Removing stat points from the characters. It seems to be that it is counter-productive to force people to create new characters if they make a mistake in a build or decide to try something different. Can anyone explain the logic of this?
Crate set out to make a more difficult, more ‘hardcore’, old school arpg . That’s pretty much the logic to it.
Forcing people to level characters over and over is silly IMO, especially when you consider that reputation for factions in involved. I am not super pissed about it, I just think it is a mistake on their part.
Sadly I don’t think it’s something you can mod either, so there might be more to it than just “old school” mechanics.
It’s an hack and slash ARPG. The “journey” (leveling a character, figuring out builds, finding/crafting items, KILLING MONSTERS muhahaha) is kind of the point.
Grim Dawn has interesting lore and story elements, but if you take away the “hack and slash A-” part you’re looking at a terrible RPG.
Anyway very few builds are unsalvageable, and even a character with 30 levels worth of bad stat point distribution can be turned into a productive build. The game is very forgiving stat point-wise. The factions are not a big deal if you give your new characters the rep gain scrolls, you’ll likely max out most of them just by playing the game.
There’s no logic to it except to force players to start over if they screw up. Some people feel the time is wasted (me) and others feel it is part of a wonderful journey (most everyone else).
I had to completely scrap a level 42 pyromancer because I kept putting points into cunning, which was the opposite of what I should have been doing. I was supposed to put all my points into that tank stat, fortitude, so I could wear heavy armor. Silly me.
I had to restart my char about 7 times when I first played and about 3 of them times was when he was above lvl 50. Now I only make a char when I have all gear already for him so I can see what it all takes to use and what stats it all gives, I work out the best devotion path and add up all the attibutes it gives too. Once I work everything out then I can play knowing exactly what points need to go where, it takes a while but it’s better than messing your char up 
This is a lot of work just to play a character. Game shouldn’t turn into this much work.
having points in other stats than Physique as well is fine, 42 is a little excessive though 
You can always use tools to change the stat allocation rather than start over
I guess that at some point the attribute bonuses will be rebalanced to make cunning and, to some extent, spirit more viable. At that point I believe we’ll have a possibility to respec.
Also, I believe side tools will be created to cover this, if not already done.
The problem with some people seems to be that they’re fixated on a particular character type. They want a character that specifically uses some unique item X AND skill Y AND playstyle Z, etc. Given these multiple parameters, the list of stat builds/skill and mastery combinations you can use start to shrink dramatically. Every restart becomes tedious because they basically just want to refine and perfect their dream character build. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the game isn’t as generous to these people.
Others are content with setting just 1 parameter at a time - a character that uses an item X OR uses a skill Y OR a playstyle Z. Suddenly, you have a massive amount of options available to you and you basically only need to concern yourself with doing enough DPS/having enough survivability. As long as you’re not being forced to work under too many parameters, you can get away with doing something like playing a pure cunning character if you really wanted to. It won’t even be squishy if you know your way around HP/resist stacking.
The reason I think it’s dumb is because we CAN reset every other aspect except the mastery points for opening skill trees and the stats.
I feel like going back to permanent choices like these is actually a step backwards at this point. Having the ability to rework a character is a modern quality of life kind of thing that people are accustomed to now. Much like auto-loot for money on the ground and other things that just make playing the game less tedious and frustrating.
Once you make a mistake you get set back with progress and it stops being fun really fast. They changed stats with one of the patches a while back and it had a major impact on my character that I cannot fix since there was no attribute reset. This effectively destroyed my almost finished character and I for one have no desire to completely rebuild and level my character all over again.
And about that bullshit of the journey being building a character blah blah blah the journey is only fun if you don’t have to stop part way into it and go all the way back and start the same journey all over again let alone multiple times.
Use a fucking trainer…problem solved. If you don’t use a trainer to fix the mistake then it wasn’t really that big of a deal. They aren’t changing the mechanic.
Your character is a combination of stats, gear, devotions, augments etc. What you think you may lack in basic stats you can make up with the rest of your choices. There is no perfect char, it is all about the journey!
There is no real logic to be explained here, as this is a decision from the devs to help add replay value to the game. If you could reset every single aspect of your character, then you would get bored and tired of the game much earlier, and I’m glad that Crate took this route rather than making the game a short and meaningless ride, like Blizzard has done with Diablo III, where every single core aspect that makes the ARPG genre a fun experience got stripped down from the game, taking it’s soul away in the process…
If you don’t find this idea “logical” or boring, then this genre is not for you, sorry…
This does fix the problem, I was not aware things like this were available.
Skill respecs make sense because it’s basically the game’s way of allowing you to test skills before committing to them.
OTOH you have the ENTIRE game to test out stats and mastery points, and the former is COMPLETELY fixable unless you don’t stop what you’re doing and continue to ruin your build on purpose. If your build becomes “useless” because of a stat rebalance that’s a failure of your build. I cannot imagine how a build could be “effectively destroyed” by stat changes considering how easy it is to stack stats in this game through other means.
It’s not even like stats are that impactful unless you stack a TON of it, and if you do decide to stack stats it’s better to do it using ITEMS. Hell, it’s better to ignore the main stats and stack the specific SECONDARY stat (OA, HP, etc) you’re interested in using items.
I don’t understand why people always wanna play games that is totally dumbed down to the level of diablo 3.
Make no choices, there for feel no consequence.
What is the problem with have to stand by the choise you make in the game? Of course is a nice to have a world of no consequence, but come on. No need to make this game, like its made for 5 year old kids.
If you make a mistake, then try to compensate for it, just like in life. Nobody start schools over, or something like that because they had a bad grade.
I stopped playing diablo 3 because it was such a retarded game, that left no options for the player. But only had the oppertunity to change gear.
Grim Dawn needs to uphold the higher difficulty, and not make it a new version of diablo 3.
I’m with you, bro. I even hate the way some people moan about game/skill balance. If some options wouldn’t work better than the others (because they’re all so perfectly balanced), then why bother making choices?
Trouble is there are two conceptions at odd here.
The first is the traditional ARPG way, where you build up a character, and the game ends when you kill the final boss at the final difficulty level. Sure, you can go on playing that char (PVP, farming, coop help, etc…), but that’s not the core design.
Then there’s the MMO way, where you build one character and keep playing it on and on, with the game providing new content for it on a regular basis.
And with a whole generation of gamers bred on WOW, they’ve come to expect ARPGs to conform to the MMO formula (hence all those posts by players who rush through the actual game content, and clamour for “endgame content”, or the fact that the “builds” posted on these forums are not builds at all, but only max level character blueprints).
Respects are the MMO way.
No respects allowed is the ARPG way.
Unfortunately, game designers usually go for the try-and-please-everyone approach, and thus we end up with bastardized compromises, like allow full respect for skills, but not stats… which makes little sense indeed.
And then there’s the issue of the actual implementation of stats in this game, where Cunning is basically irrelevant, Spirit rendered useless by the sheer amount of +% damage sources and the fact that time (cooldowns) was chosen as the skill ressource in most cases instead of mana, so that leaves Physique as the only relevant stat.
Which makes the whole stat system one big “newbie trap”.