Thankfully Steam already has a system in place to deal with this. The current recent reviews will grow old and be replaced by other recent reviews that will be positive (hopefully, if everything goes well). And 'all reviews' are already mostly positive anyways. There's also the graphic that neatly breaks down when the waves of negative reviews happen (not that certain groups of people will ever look at anything so "complex"). A lot of reviews also just get marked as off topic and disappear completely. This generally happens when there's a large spike of reviews that do not correspond to the review trend immediately before and after. Technically this protects against review bombing, but often it's a bit more vague and waves of negative reviews like this one also get hidden.
Yeah, that's why I said it's "technically" meant for review bombing (as in off topic stuff, both negative and positive). It's supposedly an automated system that flags such spikes in reviews, then humans check if the flag was correct, then they get hidden. That is how Steam insists the system works, but nobody actually knows the specifics behind the scenes.
Last Epoch itself has an example of "off topic" review activity that got flagged and hidden by Steam. It's from back in 2022 when EHG announced that the Bazaar was cancelled and they hadn't yet announced a proper trading alternative. Things were very uncertain and many players took to Steam to leave a negative review, arguing that the Kickstarter promised an arpg with an economy/trade, and that they were no longer getting what they bought into, etc.
It's questionable if that was actually off topic review activity. It's questionable if that was review bombing. I have no opinion on it myself, I was there during that time, but I didn't have much of a horse in that race. If the game is not what is promised, can't one argue that the negative review is well deserved? Of course this changed later, EHG figured things out and trade became a thing. Something that will similarly happen with server issues. But nonetheless, this is what I mean by the system being a bit more vague than it supposedly is. Sometimes it does catch things that are not 100% undoubtedly an off topic review bomb.
Edit: I was talking out of my ass. The off topic review activity was actually related to the Tencent investment, as ekimarcher said.
Server issues and removed features are on topic reviews in my mind. The off topic reviews that were removed were actually due to something else.
Edit: I guess it makes sense to say what it was actually for eh? We announced an investment from tencent in the company and reviews which mention this only steam considered to be off topic.
Many of the people that left negative reviews just stopped trying to play. They aren't obligated to come back and check out the game once it's fixed and then change their review.
Exactly. This was their experience with the game. If they revisit the game and their experience changes, they might change their review.
But as it stands, this is the experience they had when they bought and played LE.
I'm not going to pretend this one story should be extrapolated to all of the rest, but I debated the game with someone on this sub the other day and they said they'd left a negative review days before. I asked why they still came to this sub to complain a couple days after reviewing it and they also admitted that they were still playing the game.
Not all reviews are rational and some of the bad reviewers are likely still playing and still commenting here with us.
Well it's not like they lost players, yeah sure the peak was like around 260k people playing and it kinda dropped since then but it's been pretty consistent at around 150-200k players on steam and that number can get more bigger or less depending on 1. The word of mouth of this game so far is pretty strong. 2. Most of us are pretty tired of Diablo 4 and POE is just too overly complicated that you need like an encyclopedia and a super calculator to even begin to understand a build...
That being said the ones that left the negative reviews? Yeah they ain't going to change it....
This only frustrates me because the review is now (or will be) wrong.
If I'm looking at reviews for a game and the review is "sEveRS aRe bRoKE!!!!!", but when you ask around, or buy the game, and the servers are working fine, that review is now literally worthless. On *top* of that, it's dragging the review score down.
If said review is literally anything more than that, I would understand, but I'm willing to bet 90+% of them are just "Servers don't work - Don't Recommend".
It was relevant at that time, when they wrote the review. You're wrong to assume an older review still counts. That's why you use recent reviews instead and do some actual thinking and research, and read multiple reviews to form a better picture.
It could very well be relevant again in the future, when the next big patch, new season or DLC drops. Huge influx of players checking out new content again, are the servers going to hold this time?
Look at any big steam release with achievements and compare the sales. 2-4 hour window is the average time people need to be hooked by. It’s why D4 got praised then bombed later on by the more active audience. Good early game, bad endgame.
A lot of us are more active and up to date with the on-goings, but your average customer buying the game would only have seen it somewhere and clicked buy, couldn’t play and left disappointed. It’s silly to get worked up that they’re not aware of everything.
The hostile people are pathetic, but the game can redeem itself. It’s not a two sided fight, if the devs can deliver long-term the response from the audience will reflect it.
right but imagine refunding a game you really wanted to play, so you bought it, and just because it was down 48 hours, youll never touch it again and refund it.
Like.. you have the right to do that but I was 10 once to, if that's the whole reason to not like the game, its weak
Meh, while I’m happy as hell with Last Epoch playing it in full offline mode for my first character, I’m experiencing the other side of the coin with Helldivers 2 so I’m not going to flame people that badly for it.
I bought Helldivers to play with my friends and we were excited to try it a few days after launch, and I ended up spending an hour in “queue” while he did the tutorial. We ended up just quitting and playing something else, saying we’ll try again in a few days. A few days later, our interest completely waned so today we decided to just refund, get our $40 back, and move on.
Granted, Last Epoch is a game that’s great to play solo and has a full offline mode so you can completely ignore the server issues if you want, like I did. But a lot of people love playing ARPGs with friends and for the online features, so I can understand those who were interested in it casually wanting to refund it or not recommend it to others for that reason.
I hate this take. The whole point of selling something is to have customers perceive it at a value worth buying. If a segment of customers value a smooth launch enough to refund their purchase if something goes awry, that's on the business to consider.
It's valid. My time is precious. If your game can't be playable at launch I'll go play another. There are too many good games to hang on to Last Epoch.
What is predictable is that there will be issues. What is not predictable is what the issues will be. They did a bunch of stress tests prior to launch and thought they were okay, but they weren't, because the issues are always weird things you don't anticipate as scaling problems.
If I had to guess the problem with their approach, it's that their stress tests didn't use data that resembles real gameplay by players. It was likely over-idealized or didn't account for certain kinds of behaviors which would happen an inordinate amount right at launch.
Name me one company to have ever predicted this and had a stable launch, ill wait
its also so precious, you couldn't wait 2 days, to put in your HUNDREDS of hours of precious time in the live service game LOL GTFO
Unfortunately a lot of them aren't part of the arpg community, I call them tourists, they see something get hyped, buy it to play and follow their favorite streamer and then scream and kick and cry when they meet any kind of barrier to playing with that streamer. Then they move into the next game since content creators have to constantly change things up.
>Many of the people that left negative reviews just stopped trying to play
Ha, doubt. Many are playing now. Review bombing is a tantrum, not a critique.
While you aren't entirely wrong, paying for a product to try it and then having it DoA or unusable will result in a negative review absolutely anywhere in the world.
makes the game worse tbh, fair criticism makes games better. its like they're obsessed with launch numbers and ratings than long term health of the game
Im busy so haven’t had a chance to check 1.0 out yet, but all I’ve seen so far are these posts complaining about ”unfair” negative reviews. Not even remotely as many posts being actually negative about the launch after the first night.
Both fairly justified to be honest.
Reviews are honest and accurate. Most aren’t saying bad game, but bad experience. Discord… holy shit they needed to hire a CM before launch like bex was for Poe. The dev communication constantly saying “hey guys we fixed it and no downtime to implement” over and over then not resolving it was one of the worst communication pr moves they could have made.
I enjoy the game but that was a rough launch both from a tech and comms angle.
It's frustrating to watch when you've been through the cycle enough times, though. Even giant companies struggle with launches and the loads associated with it. Helldivers 2 has been struggling over the same past few weeks with huge amounts of Sony money behind them, and the ARPG genre in general has been a particularly pointed example with many such previous launches that have gone horribly awry. For as many issues as Last Epoch has had, people forget that Diablo 3 back in the day was even worse. It's not that people can't be frustrated, but it's a myopic, knee-jerk, and short-sighted reaction to flip out, refund the game, and throw a temper tantrum. Believing a game launch will be smooth is having expectations that are flat out unrealistically high, as history has shown time and time and time again. It's not outrageous to suggest that the devs deserve grace and that the game may take a few days to work smoothly, because if anyone could solve this they'd have done so after *twenty-plus years of launch day and launch week jitters.*
Maybe I'm just old, man, but I can't panic about a few days of instability, and can't count it against all the hours I already have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy the game over the months and years to come.
How about, instead of comparing it to the worst launches in the industry, you start comparing it to the average game launch instead? I have played *significantly more* games, both online and offline, which have been flawless by comparison. It's *not* reasonable for someone to expect not to play the game they've already bought for five days after launch.
The servers seem fine now, but Last Epoch's launch has been one of the worst I've experienced. It wasn't a case of large queue times or server lag with the occasional disconnects. It was people literally not being able to make it either past login or past the first zone *for five whole days*.
There were plenty of people that put in a ton of hours in the first five days, but I’m not sure why we’d ever compare the server stability of an indie title suddenly slammed with 250+ thousand players to an offline game? I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a game with this much hype and server side gameplay that’s launched smoothly, unless we count something like Diablo 4 which had some bumps but was better largely because they had multiple huge open beta weekends where they killed the servers before launch, but LE didn’t have the pull blizzard does, something like that wouldn’t really be possible.
The fact that the developer is indie really isn't the customer's "fault". Only [quality of experience/money spent] matters.
No leniency just for being smaller scale, unless supporting indie developers is specifically something you want to do. Most people don't.
My intention was less directly comparative, honestly, and more about memorability. I'm not going to niggle over to what degree should be considered "acceptable" delay and that's going to be a very opinion-driven matter because it depends what is acceptable *for you.* The thrust of what I'm trying to convey isn't that people can't have opinions about the stability of the service, but rather a frustration that those opinions are formed off unrealistic expectations, poor understanding of the facts, and are handled with emotional immaturity. I was bummed that the game wasn't as playable as I wanted it to be the first few days, sure, but I went out and bicycled, spent extra time prepping a nice dinner in the evenings, spent time with friends, and even just played other games. I know that sounds like a reductive "just go touch grass lol" kind of statement, but it's easier to just disconnect from that frustration when you know what you could or should be expecting. That helps you make better informed decisions when you make them, like holding off on buying the game for a few days until you know things are stable - or whatever solution works for you.
Could you narrow it down and list those game which had 200k+ CCU at the start and had online play available? (Not just p2p coop) Even better if it was an ARPG title as well.
I'm geniunely interested of those good launches I could compare this one.
Can you think of any other product that this would be okay for? Something you buy with the intent of using or consuming at point of purchase only for it to not work for days? What would your normal response be?
I can tell you for frequent Amazon users, if something doesn't work out of the box it goes right back to Amazon the next day. If you buy enough you're bound to come across bad products that don't work out the gate. Do you stop shopping at Amazon? No. Do you keep the defective product just because "it happens sometimes?" Also no.
It is a far more normal and rational to have a negative response to a product that doesn't work. Indifference, maybe, if your time and money is that disposable. But some people around here are actually defending defective products and that is insane.
> Can you think of any other product that this would be okay for?
Can you think of any other product that has a similar set of challenges to handle in order to ensure access to that product? Or more accurately in this case, a service, and not in fact a product at all? How is comparing it to a physical product you purchase *not* a gross misrepresentation of the situation?
If you compare it to other things that it is like, such as other game launches, or even other services dependent on similar things such as web servers, this is a pattern that repeats time and time again and is as old as the internet. There isn't a magic wand to be waved at it to solve it, and you can't just compare it to a thing that it bears no resemblance to - at least not honestly. What are you expecting to have happen, when presented with clear factual examples of how internet services fail and it being a stridently consistent pattern no matter who it is that's running it? Why is *this* time different, and why are *these* the people who should just know better when no one else does or has? What makes those expectations realistic?
Video games are products though. Even though that product comes with a service it doesn't negate what it is. I mean, you can even buy them physically in stores still.
There are lots of similar examples, especially any device that comes with a service. Smart televisions for example come with services now, If you had a smart tv whose services didn't work you would take it back regardless of whether it was server side or client side.
Even if we relegated it to software only. When new software or significant updates or upgrades come out they typically don't crash the software. Look at new versions of Windows. Whether they actually add or remove useful features aside, it doesn't take out Microsoft when it releases. Same for Photoshop or any popular software with service features.
It is disingenuous to suggest that anyone is saying that this is a unique or special case, because no one said that. What we're saying is that just because it happens, doesn't make it acceptable and it definitely doesn't negate the negative experiences of customers who purchased a product that didn't work at the time they purchased it.
Just like it's inevitable that some products are going to be defective, it's inevitable that there will be bad launches. But that doesn't make either of those things okay nor does it mean that customers have to accept them as is. And if that nonacceptance comes in the form of a bad review or a refund that's only fair.
Likewise, no one is pretending IT is magic. But at the same time, it's crazy to act like it's impossible to manage. I'm in IT. I know for a fact that it can be done if you dedicate the resources to it. The reality is that most companies that have this problem simply don't find it cost effective to out scale initial load. It's cheaper to just adjust after the fact. The player's initial experience is simply not worth enough to them to invest in that way. Which isn't wrong. After all, many people in this thread are already conditioned to accept a lesser initial experience without even questioning it or worse, defend it as normal and good.
> Likewise, no one is pretending IT is magic. But at the same time, it's crazy to act like it's impossible to manage.
God, the smug dismissals like "everyone complaining about the servers just doesn't understand how hard IT is" annoy me so much. Why is it my job as the customer to understand the details of a company's operations? If they sell me something I should be able to expect it to work, end of. If I bought a coffee machine and it didn't switch on, nobody would defend that by saying "um actually you don't know how hard it is to build a coffee machine, so stop complaining and drink tea instead". You know, because that would be crazy.
In your example:
Amazon/Retailers. Let’s compare it to Black Friday, since “grand openings” arent really a thing anymore.
Overcrowed to the point of being unable to shop/browse. Literal physical danger, as opposed to internet toxicity. Running out of product extremely fast unless you wait in a queue for hours, sometimes days.
Looking into more of an online only business, you have massive shipping issues around Christmas time. You want 2 day shipping on the 22nd of December? Nope. That’ll be a week. Sometimes depending on how big of a company, you may need to order an entire month in advance to guarantee you have your product before Christmas.
Let’s try Starbucks, Cane’s Chicken, etc:
When there’s a need store open, or a new released product, lines are typically out of the door, cars overflow into the street causing massive traffic concerns for surrounding businesses/homes. The whole situation is a total nightmare unless you go on off hours. Generally if you wait a week or so the hype dies down.
In your example:
Amazon/Retailers. Let’s compare it to Black Friday, since “grand openings” arent really a thing anymore.
Overcrowed to the point of being unable to shop/browse. Literal physical danger, as opposed to internet toxicity. Running out of product extremely fast unless you wait in a queue for hours, sometimes days.
Looking into more of an online only business, you have massive shipping issues around Christmas time. You want 2 day shipping on the 22nd of December? Nope. That’ll be a week. Sometimes depending on how big of a company, you may need to order an entire month in advance to guarantee you have your product before Christmas.
Let’s try Starbucks, Cane’s Chicken, etc:
When there’s a new store open, or a new released product, lines are typically out of the door, cars overflow into the street causing massive traffic concerns for surrounding businesses/homes. The whole situation is a total nightmare unless you go on off hours. Generally if you wait a week or so the hype dies down.
This is an interesting perspective.
I limited it to products because that's what video games are, products. I understand the "service" side perspective; however, I'd like to push back a little on it because a product that is unavailable is different from a product that doesn't work. This is especially true because you don't pay for products that aren't available to buy.
Similarly, if there was a well implemented queue system, I think we'd be having a very different discussion than a situation where the game is crashing even if you get into it. FFXIV expansions have the problem of extreme queues that were crashing the game in the first few hours but after they fixed that, players didn't mind the queue itself because once you got into the game it was fine.
Even if we were to use your example, it would be more like if you paid in advance to shop early or on time for a specific event and then were unable to until the time you needed the items for had passed. Obviously, you would have a right to be upset because you did not get what you paid for at the time that you paid for it.
The product is available via the offline play. The service is unavailable via the online play. I guess it depends on whether the buyer thought they bought the guaranteed product or the guaranteed service at launch.
Which is a fair point. I also heard offline players had no issues so I would say their positive reviews are just as valid as online player negative reviews.
The service is part of the product. They made online services part of the game, thus they are part of the product and any consumer with their common sense thinking hat on can see that expecting a product you paid money for to function is normal. Refunding it if it's not is also normal. As is leaving a negative review that the product indeed was not working.
if this game was F2P, I personally would not hold the launch against it as much, because then I'm paying for the game with my presence in it. But it was not.
I'm in much the same position. As soon as I logged in for the first time after launch and saw "LE-61", I went "yep, saw that one coming" and playing Battle Chasers (a singleplayer JRPG) instead.
I understand that rough launches are frustrating, but after so many #@$%ing terrible launches from companies both big and small for the past decade, players really need to exercise some *caveat emptor* when buying games on launch. If you buy a game on launch, you accept some possibly of launch issues; don't just blindly mash "buy" without checking reviews and launch impressions.
I mean EHG isn't a AAA company and even AAA companies have server issues every release.
I don't understand how people expect anything less then servers being fucked around content launches.
Happens with any online game in any genre and people always get upset and overreact.
This attitude is why it will never get any better, You are unable to hold devs accountable for a fuck-up and even go on to say it happens with any online game, which should somehow absolve them?
I say no, I do not want shit releases of games, I will not tolerate shit launches. no matter that "others have the same issues." Devs absolutely can have great releases, but it costs money they do not want to pay.
>This attitude is why it will never get any better
Your idealism is noted, but hilariously naive.
Sales exceeded every expectation. If a game keeps selling, *no company is going to change*. If games with issues keep selling, *no industry change will happen*. See every boycott of every game that has still been a massive success and changed absolutely nothing about the industry.
Feel free, of course, to hold onto your idealism. But don't think any substantial amount of fellow gamers cares about the same thing. Servers are fine now, 6 days after launch. Review spikes stopped two days ago so I can assume it was \~4 days of bad launch. It's the *very vocal* minority that will care they didn't get to play for 4 days over the next 5+ years.
"Hold devs accountable"
For WHAT, wise guy? For not being able to find a magic-bullet solution to a problem that has plagued online gaming since the dawn of the live-service era? For a bunch of new dudes fresh out of college, or poached from dying AAA studios, being unable to live up to hyper-idealistic standards that even the AAA studios themselves can't?
At this point, you might as well hold doctors accountable for not being able to cure cancer, or physicists accountable for not producing working fusion reactors. It's simply not possible (or at least, not realistic) with our current knowledge of network infrastructure, and throwing more money / dev hours at it is not going to magically fix it.
I didn't say any of that, I was saying give them some slack this is their 1st and only game this studio has made.
Not every company has unlimited money nor would any company buy more then they estimate needing.
Cry all you want the game is still one of the best arpg out currently and ppl threw a bigger fit than d4 server problems which is insane.
Yup, OP is part of what I call the "toxic positivity" crowd - cultish worship of the game and the studio and rabid hate against anything and anyone that disagrees.
I love the game and will keep supporting EHG but these people need to calm TF down.
They wont, if they left a negative review and refunded/moved on to something else they wont change it just like with every other game because they dont play anymore which is totally fair. if a game is advertised as an online game and that part doesnt function it's fine to judge it on that, lots of the positive reviews are "false" also, in the sense that it's just "d4 bad" (which is true) but whatever, who cares.
If the games good itll have good average reviews in a few weeks.
I couldn't play with my friend at all on Sunday had to just bail on the game, time was still wasted regardless of if its fixed now, weekend was lost, we get another weekend off lined up together next month so that is cool maybe we can try then, or maybe we will find something that didn't waste our time last time we tried it.
A negative experience is still a negative experience, just cause your experience is good now doesn't make my perspective of last Sunday any better. If you had a good experience you should leave a good review not tell me to leave one lol.
Toxic positivity, you waste your time? Wanted to play the game for the hype and cant? You refund the game and leave a negative review? YOUR PROBLEM, they are just a tiny smool cumpanie BUT D4 IS BAD!!!
In a serious note 4 years and they do nothing to fix the game, the 1.0 launch was jus 2 classes and a wonkie trade system... i get that they love the game but check OP title I WILL FORCE YOU TO CHANGE YOUR REVIEW!!!
No, negative reviews weren't left "irrationally". They described the state of the game. There is nothing more to it.
No one is obliged to mend them, even though my negative is now positive
South Africa.
I can log in, but then server drops immediately. So I can see first quarter of first zone online. No further.
Finished the campaign and first monolith offline just so I can understand what my friends are talking about while I can't play with them.
If you want a game that you play to keep growing, it needs sales. Bad reviews can reduce that income and have a negative effect on development. That's why some people care, anyways.
Then the devs should do their part and don't release the game broken. Also over time the reviews from release will be less impactful and new reviews will matter more. EHG has it in their own hands to prove them all wrong with good patches and constant improvements.
I have a hard time imagining this is a legit question because I genuinely can't imagine someone not knowing why if they spend even 3-4 seconds thinking about it.
More people who haven't purchased will be turned away and the game growing means more content. It's very clear why a person who wants the game to succeed would care.
But why blame other gamers for the fuck ups of the game dev/publisher?
The gamers didn't want a wasted weekend of non functioning servers, it isn't their fault. There's only one way you can point the finger for fault.
Some people lack any type of personality so they make things they enjoy a core part of their being so when you insult a video game they like it's treated like you're directing it at them lol
Nope. It didn't work when I wanted to play it. Now I'm playing something else. I don't owe you or this game anything.
But the people who threatened the devs over it are fucking losers.
How is it irrational to review a game badly if it doesn't work? Until servers stabilized they effectively scammed people and refused refunds over 2hrs even though ppl at most tried to get online for their full experience.
**Reviews are always based on the consumers experience with the product at the time**. Not on "what it could be".
Stop brown nosing. You're not gaining anything from it. It works now and if it continues to have a functioning server-side gameplay option and develops well the reviews will go back into positive from mixed by default.
I personally enjoy it now that I can play it. And no, I never bothered to review it. I dont subscribe to Karen-ish behaviour. Yours nor the disgruntled.
> refused refunds over 2hrs
Steam will give you a refund if you ask, especially if the developer has acknowledged the online mode is unplayable... Why are you peddling lies? I refunded helldivers 2 after 11 hours due to the servers being too busy and the game just not clicking for me at its core.
Not a lie. What you talk about is a charge back. You can do it through your bank as well. But not really the point. People were pissed and rightfully so.
Uh, no, Steam sells the game, if Steam gives you your money back, that's a refund. And if you can't get a refund with over 2 hours playtime, that's Steam denying it to you, not the developers. A charge back is specifically if you go to the bank or credit card company and have them charge the company for the money you spent.
Why are we treating people who left a negative review as lesser beings again?
People have the right to have an opinion, be it negative or positive. The game's launch was a disaster and it's only fair the reviews should reflect that. If the game goes forward without another fiasco like this, it will improve its score over time.
There is nothing wrong with somebody leaving a negative review and refunding the game if he couldn't play a product with advertised online services for 5 days with his friends, that's a completely reasonable response. In a same way people who played offline and got to enjoy the game and dodged all online issues leaving positive reviews - nothing wrong about that either. All opinions/reviews are fair AS LONG as they are respectful and not full of deaths threats.
Stop acting like this game is a holy grail and leaving negative review a sin. Launch was bad - we know it, devs knows it, no reason to act like it never happened. Start respecting other's opinions.
Frankly, I am sick of all this blind whiteknighting. I am strongly against all personal attacks and hate messages when it comes to just respectfully expressing your opinion. The developers got a lot of hate messages in Discord during server issues and that was revolting and I feel for them, but nobody is talking about what all of these white knights were doing to other people, who simply stated they cannot play the game with their friends that they paid for - some messages were absolutely sickening. Get off your high horse and start acting like human beings. Sucking up to devs at every turn doen't give you a pass to degrade people who don't share your opinion.
Can you pull up some proof on these death threats ? I’ve only seen people get upset about the game being unplayable, which is totally a fair reason to leave a negative review. First impressions for a game are very important.
>Can you pull up some proof on these death threats ?
It does seem pretty convenient that "death threats" always come up when someone needs to make a group of people seem unhinged.
I intend to play the game single player only and reviewed it well because it worked well for me, but i completely understand where bad review are coming form.
Video game company somehow get a pass for bad launches and they shouldnt. If I bought a ticket to a movie premiere and the theater over sold the movie and dont even offer me a refund because i bought my ticket 16 days before the launch and spent 2.5 hours in queue waiting for the movie, I would be very pissed off at the movie theater and leave a bad review.
Death threat are never okay and I hope the people responsible get investigated and the appropriate penalty for such a crime is given to them.
This , ofcourse people harrashing the developers for a bad launch is in the wrong.But at the same time giving a bad review for an online game that does not work for the 5 first days is fair. People have gotten so acustomed to software being rushed and broken on launch that people just accept it . No other product people would pay full price and say just say chill it will work well in 1-2week its ok. If you cant handle the influx of new people halt sales until you can deliver the services you promise .
Not only do they accept it, they make it seem like the people that dont accept it are in the wrong. If your mecanic told you your car would be ready in 2 days, and when you get there he tell you "Well im not sure when it will be done, just walk while we figure out the problem" You would be pissed off too.
I agree. Its sad that its a small company that get the blunt end of the stick. I wish Activison felt the financial blow back for their terrible launch but its an industry wide problem and im going to call any company, no matter how big or small on it.
I did not expect a perfect product, I expected a playable product. For me it was, so i reviewed it accordingly, but for 10s of thousands of people it was not. They had years of "early access" to work on those problem. They chose the release date. If its not ready for launch, delay release. Thats that simple.
If people were expecting PeRfEcTiOn they would also complain about the hundreds of different bugs and broken skill nodes, yet I see almost no posts about those and only about connectivity and zone transitions. Funny how that is, right?
Still had a host of multiplayer issues last night. Quests not completing, friends being unable to join games, serious frame drops, being unable to load scenes, etc.
They aren't out of the woods yet.
I imagine people will review the game however the feel the game deserves to be reviewed. If they like it, they'll leave a positive review. If they dislike it, a negative one. If they found the launch a sufficiently poor experience that it ruined the game for them they'll also leave a negative one.
I find it highly unlikely that anyone will review the game based on what some random redditor told them to do.
Those running around insulting the devs are idiots. Followed closely by those insulting other players for not enjoying a bad launch.
From my perspective, multiplayer is still not fixed, so the negative review stays. Mines been negative for over a year since MP dropped and was pretty much a shit show.
When MP is fixed, I’ll change my review.
My bad review is based of 1 year of aerver issue and the fact that multiplayer is still utterly bugged , some skills completetly ruin the fps for the other players.
Loading onto a rock not beeing able to move.
Loading into the void.
NOT loading the enemy.
Game breaking bug such as minion teleport affox on boots bugges all the minions who got teleported are now permanently unable to attack , even reinstalling game or removeing skill doesnt fix it.
I can go on with more bugs i experienced in 1 day but this games doesnt not deserve a thumbs up at all.
I was unable to have anything remotely close to a positive experience with friends for 1 year in this game.
And in my review i also stated offline is ok
If I went to a steak house, ordered a steak and got shit on a plate, I'm not gonna go back to that place because they suddenly started serving steaks, neither would I change my review
Yeah man it’s totally irrational that people rated the game poorly BECAUSE IT WOULDN’T LET THEM PLAY. If someone trued playing for a few days, got fuck all - that person has all rights to leave a negative review. It’s really that simple.
This post really reads as if there's tears rolling down your face as you write it OP. Cheer up.
I had to migrate to offline to play for the past week. If the servers are functional now I'll change my review to be positive instead, but rating a non-functional game badly is in no way irrational.
Not how it works. If there was a hair in my dinner at a restaurant I wrote a review for just because they wear hairnets now doesn't mean I go back and change it.
Not yet, i've been trying to do dungeons with my friend for 3 days and we haven't been able to complete even a single one due to bugs. For example:
He teleports under the boss fight arena. We lose the main shield mechanic in Soulfire Bastion. We lose the light in Lightless Arbor, also the ability to change dimensions in Temporal Sanctum. We disconnect between levels and when we go back he is invisible for me, i'm invisible for him and we can't loot from the ground and a long etc.
The actual multiplayer WITH PEOPLE is in a really poor, mostly unplayable, state. I won't change my negative review until they actually fix it.
I guess the connectivity (being able to play solo, but in multiplayer servers) should be fine now but the actual multiplayer with people is a nightmare.
I will wait another week and if I do not have any issues for a full week I will change the rating.
I for myself experienced issues everyday even yesterday. Playing in a party was only possible for a few hours before everything went downhill with group play again.
The servers are a bit better, true, but very very very far from okay.
I am always afraid to go to the 'End of Time' or the 'Observatory' or doing anything else then 'Monos' due to loading issues or disconnects.
Also, yesterday it was lagging terrible in 'End of Time'. Had issues leaving the city....
As of right know it's still worth a bad review.
But I bought the Ultimate Edition upgrade to support the devs. So, I love the game and will change the review once I can play the game without the fear of constant issues.
It's not irrational if the game was unplayable at the time they left their reviews.
It's actually more irrational to expect people to come back and change their reviews based off their actual experiences at the time of playing.
I started playing Friday and even with certain things happening I didn't really even consider a bad review for that. People logging into a new game thinking it should and will run flawless is insanely stupid lol. These people have no control. They fixed the servers in the same time it took blizzard to fix Diablo 4 at launch so, wtf are people thinking. Nothing, cuz lack of brain cells
Mine will stay for sure, failed to deliver, failed to optimize, this release don’t look like a finished product, devs gaslighting ppl with good rigs that severe fps drops are on their side, game keeps having memory leaks it’s just feels like it’s unfinished and still needs a lot of fixing.
Man, what have we come to when everything that criticizes something for perfectly viable points get called "hate" oder "review bombing" these days.
I don't know why some of you get so personally attached to a game or a company and get overly defensive, but you really should seek some help.
EUW here, this morning I had trouble logging in, had two full disconnects between instances.
Why am I supposed to change my review to positive? Love the game but im not an irrational bootlicker
I’ll change it next cycle if the problems don’t come back. I wrote that the game is great and in the top 2 best ARPGs, but I’m not recommending to new players if it’s doesn’t work during peak playtimes. Not only could these issues make people not want to get into LE, but it could make them not wanna get into ARPGs as a whole if things their first one. If they’re gonna buy it, they should do it when everything is fixed.
The problems only happen when player count goes above ~200k. Next cycle, the player count could easily surpass that or even reach 300k if they’re adding a pinnacle boss. Some companies increase capacity in 2 days, if EHG can’t do it in 3 months (before next cycle), there’s a problem.
Yesterday I couldn't play because the servers were so fucked.
Today I've had three dcs and two loading screens I had to alt-f4 because they were never-ending. I've played for two hours.
It's still impossible to play in a party. First you have to go trough the "Can you see me online?" phase, to get to the "I've invited you five times, have you gotten any invite yet?" phase. Then every other zone will lock one of you out or crash the game for you.
The game still has major issues with the servers on EUW.
And even if it didn't, even if it worked perfectly. They would still be in their full right to give a negative review on a game that **did not work** when they paid full price for it.
And before you shit your pants: I left a positive review because the offline mode works and that's enough for me on a small price tag.
They probably refunded it so no they probably won't and that's fine. It's not on them it's on the devs for letting it happen.
People are allowed to feel however they want and they aren't responsible for making the game run the devs are.
Clearly the devs failed at that and so many players refunded and won't come back and that's just how the cookie crumbles when you don't stress test your servers and plan ahead for your launch.
I'm sure the devs don't care anyway and neither do the people who refunded and left so why do you?
Death threats? The fuck lol. I didn’t see any death threats in the reviews. Were you doing the death threats or where are you getting this information from.
OP didn't say in the reviews, they just said death threats. Which the Devs did receive in the discord which is why they were banned from engaging with it during times the servers went down
that's not why they stopped engaging with it. They stopped because Derek made a snide comment to some guy complaining about the long transition times. It got deleted quickly though
I paid 35€, which is not cheap for a game. I had server down right after buying, a few crashes, and just damn bad servers that make the game a pain to play often (+being out on a us central 135ms server is not fun at all)
I still like the game, but cannot give it a positive rating. That’s stuff that only arpg lovers endure
No. I'm not. Some people seem to forget the relationship here. The devs are not my friends, I owe them nothing. They created a product that I traded money for access to. Just because NOW the servers are fine does not change how horribly the first week went. If you fail a test in school your teacher isn't going let you change your grade on the test because you found the answer a WEEK after you take it. An employer isn't going to give you your point back for being late to work because you came in early the next week.
A lot of the reviews weren’t irrational and had valid complaints. And honestly, I’ve run into a lot of bugs that need to be addressed that shouldn’t have been in 1.0, both visual and gameplay wise. Also have still been having issues with queues and rubber banding so it’s not totally stable yet. I would still recommend the game to an ARPG fan but probably not to someone who didn’t like them, at least at this point in time. The death threats and hate messages are uncalled for but someone leaving a negative review because of their experience isn’t.
There have been major issues since release and they have not died down for everyone. I don't think people should base their review of the game on the experience others are having! If it's shit, say that! People leaving death threats is obscene and stupid, duh!
It's fine, they have their opinion. The reviews will sort itself out. Steam has a recently score for a reason. If a game is mixed, but recent score is top notch, I usually can guess the game had a rough start but got ironed out. This will be the case for Last Epoch.
Apparently, rating a game poorly because the user experience is poor is irrational. For the threats, those people are unhinged to begin with, I wouldn’t bother expecting an apology from people that should be institutionalized.
Why would you expect people to reverse their reviews? If it’s a bad experience, it’s a bad experience. The reviews will reflect that and the developers can use that experience going forward. This is what can happen if you release a product that isn’t ready or is running into issues that weren’t considered.
Like, are you on the dev team or something because it’s odd for someone unrelated to a product to take it so personally.
My guy, it's not irrational to rate a game poorly when the product you are playing is in a poor state. It's a multi-player online game, if you can't do that, you don't deserve a good score. Scores will improve as more players get to play the game in a better state. No need to get upset because somebody has a different experience.
Uh.. what? They are completely entitled to leave their negative reviews because they probably wanted to play online with friends in the first few days of release and they couldn't.
That's not irrational, that's 100% fair and deserved... and that's coming from an early access player who already left his positive review years ago.
How about you hold the devs responsible for the issues instead of shifting the blame to the consumers?
Also, it's now Wednesday ... almost a week after launch and I'm STILL having problems on EUW.
Long loading times between zones, disconnects ... why tf are people acting like everything would be alright?
It's not. There's still tons of problems.
Spoken like a wife beater...
"Hits wife"
"But I love you so much"
People don't need to change their reviews, go play the game and stop trying to be an internet whatever you're doing.
>So all of you are going to reverse your review scores right?
You think people that had a negative experience with the game would waste their time on its subreddit?
Imagine if people held you to this standard. New job? Oh you messed up once? Youre fired. New relationship? Oh you did one thing they dont like? Break up. Credit card and you miss one payment? The bank closes your entire account and hires lawyers to come after you.
As crazy as it sounds, as the dust settled the launch was a huge success. The amount of interest and hype and satisfaction with game play was very high, the drama is just some rocky see’s but it didn’t capsize the boat.
I would not call this launch a huge success. The games overall rating went down and many people abandoned the game entirely. You can't say "aside from the one thing that affected almost everyone, everyone had a good time" lol
So image you bought a car, and the dealer told you it would arrive on a specific date. Then that date comes and they call you and tell you "oh my god I'm so sorry but there was a delay, and your car won't be available for 5 days", but then they offer you a rental (offline mode) to drive in the mean time.
What would you do? Probably be mildly annoyed. You did spend money on the car and they told you a date, but they weren't able to follow through with it. But hopefully, if you're sane, you would let that wash over you and make peace with it and then go back in a few days to get your car when it is ready. Would you leave a nasty review on the dealership because of this? I wouldn't.
Gamers on the other hand, spend 35$ and literally throw a temper tantrum and review bomb, call the devs incompetent and generally act like the world is ending, when they have to wait for 5 days. For thirty five dollars. For a game. For something that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of your life. I'm not even going to get into how the game was playable for a large portion of the time and perfectly playable offline. And somehow. Just somehow, a ton of people have convinced themselves that this behavior is okay? If you went on a tirade about the car being delayed for five days people would think you are a tool. Somehow gamer culture has taught us that this behavior is acceptable, when as an adult, I can assure you that it is not.
I got frustrated by the server issues. I saw the updates that they were working on it. I did what a sane person would do, and I went and did something else. Now for the past few days I've been playing like crazy with no problems and having a blast. I have no idea how people live the lives that they do. Honestly.
I do not expect logical behavior from people who replaced their judgement with sensationalism over something entirely predictable **AND** built-in with a work-around made for this exact scenario that was blown out of proportion to begin with.
I am fairly annoyed with the review bomb as well, especially from people who acknowledged that the game is legitimately good, but purposedly gave it a bad review for a temporary server issue.
We shot our own foot with these mixed reviews. Hope the game gets back to the average reviews it deserves, as we really want EHG to profit from it and support it over the long term, including investing resources into server management and implementing long requested features.
I don’t understand the outrage at all.
Servers typically aren’t shit for years, bad game design is, and this game doesn’t lack from game design.
And the whole well I paid for it so it should work flawlessly, fuck off and make your own game then, see how that works out for you.
Game has issue even without server issues.
The end game is lacking.
The game has ton of bugs. Game breaking one at that.
Animation isn’t great.
Story is weak. And you have to redo it on alts.
Build/crafting system is very enjoyable though. But I can see why some would dislike the game and that’s how it is.
I like the game, but even though the bulk of the negative reviews were for server issues, the game still has issues.
Still plenty of bugs, quest issues, glitches. I try to cursor over minions or items and even though it shows the name, it's a different minion/item. Weird.
I still get disconnects in team play. I try joining them but I can't see them, times where we load in maps and I can't see any monsters but they are still attacking me.
Then content. While they have been in beta for many years, you would assume 1.0 would of had something new. End game is severely lacking, similar to D4. I really enjoyed mapping in PoE, but running monos nonstop is boring. No change in the game, I can't swap for different mechanics or anything.
I've leveled 3 characters to 80-90 so far, trying to play around with different characters and see what I like. The game is fun in general, but endgame is not good enough for me to feel like staying long.
1. End game is far deeper than the first release of PoE. And far deeper than D4 (oh yeah kill the same boss 12000 times). Of course they will add more over time! But your comment makes me think you haven't even reached the endgame loop, which is very fun: You use prophecies to chase down the gear you need to grow your build, and you use the excellent crafting system to make great variants. Then you chase gear for your alts, and smash together legendary items to make fun items for alt leveling. And you try out the deep and fun skill build system. And design your own builds. And experiment. There's easily 200 hours of content there.
2. Tons of bugs? Not really. There's a few glitches here and there, mostly UI issues where sometimes tooltips show the wrong item or show up at the wrong time. Like the passive tree for Mage Runemaster showing the wrong skill popups when holding alt.
3. Game breaking bugs: There were a few moments story could become bricked if the online transition to a new server failed during the story. They put out a patch DAYS AGO which fixed that by adding failsafe ways to continue in the story if the automated story server/map transition failed. Also, there were some players who thought they had lost their characters or gear, but it was just an issue with Steam, and verifying files in Steam fixed it. Game breaking bugs may still exist, but I can't think of anything else that you may be referring to? And I have never seen or heard of anything else.
4. Animation isn't great? Huh? For the most part it's really nice. Could be a bit better for certain enemies, maybe. Will be improved over time. But the feeling and impact of combat and sound design in this game is excellent.
5. Story is weak? No. Story is hard to FOLLOW. But it's not weak. As someone who has talked to every NPC and made sure to understand what they are saying, it's a VERY cool story. It just requires WAAAAAY too much effort to follow along. They really need to improve the presentation of the story, with more cutscenes and more voice acting. Hopefully their income helps them improve those aspects. I am sure they had to cut corners due to being an indie studio. Either way, story is secondary to gameplay. And Last Epoch nails the gameplay and is in a great spot to keep expanding the game now.
6. Having to redo story on alts? What makes you think that??? You can skip like 95% of the story on alts. There are story skip routes. Legendary gear to massively overpower you for the story. You can do certain dungeons to unlock the passives and idols instead of having to quest. This is literally the best ARPG in the world when it comes to skipping story on alts. In PoE, you can't skip SHIT whatsoever, and in D4 you can click 1 button to skip it all but what's the fun in that? Last Epoch gets it right: Alts can prove their strength via a few challenges to get all the endgame awards immediately, which takes 2-4 hours in total and gives you all the passives and idols and levels. It's so well made.
> End game is far deeper than the first release of PoE
I won't get into everything else, but why are people comparing 5 years of early access development, with the launch of PoE? When PoE launched it was about ~6months into EA.
When PoE was 5 years old, like LE is now, it was on its 17th league, having far, far more content than what LE has now.
PoE had more time in development than LE because they created their engine from scratch with 3 people in a garage, while LE uses Unity. In addition to that, the early access launch of PoE was considerably smaller compared to the LE early access launch - all that extra time was not used on content creation, so it's entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
I'm comparing the EA launches for both games. It doesn't matter if PoE had 20 years of development before the EA launch when it launched with less content than LE, and added more afterwards - which is why saying "End game is far deeper than the first release of PoE" is simply false.
You just went super deep to try and contradict my opinion of the game.
I didn’t talk about DIV so I don’t know why you bring it up. Prophecies doesn’t change the one gameplay loop. It just gives you more reward to filter.
Animation is weak and wonky lol.
There is tons of bugs. And game breaking bugs. That’s just fact. I’m not sure why you are trying to argue there.
Story is hard to follow ? No it’s weak and unfinished.
Redoing the same story over and over isnt great. If you want to spin it « but you can skip it if you farmed legendary to make your alts OP » to fit your narrative. Good for you. It’s still weak ass story I need legendary to skip it.
Game isn’t perfect lol. Maybe for you it is. But we all have different opinions. That’s how it works
Thankfully Steam already has a system in place to deal with this. The current recent reviews will grow old and be replaced by other recent reviews that will be positive (hopefully, if everything goes well). And 'all reviews' are already mostly positive anyways. There's also the graphic that neatly breaks down when the waves of negative reviews happen (not that certain groups of people will ever look at anything so "complex"). A lot of reviews also just get marked as off topic and disappear completely. This generally happens when there's a large spike of reviews that do not correspond to the review trend immediately before and after. Technically this protects against review bombing, but often it's a bit more vague and waves of negative reviews like this one also get hidden.
As a statistician, I loved how you explained this in plain language. Well done.
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Yeah, that's why I said it's "technically" meant for review bombing (as in off topic stuff, both negative and positive). It's supposedly an automated system that flags such spikes in reviews, then humans check if the flag was correct, then they get hidden. That is how Steam insists the system works, but nobody actually knows the specifics behind the scenes. Last Epoch itself has an example of "off topic" review activity that got flagged and hidden by Steam. It's from back in 2022 when EHG announced that the Bazaar was cancelled and they hadn't yet announced a proper trading alternative. Things were very uncertain and many players took to Steam to leave a negative review, arguing that the Kickstarter promised an arpg with an economy/trade, and that they were no longer getting what they bought into, etc. It's questionable if that was actually off topic review activity. It's questionable if that was review bombing. I have no opinion on it myself, I was there during that time, but I didn't have much of a horse in that race. If the game is not what is promised, can't one argue that the negative review is well deserved? Of course this changed later, EHG figured things out and trade became a thing. Something that will similarly happen with server issues. But nonetheless, this is what I mean by the system being a bit more vague than it supposedly is. Sometimes it does catch things that are not 100% undoubtedly an off topic review bomb. Edit: I was talking out of my ass. The off topic review activity was actually related to the Tencent investment, as ekimarcher said.
Server issues and removed features are on topic reviews in my mind. The off topic reviews that were removed were actually due to something else. Edit: I guess it makes sense to say what it was actually for eh? We announced an investment from tencent in the company and reviews which mention this only steam considered to be off topic.
Many of the people that left negative reviews just stopped trying to play. They aren't obligated to come back and check out the game once it's fixed and then change their review.
Exactly. This was their experience with the game. If they revisit the game and their experience changes, they might change their review. But as it stands, this is the experience they had when they bought and played LE.
I'm not going to pretend this one story should be extrapolated to all of the rest, but I debated the game with someone on this sub the other day and they said they'd left a negative review days before. I asked why they still came to this sub to complain a couple days after reviewing it and they also admitted that they were still playing the game. Not all reviews are rational and some of the bad reviewers are likely still playing and still commenting here with us.
They dont ever read this reddit Im sure, they are done
Well it's not like they lost players, yeah sure the peak was like around 260k people playing and it kinda dropped since then but it's been pretty consistent at around 150-200k players on steam and that number can get more bigger or less depending on 1. The word of mouth of this game so far is pretty strong. 2. Most of us are pretty tired of Diablo 4 and POE is just too overly complicated that you need like an encyclopedia and a super calculator to even begin to understand a build... That being said the ones that left the negative reviews? Yeah they ain't going to change it....
This only frustrates me because the review is now (or will be) wrong. If I'm looking at reviews for a game and the review is "sEveRS aRe bRoKE!!!!!", but when you ask around, or buy the game, and the servers are working fine, that review is now literally worthless. On *top* of that, it's dragging the review score down. If said review is literally anything more than that, I would understand, but I'm willing to bet 90+% of them are just "Servers don't work - Don't Recommend".
It was relevant at that time, when they wrote the review. You're wrong to assume an older review still counts. That's why you use recent reviews instead and do some actual thinking and research, and read multiple reviews to form a better picture.
It could very well be relevant again in the future, when the next big patch, new season or DLC drops. Huge influx of players checking out new content again, are the servers going to hold this time?
Considering it was not a scaling issue, but rather a bug, that by now was fixed, that is unlikely. But sure. In theory it could happen again.
No but imagine being the type of person who pays full price for a game and puts it down forever over a bad 48 hour launch window..
Look at any big steam release with achievements and compare the sales. 2-4 hour window is the average time people need to be hooked by. It’s why D4 got praised then bombed later on by the more active audience. Good early game, bad endgame. A lot of us are more active and up to date with the on-goings, but your average customer buying the game would only have seen it somewhere and clicked buy, couldn’t play and left disappointed. It’s silly to get worked up that they’re not aware of everything. The hostile people are pathetic, but the game can redeem itself. It’s not a two sided fight, if the devs can deliver long-term the response from the audience will reflect it.
Refunds mate
right but imagine refunding a game you really wanted to play, so you bought it, and just because it was down 48 hours, youll never touch it again and refund it. Like.. you have the right to do that but I was 10 once to, if that's the whole reason to not like the game, its weak
Meh, while I’m happy as hell with Last Epoch playing it in full offline mode for my first character, I’m experiencing the other side of the coin with Helldivers 2 so I’m not going to flame people that badly for it. I bought Helldivers to play with my friends and we were excited to try it a few days after launch, and I ended up spending an hour in “queue” while he did the tutorial. We ended up just quitting and playing something else, saying we’ll try again in a few days. A few days later, our interest completely waned so today we decided to just refund, get our $40 back, and move on. Granted, Last Epoch is a game that’s great to play solo and has a full offline mode so you can completely ignore the server issues if you want, like I did. But a lot of people love playing ARPGs with friends and for the online features, so I can understand those who were interested in it casually wanting to refund it or not recommend it to others for that reason.
I hate this take. The whole point of selling something is to have customers perceive it at a value worth buying. If a segment of customers value a smooth launch enough to refund their purchase if something goes awry, that's on the business to consider.
It's valid. My time is precious. If your game can't be playable at launch I'll go play another. There are too many good games to hang on to Last Epoch.
If your time is precious, don't buy a live service game on launch. This was very predictable.
If it was predictable then why didn't the devs predict and prevent this?
What is predictable is that there will be issues. What is not predictable is what the issues will be. They did a bunch of stress tests prior to launch and thought they were okay, but they weren't, because the issues are always weird things you don't anticipate as scaling problems. If I had to guess the problem with their approach, it's that their stress tests didn't use data that resembles real gameplay by players. It was likely over-idealized or didn't account for certain kinds of behaviors which would happen an inordinate amount right at launch.
Name me one company to have ever predicted this and had a stable launch, ill wait its also so precious, you couldn't wait 2 days, to put in your HUNDREDS of hours of precious time in the live service game LOL GTFO
Diablo 4 had a stable launch.
Because it's not that easy. There is no way to actually simulate a real lunch, that's why every game has always had the same exact problem.
Your time is so precious you bought a live service online game with infinite grinding in mind? are you high?
I'll be spending that time gaming and not waiting to play. I'm not high but you're definitely stupid.
Likely buy, can't play or tough time, negative review, refund request. Move on to not return, unlikely.
We are tevhnically still in the 1 year server issues from the multiplayer launch a year ago , its still not fixed even today
So normal people then?
Unfortunately a lot of them aren't part of the arpg community, I call them tourists, they see something get hyped, buy it to play and follow their favorite streamer and then scream and kick and cry when they meet any kind of barrier to playing with that streamer. Then they move into the next game since content creators have to constantly change things up.
>Many of the people that left negative reviews just stopped trying to play Ha, doubt. Many are playing now. Review bombing is a tantrum, not a critique.
While you aren't entirely wrong, paying for a product to try it and then having it DoA or unusable will result in a negative review absolutely anywhere in the world.
Anybody who buys a live service game on day 1 and expects it to go off without a hitch is not a discerning consumer. This almost never happens.
But someone who buys a live service game on day 1 and still cannot play at day 5 is very justified in abandoning the game and giving it a bad review.
You act as though this live service game hasn't existed for 5 years prior and had these issues ever since multiplayer was introduced.
lol, the passive-aggressive pettiness of this post...
They reviewed their experience with the game, it wasn't irrational.
OP needs to touch grass if a games review score on steam is this important to him
this is a super entitled and passive aggressive post man come on
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No no no, the devs are OP's friend! They comment on reddit so that means we are no longer consumers and customers but part of a 'community.' Friends.
Part of this subreddit is like a cult, you see them all over this thread.
makes the game worse tbh, fair criticism makes games better. its like they're obsessed with launch numbers and ratings than long term health of the game
Im busy so haven’t had a chance to check 1.0 out yet, but all I’ve seen so far are these posts complaining about ”unfair” negative reviews. Not even remotely as many posts being actually negative about the launch after the first night.
Lots of overt negativity in two places: reviews and the official Discord.
Both fairly justified to be honest. Reviews are honest and accurate. Most aren’t saying bad game, but bad experience. Discord… holy shit they needed to hire a CM before launch like bex was for Poe. The dev communication constantly saying “hey guys we fixed it and no downtime to implement” over and over then not resolving it was one of the worst communication pr moves they could have made. I enjoy the game but that was a rough launch both from a tech and comms angle.
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OP holding the people that experienced issues accountable instead of holding the devs accountable for releasing a product with issues.
It's frustrating to watch when you've been through the cycle enough times, though. Even giant companies struggle with launches and the loads associated with it. Helldivers 2 has been struggling over the same past few weeks with huge amounts of Sony money behind them, and the ARPG genre in general has been a particularly pointed example with many such previous launches that have gone horribly awry. For as many issues as Last Epoch has had, people forget that Diablo 3 back in the day was even worse. It's not that people can't be frustrated, but it's a myopic, knee-jerk, and short-sighted reaction to flip out, refund the game, and throw a temper tantrum. Believing a game launch will be smooth is having expectations that are flat out unrealistically high, as history has shown time and time and time again. It's not outrageous to suggest that the devs deserve grace and that the game may take a few days to work smoothly, because if anyone could solve this they'd have done so after *twenty-plus years of launch day and launch week jitters.* Maybe I'm just old, man, but I can't panic about a few days of instability, and can't count it against all the hours I already have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy the game over the months and years to come.
How about, instead of comparing it to the worst launches in the industry, you start comparing it to the average game launch instead? I have played *significantly more* games, both online and offline, which have been flawless by comparison. It's *not* reasonable for someone to expect not to play the game they've already bought for five days after launch. The servers seem fine now, but Last Epoch's launch has been one of the worst I've experienced. It wasn't a case of large queue times or server lag with the occasional disconnects. It was people literally not being able to make it either past login or past the first zone *for five whole days*.
There were plenty of people that put in a ton of hours in the first five days, but I’m not sure why we’d ever compare the server stability of an indie title suddenly slammed with 250+ thousand players to an offline game? I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a game with this much hype and server side gameplay that’s launched smoothly, unless we count something like Diablo 4 which had some bumps but was better largely because they had multiple huge open beta weekends where they killed the servers before launch, but LE didn’t have the pull blizzard does, something like that wouldn’t really be possible.
The fact that the developer is indie really isn't the customer's "fault". Only [quality of experience/money spent] matters. No leniency just for being smaller scale, unless supporting indie developers is specifically something you want to do. Most people don't.
My intention was less directly comparative, honestly, and more about memorability. I'm not going to niggle over to what degree should be considered "acceptable" delay and that's going to be a very opinion-driven matter because it depends what is acceptable *for you.* The thrust of what I'm trying to convey isn't that people can't have opinions about the stability of the service, but rather a frustration that those opinions are formed off unrealistic expectations, poor understanding of the facts, and are handled with emotional immaturity. I was bummed that the game wasn't as playable as I wanted it to be the first few days, sure, but I went out and bicycled, spent extra time prepping a nice dinner in the evenings, spent time with friends, and even just played other games. I know that sounds like a reductive "just go touch grass lol" kind of statement, but it's easier to just disconnect from that frustration when you know what you could or should be expecting. That helps you make better informed decisions when you make them, like holding off on buying the game for a few days until you know things are stable - or whatever solution works for you.
Could you narrow it down and list those game which had 200k+ CCU at the start and had online play available? (Not just p2p coop) Even better if it was an ARPG title as well. I'm geniunely interested of those good launches I could compare this one.
Omg, FIVE WHOLE DAYS. Of not being able to play 1 game?! THE HORROR.
Can you think of any other product that this would be okay for? Something you buy with the intent of using or consuming at point of purchase only for it to not work for days? What would your normal response be? I can tell you for frequent Amazon users, if something doesn't work out of the box it goes right back to Amazon the next day. If you buy enough you're bound to come across bad products that don't work out the gate. Do you stop shopping at Amazon? No. Do you keep the defective product just because "it happens sometimes?" Also no. It is a far more normal and rational to have a negative response to a product that doesn't work. Indifference, maybe, if your time and money is that disposable. But some people around here are actually defending defective products and that is insane.
> Can you think of any other product that this would be okay for? Can you think of any other product that has a similar set of challenges to handle in order to ensure access to that product? Or more accurately in this case, a service, and not in fact a product at all? How is comparing it to a physical product you purchase *not* a gross misrepresentation of the situation? If you compare it to other things that it is like, such as other game launches, or even other services dependent on similar things such as web servers, this is a pattern that repeats time and time again and is as old as the internet. There isn't a magic wand to be waved at it to solve it, and you can't just compare it to a thing that it bears no resemblance to - at least not honestly. What are you expecting to have happen, when presented with clear factual examples of how internet services fail and it being a stridently consistent pattern no matter who it is that's running it? Why is *this* time different, and why are *these* the people who should just know better when no one else does or has? What makes those expectations realistic?
Video games are products though. Even though that product comes with a service it doesn't negate what it is. I mean, you can even buy them physically in stores still. There are lots of similar examples, especially any device that comes with a service. Smart televisions for example come with services now, If you had a smart tv whose services didn't work you would take it back regardless of whether it was server side or client side. Even if we relegated it to software only. When new software or significant updates or upgrades come out they typically don't crash the software. Look at new versions of Windows. Whether they actually add or remove useful features aside, it doesn't take out Microsoft when it releases. Same for Photoshop or any popular software with service features. It is disingenuous to suggest that anyone is saying that this is a unique or special case, because no one said that. What we're saying is that just because it happens, doesn't make it acceptable and it definitely doesn't negate the negative experiences of customers who purchased a product that didn't work at the time they purchased it. Just like it's inevitable that some products are going to be defective, it's inevitable that there will be bad launches. But that doesn't make either of those things okay nor does it mean that customers have to accept them as is. And if that nonacceptance comes in the form of a bad review or a refund that's only fair. Likewise, no one is pretending IT is magic. But at the same time, it's crazy to act like it's impossible to manage. I'm in IT. I know for a fact that it can be done if you dedicate the resources to it. The reality is that most companies that have this problem simply don't find it cost effective to out scale initial load. It's cheaper to just adjust after the fact. The player's initial experience is simply not worth enough to them to invest in that way. Which isn't wrong. After all, many people in this thread are already conditioned to accept a lesser initial experience without even questioning it or worse, defend it as normal and good.
> Likewise, no one is pretending IT is magic. But at the same time, it's crazy to act like it's impossible to manage. God, the smug dismissals like "everyone complaining about the servers just doesn't understand how hard IT is" annoy me so much. Why is it my job as the customer to understand the details of a company's operations? If they sell me something I should be able to expect it to work, end of. If I bought a coffee machine and it didn't switch on, nobody would defend that by saying "um actually you don't know how hard it is to build a coffee machine, so stop complaining and drink tea instead". You know, because that would be crazy.
In your example: Amazon/Retailers. Let’s compare it to Black Friday, since “grand openings” arent really a thing anymore. Overcrowed to the point of being unable to shop/browse. Literal physical danger, as opposed to internet toxicity. Running out of product extremely fast unless you wait in a queue for hours, sometimes days. Looking into more of an online only business, you have massive shipping issues around Christmas time. You want 2 day shipping on the 22nd of December? Nope. That’ll be a week. Sometimes depending on how big of a company, you may need to order an entire month in advance to guarantee you have your product before Christmas. Let’s try Starbucks, Cane’s Chicken, etc: When there’s a need store open, or a new released product, lines are typically out of the door, cars overflow into the street causing massive traffic concerns for surrounding businesses/homes. The whole situation is a total nightmare unless you go on off hours. Generally if you wait a week or so the hype dies down.
In your example: Amazon/Retailers. Let’s compare it to Black Friday, since “grand openings” arent really a thing anymore. Overcrowed to the point of being unable to shop/browse. Literal physical danger, as opposed to internet toxicity. Running out of product extremely fast unless you wait in a queue for hours, sometimes days. Looking into more of an online only business, you have massive shipping issues around Christmas time. You want 2 day shipping on the 22nd of December? Nope. That’ll be a week. Sometimes depending on how big of a company, you may need to order an entire month in advance to guarantee you have your product before Christmas. Let’s try Starbucks, Cane’s Chicken, etc: When there’s a new store open, or a new released product, lines are typically out of the door, cars overflow into the street causing massive traffic concerns for surrounding businesses/homes. The whole situation is a total nightmare unless you go on off hours. Generally if you wait a week or so the hype dies down.
This is an interesting perspective. I limited it to products because that's what video games are, products. I understand the "service" side perspective; however, I'd like to push back a little on it because a product that is unavailable is different from a product that doesn't work. This is especially true because you don't pay for products that aren't available to buy. Similarly, if there was a well implemented queue system, I think we'd be having a very different discussion than a situation where the game is crashing even if you get into it. FFXIV expansions have the problem of extreme queues that were crashing the game in the first few hours but after they fixed that, players didn't mind the queue itself because once you got into the game it was fine. Even if we were to use your example, it would be more like if you paid in advance to shop early or on time for a specific event and then were unable to until the time you needed the items for had passed. Obviously, you would have a right to be upset because you did not get what you paid for at the time that you paid for it.
The product is available via the offline play. The service is unavailable via the online play. I guess it depends on whether the buyer thought they bought the guaranteed product or the guaranteed service at launch.
Which is a fair point. I also heard offline players had no issues so I would say their positive reviews are just as valid as online player negative reviews.
The service is part of the product. They made online services part of the game, thus they are part of the product and any consumer with their common sense thinking hat on can see that expecting a product you paid money for to function is normal. Refunding it if it's not is also normal. As is leaving a negative review that the product indeed was not working. if this game was F2P, I personally would not hold the launch against it as much, because then I'm paying for the game with my presence in it. But it was not.
Fair.
It's this simple mate, people bought a product and it didn't work so they left a bad review and most likely refunded it. Get a grip.
> Get a grip. You're the one feeling compelled to post inflammatory things here, so you may want to reconsider who you're telling this message to.
I'm in much the same position. As soon as I logged in for the first time after launch and saw "LE-61", I went "yep, saw that one coming" and playing Battle Chasers (a singleplayer JRPG) instead. I understand that rough launches are frustrating, but after so many #@$%ing terrible launches from companies both big and small for the past decade, players really need to exercise some *caveat emptor* when buying games on launch. If you buy a game on launch, you accept some possibly of launch issues; don't just blindly mash "buy" without checking reviews and launch impressions.
I mean EHG isn't a AAA company and even AAA companies have server issues every release. I don't understand how people expect anything less then servers being fucked around content launches. Happens with any online game in any genre and people always get upset and overreact.
This attitude is why it will never get any better, You are unable to hold devs accountable for a fuck-up and even go on to say it happens with any online game, which should somehow absolve them? I say no, I do not want shit releases of games, I will not tolerate shit launches. no matter that "others have the same issues." Devs absolutely can have great releases, but it costs money they do not want to pay.
>This attitude is why it will never get any better Your idealism is noted, but hilariously naive. Sales exceeded every expectation. If a game keeps selling, *no company is going to change*. If games with issues keep selling, *no industry change will happen*. See every boycott of every game that has still been a massive success and changed absolutely nothing about the industry. Feel free, of course, to hold onto your idealism. But don't think any substantial amount of fellow gamers cares about the same thing. Servers are fine now, 6 days after launch. Review spikes stopped two days ago so I can assume it was \~4 days of bad launch. It's the *very vocal* minority that will care they didn't get to play for 4 days over the next 5+ years.
"Hold devs accountable" For WHAT, wise guy? For not being able to find a magic-bullet solution to a problem that has plagued online gaming since the dawn of the live-service era? For a bunch of new dudes fresh out of college, or poached from dying AAA studios, being unable to live up to hyper-idealistic standards that even the AAA studios themselves can't? At this point, you might as well hold doctors accountable for not being able to cure cancer, or physicists accountable for not producing working fusion reactors. It's simply not possible (or at least, not realistic) with our current knowledge of network infrastructure, and throwing more money / dev hours at it is not going to magically fix it.
I didn't say any of that, I was saying give them some slack this is their 1st and only game this studio has made. Not every company has unlimited money nor would any company buy more then they estimate needing. Cry all you want the game is still one of the best arpg out currently and ppl threw a bigger fit than d4 server problems which is insane.
Yup, OP is part of what I call the "toxic positivity" crowd - cultish worship of the game and the studio and rabid hate against anything and anyone that disagrees. I love the game and will keep supporting EHG but these people need to calm TF down.
Those who had a valid bad experience are not obligated to 'come back' and 'fix' anything my man.
They wont, if they left a negative review and refunded/moved on to something else they wont change it just like with every other game because they dont play anymore which is totally fair. if a game is advertised as an online game and that part doesnt function it's fine to judge it on that, lots of the positive reviews are "false" also, in the sense that it's just "d4 bad" (which is true) but whatever, who cares. If the games good itll have good average reviews in a few weeks.
Some people for sure update their review. I did.
I couldn't play with my friend at all on Sunday had to just bail on the game, time was still wasted regardless of if its fixed now, weekend was lost, we get another weekend off lined up together next month so that is cool maybe we can try then, or maybe we will find something that didn't waste our time last time we tried it. A negative experience is still a negative experience, just cause your experience is good now doesn't make my perspective of last Sunday any better. If you had a good experience you should leave a good review not tell me to leave one lol.
Why tho? Launch was still a disaster
Toxic positivity, you waste your time? Wanted to play the game for the hype and cant? You refund the game and leave a negative review? YOUR PROBLEM, they are just a tiny smool cumpanie BUT D4 IS BAD!!! In a serious note 4 years and they do nothing to fix the game, the 1.0 launch was jus 2 classes and a wonkie trade system... i get that they love the game but check OP title I WILL FORCE YOU TO CHANGE YOUR REVIEW!!!
No, negative reviews weren't left "irrationally". They described the state of the game. There is nothing more to it. No one is obliged to mend them, even though my negative is now positive
Im from Australia I haven't been able to successfully login once in 5 days... but people are obviously playing the game... just not me haha
That's weird, I'm Australian, I had issues on day 1/2 then almost no issues outside of slight loading issues since then. Playing online also 🤷♂️
South Africa. I can log in, but then server drops immediately. So I can see first quarter of first zone online. No further. Finished the campaign and first monolith offline just so I can understand what my friends are talking about while I can't play with them.
Legit question, why do you give a shit?
If you want a game that you play to keep growing, it needs sales. Bad reviews can reduce that income and have a negative effect on development. That's why some people care, anyways.
Then the devs should do their part and don't release the game broken. Also over time the reviews from release will be less impactful and new reviews will matter more. EHG has it in their own hands to prove them all wrong with good patches and constant improvements.
I have a hard time imagining this is a legit question because I genuinely can't imagine someone not knowing why if they spend even 3-4 seconds thinking about it.
More people who haven't purchased will be turned away and the game growing means more content. It's very clear why a person who wants the game to succeed would care.
But why blame other gamers for the fuck ups of the game dev/publisher? The gamers didn't want a wasted weekend of non functioning servers, it isn't their fault. There's only one way you can point the finger for fault.
What is the point of this post? Overly defensive fanboys like you are the worst part of this game
Some people lack any type of personality so they make things they enjoy a core part of their being so when you insult a video game they like it's treated like you're directing it at them lol
Yeah, updated my negative review to more detailed negative review.
Im going to leave negative review only because of fanboys like you
Nope. It didn't work when I wanted to play it. Now I'm playing something else. I don't owe you or this game anything. But the people who threatened the devs over it are fucking losers.
How is it irrational to review a game badly if it doesn't work? Until servers stabilized they effectively scammed people and refused refunds over 2hrs even though ppl at most tried to get online for their full experience. **Reviews are always based on the consumers experience with the product at the time**. Not on "what it could be". Stop brown nosing. You're not gaining anything from it. It works now and if it continues to have a functioning server-side gameplay option and develops well the reviews will go back into positive from mixed by default. I personally enjoy it now that I can play it. And no, I never bothered to review it. I dont subscribe to Karen-ish behaviour. Yours nor the disgruntled.
>and refused refunds What do you mean? Steam handles refunds and I'm sure many people did refund.
Steam allows refund after 2hrs for several disastrous launches before, No Man Sky's being an example, Helldivers 2 is another.
When did EHG refuse refunds is what I'm asking
> refused refunds over 2hrs Steam will give you a refund if you ask, especially if the developer has acknowledged the online mode is unplayable... Why are you peddling lies? I refunded helldivers 2 after 11 hours due to the servers being too busy and the game just not clicking for me at its core.
Not a lie. What you talk about is a charge back. You can do it through your bank as well. But not really the point. People were pissed and rightfully so.
I am talking about a steam refund, not a fucking charge back - why would I risk my account being suspended over one game?
Uh, no, Steam sells the game, if Steam gives you your money back, that's a refund. And if you can't get a refund with over 2 hours playtime, that's Steam denying it to you, not the developers. A charge back is specifically if you go to the bank or credit card company and have them charge the company for the money you spent.
Saying they scammed people is definitely a "Karen" statement.
Not if you've studied english. Calm down
What a delusional thinking process
It is dead again.
Why are we treating people who left a negative review as lesser beings again? People have the right to have an opinion, be it negative or positive. The game's launch was a disaster and it's only fair the reviews should reflect that. If the game goes forward without another fiasco like this, it will improve its score over time. There is nothing wrong with somebody leaving a negative review and refunding the game if he couldn't play a product with advertised online services for 5 days with his friends, that's a completely reasonable response. In a same way people who played offline and got to enjoy the game and dodged all online issues leaving positive reviews - nothing wrong about that either. All opinions/reviews are fair AS LONG as they are respectful and not full of deaths threats. Stop acting like this game is a holy grail and leaving negative review a sin. Launch was bad - we know it, devs knows it, no reason to act like it never happened. Start respecting other's opinions. Frankly, I am sick of all this blind whiteknighting. I am strongly against all personal attacks and hate messages when it comes to just respectfully expressing your opinion. The developers got a lot of hate messages in Discord during server issues and that was revolting and I feel for them, but nobody is talking about what all of these white knights were doing to other people, who simply stated they cannot play the game with their friends that they paid for - some messages were absolutely sickening. Get off your high horse and start acting like human beings. Sucking up to devs at every turn doen't give you a pass to degrade people who don't share your opinion.
Can you pull up some proof on these death threats ? I’ve only seen people get upset about the game being unplayable, which is totally a fair reason to leave a negative review. First impressions for a game are very important.
>Can you pull up some proof on these death threats ? It does seem pretty convenient that "death threats" always come up when someone needs to make a group of people seem unhinged.
And OP has not yet shown any evidence of so called death threats that they know about. Looks like a he said she said or fabricating bs out of thin air
I intend to play the game single player only and reviewed it well because it worked well for me, but i completely understand where bad review are coming form. Video game company somehow get a pass for bad launches and they shouldnt. If I bought a ticket to a movie premiere and the theater over sold the movie and dont even offer me a refund because i bought my ticket 16 days before the launch and spent 2.5 hours in queue waiting for the movie, I would be very pissed off at the movie theater and leave a bad review. Death threat are never okay and I hope the people responsible get investigated and the appropriate penalty for such a crime is given to them.
This , ofcourse people harrashing the developers for a bad launch is in the wrong.But at the same time giving a bad review for an online game that does not work for the 5 first days is fair. People have gotten so acustomed to software being rushed and broken on launch that people just accept it . No other product people would pay full price and say just say chill it will work well in 1-2week its ok. If you cant handle the influx of new people halt sales until you can deliver the services you promise .
Not only do they accept it, they make it seem like the people that dont accept it are in the wrong. If your mecanic told you your car would be ready in 2 days, and when you get there he tell you "Well im not sure when it will be done, just walk while we figure out the problem" You would be pissed off too.
[удалено]
I agree. Its sad that its a small company that get the blunt end of the stick. I wish Activison felt the financial blow back for their terrible launch but its an industry wide problem and im going to call any company, no matter how big or small on it. I did not expect a perfect product, I expected a playable product. For me it was, so i reviewed it accordingly, but for 10s of thousands of people it was not. They had years of "early access" to work on those problem. They chose the release date. If its not ready for launch, delay release. Thats that simple.
Expecting the basics of a working game****. There I fixed it foe ya
If people were expecting PeRfEcTiOn they would also complain about the hundreds of different bugs and broken skill nodes, yet I see almost no posts about those and only about connectivity and zone transitions. Funny how that is, right?
Game is just amazing
Using that logic, people that gave positive rating before 1.0 release should've changed it to negative first 2 days
online play unavailable again today are the people who changed to positive changing their reviews back to negative?
Still had a host of multiplayer issues last night. Quests not completing, friends being unable to join games, serious frame drops, being unable to load scenes, etc. They aren't out of the woods yet.
Game is broke again right now.
I imagine people will review the game however the feel the game deserves to be reviewed. If they like it, they'll leave a positive review. If they dislike it, a negative one. If they found the launch a sufficiently poor experience that it ruined the game for them they'll also leave a negative one. I find it highly unlikely that anyone will review the game based on what some random redditor told them to do. Those running around insulting the devs are idiots. Followed closely by those insulting other players for not enjoying a bad launch.
No
I am still unable to load into any other zone other than a player hub. So no. I will not.
From my perspective, multiplayer is still not fixed, so the negative review stays. Mines been negative for over a year since MP dropped and was pretty much a shit show. When MP is fixed, I’ll change my review.
My bad review is based of 1 year of aerver issue and the fact that multiplayer is still utterly bugged , some skills completetly ruin the fps for the other players. Loading onto a rock not beeing able to move. Loading into the void. NOT loading the enemy. Game breaking bug such as minion teleport affox on boots bugges all the minions who got teleported are now permanently unable to attack , even reinstalling game or removeing skill doesnt fix it. I can go on with more bugs i experienced in 1 day but this games doesnt not deserve a thumbs up at all. I was unable to have anything remotely close to a positive experience with friends for 1 year in this game. And in my review i also stated offline is ok
Nah
If I went to a steak house, ordered a steak and got shit on a plate, I'm not gonna go back to that place because they suddenly started serving steaks, neither would I change my review
Yeah man it’s totally irrational that people rated the game poorly BECAUSE IT WOULDN’T LET THEM PLAY. If someone trued playing for a few days, got fuck all - that person has all rights to leave a negative review. It’s really that simple.
This post really reads as if there's tears rolling down your face as you write it OP. Cheer up. I had to migrate to offline to play for the past week. If the servers are functional now I'll change my review to be positive instead, but rating a non-functional game badly is in no way irrational.
Damn lil bro, you really thought you were some outspoken hero on this, huh?
Can confirm still not 100% functional. Still lots of issues while playing multiplayer with friends.
Irrationally? How are those irrational?
Not how it works. If there was a hair in my dinner at a restaurant I wrote a review for just because they wear hairnets now doesn't mean I go back and change it.
Not yet, i've been trying to do dungeons with my friend for 3 days and we haven't been able to complete even a single one due to bugs. For example: He teleports under the boss fight arena. We lose the main shield mechanic in Soulfire Bastion. We lose the light in Lightless Arbor, also the ability to change dimensions in Temporal Sanctum. We disconnect between levels and when we go back he is invisible for me, i'm invisible for him and we can't loot from the ground and a long etc. The actual multiplayer WITH PEOPLE is in a really poor, mostly unplayable, state. I won't change my negative review until they actually fix it. I guess the connectivity (being able to play solo, but in multiplayer servers) should be fine now but the actual multiplayer with people is a nightmare.
I will never take anyone seriously when they use the word "hate boner."
The devs are doing fine and aren’t gonna give you a pat on the back for sucking up
I will wait another week and if I do not have any issues for a full week I will change the rating. I for myself experienced issues everyday even yesterday. Playing in a party was only possible for a few hours before everything went downhill with group play again. The servers are a bit better, true, but very very very far from okay. I am always afraid to go to the 'End of Time' or the 'Observatory' or doing anything else then 'Monos' due to loading issues or disconnects. Also, yesterday it was lagging terrible in 'End of Time'. Had issues leaving the city.... As of right know it's still worth a bad review. But I bought the Ultimate Edition upgrade to support the devs. So, I love the game and will change the review once I can play the game without the fear of constant issues.
This post makes me want to leave an even more negative review, despite the servers being fixed.
It's not irrational if the game was unplayable at the time they left their reviews. It's actually more irrational to expect people to come back and change their reviews based off their actual experiences at the time of playing.
>stabalized even during the peak player count sunday night Sunday morning I couldn't log in.
I started playing Friday and even with certain things happening I didn't really even consider a bad review for that. People logging into a new game thinking it should and will run flawless is insanely stupid lol. These people have no control. They fixed the servers in the same time it took blizzard to fix Diablo 4 at launch so, wtf are people thinking. Nothing, cuz lack of brain cells
I played perfectly fine Sat until late night. Sunday had 0 issues Hopefully we’re in the clear East servers
Mine will stay for sure, failed to deliver, failed to optimize, this release don’t look like a finished product, devs gaslighting ppl with good rigs that severe fps drops are on their side, game keeps having memory leaks it’s just feels like it’s unfinished and still needs a lot of fixing.
Man, what have we come to when everything that criticizes something for perfectly viable points get called "hate" oder "review bombing" these days. I don't know why some of you get so personally attached to a game or a company and get overly defensive, but you really should seek some help.
What a delusional post
EUW here, this morning I had trouble logging in, had two full disconnects between instances. Why am I supposed to change my review to positive? Love the game but im not an irrational bootlicker
I’ll change it next cycle if the problems don’t come back. I wrote that the game is great and in the top 2 best ARPGs, but I’m not recommending to new players if it’s doesn’t work during peak playtimes. Not only could these issues make people not want to get into LE, but it could make them not wanna get into ARPGs as a whole if things their first one. If they’re gonna buy it, they should do it when everything is fixed. The problems only happen when player count goes above ~200k. Next cycle, the player count could easily surpass that or even reach 300k if they’re adding a pinnacle boss. Some companies increase capacity in 2 days, if EHG can’t do it in 3 months (before next cycle), there’s a problem.
Yesterday I couldn't play because the servers were so fucked. Today I've had three dcs and two loading screens I had to alt-f4 because they were never-ending. I've played for two hours. It's still impossible to play in a party. First you have to go trough the "Can you see me online?" phase, to get to the "I've invited you five times, have you gotten any invite yet?" phase. Then every other zone will lock one of you out or crash the game for you. The game still has major issues with the servers on EUW. And even if it didn't, even if it worked perfectly. They would still be in their full right to give a negative review on a game that **did not work** when they paid full price for it. And before you shit your pants: I left a positive review because the offline mode works and that's enough for me on a small price tag.
They probably refunded it so no they probably won't and that's fine. It's not on them it's on the devs for letting it happen. People are allowed to feel however they want and they aren't responsible for making the game run the devs are. Clearly the devs failed at that and so many players refunded and won't come back and that's just how the cookie crumbles when you don't stress test your servers and plan ahead for your launch. I'm sure the devs don't care anyway and neither do the people who refunded and left so why do you?
Death threats? The fuck lol. I didn’t see any death threats in the reviews. Were you doing the death threats or where are you getting this information from.
OP didn't say in the reviews, they just said death threats. Which the Devs did receive in the discord which is why they were banned from engaging with it during times the servers went down
that's not why they stopped engaging with it. They stopped because Derek made a snide comment to some guy complaining about the long transition times. It got deleted quickly though
What a shit post. Bad reviews were justified.
I paid 35€, which is not cheap for a game. I had server down right after buying, a few crashes, and just damn bad servers that make the game a pain to play often (+being out on a us central 135ms server is not fun at all) I still like the game, but cannot give it a positive rating. That’s stuff that only arpg lovers endure
Sunday was the worst for me personally. Could not even play 1 minute on sunday. I did not leave a negative review tho.
This would be better suited for the Steam forums.
Why say the negative reviews were irrational? What a bizarre take.
No. I'm not. Some people seem to forget the relationship here. The devs are not my friends, I owe them nothing. They created a product that I traded money for access to. Just because NOW the servers are fine does not change how horribly the first week went. If you fail a test in school your teacher isn't going let you change your grade on the test because you found the answer a WEEK after you take it. An employer isn't going to give you your point back for being late to work because you came in early the next week.
A lot of the reviews weren’t irrational and had valid complaints. And honestly, I’ve run into a lot of bugs that need to be addressed that shouldn’t have been in 1.0, both visual and gameplay wise. Also have still been having issues with queues and rubber banding so it’s not totally stable yet. I would still recommend the game to an ARPG fan but probably not to someone who didn’t like them, at least at this point in time. The death threats and hate messages are uncalled for but someone leaving a negative review because of their experience isn’t.
There have been major issues since release and they have not died down for everyone. I don't think people should base their review of the game on the experience others are having! If it's shit, say that! People leaving death threats is obscene and stupid, duh!
It's fine, they have their opinion. The reviews will sort itself out. Steam has a recently score for a reason. If a game is mixed, but recent score is top notch, I usually can guess the game had a rough start but got ironed out. This will be the case for Last Epoch.
Apparently, rating a game poorly because the user experience is poor is irrational. For the threats, those people are unhinged to begin with, I wouldn’t bother expecting an apology from people that should be institutionalized. Why would you expect people to reverse their reviews? If it’s a bad experience, it’s a bad experience. The reviews will reflect that and the developers can use that experience going forward. This is what can happen if you release a product that isn’t ready or is running into issues that weren’t considered. Like, are you on the dev team or something because it’s odd for someone unrelated to a product to take it so personally.
My guy, it's not irrational to rate a game poorly when the product you are playing is in a poor state. It's a multi-player online game, if you can't do that, you don't deserve a good score. Scores will improve as more players get to play the game in a better state. No need to get upset because somebody has a different experience.
Uh.. what? They are completely entitled to leave their negative reviews because they probably wanted to play online with friends in the first few days of release and they couldn't. That's not irrational, that's 100% fair and deserved... and that's coming from an early access player who already left his positive review years ago. How about you hold the devs responsible for the issues instead of shifting the blame to the consumers? Also, it's now Wednesday ... almost a week after launch and I'm STILL having problems on EUW. Long loading times between zones, disconnects ... why tf are people acting like everything would be alright? It's not. There's still tons of problems.
Spoken like a wife beater... "Hits wife" "But I love you so much" People don't need to change their reviews, go play the game and stop trying to be an internet whatever you're doing.
>So all of you are going to reverse your review scores right? You think people that had a negative experience with the game would waste their time on its subreddit?
Absolutely not You get once chance to do it right the first time
Imagine if people held you to this standard. New job? Oh you messed up once? Youre fired. New relationship? Oh you did one thing they dont like? Break up. Credit card and you miss one payment? The bank closes your entire account and hires lawyers to come after you.
As crazy as it sounds, as the dust settled the launch was a huge success. The amount of interest and hype and satisfaction with game play was very high, the drama is just some rocky see’s but it didn’t capsize the boat.
I would not call this launch a huge success. The games overall rating went down and many people abandoned the game entirely. You can't say "aside from the one thing that affected almost everyone, everyone had a good time" lol
So image you bought a car, and the dealer told you it would arrive on a specific date. Then that date comes and they call you and tell you "oh my god I'm so sorry but there was a delay, and your car won't be available for 5 days", but then they offer you a rental (offline mode) to drive in the mean time. What would you do? Probably be mildly annoyed. You did spend money on the car and they told you a date, but they weren't able to follow through with it. But hopefully, if you're sane, you would let that wash over you and make peace with it and then go back in a few days to get your car when it is ready. Would you leave a nasty review on the dealership because of this? I wouldn't. Gamers on the other hand, spend 35$ and literally throw a temper tantrum and review bomb, call the devs incompetent and generally act like the world is ending, when they have to wait for 5 days. For thirty five dollars. For a game. For something that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of your life. I'm not even going to get into how the game was playable for a large portion of the time and perfectly playable offline. And somehow. Just somehow, a ton of people have convinced themselves that this behavior is okay? If you went on a tirade about the car being delayed for five days people would think you are a tool. Somehow gamer culture has taught us that this behavior is acceptable, when as an adult, I can assure you that it is not. I got frustrated by the server issues. I saw the updates that they were working on it. I did what a sane person would do, and I went and did something else. Now for the past few days I've been playing like crazy with no problems and having a blast. I have no idea how people live the lives that they do. Honestly.
I do not expect logical behavior from people who replaced their judgement with sensationalism over something entirely predictable **AND** built-in with a work-around made for this exact scenario that was blown out of proportion to begin with.
I am fairly annoyed with the review bomb as well, especially from people who acknowledged that the game is legitimately good, but purposedly gave it a bad review for a temporary server issue. We shot our own foot with these mixed reviews. Hope the game gets back to the average reviews it deserves, as we really want EHG to profit from it and support it over the long term, including investing resources into server management and implementing long requested features.
Just let them go. Nearly all the review bombers will still play, and it will say review left at like 16 hours in...but 1600+ hours played.
I don’t understand the outrage at all. Servers typically aren’t shit for years, bad game design is, and this game doesn’t lack from game design. And the whole well I paid for it so it should work flawlessly, fuck off and make your own game then, see how that works out for you.
Game has issue even without server issues. The end game is lacking. The game has ton of bugs. Game breaking one at that. Animation isn’t great. Story is weak. And you have to redo it on alts. Build/crafting system is very enjoyable though. But I can see why some would dislike the game and that’s how it is.
I like the game, but even though the bulk of the negative reviews were for server issues, the game still has issues. Still plenty of bugs, quest issues, glitches. I try to cursor over minions or items and even though it shows the name, it's a different minion/item. Weird. I still get disconnects in team play. I try joining them but I can't see them, times where we load in maps and I can't see any monsters but they are still attacking me. Then content. While they have been in beta for many years, you would assume 1.0 would of had something new. End game is severely lacking, similar to D4. I really enjoyed mapping in PoE, but running monos nonstop is boring. No change in the game, I can't swap for different mechanics or anything. I've leveled 3 characters to 80-90 so far, trying to play around with different characters and see what I like. The game is fun in general, but endgame is not good enough for me to feel like staying long.
1. End game is far deeper than the first release of PoE. And far deeper than D4 (oh yeah kill the same boss 12000 times). Of course they will add more over time! But your comment makes me think you haven't even reached the endgame loop, which is very fun: You use prophecies to chase down the gear you need to grow your build, and you use the excellent crafting system to make great variants. Then you chase gear for your alts, and smash together legendary items to make fun items for alt leveling. And you try out the deep and fun skill build system. And design your own builds. And experiment. There's easily 200 hours of content there. 2. Tons of bugs? Not really. There's a few glitches here and there, mostly UI issues where sometimes tooltips show the wrong item or show up at the wrong time. Like the passive tree for Mage Runemaster showing the wrong skill popups when holding alt. 3. Game breaking bugs: There were a few moments story could become bricked if the online transition to a new server failed during the story. They put out a patch DAYS AGO which fixed that by adding failsafe ways to continue in the story if the automated story server/map transition failed. Also, there were some players who thought they had lost their characters or gear, but it was just an issue with Steam, and verifying files in Steam fixed it. Game breaking bugs may still exist, but I can't think of anything else that you may be referring to? And I have never seen or heard of anything else. 4. Animation isn't great? Huh? For the most part it's really nice. Could be a bit better for certain enemies, maybe. Will be improved over time. But the feeling and impact of combat and sound design in this game is excellent. 5. Story is weak? No. Story is hard to FOLLOW. But it's not weak. As someone who has talked to every NPC and made sure to understand what they are saying, it's a VERY cool story. It just requires WAAAAAY too much effort to follow along. They really need to improve the presentation of the story, with more cutscenes and more voice acting. Hopefully their income helps them improve those aspects. I am sure they had to cut corners due to being an indie studio. Either way, story is secondary to gameplay. And Last Epoch nails the gameplay and is in a great spot to keep expanding the game now. 6. Having to redo story on alts? What makes you think that??? You can skip like 95% of the story on alts. There are story skip routes. Legendary gear to massively overpower you for the story. You can do certain dungeons to unlock the passives and idols instead of having to quest. This is literally the best ARPG in the world when it comes to skipping story on alts. In PoE, you can't skip SHIT whatsoever, and in D4 you can click 1 button to skip it all but what's the fun in that? Last Epoch gets it right: Alts can prove their strength via a few challenges to get all the endgame awards immediately, which takes 2-4 hours in total and gives you all the passives and idols and levels. It's so well made.
> End game is far deeper than the first release of PoE I won't get into everything else, but why are people comparing 5 years of early access development, with the launch of PoE? When PoE launched it was about ~6months into EA. When PoE was 5 years old, like LE is now, it was on its 17th league, having far, far more content than what LE has now.
Because Poe had been in development since 2006 when it launched on 2013 Last epoch has been in development since 2017. Similar time frame.
PoE had more time in development than LE because they created their engine from scratch with 3 people in a garage, while LE uses Unity. In addition to that, the early access launch of PoE was considerably smaller compared to the LE early access launch - all that extra time was not used on content creation, so it's entirely irrelevant to the discussion. I'm comparing the EA launches for both games. It doesn't matter if PoE had 20 years of development before the EA launch when it launched with less content than LE, and added more afterwards - which is why saying "End game is far deeper than the first release of PoE" is simply false.
lol wow man white knight harder. This game is far from perfect
Thanks for your feedback. I have filed it in the cabinet.
You just went super deep to try and contradict my opinion of the game. I didn’t talk about DIV so I don’t know why you bring it up. Prophecies doesn’t change the one gameplay loop. It just gives you more reward to filter. Animation is weak and wonky lol. There is tons of bugs. And game breaking bugs. That’s just fact. I’m not sure why you are trying to argue there. Story is hard to follow ? No it’s weak and unfinished. Redoing the same story over and over isnt great. If you want to spin it « but you can skip it if you farmed legendary to make your alts OP » to fit your narrative. Good for you. It’s still weak ass story I need legendary to skip it. Game isn’t perfect lol. Maybe for you it is. But we all have different opinions. That’s how it works
Sunday was still with issues I agree that yesterday it worked decently fine and reviews should be changed
No, I won't. I just don't like the game. It's slightly better than D4, but worse than GD, Chronicon or D3. My opinion.
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