Leveling new characters becomes tedious and frustrating after n characters

While I see potential usefulness in Crucible tokens for campaign, it doesn’t really solve the issue of slow leveling (they would be nice to have, though). I would appreciate the consumable, though.

Making people moist is like the sole reason people get into the game industry, so that’s good I suppose!

Looks at posts

+1 to difficulty tokens, would legitimately try a level 1 ultimate run for shits and giggles.

seriously you guys are all weird sometimes.

reads through thread So I’m not crazy, GD really is a bore to play through over and over and over. We need to keep talking about this so that some changes can be made to make playing through the game as much fun as character building. Remove a playthrough. Add world shortcuts. That mandate idea that gives new characters +100% EXP is a good idea (I wonder if we can somehow make it so that multiple capped characters could individually contribute to a stacking bonus, with a cap at maybe 5 or 10 chars?).

Borderlands 1 did that, and it was freaking perfect (which is why I suggested the exact same thing awhile back). No third playthrough nonsense, everything just gets harder once you reach the final boss room. GD desperately needs this; 3 playthroughs per character in a long, linear game that encourages you to make 20+ characters is absurd.

inb4 “people already have characters with Ultimate rewards so it can’t be done”. In a game with mods and cheaters… :rolleyes:

Yeah, the new standard for leveling characters is going to make the expansion content mandatory, because of new devotion shrines. Sure, you can jump right into the next difficulty right after beating Log as Zantai stated, but who in their right mind is going to skip shrines that are easier/cheaper/faster to activate than the Elite ones?

It might boring to you but at the same time is not boring to me. Don’t try to pass it as a fact.

Funny that in Borderlands 2 they added a third playthrough because people bitched that the first game was too short.

I honestly don’t care if they remove a playthrough or not. As long they don’t do that crap Nordic did in Torchlight 2 where the game is only one playthrough but then the game either gives you the choice of repetitive as hell grinding through “random” dungeons or just go through New Game+.

What I’m suggesting would have literally 0 impact on those that have no issue with the current speed of leveling. I also never stated anything as a fact.

My post was directed at Xeliua.

Oh, my bad. :rolleyes:

You suggestion seems fine and i’d actually use it if it was implemented.

I guess this is one of the cases where Crate wants this to be this way and if you want to change it, you can use mods. If people agree or disagree it’s up to them.

I have a slightly different take. Levelling my earlier characters was fun and I enjoyed playing the content and pushing for gear etc and slower progression to Ultimate (though I still only have a L78 as my highest amongst 30+ builds).

Where I find the problem is that the more characters I create, the further they move away from being ‘strong’ - i.e. odd damage type combinations etc. This is fine through Normal as I can disable Veteran and still progress reasonably fast. It becomes a problem in Elite though, and I imagine more so in Ultimate.

Even though I’m playing with ‘fun’ builds I still don’t want them to be ‘slow,’ as I’ve been through that experience with early chars. I want a fairly smooth levelling process through to Ultimate and I think the best way really is for Veteran/Normal versions of Elite/Ultimate (unlockable after first Ultimate clear perhaps). I can push the ‘interesting’ builds through on ‘normal Elite/Ult’ and push my mains/stronger builds through Veteran.

In other words, it’s a chore because progression slows too much in the higher difficulties (i.e. needs far more grind) due to builds being not as strong. I don’t want to grind these builds, I want to just see where they end up and grind once there if I’m still having fun.

So many of my builds stop after Normal or Act1 Elite because I’m faced with having to go farm to progress, and when I’m not confident the build will still be fun towards L85, that prospect isn’t so appealing. I don’t think there’s a progression problem so long as a build is strong enough to clear Ultimate reasonably fast and stay alive, but the ‘easier leveling process’ imo should not be available straight out of the gate, hence an ‘unlocked normal mode’ at Ultimate completion.

you can find a handful of people who will agree on this for any game, in fact I’d say this is true for every game after a while.

We need to keep talking about this so that some changes can be made to make playing through the game as much fun as character building. Remove a playthrough. Add world shortcuts.

not sure how that helps, that just means you need to grind more in the end, which is the ultimate bore

I am on the opposite end of others in this thread, I like starting new chars, it is once leveling slows down in Elite and Ultimate that it becomes somewhat boring.
I also do not see much build-unlocking gear, sure there is BiS, but it usually is just better than the other gear, not different, so by level 60 my builds are pretty much how they will be at level 80 too, not drastically different

Yeah, the new standard for leveling characters is going to make the expansion content mandatory, because of new devotion shrines. Sure, you can jump right into the next difficulty right after beating Log as Zantai stated, but who in their right mind is going to skip shrines that are easier/cheaper/faster to activate than the Elite ones?

as there are more shrines in vanilla GD than you get devotion points, there is no need to go through the new act for them, it’s not like it is particularly hard to unlock them in Elite or Ultimate…

I understand that dedicated players who wish to roll many characters want shortcuts and I think there are ways to accommodate that without breaking everything fundamental about the game. But the game is a bore to play through over and over? Let’s be realistic a second. This is a $25 game that already has about 40 hours of non-repeated content. 80% of players don’t finish games at all (not just GD). Grim Dawn is actually doing pretty good at about 24.5%. A fraction of that wants to play further to reach the “endgame”.

A single playthrough that rises in difficulty all the way up to the “max” means that the average player who now wishes to see the full story has to be skillful enough to overcome such a challenge. Not good enough? Too bad, you can’t see the ending! Watch it on Youtube, scrub.

This might work for PoE as they are focused on Ladders/Seasons, the hardcore crowd. Grim Dawn is a singleplayer experience that is approachable by a variety of skill levels. You’ll probably be surprised that we got complaints about Normal being too difficult.

Cut Elite? Hypothetically doable at this point with changes to game balance and scaling difficulty, though older characters ending up with an extra skill/attribute point is a very real concern. Simply saying fuck you to new players/characters is not an option as they would feel cheated compared to the game’s “veterans”. To even considering cutting Elite, we would have to create some way to check older characters for whether they did particular quests on Elite, then offer additional rewards to new characters on Ultimate that these characters would not have. All code work that would need to be done in addition to the balance/tuning, time spent away from adding new content.

We already spend a massive amount of time providing content for those that play the game through to the level cap. Frankly, from a business perspective, it’s illogical, but we find that fun, many of you guys on the forum find that fun, and so it’s supported and rewarded. We try to keep the endgame relatively balanced and we introduce new prizes to seek on a regular basis. In some cases, like the Hidden Path quest line, new and old players alike benefit.

As I said earlier in this thread, I think there are things we can add to give the game’s veterans means to reach the endgame they wish to focus on faster, but don’t expect massive fundamental changes that cater only to the hardcore gamer crowd.

Honestly Grim Dawn has the “highest” levelling progression out of any ARPG that I’ve played. I’m old-school though, back when I played Diablo 2 my highest level character was 84 and then the grind was atrocious.

Grim Dawn doesn’t suffer from that. It can be repetitive, that’s for sure. Any game you’ve invested long hours into gets this way. I suppose I wouldn’t mind if they removed “Elite” difficulty in the expansion.

That’s fair enough. What about the idea of an ‘easier’ mode unlocked on beating Ultimate?

I know that sounds counter-intuitive to players beating the game wanting more challenge, but unlocking a way (i.e. ‘Normal Elite/Ultimate’) to make levelling alt builds faster wouldn’t break anything significantly? Perhaps even if it’s as simple as just removing the resistance penalties, allowing more focus on damage and hence not having to change the overall monster balance…

Note I don’t believe the levelling pace of the first play-through is wrong, because it should be an accomplishment.

That’d be awesome. :slight_smile:

I don’t think massive changes, like cutting a whole difficulty or making the game single playthrough, would benefit the game and it would massively polarize the playerbase (apart from all the coding needed). Such changes are, imo, simply not needed.

Some neat ingame mechanics to ease up leveling for dedicated players will just do the trick.
It also might motivate newer or more casual players to try to reach lvl 85 and create multiple lvl 85 (or lvl 100) chars.

I think some people in this thread just miss the point where kidpid is coming from and get carried away by suggesting more or less complete game overhauls or massive changes. That’s not what we want.
Dedicated players love the game as it is, otherwise we wouldn’t play it as much.

Exp boost consumables and difficulty tokens would be awesome. I do quite like the Normal-Elite-Ultimate multiple playthrough thing, but after 20+ characters it does sometimes feel a bit “ugh”, especially when a lot of the more fun or build-enabling items aren’t available until you’re practically into endgame. Being able to blitz Normal (and possibly even Elite) with extra Exp would definitely help smooth things out a bit, and the potential insanity of taking a Lv1 character into Elite and Ultimate from the beginning sounds crazy enough that I definitely want to give it a shot.

While it’s true that with the xpac you’ll still be able to go straight into Elite and Ultimate right after Act 4, it’d probably end up significantly slowing down your reputation gain/loss for the xpac-exclusive factions, so skipping it might not be the best idea in the long run - though I suppose there are always bounties to help move things along a bit. If people are going to be playing an extra ~40% of the game per playthrough for the sake of faction reputation, that might just end up making the “lower difficulties kind of drag” situation even worse, so speed-things-up-somehow consumables would be even more welcome.

Maybe even Mythical Gazer Man could deliver the super-exp-boost goods. :cool:

you can use editors to give that a shot now :wink:

The game as it is is perfect right now for new people:
-You can either enjoy a casual or making it more difficult (which is actually difficult for first time playing)
-The transmission into later difficulties is almost flawless, since the focus of elite lies in balancing out your gear for resistances and for that you actually have knowledge about crafting components which gives you a lot of resistance (the need to craft silk swatch for a ruined shrine as example)
-It really encourages people to visit old places because now exploring for onshot chests actually rewards you with legendary gear
-Lvling for the next tier of equipment actually encourage you to play

If you reached the highest lvl possible with any character given, imo it shouldn’t be necessary to experience the whole game with the same speed, even with experience gained-gear.

Just as a thought, how about if writs and mandates could be reworked?
-Mandates and Writs keep their base function
-If a character has already a Mandate equipped they can also equip a Writ once the reputation is high enough
-If both writings are equipped, the reputation gained from writs will be transferred to xp instead based on the enemies being slain
-As example for Outcast once you get both Mandate and a Writ, you’ll gain extra reputation AND experience from aetherials and chthonians
-Should be in theory not to hard for being implemented, just have to change the rep gain from writs to exp gain with a simple “if-then line”, if mandates are equipped (of course making sure to remove the check to not being able to equip a writ and a mandate at the same time)

Any thoughts?

The problem with your suggestion is that a player would reach the level cap far before finishing ultimate, making all the experience gained from quest rewards worthless.

Step 1. All zones scale with player. No min/max level bs.
Step 2. Balance experience gain. Average 20 levels per act.
Step 3. Veteran option = elite, and add ultimate option.
Step 4. Everyone wins.

Basically D3 style scaling/leveling/difficulty, but with 3 difficulties instead of 13.