Dear Crate: Can we please get a reason to stay?

Grim Dawn General Discussion
1

Let me be clear by prefacing that i am usually not one to make a post about games to discuss it. When a game is good i stay and enjoy it. When it’s bad i leave - silently. Like most people i just don’t care enough. But this time, i want to speak out for a lot of us other silent gamers. Because we i loved Titan Quest, the action rpg and i care about Grim Dawn:

We need a reason to stay.

Anyone following the action rpg market has probably come to similar conclusions:

There is Diablo 3 and there is Path of Exile.
Then there is nothing for a long while.
And then we see titles like Torchlight 2, Grim Dawn, and so on.
Why is that?

Diablo 3 is game that made me stay for a long while. But from the viewpoint of the developer it doesn’t matter. They only profit when i come (buy the game) - and when i go (less server hardware and people for service). It doesn’t matter if i stay and have fun or go somewhere else. Its selling point is a very smooth gameplay experience catering to casual players with a bit for everyone. But in the end it is an ocean wide puddle.

For Path of Exile (PoE) it is different. They only profit when i stay and become an addicted customer willing to spend ingame money. They also profit from highly enthusiastic fans, that are willing to spend a quarterly full price on something called supporter packs. Basically a way of giving the developers back and receiving lots of on gameplay chaning ingame goodies for it. This game obviously needs to come up with new ways to keep us entertained. A game like Diablo 3 doesn’t have to. There hasn’t been any kind of meaningfull update since 2 years.

Obviously Grim Dawn is not nearly in a similar league of budget. But that doesn’t mean it can’t profit from the experience and changes both projects underwent in their development. And there is one big one, that made all players say “yes, dammit, finally!”. And that is scaling.

Universal scaling

Years ago, Diablo 3 got rid of all playthroughs because players were sick of having to play through the campaign 4 times in a row. With the addon they also added an “adventure mode”, which basically is a mode without story with full access to all areas and reasons to go revisit certain areas.

PoE dropped one difficulty recently and is now dropping all of them in 3 months of this original posts posting-time. Even a game like Borderlands, which is basically a shooter diablo-esque, did it somewhat in the first game. Dropped it totally in the second for 3 full playthroughs. And went a step back again in the Presequel where it removed one playthrough.

Other games like Victor Vran gave a meaningfull hard mode with difficult challenges but equally fitting good rewards. Van Helsing added a somewhat usefull adventure mode - basically a mode where you just play maps without story to enjoy the gameplay and further your characters development.

So what can Grim Dawn learn from this?

Obviously Grim Dawn is in similar shoes as Diablo 3: The developer only profits when i come/buy the game. Financially speaking they don’t care about us staying or leaving. But that doesn’t mean you can make a product that can be a long time stable source of income with a dedicated player group.

So here is my, and much more importantly the genres’ popular solution:

Add scaling and please don’t be too late. Because all the people i know stopped after one playthrough of Grim Dawn. There is just not enough meat and reason to go through the whole content again. The “daily quests” type of the bounty boards is already a good idea, but it needs refining.

In Titan Quest i cared about the areas and the monsters inside. To the knowledgable: yes, i am talking about the monster infrequents. Now imagine a fully fleshed out bounties-system in an adventure mode with a scaling world to my player level where i select bounties from all around the map. In a single place with all the necessary npcs. A map overlay which shows me which areas contain which monster infrequents. Usage of the night and day system to influence monster abilites (think day = normal mode, night = hard mode). Special or unique spawns per area that can only be encountered at certain times of day.

This game has the potential to be really good. All the groundwork is there. It only need to be fleshed out. I can think of a lot more stuff.

All this could not only add more incentive to level a character further than lvl 50. It can also always be further enhanced with new content. Slap a low DLC price on it, or pack it with a big expansion and i am sure lots of people will jump aboard. Especially if you give people some kind of online-only mode to actually attract a staying competitive player base.

Let me finish this with one last thing:

This needs to happen soon, or people will move on - because a lot already have:

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Source: http://steamcharts.com/app/219990#1y

Comparison to Path of Exile: http://steamcharts.com/cmp/219990,238960

As you clearly see, Grim Dawn has lost players since release. Got a few coming back for the crucible and now people forget. Why? Because they played through it once, got bored, and went somewhere else.

In PoE they come back everytime there is new content. And they always leave new money. So please, dear Crate, give us reason a stay and more importantly: to come back.

2

Expansion is coming soon ish (q2 I think?), pop will jump up again for a short time.

Removal of difficulties, I’m not opposed, I think it’s an alright idea but it would require a lot of work, probably way more work than is worth for GD. I mean, Crate has sold its copies already. It won’t make more money off the game so without creating DLC and expansions, there’s little reason to implement any of this stuff you are discussing.

3

A) Expansion
B) We do have MI’s, and they are much loved. We could certainly do with more, and I expect there will BE more for the expansion.
C) In POE and D3, the infinite scaling is the point. Shaper farming, or high GRifts, are the point, and that has a cost, a serious cost: Variety. In GD, we have SO MANY builds that can work their way into Ultimate, and kill Logherrean. In POE and D3? How many few builds are recognized, by the community, as “viable”? GD, the focus for your “end-game” is new builds, so many more builds and so many viable options, so many items to see if you can make work, and people won’t look at your build once you are done and say “Oh that’s not viable, it can’t do X End Game thing, it sucks.”

GD has caused enough POE and D3 issues by adding the ever-infamous movement speed stat, that we’ve never needed and all communities focus too much on. The Crucible has added more of those style of issues, now people are claiming “Solo Gladiator Crucible” as the new standard, no matter how unrealistic that is.

An End Game would be nice…But infinite is NOT a good thing, or to be desired. There needs to be an end, so that you have a reason to say your build is done, and go start another. People need a reason to say they are done, or they never will, and infinite end game will get tiring simply through repetition of the same thing, the same way, forever.

POE and D3 had their moments, their good qualities…But they are NOT to be followed without forethought. Nor are they in the best states right now, in game play, balance, or communities. Right now, GD is the forefront of the ARPG community in all three things, and they are doing very well at forging their own paths without copying the issues of the past.

4

Removal of difficulties isn’t happening.

I agree that bounties could use refinement and they would be worth expanding upon as endgame repeatable quests. Perhaps another bounty table could be added for certain factions that is only usable once you reach revered with that faction, with commensurate rewards for completing its own pool of quests.

Infinite progression doesn’t really have a place in GD, however.

5

I’m honestly getting kind of tired of some people wanting stuff that’s in other games (mainly D3 and POE) in Grim Dawn. Just stop, if you want that stuff just go play those other games.

Grim Dawn is not built around infinite grinding with the same character. The game actively encourages the player to try new builds. So stop asking for infinite grinding with the same character for Grim Dawn.

The only thing i agree on is with improving the bounty system. I honestly only use it to to reach Revered with Black Legion because i always side with Anasteria.

6

Had to read twice to understand what do you mean.

Don’t want to go in-depth, but Imo you misunderstand why people left. Most people just have 1 or 2 games they play regularly and once something new is released they jump on it for two weeks or two months - depending on how much they are interested. You make it sound like they left to D3 or PoE, but that’s not true at all - they went back to Dota2 and counter strike, and GD was a “game of the month” for them to begin with. No adventure modes and bounties will make them stay.

7

The best thing I think we can do here is put out an expansion that will have broad appeal across different segments of the GD audience, while also helping to attract new players.

With each expansion though, you tend to see less and less people come back. Games get old, new games come out, people get their fill.

In most other genres, people play through a game and they’re content. For some reason in ARPGs, there is a portion of players who expect the game to last forever. For some it does keep their interest for years and that’s awesome. We’ve put a lot of effort into building out side, secret, challenge and high-level content for those ultra hardcore players, way more than we did on TQ, to a degree that I’m sure is not even profitable.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it makes sense for us to go further in that direction than we already are. The portion of players who finish the game on Elite difficulty is only 8.1% and the number who defeat even one Nemesis monster on Elite or Ultimate is 5.7%.

I mean maybe we could look at unlocking difficulties for the ultra hardcore 3.2% of the audience that has played through Ultimate but it’s not like that is going to make us any money since we don’t get paid per hour of play.

The economics of GD are quite a bit different than Path of Exile. As a f2p game, those big spikes in players returning don’t really mean much in terms of profit, since a lot of those people will never pay anything or their life-time expenditure will be some low amount. The real purpose of the expansions is to keep a smaller core audience playing, much like you suggest we could do… however, how do we actually make money off people just sticking around and playing? F2p games make a huge portion of their profits off a small dedicated group of loyal players by getting them to spend huge amounts over time.

It’s funny because I think a lot of hardcore players hate f2p but it’s the game model that best supports continued investment in a game, to create content for that audience. Yet, I think if we turned to that, people would be upset. GD is also not set up for that - you need secure servers, you need your game to be always-online, and you need an in-game micro-transaction economy.

GD earns revenue completely differently. We make the vast majority of profit that we’re going to make from players the moment they purchase the game (any additional revenue coming from DLC purchases, which many people also do up front anyway). The vast majority, something like 90%+ of GD players never play through more than once. They have some fun with the game, are satisfied and move on. I don’t think there is much we can do to change that, it’s just the nature of most people. It’s the reason PoE has those dramatic ups and downs in player numbers - most people return, play through the new content once, then leave, probably without spending any money.

GD player numbers go up when we have sales and release DLC. On a day to day basis though, GD sales are higher now than they were this time last year (although once we get past the 2016 release date, that won’t be the case, given the huge spike we had at release). The average player numbers for GD have been fairly consistent and were actually higher in Feb than in the prior 8 months, so I certainly wouldn’t say they’re dropping off. Of course they’re lower than at release, when everyone showed up to play through the finished game for the first time…

So I think GD has been fairly stable and will continue to be a good source of revenue for us for at least another year or two. The expansion will certainly help with that and if it does well enough, we’ll put out additional content.

At some point, there will be a diminishing return though and the solution for that is to keep creating new games that can capture people’s interest again.

8

Just wanted to set some background behind these numbers. The source of them is GD steam achievements statistic. So, GOG players are out of that count. Then again, if we check steam we’ll see that only 65,3% of all those who purchased the game played it enough to get to level 10.

So, from all those who actually invested at least a little time to the game ~12,4% completed it on Elite, and ~4,9% on Ultimate.

Let’s dig somewhat deeper. 23,1% of all purchasers killed Log on Normal/Vet (only 22,5% actually bothered to report back to Creed, lol), so that’s how many guys completed game once. If we took that number as a base, then one third (~35%) of those who completed Normal continued on to complete Elite. Third of them (~13,85%) — one ninth of all those who bested the game at least once, also completed Ultimate.

And let’s look at the game sale number also ~850k purchasers on steam, and I remember Med accepting 1 mil number of sold copies in one of the streams, so GoG makes up for ~150k. 231 000 people completed the game. 81 000 completed Elite. 32 000 completed Ultimate.

Thirty two thousands people is enough to fill the small stadium. I am one of them, and I love you, Med, Z, Rhis, Hyb, Soundz, Kin, Grav, all of you guys in Crate (even tough I forgot the rest of your nicks :slight_smile: ) — for the effort that you keep putting in fine-tuning the beyond-normal difficulties. I’m also sure that I’m not alone in that.

So if anyone on Crate team ever have doubts like: “ooh, why am I balancing this, only some 3% of people will really care” — remember that us is the small stadium of people, and yes, we do care. Thank you, Crate, once again — all that fine-tuning is deeply appreciated.

9

The progenitors for the genre are flukes in their longevity and as such also became the baseline that people now expect.

I also think there are several generations of players raised on MMOs and F2P that have this end game longevity mentality as a result of the rise of a particular business model and in today’s marketplace games like GD are now outliers in their deviation from this model.

10

Exactly. I love playing Torchlight 2 too and you can go as far as new game++++ I think. I don’t know because I finish the game only twice(on the hardest difficulty, wich is a lot) and call it done. Playing this way makes it much more enjoyable.

11

We don’t need a reason to stay. Games don’t have to be infinite. People who love the game will play hundreds of hours, like myself who is sitting on 600 hours.

The game costs 25 dollars. People who only finish normal once and move on will probably play around 20 hours. That’s 1.25 dollar/h! It’s cheaper than going to the movies. There’s no need for much more return to you money.

On the other hand, people who left before level 10… Well, you can’t please everyone.

12

I think the “infinite” scaling thing is stupid but GD could definitely use some more chase goals in the end game.
The expansion seems it will add a good deal of complexity with the extra masteries, level cap and other things which will give the player more to do.

I hope it’ll add some challenging post-story battles as well. They have a good thing going with the Crucible already, hopefully they can build on that and create something that keeps the challenge of that but is more varied.

13

I mean maybe we could look at unlocking difficulties for the ultra hardcore 3.2% of the audience that has played through Ultimate but it’s not like that is going to make us any money since we don’t get paid per hour of play.

Slap a price on that option and sell it as a DLC. At least thousands of people would pay a non-neglible price for it.

At some point, there will be a diminishing return though and the solution for that is to keep creating new games that can capture people’s interest again.

New games? I guess Grim Dawn 2 would be a new game, ha ha. Jokes aside, I think the main point of OP’s text is - dear Crate, please don’t be afraid to take our money. In all honesty, the amount of content you guys delivered on such a low price as the base game, and the amount of free content that followed it, is absolutely astonishing. Sure, that kind of conduct and the regular and detailed interaction you have with your player base is something which gave you the image of the coolest game studio ever. Releasing hotfixes on Christmas Eve? That’s a level of dedication rarely seen and hugely appreciated by the community.

Thirty two thousands people is enough to fill the small stadium. I am one of them, and I love you, Med, Z, Rhis, Hyb, Soundz, Kin, Grav, all of you guys in Crate (even tough I forgot the rest of your nicks ) — for the effort that you keep putting in fine-tuning the beyond-normal difficulties. I’m also sure that I’m not alone in that.

So if anyone on Crate team ever have doubts like: “ooh, why am I balancing this, only some 3% of people will really care” — remember that us is the small stadium of people, and yes, we do care. Thank you, Crate, once again — all that fine-tuning is deeply appreciated.

This hit the nail in the head. Say that 30k is too high an estimate, but there are probably at least 15k people that are seriously hooked on Grim Dawn, and a part of them is fanatical. Those people would probably pay decent amounts of money to have a small amunt of new content every once and a while. Item pack? Say that you add 100 new items in the game, and sell it as DLC. New bounties? New roguelike? 10 new constellations? New difficulty scaling, as you mentioned earlier? Please, do. Kickstarter funding for new expansions? You get the picture.

However, I don’t pretend to know the economics of the game better than you guys at Crate do. So please don’t take my post the wrong way, I was just trying to express just how much I personally am attracted to this game, and that I would like to be able to play it for years. Whatever the future of Grim Dawn holds, thank you for making such a wonderful game!

14

I stay for the nearly infinite build possibilities to experiment with.

When I get bored with experimenting, I take a break and play a different game for a few days. Grim Dawn isn’t an MMO or an infinitely scaling progression game like D3. You won’t “fall behind” if you don’t play for a few days.

I think a lot of people either buy the game and play for the story, or expect it to be like D3 where they look up a build on the forum and just think they’re going to play and get all their gear in a day or two and pwn face forever on the same guy.

I’m happy GD breaks the mold. I like that my reward (new gear) for playing encourages me to be creative and utilize the gear for new builds. I realize not everyone works the same way, and I can see how playing through the same game over and over gets old. The problem I think is that after a certain point, you just basically have to treat the game like rifts or maps from D3 and PoE - it’s not about the story really; it’s about perfecting your character by tweaking skills, devotions, components, augments and finding new gear. Either for that character or another.

And really, there is a type of infinite scaling in GD - MIs. You’re character will never be “perfect” until you can get the perfect double affix MIs. Sure, this isn’t a requirement, but it’s a goal that definitely exists.

15

Crate! Take my muhney!!!

16

I agree with every word.

17

As much as I love Crate I am against that particular idea. They made enough money that they can fund any expansions themselves. Plus they already have a new game in the pipeline (which will hopefully prove successful as another revenue stream).

I don’t like the idea of a developer with the capability of funding themselves taking advantage of Kickstarter (and their customers) in that fashion.

Certainly not for an expansion at any rate.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

18

You’re probably right, the base game could fund the expansion, and the expansion sales could fund a second expansion :stuck_out_tongue:

However, I don’t think using Kickstarter to fund Grim Dawn 2 would be problematic, say 3-4 years from now :smiley:

19

From my perspective I see new people coming in all the time, with the upcoming expansion will bring back many players, just like the patch seems to have done (at least according to some in my chat). There are plenty of reasons to stay, sure things could be improved (multiplayer and maybe some procedural generated dungeon for end game, but we already have crucible) but that’s really it.

I see new people coming all the time from PoE and Diablo 3. Constantly asking about this game and why they should get it, hell one of the big “PoE only” streamers has recently made the switch to this (albeit I think only temporarily)

As long as they are making new content and updating their game that should be more than enough, especially with a new expansion.

Just my two cents.

20

because one is Diablo and the other is free-to-play

Years ago, Diablo 3 got rid of all playthroughs because players were sick of having to play through the campaign 4 times in a row.

PoE dropped one difficulty recently and is now dropping all of them in 3 months of this original posts posting-time.

So what can Grim Dawn learn from this?

so you are saying we should be able to dynamically select the difficulty instead of having to go through the game 3 times, because you are bored after having done so once.

Which begs the question why you would continue farming when that is basically the same as playing through a second and third time.
I don’t know about you, but to me farming is more boring than going through the campaign, so if the campaign bored me, I sure won’t farm afterwards.

It does not really matter if there are three playthroughs when I leave after the first anyway…

So what is there to learn ? nothing really… either you like the game and keep playing or you don’t and stop, number of playthroughs makes no difference there

Add scaling and please don’t be too late. Because all the people i know stopped after one playthrough of Grim Dawn.

and they would have stuck around if they could keep doing farming runs ? Not so sure about that…

In Titan Quest i cared about the areas and the monsters inside. To the knowledgable: yes, i am talking about the monster infrequents.

TQ is exactly like GD in that regard, 3 playthroughs, similar itemization with MIs

So if you liked it in TQ and do not like it now, it appears that you cared more for the storyline then and more for the grind now

Slap a low DLC price on it, or pack it with a big expansion and i am sure lots of people will jump aboard.

I am fine with small new areas or item packs etc., but we will get a big expansion instead, which is even better :wink:

Speaking of DLC, have you tried the Crucible ? That might be of more interest to you then, as you seem to prefer grinding

Especially if you give people some kind of online-only mode to actually attract a staying competitive player base.

ugh, forced online is the one thing that will get me to leave. Optional online will be ignored, but I will mourn the effort spent on it instead of content.

In PoE they come back everytime there is new content.

not me, I have not been back for a long time and have no intention of ever doing so

With the GD expansion people might also come back. I don’t expect them to stay as long as in PoE or D3, but hey, that is ok, to each his own. I have spent more time in GD than in D3 and PoE combined, and that ratio can only move in favor of GD now, as I won’t touch the other two ever again :wink:

Ultimately this seems to be a matter of preference, I really do not want to endlessly grind with one char, which is a lot more the focus of D3 and PoE. I am glad it is not in GD (not that you can’t grind here if you wanted to)