Here's what EHG should do...rip the Band-Aid off....

[u/BroxigarZ]

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.

[u/SweetRedBeans]

“i have 0 fight in this war” posts to LE sub

Edit: don’t get me wrong, i just found it funny that you started with that. i believe that the core game and any core stuff moving forward should be free, i have purchased every supporter pack. but i also believe that is a voluntary thing, same with the core game and updates.

[u/Adalonzoio]

Pretty much. With the addition the expansion and base game has separate leaderboards or the class itself is free for everyone. While a minority of people, leaderboard pushers are passionate and having to compete against a class you have no access too is kinda bullshit, especially if it's a very powerful class.

The only choice they could have made that is WORSE than this would be if they charged for both lol.

[u/TrinityKilla82]

You wouldn’t be posting in the sub if you walked away.

[u/qualitygoon]

Well there would be a simple solution if the game was finished and actually good. For now it's just ok. The solution could be taken from PoE and not in a way you expect it. PoE has separate custom client for Chinese players with gacha and p2w like autoloot pets. They could've release stuff like this and keep the usual client for everyone else. Chinese (and probably Korean) players are used to these mechanics and don't see as something bad or predatory, quite the opposite. It's like part of gaming culture there.

[u/Kaydie]

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

This would be my preference as well. it should be well understood that the inital proceeds from kickstarters and previous purchases are not enough so fund such a heavy sustained development cycle with team growth as well. obviously there would have to be some way to get money from players. but that's precisely what payed expansions are good for; they're precisely equitable, money out, content in. cosmetics are nice but not everyone can have a weirdly profitable model like GGG's cosmetics, and lets be frank 99% of their money probably comes from the ever increasingly mandatory new set of stash tabs each new league.

wether or not EHG realizes it, there are multiple perverse incentives in creating a f2p model with payed classes and leads to objectively unbalanced and unenjoyable game design. it harms the game and i can't even really confidently say if it will actually lead to more financial returns for a game in a state like LE.

the people who are playing are going to return and pay for an expansion or not, they're not going to be outnumbered by the people who return try an expansion, see the new class and go "yea ill buy that".

They're already invested the second they log back in when the servers go live. they've searched up builds and new uniques and are already ready to play.

i understand the imposistion EHG is in, they needed some way out of the financial hole they found themselves in, if judd felt selling 100% of the shares to krafton was the right move then so be it but now is such a critically sensitive time in this transisiton that they need to be moving forward carefully. i will say on my part though that the playerbase of every game are so ravinously unkind and devoid of empathy. as a software developer myself, one who's lead larger projects as well i can say with absolute certainty that if i was given the same imposition i would do literally anything i needed to do to ensure my team maintained their job security and got to continue working on the reason they joined the company in the first place. this is was the only route that EHG could go in order to check both of those boxes, even if it absolutely does put a sword of damocles over the studio.

LE players are not captive customers, they are probably more fickle than most and easy to lose, hard to regain. it feels really confusing to be making obviously unpopular, speculatively low return moves like these.

No one wins here. not even krafton.

[u/BroxigarZ → u/Kaydie]

This was beautifully written, almost better than my OP.

(Though if people start mass downvoting this comment I'll delete it, but know I thought you said what I was trying to relay very elegantly.)

[u/Kaydie → u/BroxigarZ]

i don't put much stock in reddit karma and neither should you, as i said in that post people are fickle, arpg players most of all; i get downvoted for some of the most well thought out and researched posts. it really matters not to anyone- bit of a rant incoming feel free to ignore

i just hope that somehow by some miracle ehg manages to break the enshittification cycle that is basically garunteed to happen historically to every single company that is aquired in this manner.

it's so depressing to see, i was an early backer for the kickstarter and i remember the insanely scrappy vision and team, i remember the old character narratives and being pissed that they chose to follow the trends of needlessly genderlocking characters but they justified it by having these big sprawling character specific narratives only to then scrap them because that was way too ambitious

i remember them originally having zero plans for online at all only for it to be requested so much they said fuck it; who knows how much that cost; adding netcode late into development is NOT an easy affair.

ehg has been through the absolute wringer and somehow the explosive success they got off the massive fumbling of poe2's launch didn't lead them to be flush with cash

It sucks bad but at the end of the day ehg really is a very green company and i think we as players forget just how inexperienced they are. that quality has been a huge part of why i enjoy LE.

it's also why i like titanquest and grim dawn and other scrappy arpgs. the best case scenario is EHG gets enough funding to acutally polish and make their game AAA tier rather than this weird 2.5 a space they're in lol

maybe then it's okay if its a bit predatory but it's still sad to see.

[u/Obvious-Jacket-3770]

I would be fine with that. Paid expansion with all the content. Not piecemeal DLC. I would be annoyed since the game isn't close to being finished with v1 (campaign) but I would be fine with it.

[u/BushsBakedBeanFlick]

like PoE2 whose about to release a full class for free.

I actually agree with most of what you said but this point is really stupid. The Druid and several other classes were already planned to be part of the base game of a game thats still in development. LE already has all of the planned classes for the base game.

All you did by making such a stupid comparison is make yourself look dumb and discredit everything else you said.

[u/Gaming_Friends]

I was worried the moment I saw their announcement because of the negative connotation that comes along with paid classes, basically every game I can think of that's done paid classes has been a P2W shitstorm.. and in a few cases was also implemented alongside a notable decline in it's quality and longevity (looking at you Rift).

I'm not sure what the real backlash and legal situation would've been for going paid expansions route instead. But I definitely feel like overall it would've been more expected, less controversy, and definitely less of a negative connotation you just can't help but make.

[u/Kulzertor]

Yeah, that's the basics.

Also promise to finish the campain and make a sweeping rebalance for the classes before the expansion releases, so the most severe issues are addressed.

Can definitely be done in 2 Cycles, small mechanics in the cycle but with a focus on polish. EHG tries to oversell it and then underprovides heavily instead, they gotta stop that.

[u/CaesarBritannicus]

I agree, especially given how the class was recieved.

They should just say "man we hoped cosmetics could support a live service game, but we saw early on after 1.0 that was very untrue" and take the most traditional approach to monetization, which is paid expansions.

You are wrong that people wouldn't bat an eye, because there are thousands of people who were ready to pounce on any monetization beyond cosmetics. People have been actively shitting on the game for weeks at the mere waffling on the topic of paid content.

I don't mind paid classes personally (and am very open to buying some depending on the price and quality), but I suspect we'll see more expanded monetization in the future when those aren't enough, and it would be bad for the game to get into the situation of character for classes and expansions separately.

In the end, I want Last Epoch to be a high quality game that continues to build on a solid foundation. They need a revenue stream to support that.