For the first time, i have not used that term for that, i swear. I was thinking global conditions of world actually. Gratification is a nice way of saying ass-licking in my office(as in many places of the world) and in that time i was in office. I was angry and it blurbed =) When i mean it, i admit… friend.
The only thing remotely close to Grim Dawn difficulty system and progression are those games with a new game + option that you unlock after you beat the game once, but you only need to do it once then pick that option for every subsequent playthrough. I can’t think of a game (besides maybe diablo 2? i don’t even remember how it was) that works like Grim Dawn, not now, not 20 years ago, it’s either separate difficulties available at the start or a new game + difficulty available at the start forever once you beat the game once.
^
The engine this game uses comes from a game that did the same thing. Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 also did this and i can probably find countless games that also did this. This was actually a pretty common practice.
Path of Exile (until recently), Diablo 3 (until less recently, but certainly for a year or so when it came out). Lots of ARPGs are now doing away with the different difficulty levels and the same content, but that’s fairly new (last 3 or so years) - and certainly when GD was initially created it was common place mainly established by Diablo. 
Looks like I was ninja’d
Diablo 2 - exactly like GD.
Titan Quest - exactly like GD.
Torchlight 1&2, Van Helsing - separate difficulties at the beginning of the game.
Diablo 3 - two dozen of ‘difficulties’ that you unlock once and then could pick anytime even with a lvl 1 char. Changing a difficulty doesn’t start a new playthrough, so it’s not exactly like GD, it’s more of a system of presets.
Sacred 1/2 - IIRC you have two difficulties at start and then unlock a new one upon completion, so it’s pretty much like GD.
Personally selecting a difficulty at the beginning tends to have a pretty broken balance, so I prefer the way GD does it.
Yes, maybe I underestimated the number of diablo 2 clones, still this difficulty system is unheard of outside of this specific line of games for a good reason, it’s terrible.
Clearly having to clear multiple difficulties is what the players REALLY enjoy, so I propose we add 10 more mandatory difficulties before you even step foot in Ultimate difficulty.
Yeah, you’ll gain 1 or 2 levels during Elite VIII, but you’ll have the satisfaction of spending A LOT of time on the game, and not being one of those instant gratification kiddies.
New Game+ concept is unheard of outside hack and slash ARPG genre?
It’s also quite common outside of hack and slash games. Metroid Prime Trilogy uses this system and i can name quite a lot of games that use them.
WoW also used it (uses it, still?).
Let’s not go up to extremes.
I’d seen your thread briefly. Agree with you to some extent, but feel more like Ultimate should be more of an option for Elite w/o resetting quests, similar to what veteran is for normal. Then most ppl would be ok with that.
WoW also used it (uses it, still?).
You mean that some dungeons have “heroic” versions? Well, maybe. That’s not a good example though, imo.
I described 3 difficulty systems,
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several difficulties available at the start
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several difficulties available at the start once you beat the game once unlocking the new game + option
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the layered difficulty system diablo 2 uses where each difficulty is built on top of eachother within the same playthrough and thus not available at the start.
No game uses 3) really, it’s either 1) (ex: pharaoh 1999) or 2) (ex: final fantasy 7 1997) or not at all and only one difficulty (ex: the sims 1 2000)
Option 3 is pretty much a typical New Game Plus system masquerading as diffuculties. A lot of games have NG+, although I concede that not every game bumps the difficulty in NG+ or even carries your progress. If you’re into old game examples, I’d say Legend of Mana is pretty close. Dark Souls series as a more modern one.
Also, FFVII had difficulties? Really?
It’s not comparable with 2) because I can pick the hard option or new game + option whenever I want every time I start a game or new character or new playthrough effectively playing normal once and hard 9 times out of 10 games.
You can’t do that with 3) you are forced to play normal first every single time you launch a new game, resulting in at least as many games played on normal than on hard, say 5-5.
- is actually a lot closer to 1) than it is to 3) if you parse it with numbers. Over 10 playthroughs, with 1) 0 normal and 10 hard, with 2) 1 normal and 9 hard, with 3) 5 normal and 5 hard.
With a game like Grim Dawn that encourages you to start over a lot to play a different main character, the effect is exacerbated, and you have players like me who are bored out of their skull halfway through the game and just stop playing all together before reaching harder difficulties.
I agree with being bored half way through the game part. After x chars, it starts to feel like burden. Only current fix for it is to play multiplayer or if your build is really dynamic and each 10 levels you find something else to try.
Looking back through these posts, it seems like a source of conflict here comes from expectations of what GD is or should be (e.g. comments like “Crucible was intended to be end game content” or “Why even have a campaign”).
I personally am not trying to advocate that Grim Dawn should be one way or another. I loved Titan Quest and I played through that campaign dozens of times with different characters, because that was the way the game progressed. But the fact of the matter is that GD has a crucible mode, and the goal of this thread is to suggest ways for Crucible and Campaign to co-exist without causing unnecessary frustration for the player.
This is how I see the current state of the game:
- You can play Crucible from level 1. Content scales with your level so it never feels like you “shouldn’t” be playing Crucible regardless of your character level.
- The campaign areas have caps on scaling. If I go to an area where I am overleveled it feels like I am playing content not intended for my character.
- Investing time in a character in Crucible and then trying to start in campaign mode feels like punishment. It is not fun in any way.
It doesn’t matter what the intent of these modes was: because the game allows me to create a character in Crucible, level up to 100, and then forces me to pointlessly play through Normal, it is severely violating the principle of least surprise. It’s just a bad design choice. The fact that it can be fixed with a trainer doesn’t undo the fact that it’s a bad design choice. Right now I have a level 54 character who can play on Elite, and a level 57 who can only play Normal. That is indicative of an underlying problem.
I proposed automatically unlocking difficulties at certain levels because it seemed like the easiest solution to implement. Requiring that a player passes through a difficulty at least once to unlock it for other characters would be perfectly reasonable.
Scaling the whole campaign seems like a lot of work. I think as long as the expectations are clear to the player (“unlock Elite at level 50 or after completing Normal. Unlock Ultimate at level 80 or after completing Elite”) it is fine. The point was that I didn’t realize I was doing something wrong until I tried to go back to the campaign.
Another option would be to change how Crucible is accessed. It could be unlocked after completing Ultimate. Or you could have a one-way import process where once a character goes to the Crucible, they can’t come back to the campaign. Then I’m at least making a clear choice when I start the Crucible at level 1.
I think there are two options that have been presented in this thread that would work for Grim Dawn.
The first option is level gating the difficulty levels. While I wont go over some of the issues players would experience, it is a pretty straight forward option and not a terrible one. It also allows players who don’t want to replay content to move straight into the difficulty level they desire (assuming they own Crucible).
The second option, and I personally believe the better option, is to require someone to play through the game once on each difficulty then have it unlock for the rest of their characters. I believe this is the option with most merit. Not only do you experience Grim Dawn as I assume the developers wanted it experienced, but you get a better understanding of what to expect in each difficulty. And I think that latter point is necessary for new players.
I don’t often play Crucible so I am not really impacted by this. However I think the above is a reasonably straight forward and simple way to resolve the problem. I can certainly imagine picking up Crucible one day, levelling to 50 and then wanting to jump into Elite (though I probably never will).
I posted this in another one of these threads. It’s the way to go, nothing but good things happen giving players options.
I think it would be better if monsters scaling would not have a cap. The area level caps should stay, but monster level caps should be removed, so we could start the campaign at level 50, normal difficulty (if we went for the fat *Crucible feast). Area caps should stay because that would be some kind of penalty to players for starting at higher level (getting an e.g. level 12 epic weapon vs. level 50+ monsters that would basically murder you in two hits would be enough, seriously). Even then you easily could avoid that in some way buying items from merchants (or having items from Crucible).
On the other hand, making players able to start from level 50* will be kinda bad idea. I’d rather have a possibility of experience lock on Crucible, so we could receive any exp if we want to go for items (or cheat the devotion points, so we have 55 points at level 1, lol. If experience lock would be added to the game*, the price of devotion for tributes should increase by 100 - 200%, or the system should be set to give tributes after successfully completing the run, not after 10 waves + after quitting. Farming devotion points in crucible would just make the game easy, as you could be level 50 and have maxed all devotion skills. The other penalty (and requirement) should be unlocking the level locking at a certain level of our character (let’s say 15, or 20), so we don’t have a level 1 character with 390 tributes and then just buy the devotion points for only 3 points.
Third option would be enabling experience lock and disabling tribute gain. Kind of a hardcore mode (but not hardcore).
Dude, why is this message so long… Greetings!