Hi, I’m looking for hack’n’slash to play many many years and hours, 2k hours, 5k hours and more. But, Grim Dawn doesn’t have any seasons/ladders, so here is my question.
What’s pushing you to play GD so many hours? Because it’s offline.
Is it worth to make SR’s? Is some of leaderboards somewhere for SR’s or Crucible?
there’s a guy holding a gun to my head
obviously because it’s fun
to some/many? people a game doesn’t need season or ladders to be fun, in fact to some people it can be a drawback, - and having seasons or ladders doesn’t equate to quality game either
grim dawn, depending on how you view, it can have lots of replay value just on its own, 36 classes, each with different/multiple different builds to make.
Various endgame potential, trying to be fastest Crucible runner or SR farmer, or highest SR climber. Or just making new or unique builds regardless of top performance.
there are lots of little ingame goals you can set for yourself, in terms of build capability/performance thresholds you want to meet for your character,
and making/grinding builds legit can take time on its own if you’re not purely interested in build crafting with ex Gdstash
Then you have mods ofc, which to many is a great reason for the offline, allowing modability means extra content and renewed life or playability, which then can each add XXXhours on their own on top of eachother and on top of the vanilla game
ask yourself the same for other games, why do you play hundreds of hours in Dark Souls, why do you play hundreds of hours in Skyrim, etc etc, just because a game is offline does not take away from the fun to be had
7 Likes
Have absolutely no interest in seasons or ladders so it’s a plus for me that GD doesn’t have them. Not being always online is a plus too for me and many other players.
I’ve been playing since day one of early access back in 2013 and haven’t tired of the game yet. Build diversity is the key for most players I think. So many ways to play each class combo.
Crucible does have a leaderboard, but it’s just for your own characters; not against other players.
2 Likes
For me it’s about testing new ideas against the storyline / bosses, which always seems to provide new challenges for those characters while not being impossible - there is always a way to tweak the strategy of a character to continue to make progress and get those dopamine hits on levelling up, new drops and little surprises along the way
1 Like
Ok i seem to screw up on my reply here. Medea I think i accidently sent it to u somehow. How do I straighten that out?
Im addicted to alts. This game is alt heaven. & the mods never end. Great community too.
There is a group of modders who make a season thing. Season 4 is over. They turned it into a stand alone mod. You might want to check it out under modding projects. They do plan on making a season 5.
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You did reply to me, but no harm done. 
Fashion Dawn and memes.
5 Likes
Well, firstly, I couldn’t give a tepid pile of crap about leaderboards and seasons. And not being always online was a big plus for me when I used to have unstable internet.
But above all, the game offers four important things:
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tactical combat - no one-click screen clears at 280 % movement speed. Enemy abilities and player tactics matter cause enemies stay around longer than the split second it takes for you to kill them (looking at you, PoE). Meaning varied enemies bring varied combat, not just a different death animation the moment they appear at the edge of the screen.
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ridiculous build variety - you can take the same class combination (out of 36) and build it at least 6 different ways without having to go off the deep end on the mental gymnastics (and if you do go off the deep end, you’ll probably find another 20 possible builds to go). I have 5.2k hours in the game and I don’t think I’ve even done 1/8th of the builds possible. And most of the time, when I make a build it doesn’t feel like the developers just held my hand and led me to it. Even if I use a big set, that doesn’t automatically define what build I play (just cause a set is for Cabalist doesn’t mean you have to use it with Cabalist to succeed) and how I fill my other item slots can vary a great deal depending on what I’m looking to do. When I succeed at a build, I don’t feel like things have been lined up for me, it feels like I figured something out.
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self-sufficiency and good gear system - you can play on your own, never trade, dupe or generate a thing, and you can make the perfect character. No farming 850 of the same mundane material that you then trade for 20 of a rare material that you then trade for any item in the game (provided its price didn’t skyrocket that league). You just fucking find the item and use it. And if it rolled like shit, well you just craft and find a new one. The game has the perfect balance of giving you enough good gear to let you be self-sufficient while simultaneously not giving you so much good gear that you’re just hauling bags full of legendaries to town every 30 minutes. And, it’s not just about legendaries and sets. Epics (more common and generally weaker than Legendaries) and rares (monster infrequents with randomised affixes) are just as important. Many items can also be target-farmed or crafted so you’re not left to the whims of rng when you’re looking for something specific.
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variety in challenge - the game can be hard as balls if you let it and that can start all the way from levelling. If you feel like it, you can skip the first two difficulties and jump straight to the final difficulty from level 1. So if you ever felt like levelling is a time-wasting chore, well, now it’s a war for survival. Once you reach endgame, pick your poison. Between superbosses/secret bosses, Crucible and Shattered Realm, you never feel like you’re limited to the same pointless hamster wheel over and over cause there’s nothing else to do (queue a D3 rifting montage
). And, because the levelling process wasn’t a pointless chore, it doesn’t feel like the game starts at endgame (and if that endgame were disappointing you’d start wondering why you even bothered). The endgame is the place where you can cap off your build but it doesn’t feel like it’s all there is in the game. In addition, there’s a hard limit to how powerful you can get with a build (no paragon levels or infinitely scalable augments) so if you want to overcome a harder challenge, you don’t just have to grind another 20 hours to get more paragon, augments and gem levels. You either improve your build or you git gudder at playing it. The game isn’t going to let you win eventually cause you’ve tried long enough to fail upwards. You win when you earn it. And you don’t stop playing a build on a downer, i.e. when you’ve grown sick and tired of grinding the same build over and over for more paragon or gem levels. You stop on a good note, when you’ve overcome the hardest challenge you think you can manage with a given build. Which keeps you motivated to build something new and see how far you can get with it.
10 Likes
Build variety (I have never played a caster build yet, nor pets. Still stuck on melee and ranged, and I got lotsa more to build and try). Endgame is excellent, my pc doesn’t like Crucible but SR is very fun. Levelling said endgame builds is refreshing and challenging, especially with the same damage type/skills. Farming monster infrequents; there’s always a better double-rare out there…(fuck me but I could never find a Tyrant’s of Ruthlessness Derma slicer…my Belgo BM has no damage reduction 
but 2k cunning lmao). Honestly even with legendary BIS items there is always a quest to find the best rolled version. So yeah, that’s why I still play after a measly 1.2k hours in the game.
3 Likes
The motivation is internal. We don’t need a publisher to set the goals or pace for us. No parental guidance here. We got the toy and we’re off.
5 Likes
After over 1k hours in GD (granted, many of those were in various early access versions) I still haven’t tried even a half of all possible classes, and even a quarter of majorly different builds.
That’s my main motivation. Though I guess playing only hardcore and very often a self-find hardcore kinda slows down the pace.
1 Like
The fact that this kind of game has multiplayer, but not like the MMO type. A simple multiplayer co-op. Rare that any other new game does have that, surprisingly.
Played this “Last Epoch” recently and surely it made me appreciate this game even more because there isn’t a loading screen in each small area. Maybe that changes in the far future but till then I am still playing this while finding anything remotely similar to replace it.