I have about 1300 hours on Grim Dawn and wanted to try something else so i recently bought Last Epoch, and something caught my attention.
1 - In Last Epoch, there is an option that highlights enemies briefly (white flash) when they are hit by you. Similiar ARPG s also have this system if i remember correct.
Why is this important? in Grim Dawn, for instance, visuals of most spells doesnt match their AoE. You can especially see this on basic circular AoE spells like Siphon Souls. This brief flash effect helps a lot in other games because it immediately tells you which creatures are hurt by your recent spell.
2 - There is another option which change the intensity of Camera Shake. Now most people perhaps dont care but i think Camera shake is a really good tool for hit feedback.
Why is this important? in Grim Dawn, camera shake intensity is absurdly high, especially on a fast auto attack build where you crit a lot. Its interesting that no one seem to complain about it, i think they just DISABLE (like me) camera shake. If we have a basic slider for camera shake intensity and choose whether only player spells or both player/enemy spells trigger it, we will have a better and more satisfying hit feedback.
Another issue is, in big combats, many of the effects’ sounds are constantly missing due to poor engine(?). Camera shake can act as an extra feedback here.
Developers after patch 1.1.4 seem to move forward more content and balance patches at this point. But i would really like to see some gameplay improvements like this in future.
Having played many other ARPGs, I’m genuinely not sure what you are describing.
I can see the appeal of such a feature, but it feels rather gamey to me and mechanically I’m not sure would really impact gameplay as much as you think, at least for the average person. But Last Epoch has it as a toggle, as you say, so the option is there for those that like it I guess.
We’re not at a point in development where we’d be considering such features though.
Camera Shake is generally one of those things that you either want on or off. You’re correct that nobody seems to be complaining about it because it genuinely does not seem to bother most people. Could it be a slider? I suppose? But how many people would actually care to fine tune the intensity of camera shake and how much value would they get out of us spending dev time on it? Personally, I imagine programmer time can be better spent for player value.
For instance, in a dense combat, i cast an AoE spell rapidly between other actions. In such dense scenarios, some of the ability sounds doesnt trigger with ability for that moment (as if there is a certain number of sound source limit that can play at one time). Some streamers confirmed it when i ask them so i think its an engine issue.
As for camera shake, with a proper amount in my opinion, it helps with the feel of combat and individual hits’ impact (also another feedback that shows my ability kicked in when i maniacly cast spells in combat?). It’s true that many people dont care and would call this a nitpick, but i would personally fine tune it, or add a slider for it if i was a developer. Not sure how much it would take time though.
Will confirm as well, and have also encountered it on stream. I also think I’ve complained about this since the game’s Early Access period, as far back as 2015.
It’s not something that I think you can just hop on and test, unfortunately. I don’t have an exact repro for it, but I do know that it happens most often during extend play sessions (not even exiting to main menu). If I’m playing a Cadence build, for instance, eventually after clearing every roguelike and doing every endboss and doing every whatever else, after an hour or two of consecutive play, Cadence and a few swing sounds will be entirely muted and its a crapshoot of whether they ever return. It does take dense combat to mute such sfx, but there is also a time component to this issue as well.
From my limited knowledge of programming with audio, my assumption is that there is an error somewhere either in media stream cleanup or the game’s audio (de)queuing.
As to the topic at hand, I feel like you want different terminology. After a recent binge in Last Epoch, I was appalled at how little tactile feedback there was for players in the game, and surmised that I had simply grown too used to Grim Dawn, which had set a very high bar that I haven’t seen many other ARPGs meet, let alone beat.
Though I cannot tell if sometimes some specific sound is missing or not (too much fuzz going on onscreen), but in packed situations it has become quite normal that the big DONGG when levelling up is missing.
Wanna say: Missing sound is a thing, can confirm that.
I’ve had it happen in the Main Campaign - it happens when’s there’s too many sound sources triggering at the same time after playing for a while (for me that is!).
I’m having this too and doubt if I keep hitting when it happens something wrong with my mouse left button etc; kinda bothers me. So it happens with AA skills aswell.
As you may expect, there are a lot of sound effects happening at the same time in the Crucible and, as we expected, the issue lies in the sound channels getting flooded at certain moments of gameplay.
This is very rare to happen in the campaign, but is exasperated by the menagerie of enemies spawning in the Crucible at the same time on top of all the spell sfx.
A long time ago, we reduced the sound channels in Grim Dawn to 64 as it was observed that the game virtually never reached the 128 limit, which came with a marginal hit in performance.
Since then, the game has been significantly optimized, and the Crucible was released. As such, we will be returning the sound channels to 128 with v1.1.8.0, which should alleviate the issue of sounds not playing.
Missing sound occurs a lot for me in Ugdenbog, when running through the water. The sloshing of your footsteps will suddenly become muted, and randomly resume again, despite remaining in the water the entire time. Maybe this example could be used as a test. Always happens to me when i head from Coven’s Refuge to the Ancient Grove.
Based on what? Our retention rates are above average from my observations.
Hit feedback is obviously something of personal preference. I find white flashes on hits to be rather gamey myself. And while some sfx/fx, especially from the vanilla game, could use improving, it’s ultimately going to be a matter of personal taste.
Well I never could get into TQ much because the feel of hitting something just felt meh. I always went back to D2 but GD has good feel of hitting something. I never played any online aRPG’s so I can’t say anything about them. But from videos what I don’t like about online aRPG’s is that they feel more arcade like. GD is great successor to D2. I just wish that TQ gets remastered in way similar to GD.
