must be the lingering damage from ravager then, still funny
FoA was announced in August 2023 with a release date of summer-ish 2025.
People were itching with anticipation, especially as 2025 came and went.
The game had an entire year to polish what would have been, and now the consensus is that itās underbaked, rushed, and not worth peopleās time?
We can āfeel like it could have done so much moreā all we want, and yes, fan passion projects often end up being better than the official thing (have you heard of Elder Scrolls modding?) but all thatās a pretense for saying that the people who actually get paid by Crate to work on this game (and Farthest Frontier, and all those other games the company does) should be fired and somebody should take their place.
A reminder that I was not personally involved with internal testing for FoA, and I would have absolutely brought up multiple issues like the TDM potions. But at the end of the day, Iām just happy to be playing this game, and helping providing input and direction wherever we can.
Man lurks in the shadows and occasionally drops a truth bomb. A rare praetorian spawn.
What, and ruin the surprise of the new patch changes that go completely against what you believed to be the goal or the vision? Whatās next, Santa isnāt real?
The vision behind FoA or the vision behind FoAās balance?
The two are not the same.
The vision behind FoA was to breathe new life in the gameās campaign overworld. To give endgame players reasons to participate in it. Has this vision been achieved? Do endgame players farm Ascended mode for Ascended resources/drops (the idea of Ascended items dropping raw came a bit late into development so itās no surprise it was not there for release); do endgame players use the Ascension altar to tweak their farming experience/routes? If the answers to these questions are yes, then I imagine Crate is relatively happy with having come up with that vision and managing to achieve it.
For those that feel SR has been neglected from this expansionā¦duh? Given the above, the entire point was to incentivize campaign farming against SR farming. One shouldnāt be more prevalent or respected than the other, but rather the two should be competitive options with one another. Basically since the release of Forgotten Gods seven-point-five years ago, SR has been the dominant spot players have spent all their time. Itās understandable, then, to feel a bit hurt when this game mode sees a period of neglect from Crate - it has consumed so much of your time, after all! But can you really blame Crate for this? SR has dominated the core identity of Grim Dawn for almost a decade. It has taken an expansionās effort to relieve the game of some of that dominance. Iām sure SR will not be left in an unplayable or unfun state for very long, in the grand scheme of things, but I am also sure that addressing that was neither FoAās launchās priority nor is it likely to be the priority now, still so soon after launch. The vision, and the focus, is on the campaign.
The vision behind FoAās balance is another story. I wonāt really be able to identify what Crateās intentions are here. And truth be told, for all my years with the game, I donāt think Iāve ever really had a finger on the pulse to know what they want either. Certainly I have had my vision for what the balance should be, but just as sure as the sky is blue, my vision is not Crateās vision.
If it wasā¦something something Cadence.
Just yesterday I had an hoursā long talk with a friend about this video and some related subjects.
Bear with me if this seems unrelated.
Veneer of Warhammer aside, in that video Warhammer is merely the lens through which the topics of identity politics and āfandomsā are discussed. In myā¦errā¦departure post, I wrote the following:
And after having had this discussion with a friend, I think this is close to the truth, but not quite there. I think thereās a nonzero chance people are prone to identifying themselves with their feedback, and feedback given to feedback, hence resulting in both personal ties to the points being made as well as viewing said-criticisms as personal attacks against them.
Just so, people are prone to identifying with certain elements of their hobbies. When those elements are buffed or nerfed, there can be a personal affront in oneās interpretation thereof. Iāve never done this, Iāve never really taken much personal offense to having my builds nerfed (hey whatās up with that Discordant Gem nerf, Z?), but sure as the sky is blue, nerfs have definitely rustled some jimmies here and certainly in other gamesā communities. One topic my friend and I discussed was Warhammer 40k Darktide. (Weāre both big Warhammer enjoyers, if you couldnāt tell) Shortly after Darktide released, one of its classes, the Veteran, saw some targeted nerfs. In response, the Chinese Darktide community reviewbomed the ever loving hell out of the game.
Since then, Fatshark - the developers and publishers of Darktide - embraced a ābuff onlyā strategy to the gameās overall balance. This has been advocated for quite a bit here, with people asking why a singleplayer/non-competitive game like Grim Dawn, or like Darktide, would ever see nerfs. But the results of Fatsharkās ābuff onlyā approach created a game state harrowingly narrow in terms of endgame viability. In buffing everything the players had access to, the enemies have had to be turbocharged likewise to prevent the gameās hardest difficulties from feeling too sandboxy. So endgame Darktide is now a spam of minibosses, heavily-armored targets, and enemies that heal or grant DR to others. This, in turn, means that endgame Darktide necessitates anti-armor weapons and weapons with huge burst potential. The remaining swathes of itemization in Darktide are just not playable at the gameās highest echelons of difficulty.
This is not to say I do not understand peoplesā aversion to nerfs. Youāre playing something in a game and youāre having fun with it. When a developer nerfs that something, theyāre nerfing your fun! And that sucks! You paid good money to have that good fun! But sometimes the bullet has to be bitten all the same for the betterment of everything else, and Iād be willing to bet that even post-nerf gameplay can still be a source of good enjoyment.
If it seems Iām getting too philosophical over here, itās because I am. I have not been following the public test patches, forā¦reasons. I have not been following much community sentiment as of late. So I no longer have the same understanding of the gameās state as I may have had just a few months ago.
But this thread asked for a vision and a vision is not going to be revealed in patch notes.
While I canāt know Crateās vision for balance, I can know how they intend to get there. Iteratively. Change by change, feedback by feedback. Their vision for balance will not be achieved tomorrow. And no amount of cooking balance changes behind closed doors would have resulted in any finer a product.
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Whoās consensus is it that its not worth peopleās time? This is an awfully dramatic readā¦
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Oh chinese darktide playersā¦
As for GD, patch can take its sweet time specially since the pet resistance fix wasnāt supposed to be in so thatās a bunch of extra work Z has to do on top of all the WPS/ascendant affix balancing.
Remove the TDM pots already though, thanks. Oh and RR from rings as well.
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I just wish we had more concrete numbers. I have the general feeling of
sub 30 rav: nerf
sub 20 rav: nerf, multiple items + skills
sub 10 rav: hard nerf, almost everything. Possible system nerfs / changes
Honestly I think we should work together to try to steer away from super bosses as a main benchmark, making them more of an afterthought, and talk more about buffs and nerfs in relevance to SR, ascendant, juiced ascendant, and crucible performance.
This is where players actually farm and spend most of their time! Even end game players donāt spend much of their time farming the same superboss over and over. Ok some do. But for obtaining gear legitimately for future builds, they do not!
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Then I want a tougher training dummy that hits me and I can health steal off of.
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Why? Red Ravager specifically is used because heās kind of a great punching bag for testing single target damage specifically. Those other modes also have a ton of, well, noise in the signal due to their variance (crucible less so than SR, though). And, while you may not be super aware of this, despite being a superboss red Ravager isnāt particularly hard to kill anymore.
I do want to say that 30sec Ravager isnāt actually as impressive as it once was. He definitely needs like a large health buff or something, honestly. But more importantly I feel like Z needs to find builds he thinks are healthy, and see what their red Ravager, SR, and Crucible timings happen to be, and use those as the benchmarks rather than gut feeling of what a good Ravager (or otherwise) timings are supposed to be.
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Especially when some of those benchmarks are achieved using very superficial character setups that would get you smoked if you were just out there playing the game with 5 altar buffs up. I donāt think double tdm ravager results using all the temporary defenses available to you to make it possible, including clusters, is very telling of how those characters will actually play through the game.
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Boss farming is in fact a thing so it is kind of relevant, and there arenāt many good standard candles besides the easily accessible red Rav who have enough health to get a decent time on.
On the note of TDM pots, the builds that can use those outside of specifically clustered Rav fights are genuinely disgusting. They really shouldnāt be in the game, if I may be honest. The pots, that is.
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Word of advice, you are nearing the line where Zantaiās just going to ban you, so perhaps try thinking before you post? And actually provide some proper criticism instead of shitting on everything.
Also, Iām a complete gumby and yet Iām often tearing through Ascendant mode with relative ease. On my end game builds I did for AoM of course, levelling is going to be Altar only because Ascendant mode is for builds capable of handling it. Alas, some, like you, seem to think it should be nearly as easy as Ultimate. Where as those of us with a bit more brains are loving the fact the game can actually be difficult beyond cheese like Crate of Entertainment.
Oh and SR got new shards and new bosses, I donāt see how that means it got no attention. Itās also rather obvious that one of the pillars of FoA is to get people to farm the campaign more than SR. Which I like, because SR gets bloody boring if you have to run it constantly. Itās very good for iron farming now though due to the Altar :3 For 1 million iron in 5-7 minutes is rather scrummy. Never mind the new loot.
ā¦ Iām perfectly aware of how easy ravager is. My whole point is that the majority of time players spend farming for their characters and future characters is infinitely more relevant to the devs and how builds are effective?
Crate has said in the past they donāt balance around super bosses?
SR used to be one of the main determiners for balance?
So now we have a healthy mix of SR vs. ascendant vs. Juiced ascendant vs. crucible to consider for where player builds will spend most of their time?
Iām not suggesting ravager times be entirely ignored, but they should be considered as a tertiary point of thought, after the above.
How the fuck is boss farming a thing? Genuinely? Do you need 27 ravager helms? Bosses donāt have many drops on purpose. Boss times are more for Epeen than anything else. Even the builders I speak to regularly donāt think boss times should be overly factored and are unhappy about how sometimes buffs and nerfs seem to happen off them even when the build that over performs on single target sometimes struggles in crucible, SR and ascendant.
Iām sorry, but this is an area where I AM certain that the loud minority here does not represent the majority of end game players. Aside from using it to show off build performance the vast majority of internet lobbies I see are farming SR or altar ascendant mode. People are not generally coming online to kill Mog2 over and over for a few hours.
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/siiiiiiiiiiigh
I swear kids these days have skin as fragile as wet tissue paper. Also, you should go check the steam side of things, then youāll reset what you consider ābadā, because steam is a total garbage fire at present. And very little of it is constructive criticism because itās just reactive cry-wanking for the most part over the game changing and now OP stuff getting rightfully nerfed. And theyāre especially giant piss babies about Zantai not bowing before them on top, more so when he told them they needed to learn the new game systems rather than assume they could just facetank everything.
Alas Gamersā¢ these days are even more entitled than the mid 10ās and itās not good for game dev and a gameās balance to bow before such utter entitled bullshit. Because as weāve seen with Darktide that can lead to otherwise solid gear etc becoming useless. Never mind more complex balancing situations, like Grim Dawn or PoE etc.
Anyhow, I donāt agree with Zantai on fucking everything, elder gods know Iām still annoyed with his bs ban of me and failure to deal with the troll who was harassing me (with bonus steam mods were utterly useless). But I do agree with banning time wasting entitled brats and being blunt with those who refuse to use their brains. Doubly so on the last one actually, due to the current state of things, but thatās a topic for another time and place.
So kindly knock off expecting Zantai to act as a PR drone, itās not his job title and itās always refreshing to see a dev actually engage as a person and not as polished PR speaker always concerned about Teh Gamersā¢ āfeelingsā or the companyās āimageā.
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Iād rather RR rings still exist but maybe only for class combos that lack RR, easier said than done Iām sure.
I was thinking exactly the same thing when I posted a build yesterday. I want to know what level of performance is considered appropriate, and therefore how much of a buff request is reasonable.
For example, I think the Apoclypton set needs -100% Fire RR.
Sounds like a ridiculous suggestion? Sure, it is. But arenāt other items allowed to have equally ridiculous levels of power?
Mh, id argue creative building should be rewarded. So just completing a set and being a top5 build should never ever happen in grim dawn. So in this case id advise against giving 100% fire RR to apoclypton which is imho actually overall quite strong despite being a somewhat single -RR mastery and super inflexible in terms of building 
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WHOA THERE DOOM. I HAVE DONE THATā¦for times.
And despite being possibly the only person in the history of grim dawn excited to log on and do nothing but boss attempts on the same 5 bosses for 6 hours straight to see if I can shave off a second, I also agree that it feels like celestial times are over indexed in regards to nerfs lately. Maybe itās an overreaction after what my Chaos Dreadnaught did. Ragdolling celestials is def a no-no.
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Maybe using a specific example was not the best way to make my point. What Iām trying to say is that Iām seeing this level of power across FoA in general.
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