Announcement from Crate? What are you most interested in?

With the successful release of Ashes of Malmouth, there’s a possibility that sooner or later we will hear from the developers regarding one of the three following things:-

  1. RTS/Town builder project -

An almost dead genre these days, Crate seems to be working on a project in this genre

  1. Future of Grim Dawn -

It was once said that depending on the success of Ashes of Malmouth they will decide whether or not to add a second expansion.
Some players have also expressed an interested in a full-blown sequel on a brand new engine rather than an expansion.

  1. New Project set in same universe as Grim Dawn -

It is known they’re working on a new project set in the same universe as Grim Dawn. The details of the genre of this game are shrouded in mystery.

So what announcement are you interested in the most?

I thought the the new hinted at RTS game was set in the Grim Dawn universe. Maybe I’m remembered that?

I voted for the first option since they are working on it and I think I’m getting burned out on ARPGs. :slight_smile:

The details about anything they’ve said so far are murky but it does appear RTS and new GD project are separate ones

I’m fine with anything, really. :slight_smile:

I voted the future of Grim Dawn. But the 3rd option… imagine how a Souls-like game set in Cairn would feel like:rolleyes:.

You Died
/10charslateryoudied

Not an option though :undecided:

You Died
/10charslateryoudied

I’m not a fan of Town Building games. So I’m most interested in the future of Grim Dawn, of course. I would like to see the end of the story. The actual end.

even if you get a 2nd expansion it won’t be the end. thats not the type of story they are telling.

Well i didn’t mean it to be hardcore . It’s just that I like the whole dodge/block learn the mob’s pattern thing. :smiley:

Then what are they going to do with it, considering HOW MANY loose ends we have right now? How abrupt expansion’s ending was? Prolong it until it stinks? I call bullshit.

Me neither, but I would kill for a full-fledged RTS with good Base Building. It’s been so long since we’ve had a good one. C&C and SupCom:FA were “alright” but nothing too stellar.

Something like Kingdoms of Amalur?

Well OK, I must admit that I played a lot of Dune in my young days, so yeah, if they can pull off good RTS with detailed base building, I’ll be very happy.

Not a good example. Amalur has a completely broken smith system that makes the game piss easy.

I meant it only as an example of a game that utilizes dodge/block mechanics, is an RPG and not hardcore.

But ok, if that’s not a good example then Witcher.

Yes, now I can see the similarities. How about Gothic? You actually needed to git gud with dodging and blocking there.

Weird as it is, I haven’t played neither Gothic nor Risen series. I’m more of a The Elder Scrolls & Dark Souls person :stuck_out_tongue:

Witcher, yeah pretty much. But the witcher is too big and i guess it’s hard for a team so small to make such a big game. Ds3 was the best example in my opinion. Not too short but not too long either, with metroidvania elements, and a cryptic story leaving room for speculation, which Crate already did in Grim Dawn.

I love city building so hope we see that soon.

A couple of Medierra comments (which probably started the whole “what’s next for Crate” thing off in the first place ;)).

Medierra 03.03.17:
"You can mostly thank the XboxOne port.

It requires DX11 and we’ll also need to do a bunch of work to get decent frame rates on there. We won’t be changing anything else about the PC version that will affect gameplay but it will get these engine improvements and some additional controller functionality.

We also are planning another “spin-off” game that is based on GD but a somewhat different kind of game."

The totally new non-GD project we’re working on uses Unity."

Medierra 21.11.16:
"We do plan to keep working on Grim Dawn. How many expansions we produce just depends on how well the first expansion sells and how well GD itself continues to sell.

There is also a good a chance we’ll do GD2 at some point but, due to the age of the current engine, we either need to undertake some massive update work on it or start from scratch with a licensed engine, which would mean a massive amount of work writing all new gameplay code.

Given that we’re working on an expansion now, might do a second one and I’ve been working on ARPGs for 14 years now, I feel like I could use a bit of break before jumping right into GD2. Imagining exciting new features, systems and a whole new story arc take a lot of energy and passion. I’m happy continuing to work on and oversee content for GD but I feel like I need to recharge before I can give a whole new ARPG my all.

There are other genres of games I love and have always wanted to work on. I’d also like to work on something lower scope next, that requires less building of content and which won’t take too long to finish. I expect to be releasing this new project 12-18 months from now. Then after that, who knows, maybe it will be time for GD2. I won’t know until I get there. One thing I can say though is, I’d be a lot more excited to work on GD2 if we could get to a point where we had a lot more money to throw at it.

Someone mentioned that Banished / Anno town-builders were overcrowded but that looks like a wide open market compared to ARPG. Not only are there a lot of ARPGs coming out recently but players commit to a single one for much longer than games in other genres and it requires a ton of content and features to be competitive - more than almost any other genre of games. Then think about the fact that the ARPG genre has a franchise that is widely seen as “king” and is developed by one of the biggest, most well funded and widely respected companies in the industry. Everything is compared against Diablo and it’s hard to compete with a team that has virtually unlimited resources. Then Grinding Gear has around 5x the people we do and I doubt competing against a free-to-play game has helped our sales. Then there’s Torchlight (although it looks like their next game isn’t an ARPG), Marvel Heroes, Van Helsing, Victor Vran, maybe a TQ expansion or sequel from Nordic, Lineage Eternal (if that ever finishes), Wolcen and too many others to remember. Since the huge sales of D3, everyone and their mom seems to be making an ARPG these days. About the only thing worse would be deciding to make a MOBA.

Even with all that going on, I wouldn’t say it would prevent us from making GD2 but it certainly makes the level of competition in most other genres look a lot less daunting.

A big factor for working on something else though is that I don’t think it is good to keep all our eggs in one basket, as a studio. Our primary goal is to keep the company alive so we can keep being independent and making games. While it’s certainly possible to focus on one franchise and stay alive for a long time doing it, it’s riskier having all your future dependent on the continued success of one game property in one genre. Diversifying the types of games we can make and the IPs we own is a good way for us to better secure out future.

Beyond just branching out to work on other genres, it has always been a goal of mine to be able to work on concurrent projects. Not only do we not want to be pigeon-holed into one genre but I think it’s important for us to be able to work on multiple projects at time. That way, we’re not just counting on the success of a single big release to keep us alive, where if it under-performs, it could take years to course-correct and finish another project (years we likely wouldn’t have). This also helps to increase the efficiency of the studio, as we can shift people around based on the needs of a project at any give time, instead of having lulls at the beginning and end of a single project, where not everyone is needed at full capacity. Another factor is that people get burnt out working on one thing for too many years. When people get burnt out, they leave and look for something new. I feel like we have a great team and I want to keep them engaged with fresh new projects and not solely grinding away on ARPGs for the next 20 years.

Since we would like to keep making content for GD, we’ve brought on some new people for that, to keep up the level of energy and enthusiasm (or new old people in the case of Grava, aka Josh Glavine). We’ll keep making content for GD as long as it’s financially viable. GD2 is a definite possibility but whether / when that happens depends on how things progress in the ARPG genre and internally for us at Crate over the next year or two. We also have some ideas for GD related games that are set in that universe and will share some mechanics but are not quite ARPGs."

Everything is compared against Diablo and it’s hard to compete with a team that has virtually unlimited resources.

Haha, even though Diablo2 was my start for ARPG’s, Grim Dawn surpassed it by long. I won’t even talk about Diablo3 shivers. I even liked Torchlight 2 more than Diablo 2, which was made by former Blizzard North director+employees.

Just because more people are playing a game, doesn’t mean that game is better. If 50 people tell me the grass is red, doesn’t mean they’re right just because they’re more