The vision behind FoA

[The_Mess]

Right, firstly thanks for post this, as you engaging openly with us is one of the reason why I love Crate :3 Even if I have my “disagreements” with you over a certain moderation issue. Anyhow:

@Zantai

I think we went overboard with making the new zones big and vast, which actually did us no favors despite taking more time to make. People complained about stuff feeling stretched thin and a “lack of content”. When people started saying FoA felt smaller than FG, that was a real mind blown experience. I mean, we can post all the charts we want with actual numbers and facts, but that sort of thing means nothing versus user perception. As we often say with design, perception is reality. So we kind of shot ourselves in the foot there, but ultimately I feel that will ease up as content updates happen.

I think the issue is that way too many players have been spoilt by Ubisoft style dumping of content everywhere on the map stuff. Where there’s next to no spaces on the map that are free to just be space. Case in point, Sacred 2 is far worse on the sparseness front and Diablo 2’s RNG based maps leads to a feeling of sameness and lack of isness for lack of a better word.

Where as the big open spaces in FoA feel big without being padding and frankly give time between fights to take in the sights and the excellent world art you guys did. Though I’d have had the final map be much more vertical, because after years of tramping/hiking it feels more like a hill than a mountain Alas I also know the engine gets grumpy with too much verticality and it can lead to movement targeting fun even with the changes made with FoA.

But yeah, claiming FoA is “smaller than FoA” just strikes me as “lolwut?” level stupid. Where as FG’s maps often felt too small to me, especially the desert sections, bar Bonebleach Basin of course. Never mind AoM lacking some areas and organisation, as the altar should have been deep in the bog, not north of Barrowholm. Plus us addicted to aether crystal farming would have loved another aether crystal area as hinted in the lore to be south of Malmouth.

Alas Gamers™ have become very entitled since the mid 10’s, which is how we got the next section:

@Zantai

In regards to making the main story require going to Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods, I mean, sure, that was probably a mistake in hindsight? But the reasoning for doing that was pretty straightforward: to tie the world’s events together and to nudge new players towards that content as well.

What I was definitely not anticipating was the outrage, how could we stretch out the campaign in this manner? How could we force players to do this? We’re just “padding the game time”. Like it fucking matters to me what someone’s playtime is, as if we make money per hour people play. I guess it was a mistake to assume “play game more” was a good thing?

And it’s not even places that are hard to get too either, in fact ideally you’d have already run those expansion campaigns already and FG’s takes fuck all time to get to the Tomb of the Eldritch Sun anyhow. Never mind hauling arse to Ugdenbog. So it just strikes me as whinging for the sake of whinging rather than anything of import

Could be worse though, if you’d had even the slightest hint of LGBT+ stuff the usual schmucks and putzheads would have crapswarmed to complain about “teh WOKE”. Least with Crate they’re going to get banhammered very quickly. Unlike on much of steam where that shit is perfectly okay, but pushing back? Well, say hello to getting temp banned for “being too mean”.

But yeah, these kids would be utterly lost in any of the old adventure games and their insane logic and need for backtracking obscene amounts sometimes. If it was possible lawl. As often you were sweet out of luck and would have to restart if you missed a vital item.

Sadly Teh Gamers™ get tetchy if you introduce even slight friction they don’t like, for entirely irrational reasons. As the modern gamer has been feed friction free AAA slop and so we get this derp. So frankly I think they’re making a mountain over a flat stretch of ground lawl.

And I just realised we can blame Diablo 3 for a lot this lawl, for it was smoothed down so much there’s a whole generation of ARPG gamers who think all Diablo likes should be like D3 Where as I prefer to have some variation and diversity in my bloody games and not have endless clones of clones T_T

@Zantai

@grey-maybe

FoA doesn’t and never really did have THE vision when it comes to endgame…

@banana_peel

Man lurks in the shadows and occasionally drops a truth bomb. A rare praetorian spawn.

And here is honestly where I go from “well mistakes were made” to “what the fuck?” What vision of the game did we promise and fail to meet? Did we overhype this expansion or something?

What the actual fuck did I destroy myself for 6 months for only to be met with this kind of “truth bomb”? Because we didn’t create someone’s particular ideal of an ARPG? Were you hoping for us to reinvent the game at the 11th hour? Give me a fucking break.

I’m low-key amazed you didn’t ream them more here. Because yeah, in light of the crunch involved, which ideally shouldn’t have been needed, because burnout is a bastard and game dev health matters more than any game, so the chutzpah here is disturbingly large. But then it’s far too damn common for a lot of gamers to not know how the sausage is made game dev wise. As coding new features is always a lot of work, never mind modifying a game engine as old as this one. Or that devs are actually people, because why bother with empathy right?

Which in case anyone’s wonder, yes, sometimes I do intend to be mean, but that’s because after 20 years of depression + other horrors I am all out of tolerance for fuckwits and the wilfully ignorant. See Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance for the core…

And back on topic, it’s obvious too there’s an aim to FoA, and that’s to provide more difficulty options and make all the campaign stuff much more fun to play. Which Crate have achieved, even if the balance is still evolving and requires testing and constructive feedback. Which sometimes shines through the wank here, though ideally the wank would reduce.

So the fact some argue there was no aim with FoA is frankly fucking laughable, because if my dysfunctional mess of a self can see it with ease what’s their problem? Assuming good faith of course, though one has doubts here about the validity of that here…

@Zantai

And here we get to something else entirely. I don’t know if it’s the enshittification of everything consuming the world, but over the last year or so I’ve observed all our forums becoming much more…angry? Like there is too much pent up pressure and any opportunity people find to lash out is taken, like a relief valve. People seem way more eager to jump at each other’s throats and the tone towards the team has turned much more hostile. Every action taken by the dev team is a personal affront to somebody. I’ve seen this both in our Frontier communities and here, so it’s not unique to just Grim Dawn.

It used to be that the occasional asshole would come along, and we would shut them down with a dose of their own medicine. But when suddenly everyone seems eager to be an asshole, not only has that strategy rapidly fallen apart, it made us part of the problem.

But also, when almost every interaction feels like I’m fighting for my and my team’s dignity, where I’m having the same tired debates over and over with people acting like us adding Evade and Sunder was some kind of betrayal of our old values, it starts to beg the question: why am I doing this to myself? This isn’t worth it. Honestly, I’ve already pared back my online participation significantly in the last couple months because it feels like wading into a pool of eagerly awaiting sharks with cuts all over my legs. Where I’m doing “damage control” with people that don’t actually give a shit about having a constructive discussion on the topic anyway.

In my 15 years doing this, I never imagined there being a time where I’d stop interacting with our communities, but lately that question has been crawling in the back of my mind.

And I wonder if people realize that there is a world where we don’t bother to anymore. A world where everyone can just scream into the void, and occasionally someone may, silently, listen.

-Zan

Oh Voy, without getting into the important politics side of things, which is a lynch pin, basically this is all down to growing social/environment stress from multiple angles. On top of enshittification and the lack of moderation on steam/X etc that properly clamps down on people being actually shitty. And instead protects the bigots etc. So everyone’s gotten more bitchy as an attempt to cope with all the shit and utter horrors out there.

When really what they need to do is take action to push for real fucking change instead of being fucktards online. Alas, that’s far easier than say providing someone homeless with clothes or food or even emotional support, never mind taking other positive actions. Shit, I’d be more engaged helping the homeless here in Christchurch if I were more functional myself as my way of doing something good to help deal with all the shit I’m worried about.

So instead we get shit like this. And it is in the end, a waste of everyone’s bloody time, because it’s not about feedback, it’s about venting.

Anyhow, a good idea might be to recruit more mods on steam to deal with the idiots on there, because steam these days is a garbage fire that a lot of devs seem to have given up on using. Especially when say, steam moderation decide a review that’s got racist dog whistles in it over a character being Muslim and thus breaking ToS should totes stay up. Or that blatant transphobia is also perfectly fucking acceptable.

Where as here you can more easily control that sort of behaviour. And have some other moderators to help out, though as per usual, having to sign up to another site helps reduce the fools considerably. Oh and weirdly, reddit’s now better than steam for discussions on a game, which is a very weird reversal given reddit’s prior fuckwittery. Not perfect of course, but reddit will intervene like with Pragmata if things go wrong enough. Unlike steam T_T

But in the end, thanks for this post, it should “help” reduce some of the stupid here, hopefully. And I hope you and the team get a bloody good break, because despite all the pointless whinging, you’ve definitely earnt one with FoA :3

Which has probably doomed me to another 2000hrs in GD lawl. But then I’m stuck Waiting for Godot, so I’ll take this morsel of sanity salvation while I wait to sort my ADHD shit out. Finally.

Fucking peak black comedy I have to pay for it myself while on welfare though XD