pinned "steam and our business model" post.
steamcommunity.com
Last Epoch is a Buy To Play game which will enter beta on April 30th.
Buying the game & beta access costs $35. At release the game will be $15.
Post-launch the game will be supported by purely cosmetic MTX. We will regularly release free content updates which bring new zones, enemies, items, features, mechanics - and more! Our content patches will be released between Cycles (think Seasons in Diablo III, or Challenge Leagues in Path of Exile).
Grabbed it yesterday. couldn't register my account till this morning. their site refused to send a confirmation to hotmail or something..
I logged in for like 5 minutes this morning before work to test the login after support got back to me.
My first thoughts were, "ooph, this is rough." Graphics/animations make Path of Exile back in 2011 look new. Movement as well. No dodge. Wolcen shits all over this, in that regards.
This does borrow bits and pieces of each of the other arpgs. Some torchlight, some PoE, some d2, etc..
Classes are preset, using prefab models/genders. Skills are not freeform. A mage has mage passives, and skills.
Offline is planned, but not in atm, I think.
Attributes. 1 per level at lvl 4+ meh. Each stat is effectively a primary/god stat for a class. like mage scales almost exclusively with INT. all stats go into int, and little reason to pump anything but int. The good however, is none of the stats pump Health.
So, their attribute system is not as bad as Grimdawn/diablo/wolcen.. but also not as good as path of exiles.
Class passives act like Grimdawn,etc. invest in class, to build mastery, at 20 points, you can spec into an Advanced class.
Class passives are mostly passives, but also have 3-4 skills that can be unlocked. Both base classes, and Advanced classes.
Skill system is a combo of the Rune systems of Wolcen/diablo3/etc, and path of exile gem sockets. Potentially the best system.
Can only pick 5 skills to "specialize" and mod however.
The shitty rune system of other games, has a lame, "either or", with no real variance. Wolcen swapped it up a bit, allowing abit more freeform, but still atm, theres largely a correct answer.
Path of exiles has been far and away the best, due to tying skill advancement to gear, and socket potential. Path of more multipliers has of course been a problem lately.
This preset passive tree system might help with that. The tree, gives a huge variance in potential builds for any given skill. But also prevents "more damage" stacking as an option.