First impressions: problems of the game and tips for solving them

Feedback and Suggestions
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My dear friends!

Last Epoch has become for me, a big fan of the ARPG genre, a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the current version of the game is replete with so many flaws and overtly weak solutions that I decided to express my impressions in detail after a few hours of playing. Read this text not as a boredom of a sated player, but as a sober criticism of a person who has something to do with game development in this genre and therefore evaluates a product primarily from the point of view of its convenience for an ordinary player.

And one more important point. I live in Russia, so English is not my native language. Therefore, I ask you in advance to treat condescendingly possible errors and typos. If you do not understand a piece of text - feel free to contact me in the comments, I will formulate it more carefully. Letā€™s go!

Character and Inventory

  1. The first thing that catches your eye is the incredibly low speed of the heroā€™s movement around the location. Given the gigantic (weā€™ll discuss it later) size of each location and the high density of monsters on them, this factor greatly stretches the gameplay, turning it into a routine. The player has no way to increase the speed of movement (excluding Magicianā€™s teleport, which allows you to literally skip some separate locations), this is ultimately only frustrates the players ā€“ you can see, how many topics with complaints have been created on the forum.

How can we solve the problem? Firstly, add a modifier to each Boots in the game that increases the speed of movement. Secondly - to provide players with a universal mechanism for fast movement: a crafting component (for example, for rings and amulets), which would endow any character with the ability to Blink or Dash.

  1. Tiny inventory size. This problem exists in all ARPGs that came out after Diablo 2. Why "after"? The fact is that the small size of the inventory in that game was justified from the point of view of the gameplay: there were "talismans" in the game, which gave passive bonuses to the character while they were in his traveling bag. Therefore, the limited size of this bag allowed game designers to balance the game and did not allow characters to become gods with colossal stats.

In the case of Last Epoch, limited inventory is just a reason to constantly distract from the game and teleport to the city to sell your loot. Considering that the locations and dead monsters are reset to zero after each re-entry - this frustrates the player and makes it difficult to fully immerse into the meditative process of exterminating monsters.

How to fix: increase the number of inventory cells, add additional slots.

  1. Crafting Materials. The implementation of the concept of ā€œstones with affixesā€ in the game appeals to me, but their management sometimes raises questions. Okay, I am grateful to the developers for the fact that these stones should not be stored in the inventory or chest, but in a special panel, but ā€¦

Question: why make them pick up these stones first in their inventory, and not immediately put them in storage?

Answer: so that these stones can be transferred to other characters through a common trunk.

Question: If so, why not immediately make for all characters (except Solo mode) a common storage in which they will place components for crafting? Why make each character manually transfer another component to another when you can simply combine the common pool of these components on your account?

  1. Item Transfering. What do I sayā€¦ Shift+rightclickin in not intuitive. At all. Why canā€™t I simply dragā€™nā€™drop my items to vendor? There was always be one simple mechanic: rightclick\Ctrl+click on the tem to by or to sell. But here itā€™s just painfull.

I also hope that in the future, developers will add a pop-up window when you hover the cursor on the object, which shows the characteristics of the current equipment of the player. This will allow you to quickly compare items to each other and choose the best.

Interface

  1. Game definitely needs an ability to disable prompts in the menu or the option "Disable prompts" when the first pop-up window with tutorial flaff appears.

  2. The ā€œSkills and Specializationā€ panel cannot be closed using the mouse (there is no Cansel button or a cross in the upper right corner). In other panels, it is present, which is very convenient.

  3. Non-working button "Teleport". You can call the portal into the city only by pressing the corresponding button on the keyboard (ā€œTā€ by default). In addition, this button on the interface panel confuses the player, as it is highlighted from the very beginning of the game (although the ability to teleport will open to the player much later) - and it is not pressed.

  4. A surprisingly small number of active slots. The player has only 4 active skills + 1 active skill on the right mouse button. Visually on the screen there is still a lot of free space - why not use it? In the current version, the interface can be easily expanded to 8 slots (say, 1234 + QWER). I understand that most players will not use 9 active skills at the same time - but it is important to leave everyone a space to experiment and create their own builds.

  5. Differentiation of the buttons "Movement" and "Strike". In all hackā€™nā€™slash games that exist today, the ā€œStrikeā€ button works comfortably and intuitively, combining the function of moving around the location and the basic attack on the enemy. Yes, if desired, the player can assign the ā€œWalkingā€ button to her place (which may be useful in some cases), but this is just one of the options.

Why do I think this is a problem? Players are accustomed to the fact that, starting with Diablo, the mouse buttons allow them to make the most basic gaming bundle: the ā€œGo / Attackā€ button + the active skill button. And now players are forced to use only 1 button, either under attack or under active ability, since one of the buttons will always be occupied by the movement function. Given the previous point (a small number of active slots), this system further limits the capabilities of the characters.

  1. World map. In this case - specifically the network of teleports and the visual display of the locations under them. In the case of a maximum or almost maximum scale (say, if a player wants to look around the entire map), the inscriptions and teleport icons become so small that it is completely impossible to read them. This can be solved by text scaling depending on the current map scale.

  2. Autoloot mechanics. In the current version of the game, the player needs to literally ā€œstep onā€ the character model on the object in order to pick it up. Often in the thick of battle, or as a result of the screen being loaded with icons with the names of the dropped loot, this can be very difficult to do the first time.

How to fix: significantly increase the radius of the autolooting and add the option of automatic selection of components for crafting and things of a certain color.

  1. Tiny dialogue window. Not only that the text itself and the active options in it are made with too small font, so the World Chat window also climbs onto the active area! So many times I, trying to bargain or accept the quest, clicked one pixel to the left - and instead opened the chat.

And ā€“ please! - prevent the character from moving while in communication with the NPC. It is worth accidentally clicking anywhere, except for the active line of the dialogue, as the character runs off into the distance - and the dialogue remains open.

Combat and Spells

Since I just started playing Last Epoch and have not yet had time to complete the game, I canā€™t fully discuss the balance and specific combat mechanics. Now I have only one remark:

Mageā€™s spell "Fire Shield". Give me one reason why this spell is not a passive aura with no duration limit? The need to update the spell every 14 seconds causes only frustration, despite the fact that it practically does not spend mana - so this fact can hardly be attributed to mana management.

Yes, you can note the fact that in the tree of passive perks of this spell there is an option that doubles its duration after full bleeding. But, firstly, 28 seconds is still damn little and makes no sense. And secondly, if the developer wanted so much to force the player of spending skill points to increase the duration of the spell, then why not just leave one single option that would cost 1 point of skills and make the spell permanent? This would force the player to invest in the development of the ability and thereby save both time and nerves.

Monsters and locations

  1. My first and most important complaint is everything related to locations. I do not want to discuss the graphical aspect of this issue and the fact that many locations consist of the same assets, which makes them indistinguishable from each other. Now the game is in beta testing, and I hope that the developers will still be able to improve the graphic component of the product (itā€™s not for nothing that we paid the full price for the game).

There is another thing that outraged me. Each location (with the exception of a few starting ones) is a huge maze in which there is absolutely nothing to do. Dozens of branches from the main route lead to nowhere, extremely rarely rewarding the player for research with at least an ordinary chest (in which, as a rule, there is practically no interesting loot). It would not be such a big problem if ā€¦ Locations were not updated with each new entry / teleport. I do not see a gameplay excuse for this, but this fact is incredibly frustrating. Sometimes even the layout of the location changes, which is why the character finds itself at a completely random point and has to try again to navigate the terrain - which is almost impossible to do, since all the assets, as has been said, are exactly the same. And that brings us to the second big problem.

  1. Minimap. In the current version of the game, the minimap is implemented so ineptly that it does much more harm than good. Due to the fact that the locations are updated every time after a new entry, the player has to explore the area in a new way, even if they have been in it many times. The internal map of the game (the Tab button by default) does not have a zoom option, which completely devalues ā€‹ā€‹such a map ā€” the player sees exactly the same space on it as on the mini-map. At the mini-map, by the way, there is no scaling option either, which once again makes it difficult to orientate and forces the player to wander for hours in the same maze, disrupting anger on his inhabitants.

How to fix: add scaling options for both maps. In the case of a mini-map, these are the ā€œ+ā€ and ā€œ-ā€ buttons; in the case of an internal map, the Tab + mouse wheel scrolling.

  1. Enemies and their location. In general, I pay tribute to the efforts of game designers, who presented the game with various types of opponents with their own attack strategies. However, the ā€œdensityā€ of the monster resettlement is very uneven. At the very beginning of the game there are so few of them that you can be bored frankly - they do not pose a threat at all (and this despite the fact that the game does not punish you for death at all, but only teleports the player to the control point). However, at some point the level of danger of enemies increases so dramatically that the character will die in almost every battle where there is a more or less powerful enemy or miniboss (this is especially noticeable in the lands of the undead).

Hackā€™nā€™slash is a genre built on a cheerful genocide. Paying more attention to the location and the number of monsters (especially in the initial stages), you will make the process of engaging in the game more intense, which will attract newcomers and keep the existing audience.

  1. Traders. The first time we meet the merchant is practically in the second game location, when the character still has no physical items for sale and money to buy something valuable (especially considering that the merchants never sell something useful and money in the game for the most part the account is needed only to reset the characteristics). Then follows a long, very tedious game section, during which the player loads his pockets with loot to the eyeballs ā€¦ And only much later, when the player leaves lying on the floor stuffed in a fair fight (because the small inventory is full again), he again gets access to merchant and chest.

How to decide: to put the merchant not at the very beginning of the game, but exactly midway between the starting location and hab. Although, letā€™s be frank, if you throw out the starting journey and just allow the player to start right away in hab, the game will not lose anything, but will only save the player time.

  1. Crafting table. All the above applies to the workshop. Access to crafting is open from the very beginning of the game, the components are falling to us almost from the first enemies, but for some reason, the player decides to present this mechanic to the player after a few hours of play, when there is no need for it.

Conclusion

At the moment, this is almost all my claims. Only subjective aesthetic preferences, which can hardly be considered ā€œobjective criticismā€, remained inaudible. For example, I am terribly disliked by the design of the enemies in this game. Void is the most boring choice of "world evil." Back in Torchlight 2, these piles of purple jelly looked ridiculous and ridiculous, and killing monsters that exude tar was just plain dull. Flies, bears, spiders - all this is commonplace, which in 2019 looks more funny than interesting. The same applies to writing - the text is written so boringly that you absolutely do not want to get a grasp of it.

But these are my personal preferences, which I would not like to impose. I believe that if the developers take the time to work on the bugs and more elaborate work, then the game can have a great future. I would be happy to provide Eleventh Hour Games with all possible assistance - I am waiting for your comments.

Sincerely, Hermes Trismegistus

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And yet you are more articulate and well spoken than american college students I hire.

Your post addresses a number of my concerns after a few hours of the game play. (Especially the click-input when other screens/dialogues are in view.) I am sure that EHG has a number of these on their roadmap we just donā€™t know the priority.

The only one I disagree with is the introduction. I enjoy the addition of immediate time travel before ending up at the first hub.

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This already exists, as well as movement speed affixes that can be applied to boots

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Yep, but theyā€™re not so common and (for my oppinion) didnā€™t increase speed as much, as it needed

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I personally like only having a small amount of active slots since I have issues managing more than a small handful of skills at once (this really is my issue with MMORPGs and other games that have dozens of skills to manage). I feel like being forced to work with a small handful of skills allows you to fine-tune your build rather than playing a ā€˜jack of all tradesā€™ build that does a whole mess of things. I would, however, love having an active skill on the left mouse button (like the option to do so in PoE).

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Regarding inventory size, rather than add more cells, I would reduce the size of items in the inventory. This is one place where I really appreciate D3. Make the graphics for inventory items smaller and use less space.

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Yes, there is certainly a rational grain in this and it can help solve the problem. But on the other hand, functional design will suffer from this. I like the way the developers carefully approach the design of the loot in the inventory ā€” it is made qualitatively and allows you to visually distinguish one thing from another. Considering that on the character itself the objects are now displayed rather dull and monotonous, the transformation of the whole production into pictograms of 1x1 size can kill the already small pleasure from the extraction of new equipment.

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I appreciate the effort you spent making this post and your points are valid in a few cases. But this is the problem with most game reviewers or critiquers, not specifically you, but how much time did you actually put in? How far did you get ? Did you consider mistakes you may have made? Did you play it again after learning from your mistakes? Of course notā€¦

And to be perfectly honest and a little mean - Itā€™s pretty ridiculous to me that you start off your super long critique with something about movement speed boots which already exist, are already effective, and directly the opposite of what you posted.
That makes me think you donā€™t know what youre talking aboutā€¦which you dont:P Sorry but its true.
I just switched over to hc from sc. My very first character in this league for this patch (lots of experience in the game though). Iā€™m level 13 with 30% movement speed. It feels completely fine. Something thats recreateable every time you reroll unless youre very unlucky.

I also disagree with a large amount of your other pointsā€¦but its clear you havent put any time into the game and its not worth taking the time to debate with you one by one until you do.

You cant claim to be an expert on anything until you actually take the time to learn about it. Your post makes this mistake. Again this is my opinion. Iā€™m sure the developers of the game would be a lot nicer to you:)

Another exampleā€¦I can go most of the story of the game without filling my inventory. Thats because I have experience, I know what items are actually worth picking up and which arent. Theres no id scrolls needed which is a huge improvement over any other arpg. So as I learn about the game and what works I dont need a large inventory to accomplish what I need. Its not an issue what so ever.

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If you running out of space well theres a few things:

  1. Grey items are useless waste of space. Next to no gold at all and cant break them into shards for crafting.
  2. Get shatter runes and break down items to turn affixes into shards during a run.
  3. Some magical items can be next to useless poor affixes and low gold value, AKA floor trash.
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Yes, you very well expressed all my thoughts, to which I came in a dozen or so hours of play) For now, inventory is the least problem of the current version of the game compared to its other flaws, so I donā€™t want to single it out as a gamebreaking

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A1. No. Movement should stay as it is with maybe small improvements. Giving movement skills with no CD or real cost, will result in a playstyle that other games already excel at. Let people complain on this one. We saw the effect fast movement might have on endgame.
2. Everything in an arpg is about decisions. Having limited inventory makes you decide what to pick and what to leave behind. Imagine how much easier it would be to acquire gold if you could pick and sell everything and the implications it would have in the economy.
3. Because trading.

B4. I donā€™t know how to respond to that. Decisions and balance. Simple arpg fundamentals.

C. Keeping you on your toes, alertness. You shouldnā€™t have everything on auto and just focus on dealing damage.
C2. Although the area reset is gonna be fixed at some point, I totally agree about minimap. What I would like is a really small minimap that I can check to see what paths I left unexplored, without the need to press tab.
C3. I would prefer better density as well but it might have implications with game balance and mechanics like ward retention.

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Worst post I ever saw in those forums.
You clearly dont know how to live in society sir. All the points the guy made are very valid, and he have the right to do that, as you have the right to write bad words like you did.

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Actually i agree with Sirris. A lot of these post lack knowledge of the game itself. Many of the complaints have been acknowledged. With just a little forum research many of these would be answered.

At this point i feel like we are beating dead horse. People should do some research before pisting these so they can slim this stuff down. There is for sure some valid points. However they are the same as all other versions of this post.

As far as being mean that is meh. You just did the same thing. We should all refrain from this as it turns into an argument rather then a discussion.

Good luck in LE

Tweezus

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I must say that thereā€™s a lot of truth in all youā€™re saying. But I have several quick remarks.

I guess, it would be easier / correct to increase base characterā€™s movement speed than to make this modifier basic for every boots :slight_smile: . Also I heard that devs have some plans to decrease location sizes (not sure about this). At the same time, I personally donā€™t like the idea of ā€œrunning throughā€ all enemies straight to the target. Because of that the whole locations seem wasted and needless. Though I agree that their current design / mechanics is not perfect, I believe itā€™s a matter of time.

  1. Current functionality is not finished. Event this one is added not so long ago. Iā€™m sure weā€™ll some improvements in the future :slightly_smiling_face: .
  2. Same as 1st, but I just wished to say that there are several discussions about that.
  3. If Iā€™m not wrong, the material stash is account-shared, unless you play Solo mode :thinking:.

In my opinion ā€œactionā€ itself is based on the number of playerā€¦ hmmā€¦ actions :slight_smile: per time period. Most existing skills have no cooldown or have something between 3-10 seconds. So, on average, with 4 non base attack skills on the panel, players are able to act 1 time every 1-2.5 seconds, or make a 2-3 sec skill combo once every 4-10 seconds (movement excluded). Iā€™m pretty sure itā€™s quite fast gameplay (when you get full panel, of course), and Iā€™ve seen some posts that the game is HARD (Iā€™m not judging, just stating). I mean, I just donā€™t know why you may need this :blush:. Even if you get all skills on the panel, you wonā€™t be able to use them all, because every skill has its cast time. And having them all just in caseā€¦ in all casesā€¦ emmmmmmā€¦ it seemsā€¦ notā€¦ right :blush:.

It will be reworked. Ice Ward also. And some other skills :slight_smile:.

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And what does your post add to this discussion? Sirris is correct even if heā€™s being a dick about it. Pretty much all the ā€œreviewsā€ Iā€™ve seen so far are people who havenā€™t paid attention to anything the devs have said and itā€™s like they are rushing through an hour or two of the game to get something written.

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Why people should be specialists on a subject in order to give feedback?
Its the companyā€™s job to filter and gather important stuff, but feedback can be given from anyone and is always welcome.

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Spending 100 hours ingame wonā€™t Change the fact that you will still have missed earlier Dev-Postsā€¦

And I agree with most of his Points, many Things have been said before (map/Location stuff), but some Things simply are bad design.

For example the crafting materials. You donā€™t Need to put them in the inventory first, put them in the crafting stash immediately and add a ā€œtake out of stashā€-Button in the Stash window if you want to trade them.

The shift-rightclick also caught me off guard a bit, itā€™s Preference and ideally configurable. But an Option to always Display your equipped item next to the one you mouse over should be Standard by now.

Also that the Teleport Button does not workā€¦ fair Point, rather unimportant for the gameplay, but very important for a good first look, polish is important.

Active Slots I like the reduction and Focus on less, but more diverse Skills, personal Preference.

Movement+Strike, very much yes. Make it a modifier with Shift+Rightclick to either stand and attack or move and attack (what is Standard should be configurable in the menu). Especially the early melee fights feel incredibly clunky, first Impression.

Iā€™d like to add a lootfilter Option, was probably said before as well, but I think lootfilters should belong in every ARPG by now.

PS: I also agree with the General Buff design Point. Either make them permanent, or make their cooldown longer than they last. There is no Point in having to recast a buff every 20 seconds when mana cost and cooldown donā€™t prohibit me to have it permanently on anyway.
Well working alternatives IMHO: In PoE auras cut your max mana pool. In Grim Dawn, they cut your max mana pool and slow your mana Regeneration by having small, permanent mana costs themselves.

Or, if you want a more active style, make the buff permanent, and give it an extra ā€œThingā€ when activated, same as Primalist Pets now. The first cast puts the buff on, new casts trigger function X at manacost Y and cooldown Z. This can either be increased stats of the buff, AoE attacks/debuffs, a DoT/Debuff cleanse on yourself or what have you.

Alternatively, you could make the extra ā€œThingā€ something big, that eats up your buff. For example on fire shield: Fire shield is permanent, and you get ā€œDetonate Shieldā€ as Skill on Fire Shields place. (For multiplayer just make those buffs Auras if you could cast them on teammates to avoid not being able to cast them on teammates)
Detonate Shield deals massive one time AoE damage, but removes your fire shield and has for example 20 seconds cooldown, so that you have to decide if and when to cast your ā€œnukeā€ and being at more risk afterwards.

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I do not expect to have to read any further posts similar to those quoted below.

Keep it on-topic and civil, please.

Summary
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Hey @HermesTrismegistus ā€“ Iā€™ve added my thoughts and opinions to some of the points you made in your post. For the sake of brevity Iā€™ve omitted things that I think are obviously on the devā€™s to-do list and shortened some of the quotations from the original post.

Here we go :slight_smile:

The first thing that catches your eye is the incredibly low speed of the heroā€™s movement around the location.

I think the base movement speed is OK. It is on the slower but it doesnā€™t feel like your character is walking in quicksand. After finding a pair of 10% movement speed (MS) boots and a couple of +5/6% MS rings things felt much smoother. Once I got the Acolyteā€™s Harvest skill node which grants +10% MS per point if youā€™ve crit recently (2 points max) I felt much more comfortable. For me getting more MS is always an immediate goal and I think the base MS inspires this goal enough without being overly slow or punishing until MS gear is found.

ā€¦ provide players with a universal mechanism for fast movement: a crafting component (for example, for rings and amulets), which would endow any character with the ability to Blink or Dash.

I like the idea of each class having a thematic movement skill or two, and I think I like the idea of gear providing a movement skill too.

Iā€™m in the 30ā€™s with my Lich and the Transplant skill is just utterly amazing not just because its so useful but its also so thematic to my build. Playing a Harvest Lich and teleporting around the map like a crazy vampire is so damn fun.

Tiny inventory size ā€¦ In the case of Last Epoch, limited inventory is just a reason to constantly distract from the game and teleport to the city to sell your lootā€¦
How to fix: increase the number of inventory cells, add additional slots.

I think the inventory size is about right. If players donā€™t want to sell items constantly then they shouldnā€™t pick up so many items. It is definitely an ARPG concept that most loot is garbage, and I do hope Last Epoch doesnā€™t fall prey to the ridiculous amount of useless loot that other games have. For me I only pick up upgrades for my character or legendary/set pieces to stash and I rarely TP to town just to stash.

Thank the devs for auto sort.

ā€¦ why not immediately make for all characters (except Solo mode) a common storage in which they will place components for crafting? Why make each character manually transfer another component to another when you can simply combine the common pool of these components on your account?

Agreed that crafting mats should go to some account wide storage tab, either immediately upon looting or after depositing to the stash.

A surprisingly small number of active slots. The player has only 4 active skills + 1 active skill on the right mouse button. Visually on the screen there is still a lot of free space - why not use it? In the current version, the interface can be easily expanded to 8 slots (say, 1234 + QWER). I understand that most players will not use 9 active skills at the same time - but it is important to leave everyone a space to experiment and create their own builds.

I like making the hard decisions of which skills to slot. So far the 5 ability slots (QWER + right click) seem to work very well in keeping things open for experimentation while also requiring build identifying decisions to be made.

Having 4 button skills also somewhat dictates the pace of the game. With just 4 buttons skills the player can be expected to respond with the correct decision more quickly since they have less choices to iterate through mentally.

One final thought is that as skill bindings increases build variety decreases, since a single build will be able to perform a larger variety of actions.

Differentiation of the buttons ā€œMovementā€ and ā€œStrikeā€. In all hackā€™nā€™slash games that exist today, the ā€œStrikeā€ button works comfortably and intuitively, combining the function of moving around the location and the basic attack on the enemy. Yes, if desired, the player can assign the ā€œWalkingā€ button to her place (which may be useful in some cases), but this is just one of the options.

Why do I think this is a problem? Players are accustomed to the fact that, starting with Diablo, the mouse buttons allow them to make the most basic gaming bundle: the ā€œGo / Attackā€ button + the active skill button. And now players are forced to use only 1 button, either under attack or under active ability, since one of the buttons will always be occupied by the movement function. Given the previous point (a small number of active slots), this system further limits the capabilities of the characters.

Can you further elaborate on this point? I donā€™t see what the issues with move being bound to left click.

Autoloot mechanics. In the current version of the game, the player needs to literally ā€œstep onā€ the character model on the object in order to pick it up. Often in the thick of battle, or as a result of the screen being loaded with icons with the names of the dropped loot, this can be very difficult to do the first time.

How to fix: significantly increase the radius of the autolooting and add the option of automatic selection of components for crafting and things of a certain color.

Agree.

Each location (with the exception of a few starting ones) is a huge maze in which there is absolutely nothing to do. Dozens of branches from the main route lead to nowhere, extremely rarely rewarding the player for research with at least an ordinary chest (in which, as a rule, there is practically no interesting loot).

I agree with you that the alternate paths through levels donā€™t feel very rewarding once you have some half decent gear. I think chests, rare mini bosses that drop decent loot (and are a fun challenge), randomly spawning hidden side areas, etc. would all be a welcome addition down to road.

It would not be such a big problem if ā€¦ Locations were not updated with each new entry / teleport. I do not see a gameplay excuse for this, but this fact is incredibly frustrating. Sometimes even the layout of the location changes, which is why the character finds itself at a completely random point and has to try again to navigate the terrain - which is almost impossible to do, since all the assets, as has been said, are exactly the same. And that brings us to the second big problem.

I thought that the maps during the story line are all hand made (vs. procedurally generated) so I donā€™t know if the layout changes. But the devs have stated in another thread that zone persistence is on the to-do list.

Enemies and their location. In general, I pay tribute to the efforts of game designers, who presented the game with various types of opponents with their own attack strategies. However, the ā€œdensityā€ of the monster resettlement is very uneven. At the very beginning of the game there are so few of them that you can be bored frankly - they do not pose a threat at all (and this despite the fact that the game does not punish you for death at all, but only teleports the player to the control point). However, at some point the level of danger of enemies increases so dramatically that the character will die in almost every battle where there is a more or less powerful enemy or miniboss (this is especially noticeable in the lands of the undead).
Hackā€™nā€™slash is a genre built on a cheerful genocide. Paying more attention to the location and the number of monsters (especially in the initial stages), you will make the process of engaging in the game more intense, which will attract newcomers and keep the existing audience.

So far Iā€™ve found enemies to be somewhat wildly imbalanced (this isnā€™t necessarily a bad thing, read on!). Iā€™ve been able to steamroll some zones, move to the next zone, and then get utterly obliteratedā€¦ repeatedlyā€¦ and I kinda like it. I like that some mobs are overly dangerous and should simply be avoided. It reminds me of older RPGs where some monsters just arenā€™t worth fighting. I like that thereā€™s some enemies that are just plain tough and make you think twice about engaging.

Somewhat tangentially I also love that you can mob train fairly easily in Last Epoch (at the peril of you character and FPS). Its super fun to group up 30 enemies, cast Marked for Death, Transplant in the middle of the pack and AoE them down with Harvest.

Thanks for reading!

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But in a game where you can only specialize into 5 skills, having 5 available skills makes sense. Some people want left click, and they can go for it.