Level 100 and the time it takes to get there

@Sarno, will there be a compromise? can we keep no death penalty in ATLEAST one end game area, and atleast one ladder game mode?
we can satisfy our player base and keep maximum profits by satsifying our speed runners, our casuals, and our tournament/league serious players by adding new content to most of the player base game modes in a minimal limiting way, but also try and promote all the game modes that you put in the game for different kinds of players.

so death penalty, and skill/gear restriction usage could still be fine if you implement it like how im saying

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I feel like I am the only one in favor of death penalty to experience. Especially at the later levels when it negates a chunk of time when you die. Without them, glass cannon builds are almost always the way to go for reaching top level. Penalties require more rounded toons be played, or gamble with a glass cannon.

Poe got it right. In any case, it’s not like we’re running to retrieve our gear after death anymore.

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Well this game is different from poe in a lot of ways. As for going glass cannon just cause theres no death penalty… yea i dont see any glass cannons at the top of the leaderboards. This game requires more rounded builds if you wanna go far not just cause there would be a death penalty.

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This works in other games where you can choose a (relatively) static difficulty level to play on. The two endgame modes we have currently in LE both include steep difficulty ramps as part of their core mechanics.

I guess, in theory, you could glass cannon your way through a monolith and reset it before entering again. I feel like your XP gain would be rubbish, though…

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This same discussion is happening on diablo 4 as well. i would much rather they dont add penalties and instead give a small random consumable bonus everytime you level up beyond 100.

this will make sure that no character will become too overpowered like diablo 3 and not punishing like POE.

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Nope, I agree with the death penalty 100%. Defensive upgrades need to feel good too, people wont care about them if they don’t care about dying.

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The major D4 discussion as I understand it is is around the Paragon system, although I’ve seen death penalty comments as well. Paragon ruined D3 in the sense that it made things absurdly hard to balance due to the orders of magnitude of difference in stats between low- and high-Paragon players.

Apologies for the off-topic comment.

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I’ve not got as far as some probably have in terms of monoliths, but dieing at ~30+ timelines & then having to restart from 0 really sucks. And as Boardman says, if you want to push the higher echelons of arena, you can’t go glass cannon, so we’re already in the place you want to be in (dieing sucks, don’t go glass cannon).

as boredman has said , getting to higher levels of monolith and arena already require you to not go glass cannon, while serving as something to push for - even when maxed level and geared since you can always improve your skill level.
Gaining levels already becomes much slower after 80 , requiring longer and longer wave runs in arena to be effective. Monolith runs become less effective at higher levels , as climbing back to the 40+ mark where the experience is decent takes a while.

Defensive upgrades always feel good , as it means you can push higher and earn the experience rewards associated.

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If you want to be the top of the class it should be that you do everything to make that happen just like in real life. Imagine if you were at the worlds for the 100 meter dash and decided to jump instead of run. How should that end up for you? Not good. You can still have fun doing it but you won’t be at the top of the world. There’s always going to be the best build for what you are doing. That’s not to say if you go and make a build off the beaten path that you won’t have fun. But there will always be something for what you are doing that will be the best way to do it. This isn’t a bad thing!

I agree with Llama8 and Boardman on this point.

The best design is to have game mechanics encourage a healthy balance between offense and defense. I feel that LE is already at a good spot in this regard which is impressive considering that the game isn’t even released yet.

If the death penalty is too severe then players can’t take much risk which typically corresponds to grinding on pathetically easy trash mobs or limiting your build to something that is so tanky that you have almost no chance to die. Both of these styles of gameplay are boring to me.

I’d like to see a system where players have an incentive to participate in increasingly challenging content to the point where death becomes a likely possibility, but completing the content without dying results in substantial rewards.

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In general, a death penalty seems a reasonable thing to encourage one to use a bit of strategy to defeat a challenge. I do like the idea of people risking a bit as they develop builds, but I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. You could disincentivize people if the penalty is too harsh e.g. PoE, so some consideration would be prudent.

Have you tried glass cannon-ing Arena or Monoliths? Restarting from wave/timeline 1 is painfull.

I have 10 lvl 100’s in PoE and the time it takes to hit 100 is painful, if you die in PoE you lose 10% xp, at lvl 99 this is actually hard to deal with mentally, assuming you are just ‘mapping’ (monolithing in comparison) without doing any XP party tricks, you can lose 3-4 hours of constant grinding and you could just die again.

Sure this makes you build tough all-round characters but PoE still has stupid mechanics if you cross you will die, ie Detonate Dead from certain monster corpses isnt survivable if you step on the wrong body at the wrong time and losing connection/crashes can kill you easily however its fine you just deal with it

For a game like LE, not sure where this game is apparently going to go but for me its purely an ‘offline’ Solo self found so for me losing 10% xp in a singleplayer game is probably too much,

I think Grim Dawn is best if you die you do actually lose XP but can retrieve your grave and the loss is minor anyway as lvling is easy, if you die in certain places you ‘lose’ the dungeon run by being kicked out and cannot return that session and bosses also get healed to i think max HP when you die so you cannot corpse rush a boss

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No. Llama8 I haven’t, but I believe you. I admit I haven’t the game specific experience to justify myself. I’m coming at it from a generalized gaming perspective.

Its very big NO for me!!!

God dam Karv!!!

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Make it take as long as d2 level 99:D the only ladder race you need!

I’ve played POE a lot and it seems to take forever to level Last Epoch challenges. In POE, you can easily reach level 60 in about 3 days. Last Epoch though seems like it takes a week to reach that same level for me. Is it just that you’re supposed to be leveling via the arena and the monolith’s main purpose for people is to provide arena keys? I was under the impression that I should be saving them for a higher level that’s maybe wrong.

Just experience I think will help you. I can get a character to level 70+ in under 8 hours

When I look at the current “endgame” without an xp penalty on death glass cannon builds are not viable. That’s a huge thing for me. I was afraid that endgame would end up just stacking damage an wipe through the maps as fast as you can. For LE the defences are very important if you don’t wanna die every 5 minutes.

While there’s no progression decrease while playing through the story content - you die and just try again instantly - there already is a huge penalty when you die during monolith.

I don’t know how death will be penalized on future game modes, but for now it is already enough.

Right now I have 130+ hours in the game. I am not chasing for max level. I try different classes and skill setups. I play about 2-4 hours a day so I am more on the casual side. My highest char is a 79 sentinel, second is a 75 necro. All other chars are around 40-50. Right now I play my Sentinel every day. I get about 1-2 levels per day and I asume this will get slower the higher I get.

Long story short: The actual time for teaching max level for me already is long enough - without any additional death penalty like xp loss.

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