Environmental damage and traps

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
21

and this is you being serious ? No one ever fights in those areas, granted for some mobs you blitz in to get to them as melee, but that is it.
If that is too much to figure out, have a gun as your second weapon for those cases. No one says melee builds cannot use ranged weapons, even if they kill somewhat slower with them.

Also, you can just skip the three or so mobs that stand in them if you do not want to either walk into it or use a ranged weapon.

On top of that, this is an issue for maybe 5 minutes out of a 16 hour playthrough…

Yes, we all can manage it

good, then there is no real problem here…

Anyway, this mechanic is not fatal to the gameplay and we can live with it. As well as we could live without it and it actually would contribute to the gameplay, not reduce the interest.

Not sure removing it would contribute to the gameplay. Right now we have a few areas where you have to be a bit more strategic about how you proceed instead of mindlessly walking all over the place.
Allowing you to walk mindlessly over them is not really making it any more interesting.

The areas are small enough and easy enough to navigate that this is just a minor inconvenience for those who see it more as one.

So “avoid it or die” is a pretty lame excusion for the poor mechanic which could easily be fixed by applying resistances to that type of damage. Players simply would be more happy having a potentially controllable threat instead of pretty much uncontrollable one.

you control it by walking into it consciously, I have not died once to this on any build and any difficulty… very uncontrollable that way

22

Only area that I find environmental damage to be fine is the one cave in Act 1 Junkyard where it’s more of a slow drain of life as opposed to large chunks ripped out of your health bar.

Far more manageable and you can easily take the damage while fighting enemies at the same time.

23

Oh, spealking for all the world, eh? :slight_smile: I know people who fought several heroes at once at these fields.
I myself don’t use blitz usually and still kill mobs in these areas. Can skip them though, yes. Can turn my melee character into a ranged one temporarily (that of course does not mean ranged chars have an advantage there, how dare I say that?). Can dance on one leg and sing closing one eye. The only question - what for?

On top of that, this is an issue for maybe 5 minutes out of a 16 hour playthrough…

As I said, it is not a fatal issue. It’s a small inconvenience, just like a stone in your boot. You can walk and even run with it but putting it out would make you more happy.

You can blindly defend everything belongs to GD, of course. Not auto picking up quest stuff and resources? It is only better as allows us to click more! Have areas which explode the inner game combat mechanic into the dust? That’s great as we can show our caution! Inventory is small enough? Excellent, we can learn to collect items carefully!

I personally don’t feel necessary to seek the excusion for everything. If I feel some mechanics bad to me I say about it. If many people say these things are bad then probably developers could rethink these design solutions. That’s a simple kind of voting. You won’t make me feel stone in my shoes is fine anyway, sorry. I, in turn, can’t and won’t stop you to enjoy that stone.

Not sure removing it would contribute to the gameplay. Right now we have a few areas where you have to be a bit more strategic about how you proceed instead of mindlessly walking all over the place.

What do you call strategy actually? Running around the areas which can kill you in few seconds? Yes, that is a really complicated puzzle :smiley: I (and I guess many more people as well) look at these things as at little annoying unnecessary hindrances which should be passed as fast as possible to enjoy the rest of the game. A kind of point of temper. Absolutely unreasonable, I guess.

Allowing you to walk mindlessly over them is not really making it any more interesting.

Well, it would allow me to concentrate on combat which is a primary purpose of the game. Would be more interesting to me than looking where do I step. Currently combat in these areas is constantly interrupted as you have to reposition yourself quite often.

you control it by walking into it consciously, I have not died once to this on any build and any difficulty… very uncontrollable that way

I would prefer to see such threats from mobs who:
a) can be counteracted by your defense and
b) can be killed
than these unmoving, unresistable and undestroyable earth areas which you can only run around (that is indeed a top of strategic behavior).

24

I would second that. And add, that making environmental damage (even leaving it unresistable as it is now) to be more reasonable in terms of amounts (say, 2-3% of the max life, not 25-30%) would change the situation dramatically and turn these hindrances into a viable and interesting gameplay element.

25

I agree.

But that doesn’t change the fact that there is just no reason at all not to have those damages affected by the resistances.

And destroyable generators (crystals, pipes, whatever) would also help a lot those features to fit much better in the game. To have damage areas around “just because” is no challenge and no fun.

26

THIS.

At 25-30% loss per second entering damage fields is not-combat viable in nearly every situation. 2-3% health loss per second means I now have the tactical options of dashing through or standing in the area for a brief periods to put down a greater threat.

I don’t dislike the hazards imposed by environmental damage. I dislike the combination of it being unresisted, %health based and capable of rapidly killing in most places when* combined with the game’s lack of a last-hit log and somewhat random visual indication of maladies affecting your character.

27
  1. Environmental damage can be mitigated by resistances (poison, aether, chaos, etc.).
  2. Aether cloud from Port Valbury and red crystals (traps from BoC) can be destroyed like any other enemy. They can respawn every X sec.
  3. If you stand still in Environmental damage for X sec, you get the current damage. But if you run through, you get less damage.

Any other suggestion to improve Environmental damage?

28

Please excuse me if I’m wrong, but I thought the poison damage in the two caves in Act 1 can be resisted since it’s not %Health Reduction? I much prefer this to the %Health chunks ripped off when just touching other ground effects… :furious:

29

I’d also like to see % health reduction replaced with flat damage. Possibly stackable so it takes greater chunks of health the longer one is in the affected area. I do like the difficulty environment damage areas add but would prefer it was a lot less…damaging.

The Aether cloud things are my least favourite part of this game and I find they put me off Port Valbury as an area.

Unkillable traps in BOC are a little tedious but not a major issue. Perhaps a slightly shorter life span would help as I find i just hide in a corner until they are gone.

30

If Environmental Damage was maybe CURRENT health chunks, that’d at least be more tolerable, because then it’d never kill you. It’d still suck, but…

31

really ? that would make them completely irrelevant… we can argue that it should be 15-20% rather than 30 (and I would agree), but at 2-3% they lose all relevance, might as well remove it

32

How so? You still don’t want to stand and fight in them. All they offer now is a “don’t stand here-ever” area. If you tone it down, it’s less “avoid this area at all costs” and more, “only fight here if you know what you’re doing and have a reason to.” One is basically the same as making the area impassable, the other makes it a trade off.

33

ok, no sane person does, better ? :wink:

In any case, it is your choice

I myself don’t use blitz usually and still kill mobs in these areas. Can skip them though, yes. Can turn my melee character into a ranged one temporarily (that of course does not mean ranged chars have an advantage there, how dare I say that?). Can dance on one leg and sing closing one eye. The only question - what for?

to avoid taking the damage you rather complain about…

What do you call strategy actually? Running around the areas which can kill you in few seconds? Yes, that is a really complicated puzzle :smiley:

I did not claim it is complicated, only that it is more strategic than just carelessly wandering about like you do the rest of the time

I (and I guess many more people as well) look at these things as at little annoying unnecessary hindrances which should be passed as fast as possible to enjoy the rest of the game. A kind of point of temper. Absolutely unreasonable, I guess.

yes, they are different from the rest of the game where you walk around without caring about this. Whether you like a little variance or consider it an annoying distraction from your ability to just keep fighting is up to you

Well, it would allow me to concentrate on combat which is a primary purpose of the game. Would be more interesting to me than looking where do I step. Currently combat in these areas is constantly interrupted as you have to reposition yourself quite often.

it is an additional component to the combat in those areas

I would prefer to see such threats from mobs who:
a) can be counteracted by your defense and
b) can be killed

you do have a), just not b)

Some components reduce their damage and high health regen also helps…

34

no, at that point it becomes ‘I don’t care where I stand, worst case I drink a potion’

All they offer now is a “don’t stand here-ever” area. If you tone it down, it’s less “avoid this area at all costs” and more, “only fight here if you know what you’re doing and have a reason to.” One is basically the same as making the area impassable, the other makes it a trade off.

They clearly are not impassable, in fact you do have to cross them. All they do is force you to leave them again fast.

Reducing damage a little makes that less urgent / punishing. Reducing it a lot makes it completely irrelevant how long you stand in them.

35

I think perhaps you are seeing some “strategic” or “challenging” element to this that I am not. As far as I can tell, there’s no strategy for dealing with enviromental damage… You simply avoid taking it. I can’t reasonably call that a strategy for dealing with it, as you are simply NOT dealing with it. Nor I can reasonably say it’s challenging… As YOU said, you “pop a potion.”

So instead of telling us all why it isn’t so bad, Mamba… Why don’t you tell us the BENEFIT of having this feature in the game? What wonderful thing does it add to counterbalance the annoyance/nuisance/development time that this feature costs? If you can’t reasonably make an argument FOR it, then I don’t see a huge reason for you to make any argument AGAINST it.

36

The argument for it is that he is Mamba. He talks for the game and for the community. What he states are facts and cannot be otherwise. He needs no argument. The game is perfect and cannot be any different and any better, and shall therefore suffer no questioning over its mechanics. If you don’t understand this, then this can only mean that the problem is on your end.

The most serious discussions allowed here are should I go soldier or demo, melee or ranged, 2H or dual or shield. That’s it.

37

Believe me, the person who fought several heroes in that area is very sane :slight_smile: He knew perfectly what he was doing.

Even my chars, who don’t stand close to his tankiness, can walk in these areas pretty easily in a late game. It’s quite possible and not even very heroic to fight on that ground. But I still see very few sense in making things like that.

It ruins an RPG element of ARPG and pushes it hardly towards Arcade genre where you have to see where you step and watch your every move. I honestly don’t think we can safely mix both of these genre and still have a great game which will be liked by it’s current fans. That is what concerns me about these elements.

to avoid taking the damage you rather complain about…

But now I am arguing in a hope to create other, more natural to the game mechanics, ways to avoid it. So why should I stay with those crude ones?

The current mechanic is simply crude and totally unpolished - it takes a large club and crushes your head with it. There is not much place for any variety or strategic behavior - just stay away from it, that’s all. Even you are not ready to talk about combat in these areas, eh?

It reminds me with Mogdrogen’s initial design when he just killed you if you choose a wrong dialog option - so much strategic solution! It is replaced with much more elegant way now. We, who talk in this topic, hope to find the same elegant tuning to the environmental damage.

I did not claim it is complicated, only that it is more strategic than just carelessly wandering about like you do the rest of the time

As others said already, staying out of some area is not “more strategic”. It is just an annoying hindrance. Run fast, regen, kill mobs before or after, wait until your potions get off cooldown. All these things just create interruptions in the gameplay. There is no brain here.

yes, they are different from the rest of the game where you walk around without caring about this. Whether you like a little variance or consider it an annoying distraction from your ability to just keep fighting is up to you

As I said, I don’t feel necessary to find a blind excusion for everything. This mechanic is bad to me as it goes agains core combat and basic game mechanics. I hope you won’t refuse that?

it is an additional component to the combat in those areas

Not for me, sorry. Combat is the same, you just can’t use the whole area now. Monster traps or special abilities are much more strategic in this way. I would prefer to see more of them than that cheating decision.

To illustrate it better, they could add a Tetris mini-game as well (which would kill you if you lose a round) - it would be a great additional component to annoying all-the-same combat. Am I right? Would you like it?

Some components reduce their damage

Really? Which ones?

38

by that logic there is no stratgey to any (boss) fight either, simply avoid the attacks, done…

So instead of telling us all why it isn’t so bad, Mamba… Why don’t you tell us the BENEFIT of having this feature in the game? What wonderful thing does it add to counterbalance the annoyance/nuisance/development time that this feature costs?

as I said already, you can see it in two ways, one is to mix up the fights a bit by having an additional element to consider, or by seeing it as a nuisance because it is an additional element to consider. You chose the latter.

39

look who’s talking… I as anyone else state opinions, not sure why you would expect me to point that out when no one else does - other than because I disagree with your opinion

Also, you may have noticed that I said I would prefer somewhat less damage, I guess you ignored it because it did not fit your facts-free rant

40

What we really need is a way for the environmental damage layer to automagically snatch the opacity value of the aetherground texture and associate it with a value in a table.