Note to Devs - Please be Aware of "The Trap"

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This may be a little controversial but it’s beta and the best time for this kind of discussion.

I have alpha and beta tested many games in the past 20 years, but I come at it from a much more casual perspective than I suspect many do. That said, I’m certain there are still a ton of players that would likely think me calling myself “casual” is crazy. I have around 100 hours played on this beta, and I think over 500 hours on PoE. My highest level in LE is 60 I think and 75 or something on PoE. I tend to make a lot of alts and take my time with them, which means I spend a majority of the game in the “main game” as opposed to the “end game.”

So when I refer to “the trap” what I am talking about is the tendency for developers to get completely caught up in the endgame experience, which also tends to focus more and more on the hardcore gamer experience. What I’ve seen happen in other games is that the mentality is so much focused on incredibly intricate details that a majority of players never experience.
So much so that the beginner and casual experience starts to suffer, as casual players can’t even relate to some of the game design decisions. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading about the crazy end game experiences and builds, but I think it is just as important to remember the causal gamer who never sees or experiences that portion of the game.

As much as I love PoE, I have seen it turn off many friends and gamers and be stuck with a label of being too hardcore or too complicated, which is really a shame. I would hate to see LE get sucked into that same kind of pattern. The present game, minus some minor balancing, seems very friendly and I really appreciate that. I think the majority of casual gamers will appreciate that too. Just a friendly reminder to not forget about us as development continues.

I don’t have anything specific at the moment, but I just wanted to remind people of a trend I’ve seen in the past with multiple other games.

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I see where you are coming from. While in almost all aRPG the “big” discussion always are about endgame, content and more content, did i mention content?

I think LE already has a oustanding foundation for some really good experiences for all kind of player. Even if you take your time and not just breeze through the story. Since devs already reworked/tweaked some of the already existing/“older” parts of the story, try to put them on par with the more recent additions to the story content, i think in the end when the main story is “complete” devs will give the whole story as a package some love.
I think they already mentioned little cutscenes, or at least some voice acted scenes to introduce new chapter/characters and try to fill some gaps currently are a bid missing when jumping from one chapter into the next.

I am not sure if “just a good story” is already enough for you. But LE has some oustanding system, even from the very beginning. The sense of progress and getting stronger is really good in LE in my opinion and the skill specialisation trees are a feature that every player experiences from the get-go.

One thing that could be interesting is, how many different options there will be for leveling new characters. If you don’t wanna do the story over and over again with new alts. We have to see how the MoF update with 0.79 turns out. But i would like to have some choices how i want to level my alt chars.
But i am completely fine with the first full story runthrough as it’s already in the current state a enjoyful experince IMO.

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Good point about the current endgame experience in other big arpgs.
I have to be honest, i usually spend a lot of time into different arpgs (poe, d3, gd) and most of the time my chars are all around min maxing in the endgame to really get the best out of them. I still like to call myself a casual gamer, even though i have 2k+ hours in poe, 4k back then in d3 and 1.5k in gd, but i could never experience an arpg game like all those speedrunners do nowadays by just rushing and rushing. To reach ‘‘perfect’’ gear in d3 is even easy for a casual after one week. In PoE you have to dedicate alot of time, maybe even the whole league (3month) to perfect your character.
The feeling that you described and what you wish for in LE i always got from Grim Dawn. Even in this game sometimes i just stopped my char at lvl 50 or whatever (most of the time after finishing normal difficulty) and rerolled to another new char, because i liked the level part and the whole story so much. I think no other arpg made that leveling feeling so good as in GD.
We actually had an interesting discussion about this in one topic if you like to read through it.

I also really hope that the leveling feeling and the whole situation about early level campaign experience gets more exciting, otherwise how i like to say it, the ‘‘poe effect’’ kicks in and people start to rush story mode into endgame content which is of course really sad as a developer regarding how much time you spend into creating the story/lore and early game.

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100% agree, together with Last Epoch, Grim Dawn is the aRPG i have leveled the most chars with. Generally i often just like a very specific amount of skills/classes/builds in other similar games, but in GD, i often found one single legendary and thought, WOW with that i can make a build. Grim Dawn is the only aRPG where one single item gives you whole build ideas.

But i think the main part WHY leveling feels so good and i personally don’t mind playing the story over and over and over again is, that you build get’s an identity very very quickly. Same applies to Last Epoch, every skill feels impactful and good, even if you havn’t build around it yet in the early stages. Grim Dawn achieves the same thing with giving you 3 skill points per level for the first 50 level, which is huge. You can basically go straight to the skill you want the most.
In Last Epoch your first 3 specialisation slots get unlocked fairly quickly and the chocie of mastery also comes pretty fast, but it takes long enough to have at least some kind of sense for your class/build so you can decide better.

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Grim Dawn is definitely on my list of top games of all time. If it had had a “full” multiplayer experience I think it may very well have taken the top spot for me. (By “full” I mean like PoE or D2 with trading, etc. ). I think, though, not dealing with the complexities of all that, allowed them extra freedoms in item balance, etc that may not work otherwise. Anyway, I agree that the current flow of gameplay for LE is really good. I’d probably argue there’s a slight disconnect in difficulty transitioning to the last era, but that’s something that can easily be tweaked.

The thing that I’m more concerned about is the hidden creep that seems to follow developments. It’s completely natural, and I understand why it happens, but I think you just have to be aware of it. What do I mean? There was a game I came into beta fairly late (it might have been Hellgate I don’t remember), and I recall the first time I went into the forums. Pretty much every post felt like it was written in a different language. All the terminology, the discussions, concerns, etc were so far beyond what a new player would be concerned with. It soon became clear the developers had completely lost touch with a potential new gamer’s interests, they were simply too knee deep in the most complex details of the game. And it was also clear they were making balancing decisions based on the hardcore gamers’ concerns.
Again, it’s expected in some ways, because over time, that’s just what happens. The hardcore ones are the most vocal and have the most experience with the game, they are the ones testing the game past its limits. The “trap” though, is to cater the game design too heavily to that perspective.

This upcoming patch is a good example. Am I personally excited about the endgame improvements? Of course. But would I have traded that for the rogue class or more “new’” game/story content and balancing of the current “main game” or maybe the first stab at multiplayer? Yes! A friendly reminder that there are many potential players that may never even touch the endgame.

Anyway, I have extremely high hopes for LE in the long run, which is why I kickstarted the minute I read about it. If they can put together an online/trading/economy component that surpasses PoE/D2, they could very well become the reigning champion of all ARPGs.

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ugh grim dawn is terrible

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Because (apart from it not being D2)?

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Path of Exile is still massively popular even though it barely changes the early game with its patches. In fact a sizable portion of the community dislike leveling and demand other ways to get to the endgame.

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It’s “massively popular” with its core audience, but tends to drive away or deter any new players, which is a shame. It’s an awesome game with some incredible mechanics that no other ARPG has, but the fact is it is so complex (or perceived as such) that it loses a lot of people that might otherwise enjoy it. Of the roughly 15-20 ARPG fans I’ve tried to convince to play, only one of them fell actually stuck with it, and maybe 2-3 gave it a real chance.

Anyway, I was going to reply to one of the monolith/endgame discussions, but as I did so, I realized what I was afraid of (aka the Trap) was already starting to happen - reading through some of those threads, I feel like so much attention is being focused around the endgame and especially how the hardcore players view the endgame content. Some of the posts are starting to read like engineering emails with one acronym after another.

My question is why are we focusing on this already? Why not complete the main game (all content and most of all MULTIPLAYER) and make sure it is great and shiny, and then worry about all the endgame balancing. Yes, of course, it’s never too soon to do balancing, but again, my fear is that devoting so much energy toward satisfying the “1%” or whatever you want to call it, is going to come at a cost to the greater gaming community, and possibly to the game itself.

Sometimes I read those posts and I get the feeling the majority of participants don’t even know what a “casual” gamer really is. This is someone who might play the main game through once or twice, maybe experiment with the endgame content, or maybe just try another character or two and play some sessions with their friends. Let’s not forget that for the majority of game genres, playing 30-40 hours would be considered a fairly dedicated gamer. For ARPGs it seems like this type of gamer is simply not to be taken seriously.

That said, having run the main content now about 10 times, I feel reasonably assured this game is going to be fine - for single players. My biggest concern right now is multiplayer. Maybe I’m worrying too much, but I feel like MP is not getting the attention it deserves and needs, I really thought/hoped we’d be testing it by now. All of the endgame details will likely have to change and get re-balanced once MP is put into the mix. What I don’t want to happen most of all is that they end up doing a Titan Quest/Grim Dawn and give up on a “full” MP experience because it’s just too much of everything (balancing, maintaining a player economy, cheating, trading, etc). Hopefully my fears will be addressed soon.

TLDR: Sorry this kind of became two different issues - my personal opinion is the focus of development should now be concentrated on the one thing that impacts gamers of ALL types: multiplayer!

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You want to be careful making ALL statements. I’ve been playing aRPGs for years and could not care less about multiplayer. :wink:

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Many of the people on the forums saying the game needs to be harder have over 1000 hours on the beta and have collected many strong gear items and game knowledge which is what makes the game so easy for them. Most of the hard content was only just added recently so they never had to play through the game with nothing. They’re so detached from the new player experience by this point that they have no idea what they are asking for. At release the game should not be balanced around people with 1000+ hours. Everybody will be starting from scratch when seasons come out.

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Itll be interesting to see what it’s like when mp is out and everybody (except @CaiusMartius) goes online and has to start from scratch again. Though the knowledge/skill will be carried over. Lizard will be fine soloing all the content nekkid.

I’d really like to get some idea of the devs view on mp scaling. Is there going to be an mf/xp buff in parties? How much will mob damage/hp/etc scale with extra players?

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My biggest interrogation concerning multiplayer will be more about the possibility to really play everything.
I can’t even fathom the mess on screen that 3/4 players with 40+ wraith builds will be. Not even if that will be effectively supported by the servers in terms of damage calculations. Or if your computer is gonna ignite under the graphic load.

I’d bet some combinations of builds will be purely impossible to play in multiplayer.

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Not necessarily, D3 doesn’t display partied players pets, so that would get rid of the lag from wraith builds.

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Didn’t knew that, that’s smart. But how does it renders on screen ? You see stuff dying randomly here and there without anything hitting it ?

But does that means that your aura for instance doesn’t affect party minions ? Cause if it is the case that pretty much cancel the purpose of mp which is getting synergy between players.
If not then that would still stress the server for the damage calculation and interaction between party builds.

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I’m sorry but this feels like you’re trying to gaslight devs into thinking that there’s some sort of prevalent malignant pathology in ARPGs while in reality it’s just that some games are more story focused and some less.

Sometimes I don’t even finish a game because I pretty much or fully know the end already and there is no endgame.
I personally see that the opposite is in aRPGs - not enough games are “TRAPPED”.
Can you name me a few more aRPGs aside from PoE/D3 which have the “TRAP”?

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The party members minions were rendered as faint ghostly versions of what you would see if they were your own. So in the heat of battle you wouldn’t see them because they would be “drowned out” by the enemy mobs. Everything worked properly, they just rendered fully so you wouldn’t be distracted by “allied” mobs when you need to focus on the enemy mobs.

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:grinning: I actually WAS very careful, my original statement was different so I deliberately edited it. Whether you care about it or not, multiplayer will IMPACT the game design - skill balancing, item balancing, economy, all of that will have to be adjusted for MP, and will either directly or indirectly affect the final game experience for every gamer.

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The problem with PoE is not end game difficulty or being centred around HC or SC audience.
The problem with PoE is access to information, learning curve, quantity of different mechanics.
Once you learn the game, the actual content difficulty drops by a lot. The real trap is how to keep people coming every new league, offering them something fresh without losing focus and creating an iceberg of content with only 20% being relevant and the rest being an unmanageable mess.
Easy access to game systems, not needing to use 3d party programs and sites with a combination of a scaling difficulty that can be challenging to the best of players, is the way to go imo.
And don’t forget that PoE is a f2p game, meaning that anyone can try for free and they may quit for reasons that don’t have to do with actual content. And I mention that cause there is this idea that “only 1% kills UE” or something like that and that is used as an excuse for power creep.

The difficulty in PoE when it comes to casuals that KNOW the game VS Hardcore players, is not the actual content. The difference is in meta-crafting, currency generation etc. I played PoE as a casual for 5 years. I quit leagues around the time when I was able to clear easily t15 to Shaper with VERY budget gear and I had to farm trivial content to move a muck around the atlas to access a challenging boss.

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I didn’t mean to imply this only happened with ARPGs, it’s just something that I happened to see in ARPGs (and MMORPGs), but that’s because those are the games I’ve been involved with in beta. I will say it’s more prevalent in an ARPG like this, which comes with the expectation that some players will want to play it for years, possibly for hundreds if not thousands of hours. It really makes things so difficult to balance a game around someone who may play a game through once for maybe 20 hours vs someone who might play endlessly and is only concerned about gameplay in the maximum difficulties and levels.

The question is how much time and energy should be spent designing the game around this type of player, but more at what cost to other areas. Resources, I assume, are always limited. So if devs are focused on getting Tier 7 affixes balanced perfectly, that means they aren’t working on finishing the Rogue class (I could be totally wrong about this, maybe there’s plenty of people working on all aspects simultaneously). If they continue to put the majority of resources into “endgame” content and worrying about if a single skill combo that only lvl 100 players with endgame gear will come across, that means other game elements are likely to suffer. Also in some ways it seems inefficient to balance content without having all of the skills and classes complete yet, let alone MP. One of the things that makes the game great is how differently a different build can play, but that also means so much more balancing is required for every new element that’s introduced.

So anyway, when I talk about a “trap” it’s more of a concern that developers become so involved in kind of a myopic view that’s only what they see and hear on forums (and now discord), and making development decisions based more on that than a broader gaming base, sometimes even more than their own original vision. It’s kind of like politics in the Twitter universe, where everything is so hyped and skewed in that bubble but it may not accurately represent the rest of the population. At some point it can get to the point where you are so deep in a development and the intricate details which only affect a small percentage of players, that you can completely alienate a casual gamer.

I really don’t think that’s going to happen here, but I am seeing small danger signs here and there, so I think it’s good to at least keep the thoughts about it in the back of peoples’ minds.