Explain it to me please, why is this game so popular ? It fascinates me.

[Voyager]

I refunded this game, but I am still thinking about re-purchasing it. I'm just trying to understand what is so appealing about Last Epoch, except that it's "the new RPG to play". Not ironicaly.

Here is my problem. It seems to me that 99% of all mobs exist just to test my build and to make me " enjoy the damage numbers " on them. Occasionaly there is something that might actualy live for more than split second, and very rarely there is something that can actualy harm or even kill me. Seems like a fair point of view so far ? I hope so.

Now, assuming that there is some truth in what I am describing, the whole reason to play Last Epoch is to: A) design ( or copy ) best builds, B) To gather & manage the loot. Technicaly it sounds normal for any RPG, what I dont understand is the way this game is played when I fight enemies.

Chaotic mess is how I would describe it.

Majority of mobs die before my brain can even register how they even look like. Was that a manbear, goatman or very short person with a moustache ? I have no clue, it could be as well half rat, half snake with bird nest as a hat, wearing ballet flats and using little piggy as a weapon. I wouldn't now.

I thought " maybe I didn't played it long enough ", so I've looked at high level nerdy-sweaty gameplay and it's 10x worse than what I've assumed. Everything dies from just looking at those players characters and for most part they just staring at stash, inventory, loot, abilities, passives and other random stuff.

So Last Epoch is addicting and popular becouse the way its designed arround Builds & Loot ? Thats what supost to turn me on about the game if I am correct ? Math problem, spreadsheets and sort of feeling " Oh daddy, my stash has so much stuff in it ".

[Krainz337]

Everything you described/said sums up arpgs. If youre not a fan of them you wont like them

[Impaler]

Yes, go back to watching your train ride on a rail.

[just.dont.do.it]

It's not supposed to be like that. None of the well-made ARPG do that - mobs in ARPGs are short-lived indeed, but not to the point of dying in a split second. And especially not the bigger ones.

Unfortunately, LE devs didn't find any time to polish and tune progression difficulty. So basically mobs will always die in split second, and a bit later even if some mobs will survive for a second or two, by that moment your character will be throwing so much colorful stuff all over the screen so that you won't really see mobs anyway.

[Paraxis]

I get what you mean. This is a thing that applies to most ARPG as well ad the musou genre imho. From a logical standpoint i guess youre right. I enjoy roguelikes and other rather challenging games. Impactful decisions. Thats what makes them stimulating. But for ARPGs? I like LE a lot, although your points completely make sense. I love creating my own build. Even if at the end of the day, it mainly lets enemies explode in another color. Maybe an explanation could be, that each build is actually quite different in playstyle, but on the outside just looks dumb and samey. The nuances? I dunno

[Katitoff]

This is ARPG.
It does ARPG things and does them well, contrary to all other ARPGs released between PoE and LE over the years.
That means this ARPG is much better then anything else released recently, including D4, which turned out to be disappointment of the decade.

If you do not like what LE offers, you really are not ARPG player.

Jumping on a game that is popular does not mean it is popular for all players, it means its popular for ARPG players.
If you are not ARPG player, you will not like it.

Originally posted by just.dont.do.it:

It's not supposed to be like that. None of the well-made ARPG do that - mobs in ARPGs are short-lived indeed, but not to the point of dying in a split second. And especially not the bigger ones.

In PoE, Wolcen, Inquisitor Martyr and many more everything dies instantly if you have good build and you need to push very far into the end game for it to change, so no idea what are you even talking about in here.

LE allows you to create good and viable build for every single skill, so you just don't feel as bad as you actually are given slow TTK you had in other ARPGs.

Go to empowered monolitchs, get on 200+ corruption and tell me mobs die fast.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Voyager:

Thats what supost to turn me on about the game if I am correct ? Math problem, spreadsheets and sort of feeling " Oh daddy, my stash has so much stuff in it ".

Unless its a porn game, games aren't supposed to turn you on.

Originally posted by just.dont.do.it:

It's not supposed to be like that. None of the well-made ARPG do that - mobs in ARPGs are short-lived indeed, but not to the point of dying in a split second. And especially not the bigger ones.

Erm, that's exactly how they do work if you got a good build.

Especially this style of arpg, where the game throws literal hundreds of lower health enemies at the player.

[just.dont.do.it]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Erm, that's exactly how they do work if you got a good build.

You don't suddenly walk out with lvl1 character having "a good build".
A good build is something you work (hard) for, and not a something that very much happens automatically like in LE once you pass lvl10 mark or so.

The only way to keep mobs on your screen for some time in LE is to NOT spec anything and preferably avoid attacking mobs at all. That way you can at least see how they look and what they can do.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by just.dont.do.it:

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Erm, that's exactly how they do work if you got a good build.

You don't suddenly walk out with lvl1 character having "a good build".
A good build is something you work (hard) for, and not a something that very much happens automatically like in LE once you pass lvl10 mark or so.

The only way to keep mobs on your screen for some time in LE is to NOT spec anything and preferably avoid attacking mobs at all. That way you can at least see how they look and what they can do.

By "good build" I ment "functional" build.
That said, your example is too hyperbole, as simply leveling to lvl 10 isnt automatically good enough to oneshot enemies all the time. That's just not the case.

By the way, campaign/leveling in these games is always unbalanced. So its not a good example to say "well when you are lvl 10.."

[screamingpalm]

Older arpg's were a bit more challenging. D3 vanilla was the end of that era and the genre evolved to be more like mmo's. It was sad to see what they did to that game. I no longer enjoy them, but I'll pick up PoE if in the mood for one. I prefer turn based tactical RPGs like BG3 where monsters last for more than a second and have interesting abilities.

Creating a good build never seemed appealing to me in an arpg since there's never anything to really do with it.

[just.dont.do.it]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

That said, your example is too hyperbole, as simply leveling to lvl 10 isnt automatically good enough to oneshot enemies all the time.

Yeah, you also need to place a skill into spec slot. Click on some icons. Actually use said skill. Etc.
So much hard work.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

By the way, campaign/leveling in these games is always unbalanced. So its not a good example to say "well when you are lvl 10.."

No it's not. You're just blatantly lying at this point.
I can easily remember all kinds of mobs in the game in Diablo 1. I can do the same with Diablo 2. Same with Grim Dawn (and it has lots of kinds). I can even remember quite a few from D3, but D3 already went the casual way hard enough so some were always dying exceptionally fast.

And I can't name you more that half a dozen of mobs from LE even though I played through it just a few days ago. I simply don't know - most of them were splatters before I could look. Like out of all the void mobs I only remember the largest things with a big mishapen hand (but I didn't bother rememebering how they're called); all other void mobs were "purple stuff that dies instantly".

[Impaler]

Originally posted by Voyager:

I refunded this game, but I am still thinking about re-purchasing it. I'm just trying to understand what is so appealing about Last Epoch, except that it's "the new RPG to play". Not ironicaly.

Here is my problem. It seems to me that 99% of all mobs exist just to test my build and to make me " enjoy the damage numbers " on them. Occasionaly there is something that might actualy live for more than split second, and very rarely there is something that can actualy harm or even kill me. Seems like a fair point of view so far ? I hope so.

Now, assuming that there is some truth in what I am describing, the whole reason to play Last Epoch is to: A) design ( or copy ) best builds, B) To gather & manage the loot. Technicaly it sounds normal for any RPG, what I dont understand is the way this game is played when I fight enemies.

Chaotic mess is how I would describe it.

Majority of mobs die before my brain can even register how they even look like. Was that a manbear, goatman or very short person with a moustache ? I have no clue, it could be as well half rat, half snake with bird nest as a hat, wearing ballet flats and using little piggy as a weapon. I wouldn't now.

I thought " maybe I didn't played it long enough ", so I've looked at high level nerdy-sweaty gameplay and it's 10x worse than what I've assumed. Everything dies from just looking at those players characters and for most part they just staring at stash, inventory, loot, abilities, passives and other random stuff.

So Last Epoch is addicting and popular becouse the way its designed arround Builds & Loot ? Thats what supost to turn me on about the game if I am correct ? Math problem, spreadsheets and sort of feeling " Oh daddy, my stash has so much stuff in it ".

Most people that like these games grew up playing Diablo and Diablo 2, so we developed a taste for them. The other side is young people whose first ARPG was Diablo III and IV, and have grown bored with it. We already know what to expect, and the gameplay loop of growing stronger, killing hordes of enemies in unique ways, getting better loot, unlocking more systems to get stronger and get better loot, etc., causes us to have a dopamine rush.

Anyone that has 800+ hours on a train sim, is not the target demographic.

https://www.zleague.gg/theportal/discovering-the-magic-of-last-epoch-a-diablo-2-fans-delight/

[just.dont.do.it]

Originally posted by Katitoff:

In PoE, Wolcen, Inquisitor Martyr and many more everything dies instantly if you have good build and you need to push very far into the end game for it to change, so no idea what are you even talking about in here.

Well thank you for naming some pretty bad ARPGs along with PoE.
And indeed I guess we have to blame PoE for making it "norm". Even if it wasn't actually in PoE for a very long time (I know, I played PoE mostly in its early days) - yet, at some point PoE devs indeed went for rebalancing the game in such a way that mobs drop like flies.

Well no, it's not a norm and neither it was a good design decision.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by just.dont.do.it:

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

By the way, campaign/leveling in these games is always unbalanced. So its not a good example to say "well when you are lvl 10.."

No it's not. You're just blatantly lying at this point.
I can easily remember all kinds of mobs in the game in Diablo 1. I can do the same with Diablo 2. Same with Grim Dawn (and it has lots of kinds). I can even remember quite a few from D3, but D3 already went the casual way hard enough so some were always dying exceptionally fast.

I dont remember any of the mobs I fought in the arpgs I played. Even the ones like Throne of Darkness (released a year after Diablo 2). Granted, I didnt play those games for hundreds of hours. I also don't remember any of them from Diablo 3.. a game that I did play for hundreds of hours.

I don't know why you give games like Diablo 1 and 2 as example when these games were pretty much the standard for these "zombie shooter style arpgs". Games like these, you have to kill enemies fast because hundreds of them are thrown at the player. If you don't, you get overwhelmed and die. Unless you got some kind of tank build I guess, in which case you will kill much slower.

Its interestingly when you say I'm "blatently lying" when earlier I was being diplomatic and said you were using a hyperbole.. when I could just have said "you are blatently lying" instead.

And btw, if you say "but that wasnt the case in those old games" then I will ask you: were you remotely as experienced with these kinds of games back then? Did you even know how to properly spend skill and stats points?

Also, you might want to go back and read where I said:

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Erm, that's exactly how they do work if you got a good build.

Especially this style of arpg, where the game throws literal hundreds of lower health enemies at the player.

Aka, I did make a distinction between this kind (by which I ment Diablo 3+ onwards) and arpgs in general.

[Tiasmoon]

Arpgs have always been unbalanced in the campaign. Having a good build makes anything die really easy. These kinds of games (the Diablo 3 clones) just amped that up so that you need less of a good build.. but its still not something that automatically happens.

[Machin Shin]

for me its the smooth gameplay and corridor gameplay, i hate open world like in D4, and a very important thing is that you have very very many ways to make different builds, not so shallow like in D3/D4