Enemies Respawn After Using Town Portal - Please remove this ASAP

[Wot?]

Just going to say it:

This needs to not be a thing.

It severely punishes people with slower internet connections, causes undue harm to anyone who plays Hardcore, dissuades people from actually using TPs, and in general is just a really bad mechanic.

You can read design interviews and articles about ARPGs all the way back to Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 - everyone has been in agreement for an incredibly long time that areas and monsters respawning when a portal to town is used, is heinously garbage for the player.

I understand the instant monster respawn may help people farm content, but to put it simply, it largely punishes people!! It's not an expected or logical design decision especially to experienced / long-term ARPG players and extra especially to new Last Epoch players.

There is no warning about town portals respawning enemies, and at time of current writing, if you clear an area, town portal back to sell things, then use your town portal again, by the time you load in, you're completely surrounded on all sides by monsters that have wandered, aggro'd from off screen, or because you can't reasonably see where all the monsters you killed over the last 5-10 minutes in an area, died.

This issue is exasperated by the fact that many movement skills do not happen quickly enough, or outright will not allow you to exit the huge swarm of monsters. A good example is Lunge, but every class struggles with escaping a 6-monster-layer-deep circle of enemies within 1 second of real life time.

I have genuinely dropped a portal in the absolute corner of a map where I thought no monsters were - it was an area I hadn't explored yet, and the rest of the area was cleared - and even still, when I zoned back in, I saw the loading screen, got to look at a 360 degree spiral of about 50 monsters surrounding me, and then I died instantaneously from 14-20 monsters all hitting me at the same exact time in a synchronized OTK.

Please fix this. Put in instances like Path of Exile, or make it timed, or do anything whatsoever. The HCSAF crowd specifically have all suffered this happening atleast once or twice, especially since 0.9 and online play has become the main mode of experiencing the game.

Even me - who plays HC in every ARPG and can still remember the bittersweet death of a level 99 character in Diablo 2 - is really freaking tired of dying in cheesy town portal related bullcrap. The many many hours I ended up "wasting" because I forgot about the re-spawn from the portals on my only 60+ HC character is utterly garbage.

Additionally, the town portal re-spawning monsters mechanic unduly and extra punishes anyone who is older or disabled or otherwise suffers from TBIs - Traumatic Brain Injuries - including combat veterans of the infantry like myself.

Even KNOWING the portal respawns things, I occasionally forget, and it has led to me entirely not using Town Portals whatsoever. Not even when I really need to, like because real life is being an issue, or I am sick, or etc. Many others have kids or pets that may urgently need attention.

It's garbage ya'll. It shouldn't be safer to AFK inside of an area than it is to portal back to town.

It needs to be changed.

Thanks.

P.S: You can see my other HC/HCSAF gripes here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/899770/discussions/0/3824162050998195165/

[magnafides]

After dying 3x to this, I asked about it on the LE discord and the dev said it isn't supposed to respawn the enemies.

I reported it as a bug on the LE forums: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/tp-back-to-cleared-area-results-in-enemies-immediately-spawning-on-top-of-me/57614

[Ravenkid9266]

Originally posted by magnafides:

After dying 3x to this, I asked about it on the LE discord and the dev said it isn't supposed to respawn the enemies.

I reported it as a bug on the LE forums: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/tp-back-to-cleared-area-results-in-enemies-immediately-spawning-on-top-of-me/57614

I do not know about this shift in design. I am not saying that the developer is wrong, but I think it is an unintended result of a planned design feature.

See back in the day map permanence was a bug, then it got rolled into a feature. It is likely that the respawn is tied to that. It seems that when you "return" you are going to a new instance of that map, and that is intended. So the respawn is likely tied to that "feature" even if unintended.

I also know they are working on some sort of grace period to stop people from dying due to latency when loading a map instance. So it seems there are more wheels in motion then it would at first appear.

[nicodeimous]

In my experience anything that can "refresh the map" respawns all the mobs on it. Town portal does this, going into an area and returning also does this. It makes things very tedious.

[RodHull]

Is a bug and was never intended but at some point in the not so distant past it got reworked into a 'feature' following 'feedback' (from whom who knows) or rather they couldn't fix it...

[Robin]

I thought it was just a placeholder function until they could fix it for online mode but nope still there. Ridiculous. Can't even TP safely on hardcore cause you'll get killed when you walk back in.

[orionar101]

Originally posted by magnafides:

After dying 3x to this, I asked about it on the LE discord and the dev said it isn't supposed to respawn the enemies.

I reported it as a bug on the LE forums: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/tp-back-to-cleared-area-results-in-enemies-immediately-spawning-on-top-of-me/57614

its been doing that since like day 1

[Micklov1n]

I gotta admit a couple times it was hilarious to portal back and just start slamming my head against the keyboard cause I was not expecting 440923470932480 mobs to be humping my character.

[zargo_zore]

Definitely not a good thing and very bad for HC. Will not play HC anymore till this is fixed. Basically makes selling and picking up loot and town portals useless.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by zargo_zore:

Basically makes selling and picking up loot and town portals useless.

When I voiced this same issue over a year ago I was told, unironically, by fans and defenders on here that I

"Shouldn't be selling loot anyway as its pointless"

And not once did this strike them as odd advice to be giving people in an ARPG literally built on that gameplay loop of filling your backpack then returning to town.

[Ravenkid9266]

Originally posted by RodHull:

Is a bug and was never intended but at some point in the not so distant past it got reworked into a 'feature' following 'feedback' (from whom who knows) or rather they couldn't fix it...

Yea, that is why I was so confused.

Originally posted by magnafides:

After dying 3x to this, I asked about it on the LE discord and the dev said it isn't supposed to respawn the enemies.

This sounds like a shift in design, because maps havent had permanence so either the dev misunderstood or something changed.

[Yglkrum]

Originally posted by Ravenkid9266:

See back in the day map permanence was a bug, then it got rolled into a feature.

You keep repeating that in multiple threads. Can you point me to a forums post or something else where the devs confirm this? I'm not saying you're wrong or anything. I just want to read it myself. Thanks in advance!

[Ravenkid9266]

Originally posted by Yglkrum:

Originally posted by Ravenkid9266:

See back in the day map permanence was a bug, then it got rolled into a feature.

You keep repeating that in multiple threads. Can you point me to a forums post or something else where the devs confirm this? I'm not saying you're wrong or anything. I just want to read it myself. Thanks in advance!

Honestly, I do not have a link to provide you. Rodhull likely knows more on this subject then I do. Having said that a quick bit of googlefu revealed on the official forums multiple recent bug reports about maps refreshing and multiple users and developers stating that it is not a bug.

However if you go back years, you will find posts from developers acknowledging that maps resetting is unintended and will be fixed.

Part of the problem is how EHG dolls out information. What would be a major announcement for any other studio plastered everywhere, EHG dolls out in random reddit post replies, or on the discord, the official forum, tucked away in a content creator interview, or a developer stream, or even a stream with a LE content creator. This makes it very hard to keep links direct quotes.

What I can tell you is I have been here for quite sometime, and as you say posted this statement multiple times, however this is the first time someone has asked for a direct quote, so give me a bit to googlefu back years of developer posts.

Edit: A quick search pulled up this quote from Sarno (Dev tag)
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/item-map-reset-on-using-personal-portal/11626/5
"This is a known technical limitation which will be resolved in a future update. I can’t yet offer an ETA for when zone persistence will be improved, however it is on our radar." Apr 2019

A steam search found: the quote "This is a technical limitation that should be resolved with patch 0.9 (multiplayer)." Jan 2022

I also snagged a quote
https://steamcommunity.com/app/899770/discussions/0/3193615072220855058/#c3193615072221576152
"Just for the record, we know exactly how to fix the zone respawning problem. We’ve had a plan in place for it for years that is still going to work well." Jan 2022

As well as: "Currently, almost nothing about the 'world state' is saved as you travel from one area to the next. The system that will resolve this is coming alongside multiplayer when it releases sometime this year" May 2021

Now we have established that it is, as for the removal well its not here and not on the road map not on what they are working on despite the MP patch. I guess we just have to either cross our fingers that the developers are keeping it a secret for some reason or point to the other features they promised on their kick starter and quietly removed from the road map. If you are asking for some post I could link to with a mea culpa from the developers about the removal of features I do no think it is a realistic ask.

Edit2: found my old notepad doc with a dead reddit link dated Dec 2022 with what I copied, take it at your own value: "Town portal resets the area?" User Ekimarcher (EHG team tag) "Yes, that's how it works"

Edit3: Found on Steam by user EHG_Kain https://steamcommunity.com/app/899770/discussions/0/5764050278033♥♥♥♥57/

"It is intentional that when you leave a scene (instance) that the scene resets. The Fog of War returning is not intentional and is a known bug which we are internally tracking, though has been low priority. " Mar 2022

As well as this reply from EHG_Kain when asked about maps resetting: (He rambles a bit so I chopped up the relevant part in longer quotes for context but link provided.)

https://steamcommunity.com/app/899770/discussions/0/3416556480600150312/

"I don't think it's very surprising that there's many reasons for a particular thing to happen, and that some of those are beneficial, and that we would acknowledge those beneficial aspects as well."

"In standard gameplay, leaving and re-visiting a zone is very uncommon. "Vendor runs" are disincentivized in Last Epoch, as we want players to be out there playing the game, killing mobs not sitting in town talking to vendors as their gameplay experience. As such, items are set to sell for extremely little gold so players don't feel any need to keep portalling to town to sell items. Quests also don't regularly have players re-visiting the same zone. In standard gameplay, the only common events we expect a particular zone should be revisited is if a player needs to portal to town to go AFK for a while, or has left the game and come back to it, or with the monolith of Fate reward zone."

[Ravenkid9266]

That is quite the wall of text but here is a quick timeline of the few quotes I referenced with as many links as I could find from above.

2019- maps resetting is a bug due to technical limitations.
2022 Jan- we know exactly what the problem is and have a plan in place for years.
2022 Mar- It is intentional.

So from Jan 2022 it was not intended but they had a plan in place for years, then in Mar 2022 it is Intentional.

Seems like a bug got rolled into a feature to me.

[Hybria]

Is that really of any relevance?
There is really zero need to EVER portal back to town through the whole campaign.

Stuff sells for next to 0 gold for exact the reason of making going back to town obsolet.

[Ravenkid9266]

Originally posted by Hybria:

Is that really of any relevance?
There is really zero need to EVER portal back to town through the whole campaign.

Stuff sells for next to 0 gold for exact the reason of making going back to town obsolet.

Seems to be of relevance to the OP, as well as any number of users who have brought up the subject here, on reddit, and the official forums. Speaking of relevance, I was asked to provide any official statements on the subject, and have done so. If it is of no important to you that is fine if it is that is also fine, I was not taking a position on it being good or bad or purple simply provided the requested information about what is. The value of the subject is up to you to decide, and has no bearing on the requested information I provided.