Things that will stop me playing

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

I’m a long-time RPGer. About half-way through my first playthrough (pre xpac), I was hooked, bought the DLC and started thinking about the things I wanted to try with classes, skills, devotions and gear.

And that’s what really appeals to me about GD: looking forward to playing through with different builds, experiencing the range of combat options available and seeing all the clever (and sometimes hilarious) ways that is illustrated.

So understand that it is coming from a place of advocacy when I say that by the time I finished that first play-through, I realised there are quite a few things that are annoying enough that will eventually be the reason I stop playing.

  1. The light. I’ve got my monitor jacked up to max brightness and every setting in game I can think of and it’s still not enough. I get a headache from squinting - instead of a headache from not sleeping due to playing “one more quest”.
  2. The inventory. For an inventory game, there is a serious lack of tools to make this easier on the player. I feel like I spend more time sorting through loot than playing.
  3. The questlog. I’m sure after quite a few play-throughs the locations and NPCs will become second-nature. But right now I spend more time reading the wiki to find stuff than actually running amok in Cairn.
  4. The grind. As I said above, I want to replay - not play the same build over and over. So the idea of grinding out the same bounties over and over, or the same bosses over and over to get a chance at drops is not at all appealing

To be constructive, here are my thoughts on how to address each of these.

The light

  • Does there really need to be more than one suggestion? Give us a brightness control option. Or even better, allow us to have an “always day” visual options.
  • If it’s really that offensive to the “theme and style”, then have us earn it after our first play through.

The inventory

  • Auto-pickup. It’s obvious. If it offends the realism of moving to the space to pick things up, then wait until vitality kicks in (ie after combat) before everything leaves the screen for your inventory
  • Auto-consolidate. Again an obvious for space management.
  • Auto-sell. Running back and forth to merchants is a joyless endeavour. If I’m playing a 2H melee char, I am not even looking at 1H weapons or off-hands of any kind. Ideal would be to allow the player to set this based on item type and quality.
  • Component manager. There are so many bits here, there really should be a completely separate tool for this - outside of inventory. Maybe a mini-rift where you just get a table of items you have, with a tiers for component parts and recipes for the armorer. Even better, provide an alchemist in some cities who can provide it for you (and it goes without saying this needs an obvious auto-store with the alchemist)

The questlog

  • Put the nearest rift-gate (or at least nearest start location) in the heads-up display.
  • Mark bounties on maps. Let’s face it, by the time you are taking up bounties, you’ve been through those areas at least once. And those randomised locations are just annoying anyway.
  • Add recipe ingredients to the log (upon request). When I’m writing stuff down to play a game, it feels like the 70s again. If I say to the armorer I want to make a Fortress, he should be able to tell me all the bits I’m missing, which can then be added to the questlog for me to hunt down.
  • For mainline quests, if you get ahead of the story, it should count your completion as you do them. So if I manage to wreck the forges and kill Cronley before being asked, I should get credit immediately. This was the most jarring on first play through - like, really, I have to go do what I just did again?

The grind

  • The bounty scoring system. Bounties are repetitive enough as it is without requiring supplemental repeated dungeon clears (how many times can I do four hills and cronley’s hideout? and why do they keep coming back to life anyway?). Switch it over to completing all the mainline quests and side quests in the city, then 2 bounties per level of reputation (or something).
  • The item drop system. When players are engaging in meta-gaming (eg trading saves over the net), your game is broken. At some point, we should unlock merchants with the successively higher level items. Or, make them recipes with unique ingredients that we have to acquire - that’s better than the infinite crapshoot when your luck is out
  • Re-loading. So I get a bounty for 50 Dermapterans and go clear the hive to do it. My next bounty says kill the Dermapteran Queen. Well I just did that but now I have to meta-game to do it again. Any time any quest requires you to collect or kill something, whatever that is related to should auto-re-spawn
  • Faster running outside of combat. Let me hold the shift key whilst moving around. If there needs to be a cost, have it (slowly) drain the vitality bar.
  • Other ways to earn devotion. Once I’ve done a build, I’m keen to start another - not playthrough again on another difficulty. So some other mechanism for earning devotion would be good so that we can see character development through

I’m under no illusions that these ideas are original or easy. Nor am I under the illusion that the game should be tailored to my play style - it could be that GD is simply not for me in the long-run.

By providing these thoughts and suggestions, I’m hoping that I can add to the chorus of feedback to encourage the developers to make the game more adaptable to a wider range of play styles.

Thanks for listening. :slight_smile:

2

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what monitor do you have, I leave the default settings and it sufficiently bright…

Does there really need to be more than one suggestion? Give us a brightness control option. Or even better, allow us to have an “always day” visual options.

brightness control = fullscreen gamma, as in pretty much every other game.

The inventory. For an inventory game, there is a serious lack of tools to make this easier on the player. I feel like I spend more time sorting through loot than playing.

Would not mind auto-pickup of some more items and auto-combining of components

The questlog. I’m sure after quite a few play-throughs the locations and NPCs will become second-nature. But right now I spend more time reading the wiki to find stuff than actually running amok in Cairn.

just explore the area and you should automatically complete almost all quests, that is how I did it initially and there was never really anything that did not get completed automatically that way

Now searching for Nemesis spawns or some faction quests I agree, those might not be so straightforward to find, but for everything else I can’t really think of anything that actually gave me any trouble

For bounties that have randomized locations, I usually just ignore them and pick a different one for a location I am headed at anyway :wink:

For mainline quests, if you get ahead of the story, it should count your completion as you do them. So if I manage to wreck the forges and kill Cronley before being asked, I should get credit immediately. This was the most jarring on first play through - like, really, I have to go do what I just did again?

never really had that problem, I could always just hand them in when talking to the quest giver and I had not received that quest before

The grind. As I said above, I want to replay - not play the same build over and over. So the idea of grinding out the same bounties over and over, or the same bosses over and over to get a chance at drops is not at all appealing

you can transfer drops between chars, so not sure why you would need to get the drop on a specific char

Mandates and Writs help with the faction reputation, once you have the proper reputation with one char, all others simply use the documents and do not need to grind reputation at all (for friendly factions, you still need to do it for nemesis bosses) - but of course that assumes you play all difficulties, which it sounds like you are not doing

3

Agreed. He may want to consider taking a look at his monitors internal settings and values first to be sure the devices defaults aren’t too low. Not only can you adjust these kinds of things in-game and in your GPU settings there is also the hardware’s own settings to consider.

4

Unless he’s talking about the C’thonic Rifts, it shouldn’t look dark.

5

Put me in the same ‘sometimes dark isn’t gritty, it’s just hard on my eyes’ camp. I don’t mind saying that I’ll be 43 in a couple of months, and am quite farsighted. I’ve worn reading glasses since I was 10.

It’s not my monitor settings. I play many other games on the same monitor with the same settings. I tweak the gfx settings for games like GD as far as I can.

The game just gets too dark for me, and it’s hard on my eyes. Esp things like cooldown counters, auras/buffs, all those things on the HUD that I’m sure most of you don’t have a problem with. I’ve made the suggestion before - I’d love to see those things 3x as big, center top of screen, with adjustable opacity. Targeting highlights that are adjustable as well (they may be?). And overall more legible fonts and layout. Don’t get me started on components…

6

While you might be just talking about the buffs and debuffs, you can scale the UI in the settings and make everything bigger. Though I wouldn’t mind having some of those WoW mods that would flash when certain buffs dropped or were about to.

7

I think we can all agree that the game is sorely lacking in some QoL features pertaining to inventory management. I would personally like the ability to select and move multiple items at once along with some of suggestions mentioned above (better way to manage components; hold down to pickup all etc.).

8

On the “too dark” i think something is off with your monitor only problem I’ve ever noticed is “too uniformly red” within some of the chthonic rifts.

Auto sort inventory already exists, it is on the top of a given inventory tab. Other than that it sounds like you are picking up way too much crap - beond warden i recommend liit filter to green+ only, you’ll miss a few small upgrades but move far faster resulting in more levels and better gear over the medium to long term.

As for “requiring trading” the game hardly does this. I’ve taken numerous characters through end of ult and challenger (but not gladiator) crucible and never felt the need to trade or use GDstash for something other than to satisfy my inner packrat. Likely won’t complete many legendary sets though.

As for getting devo points without rerunning the story crucible already offers this.

9

About the inventory thing. It’s really good idea! Lot of time we spend, to “play” with components and items! All points, what You write, is amazing!

10

I always felt the game was too bright. I play with “post processing” turned off.

11

Same. The terrain sometimes has very shinny spots. Callidor’s Tempest’s flash too is excessively bright in my opinion.

12

Really appreciate some of the thoughtful replies. I particularly like the reference to “quality of life” - I often refer to games as having “nuisance clicking”, or things that don’t add to gameplay or include interesting decision-making, just busy work.

And for the record, my monitor is fine, I work on it and play a variety of games without any problems. If anything, turning my monitor brightness settings all the way up just to play GD has made everything else seem too bright.

I’m closer to 50 than 40, so happily accept it may be age catching up with me. That said, it’d be nice for developers to acknowledge that with options :slight_smile:

13

So I just don’t notice that my monitor settings are off with the other dozen games I play, the videos I watch, and alloftheotherthingsever? It couldn’t possibly be that the art direction is thematically lower brightness and lower contrast?

sure.

:eek:

14

I am quite farsighted, and progressively more so as I get older.

Gamma settings don’t increase contrast, which is the biggest problem I have with dark games. ‘Dark’ in an art style generally means lower contrast, and light effects that are diffuse and ‘low angle’. There aren’t many hard shadows, and the palettes are from from muted, earth-tone colors. This makes things like aether clusters and anything else that ‘glows’ really pop!

I have a good chunk of games on my PC. There are several that I’ve had to quit playing entirely because they are just too hard on my eyes (Pillars of Eternity, I’m squinting at you). It is a testament to what an excellent game GD is that I stick with it.

There are individual lighting effects that make or break my ability to play/enjoy games. In general, ‘cartoony’ games are much easier for me. They use high-contrast palettes and back-lit effects on characters and creatures that make everything ‘pop’ in a way that makes it much easier for me to follow.

The graphics in GD are gorgeous. The art is fantastic, the design is lovely (well, some of the font choices are suspect), the effects and animations are truly well executed. It is a deep, bitter irony for some of us that these same elements contribute to a poorer gaming experience.

Now please tell me how it’s my monitor settings.