I gave it a fair shake, played it extensively (almost 140h), but its just not on par with most other ARPG’s out there.
Juggling a dozen resistances (srsly, WTF), no respec for attributes or classpoints, 99% of loot worthless, most build combinations not endgame viable (unless you’ve got every unique in the book and even then most builds dont make the cut), overtuned difficulties past normal one, and so on. Fun is always sort of a tipping scale and to me the fun factor of the game went in the wrong direction with aforementioned problems the game has.
I’m not salty, but rather expectations were likely too high for me and nostalgia just cannot compensate for antiquated game design.
What you dislike about the game is what people like myself enjoy about it. I finished ultimate with all resists except stun at 80-87 not much farming or frustration involved. That being said some unfortunate people must get poor RNG drops.
because GD is very casual, perhaps less so than D3 or Torchlight / 2, but thats actually a good thing.
“Almost every build is viable” is the final state of Torchlight 2. Its when your DPS can be made stupidly overpovered with proper stats. Lots of stats. No matter what skills you are using, most of them will fit ad do well. At that point you loose any challenge and will get bored fast. You might find some challenge in NG3+ Tarroch on elite (highest difficulty, level 100+), in multiplayer with 2-3 other people. While everything else is facerolled effortlessly.
When you cannot reach that state “by default” with every build its more interesting. Maybe there is no need to push it to the extreme like in POE, but GD is nowhere near that. And the opposite extreme, “every build is viable”, isn’t really good either, like I described above.
As ARPGs go it is more challenging than most but also a lot more customizable and has a skill system for adults as opposed to the Fischer-Price Diablo 3 skill system.
The variety in builds is staggering and it does take game knowledge to keep your character relevant at high level but there are MANY ways to do this, there is no one “best” build per class for endgame, and being able to even build your character around an item or specific weapon has never been done before.
What they’re doing is great, we just need more of it
Lol I broke Torchlight by reaching 35% chance to proc meteor on every attack back when it had no CD and was the highest damage power in the game. Absurdly broken; it was fun for 10 minutes after that but GD is infinitely more nuanced and a lot more rewarding.
I am probably one of the worst RPG players of all time, and I dont feel like the difficulties past normal are overtuned at all. To me its kinda standard to make the monsters harder to kill and the gear to kill them efficiently harder to find.
The game has a few annoyances but it is one of the best arp’s out there. Torchlight was way too easy, I had a lvl 6 char that could beat anything on the hardest setting -.-
The difficulty of this game is actually good, some bosses have far too much burst damage like the mad queen and fabius but only a few.
The loot is fine too I think, some loot you think looks bad untill you think of a unique build or another item that works with it.
You can beat Ultimate with just green gear, so it’s not overtuned at all. Also, saying 99% of the loot is worthless is one of the most exaggerated things i ever heard.
TL2 was easy…You think metor was broken? Wait until you try glacial spike Ravager build. You needed mods like Tartarus endless dungon with 200 lvl+ mobs for an actual challenge…still played it a lot.
Now GD is not that casual and there is no combination of classes that does not work. Or skills. Some better than others but may fit your style more. I love this game. As I did TQ.
POE for endgame is pretty much a part-time job…Perhaps even full time. Whether that is ok or not is up to the each individual player to decide…to me personally it’s not.
As for what OP said, I’ll run through your points one-by-one:
Highly subjective. There are positives and negatives to Grim Dawn, as well as all other ARPGs.
Myself? It’s taken me about 150 hours to even start to understand GD. Maybe other people are just more intuitive with these kinds of things, or they play more games that new games come naturally?
Again, subjective. I personally like this, as I like the idea that it’s really hard to max resistances, and “isn’t necessary”, but really helps if you can do it. I’m not in Ultimate yet so I’ll have to see whether maxed resistances and high health really are necessary or not. But you don’t have to play in Ultimate…
Yet another subjective thing. I like it, as it makes me really feel like I earned it when I make a good build. I would prefer the levelling process to be a little quicker; 20-30 hours from start to finish feels like plenty for me.
This is actually pretty important in ARPGs. Firstly, you’d spend a lot of time comparing loot if say, 50% of it was useful at all times. You’d also become powerful way too quickly in this case. Plus it’s hard to design this kind of progression in. And to top of it all off, having a lot of useless stuff drop before that really sweet Legendary item drops is the whole point of the slot machine effect, and that’s what keeps players playing for so long!
This is one I’m personally divided on as I love the idea of having a wide range of viable builds. But it requires defining “viable”, it requires some insane balancing which can sometimes cause the game to become homogenised, and it can also make the game too easy as you can literally just pick anything and it still kills stuff.
As I said before, you can still play in Elite and just not do the absolute hardest content like Fabius, Mad Queen, Mogdrogen, etc. Does it really matter if you miss out on a few bosses if you’ve had hundreds of hours of playtime doing everything else?
Elite is not overtuned, I can tell you that. It is definitely harder than Nightmare in D2 and Cruel in PoE, but if you have the game knowledge you can breeze through it. How do I know? It’s not overly difficult for me, and yet I see lots of videos of people who find it a lot easier.
All in all, maybe you did just have way too high expectations? I find that if I take some time to learn a bit about the game, then slow down my gameplay a bit and just enjoy smashing monsters and finding flashy new gear, I can really immerse myself in pretty much any ARPG (yes, even D3 at times :O).
I honestly find Elite easier than Veteran. It takes a while in Veteran to get to the good skills and items and until then, things can be somewhat difficult at certain points. In Elite however, you start to get to the level of the good items and reaching the final mastery skills and devotion skills and the game starts to get much easier.
I agree with this post! Veteran is definitely harder as you spend most of the time below lv 40. You get some big gear boosts between 40 and 70 which helps make things much easier and those are the levels you typically play elite… There are several BIG bumps in power due to gear in there. I always seem to struggle (at least with clear speed) until hitting 40…then it picks up a ton! That could be balanced a little better, but don’t think it is a huge deal… My biggest issues with that is it can be hard to play a particular build until those points. So much better to pick a different one for leveling and then respect when you start hitting lv 50+ and can start equipping the gear. Would be nice to be able to effectively play a build all the way up. But on the other hand, leveling is a small portion of the game so really not that critical…just a “nice to have” not a “need to fix”.
I do not agree. I’m still a pretty new player too (280 hours played according to Steam). I’m a heavy alt player so this actually doesn’t bother me, but regarding people who do focus on one character only I understand the frustration: It’s just the lack of possibilities to get items suited for the chosen build (maybe something like Horadrim cube could help or another way to change useless items for more useful ones?), because GD has a multiplayer mode in theory but definitely focuses on Single-Player, so the Multiplayer rule to make it more likely to happen that items drop one doesn’t need but then should be traded to get in touch with other players doesn’t fit GD’s current gameplay experience offerings well.
Nevertheless there are a lot of possibilities to make builds around certain skills in the trees and found on items. And regarding endgame viability: One doesn’t have to rush through the game to “farm” endgame. Better farm earlier stages of the game to beat endgame. And be flexible to distribute points elsewhere for certain encounters. I still enjoy GD very much
Thank you guys for voicing your opinions, I do appreciate it. And I do respect them.
I had written a huge response to your points, but that is actually not what I wanted to do with me posting this thread. I was disappointed in the game because things kept bugging me while playing it and I wanted to share it.
I still play the game and made my peace with some of the things that got me riled up so thats that Just cant go back to PoE, that game is heading in the wrong direction. And yes, to me it is easier than GD (played Poe for 2.5k hours), go figure
Much love. Btw, would love this see a GD veteran actually do newbie builds which serve as base for endgame builds. Jaja’s 2 “newbie friendly” builds are okay, but we need more
