Non-story mode and only one difficulty

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Hello. I’ve spend much happy hours in Grim Dawn but now completely abandoned the game. There are two main reasons for this.

  1. The most stupid feature of the game - three difficulty levels, which force to pass the same quests three times for each character. Seriuosly, dear devs, that was totally stupid even in Diablo 2, and now in 2018, there isn’t any justification for this ugly gamedesign solution from mesozoic era.

  2. Why the game does not have a full non-story mode like in Diablo 3? With all respect, it’s totally frustrating to go the same path time after time. Your game is about character builds and items, not about the story, and gameplay must be comfort as possible.

Hurt to see how really nice game suffers from such ancient troubles.

2

Please do remember/consider that Diablo 3 has many more workers than Crate and vastly more resources available to them. Crate is a small studio of around 10 people who built the game up from kick starter.

3

I know this and i really think Grim Dawn is better than Diablo in most aspects. Troubles what i focused growing from gamedesign and not determined by low game budget.

4

Says who? You? Game is about character builds as much is it is about story and lore.

Three difficulties are pretty much here to stay. Devs fear that reducing down to any number lower than it is now will break existing characters.

I’m gonna assume you mean that Adventure mode bollocks from Diablo 3. Yeah, not gonna happen because i’m pretty sure the devs want for the main core of the game to not be completely skippable.

5

  1. Crate have said they are looking into streamlining this, but until they know whether anything is possible they won’t say more. The game is balanced around 3 difficulties and they have to take that into consideration as well as not breaking the current builds out there.

  2. Not really sure what you mean by this. If you just want to kill stuff and gather loot you have the DLC Crucible add on for a battle arena experience. The new game mode coming out in Forgotten Gods will also add an endless dungeon for you to play in.

6

Well if the game is about char building and not story, that depends on the player right? I enjoy the story and the different choices you can make, but I would think that two difficulties would be enough

Diablo III has like 15 different difficulties and Diablo II has 3*8 = 24 difficulties.

7

I don’t see the big difference. Assuming you still want to reach level 100, you still will have to replay areas to get there, whether in story mode or in the campaign.

At least with the campaign you spread that out over many areas… I don’t see story mode improving upon that, it just is more pointless grind, just like rifts

8

Steam of the 27th July:

"Pokerkid777 :Will there be any way to skip elite straight into ultimate? Going through the main game and 2 expansions 3 times can become very tedious at times.

Zantai: I do understand that concern for some of you who have been playing the game for a long time and want to level a bunch of characters up to maximum difficulty. I actually have an idea for how to have a solution to this conundrum for those of you. The programmer is looking into how doable that solution would be and how long it would take. There are a lot of factors involved here. The biggest one honestly is we don’t want to break your characters, primarily due to the attribute and skill rewards you get on Normal and Elite difficulties. When we release an expansion we’re more careful of that so the skill rewards are exclusive to Ultimate."

9

Glad to see devs understand the problem.

10

They’ve been aware for some time. Whether a solution can be found that doesn’t take more time and effort than is worthwhile financially is the question. As Zantai said there are a lot of factors involved, not just the possible breaking of characters though that is the biggest. It may make more sense business-wise to go with one or two difficulties only if/when Crate decides to make a GD2.

11

It is something you’ll more likely see in a mod before the official game. In grimarillion we already have players hitting the level cap far before even reaching ultimate.

12

Indeed. My Guardian of the Elements has just reached Homestead and he’s L51 already. He’s been clearing all areas so if he does the AoM expansion in Normal as well I expect he’ll be pretty close to the max level cap. If he skips AoM I think he’ll still hit the cap somewhere in Elite.

13

Some thougths(sorry if they are bad):

  • Normal/Veteran levelling speed could stay the same.
  • Second difficulty levelling speed could be a bit faster so we can reach max level around the middle of the game(if you play like a completionist until that point)
  • Extra skill/attribute rewards could be shifted to be gained when you start the next difficulty, as an incentive to continue playing.

Like OP I also don’t see the need of a middle playthrough in a long game like this one(or Titan Quest). I probably wouldn’t mind that much if the game was 5-6 hours shorter.

Best of luck! Cheers!

14

I like long games, I think Grim Dawn is too short in terms of Char progress because you can hit level 100 in like 40 hours or so. Like, then what?

15

Gear-based progress or a new character. GD offers lots of both.

16

NOTE: this is entirely from a game-mod perspective, as to vanilla, I am not sure you should expect any change at all in this regard.

There are arrays for a whole lot of things in the game that are indexed on “Normal/Elite/Ultimate”. But there is one field that has a single value and that is the final boss dbr, presently Log. So within these confines, you really cannot shift the transition from Normal->Elite or Elite->Ultimate.

You can just remove Ultimate and yet you cannot. If a modder changes the game playthough model, and really wants 2 instead of 3, you cannot prevent the player from entering the 3rd. You could make it identical to the 2nd, but it will just exist as that is the way parts of the game work that are not moddable.

However, through the quest system, you could grant the player all the rifts in the world to speed up traversing the world. You can, using the editor, add elements that would allow additional rifts to further speed up the traversal process.

But then, the placement of where in this process someone reaches max-level becomes very much a point of opinion and quite varied are those opinions.

IMO, the speed run mode should be open in all 3 difficulties. Normal, you use it a bit less in the beginning, but by the time you have killed the Warden, you are ready to just hit each boss/quest/shrine and move on to the dlc and challenge-areas. I would like to see the difficulty ramp up a lot after that. I would like to see the game get really hard and you would find yourself speed running less in the second playthrough.

For me, at the end of all the dlc and challenge-areas on the 2nd playthrough, I would like to reach the level cap and just stop with that toon. The playthough 3 would still exist, but I would ding my last level right at the end of the second. For people that want to have another resistance penalty and just farm loot, I would just leave Ultimate there (as it will not go away anyway) but design the game-mod so that you have finished it at the end of Elite. In addition, I still get sad after level 50 with only 2 skills points. So I would rescale the higher leveling process to be slower but maintain 3 skill points per level. This would lead to a reduced max level. This would lead to a change in loot level requirements as well. Once log is dead, you should be at a level that makes legendaries drop and be usable while running the dlc and challenge-areas. But of course to enforce this for all players, you would have to transition XP gain to the quest system instead of the kills system. As someone that does not speed run normal will be far higher in level at the dlc. See how messy this is all getting?

(and yes, I did write that all out as this is what Grimmest might become and I am mildly curious of the feelings of others as to if this is appropriate)

17

The easiest way I think is to add new original quests(main and secondary) and locations (and unique bosses) only for the epic and the legend (different for the epic and the legend). Although I did not go through another epic and legend. Perhaps already done so.
Just for the epic and the legend (in different ways for the epic and the legend) you can change the story a little (not much, but interesting).It is also possible to make maps differently.
I would certainly test the cards before entering the market. But I think in a compartment with new tasks and changes in the plot and new monsters, this will be perceived in a new way.

You can also add large locations for passage, interesting and very difficult to travel (such as the crucible, but large, with dungeons). There will be simply monsters, and there will also be waves in the crucible, in any random place. There are super bosses, very complex, local and mega complex global (one super main or several as one). There are chests with awards. These locations do not have to be done so that they could be passed completely (kill all the bosses / not complex). I think it would be all has spoiled. Go by several characters would be cool.
You can also do this with the portals on the global map (eg 3 large zones as one pass)

18

I finished the standard at level 80. I did not play a lot of that. I did all the tasks and opened the whole map. Several times I was in the furnace. There were bosses wetting several times and several times walking through the skeleton key.

19

My Guardian is playing the ungrim mod which increases mobs, heroes and bosses. :eek: So is gaining XP much more rapidly than you would in normal game.

20

: Еек: : D?