Last Epoch is POE Killer now

Actually, Last Epoch is going in the same direction balancewise as Poe with the majasa patch: - they mass nerfed builds, buffed enemies' health and damage, nerfed item rarity and made it so you cant gamble for sets and uniques.

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MECHanokl wrote:

so they try different tactics

Which is a HUGE part of the game. Most skills are still good enough to beat 'most' content with (except deep delves and T19 Simus and stuff). If "trying different tactics" help people realize that, good for them. If "trying different tactics" is fun for them, good for them.

That said, some skills are worse than others, which is what GGG want; for there to be good choices, there has to be bad choices too. Don't necessarily agree with that, as for example melee has been a "bad choice" for years, except Slams for a league or two.

Good and bad skills = good, if there is enough good options for ALL archetypes, which I currently feel isn't the case, sadly. That needs to be looked at in the next league(s).

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Exile009 wrote:

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Jerle wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

have unrestricted and frictionless trade of any and all items, and even to have a far more accessible crafting system to go along with that as well.

POE trade is not frictionless. In fact, friction is the most complained about aspect of POE trading. So I dont know what you're smoking.

Evidently something better than what you're smoking, since I never said it was. A frictionless system is the auction house that we keep seeing posts asking about every so often. Point being that (some) people seem to want to have it all - unrestricted and seamless trade + an accessible and powerful crafting system. And aren't willing to accept that that's a bad idea.

It doesn't need to be a proposition of "all or nothing": Unrestricted and seamless trade where it makes sense (for example, maps, essences, etc), and restricted where the impact of not doing so would be detrimental for the game (example, BoA items). Same with crafting. Same with dropped items.

The idea is that each of these pillars compete/complement one another and not have just one of those (trading), be the determining factor to balance the rest (and the whole game).

Edit: Unrestricted trading is bad, seamless or not. It is bad even in the current state of this game, with all it's inconveniences. Because they end up getting bypassed.

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Thayaric wrote:

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Bleu42 wrote:

And it's funny to ME how most completely disregard the level of deterministic crafting ALREADY in the game.

Base crafting, the most RNG of the crafting, with Alt Aug Regal. This alone is useful for trying to hit a specific mod.

Meta crafting, which lets you lock prefixes / suffixes / craft multiple mods of EXACTLY what you want from the bench.

Beast crafting with imprints and splits.

Essence crafting lets you DETERMINISTICALLY always hit a specific mod, you've got something like over 150 mods to choose from, with deafening providing at or near or even above T1 rolls.

Fossil crafting, which DETERMINISTICALLY lets you weed out entire mod groups you don't want, while ALSO giving you better chances at mod groups you DO want, and you can use up to 4 fossils at a time.

Harvest crafting, which DETERMINISTICALLY lets you re roll and add mods from a VERY specific and narrow pool of mods.

You've also got conqueror exalts which specifically add a mod from a very small pool to that item.

Woke orbing to combine two mods from two different pools.

Maven orbing to up one of those mods.


Yes, crafting in PoE is RNG as it should be, but it's completely disingenuous and downright lying to say you have zero control over how you craft and that there's no deterministic value in the crafting at all. There's literal cooking book type recipes for crafting EXACTLY what you want on an item piece, it just takes currency.

None of that crafting is particularly deterministic ( not sure you can call rolling 200 deafening essences on an item or 200 fossils or harvest rerolls with metacrafts being removed with each reroll at a cost of 2ex per try is a particularly deterministic way of crafting) and a lot of players can't get involved in most of it due to costs involved. Some items can be forced but even they take oodles of currency. It's not uncommon for a single armour piece to take upwards of 30-40 ex to be completed or 100ex+ for a nice weapon especially as it's much more now about the gambling and at almost every stage you have a chance of virtually bricking the item with a bad mod leaving you no option but a yolo annul. That's so fun.

This is what I mean when I say yall are hurting your own chances at a good discussion when you use SO MUCH hyperbole, exaggeration and downright lying (at best bending the truth to nearly snap).

"None of that crafting is particularly deterministic"

Essences are literally deterministic, there isn't an argument against that. You determine which mod you specifically want from like a 150+ list of em.

And the rest of the crafting options ARE deterministic to a point - you get to manipulate the likely outcomes and mod pools while also removing undesirable mods and mod pools.

Also your entire point that because it costs a lot to use certain methods therefore it isn't deterministic is wrong. It doesn't matter how much it costs to do it, it's available.

"It's not uncommon for a single armour piece to take upwards of 30-40 ex to be completed or 100ex+ for a nice weapon"

What?

Okay so A) You just tried to make the point that deterministic crafting isn't available in PoE, and then proceed to talk about how you CAN 'complete' an item, it just costs a lot.

And B) We apparently have widely different opinions on what a 'nice weapon' is haha.

THEN, then, we have this sentiment "and a lot of players can't get involved in most of it due to costs involved".

Explain to me how then many players on SSF can craft FOR FREE! Yes for free, because there's no trade and it's just crafting with what you find.

Anyway closing statements;

If you don't like the current crafting methods that's completely valid and you should feel free to state that. But man don't use such hyperbole and exaggeration, you ruin any actual point you might have and it doesn't promote discussion. And this isn't directed solely at you, almost everyone on these forums does it just to try to make their point more valid.

I should add a clarification here.

(NO YOU SHOULDN'T I hear you cry, and you are right...oh well.)

My suggestion was probably bad not because I think it'd be "bad" for the game, but because I know (and am pleasantly surprised no one nailed me on this one) that gamers haaaaate bound items. Especially in a genre with a rich history of trade prolonging a game well past its uninstall-by date. And no one can deny that PoE has tried to brute force that which D2 somehow just evolved: a sprawling free for all economy wherein certain items actually became de facto currency. Gold itself became so worthless we started trading in rings and runes, amusingly taking a literal "gold standard" and discarding it for a more fluid barter system that then took the most commonly traded items and made them the new gold.

You just can't replicate that deliberately but GGG tried by doing the most obvious step: eliminate npc-targeted gold altogether and designate crafting elements a new currency. I said it was brilliant way back in my first feedback post and I still think it was. As was pretty much every idea and concept in beta -- few of which remained brilliant in a positive sense because they just contiue to gain intensity and became blinding.

So, fun little aside: I wanted my first sword, at the time the only one I had planned (I had far more fun ideas for my other design slots that I never got to do), to be bound. GGG flat out nixed that idea and that was when I got my first real glimpse of how committed they were to the prevalence of the trading aspect of PoE. Never mind that the time I believe we still had to use drop trade...anyway, yeah, I AM a fan of bound items in games ostensibly labelled as loot fests rather than market simulators. But PoE wanted it all, and so Tipua Kaikohuru went from being a sword that grows with the user but cannot be traded to The Goddess Bound, first of three forms of the same single item concept. The "bound" was loosely about binding that which is owned to that which owns (and the query of which is which) but not really a conscious wordplay...tempting though it is to say otherwise.

Despite my protestations (and annoyance at burning multiple slots just to eventually remake my original idea) I think GGG were right to nix the bound item idea for their game because it is a f2p GaaS and an unrestricted economy coupled with a maddeningly volatile metagame is a great way to keep people hooked...but LE is buy to play which means the player is not, as Chris put it, the boss. EHG can do some things that might not be popular but still result in a better game overall.

I already explained why I advocate for crafting material trading rather than end product trading but I get that is really teasing a different genre, one that doesn't really have a name but includes survival construction games, world builders, space flight sims...anything where you cannot buy a fully completed thing but must instead assemble it. Arguably PoE also has this: you can't just buy a full character, but instead must engage the market or get real lucky actually playing the game. But I think the complexity of the items traded cleave closer to finished products than building materials.

So why not a mesh of ARPG and this broad genre of item construction? At the very least it'd be a way for Last Epoch to stand out because fuck knows it doesn't really have one yet. Well it does, but none of its selling points seem to be really selling. I love sooo many of its elements: the chrono trigger time and space movement; the individual skill trees; the diverse class offering; and, of course, that crafting system. But I feel like none of them are different enough to really make the game memorable or even justified in the ARPG scene.

A clever blending of two very addictive but so far unconnected game styles could do it.

But being realistic, I don't think EHG have the chops to pull it off.

Maybe someday someone will make it. A hardcore survival ARPG/Diablo clone where you start with nothing and have to use what you find and what you trade for to craft awesome gear for your build...well shit, that's sort of what I thought PoE was meant to be. Bet I am not alone there.

It is no coincidence that you had to vendor craft the two upgrades to my initial unique...or that you have to play a minigame of survival on the beach with only the items you find on the way to get the last one.

What surprised me was how many people did it. How many people got involved in the sword recipe riddles, and then played 3 or 4 characters in the same starter zone for 8+ hours...but that's the final lesson here: gamers will put up with all sorts of awful shit if you incentivise it well enough.

An ARPG could absolutely pull off upgrade based trading with bound finished results...with the right incentive.

For me, that incentive would be nothing more than a completely unbalanced slaughterfest of anything getting in my way...after a very long, challenging process of the opposite.

Because Carl was right. Balance is a moving target. GGG tried to hunt it, and then realised it's better to just leash it. Neither make for a fun ARPG when unrestricted trading is a factor. But if you use restricted trading as an envelope, you can maybe give balance a petting zoo. Never fully tame or, heaven forbid, actually caught and killed, but approachable enough. We shouldn't be frightened of balance, but we shouldn't let it dominate our game experience either.

I guess I knew GGG would never understand this idea of living with the untameable when they confused a "bestiary" for a "menagerie", and threw in a little bit of gladiatorial bloodsport for fun.

Aaaaanyway. Last Epoch needs SOMETHING right now. Some sort of spark to set all of its great ideas on fire...I just don't know what.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

What surprised me was how many people did it. How many people got involved in the sword recipe riddles, and then played 3 or 4 characters in the same starter zone for 8+ hours...but that's the final lesson here: gamers will put up with all sorts of awful shit if you incentivise it well enough.

An ARPG could absolutely pull off upgrade based trading with bound finished results...with the right incentive.

This is one thing among many that the vocal crowd don't get. The ex-WoW burnouts who came here late and call any grind they don't personally enjoy a 'cheap tactic to increase player retention' because that's all they've been conditioned to know after the last 10 years of that game.

One persons unfun tedium is someone else's rewarding grind.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Aaaaanyway. Last Epoch needs SOMETHING right now. Some sort of spark to set all of its great ideas on fire...I just don't know what.

Well you hit on it earlier. It's all about incentives. They just need to make a loot system that has items people want to chase and end game activities that players yearn to use those items in. Simple.

Shifting gears a bit, should we assume EHG will use the GaaS model to supplement their income going forward? They sell the equivalent of supporter packs don't they? In that 'supporting them during early access awards exclusive in game cosmetics'. I find it hard to believe they're going to go the Wolcen route and not the PoE route.

And if they want those players to keep coming back on a recurring basis, they need ladder resets or periodic new content. Both is almost certainly better.

But do they want that? Do they want to be PoE or Grim Dawn? Or is there a 3rd way? B/c the problem with being a preeminent GaaS is you will by nature develop the dual player base we have here (really a spectrum as many things are, but anyway) - in PoE today you have a camp of players who seriously claim that there is nothing to do at end game and that they're done with the league by day 6 - all challenges done (well 36/40) and all content defeated.

Simultaneously you have people claiming they're quitting the game b/c Act 1 is too hard. Not new players mind you - veterans of the game. How do the devs win? There is no magic formula that EHG can find here.

One persons unfun tedium is someone else's rewarding grind.

One persons 'just right' is concurrently someone else's too easy and a third persons too hard.

It's weird. You take a single player experience with an easy/medium/hard difficulty slate and no one bats an eye.

You make an ARPG where 3 different builds top out at 1x, 5x, and 10x damage and the game is an unbalanced unplayable clusterfuck with incompetent devs. Isn't this just easy, normal, and hard mode? But people care because the 'default' game is the multiplayer trade-enabled temp league. And if they're farming at any speed less than maximum efficiency they're upset.

In a single player game that wouldn't matter. But if that's what LE wants to be then it will never - can never - be a PoE killer. And if it wants to do the other thing - GaaS - it's going to run into every single one of the same problems PoE currently faces - with the added handicap of being 30 challenge leagues worth of endgame content behind their biggest competitor.

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innervation wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Aaaaanyway. Last Epoch needs SOMETHING right now. Some sort of spark to set all of its great ideas on fire...I just don't know what.

Well you hit on it earlier. It's all about incentives. They just need to make a loot system that has items people want to chase and end game activities that players yearn to use those items in.

I feel the same about LE. I like the character choices and their skilling system, but somehow the game doesn't click, yet.
And I agree, the loot system is something that needs work. I'm not saying it's bad, but I don't really get it and it does not really feel exciting.
And call me old-fashioned, but I don't like identified drops.

Speaking about item editing.

Anyone that played both games will recognize fast which one has a real item editor, even with almost no currency.

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Bleu42 wrote:

This is what I mean when I say yall are hurting your own chances at a good discussion when you use SO MUCH hyperbole, exaggeration and downright lying (at best bending the truth to nearly snap).

"None of that crafting is particularly deterministic"

Essences are literally deterministic, there isn't an argument against that. You determine which mod you specifically want from like a 150+ list of em.

And the rest of the crafting options ARE deterministic to a point - you get to manipulate the likely outcomes and mod pools while also removing undesirable mods and mod pools.

Also your entire point that because it costs a lot to use certain methods therefore it isn't deterministic is wrong. It doesn't matter how much it costs to do it, it's available.

"It's not uncommon for a single armour piece to take upwards of 30-40 ex to be completed or 100ex+ for a nice weapon"

What?

Okay so A) You just tried to make the point that deterministic crafting isn't available in PoE, and then proceed to talk about how you CAN 'complete' an item, it just costs a lot.

And B) We apparently have widely different opinions on what a 'nice weapon' is haha.

THEN, then, we have this sentiment "and a lot of players can't get involved in most of it due to costs involved".

Explain to me how then many players on SSF can craft FOR FREE! Yes for free, because there's no trade and it's just crafting with what you find.

Anyway closing statements;

If you don't like the current crafting methods that's completely valid and you should feel free to state that. But man don't use such hyperbole and exaggeration, you ruin any actual point you might have and it doesn't promote discussion. And this isn't directed solely at you, almost everyone on these forums does it just to try to make their point more valid.

Essences guarantee one mod, and give you 3-5 mods you probably don't want, meaning you need spam a large amount of essences to get something worthwhile. That's not deterministic crafting, it's very random. Fossils have the same issue. The amount needed to be able to fossil craft a decent item is often hundreds or even more. They are just chaos spam with 1 fixed mod or reduced modifiers available.

Some items can be forced. Just some. Some items can be deterministicly crafted somewhat at huge cost.

Grimro made a good bow this week. The first step in this deterministic craft is 9-10 ex per try unless you happen to have a bunch of fracture a suffix mod craft saved. I haven't seen one let alone a bunch. I had one in Harvest league, none since. He got lucky hitting his fracture on the second try. 20 ex just for the first step and it could easily have been 40 or 50 ex. Cant remember what he spent overall but it was somewhere around the 100ex mark.

The point is crafting should be accessible to all not just to the people that can and do farm hundreds of exalts per league. The vast majority of players don't farm even a tenth of that amount.

Crafting now is mostly semi-random, far too random and expensive to be useful to most.

I didn't play much of Last Epoch but i will when it grows up a bit. That has real deterministic crafting from what I saw. It seemed to be fairly similar to the crafting from the MMORPG Rohan.

It's such a shame GGG have taken POE in this new direction after giving us a real crafting system which made the game even more enjoyable than usual. I could play my favourite non-meta builds and make half decent gear so i can get to and enjoy at least some of the endgame.

I'd play my standard league characters if GGG hadn't broke them all.

And keeping with my pattern of erratic post length, I will just say that almost every multiplayer game needs to be GaaS to a degree these days.

But it doesn't have to be paid. At least not at first.

I had no idea that No Mans Sky was doing league-like long term events. It was honestly not something I thought the game needed but it actually works really well. Lets them flex what their game can do when it's not at the mercy of RNG. And since it is absolutely a multiplayer game now, it meshes nicely with putting a bunch of players in a relatively confined space to work together.

Aforementioned Animal Crossing has seasonal events. For Honor, which is to this day a buy to play game, has seasonal events and a premium battle pass system for shinies. Division. Monster hunter world. Elite Dangerous...and these are just the "multiplayer" games I personally play.

Fuck, even Wolcen, with more problems than a high school math test, has seasons already in the form of story-extra chronicles (say what you will but I much prefer this over story mutating leagues a la PoE, but then again Wolcen has a random dungeon mode for new characters after you finish the story just once...).

But I suppose...wait, this is getting close to a long form reply. Fuck.

Yes. I think Last Epoch will need some sort of GaaS angle. Financially. Wolcen's horrific hype explosion and subsequent crash landing meant people won't be buying into an arpg in a hurry. PoE remains the safe bet here. Diablo 2 r as well. 4, well, we will see. But LE almost certainly wont be a big seller on launch.

I dunno. Its hard for me to speculate how they will finance their post launch development when I cant see how they plan to launch successfully to begin with. They do have pet mechanics, but so does Wolcen and I dont think either game has anywhere near the goodwill of their few but dedicated players to charge for them.

And buy to play man. Pivoting a buy to pay into a GaaS takes...something magical. Usually the b2p MMO gets a free version laced with hidden costs down the line...i dont see a mere arpg pulling that off.