As something of an ARPG fan, for better or worse, I'll chime in here.
I appreciate some of the smoothing out modern ARPGs have done, but I also resent some of the dumbing down. Also, trying to sell 'skipping the grind' via microtransaction - at least in a non-F2P game - is just cheap bullshit, and can fuck right off. Microtransactions are not, and should not be, an alternative to gameplay. Anyone who does this can get fucked.
I will never pay someone to play the game for me. If they've made a game so unfun that people would pay to skip it, hopefully I did my research and never gave them money in the first place. Fuuuuck you.
Back to the topic at hand more mainly, I don't think I'm the average gamer anymore, sadly, so I can't say too much about what 'the fans' want. But I will say, I don't mind a smooth curve with a fair bit of grinding. I don't mind if I play a bunch and never find upgrades to gear. It's in some ways gratifying that you already have a decent setup.
Last Epoch is a good example of this. It's quite tricky to find the true best in slot. It's somewhat easy to craft stuff that's passable, but you'll reach a point where you likely won't find an upgrade for days. Some people might find that obnoxious, I don't really mind. If the gameplay is decent, it all works. And classic ARPGs like D2, you could go months (years for the truly insane players) without finding viable upgrades. Shit was hella rare. I don't want things quite that absurd, but I also don't want things dumbed down too much. And a lot of modern games seem to be going in the direction of dumbing things down too much, no surprise. I don't need constant gear upgrades. I need the potential for gear upgrades.
Even finding uniques was pretty rare, at least compared to modern game droprates. Now you find multiple 'super uber ultra unique legendaries' per play session.
As something of an ARPG fan, for better or worse, I'll chime in here.
I appreciate some of the smoothing out modern ARPGs have done, but I also resent some of the dumbing down. Also, trying to sell 'skipping the grind' via microtransaction - at least in a non-F2P game - is just cheap bullshit, and can fuck right off. Microtransactions are not, and should not be, an alternative to gameplay. Anyone who does this can get fucked.
I will never pay someone to play the game for me. If they've made a game so unfun that people would pay to skip it, hopefully I did my research and never gave them money in the first place. Fuuuuck you.
Back to the topic at hand more mainly, I don't think I'm the average gamer anymore, sadly, so I can't say too much about what 'the fans' want. But I will say, I don't mind a smooth curve with a fair bit of grinding. I don't mind if I play a bunch and never find upgrades to gear. It's in some ways gratifying that you already have a decent setup.
Last Epoch is a good example of this. It's quite tricky to find the true best in slot. It's somewhat easy to craft stuff that's passable, but you'll reach a point where you likely won't find an upgrade for days. Some people might find that obnoxious, I don't really mind. If the gameplay is decent, it all works. And classic ARPGs like D2, you could go months (years for the truly insane players) without finding viable upgrades. Shit was hella rare. I don't want things quite that absurd, but I also don't want things dumbed down too much. And a lot of modern games seem to be going in the direction of dumbing things down too much, no surprise. I don't need constant gear upgrades. I need the potential for gear upgrades.
I never found any of the high runes or super uniques, and played for years starting since launch
Even finding uniques was pretty rare, at least compared to modern game droprates. Now you find multiple 'super uber ultra unique legendaries' per play session.