Not a rewarding Experience (biased opinion)

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

Hi Guys,

before commencing, two words about me: long time PC Gamer, hooked from the first time playing Wolfenstein 3D as well as Diablo 1 back in the days. Not so long ago I discovered this ARPG jewel. Started with Softcore and recently moved on to Hardcore, as I like the thrill and the more defensive Playstyle.

I’ll start with an example to describe what bothers me with this game: I just did a few Skeleton Runs and cleared Vanilla Content for about 2 hours on Ultimate, which is a very entertaining experience, you get around a lot and from time to time you find new secrets although you have been in an specific area for so many times, which I enjoy very much. All in all this got me 5 legendarys, the last Valbury Run didn’t get me any leg at all. If I invest the same time in Crucible, I can get 4 times as much legs in the same time, even on Challenger Difficulty (hardcorde…) and even much more on Gladiator, although this is to dangerous for my current Chars. The crucible experience is nice in the beginning, but gets somewhat boring after a while, for obvious reasons. For me it is very important to be effective in what I do, so it bothers me a lot that I only get lots of juicy legendarys by doing crucible runs, which is far less entertaining then doing skeleton runs for example, and can be repeated much more easily.

Now don’t get me wrong, in every game there’s always a way to get your loot (at least slighly) more effective, but this game offers so much great possibilities as well as environments and in the end it is doing (subjectively) boring stuff that pays out most.

Best regards.

2

no way you can get 4-5 legendaries on first difficulty crucible ( I meant by one run 50-150 or 100 150. if u just meant minutes, maybe you are right).

the memory is selective. select a bigger sample site and note the results down. this is grim dawn not diablo3. they buffed the drops a bit.

3

My bad, I meant challenger difficulty (with extra spawns), Waves 100-150, which gives you 2 to 3 legs per runs, sometimes only one. But after 2 hours with the respective wave 130 check points you get a much much better yield than doing vanilla content, not to talk about gladiator…

I’m perfectly aware of the selectiveness of memory (although I tend to fall for it from time to time) and I don’t wanna compare GD to D3 (which I played a few 1000 hours), the drop rate of D3 is completely out of control.

4

Don’t compare the core game to the crucible, in any aspect.
This mode was developed as a half-assed end game substitute, it’s small, dull, and lacks quality. It HAD to be super rewarding, otherwise no one would play it.

IMO avoid it as long as you can, don’t even think nor speak about it. Instead, just focus on the main game, and soon you’ll discover that drop rates are fine - not too stingy, not too generous.
A great portion of the aRPG gameplay experience is the expectation, the item hunt, the so called carrot on a stick.
GD doesn’t rain top tier items as it would trivialize your progression, but at the same time drops are not utterly rare.
I’d say item drops are in a good spot, especially after all the buffs to the rares. You are hard to get stuck in your progression, as long as you are not looking for quite specific or rare items, hard to get.

5

I think Op’s above sentence is correct. Due to bad rng design of this game, grinding(or trading) is only solution for end game gear. It is ironic that game creator medierra said that “grinding is not fun” years ago but in the end it is the only thing that pays for. Yes, this is rpg which is designed to grind but in this game you grind as much as any other mindless grinds, which was not wanted for the game creator.

6

Well, I guess all opinions on this topic are subjective, as it’s mostly about personal expectations, wishes, experience, or even luck.

If we take a look at the rest of the aRPGs on market - we got D3 with items raining, and PoE where you are likely to play lvl 70-80 areas with lvl 30-40 gear and no perspective for upgrades.

There’s no way to please all, and there’s no “proper” way to balance drops.
I’m personally fine with drop rate in GD, someone else may be not.

I just advised OP to not take crucible as a standard, but to judge on the main game instead.

7

The crucible came about after debate over grinding in ARPG.
It is a great way to get a characters average item level up and most importantly for the game a great fast track method to get a new character to level 15 without cheating.
Normal grim dawn may have good enough drop rates by type, but it’s been historically rat house at keeping characters gear at equalized average level.
Currently I’m not feeling as much of a pinch with that so perhaps it has improved recently or my stockpiling in G.D.I.A…

At the end of the day it strikes a balance, the crucible is meant to be a harder lock in risk for more reward, while the campaign a safer though less reward focused experience and having both options is not a bad thing.

8

Have you tried farming bastion of chaos? The drops rates there are pretty absurd because the hero density is insane. On the first floor alone there is a place which spawns around 5 elites and its not a death room.

9

I don’t know any aRPG which succeeded to provide the player the craved gear and the challenge to acquire it, both at the same time.
RNGs game developers use have their cons, and what matters at the end is their vision over the game. Mostly that. It may, or may not fit in the player’s expectations, as people are different.

D3 tried deterministic drop, and it backlashed severely. To calm players down, they made game drops character bound and pour tons of items over your head to compensate the difficulties coming out of this mode. Now you fully gear a char in a couple of hours, then farm till your eyes bleed for the same items you already have, but with slightly better stats.

PoE bypassed their naturally stingy drops (economically motivated decision), by the ability to trade. And you are unable to progress past a certain point if you don’t trade (unless you are extremely lucky, or bot farming for ages).

GD is somewhere in the middle - drops not raining, but with enough luck and dedication you may have what you want, in relatively short terms. Or may not. Crate tried to fix the randomness by fixed items from vendors and some leg rewards here and there, but these are not sufficient past a certain progression point, nor can fight bad luck or imperfect pseudo random generator.

In short:

  1. As a player, it’s impossible to have the best experience with drops, as people differ. There are try hards, there are lazier ones. And all groups of players have their rights to enjoy a game.

  2. As a developer, it’s impossible to provide smooth gear progression, without:
    a) deterministic drops
    b) abysmal increase of quantity of drops

But does this approach add quality to the gameplay experience? Or just bad taste in your mouth? Depends, discussable.

I don’t intend to preach how good GD drop system is, as it isn’t the best, nor can be.
I just say that it’s a good spot, at least according to me. My personal approach is to work around “predetermined” builds, when I have most of the core gear needed on hand. Sometimes I play a char from scratch, knowing well I may, or may not, struggle past some point - an intentional decision.

If you have any suggestions of how drops can be improved in this game, throw them in.

10

the main problem is, we have 28 possible masteries combinations, which means at least 28 sets of legendary sets to cater these combinations, and hundreds more legendaries that also need to be steping stones/alternatives to these sets. This created an essentially bloated legendary system where the legendary you want will take weeks/months to farm, while duplicate legendaries drop nonstop, frustrating you to no end.

As im speaking right now, my cablist summoner got 3 shrouds of illusion, 3 copies of storm treads, 3 copies of groundbreaker treads, and only 1 part of mask of lost souls. It is bugging me out alot.

Legendaries do drop, but most of it is useless to your character.

11

I think one way to improve this is to make things abit more rewarding with the amount of risks involved.

Grava and Beast nemesis are some of the hardest boss in game, beating them can take up to 10 minutes on some Char, so imagine their reaction when the chest opens and is all blues.

Same with Port valbury. Such a difficult and lengthy dungeon, you’d hope one extra chest than SOT and BOC (which pretty much everyone with decent blues can faceroll).

12

Port Valbury is hard to due to the layout. The end boss is a DPS check and stun check

Grava is weird, I still have no opinions on him. 10 minutes sounds excessive to me. Wasn’t this high last time I checked

Kupacabra literally screams shit design for nemesis and good design for Beast Dungeon Boss (the upcoming one)

13

I honestly wouldnt mind if they keep the difficulty but up the drop rate :rolleyes:

Is kind of like Shaper fight or apex of sacrifice in our version of the game, giving people good rewards for the risks they are willing to take.

We already have this system in place in the crucible.

Edit: though i can see people builds specifically for these dungeons/bosses and just meta farming the game :<

14

I think it’s fair to ask for a minimum of one high level leg considering I’ve too had dry runs a.k.a zero leg rewards from treasure chests at the end of the dungeon

Not sure how it’s in the current system. Since it’s been raining purple. I am having a harder time with greens though

15

In my experience the vast majority of runs result in no legendaries from those chests. You’re only guaranteed one epic, which is kind of … pointless?

16

Port Valbury is hard to due to the layout. The end boss is a DPS check and stun check

Stun check? Did I miss something? :confused:

For me, it was always about resistances. I always put some extra consumables (Poison, Fire, Aether) in, just to be on the safe side, after the long run to Aldritch.

I understand, that it is sometimes frustrating to kill a special boss and only get an Epic. But on the other hand, I got really cool Legendaries from heroes.

RNG is RNG…and most of the time it was fair to me.

17

That meteor is easy to dodge but if it hits it stuns you

Oh yeah, aether resistance should be overcapped and melee chars shouldn’t stand in the fumble poison cloud

I never have a dry run from a complete run but I think it’s rather disappointing to get a leg from a zombie and not from the final stash of the dungeon. But that’s just me

18

To me dungeons does not justify the skeleton key mats. Instead, just save 8 blood of cthon and you will get what you want from trade in exchange for it. Dungeon drop rates are awful(waiting for xpac one). Not to mention, legendary drops are rarely what you want except end bossses ones.

19

@ Chthon:
I had one of these nearly “dry runs” in PV. Nearly because I got a nice MI Belt which I could trade.

I don´t need the loot. I like the design of PV, I like the risk of a rogue-like Dungeon. If I could change something I would implement a (repeatable) quest for the Endbosses with a small reward (e .g. Blueprint) and some “cosmetic” change for that gaming session (e .g. everybody in Homestead cheers at you after you killed Aldritch).

20

Time for smart loot, eh? :stuck_out_tongue: