Remove elite, buff experience rate so the chars would end at the same experience as the current normal+elite, double the non-experience quest rewards at ultimate. Split shrines to 3/2 difficulty ratio while scaling down the reqs of ingredient shrines on ultimate.
Making sure characters would end up with proper amount of skill and stat points is trickier, but there is no way to randomly farm neither of those, so checking the sum of char level and quests completed, and comparing to the current value upon loading the old version would do it. Force a full respec on skills/stats and devotions if it’s not possible to subtract points when they are spent. Yes, it will take time, but I’d say adding two new difficulties in one fell swoop back in the beta was even bigger waste of time.
Especially since three difficulties is the main reason “veterans” are separated from “casuals” in the first place. I think I’ve started having fun only around 500hr mark, when I’ve farmed all useful relic recipes (seriously, these should be guarantied boss drops across the whole game) and items to kickstart any build. Crucible with even tighter requirements to builds didn’t make it better.
I agree with Zantain on this one. Surely game is going to get a bit repetitive after you have completed it 10 times on each dificulty. What do you expect? Hardcore players have 400+ hours in this game, I can’t see any way around a bit of tediousness and boredom that they will eventually experience given that it is after all just a single-player ARPG.
Only realistic solution is adding online only mode, but you have to code a new game for it. If only Crate had resources to makes something like Diablo’s 2 Battle.net engine with chat rooms, ladders and online-only characters, one could dream.
Also, if you use a shortcut like character editor just to make a level 85 build with all the gear required - what are you going to do with it? It would get boring after few hours of farming, because you have no reason to farm or quest anymore.
I don’t know if this is a safe idea what with Faction choices present in the game. While I haven’t personally tested it (because I don’t actually think it’s possible now… ?), if one made a choice between ODV/KC in, say, Ultimate and then made a different choice in Elite, having skipped Elite by the use of some token, would that not soft-lock their character in one difficulty? They wouldn’t be able to advance reputation-based quests as their reputation is reset and flipped around. Now, players could probably be aware of this and most players probably wouldn’t make this mistake, but someone might and then they’d be pretty solidly SOoL.
I also don’t really like the idea of a “duration consumable” due to the existing track record of such duration-based consumables available from factions. All that would wind up happening is it’d create tedium every X seconds/minutes as players refresh the duration because they want to have it up all the time because the leveling process, even if cut in half, will always take very many hours. Plus it’d be another button to press at the beginning of a session, when already I need to press half a dozen buttons to activate all my buffs, sometimes sitting through their animations because not all buffs are instant-cast for some reason. 
That being said, I’d be OK with kidpid’s suggestion of a permanent mandate-like thing that increases XP gained by, say, 33-50%. But I think that’s really just a bandaid to an existing core problem of the game when it comes to experience rewards.
Monsters suck at giving you experience, and the larger the monster the more the difference in the time spent killing it and the reward in experience you receive. This problem is exacerbated in, say, the Grimmer&Grimmest mod and it’s the main reason I don’t play that mod much: experience from monsters is halved while monster spawnrates are increased by around 3x-5x. So you spend more time killing stuff but for less reward; the goal of Grimmest was to keep players at approximately the same level as they would be in equivalent quest progression in the vanilla campaign, but that equivalent quest progression takes far, far more time investment in Grimmest due to the far, far higher spawnrates of enemies. But I guess maybe ranting about a problem in a mod is a little too off topic…the point I wanted to make was that heroes and bosses in Grim Dawn reward essentially nothing more than regular enemies at almost every stage of the game. This is why, for leveling, it’s not worth turning Veteran on. The added hero spawns will only slow you down with no functional, tangible reward other than a bit more iron.
In my opinion, if you want to make leveling and grinding more fun, I’d give monsters across the board a 20% increase to their xp rewards, and then give heroes an ~4x increase and bosses an ~7x increase. Alternatively, perhaps it’d be worth looking into difficulty-specific multipliers for heroes and bosses, so that higher difficulties make these very-tough enemies more rewarding than previous difficulties would.
I agree with OP.
In my last playthrough doing all quest, all shrines and factions quests, It took me ~11 hours to finish Normal. And ~11 hours to finish Elite. I didn’t check when finish Ultimate but wasn’t less than ~10 hours.
Today, I want to try a new build but the funny part, for me, at this point, begins when my char reach level 75. It’s when I can use my end-game gear.
But I don’t want to “pay” ~22 hours to reach that point.
What would happen if we have a way (an Augment, for instance) to have access to end-game gear at, let’s say, level 50?
Also, I agree with this.
In my opinion, in the current state of the game, if you want to level up faster, you have to focus on quests.
Can’t help but agree with this. I once, long ago, got a character in D2 to level 94. That took forever, GD is a breeze compared to it.
Anyway why have this discussion when you can create a finished level 85 character with all the gear you want in minutes? No closed servers here…
Some of us actually enjoy playing the game and want to make that experience better.
Only problem while leveling is unnecessary route forcings. You just see the the road you should go but cant reach because game forces to explore and go through many paths to reach the point(first act and derma fields example). So best thing to do is open shortcuts or break fucking walls after first playthrough
I feel increasing XP will lead to more complaints and is not a solution. People are already complaining that they cap their characters half way through Ultimate and don’t feel like using them anymore.
If too many legendaries drop like in the “legendary” treasure trove patch way back, people complained that they had too much gear and found the game too easy.
I honestly think the best solution to lower the grind whilst still keeping the game interesting is to omit “Elite” difficulty. But I understand the work around for the Devs would be a headache as well.
TQ:IT only 4 of my characters made it to the Legendary difficulty. It was an incredible grind as well. I’m not sure I want to complete 3 difficulties in the GD expansion if the journey is just as long.
Agreed. There’s a lot of places off the main path/shortest route to the next difficulty that are worth visiting, if not almost mandatory, and while having better gear available for subsequent characters during the levelling process makes this go a bit faster, it also makes it a lot less challenging, turning it into a dull run-and-fetch chore. 
Shortcuts won’t really solve this, though, unless unlocking/taking the shortcuts would also result in gaining the out-of-the-way rewards such as side-area shrines and the rather important hidden path attrbute/skill point rewards that can’t be obtained anywhere else (devotion one could grind in the crucible).
Elite tends to feel like a tedious buffer on subsequent characters, but it also has the rather important function on not having a first character run into a gear-check wall immediately after finishing normal/vet that’ll be extremely tedious to overcome the first time because its requirements will have to be farmed in normal/vet.
So while I personally wouldn’t mind the game rbeing reduced to two campaign playthroughs, with Elite and Ultimate combined, it’s probably not worth the (balancing) effort.
That’s why on Elite difficulty you just do the bare minimum. All shrines, quests with skill point/attribute point rewards, rush Log, then I’m done. Skip SoT, BoC, Valbury, and optional mini-bosses. I don’t even bother with most of the optional faction quests on Elite since mandates give you maximum faction status essentially automatically once you finish Ultimate. I’ve gotten a total of one or two legendaries across 3 characters from Exalted Stashes on Elite, so it’s not even worth going out of your way to get those until Ultimate either.
This is all assuming you’ve completed Ultimate and have reached max status with all factions at least once, of course.
Well that’s just it. Everybody that plays Elite just rushes through it. It really does feel like a filler difficulty. I assume with the expansion, you’ll probably finish the normal difficulty around level 65-68 (assuming you completed all quests etc). Which is why I feel one more playthrough should suffice.
Playing thru the expansion on each difficulty is NOT required.
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At least the good thing about Elite is that by the time you reach it, Empowered Epics, Legendaries, higher level faction gear and skills further down the mastery and devotion trees all start becoming available. You won’t have everything, sure, but there’s definitely enough potential build variety by that point for things to be a little more fun.
Norm/Vet, on the other hand? Interesting equipment is thin on the ground, with most drops just being purely stat upgrades with a skill point or weak ability thrown in if you’re lucky. I’m not saying this should be changed, because early game shouldn’t really be throwing amazing gear at you after all, but for me it’s definitely the weakest part of the overall experience.
If you want to rush to Lv50/Elite, the gearing situation is made even worse since in order to get the maximum XP bonus you have to start cobbling together small amounts of the stuff across something like 5-6 different item slots. If the Norm/Vet looting experience was already a bit weak, it gets even weaker once you realise that a good chunk of your item slots become essentially irreplaceable until you reach Elite. Having a consumable XP bonus/mandate-thing would free up equipment slots, once again allowing you to start looting and equipping different gear - a pretty core part of the game.
???
Could you elaborate. If I start a necromancer I assume I have to start at level 1 on Normal Veteran? Or are the devs allowing us to jump straight to Ultimate with a level 1 character?
Or are you specifically referring to existing characters that have already reached Ultimate?
He just means that you can skip the expansion if you like. So you can go…
Normal - Act 1-4
Elite - Act 1-4
Ultimate - Act 1-5
…though if you do that, it’ll probably mean you miss out on a bit of faction reputation, some low level Act 5 MIs, etc.
I see. I probably wouldn’t skip it either. Seems odd that the next difficulty is unlocked through killing Log but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for those who want to jump ahead.
Some of these suggestions are giving me a heart attack…
I personally enjoy games of this genre when the combat is fun. When there is a lot of build/gear variety. When there is depth to character development and interesting “puzzles” to solve in regards to theory crafting a fun build. It doesn’t have to be a supreme OP build, just a cool fun build to finish the content.
From that point of view I find leveling an enjoyable experience. Starting a new build and seeing it develop. Making it work with the gear you find along the way before you get to the point that you twink it around lvl50+ and it really starts to come together. To make it enjoyable the environment needs to be interesting as well as the combat mechanics. Quests and story take a backseat the more you replay the game.
Even though you know the boss/hero encounters well it is still a fun “puzzle” in regards to making decisions on which gear to use or discard. Then testing it against the test/hurdles this game provide. No matter how well you theorycraft a character, or create a lvl85 fully geared char, they will never perform as well as one that you developed from the start. I can re-create some of my characters identical, but their performance will be different in ways I find very noticeable and annoying.
So starting a game at elite or ultimate, because people don’t want to restart on a lower difficulty… Hell No. Not just because of that aspect, but also because I find that I do not enjoy games that reduce amount of playthroughs needed to reach max level. For some reason when I play torchlight, D3 and recently PoE… They got rid of difficulties and just let you play through the campaign once. It is a horrible experience in many ways. Often the games are balanced to a much easier challenge level overall to the point even the highest difficulty feels like Veteran in GD. On top of that you also need to account that games with such a setup need to provide something else in regards to content. Something often referred to as “end game” like the Map system from TL2 and PoE or Rift Gates from D3. Grim Dawn does not have that.
When it comes to the actual difficulties I enjoy Veteran. If you don’t twink it can be quite puzzling, challenging and interesting at times. I love Elite, because I can rush through it feeling like a god. Which is the perfect reward after Veteran and gives you a preview of experiences to come. Then in Ultimate its time to get back to work again untill you got all the gear to become a god again. I like that build up and pacing.
Also when games have good, to great, character development with lots of build options and good itemization you expect to make many characters. You will play through the campaign multiple times one way or another. Games will get dull over time no matter what. What is more important is that the developers make a single run through the campaign as fun and engaging as possible. Then it won’t matter whether you run through the campaign 5 times on 5 different characters…or 15 times with 5 characters.
In regards to end game content I am divided. For some reason I enjoy quick short runs in Titan Quest where I did Telkine at the mountain followed by Typhon and a telkin in Egypt. Restart the game and repeat this for hours and hours on end. In Grim Dawn however I do not enjoy farming entire areas for loot. I’d rather be able to reset all the quests on Ultimate and replay the campaign again since you’ll be killing stuff with a “purpose” again. And with the rest at lvl85 or 90+ make it so opponents no longer have scaling limitations either due to the high end gear you’ll be having anyway. And have the difficulty scaling after 90+ be tuned way up for that truly Ultimate experience. Loot wise it wouldn’t matter. I do enjoy farming for certain MI’s like the specific Hidden Path bosses. This is personal and varies per person.
A randomized map system depends on how it would be implemented. The whole idea of randomized content prolonging longevity is an argument wasted on me. I get annoyed with randomized maps and just want to get through the area in the most optimal way and get the reward. You know what you’re after and you can do so efficiently without wasting time on trying to find your way past a randomized pathway which appears to be blocked off and requires minor backtracking.
Additional “randomized” content in the sense of upgrading your Skeleton key and generate different challenges, such as Crucible like modifiers applied upon entering the rogue dungeons, would be quite welcome in my opinion.
What I, can understand, is how some people want shortcuts to get through certain parts of the content faster. Everyone has areas they like less then other places. I’d like to skip those as well if possible.
Adding a piece of paper you can buy from a faction to increase XP gain could be fine. It is optional whether you want to use it. There are plenty of people rushing through normal at lvl 30-35 and they’d end up around lvl40-45-ish which isn’t that far off with where you’d normally end up anyway. For players like me… I don’t even bother with the faction options since you get them maxed out anyway by the time you need them. In that regard Grim Dawn in general is quite a smooth experience and requires little farming to progress. Only repetitive “boring” farming comes into play when you want to gear for the ultimate challenges such as the nemesissies and other optional stuff.
In regards to Ceno’s suggestion of upping xp gained from opponents… I don’t see that as a necessity if you use the piece of paper approach. Otherwise you have people playing at a “Clear all OCD” pace getting too far ahead of the curve. I already find that my lvl 50-54 at the end of Veteran when doing EVERYTHING is too high to my liking. Increasing XP gained from mobs would make it only worse. Seeing the limit of opponent scaling you’d be too far ahead of them as well making it an even more boring experience. And I use normal/veteran as example since numbers show that’s what most people play and stop at. Next to that I personally never really cared about xp rewards from opponents. As long as I regularly enough ding out in the wilds, and not just from turning in quests, I’m fine 
In short…why fix what isn’t broken.
I don’t understand why people is so eager to get lvl and gear capped fastest as possible. And then what? Claiming the game has no endgame content? Lvilng is part of the game and it’s fun i’m lvling my 16th char right now. Please remember this is a single player game and you won’t find 10000 hrs of fake content of endgame grinding.
I think it’s not about fixing something broken. It’s about improving game experience. Remember, “good” is enemy of “the best”.