They can be still playing Grim Tools. And will we be informed if they reinstall it? I hope so 
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Well man, I understand you guys want to be listen more by devs. Which is your right. You’re probably the most dedicated ones among the veteran community. So it’s sad but come on will they start PoE 2? lol. You guys made building a competition which motivates you to play more. You got your wishes time to time also, so you should use your community to pressure for some changes but with analitic reasoning not just by moaning. Not just because each patch one of your build get nerfed. So it’s their decision to delete the game or fight for it as Safarel Community. You’re probably the only ones care about crucible times. So your build making interest comes from your group not by balance changes devs made.
Look deeper-not even GT but mindpalace
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None of us like PoE
Do you think a build’s measure should be solely focused on whether it could tank / outlast extremely hard hitting enemies like Reaper or Kaisan + Iron Maiden + Grava + Korvaak with Crucible modifiers (some of them like Regen can make things really difficult) + SR scaling simultaneously? I hated the aggro change in Crucible and and doing the same in SR would force players to build around this theme as well. It removes the ability of the player to highlight particularly bothersome enemies and makes you have to withstand 10X debuffs at once (not to mention having all the chargers block your movement from finding that one Hero jerkhole who’s healing everybody). Being able to pull some enemies and not others is not “aggro abuse” or “exploits,” it’s common RPG tactics, and I definitely wish it was treated with more finesse than it was.
People who gripe about Crucible times don’t understand that nerfs and “balance changes” no one asked for is not the difference between a 5 minute build and a 7 minute build; it’s the difference between beating Crucible regularly and dying 75% of the time. It’s the difference between beating a harsh Boss enemy before everyone rushes you and having that one boss healed completely to full so you have to deal with nasty attacks from the Boss AND everyone else. At least from a pet-builder’s perspective, I haven’t seen a single video of a pet build beating Crucible since the aggro change, while I was at least able to somewhat beat Crucible with pet builds before the change.
That is going to cause frustration, no matter what, and it’s already pigeonholed players into a tight spot. You can see on the Ranged Builds section about how the only way to build ranged is with either Fire Strike or pass-through weapons. All those debuffs and stacking AoE really messes with players that make the game much less enjoyable.
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Exactly my point.
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At some point players are going to hit their limit on what they want to do inside if any game.
The statement that there is a lot to do in GD is still very true but not all people want to do all of those things.
Balancing around a aspect of the game would happen regardless of whether the mode was called CR, arena, MC, or what have you. If CR didn’t exist it would still be balanced around something else.
I hope aren’t “leaving” or whatever because they lost 1 min on their CR clear times.
From personal experience, I find people I know playing less because the changes that are occurring are more akin, and I am paraphrasing those I know, to how D3 is making changes. It’s just a shift in numbers and not a shift in game dynamics. Adding +3 to a skill and adjusting %phys dmg and OA, often times does not make for dynamic change.
Some changes are awesome such as the changes associated with Aura of Conviction and all items tied to it that added conversion. Menhir’s Bulwark change is another example of a dynamic change. But there said changes won’t last long because there isn’t a lot of item options to support it.
It is why we, as a group, wanted Badge of Mastery to be less RNG so we could achieve those dynamic builds. With 10s of thousands of hours between 8 people there are only 3 +5 badges and one of those is GDStashed.
Finished game or not you can already do small changes at a time to invoke long term change.
The hospital I worked at, we wanted to improve door to door times for ER patients to an inpatient bed. We certainly didn’t upend the entire workflow to achieve this. We did things in small changes to reach the end result and maintain low cost. Can’t see why this can’t be applied to anything else, especially when adding dynamic changes to a game that is clearly still very popular outside of this forum.
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The inevitability of a game’s community dwindling is, well, inevitable. Happens with really anything.
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Sorry, but I kind of disagree on one point. Having a sturdy build and still dying to stacked AoE makes the game still threatening even with a completed build. It is a balance act. If you engage in modes where Boss are stacked and you can totally bypass that factor by picking them one by one, then what’s the point?
That being said, Crucible 150-170 and SR 75+ leading to pigeon-holding doesn’t strike me as necessarily bad. After all, Celestials also lead to pigeon-holding, and unlike SR 50 and 60, Crucible and deep SR have not exclusive content, they’re just here for the glory, and most efficient quantity farming to some extent.
You missed the step where the items / skills / abilities that actually allow players to get past this content get nerfed and then you’re back to square 1 figuring out how the heck you’re supposed to win in the first place.
Certain bosses are meant to be challenging for certain types of players: some bosses should be harder for casters than melee and some bosses should be easier. Some bosses have a lot of fumble debuffs, some bosses have weak attacks but debilitating debuffs (whether that’s skill disruption, huge RR, DA shred, what have you), and some bosses just hit hard and are relentless. Fighting Reaper fully buffed and fighting Reaper when you have 50% damage reduction, -30% removed resistances, wallowing in Sharzul’s flying fire Tornadoes and constant Slow / Fumble / whatever aren’t even in the same ballpark.
At least with Celestials it’s one fight and you have Consumables to help you (what else would you use them for?) Builds that were powerful enough to aggro everything could easily just jump in the middle of the arena and flex their micro-piloting skills that way (plus it would actively lose time in speedruns if people were really that fake-concerned with it). A good number of bosses are difficult enough fighting Solo. Removing the ability to pull one Boss at a time really screws the game’s balancing to the point where several archetypes simply can’t handle it (mainly concerning Melee, dual-gunners and pets here).
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It’s like these bosses weren’t meant to be put together and having modes that attempt to group them together lead to situations where players get overwhelmed because of the stacking of multiple abilities from several “already dangerous on their own” bosses, making players resort to tactics like aggroing each boss one by one.
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This! 
/10 char
I have bought the game for 4 friends. Only one of them plays it with me. The other 3 lost interest before they even hit Elite. This was due to the fact that they were playing with OTHER friends, who were huge PoE fans. And ultimately, those 3 friends flocked to PoE. Personal preference i guess.
The thing me and my friend struggle with is finding the time for a good solid game session. Grim Dawn is so easy to sink a couple hours into, leveling and completing the MC, so much that my friend has barely scratched the surface of the Faction system! Not enough time to sit there and read and research- hes a new dad, and the only games he can play now are ones he can fit into quick 30 min sessions at random moments when the chaos is calmed.
Im really looking forward to getting another friend, with no children, into this game. Lol. It was so fun while it lasted! The multiplayer experience really gets slept on, hard.
Now the title change and the thread getting enough attention. Let’s put aside that some players deleted the game or stopped making builds.
We have a community. There are people who interact daily basis and there are people who just follow up the new threads and updates. Some people share their opinion about items, classes, builds etc and some don’t.
Some changes are welcomed by everyone and some create arguments. I don’t know which criterias Devs use while making balancing changes. Do they consider wishes? Do they check the builds posted on forum? Do they look a build and say omg this shouldn’t be so powerful let’s nerf it? I don’t know. But the fact is that it’s all up to them. No one can make everyone happy. Some people just take it personal, it’s not. There are players who doesn’t give a crap of what nerfed or buffed, they look at the changes as just changes and they adapt if they still want to play.
And if you consider that this is a finished game, they won’t make any big changes that you want to pay to get it. So for the devs, there is no profit from existing players. So what they are doing is just they keep developing the game as they want to. Yeah I wish some things different, I express my thoughts and usually no one gives a crap. If I had some friends who supports me, would it make a difference to the devs? Nope, I don’t think so. Thus if some people who plays together, supports each other, share their builds and compete their performance; is that make their opinion better than others? I don’t think so. Yeah here we are experienced players, most of them undeniably contribute the community and the game itself. Even if they have right to say that we are more experienced than the majority so our feedback should matter more; I don’t think that devs can afford to give them this much credit. So they act neutral as they suppose to be.
So the question is that, should updates on the matter of endgame rely on the players who have more experience on endgame? What is the criteria of such experience? Should devs listen only builders that reached SR 100? People have sub 5 Crucible builds? If they not rely on these builders, then these builders should leave the community and the game? Is this developers fault?
I don’t even share my opinion on this matter since I’m probably one of the most annoying people here since I’m a ‘‘purist’’. But here we are, and I don’t want this forum to be a ghost town either. I also like the game very much and don’t want any player quit because of some communication problem. So even an arrogant builder like Lee is contributing the forum and the game. If you guys want to express things you wanted or want, I guess this is the place. In the end it might change nothing then you keep deleting the game just as now, so no loss here. @grey-maybe @Slev1n
To put some things into perspective…both the game’s concurrent players and forum activity have been just about steady for a very long time, which to me indicates that while yes, some players burn out and move on to other games, there is a steady influx of new players that can either be welcomed and become another addition to the community, or scared off by negativity.
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@jawa comment about GDstash is totally accurate. Alternatives in that form shorten a games lifespan regardless of what kind of game it is.
I may be frustrated currently at somethings but that doesn’t mean I won’t or haven’t come back to sink more hours into this game. I still have a lot of builds to test that have GDtools links but just don’t have the time or energy currently…stoopid virus.
Here Is the bottom line though. Regardless of their views or “drama” those that may have deleted have contributed positive things to this game and like any person with knowledge, their insight on things will be missed. Happens in all things.
I get the Crate is exhausted at this point but to stop totally doesn’t make any sense…but I guess that’s why modding tools exist.
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It’s been almost 5 years. I think the fact that there is still a steady amount of concurrent players is pretty fucking amazing. Let people leave.
There’s this thing called life and other games that appeals to some people. I don’t see the problem here. And Zantai could beat the dead horse until the end of time but people still won’t believe him on what actually goes into patch changes.
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On forum it’s not that visible, but on the discord server (not the rus one) there are lots of new players starting the game. From 0 to 2 people join the server and say “Hi I just bought GD/Hi I just joined/Hello I am playing the game for some time and need some advice”, on average it’s a 1 new player per day. That’s just the ones joining discord so obviously there are way more players who just started GD. Of course, most of those people don’t become active and either lurk or leave the game, beating normal is considered finishing the game for majority of players. Still, even with 1 out of 16 newcomers becoming active is huge and who knows, maybe they will go for the endgame. So in the future we could see someone replacing madlee, dmt and others who left. New interesting personalities with a different view on the game! That’s cool. Top players leave, top players come, top players rise.
Probably a post of mine that has no value to the convo, not going to talk about balance because I am poop at the game. If you want to talk about builds, join discord! (Eww sounds like an ad)
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That’s also true. The forum absorbs a lot of the most heated discussion since we enforce a bit more strict standards of discussion on the discord server. So it’s two different looking communities, then as Z also mentions a lot you have the VAST silent majority of players who never interact with the forum or the discord server.
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That’s crazy when you actually read it on-screen and realize how long it’s been.
I started played Early Access in late 2014 and still play almost daily. I also STILL gift copies of the base game to anyone that mentions nostalgia for Diablo II…
This game really is something special. Clearly a labor of love and the systems have that perfect balance of complexity without being overwhelming to the ‘filthy casuals’ like myself.
Keep up the incredible work Crate! (where’s my Loyalty Pack 3? I feel almost guilty not contributing to this game’s continued developer support/patches)
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