On March 28 2023 05:34 Archeon wrote: Yay another LE fan, imo still the best ARPG currently playable. Tbf I haven't played LA, so no idea how it compares.
Overall I prefer the grimness of D4 and LE has some problems in terms of storytelling in general imo, but at least in terms of skilltree depth I vastly prefer LE so far. The main gameplay loop is pretty similar even for ARPGs.
How is the monetization model of Last Epoch? Any microtransactions or other bullshit, or just buy game have game?
IIRC there are visual microtransactions similar to PoE but other than that it's buy game have game.
It's been a while since I played though, but after the D4 beta I'm itching for a ARPG and am reinstalling, so can prolly tell you more tomorrow.
The good: Artstyle, sound design, good variety of classes, World looks beautiful & mobs design is great. Gathering is instant (thank god!), random world events were (surprisingly) OK The bad:
shitty "skill trees" (if you can even call them that in the first place)
extremely anti-melee design (mobs that crowd control you, mobs that skitter away, bosses that don't have a grace period for melees to lay into them to do some damage)
dissonance between the Devs actions and game design philosophy (they claim they want a game for a casual audience, but they make a game that will have increasingly higher respec costs with every level, and then lock the majority of the players' power in RNG droprates of insane legendary affixes. I believe it will be the items that drop for you that will determine your build, not where you choose the spend the few skill points you'll earn in that sorry excuse for a skill tree.)
skills in general have long cooldowns or the generators don't actually generate enough energy. (The fun stops when you run out of spirit, fury, mana etc) not to mention the so-called "ultimates" that have cooldowns of upwards of 60 seconds (70, even 80s) and they work for 6 to 8 seconds. It's downright insulting having to put these on your skillbar and that they have to compete with other skills from other branches.
UI is very basic/ugly/bland (6 skills on bar max? insulting; I have to scroll down on items to read the whole list of affixes?)
The ugly:
I don’t know how endgame will play out – will it be repetitive Greater Rift farming again? Infinite boss runs? Dungeon runs that will always demand you to kill 100% of the monsters inside, bring 2 thingies to the altar? IDK
Balance of classes all over the place (see: Sorc vs Barb)
You don’t feel like you get stronger with each level. In fact, you chase after the mob’s powerlevel spikes after each of your levelups, just to stay relevant. This will feel even worse when they nerf legendary drop rates (they were about 3x inflated for beta purposes) so welcome to the world of all-rare level 25s next time you play, and without those actually good legendary affixes like +1 hydra; pulverize sends out a shockwave; your blood mist triggers corpse explosions and lowers its own CD for each corpse exploded
I personally don’t like the MMO stuff – emotes, mobs scaling to the amount of players in events, level 15s unintentionally griefing World Boss attempts etc. Not to mention the shitty off-screen abilities that can blindside you…
using Arial as text? Really?
mob density was all over the place – sometimes the corridor was packed with mobs, other times you ran for a full minute without anything to kill.
I’m afraid the Paragon Board will not be as impactful as they want it to be…
Insulting playerbase by saying players can’t understand resistances so they lumped it into “Armor” LOL
No transparent map overlay
Still not sure how the battlepass will affect the player experience, or other monetization.
Cursed shrines and cursed health pools – they take an annoying amount of time to do – 5 waves or 60 seconds
On March 28 2023 05:04 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:The bad: The UI is horrible... at the very least there should be 9-10 slots for the action bar. Not 6 with two being for the left and right mouse clicks. Dumb. That's not even considering your Chars ultimate that needs a slot as well, which should not be the case. At this time there are 3 slots for skills.... why?
I'm afraid this is inherited from D3 to make the game easy to play on a controller without having to switch any skills on the fly with a toggle.. even though controllers could still support more skills like D2:R has controller support, or I mean Elden Ring lets you do tons of different actions and spells on controller (up to 10 spells, weapon switching both hands up to 3, more than 6 different types of attacks per weapon [light, heavy, running light and heavy, jumping light and heavy, dodge attack and sometimes more] with different charge levels and follow up variations + a extra weapon skill for each weapon that could be charged or not + block action and counterattack or several second weapon attacks + 4 quick items + 12ish "slow" items etc)
That Alk video was interesting. If all those barb legendary powers snapshot on Whirlwind thats kinda crazy.
Rogue imbuement spam looks fun. My favorite class still even after trying necro and sorc. I didn't know about the poison pool legendary power for free poison imbuement, that's busted.
They had a good reason for the 6 slot limit in D3. D2 had way too many good skills that required 1 point investment and let gear add the rest of the skill points. The limit forced you to make tradeoffs and not be able to pick every situational skill for every situation. Hades is more similar to Diablo than an Elden Ring and worked with a similar amount of attacks.
Unfortunately, ultimate skills need a slot. And the necromancer specialization needs up to two. Druid one wasn't available in the beta. I didn't play the other three during the beta. Blizzard should've added 1-2 slots at least. Or at least a dedicated slot each to an ultimate and a specialization. I was really expecting ultimates to have their own dedicated button.
On March 28 2023 07:23 andrewlt wrote: They had a good reason for the 6 slot limit in D3. D2 had way too many good skills that required 1 point investment and let gear add the rest of the skill points. The limit forced you to make tradeoffs and not be able to pick every situational skill for every situation. Hades is more similar to Diablo than an Elden Ring and worked with a similar amount of attacks.
Unfortunately, ultimate skills need a slot. And the necromancer specialization needs up to two. Druid one wasn't available in the beta. I didn't play the other three during the beta. Blizzard should've added 1-2 slots at least. Or at least a dedicated slot each to an ultimate and a specialization. I was really expecting ultimates to have their own dedicated button.
That's true about Hades but in D2 you still have a lot of tradeoff to make. For me it was a major bummer to lose so many skill slots in D3 plus I always perceived it to be due to controller accessibility so yeah I don't like seeing that limit in D4 at all. But gotta be fair a lot of other ARPGs have a similar limit. I just don't personally like that.. Although I still completely loved Hades so yeah depends^^ (notably because its a roguelite)
Making and playing more complex characters is really fun so I would love to see something more in the vicinity of max 12 skills at least (16 is nice too^^ maybe more?? 24 is nice, wow's 40+ is kinda amazing, different game of course), with the option remaining to make characters that only use about 6 and still do well would be all right for example. Getting to choose how many skills you actually use is totally a interesting aspect too I think.
On March 28 2023 07:23 andrewlt wrote: They had a good reason for the 6 slot limit in D3. D2 had way too many good skills that required 1 point investment and let gear add the rest of the skill points. The limit forced you to make tradeoffs and not be able to pick every situational skill for every situation. Hades is more similar to Diablo than an Elden Ring and worked with a similar amount of attacks.
Unfortunately, ultimate skills need a slot. And the necromancer specialization needs up to two. Druid one wasn't available in the beta. I didn't play the other three during the beta. Blizzard should've added 1-2 slots at least. Or at least a dedicated slot each to an ultimate and a specialization. I was really expecting ultimates to have their own dedicated button.
Completely agree with the latter half. Having some limit is fine but it needs to be attuned. 6 is not enough for what D4 wants the player to do. It already forces you to take a ressource generator and also wants you to take an ultimate. Then you have one active ability for damage and you are left with 3 slots for defenses, cc and other utility? There should either be an additional slot for the ultimate or 8-10 slots for abilities in general.
I don't really agree on the first paragraph though. D2 had limited access to skill points in most cases so you couldn't just pick every skill for one point and still spec out your full damage. D4's skill tree kinda looks like you can spec into almost everything by lvl 100 so this is more of an issue I suppose...
I think I've pinned down what it is that bothers me most about D4. D4 seems like a project where the developers used D3 as a "gold standard" base, then made adjustments based on what worked in that game and what didn't. I feel this is an inherently flawed position for D4 - it can be acceptable when you have a brand new franchise and are developing a sequel, but for the fourth iteration in a series, that's not the route you need to take. D3 did take a ground-up approach to its development, and as a result bold decisions were made for that game, for better and for worse. But D4 seems too "safe" in this regard. "D3-2" is probably a more correct way to view that game, and based on the iterative corporate strategy of Activision-Blizzard, it's an understandable if not predictable direction.
Showing affix ranges is just disgusting, and really does not bode well for the game. You find a Unique weapon, and are you marvelling at all the various things it does? No, you're evaluating each number versus the range in brackets beside it. This is the kind of thing where it's easy to say it's just good game design, a convenience for the player, and yet completely disregards what those choices do to how the game feels.
It would be like complaining about having to draw your own map in Etrian Odyssey games. Yes, it's more streamlined to have the computer just update your map as you explore the world. But in a game like that, drawing the map is there deliberately to increase the sense of adventure. Diablo shouldn't be taking away the sense of wonder to streamline. I would argue that uniques having variable numbers on them is just bad in general, so even D2 (and IIRC D1) are guilty too. But it absolutely shouldn't be reminding you of that fact the first time you mouseover the item. This is such a lazy way to create a grind, and cheapens the experience for everyone, but especially the casual, as a result.
Also yeah not surprised to hear the skill trees are terrible, the Sorc tree that got previewed was so uninspiring.
On March 28 2023 07:23 andrewlt wrote: They had a good reason for the 6 slot limit in D3. D2 had way too many good skills that required 1 point investment and let gear add the rest of the skill points. The limit forced you to make tradeoffs and not be able to pick every situational skill for every situation. Hades is more similar to Diablo than an Elden Ring and worked with a similar amount of attacks.
Unfortunately, ultimate skills need a slot. And the necromancer specialization needs up to two. Druid one wasn't available in the beta. I didn't play the other three during the beta. Blizzard should've added 1-2 slots at least. Or at least a dedicated slot each to an ultimate and a specialization. I was really expecting ultimates to have their own dedicated button.
Completely agree with the latter half. Having some limit is fine but it needs to be attuned. 6 is not enough for what D4 wants the player to do. It already forces you to take a ressource generator and also wants you to take an ultimate. Then you have one active ability for damage and you are left with 3 slots for defenses, cc and other utility? There should either be an additional slot for the ultimate or 8-10 slots for abilities in general.
I don't really agree on the first paragraph though. D2 had limited access to skill points in most cases so you couldn't just pick every skill for one point and still spec out your full damage. D4's skill tree kinda looks like you can spec into almost everything by lvl 100 so this is more of an issue I suppose...
It goes back to bad balancing at this point of D4's lifespan. D2 had a lot of skills like the Amazon's Valkyrie where spending 1 point is enough and you'd just rely on +skills on items to make it better. Of course, you're going to max your 2-3 bread and butter skills but stuff like sorc's teleport and a bunch of buffs only required minimal investment.
D4 has a lot of skills like that right now. There are a lot of buffs and skills on cd where the first point is far and away the strongest. The subsequent points just suck. If I had 10 slots on the druid in D4, I'd take all their pets even though I'm underwhelmed by the raven at this point because why not? Additional points in skills are just very underwhelming right now.
You've also touched upon another common complaint. Generators just suck at this point of the game. They need to be a primary source of damage as well. Too many of them just make enemies vulnerable or increase your crit/crit damage/whatever. It's actually backwards. If spenders do 2-3 time the damage of generators and add the buffs/debuffs, they still feel rewarding to use while letting players actually kill stuff with generators. When I played the necromancer, I settled on hemorrhage just because it generated the most essence per cast.
I don't mind the few skill slots, got used to figuring out builds in D2 that don't require me to swap between skills too much so I only use 2-3 of them anyway. What I do mind is the poor skill tree, you don't have that many abilities to choose from to begin with and then it seems that there's just 1 good or optimal way to build your character (so why even have those other skills?). I guess the choices you make regarding the skill tree will ultimately depend solely on the gear you find, which I think is a terrible design and we already had a discussion about it earlier in the thread. Gear should enhance your build, not define it. The idea of "oh, I can't play the way I want before I find this super rare legendary item" is ridiculous. What they should've done is have those legendary affixes as part of your skill tree and legendaries simply be items that have a set of stats that always roll perfect mods.
On March 28 2023 06:43 Latham wrote: Alkaizer with his amazing Barb showcasing just how powerful the Arsenal (3 extra weapon slots) system can potentially be early on: + Show Spoiler +
And how many of those builds are solely due to the vastly increased drop rates for the beta? Legendries should affect skills not be needed to do actual damage.
Also keep in mind 6 slots are not a lot to most of the classes. Two are already taken but then Necros, and Druids would need 2 more for their summons. Wolves, and Vine. Skels and Golem. So now that leaves only two left. Ridiculous.
On March 28 2023 11:15 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: And how many of those builds are solely due to the vastly increased drop rates for the beta? Legendries should affect skills not be needed to do actual damage.
Also keep in mind 6 slots are not a lot to most of the classes. Two are already taken but then Necros, and Druids would need 2 more for their summons. Wolves, and Vine. Skels and Golem. So now that leaves only two left. Ridiculous.
Summons are not mandatory bro.
You can very easily play Druid without using summons and Necros have an entire mechanic around getting passive bonuses for giving up your summons. It's meant to be a choice, not: you get to have EVERYTHING you want all at once.
For necro it didn't really bother me. I think most will end up sacrificing at least one of the minions skills. If you keep both then using the active version of those skills is part of your rotation. I saw a lot of comments of people complaining about minion power / survivaibility and I think it's cus honestly very few even used Skele active skill
you can also use a build where you don't use a generator, or don't use a spender. There's a number of builds where you utilize a skill without it being on your bar. Like Hydra + Fireball (enchantment), or Corpse Explosion (OP blood mist legendary). Pretty sure the corpse explosion legendary will be nerfed tho
still, balance and building aside, I think it would just be more fun with 7 or 8 skills possible. I like fun.
Wasn't the OP blood mist legendary from a side dungeon too? I seem to remember it was.
I do agree that most necros would probably skip one of their summons and there should be a tradeoff if they want to keep two. Druid just needs some buffs because the vine creeper active ability was too much of their damage capability when I was playing one.
I guess with Druid we haven't really seen their full potential since their class quest wasn't available in the beta and they didn't get access to all the tools.
Nah Druids are fine. They scale like crazy. Even on beta they didn't feel like a chore to play at all unless you wanted to insist on leveling as Bear specc.
I level'd 2 of them to 25 with no issues, and in a similar amount of time it look me to level the other classes.
Rather disappointed that I cannot stay shapeshifted to either a werebear or werewolf! The skills are lackluster for the quantity involved and I daresay I preferred the Rune system of Diablo 3 to the spec system of D4! I am sorry to all the people who really disliked Diablo 3!
A lot of time seems to have been invested in creating rather similar dungeons and cellars across Sanctuary. I think this is OK but not great. The filler content feels somewhat MMO-like in its mundane presentation. I tend to agree with the previous posters about a rather bleak atmosphere in the Fragmented Peaks and that the skill system could use a considerable expansion. It is not very aesthetically pleasing!
The cooldowns are too long on many skills! Again, I hate to say this but I think Diablo 3's system was somewhat superior in that I could at least use many of my skills frequently. I like to roar as a Druid but cannot roar very often! I did not like the legendaries! There are too many class-specific properties of legendaries at this point and it just reinforces my disappointment in the skill tree!
Overall I am worried about the game! I did not like the Adria dynamic with Leah in Diablo 3, and I did not like the beta content. What could possibly by so seductive about traveling with Lilith? Of course it's a very narrow premise and then to your disappointment it ends exactly as you would expect! The story was very disappointing! I was disappointed Rathma was dead!
I think people want to be very excited for Diablo 4 as Blizzard has not released something catering to its traditional fanbase in some time. But I think the game is focusing on creating content and is too mechanistic in its approach! There is a lot of stuff but it is not compelling! I think of Diablo 1 as the benchmark for the franchise, and Diablo 1 was compelling because the quests were varied and interesting. There seemed to be a point to completing them and then you were rewarded with a unique item! But in this game the quests are very similar, and there are only so many instances where I rescue someone's son or daughter or wife or whatever before I just don't care about the NPCs. Can't they ever do anything compelling themselves? There are so many stupid minor problems in Sanctuary of various possessions and disappearances and so on. Well that's just how it is! The developers need to show some priorities and make the hero a little more compelling!
In the previous Diablo games you were not burdened by a bunch of mishaps like cats stuck in trees or dogs with their tongues frozen to fire hydrants. If there are really going to be 500 side quests, then I think the game will be really disappointing. I would have preferred a more expansive storyline and not so much busywork. Personally I did not care for the MMO-elements. I did not like upgrading my potions! What point could this possibly serve?
Ugh. Well I am somewhat sorry this rant is headed this way. Overall I find the larger world interesting. I like the big towns and a few of the wild quests (coming upon some event). I think the stronghold system is kind of cool--that you're transforming the world as you go. Hopefully this will serve a compelling purpose and not just yield entrance to a single dungeon. I miss my companion from Diablo 2 & 3. I found the companion to be the most interesting part of certain games & I think if executed correctly that companion adds a lot! I certainly hope we get a companion in the final release!
Once upon a time I think Diablo 1 had the perfect qualities of brevity and darkness. I do not think I will appreciate the darkness in this game if it is built upon thin premises. I do not want to trail stupid NPCs who align themselves with Lords of Hell. If the Lords of Hell are to be worth their salt then mortal people should be staying well away from them. Lilith shouldn't require any assistance in simply traversing the world. I was similarly disappointed with Rathma! The first Necromancer and so on. So far his mention has added nothing!
I do not at all like having to rely upon people like Neyrelle. Constantly aiding and searching for Neyrelle is stupid. A lot of these defenseless mortals should simply die walking around with the hero. They don't have any training or means of defending themselves and it's not plausible for them to survive the journey. Why do I need her to open doors or read books or anything whatsoever. Personally I am not going to evaluate the beta story any better than the Diablo 3 story (which was not all that great).
As for content I think the game needs to be much more focused and that if some of the manhours were invested in working on an innovative continuation it would be much better. What I mean is that Rifts and Greater Rifts were aiming to address something (and they didn't do it all that well). On the other hand, the intention is to acknowledge a direction for the game. If the manhours from cellars and various dungeons were invested in some new innovative approach to continuation that would be wonderful. Why can't there be multiple "purposes" to an act? Perhaps a pronged approach would be best wherein the hero could advance some more intriguing plots (like Duran in Starcraft). Again, I really don't see the point of adding countless dungeons just to quiet the voices that some NPC hears at night or collect Druid Sap for some shaman. These quests belong in an MMO but not in Diablo! There should be more significant plot points!
The game is pretty dreary as someone pointed out previously. I hope there is a more colorful presentation to some of the later acts. I don't have a perfect eye for art although I am something of an artist. Nevertheless, I find the slue of reds and greys to blend together all too much. To be honest, I do not find many of the enemies visually appealing. They are either red grey black or tan and do not have significant features. Many times I find them to be monotonous and almost homogeous until the red attack outline appears upon them!
While the quality of the graphics is not bad I just do not like the artwork!
Well, I have ranted a lot, but I was expecting a lot from this game! In summary, I hope the lords of hell will be more compelling in future acts, and that they won't randomly enlist people to no real point and purpose. If there were some grand scheme of corruption then that would be excellent--something somewhat political and focused. Furthermore, I hope the references to religious subject matter will be less overbearing! I do not really like this aspect of Diablo 4! The hero isn't supposed to see or hear struggles of free will versus demonic corruption! There needs to be the subtle undertone of blatant obviousness! It should be granted that Sanctuary is facing real virtually, omnipotent demons and no amount of Earth-bound orthodox religion will be of any use. Overall, I really did not like this plot arc either! The Reverend Mother Prava and so on. With a zillion, real demons roaming the wide world (apparently everywhere and taking over every town in sight) there is no way anyone would pay the slightest heed to her.
Well, I guess I am just in for disappointment! Although I watched many reviews (some positive and some negative) I guess my own take is profoundly negative! I hope the hero will be more heroic as the game progresses and will not have so many crutches for exploring Sanctuary. I hope the lords of hell will be more compelling as the game progresses and will actually have some discernible plot toward malevolence. I hope no more trivial events will inspire such focus (as it is obviously the purpose of the demons to cause mischief). I hope the skill tree shows more promise, and that some universal skills are added. I hope there is more purpose to the open world than has been presented thus far! In short I am not very optimistic, but thanks for listening to my rambling!
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/R1eeQim.jpg)
