keep up the hard work, dedication, and enthusiasm team!
Love the current skill “specialization” mechanic. I feel it allows me to take a skill and craft it into something that fits my needs (desires, dreams, etc) and play style. I was wondering if there were any plans to be able to add “proc effects” to your specialized skills similar in fashion to Grim Dawn’s celestial power mechanic from their devotion system. I feel it would further allow the player to make “their” build their own. There isn’t much we can do to prevent “meta” builds, but providing the player with numerous options is always fun and exciting and what drives most of us to come back and play for another 5 minutes or 5 hours
the monsters/ enemies in this game are great imho. Numerous types with various skills and when they come together to form a mob they present a very welcomed challenge. (although sometimes overwhelming lol) Whoever(s) is behind the mobs and their skills… high five
the arena is fun and a much desired end game mode. Hopefully one of many! More enjoyable than greater rifts that’s for sure though in time I’m sure they will become repetitive and dull with time and that’s ok! I believe I read that player groups will consist of up to five? Will their be some kind of raid like content? I think it would be fun and appeal to the majority of the player base and seems to be the direction that some newer arpg’s are going (Lost Ark, Lineage Eternal). It’s much appreciated that this game will have an offline mode, but the social aspect definitely helps to make and grow a game/franchise.
I apologise for the brevity of my response; it’s half past four in the morning here and I just wanted to offer a quick response since I saw you had posted.
We have spoken about procs. My understanding is that they are not immediately possible to implement; a certain amount of technical work would need to be done to facilitate their inclusion. Grim Dawn is an excellent example of procs done well, and I’m very much in favour of them being added to the game. I’ve seen a lot of support for them, but I’m not sure if a decision has been made yet.
We do feel that five is a good number for the core leveling experience and most forms of PvE content. There’ll be more players visible in town, and involved in certain kinds of PvP.
I was wondering if way way down the road, if the team was considering having player made content in this game? Housing is interesting if it has purpose like being a place where a player sets up his own shop to sell his items / custom crafts to other players. Or perhaps player made dungeons
It’s not something I’ve seen any discussion about. To be honest I think it’d be a ‘wait and see’ kinda thing. When the game has launched, there’s a healthy playerbase, and the team has grown in size… sure, if there’s demand for that then I can’t think of any arguments against it. As you said - we’d want it to serve a purpose, but if it can do that then it’s worth considering. I’m quite certain it’s not something we could invest KickStarter money into, though.
There was a time when I first got involved with Last Epoch that I offered to help moderate the forum (and later Discord), and this was the extent to which I was involved with the team.
I’ve been acting as the Community Manager for a while now. It can be difficult to justify spending time making changes to the website this close to our KickStarter launch - but it was also important that folks knew we had someone whose job was to make sure their feedback was seen.
Edit: Just to clarify - I meant that changing the colour of my text on the forum wasn’t seen as being an urgent priority. I’ve rephrased part of this post. Sorry!
A very important job indeed. Actively engaging the community is definitely appreciated and much desired especially for a small indie game/ crew. It’s also a very difficult task. Look at Activision/Blizzard (with their vast resources) and how they fail to engage their community. To their defense their audience is very large and diverse, but their mostly silent approach on their forums is… lame.
To be fair to Blizzard, I have once attended a Community Summit they hosted in France - and I have no doubt that the CMs I met there work very hard and care a great deal about the communities they represent. They just tend to be a bit invisible when going about their job.
I suppose the approach of Community Managers (and those setting out policies for them) can be a product of the companies they work at. Blizzard Entertainment is a household name in non-gamer households. Think of Hearthstone, of Overwatch, of the decade-spanning World of Warcraft. Indie studios can have a smaller presence on social media and less money to spend on marketing. This can lead to less of an ability to attract new and former players, and a greater reliance on keeping hold of current ones.
I guess what I was trying to point out is that the blizzard developers are very quiet on the forums. Not really answering questions as to why or how. Giving the players some background on the philosophy so to speak. There was a brief time in which they did, but it was untimely and felt like a knee jerk reaction to much negative criticism.
The CM’s are cool and do try their best, but often can not answer the question that is brought forth and as you stated, I believe to be the byproduct of the policies set by the companies they work at. This is understandable to a degree as these companies are often public and have many to answer to and trade secrets to protect.
