Grim Misadventure #203 - Obsidian Lore

Several Kurn have looked larger to me than the player character if you stand close. Makes sense, for barbarians.

Yes please, esp. since these Characters are already in the Game (and loading screen) i always found it somewhat criminal that we didn’t get a chance to get their Fashion/Armor… always thought maybe you wanna bundle it up in a Loyalist Pack someday (bryscilla atleast) - and ngl, even tho the shown LP4 designs are nice, i’m quite disappointed that we still didn’t get her outfit (or the Kurn-Boss one)…

Agree, one can dream i guess. Maybe we are lucky (but i don’t believe so) and we can grind/earn them with the upcoming Roguelike Dungeons…

In terms of fashion, I would be happy if you would also consider the Invisible Illusion for the weapon slot.

That would be hilarious indeed. It also wouldn’t let you dip into Implements of War, although it could have a modifier for it and work all the same?! Oh yes, YES!!! Pierce/Bleed could really use some support.

Awesome news, and the Loyalist Pack seems very cool as well. PTR is already underway, so let’s go!

Dear mr Zantai

Since there’s still things being added to the game, would you mind adding a Poison/Acid conversion to AAR? It could be a prefix on the Conduit of Arcane Whispers so you guys don’t need to add a new item to the table. That Plague Doctor skin is begging for it.

Thank you very much for your attention.

how do you put this image to load like that?

Mindless tweaks and fixes. I spent dozens of hours getting this build ready, and now you’ve ruined it with this patch? For ten years the summoner bugs were left untouched, and you fix them now? If you want to drive players away, just say it outright.

For some reason thought that the year is 2025 and we don’t have any more misadventures until next year.

Still, no Misadventure in October makes the next one seem more promising. Can’t wait to see how Fel Orcs look like in GD.

Pets completely disregarded swathes of incoming damage, finally explaining why it was so obnoxiously difficult to balance them all this time, and you’re upset this bug is being fixed?

Truly, we’ve reached peak levels of whining.

Is such strict balancing really necessary for a PVE‑only game? They ignored a bug for ten years and only fixed it now. Isn’t this clearly messing with players? It completely goes against established logic and player habits. Why would I play a single‑player game if it isn’t fun? Right now pets die immediately after leaving town; how are we supposed to play? What’s more, on China’s largest gaming community, lots of people are complaining about issues with pets and WPS. This has been players’ established habit for a whole decade. WPS was supposed to be a new direction for the DLC, and players built plenty of character builds around it. Now they’ve nerfed it completely. There is no point in saying more. Do whatever you want.

Yes, people care and it matters a whole lot for a game you are expected to keep playing after the first run through.

This isn’t some single playthrough RPG. This is a loot game where many people measure fun by “loot per minute” and if something is way out of line, it causes people to gravitate to it or disregard other options as “trash” and the game begins to suffer from a reputation as “lacking build variety”.

We weren’t aware of this bug until very recently. Ironically, several players stumbled upon it around the same time and knowledge of it was beginning to spread.

The fix wasn’t supposed to even go out in the first build, but programmers snuck it in on me. So yes, the tuning is unfinished. This is a playtest, things change, often quickly.

It’s still only a playtest (no patch has gone live) We still have time before needing to panic, things will likely change anyway

A bug that has persisted for 10 years can no longer be called a bug. It has become a default setting, something that has gradually taken root. This action cannot be described as fixing a bug. Instead, it changed 100 damage immunity to 80. This is how the nature of this matter can be defined. Please give it some thought.

Adding to this.

Even after it goes live, it’s best for people to play the actual production patch before complaining.

7-8 years ago, I remember having a meltdown because the patch notes made it seem like they nerfed Fire Strike (or maybe it was all DARs). I don’t remember the details but the build actually played better once I upgraded to the patch.

Also, if people do feel like their builds were unfairly punished. They can always make a case for it. As someone who used to spend an unhealthy amount of time on the vBulletin forum, I’ve seen the devs be very receptive to feedback.

That’s not how bugs work. Let’s not try to redefine meaning of established software development terms to suit a narrative.

If you’re still on the play-test version, I recommend waiting for the actual patch.

If you’re interested in providing some detailed feedback, it’d be better to take this discussion to the play-test subforum or the Ideaa and Feedback subforum. This is a Misadventure thread, your feedback is bound to get buried here.

@medea_fleecestealer Sorry to trouble you, but does Discourse support branching threads out.

To think some people kept asking for more pet buffs over all these years while benefiting tremendously from such a blatantly unintended bug is so hilarious. To know there are people who’d whine about it being fixed is even more so.

Well it hasn’t really taken root, because many people didn’t know about it, and now I know about it for the first time it immediately feels weird. I’m having a level 75 character right now and I know that if i want to I can easily make my pets completely immune to elemental dmg. I can’t make it immune to everything at the same time because my character is too low level for that, but against specific bosses moving resists around feels a bit like cheating and also bad for the gameplay if you can optimize like that.

Overall its better to have it fixed and compensated with generic buffs.

To be fair…

To say that the devs were not aware of this feels a bit weird…

Maybe Z didn’t realize that the resistance didn’t cap at 80%, but people also had legit reason to assume that pets were working as intended until now.

That’s fine. My comment was directed at the wording used by the commenter. It wasn’t meant to shoot down legitimate concerns about the viability of pet builds.

Was there a real need to fuck with grenado? Now it feels like BWC minus AoE. Super clunky and annoying.

I really hate this Argument, because it’s just so shortsighted and ignoran.
“It’s PvE Only?” “It’s Singleplayer-Only” - like that this point really does matter in the overall context. You’ll have Games which may not need to care much about Balancing, but these Games are often chaotic messy games, but for them it doesn’t even matter if it’s PvE, PvP, Solo or MP, it just works for them. In an Saints Row 3 it’s completly irrelevant if you have some weird weapons which are chaotic and outshine ‘Pistols’ and what not. For an (as Zantai mentioned) for an Single-Playtrhough RPG ti can be less relevant, because it also can add an flexible alternative way of difficulty and it’s a purely personalized experience anyway, where often stuff like Narrative and Campaign is more at focus then Build-Poissbilities and what not.

But for an longterm game with high replaybility like a Grim Dawn, shitting on Balance can detrimental for bleeding players, because it works agains the core experience the very Genre defines and this game in particular. You can’t simply make a Game where the whole Point and Core of a Gameplay-Experience is to gathering randomly loot with Stats, trying to figuring out synergies and min-max on that, amplified by alting/twinking (multiple chars); and then have outlier aspects which completly destroys the loop.

“Yeah but then just don’t use it”.
Oh yeah, can’t wait for a Gran Theft Auto to drop with broken driving Mechanics and people telling others “oh if you don’t like it, don’t use it”. This Argument only works for Elements which truly are purely optional and doesn’t effect the experience in a meaningfull way, but something which defines the actual experience, that’s not simple as “just ignore it”. ‘Oh let’s build a genre which is build around that you pick the best possible stuff…’ ‘Oh not that one, ignore it, because it’s not just best, but actual broken’.
And the thing is, that’s not just that alone, it is a snowballing thing which effects everything, now devs need to concern about enemy and difficulty balancing. Focusing on the outliers → normal build underperform shoehorning people into using the broken builds. Focusing on the ‘standard’, people still get shoehorned into using thebroken ones for most effeciancy, not to mention that it devalues their builds because no matter how much thought and effort htey put in their builds do, they are vastly outshined because of lack of balance.

But yeah the solution is always to ignore it, and we’ve never seen how it went. LIke Borderlands 4: Let aside all the other issues which it have, it’s already telling that even the ones who sticked with the game gradually get more frustrated when GBX neglect Balancing. What use is the vastly enhanced evolved Skilltree, if you pretty much have only a few right paths to go with because the rest is shit? One correct way to play the class. For a Concept like ‘SKILLTREES’ which are meant to give you various meaning full choices to pick from to define different playstyles, if your playstyle get screwed over by imbalance.

That’s not to say everything needs to be homogenized or perfect, that’s not to say there isn’t some stuff which can be weaker or stronger, but it needs within a range that it doesn’t feel or factually play much worse/better then others. It’s not to say everything needs to work with everything, nobody shouldn’t care about proper point distribution and synergies… but if you build properly you shouldn’t be punished or your build bad in comparison because certain systems are bugged, broken, overtuned. Balance ‘can’ be important in an PvE Only Game, and it certainly ‘IS’ important in a Game (and Genre) which prides itself on Build Variety.
But hey you advocate for Balancing isn’t important. Then i suggest Crate to buff wind devils and what not to one-shot any enemy no matter their HP, Defense whatever. If it outperforms your Pet build, why does it bother you? You don’T need to use it and it’s a PvE only Game? Right?