Highlights
- EHG will nerf bug-driven OP Last Epoch builds mid-season based on overwhelming survey feedback.
- Players prefer to be notified of nerfs in advance and appreciate the transparency, so this will likely happen whenever changes are made.
- The decision to show time and patch details on leaderboard rankings has been well-received by the community.
Eleventh Hour Games (EHG), the developer behind popular action RPG Last Epoch, has announced a number of key changes coming to the game after a large survey. These changes will impact the players who use builds that become overpowered due to a bug in the game. Based on the survey feedback, these OP builds will be fixed sooner than usual, with the company alerting players about the adjustment in advance.
Earlier this week, EHG announced that it had started working on nerfing certain OP builds, caused by a bug, on the basis of overwhelming votes asking for the balancing pass. More than 69,000 votes were counted in the poll, with the survey results shedding light upon what the players want to see in Last Epoch.
Last Epoch’s Base Class and Masteries Explained
With five classes and 15 subclasses to choose from, Last Epoch offers every flavor of hack-‘n-slash goodness under the sun.
In an official blog post, EHG declared the results that would define its mid-season balance changes. As per the report, 55.5% of voters strongly agreed that the highly OP builds caused by bugs should be nerfed during the course of an in-game season. Currently, the nerfs are set to hit Profane Veil’s Vampiric Pool and Sanguine Runestone. On the other hand, votes for mildly overpowered builds were spread evenly, leading the developer to state that the fate of these builds will be decided on “case-by-case discretion” with reference to community feedback. In addition, EHG revealed that the players preferred to be notified of forthcoming nerfs via the public forum – 73.2% of votes strongly agreed with this.
In regard to OP builds not caused by a bug, a 34% majority of votes agreed that it would be good to keep Last Epoch’s highly OP builds, and 52.5% agreed to keeping the mildly OP ones. On top of that, the developer also addressed that, based on voting patterns, it will not bring any leaderboard reset to compensate for the bug-driven highly OP builds. The game will show information about when the leaderboard entry occurred or which patch was in use instead of showing whether a player used buggy OP builds or not, stating that the latter could look like a “mark of shame.”
What The Survey Results Mean For The Trending ARPG
A big takeaway from this poll is that bug-driven OP builds will now be nerfed mid-season in Last Epoch. Until now, these bugs persisted for the duration of the remaining season. Moreover, the decision to add time and patch details to the leaderboard rankings as opposed to highlighting if a player used a buggy build is a move that is well-thought-out. It provides everyone with relevant information about the entries without singling out any player on the leaderboard.
Since its public release in February, Last Epoch has reached a peak of 265,000 online players by the end of the month and currently has “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam. Undoubtedly, it is quickly emerging as a popular choice for PC users with a fondness for the ARPG genre. As the developer continues to improve Last Epoch based on player feedback, it will be worth tracking how it competes with ARPG behemoths, such as Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2.
Last Epoch
After a few years in early access, Last Epoch made its full launch in February 2024. Eleventh Hour Games’ hack and slash RPG features 15 classes and subclasses, a vast skill tree system, and plenty of loot.
