'Smart loot' setting for GD (maybe GD2)

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

[edit]After careful consideration of how the masteries/classes/skills/damage types/resistances work together in the game, I have been persuaded that a smart loot system (or at least one that would work well) isn’t feasible.

Thanks to those who provided constructive and reasoned comments.[/edit]

I’ve only been playing for a couple months, so I’m sure this subject has come up before. However, I did search the forums for thread titles containing “smart loot” and couldn’t find anything.

So I realize that I’m probably in the minority of GD players in the sense that I’m never going to play more than a few builds. I know that might seem crazy considering the massive build diversity available in the game, but it’s just the type of player I am. I just like to max out or near max out a character before moving on and making another one. I haven’t even done that once yet after 150 hours, and honestly I will be burnt out on the game by the time I do this again for 2 more characters.

Rather than explore builds by starting new characters, I opt to research builds online in advance, with certain playstyles in mind that I’m interested in. Then I make a character and commit to it.

I have to believe that there are more players like me, even if we aren’t a majority.

For most dedicated GD players, having random item drops is probably a nice deal. If a high tier item drops that your current character can’t use, then there’s a decent chance it can or will be useful for another build. It also enables you to make special farming builds to find gear for other builds. I get it. But for players like me, it isn’t such a positive thing. Knowing that I’ll never play more than 3 builds max, it’s a bit deflating when that nice blue or purple drops and there’s only a very small chance it’s something that will actually synergize with my build. Consider that my wife has played for almost as many hours as I have - mostly with one character - and there have been only a couple of times that she has found a good item for me or vice versa. That’s just indicative of the massive variety in the game.

So with this in mind, I propose a “Smart Loot” setting in the game options. Have it disabled by default, but if it is enabled, then it will tilt the loot tables in favor of the classes from the build you’re actually playing. This is what Diablo 3 does, and I know GD isn’t Diablo, but if something like this as an OPTION could boost the enjoyment of the game for players like me and make the loot more exciting, while not affecting the other players who want to keep totally random loot, then I say why not?

I realize there’s little hope for something like this in GD, but perhaps it could be incorporated in GD2.

2

How would smart loot even work in this game? There’s a lot of different builds for each class. It works in Diablo 3 because pretty much every class is funneled to their specific build.

Also, a lot of work for a toggle that i would bet very few people would actually use and Crate, at least from posts, doesn’t seem to be a fan of adding toggles that only a few people will use.

3

Of course it wouldn’t work as well as D3. But if I’m playing Commando, it would be easy enough to program that items with +x to Shaman and Inquisitor skills have much less chance to drop than items that boost Soldier and/or Demolitionist. I can handle getting a piece that drops with the wrong type of damage bonuses, but it really stings to get those items that boost skills for entirely different classes. I’m not a game developer, but it doesn’t really sound like a ton of work to me.

I could be wrong about how many players are like me. Maybe it’s a tiny niche after all, and 95% of other players have 50+ characters. If that’s really the case, then by all means it would be a waste of time to do anything like this.

4

A) It’s a fuckton of work/rebalancing due to the sudden massive reduction (less chance of other items dropping) of loot pool and rebalancing so the players doesn’t get too good a loot too soon, that would be better spent elsewhere esp for such a small team.

B) Grim Dawn is meant to be about building multiple chars and thus having items drop that aren’t for your char “can” encourage the player to try a different build. :wink:

5

Smart loot, sure sure … let´s take 5 minutes and code that, nema problema.

Even if a smart loot feature like in D3 would work for GD (which it totally would not), that would be a huge time/cost investement. That some people seem to believe Crate Entertainment has the resources to do something like that baffles me. Maybe it is meant as a compliment. :undecided:

6

I don’t think is even possible on GD given the mastery system, it also would make little or no sense cause you might want to build a soldier with a crossbow or whatever comes into your mind.

ALSO i find smart loot to be really a bad thing in an arpg, not a great idea.

7

Yeah I didn’t expect to get much agreement on wanting the option. But at the same time, if it’s just an option, it doesn’t hurt you and helps make the game more enjoyable for players like me who aren’t fans of having 50 mediocre level characters.

A) It’s a fuckton of work/rebalancing due to the sudden massive reduction (less chance of other items dropping) of loot pool and rebalancing so the players doesn’t get too good a loot too soon, that would be better spent elsewhere esp for such a small team.

“Too soon” is subjective, and for me I don’t consider 150 hours on one character to be “too soon” for me to have acquired top tier gear, at least for my level. But as it stands now, I don’t have optimized gear for my level even after investing 150 hours in one character. If the idea is to push players into trying a bunch of different classes/builds, then I wish they would pull the level cap down to like 50. I would probably be on my third character by now if the level cap was 50. However, just because of my personality and how these types of games offer the allure of more progression and power, I’m just not content to abandon my character when I’m still so far away from max level.

B) Grim Dawn is meant to be about building multiple chars and thus having items drop that aren’t for your char “can” encourage the player to try a different build.

But if that’s how they mean it to be, then level caps should be lower like I said above, and top tier gear should be easier to come by. If my level 80 Commando finds a top tier legendary/mythical piece of gear or set for a Druid, I’m not going to suddenly stop playing the Commando so I can start the game over with a Druid and level it enough to use that gear. That’s just not going to happen when I have so much time invested in the Commando and there are 20 levels to go.

Anyway…when I start my next character I’ll be looking more into leveling guides so the process will go faster. Thus far I’ve just played the game from quest to quest, area to area, exploring most everything I can. Very little dedicated farming. I’ve now completed the main campaign once on Veteran and once on Elite. I haven’t started AoM on Elite yet since I haven’t finished it on Veteran. I think I just finished the penultimate leg of the main quest, “Stoking the Flames”.

My plan now is to finish AoM on Veteran, then I’ll probably start main campaign on Ultimate. Also will consider purchasing the Crucible DLC at some point. Sounds like Crucible is pretty much the most efficient way to level and farm anyway. I’ve stayed away from Crucible so far because I got my fill of horde grinding with Diablo 3 rifts. It’s a nice change of pace to explore a world map rather than slay hordes in random maps or arenas over and over. With that being said, once I’ve gone through the whole world map again on Ultimate (assuming I’ll be able to beat it on Ultimate), perhaps Crucible will then become the change of pace I need to stay interested. After all, I can’t say that kind of grinding is not my cup of tea since I was more than happy to slog through 940 hours of it in D3 last year. But right now I’m not ready to get back into that sort of loop yet.

8

The problem is that while it doesn’t hurt others, it takes the devs time to develop stuff and it’s a relatively small team that probably already has its hands full with the next expansion, other projects and whatever current GD content they are working on right now.

When I started posting here I made quite a few suggestions. Most of them went ignored, I thought some of them were pretty good ideas but many people have ideas and even if it looks good from a personal PoV, it may not be worth the time/effort required for Crate to implement it for the end result.
Or just not technically feasible without a major rework.

IME, stuff that already exists in the game in some way or is just numbers changes is relatively easy to implement and has a good chance of being done if you build a good case as to the why.
Stuff that requires a UI change not so much, unless they were already working on it or it has a lot of public following with good arguments.

And then there’s ideas like in the OP that requires a complete new system.
As others have mentioned, the dual mastery system and amount of classes available doesn’t lend itself easily to a D3 style smart loot system.
There are way too many damage types and build variations (casters require different weapons than fighters, etc.) compared to D3, where you only have 1 class and both attacks and spells scale off weapon damage.
At least that’s how it was when I played D3 on release, I haven’t touched it in years.

9

feel the same here, rebel,

i only playthrough ONCE, rarely twice, espesially games like this where its not realy story heavy

i have very narrow lines along which i build around
and being able to filter loot by “tag” or something would go really far for me

ie, id filter loot for passive/reactive damage,
i like to immaging the goulies are killed by my sheer awesomness and rugged good looks :stuck_out_tongue:

but since i rarely get gear for my playstyle, i just cheat, that way,
even if my build (or gear in most cases) sux nuts, i can still play,
NOT spend 100+hrs, and get some enjoyment out of it

10

This game isn’t designed for people who only play through once or twice with one character. You’re not going to get the loot you want that way, and devs aren’t going to redesign the whole loot system just for people who don’t want to play very long. You may not like it, but that’s how it is. The decision has been made.

11

That’s true for any arpg i know. If someone doesn’t like grinding for loot most likely doesn’t like arpgs at all.

12

It’s been a couple of days, I was worried we weren’t going to see another pointless “Add this like Diablo has” request.

Some gamers should just cheat the game and get what they want sooner. It’ll make them move on a lot faster to the next game they don’t like.

13

After careful consideration of how the masteries/classes/skills/damage types/resistances work together in the game, I have been persuaded that a smart loot system (or at least one that would work well) isn’t feasible.

Thanks to those who provided constructive and reasoned comments.

14

Smart Loot system would be difficult to pull off and I think perhaps an increase for epic/legendary/blueprints + certain affixes/suffixes that involve either mastery’s skills would be nice - still allowing other random items to drop that would encourage build diversity.

As for it actually working it would take a ton of work I imagine. I could see it being beneficial though and more so if other mastery’s are added in the future.

15

I don’t think it’s not feasible even for a small team like Crate, at least for a potential GD2. I also don’t believe you’re part of a small minority. I suspect quite a large percentage of players plays like you do.

A slightly skewed system in favor of your chosen masteries and/or damage types would be nice and probably welcomed by a great number of players, myself included. On the other hand some people are already complaining about certain legendaries dropping over and over for them. A smart loot system would make this worse.

In the end you’ll never be able to please everyone no matter how carefully you design the system. There are just too many ways to play GD, which is one of things that make it so good.

16

Reward mechanics are almost non-existant in this game aside from self-satisfaction thus loot reward system must be reworked.

17

Yeah right. Yet another slag the game off post from you, no hints as to how you think it should be improved. Just “Improve this now” :rolleyes:

18

An easier alternative (?) could be to extend system we get in FG to also include epics and possibly MI rares.
You don’t get 100% what you want (by a bloody long shot), but get better odds with less farmin’.

19

Also it´s prolly the sucking community, that is the reason behind this not gettin fixed.

20

You can’t fix something that is not broken. Seriously, what’s up with all this people wanting all the games in the genre to be the same fucking thing? “Add seasons”, “add random maps”, “add smart loot”, come… on… Oh, I have an idea: Why doesn’t Crate make Grim Dawn a MMO cover-based Battle Royale with loot boxes so everyone is happy? There should be a check-list every time someone makes a thread like this.