Could Last Epoch Fail?

[@LastEpochGame]

We're very much aligned in these understandings, McFluffin! Great video - most of the dev team has watched this now.

[@cstiger4]

this is so awesome!

[@krel3358]

I think its great to have a dev team that listens to the fans. Too many companies just ignore the intelligent player base and just release products based on brand recogniztion that are sub-par. Cough cough Acti-Blizz. Playing through the beta im extremely impressed with how the game has advanced that my initial impression of Last Epoch is that it feels like the only worthy spiritual successor to a certain game featuring Necromancers, Barbarians and Druids. I think one thing you have absolutely nailed and continuing to develop is the itemization and crafting systems that are not simple and not overly complex to require insane amounts of memorization and pages of outside websites to keep track of. Last Epoch feels rather intuitive giving players the leeway to experiment with their builds without punishing them. Games like Grim Dawn and POE had systems that were confusing and overly complex for my taste. Maybe its because ive been playing from the very begining and seeing things being slowly added my best suggestion is to keep the itemization and crafting/gear upgrading systems simple to the point that when players find things like shards or keys to dungeons for legendary upgrades it should be very understandable what is going on and how they can progress with their builds. Another idea is do not release end game content that invalidates another section, everything should flow smoothly with each other.

[@DrYoloNuggets]

Fantastic devs

[@MrHoodlin]

The fact that a development team is listening to the people who don't have a super large following brings me hope.

[@warmongerism]

Been a fan for a while and in general I agree with you. Well said. What you didn't touch on is things like socketables and runewords. Those (D2, Torchliight, Inquisitor, D3) games managed to design a level of gaming where you're looking not only for the best affixes but the ability to be modified extensively. This game seems to struggle with fact that outside of "Idols" there's not that much to grind for. The patch was huge, but they stil need one more element of rando to make it addictive IMO. Even with this crafting changes it's missing that X factor. I wrote this on the forums a few months ago about "treasure classes" and "tier levels". Nobody pays attention, but what D2 did correctly is that a magic item can roll higher values. So in theory, you can find a magic helmet with +2 druid skills and+2 tornado and then add 1-2 sockets to make it very flexible. Perhaps even best in class. I'd be willing to bet everyone playhing this game ignores the blue items becuase (statistically) they have less stats and less forging potential. So the delveopers have essentially eliminated "magic" items from the game. IMO, this was a huge (monumental) misstep. Something like an orb or corruption ala PD2 would go a long way- where we have a chance of bricking the item but also a chance of adding new stats or opening up sockets. It took us 20 years on D2 but I can guarantee you this mixes up the endgame. It would be fun to see something with 4LP be corrupted with a 70% chance of brick, 20% chance of added mod, and 10% chance of socket, for example. The other option would be something like influenced items in POE where only certain items can roll certain stats. Like you beat the boss and get an item with a slot that cannot be influenced outside of some rare drops. And only then can you re-roll the tiers. Treat it like a 5th affix like we have now - only with a rare drop you can influence the tiers. It would be an end game grind that we don't have now. Either way, after level 60+ it just feels like an endless void of grinding mono's and hoping for an upgrade. Love the game - but even despite the great efforts it feels very "static". There's very little room to make an incredible build out of creativity - which is what games like POE and PD2 have in spades. The LP was a step in the right direction, but I for one need more than this. Give me one or two more "elements" to play around with.

[@McFluffinGaming]

I think you have a lot of cool ideas here that could add more depth to itemization, which I think is what we could boil your suggestions down to. I could see the game getting a bit more in that department, and if it's done well, it could definitely be a benefit for the game. I'm not yet sure the game needs it in order to avoid failing in any ways that I mentioned, but I could see an argument for the third one (competing with the big 2) and maybe even the second (long term growth & success).

[@warmongerism]

​@@McFluffinGaming Agree. The game is in a great state and I don't see it failing outside of multiplayer being a huge bust. Just a big fan of yours and the game in general and (for whatever reason) decided I would vent my thoughts on here. Thanks for all you do and I appreciate the reply.

[@danielsecara]

Thanks, I enjoyed the vid and pretty much agree with all your points. I have faith in EHG and am cautiously optimistic.

[@quietforme]

Love the topic something i talk about alot. Glad to see someone else do the same. thanks for your hard work

[@DmytroBogdan]

If LE reaches numbers of concurrent players of GD a year post 1.0 launch I'd call it a success. Also longevity of smaller titles mostly determined by active community (new builds, forum discussions, streamers, mod creators, etc) and diligent devs who listen to that community and regularly implementing very minor tweaks to balance just to address some crucial issues again voiced by community

[@leandervr]

I just got into the game with 8.4 and I'm really liking it. I'm a picky gamer, and no arpg since D2 really managed to grip me. LE is my favorite so far and if the devs keep up the good work this game will be really amazing.

[@arthurshugars1974]

Thank you for sharing your perspective on all of the points you presented, and I most certainly agree with the vast majority (if not all) of what you laid out, especially the optimisation and balance parts which really stand out for me. I just started playing this game maybe about a month ago, and have pretty much stuck with a hybdrid Sentinel/paladin/Warpath build utilising Bleed conversion to ignite, along with the Ruby Axe/Shield set for some extra DoT dmg. So far it's able to handle empowered Monos with the base 100 corruption quite well, and is tanky enough to withstand some layers of various mods, and I happy with its progress thus far overall as I continue to grind more for that next lucky drop that might be able to be my next gear upgrade. However, in the back of my mind, and as I lurk on KZbin for what other builds I see melting content like a joke, I am left wondering why I am even continuing to press on with Warpath (even though I love the engaging playstyle of it), and instead get a build type that can easily farm T4 Julra's (which I have only currently cleared T1 Julra's on Warpath atm since I haven't been pushing it yet) and build up some corruption past 100 in empowered monoliths and be able to get an increase int eh quality of my drops. I mean certainly I could do that and use that build to farm up what I need for Warpath, but I feel that would kind of be a dishonest way in my view of true solo character progression, so I am choosing not to do that, at least for now. As far as optimisation goes, not everyone will be able to have the basic minimum requirements in their hardware/software to at least MAINTAIN a steady enough fps for long enough to have an enjoyable time unless the devs really get on it and lower the costs on our cpu/gpu's so that when we are in the middle of an echo (and Arena), our fps doesn't drop from a steady 60 all the way down to 10-15 in a moments' time. That is really what I am experiencing right now, and when it happens, I am like omg here we go again, roll my eyes/sigh, and hope to God I don't get shredded all the sudden by the huge lag I now have to deal with on top of all those enemies spawning on the screen at once. I also notice this happening on certain tile sets in echoes where this drop in performance will happen more often than not than in others, and that needs to be a big priority to fix this in my opinion. I am running Nvidia RTX 2060 2.9GHz with Max-Q design and at least 4 processor cores with 16GB RAM, and by no means so I be experiencing these kind of sudden performance drops after roughly 20-30 minutes of launching the game. If this doesn't get fixed, I can't imagine the type of disaster multiplayer will become to those anticipating its launch. Again, this will have a HUGE impact on this games' success or failure so I really do hope that this would be the on the devs' top 2 priority list to get resolved before tackling other things. Again, thanks for the video and helping those of us new to the game to put things into perspective. I am supporting this game thus far through supporter packs, and I just hope and pray to God that my contributions help to better enable the success of this game and not be all wasted in the end. :)

[@DmytroBogdan]

Many devs like Factorio or Everspace 2 one's were scared of Cyberpunk release and we all know how that turned out. Of course not setting a release date on the same date as your direct competitor is a common sense but also rushing the release just to be first make no sense.

[@Ninakoru]

Great discussion, to me optimization and balance are the most concerning. Specially optimization, I'm fairly new into the game (1 month) but I also know the performance issues are there since the beginning. I am specially concerned they just don't have anyone in the team able to further optimize the game. Another important point to me is that they keep a healthy distance to PoE, the sweet spot in complexity, much simpler that PoE but much more complex than D3 is a blessing that if they choose to keep that way, will help them secure that big spot in the ARPG landscape. If they come closer and closer of what PoE is (looking at that MP, trade, season focus of lately), they will lose the spot also. Also worth to mention Lost Ark, while is a MMO, will for sure draw a lot of attention from isometric ARPG fans, as is the same thing combat-wise.

[@johnpistacchio9343]

It’s weird for me after trying both off the bat immediately I enjoyed last epoch over lost ark by a lot

[@Ninakoru]

@@johnpistacchio9343 Yah that's normal, Lost Ark is an MMO despite the similar camera view. Epoch is Hack n' slash ARPG.

[@frodofraggins]

This was a very thorough video. I'd say my biggest concern at the moment is how restrictive trade will end up being. I understand that POE trade can be a pain in the butt. But it's nice to know that you can always find an upgrade somewhere even if you've already put in tons of time and hours. I feel that Chris Wilson is very accurate when he states that you either need to make items really hard to search for but easy to trade or easy to find but a pain to actually make a transaction in. Where POE fails is putting such restrictions on everything such as map and currencies. D3 trade is far too limited and only benefits people grouped up at the time the item drops. It doesn't help that good loot drops like candy in that game so there's rarely any need to make trades even when grouped. My understanding is that EHG doesn't want people to need to use third party tools for anything in their game. I think this philosophy hits a major obstacle when it comes to trade. Their first idea was to use the second viable option that Chris Wilson saw which was to make it very hard to find specific items but super easy to make the trade once you do. Although I'd say the Bazaar system was far too random and difficult to find items with and it just didn't sound worth the time. In the past David Brevik has mentioned that he suggested to GGG that they make some gear slots untradeable to limit how much could be traded (or bought with RMT). Although I'd like to see all gear bind on equip and bind on transfer to prevent flipping. I think it's going to take EHG quite a while and many iterations to get it right( and not everyone will be happy). The safest thing to do would be to maybe limit trades to people in your party at the time or friends/guildies that were on your friend/guildy list before it dropped. This would make RMTing much more difficult. But it would also not be nearly as easy to find upgrades, especially if you've already spent a lot of time finding gear yourself.

[@Lighteese]

Agree with all of the points you allocated. I've bought a game at spring 21, played like 250 hours in a row, and then made a decision like "better to wait for the next big step". It's beautiful to observe changes in the game from quarter to quarter, but it's also hard to enjoy every patch like trying a game for the first time. Think we should chill a bit and give a devs time.

[@chewbacca2209]

I have a number of my discord friends that play D2R and they are waiting to play Last Epoch when Multiplayer is up. So I really hope the multiplayer works out well.

[@psychodriveskip]

Hey McFluffin. In the wake of the multiplayer events and the compassionate (if sometimes toxic) discussion on trade, I just watched this video and your vid on snapshotting. How are you feeling about this now? Have you feelings changed?

[@McFluffinGaming]

Great question. Starting with the snapshotting, I think they'll get that part figured out eventually. They've already made adjustments to the test build we've been playing over the last week or so to improve in that area. As far as trade...I think if they were to stick with the current direction of just having gifting it would be difficult for them to carve out a large enough position in the ARPG market to handle the costs of a development team that has now ballooned to somewhere around 100. They recently put out a survey that seemed to be testing the waters when it comes to trade, so here's to hoping they change course on this in the future.

[@psychodriveskip]

@@McFluffinGaming thanks for the reply. I know some had problems with the survey but I liked it. Sometimes you need to ask questions which have no best answer to get the most useful information. I have no doubt they'll combine it with the qualitative feedback elsewhere :) Looking forward to 0.9 and hoping Last Epoch becomes as successful as I think it could be. Thanks again :)

[@deeharp]

And now, the game better launch with Steam Deck support and be optimized. Even if the Steam deck player base is not huge. The voice of that player base will be. Especially when POE runs great on Steam Deck.

[@McFluffinGaming]

While it would certainly be nice for the game to get Steam Deck support on launch, I don't think it's necessary for the game to succeed. Definitely something they should get to eventually though.

[@Thyworm]

Great video

[@frodofraggins]

My second biggest concern, the first being trade, is when LE will release. Hopefully most of the devs aren't concerned about this as it would be an undesirable distraction. Let the principles in the company worry about that. But as you stated, they really do need to try and release before D4 and POE2 if at all possible. They should also avoid releasing within a few weeks of a POE launch to better attract those players and streamers to the LE launch. I'm actually surprised LE isn't doing better in terms of twitch views and steam players. The multiplayer patch will give us a much better idea of it's viability long term. We'll see how many people were simply waiting for it before returning or trying it.

[@nurglerider781]

If they set drop rates based on trade I won't play LE. This is my biggest complaint against PoE as I despise the trade system and while I get a lot of enjoyment from SSF the drop rates being tied to trade means there are a massive number of builds you simply cannot play in SSF which is total BS.

[@McFluffinGaming]

Yep definitely. Fortunately, the devs have actively stated that they want to balance for SSF, so I don't see this happening. At least as far as build enabling items I expect them to be all farmable in SSF.

[@vinceplace3667]

thanks for all the good points. for me the combat and mapping are the main issues. and i think its probably very resource heavy to fix but hopefully they pull it off. the animations are still too cartoony - in some of the enemy dashes and jumps, the trajectory and speed do not correlate to the animation at all, making it look and feel bad. Characters seem to only have one attack animation which makes them feel robotic and the movement feels a bit like ice skating. Enemy feedback to hits is also very poor as mentioned and the sound lacks impact or "crunch". I love the great things this game has to offer, wishing the devs good luck on their endeavour and a successful launch, it's been a minute since we've been thirsting for a good arpg. o yes, and optimisation definitely needs addressing. It seems to be certain environments usually with panoramic components, or certain enemy types that cause major fps drops.

[@Neksmel]

Last Eposh to the moon baby!

[@Marfig]

The game already has great reviews on Steam and it doesn't even have multiplayer in. Why do we need that can of worms that will alter completely class balance and gameplay and introduce a lot of risk with server stability and performance? I'd rather prefer this game competed with the likes of Grim Dawn, than PoE or Diablo IV.

[@McFluffinGaming]

I understand this sentiment. At the same time, we know it won't stay a single player game, and was never intended to. The devs are a lot more ambitious than that, so here's to hoping they pull it off.

[@G.M.A.]

only 1 thing for me is important and its pvp, i played LE for about 100hours but unfortunally for me if i dont see the meaning after a while i just leave it there..

[@randomnamex7974]

Last Epoch is too big to fail... j/k. This was a really good summary encapsulating all of the issues and obstacles that EHG has to overcome to make Last Epoch have a successful release and ongoing success after release. I know about most of the them because I've been playing and watching LE for so long, but it was really nice to see them all put together in a clear and thoughtful way. In my mind, the boogeyman is MULTIPLAYER and all the things that entails - lag/server stability, graphical lag, anticheats for fair leaderboards and avoidance of duping - a failure on any of these could really derail the game, as these are the barebones that make up a multiplayer ARPG. Balance, seasonal content, even trading can be improved later, but the core multiplayer experience will be where Last Epoch lives or dies in my opinion. About trading: as EHG Mike has said, it is hard to balance because many "fixes" that players propose are basically just synonymous with free trade, which EHG does not want to implement for a variety of reasons. The proposed trade system (a "bazaar" that would be populated by random traders) is basically trade for people who hate trade, but I don't know of a better way. It is a really tough nut to crack without just letting people have unrestricted trade or no trade. You won't appease the people who want to create wealth by trading instead of killing monsters with anything but unrestricted trade. However, EHG (and I agree with them) wants their game chiefly to be about killing monsters for loot, not just flipping gear in an auction house. About combat: some skills, especially melee feel really "airy" - they lack a certain weighty feel. Swipe is a really good example, as is most melee. You feel like your skills just pass through monsters instead of hitting them. It took me a really long time to get used to LE's combat feel. Diablo 3 for example, has a combat feel that is more hefty and I have to get used to LE's combat every time I come back to it. About maps: when PoE came out, maps were done because they were a limited resource and you had to run them to get good xp and the best loot drops. LE effectively has "infinite" maps (echoes have no price of entry) so each individual one is less important to clear/explore since you can just run another one for free. Echoes also seem really short and don't have a monster killing requirement like Diablo 3 does in rifts, so that further incentivizes just running to the objective and completing it. It will be interesting to see how EHG deals with the challenges you presented in your video. Great video encapsulating many of the things that I see talked about in Last Epoch streams and on the other social media. :)

[@McFluffinGaming]

Good point on MP. That does seem like the one that if it isn't right the first time is also the hardest to correct down the road. As far as trading, I'd personally prefer something akin to an Auction House style system that also employs bind to account for certain items. The way that itemization works in LE I think really makes this feasible. I.E. uniques could be account bound but exalteds are tradable (or vice versa). That way, only one of the two things necessary to make a legendary are accessible through trade, and the other still needs to be acquired by the player through playing the game. Good point on combat. I wonder how much of that has to do with the lack of response from enemies when they get hit. Another good point on the value of maps as a resource. This likely further exacerbates the problem since there's really no opportunity cost to leaving a map early.

[@gi-me-the-gamenerd5325]

I hope Diablo 4 launches with a offline single-player mode like Diablo 2 remaster has. Just having a offline mode will Thanos snap last epoch out of existence lol.

[@McFluffinGaming]

I'm also really interested in D4, but even if your premise is correct (which...I doubt) I have some bad news for you...

[@gi-me-the-gamenerd5325]

@@McFluffinGamingwhat do you think is going to be bad?

[@gi-me-the-gamenerd5325]

@@McFluffinGaming look more into diablo 2 and Grim dawns community's. Take a look at the sales and reviews. Then you have to ask what do they have that diablo 3 and last epoch don't have. Here is one question of that answer they have more community's. Like speed run, modding and etc.

[@gi-me-the-gamenerd5325]

@@McFluffinGaming there is a reason diablo 2 to this day is still played, sought after and enjoyed. If they aim for multiple audiences like the modding community's last epoch will never die and still will have sales just like diablo 2 wich just came out with a remaster.

[@gi-me-the-gamenerd5325]

@@McFluffinGaming I personally don't really use mods except for stellaris. But I would love to have that offline option to not have to sign into a account. I agree people that dupers should be in trouble for hurting the market online. If you look at fallout 76 their anti cheat and the online did not make a lick of damn difference.

[@ghostlightx9005]

Last Epoch has 2 major problems: no co-op and terrible optimization. And the devs have simply taken too long to solve both of these. The game's time was the start/spring of this year (2022). That was when it HAD to drop 1.0 basically. Now it's kind of missed the boat. I played 600 hours of LE and love it, but I've been patiently waiting for co-op, ready to bring my entire usual ARPG group in as well. However they just took too long and so we've gone all-in on Grim Dawn and expansions instead. By the time we are done, PoE2 or D4 will be out I think. And btw Wolcen is excellent now and well worth playing (we just played 600 hours of it).

[@ghostlightx9005]

Another thought occurred.... Last Epoch has a horrible re-spec mechanic that is just too expensive (in term of time to re-level skills) for purpose. This makes the game extremely unfriendly to build experimentation, especially when levelling, the time when you most want to experiment with builds. The Diablo days of "spec choices matter" are long gone. People no longer have the time to indulge in that nonsense. ARPGs need instant and free respecs or they will have trouble finding their audience. Another reason my group will not play this game.

[@Kodiah-]

Ya the feel of combat is important. I like nice visualizations. Audio tho isn't that important to me. If poe devs keep doing what there doing then ppl will careless about poe 2. Also the environment in this game is beautiful but feel the character model is plain compared to it. Might just b me but just wat I think.

[@Murlocky82]

haha a lagmancer is my favorite....haha

[@TehDanny]

It could definitely fail, but not on a Wolcen scale, since Wolcen failed even when playing solo. I have a feeling that it could potentionally "fail" in a way similar to how Diablo 3 was a failure for for some people at launch. A lot of WoW players payed for an extended subscription to get a "free" Diablo 3, a 6 month subscription I believe, and a lot of those players didn't like it. Those players most likely just thought "I'm gonna play WoW for the next 6 months anyway, so why not" and then didn't really look much into the game and expected it to be more similar to diablo 2. So to add on your list of causes, the game could fail in some ways if marketed poorly. If the devs releases a trailer showing 8-player gameplay, but only optimizes gameplay for up to 3-4 players, then large groups of friends will get hyped, buy the game and then quickly request for refunds and play something else.

[@McFluffinGaming]

That's true, it could happen. However, I don't know too many things that are left to be marketed that we don't already have. Poorly optimized MP would definitely apply, but was also covered. Maybe one of the endgame systems or a mastery is released around 1.0 to a bunch of hype and it just fails hard.

[@mezmerya5130]

success for last epoch is path of exile fail, because that's when it gets true exposure to a community. Just like ff14.

[@snoofos]

Hate the title (the sound of the approach) But great content and potential proBlems/increasing chances to succeed (at this current time)

[@DrFl3sh]

is really funny how you don't mention one of the biggest elephants on the room (there is almost an entire zoo for this game) that is the really bad textures/character models/item textures that the game has when is a b2p game and that the developers already confirmed that there is gonna be cosmetic microtransactions

[@McFluffinGaming]

I didn't mention it because I don't believe it's a problem. The textures/models are fine as is, but are also getting updated constantly. This is an area that EHG has prioritized and while it's not quite AAA level of polish, I think it's in a pretty good state and high enough quality to allow the game to be successful.

[@SLISKI_JOHNNY]

I feel like Last Epoch won't compete with DIablo or POE because it's not online-only or live service. It will more likely compete with Grim Dawn and in my honest opinon it's already better, but i'm being biased here because I hate Grim Dawn/TItan Quest character development system. Meanwhile, the first thing that struck me in Last Epoch is fanstastic character development - it's pretty much perfect middle ground between Diablo 3 and PoE. Diablo 3 was too simplified, but I do value being able to easily respec my points, like Borderlands allows for instance.

[@McFluffinGaming]

It's going online/live service with seasons :)

[@SLISKI_JOHNNY]

@@McFluffinGaming really? That's great, I assumed it was going to be offline with optional multiplayer, like Torchlight or Grim Dawn

[@McFluffinGaming]

@@SLISKI_JOHNNYThere may still be an offline option, but the main way to play will be server authoritative online-only characters, and seasons (called cycles) are confirmed. Multiplayer is also in testing with the community testers, so hopefully we'll be seeing it go live in the near future.

[@SLISKI_JOHNNY]

@@McFluffinGaming that's good, I was worried about multiplayer with offline saves because of cheaters of course. Thanks for clearing all doubts, I will most likely get this one soon :)

[@Kiadaw77]

It will be better on MP than PoE2, at least. PoE MP is god awful, and doesn’t seems improve in PoE2.

[@Shallaan]

I've literally never seen a game as badly optimized as LE

[@gilo7171]

Its the same game as WOLCEN. Nothing special.