This is probably the most important factor to focus on. Guys let’s just keep playing it!
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A granted skill, or proc, that would auto-switch your weapons sets could be REALLY interesting in some niche builds designed around that mechanic. Man that could open some wacky doors, gets my brain going
I wonder if the last patch will contain some story arc?
It will be epic if we have something that will feel like an ending or … tease to GD 2 
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Zantai said there will be new areas so maybe story as well.
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Is it bad that I would prefer Crate to make TQ2 next? (if that is even possible?)
As much as I have loved my thousands of hours played in GD, I always preferred the settings and the lore of TQ. Grim Dawn is just a bit too, well…Grim.
No matter the direction you take I’m sure I will buy whatever it is you guys decide to make.
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Very unlikely. a) They don’t hold the rights to the game; THQNordic do and b) it’s unlikely that Nordic would ask Crate to make it. Not sure Medierra would want to put up with having to report to others on progress either.
If you want a TQ2 then THQNordic is who you have to appeal to.
Thank you for the link, interesting read 
I thought I could remember THQNordic approaching Crate years ago about making TQ2 for them?
but maybe that’s just my imagination running wild as I still hope one day TQ2 will be made.
Never heard of anything like that, but doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Only Crate knows who approached them about doing projects for them.
I’ve done some hunting as I’m convinced Medierra commented on THQ approaching him about TQ2 at the time THQ bought the rights to Titan Quest. I think from memory he said that with the first expansion being made they simply didn’t have time but it was a possibility in the future. It looks like it’s all been lost when the forum changed software sadly. Also the THQ forums have been closed so the thread discussing it has also gone.
All I can find is an old forum link in my post history that gives a dead link unless somebody can make it work:
I think the link I gave went to the thread discussing TQ2 but can’t be sure.
Well, I did a search for both TQ2 and Titan Quest 2 for Medierra comments and found nothing so only thing I can think of is, if it did exist, it was in a thread that was purged from the forum when we changed platforms last year. Some were removed since they were considered obsolete, etc.
Only thing I did find was him talking about them having a prototype TQ2 at Iron Lore.
isn’t that exactly what happened some years back and Crate turned it down because they were busy with GD ?
Don’t see Crate being open to it now either though
I don’t know. I guess only Zantai or big M can tell us if they were approached to do it.
Yeah this is how I remember it as well. They were approached to work on TQ and turned it down because of GD, now with finalizing GD, starting the city builder and mystery projects 1+2 (2 right?), I think they have more than enough on their plate. I seriously doubt anything TQ related will come from Crate when they have their own successful IP that doesn’t require working under a publisher like THQNordic.
Yes, two other projects; one Grava’s working on, the other Zantai is.
Plus working on GD updates and patches and the Xbox port (and the city builder, of course)
When you consider it - that’s a huge amount of different things going on in the mix for a 13 person team. medierra wasn’t joking when he said he’d like to try to ensure he had enough work to keep everyone busy at all times. Looks like he figured out how to make that happen.
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Just adding this that big M posted in a Steam thread.
"Man, this thread… no need to get all heated over game discussion. Not like anything said here is going to hurt GD’s feelings.
Why are we not just jumping on GD2 - for one thing, I’ve been making ARPGs for like 18 years and I need a break. I think also to really improve upon GD and compete with D4 and whatever PoE is doing next, we’ll need to make a big investment and have some fresh ideas. We’ll also need to either overhaul our engine or jump into Unreal or whatever. On that topic, someone mentioned going to Unreal, which would certainly almost guarantee great graphics… however, ARPGs require some special consideration when it comes to engine architecture and Unreal is not natively designed for that type of performance. The tools are also not great for an ARPG. We’d have to do some engine work and a lot of tool work and after that, we’d be starting from scratch in terms of ARPG combat / features. It would be a lot less work to overhaul GD.
Also, 5% engine fee would be millions of dollars and it’s not like we can just assume in advance we’ll get some sort of offer for an exclusive that is worth enough to offset, which I am doubtful would be the case.
On the other hand…“But GD is an old engine and…” Do you know how old Unreal is?! Part of what has kept up from making major graphics updates to GD is that we are burdened with having to support the specs we put out years ago, for older directX versions and operating systems. We can’t just update the game in a way that will break it for existing users who have to play on older machines. A jump to a sequel though gives us an opportunity to start fresh, cut support for older shader models and directX versions, hardware specs, and allow us to greatly modernized the engine. If you scrap the renderer and start over there, it’s not like the age of whatever you keep matters - it’s basically like a new engine. Beyond the engine component, we have an entire ARPG codebase we can then use, which cuts out a ton of work. Even if we go in a direction drastically different from GD, there are a lot of fundamentals to ARPG gameplay that take time to program and get working just right. It would be easier and lower risk to start from a point of being able to say “what do we want to change, cut, add” to an existing codebase.
Not sure what direction we’ll go in terms of engine but it’s not a straightforward choice. There are big pros and cons either way.
GD is also still doing quite well - last year was our highest earning year by far and this year it looks like we’re on track to meet or exceed revenue from 2016, when GD released.
As someone pointed out above, we have no investors or publisher and I am the sole owner, so you can imagine I’m doing pretty okay and my biggest motivation is not to maximize profits at this point. And really, that’s great for fans because chasing profits often leads to decisions that are not beneficial for players.
Why a town builder? Well, I loved the genre when I was younger and I’ve always wanted to make one. I also wanted to take a break from such content-heavy games as ARPGs and do something that was more pure gameplay. I also think it is almost guaranteed to break even and will probably make a pretty nice profit. I also wouldn’t say town builders don’t sell - just look at Banished, which has sold around 2m copies. Sure, no town builder has numbers like the Diablo franchise but there isn’t actually a lot of competition in that genre compared to ARPGs. We have two huge competitions with Diablo and PoE, plus various smaller ones, and ARPG players will often stick to a game for years. Wolcen was lucky to release when they did but if we start on GD2, it’s very likely, we’ll be releasing alongside the next Diablo (again) and whatever PoE does next.
One thing I think a lot of people fail to consider when they look at financial success of games is the development cost. Sales don’t directly equal profit - profit is what you’re left with once you deduct dev costs from sales revenue. So there is something to be said for a project that maybe has lower sales potential but also has a much lower development cost. As far as this city builder goes, we won’t need to sell that many copies to break even, so I think we’re almost guaranteed to make a nice profit on it.
Finally, while we do intend to return to GD in the future, we don’t want to be a one-trick pony. There is definite value and stability in establishing multiple successful franchises vs. just churning out the same game year after year, hoping people don’t get tired of it. The idea that a developer who made ARPGs can only make ARPGs is a very publisher-like sentiment. We ran into this very skepticism when we pitched Titan Quest and the problem then was - we were known as RTS designers. Yep, at Iron Lore, Brian Sullivan and myself only had experience on RTS and publishers weren’t sure we could manage to make a successful ARPG. Now you’re telling me I can’t make a strategy game and have to stick with ARPG?! Haha, not sure I want to know what you’d say then if we told you what else we were working on…
Anyway, sorry no GD2 yet but hope that answers some of your questions. Don’t worry, we’re not about to go bankrupt anytime in the foreseeable future. We’ll get back to GD before too long."
“Haha, not sure I want to know what you’d say then if we told you what else we were working on…”
Well, you won’t find out until you tell us now will you. 
Come on big M, spill the beans.
If you won’t do that (and no I don’t really expect you to) just give us more info about the town builder. Is it close to being released? Will it ever be released?
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On medierras comment:
Are Diablo 4/PoE really competitors, though? From my perspective Grim Dawn is a unicorn of a game done by a unicorn company. It is an unapologetically singleplayer focused ARPG with deep gameplay mechanics, exceptional build diversity, a lot of content and great ongoing support by the devs. I don’t see any game that can compete with this right now because the aforementioned ARPGs and other ARPGs currently in development have a different focus, which is online play.
I personally don’t like online-focused ARPGs because they usually come with this underlying pressure of competing and keeping up with what’s the meta right now, sometimes even combined with sketchy mechanics, systems and events to keep the player interested in playing the game. Right now Grim Dawn has its own niche and it seems to work quite well for Crate. Obviously there is a market for a game like Grim Dawn that is not focused around stuff pretty much every other ARPG does at the moment.
I see it like this:
Technically any game occupying the “diablo-like” market is a competitor by virtue of but technically Grim Dawn can get away with “snubbing” them and pretending they don’t exist as competition since it’s the only currently active one occupying the “offline & moddable” diablo-like market. Their closest competitor for that particular portion of the market would be Torchlight 2 but we all know how that ended and Torchlight 3 has veered away from all that.
I guess I should add that Titan Quest is also technically competition as a result but in my honest opinion the recent work Pieces/Nordic has done doesn’t come close to what Crate has done with GD, which outclasses TQ completely.
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yeah, pretty much this. And it seems to work just great so far. The numbers are good for GD, especially considering the fact that Crate doesn’t need to rent a server farm to keep GD going.
There are other games like Chaosbane but it’s lackluster in basically every aspect. Which is kind of a common theme when it comes to more SP-focused ARPGs. Something that sets Grim Dawn apart yet again.
I never played through Torchlight 2 because, judging by the design of the areas and levels, the game was already heavily tilted towards an online-focused game where it felt like they just got rid of that concept at the last minute. Giant areas with multiple entrances to dungeons that had basically no coherent connection whatsoever made the game feel like a chore to play through. T2 also had the reputation of being generally unbalanced class-wise. I enjoyed Torchlight 1, though.
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It doesn’t help that they also never really supported T2 post release anywhere near the level Crate has done with GD.
What ultimately completely turned me off of the Torchlight series tho was the graphical style… I just couldn’t stomach the kiddie style anymore and needed something a bit more “grown-up”.
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