Its been a while since I played vanilla GD and with the changes to scaling, with Normal allowing you to hit 100 and fight level 100+ enemies, I am trying to determine exactly what Elite and Ultimate give you, outisde of challenge and the quest rewards?
Are there drops that will only drop in the higher difficulty? Are there more drops on higher difficulty? Like what does playing on Ultimate actually give you now, as a reward for the increased difficulty?
I think that elite can be deleted altogether now. Classical gameplay should be normal/veteran+ultimate. And a new game mode should be created on the level of veteran/ultimate where you would play only once and still receive all rewards. One playthrough should be enough with the new expansion. And then the ascended ultimate as an end game option to play the campaign again.
At level 1 you would have normal res. At level 50 they would drop to elite level res and at level 75 they would drop to ultimate level res for example.
Also it would be nice if solo self found option could be created and you would just start one character that finds its own stuff and can’t acces the shared chest and starts with no blueprints found.
if you are a new player, you still need to complete Elite to go to Ultimate - no? There you get tokens to unlock the Ultimate, skill/attribute points, portals.
When i start a new character, i level it until 50-55 levels, where i equip Praetorian set + Royal Exuberance set (rings + amulet) to get resists to go Ultimate. That’s it.
Nobody will delete Epic difficulty now at this stage of game’s life.
Does it make sense to have only one difficulty in hypothetical Grim Dawn 2? My personal opinion is yes, but it’s up to developers to decide in any case and i’ts still 8-10 years before it may appear, so relax and play the game instead.
No, you don’t now. With v1.2 when you beat the boss in the Necropolis that unlocks both Elite and Ultimate so you can choose which to go up to if you want.
Ultimate has higher chance to drop legendaries and bis affixes on monster infrequents. Plus it has exclusive content like the secret quests.
I think the current setup is the best one because i think deleting Elite is a bad thing. Elite can still be used by new players that are struggling with Ultimate and need an easier difficulty to gear up while still having a higher chance to drop stuff compared to Normal/Veteran. And veteran players can still skip Elite with merits.
There’s plenty of end-game items that only drop on Ultimate.
Trying to farm Shar’Zul’s Worldeater?
It drops on Ultimate, but not on Normal or Elite.
Searching for the Blueprint for Eldritch Gaze?
It drops on Ultimate, but not on Normal or Elite.
There’s many other examples.
I disagree.
I started playing HC not so long ago and I think Elite is still an important stepping stone towards Ultimate, especially for SSF. I only do the most important quests though, and once my resists exceed the penalties on Ultimate I leave Elite behind. By the end of Normal I rarely manage to get my resists high enough to jump directly into Ultimate. If I was playing SC I wouldn’t care about that and skip Elite (or skip Normal and start on Elite), but on HC I don’t wanna take any risks so yeah Elite definitely has its purpose.
Curious if there are also items that don’t drop on Normal, only on Elite and higher?
I think Callagadra can drop her legendary Visage helmet on Elite, but not on Normal.
So if you can’t beat her on Ultimate you may try to farm her on Elite instead.
Pending confirmation. I haven’t tried this on the latest patch.
Playing the campaign multiple times is a staple of a bygone era… There should be a game mode that will allow us to play it just once. Those who want can still play it 3x times with the current mode…
You can technically play it from ultimate since your 2nd character with merits. But starting right in ultimate is tedious.
Damn, I should have known that 5 years ago 
Probably would have saved me some hassle (back when FG came out I made a build to specifically farm Cally on Ultimate). I always considered superbosses as endgame so I never thought about tackling them on Elite. But I will keep it in mind when the time to kill her comes on HC. I guess Ravager too, I’ll look up what he drops on Elite.
Maybe that’s true. I guess I’m too used to the D2 Normal/Nightmare/Hell approach that almost every ARPG afterwards copied, at least most of those that I played. I don’t play any “modern” ARPGs, do you have an example of a game that does only have one difficulty mode that still allows access to all content while still offering a system for increased challenge and rewards?
One older game that has does something like that is Victor Vran, the player can choose “hexes” to make the game harder and receive better rewards, but it still has a normal and a hard mode (I don’t remember the difference, played it a long time ago)
I am not sure. I don’t like playing online ARPGs. But these tedious mechanics should be left in the past now. If there would be a new mode and an old mode everyone would be happy… And GD can be the first 
And I am sure the game could be rebalanced to officially only have two difficulties with the new expasion so that it is viable even in HC. GD league already has it if I am not mistaken.
Technically GD has 4 difficulty modes if you include Veteran, with a 5th one coming next year 
But yea not having to switch modes all the time would be nice for a change. I think the Victor Vran hexes system is worth looking at for GD2, I like the idea of freely switching around mutators at any given time to customize the game to different players’ preferences and playstyles.
no. starting on ultimate is to “bulletspongey” and elite is great to skip veteran.
That is exactly what I am complaining about… Starting on ultimate is now tedious if one wanted only one playthrough.
Maybe some workaround could be implemented but I have no idea now…
for that i start elite with xp booster to 30-40 and switch to ultimate
But that means playing two difficulties… One can easily do it now with veteran+ultimate…
Maybe a jumpstart in crucible and then going to ultimate MC could be viable… But still not a simple balanced single playthrough by default…
I find elite very useful to max reputation and get the augments that allow a clean ultimate playthrough.
But that is because reputation is not great now in the game. Again GD league has already improved it. These are things that can be tweaked.
Personally I don’t care about league, seasons and thelike. I play this game firstly because it’s good and secondly because it’s offline.
Yes, so do I but there are still possible improvements left to be made for the offline experience. And the league shows the way…