On "Farming"

Grim Dawn Development Updates
521

Hi new forum member and long time TQ player (still play occasional).

Just like to ask that the system from Titan Quest with some tweaking would be my preferred thing.

Please do not add an auction/trade house ,end game maps,or gate content in such a way that it has level and/or gear check requirements.

While having one or two secret areas is also cool for the game,please keep in mind that making access to them heavily dependant on RNG is probably not a good thing.

The secret passage in TQ was acceptable and quite fun,but not something I was interested to run all the time,even if I could get the drop to open it easily enough.

What I like in the older ARPGs is the risk verse reward factors.A gear progression that makes sense and the incentive to move on to higher level/difficulty areas with the very real risk of dying(in fact like TQ a reason to stay in lower level areas or come back) and the reward to match that threat.

Please if possible limit monster level scaling to a minimum.As an old school ARPG gamer my friends and I didn’t band together to fight the same level/difficulty/mobs/content with pumped up health/damage just to be rewarded with the same reward as soloing.We adventured in partys to take on far greater opponents and reap the rewards of better challenge and equipment or die miserably trying.

If doing this means no party bonus experience that is more than fine,it wasn’t the experience we were after in the first place.

Just a few things I can think of,thanks for listening.

522

It’s a staggeringly big thread so I haven’t the time to read through every post so I’m not sure if this idea has been brought up yet, but one way to make farming more friendly is to keep the RNG drops but also make boss monsters drop Tokens that you can use as a currency to buy Unique items, kinda like in WoW for example. There were drops to be had from bosses, but even if you were unlucky then you were guaranteed at least one piece of good equipment that you wanted/needed, eventually. This way you were always on the path to progression and never got stunted due to bad dice rolls, even if it was slower than just getting really lucky with good drops.

523

If you want to ruin games. Then go for stuff like this.

524

How would it ruin the game? Just because it’s a feature in a game you don’t like? That’s neat-o, doc.

There are some benefits to having a system like this. For example, the developers can assume more freely that people will have better equipment, on average, on higher difficulties, meaning that they can design more tactical and demanding encounters.

525

IMO, farming should be left for end game. Even if they consider end game as the end of each difficulty. Not every gamer wants to farm for hours just to do the next story quest.

This is one of the biggest downsides of some RPG’s. Take my experience with the Star Ocean series (same can apply to most ARPGS’s). Due to the combat being active, it’s possible to defeat enemies quite a bit above your level. Just playing though the story I get to a point where I get enough XP to level every couple fights. Then I get to a boss that has some ability that is near impossible to avoid, and instant death. Then I have to go grind until I can survive that attack.

Now, for end game, this is fine, and I actually like it. But having to stop mid story is just annoying. I believe the game should be designed to be “beatable” without having to farm. Once beaten, sure, I can understand requiring a little farming to be able to start the next difficulty.

Even the second difficulty I think shouldn’t require farming to get though, but may require some purchases from the merchants. The first play-though should be designed for people to get through the story. The second for people to finish their character builds. Then the third should be where the grinding starts.

Let’s face it. Not everyone wants a grinding game. Some just want to play through the story. Some also want to finish their character to how they want it. Some want a long treasure hunt grind.

Having a non-grind first difficulty doesn’t really affect the end-game grinders. Nor does the second difficulty. So, I think the grinding/farming is best left to where the people who want it the most will be mostly playing, and that’s end game of the highest difficulty.

526

Also something that could be done that you don’t see in a lot of ARPGs is add in mechanics to the boss fights beyond like the current “Take a swig of a potion when hit with an AoE”.

For example with the Warden, the room outside his already has a multitude of Aether Crystals outside. What if you made it to where for each Crystal in that room left standing, the Warden gets a buff to his health and damage, and if every crystal is left up then adds randomly come into the room from those crystals.

One, it would add difficulty to the boss encounter and progression because you could make it to where basically the harder the Warden is, the better loot he will have or have a higher drop chance to drop something good.

This would not only add an extra encounter element to the boss fight, but it could also add additional challenges to the encounters as well as allowing the player to progress in what would otherwise be a seemingly boring boss grind. And by progress I mean like for example:

“Okay, I can take the Warden easily without any of the crystals up, let’s try with two up… Damn he’s too strong, guess I’ll have to farm on one crystal up until I get better gear to advance to having more crystals up.”

Or something like that. It would add increased difficulty/reward, and be a rather interesting boss mechanic.

Also you could for a future boss or something make it something like:

There are four magic pentagrams on the floor, two red two green or blue or whatever you want them to be, but probably blue for those who’re color blind. The boss could have an absurd amount of health and defenses outside of the circles which would make him impossible to fight against. In order you damage him, you must kite him/her/it onto the red circles, which will apply a health/defense debuff to both you and he that will allow you to deal true damage to him, negating his defenses, but he also hits you harder.

When you need to heal or catch a breather or something, you can kite him onto a blue circle, which renders both you and he immune to damage allowing both of your healths to regen. (The players would regen much faster of course) Then once you’re ready to fight it again, kite it back onto a red circle.

Those are just some ideas on how to make boss fights interesting.

Edit:

And before someone says the typical, “Oh that’s stupid, I would quit if they did that.” type of comment, let me just say that they are just EXAMPLES of how to spice up a droll boss fight, not something I am screaming, “DO WHAT I SAID EXACTLY AND DO IT NOW!”.

527

I’ve been having some thought on farming and when I do farm and when I don’t.

I have no problem with farming and farm a lot in ARPGs … IF…

It’s farming for something I need in a particular area and not just randomly killing everything in hopes of something good happening in my life.

Sorry to bring up TQ:IT again … but

It was a smart farming game.

In TQ you farmed areas mobs that had a distinct drop table,wether it be for crafting materials or items.You weren’t guaranteed that what you wanted to would drop any time soon or even at all,but you had a 100% surety that area or those mobs/boss dropped it.

It gave a reason to farm areas either way above your level or even far below your level,which in my opinion is fantastic,why neglect older areas if they can be usefull.

Some things for example,Stonebinder cuffs and Batrachos greaves are well worth being either under level or over level to try and farm.

A lot of the crafting material was essential for a lot of my builds for the resistances (especially pierce) and I just couldn’t live without mechanical parts.

Hell you could even say I used to farm merchants in game,mostly for +skill amulets and honor guards (pierce resist ?) and hallowed helms.

Guess all I’m saying is if the loot stays smart like in TQ,then I think farming hours on end is fine at any level.

528

Because the way WoW does it is horrible. If poor pathetic players can get decent enough gear while doing little to nothing. And when you were raising a new character it became too easy. Within 5 days it was possible to be lvl80 and due to the tokens from Valor Points you could be farming Heroic Raid for top end gear in no time. Making you complete and maximize a character within 7 days. Oh the fun in that… NOT

Developers can already fairly accurately predict what level and stats players will have at specific points in the game to make appropriate encounters. And after playing a few self found geared characters you know those points as well. Tokens will not aid in any way.

=========

On normal difficulty you never have to farm in any game. On Veteran you often find out whether your build is good enough to continue. Or you have to start a new character from scratch and learn from your build mistakes. Rarely do you have to grind for better gear. In some games you do for gear with required resistances for the upcoming boss fights. But in TQ and GD you have crafting materials to take care of that in a heartbeat.

On Legendary difficulty you should have moments where you’re stuck and either have to restart a new character from scratch due to build mistakes. Or farm a fair amount for new gear. If you can go through Legendary without that…then there is something seriously wrong.

As for bosses with loot tables. I really miss that in current games. I hate having to kill everything in the hope something useful drops. With a specific loot table the chance to get what you want is already low. When you have to kill everything with a global loot table it gets even worse. On top of that… Knowing that you’re farming a specific area/boss for specific drops is actually more motivating and meaningful to keep going. Sure you’ll get a ton of swords that aren’t good. But you know that eventually you’ll get a good sword. Unlike a global table where you’re lucky if you even get a sword to begin with.

529

I’m not exactly sure what you are complaining about here. How do tokens let “poor pathetic players” get decent gear while doing nothing? The other guild members could (and did) pass on the boss drops to these players during raids and they’d still get gear without doing anything. People could level up and gear up within 7 weeks? They did this already in the vanilla days and they did it even faster than 7 weeks. This isn’t a problem caused by tokens.

I don’t even know why you brought this up since we are discussing Grim Dawn and not WoW. It was just an example of a game that had such a system. Seems to me that you are just letting personal bias interfere and not looking at it from an objective POV. You don’t even seem to understand what the whole point of tokens were. It wasn’t a way of replacing boss loot or making it more accessible to new characters (although I’d say that was a good side-effect), but a way to make sure that you didn’t have to spend 3 months raiding the same place for just one item because the RNG gods didn’t feel like smiling on you.

Unless they have a system that tracks peoples’ stats online, they really can’t. Your experience may vary because the random drops are nothing but a gamble. Sometimes you win, usually you lose. The only way to skew the dice rolls more into your favor is to play/farm more, but even then it’s still not 100% guaranteed. Loot tables would be excellent, but even then if an item you need has a 1% chance to drop it’s still not guaranteed, not even after killing the same boss 100 times.

I agree with you concerning difficulties, but my point with tokens was that with this kind of system you’d be guaranteed to be able to progress in Legendary at a more “human” time frame rather than being forced to spend from a few hours to days and maybe even weeks of farming loot just because you never got anything good for your particular character so you can’t progress. For some people these games are just about playing and beating them with a good character, for others it’s the gambling based loot hunt. I find tokens could be a middle ground where people can still have both.

530

7 weeks was a rushed typo. was meant to be 7 days in which a lvl 1 would reach lvl80 with best possible gear.

We don’t need Tokens, because a proper loot table should be sufficient to reduce excessive RNG layers and increase the chance for decent loot. Even if it only has 1% it still beats the 0,001% you’d have in other games due to more RNG layers. On top of that we already have the 1 shot chests. Which means the first time you kill a boss you’re guaranteed on a good blue item. We don’t need tokens for that and only make things even easier. Just like you didn’t need tokens in WoW to reduce time on raids since the drops are predictable and everyone will have what they need in a few weeks instead of months.

Games in this genre are about grinding, farming, looting and slowly but steadily progressing with a nice back story. Not about playing the story one time through and getting easy loot. I really couldn’t care less why people play a game of this kind as long as it is in line what games of a specific genre are meant to be. Unfortunately a lot of “gamers” these days want to fuck this up and want to change entire genres to something they’re not meant to be.

531

I look at tokens as the not yet implemented crafting system. Collecting Scrap Material, Aether Crystals and other items to craft awesome items is like getting tokens yet from drops in which once you have the necessary parts you can then craft the item.

532

Your argument basically boils down to this: giving loot at a faster pace makes the game easier and that more time spent on the game = harder game. This is a fallacy. The game’s difficulty should be defined by encounter design, not by how much time is spent repeating tedious and menial stuff.

You also claim that this type of game is about X and X only, when the truth is that it used to be about something completely different until it was changed into something “it was not meant to be”. So why can’t it change again? The ARPG genre is nothing but a derivative of roguelikes. These games were about surviving by the skin of your teeth long enough to survive until the end, not farming for awesome loot. Good items came with great luck; usually with a very high risk vs reward against a particularly dangerous enemy that you may or may not want to risk fighting. Having a boss on farm status in an ARPG is the antithesis of risk vs reward. Most roguelikes discouraged blatant farming and encouraged you to keep pushing on be it due to having to keep scavenging for food or constant respawning enemies coming at you and little by little chipping away at your resources.

This could very well be the case. I’m looking forward to seeing how crafting turns out.

533

I have played all through the Diablo series and was bitterly disappointed with the decisions made in D3. I now no longer play the game at all. Having to grind through 4 levels of difficulty before you start to get significant Item set drops and then still have to do farming runs leaves me cold.

As for the auction house joke please don’t ever introduce this into Grim Dawn, it is only for rich fools who have money to burn and would make Grim Dawn no better than D3.

I really enjoyed playing Titan Quest because of the early drops of some item sets and likewise I have enjoyed playing Torchlight 2 for the same reason. Grim Dawn has the same ethos and I love it to bits.

Crate have got the game pitched just about right for me and have done an excellent job so far. It hits all the good spots and is way better to play than D3.

Well done Crate!

534

Nobody plays roguelikes anymore, but tons of people are still playing Diablo 2. I love boss runs because I can dip into the game and then out again whenever I have time, without having to commit a large block of time and attention to story progress. If I wanted that, I’d go play a Bioware game.

I like traditional boss runs and I dislike crafting, as implemented in most modern RPGs. Spending farmed currency and materials on what is essentially D2’s gambling with a much more annoying interface and forced time expenditure is the antithesis of fun.

535

you’d be surprised how many people play roguelikes.

536

Agreed!! Just because something is out of popular fashion (for the current moment) doesn’t mean it’s not still being worn or gone, never to return.

Things get classically rebooted with a modern twist all the time.

537

WHAT?! Have you been to steam lately? There is a ton of roguelikes coming out.
I still play Faster Than Light, recently bought.
There are also Dungeons of dreadmor, Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, Nuclear Throne, Teleglitch, Risk of rain, Cardinal quest 2, Steam marines, Eldritch, Sots: the pit, Bionic Dues, Delver’s Drop, Our Darker Purpose, Tower of Guns, Bionic Dues, Cargo Commander, Delver, Dungeon Dashers (I own it), Full Mojo Rampage, Hack, Slash, Loot, Legend of Dungeon, Paranautical Activity, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, quite simple but addictive Dungelot, also awaiting to be greenlit: Dungeonmans, Fancy Skulls, Famaze, GUTS, Rogue Shooter, Rogue’s Tale, Wayward, WazHack…

Who is playing diablo2? that is and old crap than some fanboys keep calling a classic, its a fairly decent game, quite boring if you ask me, i spent more time in Torchlights, Silverfall, Titan Quest, will spent more time in Grim Dawn than ever in diablo2.

Don’t know how the crafting looks like in GD yet, but I like the options game gives us, relics we can add to our gear, gear you can buy at merchants if you dont want to farm.

538

I’m a fan on farming. I have played many ARPG’s including, Diablo demo, Diablo, Diablo 2, Diablo 2 LOD, Diablo 3, Sacred, Sacred 2 beta, Sacred 2, Titan Quest, Dawn of Magic, Divine Divinity.

Tried Guild Wars, and Never Winter Knights, but could just not get into it.

On farming, I was one of those guys on D2 LOD, that ran multiple bot programs while I slept, and did manual runs of numerous boss’s and the famous chaos runs while I was awake. Just gathering gear for Runewords and… wait for it…Crafting!!

I don’t mind seeing godly stats on items that have been crafted. Just like farming for items, people have put the time into it, and should be rewarded for it. Gotta have some kind of motivator to do it, or it becomes a useless tool, and a waist of the dev’s time. To leave it out, means less than what other games have to offer, and you may lose customers. One thing is for sure, the ARPG genre is widely populated, and a hard market to please. With D2 slowed way down, and D3 being a dissappointment to the hardcore and dedicated customers, now is the time to strike, and bring out a game that will revive the game addiction and endless hours of in front of the PC screen. :eek:

I was hoping Sacred would have made it, then Titan Quest, and then Sacred 2, but with D2 running at it’s peak, it was to difficult to pull people away. No matter how old the graffics were, or how lame the 2D design was, it was still addicting, due to farming, leveling, and PVP. Don’t get me wrong, there are people that still play games for the story, and I’m one of them, but to have the best of both worlds?! I can’t tell you how many times I repayed D2 LOD, just cause, and I enjoyed the story. I didn’t need gear, for I had many mule accounts with the best of the best. I really liked the story, but I also liked to farm and help my small amount of friends out. My youngest son, which is 18, I’m 40, still plays D2 LOD, and I was shocked to still see as many people still playing that game. The addiction is huge, and loads of money can be made, if Crate plays their cards right!!

…if I have offended anyone, I do appoligize. My statements are opion based only, and I mean no harm!! :wink:

539

Farming imo makes you feel more invested with that character. As long as the required amount of farming is not sadistically huge, I think it works well in games like this.

540

I’m a religious target farmer …

Simply offering mobs to kill doesn’t interest me at all,given a specific reason to kill them besides Random I’ll farm all day/night targeting a particular mob for targeted loot.

That is why I farm and farm a lot.