Yeah, GGG had a total of 114 employees in 2022.
Which I would say should give the 135 for April 2024 a solid standing of it being ‘the company’ they have.
Baffling low number for what they do.
That’s what sounds off/wrong. Increasing to 100 is one thing, increasing by 100 though…
I was a big fan, but everything gonna too slow. Where is promised Cycle 3-4 months, not 5-6?
I was pretty sure I read something about them hiring 100 more people. But I can’t find it, so I might be remembering wrong. Like I was under the impression they had a dozen pre-1.0. 
That was well before 1.0 though. Like, several years.
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Yeah, probably several years back.
Only thing I could find today while I was searching about their team splitting was this post from 2021 saying they were already more than 50 total members by then.
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I’m not the Llama, but I agree with him.
The game feels very incomplete, with new mechanics still being tested (see the dodge introduced in 1.1) and without a solid roadmap.
When the game was released, there was clearly a demand for a new action RPG - see how many concurrent players the game had.
But, by releasing Last Epoch in the state it’s currently in, I think EHG may have driven some of those players away. Players that maybe would have kept playing (or at least returning) to the game if it had been released later, in a more polished state.
But I agree with DJ - I think EHG was keenly aware of this, but was also forced to release the game due to their financial situation.
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To be fair, dodge feels like something that wouldn’t have been added if it stayed in EA. It was a feature that was added by request by a lot of new players post-launch.
If WASD was simple to implement, I’m sure it would have been released in 1.1 as well.
As for the roadmap, I’m fairly certain they had a roadmap, probably pretty close to the one they released after launch.
To be fair once again, I’m pretty sure the lack of polish wasn’t the main problem but simply the fact that there is only one real endgame activity, which is farming monos over and over again, which isn’t appealing to many players.
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That’s fair. The verb ‘feel’ already points out the subjective nature.
One reason why I assume people perceive LE as incomplete is the expectations they have. LE’s campaign for example is in a good spot for the ‘to be continued’ sign. Aside from EHG having announced that the story is supposed to be longer, it is clear that they strive for a larger arc.
PoE took the lazy man’s approach to campaign creation to keep people somewhat busy. Three rather short acts run in three different difficulties. But the story - for me - always felt incomplete back then. Too much stuff just hinted at. IIRC, many of the lore snippets you find during the acts were also introduced over time. And I am pretty sure GGG said early on that the campaign isn’t finished and that they will add new acts in time. There was some post I remember where Chris Wilson said that a new act takes a year to make, and act 4 would come much later.
Different classes had zero difference but their starting point on the grid, or their visual appearance. One could argue that this was a clever design choice, as this saves a lot of work that goes into designing specific classes, subclasses, etc.
There was no trade system that could feel half-baked, for there was none, aside from the fact that people could have a trade window open for direct trade. PoE felt so incomplete in that aspect that 3rd party developers basically laid the groundwork for what GGG implemented later on their website. Even after 10 years of service, trade in PoE feels like incomplete and unintuitive garbage - people just got used to the frustration it brings, I guess.
From a technical perspective, PoE ran worse than LE does - if we ignore the first few troublesome days.
Desyncs and rubber banding in PoE were so bad that people used macros to repeatedly send /oos to the chat. It’s the reason I never bothered with HC in PoE, even though I liked that in D2. I died so often because I desynced after any sort of movement skill.
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3-4 months is an estimated time frame. Doing exactly 3-4 month time frame was never promised.
Cycles can either end early or be longer. In this case 1.1 cycle 2 is going to be longer at least till Q1 of 2025. When 1.2 cycle 3 drops
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Awww man, I spend one day playing MonHun and chilling with the wife instead of browsing the forums for new threads since it’s been slow, and I miss this entire juicy thread of discussion/arguments!
Even though I’m late, for the record, I think the label of EA would prevent a lot of the complaints we’ve seen on the forums regarding the state of systems that aren’t up to snuff. It’s easier to say “wow, boss Ward sucks, I bet they’ll fix it before release” vs “it’s almost a year since 1.0 launched and we still have buggy systems like boss Ward!”
Unfortunately, I also agree that the launch padded their pockets which is a good thing for producing more quality content.
LE is a very good game and while there are systems that need updated, it’s not a broken game like Wolcen was/is (last I played).
Lastly, I’ll end with that I agree with SolidMetalKnight that I’d take a story driven GD/TQ experience over seasonal/cycle content any day. Polish the game you have and keep releasing great content even after years (look at Titan Quest Eternal Embers for a 15+ year old game at dlc release and Grim Dawn’s new expansion early next year as great examples). Ultimately, EHG settled on cycle content and I can live with that. I’ll still play it and will play GD and TQ2 (once it releases in EA in Dec./Jan.)
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More employees does not nec mean a good game. Palworld was made with 12 person team and concord had hundreds and still failed. Look at The Veilguard and how hard that will flop.
Hard thing to judge.
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The size of a company is a pointer as to what they should be able to achieve in a specific timeframe, as well as the respective quality you should be able to expect.
For example… I don’t expect great graphics from Dwarf Fortress, even in the graphical version on Steam… and I don’t expect weekly updates for fixes, it’s 2 people after all actively working on it.
I expect similar quality as to what other games of the genre can provide - at least coming close to it - when the amount of employees rises.
So, if EHG gets close to GGGs employee count I expect the same quality and cadence of updates after taking into account a time for them to get their systems up to par and optimal to provide quality content.
We’re not even remotely close to that though, GGG was a garage company which steadily increased in size, still being surprisingly small by the time of 1.0… which caused the small updates, they were expected.
Over time they got bigger though and hence had more capacity, and their methods also become more refined (while messing up majorly in-between, but that’s par the course)… with EHG? We have the size already, but we don’t have the quality or cadence of updates yet.
That’s why people start to be disgruntled.
Not to speak that a live-service game has other (understandable) expectations then one which is stand-alone.
First of all we can expect it to just be ‘gone’ in the future, which is a major negative and EHG has to make up for that otherwise, we’re basically having a ‘time limited’ product.
Secondly the live-service model itself wants us to play on and on and on… hence the expectation is obviously there for the devs to provide that, which is very wonky since end-game is monotonous and the other mechanics are unfinished or in a basic state (no finished campaign, dungeons are extremely basic, arena is very simple setup).
Hence this leads all to people simply saying ‘Yeah, it doesn’t yet provide what a live-service game which is released is supposed to provide’, which is a solid base game for the time with competition in mind + reliant updates that are able to keep up with the competition as well.
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I just don’t understand posts like these.
People are like “I was a big fan of the game, but there’s just not enough content for me to speedrun through, so I am going to play XYZ instead! But don’t forget I am a big fan!”
Like, no man, you are not a big fan. Me, I am a big fan, and I am content with wherever the game is at the moment, and am willing to be patient for it to be improved.
I also prefer to show how big of a fan I am by purchasing cosmetics and send my good feedback wherever I can.
I wouldn’t be a big fan if all I was doing was to criticize the game, call it dead, and disguise all of that negativity under “constructive criticism”
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I would agree with you if LE DID NOT choose a live service model. They have to know the expectation for a season is 3 months, because that is the norm & more importantly the schedule the arpg competitors stick to (give & take a few weeks).
If LE cannot deliver with satisfactory within the timeline, then they shouldn’t have made the game a live service model, & stick to traditional base games +DLCs ala Grim dawn.
You can still have seasonal reset, like D2, with expectation of no major updates.
I had the game since I think 2019. Its very clear (I did not blame them, as they are small studio) they do not have the capacity to delivered enough update in 3 month cycles, especially it competitors have up their game.
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Being a big Fan, & not happy with current content are not mutually exclusive.
The thing I heard from you, is you think" big Fan" means liking very much the game as it is. If you are not satisfied with the game, you are by (your) definition not a big fan
(correct me if I am wrong)
If you are a sport fan that support a team, you will know “Fans” do not mean you enjoy what your supported team is doing, & being not critical.
Fans could means you like the studio, you want the game to succeed, you see potiential…etc
What I mean is that it seems like these people have more negativity than positivity.
I think that if your negativity is 51% or more, compared to your positivity towards the game, then you are not a big fan
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Lets agree to disagree.
So by your understanding, a fan is someone who is allowed to be more negative than they are positive towards a subject? And by your definition, that still counts as a “fan”?
I’m sorry, but in my book, that is called “hater”
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Devs slept through the hype for Last epoch. Perhaps they released the game too early due to the release window being used. Only very big and positive changes can save it. They don’t need to look at PoE or Diablo. If you don’t fight for your place on the market, you die. They played Russian roulette with these slow changes. The future will show whether they will defend themselves or end up as a game with low population like Wolcen or Martyr.