Hello Crate, the first thing i got on my heart, is to tell you that I mostly love everything about Grim dawn. I think it is what titan quest should be and the first real competitor to the real hack and slay game Diablo2. And thats quite honest the biggest compliment i can make, as a player with over 5000h in diablo2. However there are some things I can not understand why you did what you did there and really wishes to state my oppinion. Obviously iam aware that some things are just an Oppinion, however I feel like there are some things you should consider in the near future.
- The big elephant in the room is obviously that the game still crashes, especially in multiplayer games. My pc didnt crashed in single player games for quite some time but in multiplayer games there are still issues.
While i got like a 25% chance to crash after long multiplayer sessions one of my friends is kinda not even trying anymore.
While this probably pains you as much as the playerbase itself, there are some things which make things even worse.
In these cthonic rifts you are absolutely lost if you cant remember where the starting entrance was and if you dont look it up online you can basically only leave the game. While this is kind of acceptable for me in single player we got that problem the other while solving bounties for the legion. Kinda stuck in the void we decided to restart the game.
This did not only forced the mandatory restart for my friend it also ruined the whole evening.
While I can understand that some caves are not noticeable on the minimap to let people actually discover a little bit more of the map, this is just not acceptable as long as this bug isnt wiped out. Please either enable rift portals in these areas or at least dosnt hide the entrance once you actually used it. To my point of view it is not a favorable feature to begin with, but the bug makes it game and party breaking. You shouldnt be forced to look up where to leave an area it just destroys the otherwise fantastic flow of the game.
- I feel like you really should add tutorial messages for things going on. I just got nemesis on my first faction and once again needed to check online what that actually means. Magical augments were another thing which left me puzzled, because I didnt knew they would stack with components. Both of these things could be properly explained once you reach the opportunity to use these features. At least for magical augments create a sentence under them “can be used alongside components”
Please consider to insert these things dictionary aswell. It would also be nice if you could insert certain informations about damage formulars. Even or especially in a theoriecrafting game like this, players shouldnt be forced to check every assumption online, before beeing sure, they understand the game. Just an example, Damage conversion before or after %%% boni to damage, basic explanation of how the crit formular works etc.
- The Crafting window needs an overhaul right about now.
While offering so much possibilities and it feels wonderful once you finished your project, It is so time consuming to click through all these
things. Producing a single “tier3” relic can take 10 minutes if you havent prepared anything. This is not acceptable and needs to be adressed. Let the game check itself whether or not i got everything to last ressource or let me open multiple windows. If i click on a not available ressource i should be able to immediately get to it. Insert a back button to the last seen page and you made it better for like 100000 times.
Right now it is a nessessary pain the butt, to click and check all these components, create one go back check create the next.
Speaking of components, is there really any advantage from a gameplay perspective that i cant just walk over them to pick them up? I mean 90% of the gamers who didnt allready got everything they ever will need in this game will pick up every single one of them, just like gold, so why not autopick up them aswell? I dont see any reason for that.
I feel like these things are mandatory to meet the actually quality of the game itself. This dosnt apply to auto pickup components.
Anything below these lines is my point of view and could be considered:
- Flow of the game is a good topic because there is actually another big thing. Dead ends are kinda everywhere. While this is obviously sometimes useful, to create a certain area and a theme about it, i usually feels just unnessary and sometimes you are kinda surprised, because the areas feels like you should be able to walk just fine but in reality you just reach another dead end and need to walk back like 90 seconds to get the correct way.
I think it would be cool if you could just blow up these obstacles with dynamite. In single player these destructions could be permanent. Thats obviously not an easy to implement feature and might be part of a future expansion.
- When i first reached nemesis with a aetherials I immediately met a group of Overmind bosses in the cellar right before krieg. And I thought cool, random big groups of bosses was kinda what nemesis would be. I was kinda disappointed later, when i read, that all nemesis appear to be doing is spawning this single boss, which to be fair is a cool feature.
Lets do some quick look on the definition of nemesis, “Arch enemy” would be another expression and I feel a random boss hiding somewhere is not right value to reflect this state. What I want to see is a faction which actively hunts me down. My suggestion: Random events everywhere, boss monsters spawning alongside other factions, to mix things up in general. At least in challenge dungeons. In areas which you would consider a home for these factions you should see an army of stronger mobs on the map which will hunt you until they get you or you flew long enough. I want the total War against these factions and i would heavily appreciate if i lose it at first. It would feel so much more interactive than a single super strong boss guy.
- This might be my own fault since I was not willing to destroy a whole faction for a little bit of reputation for another but right now i feel like the black legion needs some type of enemy to farm reputation from, other than killing an entire faction -_- . I know you dont need the outcast on every single difficulty.
But dont tell me it feels right since you cant understand it at first. I for myself and my friends didnt thought it would be a hugh deal. This in my point of view is the first and only non favorable game design point in this game, except the disappearing rifts in these voids. Tell the player he will have difficulties farming reputation for the black legion, because how on earth should you really expect that? Really frustrating, especially considering the trouble we had when we tried to finish these bounties in the rift (which is fixable like i said in point1).
I once again want to express how much i love this game and I want it to become even better. Even if some critic might sound harsh the overall product is one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever seen. Its actually the first action game where I actually read the lore interested, finding myself enjoying these wall of texts ^^ .
Continue your good work,
big love nash 
P.s. sorry for the big wall of text, i hope you got patience 