I do think that is what some of this is. We are experimenting with the full force, pre-nerf (minus nerfs done in playtest) content versus stuff that has had more time to be balanced. And if Crate has to pick starting harder and tuning stuff down, I do think that’s better than starting too easy and making stuff harder in terms of overall player satisfaction (people tend to like buffs more than nerfs and tuning down content feels like a player character bfuf).
It would be pretty sad if the new content did not feel harder than the old.
Chef’s kiss post.
In terms of challenge, I don’t think this is a controversial statement.
But damned if I haven’t skinned the hide off that beast enough for a lifetime. 
Yes I think this system still needs work.
That or the “balance” of enemy diversity detracts from the fun. Every faction gets two Nems now, yay! But you’ll still see more Beast Nemeses than any other by an order of magnitude. Hell, if we had six Beast Nemeses, I’d probably still be tired of them all.
Part of me wonders whether Nemeses should get the Dread treatment and spawn from any faction death. Grava showing up when you kill some Aetherials? Well, he’s striking when you’re weak! And if he gets to beat the brakes off his true arch-enemies while he’s there, all the better!
Isn’t that what a Nemesis should be?
One might argue that needing to pay attention to Underking rather than facerolling Kuba is indicative of an altogether different problem, though. 
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IMO:
Dread should have never been optional on ascendant.
Nemesis spawn rate should have never been altered on ascendant. The loot should have been decreased a bit instead to compensate.
The mode was there for a reason. That reason is getting blurred now.
You could use the altar in ultimate (or a lower setting if too hard) and achieve the same effect as having no dread and reduced nemesis, right?
No matter how hard you try, you are not going to change the opinion of the masses. Seriously, people are expecting too much out of others by saying “move out of the bad” or “don’t play in that difficulty.” Turn blue in the face and assault grass while doing it, they will likely still not listen and see it as a game problem and not their problem.
A bigger problem is once all those people are gone, like:
The ones who bounced off because of difficulty
We’re here for one play through and we’re having issues because of difficulty
Those who refuse to adapt
Etc
Those that remain are going to be starring at something they didn’t want either, like the first 2 things mentioned above. I didn’t want that to occur, but here we are.
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yes the reason was higher difficulty, not more repetitiveness, which is what you get if you force people to fight the same boss over and over
See below.
If you wanted to do ascendant, well sorry that comes with the territory. This is not elitism, this is what the mode was originally for IMO.
Exactly. More spawns of inconvenience/difficulty at inc freq with bad timing. Like my hungering darkness: dread, +2 scions, and the new eldrich nemesis all at the same time - full altar.
Thereby bringing up the point that is pointed at many times in this thread. People doing difficulty when they shouldn’t have, being told that they shouldn’t have and then freaking out at “elitism, etc.”
But you can argue how that difficulty was implemented I guess. But I still won’t agree with the changes.
People being people, as I said.
Ultimately Crate is gonna do what Crate is gonna do, 
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I go to Ascendant precisely because i want to fight Nemeses and Dread over and over. If i don’t want that, i can just play Ultimate.
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I personally like the ambush mechanic from Ascendant and the increased material drops including ashes and soul things. But I LOVE being able to disable Dread. Anybody who doesn’t like the Dread disabled in Ascendant is welcome to re-enable it. No skin off my nose…
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Exactly this. I can understand people having different views on how many nemesis mobs they want to face in a dungeon (maybe they want to go from 2 in ultimate to 6 in ascended and it got nerfed to 4 and that means less challenge / less loot). But in a single player game, being able to disable the Dread harms exactly no one.
I kinda see the Dread and Nemesis spawn rate as a gatekeeper to reign in rampant Ascendant loot-material farming.
Reducing these does start to blur the boundaries between Ulti and a Loot+ Ulti in context of end-game builds.
I may have missed it elsewhere but has Zantai clarified what Ascendant play is meant to be.
Also it feels counterproductive as some of the Ascendant materials are better from the Dread and Nemesis.
Personally I dont want to end up running a lot of Ascended chests farm routes myself through various skeleton key dungeons, which this change starts to make more effective-efficient.
Next it might end up with skeleton key chests being nerfed to compensate for these quick runs, would hate to see that.
I haven’t played with it yet, but please don’t nerf 
I’d much rather have a challenge where I have to really try to make a good build or play better than walk right over everything if I happen to make a decent build.
I still remember when I started playing GD on normal (as I never played an ARPG before) and after a short while I noticed I couldn’t even die from normal enemies just standing there (I raked up health regen without realizing). Luckily it was still a bit of a challenge on veteran and when I got further into the game. But I almost gave up, because I don’t enjoy games without a challenge.
Point is, this is the end of the game, supposed to be the hardest part of the game. It shouldn’t be easy in any way on ultimate. If you want it easy, play on normal difficulty imho.
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Same
Also when I see a Nemesis I think about gear and materials
Having a Nemesis from cronley takes time though, If you kill most of them you might see 1 Nemesis only, I wish the spawn rate was better for that faction, probably the same for the Kymons and death vigils factions
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That view is debatable. It’s an ARPG, not a platformer. There needs to be a way to outpace and outbuild the monsters (and for the most part of Grim Dawn, there is a way). If player power curve can’t catch up, to me it means that there’s not enough tools in the game, or they are too inaccessible. Like overpriced ascended modifiers, currently.
That disconnect between the challenge and the tools is my main problem with 1.3 difficulty. Altar and Ascended mode give monsters so much health. So on any Ultimate-farming build you need to find at least x2 damage to make a successful transition into Ascendant, and it’s pretty hard to get that much value from FoA additions, even if they were cheaper. But you also lose a lot of dps uptime to dodging monster abilities. 
So now you need to find extra sustain, on top of extra damage. Or, alternatively, even more damage. That’s a lot of work just to break even, and the payoff is… being able to afford these upgrades on future characters? And how are you supposed to afford them before that?
It just doesn’t add up.
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For a first or SSF char there’s a similar ramp up from Ultimate campaign to higher SR shards. You have to gradually work to improve your gear (which is surely the most ARPG-like thing there is). You can’t just jump in straight from after finishing the campaign.
You can start with MI and totem-farming in Ultimate, try adding some altar buffs, build up to SR 24/5 and then to 30/1 and by that point you are probably ready for Ascendant.
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I disagree. If a DLC introduces a new baseline difficulty, it’s responsible for setting up the corresponding progression. And FoA didn’t make the Ultimate SR progression much better.
If altar buffs become less expensive and/or give mobs significantly less hp, it would shift the equation in FoA’s favor, to an extent.
Either way, in a reasonable world Crate would set up SR scaling for Ascendant (because it’s just a… silly inconsistency, to have no SR scaling on max difficulty). And it’d make it obvious that Difficulty progression and SR progression are multiplicative, and both should be supported by something.
Notice how we didn’t even mention Ascendant+Altar? So there should be even more unaccounted for power sources in game, to support target farming in Ascendant. (I mean, it’s not a case of “well-supported” progression, I guess, and some builds would have better time with Ascended+Altar than others. But if the earlier power thresholds are already requiring significant grind, “aspirational” power thresholds become even less realistic. That’s the idea.)
It didn’t add a new level of difficulty, it just added a new place to find that difficulty.
There was always a gap between the power level needed to finish the Ultimate campaign and the power level needed for end game farming. The only difference is that “end game farming” now includes Ascendant as an option instead of just CR and SR. Essentially, it’s not a “baseline difficulty”, it’s “the third pillar of the endgame”.
Closing that campaign->endgame gap (if you don’t have gear stashed in advance) has always required some effort - maybe 5-20 hours play time, depending on build and luck.
This is what I originally expected but I can see why they didn’t do it, given that we can’t reach anywhere near max SR solo in Ultimate (and probably never will). If they did do it, we would have the question of which was harder, Asc 20/1 or Ult 36/7 (or whatever), which would be interesting.
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We’re kinda arguing about perceptions at that point, but I want to highlight something.
I understand the idea of the third pillar, and I can see that it makes sense from Crate’s point of view.
From a DLC buyer point of view it’s presented as a compelling standard package “new difficulty + new drops + new endgame + new uberendgame”.
For context, there’s a reason to consider Ultimate SR1 the “baseline endgame” of FG - you have access to all drops at that point, other than a few individual items. And the gameplay doesn’t really change from pushing SR tiers, monsters just get tougher and you’re asked to deal with more bosses at the same time.
Similarly, in terms of character power, the most important feature of the DLC is ascended+awakened items. It just so happens that you get access to the required materials in Ascendent mode (or with Altar which would give pretty much the same monster hp growth anyway). That makes Ascendent mode the proper endgame, where you’re again able to farm for endgame upgrades. That sets the distance between “FG baseline endgame” and “FoA baseline endgame”.
I understand that I’m describing my opinions and my perceptions rather than some “hard truth”. Still, that’s the alternative point of view. And a lot of people who aren’t watching Zantai’s interviews would probably relate to it. 
Another consideration is that its not entirely clear to me that GD progression can just keep growing the numbers indefinitely. There is a point that the game mechanics should start failing, and the damage scaling will simply overwhelm defenses, even if upscaled. This is the consequence of the multiplicatives and percentages at the core of the system.
I don’t know how much of this was tested by the devs, and how deep they went analysing a possible SR scaling for the Ascendant mode. But I’m sure they did some sort of testing. There are however lessons from the past. Games like Torchlight 2 with theoretical infinite scaling, break apart sooner or later, as you will know if like me you tried to push it. And in a much more complex games like GD, where offensive and defensive stats don’t map cleanly to each other like they do in Torchlight, balancing at the highest levels is a nightmare to achieve.
All in all, I’m almost 100% confident we are better off without SR ascendant scalling then with it. Maybe they will introduce it later after extensive testing. But I dunno what benefit the extra work will bring to the game.
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Well it’s a secondary point in the whole topic of “ascendant mode is a difficulty”. Serves a completely different group of people, too.
The SR system needs to be seriously inelegant for it to not be compatible with the base stats introduced by the AM, though.
Also, if you look at it as a challenge generator for the exceptionally strong builds, the need for balance is not that big. It just needs to generate challenge, and give somewhat better rewards. These characters are achieving supreme farm anyway.