First of all, hello Judd!

Thanks for doing this AmA.

My question is about this statement you made on your last AmA:

"I will not let our game become movement skill > screenwide kill > movement skill > screenwide kill, repeat. If you notice that happening in the future, copy and paste this comment to me and I will ensure it gets fixed. ;)"

https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/8iwbig/i_am_the_game_director_for_last_epoch_ama/dzaymps?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

The more the game advances its developement, the game can sometimes feel like"movement skill > screenwide kill, repeat". Specially after the rogue release. I know the rogue is loved by most and it feels very fluid, but I am scared it will became the standard of what people expect Last Epoch combat speed to be.

What are your thoughts on this?

Love the teams work <3

Hey Lizard! The team and I are committed to this game design goal and will continue to look at player toolkits to ensure that when you are challenging appropriately scaled content that this is not the case. Don't worry, harder challenges are on the way! See you in game.

Hello Judd!

What kind of steps are Eleventh Hour Games taking to ensure multiplayer launch to be smooth?

Will there be more than enough server capacity to ensure that people who wish to play can login without 8-hour que.

To name a few

• Learning from those that came before us. There's been a lot of hiccups when releasing server-authoritative multiplayer and there's plenty of information on what issues have occurred so we're taking into account how we can avoid the same mistakes
• Ensuring that multiplayer is not released before its ready. We're very excited to launch it but we won't do it before it's stable, enjoyable, and where it should be.
• working with consultants and engineers from the AAA space that have developed this for very popular titles
• testing, scale testing, testing, testing, testing.

Even with all the precautions we're taking it's likely that there will still be some hiccups here and there but we're very serious about getting multiplayer right.

Would you ever consider adding an auto-cast option in game?

This is already achieved using numlock and is widely used currently, but would be a major QoL addition if the game supported it natively.

We are aware the many skills are best used on autocast. This isn't intended gameplay from our perspective. While we aren't looking to prevent people from doing this, we are looking at how to redesign the major offending skills such that autocasting them isn't the optimal gameplay. And example of this would be when we redesigned Fire Shield as Flame Ward. It used to be primarily autocast but now it is tactically used instead. We will be looking at other problem skills going forward too.

The biggest downfall to most ARPGs is visual clutter. How are you going to keep everything visible for high end content without player made skills or enemy skills making the player losing accessibility?

Accessibility question. is there a time table for colourblind and other forms of accessibility options talked about?

PS. love you and Last Epoch keep up great work thanks for your time.

Visual clutter is something that we talk about a lot. This genre is predisposed to the issue so we make sure to bring it up constantly and make sure our visual artists are thinking about it when making skill effects and effects on enemies. You'll see a lot of visuals be a bit snappier and lighter weight in the near future as we're testing the game in multiplayer much more now which unveils where problem areas are.

We're excited to bring accessibility improvements and now that we've got our legs and content in a place where people are enjoying it we can start to prioritize it. We have plenty of UI mockups for what this will look like!

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm just gonna piggy back on this with a few points, I hope you don't mind!

• An option for loot visibility in between "Show" and "Hide" that shows things that have just dropped for maybe 3 seconds before hiding them would help a lot.
• Dialogue boxes during combat are a hazard. Some kind of "click anywhere to dismiss" function would be good.
• Lightning (there's a N in there, zappy stuff) effects in this game are the first lighting (no N) effects in a game that bother my eyes substantially. I have noticed that it is very specifically uncomfortable when multiple lightning skills overlap while also being very close to the camera as far as the PoV is concerned. It's especially noticeable playing a minion build that allows for 10+ targets to be struck by sky lightning at a time.
• Speaking of minion builds, one of the Acolytes im playing around with scales her damage by having as many active minions as possible. Currently she's able to have around 30 on the field in the thick of it. This is obviously gonna make it hard to see my character, and obviously effect my performance as well, and neither of those come to me as a surprise, however an option to set minion model and effect opacity at 50%, or maybe a basic accessibility option to give your player character a very prominent outline would help with that a lot.

Thank you for all the work you have done, you guys are really producing an amazing product and I can't wait to watch it grow with you.

Also, whoever decided to give the impact sound you get when hitting something with a 2 handed mace enough bass to vibrate apart a battleship is good at making decisions and you should throw them a pizza party. WHOMP.

Great suggestions and feedback.

Lightning, Fire, and on-hit effects are all going to get a pass for 0.8.3 (the patch after the one coming on Monday) if everything goes according to plan!

Yea, Necromancers are always going to be that class that people roll if they want the fantasy of having a lot of minions which is going to make it more visually noisy than others but we're continuously taking a look at that toolkit as we expand it. For example, getting 25 wraiths on the field at a time was not healthy.

Semi-transparency is something we've discussed and we've actually being switching everything over to using a single standard shader that will allow us the option to do things like this more easily. We're definitely on the same page.

Playing other ARPG's I find that the multiplayer is not meaningful. Most players end up playing their own game and teaming up only when necessary or for trading. I believe this to be a missed opportunity. Example: Diablo II: LoD was sort of down the middle here. You would find better drops and harder enemies while playing with other players, but the shared loot made way for click botting and ultimately a click competition when the boss would be killed.

Are there any specific things you plan to do with multiplayer to create an incentive to play together while balancing cooperative vs competitive gameplay?

We're taking a few steps to encourage players to want to group up.

1. Enemies will scale with additional players including health, pack size, and possibly other ways in the future
2. We want to ensure that movement stays under control so that you can keep up with your party members, and if you fall behind there being quick ways to catch up to them
3. We are making sure that grouping with players in other quest states doesn't prohibit drop-in play.
4. Dropped loot will be individual per-player to prevent whomever has the quicker finger getting all the loot

The goal is to make it so that a well organized team can complete content slightly faster than an individual but a disorganized party is a bit less efficient than a good single player.

Hey Judd!

Can you give a bit of information in what order we can expect the missing milestones of the forecast will be implemented?

For example will the Runemaster, Falconer and Warlock be implemented altogether? Or one by one? In What order? Before or after Multiplayer patch 0.9.0?

😆✌

Hey Fierce! We'll be updating the roadmap with more information alongside it in the near future. We've got the toolkits for these three masteries mostly fleshed out and are getting into skill development. We're not certain if they'll come out as a singular package or separately just yet. I think the Falconer is slightly further along than the other two but not by too much!

Priority number one for the team is multiplayer but there are plenty of team members not working on multiplayer that are working on other features/classes/skills and progress and feedback will dictate in what order what things are released. Sorry, it's a bit of a wishy washy answer but I'll get you a better one soon!

It's such a pleasure being involved with LE in it's early days, very excited to see how the game progresses.

Can you share any provisional details on trading in mutliplayer? Or perhaps information about the principles guiding your thoughts on trading?

In the kickstarter there is a mention of a Bazaar with gold, and in one of the last dev streams it was mentioned that in game trading "will be unlike anything we have seen in other games", but I'm keen to understand the principles that guide your choices with regards to trading. I can appreciate this question may be jumping the gun, but I'm super interested in your thoughts on this.

All the best & can't wait for 0.8.2!

Some design goals we have for trading are:

• Don't ruin the chase. We want people to be excited about going into the world, killing monsters, and having the chance to get great upgrades
• Bring people into the same space so it feels like a living/breathing world
• Don't build a system where people feel like they need to go outside of the game to be efficient

Will have more details later.

The game looks awesome and I've wishlisted it a while back for when I have a solid chunk of time to get into it.

What are the future plans for monetization? DLC expansion? Or stuff like cosmetics on a MTX store? Or the dreaded pay-for-convenience stuff like storage or quicker progression?

Been lightly paying attention to the development and it looks great so far! My cynicism has me wondering "What's the catch?" now.

Thanks! I know some of this stuff may still be in the works and not ironed out yet. But I am curious of what the future looks like.

Current plans are to keep the pay-to-play box model that we have now while also introducing cosmetics. If this goes as planned this should allow us to pay for server costs plus future content releases!

There will never be any pay to win or pay for convenience features. The box sale price will allow us to provide all the convenience features we can create and provide with the base game.

We have some really cool cosmetics in the work that I'm excited to share in the near future

Is there any information as to the prices of the MTX? And how flashy they're planned to be? Will there be things like wings, character effects and such?

I enjoy PoE and I've bought some MTX and supporter packs, but their pricing is overall ridiculous - some armor sets cost over $80. I'd be willing to buy more cosmetics and spend money if they were just a bit cheaper :s

How flashy cosmetics are will range quite a bit but we don't want to over do it because visual noise is a very real concern in the genre. We do want to keep most things that glow/emit light or are much more saturated as cosmetics though for a frame of reference. Pricing will vary but since there is a box price you can expect that on average they will be less than PoE which is a free to play game.

Hey Judd! Really glad I found a game with such an amazing team behind it, thanks for everything you guys do!

Anyway, my question, what are some of your biggest fears regarding the future endeavors and challenges you and your team will take on? :)

P.S. Please make necro more OP ;)

Thanks for the kind words, Zeckar!

Things that I fear in the future... I suppose not a fear but something I'm working very hard to fight off is anything that would allow us to lose our agility which has been a big component to getting us this far. I can now very easily see how team's fall susceptible to losing their speed as they grow and especially when gearing up for translations/ports/etc. Agility will be something I do everything in my power not to lose as we scale.

Excited to show you the new bone golem ;)

Hey Judd! Love LE so far, you guys are doing a great job with the game. What are your inspirations in terms of UI development? Do you consult and ask for suggestions for the changes to the UI that you do with the testers? Do you plan on extend the testing player base?

Again, thanks for all the love you all showed to us as players

Haha, I just love UI! It's a very fun challenge with a game like this because there are a lot of deep and complex systems that we need to make easy to understand. We are constantly gathering feedback, watching people play the game for the first time, and recently have brought on a couple amazing UI/UX people. You'll see a lot of that reflected in the patch this Monday.

And yes, we are continuing to expand the community tester program that we started September of last year as we see beneficial.

Thanks for being part of the community

Hey Judd,

I have a question about trading and how it will be implanted. Are you envisioning something like POE with a person to person trade system or something more like WOW with a global AH where you can just post and buy items with out having to interact with anyone ,or something in between?

More information will come about the trading system after we've been able to test its implementation a bit further! However a few design goals that will give you an idea:

1. Don't ruin the chase. We want people to be excited about going into the world, killing monsters, and having the chance to get great upgrades
2. Bring people into the same space so it feels like a living/breathing world
3. Don't build a system where people feel like they need to go outside of the game to be efficient

Hey Judd, I have a lore question because I really like the lore of the story and hope more cut scenes get incorporated into campaign to emphasize the overall story line: are the two primary gods Orobyss & Eterra related in any way? Father/Daughter, Mother/Son, Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife?

We are definitely working to make the story come across more clearly and make the world feel more immersive! You'll notice a lot more voice acting, in-game events, etc coming in the upcoming patches.

As far as Orobyss and Eterra being related... they are in a sense but that will be revealed later. I don't want to spoil anything for those that are interested in following along with the content releases!

I am absolutely in love with Last Epoch, i was holding off buying it for so long but as more and more people said greater and greater things i wanted to wait until 1.0 but i couldn't resist. I have left you a very positive review on steam and i really believe this game is that "World of Warcraft" gem type game, where it takes the good of each game and improves it and takes the worst parts of the games and makes it better, ala what WoW did to Everquest and all those 1990's MMO's. I really think this game when it hits 1.0 and beyond will rival or beat its competitors like D4, POE2. All great games, but the last epoch just has a certain flavour, so please keep going in this direction and the monolith changes sound amazing! i just wish it was this week as Biomutant releases on the same day, i feel spoilt for choice but in 2 weeks I've put 60 hours into your game. I'm just absolutely hooked made a rogue blade dancer first, now it's a mage chain lightning build.

I just want to make sure that you and everyone there know, you're making a fucking good game, please keep on this path too!

Here is my question, if i get the max supporter package on the website, will that include all previous rewards pets and cosmetic currency, or is the currency 10000 + the amount i got for buying the game? And finally, is 1.0 planned for 2021 or is it looking more like 2022? I won't be disappointed either way as i truly want you to take all the time you need because when 1.0 launches it will have the content of every triple a, arpg out now if not more, and it won't be boring mindless fucking drivel either.

Comments like this make what we're doing just that much more fulfilling. Very happy to be able to bring you something that you're enjoying spending your time on - we'll continue to produce the best content we can for you :)

The higher tier supporter packs include all the rewards from previous tiers available at that time! The amount of currency is only what's shown on that tier supporter pack. I'm hesitant to put out a 1.0 release date at the moment because we want the state of the game to be what dictates the release instead of a date.

See you in game!

What got you interested in game development, and what was the path to starting your own game studio like?

I've been a gamer since I was young and I was completely obsessed with games like Diablo 2. I ran a web agency for a while so I knew how to build and manage teams and then I worked in the corporate world for a few years before starting the studio after hours. It's been a crazy journey but if you want anything bad enough you'll make it happen. The simple timeline is

1. Decide I was going to make an ARPG/Game Studio
2. Find equally passionate ARPG/devs through Reddit that wanted the same
3. Kickstarter after ~12 months of development
4. Release on Steam
5. Growth

Hi Judd, thanks for hanging out this morning.

I'm sure you guys have played a fair bit of Path of Exile and perhaps you're even aware of the drama surrounding deterministic crafting in regards to Harvest. For anyone unfamiliar with the topic, basically you could run end-game zones and have a low chance of an event happening that provided random extremely powerful deterministic crafts. This was the primary way to incrementally craft a penultimate piece of gear stat by stat given enough time and people would sell their deterministic crafts to other players outside the game using a Discord community.

Obviously there's heavily deterministic crafting in Last Epoch and I personally think it feels better to have targeted agency in desired outcomes opposed to just severe RNG (Diablo 2 comes to mind for the latter). Even though it feels amazing when an almost perfect item drops for your build, having to grind for it for 100 hours with a stagnant feeling of progress until it drops doesn't feel super great.

Actual Questions

1) How do you feel about deterministic crafting in terms of game philosophy in what's ultimately an RNG game genre?

2) Do you have any specific thoughts on the topic of people selling "unsanctioned services" in multiplayer (this was happening in POE with harvest and happens with other game systems as well) and is this a concern for your multiplayer implementation? Obviously the bazaar is a trading system, but if there's something desirable that's not itemized, people will set up communities around trading that commodity. Diablo had transmogs and boss-killing services etc. Are these kinds of things a threat to the vision you have for multiplayer trading?

As an aside, you also have the problem of loot fatigue in that the overwhelming majority of items that drop aren't even worth looking at. Loot filters are nice for that, although it is an interesting problem even with loot filters. Essentially if almost every item is being hidden anyway, what's the point in them dropping at all? It's kind of an interesting situation that I haven't really seen a super elegant solution to yet, but maybe the solution is loot filters. Anything else might require changing the core design philosophy. Is 100 items dropping on screen in a loot-based game what makes it fun, even if you wouldn't pick up a single one of those items because they are bad? I think we're at a point in ARPG history where we're iterating on predecessors and trying to balance that fun vs. utility situation. Like those items might as well just drop as crafting materials if that's their plight in the end anyway. Or maybe the power comes from the player having to make that determination whether it's worth their time to convert all of those items. It's a weird problem.

I'm just rambling at this point, thanks for doing an AMA.

Hey there, Hands. Let's see if we can get this in one post, haha!

1. We believe deterministic crafting is great to enable players to play the builds that they'd like to without being reliant on the luck of drops. However, we want to ensure that there is still that gear chase that does require completing high level content, often times many many times over. A good example I can point to for this is the updates we made to Exalted items which are very powerful and cannot be crafted. We have other systems in the works that ensure crafting is a great start to your character but won't be the end-all-be-all for making a super powerful character.

2. We have some design plans with our trading system that should help keep this from becoming an overwhelming issue. As far as people paying people to run with them through content, it's something that I don't think we would have an elegant solution for and may just be the nature of online multiplayer games. It's not something we'll look to restrict

Loot fatigue is a tough issue. It comes down to how much we want to direct a player and decide what is going to be good for them or not. If someone is playing a Sorcerer we know that most of the time, items with elemental damage on them will be ideal. So, we could curate those items directly to them and significantly limit the amount of loot to sift through. However, this assumes that we know what you want. If the system doesn't have room for out of the box builds then I think that's a problem with the system. Because we want these sort of oddball playstyles to be possible, we need to give players the chance to find any type of gear.

Curating loot drops would also cause problems with the multiplayer economy when that goes live. If one build is particularly popular and it has a specific item that is world a lot. If that item drops at a 500% increased rate for one class then that will even further homogenize class builds. Ideally we would want people who are playing other classes to still be able to find those items and trade them.

We also like that sometimes having a really good sword drop while playing a caster can incentivize people to experiment and try out a different playstyle. It is also useful to be able to target farm gear for other characters. Because our crafting system is so open ended, what is good, is often very subjective. We need to give players the options to find gear that they might want that we might not think is ideal for them. With the variety of gear that we want to have available, the only good solution we have found is giving players a robust and easy to use/share loot filter as a tool to show what they are looking for.

We have made some minor changes to how loot drops to make good crafting bases drop more frequently in next week's patch. We have made Exalted items drop more often on high tier base items instead of low and prioritized fewer higher tier affixes over many low tier affixes. These are minor changes but will make it so that people find better gear more often and we can slightly reduce the overall loot drops. We are also adding in more target farmable rewards in the new monolith system which will let players decide what types of items they find more specifically

Great questions.

Good Morning Judd! Can you explain a little about how the skill trees are created and balanced? Also why do I have to put in wasted points to get to the good node that I want? Thanks!

Sure! We hold multiple skill-related working meetings each week. Tuesday's we'll have a larger ideation meeting where we pin down how we want the skill to behave, look, what role it should play in the class' toolkit and then we make a huge web of potential skill nodes. Then on Thursday we have a more focused game design team go through those ideas and piece together what is feasible from a design and balance perspective and they make the finalized tree. This then goes to a few developer and our VFX/Sound team to work on.

Sometimes you have to travel through less desirable augments to reach the awesome ones to keep the tree balanced. If every node was something cool and powerful we'd likely have some balance issues on our hands, haha!

Hey Judd, I love Last Epoch and am looking forward to future content. My question is around plans for plans to allow for offline play maybe in a single player only mode or way in the future when servers go offline. Do you plan to support offline play before end of life?

Yes! We will continue to support offline single player as the game does now with limited social features.

Your offline characters won't be able to join the online multiplayer realm though so there are not hacked/cheated characters interacting with economy, leaderboards, etc.

Will you ever allow mods for the offline single player characters, similar to what Grim Dawn allows?

While we enjoy mods we are not currently intending to allow modding of the game.

Do you intend to offer short-term leagues, and if so: What kind of release cadence do you expect for league content?

We do! Epoch's seasons/leagues will be called Cycles. We're currently looking at a 4-5 month cadence for these but we'll need to release a couple to find what works the best for the game and community.

Any plans to add random events or encounters to the story and/or end game? Things like goblins or random hidden areas in other games can make exploring more exciting.

Absolutely. We feel that additions like these are very important and they will be coming. We actually just created our Wealth Elemental model which is super cool :)

Judddddd!!

When can we expect to see an Epoch Convention???

airhorn.wav

Haha, time will tell!

Awesome! Are there any new features you are going to be making that you are excited about?

There are tons! I think the biggest feature we'll be releasing that we and the community are excited about is server-authoritative multiplayer. The game is a live service model that we'll be supporting for many years to come so we'll be releasing features that we haven't even thought of yet.

What has been the toughest challenge to overcome so far (or will be) in developing LE?

Probably growing the team and company from an after hours project to where we are now. We not only have to develop the features for the game but also develop the team and company. The whole "changing the tires as we're driving the car" model :)

I'm super excited for the Monolith updates!

Do you know when we'll hear more about the other endgame systems, especially Gates of Memorium?

I'm hoping to create a developer blog on our more up-to-date plans regarding the additional end game systems. Lots of really exciting stuff planned with some shifts that we think will benefit the game in big ways.

Hi Judd! Love the game thus far and am excited to see what else you guys implement as time goes on.

I'm curious about a passive for multiple classes: duel-wielding. When you log into the game the graphics seem to be misleading - the rogue appears to have 2 daggers and the primalist clearly has 2 1-handed axes, however in the passives tree when unlocking the ability it only allows a 1-handed sword to be equipped in the off-hand slot. Was this planned or will other 1-handed weapons be allowed to be equipped down the road?

Hey Briseis!

Each class has different dual wielding capabilities. As you have observed on the character selection screen, Primalists can dual wield axes and Rogues can dual wield daggers. This is reflected in game. These are designed to be thematic for each class. The Rogue can dual wield daggers and swords but not axes. The mage can only dual wield swords.

Hope this helps!

How the recent state of game effects other features from forecast?

Is Lost memories and legendaries are still a thing?

Lost memories and legendaries are still a thing but the idea of what they are has transformed a bit. We're always evaluating our past ideas with what the game is now and taking into account community feedback. We'll update the forecast in the near future alongside a developer blog with some more information.

Hello Judd,

Firstly i love Last Epoch and huge thanks for the whole EHG team for creating this game.

Many people is concerns performance issues. We know its ongoing project and every patch comes optimization/performance improvements. can you give answer which assures that performances are getting better? Like how heavily you test things?

Hey Chatter, definitely!

If you've been around early access for a while you'll probably notice that performance is much better than it was even a year ago. Our main engineer working on performance related issues peeled off to work on server-side performance for multiplayer in the 0.8.2 patch cycle but we're still bringing a number of performance updates this patch as well.

To give you some context here, one of the biggest issues with our performance has been instantiation of game objects or "things" you see in the game. We've developed much better systems to handle this in the last couple patch cycles and are rolling it out across different types of game objects.

Another big one is RAM useage - as we hone in on our finalized UI style we can start to pack images into what is called sprite maps which will reduce the memory foot print significantly.

We're now going to be spending time having those engineers make systems to find enemies/vfx/and areas in zones that have performance issues specific to them and address those.

There's probably more I'm missing here that they're doing but I can assure you that it is a heavy focus and the guys tackling it take a lot of pride and joy in making those performance graphs nicer, haha!

Love the game and thanks for taking time out of your day to host this AmA! I'd like to ask: What goes on behind the scenes that's enabled your team to be so agile and easily change game systems? One example of this was the complete overhaul to the defensive system changing protections -> resists. Did your previous experience as a web developer influence what kind of project management systems your team currently uses? I'm frankly very impressed by the rate that you iterate on things in LE.

I'd say the secret sauce there is that I've built a team of ARPG fanatics first and foremost. We live and breathe this genre and we're passionate about it. We generally agree on what issues are present and are quick to debate and turn around solutions to those issues and once we have a solution agreed upon it's hard to keep us from putting in the effort to make it happen.

I'd say my previous experience as a web dev and running a web agency just helps with running things as if our community and team are clients where we want to accommodate their wants while making sure it's additive to the overall health of the game. We use different production methodologies at EHG than I did back then though which are spearheaded by members who are very talented in that area.

First off, thanks for all the hard work, I am absolutely loving the game so far, and it only seems to get better and better every patch.

What are your long term plans with post release content, such as seasons/leagues. What kind of things can we look forward to being different between them?

Hey Dethmonger! We will have "Cycles" which is our term for Seasons/Leagues which will come with economy resets, new features/mechanics, new masteries/skills, and other things we deem to be a good upgrade to the game. Honestly, we want to evaluate what the game needs at that time instead of preplanning for years in advance so Cycle content may be quite different from one Cycle to the next. It won't always be "X new sets, X new zones" or "X new mechanic that takes over everything", but maybe some of them will be that way. Lots of fun plans internally already for new masteries for example.

What programming certification, or courses would you recommend for someone wanting to get into that field? What programming languages and software are the most commonly used for game development?

There are many different routes to get into game development. The two biggest and most common game dev engines are Unity and Unreal. They use C# and C++ respectively. Learning either of these in depth will give a massive jump start to learning the other. I would recommend picking one and running with it. Having a presentable finished example of a game you made is the best way to catch someone's eye and stand out in a crowd. It doesn't need to be something amazing and perfect but just having a finished product to show is so important. Good luck!

Do you intend to add more specialization slots and points to the game? Thank you for your time!

Hey, mattt! Changing the number of slots and points available drastically affects the balance of every skill in the game. We are looking ahead to 1.0 launch and global redesigns of that magnitude would be unwise at this time. It's something that we won't rule out post launch but we are very happy with the current distribution and plan to launch with the number of slots and points currently available.

Hello, Just, with best wishes and hopes I'm not too late! Really loving what I've played so far and excited about what's to come!

In particular, you have a lot of interesting twists on ARPG endgame planned/announced, but I was wondering if you had any info to share on where the emaining (and apparently last, given the roadmap) story chapter is in terms of dev priority? Is it more of a "one of the last things before 1.0" thing or will we be seeing it sooner?

We've been developing the next chapter of content for nearly 3 months now which has been spearheaded by the broader art and level design teams. It's going to bring a lot with it that can be experienced inside and outside of that chapter like new enemies, zones, and other content for end game. You'll see it sooner than 1.0.

Hi there. Thank you very much for your time. Bought the game 2 weeks ago, already got 5 friends on board, can't wait for the Multiplayer to be ready.

We all have a ton of fun, there is currently really only one concern i have:

The Loot. Uniques drop quite Frequently, Set items are a bit rare (at least untill about level 80) but my problem with the loot is, i don't really get excited anymore when a Unique drops, since i mostly will not use it because it's for a different build, or flat worse than my crafted rares. i already got the 3 uniques my build can profit from, so the loot gets stale and unexciting. Also Set items mostly are a downgrade to most of the builds, because they are not powerfull enough.

do you know about this issue, is it on your radar, are there any plans to make uniques and sets more meaningfull, and also bigger sets than 3 pieces in the making?

thank you!

Hi Stae! I'm glad you're enjoying the game and thank you for spreading the word.

I think there's somewhat of an expectation of uniques stemming from other games that we're breaking the mold from a tad. We don't necessarily want most uniques to be better than good found or well crafted gear that has the mods that your character is built around, but to be a unique piece of gear that has mods that you won't find elsewhere. With that being said, we do fully intend to make more powerful sets and uniques that are considered "chase" items that are very powerful - but if you can find a four tier 7 mod mod exalted item it's likely going to be hard to beat!

Check out some of the new uniques we're dropping in 0.8.2 this Monday.

Will you be resetting the blessings we earned from completing Monoliths and Empowered Monoliths?

No, your Blessings will remain intact and there will be a much improved UI supporting them!

Will Blessings be reset with the next update?

No, your Blessings will remain intact and there will be a much improved UI supporting them!

as for features for the loot filter later on....

will sounds/icons/loot beams be coming later down the road towards release of the game?

Definitely. We're actually pretty excited about adding a Mike sound pack option for all the crazy sounds and saying he's been making on our Friday developer live streams. "Oh, spicy!! Hot hot hot!"

There are some good loot filter updates rolling out in the 0.8.2 patch coming this Monday at 1pm CDT

How many new classes are planned for launch? Will there be an actual reward for reaching level 100 (unique limited time cosmetic item that is only available for that season)? Atm there is no incentive to reach 100 other then "Yay I did it". Keep up the good work!

We still have the Falconer, Runemaster and Warlock to go before launch. We're also revisiting a number of classes to improve their toolkits and visuals before then as we've grown substantially in terms of the quality we can produce.

There's not a current reward planned for reaching level 100 but I very much like the idea and will run it by the team.

Hey Judd, I've noticed that idols in their present state have instability rolls (always 0 at the moment) which makes me wonder with the changes to UI that dramatically change idol choices -will crafting to improve idols be something that is explored in future patches/beyond 1.0?

Hey Castle! It is overwhelmingly likely that we will expand on the idol system post 1.0. We consider it to be a core system and itemization component to the game and have had a number of ideas from the team and community that we see a lot of promise in. Not ready to say if that involves crafting or not just yet though

Hello Judd, can you provide more information/timelines on when multiplayer is coming to LE?

Multiplayer is one of those things that is "ready when it's ready". I will say that we have a much larger team working on this exclusively now and it's coming along well! We do a team-wide multiplayer test every Wednesday.

It's important that we give it the development time it needs as no one wants to play a multiplayer game with issues. I've talked to the team about doing some multiplayer live streams so you guys can follow along progress a bit closer.

Love the game!

Have you guys thought about blockchain solutions to item trading on the future, giving true ownership of items to players? (check Gods Unchained as reference)

It's definitely an interesting and powerful way to go about ownership but we are likely sticking with a traditional method for the foreseeable future! It would be a pretty big shift in our architecture.

I appreciate your game and the AMA, I have 2 questions:

How are you planning to structure the monetization model for the future? Will it be cosmetics only or do you think you will introduce other paid features like specialized stash tabs, paid content dlcs or other stuff?

And 2nd question: With multiplayer and trading coming in the future, acquiring gear by buying it from others is obviously going to be much faster and easier than finding it yourself. Do you already know if you're going to balance drop rates around trading, therefore making ssf-playstyle grindier/harder or are you gonna focus on balancing around solo play and just leave players alone who choose to play "on easy" by trading?

I have high hopes for your game and am excited for the patch on Monday!

We plan to stick with the box model that we have currently and will be offering cosmetics. The upfront price allows us to provide every convenience feature we can create at no additional cost so there will never be paid-convenience. Very excited to get the cosmetic shop up and running in the near future - there are some very cool appearances, pets, skill VFX, etc on the way.

For trading, we intend to avoid some of the issues you're mentioning here. We have the luxury of seeing how other trade systems have affected games in the near and long term and have learned those lessons as being part of those playerbases.

We're very excited about this upcoming patch. Try Storm Crows plus Lightning Swipe ;)

What's the most helpful new skill you've had to pick up over the course of creating this new game?

Probably managing a much larger team and iterating on processes that got us to X but won't get us to Y. We have an amazing team that I imagine makes this quite easy in comparison to what it could be though!

Hey Judd, thanks for the AMA, hearing from people who successfully started a game studio always gives me some hope Ill be able to do it too someday.

How did you find like minded people to work on your game with you?

I have a project I've been working on by myself for the past year but I struggle to find others who are interested in similar genres of game and are interested in working together. Thanks!

Reddit! You'd be amazed at how many people just like you are out there and just don't know how to start. Go to subs like /r/INAT and /r/IndieDev!

If you can rally a team and communicate a clear goal you have a good chance at starting something that could very well become the start of something bigger. Sometimes the waters aren't the smoothest but if you want it go out there and make it happen!

Best of luck and if you need any advice I'd love to help you through any questions you have. You can add me on Discord - I'm at the top of the server list on https://discord.gg/lastepoch

Hey Judd, I love the game so far just got back into after trying your game out when it first came out way long ago. My question is I love wearing hoodies especially when streaming your game to keep me warm cause my girlfriend keeps the house so cold i shake and shiver, when will the last epoch store become available to purchase hoodies so i can keep warm? Thanks! Sincerely Thegrimreaper_tv

Hey Reaper! We plan to bring an ecommerce shop to the website before end of year, maybe a touch sooner.

Funny enough we actually ordered a lot of hoodies and they just came out terribly so there's a few large boxes of hoodies in a garage not being used. :(

We want them too - you can expect them.

hoodies PLZ <3

(and cap!)

Hats will be there as well. I wear my Epoch hats everywhere. :)

I'm glad to see your AMA. LE is such a great game! I have some questions about EHG and LE.

How is the game dev background of the co-founders and early members of EHG? Have you guys worked on other games before joining EHG? If not, it's such a bold but courageous move for you guys to make LE.

About the class and mastery, will all unimplemented masteries be released before or after multiplayer release? Also, will every class have its way to pursue minion builds? Forge guard's minion skills and Rogue 's Ballista are quite different than the conventional summoner archetype. Will there be more minion supports to unimplemented skills or masteries?

Hi Omelette! The range of experience on the team varies quite a bit, and often time's I've hired people for the passion and knowledge of the genre over their technical knowledge. We do have quite a few members that have worked on very impressive high-profile projects in the past though and have built a very strong network of consultants and specialized contracted engineers that assist regularly. From the beginning I knew that this was a very ambitious project and that's why I hire for passion for what's being worked on. It's hugely important that people are fired up about what we're doing as we'll be continuing to create content for Epoch for hopefully a very long time!

With multiplayer being "ready when it's ready" we're not 100% certain on that ordering but I'm assuming multiplayer will be first.

While we like minions we're definitely not intending all classes to be "minion classes" even if they do have a couple options for them here and there - that should fall mostly with Primalist and Acolyte. We'll add some minions that make thematic sense to other classes though and I can think of at least one coming to a non-minion class that isn't the Falconer.

Hey Judd,

I'm a recent game design graduate, but I'm finding it difficult to nail a job in game dev. What could a junior game developer do to become more desirable to your company?

I'll give you the hackerman tip on how to get into game dev as a junior, at least at EHG. Enter as a QA and then creep into other spaces. We've had a fair number of people enter as QA that do mainly development, design, level design, production management, etc. now.

Learn a bit about the company you're targeting and legitimately show an interest in what they are working on. This is true for any industry.

Best of luck! It's not a challenge that is unique to you so keep your head up and you'll find an entry

Hello, thanks for the AmA, I have been following closely.

Will there be PvP in this game?

It is a big part of Diablo 2 LOD and one of the reason why I couldn't get into D3 or PoE.

We would like to add PvP, yes! We have some really fun ideas for what PvP could look like in the genre but there are quite a few things that we will be tackling before exploring this. It's probably worth mentioning alongside this that if we do implement PvP it won't ever be super balanced and competitive as we want to ensure that PvE is the main content that we balance around. We do know, from being D2 players ourselves, that some PvP action even if unbalanced can be a lot of fun for some people.

Hey Judd!

Smalltime streamer here. One of my community members was a sweetheart and bought me Last Epoch, and i now have over 300 hours in this game, and i enjoyed every single second!

I just wanted to know, What is the first thing you and the team talk about in the morning when coming to work?

​

I hope yall are doing well, and stay healthy ^_^

Thanks for the kind words, Telling!

We have our team standups at 10am CDT as a broader international team over Discord and usually it starts with some excitement about something implemented earlier in the day by some of our dev team in Europe or bringing some stuff up that we see on our forum/Reddit/socials/etc.

Hello Judd!

Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA. I started playing Last Epoch something like 2 months ago and can't put it down, really love the game and am so excited to see the EHG team in game chatting and similar.

As to the question - could you speak a little bit to the business side of things? Did you have prior experience in running a business or did you kind of learn as you went? I am curious if that whole aspect added a layer of difficulty to the dream of developing a game, I imagine the business side was a whole process on its own to help make that dream a reality. Wish you and the team all the best, and can't wait to see how LE continues to unfold.

Thanks!

Hey TandCuddles! I definitely did have experience with running start ups, managing teams and projects before starting EHG, however this was in the form of a web agency and SaSS company which has quite a few similarities. I would say that building and managing a quickly growing company is as hard if not harder than actually developing the game itself (which is pretty technically challenging), however I've been fortunate to find great and passionate people that have made it about as easy as it could be.

We look forward to bringing you more great game content!

When will we have pets? Will they be available to purchase?

Hey Shaunh! Some supporter pets are already in the game and we have plenty more awesome cosmetic pets on the way that will be purchasable through the cosmetic store. Any requests for cool new pets you'd like to see?

Just want to say that I'm having a ton of fun with the game. I managed to down the abomination for the first time this morning after dying to it a few times earlier this week. It was one of my goals before the monolith revamp next week.

I can really tell how much hard work has gone into this game, and it's a blast to play.

Here's a few questions I've come up with:

• What technologies, frameworks or languages are you using to create the game?
• What has been the most challenging part of creating the game?
• Any plans for a caster class dealing in void magic?

Hey Axlc! Glad to hear you're enjoying your time in Eterra!

1. The game is built in Unity using c#
2. The most challenging feature to implement has been server authoritative multiplayer. It is a highly specialized field and requires immense testing.
3. Maybe....

Hi, just curious about what will happen to our current monolith progress after the update. Will it reset everything? I’m not concerned if thats the case because i’m just as excited for the new monolith structure. Thanks for doing this!

Good question! Which timelines you have unlocked will remain in place. The current runs you have going in any of these timelines will be reset as the new structure is incompatible with the old. So, if you want to hop right in to a level 100 monolith that you already have unlocked, you'll be able to do so.

Hello Judd,

Sorry if this was asked already. Is there a timeframe when some skills will recieve spec trees?

Me and a friend have been wanting to do a detonate dead based build there is no specialization for it last i saw.

Thanks!

Hey Pheonix! Luckily a number of our devs that usually work on skill trees will have quite a bit more time to work on skills again in the 0.8.3 cycle so we should be filling these out even more quickly.

Hi, I bought the game years ago, I migrated to Linux this week, and performance is an issue right now. Is there more improvements planned for a better Linux performance/support?

I am using Nvidia official drivers and the game on OpenGL is giving me 30 fps and on Vulkan with -force-vulkan only prrsents a blank screen.

Hi Kensai!

We are always working on performance, yes. In this upcoming patch with have many significant improvements for all platforms. We also have a few minor Linux specific changes. With some big wins still available for all users that is our primary focus at the moment.

Thanks for doing this!

Out of curiosity, as a long time ARPG player, what are some of the biggest challenges that The ARPG genre face in the long term for not only company success, but also player fulfillment?

I think one of the biggest issues the long standing ARPG's face is feature bloat which makes it hard for new players to get in to. Another is probably just with the live-service model, trying to keep up with the graphics race if you enter it while not being able to "start over" with the newest and shiniest engine tools and instead having to upgrade what is existing which is sometimes more difficult.

Good question :)

Regarding visual clutter: One of the things I have the hardest time with in ARPGs is keeping track of the mouse cursor. Is there any chance we could get an option for a screenwide pair of horizontal and vertical lines intersecting where the mouse cursor is? It's a feature I've seen in CAD programs in the past, and was super intuitive, allowing your peripheral vision to help hint your eye to the region of the cursor regardless of how much stuff is around it.

Hey Cospik! Yea, we definitely hear the desire to have additional looking cursors or ways to track your cursor. I haven't heard this one before but it seems like a good idea as an option. I'll bring it up with the team!

Hey Judd! Thanks for the AmA and for your dedication to the ARPG genre. My question is related to the API and the support of community developments: any plan to release at some point resources for fellow developers willing to kick this community forward ? Cheers ! Keep up the good work.

Hey Theone! We are definitely planning on releasing more API functionality in the future. While some sites already exist that pull data we would like to present this information to the community and also continue to provide a 'media kit' to help build fan sites. Growing a healthy a community is critical to Last Epoch's success so we will make sure to contribute to that as often as we can.

Hello Judd, been following LE development for about two years now. I really like what you guys are doing with it.

I am ONLY interested in solo play and would LOVE to purchase cosmetic mtx when they are available, but I have zero interest in any kind of multiplayer (due to servers issues, crashes, connection issues and other nightmares). In fact I despise current always-online trend in modern games.

My question is - Will LE be playable offline? And if yes, how will that work with mtx? I dont mind having to connect every now and then but being unable to play to bad connection is a great turn off for me.

Thank you in advance for answer.

Hey MrGrumpy! We are exploring ways to verify cosmetic ownership in single player but it would require a request to the server. We'll have more information on that in the near future as it's something we're exploring now.

One thing I'm not sure about the plans for LE is - what kind of multiplayer do you guys have in mind? Does this mean some kind of global trade between players like in PoE, small scale co-op like in Grim Dawn, or something else?

We are developing server authoritative multiplayer. This will be most similar to games like D2 and PoE. You will be able to find players in town hubs and through social systems. You will then party up and venture forth into the world. As for trading, it will be something else all together. We are still developing the details of our trade systems but I can tell you that it is being developed to not require a third party trade site to be used.

Hey Judd! I haven't been playing very long but I haven't seen any fist type weapons. Claws, punching daggers, knuckles etc. If not in game, are you guys thinking of implementing them?

Hi Vor, fist weapons are a really cool item type that we do want to add to the game. They aren't slated for 1.0 release but I can see them making an appearance at some point down the line.

Are you considering any other platform releases? Maybe Stadia?

We are definitely considering ports to other platforms! Right now our focus is on our PC release but we are also actively working on improving controller/gamepad support which will help us down the road should we decide to port to console and other platforms. We are working with GeForce Now and should be on their platform soon.

There is a node for summon healing totem that converts it to thorn totem. The wording makes it seem like it gains thorn totem in addition to healing effects, but the totems no longer heal. Is this intentional or a bug?

Also, there is a node after this that increases your healing totem limit but i seem to be able to summon as many as i want without this node anyways?

Hey Judan! This is a bug, yes. We have some pretty big plans for Spriggan form coming in the patch after next in which we are redesigning the skill from the ground up with all new visuals too. Here is a little preview of things to come [Transform Updates - Last Epoch Forum](https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/updating-the-druid-classs-transform-abilities/31048)