Merry Christmas and to all a Grim Night!

ChthonicSonic · November 3, 2018, 3:08pm

Ah, good work!

DirePenguin · November 4, 2018, 9:32am

I don’t know why, but this just made me think about how awesome it would be if some company creating an inter-connecting series of games that all played into one another.

In this instance, you have Grim Dawn, but if you get the city builder, it also acts as a sort of modding tool, where the cities/regioins you create also appear in Grim Dawn as areas you can visit and explore.

medea_fleecestealer · November 4, 2018, 9:44am

Sounds interesting, but don’t know how well it would work in practice. Would the city builder stuff just be limited to what a person makes themself or would it be available to all players? :undecided: Would be pretty complicated if everything made is supposed to be available to all players.

ASYLUM101 · November 4, 2018, 9:49am

Idk what the other guy is talking about but in the Sims you can either build your own house, or you can download a house other people have built. When you finish your constructions you can choose to upload them to the sims filesharing host and let them be available to all other players, but they aren’t automatically added to your game otherwise. I would think a system like that would be pretty cool. But as we know Crate doesn’t really have the resources for something like that, I think that is far out of reach for a game like GD.

USER_NAME_01 · November 4, 2018, 10:16am

Merry Christmas everyone!
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Wait, it’s November… Why are you refreshing a thread that’s about Christmas in November? Christmas is in December, in 50 damn days. Anyway, Merry Christmas.

medea_fleecestealer · November 4, 2018, 10:33am

Besides, don’t know what it’s like in your part of the world, but here Christmas stuff is already appearing in the shops, some decorations are out already, etc, etc. :eek:

USER_NAME_01 · November 4, 2018, 11:02am

We sometimes have Christmas ads in July/August. We officially start it in end of November/start of December. Whenever I see Christmas stuff so early, so before December, I say “idiots”.

DirePenguin · November 4, 2018, 3:16pm

Yeah, it would be local-only or a manual import from a file-share library, otherwise a game would easily become too flooded with add-on content if it was automatically imported.

Not sure why I was really thinking about it, maybe because I always get bummed thinking about the end of playing a game I enjoy. Yes, we have another expac coming, but how many more after that? So many games I loved playing that have nothing new to offer, so they eventually get uninstalled.

DirePenguin · November 4, 2018, 3:18pm

Hell, all the stores here had all the Halloween junk already placed in the discount aisles 2 weeks before Halloween. And you can bet your ass that once Nov 1 hit, all the Christmas crap was already out on display… and the carols were playing in every store.

medea_fleecestealer · November 4, 2018, 3:25pm

Yeah, but too many expansions just make a game too long to play. FG will likely be the last big content, but that’s not to say the devs won’t continue to add stuff post release. Plus there’s this new project and Medierra’s already said they’ll be starting something else soon. We have plenty to look forward to.

Dark_Omeh · November 17, 2018, 4:30am

medea_fleecestealer:

We think it’s a city builder/RTS from what Medierra said back in November 2016.

"We do plan to keep working on Grim Dawn. How many expansions we produce just depends on how well the first expansion sells and how well GD itself continues to sell.

There is also a good a chance we’ll do GD2 at some point but, due to the age of the current engine, we either need to undertake some massive update work on it or start from scratch with a licensed engine, which would mean a massive amount of work writing all new gameplay code.

Given that we’re working on an expansion now, might do a second one and I’ve been working on ARPGs for 14 years now, I feel like I could use a bit of break before jumping right into GD2. Imagining exciting new features, systems and a whole new story arc take a lot of energy and passion. I’m happy continuing to work on and oversee content for GD but I feel like I need to recharge before I can give a whole new ARPG my all.

There are other genres of games I love and have always wanted to work on. I’d also like to work on something lower scope next, that requires less building of content and which won’t take too long to finish. I expect to be releasing this new project 12-18 months from now. Then after that, who knows, maybe it will be time for GD2. I won’t know until I get there. One thing I can say though is, I’d be a lot more excited to work on GD2 if we could get to a point where we had a lot more money to throw at it.

Someone mentioned that Banished / Anno town-builders were overcrowded but that looks like a wide open market compared to ARPG. Not only are there a lot of ARPGs coming out recently but players commit to a single one for much longer than games in other genres and it requires a ton of content and features to be competitive - more than almost any other genre of games. Then think about the fact that the ARPG genre has a franchise that is widely seen as “king” and is developed by one of the biggest, most well funded and widely respected companies in the industry. Everything is compared against Diablo and it’s hard to compete with a team that has virtually unlimited resources. Then Grinding Gear has around 5x the people we do and I doubt competing against a free-to-play game has helped our sales. Then there’s Torchlight (although it looks like their next game isn’t an ARPG), Marvel Heroes, Van Helsing, Victor Vran, maybe a TQ expansion or sequel from Nordic, Lineage Eternal (if that ever finishes), Wolcen and too many others to remember. Since the huge sales of D3, everyone and their mom seems to be making an ARPG these days. About the only thing worse would be deciding to make a MOBA.

Even with all that going on, I wouldn’t say it would prevent us from making GD2 but it certainly makes the level of competition in most other genres look a lot less daunting.

A big factor for working on something else though is that I don’t think it is good to keep all our eggs in one basket, as a studio. Our primary goal is to keep the company alive so we can keep being independent and making games. While it’s certainly possible to focus on one franchise and stay alive for a long time doing it, it’s riskier having all your future dependent on the continued success of one game property in one genre. Diversifying the types of games we can make and the IPs we own is a good way for us to better secure out future.

Beyond just branching out to work on other genres, it has always been a goal of mine to be able to work on concurrent projects. Not only do we not want to be pigeon-holed into one genre but I think it’s important for us to be able to work on multiple projects at time. That way, we’re not just counting on the success of a single big release to keep us alive, where if it under-performs, it could take years to course-correct and finish another project (years we likely wouldn’t have). This also helps to increase the efficiency of the studio, as we can shift people around based on the needs of a project at any give time, instead of having lulls at the beginning and end of a single project, where not everyone is needed at full capacity. Another factor is that people get burnt out working on one thing for too many years. When people get burnt out, they leave and look for something new. I feel like we have a great team and I want to keep them engaged with fresh new projects and not solely grinding away on ARPGs for the next 20 years.

Since we would like to keep making content for GD, we’ve brought on some new people for that, to keep up the level of energy and enthusiasm (or new old people in the case of Grava, aka Josh Glavine). We’ll keep making content for GD as long as it’s financially viable. GD2 is a definite possibility but whether / when that happens depends on how things progress in the ARPG genre and internally for us at Crate over the next year or two. We also have some ideas for GD related games that are set in that universe and will share some mechanics but are not quite ARPGs.

You’ll also be hearing about at least one totally new project in the next year though."

Also the job being advertised on Crate’s website says:

“You would be working on one of our two current projects, both in the PC RPG / Strategy genres”

Medierra said in the last stream a few weeks ago that he hoped to be able to give us more news on the new project in a couple of months’ time.

I think is about time to hear some news about the new project, what do you guys think?

Gumshoe · November 17, 2018, 4:36am

See here:
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showpost.php?p=678664&postcount=50

medea_fleecestealer · November 17, 2018, 7:46am

Already have. From the 5th October stream:

"kobrao :hows new project going @Medierra
Medierra :I think we’re getting close to being able to show more / announce the new game but we don’t have a website / marketing art or anything else set up… so much peripheral stuff you have to do beyond just making the game

drazac :so is the new game a city builder, or is it a strategy with city building elements
Crank9000 :Has there been any info what genre the new game is? There was talk about some kind of RTS around year ago or so
Medierra :its a town-builder with an optional combat element

genericvillain :Is it confirmed that their new project has anything to do with grim dawn?
Medierra :new project is not related to Grim Dawn

CepheidSauron :Any new projects you guys are working this year, except for the expansion?
Medierra :“new” project, which is about 2 years old now, is a town-builder done in Unity though… then we’ll be starting something else soon"

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77182

darkkenzi · November 19, 2018, 8:16pm

Yes…a peaceful setting only to be marred by waves of attacks after the scouts 1st show up. Send out your own scouts to prepare for an exploratory 1st strike etc. etc.

fog of war anyone??

/rubs hands in delight as he reaches for his wallet. :rolleyes:

archaven · December 8, 2018, 10:09am

crate can venture into an actual RPG!. RTS/city building is really a risky path to take. if you are small indie, you don’t have much risk to take on.

USER_NAME_01 · December 8, 2018, 10:12am

The same path as the Grim Dawn path. They basically made Titan Quest 2 with a different story, and it somehow worked out. Exactly the same situation with the city builder game.

powbam · December 8, 2018, 10:17am

So they suddenly aren’t still a small indie? They have one game and that game was way more risky for them to take than this one.

medea_fleecestealer · December 8, 2018, 10:28am

Medierra gave his reasoning for this way back in November 2016.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=451164#post451164

mamba · December 8, 2018, 10:29am

Why do you think an RPG is less risky than a city builder ? For one there is a lot more competition, and from big names, than there is for city builders.

I am pretty sure Crate did it’s homework on that when they decided to do a city builder next. I assume the rationale is similar to the one for GD, ie you can make it with a small team and carve out a niche you can comfortably live in. Not sure that is any easier with an RPG.

darkkenzi · December 11, 2018, 7:43pm

Hopefully a city builder RPG…would like to see Crate’s iteration of that.