Was there ever an internal discussion to potentially hire a mercenary with a faction in Grim Dawn?
I think this would of been an awesome add to Grim Dawn 
30th March 2018 dev stream:
Zantai_GD: hirelings was a feature I wrote a doc for once, but ultimately we decided against it
Zantai_GD: there were all sorts of complications with adding hirelings
Zantai_GD: we’re not adding mercs, no.
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i don’t like hirelings as such anyway
they either end up busted or meaningless, i’d much prefer like a “squire” companion like torchlight’s pet follower, “here hold my stuff”, tho perhaps i’m too biased towards pets and cute ferrets 
. But it also just wouldn’t fit with GD setting and mechanics wise.
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Thanks Gals and Guys
You damn pet hater… lol
love pets, whish we had more of them in GD; even requested so several times 
Just mechanically i don’t see the point, you portal to stash/vendor so fast it would likely be faster than using the pet, so at most it would extend the time between trips if it carried stuff (which could then just be solved with extra inventory space).
Likewise it fighting wouldn’t fit thematically, with how every fighting pet needs to be actually built around combat to use, because the world of Cairn is currently such a harsh environment it kills everything but demigods and their like. So a “pack-mule” seems unfitting there, there’s a lot of horse corpses around for a reason 
Hirelings blizzard has neatly demonstrated why they’re just a poor mechanic to have, OP af or pointless extra/freebie passives
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Still drawing, breath i see, you’re one lucky bastard lol
This. On the one hand you have the absurdity of D2, where people rely on their merc to kill immunes and we are meant to applaud the spectacle of the computer playing the game for us, and on the other hand D3, where it’s just a walking bag of stats and QoL. The fact that there are no hirelings in Grim Dawn is one of many good things about the game.
Agreed, Hirelings are a bad idea that often undermines class design at a fundamental level. Back in D2 classes had a very tidy design. You were either a self-sufficient, survivable, tanky character (Pala, Barb), a squishy, long-range caster (Sorc, Necro), or someone who lacks survivability but still needs to engage in close-ish combat, so they rely on summons to soak for them (Amazon, Assassin). With many variations of that depending on build, of course. Sorceress was just designed to dance away from enemies and rely entirely on her magic to both survive and to kill. Except oops, scratch that, she has a free tank she can teleport at will. She gets to just stand and spam. Oh I’m sorry, is Static Field ridiculously OP, but it’s very risky because it has to be cast at close range when unlevelled? Please, you just hide behind your hireling as usual and cast it to your heart’s content. And god forbid you give them useful abilities. Holy Freeze, for everyone! Enjoy!
Then you have the D3 approach where they’re just aura bots (with later balance, aurabots and extra inventory slots for legendary powers, cause that’s a good idea apparently).
So either they break class design or they’re walking statsticks. Why bother?
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Just because other games in the genre did not implement the hirelings well, doesn’t mean they are a bad feature in a game.
I’m sure, when given proper thought, they could be useful. Depending on game, and what your objective is.
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I suppose the question is, in what way do you think they can enhance a game? The problem with them in D2 and D3 isn’t that they are not useful, it’s that they are too useful and provide easy boring solutions to otherwise tricky and interesting problems.
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Well, what is the intended objective of a Hireling? They’re supposed to be a support combatant, that’s their literal purpose in the world of the game. How do you achieve this? Do you make them a sizeable portion of your DPS? How much. 30%? 20%? Where do you strike the balance? Because the player character has to feel like the main power in the setting, yet the hireling can’t feel useless, else what’s the point? Or are they supposed to provide support? Maybe synergistic abilities, source of debuffs? Perhaps a separate skill tree which you can fine tune to complement whatever it is you’re building for, to create essentially a three mastery combo? How do you do that?
If you work through just auras, curses, debuffs etc. the hireling is a dull aurabot. If you design for broad skill synergies (if you’re built for slow, this skill tree helps, if you’re building for crits, this skill tree helps), then you have to dedicate a portion of the Hireling to almost every possible strategy the game has to offer, otherwise they will feel generic. And if god forbid you miss out on a possible playstyle, players leaning towards that playstyle will be like “well, I guess I’m the red-headed stepchild in this game, there goes 20% of my power that I cannot make use of”. You can’t give them stuff like “slowed enemies take X % more damage” without creating the requirement that from now on, if you want to be a viable build, you need to shoehorn a source of slow into your build somehow. That’s the D4 style of conditional power from what I hear and it sucks cause then you’re just ticking off boxes. So either you add a fuckton of complexity by tailoring the Hirelings to all possible playstyles, you make them so generic that they might as well not be a separate entity and might be just built into the character’s tree itself or you make them a checkbox. Can you find a balance between these? Possibly. It’s going to be fucking tough and…what’s the big payoff exactly?
That’s not even speaking of how you handle their surviability. Are they killable? Do they respawn like the player? How do you make them tanky enough that they get to actually stay around in the fight, yet not so tanky that they negate the player’s need for tankiness? If you make them invulnerable, why is the player character there, the hireling can kill the entire world on their own. Who’s the hero in this scenario? And if they are invulnerable, what’s stopping the player from just kiting until the hireling does all the killing? If the hireling isn’t able to kill anything, and can’t draw aggro and tank, and is just there for support abilities, again, they’re an aurabot and their abilities might as well be included on the character’s skill tree instead.
It introduces an incredible level of complexity in designing it right and if you lean just the smallest bit too far in one direction or another, you’d be better off not having them at all. It’s a safer bet to just not complicate the game with something that can so easily go so wrong. And if you get it right, does the game even feel meaningfully different anyway?
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Might be something Crate consider for GD2 in a few years’ time, but it’s far too late in GD1’s life to make such major changes methinks. If they didn’t do it back in 2018 they’re extremely unlikely to turn around and do it now.
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See! Mercenaries and Pets are different things already ^^.
But I feel you. So what do you want from a Mercenary?
I view Hirelings as a great tool for generalist players who value Utility.
On that point, Katarina in The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is one of my favorite:
- She can be set on Melee or Ranged,
- has a ton utility in her skill trees (Magic Find, Healing, Freezing…)
- she can go back to town and sell your loot.
It’s just that Grim Dawn wasn’t designed with Hirelings in mind.
If you’re dying to have Hirelings in Grim Dawn, I recommend:
Reign of Terror (Mod): this is literally Diablo 2 in your Grim Dawn.
Reign of Terror Includes Hirelings, Runewords and even the Cow Level.
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Agree Gally
Same here, Katarina is one of the reasons I really like that game.
But a concept like that wouldn’t work so well in GD I think. Idk why, just wouldn’t feel right to me to have an interactive companion like that always by your side, with story and lore and dialogue lines and all that. It was a great fit for Van Helsing though.
I also really like the pets of Torchlight 1 and 2. They can fight but aren’t too essential for your build like the D2 mercs, and they also bring some QoL as you can send them to town to sell and buy stuff while your character keeps on exploring and fighting. That concept could work in GD, since cosmetic pets are already a thing, might as well make them useful.
Just give them the ability to deal some damage and provide a few stats (but nothing too crazy so the choice of pet or pet equipment doesn’t become build defining), give them an inventory and the ability to bring trash loot to town for selling and dismantling.
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Van Helsing is one boring AF game lol
nah it’s fine, mechanics aren’t as deep as other games in the genre and there isn’t much of an endgame, but I enjoyed it for what it is. Playing it in co-op probably helped too.
You are wrong. Van Helsing actually have deep, built in mechanics, which most games don’t have. Problem i have with the game is “feel” the skills don’t feel impactful at all, it’s a sluggish festival from level.
lol, so much for OTHERS opinions.