Yeah but D4 is designed to be an MMO and is open world, where last epoch is linear. It’s hard to try to bake in the exact same mechanics when the games are so different

Additionally, that’s a minor aspect of d4. For each alt i need to run around to every region and do all these side quests to get reputation points, and i need to do it in each difficulty. I have to do it multiple times, whereas i don’t really need to do that in last epoch.

I’ll reiterate that if you try the skips as designed it’ll be close to what you want. But i agree that it needs improving. D4 is an objectively much worse game than LE; i absolutely do not think that LE should strive to be more like it.

How much have you actually played both games?

I’m not entirely sure what you’re requesting then. The end game monoliths start at level 58, and the lowest level I’ve been able to complete them without dying repeatedly is level 30 or so. The campaign skips start at level 20, and give passive and idol slots. Are you asking for the game to just start your alternates at level 60? I’m not following.

Additionally, once you unlock your mastery at the end of time, you can just go straight to the end game monoliths on a second character - there’s literally nothing stopping you from doing this.

As it stands, you can skip 3/4 of the story if you use the current method. Now that you can skip dungeons and go straight to the dungeon boss, you are easily able to bypass a ton of story, and fairly quickly. I have 6 characters in this season, and i did the campaign skip on each one. You can get past the entire campaign in about 90 minutes with this method now, which doesn’t seem too bad you me. You also get passive points and idol slots for completing the skips. You can actually skip almost straight from the first major part of the ruined era (level 20) all the way to the level 50 era in a matter of minutes. If you’re geared up for this, go for it!

When i said i was contesting it, i was conceding to you that i somewhat agree with the skip function needing improvements. That being said, I do think as they’re adding general game improvements, it is making the idea of having alternate characters much better and easier.

There actually is a campaign skip. It’s baked into the map via the dungeons (and you can skip to boss now with charms), but you can skip two thirds of it on a second playthrough.

I’ll contest that i think the skip function needs a little work but it does exist

You may enjoy Last Epoch. It definitely scratches that itch for me, and is a bit more entertaining than TL imo

I only like the albums they did with dave grohl on drums, the rest just don’t seem to hit for me.

I’m pretty sure that’s only songs for the deaf and a few songs on like clockwork. I can’t get into any of their other stuff.

This is how I’ve always understood it as well. The two spellings are homophones so it’s a pretty easy mistake to make.

I disagree, “should’ve” and “should of” sound virtually identical when spoken (at least in some regions, can’t speak for all pronunciations). I can imagine why a non english native speaker would have trouble with this, though I’m not disagreeing with it being a common issue amongst native speakers as well.

His goal was to point out that it wasn’t worth it to mess with him, he’s going to fight back hard and take you out. It was about deterring him from wanting to ever pick on him. Right, his goal wasn’t to permanently disfigure him, but to establish a permanent idea that it isn’t worth it to pick on him

That’s fair, though he was trying to permanently end the bullying, which is what i think OP was referencing at least. Since, you know, that would end bullying permanently

I think it’s more of a book reference to his fight with bonzo, who was bullying ender. Ender was a few years younger and knew he had to win the fight “permanently,” so it’s inferred that he knew what he was doing (not intending to kill him but that’s obviously a possibility).

Iirc, the officials told ender that bonzo was sent home. In reality, he did actually kill bonzo and was lied to about it.

Definitely not questioning your opinion and review of the game (i quite enjoyed it but that’s my opinion). However, i do not believe that most people would see 7.5/10 and think “that’s a high score.”

One variable here is medium bias. Different mediums of entertainment have different “average” scores. It seems (i think) like things that take more time to enjoy (video games, TV) have higher baseline scores that are considered average than say a movie. (As an example, metacritic has different score tiers for movies than it does for video games, for their video games, anything 60-79% or 6.0-7.9/10 is mixed or average, but this score is 40-59% for movies).

I would further say that, across the board, a score of 5/10 would almost certainly be considered well below average for a game (or even a restaurant for that matter). I would be willing to bet that average for a video game would fall into the 7-7.5 range for most people. There are probably other biases at play as well, many of which i believe are impacting the scores in the first place (for example, the way people rate movies may be even more critical, and then perhaps there are so many highly rated games that it brings up the average there).

Something that i know i consider is that video games can absorb 10s, 100s, and even 1000s of hours of time, and i wouldn’t want to sink that kind of commitment into a 5/10 game, which probably got such a score due to a combination of bugs, bad story, and poor mechanics. Plus, the lowest ever rated games are 1-2/10, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any game rated below that (which further drives up the average).

I know that If i saw a game with aggregate reviews of even 7.5, i would think it had major problems and may not be worth my time investment. 7.5 is almost certainly not a “high” score, though i can appreciate you being very deliberately mathematical with your scoring.

quietly turns around

Oh i know that place! It’s the corner bistro!

Random encounters are a staple of Japanese rpgs, not rpgs in general (and also not all jrpgs have them). There are a plethora of rpgs without them! You will more likely see enemies on screen, and good rpgs allow you options to resolve things without combat (with some exceptions, like certain monsters).