[The Crucible] Perceived shift in difficulty - especially Crowd Control against players

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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Honestly this feedback always finds its way into these threads every patch. All made by the same people and the ones who support them. 1.1.6.0 did introduce changes in cruci especially on storm beacons which mostly nerfed everyone. But CC has always been present in cruci. What changed the most is players’ perception on how the game should be played. It’s not necessarily building more glass cannons but changing the way you move inside cruci. The rotations, the buff/banner setup.

For example, during those days when Vanguard banner + 3 buffs was the common setup, people would usually camp in bottom left, where the banner is located - eliminating the bot left enemies early and finishing what’s remaining from the other sides.

Nowadays 4 beacons are widely used which led people to mostly play herding in center - and it alleviates aggro bugs, meaning you’re facing more enemies on average compared to vanguard setups making you more susceptible to cc.

It’s not just that. Even during patches where nothing changed in beacon setups (i.e. 1.1.5.2 to 1.1.6.0) this feedback is still prevalent - because as people find more ways to optimize times, it almost always leads to more dangers, or should I say, different dangers. I used to rush Dravis on 169 but switched to rushing Annie. Now I find Dravis to be the most dangerous boss on 169 instead of Annie or Korvaak because of this rotation.

I recognize that cruci somehow got harder but I also recognize that this is most likely due to the shift in my own gameplay rather than some mysterious changes in the patch notes that zantai somehow didn’t tell us.

And yeah I recognize that this won’t go well with the “zantai go fuck yourself and play your own game you know nothing” crowd

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gosh pierce cadence blademaster is poop? have you tried physical cadence? xD

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i believe he was joking :slight_smile:

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A crowd is comprised of people. Your character is a person, right?

Or do you simply think that taking the role of the hero in a game makes the character somehow immune to the effects it can use against enemies? We’re all Chuck Norris, yeah?
“I can get cold like everyone else, but I never freeze.”
“Oh yeah! That guy. 2 tons of meat and he hits the ground like a wet fish? Gave me a bit of a shake, sure, but stun? Never! Me, now - when I lay into the ground with my hammer the whole Shattered Realm goes night night.”

Sounds legit…

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I’ve seen much worse on this forum…to see my post deleted was actually sad…I actually though it was funny given the fact that people should read first. I am almost tempted to past it again since I can remember it word for word more or less lol

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@Shadowpast - if you see worse than what I have just deleted, please flag it. TYVM

Still you have a point as Zantai used to argue against CC on bosses like this:

In the end it’s splitting hairs over semantics and game terminology. Bosses are immune to many status effects, whereas the player is only against knock-down and staggering.

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Sarcasm…last 4 words.

Edit: Round 2, fight:

So before I was so callously outmaneuvered, I suppose I need to give the “G” rated reply.

@LordThundyr

My quote is being taken out of context. It was, as I said above, sarcasm. Clearly, at least I thought, evident from the last 4 words.

If I want to IP Man my way through the game I would’ve modded everything’s cc res to 0, regardless of whether it was “legit” or not.

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I don’t think anybody would agree to remove cc completely so there’s no need for ridiculing other people’s attempts at humor. The way I see it, This thread is about how strong cc effects currently are and how it affects the game.

Imo right now there’s too much stun and freeze in the game. Availability of stun res did increase (not for everyone, though. Ex. acid still has almost no cc res on gear, devotions and masteries - outside the temporary Ascension) but there’s no way to raise the cap. And cc effects are so common that even at 20% strength they can affect the gameplay making it clunky and inconsistent.

Getting cc-ed interrupts the animation of what you’re doing especially movement skills. But even autoattack. I was playing a 2h Savagery build lately and even with stun res capped I had situations where I could not hit with that Savagery for a while because of getting microstunned from all directions. It does not happen all the time as enemy cc skills are usually on cooldown. But with so many heroes having such skills, the chance that it happen is quite big. This is another layer of RNG aka “Why TF Did I Die?” Imho GD really does not need more of those. Especially with all the issues with responsiveness and FPS.

At least this is how it feels for me. If there’s anything wrong with my assessment pls let me know but keep it civil, please.

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I honestly struggle to see why complaints about the character being affected by non-damage enemy mob effects should have any traction, yet several people spring to the defence at once - lol. If enemies deal a certain damage type to which the character may be susceptible (the cap is not 100% so you’re still susceptible) then surely the onus is on the player to control how many of those effects he or she can handle at any one time without getting, say, stun-locked? I also hate that Aether damage can interrupt the character, but if that leads to a character death then I need to play better, not apply sarcasm in an online thread of complaints.

GD could have better tells about insta-gib deaths, yes, but that’s a different argument.

A large part of the game is a gear/maths check, and there are times when RNG will let you down if you allow the character to become overwhelmed. It might only be a 1:20 chance of getting ‘stuck’ or without ADctH for a critical period, but if you put the character into 100 such situations chances are that the character could die 5 times. If you don’t like those numbers, play differently. Pushing high rifts and Gladiator content does increase risk, of course, but the end game is meant to be hard. Failing to punish a player for not taking the enemies seriously would be the opposite of making it hard.

Shadowpast’s attempt at humour notwithstanding, “I couldn’t act for several seconds, this game is so unfair!” is exactly what it’s called earlier in this thread - a misplaced sense of arrogance and/or entitlement. You can’t allow max-everything all the time on every character because it’s just bad game design, and Zantai absolutely knows that better than the rest of us.

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Look, when difficulty spikes are fair, I agree, there is no reason to complain. Thing is, it’s one thing to face a deadly Nemesis in Crucible Gladiator or deep Shards and another thing to battle buggy mechanics of the old engine.

Another thing, unfortunately, because of the old engine or specific game design or everything together, CC-mechanics do not work both ways and some of them (hello “sleep” and “life leech” resistance) don’t work at all. Which is, and I am sure you understand why, is very frustrating. Like there are skills and sets dedicated to certain CC but their uses are super-limited because all important Bosses are basically very resistant and immune to CC.

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Bosses are immune to things in so many games and that’s part of what makes them bosses. They don’t follow the rules of ordinary monsters. Otherwise you could say: “why is he called a boss when he dies just as easily as anybody?”

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Most of them do die easily and pretty fast anyway when facing min-maxed endgame builds, but the reason lack of CC-mechanics is frustrating is because it kind of makes endgame gameplay a bit homogenous in that sense. Like, stack enough damage and enough defenses and just outleech/outdamage the big boss. CC-mechanics could give those fights different flavour but unfortunatey it doesn’t work properly.

If you played D3 you might remember that (despite all the drawbacks of the game) bosses have CC-resists that increased when you were cc-ing them.

Like imagine how cool it would be if your Rimetongue Infiltrator could trap big Grava’Thul, but you knew that each trap’s duration would be shorter and shorter untill it would stop working on him so you have to approach that fight strategically as in time your traps, try to deal as much damage as possible while boss as trapped, plan how you gonna kite when traps become less potent, etc. etc.

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@LordThindyr pls read your post above and ask yourself, “How constructive was this as player contribution to balancing and perfecting the game?” You’re basically saying everything is already perfect, and shutting down those who claim otherwise. How does this help as player feedback?

Also,

This doesn’t happen.

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You seem to have missed criticising other posters for doing the same?

My point is simply that some gripes are largely about game difficulty in the most difficult areas of the game. They are not of the kind: “In situation X, Y happens consistently which is at odds with the rules of the interaction,” but rather “RNG in situation X is really bad,” as though RNG is itself a buggy game system. Being adversely affected by non-damage effects doesn’t generally matter so much elsewhere, regardless of whether by accident or design - only when pushing the limits of the game engine and/or enemy difficulty. So it’s hard to tell whether there is a genuine concern or if players are just salty. If an enemy skill or effect can interrupt the character in certain circumstances, then why be surprised when it can interrupt literally anything the character was doing? Or do I not understand the meaning of “interrupt”?

Some background that supports the next paragraph: Even as long ago as Diablo 2, I had a build that would get stuck in the Act II tombs surrounded by enemies that would induce ‘block lock’ - the character took no damage because it could block everything, but would never have an opportunity to attack back nor could it move or create a town portal or do, well, anything. It was infuriating but I can tell you that wasn’t a bug, merely a consequence of my build and play style, and there was no way Blizzard were going to overhaul the blocking system to ‘fix’ it (though they may have eventually - I stopped playing the character so I never tested it later). Blocking cooldowns were introduced in later games so that the shield wasn’t always available to interrupt your movement skill or attack.

So with reference to your earlier post: Being “micro-stunned” in GD when facing a specific set of enemies simultaneously doesn’t sound like anything different to my block lock in Diablo 2. It’s pretty hard to suggest an “I can’t be hit by cc-effects cooldown” (even though the enemies have them) because, well, for what logical reason should it exist? So that we don’t have to care that an enemy’s greatest threat is to interrupt the character? How would that concept support the idea of “high difficulty area boss”?

The game isn’t perfect - I never said it was. But some “issues” simply don’t make sense to me.

{Aside: the Aether thing is noticeable when getting hit by Krieg’s effects and I always assumed it was an aether damage side-effect. Clearly it’s something else, but my point about playing better or differently stands.}

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I can’t but wonder if you really read everything here on this thread.

You’re notion of aether causing issues doesn’t lend well to any of your arguments because it shows lack of a general understanding of game mechanics.

I don’t think the moderator even understood what I was trying to portray when I stated my sarcastic comment because they answered it like it was legit when everything else I posted backed @mad_lee in the fact that things can happen in background that no one noticed.

After that I went as far as saying that certain anti cc affects are absolutely necessary or else insta gibs are in store for you. Also, when I use my reading comprehension, I see that my legitimate gripe was that I wished I didn’t have to take all the same nodes/items to get the cc res I needed to survive and NOT complaining about the cc res itself.

Uninformed and outdated use of “leg” attacks without context gains no traction from me. Furthermore not a single person batted an eye at my sarcastic comment from my post down with the exception of yourself. That’s 50 posts. From those optics, picking a fight sounds more akin to what was occurring here.

So you have perceived issues with people whining…about things you don’t like or agree with…okay…However that’s your problem. Your “Walker, Texas Ranger” comment was done based on your biases/beliefs without even clarification from what the poster was trying to do or say. Maybe a simple, “was that a real feeling about cc?” Question would have gave a “sparkling” response of “lol, no”

I don’t like the “meta” of this game. But I won’t try and ruin it for others with petty references especially if I failed to read a comment or my beliefs. That’s the way they want to play and I want to play a certain way so who am I to change it.

All gripes about this game are legit in the eyes of the player that is playing it, from that angle alone. It doesn’t mean they are right, but it impacts their fun and that matters. So I won’t ask for CR to get shat on because it’s fun for others. I won’t ask for the cc res to go away because I got locked. Never have. Never will. Never did in this post. I won’t use anymore time trying to figure out why only 2 people on this thread thought I was making a legit complaint.

Again, @mad_lee, I hear you man. Sometimes things happen in the background and should just be checked. If nothing changed, well what can you do…

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The Block Lock was a buggy mechanic of a 20 year old engine. If Diablo 2: LoD was the best aRPG ever it doesn’t mean it was without its flaws. It had quite a lot of weird mechanics that weren’t balanced. It doesn’t mean that buggy mechanics/interactions that can be fixed should be part of Grim Dawn despite how much it copies Titan Quest/Diablo 2.

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I want to understand who you’re referring to at the end of this first paragraph when you mention playing better rather than applying sarcasm- what/who exactly are you referring to?

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My guess was me. His rebuttal is flawed because it comes from a place of bias, his belief that if someone complains about something it is because they need to “get gud” or “#lolsaltytears” which couldn’t be further from the truth and wasn’t something that was occurring here.

What occurred here was someone stating a perceived change to cc and, in their way, came to forum to see what was the truth. Not to mention, others in his community noticed the same. If you look at those facts alone without checking the backend of the software, is legitimate until proven otherwise which was. End of story.

My deleted post was definitely vulgar but didn’t attack the person but it did attack his argument and his point of view which was my point.

@mad_lee re: D2

Yeah all true. It might have been the greatest aRPG at the time but it’s not now. Comparing modern day rpgs to it, it’s apples to oranges. PoE and GD are light years ahead in terms of complexity, better balance of systems, etc. even if you take each game’s flaws into account.

Disregard since I was just proven wrong: If it is the greatest why are we here playing GD and not D2? Or anything else for that matter.

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I am playing d2 …

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Edited my post since you have proven me wrong sir. Thank you :+1:

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