I’m a recent convert to Grim Dawn despite having watched it’s development from the time it was first announced. I’m loving the game. It is hard but not unduly so, consistent, and most of all does not contain any of the cheesy context breaking nonsense that now fills the Diablo franchise.
The artwork is really nice, and although the engine is a little clunky and has inherited a few of the persistent issues and slowness of Titan’s Quest, the game overall is an astounding achievement for such a small company.
However, there are a few things that hold it back. Just going to throw these out there for the devs to consider (especially if there is a GM 2):
Difficult bosses should guarantee a certain level of item drop. Dying over and over and then being rewarded with useless greens is actually just crappy design. That should never happen.
The game needs a better entry tunnel into the game systems. It’s honestly overwhelming (frustratingly so) for a newcomer. I’m willing to bet player retention is a little low, and this is why.
Animation locking! The input response time in Grim Dawn is already significantly lower than the Diablo games. Adding animation locking (i.e. no animation cancelling) on top of lag can result in a really poor, unfair experience. The number of times I have died from a combination of lag/animation locking is absurd. I understand why this system was chosen. It much easier to implement and tune, and animate for. But animation cancelling in what is essentially an action game is not a luxury, it is a necessity. This is the number one issue with the game (not a bad thing to say, and shows the game’s quality overall).
Respeccing cost is counterintuitive to the game and its systems. The whole point - the necessity - of the design is to experiment with builds. Creating an increasing cost to respeccing is very odd. I actually wonder why you did it, and think it hasn’t been thought through. You are devaluing your own systems. Yes, we can get around it with rare potions and as a last resort, trainer programs. But why make that necessary? Just cap the cost at a much more reasonable level. Nothing else really makes sense.
UPDATE: One shot poison dropping from the sky, from mobs offscreen, coupled with another example of animation lock (turning around to get the hell out of there). Good God guys. What were you thinking. We had a DM once in a pen & paper group who literally cried “Yes! The DM wins!” after successfully killing the entire party through similar unavoidable nonsense. The amount of one-shotting in general in this game is absurd. It’s one of my few criticisms, but I can’t state it with enough venom.
Nnnnnnope. The whole point of it is to fine-tune a build, not create an entirely new one. For that, the main menu provides a Character Creation button.
The game needs a better entry tunnel into the game systems. It’s honestly overwhelming (frustratingly so) for a newcomer. I’m willing to bet player retention is a little low, and this is why.
Eh? Anyone can finish normal with random point allocation in any mastery.
I admit, I laughed a bit at this. 8+ years developing the game and you don’t think they thought it thru
The only point I personally agree with is that the noob entry level can be a bit rough, I’m talking pure noobs to any old school style Diablo game tho (do keep in mind that old school was kinda what Crate was going for). Everyone else really shouldn’t find the barrier too steep imo.
What? No. The size of time investment in a single character is pretty substantial. The number of possible builds is staggering - especially when you’re new to the game. Lessening the burden of the cost of respeccing at least for the first character just seems rational to me.
But as I said, I don’t know why the limitation in the first place. It doesn’t achieve anything positive. Just my opinion though!
Don’t see how the game can be overwhelming, maybe if you have never played a video game - then sure. But now you get a few points when leveling, later on get a devotion point, unlock a blacksmith, complete a component. It’s not like all game ‘systems’ are being thrown to your face at once.
“Crappy design”, the new buzzword for “this game does something that I don’t like but I want to say it like I’m an authority in videogames”. GD is quite generous with the loot, anyways. Just imagine a game like PoE with GD’s droprates; the hyperinflation would blow its economy in a couple of days. The Roguelike Dungeons have some of the hardest bosses and they have one guaranteed legendary drop in ultimate. There are one-shot chests that give you at least one unique item (with a very high chance of dropping a legendary if your level is high enough). Nemesis bosses always drop their MI greens on top of the nemesis trove. Honestly, I don’t what else you want from this game to make it meet your high standards of game design. The only unreliable asshole boss I can think of right now is Rashalga.
On this i totally agree. one of the better features in this game is great class variety and great build variety for each class, one should be free to change build as much as he wants without incurring in costs of 15l iron bits for single point removed.
Expecially because some build get OP or undewhelming after certain patches so you may NEED to change
Difficult bosses should guarantee a certain level of item drop. Dying over and over and then being rewarded with useless greens is actually just crappy design. That should never happen.
Yeah, that’s the game telling you suck and need to get better.
I do agree on the point that GD is a confusing mess even for somewhat experienced ARPG Gamers. A load of damage-types with dot-variants, the way various defensive tools work, conversion, rr… took me HOURS to Google or Forum-search all that stuff up. The sources provided ingame or on the official website give not nearly enough insight, or have even been wrong for some time (like order of defense).
Not sure this has a noteably large negative influence on player retention though. Everyone I know that stopped playing GD, did it for other reasons.
Well, i think the game should have a better start up menu UI-----The current one is fine—but hey, it doesn’t deliver the sense of satisfaction when you scroll through different heroes cuz the Scrolling UI is just plain text, it will be really cool if we an scroll through character mannequins—It just feel more intuitive !
If you don’t read about builds you can be fooled into putting Attributes on Cunning or Spirit, as it normally the case for non melee in other games, however I think the potions you get on the expansion are great in case you do mess up your character, by that point you are very likely to have read at least a couple builds or forums posts and know to put most attributes on Physique.
Except for a couple it seems pretty normal to me, just ignore the ones you don’t like. It’s comments like yours that tend to make a conversation more uncomfortable than it needs to be and direct attention back to something that doesn’t need it.
Either discuss the OP’s points and try to influence the topic in to a more positive direction or don’t comment at all.
