Unable To Play With Non-Expansion Players Feedback

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Hey Crate,

I replied to a thread in which Zentai posted on the Steam Discussion for Grim Dawn, but I wanted to post it here as well, because honestly, I wanted to make sure you guys read it.

I’m sorry, but while I understand your argument, I do no agree with it. Diablo II had a toggle for creating a character with or without Expansion content 16 years ago and it, too, was a locally stored game. It was a game that people modded. Now, while you guys are nowhere as large as Blizzard and certainly have to protect yourselves and your work, handling it this way really feels like a slap in the face to me.

I picked up Ashes of Malmouth today when it released and took the opportunity to buy Grim Dawn copies to gift to friends so we could play together because I wanted to support Crate. Now I cannot play with them at all. I go out of my way to support your company, because you guys are a small studio doing a great job…and I immediately get shot in the foot over it. I hope you can understand how that is immensely frustrating.

Now, I know a lot of people will just say, “Well, just buy a bunch of expansion copies then.” Honestly, I would if I could, but that’s not in the cards right now. Maybe in the future I can do just that, but for now I used what disposable income I had available buying the base game and crucible and now I’m locked out of being able to play with my friends.

The reasoning for this is “Piracy” and, once again, the only people hurt here are the paying customers. If somebody out there is going to download a mod that gives them access to Expansion material and not pay for it, those people were probably NEVER going to pay for it anyway. Meanwhile those of us out here buying multiple copies and encouraging other people to buy copies to make sure you guys are successful as a reward for your hard work are the ones taking the hit. I understand you need to protect what you worked so hard on, I absolutely get that, but doing so at the expense of the people who support you and want you to succeed is a cruddy thing to do. I am not saying that is your intent, but it certainly feels like that’s what’s happening here.

One of the things I’ve really come to love about Crate Entertainment is the level of interaction you all have with the community. You take time to answer our questions and you do so honestly and candidly, you make jokes, laugh with us, and, especially on your streams, make the community feel like friends. In short, you treat us like the people we are, not just wallets full of money to buy your games. Not many companies connect with their audiences that way. The fact that you do is immensely appreciated. But this expansion/non-expansion situation makes me feel like just a wallet…

At the very least, I would ask that you put a warning on the Ashes of Malmouth page that says that if you buy it you can no longer play with people who don’t have the expansion. I think that’s just courtesy, so others don’t run into the same issue as I have.

Thanks so much for your time, hard work, and the wonderful game.

-Cripple X

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2

If you disable the expansion in the Steam Grim Dawn properties on the DLC page, you should be able to play with them.

Obviously you then cannot play a mastery from the expansion or enter its areas

3

First thing is to do is weigh it up without thinking of yourself.

Are more people hurt by not being able to play with expansion owners when only having the base game or by giving cheats/mods etc access to the expansion unfairly?

You can always install just the vanilla version to play with friends until they too have the exp, I. E. Do a folder copy of the expansion install and switch them.

Not perfect, but solves the problem.

4

Not sure, but didn’t/doesn’t D2 run on closed servers for multiplay? If so, then that’s probably where part of the problem lies since Crate simply can’t afford to support such a system.

The simple answer is for you to uninstall the expansion so you can play with your friends. Alternatively persuade your friends to buy the expansion.

Titan Quest and Immortal Throne were the same, you couldn’t play the expansion unless you both had it so I don’t really see why you expect Grim Dawn to be different. Are there other games out there that let you play with different versions?

5

This was one of the first things I tried. I ended up having to reinstall after because the game would crash, even trying to open a character I hadn’t played in a while. Its working fine since I reinstalled, but since disabling the expansion didn’t work when I tried it, I figured it was a non-solution.

Excellent advice, Gumshoe. Though it may not seem like it, I was thinking of other people when I wrote my post, though, admittedly, I am close to the issue and have a personal stake in it.

Honestly, I would argue the former group is more negatively affected. It’s just a further case DRM screwing the legitimate customer rather than having any effect on pirates. It happens a lot actually. Those pirates they’re trying to cut off will get the game no matter what measures are in place. The people who want to do that sort of thing just will.

The rest of us realize that in order for Crate to keep making great games and content we need to support them with money. People have to eat. People need to take care of their children and significant others. People should be rewarded for a job well done. So we, their fans, pay our hard earned wages for their games so that they can live well and keep making games. Supporting their business financially is how we show our appreciation.

As I mentioned above, I absolutely understand Crate’s desire to protect themselves. I don’t take issue with that at all. I only wanted to point out that it doesn’t actually stop the pirates though. It just hurts the people supporting them. It hurts you, it hurts me, it hurts the eight or so people whose threads I saw this evening on Steam, Reddit, and other forums with the same issue that I was having. It hurts the community as a whole. It makes us feel unappreciated and eventually that sentiment could embitter enough people that it hurts Crate because they just stop buying their games.

So do I have a personal stake here? Yes, I do. But that certainly doesn’t preclude me from being able to see the bigger picture and consider other people and their relationship to the issue. I might be frustrated, but I’m not angry. I absolutely support Crate. I think they are fantastic. I just don’t think that, with regards to this issue, the end they are aiming for (protecting themselves and the value their customers receive from buying a product) is the end that they are actually bringing about. I think handling the issue this way ultimately results in a worse experience for customer and company.

Well, Diablo II had both. It did have Closed servers, but it also had Open Servers which work very similarly to the way Grim Dawn works, so the closed server thing is a non-issue if you’re looking at it from that perspective.

I can actually think of a few games which do allow users to have different versions of DLCs so long as both have the same base game, which are not online-only or closed servers–the Total War series comes to mind. I’m fine with not having AoM content so long as I can play with my friends. The Disable DLC solution mentioned failed when I tried it the first time though. I’ll give it another shot.

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6

A number of my friends picked up grim dawn for $9 today after my recommendation.
Now I can’t play with them unless they drop another $23 each.
I feel much like the phallic object now.

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7

Or more like it’s common knowledge that you can’t play with someone else who has an expansion if you don’t have it.

Haven’t played a single game where you can play with someone who has an expansion, while you don’t have it.

8

have not tried this since, but it worked for me during the beta, as recently as last week, so I would be surprised if it would not work now

9

I genuinely would like to hear of the games that do allow it without being connected to online servers or other DRM method?

Grim Dawn has no DRM (aside Steam), so allowing sharing between exp and base game is basically giving the content out for free…

10

Or as has already been posted in this thread, just untick the expansion in steam and play with a char that hasn’t played the expansion. :wink:

11

Hi guys. That sounds sad, because two of my friends just bought Grim Dawn for playing it together with me. I’m quite sure, that they won’t buy the Expansion. :confused:
I / we use the gog versions. Will disable the expansion work with the gog version, like the steam version? Is any problem to be expected?

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12

I’m not sure how Stellaris does things, but they have mods and player hosted games where players can have different levels of DLC buy-in.

13

The GOG version should behave like the Steam version. Upon installation of the expansion, your pre-expansion characters were backed up. After unchecking/uninstalling the expansion, your characters will be reset to that “pre-expansion” state. Since the game versions are the same (1.0.2.0) There should not be any problems with switching between the two. If you DO encounter problems, I would post them here to let the developers know.

14

A few that I can think of off the top of my head are the Total War series of games, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Endless Legend. In all of these cases, you can play with people who don’t have the DLCs without problem and they are all primarily single player titles. You may not be able to access the DLC factions or certain DLC content, for instance, but that doesn’t stop you from playing with people who are using that.

Like I said before, that’s not what I’m looking for here though. I just want to play vanilla Grim Dawn with people who also have vanilla Grim Dawn even if I have the expansion. People are saying that it’s possible simply by unchecking the DLC on Steam. When I tried this is screwed up my install, but I will give it another go.

That’s good to hear. I’ll try it again once I am home this evening. Maybe it was just a Steam glitch. Wouldn’t be the first time Steam patched and screwed up an install.

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15

This has nothing to do with piracy.

The games you describe function by sharing the DLC with the players joining the session for that session only. Which is fine because those games are single-session, have no items/inventories/skills to store.

So let’s say we do give out all the game data to everybody whether they bought the expansion or not, how do we lock out those that didn’t pay for it? All the game data is on their system and we have no online accounts.

Let’s say they join a session with somebody that owns the expansion…can they loot expansion-only items? What about new features like Monster Infrequents with skill modifiers? Do players who own the expansion literally see different stats even if they are in the same session with somebody who doesn’t own it? Or do we just give away a feature we worked tirelessly for for free to everybody?

What if a player with the expansion opens a riftgate to the new areas? Guess we gotta check “Do you own the expansion?” before letting the other players teleport to it?

These are just two of many dilemmas created, besides the fact that not all owners of the expansion will feel as amicable about giving stuff they spent their money on to everybody.

As was explained above, you can uncheck the expansion in your Steam library, uninstalling it, and then the game will use your pre-expansion backed up characters.

16

I absolutely understand all those issues and I’m not complaining about not being able to use AoM content with non-AoM users. I’m concerned with the fact that I wasn’t even able to play vanilla Grim Dawn with a friend after I installed the expansion. I tried the “Uncheck the Expansion” solution and it didn’t work, so from my perspective I was simply locked out of vanilla GD because I purchased the expansion. That’s the root of my issue here.

As was explained above, you can uncheck the expansion in your Steam library, uninstalling it, and then the game will use your pre-expansion backed up characters.

As I mentioned up-thread, this was literally the first thing I tried because it seemed to be the obvious solution. My game crashed twice afterwards so I reinstalled with the expansion and it’s worked perfectly since then. If this is indeed the solution, that’s fantastic and I’ll give it another go this evening. If it works the second time, that’s wonderful. That’s all I want.

P.S.
Seriously though, thanks for taking the time to read this, Zantai, and thanks for all you guys’ hard work on Ashes of Malmouth. It really rocks.

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17

I played the game through single-player and bought the expansion today and played some more, and recently convinced my friends to buy the base game.

If I need to switch back and forth between installing the expansion to play single player and uninstalling it to play with my friends, how does that affect my saves in either version? Will it overwrite my expansion character with the backup when I install the expansion again? Will it still bring my new non-expansion character I’m playing with friends into the expansion later if my friends buy the expansion later?

I need to know the impact of attempting this workaround, it sounds risky.

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18

Any characters you load into the expansion simply exist in 2 states: pre-expansion and expansion, saved separately based on what version of the game you’re running.

I tested this on my own characters several times and it works.

19

They are separately stored. When you reach the end of Normal or Elite you unlock the next difficulty up without having to access or finish the expansion. I have an L64 Conjurer in the base game - the same Conjurer is L87 in the expansion. If I disable the expansion the L64 Conjurer is available to play from where I left off in Elite. If I enable the expansion again the L87 Conjurer will appear in my charcter list.

Ninja’d by Zantai. :smiley:

20

Okay here’s the scenario I’m worried about:

  1. I have a level 60ish character I’m playing in the expansion right now.
  2. Uninstall the expansion and start a character multiplayer with my friends.
  3. We play a while and my new non-expansion character is up to level 10 or something.
  4. Then I decide to keep playing in the expansion, so I install the expansion again and keep playing my level 60. I assume it also brings over my level 10 for the first time right then and makes it an expansion character.
  5. Then I uninstall the expansion again to keep playing with my friends, and let’s say we all beat the main plot together and get my non-expansion character to level 50. Now my new character is level 50 without the expansion and level 10 with the expansion, if I understand correctly.
  6. Then my friends buy the expansion.
    When they launch the game they now have level 50 expansion characters, but since I’ve been switching back and forth the character I’ve been playing with them is still the original level 10 I brought over the first time, right?

Is there a way at that point to bring the latest level 50 version of that character into the expansion to continue playing with them? Without hurting my original character I’ve been playing through the expansion all along, of course.

Does that make sense?