Future DLCs

[Bloodwyrm]

ARPGs are certainly one of my favorite genres of game. There really aren’t that many out there worth playing (our out there period), and those that are are getting pretty old.
With what we know so far about Crate’s plans, I do worry about the future of Grim Dawn, what with them allegedly getting burned out and all.

The fact THQ Nordic released an expansion for TQ after all this time (regardless of how some may view its quality) was a pleasant suprise for me (especially since I had been wanting a Norse-themed expansion since even before Immortal Throne’s release).
I know THQ currently holds the rights to the franchise, but I’d always hoped to see a Titan Quest 2. It’s probably too much to ask to see that come from Crate, but without veteran TQ devs it just wouldn’t be worth it, IMO.
Granted, TQ’s a cult classic and not really a huge money maker, and THQ has already proven they’d rather not do a whole lot of work on the game. Since TQAE was a passion project (or so they say), I think they’d probably be open to relinquishing the rights. Only one way to find out, eh?

It just always seems like ARPGs are developed, get one or two x-pacs, and then get dropped like an ugly baby shortly after, which is a damn shame since they always have so much potential for further development.
Suffice it to say, if “the next game” isn’t an ARPG, I will be “moving on” as well. Unlike some consumers, I’m not so quick to give up on a genre I love.
That’s nothing new for me though, we’ll just have to see what comes out of the cutting room floor.

[medea_fleecestealer]

Well, they’re not burnt out yet, but changing to doing other things will certainly help prevent that. Also having other projects helps broaden their franchises and makes better use of the team’s time as just working on one game sometimes means there’s not enough for all of them to do. Medierra summed up his thinking back in November 2016:

Mountain valley town

We do plan to keep working on Grim Dawn. How many expansions we produce just depends on how well the first expansion sells and how well GD itself continues to sell.

There is also a good a chance we’ll do GD2 at some point but, due to the age of the current engine, we either need to undertake some massive update work on it or start from scratch with a licensed engine, which would mean a massive amount of work writing all new gameplay code.

Given that we’re working on an expansion now, might do a second one and I’ve been working on ARPGs for 14 years now, I feel like I could use a bit of break before jumping right into GD2. Imagining exciting new features, systems and a whole new story arc take a lot of energy and passion. I’m happy continuing to work on and oversee content for GD but I feel like I need to recharge before I can give a whole new ARPG my all.

There are other genres of games I love and have always wanted to work on. I’d also like to work on something lower scope next, that requires less building of content and which won’t take too long to finish. I expect to be releasing this new project 12-18 months from now. Then after that, who knows, maybe it will be time for GD2. I won’t know until I get there. One thing I can say though is, I’d be a lot more excited to work on GD2 if we could get to a point where we had a lot more money to throw at it.

Someone mentioned that Banished / Anno town-builders were overcrowded but that looks like a wide open market compared to ARPG. Not only are there a lot of ARPGs coming out recently but players commit to a single one for much longer than games in other genres and it requires a ton of content and features to be competitive - more than almost any other genre of games. Then think about the fact that the ARPG genre has a franchise that is widely seen as “king” and is developed by one of the biggest, most well funded and widely respected companies in the industry. Everything is compared against Diablo and it’s hard to compete with a team that has virtually unlimited resources. Then Grinding Gear has around 5x the people we do and I doubt competing against a free-to-play game has helped our sales. Then there’s Torchlight (although it looks like their next game isn’t an ARPG), Marvel Heroes, Van Helsing, Victor Vran, maybe a TQ expansion or sequel from Nordic, Lineage Eternal (if that ever finishes), Wolcen and too many others to remember. Since the huge sales of D3, everyone and their mom seems to be making an ARPG these days. About the only thing worse would be deciding to make a MOBA.

Even with all that going on, I wouldn’t say it would prevent us from making GD2 but it certainly makes the level of competition in most other genres look a lot less daunting.

A big factor for working on something else though is that I don’t think it is good to keep all our eggs in one basket, as a studio. Our primary goal is to keep the company alive so we can keep being independent and making games. While it’s certainly possible to focus on one franchise and stay alive for a long time doing it, it’s riskier having all your future dependent on the continued success of one game property in one genre. Diversifying the types of games we can make and the IPs we own is a good way for us to better secure out future.

Beyond just branching out to work on other genres, it has always been a goal of mine to be able to work on concurrent projects. Not only do we not want to be pigeon-holed into one genre but I think it’s important for us to be able to work on multiple projects at time. That way, we’re not just counting on the success of a single big release to keep us alive, where if it under-performs, it could take years to course-correct and finish another project (years we likely wouldn’t have). This also helps to increase the efficiency of the studio, as we can shift people around based on the needs of a project at any give time, instead of having lulls at the beginning and end of a single project, where not everyone is needed at full capacity. Another factor is that people get burnt out working on one thing for too many years. When people get burnt out, they leave and look for something new. I feel like we have a great team and I want to keep them engaged with fresh new projects and not solely grinding away on ARPGs for the next 20 years.

Since we would like to keep making content for GD, we’ve brought on some new people for that, to keep up the level of energy and enthusiasm (or new old people in the case of Grava, aka Josh Glavine). We’ll keep making content for GD as long as it’s financially viable. GD2 is a definite possibility but whether / when that happens depends on how things progress in the ARPG genre and internally for us at Crate over the next year or two. We also have some ideas for GD related games that are set in that universe and will share some mechanics but are not quite ARPGs.

You’ll also be hearing about at least one totally new project in the next year though.

As Zantai has said before each expansion sells less well than the last so it’s a case of diminishing returns for the same amount of work. So there has to come a time when you say that’s it and move on to something else or start something like GD2.

As for Crate doing TQ2 I can’t see that happening. Nordic have done a lot with the game: AE edition, an expansion, it’s been ported to mobile and all the consoles. Plus they bought the company that made the expansion for them. And why would Crate bother to buy the intellectual rights? I’m sure they can come up with their own twists for something along similar lines that wouldn’t break any copyright.

[el_critico]

My trustworthy senses tell me FG will not be the last content for GD. They would still add some balance patch one small area content like Kraken and 3 sets mythicals. After that the game should be okay in content and size. adding More will make game very long.

After forgotten gods, even immortal people like Zantairin will look for greener pastures. Quite certain the team’s mind is exhausted by now after branstorming and carefully crafting the final holy mastery.

After FG they can be assured sales will surpass there expectations, most fans happy and then they can move on to other project. But before everything ends first crate, let me get ny hands dirty with the holy goods;)

[medea_fleecestealer]

Sales have already passed their expectations. Iirc Zantai or Medierra said they were hoping for around 200,000 copies sold to break even. Steamspy has nearly 1.5 mil sold, not sure if that includes Crucible and AoM or just the base game. And that’s not taking into account the GOG sales.

[el_critico]

Sales have already passed their expectations. Iirc Zantai or Medierra said they were hoping for around 200,000 copies sold to break even. Steamspy has nearly 1.5 mil sold, not sure if that includes Crucible and AoM or just the base game. And that’s not taking into account the GOG sales.

always online medea ? i admire your resiliency and perhaps no sleep? i think of all you are the most excited for the expansion yeh. that being said crate should update us with sales figure so rich people,not me, can see if they need to buy more dlcs to support the game. if this done the forgotten gods being last major expansion , lets assume, will be top quality and blow our minds and grim dawn rpg will leave good taste flavor in our mouth forever and ever

[medea_fleecestealer]

Only because I’m now a moderator here, though I’d be popping in several times a day anyway. It’s more that I’m on my PC all day so I’d visit this and my other forums on and off throughout the day while doing other stuff. When I accepted Zantai’s offer to become a mod it just made sense to me to simply log in first thing in the morning and then keep the forum on a separate tab all day so I can react quickly to spam and other stuff if needed. So that’s what I do. But yeah, I guess I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment since I’m around from 7am to between 10 or 11 at night. But the only reason I’m up that early is because my husband leaves for work at an ungodly hour. :eek:

FG will be top quality regardless of people buying more copies (though of course that always helps) - Crate don’t roll any other way.

Not sure I’m the most excited, but I’ve certainly been enthusiastic about Crate and the game ever since Medierra had this crazy idea to let people buy into the game early. I’ve found it very interesting watching how the game’s developed, the team’s grown, how Crate have interacted with the fan base, etc. It’s been a totally new experience for me since I’d never done anything like early access to a game before. I’m looking forward to all that continuing with FG and their other projects in the future.

And hey, us oldies have to have something interesting to do. Guess this is mine.

[Bloodwyrm]

As Zantai has said before each expansion sells less well than the last so it’s a case of diminishing returns for the same amount of work. So there has to come a time when you say that’s it and move on to something else or start something like GD2.

Fair enough, but when you compare GD to the games mentioned in your quote, you realize it actually doesn’t have much competition.
Runic Games, the developer of Torchlight 1&2, was dissolved last year; Marvel Heroes was shut down; Lineage Eternal had to be rebooted and is still in development; Victor Vran is a very different kind of ARPG (not my thing either); Van Helsing wasn’t received too well; Path of Exile is online-only, so that’s a no-go; Diablo 3 is also online-only and its playerbase is declining. All of this kind of proves my earlier point about ARPGs, if you think about it.

Wolcen is really the only one that looks promising, and I’ve been following it since the day it showed up on Steam. Due to that, and the fact I already dropped money on it (something I almost never do), I hope it pulls through to become something amazing. Fingers crossed…

There really aren’t that many ARPGs out there, which is just another reason why I’d like to see development on this one continue, or another one from the same company. Or just another one, period.

As for Crate doing TQ2 I can’t see that happening. Nordic have done a lot with the game: AE edition, an expansion, it’s been ported to mobile and all the consoles.

I love Titan Quest, so I appreciate that the game was actually “revived”, in a manner of speaking.
That being said, THQ Nordic’s efforts have been… rather lackluster, if I’m being blunt.
The Anniversary Edition, while being a ‘definitive edition’ of sorts, added very little in the way of quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.
Storage lacks a sort button, act progress still randomly gets erased and fragmented, items still fall through the ground (though this is likely an engine issue).
This would have been a good opportunity to add the number of rarity filters Grim Dawn has, including that little button on the left, but we received no such thing.
Grim Dawn also combines components across all bags, TQAE combines relics / charms across only one bag using the sort button.
You know what would also have been nice? A little character list on the right (sound familiar?) that allows you to see all your characters and select one without having to press an arrow button repeatedly.
What we did get was a game speed setting (that I do appreciate) and a new UI layout that reuses assets. Good thing they still let us use the old one.

I talked a bit about the expansion already. Although I do feel it was needed, it was of lesser quality than the base game and IT: The voice acting, while not entirely out-of-place, is noticeably worse; Many textures lack that characteristic TQ bump mapping so there isn’t much artistic consistency in the expansion; The new equipment icons are atrocious (with the exception of accessories); I noticed a number of typos (which were later fixed, thankfully); Assets are heavily reused; Certain new enemies were given static death animations when they really should have ragdolled (play it and see what I mean); and numerous less-noticeable things you might consider ‘nitpicking’. But what can I say? I’ve an eye for detail.

I’ll admit I wasn’t aware of the mobile and console ports. I’m sure they’re just as buggy, however.

And why would Crate bother to buy the intellectual rights? I’m sure they can come up with their own twists for something along similar lines that wouldn’t break any copyright.

I can’t imagine the IP would be very expensive at this point, but I was simply throwing it out there.
They probably could come up with something similar (an ARPG based on mythology), but I wouldn’t expect it. I wouldn’t expect a game like that from anyone at this point, sad to say. The only other game like that is Loki, which came out a year after TQ and yet somehow managed to be infinitely worse.

On a side note, Sacred 2 is one of my favorite ARPGs, and I’d kill for that one to get an “Anniversary Edition”.
Would be nice to have that memory leak issue fixed after a whole damn decade…

[medea_fleecestealer]

Well, Medierra’s comment was nearly 2 years ago now. Things change. I’m intriged by his comment about GD related games that aren’t quite ARPGs. Maybe we’ll be seeing something on one of those at some point in the future. Pretty sure the town builder won’t be the only other project the team are working on. It’s just good business sense to have other projects under development though what they may be we will have to wait and see.

I think Nordic itself it pretty lackluster. I was frankly surprised when they bought the AE version out. Saw a demo of the mobile some years back and we all had a good laugh about it over on the old TQ.net forum because skills were all mixed up. Haven’t played the expansion much since most of my characters haven’t reached it yet, but some of the voice acting is pretty bad. None of it tops the cheesy speech by the oracle in Delphi though. Console versions (except for Switch) were released in March

https://www.thqnordic.com/article/titan-quest-coming-all-current-gen-console-platforms-2018

Not sure how much work they did on AE themselves apart from incorporating all the various bugfixes and other stuff the fan base community had made for the game.

[el_critico]

let’s talk titan quest because gd and tq are related by blood. Do you think tq will have future dlc’s or is the crappy ragnarok the end of its line.

[medea_fleecestealer]

I don’t think it should because the new expansion has made the game long enough. Any more and it just becomes unwieldy and people will get tired of trying to finish it. Better they move on to a TQ2 or something similar.