They bug me a little. The main quest seems laid out on rails. All the way to the Warden the main quest objectives are just off the road, reliably in the same place. If one follows the objectives the game is a very repetitive, linear experience, differing only by the item drops…so far. However there are caves and other things off the road. The cave locations spawn semi randomly, but the Easter eggs are always in the same place, and always drop the same rare leveled loot. Further, if I played the game based on the objectives, i would never have any reason to leave the road, and no incentive to explore the area.
Now the devs obviously want us to explore the areas, but given that after doing it once i already know exactly where everything will be and exactly what I will get for the effort, after doing it once I cant see any reason to do it again. Sure there are rare monsters out there, and some of them are part of bounty quests, but others, like the rat in the Old Dump, are just there, in a cave, that i have no reason to dive in to.
Lastly, and probably the most infuriating part, is that these things are out to encourage exploration, but if I do go ahead and cover the whole area i very quickly out level the area. Clearing the areas ensures you will out level everything all the way to Burwitch, which i believe reduces the quality of the drops. So in a way it’s like saying, we want you to explore our beautiful world, but we are going to punish you if you do.
The thing that makes games like this repayable is that after doing it once you know whats ahead of you, but you don’t know where it will be or what you will find along the way. The lack of real incentive to leave the road makes exploring the area a chore, and with no objective to take you to some of the caves and remote areas(where you are sure to find the same loot you found last time), those little hidden things seem tacked on without any real purpose in the game.
So you found the Hidden Path all alone? And your way to The Edge Of Reality all alone as well?
EDIT: Also, games in this style are not, at all, replayed for the story, or the environment. They’re replayed for the builds. That should be pretty dang clear, given they visibly spent more than three times the effort on items and skills, compared to the story and the environment combined. The story’s quality, don’t get me wrong… But they spent way more times on the builds.
Of course the main quest is on rails, it’s the main storyline of a CRPG. Of course there’s a lot of stuff in the same place, if the game had to randomly generate a location for every boss, cave, quest mob and quest location in the world, it would take all day just to load. Of course you’re gonna outlevel the zone if you do a full clear of every corner and turn in every quest, because if you didn’t it would be functionally mandatory and level grinding is boring as hell for the vast majority.
The actual thing that makes the game replayable is that there’s a lot of places where you can make a different choice and have it affect the game world. There’s a shitload of customization of your character to be done as well, and as such a ton of different play styles to be had. Hunting down randomly placed caves is not what I or most people call “a good time”.
Sounds like what you’re looking for isn’t Grim Dawn. You want Minecraft, or maybe No Man’s Sky. Something you can wander around the game world and make up quests of your own and faff about without any real direction.
… CRPG? No, I’ve played CRPGs, and this has far less reading involved. And far less choice, for that matter, since your only choices are “Do/Don’t this thing that will make a cosmetic change” and “Which faction do you support?” Tyranny is a CRPG, you can make tons of choices, and totally screw yourself over in the process. The storyline is also specifically NOT on rails, allowing you to choose how and who to accomplish the main goal with.
This, is an ARPG. The story, while quality, is not the point. The builds are.
Ah, good to see the nitpicker is here with a freshly sharpened razor to split the finest of hairs. This RPG played on a Computer? No no, not a CRPG! :rolleyes:
I was a “map-clearer” predominantly during EA and when the game was first released.
Not sure about Normal, but on normal veteran "You will not out-level the content by clearing the entire map. You will certainly out-level certain zones (if you keep heading back to Act 1) for example but enemies end-game on normal veteran get right up to level 60+.
The main game if you’re a map-clearer will have you finishing normal veteran around level 58ish. If you rush through and complete every quest but not bother clearing the entire map, you’ll still clear normal veteran around 50+.
Personally, I hate exploration. I feel the older I get the less inclined I am to want to explore. I prefer linearity and progressing with the story. One of the things that I really found off-putting in EA was the way Act 2 was designed. There were all these paths that went around in circles and eventually led to roughly the same spot. Hell you could even skip the “Cronley” fight entirely by taking another path. I’m glad it was changed to be a bit more linear. Act 2 is actually my favourite act in the game in it’s current format.
Yeah, the game is pretty linear. What’s even worse is that the game USED to be more open - Cronley’s Dungeon and Old Arkovia were optional side dungeons just off the beaten path in EA - now most of the content is mandatory, which means that A) there’s less optional places to adventure and B) the main game is far too long, which becomes a big problem with multiple playthroughs and difficulty levels.
GD would have benefited from a much shorter main campaign, with much of the currently mandatory content as optional content instead.
Give me one example of a choice with a meaningful consequence in GD, where the impact on the world itself is actually tangible. I’m talking about choices where there are two or more different outcomes, and there’s no clear-cut “correct” answer.
The game forces you to be a goody-two-shoes or else you miss out on vendors and factions, so any “kill them!” choice is “wrong”. Many choices are simply “do it / do good thing” (correct) or “don’t do it / do bad thing” (wrong). The faction choice in Homestead is binary and nothing more than “which stats do you want?”; neither faction has a meaningful impact on the world itself beyond which one you fight in certain regions.
Long-term consequences don’t exist (those two people you saved on the road? You’ll never see them again after turning the quest in; they just sit around doing nothing in DC!), there are no branching paths or multiple endings, you won’t make a decision in the early game and have it affect something in the late game (the only event like this is if you decide to kill Isaiah Reddan, and his daughter confronts you on the bridge up ahead…unfortunately this is a short-term consequence and a “wrong” decision since you lose a vendor in Homestead. GD could have used more decisions similar to this, where characters you save appear in later areas of the game and do something useful). Consequences are short-term at best, which makes it difficult to feel like my actions are having a serious impact on the world; This ain’t a CRPG or Megami Tensei.
^Sums up the quests very well. This is my main gripe with GD’s quests, they are too superficial.
Allies? The “allied” faction doesn’t have any concrete impact. Now, maybe if you could summon Iron Maiden/Zantarin for one minute at Revered by using 1000 rep points?
I read the forum header, said I was free to nitpick essentially, so i entered with full intentions of doing so.
I like the game people, its fantastic actually, so don’t get your panties in a wad, no one is criticizing you by suggesting something you like is less than perfect. I have done the first run to Burwitch several times just trying classes and different approaches to see what i like best. Just saying, a mission to cleanse the shrines would give a reason to take that right path in Wightmire, or someone crying about the fate poor Ghavlin who didn’t return from his expedition and not having his body spawn in the same spot each time, there are only some 20 camps on the road and out in the wilderness, any other could do. And hell, will a little roll of the dice on the loot each time you could bet I would look for him every time.
Honestly I more or less agree that choice and consequence in GD is largely inconsequential. While it probably sounded nice back in the KS days it probably became rapidly apparent to Crate that they bit off more than they could chew to implement such a system in a game sub-genre that I feel is actively incompatible with choice/consequence without allocating a large team to the task (a very complex task that does better with multiple story arcs and endings, requiring much more work and art, storyline, npc’s, tweaking and bugfixing). The diablo-like game style does not endear itself to the Mass Effect approach well. Anything less than full commitment and resources to the mechanic will always leave it feeling superficial. With the team as small as it was over much of development we would probably still be waiting on the game to release if they decided to go all in on this.
This is where I have always felt you are way too hard on the choice they ended up making here. Cronley should never have been optional to begin with in my opinion (and I’m not so sure you should even be able to bypass the Warden either, speed-runners/levelers be damned) and I feel they made the right choice by changing this. Arkovian Undercity however is open to heavier interpretation. While they did put it right in the players path with the change it actually still is partially optional (Note: I am not referring, of course, to the Arkovia area at large. Just the Undercity). Players can easily just dip in and out and continue on their way if they wish.
The downside is that new players might not immediately recognize this alternative and be left thinking that they absolutely must complete it right then. In my case I always do as I go thru for the shrine and because it is easy to me no matter the build or level thanks to my experience. The beginner may not have the same outlook and preparation of course.
I get where you are coming from. You feel Crate reneged on their KS/pre-KS promises of what the game would be. You have been taking shots at them for quite awhile now (since the Cronley change) over it and I get it.
But I can see why they did it and overall I agree it was for the best. That’s my thinking on it anyway.
I quite like the game actually. I have done the first run to Burwitch several times just trying classes and different approaches to see what i like best. The game this brings to my mind is Diablo, and as I recall every time i entered that dungeon it was slightly different. Its not the linearity of it, the static nature of where objectives appear. Not saying the world needs to be randomly generated, thought that would be nice if it were possible, just needs for the objectives to be off the main path a little and not in the same place each time. That way you don’t have to explore the whole map each time, but over the course of several runs you will. As it is you sweep a large area and once you have found everything you found it forever, save for a few cave locations, most of which present no obvious compelling reason to seek out.
For instance, the Rover prisoner in the cave both gives you the quest and completes the quest. Why not the other Rovers who give the Sith quest? Why aren’t they asking me to find their lost companion who was kidnapped? “We think the convicts are hiding somewhere in the area”. See, now I have a compelling reason to roam around. Then the Sith quest could be given as a reward, except I have to fight a hoard of sith who drop amulets like crazy just to get to the Rovers and I have finished the quest before i meet them. There is no effort to invent ways to creatively constrain you until it is time to seek the quest objective, and that makes the experience haphazard and lacking focus. Even something as simple and not dropping amulets until you get the quest from the Rovers.
Also, like Ghavlins Crossbow. It, like the Rovers, is only found by compulsively trying to clear the gray on the map. You didn’t stumble on it because you took a wrong turn, and nothing indicated you should go looking there except for a compulsive need to clear the gray from the map, and once you found it there is no need to ever go out that far again, because there is no real objective there. That compulsive clearing is only fun once or twice, but if a quest giver told me that Ghavlin was lost in the woods at a random location and i got a random rare “Ghavlin’s LOOT” from it, i would happily scour the wilderness each time. Now I have another compelling reason to roam around.
There are at least a dozen things like this on the way to Burwitch that seem to be tacked on content. They reward you for exploring but make little sense in the context of the game. Why should you stumble on the guy in the cage in the sith camp when you are on an important mission to Burwich, unless something pulls your attention toward it?
Gavlin’s Crossbow as well as the other static Green’s in the beginning areas was added during testing awhile back (I can’t remember right now which version, before release maybe?) when I commented to the devs that it would be nice if we we had set starter Greens of other weapon types for beginners in the starting area(s). At that point all we had was lonely lil Francis’ Gun
(and Isaac’s Spaulders), this seemed like an obvious disparity to me that needed to be rectified.
Shortly after I made this comment they apparently listened to this small bit of feedback and a subsequent test build was stocked with new starter Greens.
You can blame me for that then I guess. Adding tons of extra quests seems uneeded for something that just adds a little extra flavor and a nice boost, we already see some people from time to time complain about “all” the quests they have in their queue’s as it is.
I guess sometimes devs just can’t win no matter what they do. It’s like a nightmare version of Choose Your Own Adventure where absolutely no matter which path you go there is always going to be someone not particularly pleased with your choice. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t as they say in Ancient Chinese Secret language.
Because he actually has better quality gear available than the other merch. My advice… always grab him. XP is nice too.
Yer just Joe Schmoe wandering the land, doing what you do, thankful to be yourself again and trying to forget the rope burns on your neck that Jarvis still wants to see go Snap! Dude needs to get himself a woman.
I quite like the current distribution of objectives and things to find, if every inch of the game world was filled with “essential” stuff it’d eventually feel like work having to get it all every single time. I’m fine with a lot of places just being there to look pretty and having nothing more than a crappy chest or two, it makes it seem like more of a believable world than one where every other path leads to an objective/shrine/one-shot chest placed there just for the player.
I think the important thing is that completing every quest in a playthrough will take you to around 90-95% of the named locations in the game (and even if you just stick to the main quest it’s still a fairly high percentage), and that’s enough for me without forcing me to clear the entire map every single time as well. Being able to choose my own path through an area and skip things I don’t necessarily want or need as I go along is a nice bit of freedom that I feel like I’d lose if every other branch in the road had something unmissable at the end of it.
Regarding choices and consequences…I’m hoping that Act 5 doesn’t fiddle with choices I made earlier too much. I have a huge list of characters that saved Anasteria and I don’t want the game to suddenly turn around and go “well, sucks to be you, because Act 5 reveals you should have killed her for this new and even better reward, now all your characters are worse than they could have been had you chosen otherwise a year ago when nobody but the devs knew better”. :eek:
I agree with the game’s choices not really making any large impact
And I also agree that Cronley’s quest being main makes sense since our main purpose wasn’t to wake up and save the world but rather earn our keep at DC.
Cronley being their major enemy makes him a mandatory boss imo
I do however would like more meaningful side quests which when dodged can have dire consequences.
Some side quests with actual story impact would be nice
Like I personally like the New Harbor questline, if you fuck up you end up orphaning the children.
But i have to agree with you such “complex” side quests demand resources. And there’s always an option for Grim Dawn II which can improve upon what was missing
That’s my hope as well. I would like to see more complex involvement, relationships, story in a GD2 as well as the more open ended, open world aspects that Xeilua has been so upset about. I’m more forgiving because I understand that they may have overreached their vision and were brought up short and instead forced to live within their means.
medierra has long said that he has always been careful with funds to make sure they weren’t left high and dry during development like the trap many indies have fallen into. With their success I hope that when they feel ready to tackle the genre again that the budgeting holds true throughout and they have all the room they need to do exactly that.
If things go well over that time they may even have enough capital to rival Triple A production levels. At the very least they should be able to raise the bar significantly.
Don’t spend it all on yachts medierra. At least get Rhis one too I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen Rhis constantly logging in and out of GD, bug testing all damn night.
Making Cronley optional makes no sense. They are the main threat to Devil’s Crossing and it was all made worse by you fixing the bridge to DC because now they can just round up a large group of people and conquer DC. Thankfully Crate changed this.
I’m fine to a certain extent with Arkovian Undercity being mandatory. Then again, only half of the first floor is mandatory, so it’s not like the developers are forcing you to go fight Kilrian. You can easily just leave him for later.
Personally, I can’t say I’ve ever seen an open world I valued. Mostly they just seem to be pretty scenery, and an occasional side quest. Those side quests also seem to inevitably be either a total waste of time, or near-mandatory for whatever the reward is, making it basically a main quest. If I wanted pretty pictures, I’d go to an art museum.
Maybe if an open world game somehow managed to not do either thing, then I’d be more appreciative.
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen Rhis constantly logging in and out of GD, bug testing all damn night.