Diablo4 vs. Grim Dawn gameplay experience

My takeaway from this thread is how GD does things in a way other ARPGs don’t. It is INTERESTING. It is FULL OF CHOICES. The BUILDS. The LOOT. The different ways you can run thru over and over.
For me, my only gripe is that the maps are the same every run-thru. I do prefer D2’s map processes for this reason as well as Torchlight 2. But all the other variations make the one flaw easy to overlook.

But IMHO, the single biggest reason for the depth and character of Grim Dawn is that the main author and developer is working from primarily one motivation — inspiration. Hes not trying to make the most money possible. Hes not polling people to see what they want. Hes not trying to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
Its his VISION, thats it.

As a fellow artist (even the programming arts), i can appreciate that. :sunglasses:

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They’re not exactly the same though. Caves appear in different locations, paths are randomly blocked, etc.
I didn’t play D2, but with Torchlight 2 the maps felt a bit… devoid of meaning if that makes sense, while still being more or less the same.
Obviously it’s a personal taste, but I do think the way GD handles randomness is quite nice.

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It’s taken me a long time to get familiar with the entire GD map. On each subsequent playthrough with a new character I try to optimize my route so I complete the quests without making any wrong turns. For some reason I find this really satisfying. If I can make into Malmouth and find all three corpse wagons without making a wrong turn, that’s satisfying to me, or when I have memorized all the spawn points for the lesser wendigos in Gloomwald and Ugdenbog that I can find them all quickly and complete the quest.

I really liked it when I had my local grocery stores aisle layout memorized, I could waltz in, get everything I wanted, without backtracking, and get out in record time. One day they just “reorganized” everything and I was a little disappointed to say the least, now forced to waste time on this arbitrary new layout.

I think what I like about the same map is that MY SKILL in memorization will decrease the amount of time it takes to level up to 100. It doesn’t require the game dev’s to add something new (like helltides in D4) to reduce the leveling time. If I just know where all the quest objectives are I can do it really fast. In D4 the quest XP rewards feel very small, unlike Ultimate Difficulty in Grim Dawn, where the rewards are so large it feels worth it to complete the quests. It puts me in “the zone” when I have the next 10 steps lined up in my mind.

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Its been just an year, give the game some time, and they will find what works.
This happened with D3 and even after how many now 30 updates, the game itself is perfect as it is, yet ppl always find something to bi*ch about -_-

Just dont get it, with todays games its easy, there are 100+ to choose from, simply play the one thats good for you, and leave keep the salt for your dinner.

Funny how it’s ok to ‘just give them a year’ to AAA companies with massive budgets, charging $100+ for their games, to hopefully actually enjoy it properly in the end.

“Hey, you’re going to be a beta tester for a year or two for us and give us $100+ for the privilege.” Oh, and then “for the really finished game, give us another $40 to beta test phase two.” What a world.

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The big difference between Grim Dawn and Diablo 3/4 is that Grim Dawn had a great foundation (i’m talking its release state back in 2016) to build upon and make an even better game.

Diablo 3 and 4 were released clearly unfinished and took so long to actually be worth anything (and even that’s debatable).