Upcoming Changes to the Shattered Realm (v1.1.9.0)

Grim Dawn Development Updates
103

I have mixed feelings about this, but at the same time, I am glad if this is the only “nerf” high SR builds get hit with.

Unless ofcourse, the change to SR is in addition to nerfing the builds that used to make full use of Camera Exploit to reach deeper shards. That would be a bit too much without even allowing the players to test their builds in the new SR system without any room for Camera abuse.

Not saying that is what Z has in mind or that it is what is going to happen, but just voicing my thoughts here.

As for the 1 - 2 - 1 thing with the bosses, personally I feel like 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 would be still fine, but I am just as well looking forward to this change. The mixed feelings mentioned at the start of this post is because I am not sure if any boss combo can appear together as the Duo Bosses or if they are pulled from a specific pool. Like if I had to face Kaisan + Moosi/Kuba/Sentinel, that would most likely be an auto reset for me with most builds after SR 80.

Then again, no loot if using Deathly Waystones, so pushing deeper than 75-76 is only for bragging rights. So making things harder should not be much of a problem.

However, I do wonder if making the 1 - 2 - 1 thing a unique feature of SR 80+ or something like that would be a better idea.

But for a change, atleast this one time, I will save my Salt and rants for after the patch drops (and if pets get nerfed :zantai:)

7 Likes
104

Same
I would say that the current solution is kind a palliative.
Why not to make 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 indeed or make all bosses aggro at once, but decrease their scaling

5 Likes
105

Greate change.

106

I prefer this, how about 1v1v1v1v1 but timer with 3-5 mins (scale with sr level), after 3-5 mins the next boss automatically spawns and aggro at the same time. This should balance the offense/defense of your char, ok you would survive with ton of substain, but if you put too much defense layers and dont kill fast enough the challenge goes x2-4.

5 Likes
107

One boss/Nemesis appear and if you can’t kill him in time, another one spawns.

Or increase boss scaling if you can’t kill in time.

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108

That forces every builder to make their builds in the most aggressive way. People will tear apart between geting one-shot with bad mutators/bad luck or slow kill and get gang banged lol. And beginners with unoptimized builds can’t farm shit with something like that. You only think this on end-game basis. If it’s possible your suggestion can only be effective after 80-85. And I don’t think this method is impliable; till 85 everything will be normal/or new normal with 1-2-1 and after 85 the whole concept changes. Is it possible with this engine?

109

Too bad you cant balance all aspects, and SR is mostly all about end-game content, not friendly for beginner. Pretty sure they will do well with SR under 3-50 ultimate, as bosses dont have chunk of HP. And thats why we have a timer scaling with SR level. About mutators, I think some of them should be remove/tweak.

110

There are beginner builds that can farm 50+ and people choose those guides to make a good start so they can farm their next characters etc you know. End-game or not, it’s a good farming place. Do you know why no one farms CR? Not just because loots is worse than 65-66. Because when you die you lose too much. So trying to equalize SR with CR challenge will deprive all beginners of farming. You now gonna say they can farm totems, yeah but that doesn’t change the fact you’re debaring them from SR until they make a good optimized mid-tier build.

For you maybe, and your solution is making things better for veterans and worse for casual/beginner players, I believe what devs trying to do is just that. Making a balanced game all over, then they’ll stop updating GD and move on for future projects.

2 Likes
111

It is so easy to get loot in the game anyway. SR50+ should be “reserved” to more refined builds imo.

1 Like
112

36 posts were split to a new topic: Shattered Realm Boss Spawning Discussion

113

As someone who played melee a lot, i can confirm that the introduction of forced 1v2 will breach the gap between casters/retal and melee even further (assuming everything else will stay ~ the same).

In that regard i’d like to bring up another topic which, IMO, didn’t get nearly enough attention it should.

Numerous endgame bosses in GD have obscene movement speed. Guys like Reaper can close in on you from the off screen in literally less than a second. Not to mention off screen oneshotting abilities and teleports. This is the main reason why movement as a defense mechanic works very poorly. So to everyone who says “how about not facetanking everything” i suggest to actually play one time against some combo like Kuba+Reaper+Galakros on a small arena and record a skillful kiting gameplay against them.

If you could freely kite bosses, divide them and have them bodyblocking each other, it’d make close combat builds so much more viable. The strongest evidence to this is Crucible. 4 bosses start far apart from each other and with Cruci buffs (+bosses nerfed) a good melee build is usually able to deal with one boss before others join. And Crucible as a gamemode has many more viable melee builds.

IMO the biggest positive change to gameplay GD could have rn is boss animation and movement speed reduction (with stat compensation). Suddenly even 1v4 can become a fun and diverse experience.

14 Likes
114

The only thing I want to add to this is that physical damage scaling is too high for most melees to have a good times vs. big guys even at 75

3 Likes
115

too much physical and not enough elemental scaling is more universal than that, if you move out of the narrow realm of fully farmed up characters.

116

with the logic “it is hard for casual players to learn about aggro/camera abuse” then you can also say that it is hard for casual players to learn basically everything about game mechanics in grim dawn. The official game guide and the information in game is rather poor. So if you wanna learn how to make end game builds you kinda need to read other players builds and guides etc.

Why suddenly after 1,5y is it “needed” to fix this particular narrow aspect of end game grim dawn?

It will be a pain to balance your proposed SR solution. Consider just one boss in the boss room, like in diablo 3. Just one boss will make balance easier and all build and playstyles can thrive

6 Likes
117

True, true.

But even if the aggro abuse is fixed, the change also comes with allowing you to pull bosses one by one without aggro abuse easily, right?

So, if I am correct, what everyone is concerned about mostly is that 2 bosses together scenario which might end (probably will) cause problems.

There might also be issues regarding exactly how generous the new positioning of bosses are and how smaller their aggro range would be compared to atm.

So, this would be like they making all the game mechanics and stuff easier to learn for beginners so that they won’t have to rely on the community for answers. But ofcourse, whether the changes do more harm than good is something one needs to see before giving evaluation on the overall nature of the change.

I am skeptical as I said up above. But fingers crossed :sweat_smile:

I remember Zantai once saying that it was a bad idea to release patch info before the actual patch :rofl:

1 Like
118

But why just change SR mechanics? How are new and casual players gonna learn about what buffs / debuffs stacks and what not etc. I think those things are more important than fixing a thing that is only “needed” in the part of SR which is not supposed to be balanced anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

Like how many people are actually playing SR 80+ ? 100? lol

2 Likes
119

You’re missing something. Tell me I’m an optimist but let’s count the facts here;

  • Clearly devs now accepted the end-game enthisuasm of veteran players.

  • And they decided to balance the SR.

  • Their first opinion while creating SR was people will handle 1v4+ situations. Which is clearly didn’t work well and players learn new tricks so get over the process. So they accepted 1v4 is not going to be embraced.

  • So they decided to change things accordingly. They find a middle course and they’re implementing it.

  • What’s up to use to test new situations and give proper feedbacks so they can adjust things. I also aware of some boss combibations in the middle will be so PITA for various damage types. Like how many fire melee builds can pass Grava+Iron Maiden on 1v2 after 75-76. I know what’s the possibilities and I also have some concerns but till we meet the new situations; everything is just speculations that they can’t work on it. But even as it is, things will be worse than 1v1(for cam-abusers anyway) and things will be better than 1v4 (without any trick)

  • And with more constructive feedback after the patch; I believe they will adjust things to make things excellently balanced. Not saying perfectly because such thing doesn’t exist. There will be always some things we gonna have to accept as it is.

And yes, some playstyles always flourish among others unfortunately; I accepted this as a melee player. To achieve more equal approach maybe they can add some skills to interrupt kiting, break retaliation damage a bit or they remove fumble/aim in high shards.

3 Likes
120

Could be because Zantai wants a better environment to guage SR performance of builds.

Right now, unless the authors state whether something was done with Camera trick or pulling one-by-one without it (possible if Lava map), or if the build can take on all 4 at the same time, the devs have no way of knowing unless they play the builds themselves to test or make the praetorians do it for them.

One gripe people have had in the past, or atleast myself personally had voiced was how balancing tends to be done solely (or mainly) based on Crucible performance. Many consider it to be a better testing ground since there is not as much randomness to it.

But where Crucible favours speed, SR needs much more survivability and you can’t have complete glass cannons give the same performance there. Nerfing builds based on Crucible however, nerfs them everywhere, including in SR, which I personally had also complained in the past to Zantai and I am sure I am not the only one.

But if SR could be made easier to balance around, it could be taken as a valid metric and can end up creating more variety among builds with some tuned for SR and balanced around it while others still speedrun Cruci.

But then comes the question, do you balance around aggro pulling / camera trick or without?
A build that can do SR 120 might hit a wall around SR 85 without camera trick or pulling one by one. And if the game mode was originally intended to be played without the trick and most players are not aware of it anyways, it makes sense to remove it altogether while providing something built-in as compensation.

Ofcourse, that alone won’t fix the inherent randomness of SR or suddenly make people flock to it. It also alienates those who believed the Camera thing to be fine or even the way to play SR. It creates unnecessary problems with the proposed change as currently you have the choice to aggro 1 by 1 or 1v2, or 1v3, or 1v4 at once, which once the change drops you will be forced to 1v2 for the last 2 bosses even if you don’t want to.

So, yes it is a mixed bag. No, it won’t solve all the issues with SR. Yes, there could be better ways to “fix” the issue. But I doubt Zantai is going to discard the change because of our concerns with no one having actually played or tried out the new patch. If it does end up creating problems, Z hopefully will make changes as needed to address them.

All this aside, personally I would have loved to see SR get its own unique monsters as Level bosses with just 1 boss in the boss room. Like that giant maggot, or the eye thing, or that Damage Sponge Aether construct which we all hate :yum:

Would have been easier to balance, most of the stuff needed including not just the bosses but also their unique maps are already ingame etc. Would also give them more spotlight since atm it is random whether you fight them or not and most people consider these special stages or atleast that Aether Construct one to be just a waste of time that might even warrant a Reset.

(I cannot kill it after a certain level for example even though the builds can easily kill Nemesis bosses 1v1 in the boss shards of the same level)

6 Likes
121

That reason was not provided in the first post. I interpreted it as 1) you need to know about this trick/abuse to push high and that was not indented in the birth of SR 2) not everyone knows about this “trick”

I read nowhere “this will make it easier for devs and play testers to evaulate and balance builds”

122

It’s subtext, or atleast we hope it is :rofl:

3 Likes