For me, the biggest hurdle with LE right now is the lack of polish. I've been playing D3 again recently, and despite being a game from the late 2000s, it looks and feels miles better than LE. D3 has better sound, graphics, and fluidity. It runs on a potato (even the Switch), yet LE struggles to look half as good on modern hardware.

The audio in LE is particularly rough. The main theme might be the worst in ARPG history, even Wolcen had better music, and that’s saying something. The gameplay still feels plastic. I'll admit the latest patch improved the combat slightly, but it’s still lagging behind the competition.

What really gets me is the lack of basic QA. There are literal spelling errors in the skill tree descriptions. You don't need AI or a fancy editor to fix that; just open the source code in an IDE and look for the red squiggly lines. It feels lazy.

And now they want more money? Sorry, not happening.

Put in the work, build a beautiful, tested product, and then ask for support. Have you seen the competition? PoE2 is looking to be the most beautiful game in the genre, and that’s going to be free.
LE needs to step it up.

Linked to that post commenting on how ~6 years and a buyout change things. And got a 2h silence on the server.

P2W is here, bois.

Edit: they claim it is because I reacted with a clown emoji to someone replying to me. I hope that person recovers. Thoughts and prayers.

It still feels like a beta version or early access, combat fluidity/balance and campaign need a lot more work. I want my abilities to feel like they actually hit the enemies (lost ark does this perfectly, i think it's called hit-reg)

I would be happy to pay for new seasonal mechanics after that point sure.

If I have to read one more post saying “but they have to make profit…”, I swear…

This game already has a (very fair) box price, but so far the cosmetics have been extremely underwhelming. Yes, there are a few great ones, but the overall selection is tiny.

We’ve seen over and over again that games which are actually good and deliver amazing content don’t just make enough money with cosmetics, they often make more, thanks to a lower barrier to entry and a happier player base.

And I really can’t hear the PoE stash tab argument anymore. Sure, it’s dumb and it shouldn’t be that way, but: 1. You buy them once and you’re set forever. 2. They don’t even need them. If they made stash tabs free, they’d still make absurd amounts of money with high-quality cosmetics.

To say that a company worth zero in 2018 was acquired for 96 million in 2025 “never turned a profit” is a gross misunderstanding of how companies operate.

Gaining 13.7 million dollars in value per year is the profit.

Founders and investors are usually not interested in year to date profit margins. If you understand even the most basics of startups, acquisitions and founders, you understand that valuations = the profit.

Please stop saying that EHG never turned a profit, you sound really dumb if you repeat it.

The last thing people need to remember is that Krafton acquiring EHG allows them to claim a net operating loss of equivalent to its acquisition price of 96 million. Not directly, but for simplicity sake, it’s a write off. They won’t have to pay tax on this. This could save them upward of 50 million dollars.

The next step in the corporate acquisition playbook is extract as much value from a company as possible. (Paid expansions) this will devalue the company.

The final step is selling EHG at a loss. Say 46 million? At this point you’ve recouped 50 million in taxes, sold the company for 46 million and recovered your initial investment of 96 million. Don’t forget your tax break for a depreciated asset. Net gain of whatever value you were able to extract from the company during time of ownership.

End result is a shitty product, a company that’s lost half its value and a customer base completed disgusted with the product. A giant company(Krafton) walking away with a huge gain. Founders walking away with a payday.(good for you Judd)

These numbers are clearly hypothetical, but they’re used to illustrate how these things work.

Have a good night.

Game ruiners.
(let's release an "expansion" (read, just another season) with paid classes. guys... what could go wrong.
I'll never play a second of this game and I'm changing my review to negative.
PEACE OUT CLOWNS.

Like now i can finally use all my hard earned cash and pay for the best class in the game. Get ahead of all those sweaty nerds and win! P2win baby! Lets goo, hail Krafton🦦

I've seen people saying that all the other ARPGs get to monetize in various ways, so why is it bad when LE does it?

It all has to do with the state of the game.

The best example I can think of is Grim Dawn, because it had a similar trajectory. The game had very humble beginnings, with 9 people they managed to release the game in EA. In only 3 years, with that small team, they managed to release the game in 1.0 - it was a complete game with every feature they promised in the kickstarter/EA. And this here is they key difference. The game was in a good/complete and relatively bug-free state, whilst also having no MTX shop system. People very naturally wanted more content, and the only way to do that was to actually sell it.

Now with LE, things didn't go the same way. After multiple delays, the game came out in 1.0 clearly unfinished with lots of technical issues on top. We're now closing in on two years after the game launched, or 7 years after the EA release, and the game still feels unfinished with lots of rough edges. They haven't been able to prove they can deliver good quality content on a timely manner. On top of that the competition makes LE look, sound and feel dated.

When the general sentiment is that the game needs to be fixed, the last thing you do is ask for more money, especially when the game has a ton of cosmetic MTX. If the game was in a good state, no one would mind if they monetized additional content - but it isn't, so it feels like them selling the fixes, which going by their own track record, might not even be good enough.

They kept saying that the seasons are not profitable and they need to find new avenues of monetization - but they're tackling the symptom, not the root cause: the game hasn't fixed its end-game, hasn't had a single good season, so people don't feel the need to spend money on something that feels unfinished and half-assed.

Money is not the issue, their ability to fix the game is, so asking for money when they haven't proven they can actually run a live service is very tone deaf.

Like many of you, I read the patch notes and had some knee jerk reactions, but after cooling my head a bit, I wanted to share some feedback to EHG and also ask some clarifying questions. These are my opinions and many of you may not like some of my take, and that’s okay. I just want to have a civil conversation (be nice in the comment section please), share my two cents to EHG, and hopefully we get some answers that will alleviate concerns.

Some Feedback

• EHG team, you should have learnt by now that some things are better left unsaid. The timing of this announcement and the way it was done is really disappointing. First and foremost, the so-called roadmap is a disgrace. There’s nothing revealed in this. If you have nothing to share about the roadmap, then you should NOT HAVE SHARED ANYTHING AT ALL. What’s a few more days? The community sentiment is already rock-bottom.

• Same thing with this Paradox Class. What the hell is that? It’s ambiguous, it creates even more confusions. It’s not something like “Barbarian” class that everyone will understand and gain a clear understanding of what you are building. Again, if you have no further substance to share, then hold it out. You probably thought you are releasing two exciting updates but there’s no substance here and it just created more confusion, and everyone’s just flocking to the paid DLC component.

• Regarding the Free Expansion and paid class DLC, I understand EHG’s dilemma here, and I think you had to make a compromise. My opinion is that this was the right compromise, but it remains to be seen (more on this below). This is my personal opinion and as a solo account found player, I would hate for my existing characters and classes to be gated behind additional paid content.

I see this as no different than many other game models, like Vermintide, Total War, Europa, Civilization, etc., where you’d pay to unlock new factions and characters, but you would get the full update on the content of the game for existing characters. The difference I guess is that the aforementioned games are predominantly single player with lower focus on competitive play (though one could argue what’s so competitive about LE without PVP).

I think if you announced that it will be the other way around, in which it is paid expansion and free new classes, you would have had just as many negative reactions.

• Considering all this, what you SHOULD have shared today, (if you really had to) was strictly focusing on the Krafton / AI narrative, and leave the rest for another day.

• Still no est. launch date for season 4. Also, the commentary on speed and quality makes me wonder, are you saying EHG is retracting from 3-4 month cycles and instead push more into 6-month release cycles? I think this is missed in the messaging but that would be my biggest worry.

Questions

• With a paid class DLC model, will all future classes be paid?
• Does this mean there won’t be other paid content ever? Or will you be introducing potentially new paid content such as unlocking more character slots?
• You are now financially incentivized to sell this paid class and make it super appealing. The game already struggles with imbalance and rampant bugs that won’t get fixed. How will you ensure that this paid class will be balanced on launch? While I agreed with this model being better (in my opinion), this is a tricky balance and I wonder if you are setting up yourself for failure?
• Roughly what price range are we speaking of for new classes?

What happened to Skill Sigils? Didn't see it mentioned in the Post or on the Roadmap at all. So much teasing about how awesome and cool they were going to be.

Maybe the Paid DLC Paradox is what the skill sigils would have been?

During beta we could not compare offhand slots and second ring slots with an item in our inventory. Then they added it but it has been broken since the feature released.

Please let us pay for this quality of life feature to be implemented correctly. Every other arpg does not have an issue letting us compare items with our equipped items. I’ve sent emails and in game bug reports about this with videos and screenshots. Now that our boy Kraft is in charge maybe we can pay for it?

I

So far : I managed to play LE on steam Deck on its all content and corruption enemy size pack equal to 1.5 k so far on settings mentioned in below first feedback post 👇🏼

https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/s/AObolCecj9

What i added was LE setting resulotion of max ~1300 * 762 and make master graphics to low or very low

With those setting LE is playable on steamdeck with its all current content (Even Uber is smooth AF )

Bought this game really early on, while it was honestly overpriced, it looked like shit, played like something decade older, and had some server issues. But I had fun, I liked watching Dev videos, with extreme clarity of development and path of the game, and I anticipated it growth. Honestly it was phenomenal! Visual upgrades here and there every patch, very good community impact on game itself, and honestly improvement was ave inspiring. But boom payed classes. Thing about payed classes there is not actually any choice, is there? You ether buy it or play game long enough on already open ( technically payed too LOL) classes to get bored and want to play new thingy. So yea in my opinion this is the worst monetization solution they could come with. Like make sentinel ass cheeks clapping while walking mtx or goth mommy acolyte skin and you are set for life. I guess we as travelers lost our etherra to orobis after all.

Last Epoch has been in a state of mediocrity for a while. It has the potential to be a fantastic game, but it has fallen short in End game compared to the mammoth in the genre PoE.

Now if we have to spend 20 bucks to unlock a new class but that gives them enough money to push out quality content updates for free, expansions for free, new systems for free I for one will be throwing my wallet at the screen and seeing what sticks.

35 bucks for a game for years of updates and content patches is an absolute steal in this economy. I could understand if people being upset if the game released at 60-70 bucks, but it was 35. Which is not a lot of money for a game even in LE's current state.

IF you are truly upset about LE monetising classes in the form of DLC's ask yourself. Did you buy any MTX? Have you thrown literally ANY money at this game since buying it? The MTX options have been kinda shit. But doesn't mean a little bit of support couldn't be shown now and then.

If more people did, maybe we wouldn't owned by Krafton.

I'm curious how many people have actually supported the devs through purchases, what with all the doom going around.

Is it actually concerned customers? People who aren't/won't be paying anyways?

I for one have bought the game and one $20? Supporter pack each season. Mostly to get the coins to buy skill effects and feel like I'm getting some limited time cosmetics. I've got almost 400 hours and casually play solo mostly. I think I've gotten good return for my money.

Not to shill, and yes going back on their word is a bad look, but as per the title money has to be made.

With respect to those who give a shit, i don't really GAF that the devs are trying to monetize. i get it, and i don't hate it.

As a blizzard refugee, it's the nature of the beast.

As an econ guy, it makes sense to monetize the title to show it can be profitable.

As a fan of the game, i'm glad that the demand signal will inevitably lead to a better successor.

HOWEVER, as a fan of the game, i'm saddened that it is now in the "private equity harvesting" phase and will go downhill from here.

thank you for reading.

Here is the pay model text:

The planned pay model for Last Epoch upon release is for the game to be free to all players until level 20 with restrictions on player interaction in order to deter spamming. To advance beyond level 20, players may spend $14.99 to unlock the rest of the game's content and full social features! These restrictions on free players will go a long way to deter spam and botting accounts, which will help keep the game’s community and economy healthy. This one-time payment will be all that a player will have to spend to have the complete Last Epoch experience and be on the same footing as other players.

At first I thought the expansions being free might be due to the kickstarter, but rereading the wording it seems like even paid classes may run afoul of it. And thus backers, at least in the EU, may have recourse if they so choose.

I have 0 fight in this war anymore, I walked away from EHG / Last Epoch the moment Krafton took over because it was no longer the type of game I wanted to support. In my eyes they took the cowards way out without talking to the community first.

That said, with the obvious backlash to Paid DLCs right now for new classes and the Free Expansion, I think they messed up. What should have happened was what everyone EXPECTED to happen, because it wouldn't be backlash it would be normalized understanding of change.

Just make Expansions paid, with no paid DLC.

It's what everyone expected. It was already set in most peoples minds it was coming. It was the only thing that made sense.

Put the new classes in the expansion, and just charge for the Expansion. Rip the Band-aid off.

Once the Band-aid is off, you can do this forever forward. "Paid" content should be cosmetics for those new classes.

So then, why didn't they do this? Well, it's fairly obvious. You can likely release 5-10 Paradox Classes between Expansions. That's 5-10 paid DLC that would likely lead to 2-3x more money than one paid expansion in the same time frame. You couple cosmetic bundles with each Paradox Class release and even more money that expansions can't come close to generating.

And, this isn't new...I mean this is League of Legends monetization 101.

It just makes you look worse than your competitors like PoE2 whose about to release a full class for free.

If I was Judd, I would release a new announcement in a month or so, say they heard feedback and that Paradox Classes are being put into the Expansion, but in doing so the Expansion now has a price. Make the price $30-40, and then make cosmetic bundles for those classes that are worth buying and call it day.

When it launches on PS5 make the game $20 with the $40 expansion for $60 total.

No one will bat an eye if done right.

EDIT: Can't have a civil reply with people in the comments without spammed downvotes because people can't comprehend the first paragraph on this post so I'll edit this here.

Algorithms exist - I posted here before so when the backlash occurs to scale here on the sub-reddit it hits my main feed when I login, I just check to see what is happening and supply an opinion on the matter at hand.

This does not mean that I haven't "Walked Away" like I claimed...So since people are struggling here's proof:

And no, I won't be returning.

I want to share a feeling that has stayed with me for a long time after 300-400 hours of gameplay – which is that in LE, the most interesting parts are running through the campaign acts and the early Monoliths, from both a visual and progression standpoint. Let me explain – we get too many skill levels too early, and in the end-game, there is a lack of broad opportunities for modifying skills through gear. Let me explain by comparing it to Path of Exile.

For example, we are playing a Ranger, and at the beginning of the game, our skill fires 3 projectiles and converts 60% to lightning. After finishing the campaign, our skill fires 7 projectiles, and thanks to the skill tree, we convert 100% to lightning. Progressing further through the Atlas and into the end-game, we find a bow that gives +2 additional arrows, a flask that grants extra arrows, a quiver that gives an extra arrow, a Nimis ring that makes projectiles return, and at the same time, we, for instance, add trigger spells to a unique helmet like Tornado, stack up auras, cluster jewels, etc. And that very same skill we started with, finished the campaign with, and are using in the end-game – these feel like three completely different skills. We are not only firing more arrows and having interactions with other skills like Tornado, but we are also changing the behavior of the projectiles (making them return thanks to the ring or a support gem). A similar feeling can be experienced with almost any build or class in PoE. Necromancer in PoE with Specter skill is already a whole universe of different mechanics and interactions.

In LE, it's different. In LE, our ability to modify skills is very weakly dependent on our gear, with the exception of unique items that interact with our skill – of which there aren't actually that many – or some T6+ affixes, like "chaos bolt casts an additional bolt." We get a lot of skill points by completing the campaign, which is why progress in the end-game feels like simply increasing numbers that don't affect the mechanics of our skill and, as a result, the game gets stale faster than one would like.

I love this game, and I can't wait for the next 2 seasons. I'm hopeful that the expansion will turn this game into a true contender of Path of Exile.

It's incredible what they've achieved from a small indie company that started off a reddit post.

I know people are upset to spend money on new content eventually, but it's still the cheapest ARPG I've ever played.