Why I am planning to not play Last Epoch

Feedback and Suggestions
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I try and give games a lot of chances to catch my attention. I did not like really anything about the game when I first tried it about a year ago. Recently, someone told me a lot of things had changed, so I came back and tried it again.

I judge on gameplay, story and ambience. And yes, I have played games just because the ambience was so good. Beautiful scenes and music can make for a very enjoyable time. Story can be like reading a book and hold my attention for a long time. ARPGs, none have managed those two, I almost always play them for their gameplay.

Last Epoch (LE) has horrible gameplay in my opinion.

At the control level, LE has controls that were used in D2 almost two DECADES ago. Melee skills activate where you are standing and do not move you unless you target exactly on a mob. This is one place D3 humiliates every ARPG out there. Melee skills on the right mouse button work amazingly well. And this isnt laziness here, I know quite a few people who started play Diablo when they were younger and now have arthritis, or in my case easily dislocated joints. D3’s setup there saves you pain on both. Oh, and left mouse button can be used for skills. That one is nice.

The biggest gripe I have is the skill leveling. It is easily the part that most interests me. But leveling a skill is pretty useless while leveling you character. People can tell me about avoiding skill swapping all they want, but frustration does not equal difficulty. The problem is when you want to test new skills. However, you lose all progress with another skill when you do that. That prevents normal testing for fun. It will lead to very few fun builds and only what someone tells you is good. Aka, there will be only one of two builds played per class. Yes, class, not mastery. Most people will not want to level a new character to be able to play a build that removes most, if not all, the skill leveling they have done.

Yeah, that sounds really negative, but keep in mind, almost all games have a “single way” mindset.

I expect to get lambasted here. I know the devs have said what they are going to do, but eh, it is my opinion here. Having to level and do the story over and over to try something different is a way to push some people away.

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Just reading this i can tell you havent made it very far in the game.

You say you have given the game many chances but if you had actually made it lvl 50+ you would know lvl skills is extremely fast and you can test all you want.

as for the melee targeting with melee skills there is an option in settings to have it auto move to that enemy so your not just swinging and missing.

To me if feels you spent more time putting this post together, than actually in the game “testing”

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Finish the campaign or do some arena runs you will realize you can level skills much faster the further into the game you are. Its only slow when your below lvl 30, thats how i know you ahvent gone far.

Also, i can with mhy own experience, tell you that at current moment i have 25 different builds that are all fun to play and many more to try

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I won’t lambast you, it’s your opinion and of course not everyone will love this game the way I do. But I can tell you that there is a healthy theory crafting community here that is constantly experimenting with new things and, as @boardman21 stated, changing skills or trying new ones isn’t very hard at all at endgame. If you really like the skill system conceptually, you might want to give the game another go and progress to endgame to see how you can really begin to experiment with your builds.

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I can tell you’re one of the D3 crowd who don’t want any permanence in their characters - nothing wrong with that but at least I’m not worried about why you’re not planning to play LE :slight_smile:

good luck and hope you find something that suits you better.

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I will not try and claim otherwise, but in a way, it also shows a gameplay problem.

And here is the problem, at lower levels, when you are learning new skills, it feels like changing to a new one is going to hurt you no matter how good the new one is.

However, at high levels, you can change with ease.

There is a dichotomy there that shows a gameplay problem. You are punished at low levels, but not at high levels.

I would pay 90% of my money to be able to reset a skill without losing levels right now, because there is such a high cost at even level 38 to level a new one.

Actually, D3 has a pretty bland skill system. The main reason I prefer it over most others is the keyboard/mouse controls. That is why I said I am interested in the skill system LE has. It is pretty amazing. I mean I took Elemental Nova from its pretty, meh, to very fun version where I can sweep it across the screen and do nice fire damage which is then increased by the Calamity helm I got.

Hmm, while making certain I had the right names, I just realized I have the rings to get the 2 piece for the invoker set…, damn, now I want to try it out with a small change to my Elemental Nova to make it work even better.

Anyways, that is exactly what I mean when I say I am interested in the skill trees. Change one point from Silenced Spark to Ice Nova and the Invoker set is perfect for it.

D3 has NOTHING like that. It is all or nothing where items and skill tree is concerned.

I will concede. I will give it a try above where I am now. That said, below that, the skill system is punishing, which is not a good way to hold onto players.

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Yea use those 2 invoker rings , the ones with the plus to lightning damage and level with ele nova. Honestly you are lucky you found 2 of them so early . They will basically make any skill with a spell component incredibly powerful and a lot of fun . I tend to agree with you that I wish we could save our skill level progress but everything in every game is handed to you so easily now a days that meaningful choices are a dying breed in games . Really you need to go through the entire campaign and you’ll see what the posters above me are saying . The skills level extremely fast post 45-50. And there are 100 levels in the game . Some builds don’t even start until level 40. I’ve played all the games you have and LE does a great job at keeping the hack and slash genre genre moving forward . My advice to you is to keep logging in .

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Here is what makes it funny. I got my first one on a void knight I was trying out. Today I got the second one on a spellsword I have been trying out. I had forgotten about the first until as I was writing about that. That is stupidly good luck.

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At lower levels, a good strategy is to not reset all skills at the same time, so you have 1 or 2 to use as a crutch while you level a new one. Or reset all if you’d like, just expect you will have to brute force your way for a while (or maybe go back and level on lower level maps) since you willingly dropped your entire kit to Level 1.

Just keep in mind, the higher level the enemy, the more XP you get. So, if you reset a skill you will be leveling them up MUCH quicker than the first time you selected a Skill.

And, at higher levels when you are doing Arena, you can level a skill from 1 to 20 in less than 20 minutes. I have taken an Arena level character, swapped out nearly every single skill and passive at the same time and been fine after a few sets of waves.

Actually, a major part of most people’s end game routine right now revolves around trying many new things and testing different synergies for their project build.

There are a ton of viable builds, and for most people I’ve talked to it’s been impossible for them to run out of ideas of things to push and try out.

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I have to admit that it was an issue for me, too, when I started to play LE. But I just can’t count how many times I died in other games (D2/D3) by accidentally attacking a mob when I tried to run out of a fight. The fact that you have to actively walk into melee range is a life saver.

For me it isn’t an issue anymore and I’m very confident with the games controls.

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So, what ARPGs have you actually played and finished and enjoyed?

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I’m hoping the performance improves. I like the game play so far.

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I too was frustrated with the way they handled the skill respecs, but have since changed my tune and appreciate the way skills can be respec/re-leveled now.

HOWEVER.

Locking us into a mastery classe at lvl 30(ish) permanently still has my feathers ruffled.

I already made a PERMANENT decision when I chose Sentinal class. I can’t turn him into a Mage or a Druid. But now in order to experience all 15 classes I have to level up 15 characters. Path of Exile (which this game draws heavily from) allows you to switch ascendancies. Takes some orbs. Takes a trip to the lab but it can be done and its appreciated. This game isn’t that hard core that it needs any permanent decisions (in my opinion).

A Mastery change quest… or perhaps a large sum of gold (50k, 100k?) or even a combination of both makes more sense to me. But pigeon holing me into a mastery to give this game the illusion of being gritty or hardcore is silly in my opinion.

Are there 15 characters slots? Just wondering.

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I currently have 33 characters so yeah. There is as many slots as you want

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I actually like the fact that the mastery locks are permanent. Yes, it does suck right now when we’re trying to learn and play every combination of things the game has to offer, but it provides a highly thematic and focused direction for a character to follow.

For example, a few patches ago before the mastery lock was implemented, we can take a look at the state of Sentinel. Every build used Holy Aura, and every build took a dedicated x number of points into Void Knight for the crit bonuses. It didn’t matter if you were an ignite Rive build, a void Hammer Throw Build, a broken Warpath pull build, if you wanted to play any sentinel build you had to grab those items. The mastery lock system makes people decide what direction they want to take their character, and then lets them focus their itemization and playstyle around that direction.

This is my own view, but having the ability to change masteries would be a detriment, simply because you then have to revamp the entire character every time you do so. If I was to change from a Beastmaster to a Shaman, or a Paladin to a Void Knight, I would have to retool my passives, skills, and gear to fit that change. At that point why not make a new character?

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Right now with all the “leveling” items I have in my stash leveling is pretty fast. I have no issues at all but for people with less time it’s a pain I get it. On the other hand you have a lot of benefits from making a new runthrough. From crafting mats over gold to experience and skill. I realy don’t think it’s a good thing to tell “I don’t play the game because I don’t want to play the game!” to put things in a very simple way but if this is a reason for someone to not play it’s reason as good as any other. For example I don’t like Grim Dawn because the artstyle gives me eye cancer. Just a question of taste in the end but even the feedback why someone won’t play the game is very helpfull for the devs I think ^^.

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I have to agree with Seiya. The skill leveling system could be simplified for easier instant build changes.
It’s been said by devs, thet they want players to feel multi-dimentional progression of characters, and skill leveling systerm serves well to this purpose.
What if we were leveling not skills in particular, but very specialization slots. So each spec. slot would have had it’s own level. I.E. assigning skill to lvl 17 slot allows you to put 17 points in that skill’s tree.
This way it’s similar to D3 runes system (which has high QoL) but with greater LE’s customisation potential.

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Somewhere the devs said they don’t want to have instant skillchanges and stuff like that.

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