Grim dawn is a great game. Really great. I have very few complaints at all and that’s rare for me. I have some criticism on the more technical aspects of the game. Hopefully the devs will find this useful
Co-op / Multiplayer - Lack of matchmaking / social features
Where I’m concerned, a games replay value lies in online play. Due to the nature of this game in particular it also requires a bit of commitment as it can take many hours, perhaps even many days to complete an act. As such, I feel there could be much improvement made here. Currently, to find a group of people willing to play GD takes initiative. One has to actually go out onto forums / discord groups to find people to play with. Usually this isn’t a problem with modern games because there’s a matchmaking system and, through that, usually people make friends along the way. Since GD has neither an in game social hub, chat features outside of a hosted game or even a matchmaking system I worry that GD misses out on a lot more players because of it. It also makes the game appear more stale than it actually is.
Explanations of game mechanics, bare minimum documentation & lack of intuition
As far as the skills & game mechanics go, I really think the whole system could be explained better both in game and outside of it. I also think that more effort should be made to highlight what affects what. I’ve seen so many questions, on here and reddit and more, relating to game mechanics. Yes many of them can be googled or people can read the game guide however I should point out that if a game overwhelms or confuses the average player they’ll grow bored or frustrated over a technicality and find something else to play. Aside from the fact that we live in a far more instant gratification era I think from an artistic / professional perspective having clear explanations of mechanics in game should just be expected of the developers. What’s worse, the UI and GUI makes the game feel like it’s running on some abominable windows NT OS or something. It’s utter rubbish and I’m not sure if that just compounds the issue. It’s not intuitive to people anymore. Anyway, nobody can ever please me when it comes to UI so don’t take that personally.
Let me offer a few general examples:
The difference beteween flat damage & Percentage damage is not intuitive or explained in game.
Skill upgrades & their passives are neither clear nor intuitive. Let’s consider ‘Bone Harvest’ into ‘Harvester of Death’. Anyone can figure out that a square icon means active and round means passive but you haven’t clearly explained the interactions. At a glance, to your average player, is only going to understand the first stat in ‘Harvester of Death’ and that’s -3 Meter range. The rest is very badly written. Example:
-3 Meter Range should be Reduced range by 3
30% Main Hand Damage ( X - Y ) Should be 30% Increase to Weapon damage (~ X ). First, a two handed weapon doesn’t need the clarification of ‘Main’ hand. Second, you should Indicate whether it’s an addition or reduction. Third. You haven’t specified that the game considers %Weapon damage as physical which makes the whole ‘100% Physical damage converted to cold damage’ thing just rediculous. It takes proper testing to figure out that it’s refering to ‘X% Main Hand Damage (X - Y)’ modifier. Initially you’d think it converts all physical damage to cold, or that since the upgrade requires a 2 handed weapon, all physical damage of that weapon is converted to cold etc. Fourth, (X - Y) should be shown as an average, not a min max value. If you want to offer expanded onMouseHover details then you can add it. (Many games offer expanded details on hold CTRL for eg). The idea is that you reduce the confusion, reduce the amount of text and reduce the amount of numbers for the first glance details. Otherwise it’s simply too much.
In fact with better descriptors you easily kill 2 birds with one stone. Clearer explanations & reduce the amount of text in nearly every single skill by 1/2 maybe even 2/3. They’re so unbelievably messy and filled with clutter. Ugh
In my opinion this game needs a visual, UI & GUI overhaul so that it doesn’t feel clunky and confusing.
The devotion tree is clunky. If you accidently click on a node whilst dragging, it doesn’t drag, sometimes opening skill boxes. It can’t be zoomed out all the way. It’s only going to get bigger. Way too much info to be displayed in this visual method.
Character sheet can’t be moved around. Buttons on I, II & III are horrible. Small hitboxes, clunky cursor makes it worse. There’s no option to expand your extra bags. Instead you have to click through loads of stupid small icons. No option to make it display as one.
Pressing g opens the options. Pressing it again doesn’t close it. (Sounds really petty but it’s this kind of inconsistency that makes the UI clunky)
No Drag and drop for items. Have to click again to dump. When splitting items, sometimes the whole number is highlighted, sometimes it’s not.
Other quality of life improvements / suggestions
Completely overhaul the storage system. Seperate out item storage and crafting storage. A similar storage system to guildwars 2 would be perfect. See https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Material_storage
Players should be allowed to send ALL crafting components in inventory to storage.
I have much more to say but I want sleep. Consider this a WIP thread