Mister E. Meat said:
I don't want to derail the PoE talk, and I'm happy to start a new thread but has anyone here played around with Last Epoch? I haven't jumped in yet but I watched a few streams and it's looking really polished so far. It plays a lot slower than PoE but faster than Grim Dawn, maybe closest to D3? Big attacks are highly telegraphed to give you time to get out of the way. Finally heir approach to crafting is very interesting as compared to PoE - everything is deterministic but the more you change, the more like you are to have negative outcomes, which range from locking the item as is to making it noticeably worse.
I'm almost certainly going to buy into the beta at $35 and haven't yet because I've been swamped with work. Next week I'm off though
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I feel Last Epoch fits in here well enough, and Mason is trying it out too, so he might have some thoughts on it by now. It's end league, so the conversation is derailed anyway. Haha.
I've got a 76 guy in LE, doing level 85+ content. I think it has some great strengths that highlight PoE's weaknesses, though it's definitely not finished. Here are my thoughts:
I'm a big fan of the crafting system. By far and away the best crafting I've ever seen in an ARPG. As you mentioned, it's basically 100% deterministic once you have the base, but there's some nuance to it that makes it more than just "craft what you want, when you want". You start with a base item with one or two high rolls of a mod you want (There are annul orbs as well, but I have bad luck, I swear they target the mods you want to keep. Lol), and you can fill the empty affixes with stat shards. Lets say you have an Bow with an empty prefix, and you craft a Bow Physical Damage shard on it, it gets a roll of Bow Physical Damage. However, it's only tier 1, (Last Epoch does tiers backwards from PoE, 1 is lowest, 5 is highest craftable, 7 is highest droppable). Add another one, and it goes to tier 2. In addition to that roll, it gains a few points of "instability", which is basically the percentage chance to fail the craft and lock the item out of further crafting. Lower the added tier, the lower the amount of instability added. So the whole crafting system is finding a good base that needs the fewest crafts to be "good" (Less crafts = less chance to fail before finishing), adding what you need, and hoping it doesn't brick partway through (failure results can remove up to 2 tiers of affixes, depending on the instability percentage when it fails).
Wish PoE would follow something similar for Harvest Crafting. A chance to brick the item would offset the power of the crafting system really well.
The combat feels good. It's definitely slower than PoE, and mobs are tankier, but it's not nearly as bad as Grim Dawn. Grim dawn just pissed me off with how slowly you moved, especially out of combat. Skills have cooldowns, and the high cooldown skills are strong, so it doesn't feel like you only click one button the whole time (Though you will probably still have a spammable clear skill). The skills themselves are upgraded through their own skill tree, instead of linked gems like PoE. I kinda prefer this to PoE's method, because the tree allows you to give the skills some identity and they're structured in a way that allows you to change up their mechanics without punishing you for not going pure DPS (the big DPS boosts are hidden behind the mechanical changes).
The gearing feels impactful. Lots of damage comes from weapons, and there are rare damage boosting affixes for Min/Max that you can start to fit in when your gear gets good (resist capping is MUCH harder than in PoE). Then you have Tier 6/7 stat upgrades to look out for (they have to drop naturally like that, you can't craft that high). Base types are super strong as well, so you'll always have some kind of upgrade to chase.
The end game is interesting, but definitely not as full of content as PoE. You get to end game at 55, and you have different tiers to progress through, in multiple of 5's (55,60 etc, through 90). You pick a tier to play, and are offered one of 2 maps, along with a "map modifier" with a duration and a value. So you'd for example pick a Fiery Dunes map with a modifier of "For the next 7 maps, enemies have 50% more life. +30% rarity, +50% experience", and those stack until you die. As you progress, the higher your win streak goes, you'll eventually run into quest maps, which unlock the next tier.
The game does follow PoE's "Wording means something". Multipliers are specified. Additive modifiers add in a pool, their wording specifies how they work. It's all pretty intuitive to me as a PoE player. For example, I'm playing a bleed bow character. Bow physical damage applies to the initial hit, but not the bleed. Physical damage applies to the bleed and the initial hit. Damage over time applies to the bleed but not the hit, etc.
The game also just feels nice to play. It's definitely on the D3 side, not clunky. Skills feel good, movement feels good, hits are chunky, monsters go flying when you kill them, etc.
It's not perfect though. There are definitely some gaps in the game, but they are very apparent, and most are clearly stated to be due to the early access state. 1/3 of each classes subclasses aren't available yet, for example, and it makes some "multiclass friendly" skills near worthless (The throwing weapon class for rogues doesn't exist, for example, so there is limited support for throwing skills). Uniques are nearly worthless, but they haven't created many of the "end game" uniques yet. The campaign ends very abruptly, which is again due to early access. There's no multiplayer, yet. There's no linking items in chat, yet. There's no trading, yet. There are some weird interactions that make no sense that need looked at. Etc.
So far though, they've proven to be able to follow through with their vision. We'll see how it ends!
Edit: OMG, forgot to mention the loot filter system. It is SO GOOD. Items drop identified, and you can filter by affix and tier. Nuf' said. Super simple logic stuff, with an in-game UI, and a priority order system. On my character, I have it set to hide everything except uniques, set items, and drops with tier 5 affixes. If it drops on a bad base, it's yellow, so I know it's for breaking down for shards. If it's on a good base, it's red, so I know it's worth assessing for crafting potential. If it's a T6/7 affix on a good base, it drops BOLD RED, so I know I need to pay special attention to it. And usable gear drops all the time, I see reds a few times a map, which is nuts compared to PoE's "rares are useless" mentality. I think in 4 hours the other day while talking to Mason, I crafted an upgrade and a sidegrade (Something screwed up my resists) from stuff I got off the ground, and I'm pretty well optimized already. Felt good.
