Not another "I hate RNG" rant: minor tweaks to increase "Satisfaction"

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Hello!!

Grim Dawn is an amazing game, well rounded and balanced, with incredible replay value. However, after roughly 600 hours of gameplay, taking 8 characters to finish ultimate and somehow managing to finishing gladiator on one of them (that at some point seemed impossible), I feel I reached a point of ever increasing frustration that could be addressed in a rather simple way (at least imo). I’ll elaborate further in the next few lines.

Personally, what I enjoy the most is experimenting. What drives me to keep playing over and over again is trying new stuff and trying to pull off builds with mechanics I find interesting despite their current status on the meta (in fact for some reason I tend to avoid meta builds). Now in the current status of the game, reaching the builds’ full potential requires very specific items and -most of times- completing certain sets.

Aaaaaand, there comes RNG. While the system is quite rewarding, specially early on, at some point you start looking for very specific items. In my case, I haven’t completed a single set so far, and this is pissing me off bad. I am one piece away from completing IK, Warborn’s, Markovian’s, Iskandra’s, Deathmarked and Ulto’s, all of which are key for the builds I was trying to pull. And I have so many repeated pieces!!! Now, don’t take this as the usual “I hate RNG” rant. I love RNG. Also, I acknowledge a certain degree of frustration is necessary, or rewards wouldn’t be as satisfying. Good ol’ “No pain no game”!! It is just that I would like to enjoy more of the game without having to sacrifice my whole life farming 24/7 just in case RNG blesses me and I get either the recipe or the last missing farm for the sets.

One way of solving this would be to resort to trading. If somehow the devs want to encourage this, then no change would be necessary. However, it seems to me the game is mostly focused on the single game experience. I personally wouldn’t like to resort to trade to finish sets, as it would take away much of the satisfaction I get out of completing stuff.

So what could be done to increase satisfaction without changing the actual state of the game and RNG in a significant way? This would likely be relevant after the expansion, in which so many items will be added. I can think of a few approaches:

  1. One is expanding the existing crafting system, to include the possibility of “exchanging parts” of similar tier sets for a specific part the player wants to have. Of course it would need to be balanced to prevent exploitation and to keep it as a last resort. For example: exchange four lvl 75 set parts, six of each rare material (blood of chton, ancient hearts and tainted brain matter) and 1.000.000 coins for a warborn helmet. Cost might be outrageous but you get a GUARANTEED reward after your hard work, even if it takes you 100 hours.

  2. Get a token after finishing each difficulty level to exchange for a known item, considering “tiers”: normal will let you choose a lvl 50 item, elite a lvl 70 item and ultimate a lvl 75 item. I mean, getting to choose one item after the 25 - 30 hours it takes to go all the way through ultimate doesn’t seem excessive. It could even replace the reward when killing Log. If this seems like to much, you could adjust tweaking the number of tokens per item (i.e. getting two chars trough ultimate would give you one item of choice).

Well, would like to know what you guys -and maybe the devs- think about this. No matter the mechanic, my experience of the game would be so much better if after all the hard work I put into it, I could get a guaranteed reward instead of having to rely 100% of the time on pure RNG. If the cost is high, so be it. Just knowing that if I farm 100 ancients hearts I’ll be able to finish a set would somehow help to deal with the frustration of not looting it.

Well, I hope this proves somehow useful and if it has been already discussed/proposed, my apologies. I tried to look up for similar threads, but found none. I did skim some of mediterra’s threads about game design though.

Good luck!!

2

There’s trading threads on the forum for SC/HC and separate threads for legit items and non-legit items and there’s also GDSidekick Project which I believe has almost every item going as well. :wink:

3

Thing is I personally don’t want to resort to trading or using GDSidekick. That would ruin the experience for me, and from what I’ve read, many people share that view of the game.

What I would like is a mechanic that -at a higher cost- gives you guaranteed reward, instead of relying 100% on chance alone.

4

RNG also gives you a guaranteed reward at a higher cost, it’s just that the higher cost is not fixed :smiley:

5

That’s fair enough, I only mentioned them due to your comment here. :wink:

6

RNG loot mechanics of this game is certified iso 9001 bad. Easiest fix is, if an item(or set piece or same mi combo etc) is dropped before and it is in either any character’s stash or shared stash, then its drop rate must decrease and the remaining ones that havent dropped yet must have a higher chance of drop.

7

I’m happy with RNG as it is. What you suggest would not only be probably hard to implement, but also undesirable to some people. Repeated items might be wanted to get better rolls.

The only tweak I think could improve the system is adding a mechanic that would guarantee a reward. Personally it would add to my experience of the game.

8

The more loot that is added and the more that the loot pool continues to expand, it will be harder to complete legendary sets. I definitely don’t want weighted drops implemented based on class, but some sort of weighted drop system would be appreciated as long as the player has full control over the adjusted drop mechanics. Perhaps a change to the crafting system could work, but I was thinking along the lines of a new NPC or a new mechanic (a player controlled buff) which could increase drop rates of set items based on how many items of that set a player is already wearing. For example, finding a rare consumable or buying from a vendor which buffs the character for X number of minutes and increases odds of certain drops for the duration of the buff. Without some sort of drop rate weight system implemented, finding the item you’re looking for becomes exponentially harder as the loot pool increases.

Maybe Etram Fald could craft increasingly specific items for higher crafting costs? Instead of paying 8 components for a weapon, maybe we could pay higher amounts to guarantee a specific crafted weapon type (2-handed gun for example?). I’m just throwing ideas around at this point, but increasing players’ ability to acquire specific legendaries should be strongly considered.

9

I would say keep the game as it is, just add a proper multiplayer experience, at least add online only play that would make trade always legitimate and meaningful.

Single player is single player, the staple of all ARPGS - Diablo 2 (LoD) didn’t give even the half of what this game gives you in terms of reward and it was still hella fun. Trying to get top build items or big runewords or a build that can farm ubers in single player? Forget about it.

Here you can make a build that farms Ultimate with your own finds.

If you chose a hard path, play the hard path, grind on your own till the end. Otherwise, just trade with legitimate players, nothing wrong with that.

10

No that is not good item exchange as proven by fate series the 2nd installment is like that very usless so they scrapped it in the 3rd and 4rth installment of fate

11

Guareenteed loots does not help any certain items, it helps only for colors. They can not implement every possible guareented for so many items thus only they can do is for color… such as crucible.

My suggestion is only feasible way to get all set items. Rolls are always exrtra and should not affect the build that much.

12

+1 to your suggestions. I’d love to see a system in place that dampens the extreme rng dependency of this game