Last Epoch is definitely better than POE now, and here's why.....

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Marinxar wrote:

Now, contrary to what one would expect, Chris is trying his best to actually sink PoE with ignoring long standing issues, launch disasters that gets worst every league, over tuning the game around streamers and no-lifers and nerf-festos.

*Chuckles*

Going to bump this old thread, now that Last Epoch has Multiplayer now.


I am giving this a spin for the first time, and I have to admit, I am a bit blown away.

Forget all the stuff about the newer game and the better bells and whistles - that's all there, but most people will only stick with a pretty picture for so long.


What this game does so well, is it makes it really, REALLY hard to brick a build. It actually allows the players the freedom to play HOW THEY WANT.

Sure, it doesn't have the massive amount of abilities that POE has.

But how many of those abilities are ACTUALLY USEFUL in POE?

It doesn't have Chris Wilson's prejudice against certain systems, and is actually a far superior game for it.

Gearing thus far seems pretty damn good, crafting is more deterministic and feels WAY more rewarding than POE, Once you get the hang of the skill trees, they are easy to understand, etc.

Just overall, bottom line - its more FUN.

FUN is what I've been missing in POE for a WHILE now. I will admit, Sanctum brought some of that fun back, to the point where I wished I could only just run Sanctum.

But playing POE, and seeing it continually nerfed, loot continually nerfed, players continually punished for getting good at the game, and then also punished for finding ways to enjoy the game that aren't "Chris Wilson-approved", Last Epoch is a very refreshing change of pace. My only knock on it thus far is that it isn't fully voiced over, which is something POE spoiled me on (And in video games, SWTOR before that).

But man - I do NOT regret my $35 on this game, even in pre-launch. And I don't know that I would have even looked its way had Chris Wilson not made POE feel so stale over the past few leagues, starting with the mega nerf, but really since the major loot nerf.

They better have something special up their sleeves for this upcoming league....

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

What this game does so well, is it makes it really, REALLY hard to brick a build. It actually allows the players the freedom to play HOW THEY WANT.

It doesn't have Chris Wilson's prejudice against certain systems, and is actually a far superior game for it.

That's just plain out wrong. I realLy can't understand where people's obsession comes from with that "viability"-part of gems in regards to all of them having the same power at all times and all levels of investment. Fact of the matter is, you can play whatever you want in PoE and comfortably farm t16 maps and the normal versions of endgame bosses on a manageable budget with nearly every gem. But no matter how often it was mentioned that uber bosses are ASPIRATIONAL CONTENT, people take them as the new standard that a char should be able to beat when it shouldn't be. So let's put this in perspective when talking LE, because running Empowered Monoliths is like yellow tier maps in PoE and doesn't mean Endgame. U wanna talk endgame? Throw in 600,maybe 1000+ Corruption and let's see how many of your "you can play whatever" - builds can still farm thaz and trust me: not many can. Ur creating a false comparison in order to shit on PoEs balance issues while its the same in literally every game. I am not saying that PoE has some systems that outperform others and of course one should strive for a smaller difference between the top-performing skills and the runt of the litter, but with that many systems and options in place it's not a simple task. And there needs to be a difference in order to keep personal choices relevant.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

Gearing thus far seems pretty damn good, crafting is more deterministic and feels WAY more rewarding than POE, Once you get the hang of the skill trees, they are easy to understand, etc.

I am on board with the crafting part, they nailed that one. But I don't mean the deterministic crafting, because once again you compare apples and oranges. The system in LE allows for a VERY smooth gear transition, you'll find tons of crafting material so u don't feel forced to hold onto it and can savely upgrade your items at any point. There is also luck involved, because if you run out of crafting potential or your rune of chaos gives u crap a few times you're not better off than in PoE, but it feels saver and better.
Then again, this part actually only compares to crafting probably 3 out of 6 modifiers in PoE, and as a dedicated crafter I can assure you: as long as we are not talking triple influenced modifiers, in 95% of all cases that aim is also pretty easy to aqcuire in PoE. When we're talking REAL endgame then you first need unique items with a lot of legendary potential which can be immensely hard to find, this is like forcing people to find Headhunters as a natural drop. And THEN, on top of that, you need to be just lucky that you transfer a) as much as possible and b) the correct Rare mods from your items to those legendaries. This whole step is far more luck-based than crafting anything outside of, and maybe even when it comes to mirror tier in PoE is actually because u simply can't get enough bases to beat bad odds with throwing endless currency on it.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

But playing POE, and seeing it continually nerfed, loot continually nerfed, players continually punished for getting good at the game, and then also punished for finding ways to enjoy the game that aren't "Chris Wilson-approved", Last Epoch is a very refreshing change of pace. My only knock on it thus far is that it isn't fully voiced over, which is something POE spoiled me on (And in video games, SWTOR before that).

Once again, what's with the hyperbolism man. "Continuously nerfed" - I am not ignoring the fact that build viability took down a dive in 3.15, fully on board with it. But you just simply can't ignore the reasons for that: Shit got too easy! Man, there were people clearing Sirus after 8 hours with a 5-link chest, which was back then supposed to be an endgame boss. Do you really suggest that should be doable? I don't. Assuming u need at least the max. amount of links to comfortably kill the endgame is nothing out of proportion. Archnemesis changed the perception of rare enemies and while that was a pretty incredible shit show I tell u what: right now, it's actually FUN to fight rares because in the early stages of a league they indeed have nice drops. I did my fair amount of leaguestart-tests for 3.21 already and getting an explosion of 9 rings from a rare while doing chaos recipe (that's nearly 20c drop), or getting multiple 6-socket items which result in early jewellers, or actually looking forward of corrupting half a page of viridian jewels because now u can get REALLY powerful unique outcomes are all things that feel a lot better than just mass-dropping crap.
And are you honestly going to tell me that with the introduction of beast memories and the very powerful synth-crafting alongside new items like kalandras touch, sins rebirth, progenesis or original sin they NERFEd shit? This season produced the strongest characters ever in PoE sir.

Last point: punishing for being good. I don't know what to tell you here if that is really your stance, but PoE is literally the only game where in a trade environment u can be SURE that with more knowledge and effectiveness you are guaranteed more results. Punishment for being good when the good players are always the ones ending on top is an outrageous and hilarious position, sorry.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

But man - I do NOT regret my $35 on this game, even in pre-launch.

To end on a positive note: I can fully agree on that.

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Vennto wrote:

But no matter how often it was mentioned that uber bosses are ASPIRATIONAL CONTENT, people take them as the new standard that a char should be able to beat when it shouldn't be.

I mean that excuse of "aspirational content" to cover up this games balance issues is way older than uber bosses. Deli maps were called that once, simulacrum was called that, A8 Sirus was called that, heck even uber elder was once called that. If a lot of builds can't do something and people complain about it someone always comes out with the "aspirational content" excuse.

You say it's not the standard to beat but what is? The typical goal of any person in any game is to do all the content there is. Not just fraction of it. So wanting to do that stuff is only natural. Plus those bosses meer existence has an impact on the prices for the fragments of the non uber versions AND they drop extremely valuable stuff that the non uber versions don't. If you really want to create optional content then you don't do it like this. GGG is doing everything they can to give people fomo for not doing that stuff.

Last point, even if we were to say that this excuse is valid in any way, why the hell should balance only apply to non aspirational content? Why not at least try to make that stuff balanced as well?

LE is honestly pretty boring and not even close to POE

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I mean that excuse of "aspirational content" to cover up this games balance issues is way older than uber bosses. Deli maps were called that once, simulacrum was called that, A8 Sirus was called that, heck even uber elder was once called that. If a lot of builds can't do something and people complain about it someone always comes out with the "aspirational content" excuse.

You say it's not the standard to beat but what is? The typical goal of any person in any game is to do all the content there is. Not just fraction of it. So wanting to do that stuff is only natural. Plus those bosses meer existence has an impact on the prices for the fragments of the non uber versions AND they drop extremely valuable stuff that the non uber versions don't. If you really want to create optional content then you don't do it like this. GGG is doing everything they can to give people fomo for not doing that stuff.

Last point, even if we were to say that this excuse is valid in any way, why the hell should balance only apply to non aspirational content? Why not at least try to make that stuff balanced as well?

While I brought it up, my argument is not limited to only aspirational content in the first place. A lot of builds can´t do a lot of stuff; there is only a small portion of builds that feel good in all and every circumstances in this game and I am totally fine with it, because this further increases the matter of choice and agency. Fire Burst Ignite Elementalist or TR Raider are fantastic Heisters or Speedmappers, but they feel sluggish/less optimal when bossing. Traps and mines with their pre-detonation preparation are the exact opposite. Occultist with explosions feels very strong for expedition and high quant stuff, etc, you get the idea. Is that a balance issue now that characters have different strenghs and weaknesses? I really don´t think so. My example of Uber Bosses were deliberately taken because people always assume the latest boss-iterations as the baseline of what a character is supposed to do, but in PoE its simply not the case. You woulnd´t hear, just to further my point, the people that ask "is that uber viable?" never ask if it´s blight-ravaged- or simu-30 or even deli 100 viable.
I would assume that this is because bosses have an inherent "end of game"-feel to it, a sort of final encounter and as long as their are uber bosses the normal variants lost their appeal. But this distinction is very arbitrary and at least economically speaking bogus. Turn it around, take a 15div uber bosser and run blight with it... in most cases you´ll fail miserably and that doesn´t mean the skill is unbalanced or weak.
In regards to the value of drops: I have been doing quite some bossing this league, and I was killing uber shaper, but only normal Maven. And the difference between Uber Bosses and normal Bosses isn´t as big - of course you can get lucky and drop some of the desireable new things, but some aren´t that expensive (Impale-Spell gloves or that Chaos Voidforge thingy for example) and in the Maven case the faster clear-times make up for the loss of uber-specific drops, it´s not like you can´t farm them and make profit, so the fragment-argument falls flat in practise.

And to your last point: As I mentioned earlier, balance is a tricky thing: You simply can´t have everything with exact the same power for the exact the same content on the exact amount of investment at all levels. Then your personal choice becomes absolutely redundant. The question that arises is how much variance do we want between setups, and here I already said that a bit less disparity would be nice.

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Vennto wrote:

Is that a balance issue now that characters have different strenghs and weaknesses? I really don´t think so.

It depends on the degree. If it's between doing a map in 2 minutes or 4 then that's fine. If it's about requiring a bit more skill/gear to do bosses that's also fine. But if some builds are essentially locked out of certain content unless you throw enough money at them to just bruteforce it with DPS then that's not ok. And uber bosses are a prime example for that. Uber Sirus and Exarch even more than the others. The only uber that i think is fairly well designed is Shaper.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

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Vennto wrote:

Is that a balance issue now that characters have different strenghs and weaknesses? I really don´t think so.

It depends on the degree. If it's between doing a map in 2 minutes or 4 then that's fine. If it's about requiring a bit more skill/gear to do bosses that's also fine. But if some builds are essentially locked out of certain content unless you throw enough money at them to just bruteforce it with DPS then that's not ok. And uber bosses are a prime example for that. Uber Sirus and Exarch even more than the others. The only uber that i think is fairly well designed is Shaper.

I agree. But let me ask you this: Is this in the end a very general balance issue, or is this a design-flaw around the bosses?

I personally don´t think Uber Bosses are well-designed at all, because some mechanics (I would definately mention Sirus's DoTs while in meteor-phase here) they throw at you require a certain level of investment into specific defenses because they can´t really be dodged manually. I think bosses like Aul or Uthred should be the standard of what to expect from a player in terms of movement. Easy to learn, hard to master. And if this was the approach to ubers you wouldn´t have those big requirements.

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Vennto wrote:

I agree. But let me ask you this: Is this in the end a very general balance issue, or is this a design-flaw around the bosses?

Imo a bit of both, or in generally a more complex issue - in Sentinel, when Uber Bosses came out, they truly were aspirational content.

But that's three leagues ago, and since then, a whole lot of new items have been added to uber boss drop pools. And those items happen to be from among the more exciting items from the game's updates, so uber bosses are both:
a) starting to feel a lot less like aspirational content and much more like mandatory to experience new content (new uniques) - you're not playing a starforge character in SSF if you can't first farm it from the uber boss
b) making running non-uber bosses feel stupid to do, because the increasing difference in drop pool between uber and non-uber has increased the gap in yield from killing that boss. Since they use the same keys, so those are priced around uber boss drops, so running non-ubers is effectively wasting currency.

And that makes character's ability to run uber bossees a balance issue.

the best part about this thread necro is that half the games mentioned originally haven't come out 2 years later and the few that have bombed horribly (D2R)