Last Epoch

Vorph

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Why does fucking EVERYTHING have to be homogenized and "samey" in video games.
You mean like how people seem to believe that every ARPG must have MP, unlimited trading, and leagues? If anything, not doing some/all of that shit is bucking the "samey" trend.
 
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mkopec

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The league thing I can get behind, only that it freshens up the game every few months with new shit and a fresh start. They dont even have to take the route of POE and save the mechanics and bring it to base game either. Just a nice fresh start with new features. It also is a good test bed for what works and what people like. The MP and trading I could give a fuck about though.
 
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Kirun

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You mean like how people seem to believe that every ARPG must have MP, unlimited trading, and leagues? If anything, not doing some/all of that shit is bucking the "samey" trend.
I'm simply advocating for player choice. If you want SSF, that should be available to you. If you want to throw shit on the auction house, you should be able do that. If you want to trade one l33t rare for another, go for it.

Unlimited trading, MP, etc. aren't the problems - the design around such mechanics are and that's less a problem with trading/player economies, etc. and more a problem with shitty design.
 
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OU Ariakas

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I get where you’re coming from, but it also sounds like you don’t like arpgs. I’m probably still stuck a bit too much in D2 and some parts PoE. If they have items rhar swap int for str, then I’m all about letting shit drop. I like finding a cool item that jumpstarts a character. D3 the jumpstart was getting boosted. PoE was either finding something or blowing your stash on the shit via trade.

What fucking part of my answer makes it seems like I don't like ARPGs? I fucking LOVE them and I want them to be complicated but fair. The issues I have with all of them is either that they are too fucking braindead (no trading, smart loot, infinitely refundable skill system) or the ones that are complicated make themselves complicated through artificial barriers and not actual mechanics. I think POE is sooooo fucking close to just having the formula figured out but then they do retarded things just make the game less fun. They remove targeted farming, they refuse to make some sort of auction house or bounty board, they introduce fantastic crafting but then nerf it because the hardcore 1% of players can exploit it.


It's so frustrating reading that. I can't fucking stand devs with the approach of, "Players don't know how they should play!! WE know how they should play!!!".

If somebody wants to SSF, they have the option to not use the bazaar. If a player wants to non-stop farm the "optimal" area for crafting currency, who the fuck cares? If someone wants to non-stop farm a boss that drops a specific set of rares that are valuable/coveted, why should I give a shit? That whole "explanation" read as, "We know better!!".

Agreed, I went ahead and got the early access version of Last Epoch BECAUSE the devs had said that they didn't know how they would implement trading, but that they would do it. Now we find out that their "trading" is just when you are in a party and only for stuff that you were physically present for when it dropped. Get the fuck out of here.

The trouble is, the experiences are some what mutually exclusive. It's hard to have a game that allows both SSF and min/maxing, trading players to have a comparable experience. You basically end up with balance points where either SSF players effectiveley never get to attain certain items, or the trading economy trivializes the game.

Between the two, I'd rather have the latter. As you say, you can always just not take the easier path. As someone who hasn't yet enjoyed the trading metagame, I'd rather not be funnled into it.

See, here you are trying to talk about balancing power again in a single player experience. Who cares if one class or build is slightly better than another? And even if they are worried about that then why not buff the underperformers to the power level of the overperformers before just taking away the fun?
 

Captain Suave

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they introduce fantastic crafting but then nerf it because the hardcore 1% of players can exploit it. ..

See, here you are trying to talk about balancing power again in a single player experience. Who cares if one class or build is slightly better than another? And even if they are worried about that then why not buff the underperformers to the power level of the overperformers before just taking away the fun?

I think we are actually agreeing. What I am taking about is your complaint in the first part of the quote. Bottom line, the devs have to pick a number, say for item acquisition rates. That number can be friendlier to isolated players or tuned to some vision of what it's like to play in a larger economy. You have to pick one unless you're going to ship two different versions of the game. POE devs chose the latter at the expense of the former, and I think we both agree that can result in less fun.
 
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AladainAF

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Why should they be comparable? They're totally different activities/ways to play the game. Why does fucking EVERYTHING have to be homogenized and "samey" in video games. It doesn't, play the game the way that gives YOU, as an individual player, the best experience. This is especially true in a non-competitive game like an ARPG.

As a game designer myself in second life and in an environment where I feel shoehorned into making samey games and have tried bucking the trend I'll tell you exactly why it's like this.

Because it works. Bucking the trend 99% of the time will result in abject failure. Same reason pay to win games do what they do. No one would pay them if you COULDNT pay to win.
 

Tide27

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Granted, I only have about 300 hrs or so in PoE.





In that 300 hours of playing, and having 6+ tools at 90+....I never once...not a single time....excited when loot dropped. PoEs
Loot system and gearing system was so complicated that I never knew the value of anything that dropped.
 

mkopec

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Granted, I only have about 300 hrs or so in PoE.





In that 300 hours of playing, and having 6+ tools at 90+....I never once...not a single time....excited when loot dropped. PoEs
Loot system and gearing system was so complicated that I never knew the value of anything that dropped.
YEah this took me like 3 leagues to figure out and still I was lost 1/2 the time a piece of loot dropped. I remember one league listing some dagger I found for a few C and I got like a million spams to buy it. Then one of the dudes that wanted to buy it told me the dagger was wort like a couple ex. Thats my experience with loot and POE in a nutshell.

But from my short time with this game, granted a while ago, the loot made more sense and crafting was way easier to get what you wanted, more deterministic?
 

Pyros

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YEah this took me like 3 leagues to figure out and still I was lost 1/2 the time a piece of loot dropped. I remember one league listing some dagger I found for a few C and I got like a million spams to buy it. Then one of the dudes that wanted to buy it told me the dagger was wort like a couple ex. Thats my experience with loot and POE in a nutshell.

But from my short time with this game, granted a while ago, the loot made more sense and crafting was way easier to get what you wanted, more deterministic?
Crafting from scratch in PoE is some of the most arcane bullshit in a game, you need several 3rd party sources to figure out what can be rolled in which slot, and in what order you should use meta crafts to block stuff from being rollable to get about what you want. It also was nerfed pretty heavily over time(lots of harvest nerfs and some baseline nerfs too). You're also still very RNG bound even in the "deterministic" ways of crafting, so you usually need to consider you'll have to reroll and rework your item several times in the process before you get what you want. And all the while, you need to trade for large quantities of materials via the godawful trade system.

Now slapping a specific mod on an existing item to fill your resists or whatever? Takes a click and barely any ressources, it's simple and nice, but actually crafting something is horrible shit.

As for the loot making sense, I guess kinda, once you understand what you're looking for. A lot of items you can parse and find they're trash in less than a second just because they rolled a key prefix/suffix at a low tier which isn't easy to fix, or because they have full prefixes/suffixes and not enough of the good stuff. It certainly can be pretty fast, but you need a solid understanding of what people are looking for in each type of weapon(armor is a bit simpler as most people tend to look for life+resist+empty or good stat) and the general meta builds at the time(which don't necessarily require the same things, bows for explosive arrow or toxic rain or tornado shot requires very different stats).

There's a massive barrier of entry to accurately estimate the value of anything you drop that's not unique though and a lot of people either don't bother at all, or drop everything in like a 100c tab and move the items down in value the longer they don't sell so they don't have to think about it(even then you still need a decent grasp of what can have value at all, like which bases sell and what are the good mods and whatever, otherwise you have hundreds of items to move about constantly).

I'd say overall PoE itemization is likely a failure, but it does keep people engaged because the ceiling for power level is so fucking high and for a lot of casual players(the vast majority of players) just farming maps for currency then buying everything off the trade website works well enough. They could simplify it a lot and make it easier to find good items while still having the crazy items I'd think(like phasing out low tier mods as you progress in higher tier maps, so you don't get +15life items in red maps kind of thing) but that'd boost overall player power and they don't like doing that, that's one of the reasons they always mention when talking about the lack of AH.
 
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Hateyou

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They have dates on when their last couple classes are going in? Been a while since I played so can’t remember who is missing. Falconer and one of the mages I think?
 
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Hekotat

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They have dates on when their last couple classes are going in? Been a while since I played so can’t remember who is missing. Falconer and one of the mages I think?

Not sure, they have been pretty hush hush on what's coming with .9
 

bolok

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Remaining classes are coming after multiplayer. They've been reasonably forward with that. Makes me sad, but it is what it is.
 
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AladainAF

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You mean like how people seem to believe that every ARPG must have MP, unlimited trading, and leagues? If anything, not doing some/all of that shit is bucking the "samey" trend.

Honestly, these are core tenants of what makes an ARPG an ARPG. However, every one of those options must be entirely opt in.
 

turbo

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There is a pack the server event for people who register in Last Epoch (currently own the game, you can buy now as well and register). Not sure if they hit their registration limit but if you are looking to do some heavy playing during this time message me on here or in PM w/ your ingame name if you want to group up. I'll be playing heavily across the event.

I have a spell wear bear build that I put together myself that is pretty rock solid for everything but J4, need to see how changes w/ new patch will impact it but doing 400+ corruption with it fairly strong and it will be great in MP because of some minor healing and a rocking +8 base crit and 72% crit avoid buff as well as some crit chance etc. More of an end game build but is the most fun build in the game to me. (turbo)

Going to be introducing my wife to the game so will be doing abit with her but definitely looking for some people to play the game w/ long term that like pushing pretty hard and min/max'ing etc. Until Ashes of Creation is out this will probably be my focused game.
 

Hekotat

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There is a pack the server event for people who register in Last Epoch (currently own the game, you can buy now as well and register). Not sure if they hit their registration limit but if you are looking to do some heavy playing during this time message me on here or in PM w/ your ingame name if you want to group up. I'll be playing heavily across the event.

I have a spell wear bear build that I put together myself that is pretty rock solid for everything but J4, need to see how changes w/ new patch will impact it but doing 400+ corruption with it fairly strong and it will be great in MP because of some minor healing and a rocking +8 base crit and 72% crit avoid buff as well as some crit chance etc. More of an end game build but is the most fun build in the game to me. (turbo)

Going to be introducing my wife to the game so will be doing abit with her but definitely looking for some people to play the game w/ long term that like pushing pretty hard and min/max'ing etc. Until Ashes of Creation is out this will probably be my focused game.

What event? I don't see anything anywhere?
 

Janx

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What event? I don't see anything anywhere?
Edit:
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