Ashes of Malmouth Feedback

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

We play Grim Dawn since the beta release. We have played it with the expansion this winter, leveled up 6 teams to level 100, and this is my report from the new addition and changes to the game.

This report is exclusively based on the multiplayer experience of the story game (no solo, no crucible, no mod etc).

The good

The expansion brings two additional masteries which really make sense: the inquisitor is the cornerstone a large part of the ranged and caster builds needed, and the necromancer brings new options for the melee builds.

The Ugdenbog and Malmouth areas bring new atmospheres to the game, which are refreshing changes after the dumps and swamps of the beginning of the game, and then after the barrens, rifts, snow valleys etc. Now each place really has its own identity as a matter of space, colors, atmosphere, challenges, factions, rewards etc.

And as well for the devotions, most new ones really fit well in the devotion sky, completing what was missing with the others.

So, good additions, yes, but does it make the game now complete, does its experience now fully make sense? Well… no, far from it:

The bad

Bonus fest versus Masteries limit

The whole game is about stacking as much bonuses as possible of those stats the characters plans are based on. If one does x damage points thanks to its current weapon, the next objective is to get another weapon providing more damage output, if one reaches +100% damage bonus on that type of damage the character does, the next objective is then +200% and then +300% and so on. Same with the skills: 1 point, 2 points, maxed, then additionnal +skill levels from gear. Same with the resistances: +10%, then +20%… up to 80%, and then +max res% and so on. Same for everything in the game, but the masteries… The masteries have to be improved by and only by hard skill points.

Why aren’t any bonus available for the masteries themselves? I am not talking about unlocking skills in the skill trees that can’t be unlocked with just the hard points put into the masteries, I am just talking about the passive bonuses the masteries provide: physical, cunning, health points etc. If it is possible to get bonuses for the damages, the resistances, the skills, absolutely everything, why is it impossible to get anything to improve the masteries? The game becomes challenging in end game, regarding the health points for the builds not based on many +health bonuses, regarding the offense for the builds who can’t get enough cunning and offense, and regarding the physical requirement for the builds who can’t get much +physical, and the option to get mastery bonuses would make sense here.

Once a given build has reached its levels in its masteries, increasing the health points, energy, offense and physical becomes then very challenging. Sometimes the devotions, the gear, the components can help to some extent, sometimes the build just can’t get enough bonuses to remain viable in late game. That caster just can’t get enough physical attribute to be able to wear that chest armor that would help so much with its damages/resistances setup, but he is still 70 physical points short whatever how he looks at it. He did everything he could, he just won’t be able to wear the armor. That tank was doing pretty well until now, but the end game turns out to be a little bit tougher than expected, and he wouldn’t miss an extra +1000 health points or so, but he just can’t get them, because the whole gear/components/devotions set is doing its best to provide some extra health, and both masteries are already maxed and can’t get a single additional points.

I am not talking about getting additionnal mastery bonuses in addition of all the other bonuses, I am talking about the option to boost the masteries passive bonuses beyond their natural level 50 tables. Everything in the game can be boosted over its natural limit: skills, damages, resistances, everything, but the masteries. I have some builds that were doing ok until end game, and sometimes I really would have traded some gear bonuses, some devotions bonuses, some last skill points put into some skills for those +attributes/health/energy bonus points the masteries provide. The characters in early game build up their abilities to hit harder and get hit harder incredibly well thanks to the masteries, but once the masteries are maxed to those levels that were planned for that build, well good luck in end game if you end up a bit shorter than expected with the physical requirements, the health or the offense. Planning a build with a calculator, doing some theory, is nice, but the build always ends up doing a little bit different than expected in game. That’s theory versus reality. The end game can be especially challenging by times, and I do believe that some option to get those masteries beyond those level 50 could help a lot sometimes. Not all builds do need to have all their skill points put into skills and all gear dedicated to damages and resistances, sometimes some additional health/physical/offense/defense is all they need.

My suggestion:
Exactly as there are +skill points granted to items, grant +mastery points to items. Some items would be good at their primary use (a weapon doing a lot of damage, an armor doing a lot of armor), some others would be good at helping with skills (+skill levels), and some others with masteries. The skills in the skill trees are only unlocked by hard points, the bonus points only grant additionnal phys/cunn/ener/HP/EP.

Devotion

Cooldown reduction

There is not a single devotion item dedicated to cooldown reduction.
The one item in the whole devotion system somehow related with cooldown reduction is the Time Dilation, which is a skill that has to be assigned to an attack skill and is only available in late game.

The cooldown reduction is something that is extremely challenging to build up in the current version.

Excess devotion points

Unlocking shrines once the 55/55 devotion points limit has been reached is at the moment completely useless. Why is that? Aren’t shrines all over the world supposed to be restored? If a devotion points limit has to be set for game balance purpose, why couldn’t the excess shrines give something else, like attribute points, formulas, rare components… something?

Healing Rain ability visual

The healing rain ability granted by the tree of life is hardly noticeable. This is a pity because this is a pretty challenging devotion to unlock, and its ability is useful in multiplayer. There are abilities like Heart of the Wild, Blood of Dreeg, Flash Freeze etc that are both important and visible, but this is one shows a clear discrepancy between its usefulness and its visibility and this sounds wrong.

Offense bonuses vs defense bonuses

There are more bonuses about offense than defense. Defense got plenty of small flat bonuses, but very little +% bonuses, while offense can get plenty of both flat and +% bonuses thanks to the devotions. I am not sure if this is intended. Maybe the defense is supposed to be built up mainly by the armor gear, but even so, there is little reason why the offense should get more bonuses in the devotions (if the logic is that the defense is supposed to be built up by the armor, then the offense should be built up by the weapon(s)). I always end up in end game with characters who have something like 2500 in offense and 2000 in defense at best, and building up the defense beyond the 2000 cap is always a nearly impossible challenge without the soldier mastery. Critical hits can turn out to be very bad surprises in ultimate, and with the defense capped around 2000 for the players who don’t want to go full physical/hallowed ground, the options are very limited… The armor is pretty limited since it only affects the physical damages, and even by maxing the resistances to 80%, one can still sometimes experience damage peaks which are very likely related with the critical hits and therefore the defense.

Factions Reputations Drops

Sometimes at some stage in late game, I just find myself unable to buy that faction augment I was used to buy since middle game. Reason: back to “honored”. Why? No reason, just because. Just farm again some reputation and shut up. If this is supposed to make some sense regarding the game, the story or something, I don’t get it.

Suggestion: it should be possible to get reputation points over the limit of the last stage. It is just beyond stupidity to get some reputation way over the max but then at the first action that does not please to those people to get back to “honored” like mere third parties. Am I really “revered” or not? It does not sound very “revered” to me sometimes… The reputation that is gotten over the last stage could then be used to compensate for the actions that would decrease it.

Unexpected windows opening during action and interaction

Text/Dialog windows opening right in the middle of a fight or quest rewards opening right while interacting with NPCs really are confusing and frustrating experiences. There must be an option to cancel anything appearing over the character and the monsters around as long as there is a fight going on, or to postpone it until all threats have been dealt with.

Same with loot names. Sometimes the whole screen is literally FULL OF FUCKING TEXT while you are struggling with some tougher enemies. It is not uncommon to have bosses and unique monsters surrounded with normal mobs, which are going to die first and drop junk stuff, but in some fights there is enough drops to prevent you from clicking on the remaining enemies. This is ridiculous.

Yes I know that there is an option to filter the display of the loot, and I do use it. That comment is not about filtering levels of loot, that comment is about preventing the screen from being infested by spam during the action. The filter does not filter the iron bits, the potions and the components anyway, and those are by far the most common drops and filling the screen can sometimes be done within seconds.

My suggestion:
Give the option to the player to enable or disable spam during the action. This can be setup by a countdown that starts each time the player does or receives damage, with a duration of 2 or 3 seconds for instance, and which disable the name display of all the loot on the ground around and all the windows related with quests etc, everything that may appear on screen and prevent the player from attacking or retreating.

Same with the quests rewards appearing right while selling items to the town vendors right over the inventories. This is bad and this is even worse now with the expansion: before it was possible to remove them by clicking on the OK button, but now it is no longer possible for no reason. The OK button is disabled and this is very lame.

2

Multiple bonus to skills in items description

The bonus to specific skills quickly become confusing and frustrating as the game goes on. The first green and blue items provide some small bonus to specific skills, but as the legendary ones begin to appear, there are whole lists of bonus to specific skills, which is more often confusing and frustrating than clear and legitimate. Why is that? Because one can quickly feel by taking a look on the description that there is a given idea about that item, to improve fire-based skills for instance, or lightning, or retaliation or whatever. Most items are dedicated to specific purposes and this is good, this pushes the players to make choices.

But the problem is that most of those items with pretty clear ideas about what they are supposed to do actually don’t really do what they look like they are supposed to do. You can find for instance some gloves improving lightning-based skills for the demolitionist and the shaman, but what happens if you have an inquisitor or an arcanist doing well so far in that department? I can’t count the number of drops I have found that could have fitted well with my build except that they do little for my build. They have all the right idea of the bonus to bring to my build, except that no skills are going to be improved by wearing it because somewhere someone has decided that that item was going to help that other specific mastery only and not mine, regardless of how relevant it would have been to consider what I am playing right now as well in its design.

That kind of situation is far from being isolated. This happens all the time, and this is why I think that there is something wrong here and that this doesn’t help the game and actually bring into it some kind of confusing and frustrating experience. That experience is as much confusing and frustrating as it is completely unnecessary.

Why don’t fire damage-oriented items for instance simply bring bonus to “fire-dedicated skills” instead of only some specific ones?
The processing would be straight-forward: “type of damage dedicated skills” means all the skills within all the existing masteries that have some flat damage of that type of damage and/or some +% bonus damage. Just make some categories not to have a too wide range of skills affected by the bonus, like active / passive, melee / range and attack / defense for instance. That way, anybody picking up that item would either say “hey, this is for me!” or “meh, maybe for my next build” or something like that, and not be like “why is this for my build except that it is actually not really for my build for some reason?”.

To turn most lists of bonuses to specific skills into more general bonuses to general kinds of skills would smoothen the game experience regarding the picking and the selection of the items. I can understand that some items are dedicated to very specific builds, that make sense, especially set items, but it doesn’t make sense to me that all the items in the game have to be dedicated to specific builds and those specific builds only. The game is way too open regarding the way to build up the characters to let one pretend he can think of all the ways to plan and to play their builds in this game. That is just not going to work, especially when at the end you can’t remember how many times you have seen items dropped improving some very specific skills and can’t remember having seen more than once a single bonus to those other skills you wish you could find something more relevant and more often with what you are playing. The balance within the bonus list is broken, and so is the experience of reading and comparing those bonuses. You either have to add more items to improve that balance and to make sure that all the skills in the game have their fair share of bonuses available somehow, or to turn a part of the existing items into more generic items with general bonuses to kinds of skills to break that unbalance.

I have stopped counting how many times I told to myself “I am going to try that kind of build” and thinking “There are so many different blue and purple kinds of items available that I don’t really need to check if that build I have in mind is going to work ingame or not. I am sure I will find more than enough gear for that guy”. And then by playing, picking up something or checking the inventories of my previous characters: “nah, that one isn’t really for my build”, “that one is good for this but it otherwise doesn’t really help me on what I need to improve”. Once, twice, then many times, before I realize, by checking the list of all the items currently existing in the game: “hold on, there is actually no item whatsoever for that part of my inventory really fitting for my build? really?”. I double-check, and yes, really, there is just nothing in the whole game that really fits for my character for his gauntlets, and his belt, and some other part of his inventory. I see countless times countless items fitting perfectly for some specific builds, but for everything else, it just looks like that this is “deal with it”. This just sucks. Why some builds would have to be so much promoted and all the others just ignored?

Lack of defaut attacks

What are the options for the players who would like to play a melee or ranged build with masteries that offer no defaut attack? If I go occultist/nightblade for instance, or arcanist/necromancer or whatever, what can I give to my character as left clic default main attack ability (beyond eye of dreeg and panetti in those examples)?

I see items like Temporal Arcblade for instance, which looks cool, but which makes very little sense to me. When I look at its features, the only feeling that come to my mind is “what am I actually supposed to do with that exactly?”. The weapon is clearly dedicated to an arcanist-necromancer, except that an arcanist-necromancer is not going to be able to make the full use of it. That doesn’t make any sense.

And then I see the abilities supplied by the devotions, which can only be assigned to some specific abilities, but not to the default attack supplied by default to every character for some reason, and this lack of the most elementary option then makes even less sense to me.

If I don’t go soldier/demo/shaman as first mastery, I am basically deprived of any way to efficiently handle any weapon over at least the first half of the whole game. I know that I can use the ability supplied by the component Shard of Beronath for any weapon, or Ice Spike with the Chilled Steel, Poison Bomb with the Mutagenic Ichor, Fire Blast with the Searing Ember etc, but if this is the only answer to this question about the lack of defaut attacks for non-sol/demo/sham builds, then I have another question: if I have to go Ice spike/Poison Bomb/Fire Blast etc, how can I keep an attack efficient enough by level 20+, and what if my build plan is about other kinds of damage than those supplied and improved by those ones? And if my only serious option is the shard of Beronath, how am I supposed to deal with the fights up to the level 55?

Maybe I have missed something here, but when I see that more than half of the masteries supplied by the game have zero defaut attacks options for the usual melee/ranged builds, it sounds like that there is a problem here to me. I can understand that some masteries are heavily caster oriented and may supply no option for melee attacks, but the nightblade looks melee oriented enough to me and the inquisitor ranged oriented enough to me to deserve basic defaut attacks fitting with their profiles in case the player is not going to go soldier or shaman with his nightblade or demolitionist with his inquisitor.

The alternative options supplied by the components and the relics are not open enough to deal with this problem. There looks like to be no option to me if one wants to go ranged with elemental damage or piercing damage without taking the demolitionist to use the fire strike, or to efficiently use any melee weapon without taking the soldier or the shaman. The changes that have been done at some stage during the development of the beta version to enable the cadence ability to be used with ranged weapons and the fire strike ability to be used with melee weapons doesn’t help enough here. It just makes things more confusing in my opinion. There are just too many masteries available for the few default attacks abilities currently available with those masteries. Only 3/8 of the masteries have abilities that enable the players to use the weapons supplied in the game. That makes very little sense to me.

Skills balance: unlocking levels and points requirements vs general efficiency

There is no reason why Flash Freeze should be available at a lower level than the Trozan Shy Shard and the Eather Ray: the Flash Freeze affects a large area and its effects last after the casting, while the eather ray affects a single target only, prevents from moving as long as the caster is using it, hampers the condition of its target in no other way but its health, and has its effect stop as soon as the caster stops using it. Flash Freezes freezes all the others while the Eather Ray freezes only yourself, so it’s kind of an upgrade? Seriously? Flash Freeze freezes and reduces resistances over time in addition of its damage. What does the Eather Ray do beyond consuming massive amounts of energy to do massive amounts of damage to a single target and locking you on the ground over the whole process? The Sky Shard freezes as well, but for a fixed duration, while the duration of Flash Freezes increases with the levels. And Flash Freeze requires 24 skill points to be maxed while the Sky Shards requires 40, for overall effects that I am really not sure worth the extra points. Eather Ray would make much more sense to be an early game skill. It would be in some competition with the Panetti Missile, which also does eather damage, but affects more potential targets and is a little bit more diversified as a matter of damage.

The masteries offer skills that require between 10 points to fully max (Ill Omen for instance) and some others that require up to 52 points (like Panetti Missile). I tend to consider the less-demanding skills as more interesting, as they require less skill points to fully use them, and yet they generally are as much efficient as the crazy-demanding ones. I am really not sure that the masteries need 4-steps skills. Most of them just are too demanding for what they offer. Only the nightblade with the 8/8 points steps of its dual blades somehow makes sense because of the limited consumption and the overall choice given over all the passives one may want for his dual-wielder. I tend to consider all the 4-steps skills of the game as broken (Panetti, Dreeg’s Evil Eye, Flames of Ignaffar): the player invests a lot in them and either has too few skill points left for the other important skills to build up (especially in defense), and ends up with a build not viable enough in ultimate, or manages well his defense in addition of his offense, and ends up with a boring build because all he has is one attack… That doesn’t work to me. The 4-steps long skills are a waste of space and option and balance to me on the masteries board, and should be replaced with more balanced and diversified abilities.

Monster behavior

There is room for improvement in the management of the priorities of the targets for the monsters. It is not uncommon in multiplayer games to have a boss monster that wants to reach the farthest of the players, and spends its whole lifetime getting stuck by the tank players in front of it, who sometimes by the randomness of the positions of the objects, collision sizes, tightness of the places and the action happen to just be stuck where it is, then walks and walks where it is without moving, trying on and on to find another path in order to so desesperately reach that remote target to then finally die like a complete moron without sometimes having done more than a couple of attacks. This is lame. The AI does pretty poorly here.

Suggestion: Set a timeout function that tells the monster that if after x units of time it did not manage to reach its current target, it should try to redefine another more reachable target around. Or for the monsters with no range attacks and no charge, set the priority by range: the closer, the quicker, the better.

Another problem with the AI is the management of skills like Blade Barrier. I very usually see the enemies who have that sort of skills to do it as soon as they see us around. To start a fight, at the beginning when you are all fresh and have 100% of your health, with such skills definitely is not the best use one could come up with.

Suggestion: set a restriction to AI Blade Barrier that it is only available when the unit is below x% of health, or under heavy fire (being affected at given time by more than x attacks, including DOTs etc).

The last thing is more about realism: to have fanatics, undeads or other special monsters fighting to the death is one thing, that makes sense, but to have more or less normal animals like the harpies, the boars and other various dwellers from the swamp who can see their whole groups being slaughtered within seconds and still walk straight to their death and try to attack the players who made it very clear that they were just much stronger than them makes much less sense. It would sound more natural to me that the small versions of those enemies (like the piglets, small stormhounds, sliths etc) should just try to run away if they have witnessed the deaths of their leaders right around them.

Suggestion: set a battlecry to the big units in beasts groups that trigger when they die and affect the smallest of the group. Set a morale counter to those units, that starts at 100%, loses x% when one of their boss die, regenerates x%/sec, and trigger a terror effect if the counter reaches <0%. To make that if a given amount of their bigs teammates die at once, they just want to try to escape the slaughter. The battlecry is invisible to the players, disable all attacks and increase the move speed and make them want to reach some possible shelter or escape path or whatever. That’s called fear. Fanatics groups could get the opposite effect: when a boss die, its followers turn into some rage mode and attack even more.

Character customization

So in one hand, there are japanese/korean games where people can spend up to 20 minutes to define up to the color and the size of the eyebrows of their characters, and in other hand, Grim Dawn, where the player can choose the gender… and the name… veteran/not veteran… and that’s about it…

No, that’s not all about it. That’s Grim Dawn and one has plenty of options among all the possibilities the masteries mixes offer, but I am not taking about gameplay here, I am just talking about the customization of the character: the appearance. As an ARPG, the game partially is a RPG, where the identification to the character is important. And Grim Dawn is doing poorly here. In some way, when I play the game, I sometimes have that feeling that we are somehow stuck somewhere in the middle 2000’s. This is 2018 guys. Any way to get a tall, wide guy for my tank build? A pale skin for my vampire or occultist? A dark skin, or covered with scars or something for my war veteran? Something more fitting with the different kinds of characters I would expect from the masteries and the gear I choose and the experience my character gets throughout the game? How come that a level 1 newbie character is just as tall and wide and has the exact same face than a level 90 veteran who has been through so many battles in the game? Only what they wear is different, they don’t change as people, 50 physical points or 900 physical points and still exactly as much tall and wide… no… that doesn’t make much sense to me. The builds and the faces should evolve through the game, and there should be some choice at the beginning: black or white, tall or medium or short, wide, fat or fit, sane or insane look in his eyes? Etc. I would love to customize a little bit the different builds I play.

The other problem with the current customization options is the name: only letters can be used. Why can’t I at least use dashes, dots and some other special characters? Why isn’t it possible to have some sort of code instead of a regular dull name? I try to sort the different builds I have by some sort of code, since it isn’t possible to specify in the characters list details about the selected build, but the options are very limited. So I end up with “TankVamp-Name” for my tank build into life drain, “CastFire-Name” for my caster into fire damage etc, so at least I have in the list a general idea of the builds, but this is poor.

Suggestion: Enable the characters like “-”, “.”, “(”, “)”, and possibly also the numbers digits in the management of the characters’ names.

3

Environmental damage

The environmental damages really are a pain in this game. Whether it is the damage done by stepping on eather or acid places, the crystals rising out of the blue in the necropolis rift or the mines in the plain of strike battlefield or the plants in the wood, there is very little adventure or challenge with those features, only frustration.

The eather/poison/acid damage from the damage done by the ground or place cannot be countered by the resistances, armor, defense or anything the character may be able to wear/equip/activate as item/skill/devotion/whatsoever, but it looks like to be able to be enhanced by critical hits. I sometimes happen to just die by an unexpected damage peak which could only have come from the ground. I run to reach some safe place, I have managed to clear the area around or I dodge the few monsters around, and then I have my character just lying on the ground out of no reason. Dead. I should have been able to take a couple of extra hits from the ground, but no, the game has decided that the next hit was going to have some multiplier applied on it for no reason. This is not common but this happens, and I strongly suspect that the way those damages are applied still somehow compute with the critical hit feature. This is so wrong.

And the crystals in the rift are not better in any way. They just appear out of the blue, can’t be destroyed even if they have a collision size and react to the proximity of the characters. Why can I destroy so many things in the game -including eather crystals- and not those things? It isn’t even possible to select them and to target them. They are just here, and can attack you, but you can’t attack them. There are only two possibilities here: either this is very advanced game design, too high, too much of another level for me, and I can’t comprehend it, or this is just amateur game design, like some one can find with those sloopy flash games or web games one can find everywhere on internet. This kind of feature, also like the mines, the plants, the eather waves, doesn’t belong to the current version of Grim Dawn. It would have been there this way like 4 years ago when the game was in alpha stage, that would be no problem, only something like so many other things mainly here for demo and test purposes, but with the release of the so-called complete, official version of the game, and then of its expansion, things like this either have to be removed or completed.

I can destroy the eather crystals but not the rift crystals, I can destroy the poison-spitting plants but not the melee-attacking ones, and monsters can use eather waves as abilities like any other abilities, but sometimes some eather wave just stay there forever and look around and chase you, forever, on and on. Why is that?

Suggestion: compute the damages done from the environmental damage sources like all the other damages of the game: ie with the resistances, or at least provide a protection to the environmental damages to some items, like the boots. Give something like “x% against ground damage” as an extra suffix that some boots could get, to enable the players to protect their characters from those threats, or with some augment or whatever. Just give them an option, something. At the moment the one feature in the whole game that can counter those damages appears to be the % damage absorption, and I am not even sure a low amount of that one really is that efficient as I have seen my builds with possession, sphere of protection etc just die like all the others from that kind of damage. Only a big amount, like the one from the mirror of erectoes or from an eather cluster appears to make a difference.

The nemesis

The nemesis is a great addition to the game. The idea of having infamy in addition of the reputation for the factions that are against you is a great idea, but there is no reason why the nemesis of a given faction should be a specific guy and absolutely nothing else.

I know that the nemesis is per definition one specific guy. What I mean is that as the game values diversity with all the different kinds of monsters, there should also be some variety with the nemesis. I would love for instance sometimes to encounter a nemesis boar, or a nemesis harpy, or a nemesis mosquito or whatsoever. The idea that there is only one nemesis in the current game session makes sense: the nemesis is the guy at the top of the faction that you have slaughtered, he is pissed and he is coming for you. Good. But why does it have to be the exact same guy every single game? This would be a good addition as a matter of surprise, and therefore fun and improvisation, if the player, by looking for it or not, end up facing an unexpected nemesis, ie at an unexpected place and with unexpected strengths and weaknesses. The undead for instance could have a caster in addition of their melee/cold based warrior, the eatherial vanguard could have a massive behemoth in addition of their caster and so on, and the beasts could have all sorts of variety of nemesis, according to the main races that make that faction.

Stupidly strong and stupidly weak monsters in end game

There are some monsters who end up being stupidly weak in end games, like the bees, the briarthorns, the bloodsworn adulants etc, that just die by the first shots whatever the build I have done, the kind of damages I do and the damage output, and some other monsters on the other end who are always stupidly strong whatsoever my damages and my resistances, like the eatherial chargers hulks/behemoths/titans. Whatever the type of damage I do, whatever the amount of those damages, whatever I try to freeze/stun/knockdown/confuse, whatever my speed and my attempts to dodge them, to position me so they won’t reach me straight away, they just don’t care and charge head first and stun and stun and stun me on and on and on until my character die, regardless of my attempts to block them, to kill them, to build up the resistances or whatever.

Something doesn’t make sense here. Either the game is supposed to be very challenging in end game and all the monsters should more or less make a real threat to the players, either the game is not supposed to be very challenging if the players have managed to build up their characters properly, ie with the right armor, defense, resistances, damage output, crowd control etc. But at the moment, some monsters are so weak they just don’t belong to the end game at all, and some others are so strong it is impossible to counter them properly regardless of the amount of effort put into defense, strategy, damage output or whatever. That does not work. Either the game expects the players to understand its rules by rewarding them by letting them more or less access its end game with a balanced amount of challenge, or the game is supposed to be hard as hell in end game and everything should be a threat to the players. But you can’t make both, that doesn’t make sense. Some monsters are so weak they can’t be any threat regardless how failed my build can be, and some others are so strong they can’t be dealt with like the others regardless how successful my build was until that point.

This experience like so many others in this game just makes me unsure that the developers really understood the difference between the kinds of frustration that a video game can create and can use on and from the players. Frustration can be a useful feeling to push the players toward a given idea, something expected by the game design, but what can be expected from a frustration done by something that offers no solution, just to be here and stick around and hampers the game experience and the search for success and reward and does absolutely nothing else but making sure that any hope of getting rid of it just won’t work?

Suggestion: disable the stun/knockdown/freeze etc immunities on normal monsters. Normal monsters shouldn’t be able to have more than 95% resistance at best on the crowd control effects. If you want them to be able to resist some specific crowd control effects, give them a temporary ability that they can choose to enable for like 3-10 seconds, and that the players can choose to remove by nullification, cleansing waters etc, with a visual effect indicating that they are immuned to that kind of effect for a period of time, and that if the player is not happy with it, that he has to consider some options to counter it. On a general note, immunities should only be possible with the bosses, some specific super monsters etc. Oh and also disable the zero collision of the charge most chargers use: having a massive enemy completely blocked by pets, guards and teammates and whatever on the way and still managing out of the blue to go through all of them by a fingersnap just because he has decided to target you on the other side of the screen and because its charge enables him to go through everything makes very little sense and creates more a “wtf?” feeling than a “wow!” one.

The stunlock is by far the most frustrating experience with those monsters. The Malmouth big guys appear to have many ways to stun: the charge, the eather wave and sometimes the normal attack and the eather cannon. You just need 2-3 of them and a very bad timing and you’re in for a free death. Since it is impossible to max the stun resistance to 100% and anyway very challenging to build it up to 50% if you are no soldier, if you happen to be around monsters with stun abilities who either have different attacks with stun or a couple of them around with the same attack, you can fairly expect to be stunned at least 2/3 of the time, which is enough to disable most attempts to do damage, to re-summon dead summonings, to flee or to do anything to escape from that situation. The only thing that does not appear to be affected by the stun is drinking the potions, which in such case is only likely going to delay a bit the lame demise.

Suggestion: enable some stun-free time with a special potion or ability, or with some mecanism that makes that if the character has been stunned like twice in a row, he is immune to stun for 1-2 seconds, or something that can give some option to escape the stunlock. Building up the stun resistance to an amount that makes a real difference in the game is challenging for the non-soldier characters, and the Malmouth area is infested with chargers that can charge regardless of what is on their way and their actual trajectory, that always charge you and you only and you again on and on and on and always almost instantly regardless of their massive build and of your speed, and most of the time with a synchronized effect that makes that the stun effects overlap each others. Oh and make those guys not resistant to something. Resistant-to-all monsters are no challenge and no fun.

Quest items

That the first quests in Devil’s Crossing involves gathering a couple of components sounds right: it pushes the player to look around the first places to get some crystals and scraps. The player takes the opportunity of those first quests to learn the game basics. But that the same quests in the advanced difficulty levels involve gathering the same amounts of components at the exact same places sounds much less right. What is the point in asking 3 bits of something that the character has meanwhile gathered by tens if not by hundreds? Kasparov and Barnabas in elite and ultimate difficulties asking for 3 eather crystals and 5 scraps sound very lame. Is this really the ultimate difficulty? Sounds more like a sloppy rehash of the normal mode to me. What is so elite and so ultimate asking for 5 scraps?

Suggestion: ask for more advanced components in the advanced difficulty levels, exactly like the shrines do. Or remove the quests. Or lower the experience reward. 10.000’s of XPs for giving back 5 scraps in ultimate makes no sense at all.

One has to gather 1 Basilik Bile potion and 1 Leafmane horn in the woods/jungle around Ugdenbog. Ok. So if those items are only required at that one step of the game and never again, why do they drop by tens? The color of those items is pretty close to some other types of items and they drop again and again but cannot be picked up: this is unnecessarily confusing.

Suggestion: stop the basilik bile and leafmane horn drops when they have been picked up.

In Homestead, the player has to gather the insignias of the dead fighters. That more insignias drop than the quest demands can make sense: it gives the player the option not to have to carefully review every single bush and corpse of Blood Grove and this is nice. But that the characters can gather and keep more insignias than needed makes much less sense. Do you know that it is possible to gather 10 insignias at once, and therefore complete twice the quest? In normal for instance and then in elite, without having to look for them again? I just talk to the guy, he asks for the insignias, I give the 5 remaining ones that have not been removed from the previous difficulty mode, and he is just satisfied with them? That doesn’t make much sense.

Suggestion: delete all the insignias in the inventory by completing the insignias gathering quest, or make that the insignias are related with the difficulty level where they have been picked up and can only be active as quest items in that difficulty level, and let the players be able to sell them for x iron bits for instance to give them an option to get rid of those that are no longer useful. Or give some extra experience to the player for the extra insignias that he may have gathered in addition of the 5 requested ones and remove them from the inventory.

4

Damages display

All the damages that are displayed on the various character screens (sheets, masteries, devotions, inventory) appear to be computed according to the character’s damage bonuses.

This fully makes sense with the damages done by the character himself. This makes no sense regarding the damages done by others.

I strongly suspect that the damages done by the pets and also the damages done by the other players are also displayed according to the own bonuses of the character, and not by the related bonuses. When I check the damages supposedly done by the pets, I see that they increase when I increase my own bonuses, and not when I build up the to all pets +%all damage ones. Same with the other players: when I use the inspect player window, I am like “wow you have 20K DPS, that’s good!”, and they reply “what? it’s more like 35K dude…”, which hints me that the developers never bothered considering that some damages displayed on the various screens of the game may be based on other bonuses than those built up for the character himself.

Surprise riftgates

Some riftgates appear according to the story. You have killed some story boss in its room somewhere, the game makes a rift for you to let you leave the place and go back to the surface or somewhere safe. Ok, so far, that makes sense.

But what makes less sense is fighting the boss to death and then getting the loading screen completely out of the blue when you are about to finally kill him, and then be teleported to some wtf place while you were right in the middle of a big battle and he was right about to die, and then realize that you actually just killed him and clicked on the riftgate that have just opened exactly where you were aiming to finish him or where you were clicking to move to dodge some coming dangerous attack.

This really is dumb. Really. And far from exceptional. I play video games for 25 years and surprise “oops” teleports is something that I have never thought would be possible in a game that has officially passed its alpha and beta stages.

Suggestion: setup a x seconds delay between the initial trigger of the event (the death of the boss and the creation of the rift gate) and/or make sure that the teleport will only appear somewhere that is at least x meters away from the characters played by the players. Or warn of the coming of the rift gate by a visual animation (the rift gate is forming but it not yet usable for a short period of time).

Granted by item skills

Obsidian Tremor

The Obsidian Tremor skill granted by the Obsidian Juggernaut is overpowered. One can basically cast it on and on. The only restriction in this skill is the high energy consumption. The other problem with the skill is that it doesn’t follow the height of the ground: if one casts it on a stairs or on a slope, the attack will just dive underground and not hit the targets who are above the level of the character, while other similar skills, like Bone Harvest and Forcewave, follow the ground or more or less match with the slope angle, and can be used regardless of the differences of the height of the ground over the distance.

Suggestion: add a x seconds cooldown to the skill, reduce maybe a little bit its energy consumption, and use on it the function of the Bone Harvest that enables it to follow the ground.

Fiendmaster

The chest armor “Fiendmaster Raiment” provides a toggle ability that creates an aura that actually provides no effect whatsoever to the allies around. I suspect that the aura setting is unintentional. The pets enjoy the bonuses whether they are within the aura or not, and yet the ability icon is displayed on their bonus list.

Multiplayer stats

Some statistics would be nice in multiplayer. The most important that comes to mind are total damage done and total damage received during a multiplayer session. This way, the players would have a rough overview of who is the most efficient into doing damage and who is the most important into absorbing damage. Ideally, the stats would display sub-stats such as splitting the damage done between the direct damages, the damages over time, the retaliation/reflected damage and the pets damages.

Riftgates opening

I strongly suspect that the riftgate opening has been created out of some default attack function, because it tends to appear wherever there is something else: a NPC, a chest, a rift gate, a monster, anything that can be selected. This really is another dumb feature of the game that turns what was supposed to be a smooth and otherwise meaningless action into another unnecessary moment of frustration. It just looks like the game first checks every option possible before opening the riftgate to see if it could make it as useless as possible.

5

Monsters debuffs list

There is no way to know for sure the debuffs that are active at the moment on the monsters around by other way than by the visual effects. The problem is that 1) the visual effects are very different depending on the debuffs, which is good by itself, but that some debuffs are much less obvious to see than others, and sometimes probably not displayed at all, and that 2) the “over the head” debuffs, like the curse of frailty, assassin’s mark, defense decrease, are all displayed exactly on the same spot, which makes them overlap each other, which is dumb.

Suggestion: Make the debuffs that are displayed over the monsters apart from each other, so the players can see them more clearly, and display the debuffs that are active on the selected monster (the one with the health bar displayed on the top of the screen) like those of the players (a list of icons). This way, the whole idea of using debuffs on the monsters would make more sense than just spamming them and hoping for the best.

Health points development

The management of the evolution of the health points of the characters does not work. One can get in early game an amount of health that just makes him nearly invincible to most monsters, and then in late game that health is no longer possible to build up any further. I think that it is fair to identify the main cause of this problem with the direct connection between the health points and the masteries: increasing the masteries is the main way to increase the health, which means that when the masteries have reached their final stages, the main way to increase the health is therefore gone.

Suggestion: The health needs to be connected with the general level of the character as much as with the masteries levels. Instead of providing flat health with the mastery points, supply a bonus factor instead. Example: Soldier +0.5 health/level. This means that for each level in the soldier mastery, the character receives that amount for each of his general level. If the mastery is level 20 and the character is level 30, that means 0.5x20x30 = +300. If the character is level 60 and the mastery level 40, that means 0.5x60x40 = +1200. This is just an example, the factor has to be balanced to make the classes both viable and challenging. The point is to have a health development curve that is more steady over the whole game instead of having a massive peak between level 15-50 and then a slow and tedious curve afterwards. The fact that some big augments and components and big items in late game supply massive amount of flat health appears like a clear sign to me that there is something wrong with the normal management of this feature and that the late game fails in that department and tries to compensate somehow.

End game super powers

End game tanks can get to use super weapons with super damages, but end game casters are stuck with their early and middle game abilities. Why is that?

The game provides end game super powers in the form of devotion or item abilities instead of from the masteries. This is a mistake to me. I am not saying that the devotion and the gear should not supply useful abilities, alternative options to what the character already have, just that this is the main job of the masteries to normally supply such options. But exactly as with the health, the masteries abilities enjoy a peak in early game and then suffer a lack of development options in late game. This makes them overpowered in early, and in middle game to some extend, and then more or less underpowered in late game, especially for the skills that does not apply to specific weapons (the casters abilities, those unrelated with what the characters holds in his hands, and generally with no +% weapon damage). This just sucks. It does not have to be that way.

Suggestion: enable super versions of the main mastery abilities. It can be in the form of a specific amulet or relic or augment or component, or even maybe a quest. The super version of an ability works exactly like the normal version, except that it consumes much more energy and works with much more efficiency. The thing is that in end game the casters have plenty of energy and most of the time limited options to make full use of it. Most mastery abilities at this stage either consume too little or too much. The casters may enjoy options to have more efficient versions of those abilities, even at the cost of more energy consumption.

Examples:
Sigil of consumption chest component: energy cost +75%, radius +1.5 meter, +25% vitality damage, +5% attack damage converted to health, +1 second duration, +1 second cooldown, reduce defense by 60, reduce chaos resistance by 15%, reduce health regeneration by 50%. Requires Sigil of Consumption 12/12, Destruction 6+/12.

Sigil of consumption helmet component: energy cost +75%, radius +1.5 meter, +30% chaos damage, +35% fire damage, -10% attack damage converted to health, +1 second duration, +1 second cooldown, reduce defense by 50, reduce cold damage by 25%, reduce vitality resistance by 20%. Requires Sigil of Consumption 10+/12, Destruction 12/12.

Dreeg’s Evil Eye main hand weapon component: energy +75%, turns the Blood Burst into an acid pool with radius 5 meters and duration 3 seconds which works like the caustic pool (Tome of Nar’Adin), +35% acid damage, +25% poison duration, reduce defense by 50, reduce physical resistance by -15%, reduce pierce resistance by 20%. Disable the Vile Eruption but adds its damage to the acid pool. Requires Dreeg’s Evil Eye 6+/12, Blood Burst 12/12, Focused Gaze 1/1, Vile Eruption 6+/12.

Dreeg’s Evil Eye helmet component: energy cost +75%, increase Terrifying Gaze % chance for one of the following to 50%, adds confuse target for 2 seconds to the Terrifying Gaze effects list, increase Terrifying Gaze damage bonuses by 50%, reduce defense by 100, reduce fire/cold/lightning resistances by -15%, reduce physical/pierce/bleeding/trauma damages by 20%. Disable the Vile Eruption but adds its damage to the Blood Burst. Requires Dreeg’s Evil Eye 6+/12, Blood Burst 6+/12, Focused Gaze 1/1, Terrifying Gaze 12/12, Vile Eruption 6+/12.

Trozan’s Sky Shard off-hand component: energy +80%, +1 projectile, +1 meter target area, +30% cold damage, +30% lightning damage, +30% freeze duration, +2 meters casting range. Requires Trozan’s Sky Shard 12+/16, Frozen Core 10+/12, Shattered Star 10+/12.

Trozan’s Sky Shard main hand component: energy +50%, 30% cold damage converted to pierce damage, 40% lightning damage converted to bleeding damage, +30% pierce damage, +20% lightning damage, -50% freeze duration, stun target for 1.5 second. Requires Trozan’s Sky Shard 10+/16, Frozen Core 8+/12, Shattered Star 12/12.

Curse of Fraily chest component: energy +150%, increase all resistance reductions by 50%, reduce -% movement speed reduction by 50%, reduce casting range by 25%, reduce spell radius by 25%, 4 seconds cooldown. Requires Curse of Frailty 10+/12, Vulnerability 12/12.

Those are just examples.

I know that there are already modifiers with some items. I am not talking about some specific modifiers locked to some specific items, I am talking here about end-game options for big casters. The point is to give more firepower for the caster for his energy. Those options would only be available with well upgraded skills (with solid skill points), and would not be a replacement of the normal ability, but a new/super version of the ability in the abilities list, so the player has the option to use it or not depending on the level of energy consumption he can sustand and the level of damage output he has to reach. There may also be other uses like a super Heart of the Wild aura for a shaman who is ready to sacrifice a massive amount of energy to get a massive bonus in +% health, a super Menhir’s Will who instantly restore 100% of the health points but has a three times longer Skill Recharge than normal, a War Cry that slows the enemy attack speed for a higher energy cost, a Markovian Advantage that works with everything (spells, AoE attacks, even devotion abilities) but has less efficiency than the normal “default weapon attacks” one etc.

6

Mastery Skills

Mogdrogen’s Pact
The skill was exclusively defensive until the last changes, where it suddenly has gotten a flat physical damage bonus. That doesn’t make much sense. If the point of the aura is to strengthen the allies life and vitality and the first step of the skill (“Mogdrogen’s Pact”) was a little bit too low compared to its other steps (I personnally never put more than 1 point in that one, Heart of the Wild sounds much more interesting to me as a matter of skill points investment, so I can understand the attempt to make it more interesting), something like some slow resistance or life leech resistance would make more sense. Besides, the shaman has more than enough offensive options with his other abilities.

Infernal Breath vs Blight Burst
That makes little sense why Infernal Breath can be unlocked at level 50 and Blight Burst at level 40. Blight Burst is by every aspect much more efficient than Infernal Breath: more damage, more area, more effect. A well-placed Blight Burst by a Blight Fiend followed by others big pets or teammates can confuse a whole pack of monsters, and by the time the effect wears off, a half of the normal monsters are dead and the other half is already on its way of dying. This is a strategic skill to disable the damage output of normal groups. What does Infernal Breath compared to that? I like the skill, but it can’t be compared with Blight Burst, and it doesn’t make sense to me that the occultist has to reach level 50 to unlock it while the necromancer can get Blight Burst at level 40. When one manages to give the Blight Fiend the Tainted Eruption skill in addition to this one, it turns it into a confuse machine.

Suggestion: Remove Ember Claw (useless), move Infernal Breath to level 40, and adds a new exclusive skill to the occultist dedicated to the pets. The occultist is the only mastery which has no exclusive skills options at level 50: it’s Possession or Possession. Plus Possession is insanely overpowered (only skill in the game that bring bonuses to three direct damages+damage absorption+a resistance very challenging to build up+direct flat damage) and may not suffer some nerf and competition. The skill would offer for instance some defense and dodge bonuses for the occultist, flat physical damage bonus to all pets and a passive team pets constitution thing that makes that pets regenerate very quickly when they are no longer attacking or taking damages, like the constitution does with the characters, but with an effect proportionnal to the number of pets: the bigger the army, the stronger it regenerates. Like for the characters, the pets would need to get a meal once in a while to rebuild the used constitution. This would make it an interesting option for the full summoners and an alternative to the Master of Death and Primal Bond skills. Another option would be a martyr effect that makes that each time a pet dies, the others get temporary bonuses.

Ill Omen
All those skills with effects that affect the behavior of the monsters tend to be overpowered. The Ill Omen Terrify effect is insanely overpowered compared to its level of unlocking and its energy cost. Probably the most efficient skill of the whole game for a ranged build when one considers the damage output it cancels and how vulnerable it leaves the monsters. Plus when one considers the casting range of the spell + the duration of the effect + the distance the monster adds from the player by running away, it is generally possible to re-cast the spell before it reaches the character and then to have the poor monster never be able to reach the player and to shoot it on and on. Give me any other skill at level 10 that can do anything that may be compared to this. Only the ridiculously overpowered flash Freeze can be a serious challenger here.

And yet this skill is a good idea. It is very funny and visual. So it shall not be removed. But yet a balance is required.

Suggestion: cancel the terrify effect when the monster receives damages. Make that the not-completely-dumb monsters who have survived the skill the first time then become more resistant to the skill for the rest of the game session. It is ridiculous to be able to terrify multiple times monsters that are bigger than you, especially with such cheap skill.

Sorry for the long text. Thank you for your patience.

7

Wait, weren’t you the one that said that you were done with the game? You even said that the game selling 1 million copies was sad or some other bullshit.

I just read the last one but Ill Omen overpowered? Pfft Lol! It’s easily one of the worst skills in the game and only used a devotion proccer.

It seems everything else is just stuff you suggested ad nauseam in previous threads, don’t know why you are just repeating yourself. Specially about the character customization, it’s pointless. Your character is completely fully covered in armor by the end and you can’t see crap. The Illusionist system actually makes sense in this context.

8

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=531112#post531112

9

I read most of the stuff you wrote (which is a feat on it’s own) and for me, most of these problems are either uninportant or not even qualifying as a problem, but that’s just my opinion.

I would not comment further on your opinion since it’s none of my business, just wanted to add a little bit of proofreading:

About Fiendmaster Raiment mechanic: the aura affects other players too so their pet’s too get those pet bonuses.

On opening riftgates: theres absolutely no reason to use the hotkey/HUD icon for opening them, just open the map and click wherever you want to go. It’s faster this way and you have the riftgate right where you stood so it’s two birds with one stone.

regards

10

Frankly way too much text to wade through in one hit, but a couple of points.

The loot filter can be completely turned off so nothing shows - this has been a feature for a long while so I’m surprised you haven’t found it yet. To show loot after a fight either turn it back on or simply use the “Alt” or “X” key to show drops.

Armor absorption helps with environmental damage.

11

Yeah, that one. I honestly don’t know what the OP is doing here after saying he was done with the game and basically mocked the devs for selling 1 million copies.

I just read the part about the Obsidian Tremor. Did i just read that you said it was overpowered? Are you serious? Have you tried making a build around it? it’s not that strong, same for Winter King’s Might. Then again this is the same person who just called Ill Omen overpowered, same with OFF (the last one still makes me laugh).

12

Obsidian Tremor is one of the rare item skills that can act as a main attack and be built 100% around. It’s also a bitch to itemize for and requires point blank to deal its full damage, it doesn’t benefit for default attack procs, is stuck to a level 84 weapon and can’t be overcapped, and it drains energy so quickly that you also have to account for that. I agree on the ground part though, that sucks.

Fiendmaster Raiment is a pet based item with a pet only buff, that’s all you need.

Didn’t even know that. You’re a fucking wizard.