Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure, Indie
Last Epoch
New 3D Models for Unique Items
Welcome Travelers to day five of the Enduring, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM!
Some say form follows function, Depths of Eterra update states that sometimes form follows fashion. Introducing updated 3D models for 25 existing Uniques, patch 0.8.5 introduces a new appreciation for some of the amazing art in Last Epoch, and allows your enemies to see some of this new art up close and personal like never before. Check out some examples below!
Aberrant Call
Aurelis
Death’s Embrace
Flayer’s Pride
Hell Reach
Chronostasis
The Judicator
Leviathan Carver
Reach of the Grave
Reign of Winter
Tempest Maw
Vilatria’s Downfall
You might be expecting us to say here “This concludes day five of the Enduring, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Phenomenon*TM”. However not this time! Instead keep your eyes out for our post later today on the new Wraith models being introduced in Patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra!
March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Catalysts Overhaul
Welcome Travelers to day four of the Continuing, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM!
The Depths of Eterra update introduces new and improved catalysts for concentrating your energies on what matters - culling more enemies of Eterra! All catalysts are getting new 2D and 3D art, as well as new animations, and powerful implicit affixes to curate a wider variety of builds and create more competition within the weapon configurations. Check out some examples below!
Ritual Stone
Sapphire Tome
Opulent Focus
Fleshbound Tome
Crystal Skull
Astrolabe
This concludes day four of the Ceaseless, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM. Make sure to check back in tomorrow for two (Two, in one day!) posts on updated 3d models for existing uniques, and New Wraith models being introduced in the Depths of Eterra update.
March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
Senior Developer Mike continues leveling up his Bear Druid. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
New Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion
Welcome Travelers to the third day, and first dungeon post of the Unbroken, 9 day, Sequential Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza*TM! In this news post we’re going to be covering the first of the two new dungeons coming in patch 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra: its lore, mechanics, and unique dungeon reward.
Soulfire Bastion Lore
North of Lake Liath in the Imperial Era, a Lich in the service of the Immortal Empire has unearthed the remains of an Osprix battleground containing countless Solarum made constructs and potent elemental fire. This Lich is now repurposing the constructs for use by the empire and experimenting with elemental fire to create a force known as Soul Embers, threatening to spread fire and destruction. An unlikely ally has made himself known in the form of an unscrupulous imperial agent who seeks to sabotage the operations here under the orders of a rival within the empire - his name: Grin.
Grin is an experienced agent for the Immortal Empire, a faction of undead humans who control most of the world. While Grin could easily rise as high in the ranks of the Empire’s espionage wing as he wanted, he prefers to keep a low profile. Grin makes a habit of making himself an invaluable asset to Imperial Officers of higher rank, getting paid with as many souls as possible by doing their dirty work, and being ready to stab them in the back when better opportunities present themselves.
Grin currently finds himself working for an Imperial Lich of the Immortal Empire and aiding in his attempts to sabotage another commander of the Empire. He wants to keep as low of a profile on this mission as possible, so he has taken to hiring living adventurers to attack his target for him. You are that adventurer. Your task is to explore the depths of this Osprix battleground turned imperial facility known as the Soulfire Bastion, collect as many of these powerful resources called “Soul Embers” within, and face the ferocity of the Fire Lich inside.
Unique Mechanic: Soulfire Shield & Soul Embers
In Soulfire Bastion, you will find yourself within a conflux of the Immortal Empire’s vile necrotic energies, and Solarum’s searing fire elements. Any normal adventurer would find themselves quickly torn apart by these energies. However in Soulfire Bastion you will be granted a new ability, courtesy of the imperial agent Grin, to help you survive. Of course, being Grin, the knowledge he shares may have been obtained somewhat recently, and perhaps, without the owner’s knowledge.
Using the Fire Lich’s own research against him you will have at your disposal the Soulfire Shield. The results of the Fire Lich’s research is great, and the Soulfire Shield is impenetrable to the element it is deflecting, no matter the magnitude. This power comes at a cost however - it must be fed additional Soul Embers in order to change attunements between fire and necrotic. As you face the alternating elements within the dungeon, both from the environment and from enemies within, you will need to decide when the cost must be paid and feed more Soul Embers to the shield to protect yourself.
While progressing through Soulfire Bastion, you will gain Soul Embers by destroying various constructs of the Fire Lich, with more powerful enemies granting additional Soul Embers. Use your Soul Embers to continue fueling your Soulfire Shield, but don’t spend them carelessly, these embers are a highly valuable resource to the right buyer
Fire Lich Cremorus
A petty and jealous commander in the Immortal Empire’s forces, he finds the culture and history of the long dead Osprix fascinating. Cremorus has chanced upon a Solarum battleground that has been buried and ignored for centuries. Overwhelmed with excitement at his discovery, he devoted his entire regiment’s forces to the excavation and restoration for use by the empire.
He feels a sharp jealousy towards a particular rival, whose recent campaigns in the frozen north have won him recognition by the Immortal Emperor himself. He channels this jealousy into his work, embracing the burning hatred he feels into his creation of a new form of soul magic he is calling Soul Embers. This discovery has afforded Cremorus an opportunity to finally overtake his rival’s glory, and he’ll not be so quick to let it slip from his fingers.
The Soul Gambler
Should you find yourself having defeated Fire Lich Cremorus, and pockets heavy with Soul Embers, you’ll have the opportunity to speak with one of the parties interested in helping you lighten the load. The Soul Gambler will trade his items for soul embers you’ve acquired by slaying enemies in the dungeon. He’s willing to trade and trade “fairly”. Though, still an imperial at heart, he’s not willing to tell you exactly what you’re buying.
With the Soul Gambler, you’ll have the ability to trade for a specific item type, such as “helmet” or “shield” with the possibility of it being any subtype. However these items are much more powerful than those any regular gambler would offer, with chances of being items no other gambler would dare to offer. As he’s located within enemy lines, he doesn’t have any backroom stores to change stock while you browse, and you only have at your disposal the Soul Embers from your recent conquest, so choose wisely.
This brings to a conclusion today’s news for the Ceaseless, 9 day, Continued Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, even through the weekend, as we will be continuing the pre-patch hype with tomorrow’s post on the Catalyst Rework!
March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
New Unique Items | Coming in Depths of Eterra Update
Welcome Travelers to day two of the Sensational, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza… *TM! The Depths of Eterra update brings with it a number of new Uniques, unlocking a range of brand new build opportunities to carve your way through the enemies of Eterra. Whether you are an elusive sniper, vengeful tank, commander of spirits and souls, or just finding your promised path in Eterra for the first time, we have something new for you here.
For our more experienced theory crafters out there, we are excited to see what you do when a single idol has the power to change your entire build. Check out a few examples below (we’ve held a couple back for you to find on your own) of the types of items you can get your hands on in the Depths of Eterra Update!
Chronicles Of The Damned
Hearthenon’s Vow
Singularity
Renegade’s Will
Shadow String
This concludes day two of the Sensational, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Exhibition*TM. Maybe have an idea for a new build or two with these? Make sure to check back in tomorrow for our post on the first of the two new dungeons being added in 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra - Soulfire Bastion!
March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Depths of Eterra Update (0.8.5) - Coming March 18th
Today is an exciting day to be part of the Last Epoch community!
First off, thank you for being so patient while waiting to hear what is in store for our next big update. That wait is now over, and your patience is about to be rewarded.
Today we are revealing that patch 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra is only 9 days away, releasing on March 18th. WHAT? 9 DAYS? Fire up the hype train!? We hear you, and we agree. This patch cycle we decided to take a different approach in the way we announce all the cool new things that are coming: We’ve packed them all into a Non-stop, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza *TM. Ok, we are still working on the name.
What does this mean for you? It means that starting today, you’ll get new updates, features, or reveals everyday for 9 days until we hit patch release! To kick off this Non-stop, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM we are starting with an overview of patch highlights, and when you can expect more details on each of these highlights.
The Depths of Eterra hold many slumbering secrets and waking dreams. On March 18th, new passages open filled with bellowing fires and necrotic energies, the mountains themselves seem to quake to life, and amongst the chaos, those focused on fame and glory within the walls of the arena will find fierce new foes staking their rights to the name Arena Champions.
In patch 0.8.5 join us in exploring two new dungeons, and face down the fierce new Arena Champions for fame, glory, and well earned rewards.
Dungeons Overview
As patch 0.8.5, Depths of Eterra, is introducing the second and third dungeon to Last Epoch, we want to go over what makes a dungeon a dungeon, what the goals of the dungeon system are, and the future of dungeons in Last Epoch. Our goal with dungeons is to provide repeatable endgame content that exists within the world of the campaign. This means dungeons can, and will, be added to all sorts of areas within the campaign, and you may even be able to encounter dungeons fairly early on.
With dungeons being designed to show up throughout the campaign in Last Epoch, each one is also created with the ability to scale multiple tiers, starting from whenever they first appear in the campaign, all the way to level 100. This allows us to add, through playable content, more lore to the world, as well as provide challenges and rewards for new and experienced players alike.
As these dungeons are added as part of the core world of Eterra rather than being a “side mechanic”, and their lore true to the timeline of the campaign, these dungeons also allow players to play through the campaign using different paths. Rather than each character always following the same quest-to-quest path to get through the campaign reach the “end game”, with the right keys subsequent characters can instead enter a dungeon at one point during the campaign, and end up at a different part of the campaign. This results in an opportunity to have unique and customizable playthrough experiences.
Each dungeon is designed to have its own unique mechanic as well as its own unique rewards. While not all of these rewards may be as “game changing” as Temporal Sanctum’s Eternity Cache, each reward mechanic will provide a distinct method to fuel your character’s progression.
We plan to continue to add dungeons to Last Epoch for as long as we feel there is a good place for them in the world, and we feel we have a good way to implement a new mechanic and reward. However, enough dev talk, we know you’re eager to hear about the new content to explore in patch 0.8.5, and we’re exited to share.
March 10th: New Uniques
With 0.8.5 we’re going to be adding a number of new Uniques to Last Epoch, continuing to bolster the existing roster. Make sure to keep an eye out for this post to get a peek at some of the new unique items!
March 11th: Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion
North of Lake Liath in the Imperial Era, a Lich of the Immortal Empire has unearthed the remains of an old Osprix battleground. Here he has discovered countless Solarum-made constructs and dangerous supply of potent elemental fire. Understanding the power of what he has discovered, he now works endlessly repurposing the constructs for use by the empire and experimenting with the elemental fire to create a destructive resource know as Soul Embers.
Explore the dangerous excavations of Soulfire Bastion. Put an end to Fire Lich Cremorus’s destructive intent, and don’t forget to fill your boots full of Soul Embers for your trouble. There is more than one individual in Eterra that sees the value in what has been discovered here.
March 12th: Catalysts Rework
Catalysts have been reworked, both visually and mechanically. These changes present a significant improvement to equipped item rigging, and provide more versatility within the catalyst item type. There is now more options within Catalysts for implicit selection, as well as helping provide for a better gearing system with more options when comparing with other weapon setups.
March 13th: New Unique Models
We know you want to look as powerful as you feel out there in Eterra, and we are committed to that goal. We are introducing updated 3D models for 25 existing Uniques! Join us March 13th to see your favorite Unique items that are being brought to life in-game!
(Also) March 13th: New Wraith Models
All Wraiths throughout Eterra have received a significant visual update. This includes both Necromancer’s Summon Wraith skill, as well as the various Wraiths found throughout Eterra.
March 14th: New Armor Models
0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra will continue to add to our roster of distinct armor designs. Keep an eye out for this post to get a nice view of some of the new armor sets you can collect for your favorite class.
March 15th: Arena Champions
Jormun’s Fortress, once abandoned for years, has seen renewed activity in the Divine Era. A mysterious portal has opened within its walls, taking brave explorers to arenas around the world to face hordes of deadly enemies. While feared at first, these Arenas quickly became a way to prove one’s ability in combat, and with that it drew the attention of the most talented fighters across Eterra. Over time the fortress adopted a new, more fitting name: Champion’s Gate.
The thrill of the Arena is a calling that speaks to each of us differently. Competition. Glory. Renown. Respect. While some can not hear the call, others in Eterra believe it to be an essential path of growth and a way of life. Others though, are drawn even further towards the calling and the quest for glory is all they now see. They remain within the Champions Gate, refusing to return to Eterra, waiting to finally find a worthy opponent who is capable of a proper fight, and a proper death.
March 16th: Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor
Eterra’s history holds many secrets - some stretching so far back that they fade into myth. Such is is the case of The Lightless Arbor and The Mountain Beneath. Now, deep in the Ruined Era, during Eterra’s darkest hours, humanity will have to pay the price for that lost knowledge. Deep under the mountains that house the Last Refuge, there is an underground forest which has hidden away creatures and relics dating as far back as before the Ancient Era. One of these creatures - a massive construct made of plant and stone, has awoken - his lumbering beneath the Last Refuge threatens to cause a cave-in that would bury humanity’s last light.
Venture deep into The Lightless Arbor, walking paths untouched by sunlight for over a thousand years. Find safe passage through the dark forgotten forests and caverns, eventually confronting The Mountain Beneath. Within these depths, discover a mysterious vault; which unknown to the world for so long, still holds vast stores of unknown treasures.
March 17th: Patch Notes
On the 17th you’ll be able to get your hands on all of the juicy details of changes coming in patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra.
March 18th: Patch Day!
On the 18th, the passages open, the mountains lurch to life, and the champions stand awaiting challengers. Get into Last Epoch and discover these challenges, as well as their rewards.
With this patch preview concluded, we come to an end for today’s news and announcement the Unbroken 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM kickoff! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, as we will be continuing with tomorrow’s post on new Uniques in 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra!
Here’s a summary of what you have to look forward to for the next 9 days. See you then Travelers!
March 9th - Depths of Eterra Update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
Senior Developer Mike continues leveling up his Bear Druid. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Weekly Dev Stream | Ukraine Relief Fundraiser
Hello Travelers,
As much of our community is aware, every Friday one of our game designers - Mike, hosts a dev stream. This stream is an opportunity for us to hang out with our community, play some Last Epoch, answer community questions, and maybe, reveal a teaser or two about upcoming content.
What many people might not be aware of is that each month we pick a charity which all proceeds from the dev stream are donated. For the months of January and February, we were contributing dev stream proceeds to Save the Children. Save the Children is an organization which works to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, as well as providing emergency aid in natural disasters, war, and other conflicts.
Last Friday, our Lead Game Director Judd posted a statement concerning the happenings involving Ukraine and Russia, and the relations to the Eleventh Hour Games studio having team members in both countries.
As part of our response to this, for the month of March, Eleventh Hour Games will be donating all dev stream proceeds to UNICEF’s Ukraine relief fund. Further, **Eleventh hour games is also committing to match all community proceeds and donations for the month of March up to $10,000.** All subs, donations, and bits will be going to this cause.
We appreciate all of our community member’s support, and look forward to seeing you during the dev streams, even if just to watch us play some Last Epoch or try to catch some teasers.
Stream Schedule:
March 4th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 11th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 18th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 25th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST)
Charity Information:
Save the Children - https://www.savethechildren.org/ UNICEF - https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/unicef-children-crossfire-ukraine-crisis/ Stream Donations - https://streamlabs.com/lastepochgame/tip
Multiplayer Progress Update - February 2022
Hello all, and welcome to the second multiplayer blog of 2022!
If you checked out Ross’ post last month, we took a break from all my techno babble to break down our various social features. We’re now using a number of these changes in internal multiplayer testing. But you’re not here for that - you’re here for a progress update!
I’m pleased to say that we’re now making major progress in every avenue of multiplayer development. It was a very challenging process to migrate a large chunk of our backend features to be more self-owned, something I spoke about in our November update. Now that we’re through the major migration, we’ve been able to return to core game design and preparing multiplayer for our Community Testers.
For this update I am going to speak directly to our status from what I discussed in December, and mention a few exciting game design tidbits.
Characters / Crafting
We’ve finished all of our preliminary work here. Which means... we have multiplayer crafting!
Having crafting for our daily multiplayer testing has been a gamechanger for the multiplayer experience, and we’re starting to get a really clear vision of how Last Epoch is going to be played online together with friends.
We have a lot more work here to do to ensure data integrity; that is, making sure all your characters and crafting endeavours can be saved and backed up safely, addressing any potential points of failure or game exploitation. This will be ongoing up and through our multiplayer betas and 1.0 release.
Deployment
While we’ve been working diligently on core multiplayer features, we’ve seen a natural increase to the complexity of the processes of creating and releasing Last Epoch builds.
What does this mean? The automated system we use to build the game has become more complicated to maintain, as we now have two major clients (single player and multiplayer), as well as our game servers. We have the skills to address this all ourselves, and this is a normal part of game development, it’s something that will take a fraction of our attention to address whenever given issues come up. This will also become much easier once we’re only developing and releasing Last Epoch as an online game.
With that said, we’re still hiring for more hands to manage the multiplayer release of Last Epoch!
Users / Game Access
We’re still continuing to use our new account system internally, and we have determined that its current state will be shippable to our Community Testers when we get there.
A full account migration of our now-large player base will be something we perform a bit later, closer to when we release a public multiplayer beta. It’s a complex process and will require a very thorough plan to execute, so we are focused for now on delivering a testable multiplayer experience instead.
Chat
We actually have our new chat service nearly fully complete and ready to integrate into Last Epoch. This is quite exciting, as our issues with our current chat have been well known. Right now, because we have another single-player release looming, we cannot yet add it into our multiplayer environment as it’s a complicated process. We will have to wait until our 0.8.5 release to bring this into our internal multiplayer build, test and make fixes, and have it available for when we release multiplayer to Community Testers. This new chat won’t be publicly available until we release a wider multiplayer beta.
Login / Game Server / Matchmaking
We are now ready for all of these to be tested at a larger scale, and are continuing to work at ensuring we remove as many risks to our game’s online stability as possible. This still remains one of the most important things we need to get right to give you all a high quality multiplayer release, so we’re going to always be making consistent progress here.
Also, a gentle reminder that for us, “Matchmaking” is a more technical term that describes how you and your parties will request and receive servers, rather than some sort of party matchmaking system, which is not something we are developing at this time.
Goals for March
Our main goals for March are to ensure we are able to diagnose and debug core problems quickly, and add the last remaining game content to the multiplayer version of Last Epoch. Once we have these closed out, we’re going to have a pretty high confidence in releasing an alpha multiplayer version to our Community Testers, and other players soon after that.
Multiplayer Monolith
Developing the multiplayer version of the Monolith of Fate is a far larger undertaking than adding the campaign (which is already fully complete). We’ve already fully designed and are executing our plan here, and this will be something I will share updates on in great detail in next month’s post.
An exciting part of this plan is that we’re also going to be optimizing a number of parts about how our game loads, and overall performance, so we’re quite excited about this!
Diagnostics / Fixing multiplayer bugs fast
With our team size growing and with so many complex bugs and systems to have to be able to manage when we go online, it’s important we can read all of the information we receive quickly. We’ve recognized a need to reduce the amount of noise we get in all of our logging, as well as start to mature our tools to give each of our teams the data they’ll need to make good decisions.
This may not sound glamorous, but it’s of vital importance for us to be able to diagnose problems as quickly as possible, so you’re never waiting for a hotfix to a problem, or a game update.
Remaining Game Content
Outside of the Monolith, we’ll be adding the remaining game content we don’t have yet online. We’re now happy to say we have enough support to be able to make progress on most of this at once. We’re also nearing the finish line.
Some of the main areas we’ll target: updates to the technical aspects of channeled and shapeshifting abilities, cleaning up some other elements of the endgame such as the Arena group experience, and starting to plan out what our Leaderboard will look like on our new backend. There are a few other features that could be included here, but we’re starting to close it all out!
Final Thoughts
When contemplating the question “when will multiplayer be released for testing?” I’ve learned to ask myself another question: “What are we looking for with a public test?” The answer to that is pretty simple.
We want the experience to be mostly focused on players being able to give us feedback about Last Epoch’s online experience, rather than technical bugs. Our last pushes before releasing multiplayer to Community Testers will now be focused on that philosophy: when we reach a threshold that we feel we’ll get consistent game design feedback to improve our game’s multiplayer experience, we’ll release it. I’ve started to build the plan with our lead network engineer to get us there.
Next month we’ll be excited to share with you some more status updates, a more technical breakdown of how the multiplayer monolith will work, as well as any reveals about our Community Testing plan if we’re ready.
Thanks again for all of your patience and support, and like always I’ll be hanging out in the comments sections to answer questions. See you next month!
Community Moderation Team | Beesfriends
Good day Travelers!
We wanted to take an opportunity to discuss a sometimes controversial topic, but a very important one. Moderation. This is normally a daunting topic, however we don’t think it should be. Rather, it should be something we are open about. In that spirit, we wanted to spend a little bit of time to discuss how we handle moderation, and what our plans are concerning it going forward.
Alongside this I also want to provide a big shout out to all of the community members who make up our community moderator team, and all the work they’ve been doing to help out with our community. Thank you for all of your hard work with us helping out all the players, and working to keep a great environment for players to learn and have fun in Last Epoch!
What moderation means to us
In many games and communities, moderators are scary people who tend to lurk in the background, hammer ready to punish those who fall out of line. That’s not what we want within our community. We have three core principles we follow when it comes to moderation within Last Epoch:
Setting the stage
Our moderators are not passive, lurking in the shadows. Our moderators are community guides and helpers first, moderators second. Moderators lead by example within the community. By actively setting the stage, moderation action becomes much less necessary as more players will become willing to adopt the positive environment being set. Our goal is to strive to help the community grow in a positive way, rather than simply address negative actions.
Guiding the conversations
Our moderators engage the community, not shut down the community. If a conversation starts becoming abusive, excessively vulgar, or otherwise becomes too “hot”, moderators will try to step in and reign in the conversation by changing the topic, or if necessary asking players to change topics.
Moderation action
Our moderators strive to be fair and unbiased in action. We provide coaching and guidance towards this goal, as well as providing full opportunity for peer discussion of events. We try to avoid implementing action whenever possible, preferring to provide players the opportunity to chose to be part of a healthy community. However, sometimes conversations can simply get a bit too heated, or a player goes too far in violation of the Code of Conduct. If this occurs, our moderators will take all reasonable steps to ensure fair warning is provided, and that they do not participate in any bias if action is required.
How we plan to implement this style of moderation
Community Moderator Program - Codename “Beesfriends”
We’ve mentioned in posts a few times in the past helpful community members who help us out. We refer to this as our “Community Moderation Team and Beesfriends” (name to be finalized). This team is comprised of handpicked players who have gone above and beyond within the community to make it a great place for new and experienced players alike. These players operate on a completely volunteer basis, out of their passion for the game and its community. Because of this, we do have zero tolerance for any abuse targeting these volunteer members (as we do any players).
These community members often already follow the first two principles of our moderation principles before joining the team, and are then empowered to implement short actions in the third principle when necessary. Whenever an action is taken by one of or moderators, a report is automatically generated and submitted to us so we can provide oversight and guidance to our moderation team. Any time a more severe moderation action may be required, it is discussed with EHG staff and implemented directly by EHG if deemed necessary. Though because we’ve had such a great community with all of you, this has rarely been necessary.
Empowering players to be involved in moderation
Currently, for all players, to report another player it requires directly submitting a support ticket with information regarding the event. Going forward, we want to provide all players more power in shaping their community. With the new chat system being developed alongside multiplayer, all players will have the power to report users in game. This chat system will also provide further utility for our team in regards to moderation such as helping clarify when someone is an appointed community moderator or a member of the EHG team.
Further, we provide a route for all players to be able to dispute a moderation action. If you believe an action was taken against you incorrectly, you can submit a support ticket and the action will be reviewed directly by EHG staff. Even in the event it was a staff member who implemented the action, it will not be touched by the person who implemented the action to ensure a fair review.
Why this style of moderation?
By having a community moderation team rather than solely an in house moderation team, we also help ensure that we are never ‘pushing an agenda’, or biasing our community’s conversations. Moderation action is never taken for criticizing EHG or our policies. This allows for a healthy community in which all members feel welcome and able to participate in. Our community moderators are also allowed to put forward other community members to join the team, helping to keep this self regulation within moderation to prevent a overarching bias to actions.
However, this is not to say that the community moderation team is completely autonomous. All community moderators are expected to follow the same Code of Conduct as all other players, and do have a set of guidelines to follow in their actions. The team is provided support directly by us here at EHG, providing oversight as well to ensure there’s no abuse of power within the community moderation team, and that the three core principles are being maintained.
Most Importantly, this approach to moderation is that the first two core principles don’t require any sort of special power. It’s something any community member going above and beyond is capable of. It is important to us to be involved in the community, and the community involved with us, as all of us not only come from it, but are still a part of it.
Joining the Beesfriends
As the player base continues to expand, so will our efforts in this. With multiplayer on the not so distant horizon, we are looking to expand our community moderation team including in game, Discord, Steam, Forums, and on our official Reddit. Reddit in particular we want to be as hands off in moderation as possible to ensure the integrity of discourse there, that it is always fair, and completely unbiased. For in game, we’re looking to expand our roster of community moderators to assist our global community in different languages.
If you’re interested in joining our community moderation team, here’s a general outline of what we would be looking for:
No history of moderation actions in the LE community
Preference given to players with longer tenure / more consistent activity within the community
Either generally helpful within the community such as answering questions for new players, or discussing friendly topics in chat without pushing the Code of Conduct. Let us know how you participate in the community!
Preference would be given to players which are online with a regular frequency. There are no obligations or schedules for our moderation team, but we would be looking for members who will be able to regularly help with the community.
