I think for me, the problem with Norm/Vet in particular is the lack of purpose in doing things. You can farm areas, but the loot will only last a few levels before being outdated. You can finish the roguelike dungeons and other optional areas, but the rewards are rarely worth it. You can tinker with your character and try optimising them, but the game is so easy on Norm/Vet that there’s little point in doing so, and a few levels later it’d be an outdated setup anyway. Even your decisions in conversations hold little weight, since you can just redo all your choices in the next difficulty anyway.
Sure, the levelling experience is still fun because its a fun game (though again, it can sometimes feel a bit repetitive since build variety on Norm/Vet is a bit more limited), but on Elite and especially Ultimate, those same tasks feel a lot more important. Ultimate in particular does a great job of pulling everything together, since all of a sudden farming for loot and exploring optional areas can provide you with some great rewards for a lot of different builds, tinkering with your character becomes almost necessary for survival in some cases, and the choices you make in dialogue finally have a real impact on your character and the game world. It’s not like you lose out on the levelling experience either, since you still get to enjoy that from 70-85. They’re the reasons why I like getting to Ultimate as quickly as I can (not to mention finally being able to dig out all the sexy high-level Legendaries I have tucked away and letting the light show begin in earnest).
i think that past a certain point (which should be the 2nd or 3rd build for most of people), everybody tends to rush Normal, and soon Elite too, because what you need for your HL builds lie in Ultimate. i fail to see how you can improve it without destroying the game balance.
but honestly if you keep all the blues you find (which means an expanded storage size ofc) i don’t find leveling that painful. you don’t care about the gear so all you have to do is going straightforward (just looking at Dev shrine), with the right gear you will faceroll content while your build is shaping up.
Rushing to Ultimate only takes around 15 hrs (?) after all
Let me just say I’m really damn impressed. I have a habit of looking at global achievement stats on steam to see how many players get how far in a game. That 24.5 is enormous for a game of this length. I owned 20 something JRPGs for playstation 1 as a teen, I had finished them all, some of them twice. I was appalled when I first learned that some people don’t finish their videogames. Oh. My. God.
I have a meager 450 hours in GD (seems low for the goers of this forum), but I think it’s mostly fine as it is. The OP is a person saying “I played this too much and it’s boring now”, and that’s any game.
Having the option to skip the lower difficulties, yes please. While the end result would probably be far less total hours of playtime, I think they’d be much more enjoyable hours.
Well there are new masteries so I guess most people will start new toons and then naturally explore the new areas instead of hopping into it with existing ones.
All the Crucible was ever meant to be was a Survival mode, as promised via Kickstarter.
Sure, I had my own ideas on what Survival mode meant due to influence from games of a different genre (Crimsonland, anyone?) but I can handle what Crate came up with instead. Tho I’d probably still give up my left kidney if they redid it all and mimicked the greatest Survival mode ever made.
I am personally interested more about the new content than the new toons, because we saw a lot of hours of gameplay of necro/inquis in the official streams already, but nothing about the new areas and factions yet.
So I will jump into the new act with my existing characters first.
I have a lot of thoughts when it comes to the leveling process and most of them are incongruent with each other. So forgive me if my replies below seem a little haphazardly constructed - I generally chose my words and points with specific intentions, but I get quite wordy when it comes to things I’ve spent a good deal of time pondering on…
This is all fine. I want it at the top of this post as a bit of a theme for the post which I’ll return to when I address a little something else…
For people like the first poster and myself, Grim Dawn’s ‘endgame’ is making new characters. Theorizing something on grimtools, making the character-ingame, and then stress-testing it at the limits of campaign content or the Crucible. The issue for us is the in-between involved. And it’s not as though we want that in-between deleted or outright minimized, but I think a means to mitigate the repetitive drawl of the 60-85 level range is what we’re after. It seems there’s a misconception in this thread about what’s being asked for. Neither kidpid - the first poster - nor myself have suggested a means to physically skip content.
My endgame takes other forms, too. I like Grim Dawn because it has a lot of ‘mini-goals’ I can set for myself that I can achieve with a focused, dedicated grind on any individual character. Here are some goals I’ve set for myself in the past and enjoyed:
Craft an Oblivion relic with every +% Racial Damage Completion Bonus
Ultimate: Kill every available Nemesis in one session
Ultimate: Full-clear every Roguelike Dungeon in one session
Ultimate: Full-clear an entire Act in one session
Some of those might seem a bit lofty, arbitrary, or utterly useless to complete, but here are three self-imposed but entirely-optional goals most of us here on the forum have probably completed:
Beat Ultimate difficulty
Reach Level 85
Reach Revered/Nemesis with every faction
Not a single one of these is required of you to play through the game in its entirety. Beating Ultimate is no different from beating Elite or Normal (unless you include the super-secret quest in your definition of ‘beating’, which I don’t). Reaching Level 85 does nothing for you as a player (other than unlocking an intangible, irrelevant achievement). You don’t need to reach Revered with any faction, though the augments may make gameplay easier for you if you do.
But the issue with leveling as an optional goal is how potentially mandatory it is for other things. If people set a goal for themselves like competing in high-end Gladiator Crucible, or completing a min/maxed build here on the forums, reaching the highest echelon of available levels will be a necessity. This is a problem with Grim Dawn that was not present in Titan Quest, where the latter featured characters and players that rarely ever reached levelcap. This was the case in Titan Quest not because it was incredibly tedious to do so (although it was…) but because it was never a requirement. In planning a build for TQ/:IT, you generally can finish whatever you want to do around the 63-68 range. The remaining leveling process to level 75 is entirely optional and arbitrary. (Which is why I enjoyed setting a personal goal to reach 75 on various characters in TQ - because I could, not because I needed to.) In Grim Dawn, however, you need to reach level cap to do a bunch of other things. This is the case for a multitude of reasons…
Many mastery combos are heavily starved for skillpoints (chiefly Tricksters, Blademasters, and Saboteurs, for which there are no real existing sets to cover the gap created by their skillpoint-intensive skills)
Many mastery combos are heavily starved for Devotion points (in my experience, mainly anything with Arcanist or Demolitionist)
Some optimal gear requires the maximum level (-of Attack has a maximal roll at Level 85)
This means that to even partake in an endgame with others, you do in fact need to go as far as physically possible. In light of that, having ways to mitigate the repetitiveness and duration of this “quest” is highly desirable.
As an aside, I’m pretty sure that characters in Path of Exile, too, do not need to reach levelcap to be finished and that the community advises making builds for some sub-cap level. I appreciate and respect this, but don’t think it’s presently viable in Grim Dawn, so our situation and approaches to a solution need to be considered differently.
Going back to my quote from Gibly, I’m still fine with a ‘Mandate’ sort of thing because it would most certainly be a form of mitigation. But I do still think it’s only a bandaid solution. The current state of Grim Dawn leveling is this:
Rush to Ultimate
Complete Ultimate quests that can be done reasonably
Grind out numerous rounds of Bastion of Chaos OR numerous rounds of Wasp nests if BoC is too hard on your eyes (like it is for yours truly).
The ‘Mandate’ idea would only shorten that ‘numerous’ grind without addressing the facts that
Rushing to Ultimate is optimal
Ultimate Quests offer the highest rate of XP/minute
Two-three places in the game offer a respectable return rate on XP per unit of time invested in clearing them.
I would like to be able to level appreciably so in Elite/Normal such that I could actually enjoy the presence and existence of these difficulties. But I don’t think there’s a way to adjust this in a way that doesn’t upset the degree to which one would advance in levels under ordinary play, as Gibly describes.
I would like not to need to rely on unrepeatable Ultimate-tier quests just for the sake of filling an experience bar. I’d actually prefer to do the quests because I want to, to enjoy the content itself.
I would like to be able to farm other pieces of content as I willed rather than repeating X dungeon over and over. Growing tired of farming X, even if it’s the most efficient? Well at least A, B, C, and D are viable too…except, presently, X is really the only respectable option. And I feel that specifically addressing A, B, C, and D to be more like X is more work for a less-satisfactory result. A broader stroke to minimize the difference between X and everything else - even if it makes X a little stronger in a vacuum - is much more preferable and would likely be less work.
A ‘Mandate’ solution would have minimal impact on the first issue and do literally nothing for the other two issues. Unrepeatable Ultimate quests would (likely) still be the primary source of experience for new characters. X dungeon would still be the only thing to do as its relative ‘leveling power’ to other dungeons would remain unchanged.
There is and never will be a perfect solution that satisfies everyone. I do truly believe that making heroes and bosses in Ultimate much more rewarding would go a long way toward making the leveling grind less tedious and just generally more fun. As for those sorts of people that OCD-clear everything in every difficulty and reach 85 halfway through Ultimate after Empyrion-knows how many hours of time? Sure, they’ll reach 85 a little earlier into Ultimate. Congrats to them for having the time to burn to do all of that, but I don’t mind ‘worsening’ that situation because the end result is the same regardless, it’s just a time factor that changes…which is the point.
I hope I got my points across in a comprehensible enough manner. I spent about 4 hours thinking about and working on this post and there’s bound to be some confusing stuff up there, so feel free to quote me on anything you’d like more insight/clarification on. :rolleyes:
Well, most games similar to Grim Dawn have the same premise of having to level a character to high or maximum level to try something out as an “end game” result. Sure it may only take a day (with lots of help) in those games. Grim Dawn can be done that way too (multi-player) and just speed run the game quest to quest.
Or, there’s the save files. But I won’t go there.
I agree that it would be nice to have the option that after one has completed the game legitimately on Ultimate that you unlock an option that makes new characters easy to come by, such as purchasing (requiring components and iron bits) pre-leveled characters that are level 70 (forcing you to complete the Ultimate storyline quests or grind to hit 85 still, ie, play the whole act series basically); or something along the lines of being able to purchase a Writ of experience that doubles or more the experience granted from QUESTS (not just mobs), so that you play the story line fast, and turn in quests, and get a ton of experience that way so that you can play the game, yet still level fast (you can then just bypass trash mobs and go straight to heros, quest points, bosses).
No grim dawn can’t. Grim dawn has no end game unlike the other games. in other games you rush so you can do random maps/rift gates. In Grim dawn the leveling IS the game.
From the comments so far it appears the following is perhaps the key issue?:
Once at Ultimate, natural progression slows considerably because of the difficulty increase, requiring some grinding for gear etc to keep moving through the quests. But, because completed content in Elite/ultimate outside of the quests offers little XP, the need to grind unrewarding content increases to a point that doesn’t feel rewarding until quest progress moves again, then not compensating sufficiently for time spent. Is that close?
I agree on that. Once I hit Ultimate I really enjoy going back to elite and just picking my favourite areas to run around destroying mobs (world map, not even dungeons), but the XP gain is so minimal it harms the fun and I don’t feel I’m progressing still.
This is where the mandate or such makes sense, perhaps unlockable once Elite is beaten, which makes heroes offer greater XP (perhaps only heroes, but all monsters would be good) and rewards grinding any content rewarding.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I actually really enjoy moment to moment play in many of the game areas, I.e. Blood Grove, Warden’s underground, Arkovian Undercity, Necropolis, Plains, Etc. I’d love to just grind heroes there to gear up for Ultimate quest progression
In elite, you almost have access to your end build skills (except set bonuses maybe) thus till ultimate or " end game" you keep doing same sequence and.combination of skills and it loses its magic/appeal till ultimate. Only thing you wonder is whether your build is enough for ultimate or not at that point.
If i knew that i will have new skill combination in ultimate , leveling would be a thrilling exp.
At that point, i start looking forward to gear instead of skill combinations. I’m particularly looking forward to skill modifiers though as i get the feeling some of them will mean individual legendaries will have more of an effect on play styles than equipping individual legendaries now.
For example, the Mythical Shard of Asterkarn or Mythical Will of Bysmiel will have more of an impact on their respective builds than equipping something similar and getting +2 or +3 to a skill and having it do more damage.
This is the one thing I have cheated in the game. I am no endgame powerplayer, i am happy exploring the low-mid level content and getting new epics and creating builds with those. But once you have all or most of the epics at a particular level, the fun of replaying that content drops drastically. So i find it sort of painful to do the level 1-25 leveling. So i have a template 1 mastery character leveled to 25, points reclaimed, stash/inventory empty except for the gear he is wearing and the nontransferable items he has found, and i go into the save folder on my hard drive and I copy the save file, and I use GD stash to rename and resex the character and I fast forward to level 25. No other editing allowed. I do think something about the RNG seed is determined by class, or when your character is created however. I have only done this with one character, ive mostly been happy playing a few characters I leveled from scratch.
I was actually thinking that the skill modifiers on MI could really give back some love to the lower difficulties, if they can be found on many low-level MIs.
It gives you an incentive to visit more places in your early level playthroughs.
Making Mis more rewarding and more consistently powerful (if more infrequent) would be a good way to incentive playing through those difficulties - and add some post-ultimate farming goals.
What I mean by ‘MIs more consistently powerful’ could be something in the line of carefully selecting the prefix and suffix they can get - only retaining powerful defensive and offensive affixes and a selection of affixes that reinforces the playstyle they incentive (taking into account the potential conversions).
Which is basically another completely different discussion on making affixes on rare items more relevant
Leveling is exponentially tedious. Getting to level 16 is pretty okay, but the real meat of a build takes shape level 55->60 and the real issue is you get great legendary items and sets that are completely useless for your build at that highly ground level.
I’m just at the stage that leveling up to use the gear is completely disengaging.
It’s a game, it’s not meant to be work.
The idea of different difficulty levels in itself is a bit of an age old RPG problem.
As I explain it in D&D terms, what is the point of finally having a +5 sword when you are now facing +5 armored enemies; surely it is no different than having a character still with their starter sword continuing to simply face the same 0 bonus armored enemies.
What progress have you actually made other than to waste time & effort?
Doing things 9 times for the sake of the tedium is not a reason to preserve a game mechanic. -Illiousintahl
^ it prolongs the game s life when there is no end game. (there is no rush since there are no maps. i hate it tho)
good news tho, in the xpac there is (i think) a potion with 100% increased xp for 60mins. dunno the cost or how hard is to get it tho. prolly only your max lvl char can farm some
