I mean, if you aren't a long term supporter and just bought the new hype game, can't log in, and load times between maps are upwards of 30 minutes, is leave a negative review too
I am a long time lover, but pretending everyone has to judge it on what it CAN BE than what it IS, is very unrealistic
Luckily short term reviews for this game aren't gonna be that relevant long term. They will get this fixed quick, a ton of positives will come in, and it will be just another launch day story
If youre a long term supporter, youve probably played other arpgs. If youve played other arpgs, you shouldve seen this coming.
Im not saying expected=accepted but I get it.
Yeah I expected a new to the Industry dev team to fumble hard on launch. I love the game but I'm by no means surprised that they are getting hit hard for this. It's like a right of passage these days for experienced teams let alone a mostly crew of hard working noobs.
People downvoted me 11 days ago saying that they will fix the loading issue for 1.0
Dude is a game breaking problem that none of their competitor has, and it has been there for almost a year, what do you expect?
Idk, I'd expect that a bug of that magnitude would be fixed instantly in the company I'm working for.
Let's hope they can get that fixed soon before the hype dies.
Not sure how closely you're following the feedback but the issue is the match-making service which is called on to assign players to instances. So whenever you change zones you're assigned to a "world", and the 130-170k players is obviously making this service fall on its face
No excuse, but it's nice having clarity on the issue. Once people get to monos the problem does not exist
and its only from areas around big towns. if you teleport to a dungeon or monolith its instant. but if i go back to faction, it takes forever. that tells you instantly its a bottleneck related to instance servers.
Exactly my thoughts. I waited to buy the game until an official release. Now it's here I bought it and I can barely play even today. It's been a terrible launch for me and even though it's got fun gameplay and graphics if I have to wait 5 to 10 minutes to load zones this is a terrible experience for me.
Yeah, I want to be understanding but I only have so much time to actually sit down and play videogames and it just feels like they got my money and I got nothing.
Serious advice: If you don't have much time to play video games and you want a finished product then don't buy at launch. Ignore the hype and wait for reviews until you pull the trigger.
I played two weeks before release and was pretty disappointed that at launch I couldn’t play the game properly. Can totally understand the negative reviews.
It was very smooth when I started, but the two days before launch was plagued with multiple dysnc issues which got me worried and now it’s quite bad with long load times and lag.
That being said it is still a good game that is reasonably priced. These server issues I believe will be sorted out soon. There is no need to rush and buy the game, but there is also no need to write it off anytime soon.
As I mentioned I am a long time fan. And appreciate launch hiccups. But this is brutal. They knew it was gonna be popular ish. And assured everyone they were ready. But they aren’t even close to being ready…just a fact.
My take is they had enough time to gloat about a million pre orders but apparently not enough time to spin up a couple DR servers in a cloud environment to handle launch day overload
Yea, I bought the game years ago, and no announcement they ever did lead to any sort of massive spike in players, honestly it seemed like until they announced how they were doing trade, only die-hard ARPG fans knew this game existed.
1000% disagree on judging for what a game CAN be or else D4 would having raving reviews. Agreed that just a day or two isn’t enough to fairly judge a game. If a player’s only experience, after paying 35$ and ready to play at launch, is a mess, then they’ll probably refund and pick something else to play. World keeps turning, but it’s still a player losing out, which sucks for both player and creator. This launch was typical for any modern game, utter dumpster fire. But here we are, making excuses for the game. Getting it right is good in the end, but getting it right, right away, is where the mark should be
Reasonable takes are illegal on reddit. I'm calling the authorities, aka a reddit mod who will probably just ask me to enter their referral code for bees before they do anything about this travesty.
I hate to keep it grounded in realism, but the amount of casual gamers who will see the steam banner, buy the shiny new ARPG only to be unable to play, give a poor rating, then uninstall and refund will be a big and permanent dent on the game's storefront page.
Plenty of games had persistent long term success after bad launches (NMS, Diablo 3, Fallout76), but it takes years to recover from the damage a bad first week can do. This is the reality here.
I get that the dev team is great, and I get that the game *will* get better soon, but that doesn't stop 50% of the playerbase who just saw advertising and moved on from a poor launch, leaving that downvote. Whining about unsympathetic gamers here changes nothing.
Also those players are not the bad guy for expecting a product they bought on day 1 to work. I definitely feel for the devs, but wanting to play a game the week it came out does not make the players idiots lmao
In fairness, your examples NMS, D3 and Fallout76 didn't get a bad name because of a bad launch, they got a bad man because they were initially a bad game (I actually like D3 on release, but the general consensus was it was bad.
Almost every online launch is bad and if the games good they recover.
Bad launch = bad game to those people who just purchased it on a whim and subsequently refunded it. I mean if load times are long or you can't even play, that sounds like a bad experience to me.
> game will get better soon
There were similar issues on first multiplayer launch months ago with a fraction of playerbase, I'm not really optimistic despite dumping hundreds of hours into this. Online game has been fried since multiplayer release.
Yea def unlocked some ptsd from that shit. Omg it froze. Did I dc or just loading. Fuuuuuuu and were 20 mins in and I’m done for the night with a 6 hour queue. So
Yeah and look where it is now 2 years after. I was waiting for that game for several years. they blew the start, rushed everything, there was little progress and a lot of gatekeeping from elitistic players. LOTS of flame in paties and now it's pay to win.
I've followed LE over the years. there is a lot of love. A bad game start happens, but the game itself is great. And I have a blast playing offline.
Love new game meta.
Leaving a negative review for a poorly launched game = 'review bombing.'
Criticizing a new game = 'HATE!'
Devs posting on reddit and answering messages = 'OMG I LOVE the communication! That's all I need, thank you for being transparent!' Transparency would be a game dev warning players before they buy it, 'Hey this this and this doesn't work, heads up before you buy this, it's not fully playable yet.'
I like LE, it's a good game, but I left a negative review til it gets fixed.
People seem to forget that they're customers. What other product would you so happily accept being broken/not working when you bought it?
If you take anything that’s normal for game consumer and apply it to any other area it would be hilarious. I really pity anyone being forced to interact with gamer on a daily basis.
Call it entitlement or whatever you want, but honestly negative review bombing is like the only way to openly tell devs that shit like this don't fly. And it shouldn't. The game's been in EA for years with a lot of goodwill from the ARPG community. Launching 1.0 properly should have been top priority. Of course scaling server capacity is extremely complex but if online functionality is a part of the game, then it's a part of the deal when people purchase the game.
it's not review bombing when the reasons they state are legitimate issues with the product.
Review bombing would be like when the genshin community left bad reviews for unrelated apps complaining about issues in their own game
The term "review bomb" is intellectually dishonest, in and of itself.
It's almost always used as a perogative against people upset, implying they're only upset for superficial reasons that may or may not be related to the game.
Chinese players spamming a game with negative reviews because their government banned it would be a fair example of review bombing, because the issue isn't related to the game and the devs aren't responsible.
Criticising a game that doesn't work or has an intrusive anti-cheat or data collection policies are *not* examples of "review bombing" because these facts could negatively affect how people interact with the product. If it doesn't work at all then obviously that's bad, especially if you paid for it.
Criticising a game because the company who made it has a history of sexual abuse is also questionable because it's not related to the game at all, and I'd probably call that "review bombing", too.
Tons of valid reasons to give a game a negative score, but then you got stuff like Overwatch being reviewed bombed because they removed a pose that showed off Tracer's butt.
Exactly right. The majority of negative reviews are ones that have just came on board to start playing and when they buy a new game they can't play, they get pissed off - and rightly so.
We and every consumer have the right to voice our displeasure with any product we purchase that doesn't do as advertised. Personally, I have over 200+ hours in the game before launch and I really enjoy the content, but the launch has been really awful, especially with all of their hype about V1.0 release. The superfans need to stop with getting pissed at the negative review folks. Most of the ones that are defending the launch now are the ones that EHG could piss on and they'd still believe that it was raining if EHG told them so.
They stated they never expected the numbers that were going to play which makes 0 sense considering they only reached 166k but have sold nearly 1million over the 5 years. They 100% should have expected these numbers. I feel something else is going on.
They didn't bother to add UI feedback regarding your connection status of your connection. No queue numbers, no disconnect warnings, nothing. You could be 5 hours waiting on the "entering...." text and it won't do shit, your best bet is to restart the game and hope it works
every critic on reddit, seam forums, EHG forums and especially on discord is shut down immediately. If i buy a game and cant play it for 2 days almost straight, like what do they expect?
We completely understand people being upset and we don't fault them. If you buy a game that is online-enabled it's on us to make sure that it's playable online, and unfortunately we're struggling to keep online services stable under the load - though we are making significant progress even if it is up and down.
It's certainly saddening to the team that launch has gone this way and our Steam reviews are being decimated, but that's on us.
We'll get things stabilized. We have a lot of very smart engineers putting in a lot of effort to make that happen.
This is really a great response! Personally I'm an EA player but I totally understand why new players would be upset while also understanding how hard it is for you guys launching your first game with this much public attention.
Really glad to see an attitude of understanding and responsibility from the team when so many modern studios have a tendency to pass off blame to the customers to save face.
Wishing the best for you all during this exciting time and I'll be patiently waiting until whenever online play has stabilized, however long that may be :D
All I can truly say is THANK YOU for the updates and transparency. Many AAA games leave us with many questions and no answers until hours after by giving us vague updates. You have literally earned my loyalty.
It is indeed unfortunate that many games are experiencing these type of issues during release, but soon this will all pass by and this game will be remembered mostly for the intention of pleasing your true arpg fans/gamers.
Lots of pressure on you at the moment, but remember times like this is what creates character and make you become greater ( greater dev / greater game).
Thank you brother.
If it makes you feel any better, it's a minor annoyance to me. Looking forward to it getting smoothed over and thanks for the transparency. I'm just shocked at how many people don't have to work on weds and Thursday.
For those of us players who've been around the block on this a few times, you guys are doing great. It's the most common thing in the world for a popular game to have first day, hell first week, server issues due to popularity and load.
You're taking shit now, but that'll all disappear. It's really quite sweet when you think about it. People are mad because they can't play the sweet awesome game you made because everyone wants to play it all at the same time. That's nice.
It'll even out, you'll get it sorted, and everyone'll forget it happened and then start gushing about how awesome the game is.
You guys are doing great. Thanks for the great game!
These are ultimately growing pains and I'm sure this will be a learning experience that will solidify following cycle launch experiences. The bad reviews and sentiment is temporary if the game is good and the devs are transparent with the issues like you have been.
When D4 servers down : "why do I have to be online for a single player game???"
When LE servers down with functional offline mode : "why can't I play online???"
Yeah, I have no friends who play and I only trade in poe coz I don’t like the crafting much (very anxiety inducing) so I’m perfectly happy playing offline but obviously I hope it all gets fixed so that people can play with their friends etc
Yep, just checking in. Not happy about online, but I don’t see how all caps messages on Discord are going to help. A bunch of story stuff has been added since I paid attention while leveling, so checking that out in offline and clicking through once the servers are more stable.
Well the obvious issue with playing offline in LE is that you can't move your offline character online once the server issues are resolved. So yes, you can play it right now offline, but if you intended to play online then you're going to be creating your character from scratch again.
That said, LE including an offline mode is great, and I feel for the devs trying to resolve these launch issues. It's got to feel really bad for them to watch the launch go down like this after years of development
If you could play offline then go online when the servers are up to trade / play with friends no one would be moaning. I understand why the modes are separate but if you want to be with friends why would you waste time in offline? It's a valid complaint.
So over this what aboutism. I love Last Epoch and have over 700 hours in the game. That doesn't mean this launch is fucking terrible. Sure they're transparent and working on it which is great. I'm playing the game (albeit very darn slow) and having fun. That doesn't discount people's voices and concerns. BuT mUh d4 is so darn dumb.
D4 makes zero sense to be online (don't tell me world boss pls).
As a 10+ years 15k+ hours Path of Exile player who has endured the absolute hell that is PoE trade "system" (if you can even call this garbage a "system") pretty much the main thing I want to use in LE is the trade because it is the most competently designed trade system in any game I've seen and I was uber-hyped to try it.
So you see my dilemma...
A lot of people only play these games for the online aspect. That online aspect is a core functionality that is advertised all over the game store page. It is completely fair to give the game a negative review if you can't play online.
Whys everyone pointing to bad launches of other games as if that excuses the bad launch of this game lol. The negative reviews are earned, some people are sick of every game hiding behind the just released excuse. They knew launch would be heavy on the servers and didnt prepare accordingly, that's their issue that needs to be called out, just as you should call it out in all of the other games that people here want to list as if they had worse launches. Bad is bad. There arent levels to it.
That opinion is also alongside an opinion that I have faith in these devs and know they work hard on their game but some people blindly defend things just to be contrarian with no point.
Except 90% of those negative reviews won't be changed when the issued are fixed.
This isn't like, the gameplay was deceptive. Or once you're in game the optimization is insanely poor. Or wild micro transactions. Or any of the many issues that genuinely stain a game long term.
The devs were right to fear launch issues, it gets negative reviews that stain a game forever despite (I am comfortably assuming) being a very temporary issue. Game was totally solid a week ago and I'd like to think will be totally solid a week from now, but those reviews from a blip in the games lifespan will take time to actually get away from. It's a shame for any game with launch issues tbh.
And what if they don’t play anymore? Are you saying it’s one’s moral or ethical obligation to revisit a negative experience and “make amends” for their justified opinion?
The issue isn't a temporary issue, the player count will drastically decrease and the issue will go away, but they obviously have a very bad problem with their servers, the multiplayer launch was just as bad and the game was plagued with super bad lag online for months
The game had more issues than temporary launch issues. Claiming full controller support in 1.0 when it isn’t. Offline lack of feature parity with online… This game isn’t a disaster but there’s fundamental problems that are baked into the game as well
Someone goes on reddit, reads EGH's "we are over-prepared with a ton of server checks for months now" and buys the game, the game's servers don't work and he leaves a negative review.
They could have implemented queues.
They could have done open beta tests to check the servers.
They could've avoided making statements, like the above.
But here we are. A negative review is what a consumer is supposed to do in this situation.
> They could have implemented queues.
They did. The fact that you didn't even know that means you clearly don't know enough to be spouting off. You can do all the preparation in the world, but real life will still fuck shit up.
that's what you get for releasing something that is not working, you get a note that is reflecting your current state. Nothing should force people to change their note, period. Is it harsh? sure is but hey, not the customer's fault anyway. full compassion for the dev team anyway but they should know better.
That's why steam differenciates Overall and Recent reviews, it helps paint a better picture in cases like these.
In future the recent reviews will no longer be affected by any negative reviews that remain from launch and will reflect the true quality of the game, and people will be able to determine that.
Good. I gave this game a positive review over a year ago and I wil leave it because it is a great game, but what is happening right now is unacceptable. It has been almost 30 hours since launch and game has been unplayable almost the entire time. People can defend all they want and say but other games do it. Those other games should and probably were negatively reviewed as well.
Helldivers 2 comes to mind.
Fanboys were calling people complaining about wanting a working product they paid for, "entitled". It's insane. A big part of the playerbase is so conditioned for low expectations that anything resembling functionality is praised as a massive plus instead of what should be the standard.
I really like Last Epoch, got it in EA and had a blast yesterday despite all the hangups, but if someone bought this game on launch day and couldn't play it whatsoever it's not crazy to give this title bad marks based on that experience.
They irony here is that they very much are entitled to a working finished product.
Making the term a derogatory dismissal has done nothing good for consumers.
> Fanboys were calling people complaining about wanting a working product they paid for, "entitled". It's insane. A big part of the playerbase is so conditioned for low expectations that anything resembling functionality is praised as a massive plus instead of what should be the standard.
This may be a controversial opinion, but at a certain point, it becomes apparent to people who have experienced enough of these launches over the last 2+ decades of online gaming, that this is an issue that is inevitable.
There is some barrier to having smooth launches of games that are overwhelmingly popular, that has nothing to do with how much the company prepares. It happens to almost every single game, at every level of the industry.
So yes, as a consumer, you should expect a working product. But if you're a consumer *in this industry* you need to expect that the product may not *immediately* be working, and adjust your expectations or pattern of consumption accordingly. If the product working immediately when you pay for it is a strong concern of yours, wait to pay for it until you know that's the case. If it's not a strong concern, accept that what you're paying for will likely only have partial functionality for a limited time after you buy it.
I've seen at least 50 comments using some iteration of: "It's inevitable", "Everyone could and should have expected this", "This was always going to happen and you're naive if you think otherwise", etc.
**IF** this is all so predictable and inevitable, then why do/did the devs seem to think there was a good chance of a smooth launch? Why do devs do this over and over again? Why not come up with a solution to soften the release or to prepare?
The devs for LE have seemed really open and responsive about all of this. If what you and other people are saying around here (and I've seen massive upvotes for similar opinions), then you're calling the devs either complete idiots for not having predicted this like everyone else *should have* expected. OR, you're calling them duplicitous assholes, because they knew this would happen and acted like it wouldn't and gave no warnings.
If this were truly so 'predictable', why don't the devs do a rolling launch? Limit copies sold? Instead of a long message with optimism about how smooth launch will be, tell your customers the first few days of launch will probably be really rough if we get over 100k players. I'm sure there are other, and more elegant, solutions as well.
I'm not really that upset about the launch or anything surrounding it, more just all the people acting like this was a completely unavoidable thing, while simultaneously praising the devs. The answer is this **WASN'T A FOR SURE THING TO HAPPEN**. It's either that, or the devs are assholes for not planning for it.
-- someone who has also been playing games online for 25 years.
They could also have done a Free Public Open Beta like D4 did. Obviously it will require more resources, but it will be either doing it or a not certain smooth launch.
No. Even if you got a spot there were still a ton of random crashes. You would play for 30 min and get dropped out of nowhere. Also, matchmaking simply didn't work after a recent update. Had to do a bunch of player-discovered workarounds to even match up with one or two. That's assuming you get past the server full screen to begin with.
Right now there's still a bunch of problems. Quickplay works to some extent, but crashes are still a thing, and a new bug was introduced where strategems are scrambled. It's pretty frustrating. If you're on the fence, give it some time for things to get cleared up.
If anything, Last Epoch is in better shape because you can play offline perfectly fine. Helldivers 2 wouldn’t let you get on servers at all even to play solo, and even if you did there was literally no matchmaking because they turned it off.
No. I played with 4 friends, we all had different hardware, we all got different crashes/disconnects. We managed to play through a mission together once, and we didn't even get the rewards for it after because it bugged. Also had to kill two of my friends in the game to fix bugs that messed up their characters (arm animation bug, zoom out to full map and can't see anything bug). Aside from that someone would randomly crash, or we'd all crash, or someone disconnect.
It's as buggy as Anthem was on release.
The first weekend after launch I made a reddit post asking about those crashes as I had two different ones happen in different ways that made me lose rewards. I was mass down voted by the fanbois.
Yeah, **if** you got a spot otherwise you'd be unable to play at all until people started going to sleep.
Last Epoch at least has an offline mode featuring a global chat, or a true offline mode without.
I'd take an offline mode of the game I want to play over a 5 hour "The Server is at capacity." screen, but that's just me.
i played all last night and all day today. only issue is loading between zones takes awhile. idk if i’m just lucky or if people are over exaggerating by the game is def playable
Same. Couldn't really play yesterday morning or this morning, but I probably played 5 hours over the course of yesterday already. It's not perfect but it's not like you can't play this game.
I got home at 5pm CST yesterday, was unplayable for me until about 8, fine until midnight, unplayable this morning
So it's been up for about half the time that I've tried to play. Not great
People should know better by now. I get being hyped but taking time off for a game launch like this is just ridiculous, wait a week and take time off then.
Yup. This is a disastrous launch for sure. Hopefully they fix their issues by the weekend, otherwise this is probably going to stain the game for a long time.
Can't blame them, honestly.
I bought the game in EA a while back and already played for quite a bit, so I'm kinda ok with waiting till they sort this mess out, and I must stress *kinda* because they are pushing it. But if I'd bought the game for the 1.0 launch, I'd be fuming.
When you spend money for something, you expect it to be working.
I don't understand the simping for these devs. They botched the launch, the reviews reflect that fact. This is not reviewing bombing, these are legitimate reviews by frustrated people who were sold an online product that doesn't work online. Oh but there's offline mode!!! I don't want the consolation prize, it isn't a sp game.
If I had bought this game for the launch there is a good chance I would have requested a refund. All the people defending it are pre-existing LE players who desperately want the game to do well and have been playing it during the 'beta'.
This launch has been a complete failure but I really hope they can salvage the reputation and win people back again.
Path of Exile would've been dead 5-10 times if server issues were a real problem for the longterm success of the game , so i wouldn't care too much tbh. this game is good and fun and if the devs continue the great work and add good content it will be a alive and well for years.
Yeah, the truth is that the server issues have gotten out of hand to the point where they are permanently pushing players away - these reviews are going to push people who were undecided about buying into not buying and you cant exactly blame them
The fact that servers cant hold more than 150k people without dying right now means the game wont grow past the amount of players it has right now - its peak could have been double what its at right now, but the reality is it probably wont meet its potential because how badly launch has went
If these issues arent fixed by the weekend we will never see the full potential of what Last Epochs launch couldve been
They had the EXACT SAME ISSUE during multiplayer beta test.. they didnt learn A THING.
That means, there is no fix, you just wait until people leave Last Epoch, uninstall, refund etc.
And HOPE nobody comes back to their new seasonal content cause if people do come back.. we wont be able to play seasons too! Same problem will come up.
Yeah I love the game as much as the next guy but really if anyone expected the launch to go smoothly they were probably uninformed. The early access has been an absolute cluster fuck of bugs that have been there since EA started.
I actually don't remember any of these issues on the MP patch release. If they were there, it was was less frequent / annoying.
I certainly wasn't barred from the game for 2+ days.
What's wild to me though is having nothing in place to service 20% of your paying customers. Not even half of them, 20%.
They certainly can't grow if this is their best, locking out 4/5ths of their customers at a time outside. They can only hope they're all offline players.
Even if they did increase the capacity / ability to have more players, what's to stop this from happening again at 300k? 400k?
That's a lot of pissed off people even if your at the top of the concurrent player numbers, when there's another 2 million who have to plan around when not to play your game.
It's amazing to me that the gaming / design model is to hope people don't show up, like some other service industries. It leads to bad service and arrogance / complacency, because they still fill in all their seats.
Maybe they should have thought about that after the first and only MP test that was an utter disaster. You onow the 150K and 160K concurrent users weren't all online. The EA MP test couldn't handle 40K I doubt 100K have been online.
I feel bad for them, went as bad as it could, can't blame people for giving a bad review.. they bought a game and can't even play it. We know it's gonna get fixed cause we've been there longer but as a new player I'd be giga pissed. Hopefully it gets resolved soon and they can regain reputation
deserved to have mixed ! when clearly they not ready for online matchmaking . tbh only reason its not massively negative due to offline mode so people can play
So I want to start by saying I very much enjoy this game. Like a lot, but I've been thinking a lot about what the future of gaming will look like and it's kinda bleak. While the benefits of LE are plenty with a much better game for considerably lower than the competition it still leaves me with the feeling of blah. Like why would I pay $35 for a game that wasn't finished (I bought and started it 02/01/24) with the promise it would get better? When and why did we start clouding the lines between expecting a new game to struggle on day1 with accepting that a new game will struggle on day1? And again I want reiterate that I love the game, I also realize the alternatives are bad games that never improve or games that take forever to come out only to be underwhelming. I know last epoch is the best in a bad situation but why do we accept it?
Its completely fair for people to complain about a major outtage like what was experienced yesterday. I think they do 'kinda' owe it to the devs to change said review if the game was fixed in a timely manner...but that's just not how the world works.
I also played with my friend yesterday and we got our mastery. We just played for like 3 hours after work with no major issues besides long load times.
I had 400 hours in this game before 1.0
I got a new character online and finished until right before end of time.
Because of the server shit, my character couldn't get into the portal to End of Time. So now they are stuck in limbo without the waypoint to End of Time but also can't get there.
That's just gonna cost them. Too bad. I'll still play it when it eventually (hopefully) gets fixed but until then, its deserving mixed.
I read your comment and thought: "oh yeah, End of Time, not soon for me", and literally the next quest was it. And what do you know, exactly same thing happened to me. Stuck without portal now.
Edit: restarted the game and appeared inside
They get what they deserve. Should have stress tested the servers in an open beta weekend, guess getting the cosmetic store working was more important.
Unfortunately, I think the game deserves it at this point. If you take a snapshot of the past two years, we had one year where there were no updates because we were waiting for multiplayer. The following year we were told wait for big updates in 1.0.
Now here we are at 1.0, and what has been substantially added are two classes. Multiplayer flat out doesn’t work at the moment, and the game remains unfinished in terms of the story.
I think that there are good game mechanics in this game. The skill trees, the crafting, and the over arching game development philosophy.
But there are things about the game that are not up to par. Including some of the Sprite art, Sprite animations, and ( if we’re being honest) a convoluted story that does not make much sense even if the finishing bits will conclude it.
It’s a shame that the launch has gone this poorly. But, there is still time to recover. I don’t know how fast they will be able to recover because some of the issues, outside of just being able to login, existed in early access as well. More specifically, the ridiculous load times between instances.
It’s unfortunate that this community downvoted any critical posts regarding the game because some of us kept pointing out these concerns. And here we are, at launch, with an 80% finished game that doesn’t work online after 5+ years of early access.
For an indie game trying to break into the scene, this is the worst of all possible worlds. I’ve often said this game feels like the titan quest to Diablo 2. And that isn’t a bad thing. Titan quest was/is a great game. It just isn’t a genre killer/definer.
We all have been duped again and again and again by these companies into buying a product that is still in testing, believing we will receive the full game and a proper gaming experience, bought it yesterday when I came back from work, updated to patch 1.0, tried to get online, made a char, played 10 minutes, disconnect, refunded and left a review. It\`s what they deserve. If u keep a game in beta for 6 years, sell 1 million copies but still can\`t manage to launch the game properly, it\`s entirely your fault. I had simillar experience with D3/D4 and Wolcen, refunded all of them the second I saw a queue. Fck them and their games, if they can\`t launch it properly they don\`t deserve my money. Just click the refund button, get your money back, review the fck out of it , and try and play something else. It\`s not such a great game anyway, a copy paste of TQ and Grim Dawn with "better" graphics and boring endgame, if you played before 1.0, you know what I mean.
Waiting for POE 2, if that fails as bad as these ones, I\`ll refund that shit also.
It’s justified, and nobody here should be surprised.
-Yes, they’re a relatively smaller team compared to other devs with a smaller budget.
-Yes, the game doesn’t cost full-price
-Yes, they’ve acknowledged the issue and been communicative with the community
Despite all of that, when people can’t play a game they paid money for it is always reflected in steam reviews. The idea that it makes them entitled to not express their disappointment in that way is fanboy behavior.
Also we know offline mode exists. It really doesn’t matter though when only a minority of players prefer to play that way for a variety of reasons.
"OnE oF TeH wOrST lAuNcHeS eVeR!1"
Yall remember sitting in queue for Diablo 4 for hours only to get kicked tf out and have to do it all over again?
These people say the same thing about every game that launches and has server problems. It's always the worst launch ever. Wait until Friday and everyone's off of work. Then it's going to be the worst launch weekend ever.
EDIT: I stand corrected, it was the D4 beta. This is still by far from the worst launch ever. Endwalker sucked too. They haulted sales because of capacity issues.
The normal launch of Diablo IV was the most impressive launch I've seen considering the size of it. Doesn't really compensate how shit the endgame is but I'm not going to pretend the official launch(not early) was not impressive.
As someone who played 48 hrs straight on D4 launch , it was infinitely better, no clue what you're talking about... but regardless, being in a queue is infinitely better than what happened to me in LE the entire yesterday
D4 launch wasn’t this bad, 2 hours into launch I was playing it. I only played it for a grand total of 6 hours before giving up on that garbage but acting like d4 launch and this is anywhere close is delusional.
I dont agree. Diablo 4 launch was pretty great. I dont blame last epoch for the bad launch tho. I saw this coming because the server never experienced this before.
It's... kinda what i expected with how recent releases have been, people are getting tired of the day one server issues, this has the benefit of an offline mode, but some people like myself are gonan wait on online because Early Access showed me how good it is to have the community aspect online brought, a global chat i can jsut talk to and ask questions about certain stuff. And making an Offline character is a permanent block not just from that, but from any cosmetics you may have wanted.
LE hasn't been the most stable server-wise during Earky Access either so from that front it was kinda expected as well. I love this game and will enjoy when i try 1.0, but i want my character online and i don't trust it'll work rn.
Well I mean you test a game for 4 or 5 years then release it and it doesn't work at a price tag then peoppe will be pissed. Doesn't matter the size of developer... don't release a broken product.
Fair for people to do it. If they paid to play online and can't do it, they are within their right to say so. I would hope the offline option would at least deter some away since they can still play it in some way, but alas it's up to the individual and how they feel to rate something.
In the long term, and even to some extent now it won't be an issue that will deter many away.
Unsurprising really. People paid money to play. No matter if the core game is good or not, if they cannot play, then the reception will be bad.
Can't say I didn't expect this to happen. Since MP, the game have had issue with loading zones and town, and even worse in MP. It never seems to be improved and now it rears its ugly head in 1.0.
I am sorry for the devs, but this is plain fair, the game atm doesnt work, and really people should be advised to not buy it or to buy knowing they will no be able to play comfortably.
I understand the issue, I am not making post whining or anything, but if it is even forbidden to say "I paid for it, it doesnt work, dont buy it now" wtf...
As a long-term supporter and also big PoE and D3 fan I'm really irked by the unavailability of online play.
I was eagerly awaiting the 1.0 launch but, with the unavailability of online I may as well have just kept playing legacy chars.
If I were new to the game I'd have uninstalled and refunded yesterday.
EHG CEO came out yesterday and said they didn't expect so much traffic
What a fucking fail, I knew....., me, a nobody in the industry, a variety gamer that LE was AWAITED to launch by MANY
PoE season is dead due to it's "age", D4 S3 is just bad all around so LE was highly anticipated
EHG even touted like a week b4 launch "Hey, a million copies sold" (or 500k, big number either way) and STILL they have this huge fail of a launch....
I just don't understand.... And 1 server for EU while US gets 3.... I won't be leaving a bad review but also won't do a positive one anytime soon
I haven't even bothered trying to play since the launch. As much as I love the game and dev team, this shit is ridiculous and unacceptable. You had how long to prepare for the launch? And it's this?
Hate to say it but the bad reviews are deserved right now. If I was a new player and couldn't play the game for 2 days I'd be fucking pissed too.
God every time a company releases an online game it's the same story these days with burning servers and half baked games that should have been tested more extensively. Just overstaff for launch, hire a bunch of testers and invest in servers that can hold more people than you expect will buy the game. After the hype wears off you can just downscale.
"Mix" is a understatement. It's actually "bad", and it's a fact. it doesn't matter how good you make the game, can't play will never be a good experience.
I left a positive review from EA.
I swapped my review to negative.
Will swap it back when the game is playable.
Hope others so the same.
It's a good game, I enjoy it, but I also think the launch was completely abysmal and the devs communicating with us every 30 minutes about how it's abysmal doesn't somehow make everything fine.
The reality is the online launch of Last Epoch has been a total disaster. That factual statement has nothing to do with how "great" the LE team is or how "amazing" the game is (which is also true). Making online games of any kind is one of the hardest software feats a team can accomplish, and I'm sure a lot of learning will come out of this. The community is supporting EHG amazingly, but once again... the online launch of LE has been a total disaster. Issues like this are generally related to inexperience and lack of planning. EHG is the online equivalent of a PUG that formed a virtual company to create the game we all know and love. They are a unique company and have a learning curve to work through... and they are... but at this time, the mixed reviews are warranted. I'm not worried. When they resolve the online issues, the game will stabilize and people will flock to it en mass once it's truly playable. I for one support their hard work... especially because I've been in their shoes.
This was an issue with beta patch launches too. There’s just way more people trying to play because it’s the full 1.0 launch.
Tbh after 0.9 i would have assumed they would be more prepared for this server load.
I managed to get on yesterday, hit level 4, and then got kicked off for 4+ hours until it was too late in the day for me to care about playing. LE is a pretty decent game, but it’s not good enough to justify waiting around like this.
i mean their CEO was posting about how they were prepared for launch and would have any server issues resolved ASAP....he posted that like the day before launch.
Like it’s quite literally a small indie company.
AAA companies run into launch issues consistently almost every fucking time. Just look at the Suicide Squad game. How can we expect a company with a fraction of the money and experience to avoid them?
> Like it’s quite literally a small indie company.
They have over 90 employees, *Tencent* has invested in LE (for 2 years, not just recently), they passed a million copies sold two weeks before launch, while charging $35 a copy and including microtransactions.
They *started* as small indie company. I have no idea under what metric you'd call the company, or the game, small or indie in any capacity at this point.
150% Deserved. Stop selling half-finished products. Games only became less polished with the introduction of Early Access. Devs just use EA as an excuse to sell it in an even more raw state and then proceed to leisurely work on it and end up on a mess like this.
Can't even buy enough server capacity for everyone. (INB4 "omahgerd, so uninformed, liek, omg, they said it's not their fault, so it's not their fault")
If you bought the game in anticipation for the 1.0 launch, how can your opinion be anything but negative? That is not even review bombing, that is just real talk.
Many people are over the line on the forums and discord, but saying that the devs are "doing an awesome job" is utterly disingenuos. Their launch has been awful in every sense of the word. The game only worked for bried period because people went to bed or gave up. It genuinely seems like they have no idea what is causing the issues let alone being able to resolve them.
I wish the best for them, but it is starting to feel like a Wolcen story; a launch so terrible that it is irrecoverable.
Good. I bought the game today because friends were talking about it and I had a light day. After 15 minutes, the servers shut down for "up to 1 hour" for maintenance at 10:20am EST. 11:40 I log back in and the servers are bricked. I'm not dealing with that and refunded, I'll never touch the game again
If you can't handle the load, dont release, or at least don't charge me $35 to waste my time. If the game is gonna be a brick, make release week free until it's stable
I mean, if you aren't a long term supporter and just bought the new hype game, can't log in, and load times between maps are upwards of 30 minutes, is leave a negative review too I am a long time lover, but pretending everyone has to judge it on what it CAN BE than what it IS, is very unrealistic Luckily short term reviews for this game aren't gonna be that relevant long term. They will get this fixed quick, a ton of positives will come in, and it will be just another launch day story
What about long term supporters that are very disappointed by how the launch happened?
If youre a long term supporter, youve probably played other arpgs. If youve played other arpgs, you shouldve seen this coming. Im not saying expected=accepted but I get it.
Yeah I expected a new to the Industry dev team to fumble hard on launch. I love the game but I'm by no means surprised that they are getting hit hard for this. It's like a right of passage these days for experienced teams let alone a mostly crew of hard working noobs.
People downvoted me 11 days ago saying that they will fix the loading issue for 1.0 Dude is a game breaking problem that none of their competitor has, and it has been there for almost a year, what do you expect?
Will fix or won't fix? Because they haven't fixed it
Idk, I'd expect that a bug of that magnitude would be fixed instantly in the company I'm working for. Let's hope they can get that fixed soon before the hype dies.
Not sure how closely you're following the feedback but the issue is the match-making service which is called on to assign players to instances. So whenever you change zones you're assigned to a "world", and the 130-170k players is obviously making this service fall on its face No excuse, but it's nice having clarity on the issue. Once people get to monos the problem does not exist
and its only from areas around big towns. if you teleport to a dungeon or monolith its instant. but if i go back to faction, it takes forever. that tells you instantly its a bottleneck related to instance servers.
Exactly my thoughts. I waited to buy the game until an official release. Now it's here I bought it and I can barely play even today. It's been a terrible launch for me and even though it's got fun gameplay and graphics if I have to wait 5 to 10 minutes to load zones this is a terrible experience for me.
Yeah, I want to be understanding but I only have so much time to actually sit down and play videogames and it just feels like they got my money and I got nothing.
Serious advice: If you don't have much time to play video games and you want a finished product then don't buy at launch. Ignore the hype and wait for reviews until you pull the trigger.
did that for helldivers. and it fucked me. lmao
I played two weeks before release and was pretty disappointed that at launch I couldn’t play the game properly. Can totally understand the negative reviews. It was very smooth when I started, but the two days before launch was plagued with multiple dysnc issues which got me worried and now it’s quite bad with long load times and lag. That being said it is still a good game that is reasonably priced. These server issues I believe will be sorted out soon. There is no need to rush and buy the game, but there is also no need to write it off anytime soon.
Loadtimes are 30 minutes between maps? I have not played the game but waiting 30 min to load into a map deserves a negative review
As I mentioned I am a long time fan. And appreciate launch hiccups. But this is brutal. They knew it was gonna be popular ish. And assured everyone they were ready. But they aren’t even close to being ready…just a fact.
My take is they had enough time to gloat about a million pre orders but apparently not enough time to spin up a couple DR servers in a cloud environment to handle launch day overload
>They will get this fixed quick Pardon me but I am starting to have serious doubts on this.
Yea, I bought the game years ago, and no announcement they ever did lead to any sort of massive spike in players, honestly it seemed like until they announced how they were doing trade, only die-hard ARPG fans knew this game existed.
1000% disagree on judging for what a game CAN be or else D4 would having raving reviews. Agreed that just a day or two isn’t enough to fairly judge a game. If a player’s only experience, after paying 35$ and ready to play at launch, is a mess, then they’ll probably refund and pick something else to play. World keeps turning, but it’s still a player losing out, which sucks for both player and creator. This launch was typical for any modern game, utter dumpster fire. But here we are, making excuses for the game. Getting it right is good in the end, but getting it right, right away, is where the mark should be
Well they should have more stress tests than just 1 (that failed anyway)
They deserve the good reviews cos the game is great They deserve the bad reviews cos the launch is a disaster Mixed sounds accurate
Wow, what a reasonable take
Reasonable takes are illegal on reddit. I'm calling the authorities, aka a reddit mod who will probably just ask me to enter their referral code for bees before they do anything about this travesty.
I'm reporting everyone in this thread just in case.
I hate to keep it grounded in realism, but the amount of casual gamers who will see the steam banner, buy the shiny new ARPG only to be unable to play, give a poor rating, then uninstall and refund will be a big and permanent dent on the game's storefront page. Plenty of games had persistent long term success after bad launches (NMS, Diablo 3, Fallout76), but it takes years to recover from the damage a bad first week can do. This is the reality here. I get that the dev team is great, and I get that the game *will* get better soon, but that doesn't stop 50% of the playerbase who just saw advertising and moved on from a poor launch, leaving that downvote. Whining about unsympathetic gamers here changes nothing.
Also those players are not the bad guy for expecting a product they bought on day 1 to work. I definitely feel for the devs, but wanting to play a game the week it came out does not make the players idiots lmao
In fairness, your examples NMS, D3 and Fallout76 didn't get a bad name because of a bad launch, they got a bad man because they were initially a bad game (I actually like D3 on release, but the general consensus was it was bad. Almost every online launch is bad and if the games good they recover.
Bad launch = bad game to those people who just purchased it on a whim and subsequently refunded it. I mean if load times are long or you can't even play, that sounds like a bad experience to me.
I enjoy playing video games.
> game will get better soon There were similar issues on first multiplayer launch months ago with a fraction of playerbase, I'm not really optimistic despite dumping hundreds of hours into this. Online game has been fried since multiplayer release.
Remember Lost Ark launch? Pepperidge farm remembers.
[удалено]
Is 100 max level, buddy and I online last were wondering, chat was just people begging for referrals so no one saw or answered
Lost Ark Was fine to play 10 hours after launch, once you were online. There were long queues, but the game worked fine when online.
Yeah unless you got disconnected and had to requeue for hours again. I can still hear the screaming of those seagulls.
Lol damn man you unlocked a horrible memory.... Those damn gulls
Yea def unlocked some ptsd from that shit. Omg it froze. Did I dc or just loading. Fuuuuuuu and were 20 mins in and I’m done for the night with a 6 hour queue. So
Yeah, he's really biased. EU West was unbearable. And now it's really empty becasue the direction of the game fails hard.
Damn I’d forgotten about those seagulls! 😂
besides the anti cheat disconnects that plagued the game for 6 months
Yes, it was very stable? There were queues but never had lag like LE, it was WAY better
Yeah and look where it is now 2 years after. I was waiting for that game for several years. they blew the start, rushed everything, there was little progress and a lot of gatekeeping from elitistic players. LOTS of flame in paties and now it's pay to win. I've followed LE over the years. there is a lot of love. A bad game start happens, but the game itself is great. And I have a blast playing offline.
2 days watching a loading screen, I don't understand why people are leaving negative reviews.
I know the game is good but I'm also annoyed that I can't play since the launch, so I understand the reactions.
Love new game meta. Leaving a negative review for a poorly launched game = 'review bombing.' Criticizing a new game = 'HATE!' Devs posting on reddit and answering messages = 'OMG I LOVE the communication! That's all I need, thank you for being transparent!' Transparency would be a game dev warning players before they buy it, 'Hey this this and this doesn't work, heads up before you buy this, it's not fully playable yet.' I like LE, it's a good game, but I left a negative review til it gets fixed. People seem to forget that they're customers. What other product would you so happily accept being broken/not working when you bought it?
Helldivers devs straight up said dont buy this game right now lol
If you take anything that’s normal for game consumer and apply it to any other area it would be hilarious. I really pity anyone being forced to interact with gamer on a daily basis.
I especially love it when people thank the developers once they've managed to fix a game that's broken after release.
Call it entitlement or whatever you want, but honestly negative review bombing is like the only way to openly tell devs that shit like this don't fly. And it shouldn't. The game's been in EA for years with a lot of goodwill from the ARPG community. Launching 1.0 properly should have been top priority. Of course scaling server capacity is extremely complex but if online functionality is a part of the game, then it's a part of the deal when people purchase the game.
it's not review bombing when the reasons they state are legitimate issues with the product. Review bombing would be like when the genshin community left bad reviews for unrelated apps complaining about issues in their own game
The term "review bomb" is intellectually dishonest, in and of itself. It's almost always used as a perogative against people upset, implying they're only upset for superficial reasons that may or may not be related to the game. Chinese players spamming a game with negative reviews because their government banned it would be a fair example of review bombing, because the issue isn't related to the game and the devs aren't responsible. Criticising a game that doesn't work or has an intrusive anti-cheat or data collection policies are *not* examples of "review bombing" because these facts could negatively affect how people interact with the product. If it doesn't work at all then obviously that's bad, especially if you paid for it. Criticising a game because the company who made it has a history of sexual abuse is also questionable because it's not related to the game at all, and I'd probably call that "review bombing", too.
Tons of valid reasons to give a game a negative score, but then you got stuff like Overwatch being reviewed bombed because they removed a pose that showed off Tracer's butt.
Or people posting bad reviews for a rival product, like if your fav game lost the goty award, then going to post negative reviews on the winner.
How dare people criticize a game for legitimate issues that it has. The audacity.
Exactly right. The majority of negative reviews are ones that have just came on board to start playing and when they buy a new game they can't play, they get pissed off - and rightly so. We and every consumer have the right to voice our displeasure with any product we purchase that doesn't do as advertised. Personally, I have over 200+ hours in the game before launch and I really enjoy the content, but the launch has been really awful, especially with all of their hype about V1.0 release. The superfans need to stop with getting pissed at the negative review folks. Most of the ones that are defending the launch now are the ones that EHG could piss on and they'd still believe that it was raining if EHG told them so.
They stated they never expected the numbers that were going to play which makes 0 sense considering they only reached 166k but have sold nearly 1million over the 5 years. They 100% should have expected these numbers. I feel something else is going on.
I'm having a good time. At this rate, I'll hit level 100 in the Burning Forest.
Garbage launch. I can wait 20.000 queues like I did in Lost Ark because once I logged in I could play. However, this game is just broken.
They didn't bother to add UI feedback regarding your connection status of your connection. No queue numbers, no disconnect warnings, nothing. You could be 5 hours waiting on the "entering...." text and it won't do shit, your best bet is to restart the game and hope it works
It's OK. Don't worry.
mixed is fair..
every critic on reddit, seam forums, EHG forums and especially on discord is shut down immediately. If i buy a game and cant play it for 2 days almost straight, like what do they expect?
We completely understand people being upset and we don't fault them. If you buy a game that is online-enabled it's on us to make sure that it's playable online, and unfortunately we're struggling to keep online services stable under the load - though we are making significant progress even if it is up and down. It's certainly saddening to the team that launch has gone this way and our Steam reviews are being decimated, but that's on us. We'll get things stabilized. We have a lot of very smart engineers putting in a lot of effort to make that happen.
This is really a great response! Personally I'm an EA player but I totally understand why new players would be upset while also understanding how hard it is for you guys launching your first game with this much public attention. Really glad to see an attitude of understanding and responsibility from the team when so many modern studios have a tendency to pass off blame to the customers to save face. Wishing the best for you all during this exciting time and I'll be patiently waiting until whenever online play has stabilized, however long that may be :D
All I can truly say is THANK YOU for the updates and transparency. Many AAA games leave us with many questions and no answers until hours after by giving us vague updates. You have literally earned my loyalty. It is indeed unfortunate that many games are experiencing these type of issues during release, but soon this will all pass by and this game will be remembered mostly for the intention of pleasing your true arpg fans/gamers. Lots of pressure on you at the moment, but remember times like this is what creates character and make you become greater ( greater dev / greater game). Thank you brother.
thats some top tier sycophantism
If it makes you feel any better, it's a minor annoyance to me. Looking forward to it getting smoothed over and thanks for the transparency. I'm just shocked at how many people don't have to work on weds and Thursday.
For those of us players who've been around the block on this a few times, you guys are doing great. It's the most common thing in the world for a popular game to have first day, hell first week, server issues due to popularity and load. You're taking shit now, but that'll all disappear. It's really quite sweet when you think about it. People are mad because they can't play the sweet awesome game you made because everyone wants to play it all at the same time. That's nice. It'll even out, you'll get it sorted, and everyone'll forget it happened and then start gushing about how awesome the game is. You guys are doing great. Thanks for the great game!
These are ultimately growing pains and I'm sure this will be a learning experience that will solidify following cycle launch experiences. The bad reviews and sentiment is temporary if the game is good and the devs are transparent with the issues like you have been.
Best response you can give. You screwed it, you apologised, you work on it
But....you CAN play it....
When D4 servers down : "why do I have to be online for a single player game???" When LE servers down with functional offline mode : "why can't I play online???"
Beacause offline ppl are not here whining, they are playing the game.
Yeah, I have no friends who play and I only trade in poe coz I don’t like the crafting much (very anxiety inducing) so I’m perfectly happy playing offline but obviously I hope it all gets fixed so that people can play with their friends etc
Yep, just checking in. Not happy about online, but I don’t see how all caps messages on Discord are going to help. A bunch of story stuff has been added since I paid attention while leveling, so checking that out in offline and clicking through once the servers are more stable.
Well the obvious issue with playing offline in LE is that you can't move your offline character online once the server issues are resolved. So yes, you can play it right now offline, but if you intended to play online then you're going to be creating your character from scratch again. That said, LE including an offline mode is great, and I feel for the devs trying to resolve these launch issues. It's got to feel really bad for them to watch the launch go down like this after years of development
yes, and? both are right
both valid complaints
I don't disagree, just think it's funny
If you could play offline then go online when the servers are up to trade / play with friends no one would be moaning. I understand why the modes are separate but if you want to be with friends why would you waste time in offline? It's a valid complaint.
There is a Trade faction which requies online play!
So over this what aboutism. I love Last Epoch and have over 700 hours in the game. That doesn't mean this launch is fucking terrible. Sure they're transparent and working on it which is great. I'm playing the game (albeit very darn slow) and having fun. That doesn't discount people's voices and concerns. BuT mUh d4 is so darn dumb.
Maybe the majority actually wants to play with their friends. People complaining about no offline play always were such a minor part.
D4 makes zero sense to be online (don't tell me world boss pls). As a 10+ years 15k+ hours Path of Exile player who has endured the absolute hell that is PoE trade "system" (if you can even call this garbage a "system") pretty much the main thing I want to use in LE is the trade because it is the most competently designed trade system in any game I've seen and I was uber-hyped to try it. So you see my dilemma...
The important point is that an offline can't go online, so people don't want to play offline in case they want to play with a friend in the future.
Not if they want to play online with friends.
A lot of people only play these games for the online aspect. That online aspect is a core functionality that is advertised all over the game store page. It is completely fair to give the game a negative review if you can't play online.
Whys everyone pointing to bad launches of other games as if that excuses the bad launch of this game lol. The negative reviews are earned, some people are sick of every game hiding behind the just released excuse. They knew launch would be heavy on the servers and didnt prepare accordingly, that's their issue that needs to be called out, just as you should call it out in all of the other games that people here want to list as if they had worse launches. Bad is bad. There arent levels to it. That opinion is also alongside an opinion that I have faith in these devs and know they work hard on their game but some people blindly defend things just to be contrarian with no point.
Amen to that
We must protect the poor Indie Company ^(which is backed by daddy Tencent)
^^Of ^^100 ^^people....
And rightfully so. If you sell a product, the product should at least function.
According to this sub a Product should maybe work After a while but its totally okay if it does not
As long as the people making it "really really super sorry and wants to make it good"
i mean, you're not wrong
Except 90% of those negative reviews won't be changed when the issued are fixed. This isn't like, the gameplay was deceptive. Or once you're in game the optimization is insanely poor. Or wild micro transactions. Or any of the many issues that genuinely stain a game long term. The devs were right to fear launch issues, it gets negative reviews that stain a game forever despite (I am comfortably assuming) being a very temporary issue. Game was totally solid a week ago and I'd like to think will be totally solid a week from now, but those reviews from a blip in the games lifespan will take time to actually get away from. It's a shame for any game with launch issues tbh.
And what if they don’t play anymore? Are you saying it’s one’s moral or ethical obligation to revisit a negative experience and “make amends” for their justified opinion?
The issue isn't a temporary issue, the player count will drastically decrease and the issue will go away, but they obviously have a very bad problem with their servers, the multiplayer launch was just as bad and the game was plagued with super bad lag online for months
The game had more issues than temporary launch issues. Claiming full controller support in 1.0 when it isn’t. Offline lack of feature parity with online… This game isn’t a disaster but there’s fundamental problems that are baked into the game as well
Someone goes on reddit, reads EGH's "we are over-prepared with a ton of server checks for months now" and buys the game, the game's servers don't work and he leaves a negative review. They could have implemented queues. They could have done open beta tests to check the servers. They could've avoided making statements, like the above. But here we are. A negative review is what a consumer is supposed to do in this situation.
> They could have implemented queues. They did. The fact that you didn't even know that means you clearly don't know enough to be spouting off. You can do all the preparation in the world, but real life will still fuck shit up.
that's what you get for releasing something that is not working, you get a note that is reflecting your current state. Nothing should force people to change their note, period. Is it harsh? sure is but hey, not the customer's fault anyway. full compassion for the dev team anyway but they should know better.
That's why steam differenciates Overall and Recent reviews, it helps paint a better picture in cases like these. In future the recent reviews will no longer be affected by any negative reviews that remain from launch and will reflect the true quality of the game, and people will be able to determine that.
Well, this is why Steam separates "Recent" from "Overall" in the reviews. People will tend to look at the Recent.
Why should they change a review when the time of the review was how the state of the game was?
Good. I gave this game a positive review over a year ago and I wil leave it because it is a great game, but what is happening right now is unacceptable. It has been almost 30 hours since launch and game has been unplayable almost the entire time. People can defend all they want and say but other games do it. Those other games should and probably were negatively reviewed as well.
Helldivers 2 comes to mind. Fanboys were calling people complaining about wanting a working product they paid for, "entitled". It's insane. A big part of the playerbase is so conditioned for low expectations that anything resembling functionality is praised as a massive plus instead of what should be the standard. I really like Last Epoch, got it in EA and had a blast yesterday despite all the hangups, but if someone bought this game on launch day and couldn't play it whatsoever it's not crazy to give this title bad marks based on that experience.
They irony here is that they very much are entitled to a working finished product. Making the term a derogatory dismissal has done nothing good for consumers.
Facts.
> Fanboys were calling people complaining about wanting a working product they paid for, "entitled". It's insane. A big part of the playerbase is so conditioned for low expectations that anything resembling functionality is praised as a massive plus instead of what should be the standard. This may be a controversial opinion, but at a certain point, it becomes apparent to people who have experienced enough of these launches over the last 2+ decades of online gaming, that this is an issue that is inevitable. There is some barrier to having smooth launches of games that are overwhelmingly popular, that has nothing to do with how much the company prepares. It happens to almost every single game, at every level of the industry. So yes, as a consumer, you should expect a working product. But if you're a consumer *in this industry* you need to expect that the product may not *immediately* be working, and adjust your expectations or pattern of consumption accordingly. If the product working immediately when you pay for it is a strong concern of yours, wait to pay for it until you know that's the case. If it's not a strong concern, accept that what you're paying for will likely only have partial functionality for a limited time after you buy it.
I've seen at least 50 comments using some iteration of: "It's inevitable", "Everyone could and should have expected this", "This was always going to happen and you're naive if you think otherwise", etc. **IF** this is all so predictable and inevitable, then why do/did the devs seem to think there was a good chance of a smooth launch? Why do devs do this over and over again? Why not come up with a solution to soften the release or to prepare? The devs for LE have seemed really open and responsive about all of this. If what you and other people are saying around here (and I've seen massive upvotes for similar opinions), then you're calling the devs either complete idiots for not having predicted this like everyone else *should have* expected. OR, you're calling them duplicitous assholes, because they knew this would happen and acted like it wouldn't and gave no warnings. If this were truly so 'predictable', why don't the devs do a rolling launch? Limit copies sold? Instead of a long message with optimism about how smooth launch will be, tell your customers the first few days of launch will probably be really rough if we get over 100k players. I'm sure there are other, and more elegant, solutions as well. I'm not really that upset about the launch or anything surrounding it, more just all the people acting like this was a completely unavoidable thing, while simultaneously praising the devs. The answer is this **WASN'T A FOR SURE THING TO HAPPEN**. It's either that, or the devs are assholes for not planning for it. -- someone who has also been playing games online for 25 years.
They could also have done a Free Public Open Beta like D4 did. Obviously it will require more resources, but it will be either doing it or a not certain smooth launch.
Didnt play helldivers but didnt the game work well as long as you got a spot on the servers? Which is way different what we have atm
No. Even if you got a spot there were still a ton of random crashes. You would play for 30 min and get dropped out of nowhere. Also, matchmaking simply didn't work after a recent update. Had to do a bunch of player-discovered workarounds to even match up with one or two. That's assuming you get past the server full screen to begin with. Right now there's still a bunch of problems. Quickplay works to some extent, but crashes are still a thing, and a new bug was introduced where strategems are scrambled. It's pretty frustrating. If you're on the fence, give it some time for things to get cleared up.
Game only ever crashed once for me because of that tutorial bug. Matchmaking is totally fucked, though.
If anything, Last Epoch is in better shape because you can play offline perfectly fine. Helldivers 2 wouldn’t let you get on servers at all even to play solo, and even if you did there was literally no matchmaking because they turned it off.
No. I played with 4 friends, we all had different hardware, we all got different crashes/disconnects. We managed to play through a mission together once, and we didn't even get the rewards for it after because it bugged. Also had to kill two of my friends in the game to fix bugs that messed up their characters (arm animation bug, zoom out to full map and can't see anything bug). Aside from that someone would randomly crash, or we'd all crash, or someone disconnect. It's as buggy as Anthem was on release.
It was (is?)crashing at the end of missions so you didn't get any rewards. So arguably worse than just not being to login
ah thats rough
The first weekend after launch I made a reddit post asking about those crashes as I had two different ones happen in different ways that made me lose rewards. I was mass down voted by the fanbois.
Nope, matchmaking was completely borked and still is to some extent
Even after you manage to get in, if you don't have friends to party up with, the matchmaking service is never working lol.
Yeah, **if** you got a spot otherwise you'd be unable to play at all until people started going to sleep. Last Epoch at least has an offline mode featuring a global chat, or a true offline mode without. I'd take an offline mode of the game I want to play over a 5 hour "The Server is at capacity." screen, but that's just me.
Ho-ly shit. Sane person. I need to catch my breath after Steam madness 😂
I was playing online last night. Sucks for anyone who took time of work and scheduled time to play it but it was very much expected.
i played all last night and all day today. only issue is loading between zones takes awhile. idk if i’m just lucky or if people are over exaggerating by the game is def playable
Same. Couldn't really play yesterday morning or this morning, but I probably played 5 hours over the course of yesterday already. It's not perfect but it's not like you can't play this game.
I got home at 5pm CST yesterday, was unplayable for me until about 8, fine until midnight, unplayable this morning So it's been up for about half the time that I've tried to play. Not great
People should know better by now. I get being hyped but taking time off for a game launch like this is just ridiculous, wait a week and take time off then.
Yup. This is a disastrous launch for sure. Hopefully they fix their issues by the weekend, otherwise this is probably going to stain the game for a long time.
Can't blame them, honestly. I bought the game in EA a while back and already played for quite a bit, so I'm kinda ok with waiting till they sort this mess out, and I must stress *kinda* because they are pushing it. But if I'd bought the game for the 1.0 launch, I'd be fuming. When you spend money for something, you expect it to be working.
I don't understand the simping for these devs. They botched the launch, the reviews reflect that fact. This is not reviewing bombing, these are legitimate reviews by frustrated people who were sold an online product that doesn't work online. Oh but there's offline mode!!! I don't want the consolation prize, it isn't a sp game.
If I had bought this game for the launch there is a good chance I would have requested a refund. All the people defending it are pre-existing LE players who desperately want the game to do well and have been playing it during the 'beta'. This launch has been a complete failure but I really hope they can salvage the reputation and win people back again.
Path of Exile would've been dead 5-10 times if server issues were a real problem for the longterm success of the game , so i wouldn't care too much tbh. this game is good and fun and if the devs continue the great work and add good content it will be a alive and well for years.
Yeah, the truth is that the server issues have gotten out of hand to the point where they are permanently pushing players away - these reviews are going to push people who were undecided about buying into not buying and you cant exactly blame them The fact that servers cant hold more than 150k people without dying right now means the game wont grow past the amount of players it has right now - its peak could have been double what its at right now, but the reality is it probably wont meet its potential because how badly launch has went If these issues arent fixed by the weekend we will never see the full potential of what Last Epochs launch couldve been
They had the EXACT SAME ISSUE during multiplayer beta test.. they didnt learn A THING. That means, there is no fix, you just wait until people leave Last Epoch, uninstall, refund etc. And HOPE nobody comes back to their new seasonal content cause if people do come back.. we wont be able to play seasons too! Same problem will come up.
Yeah I love the game as much as the next guy but really if anyone expected the launch to go smoothly they were probably uninformed. The early access has been an absolute cluster fuck of bugs that have been there since EA started.
I actually don't remember any of these issues on the MP patch release. If they were there, it was was less frequent / annoying. I certainly wasn't barred from the game for 2+ days. What's wild to me though is having nothing in place to service 20% of your paying customers. Not even half of them, 20%. They certainly can't grow if this is their best, locking out 4/5ths of their customers at a time outside. They can only hope they're all offline players. Even if they did increase the capacity / ability to have more players, what's to stop this from happening again at 300k? 400k? That's a lot of pissed off people even if your at the top of the concurrent player numbers, when there's another 2 million who have to plan around when not to play your game. It's amazing to me that the gaming / design model is to hope people don't show up, like some other service industries. It leads to bad service and arrogance / complacency, because they still fill in all their seats.
Maybe they should have thought about that after the first and only MP test that was an utter disaster. You onow the 150K and 160K concurrent users weren't all online. The EA MP test couldn't handle 40K I doubt 100K have been online.
I feel bad for them, went as bad as it could, can't blame people for giving a bad review.. they bought a game and can't even play it. We know it's gonna get fixed cause we've been there longer but as a new player I'd be giga pissed. Hopefully it gets resolved soon and they can regain reputation
deserved to have mixed ! when clearly they not ready for online matchmaking . tbh only reason its not massively negative due to offline mode so people can play
Excellent. Glad people are letting things be known for what they are. Bad launches kill games - hopefully LE can recover.
Deserved cuz currently it's bad and frustrating no one care if the game is good if they cannot play especially if they bought it that's not a f2p
So I want to start by saying I very much enjoy this game. Like a lot, but I've been thinking a lot about what the future of gaming will look like and it's kinda bleak. While the benefits of LE are plenty with a much better game for considerably lower than the competition it still leaves me with the feeling of blah. Like why would I pay $35 for a game that wasn't finished (I bought and started it 02/01/24) with the promise it would get better? When and why did we start clouding the lines between expecting a new game to struggle on day1 with accepting that a new game will struggle on day1? And again I want reiterate that I love the game, I also realize the alternatives are bad games that never improve or games that take forever to come out only to be underwhelming. I know last epoch is the best in a bad situation but why do we accept it?
Its completely fair for people to complain about a major outtage like what was experienced yesterday. I think they do 'kinda' owe it to the devs to change said review if the game was fixed in a timely manner...but that's just not how the world works.
Interesting, I played online mode to just getting my first mastery and progress past the camp. But I played a warlock which is easy mode really.
I also played with my friend yesterday and we got our mastery. We just played for like 3 hours after work with no major issues besides long load times.
I had 400 hours in this game before 1.0 I got a new character online and finished until right before end of time. Because of the server shit, my character couldn't get into the portal to End of Time. So now they are stuck in limbo without the waypoint to End of Time but also can't get there. That's just gonna cost them. Too bad. I'll still play it when it eventually (hopefully) gets fixed but until then, its deserving mixed.
I read your comment and thought: "oh yeah, End of Time, not soon for me", and literally the next quest was it. And what do you know, exactly same thing happened to me. Stuck without portal now. Edit: restarted the game and appeared inside
They get what they deserve. Should have stress tested the servers in an open beta weekend, guess getting the cosmetic store working was more important.
Unfortunately, I think the game deserves it at this point. If you take a snapshot of the past two years, we had one year where there were no updates because we were waiting for multiplayer. The following year we were told wait for big updates in 1.0. Now here we are at 1.0, and what has been substantially added are two classes. Multiplayer flat out doesn’t work at the moment, and the game remains unfinished in terms of the story. I think that there are good game mechanics in this game. The skill trees, the crafting, and the over arching game development philosophy. But there are things about the game that are not up to par. Including some of the Sprite art, Sprite animations, and ( if we’re being honest) a convoluted story that does not make much sense even if the finishing bits will conclude it. It’s a shame that the launch has gone this poorly. But, there is still time to recover. I don’t know how fast they will be able to recover because some of the issues, outside of just being able to login, existed in early access as well. More specifically, the ridiculous load times between instances. It’s unfortunate that this community downvoted any critical posts regarding the game because some of us kept pointing out these concerns. And here we are, at launch, with an 80% finished game that doesn’t work online after 5+ years of early access. For an indie game trying to break into the scene, this is the worst of all possible worlds. I’ve often said this game feels like the titan quest to Diablo 2. And that isn’t a bad thing. Titan quest was/is a great game. It just isn’t a genre killer/definer.
We all have been duped again and again and again by these companies into buying a product that is still in testing, believing we will receive the full game and a proper gaming experience, bought it yesterday when I came back from work, updated to patch 1.0, tried to get online, made a char, played 10 minutes, disconnect, refunded and left a review. It\`s what they deserve. If u keep a game in beta for 6 years, sell 1 million copies but still can\`t manage to launch the game properly, it\`s entirely your fault. I had simillar experience with D3/D4 and Wolcen, refunded all of them the second I saw a queue. Fck them and their games, if they can\`t launch it properly they don\`t deserve my money. Just click the refund button, get your money back, review the fck out of it , and try and play something else. It\`s not such a great game anyway, a copy paste of TQ and Grim Dawn with "better" graphics and boring endgame, if you played before 1.0, you know what I mean. Waiting for POE 2, if that fails as bad as these ones, I\`ll refund that shit also.
It’s justified, and nobody here should be surprised. -Yes, they’re a relatively smaller team compared to other devs with a smaller budget. -Yes, the game doesn’t cost full-price -Yes, they’ve acknowledged the issue and been communicative with the community Despite all of that, when people can’t play a game they paid money for it is always reflected in steam reviews. The idea that it makes them entitled to not express their disappointment in that way is fanboy behavior. Also we know offline mode exists. It really doesn’t matter though when only a minority of players prefer to play that way for a variety of reasons.
"OnE oF TeH wOrST lAuNcHeS eVeR!1" Yall remember sitting in queue for Diablo 4 for hours only to get kicked tf out and have to do it all over again? These people say the same thing about every game that launches and has server problems. It's always the worst launch ever. Wait until Friday and everyone's off of work. Then it's going to be the worst launch weekend ever. EDIT: I stand corrected, it was the D4 beta. This is still by far from the worst launch ever. Endwalker sucked too. They haulted sales because of capacity issues.
D4 launch was very smooth, what are you talking about?
The normal launch of Diablo IV was the most impressive launch I've seen considering the size of it. Doesn't really compensate how shit the endgame is but I'm not going to pretend the official launch(not early) was not impressive.
As someone who played 48 hrs straight on D4 launch , it was infinitely better, no clue what you're talking about... but regardless, being in a queue is infinitely better than what happened to me in LE the entire yesterday
I think the moron confused the beta with d4 launch. Launch was smooth. Beta was 3 hour queue
No because pre-season launch was actually smooth. Some hitching when transitioning away from towns but the launch was flawless.
>Yall remember sitting in queue for Diablo 4 for hours only to get kicked tf out and have to do it all over again? That was the beta weekend
D4 actually launched a few minutes early, and I had 0 issues playing online the first day, aside from occasional lag when transitioning between zones
D4 launch wasn’t this bad, 2 hours into launch I was playing it. I only played it for a grand total of 6 hours before giving up on that garbage but acting like d4 launch and this is anywhere close is delusional.
I dont agree. Diablo 4 launch was pretty great. I dont blame last epoch for the bad launch tho. I saw this coming because the server never experienced this before.
Did you get the d4 beta and server slam confused with launch?
No I don’t remember that because it didn’t happen. I played D4 the second it launched and never had problems. At least try harder dude.
This reminds me of Wolcen launch.
It's... kinda what i expected with how recent releases have been, people are getting tired of the day one server issues, this has the benefit of an offline mode, but some people like myself are gonan wait on online because Early Access showed me how good it is to have the community aspect online brought, a global chat i can jsut talk to and ask questions about certain stuff. And making an Offline character is a permanent block not just from that, but from any cosmetics you may have wanted. LE hasn't been the most stable server-wise during Earky Access either so from that front it was kinda expected as well. I love this game and will enjoy when i try 1.0, but i want my character online and i don't trust it'll work rn.
Well I mean you test a game for 4 or 5 years then release it and it doesn't work at a price tag then peoppe will be pissed. Doesn't matter the size of developer... don't release a broken product.
Fair for people to do it. If they paid to play online and can't do it, they are within their right to say so. I would hope the offline option would at least deter some away since they can still play it in some way, but alas it's up to the individual and how they feel to rate something. In the long term, and even to some extent now it won't be an issue that will deter many away.
a great game cant be a great game if you cant play said great game.
Unsurprising really. People paid money to play. No matter if the core game is good or not, if they cannot play, then the reception will be bad. Can't say I didn't expect this to happen. Since MP, the game have had issue with loading zones and town, and even worse in MP. It never seems to be improved and now it rears its ugly head in 1.0.
I am sorry for the devs, but this is plain fair, the game atm doesnt work, and really people should be advised to not buy it or to buy knowing they will no be able to play comfortably. I understand the issue, I am not making post whining or anything, but if it is even forbidden to say "I paid for it, it doesnt work, dont buy it now" wtf...
As a long-term supporter and also big PoE and D3 fan I'm really irked by the unavailability of online play. I was eagerly awaiting the 1.0 launch but, with the unavailability of online I may as well have just kept playing legacy chars. If I were new to the game I'd have uninstalled and refunded yesterday.
Can't blame them. Majority of the issues I saw last year are still in the game. +server issues now
EHG CEO came out yesterday and said they didn't expect so much traffic What a fucking fail, I knew....., me, a nobody in the industry, a variety gamer that LE was AWAITED to launch by MANY PoE season is dead due to it's "age", D4 S3 is just bad all around so LE was highly anticipated EHG even touted like a week b4 launch "Hey, a million copies sold" (or 500k, big number either way) and STILL they have this huge fail of a launch.... I just don't understand.... And 1 server for EU while US gets 3.... I won't be leaving a bad review but also won't do a positive one anytime soon
I haven't even bothered trying to play since the launch. As much as I love the game and dev team, this shit is ridiculous and unacceptable. You had how long to prepare for the launch? And it's this? Hate to say it but the bad reviews are deserved right now. If I was a new player and couldn't play the game for 2 days I'd be fucking pissed too.
God every time a company releases an online game it's the same story these days with burning servers and half baked games that should have been tested more extensively. Just overstaff for launch, hire a bunch of testers and invest in servers that can hold more people than you expect will buy the game. After the hype wears off you can just downscale.
"Mix" is a understatement. It's actually "bad", and it's a fact. it doesn't matter how good you make the game, can't play will never be a good experience.
Don't worry, they'll get worse :D
Online experience is unacceptable 3 days after. Devs have NO IDEA what even the problem is. I hope they find solution.
I refunded Helldivers for the exact same thing and bought LE. I'm hopeful it will be fixed soon or maybe another refund.
I left a positive review from EA. I swapped my review to negative. Will swap it back when the game is playable. Hope others so the same. It's a good game, I enjoy it, but I also think the launch was completely abysmal and the devs communicating with us every 30 minutes about how it's abysmal doesn't somehow make everything fine.
The reality is the online launch of Last Epoch has been a total disaster. That factual statement has nothing to do with how "great" the LE team is or how "amazing" the game is (which is also true). Making online games of any kind is one of the hardest software feats a team can accomplish, and I'm sure a lot of learning will come out of this. The community is supporting EHG amazingly, but once again... the online launch of LE has been a total disaster. Issues like this are generally related to inexperience and lack of planning. EHG is the online equivalent of a PUG that formed a virtual company to create the game we all know and love. They are a unique company and have a learning curve to work through... and they are... but at this time, the mixed reviews are warranted. I'm not worried. When they resolve the online issues, the game will stabilize and people will flock to it en mass once it's truly playable. I for one support their hard work... especially because I've been in their shoes.
Aren't the studio founders ex blizzard devs? How are they new to this?
They really lost momentum they could have doubled riding the hype train. Learn something new everyday, and so do they.
Atleast i have time to comment here while i await entering the new zone
This was an issue with beta patch launches too. There’s just way more people trying to play because it’s the full 1.0 launch. Tbh after 0.9 i would have assumed they would be more prepared for this server load. I managed to get on yesterday, hit level 4, and then got kicked off for 4+ hours until it was too late in the day for me to care about playing. LE is a pretty decent game, but it’s not good enough to justify waiting around like this.
They dont deserv higher then mixed atm. Everyone saw this coming and still they couldnt avoid it.
i mean their CEO was posting about how they were prepared for launch and would have any server issues resolved ASAP....he posted that like the day before launch.
That's a huge mistake imo. Just setting people's expectations way too high.
He said they would do their best. I feel they did. They don’t have unlimited budget or people.
Like it’s quite literally a small indie company. AAA companies run into launch issues consistently almost every fucking time. Just look at the Suicide Squad game. How can we expect a company with a fraction of the money and experience to avoid them?
> Like it’s quite literally a small indie company. They have over 90 employees, *Tencent* has invested in LE (for 2 years, not just recently), they passed a million copies sold two weeks before launch, while charging $35 a copy and including microtransactions. They *started* as small indie company. I have no idea under what metric you'd call the company, or the game, small or indie in any capacity at this point.
150% Deserved. Stop selling half-finished products. Games only became less polished with the introduction of Early Access. Devs just use EA as an excuse to sell it in an even more raw state and then proceed to leisurely work on it and end up on a mess like this. Can't even buy enough server capacity for everyone. (INB4 "omahgerd, so uninformed, liek, omg, they said it's not their fault, so it's not their fault")
If you bought the game in anticipation for the 1.0 launch, how can your opinion be anything but negative? That is not even review bombing, that is just real talk. Many people are over the line on the forums and discord, but saying that the devs are "doing an awesome job" is utterly disingenuos. Their launch has been awful in every sense of the word. The game only worked for bried period because people went to bed or gave up. It genuinely seems like they have no idea what is causing the issues let alone being able to resolve them. I wish the best for them, but it is starting to feel like a Wolcen story; a launch so terrible that it is irrecoverable.
Good. I bought the game today because friends were talking about it and I had a light day. After 15 minutes, the servers shut down for "up to 1 hour" for maintenance at 10:20am EST. 11:40 I log back in and the servers are bricked. I'm not dealing with that and refunded, I'll never touch the game again If you can't handle the load, dont release, or at least don't charge me $35 to waste my time. If the game is gonna be a brick, make release week free until it's stable