Hello and thank you for taking input from your future players.
I agree with the low entry plus cosmetic micros.
Keep up the good work. 
I like the modest 14.99 price for the full game plus cosmetic MTX, stash tabs, and other convenience items. I believe F2P models unfortunately bring a lot of the side of the gaming community which ends up being toxic and asking for more free stuff in the forums. I have spent a lot on PoE but its not quite the ARPG I really enjoy playing. I like to be invested in my character and PoE is more of a re-roll tens of toons kind of game. I really hope Last Epoch is the game for me. Cheers.
As a HUGE fan of ARPG’s, I am so excited for this to launch! The concepts you guys have and the vision of the game seem amazing! Definitely going to be backing this!!!
I would prefer to pay the 15-20€ for the game (and possible future expansions) and then have pure cosmetic micros for those interested. In this case, all stash tabs should be included with the purchase.
Looking forward to this one. Last ARPG i really got into has been Grim Dawn. Before that, it has been Diablo 1 and 2 since 1997 and i still play them both frequently.
While I understand the need to have -a- bar to prevent botters/RMT from jumping in no holds barred, I also think it would keep a lot of honest players out. Not necessarily from a financial standpoint but we live in a knee-jerk world. With very popular games like PoE, Warframe, World of Tanks…etc., all being free, some folks will immediately not give games like this a second thought when they see it has a price. Mobile developers see this all the time. Some people are happy to lay down $8 for a coffee but consider even 99 cents for a mobile game to be a shocking expenditure. Not exactly apples to apples but you get the idea.
Personally, I’d go with a PoE model. I was someone who honestly did not care for the game the first time I played it. When I gave it another go many months later, I fell in love and have spent several hundred dollars on it at this point. Had I spent money up front on it, I am unsure how it would have turned out.
Either way, there’s my two cents. Still quite interested in the game and for me personally, the cost model is not prohibitive one way or another.
Appreciate your thoughts, Steps.
Very reasonable and relatable.
Hi ! buy to play model is perfect with a $15 price, take the example of Black desert, a AAA game withe only $9 entry pack, spam free chats and Micro Transactions of costumes and utility items, i know it’s not the same gender but it’s an interesnting model, they have the value pack as an optional subscription and it’s works.
Another important thing is that in South America (I’m From Chile) $15 is a very atractive price, actually im playing Black desert in the Latin america server, in my guild we are from all the SA region and $15 is a very good price for everyone (Honduras, Panama, Brasil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, etc)
I’m waiting the kickstarter pack, for me i’ts a must buy !! good luck to the team ! and Greeting from Chile !!
Thanks a lot for your perspective, Agramore - it’s very valuable to hear from people in different locations and hear what would work for them. It certainly sounds like a good model.
Just thinking about the idea of expansion packs, personally I’m happy to spend $15 more after I’ve bought a base game, we used to pay a lot more for expansions in previous decades and these days I’m happy to keep paying for expansions I enjoy (e.g. Ashes of Malmouth/Crucible) but I’ll still pass on stuff that’s less valuable to my experience of a game (D3’s Necromancer).
The main idea I wanted to put forward though was absorbing some of the improvements an expansion would bring into the game for free while keeping other things exclusive. Just what gets chosen is up to you peeps obviously but speaking from my experience if it’s QoL I’d prefer it be included in the base game as well; there could be good exceptions to that but I’d rather be attracted to an expansion for its cool #content rather than because it makes a previously janky experience easier. It’d be nice to keep some parts of the end game accessible to base game purchasers/f2pers too.
A different model might be having tiered price points as well, some people could pay a higher up front price and receive discounted offers on the next expansions/cosmetic packs while free players pay slightly 10-20% (?) more for optional/cosmetic content.
Is the full version of the game still coming out on April 17? And is the plan going to be a $15 dollar buy-to-play method? Or are those details still being finalized? Because I just created a Steam account today, just in case, and I should be ready to go one way or another. Thank you for all the help. I’m looking forward to playing this amazing game!
April 17 will be the launch of the Kickstarter campaign, not the launch of the game.
No info about payment model yet. I’m sure more info will come soon.
This was never the plan.
Our KickStarter will begin on the 17th of April, which is when people will be able to back our project so that we’ve money with which to fully develop the game. It’s more of a beginning than an end. That said, we’re looking to have the Void Knight ready then (no promises just yet!).
We’ll be announcing our plans for the monetisation, as well as the various KickStarter tiers, very soon. Please note that the supporter page on the website is heavily out-of-date now.
Thanks so much!
We sincerely hope that you enjoy Last Epoch. 
Hello, I just want to spend my 2cent about business model.
I’m a player with over 1500 hours in PoE, never bought anything (yes i have only the 4 stash tab) and as a player, I think the better business model for the game will be b2p to leave out RMTers and botters.
However…reading about this game, i see Path Of Exile comes out everywhere, from developers to players, so i have a question:
Who will pay a 15€ for a brand new ARPG when PoE is free and has that much success?
Don’t want to be rude with that, but players looking for good games and often the f2p business model can’t offer a quality game, so they prefer to spend a few bucks to be “safe” from all the bad things we knew about f2p. But PoE is a quality game, with no need at all to spend money on it (you will definetly spend money on it cause you want to, not cause you have to). No one talks bad about PoE, so how you think to win this comparison if you will choose a b2p model?
Thank you and sorry if something is hard to read, i’m not that good with english =)
<script src="moz-extension://5050143f-954b-465c-978f-571be2f04b23/web/libs/ciuvo-addon-sdk.min.js" async=""></script>Hi
I would like to point out a few things. (I only have read the first page sorry I read slow…so count not read more than that)
About myself: I play PoE and supported more than any AAA titles charge, which is more than $100. I also play GrimDawn but I only bought the original game, and decided not to buy the expansion even though the original game was really good because there is not much of replayability (here I am comparing with PoE).
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There are players who do not speak English very well like me. I doubt people who are not good at English try this game if the game is not free. And in PoE, most of my play mates are non-native English speakers. I am sure you will lose almost all the Russian players who potentially pay for the game if you go buy in system. I am from an Asian country.
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The fact I have supported PoE more than any other games does not affect to my decision whether to support the last epoch or not at all. Rather the fact I have purchased the Grim Dawn affects if I should buy the Last Epoch or not. I hope you can imagine why. I can’t explain this well.
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I want to be convinced to buy or support the Last Epoch. I need incentives. Poe requires stash tabs, well I can play all the contents without stash tabs but this is irrelevant, so I started supporting. Nowadays there are many games like PoE. The market is not like before. Grim Dawn and Torch Light 1 and 2 will be a good indication of what one can expect to achieve with buy in system IMO. By the way, if LE requires both buy in and stash tab purchase, probably I won’t play the game, but charging 15 or 30 is ok for me.
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The hours of game play is very important. Why people play games? Because hours per cost is the highest among the entertainments. To have a long hours of game play, do you think buy in is a good system? How big do you want LE be? If you want big, then Free to play is the best it seems (if your worries can be solved). I wonder how PoE solved the same problems early on the development? Maybe you can seek for advice to Chris of PoE. He will be willing to tell you the secrets.
Congraturations for the Kickstarter debut!
Edit: I noticed it was too late to write here, you already decided a system? if you could make a reservation that LE could be a free to play in future, that will be the best but might be difficult.
I’m happy to see this game will be B2P, and it’s also a good decision not to sell stash tabs. Not super thrilled about cosmetic MTX for a B2P game - would rather have seen a business model based on expansion packs for continuous revenue but it isn’t really a gamebreaker to me.
Thank you for the candid feedback.
Our issue with expansion packs is that you run into the problem of the game having been out for a long time, the number of expansions having built up, and consequently the barrier to entry being quite high for people who want to buy “the game” and just play with everyone else. While we’d like to offer a free demo, as a general rule we’re uncomfortable with the idea of dividing the community.
I personally like the idea of:
“Free to play demo experience. This would include the first little bit of the game, probably up to level 20. It would also isolate you from trading with anyone to prevent exploitation. We might restrict chatting in some way to avoid other unwanted behavior.”
Restrict chatting unless they have paid. (one char above level 20). This would stop bots. Otherwise reported / chat logged and banned if posting stuff against the rules.
Being free til level 20 will open it up to a lot of players joining to grow the community. If you have done a good job then the key is keeping them playing.
Instead of demo it should be the full game. If they have a char to level 20 and they want to continue it they should and not lose it and start over.
I have a lot of time and money into PoE. With that said I feel their MTX system is great, even though the items are quite pricey. Will be interesting to see how LE does with making the cosmetics feel they are worth the cost (other than us just wanting to toss money at things to keep up the support of a great game).
The chat privileges for a trial account is a tough thing to manage. Going to take some skills by the team to get right. Be nice if there could be some sort of “Captcha” method to gaining access to chat, probably not let people have a shot at that till at least level 10. Plan being not to keep these new players from interacting, but to keep RMT and Bots from spamming chats.
Saw earlier talking about not monetizing stash tabs, which can be good and bad, some people are serious hoarders, or just want to collect all the gears. I’ve already seen some nice improvements with the crafting menu to help keep clutter out of stash and inventory. So I do feel good about how you are approaching the gear management with the amount of space you are giving us.
Huge proponent of free to play, but I think a 15$ price point is fair in order to fight bots/rmt and get some initial funds for the game.
Hope people realize this game is not a PoE clone, it’s has great elements from a number of ARPG and a bit more akin to Diablo with the individual skill talent trees.
I am also happy with buy to play.
I also dont think there is any need for a game to be playable for free without limitations. Thats just a silly thing of this time and i hope it will change in other markets as well (let us all have a facebook that costs 10$ a year but doesn’t make money on our data)
I would however provide a free trial to draw people in that is less limited. Level 20 is very very little. I would make the free trial enough to actually get people hooked. Maybe make offline single player free entirely and unlimited, and give 50 hours of online play for free or something.
Splitting between 15 to buy the game and then additional for cosmetics i am not entirely certain about. It depends a lot on how business will turn out to go. If it goes badly, you will feel forced to push the income of the cosmetic sales and that might lead to a situation where players payed for the game yet still feel like they are sort of forced to pay more. Selling stash space is one of those things that should not be sold separately when you have an initial price. (On a free to play game like poe it is ok to sell it seperate) But its a grey area and i think 15+cosmetics is just the price point where it may become the hardest to balance. If it were 30+cosmetics, you could just see it as game that costs 30, and as a developer you could hopefully make your bussiness depend on the 30 and be very sure to never make the + something that players will feel they need for playing comfort. At 15, you probably can’t be profitable without the + and i feel its might end up being hard to resist the temptation to push the cosmetics in questionable territory.
One thing i have no clue about is the cost of running servers. I always wonder if developers even make any money when i buy a game for 50$ and then play it on their servers for 5000 hours. If indeed the costs are high enough that this is an issue, i also wouldnt mind a system where you pay for the amount you play as long as it is reasonable and preferably i would base it on hours played, not months. Something like 5$ per 100 hours seems reasonable to me.