farming. I think LE needs a bit more target farming and side content for it, to reduce reliance on LP items.
I wont talk about PoE2 then, my god did they not learn from some pretty obvious issues (monster death effects, crap inventory, having to ID items, etc).
What’s the basis for this, and some examples? To me their design feels fairly traditional with their own ideas for improving loot/craft/skills etc.
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of sunk cost fallacy going on with the playerbase, some loyalty and some genuinely good stuff (WASD is well implemented, skill effects are neat), but in the end I don’t see them ending up anywhere substantially different from PoE1’s path, not quite the realisation of the promise.
No, the gameplay loop was enjoyable in essence, but it felt clunky, the graphics dated, lacked ‘flavour’ in end-game and had some frustrations like manual shard management etc. I feel now I’m just getting into enjoying exploring skills and classes, the balance through the campaign might be ‘easy’ but that’s good to me, it let’s me play with ideas without having to theorycraft to not be a crawl. I do think the melee skills need a bit more oomph and the enemies need a bit more variety in how they move around and attack/defend (you just ignore most of it at present), but it’s got my attention and I’m enjoying the loop.
Boss ward is just ‘more HP’ with gates, I think that wasn’t a good fix because there’s no way to counter it aside just damage. I agree those kinds of things aren’t good fixes for uncomfortable balance.
Yeah I’m currently playing Runic Invocation, I agree that is precisely the type of gameplay EHG should build on. I’m using Glacier + Flame Rush + Mana Strike to generate Cold/Fire/Lightning runes and playing around with all sorts of combos, it’s really fun and rewarding to be responsible for the effects of your interactions, but it’s not so slow and clunky that I’m waiting for cooldowns and managing stupid rotations. Of course I could just go runic bolts or pick one element, but I like this idea so I’m going with it because it’s fun. So many people seem to go look up builds or follow someone else’s ideas and then complain the game isn’t fun, when they’re not doing something they enjoy in the first place because they place efficiency as their first priority. Eh.
About the mechanics stuff, I’m sure that’s doable because it seems to be required for good gameplay use?
Personally I find PoE2 feels bad/frustrating. Rolling into walls or monsters, slow reactions and wind-up times, feels like I’m playing a souls game at times and I don’t like that (personally, I can’t stand the ‘souls-like’ attitude that ARPGs should be basically a boss rush and the rest of the content should get out of the way). I never liked PoE1’s melee because it’s essentially casting at point blank and there’s no nice impact with the monsters, they could be there or not and it makes no difference. Here I also like Grim Dawn and its WPS/proc system, you have to get in and actually target and hit monsters and that procs devotions and skill effects to do damage. Bring some of that into LE, kinda like Runic Invocation but as melee procs, would be ace.