I’m also in the ultimate-kind-of-bores-me-now club. Been playing a silly full offensive PRM build (blind sage, yeah baby) with barely 7k health and I still breeze through it. Not sure how much I need to hamstring myself to make it fun again at this point. Oh well, expansion soon, let’s hope.
then it is not about ultimate being too hard but either about imbalance between masteries / mastery-combinations or simply a matter of how good your different builds are (and the same combination could be better if you used different skills)…
seems that too many builds in this game rely on specific endgame items to even function properly. Just a tad annoying you have to most likely use something else for levelling and FINALLY switching to the build you want at lvl fucking 75.
not to mention this ARPG still has the archaic “do the same 3-4 acts 3 times to reach endgame” thing going on which will bore anyone but the most hardcore players. Grim Dawn needs to move away from this with subsequent expansions, even other ARPG like POE will be doing this.
great gear always helps, that is not the same as it being required
As to using different gear while levelling, of course that is the case, for one due to (level) requirements and for another the fact you first have to find it. I find this a very odd comment…
not to mention this ARPG still has the archaic “do the same 3-4 acts 3 times to reach endgame” thing going on which will bore anyone but the most hardcore players. Grim Dawn needs to move away from this with subsequent expansions, even other ARPG like POE will be doing this.
doesn’t really matter, no one but the most hardcore players care about endgame to begin with, and even among them endgame is a divisive topic. I hate the whole notion of ‘endgame’, it is nothing but a boring grind
it is not required but nobody wants to take 1 minute to kill a white monster.
oh yeah a green item that hardly boosts your levelling skill is comparable to a legendary that straights up define your build
thats just your opinion endgame is where it matters you can do all kind of funny stuff and still pass normal/elite but ultimate is where your knowledge of the game is actually put to the test
Tell that to all my builds who beat Ultimate and killed Nemeses rather fast with green and blue gear. This is one of the ARPGs with the least gear dependency i’ve played so far. And last, in some cases green gear is actually better than legendaries due to the rolls those items can have.
Removing the current difficulty structure would be way too time consuming to just balance and honestly not worth the effort. Also endgame being what matters is your opinion, i much prefer the journey than the destination. And the destination in this case would be much more repetitive than only having to go through the game 3 times, because endgame most of the time it’s just the repetition of doing challenge dungeons or some similar crap over and over.
This is what Ultimate feels like when you hop into it after you skipped neccessary grind in Veteran and Elite. I finished Veteran with level 60 and Elite with level 74-75. I never skipped a devotion shrine. I farmed Bastion of Chaos on Elite like 20 times before getting some decent gear that I was able to convert into gear I need by trading with other forum members.
But most of all, if you don’t follow working build and don’t play around with your skills you will obviously hit a wall. This game is about putting time into it, grinding. Don’t expect to bum rush Ultimate clicking LMB.
Personally, after finding/trading neccessary gear I am facerolling Ultimate with a build that is deemed weak and suboptimal on these forums. There is no real challenge for me left in Vanilla, to be honest.
So I am getting ready to move into ultimate with two builds and a third one I am leveling at the moment. One is a witch hunter that I am making up as I go along and not following a build. The second one is an occultist/demolitionist following a build and I already have the two best in slot pistols for. The last is actually the build that got me interested in the game and was inspired by I think it was JoV with his all cunning blademaster, though mine is a commando with a view to end game to use the sharpshooter set and the unknown soldier constellation. He is again self built so he might get smashed but I don’t mind it will be a learning experience. I am completely self found in my gear and only need one piece to complete my sharpshooter set. I am looking forward to using it and the challenges it will present. I understand there will be content I can’t do with certain builds but that is fine too. As long as I can get through ultimate then the build will be a success.
If hardly anyone plays it, that ought to be an indication that maybe, just maybe, those voices which decry the difficulty as being trivial, and Ultimate “too easy” might in fact not know what in the fuck they are talking about, in terms of a balanced game that the masses might enjoy.
There needs to be a curve, certainly.
But it needs to be a tad bit more gradual that it currently is.
All well and good that there shall always be an upper 1% who manage to break the game, and thus consider it too easy.
Guess what.
When you’ve broken a non-competitive game to the point where the hardest content is trivial to you… YOU’VE BEATEN THE CONTENT.
Congratulation, Welcome to Die, You Ween, You Loose, Try Again, Keed-do, Insert Another Fuckin’ Token, and roll another gatdam character, or else bask in your own Glor-E, and pick up a new game, maybe.
Were it a competitive game, well, even then, a “lack of balance” is not exactly something that keeps a game from being enjoyed competitively - particularly by the top 1% (see: almost every fighting game, ever).
Now, as I’ve already put over 1000 hours into Grim Dawn, one might (correctly) think that I like the game.
Only 1% of Grim Dawn player make it Ultimate?
Imagine what the sales numbers - both present and potential future - might be like were Grim Dawn a game that 50% of players took all the way to Ultimate.
THAT would be a great game.
That ought to be what Crate aspires for Grim Dawn to be.
Because it could be.
It could be that thing.
And Crate could be that guy [collectively].
I really think that you did the following things:
-
Specced only for damage, including gear, build, and devotions, and forsook defensive ability, armor, resists, and <anything defensive here>.
-
Decided upon a face-tank strategy, versus using tactics (hit and run if limited ability pool, or build your skill set to mitigate damage and debuffs that come your way).
Now, these things aren’t bad. In fact, I personally love the front loaded DPS-glass cannon build, of which my dual wield pistol Pyromancer holds a special place in my heart.
But you can’t expect D3-style of “Smash buttons, tank everything with face, pick up loot” in Grim Dawn. If that’s what you’re after, then you know which game out there gives exactly that.
But don’t expect Crate to change the structure of their entire game just because you choose to whine about how you don’t like the difficulty, or how characters are built in the game. That’s just nonsensical at best.
I love my Gutwrenching Bloodrager Set Warder.
He’s specced to DoT-Tank.
It’s a funny thing.
But I still hate fighting Undead with him… those extra seconds, mang. 
I guess I’d wish them the best of luck then? Considering not even tripleA’s can come close to that figure, in almost all cases?
People have horrendous attention spans. Look at human nature rather than a game’s devs.
Oh, I know what you’re saying is The Truth ™.
But it doesn’t hurt to try and tweak things a smidgen, to try and glean a few more nuts from yea olde AAA hedgerow, eh?
No slight on Crate, here - but if the best (re: Crate) don’t try to improve cultivation, who will?
yeah, because that is exactly what happens when you do not have BiS gear :rolleyes:
oh yeah a green item that hardly boosts your levelling skill is comparable to a legendary that straights up define your build
more BS from where the first load came from… name some examples of single items that are build defining and not just minor buffs or variations of builds that exist without them as well
thats just your opinion endgame is where it matters you can do all kind of funny stuff and still pass normal/elite but ultimate is where your knowledge of the game is actually put to the test
of course it is my opinion, much like what you post is yours and not some universal truth…
Ultimate is a tad harder than Elite, in Elite I can throw a build together without thinking twice because even mediocre builds with mediocre gear work. In Ultimate I for the first time have to think about my devotions at all and where resistances do become really relevant, other than that you are still pretty flexible.
In any case, to me completing Ultimate is not endgame, it is the boring grind that comes after it for better gear. Think D3 rifts and PoE maps.
To be fair, there ARE build defining Legs.
A lot of them get the Nerf bat.
Several of them so viciously, that Crate went and reworked mechanics fundamentally.
Nighty-night-Embrace (hugs 1.0.08 to sleep).
nope, it just means most people do not finish the games they buy, let alone more than once
23.4% finished it on Normal/Veteran, 8.6% finished Elite, 3.4% finished Ultimate
Only 1% of Grim Dawn player make it Ultimate?
Imagine what the sales numbers - both present and potential future - might be like were Grim Dawn a game that 50% of players took all the way to Ultimate.
sales number and % players completing the game have either no relation at all or counter to what you think (ie few but hardcore players…)
The % for Witcher 3 are: 27.5 completed the game on any difficulty (GD 23.4), 7.9 finish on ‘broken bones’ or ‘death march’ difficulty (GD 8.6 finish Elite), 3.3 finish on ‘death march’ difficulty (GD 3.4 finish Ultimate)
You will find this for most games, most buyers never finish them even once
I definitely do not claim to know all legendaries, I don’t think I know of any that qualify though.
Maybe 2 or 3 items for their conversion, but then you can always use the same skill with the original damage type and shuffle the rest of the build a bit, so to me is still not necessarily build defining.
Maybe my definition of build is a bit wider than yours / his 
Also, I called BS on him saying that not every green can replace his unique item when I challenged him on that. An item is not build defining just because it cannot be replaced by almost any other item with next to no consequence…
I’m not sure how to further clarify the message.
This isn’t really about whether or not Ultimate can be beaten. It’s about gear and devotion trees for ultimate being very stale. The power gaps between builds is just icing on the cake.
There’s a fundamental problem with ranged builds in this game in that being a ranged build doesn’t offer much in terms of mitigating damage. It’s harder to succeed with a ranged build than it is to fail with a melee build.
This comes back to the massive advantage of just building something that’s outright tanky and figuring out the damage output later. It also doesn’t help that ranged builds have a surprisingly short max range, and monsters move fast. On top of that, melee builds typically have better mobility as well.
Face tank > caster > anything with guns; with a wide gap between each type of build.
Well then - we’ll just have to agree to agree, then.
Face-Tank Gun builds beg to Differ.
Also: Face-Tank Casters chuckle softly, whilst spamming Callidor’s Tempest and merking every single thing content-wise with one hand, whilst breaking the fourth wall and sipping coffee with the other.
Face-Tanking is an equal opportunity strategy.
the only 1 I can think of off top of my head is
http://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/8331-Crown-of-the-Winter-King
as you absolutely need the item to play the build