Was talking about allowing multiplayer part in the OP.
If it is about expansion content present in the base game, yes would need encryption which would mean no modding or atleast much more difficult moddingâŚ
Canât have it both ways, I suppose. But I still disagree that people would mod to pirate content if it wasnât encrypted given the existence of DRM free installation files.
I have made my share of custom mods for Skyrim. The thought of modding GD however scares the hell out me. I would have an easier time figuring out a way for faster than light travel
Didnt they say something like MP was almost an afterthought? That was what I was getting at. If they wanted to, they could have expanded upon or added more functionalities or made changes to how MP worked in GD. The current bug(?) or limitation or whatever where quests bug out like Kymon/Vigil in MP for eg (or was that fixed in some patch? idk)
I am not sure where I read it or if it was a post by Z or the big M or something else and paraphrasing on my part as well since I donât remember the exact words. More like how the emphasis was on the single player experience with MP added on to it
Believe it was on a post related to why GD doesnât have dedicated servers on some thread(?)
I donât know, I donât have Medeaâs post quoting skill
Because it makes it easier to find than searching the forum for them all the time.
"There are no plans for closed servers.
Not financially viable for a primarily singleplayer game, especially not for one that doesnât rely on microtransactions to make profits.
Alas, you vastly overestimate how many players actually care about multiplayer in ARPGs, roughly 10% of the audience. Itâs like saying Skyrim needs secure servers cause itâs 2017. As for safe gamingâŚI donât know about your room, but when I play games singleplayer in my office, it feels pretty safe.
When you buy a copy of Grim Dawn, you could play it 2 hours or 1000 hours, from a business perspective it makes very little difference to us. If we had closed servers, now the player who plays for 1000 hours is considerably more expensive for us, and will continue to be for as long as they play.
At that point, introducing microtransactions seems like a no-brainer to off-set those costs.
I think weâll be sticking to our (already successful) plans."
25th May 2018 stream:
u said last time u wont make dedicated servers could u tell why would make game much better for everybody ?
bring dedicated server could improve the game and bring a ton of new players in⌠joining a game with 350+ ping no fun zentai plz make it happen
Yes. I havenât heard that one before. As the question comes up all the time I will answer it one more time on stream. Dedicated servers would be a cool feature. I think if we were to have it, it would have to have happened when the game was new, when we could actually garner attention for the game and get people excited for the fact there are dedicated servers, there are seasons and all these hardcore multiplayer features. Instead we focused on a single player experience, that is ultimately what Grim Dawn is about and weâre sticking to that, itâs working well for us. I think dedicated servers would be great, they will not happen for this game. Maybe Grim Dawn 2.
5th October 2018 stream:
FiskeJR :Are there any plans for âclosed online serversâ like in D2?
Zantai_GD :no, that is something that would have needed to happen when the game was new
Then there are 2 other ones that eisprinzessin has linked in his compilation of dev feedback FAQ thread.
There are probably more, but I think they make the point.
Such an approach is far beyond what I would call a trivial implementation. I meanâŚif it really was trivial to implement, why do you suppose we havenât done it already? To spite players?
I assure you that itâs a bit more work than a few âtriggerâ words.
A quick laundry list for you of just a few issues that need to be addressed to even begin implementing your trivial solution:
how is expansion loot handled?
how are expansion masteries handled?
how do you handle restricting access to expansion areas when players can literally teleport to each other?
how do you handle expansion only features such as illusionists or even expanded shared stash?
how do you handle quest bestowal in MP when quest progress/bestowal is server wide?
how do you reconcile items with updated/changed stats in expansions that also drop in the base game?
Itâs easy to say add a checkbox, until one actually considers what that checkbox means.
How else would you recognize a matured online community!
Iâd still say itâs not as bad here as some other gaming communities, but perhaps Iâm biased.
Itâs been a century, so I canât remember anymore, but didnât you need to start new characters to play LoD?
Based on my gaming experience, Iâd say that D2âs approach to letting players start D2/LoD characters was not exactly a standard for games with expansions. Of course anyone that played D2 without LoD was promptly chased out by the community for daring to play the incomplete game, so did they really even need it!
Pretty certain nobody at Crate has ever called MP an afterthought, and the years of addressing MP issues would say otherwise. We literally hired one of the programmers that worked on TQâs MP to get Grim Dawnâs up and running.
Sure, there are MP features that players have asked for, but as with all feature requests, we weigh the time required relative to how many players it actually benefits, and Iâd argue that the features we added over the years had a greater return for the community.
as somebody who paid for this game 2 days ago and immediately wanted to buy some DLC, how on earth is this a problem?
All i want to do is join my friend who has the base game.
Mark a new toon as âbaseâ and allow ONLY base game assets, skills, masteries use the base game map no âexpansion areasâ
Remove them. if iâm playing with my friend who has the base game, just let me play base game, no
âexpansion only featuresâ no expanded shared stash none of it, JUST the base game for that toon.
if you have any other problems figuring out whats base game let me know, iâd be happy to help.
I mean, what youâre suggesting essentially boils down to âdisable the expansionsâ. Which you can do, there are Steam launch parameters to do this and even a community-made tool that automates the process:
your right, that is what it boils down to, however people have been having problems with that, remember you canât just âdisableâ them as it should be, you need to uninstall and redownload them, thatâs the problem (EDIT) the tools linked above seem to fix this aspect of the problem.
itâs cool that allzome humans made some cool tools to cover the problems the devs made, i like that
stuff that should be part of the game, its like saying anybody who buys the Loyalist Item Pack must play with other Loyalist Item Pack owners, its dumb.
Then just donât load a character into the expansion content, simple, it just makes sense not to do that . How would the base game handle characters that may or may not have data from the expansions? Just wipe it completely? You wouldnât be pleased if your expansion characters just suddenly lost half their equipment and devotions when you go to play with your friends in the base game.
Except the Loyalist Packs and Expansions are wildly different in what content they add and how much of it they add to the game. The comparison is absurd.
If you think any or all of those questions are easy to answer and implement without issues cropping up, I donât know what to say to you. Often, if a task looks simple or easy to accomplish on the surface, it isnât always as simple as it would seem.
Sure, but they are also a small studio with less resources than your standard AAA company. They could with enough time make improvements to the multiplayer I suppose but they have to weigh up if that time and effort investment is worth it or whether they would rather dedicate that time and effort to other ventures that maintain their success and life as a company.
If you have a character that youâre co-oping through the base game with a friend, donât load into it at all when youâre playing in your own time in the expansions. If youâre really paranoid about somehow screwing it up, then feel free to make regular backups. If even after that you still have problems, then that starts to be on you frankly. There are plenty of fail-safes and ways around the problem.
There is only one reason iâm not spending an extra 51 of my dollarydoos on the 3 expansion packs.
that reason is because of the BS around playing with my friends and iâm clearly not the only person with this problem.
your right that would bandaid the problem, but that kinda loop jumping shouldnât be a thing.
I donât normally buy games so i can move the files around to make it work
i donât think this should be considered a multiplayer problem, because as far as i can tell its a single player problem, what if i wanted to play a toon from GD and one from an expansion at the same time to compaire the old and the new, this problem would still be a problem, it isnât MP limited its just seen the most in MP
. How would the base game handle characters that may or may not have data from the expansions? Just wipe it completely? You wouldnât be pleased if your expansion characters just suddenly lost half their equipment and devotions when you go to play with your friends in the base game.