But he is playing Normal and still finds it hard and tedious
Well perhaps there will be less complaints now about FG and AoM being too difficult compare to base game content 
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Except for the fact that, according to Zantai, the state of Veteran wasn’t really intentional. It just kinda happened over time and they didn’t correct the course. Which is interesting because I actually never really questioned Veteran’s trajectory prior to it’s pre-1.1.4.0 state… but I did notice it.
As GD crept ever close to official release back in 2016 I was seeing Veteran grow easier even then. Then as AoM came it seemed even more so. I just figured this was being done intentionally to appease the various whiners about difficulty etc.
Now we know that this wasn’t entirely the case and I am glad to see Veteran resume its former glory again.
As for Normal itself, I honestly don’t much care what they do with it as I never really play it. I can’t see bosses being that much more ‘tedious’ honestly. I’m killing bosses fairly quickly on the new Veteran even. I’m of the mind I could take down Normal bosses rapidly as well. Maybe my next playthru I’ll run one on Normal up to the Warden (and maybe Cronley) and see how it goes. I’m not expecting much tho.
I’m gonna repeat myself: I’m not finding the game any harder, just tedious. I can still kill everything, I still don’t die to anything, it just takes longer for stuff to die, and to ME (my exclusive opinion coming from my brain alone and noone else’s) that’s just boring. It’s not challenging at all and I also don’t get your attempt at trying to belittle a completely personal opinion on a subject that has no objective answer with a ironic oh so funny elitist post mocking “people wanting everything op”. I’ve never said you were wrong to play the game the way you want or wanting mobs to have larger HP pools and damage numbers, nor have I ever been aggressive towards people in this post.
The difficulty, skill wise, is still the same, it’s just spread on a wider time frame.
To cover some other spots, I never found AoM and FG to be harder than the original content, no idea why someone would throw that in here. The game as a whole was completely fine (to ME) as it was, as I could choose between playing it normally and growing or trying harder and going veteran. Now I can’t.
I’m also not saying anything about veteran mode.
The endgame is not what changed, so the same builds will work the same there… the same players will reach the same places.
If it ain’t broken don’t fix it they say. Veteran was broken, but Normal was not
If anything it sounds like if Zantai buffed the early game’s damage more, it would have been harder… and then more fun to you? My tongue-in-cheek point was that if the problem is that you feel it slows down your progress to end-game… skipping normal/veteran was already the fastest way to end-game. That’s all. Starting characters in elite is quite efficient.
Personally I wouldn’t care if normal was unchanged, but man was it mind numbingly easy. As for the bosses getting larger hp pools, I think your perspective is just skewed, that’s all. That just made them more consistent with AoM and FG content, as well as the skill dmg buffs.
I would totally be down to compromise with you though and let normal stay the same, make veteran even harder, and let players apply veteran to elite and ultimate as well.
One also has to consider the new experience as well. You might not personally find the game any harder, but players with 0 Grim Dawn experience will probably find it a more challenging experience. This side is all subjective anyway so there’s not really a right/wrong.
So why care about smth you couldn’t care less? 
As for me do whatever they want as long as that doesn’t touch my gameplay experience even slightly. I don’t play Normal . Never. So why would that bother me if someone likes it numbingly easy?
Normal was broken since AoM and FG content was way much harder than vanilla content relatively speaking.
It is up to the devs, but I guess they do not want their game to be a complete push over even for ARPG rookies. They have their reputation to think about.
I was simply playing devil’s advocate (note the motiff) and explaining why there are good reasons for the change even if some people in this thread don’t enjoy the change personally.
“So why would that bother” don’t need to frame things like this in a design discussion man. It doesn’t bother me, doesn’t have to bother anyone. But that doesn’t mean I agree that keeping it easy is best for the audience. It’s just opinion stuff. Like I said if normal went back and veteran was made even harder that’d be fantastic for a player like myself.
Nobody complained about Normal being too easy. 90% of all player level up and start fresh characters on Veteran anyway
I can find many threads and posts about this actually.
They complained about Veteran mode. Who would stay on Normal if they think it is easy when they can easily switch to Veteran mode?
I really do not have time to dig up all the forum, steam and reddit posts where people complain about normal being too easy. The responses were of course “then play on veteran”
But then we would have the same problem again, AoM and FG content hits like a brick wall since the player is not mentally prepared for the steep increase in difficulty
But the audience got the Veteran difficulty buff. If there were not Veteran difficulty you would be right. Devs then woujld have to decide on difficulty level for all the playerbase. But now there is Normal for reason isn’t it?
The devs are within their right to say “no, you don’t get an experience that is thaaaaaaat easy.” They may view it as coddling the gamer. You can mod to make the game harder or easier, so the base game is implemented, with iterations, around providing an intended kind of experience to the consumer.
This philosophy of, “it’s single-player, so why not let people play it at absolutely any level they want?” is irrational. I don’t know how to make this more logically sound as an argument to you. Why not just incorporate a slider into the base game that scales the monsters’ health then? Why let players die in normal at all?
Again, since this is purely subjective, you can argue either side (harder/easier) till the sun don’t shine. In this case the devs have opted for ensuring there is at least a base level of challenge in normal, that satisfies their vision.
To be 100% clear, I’m not arguing for or against changing normal again. I am arguing against the idea that the dev’s decision was inherently bad, and that keeping normal as easy as it was previously is inherently good. Accessibility might be good for sales but it’s not the end all and be all of game design.
I’ve never said their decision is objectively bad and my vision was objectively good, just stating my experience and being completely clear about it being a subjective opinion. I’ve never tried to even hint at the idea of something being inherently bad here.
I’m not sure you understand - I’m not dying any more than I was before (which was not often) I just find the combat less fun. And mostly against bosses, against whom I find myself kiting more frequently and the fights last longer.
My character in elite is doing fine, though.
I understand. My very first response was poking fun, but my latest response was more to the OP of your thread “I… don’t get it.” It was to explain why the change might be considered good to others even if you don’t like it.
Fair enough.
Still, people once complained it was “too easy”, even though it could be argued it was the devs vision at the time, but that didn’t stop people from giving their feedbacks on the issue.
Now I’m just giving a different feedback about my experience with the leveling pacing (again, being clear, it’s NOT about it being hard, as BelleSorciere said, I’m not dying any more than before, things just take more hits to die), even if it might not fit with their vision of the game at this moment.
The way I see it, and I’m not trying to imply you told me otherwise, both arguments and visions have the same right to be exposed.
PS: It’s probably pretty clear by now but english is not my native language. Just let me know if there’s anything confusing or hard to understand.
I did not mean to come off as dismissive. I probably overreacted a bit to your post and misread the tone as incredulous. My pushback was just so people can read the other side of things within the same thread. I actually empathize with the people who don’t want to skip normal/start in elite, but want to get through normal quickly. Nobody wants the feedback to stop, I suppose I just wish more effort was put into understanding why changes we sometimes don’t like might be implemented.
It’d be nice if people wrote some understanding for a change while still expressing why they disagree with it, but of course sometimes I get that people really don’t understand it. It’s not a big deal either way, Zantai parses through everything well enough.
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