I am a relatively new player, having only played this game for 100 hours. We are having a blast with my friend and we are enjoying our game time so much. I knew Grim Dawn would be a great game and it kept up to our expectations for sure.
I would like to make some suggestions towards some mechanics of the game that I noticed through my playtime, which I think you should consider changing asap. I do not know if these have been mentioned before, but here goes:
We shouldn’t be able to hit with attacks/spells the creatures that are behind a wall if we get really close it. I do not know how walls are coded but you should ake them more impenetrable in close range as this makes the game open to exploits and unintentional but also unrealistic behaviour.
Not only is ranged gameplay sub-par to melee/caster in this game (which is tolerable, mainly because an expansion is coming that focuses a bit on ranged combat through the inquisitor hopefully and compensates for the current small imbalance), but is also hampered damage-wise and movement wise by so many physical obstructions on the map which is insane and very annoying. For example, an arrow cannot pass above a fallen tree chunk. Really? I understand that a wardrobe for example would stop it, but some doodads should be considered invisible to the rifle/crossbow/pistol projectiles. Also, regarding the tree chunk, I have tested it with my friend and the Aether beam spell (don’t know how its called, as i said im relatively new to the game) can pass above it but how can an arrow not pass?
I know someone might say ‘‘you will learn where the arrow will pass and where not in this game through time, it is just the way it works’’, and indeed I have learned and adjusted myself a lot and I adjust my eyesight to also observe where there might be some stupid obstruction (like low-height chunks) that halts my arrow. But is it really the correct method to have such projectile behaviour? Is there room for a change in mechanics like that to the mind of developers? And more importantly, can the GD community accept a change like that as well, having been used on the current projectile behaviour all this time? I cannot know, these are questions that might be answered in a short scale below through your responses, and as for the developers, in a meeting room. (Bare in mind there are not only low-height chunks that stop a projectile, there are many occasions that I 've noticed but I cannot remember them all right now).
If you cannot change some doodads that an arrow should normally pass above it, then what you can at least do is: make a character that has been given the command to attack an enemy, move to a position automatically until he has a clear shot on the target and the projectile is a guaranteed HIT. What I mean is, you can adjust the code so that when i shift click to an enemy, whatever the obstructions in the line of sight between my char and my target, he should automatically try to move to the shortest possible position where the next attack is a guaranteed hit.
Let’s suppose we are in a labyrinth in-game, and I can see a mob barely on top of my screen because we are relatively close in pixel distance but in-game it would take 3-4 minutes to walk to that spot, because there might be 3 walls separating us plus 4-5 rooms or corridors. I would STILL aggro that mob if i throw or do something because that mob HEARS based on the pixel distance we have, and not based on the in-game movement distance of my spot towards his. The mob does not even take all those walls between us into account, I simply aggro it because it is visible on screen.
I had some other things in mind as well, but for now these will suffice. I am in no way creating this post with malice, it is my love for this game that made me create this post and I am simply mentioning ideas that could make this better in my eyes. What I want to know now is if those suggestions are objectively constructive and worth-noticing, not just for me, but for everyone. Let me hear what you think.
It’s really good to hear that you and your friend are enjoying Grim Dawn that much that you’ve taken the time to post your thoughts…Cheers
I’m nothing to do with Crate, just the first random user on here to reply, so please don’t take my reply as anything more than my own thoughts, but a lot of the issues you mention have not only been bought up quite a few times in the last 4+ years of public testing and feedback, but are (I believe) down to limits of what can be done with the old game engine, of which the devs have a lot of experience in using… and as such it’s not just a case of quickly or simply change the way some things work, as some things simply might not be possible to work as you want, otherwise they would most probably have already been changed or not even bought into the game in the first place.
Hope this makes some sense and you and your friend continue to enjoy GD for many hours to come
“3. If you cannot change some doodads that an arrow should normally pass above it, then what you can at least do is: make a character that has been given the command to attack an enemy, move to a position automatically until he has a clear shot on the target and the projectile is a guaranteed HIT. What I mean is, you can adjust the code so that when i shift click to an enemy, whatever the obstructions in the line of sight between my char and my target, he should automatically try to move to the shortest possible position where the next attack is a guaranteed hit.”
Maybe I am misunderstanding you but this is a catastrophic suggestion. Any auto-movement regardless of how short the distance is never a good idea. Better to take your shot, realise you aren’t hitting the enemy and then move of your own accord to another position. It is all about positioning in this game. Especially with ranged and casters. Also those obstacles that are obstructing you are obstructing the enemy and you can use your positioning to bottle neck enemies to concentrate them so more of your AoE’s hit.
I agree with Woofknight. Changing the game so your character would automatically position itself to where you can actually hit a target would be very bad for the game. I can understand why you’d want this with your complaints, but I also don’t see how you’re really having that much of an issue with objects in the game interfering with your gameplay. Granted, I’ve only played a physical projectile based char to level cap really.
This one bugs me a little too. I don’t like that I can see every enemy in every room, or that they aggro merely by screen proximity. Next room if you are close to the entrance making a ruckus maybe, but you are right, the walls seem like they have no substance other than to block movement. And sometimes I run three circles around a lone enemy before they aggro. And also the finite distance before enemies return the spawn point. There is some reason for that i am sure, but find the turn around point on any tough boss and it is too easy to exploit, and attacking them when they are back in the zone will not aggro them until they are back at the spawn point.
There is a reason for it… too many complaints in early access from cowards running away and unable to shake angry bosses and heroes etc. The distance used to be a lot farther.
My, opinion… if you don’t like to exploit, then don’t exploit. Simple as that. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean someone has a gun to your head telling you to do it. If we were playing an MMO then I could see this being more of an issue since there is always going to be some jackass to intentionally take advantage of every little thing and ruining it for other players who may wish not to.
This one I can admit is the more annoying behavior that I wish they could find a resolution for. Why they haven’t done so yet is a mystery to me as it has long been known. You would think they could code the AI to recognize and override the behavior but perhaps there is something preventing them? I dunno. [Note: it is the fact of having to chase them back all the way to the spawn point I find annoying in particular and not necessarily the fact that it can potentially be exploited, ie. more easily with ranged builds]
Im no coder, but im no stranger to it either. It seems some sort of statment in the “return to spawn point” script, like:
If “attacked by player”
run agrro script.
Should do it.
Of course, then you could stand just outside the combat radius and attack and the boss would just run back and forth not knowing which way to go perpetually switching between scripts. So not really a solution.
You could also have one of the gods of the characters highest affinity create a barrier that if you pass through during a boss/hero battle you will die a horrible and agonizing death, with a cut sequence highlighting the incineration, or flesh dissolving acid, or festering pustules bringing about your end. Aggroing a boss would always mean win or die.
For one thing you wouldn’t want it to be possible to “kite” bosses safely as they bounce back and fourth on the end of their leashes. Returning all the way to the boss’s starting point would prevent that kind of sillyness and maybe other varieties too.
One possible solution would would be to have the boss/hero give an earthshaking stomp and roar as it hits the leash and then have it teleport back to the spawn point. I could be happy with that as a solution.
Then you seem to might have forgotten how many difficulties with obstructions physical ranged chars have. I have found myself many times going to almost melee ranged to make sure my arrows hit, because of some branches obstructing my projectiles. I am talking about obstructions that even my own eye cannot consider them as such, and I trust human eyesight and its instinctive judgement. On the other hand, I can throw a BWC in the corner of a wall and kill monsters on the 2 rooms behind, each separated by walls.
“Then you seem to might have forgotten how many difficulties with obstructions physical ranged chars have. I have found myself many times going to almost melee ranged to make sure my arrows hit, because of some branches obstructing my projectiles.”
I am constantly testing builds in ultimate and many of them are physical ranged characters so I’m not forgetting anything. I find myself many times in melee range of enemies, it is the way some environments in the game work. My characters can survive in that range long enough for me to move to a better position.
I build my characters so they can take a few hits. Sometimes when I fight ultimate Log there is an almost barrier like effect that seems almost to negate all ranged damage I do unless I get closer. Not sure what that is about but again it is a matter of positioning and using your skills properly. Also many of the boss fights happen in rooms against bosses that are fast enough to basically always keep you in melee range. Some bosses even when playing a ranged character you want to stay in melee range because the way they respond at range is more devastating in my experience.
Sorry if I sounded provocative, but I do not post something just to have the last say or be e-cocky, this is the least of my concerns as a person. With that out of the way, I am ok with any game to be in melee range as a ranged char if the boss is fast enough to reach me, but to go to melee range because of my projectiles fail to reach its target is the thing im complaining about, and this happening 3-4 times even after i reposition my character.
I have good mechanics in arpg and hit and run/kite movement, this is not the problem. I will give you an example. A huge rock in game blocks projectiles in Grim Dawn EVEN at its EDGE where it has the lowest height possible, a height at about a characters knees, and it still blocks my shot. There are many unrealistic objects like that in Grim Dawn and the problem is the space that some objects take for blocking projectiles. In some objects that should be narrowed or reduced by a lot, and in some others should be removed completely.
you must have the worst of luck, I hardly ever do not hit my intended target but some obstacle instead. That happens maybe once in a few hours of playing.
I most definitely never go into melee range to prevent this from happening… The whole topic is a complete non-issue to me
I have good mechanics in arpg and hit and run/kite movement
yeah, that is why this happens to you all the time and almost never to me… adapt your positioning a bit, sounds like you play some cover shooter and expect the same behavior here
