1. Introduction

Hey guys, want to start off by saying thanks so much for all the hard work, and how awesome the game is so far (even though it’s only beta)!

There are a lot of kickstarter projects that don’t go over too well (delayed releases, missing features, and a broken product at the end), but even with only 35 hours so far I can already say that I’ve gotten my moneys worth ($100 supporter), the game is in a really good state, and cannot wait for what is to come over the next year.

2. Good things about the game so far:

The forum is really nice to use

The steam-client works really well, can easily open and play the game, no hassle

The skills are really unique, and passives are really nice to use. I enjoy seeing all the builds being made (as mostly a sorcerer), and there are endless combinations

Monolith is really fun and can see myself grinding for a while when the game releases. The unique drops feel good, the max monolith (150%~ rarity) is really enjoyable to see large drops

Crafting (contrary to some opinions) is really good. I think it’s in a fine state. You tend to find a lot of endgame blues / yellows, and eventually through crafting can get really nice pieces

The transparency, frequency of patches, and the communication between devs and the community is outstanding

The “world building” in the campaign is really fun, and can’t wait for the “world” to be fleshed out more

3. Thinks I think can be improved (some of these things I know are already being worked on):

The performance needs a lot of love over the beta and future

The beginning to the game / campaign is a bit vague and hard to get into at first. Text might have been too small as well. I was mostly just clicking through the dialogue and following the arrow on the map. I started “getting it” more near the end of the campaign, and started to actually get interested, but it ended. Would love it to maybe go a little slower at the start and work your way into the campaign, to get interested. Even now, I don’t really know who my character “is” in the story of the world. It feels a lot more like the story is being thrown at me, than I’m being immersed in it.

Lack of customization of character. I totally get the reasoning behind not doing like a Monster Hunter-esk customization, because animations are costly… but I’d love if we can at least pick a female and male version of the class , keep the same body animations, just change the head / hair?

, keep the same body animations, just change the head / hair? Sorcerer having a shield is kind of odd. I love the stats, but it just seems out of place. Would prefer a more mage / warlock / caster type item

Even holding alt / ctrl, I am still a bit lost on what a lot of the stats do in comparison to each other. Like is 10% necrotic resistance more EHP than 100 hp? Is 10% crit chance better than elemental %, or spell %, or fire %? EHP and DPS just aren’t displayed. Is HP better than ward? How does glancing blow vs armor vs dodge compare? It’s just incredibly hard to know when there are no complete calculations shown. Theory-crafting (which is necessary because of re-specing… I’ll talk about later) is of the upmost importance, but the synergy between stats hasn’t “clicked” yet for me. All I know is “spell, fire, elemental damage”, int, vit, armor, glancing blow, ward retention, hp are all “good”, but again, I have no ideas about priority or synergy

I find the arena not as interesting as the monolith. Maybe because I get lag spikes (even on lowest settings) and die around wave 40, or 50, or 60 due to lag spikes… even if it doesn’t seem like my fault. For example, I have maybe 30+ arena keys sitting in my bank, and can consistently farm monolith in the very very high stat ranges.

Gold is pretty much useless. The only use is re-spec, but you’ll get my re-spec rant below. Would like to see it useful to maybe add additions to the “end of time”, or buy pets, or armor paints (maybe have an endgame “gold” color that costs 1million per paint… something to show dedication and wealth), or create your own flag / stat statue… I don’t think gold even has to tie to items / bazaar, just have a really nice use for it.

4. Re-specing critique and why restricting for the sake of restricting will hurt the game in the long term

My final point to discuss is why I’m taking a break from “grinding” Last Epoch, and why I’ve gotten sort of disinterested with the game at the time being until more content is released.

I started my character not knowing much about the game, but went with a meteor and blackhole sorc build because it looked fun, and aoe-farming in games like WoW is super interesting and fun.

Now my character is level 82, and I have reasonable items with lots of t4s-t5s, int, vit, lots of resists, so grinding items for my current build isn’t super necessary for mediocre upgrades. I have almost 1million gold, have at least 1-3 of every unique / set item it seems. So grinding for my current build would just be to get slightly better rolls on some of my pieces.

I have seen others builds, and I want desperately to create a new build with my new knowledge, and make monoliths even quicker, me do even more damage etc… In my mind I wanted to try going a sword / melee mage, there are a couple builds I wanted to try out, or try going an ice build or a lightning build. I was super excited to try out some of these builds, and re-specing spells isn’t that big of a deal, can take like 15min of arena to get to level 20.

But then I realized the passive re-spec for 20x4 re-specs would cost way way way too much gold, I could maybe re-spec once, but not more than that. So I would have to literally guess at a build (because a lot of skill points / passives are vague / need to be tested). This really discouraged me as I realized I’d probably have to grind millions of gold, or it’d be quicker to re-level to 80 on a new toon (which could take 20-30 hours, which is crazy, just to “test” / “play” out more than 1 build), or more than 1 toon, having like 5-10 mages with various builds sitting on my menu, which just doesn’t feel right. Again, I’ve pretty much maxed out the gear and playability of my current build.

Granted, rolling a different class outright would probably add more hours to the game, but then I’d be in the same loop as before.

Forcing players to grind endlessly on what is essentially 1 build on their main character in a game with millions, trillions of possible build combinations seems really out of place.

Until more content comes out, or re-specing becomes easier to do, I’ve sort of hit a content wall that is just “play another class” until I get them to near level 100, and can’t re-spec so have to stop playing or repeat 50~ hours to grind the exact same class back to 90-100.

5. Conclusion:

I’m happy with my purchase. I’m excited to see what comes! I have some critiques, and one major contention that is stopping me from playing at the moment, but I’ll stick around and see what the future holds.

Although I have some critiques, still want to thank the devs immensely for all they’ve put into the game, and can’t wait to see where it ends up in the years to come. Users only critique your work if they really care about it and want it to be great. Thanks for reading.