💬┃general

[night marten]

Thats what we have been told so far

[acoustic palm]

Do they have caoybaras?

[karmic estuary]

about the paid class, how much will be a reasonable price for early players?

[night marten]

There is no info on anything paradox class related other than they plan to exist in about a year

[karmic estuary]

ya I know, I am just asking what the community opinion on the price

[zinc blaze]

I’d pay 10$ for it, probably not much more cause they said it becomes free when the next one is released

[brittle hollow]

depends on how many classes and what they offer for me.

[zinc blaze]

I think it’s just one class?

Then again it comes out in a year so who knows

[brittle hollow]

If it’s one class it’s going to be purely a case of what it offers for me.

[foggy vale]

idk why theres such an outcry, they never said no paid content, they said exansions as in ingame content to do, not do that content on

they were upfront and honest with us saying their initial plan didnt work out as expected and admitted they were at a loss financially

so it was either kill the game right their as it is, or come up with a new plan

I appreciate their atleast trying to still deliver the original promise at the demands of their new higher ups krafton

[zinc blaze]

I’d consider a class in game content

[foggy vale]

if it kills then it kills

I aprreciate their trying

[zinc blaze]

Yea

[foggy vale]

so stop playing or keep

no need to take personal offence xD

affects none of us personally at end of day

whoel internet took it personally to heart

kinda sad...

Im glad their trying, but hopefully its not a horrible p2w system

we wont know till we get more info, but its all optional as well, we will still have the original game to play, with more content

at end of day, still a win

this is why i persoally think they should have gone paid expansion route with this new system and content, but would drive away EVEN MORE

so its a "safer" approach

[pure dawn]

They did say no paid content.

[simple bison]

Several years ago, but since over a year ago they've mentioned they're flexible to the idea, even though they still weren't planning on it at the time. Which I think goes to show that they really might have exhausted all other options
#👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message

I might be wrong but afaik they hadn't made a blanket promise of no paid content at all in the past several years

Only during kickstarter and maybe a bit after

[pure dawn]

I think Judd said they weren't ever going to charge for updates or content

[simple bison]

And tons of other things from the kickstarter didn't happen

[simple bison]

No. That message referred to the seasonal updates, which will remain free.

He didn't say all content ever will be free in that message.

[pure dawn]

Ehh that's being naive tbh, they clearly meant no paid content like PoE but now are in a financial state where they need to retract that statement

but let's not pretend

[signal mica]

As an example and maybe not good, Diablo 4 released mercenary and runes behind the dlc , if D4 was actually good and they just had tou pay for the character, and given the mercenary and runes without the dlc awesome. They just flat out suck imho.

Putting the mercenary and runes behind dlc is just a horrible idea imho

[pure dawn]

D4 is really no example for anything

[simple bison]

I really don't think so. Like I said super early on (kickstarter and maybe a little after) they seemed to really think that they could make it happen and communicated as such. But since several years ago they haven't used any concrete language to signify that all content would be free. The only hard stances they've made were towards pay to win. Trust me I feel like I can be confident in saying I've likely read more of their communication over the years than most, and there's a pretty slow but clear shift in the language they use. Now you might say this is to cover their ass or whatever but it remains true that they haven't broken a promise that they made in recent times. And if you want to hold them to something they said during kickstarter then I think you'll find that you can find issue with almost every kickstarter ever.

[signal mica]

Im saying tho for dlc

I have no problem buying a character 8 months from now.

I also hope it sells well on PlayStation for those who don't have a pc and like these type of games LE will be great for console

Hopefully releases on Xbox soon after

[pure dawn]

I really really really hope they somehow dont go ahead with the paid classes idea

Maybe by miracle they start selling good skins with banger seasons content wise

[signal mica]

I don't see the issue with it at all

[pure dawn]

I really do, hope they can reverse course

[simple bison]

At this point I think it's fairly clear we're gonna get something that's not cosmetics that's paid. And in my opinion a class is about as good as it'll get. For me at least. At least this way if you're not interested in the classes skills or whatever you won't feel the need to get it. While if the expansion was paid you'd feel the need no matter what since it would obviously need to provide content that you can't do without buying it. Obviously there's the concern around balance. That there's incentive for the paid class to be stronger than the free ones. But the same can be said about making a paid expansion, there'd be incentive to make the paid content more rewarding than the free content. So you're gonna have that concern no matter what, all we can do is hope they don't intentionally make it stronger and that if it does end up being stronger that they balance it appropriately going forward. Which they've stated they plan on doing.

[signal mica]

Lol

[pure dawn]

For sure it's better to only get paid classes instead of paid classes + paid expansion.
Still quite bad imo, but oh well

[simple bison]

I meant more as in I'd rather have paid class and free expansion than free class and paid expansion

[pure dawn]

I dont think they intentionally will make anything stronger, I dont think that's a real danger

[simple bison]

Me neither

[pure dawn]

Surely it will be unbalanced, but just the nature of games, balance is hard

[simple bison]

I personally don't really care all that much regarding the balance of the game as long as I can do all the content on the class/mastery that I personally enjoy.

[pure dawn]

If anything has to be paid, then the least amount is better i agree

[simple bison]

But obviously there are people who care deeply about these things.

But for me if I were racing to 100 on let's say mage, I wouldn't care if Class X is twice as fast as me, because I'd only compare myself vs other mages anyway

[pure dawn]

For me the issue isn't that too tbh.
I don't really care if the paid class is strong or weak

I'd just like for everyone to have the same options, that's my core issue at heart

Which means excluding any form of paid content, but it is what it is

financially wise i mean

[simple bison]

Meh, it's a game you get thousands of hours and years of support out of. For a price of 35 bucks + whatever a class will cost once in a while

For me the cost aspect is barely a factor. It's mostly as you say an availability thing. And while yeah it sucks if someone would really like to play a class that's locked behind a paywall and they can't afford it or can't get it for whatever reason. Hopefully there's something else they can enjoy until they can hopefully get said class. It's not like we barely have any options to pick from currently that if you can't play a paid class there's nothing else you can enjoy

[pure dawn]

I mean I think if you are playing LE you probably are set financially wise to waste 10 or 15 bucks on paid classes, I don't think the issue will ever be that.
It's that the game is not even finished or polished enough to ask you for paid DLC. Now, to be fair, it's about 1yr out so they could work on that but I doubt there's time to close the game out in that aspect.
It honestly just bugs me that there will be a separation in the playerbase, those that have the paid classes and thoses that don't. I understand not everyone feels this way but it personally bugs me and kinda kills my joy for this type of games

[simple bison]

A way bigger issue for me would be trying to party with a buddy and they go oh sorry I can't I don't have that dlc

Which is why I heavily prefer paid classes over paid expansions

[pure dawn]

Agree with that yes

[simple bison]

I'm gonna be so for real with you the fact that the campaign isn't finished has literally 0 implication or consideration from me, I could not care less about that. And while yeah the game has its bugs and issues It's still a solid and fun game imo. For me It doesn't matter much what state the game is in, if I'm having fun I'm getting value out of it, and if I'm getting enough value out of it I'll be willing to pay more. And personally I've gotten more than enough value to be willing to buy a paid class if said class appeals to me

[pure dawn]

Understand and respect your personal vision, I was speaking more on behalf of the average player

[simple bison]

Yeah and that's completely fair. I know there's a lot of people who really want the campaign to be finished. But I bet you they're the same people who complained about S3 not having much endgame content because most of the dev-time went into the new campaign chapter. EHG is trapped between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the campaign

[pure dawn]

There's a lof of feedback of people putting the game down over the lack of polish, I think it will be a consideration for most people when deciding to spend more money or not

It goes beyond the campaign though, I mean VFX, gamefeel, bugs, QoL etc

[simple bison]

Oh yeah for sure. It's been a long standing issue I agree 100%

Hopefully it'll start improving and by the time Season 6 comes out (which is when I assume the expansion and class come out) It'll be in a better spot

[pure dawn]

Yeah, the paid classes announcement is really weird timing because a lot people judge it based on s3 dud season + current game state when it still is a year out

[calm jay]

I think they just need a better vessel to deliver the campaign

[pure dawn]

I mean I guess hiding things isn't better.. but idk

[simple bison]

Yeah Imo they shouldn't have announced the expansion with the PS release

[calm jay]

I think that was jumping the gun for sure, especially since it was speculation right up til now, haha

[acoustic palm]

Did they said that?

I think that's only a thing in another arpg

[simple bison]

They announced paid classes because they had already announced the expansion and they were basically forced to say whether the expansion would be paid or not, which btw I think it initially was going to be. But after seeing the heavy negative feedback they pivoted towards making paid classes instead. Or maybe this was the plan all along, I have no clue. But yeah they were basically forced into making this announcement because they announced the expansion earlier.

[pure dawn]

I think they 100% pivoted

[calm jay]

While I think people were patently dumber than dirt and doornails to keep expecting free content, I also think the pivot was a solid play

[simple bison]

Afaik no. But Mike said it sounded like a decent idea, which in no way confirms they'll do it.
#👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message

Yeah I agree I think it's a good pivot, I prefer this over paid expansion like I mentioned

Knowing I can party and play with anyone and do anything is way more important than being able to pick every class at the start, to me at least.

[calm jay]

I agree with the earlier point that a paygated class is way less raw content than a paygated expansion, ie zones and progress

[acoustic palm]

Yeah, I know that torchlight infinite does it, but their classes are ultra pay to win on releases

[pure dawn]

Why are people dumb for that?
Plenty of live service games follow that model, even f2p ones

[brittle hollow]

I’m an average player. Paid once, never reached more than 250corruption, never spend a dime. Couldn’t care about bugs or paid classes. Definitely don’t care about campaign.

[foggy vale]

do you work for free?

[calm jay]

Cuz that's kinda how it rolls, you gotta keep money coming in. Not to mention, it's not exactly new or uncommon.

And if devs put all the monetizing in cosmetics et al we'd hear about that too

[pure dawn]

You dont care as in you wont pay for them or you dont care you have to pay for them?

[pure dawn]

The game isnt free

There's paid MTX

[calm jay]

Everyone acted like we hadn't been doing this for years

The MTX are not it

[pure dawn]

are we pretending they have no revenue streams?

[calm jay]

Like even a little

[foggy vale]

your asking for continued content after a full release, sorry bud

[pure dawn]

There's a paid store

[livid oracle]

defending shitty p2w decision

[foggy vale]

you want more content that requires more work? that costs

did you read a single thing I said an hour ago?

[pure dawn]

Doesn't cost for other games

[livid oracle]

yeah that how krafton and other pulishers get u every time

[foggy vale]

or get mad at 1 thing i said?

[simple bison]

Guys please keep it civil.

[calm jay]

It's wild how defensive we get about paying for a product...

[pure dawn]

Who are you

[acoustic palm]

Also, as Aaron stated, EHG employes should no longer try to swift the blame on players, it's not our fault LE has the worst MTX. I'm actually pro AI considering how bad LE MTX is. The 3m sales were poorly managed too

[livid oracle]

they condition u with small things first

[calm jay]

All I said was full content costs money. I paid for Lord of Destruction

I'll probably pay for Last Epoch of Destruction

[acoustic palm]

We shouldn't look to support "LE" more.

[foggy vale]

they were upfront and honest with us saying their initial plan didnt work out as expected and admitted they were at a loss financially, said the paid store isnt working as no ones buying, its called mismanagement

[calm jay]

Or Hollow's Eve of Destruction

[brittle hollow]

Couldn’t care that they are paid. I will pay for them if I like them, if not then I won’t pay. I also wouldn’t play them if they were free and I didn’t like them.

But I will tell you I prefer them over paid cosmetics, since I would never spend anything on cosmetics

[foggy vale]

now they have new management

[acoustic palm]

35 euro is already fair to support an arpg, other arpgs ask the same money and they are just fine

[simple bison]

They don't

[calm jay]

This is wild lol.

[foggy vale]

krafton genius

[pure dawn]

I see

[calm jay]

Anyway I'm fine paying

[simple bison]

That's not what an acquisition does

[foggy vale]

krafton has final say

[calm jay]

Well they gotta make money

[foggy vale]

so 🤷‍♂️

[simple bison]

Yes, but that doesn't mean they decided this. It's not like the game would magically start turning a profit after being in the red since 1.0 just because krafton bought them

[calm jay]

Charging on classes over xpacs is broader free access

[foggy vale]

they have final say, they decide the final direction

[simple bison]

Krafton bought them time, having paid content was inevitable no matter what basically

[foggy vale]

devs are trying to accomodate all needs best to ability

at end of day we get more content for free, and a class and new way to play for $10 mayve $20?

not a bad trade off

no in game events will be locked behind money

you wont be gatekeeped from partying with new class

[calm jay]

That's the big thing

[foggy vale]

you want new class new way to play? there you go that costs

[calm jay]

I remember early LoD days doing that and ofc, WoW shunting anyone behind the paygate each xpac

[foggy vale]

people are legit taking this so personal i dont get it

[zinc blaze]

someone posted a thing in here that said that

[calm jay]

I do

[foggy vale]

the wave of negative reviews its sad

[zinc blaze]

I just blindly trusted it

[simple bison]

Don't do that

[foggy vale]

what yall paid for was 1.0, that was the game we paid money for and accepted

[pure dawn]

It's really not hard to get

[calm jay]

It's just people seeing this pattern and expecting it to continue. Not outlandish

[foggy vale]

we werent paying a monthly live service fee

[acoustic palm]

Well, it is not on reddit. So if that thing is true...company did an amazing thing communicating it

[foggy vale]

do you have a life?

[calm jay]

It's just not very adult to wage these constant diatribes when all of us know

every one of us

knows

[pure dawn]

you are so agressive and defensive 😂

[calm jay]

That their MTX shop is not doin' it

[acoustic palm]

I have to let you know gentleman that my last character was based on energy shield, not on life.

[simple bison]

I linked to where that idea came from afaik. It was just Mike responding to someone suggesting it saying it didn't seem like a bad idea. But that doesn't mean they'll do it or anything.
#👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message

[calm jay]

It's just not like, say, the LoL cosmetics which sell gangbusters

[livid oracle]

western dev need to step up with their MTX game. weak ass mtx. aside from riot there not a single dev with good mtx

[acoustic palm]

I'm getting baited [insert the fish bait gif]

[simple bison]

Yeah @zinc blaze Needs to fact check himself better

[calm jay]

Something is so fun about shield builds and regen builds...

[acoustic palm]

After a long day of work, I love nothing more than arguing with fellas about things that aren't in my control

[livid oracle]

its is in your control

[simple bison]

Tbf even riot started fumbling for a while earlier this year lol

[livid oracle]

vote with your wallet

[foggy vale]

yall literally treat having the option to pay an extra $10 for a new class as the end of the world is legit whats getting me so frustrated, when they are legit going to deliver 2 seasons worth of content for free + an expansion for free no extra money

[zinc blaze]

never

[acoustic palm]

Well, people also voted with their wallet so far and EHG had to be sold

[calm jay]

Smartest comment here about

[foggy vale]

we win at the end of the day regardless 🤣

and yall still mad

[calm jay]

Bruh I was born mad

[livid oracle]

win?

[foggy vale]

cant appease every person in the world but damn

[livid oracle]

how win?

[acoustic palm]

If we vote with our wallet more, we will not get a game anymore kekw

[foggy vale]

you dont have to pay a dime

[calm jay]

Well, you maybe. I dunno, LE got my vote if they push classes

[livid oracle]

the moment kraton acquired the game its lost

[calm jay]

We need a raw phys, and I need a void/necro

[foggy vale]

LE has my vote all the way

Actual upfront honest team

10/10

[calm jay]

And then give me a mage summoner spec, why mage got no summon spec >:o

[livid oracle]

there has not a single game where krafton didnt drove into turd

[foggy vale]

dont regret giving them my money as I was paying for a 1.0 release, seasons are a bonus

not owed

[pure dawn]

I don't really like the argument "oh you want them to work for free and die of hunger?????" when they game has an upfront costs + paid MTX.
So the revenue streams are there for continuous cash flow, that arguments doesn't really hold any weight.
What you mean to say is that we need to pay for that missmanagement, I guess everyone will put their hands on their consciente and either buy it or not.

But to blindly dismiss the situation as a "we have to give them money or they'll starve" is completely wrong

[calm jay]

I mean same with EA and they get buys, dawg. Like EA has a rap sheet two decades old

And people still line up to hoover up their games

[foggy vale]

how much many have you spent ingame?

[livid oracle]

im agree with you on that. but im not gonna pay a single dime more if they keep going with this direction

[pure dawn]

Irrelevant.

[calm jay]

EA has been 'worst gaming company' for practically as long as they've been around.

[foggy vale]

not xD

[calm jay]

I don't aggrieve that

[foggy vale]

you see why their charging now

[livid oracle]

i got the game last season and got my money worth

[calm jay]

Fear of larger merger acquisitions is justified

[pure dawn]

You don't know how much skins and packs I bought. It's irrelevant

[calm jay]

Yeah if I had to stop now I wouldn't be bummed, I got a solid run in, had fun, ran a smite build front to end.

[foggy vale]

im asking you how much money youve spent on game

[pure dawn]

And I'm politely telling you its none of your business

[livid oracle]

we are worrying about the future of the game and the dude here asking about how much someone spent.

[foggy vale]

and now you see why their charging for more classes xD

[pure dawn]

No

[calm jay]

Well, my sustenance on their MTX is ARPG is a bum genre for cosmetic MTX

PoE attaching QoL to MTX was a way, way more prudent move

Half the time in ARPGs you're kinda just watching the enemies turn into particle effects anyway

[foggy vale]

for most games only about 5-6% of players actually end up making repeated purchases in game, so when those purchases are like $5-$10, look at LE's daily numbers and do the math

its not sustainable

[calm jay]

Your character is not exactly a high res display either, this isn't an MMO kinda deal

[foggy vale]

as to which they admited

whales account for 1-2%

of that 5-6%

[calm jay]

What's worse in LE is there are many builds plenty capable of just right clicking to monos. That doesn't make lots of room for early multiplay

[livid oracle]

the entire point of this ruckus is the future of the game will go to shit if they keep heading this way. not about how good it performed

[pure dawn]

There's lot of MTX opportunity there though, skills effects, sounds, kill effects, etc

[foggy vale]

whales being $100+ and beyond

they stopped making more MTX as they had no more money

couldnt afford to pay devs to do that

as its already at a loss financially

they needed an expansion from day one

as I say, clear mismanagement

so they are trying best to accomodate all

we get content and expansion, just pay for class

A-ok and a win at end of day

[calm jay]

So I think in the first place kill effects are tied to element anyway, and then a lot of effects swap per-element specced in their skills, so that may complicate things

[foggy vale]

Have a good day yall im out

[calm jay]

Not necessarily that I disagree, though, they probably should corner those markets if they haven't

Admittedly I haven't done more than glance the eshop. I did my time with MTX and I got out, and never looked back

[pure dawn]

Yeah they need to make the spell variants for poison, ice, fire, etc

But I mean if they want MTX to be a consistent revenue stream they gotta put some effort into it

Like it doesn't cut it if you make a wolf MTX which doesn't work when you use the squirrel hat

[calm jay]

That's the issue yeah, heh. You listen to the bulk of the noise you get online and you won't focus MTX

[pure dawn]

I'm sorry but paying for that is ridiculous

[calm jay]

But they work

Yeah no MTX have to be worth it

Can't be bugging out et al, like that, because that's just faulty product

[pure dawn]

yeah

[simple bison]

I mean I'd say I'm a good example of why they had to do this pivot tbh, I've been playing the game and enjoying constant new content for 5 years or so now, and all I've gotten is the game itself (35 euro) and the ultimate edition which I can't remember how much it costed when I got it, maybe 30 euro? So I've paid the cost of a AAA game for what is essentially 8 years of work right. Now let's say that for each player they needed to make like 40 dollars, but the average player only spent 38 dollars, we get to the situation they're in now. I'm not really someone who cares about cosmetics, like sure if they released something giga dope I could get for like 20 bucks maybe I'd get it, but it would need to be like insane. something you'd buy for like 60 bucks in POE or league or whatever other game you wanna compare to, so it's just not likely to ever happen. This is basically the only way to get more money out of players like me.

[pure dawn]

then ofc you look at metrics and say "Oh no MTX brings no money"

but is the issue that people dont naturally spend money on skins or that the skins are not worth it?

I think PoE proves that people are willing to spend

[simple bison]

I've personally spent more money on poe than LE and I would with certainty say it's not because their cosmetics are better, since like I said I really don't care much for cosmetics

[pure dawn]

I think a lot of people care

Maybe just buy the cool sword, or a cool hat

[calm jay]

Yeah, I do care and genuinely want them to succeed

[pure dawn]

doesn't have to much

[elder barn]

You pay for stuff in PoE because you trust the developer so you're willing to splurge on something mildly cool if it means supporting them

[pure dawn]

I meant care for cosmetic in general

I love capes and hoods, I'd buy some if they were cool

which they aren't

[calm jay]

I swerve on all MTX myself

[elder barn]

Also a lot of PoE mtx is straight fire. Can't at all say the same for LE mtx, the little that exists

[fallow wind]

as 1.0 player I can say their MTX artists didn't really inspire to spend a cent in the shop at the beginning
but they got better later on
still changed my review to negative and won't buy anything further because broken promise is still broken promise

[simple bison]

It's because I want more stash tabs, but to get them I get the supporter pack that's nicest for me which ends up with me paying more than I really needed to for the tabs and then I buy cosmetics with my left over points. While in poe nothing gets me to even look at the shop in the first place

[livid oracle]

u can take an exemple out of the 50k $ boat from WWM

if your MTX is good enough. people will pay

[zinc blaze]

the poe supporter packs also giving shop currency equal to the supporter pack cost is a big w too

[simple bison]

No, my trust in the developer has 0 weighing on my decision tbh

well, between poe and le at least

[calm jay]

Yeah their MTX ain't it either way, LE could probably wipe and redraw the whole thing

[pure dawn]

Yeap, the average player doesn't mind spending 5 or 10 bucks on cool MTX

but it needs to be cool

[simple bison]

obviously if one was giga scum (which imo neither are) I likely wouldn't even be playing the game to begin with

[proper sluice]

oh no, we are still talking about this

[simple bison]

But yeah I do agree if le had better cosmetics they'd for sure have sold more. But that's a perfect world argument. We simply don't live in a world where their cosmetics were good enough to keep the studio afloat. Saying they should have "tried harder" is like telling a homeless person to just work harder and buy a house, it's easy to say but that doesn't mean anything. I feel it's pretty obvious they tried until they had no other option.

[zinc blaze]

[livid oracle]

wdym. argueing with stranger online is the best thing to do

[calm jay]

Yeah I've seen a lot of conduct but EHG seems strong.

[pure dawn]

Me when the biggest decision for the game is being discussed on a discord server about said game

[calm jay]

Granted I'm a registered voter in my city. A broken promise or two is kinda expected. At least they're not an acceptable percentage of my ground coffee being insects.

[simple bison]

I feel like that's accepted universally tbh, same goes for fruits and other produce lul

You can't really avoid it

[calm jay]

Well and like

If it wasn't an expac it'd have to be something

[simple bison]

yep

[pure dawn]

I dont like the homeless person analogy. EHG has a lot more resources and time to work with than a homeless person seeking shelter

[simple bison]

imo classes are the best option

[simple bison]

Okay a billionaire telling a middle class person to work harder so they can be like them, same thing. You get my gist. I'm not trying to make a perfect 1:1

[fallow wind]

I'd rather them bar the story (it kinda sucks anyway), but yeah the classes will bring the most revenue aside from all the people it will alienate

[calm jay]

Aw the story is fine

The campaign is just flat

[pure dawn]

I get what you are trying to say I just dont think it works.
If they see the MTX is not bringing money they have had plenty of time to either hire better artists, work on their cosmetics more before releasing, etc

[simple bison]

Only reason I know some lore is because I've been around so long lul

[fallow wind]

well yeah it is fine, like 5-6/10 fine so I don't mind losing access to more of it

[simple bison]

The cosmetics have gotten vastly better, but they went from really bad to bad. And they did hire new artists and all that. So they saw mtx weren't bringing in enough, did hire new artists, leads etc. And the cosmetics still didn't turn in enough money

[calm jay]

I'd rather they improve the delivery

[pure dawn]

Dont we all just mindlselly click away until the NPCs stop talking?

[spiral shoal]

so my whole stance on this, is yeah it does suck that the game isnt profitable but i was 100% expecting to pay for the expansion(i didnt know they made promises not to charge but like c'mon you cant hold them to that if they are in the red, then you just want the game to die) but like with the current player count, its like 20 players per employee or something like that, tell me can any of you sustain your lifestyle of asking 20 people to give you money? i dont think so, so like yea it sucks but its just how it is people need to find a way to keep the lights on

[calm jay]

It's a swell pickup line; I want them not to stutter when they lay it on me, that's all

[fallow wind]

don't check current player count, it is diablo like, check expansion/season release date peaks

[calm jay]

The campaign feels very contrived after it stops paying out points. Once xp and gold are all you get, the xp is not nearly enough to mean anything and the gold is droplets in an oceanic abyss

[spiral shoal]

the seasonaly andy's arent the ones who are paying its the long term people who play all the time....

[calm jay]

The quests become a chore, and I'd rather just spend stints running with various frens as they reel out some story beats at me

[fallow wind]

well they need to learn how to get money from seasonal Andy's (btw I'm one myself)
you login during a season start, you see new SHINY cosmetics and in ideal world you go "I NEEED ITTTT!!!11"

[calm jay]

Which is sad cuz there's this sort of unconventional approach and story, for the most part, but it's just kinda delivered in this hamfisted attempt to take what Diablo 2 had, without the rarity-of-loot that made exploration so rewarding in D2, nor the variety of quest rewards that made D2 quests at least worth the time

[simple bison]

This is not true, seasonal players are easily the majority of paying players. Obviously not the "casual" seasonal players who get to normal timelines and stop playing but still seasonal players. Almost nobody plays a seasonal arpg "all the time". But yes player numbers are still a horrible metric to look at tbh

[calm jay]

I mean

Anything with a perceivable end of any kind will do this

Players now consume seasonally, you know? Run in for five weeks, smash the content and flee

[simple bison]

yep

[calm jay]

Released an expac? 150% player count!!11

5 weeks later? Back to status quo

[muted cape]

I honestly dont find any other arpg as fun as le still

[calm jay]

But business expense doesn't seem to travel in the same way

[livid oracle]

that is on EHG part

they should have know how this gerne work

[simple bison]

Thing is having super high retention can actually be bad for games like this, you're paying extra server costs for potentially no upside if people would buy the same amount of cosmetics while playing seasonally, which is actually somewhat true. To an extent it's actually been shown that doing something seasonally improves your odds of spending money whenver you come back to it vs if you've been doing said thing the entire time.

This is not me saying LE's fairly low retention is a good thing btw.

[calm jay]

That's why the huge counts usually go to round based stuff, I could guess the top current counts on Steam look a lot like extraction and arena games

No low retention is bad

[pure dawn]

seasonaly andy's? You mean 99% of the playerbase?

[calm jay]

We ain't shy here, just lookit what went on with New World... even on the uptick

But granted that's fear of investors pulling plugs

[livid oracle]

still sad that newworld is closing.

[calm jay]

I expect anything to see a ~90% falloff after like 3~6 months, unless it's got a constantly recycling gameplay loop, cuz that's just how things get ate now

[simple bison]

Ngl I haven't played new world since launch, and I guess I never will. It was a good time when I did play it though

[pure dawn]

Low retention just a direct consequence of very shallow endgame content, not very worried because with each season it gets more and more complete

[calm jay]

Also yeah NW going kibosh is tragic

[spiral shoal]

sure i was being very general about the seasonal andy's i was kinda referring to alot of the people i see in here who are complaining, but then admit they also dont pay for anything, and im just like that other guy, like you cant expect 100% free stuff all the time with a game that barely has players or compare it to games like poe that have exponentially more people, and infintely larger budgets

[simple bison]

Yeah I think retention will naturally get better as it takes longer to actually do everything

[fallow wind]

my dota 2 spending 758.75$ (lifetime, but still), the game doesn't sell heroes, so I technically could play for free forever
that shows that earning from MTX is possible
(would attach screenshot, but I can't)

[pure dawn]

Not paying doesn't take your right to complain btw.
It's actually some of the most valuable feedback, because it's who you want to extract money from

[woven sentinel]

Anyone wanna keep me company whilst sat at work with literally NOTHING to do

[spiral shoal]

im not saying you cant complain, but atleast see the irony in complaining about a game having to charge because people arent spending when you are one of those people

[calm jay]

In fairness, that is a valuable push

"What would make me pay is,"

Ofc the most common real answer there is, ".. a good sale"

[pure dawn]

I dont think it's ironic, I think it's a quite clear statement on the options presented to the consumer.
Why aren't they paying? Surely some will never pay, but a lot of people do, so if that isn't happening in LE, is it the player's fault or the game's fault?
Something to think about.

A lot of free games run for decades on MTX alone

[calm jay]

Yeah don't tell me Shroud of the Avatar is being run on goodwill and generosity lmfao

[woven sentinel]

🍿

[calm jay]

They have an absolutely guttural MTX scheme, and it works on those it works on

MTX can run revenue if it's used effectively for sure

Riot Games now runs a veritable media empire built in part off selling skins

[fallow wind]

riot is a bad example, they sell champions, which is basically the same thing EHG is planning to do

[simple bison]

Is there a seasonal arpg that only sells cosmetics? I can't think of one. Not saying it can't be done but I just can't think of one for a fair comparison

[pure dawn]

I feel like a lot of people talked themselves into believing that the game needs to sell content to force the users to pay for something to survive and it's only fair this happens because they are continuous developing the game, but I dont think this is a true at all

[simple bison]

since comparing a moba with a seasonal arpg is super duper unfair imo

[woven sentinel]

5hrs left at work and no trailers have been booked for me 😂 thanks boss

[pure dawn]

I mean LE doesn't only sell cosmetics too tough, there's an upfront cost

[calm jay]

Hourly or salaried?

[woven sentinel]

Me? Hourly

[balmy arrow]

[calm jay]

Oh well that's something, at least

[woven sentinel]

Oh yeah just me and colleague are bored af

[calm jay]

I know that feel, being on the clock with actual nothing to do is probably somewhere in Dante's Inferno or something I dunno

[calm jay]

It's more that MTX are kind of a proven winner though, if you do it right (or viciously enough)

[spiral shoal]

so in the arpg genre theres only really poe1 at this moment (i dont know enough about torchlight but i hear its very p2w) but like even in free poe1 you are basically forced to buy stash tabs if you remotely want to do anything end game

[calm jay]

I commend honour in not taking the low road and doing something that absolutely garrotes a wallet, but there's something to be said for a working cliche, as it were

[simple bison]

The upfront cost is not a consistent revenue stream per consumer. Obviously people will keep buying the game but at a certain point you hit your market cap and after that you sell copies as people grow up to be old enough to play the game pretty much. So while yeah it's probably honestly the majority of the games revenue so far It's not a huge factor when it comes to its sustainability afaik. If you want box price to pay for your game you don't make it live service.

[calm jay]

Yeah and that's the thing right? Consistent costs on the developer end but singular purchase on the customer end stops adding up

And although you take in that ebb of players when you drop hype (seasons, in this case) you don't really get anything unless they're buying stuff from your eshop

But, it's also late in the game. That can't be discounted

People are suddenly discerning about their MTX, haha

[pure dawn]

Yeah but you can say that what you pay for tabs is the same as LE upfront cost. From that point on, both games are supported by cosmetics

[calm jay]

(myself included)

[calm jay]

I've never hit this point in PoE, but talking to someone who'd done multiple times he said that by then if you intend in any way to continue, the cost basically justifies itself like a box price

[simple bison]

Honestly I disagree with this premise. To start with it might hold true, but as you play poe more you'll want more stash tabs. I've spent more on stash tabs alone than I have on LE plus the ultimate edition

[pure dawn]

Eh, maybe that's true? Idk, it isnt true for me. LE has been more expensive for me than poe

[livid oracle]

on the other hand. u can try poe for free. that will pull in new players

[pure dawn]

I've bought some tabs years ago and never again

always on sale

[calm jay]

Yeah, that's the draw

[pure dawn]

less than $35 for sure

[simple bison]

And that's totally fair. I bet some people buy a currency tab, a premium tab and maybe one other tab and that's it forever. But I'm just saying poe's stashes aren't a "pay x get all the stashes you'll ever want" which is what would make it actually equivelant to a box price

[pine fox]

Depends on if you're buying just currency + maps or buying all of the specialized tabs.

[pure dawn]

People always say how impossible it is to play PoE without tabs but it is so possible it hurts me everytime.
Ofc I like the game enough to buy them though

[thick lotus]

analytics, math and knowing ur target audience is not a joke
im pretty sure your target audience is not people playing for 8-12 hours every day, so you need servers for 300k players for whole 6? months between leagues
currently all pre-uber ingame content could be completed in e.g. 50 hours
50 hours is 10 days for people who plays 5 hours a day as example
after that, game offers no content and people catapulting
also, game is already costs $35 so it filters some amount of new players

[simple bison]

Oh yeah I always bought mine on sale too, I just have a decent amount of them and at least one of every special one except maybe one or something

[woven sentinel]

Time to look "busy" for cameras been sat in office since 9pm(currently 00:30) and yeah nothing to do haha

[calm jay]

Oh god you're on camera

[elder barn]

there are basically 6 tabs that you "need" to play PoE endgame: 1x merchant tab for trade, a currency tab, frags tab, quad tab, map tab. All of this you can pick up during stash tab sale for ~$30. Everything beyond this is pure indulgence.

[calm jay]

My bosses admitted to me they have absolutely 0 desire to ever have to go through the cameras and want them by and large as threats to keep people on their toes, not to ever use any evidence collected by them

[simple bison]

Btw poe being free makes GGG money via bots that buy like one or two premium tabs to list items on that get banned and then redo it. Not saying it's on purpose but it's true

[livid oracle]

only true when u know how ot play the game efficiently tho

[calm jay]

Oh yeah that's like, a whole other discussion

[pure dawn]

Yes in theory tabs can be sold infinitely so it isn't 1:1 with a paid box price, but I'd wager most people buy the lowest amount of tabs possible for their ambitions and QoLs necessities. Now that may be more than $35 but I think it's close enough to a upfront cost to draw a comparison

[woven sentinel]

Work in warehouse mate. Cameras everywhere so I gone into yard and sat my arse on the forklift just driving around "looking" for something to do haha

[simple bison]

Yes but it's not the same as cosmetics, it's still QoL. So in poe I pay for QoL, not cosmetics or something else, it has actual gameplay value to me

[livid oracle]

lol?

[elder barn]

idk bro, back when I was a little inefficient noob I just had 4 basic tabs and 1 premium tab for trade lol

[spiral shoal]

my dude i have more currency saved up on my dude that i wouldnt have space with those 4 basic tabs they give you for just some of my curreny let alone all of it and my other items and maps and scarabs and such, sure you can get away with it, but its extremely difficult and annoying

[pure dawn]

I've played PoE2 co-op with my gf without tabs my man, that's 2 characters worth of loot. It can be done and it isn't really that hard to do

[elder barn]

Fair. Still, given the amount of money other ARPGs rake in with MTX, LE not being able to do so is still a phenomenal skill issue.

[pure dawn]

Like I said, you will pay for stashes cuz if you like the game you might as well

[elder barn]

please do not compare PoE1 with 2 lmfao

[pure dawn]

I have thousands of hours on poe1 man 😅

[livid oracle]

yea back when i started playing. i used non strict filter and loot hoard every goddamn things. so those 4 free stash arent any where near enough

[pure dawn]

Just gave you a poe2 example because it was 2 persons inventory to make my point

[simple bison]

I don't disagree, I 100% agree that if LE's cosmetics were better they'd likely sell more. Would it be enough? maybe, myabe not, I don't know the numbers so I couldn't say. Did they try to improve them? yes. I think it's clear to anyone who's played since 1.0 that the cosmetics did get better, but apparently not enough to turn a profit.

[woven sentinel]

Oh btw all ITS 1ST DECEMBER. ITS CHRISTMAS MONTH

[pure dawn]

IIIIIIII DONT WANT A LOT FOR XMAS

[muted cape]

I never buy mtx in any game for real money. I do however, buy expansions, and classes if they are good enough

[simple bison]

Mariag carey started posting it at the start of november 😭 they've uploaded 9 christmas songs so far 💀

[woven sentinel]

😂

[muted cape]

If ehg is going for like a hero siege approach im all for that

[simple bison]

Same pretty much

[pure dawn]

Mariah Carey does not care. Mariah Carey will bless your ears. There is no escape

[woven sentinel]

That's just started playing on the radio thanks for that haha

[simple bison]

Nor would I, get that bag tbh

People would be more mad at her not posting it at this point

[elder barn]

subjective and debatable. 1.3 cosmetics were absolute doodoo and I felt scammed tbh, outside of the primal bear skin maybe. Woven Templar was quite good, genuinely the only set I liked. 1.0 mtx were also awful. My biggest complaint is that in so many years we barely had ANY skill mtx whatsoever, and not a single good portal mtx.

[pine fox]

The MTX have just not been good quality, but I'd still hesistate to call it a stable singular revenue stream even if they were.

Especially with the current global market impacting discretionary funds

[elder barn]

I'm not an artist but I find it hard to believe that armor mtxes are easier to make than skill mtxes

[muted cape]

Ohh.. I bought the Tucan I did buy mtx lol.

[pure dawn]

heretic

[simple bison]

I mean yeah it's basically art so it's of course subjective but I don't think I've heard of a single person say that that 1.3 cosmetics were worse than 1.0 cosmetics. Like maybe you don't prefer them to the 1.0 ones because of their theme or whatever but quality wise, trying your best to look at it through a lens without taste, I'd be shocked if anyone thought the 1.3 cosmetics weren't an improvement over the 1.0 ones

[muted cape]

It was so good

[elder barn]

technically they're an improvement I grant you. But if so, it's the same pace of improvement as everything else about the game

[woven sentinel]

Check out my hard working on #📚┃off-topic

[simple bison]

I didn't say they improved enough to warrant way more sales, I'm just saying to me at least it's clear they tried to improve them and it simply didn't work out. They also had job listings for artists and leads for the art department so it's not like they didn't try to "hire better artists" or whatever either. All I'm saying is they tried, maybe they could have tried better or harder or whatever. But I really don't think they said that mtx weren't working out back in 1.0 and 1.1 and went meh let's just pivot to paid content without giving it any fight. If anything I think they fought it for way too long to the point where it's now a scramble to make decisions to keep everything afloat. Obviously I don't know the inner workings of the company but that's how it seems to me from the current communication right.

[pine fox]

Probably should have been caught by forecasts/projections and then discussed with the community on how to handle it earlier, yeah. It feels a bit ham-fisted at the moment, but it is, unfortunately, reality.

[simple bison]

I mean I think they were just really trying to avoid having to put out paid content because they knew the amount of backlash they would get, so they kept pushing and hoping things would turn around without it until it was evident that either they did it or the company goes under

[pine fox]

I wonder if paid expansions instead of paid classes would've gone over better sentiment-wise, but who knows. That also introduces other issues like the community being divided by content access and w/e.

[simple bison]

It wouldn't have for me personally. I heavily prefer paid classes tbh

The latest announcement was a positive one for me since I was pretty convinced the expansion would be paid

[pine fox]

People were going to be mad that they were going to be asked to pay more anyway, no matter what. Although I do think it's been blown out of proportion, especially if the alternative was closure and the end of the game.

[simple bison]

yep

I way, way, way prefer both a paid expansion and or paid classes to the game shutting down, because at least now I have the option to play it if I want to :P

I can't really think of any logical argument to preferring the game shut down

[copper scarab]

When does the next season release?

[simple bison]

"early 2026"

prob january

[copper scarab]

Thanks, I wish it was out now.

[woven sentinel]

Don't we all

Back in the nice warm office now . Yippie. Only 4hrs left haha

[cobalt fable]

Die with honour always, dont side with the bad guys

[woven sentinel]

Facts . I like this game so far. Been really enjoying season 3. So I'm excited to see how the new classes.will be built for season 6

[acoustic palm]

I hope season 4 has more content because season 3 was the worst season I ever played in an arpg. One mob and a few items, okay maybe other arpgs spoiled me, but I cant be excited about one mob mechanics

Nothing for the end game either

If that monster evolved and it chased me in corruption 1k sure. That would be a banger

But instead it was another one mob mechanic which we already have

[night marten]

But you can have it rando evolve and ambush you in echoes? Is that not the same thing you are asking for here?

[woven sentinel]

Well season 3 is my first season playing this game so can't comment on past seasons and similar games I've played is diablo 4 and those storylines sucked ass, very little end game content when you have defeated Lillth and gotten your gear from Duriel.

I'm excited for season 4

[acoustic palm]

I was hoping that it would turn into another Uber boss like uberoth

So an epic dinosaur fight

Ubersaur

[woven sentinel]

There's a echo of 1x evolved rift beast you can fight I believe or is it 8x randoms ones? I can't exactly remember

[night marten]

At a high enough corr the woven echo could be an uber.

But the 8x one is a fine gauntlet. But the 1x crystal heart one is really strong at high corr

[woven sentinel]

Back to work for 3hrs I guess. Yayy . Eagles come keep me company haha

[night marten]

Absolutely not

[woven sentinel]

Come onnn. I'm sat in office with nothing to doooo

And Christmas music playing. What's not to love 😂 😂😂😂😂

[simple bison]

You lost me at Christmas music

[woven sentinel]

Haha. It's the bloody radio station playing it

Lmao production can't do their job properly 😂😂😂😂😂

[calm jay]

Christmas music is pure evil

[woven sentinel]

Oh trust me I know but I rather sing to that then be absolutely bored shitless because production can't do their jobs properly and use the wrong fill in products

[acoustic palm]

Last Epoch I gave you my heart

But the very next day, you gave it away

this year to save me from tears

I am giving to someone special

[analog estuary]

Paid class? wow..

[acoustic palm]

Dude you are late. I understand that not everyone is terminally online, but we already malded like 6 times over that

[analog estuary]

Just read the steam post. That's.. not great.

Should just make the cosmetic armors actually look good, maybe they'll get some revenue 🙂

[acoustic palm]

Yeah, we kind of agreed on that in this beautiful chat

[analog estuary]

The recent reviews 💀

[glacial crow]

everyone bought d3 reaper of souls anyway

but i didnt notice it being stronger than other classes when i bought it

so the spiritborn was op when it came out, but it eventually got balanced out

im not worried

my only worry is that the paradox classes will be classless like poe with gems as skills, if that's the case youre defeating the purpose of your game

every dev stated implicity they wanted to retain class identity, this will be your deathtrap if you dont abide

poe is the worst in the industry. thats why i never finished morrowind, that sandboxy, classless junk never kept me going - give me neverwinter nights instead

[woven sentinel]

Okay that's pretty good 👍

Not long to go now until finished thank god. Then I can curl up into my warm bed and rest

[fervent lintel]

Funny, as someone who has DM'd D&D tables for quite awhile, I find it hard to go back to just being a player because that overly narrow class "idendity" (shoebox) is too constricting. While I have my gripes about POE, the class/skill system is not one of them.

[untold skiff]

Dang welcome to the enshitification of LE. Paid classes wtf ???
I understand they need cash to keep the game going so cant stick to the original promises ( I knew this would happen eventually, it was very very naive of them to promise free updates to a live service game), Id happily pay for an expansion or cosmetic if only they would fix the damn game. The MTX options are so fugly its unreal. The game systems are also showing their ages with plenty of bugs still, it is slowly improving but ye still needs work. Paywalling classes is not the way honestly.

If the game was in a good state maybe they could go paid classes but with the amount of broken stuff in the game still... naw. Im kinda miffed cause I supported em early and took the bugs and design issues in stride cause it was obvious they are working on stuff but ye guess that dream is dead.

[fervent lintel]

I understand why they are doing it, but I think it's a mistake. They need to move away from the Live Service model--they clearly can't keep up with the demanding cycle (and that's no hate on them--it's extremely demanding), so the best option is to restructure the framing of the development and monetization cycle. There's no shame in doing what Grim Dawn does.

[untold skiff]

Ye for sure. Id rather a polished game than mediocre live service content on a broken engine, that you come and play for 1 week go meh and move on.

[fervent lintel]

I think the seasonal nature of it actually sets the expectation that players should only play at the start, bounce out after a couple weeks, and wait (a very long time in this case) for the next update.

This isn't the case with games like Diablo 2, Grim Dawn, Chronicon, etc. People play those games for the love of them, and the developers are free to add to it as they have the time/resources/motivation to--and is generally well appreciated when they do.

[untold skiff]

Id prefere that to seasonal stuff tbh. Like 1 or 2 seasons are banger but the rest are just a waste of time imo. Like the 1 or 2 banger seasons might as well have been paid DLC and I would have been more than happy to fork out (IF and only IF the game was in a good place which its kind of not)

[fervent lintel]

I don't know about seasons as DLC, but there's nothing wrong with selling proper expansions when you have a good chunk of content ready to deliver (like Grim Dawn does).

[fervent lintel]

I don't like to be all doomer about it, but I just don't see how continuing with a failed model is going to work, especially when the solution is "Do things that make it fail more."

[stable forum]

It’s hard to see beyond all the dooming, but if they successfully do what they have planned out next year - Seasons 4/5 as well as an expansion AND launch on PS5, then they might just make it

[fervent lintel]

Anything's possible, but it just doesn't look probable. I just think if it were me trying to save the game, it is certainly not the route I would be going. Admitting that the Live Service model is failed, and is poison to the game, would be the most important step. From there, a broad array of potential solutions can be discussed and/or iteratively attempted.

[inner finch]

It can still stay "live service", just with different cadances

[fervent lintel]

Staying LS means having to make a bunch of compromises that anger players and jeopardize the integrity of the game.

It still means bailing water from a sinking ship

[inner finch]

That, nobody should do under any circumstances

being live service or otherwise

otherwise you get to have not one, not two, but three terrible roadmaps

Im still astonished at the last one, and how much nothingburger it represents

[quick magnet]

live services come with baggage. Broad expectations of a certain pacing or the like, poorly invested players expecting things to stay the same forever despite that just not being how any live game works. It was a mistake from the start but only in the sense that GGG is too good at this and cannot be realistically challenged in their space.

[inner finch]

GGG has done their own screwups. People are very quick to forget the sheer amount of community backlash PoE1+2 have provided so far and the list is a big one

[quick magnet]

They've existed since before the term Live Service was even properly codified

[inner finch]

its just that they knew how to fix stuff

[quick magnet]

Yes, they have, in a much more patient landscape

EHG had no such benefit.

In fact, we all know the only reason PoE blossomed like it did is because D3 happened

Much of this genre's modern issues can be traced back to d3 frankly

[inner finch]

I wouldnt give much credit to D3 honestly

[quick magnet]

You have to

[inner finch]

The credit belongs to GGG's work

not to D3's disappointment

[quick magnet]

GGG's work was fine, not nearly as attractive as anything blizzard had put out before then either

[inner finch]

A game doesnt get to be successful on the merit of another one in the genre failing expectations without being good all on its own

[fervent lintel]

It's both, honestly. If D3 had popped off, POE may not have been given an honest chance.

[quick magnet]

But D3 lost the OG crowd with it's design flaws and visuals. GGG was there to catch them with a game much, much closer to what they wanted

I'm not saying GGG would have outright failed if not for D3's disappointment, but they'd not be the presence they are now

[inner finch]

D3's disappointment gave birth to plenty of projects, i would say Last Epoch included

but also failed projects like Wolcen

[quick magnet]

GGG has always had good stuff in their lane, but it did not survive the popularity it gained even now

LE wasn't even a solid concept until GGG had gained their foothold. And at the time, yeah, there was a good chance to keep up

But their timing has been poor from moment one

It's EHG's deepest flaw

The live service ARPG space is dominated by GGG and arguably Blizzard. You have to run one hell of a tight ship to squeeze into it.

[inner finch]

The way i see the entire trajectory of Last Epoch, its deepest flaw is simply aiming to compete with studios that have far more experience and resources in the field to thesame standards

[quick magnet]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[inner finch]

But its also what so many of us liked about this project, it was not apologetic

[quick magnet]

Well that didn't pan out in the end. Between middling content and a tiny playerbase relative to everyone else, they've floundered and there's nothing to be done for it

They're trying to keep afloat at this point, whatever form that takes

[fervent lintel]

But the problem with EHG and doing LE as Live Service is that it doesn't have quality of POE, the polish of Torchlight Infinite, the rabid loyalty among its players of the Diablo series, etc. What it does have is a fairly unique take on item progression and some good class design ideas. While this has helped them to get where they are, it's clear that it's not enough to justify the model, especially when the devs can't keep up a reasonable seasonal pace. Even every 6 months consistently could be tolerated, but they struggle even with that. They need to be free of that expectation and time crunch so they can cook in open air.

[quick magnet]

The problem is that the ship has sailed and they cannot double back without it costing them

[inner finch]

The trigger that pushed EHG to go for a development rush onto 1.0 was in big part monetary

[quick magnet]

There's no saving this project as an offline game alone.

[inner finch]

We knew the game would be technically unfinished, yes

[fervent lintel]

Live Service will sink it. They need to change the model. Doesn't have to be offline-only either.

[inner finch]

is operating servers considered a part of live service? if the answer is yes, LE will remain live service

Is supplying customer support considered live service for online woes? if so, LE will remain live service

[quick magnet]

Having server framework is literally the only thing that constitutes it being a live service.

Without that it doesn't need to be an always online thing in any capacity because there's no reason to keep servers paid for and functioning

[fervent lintel]

Old Diablo 2 kept servers in maintenance mode for decades with little/no content for most of it. Nobody considered that "live service."

A hybrid model can work

[quick magnet]

Blizzard is a monolithic presence in the gaming industry

That is not comparable

this shit was not the same as it was for old battlenet.

[fervent lintel]

I'm using it as an example because your definition is flawed

Having servers isn't the same as live service

Especially if a concurrent offline mode is available

[quick magnet]

It's not a good example because that's a good few decades in the past when this shit was decidedly cheaper as well as built by someone who's basically an archwizard

Mike O' Brian as had his hand in the back end of two companies and both of them are on another level when it comes to server infrastructure.

[fervent lintel]

The goal of live service is continual development/content updates--and the monetization that goes with it.

[quick magnet]

But that's also not the point.

D2's server demands are a fraction of anything that's come after it

nowhere near the number of calculations to be made, things to render, data to transfer.

it by default needs less than LE has to maintain on a fundamental level

[inner finch]

We also don't know what will be Krafton's decision regarding true offline in LE. That party can be over without a notice one bright day

[fervent lintel]

LE's player base is smaller than D2's by quite a bit. I think it's manageable if they can make the rest of the model make sense

[quick magnet]

That means nothing if the data per player is so much higher

And again, This is blizzard.

They have more money and resources than EHG has ever had

[fervent lintel]

EHG in Tychus' voice: I made a deal with the devil, Jimmy.

[inner finch]

So far EHG still promises LE will remain true offline

but that's like me promising my boss can't fire my teammate

[fervent lintel]

It's like your boss promising you get to keep your job (until the business goes under)

[quick magnet]

I think you overestimate the impact that'd have on development to cut it

[inner finch]

There's enough tragedy with how lost media works with rolling version live games

[quick magnet]

There's no point to that, it's the same game

[inner finch]

and the fact you can't go back to earlier snapshots

[quick magnet]

...I don't think that's really as valid

You can't roll back to previous states of a painting either

The process is valuable, sure, but it's not broadly so

[inner finch]

This is software version management, you dont delete content to develop a new patch

[fervent lintel]

This game doesn't have the age or pedigree for there to be a lot of clamour for a release of an older version, lol

[quick magnet]

No but you don't need to see anything that came before it unless you're actively developing for it either

that's not really relevant to anyone but the devs

[inner finch]

not on a technical level, but very much on an experience level

i would need to pull out a banjo just to sing about the games where the community begged to play older live versions of it

and i hate how many of them are just Blizzard games

[quick magnet]

Eh, I don't think it counts as lost media either.

[fervent lintel]

Yeah, for other games that matters more

[quick magnet]

But I'm not gonna get hung up on this tangent

fact is, the live service ship has sailed. the game was fundamentally built to be one

it'd cost too much and bring too little to change that now

[inner finch]

Fundementally? fundementally LE isn't even built to be an online multiplayer game

[fervent lintel]

It's going to cost them more to try to stick with it

[quick magnet]

They literally planned to be in the same genrespace as PoE from jumpstreet

They said so from the start

[inner finch]

cooperative play was patched very late in the game's development phase

[quick magnet]

That isn't relevant

[inner finch]

we even got a cool backpack to commemorate its release

[quick magnet]

It was always a part of the plan

[fervent lintel]

It would be some work to make it offline viable, but if they don't, there's a good chance it ends up just added to the ever-expanding graveyard of live service games that nobody can play anymore (like Firefall)

[quick magnet]

The point is that the whole project hinges on that aspect of it. It's how they budgeted to keep the lights on

that has heavy implications on every other aspect of their development studio

[inner finch]

LE wasn't developed in a traditional manner

[quick magnet]

You sound like you know something the rest of us dont

[inner finch]

I have deep deep secrets, but you musn't tell anyone

[untold skiff]

bra the "roadmap" from LE was even worse than D4s. They did the impossible

[quick magnet]

That's not a low bar to clear but sure

[fervent lintel]

I've never cared about "roadmaps." They are just marketing propaganda.

[untold skiff]

POE 2 still sucks ass, gave up on that for now

[quick magnet]

I mean they're also an avenue of accountability

[fervent lintel]

Not really

Players gonna cry either way

[quick magnet]

Yes really. Especially on steam

Any pre-launch commitments are actually enforced by steam, but that's only tangentially related here

Not delivering on what you promise is not really something a studio can get away with when it's so written down so cleanly

[inner finch]

fumbling three roadmaps in a row doesnt quite radiate confidence in development, and that has studio-wide implications.

[fervent lintel]

Review brigades aren't "accountability," especially because Steam recognizes them as such and mutes them as the outliers they are once the mood passes.

[quick magnet]

Adjusting it as you go is perfectly reasonable

but making sure you set expectations is also important

[fervent lintel]

This is honestly the main thing

[inner finch]

Review bombing is just something gaming communities do by now

[quick magnet]

Not to say your thoughts on them as a concept aren't valid, however. Just that they serve a tangible purpose

[fervent lintel]

They make players feel good. That's about it.

[quick magnet]

Yes it is, and you have to compensate for that.

[inner finch]

I still believe LE is fully recoverable

but it will require some serious multidisciplinary work

[quick magnet]

I don't think they've even done anything explicitly wrong other than kinda suck at their timing

[untold skiff]

ye fully.

[quick magnet]

This paid class thing didn't bother me from the start. They need money and I'll pay for what I want if I want it

[inner finch]

by fully recoverable i dont mean the game, the game only keeps improving from patch to patch, it doesnt get worse

[fervent lintel]

I mean, the decision to have paid classes doesn't overly upset me, but they just dropped it on us without really having a much needed community heart-to-heart about it first--or even running a poll on what acceptable adjustments to monetization could look like.

[quick magnet]

They aren't obligated to soften the blow

[untold skiff]

problem with paid class is, they now have incentive to make it OP cause then sales would go up. Krafton has the last say after all.

[quick magnet]

Hell that probably wouldn't have happened in the first place, that shit sounds needlessly parasocial

[fervent lintel]

And players aren't obligated to buy/play--that attitude is how you sink a company.

[quick magnet]

No that attitude is how you paralyze your development pipeline

[inner finch]

EHG aren't obligated to serve carrot with the stick, but the last community post served us a carrot made out of paper with the stick, and i think that the timing of this whole thing is just awful. They should have just waited for a complete Season 4 mechanics and features reveal to serve it with

[quick magnet]

This decision needed to happen whether or not the community liked it

[fervent lintel]

Not when you're talking about breaking a foundational promise to said community

[quick magnet]

yeah that's comical

If they need money, they ask for money

if you don't want to give it to them, you don't have to

if things fail at that point, them's the breaks.

But they're not your fxxkin' buddy

[fervent lintel]

This game was build on the trust and good will of the community--which they have just violated with a sizeable portion of it. That's not "comical." It's stupid.

[inner finch]

Communicating the situation to us wasn't quite smooth

"so... we're sort of bankrupt"

[quick magnet]

The financials of a company are rarely something any company just talks about openly

[inner finch]

An indie studio is allowed to tell its community that funds are running thin, i don't find fault in that

[quick magnet]

In fact I can't tell you anyone outside of a tiny indie dev team that's ever been so plainly open about doing poorly finantially

[fervent lintel]

Warframe

[quick magnet]

An "indie studio" is also no longer about independance so much as team size. That whole term has mutated into something no one can agree on

[untold skiff]

game was built on these promises, early adopters, kickstarters and so on. Sure they arent you buddy but I wouldnt just torch the goodwill I have with a community

[quick magnet]

I wouldn't either unless shit's just that dire

[fervent lintel]

Me either. It's a dumb attitude.

[quick magnet]

and now that they have a publisher, they're not allowed to just talk about whatever

[fervent lintel]

Especially because it was very avoidable

A little honesty is all that was required

[quick magnet]

That's a hindsight thing, you don't know that.

[fervent lintel]

Anyone could have predicted it.

Again, breaking foundational promises is no slight thing

[untold skiff]

like I said I dont mind paying for new stuff. Shit changes and thats fine just dont come with pay to win bs, like paid OP classes.

[fervent lintel]

They knew what they were doing with it

[inner finch]

hindsight is 20:20, but all along the early phases of LE was were very vocal about the weaknesses of stuff like MTX system UI UX

[quick magnet]

These talks with krafton were happening well before they had any real need to make a lurch to make more money. But that's actually beside the point. Do you really think people at large would have been super cool with them admitting they're doing poorly with hoe mid everyone thinks the game is outside of our little bubble?

This community is it's own best friends and it's own worst enemy.

[fervent lintel]

Torching the goodwill of that bubble was completely unnecessary.

Excusing bad behavior is pure cope

[quick magnet]

The moment EHG cooks something you like, praises are sung, but then the high wears off and we're back to decrying them for things getting dull.

So the undercurrent of all that never goes anywhere. any moment of weakness from the tiny subset of early adopters isn't going to counter the vitriol their weakness invites

That's not how you get "people" to open up to you

[untold skiff]

no I dont think people would have taken it badly. Game still has potential

[fervent lintel]

Just a letter of honesty to the community and a poll of what solutions to increase monetization they would find least offensive before making any choices would have been way easier and smarter--and wouldn't have been review bombed.

[quick magnet]

Given how negative gaming spaces tend to be, your optimism is ...cute.

Again, that's not how business works

You wish it did. Hell, I wish it did.

But it doesn't

[fervent lintel]

You're just saying "no u" without any substance. 🤷

[quick magnet]

No what I'm saying is what you want is unrealistic. You just don't want to hear that simple point.

[fervent lintel]

It's not though. That's why it's so silly on your part.

[quick magnet]

if it weren't it'd have been done

[fervent lintel]

A letter and a poll is easy to do

[quick magnet]

It's too late.

It was too late a year ago

Acquisitions like this don't happen over a span of weeks

[fervent lintel]

Hell, even Torchlight Infinite does that sort of thing

It's not unheard of at all

[quick magnet]

Of course not, but that's also the plan. That's also a korean company with wholly different ethics behind things

[fervent lintel]

Excuses. There's no reason EHG couldn't have.

[quick magnet]

No, there is no reason they couldn't have. Past tense. I'm not arguing about what could have been, should have been.

[fervent lintel]

I am tho

They should have

[quick magnet]

That's where we went past each other, ok. My bad there.

I'm not one to get stuck on past mistakes I wasn't there to see made

I'd rather look forward and see if the future can be steered right instead. More productive.

[fervent lintel]

I'm not disputing the Krafton side of it. I'm just talking about managing expectations with the community and communicating with them to see what solutions were reaslistic that wouldn't instigate backlash.

It's wild that they wouldn't have the foresight to attempt this, knowing they were breaking a foundational promise--the kind of thing that sinks other games.

I vaguely remember the first Destiny had an issue around something similar

And Warframe's devs hard refused to do this with the Excal Prime issue--instead opting to give people the Umbra variant as a stand-in for people who joined the game much later.

Their promise to never re-release the actual Excal P is essentially sacred to them--even though most of those players probably aren't even around anymore.

But the players who do have it supported those devs in a time of great financial uncertainty, and they have repeatedly stated that it saved the game/company--so its their way of ensuring those players are recognized for it.

So it is actually crazy that EHG failed on this point

When they are generally pretty decent about community engagement

[untold skiff]

They need a better PR manager while the devs work on fixing the actual game. Meaningful fixes and improvements will do more good than this whole debacle does bad imo. Judd needs to work on game direction and dev not putting out fires. We arent a Blizzard community we like to hear from the devs and interact with them, not get stale and tone def "camp fire" chats

[fervent lintel]

I think the most optimistic view would be that it's actually not too late for EHG to address it with something like "We hear the feedback about the plan for paid classes, so here's the situation..." and go from there.

Especially if they are open to changing their minds and getting actual feedback about what people are willing to pay for

[woven sentinel]

Finally home after a boring shift

[untold skiff]

ye, they dont owe me shit but would be nice and preserve community goodwill.

[inner finch]

EHG having PR would be good

im not sure there ever was

[fervent lintel]

Frankly, this game doesn't have the user base that they can afford not to have that good will

[quick magnet]

PR is just a concept. A PR manager is the role dedicated to managing PR

For outfits like this the CMs are supposed to fill that role

[untold skiff]

ye they arent Blizzard just quite yet where they can tell half or 75% the fan base to fk off basically,

[untold skiff]

but your team devs shouldnt be wasting time on it. They need folks to interact with the community since it is the community that supports them. Without the community the game is dead

[inner finch]

yes and sort of not really

CMs are in contact with the core, but most players just visit whenever something important happens

Most players dont care and have no idea who are CMs and community outreach people

nearly everyone in my personal circle of friends limit their care for LE to "when season start so could dump a week of gameplay and dip out"

[fervent lintel]

And that goes back to my assertion that the Live Service model is financially suicidal for the game--because the development cycle can't keep pace

[quick magnet]

Again. A CM is not a dev.

Their job is, indeed, to manage a community. But it is not their job to do so at the expense of the developers being able to do what needs doing. Lots of confounding factors here.

Also PR has more reach than just the community invested in a given project. It's about managing outside perceptions as well

[quick magnet]

I get where you're coming from but there's no real functional difference anymore between it being a live service and it not. This shift wouldn't fundamentally change anything on their end. It'd just change the people that pay attention to the game. And that number would just simply be smaller.

[supple path]

when is next season for lastt epoch

[gritty helm]

There is nothing wrong with live service game designed from ground up. Problem is monetisation is not supporting it.

[main frigate]

PR=producer?

[quick magnet]

Public Relations

[south moat]

"Early 2026" is the info we have

[fervent lintel]

It dramatically changes the upkeep cost, player expectations, and the ways monetization make sense. It also gives them an off-ramp if they can't sustain it still so that at least players could still enjoy the game if worse becomes worst.

[quick magnet]

No it doesn't. The servers do. And you already tried to argue that the always online aspect of this is not some intrinsic part of the issue, when it is fundamental to the definition of a live service game

[compact dawn]

huh? game doesn't require always online?

[fervent lintel]

It isn't, though.

You have a bad definition

[quick magnet]

The pace is something they have to set, there's no real outside expectation for when content drops happen but they tried to keep pace with the top contenders and physically could not. Them not being able to do that isn't some failing of the model, it's a failing of their approach.

The main conceit here is that "the live service model is bad" when in reality it's not really a thing that does any harm. It's the inability to keep up with the baggage it brings that has done the harm. And there's no undoing that. There no functional change outside of killing the online servers and focusing on chunky updates to the base game with peer to peer multiplayer

[gritty helm]

You actually agree I think

[quick magnet]

I swear I know words :V

[fervent lintel]

Basically every point of that is incorrect

[quick magnet]

And you've yet to convince me how it is.

Frankly I have no idea what you're talking about anymore. This sounds like you're just not looking at the same reality I am

[fervent lintel]

You don't want to be convinced. You just make the same irrational points.

[quick magnet]

You're not going to get them to "stop making it a live service" without it literally killing the game entirely.

[compact dawn]

you can't reason people out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.....

[fervent lintel]

They totally can. "Will" is a different story.

[quick magnet]

I need you to explain to me, who is indeed genuinely curious, how this would work on a technical level.

[gritty helm]

I definitely agree with that point. Game was designed as live service from ground up. That ship has sailed years ago

[fervent lintel]

And it's the ship that is sinking them

[gritty helm]

Unfinished campaign is the clearest example

[compact dawn]

Game can be played full offline mode at least. So not completely dead, but is a single player game at that point

[quick magnet]

I said that earlier but something seems...........oddly convincing in this argument that there's something they can do differently on their end that wouldn't just cause them to hemorrhage money faster than they can make it when that's already a problem.

[gritty helm]

Also true, but to be exact the incomes they get are too low to support that model.
If they were higher it wouldn't be a problem.

[quick magnet]

Yes and them opting to take even less doesn't strike me as the solution here

[fervent lintel]

And their solution to that is "Do the things that push people away while not addressing why those income streams aren't working."

[gritty helm]

I'm worried that the barrier of entry is core of the problem

[quick magnet]

It definitely is part of it.

The game was never really completely worth the box price imo

but I didn't buy it myself, a friend got it for me.

I don't regret playing but I'm not convinced I'd have ever bit the bullet myself

[gritty helm]

IMO it was, but you are definitely not the only person who thought that. And that's what matters

[quick magnet]

At least not without it being on sale

[fervent lintel]

Cosmetics that are mid. Seasonal cycles that last way too long for this model. Slow to fix bugs. Slow to release new content. Now they want us to pay for new classes--and we all know that's only the beginning.

Just think about that for a minute. Who wants to buy cosmetics for a game they play 1-2 weeks a year?

[quick magnet]

Cosmetic are a subjective thing. There's no accounting for taste.

[fervent lintel]

I never had an issue with the box price--but if they are going to monetize non-cosmetics, it gets hard to justify one.

[quick magnet]

The seasonal cadence though is definitely a problem. But I don't think it was intended to be as long as it is

[fervent lintel]

It wasn't

But that is the situation

[quick magnet]

Yeah but a longer seasonal rotation isn't inherently a bad thing it just wasn't planned for and it's causing problems.

[gritty helm]

I think the gap between season 2 and 3 wasn't too bad. It had other issues though

Before that ? Hooo boy

[quick magnet]

Honestly, this puts a bit of a silver lining on things

This krafton money might be what smooths this out. That's kind of the only thing I can think would have been the case.

[inner finch]

EHG is on a recruiting spree

[quick magnet]

There's no changing the past but they've clearly needed more hands on deck for this project and just couldn't afford it

[inner finch]

the will to be better exists

[gritty helm]

depends who they are hiring

[quick magnet]

That goes without saying

[gritty helm]

they definitely need to expand cosmetic team I feel

[fervent lintel]

That only makes sense if you assume they are just now hitting their stride and things will go well from here out. I would certainly love that outcome, but I won't hold my breath on it.

[quick magnet]

I still don't know what people are expecting out of cosmetics.

[fervent lintel]

AI "artists"

[inner finch]

Good news, Amazon just closed a studio and laid off 30,000 employees

[quick magnet]

There's just not enough options at this point. Them being "better" isn't really a thing you can quantify

[inner finch]

This is basically a hate-post

[fervent lintel]

Against Krafton, yes

[gritty helm]

More like the snark, because Krafton's reputation is ... yeah

[quick magnet]

There's no need to open this can of worms again.

[gritty helm]

But on the bright side I don't think AI can generate 3D models, so idk how it would affect LE

[quick magnet]

You don't hire people that use AI special, you force it on your current team

[fervent lintel]

homer-simpson-so-far.gif

[quick magnet]

You and I know full well that will kill the project faster than any paid content people feel entitled to

[fervent lintel]

Yeah, I really hope they don't do that

Then again, if they get the AI that does these TikTok virtual girlfriend ads, they might be able to sell some skins

[copper sorrel]

Why? Because of the immense energy cost of ai leading to higher waterlevel and flooding the Studios of krafton?

[gritty helm]

Because people dislike it, partially because of its quality. And they need to sell stuff, hard to do it if people don't like what you are selling.

[quick magnet]

lmao

But yeah no, it's the reputation

[gritty helm]

But I still don't see it happening with LE. Outside of maybe Krafton forcing them to generate code brrrr

[quick magnet]

AI usage in games is a death sentence

[gritty helm]

nah
CK3 is doing fine

[quick magnet]

CK3 is also a niche game

[gritty helm]

Not wrong

[quick magnet]

all five of it's players are likely indifferent to it

the better example is CoD7

[fervent lintel]

It is very niche, but sadly becoming less so

[quick magnet]

Have you seen its numbers?

[gritty helm]

Where Winds Meet would be a bigger example I guess

But they use it generally speaking well, and it's not generative

[fervent lintel]

Oblivion Rm is a better example

[quick magnet]

Well in fairness, generative artwork is the main deterrent. Chatbots are far less poisonous

???

[gritty helm]

Anno 117 drama was something

[quick magnet]

lmao yeah

[quick magnet]

Why do you bring up Oblivion though?

[gritty helm]

It's crazy when you take a step back and realise it's about loading screens background

[fervent lintel]

They used it to remodel a lot of NPCs

[quick magnet]

That's prefectly fine. They didn't just stir it up and shovel it in

[fervent lintel]

I think it was more "AI-assisted" rather than purely AI tho

[quick magnet]

Yeah that's the kind of stuff people are ok with

[fervent lintel]

That's why I was saying it's a better example

Unlike COD

[gritty helm]

COD is an atrocious example

[quick magnet]

Well "better example" as a context for "why AI usage is poison to games"

[fervent lintel]

Oh, sorry. No. I meant where it is more accepted.

[quick magnet]

The game was already mid, the calling card shit only made it worse

[gritty helm]

It doesn't even fit the theme of the game. Militaristic shooter ? Let's add medieval fantasy, ghibli style AI images

[quick magnet]

Yeah I was pointing out why using generative anything in gaming is a terrible idea

THAT one

is SO stupid

Like w h y

[fervent lintel]

gAI is pretty much always slop, tbh

[quick magnet]

That's how you know they just didn't care

Yeah that's the point

[inner finch]

I appreciate the thought and expression behind human made art. To me, this is very binary, and an easy way to never touch a game

[quick magnet]

it's not hard to tell it's not art made by a person, even if it's not got any obvious flaws

it's just soulless, has no texture, it doesn't feel right. It's equally hard to properly convey, which is why it's so weird to talk about

it's hard to define "vibes" lol

[inner finch]

vibes is one of my least favorite gen z-alpha term to describe art

its a perfect example of losing expression lol

[quick magnet]

Absolutely, It does track perfectly in that oddly nebulous way

There's something I'd heard about often a bit ago

[gritty helm]

I think if it's used in game, background is not that bad.
The Alters come to mind.
Which had it as text on the barely visible screen somewhere in the background.

[inner finch]

In photo-video circles, its a good practice to have newcomers describe a piece of art without using "cinematic" "vibe" and "aesthetic"

[quick magnet]

Generative video programs are the closest visual representation to what dreams are like that we've ever gotten from the outside.

[fervent lintel]

If you read documents from the 1700s-1800s, it's clear that we have been dumbed down a lot

[quick magnet]

And that rings very true to me because it's a blob of noncontinuous approximations done by something unconciously

[south moat]

The cinematic aesthetics make me vibe real good

[quick magnet]

The word vibe just tracks as "feeling" to me. It's a one to one stand in

and feeling is like... the whole point of art

people just don't like when language changes in ways they don't agree with

[fervent lintel]

And the proper human response to this is to describe in detail how the shot makes you feel, what it reminds you of, and what qualities stand out in comparison to other elements

[quick magnet]

Like, for instance, everyone calling any in-game marketplace for trading between players an "Auction house"

[fervent lintel]

It's really lame when "art critics" look at a piece and bust out their thesaurus to ascribe strange notions to it that don't even make sense.

[quick magnet]

I get unreasonably irritated by that

[inner finch]

art is surprisingly scientific btw

but i dont wanna digress too much

[fervent lintel]

Me too, because I love AH systems and almost no game does it

[quick magnet]

I don't mind market boards or auction houses of any stripe. I dislike people confusing the terms

[fervent lintel]

Well, "market board" isn't so much a mainstream term, but I think what you mean by it is something like POE's 3rd party sites for facilitating trade, or D2's jsp.

[quick magnet]

Well "market board" is just like a structural thing, not any kind of static term

like "marketplace" works more generally if you'd rather but I just mean the difference between going and buying a thing outright versus placing bids on an item in a bid to get it for yourself.

It's often more affordable than any given buyout unless you just want a thing bad enough to autobuy it

[fervent lintel]

Well, in the gaming sense, an auction house tends to have both bid and buyout systems--because WoW and EQ did it decades ago

[quick magnet]

Yes but an AH has, at minimum, a bid system

But the things I'm talking about are in games with markets that do not

and that is what bothers me

there is no auction taking place

The term just doesn't apply at all.

[fervent lintel]

Yeah, but it's still the common colloquialism

[gritty helm]

I think so many people skip bidding, so when they think AH it's WoW-like AH. So search system and option to buy stuff. Bidding is optional.

[quick magnet]

I know that and I want it to burn in the pits of hell

[fervent lintel]

lol

[quick magnet]

Bidding can and does get you thinks for cheaper than you'd autobuy them for. That's the benefit of it

And again, it's fine if it's not the popular choice.

But words mean things

[fervent lintel]

Sometimes. Other times you use a bid to drive up the price on something rare to hopefully get more than you would for the buyout.

[quick magnet]

Yes but that's...how auctions work

[fervent lintel]

I'm much more a fan of the buyouts tho

[quick magnet]

Like lets take guild wars 2 for an example.

[fervent lintel]

The time element of bidding puts me off

[gritty helm]

imagine bidding in game like LE

You want say the new chest piece and wait 48 hours for it

[compact dawn]

no bidding in ARPG's, that's silly, just instant buyout and be done with it

[quick magnet]

It has the trading post where you can buy people's sell orders or post your own buy orders. The former is usually the more expensive option but if you're patient, the latter can often get you something far cheaper

An AH like WoW's is functionally the same, if not directly built like that. You just have to place the bid and wait for the item to time out. If it doesn't get bought out, you have it for like half the price of the general buyout

[compact dawn]

Buy orders seems like a lot of overhead for the servers. No real reason for it if you have instant buyout, it helps stop price settings too

[quick magnet]

Well I'm not advocating for anything in LE or the like, just expounding on examples

GW2 has a backend built by the guy who designed battlenet for blizzard, they do just fine.

[compact dawn]

GW2 has excellent devs, last I played they didn't have have server shutdowns, just rolling updates that get downloaded in the background and updated next zone in, and servers would roll over to other servers for maintence not disconnecting anyone

ArenaNet knew what they were doing. The cash shop seemed a bit much for me though, at a certain point enough pay for convenience turns into pay to win

[quick magnet]

Yep. I can count on one hand the number of times the game's been offline in the decade I've been playing

Frankly, pay to win is a silly concept

it's lost all meaning in the way it was meant to have

[south moat]

Used to play a korean mmorpg that was f2p
and oh boy that shit was p2w

[gritty helm]

Diablo Immortal disagrees

[quick magnet]

No, diablo immortal gated actual gameplay behind it's silly cash shop

also leaderboards being a thing is part of why that shit actually degenerated to "oh no this guy hit max level in a shorter timeframe than I did, riot" mentality

You're not actually competing with anyone, you can't win anything anyone else can't just because someone else fill their exp bar faster than you

but that's just exp. There's currencies that fall like rain that you can boost, item boosters that you can use to get more out of your gathering nodes for a time, and none of that is making you anything another player can't get without an extra handful of button presses

And that itself is the whole of anything I'd consider problematic even as a stretch is the boosters

Given you get super strong ones for free for having characters last over the ears, yeah, there's nothing in that shop you can do anything but be annoyed some else has and you dont

[fervent lintel]

That's enough for gacha games tho

It's this "keeping up with the Joneses" nonsense

Some people never heard the expression "Comparison is the thief of joy."

[inner finch]

which one were you a victim of

BDO? ArcheAge?

[south moat]

Shaiya

good old Aeria games and making all the games they publish in the west p2w

[inner finch]

That's just everyone

[quick magnet]

I'm pretty sure no one has

But I was born in it. molded by it.

[south moat]

It obviously had the usual stat boosts etc
but then they also had raffles like... almost every week where if you used enough money (usually in the thousands) you'd get some stuff that you couldn't get without either doing that or buying it from another played that did
a guild mate of mine used like $4000 on it every month

[inner finch]

what do you think of the idea of critical success glyphs in LE? just 4.99 a piece

You know you wanna

[south moat]

You made me cringe

[inner finch]

[south moat]

But nah, I never played BDO or ArcheAge

[fervent lintel]

8.99 for a token that lets you add 1LP to an item

[gritty helm]

with 50% chance of fizzling

thankfully won't happen, hell would sooner freeze over

[main frigate]

🥱 when EHG announce details of 1.4...

[inner finch]

tomorrow

[main frigate]

This server let me quite sleepy because nothing can be hyped

[gritty helm]

tommorow ? nice :d

[zinc blaze]

its always today and never tomorrow

[acoustic palm]

Yooo, I used to play archeage as a teen and sold my account with some nice lands for a new computer

I held that computer till some years ago. Good times

[willow sentinel]

Anybody knows if I DW 2 Apogees, are the More Dmg on it added together

[south moat]

I think it should be, yes

Not 100% sure on it though

[willow sentinel]

It would make sense since it's the same stat

[dusky nova]

Has anyone else noticed performance issues on game recently? Seems like everything is running really poorly. Enemies and minions take several seconds to show on screen even though they are there and attacking each other. Just started happening for me a couple days ago.

[willow sentinel]

Trying to make some dps calc for Maelstrom scorpion

[south moat]

Btw Vlad, how did the exams go?

[willow sentinel]

Results soon 🤞🤞
But I feel good about it

[willow sentinel]

I haven't had any issues

[brittle fjord]

Me neither but I play offline

[steel mesa]

I haven't had any performance issues in like 2 seasons

[trail brook]

https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/last-epoch-hat-es-sich-gerade-uebel-mit-seinen-fans-verscherzt,3443911.html
German gaming mag gamestar wrote an article about the current issues with the communities frustration about the payment model for the upcoming paradox classes.

[obtuse bay]

unfortunately, there are many videos and articles about the situation

it's difficult to build good reputation but easy for bad reputation

lets hope for good comeback by EHG

[trail brook]

🙏

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJbsdoDHUrI

[inner finch]

hell yeah DJ Bobo

[brittle fjord]

I would say it's hard to get a good reputation per se, but it's very easy to lose said reputation and it's hard to get it back.

[trail brook]

Man, i wish i had 96 million...... ^^

Would even be happy with just 2. ^^

[brittle fjord]

I am not sure what I would even do with that much money XD

I am quite a simple person lol

[inner finch]

I can guarantee you no one single person got 96M dollars lol

[trail brook]

warhammer 40k miniatures......many of them.

[brittle fjord]

Sounds like a plan

[obtuse bay]

and If someone had this much money, it would make no sense for them to use discord bcs they had secretarites

[brittle fjord]

You say that but then again some pretty wealthy people in America frequently use social media...

[obtuse bay]

twitter

[brittle fjord]

Yeaah

[trail brook]

Ok, i know exactly what i would do with that much money. ^^

First, getting a bigger appartment or building myself a house.

Then build my own personal swimming pool. ^^

Getting some gym accessoires, like a training bike.....

Then build up some space where i can game and relax.

Also saving up a bit for emergencies. ^^

Then sit down and make plans. ^^

[acoustic palm]

they better comeback with some good cooking, if s4 is as good as s3, people will not even bother to check s5 launch

I hope for some s2 kind of mechanic with many mobs, not one mob mechanic like mage, champion, the beast, nemesis

[inner finch]

impactful game additions and nothing less

[acoustic palm]

and capybaras

[brittle fjord]

That's what it should have been since the start, if it was they might not have even needed to sell out to Krafton

[cobalt fable]

the dream is dead

[inner finch]

We already have that

We need hyraxes

[inner finch]

Usually you are a ray of sunshine and positivity, this is very out of character for you to say

[acoustic palm]

bigger capybaras

[trail brook]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDFgItwbKh4

I love capybaras, they are soo chill, they don't even mind getting eaten, when their friends are hungry. ^^

[inner finch]

[acoustic palm]

Damn, dude linking animal gore to give me trauma kekw

I didn't need to see an animal being eaten alive, thank you

[trail brook]

Isn't nature awesome? 😉

[arctic cairn]

I don’t get why they talking LE going to p2w?

Is it like u can buy skip camping?

[obtuse bay]

its not p2w, it's pay to play

#news message

[arctic cairn]

Hopefully they add it to poe2 and poe1 tho lot of are waiting it

[exotic solar]

Oh definetly. If S4 is bad as S3 not even gonna complain on discord during work hours.

[obtuse bay]

If boush leaves the game, the game is so cooked and over, saying it rn

[exotic solar]

D4 has it because it has mmo like openworld i dont think it is possiable on poe1/2 and le. It would feel weird.

[exotic solar]

Yup, i am the only person that matters.

[arctic cairn]

Baradox classes, it’s not talking there that skip camping, so disappointing

I rather spend 20 euro and skip camping

[obtuse bay]

you must be watched rax's video https://youtu.be/s4Y1RWLyVU4?si=lyIHPp0hgjUf_m2M
you can skip campaign from dungeons but it's not p2w

[exotic solar]

I cant say i didnt feel like this after 8th char but saying it out loud feels weird.

Also there is still somewhat of a self respect that i cant ignore.

I think it can work as a challange reward.

You complete half of seasonal challanges and you get single use get all quest rewards token.

[arctic cairn]

So now season 4 and season 5 both are 6 months each feels like and season 3 would be same season 6 will come then march 2027 with paradox classes long way to wait

[exotic solar]

No idea about timelines. They didnt say anything about it.

[night marten]

no one has said anything about 6 month timelines. lol

please dont throw out random speculation

[arctic cairn]

But it’s feels like this, all can conform when season 4 is coming out

[obtuse bay]

even mods can't confirm how you can

[arctic cairn]

When readying news and earlier realsed seasons, they can speculate something

Not it’s like bad, got more time then play other games what is good

[obtuse bay]

If you don't enjoy it, you shouldn't play it ofcourse but calling out some random date for season4 will confuse people and later they will ask "why game didn't come out on february" so its better to stay silent If we don't want to be liars

[exotic solar]

I think all that matters is schedule.

There has been 0 years of periodic content release.

[obtuse bay]

this is also why ehg didn't release the date bcs there is possibility of errors or maybe lack of planning

[exotic solar]

Nobody gonna go pitchforks and torches about 1-2 week of delay but they actually never released on timely schedule before.

Its always "god knows when"