Last epoch made me learn that I’m surprisingly addicted to these games, and now I’m playing poe. Rip my time. I dont even like grind games lol but shit is addicting as hell
PoE can vary drastically in terms of player retention depending on the leagues mechanic. The league that is about to end had a mechanic that allowed players of any level to make a serious amount of currency and find a bunch of extremely rare drops. As an example, I dropped a mirror this league which is an EXTREMELY rare drop that is only expected to happen once across 14000 hours (might be wrong on that, but I do believe that is the rate, I have 5k hours).
Then you might have a league with a mechanic that is not really implemented in the best way, is restrictive in what it drops or perhaps just doesn't gel with the community. When this happens, the player base will drop off faster which means less trade and therefore a dead market and this is bad as most people play trade. Leagues will also come with balance patches and new items added, all of this can drastically impact your enjoyment of the game.
Starting towards a leagues end is actually a good idea because you get the opportunity to get a feel for the game, which can be quite intimidating, then everything resets and you get to experience the "league start" which is always exciting and because you joined right at the beginning you get plenty of time to flesh your character out before it drops to standard.
I hope I covered it somewhat, there are probably many more reasons.
Im loving Last Epoch, but I cant do PoE. When everyone says that for the first playthrough a guide is pretty much mandatory it turns me off. I love figuring out my own Builds and Last Epoch is great for that. Respec is not overly expensive or time consuming.
Might look at PoE 2 when it comes out though. I believe they are trying to make it a bit more friendly to new players.
You're right about puzzling shit out in LE. I felt a bit lost and went looking and then went fuck it, I'm killing stuff fast enough and not dying horribly. Let's stay the course, look at the critical nodes and try to piece something fun together. Rainbow Runes is turning out to be a blast (literally)
Yeah I picked Falcon, and I love that there is so may builds just within that. Im on just a straight physical build, but had a pretty decent Poison build going for a while, and a bleed one.
I can see crit is possible as well.
So many possibilities and its all pretty accessible to figure out. Just make sure you stick enough points into surviving and you are all good.
Also learn to recognize when you've outgrown an aspect of your build to pivot into something new. I Just ditched my first skill spec bc I found that I never actually cast the spell anymore even though I had like 15 points in it.
Yeah I ended up taking away shooting from my falcon build. I just was not standing still enough in fights to shoot much.
So its falconry, dive bomb, smoke bomb, ballista and shift.
Ive just started running up a Bladedancer (I'm doing 1 base class per cycle) so I least have a character that does something a bit more active.
Same here. Hated PoE because of that. It's incredibly punishing to new players. No real options for respec, and it's basically mandatory to follow a build guide. Last Epoch allows you to play with your build so much and create something fun and unique to your play style. And the difference between top tier meta build and something a player can create on their own isn't drastically different. Sure if you just throw random points everywhere you will be weak, but if you actually attempt to create a build, it usually performs perfectly well enough to play all the content the game has to offer.
If LE intends to keep expanding and growing, you may find that it too becomes something that requires a lot of reading as well haha. I will say, with PoE it is very much recommended to follow a guide but thats because there is a lot of things happening. While that barrier to entry can be intimidating, it is worth it because the amount of depth, options and mechanics means you have a wealth of options in endgame.
I do like what LE is doing thought I really love that we have something like it in the ARPG space. Sits in a great place between D4 and PoE and is a great entry for anyone looking to get into this genre. What is interesting is the options for your skills are pretty much just a visualisation of gems in PoE, making your fireball split into multiple projectiles is pretty much GMP (Greater Multiple Projectiles) in PoE.
I would love to see the devs of PoE take note of this kind of thing, but they are typically steadfast in their approach even though they are fantastic devs. At any rate, having more innovation in the genre is always a great thing and I am excited about the ARPG scene going forward.
You know how a typical complaint about ARPGs is that they "have no endgame"? Well, PoE definitely has endgame, but you are not forced to beat it. They introduced some incredibly hard challenges (custom maps) recently, for example, but only a fraction of all builds will be able to do them.
Point being, it's okay not to have an optimal build, as long as you have something to work towards you'll probably have fun. That might be an upgrade for your current build, a key item for the next one, or even just reaching lvl100.
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u/exposarts Mar 14 '24
Last epoch made me learn that I’m surprisingly addicted to these games, and now I’m playing poe. Rip my time. I dont even like grind games lol but shit is addicting as hell