I own all the DLC cause I love the game but my friends do not.
I am not a fan of having to constantly turn on and off my DLC simply so I can play with my friend.
A lot of companies solve this in various ways
Allow only Classes to be locked to DLC - so Non-DLC users can play DLC content with Host who owns DLC.
Allow players to make a “Vanilla” character on character creation screen which has DLC deactivated
The first option is more Preferable that way I can use New DLC classes while my friends can still join their own. Since I am hosting the content they can see new items and decide if they want to buy it them selves.
Isn’t 2 already possible? If you deactivate the expansions then you’re just playing the base game and only need to remember not to play that character in the expanisons when you turn them on again.
Considering this is the only game I know that requires you to disable DLC to play with someone without DLC content - I think it is safe to assume that the Can of Worms is purely self inflicted by nature.
Most of it is solved by moving non essential parts to the Base game a a Free Addon to base game. Then having all users download all DLC content regardless of ownership. Then simply locking specific DLC features behind the pay wall.
Even games from the 90s used to do it this way to allow cross ownership compatability.
Not quite that simple considering the moddable and open nature of Grim Dawn’s files.
And Crate “solved” it in their own way and decided to take the path they did. A large part of that does have to do with the fact that GD is very moddable and “bundling” in DLC to all owners of the game irregardless of whether they owned said DLC or not would actually hurt their bottom line. The only really safe way would to do what you propose would be for them to go completely online and this is something that GD simply isn’t about.
Would I be against them figuring out a way to avoid the current scheme? Nope. But I can also understand the reasoning for why it is the way it is.
I don’t know if this has been a deliberate decision or not. But as you might know, Grim Dawn is based on an improved Titan Quest engine. The latter came with features like dual masteries and WYSIWYG loot, but also constraints. If it had not been for the existing code base, we would not have Grim Dawn and Crate Entertainment might have faded into obscurity.
I think this is a very reasonable wish. Having to use an external tool or fiddling with launch options looks a bit hacky and allowing to choose on the main screen would make it accessible to everyone without having to search for a workaround.
It’s up to Crate, if they want to spend resources on this. I would then ask for an improved character management, that you can keep base game, AoM and FG chars apart from each other, so that you do not accidentally load chars into an expansion game you don’t want to play with them. I guess this would also be beneficial for Custom Game chars.
To decide on this they probably want to know the demand, or if this just for very few people like you (and me, too). Even if this is already on their wishlist, there might be higher priorities like the Xbone port. In any case, thank you for the feedback and the suggestion.