A walking multi-points-of-articulation blender with guns that shoot knives!
since there is no way weâre getting that, obviously the natural compromise is to give us the basic dual mastery system with 10 masteries like GD1; each mastery just features a PoE size skill tree in GD2 then 
I see what you did there, lol the âDisasterâ Sacred 2 Demaster⌠
Ghostlore actually had 3 mastery to build your character around with. Iâm sure it wasnât easy, but giving it were only 2 developers is impressive work.
GD2 
We know about 5% of the lore or less so tons of stuff for Crate to explore. Some hinted events can be fleshed out.
What I want is for Crate to cook up something good with little or no player input. Feedback from players and you got a handful that will make their preference EXTREMELY clear and the 95% middleground will ignore everything and take what they get.
Kind of the same argument that insurance companies use. We want the 95% customer group and the last 5% is something we donât want to handle even at sword length.
Offline mode: yes â makes it rather impossible for microtransactions.
Same class system: yes but I understand why Crate donât like it and donât want it. Makes it horrible to make new balanced content.
Huge open world: No but yes, kinda. You could argue that GD is open world. Huge in Daggerfall huge - NOPE.
Backlash Only one I can think of is if GD 2 takes Crate Entertainment in a direction the company donât want to go. Finding a 20 man echo chamber yelling they want âinsert whateverâ where 4 million players are happy with what they got 
Feedback from power gamers and youâll get: Moar speed, more big red numbers. Soulslike players want content where they have to slam their face against a boss for days before they find the right combination/build. Lore gamers want story and slow gameplayâŚ
Edit: and ~70% of all customers/players will play the campain once and move over to next game. Total playtime 20-50 hours.
1 Like
What kind of a class system would you prefer? Or which one do you think fits the Grim Dawn world better?
None.
I donât really like classes without characterization, and the GD character has more or less no personality, other than âI canât do that yet.â
I donât mind grouping skills together by archetype just for organizationâs sake, e.g., âhere are your sword skills, here are your magic skills, etc.â but âclass identityâ is something that I feel has only limited player creativity through the years. So when that identity isnât shown in-world through a character, why is it enforced arbitrarily through the boundaries of a class?
3 Likes
Ok, makes sense. Either Diablo classes or no classes at all. Iâm in.
If class names were used consistently in the names of human / humanoid enemy units - masteries for common and champion units and dual-classes for heroes and bosses - this would add to the world building.
It also might emphasize the strength of dual-classing, so that people stop asking about suppport for single-mastery builds.
The archetype class structure, 2 classes to make 1, is what I like the most about GD. Also, TQ for that matter. Just having 1 class, like D1 - D2 - D3 - D4, is boring. No class and just a grouping of skills would be even worse, especially since you can only make a human. Now, if GD2 had other races besides human, that would be fun, especially if they have their own kind and didnât copy and paste from other RPGâs with the standard playing races. Imagine being a Groble or a Wendigo. Just imagine the potential for the base game and DLCâs/X-Packs.
I partially agree. PoE 2 , to me, shows that grouping of skills based on weapon types isnât necessarily ideal.
Though I donât feel the same way about no class.
Subjectively (for me) having PoE 1âs frame work - the skill tree then using the ascendency as your âmasteryâ picks (yes 2 masteries with points to spread around the 2 ascendencies) with Crateâs philosophy of a single player game while holding their ideas and their respect for players time would make a game I would play solely till my last breath.
Masteries absolutely do offer identity, at the least because they provide a shared terminology in the community (Identifying Warders, amirite?).
I also just donât see how we could call a game Grim Dawn 2 without some form of the iconic dual class system the original was built upon. I mean, I see room for improvement, but the core still needs to feel familiar.
10 Likes
The character being a blank slate is one of the best parts about the game. I get to use the masteries, transmog, and other things to come up with my own character.
I think thatâs a lot more fun than yet another generic barbarian or thief character with a by the numbers backstory.
5 Likes
Itâs a double-edged sword imho. If you allow everything youâll have an easier time and need less creativity to make something special. Restraints are part of any game and challenge people to overcome them.
Not saying I think classes are necessary, but it provides an easy to understand method for selecting the skills you can use.
I would not like getting rid of the mastery system, not even in the name of âlimited player creativityâ. I think some limits are good, they give some direction and theme to that character and incentive making new characters. The game already gives you plenty of ways to âbreakâ those themes if you want with class combos and skill modifiers/sets. I would be severely disappointed if these systems were completely changed instead of refined and added to.
3 Likes
I think itâs less important to make something special, and more important to make something that is yours.
To that end,
I would argue using preset masteries diminishes how much of your character is actually your creation.
I agree with this sentiment but when the restraints are as far-reaching as class choice itâs less of a challenge to be overcome and more of an arbitrarily-defined limitation.
Completely pointless. Everyone would just take Occultist as their third mastery and take Curse of Frailty and Blood of Dreeg if they had enough points.
3 Likes
Thatâs assuming the masteries are the same. Zanâs already hinted that aether and chaos as damage types for us will go and probably elemental as well. That could change a lot of skills, items, etc.
I really, really hope they will rethink the decision to make aether and chaos damage inaccessible to players. These damage types look extremely attraactive and are thematically very cool and distinctive in comparison to other arpgs, and fit extremely well in the game lore.
Honestly, removing chaos and aether damage from the game (the player, that is) would be one thing that could make me not play GD2.
But oh well, itâs their game.
3 Likes
Very much agree. There are a lot of other ways they could simplify the damage types. Do we need both physical and pierce? Bleed? Do dots need to be a separate type from direct damage? What even is vitality damage? And elemental (as a combined type)?
1 Like