KickStarter Grim Dawn

If you are not sure who is responsible blame

 

I played it for a while on Veteran difficulty (highest allowed for first playthrough) then on Elite and the game has serious pacing problems, akin to Path of Exile where you endlessly shuffle trash mobs.
I picked an Arcanist, put my points into AoE (forgot its name, some aether thing going into fire later on), put literally nothing in health, just magic damage (spirit) and haven't died once.
But I could have died to several creatures I stumbled upon that had nonsensically higher level than me to the point I'd get two shotted if I lingered. And they don't have aimed attacks so it's impossible to fight them because you have to get hit.

The story is okay but the low quality of the writing and cliche characters strongly clashes with the somber Lovecraftian nature of the game world.
It doesn't make use of the game environment to vehicle the lore and is presented in a traditional wall of text manners with journal entries and so on. Too much journal "mwahahaha let me tell you my evil plan" scraps lying around.

The art direction is pretty bad character wise, especially the way gear is done. There is zero incentive to play from aesthetic standpoint.

Oh and the reason it's impossible to die as Arcanist (except for mobs 10 levels above you) is because everything fucking dies when I cast my AoE. No balance at all in this game, Diablo 2 Sorc seems tame in comparison. It's very dissapointing when literally unkillable creatures turn you back for more grind of mobs that pose zero challenge.
It's very dissapointing when game causes severe memory leaks despite looking worse than Titan Quest. It brings zero improvement to the formula

 

Is the Crucible a full scale expansion or just DLC?

I don't know if anything could fix this boring ass game.

 

I think its just a DLC. It adds an arena challenge to the game where you fight waves of progressively more difficult enemies. Sounds like Last Stand mode from DoW2. /shrug

 

I'm crossing my fingers that Crate will release an expansion pack on the level or greater than Immortal Throne.

Immortal Throne was actually better than vanilla Titan Quest.

 

They are still intending to do a full scale expansion, as stated in the last Grim Misadventures.

 

The store page for The Crucible has been set up on Steam, with a trailer and some screenshots, and according to Crate's facebook page it's releasing this week.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/483840/

Also the game is on -40% sale on Steam for this week if anyone's interested.

 

I remember being so hopeful for their project on kickstarter. But then it turned out much more generic.

 

I think the some of the constellation procs with the weapon skills were fun to play with. games like this tend to get pretty monotonous, but aside from locking class selection and class levels I was still able to manage some fun shuffling around different ability loadouts

 

I don't think they initially planned it to be a trash mob generator like Path of Exile. They had ambition to create an atmospheric open world RPG with hack and slash combat. But then they settled for just another Diablo clone.

It's efficient at that but the biggest appeal behind loot grinding games is the cooperative and competitive elements. Grim Dawn's multiplayer is more primitive than Diablo 2 so it's not going anywhere in that regard.

 

This is really this game's biggest letdown IMO. Diablo II's multiplayer was INCREDIBLE in its time. You could play for years on end, and had reason to.

 

They did intend to implement a closed multiplayer option in case the game does well back in 2010, so it's not completely out of question. Maybe for the expansion. I remember seeing talk about it in 2012 as well, but no idea if there's been anything recent about it.

I do believe they intended the game to be a diablo clone in it's core gameplay from the start, due to the inherited TQ engine and keeping a lot of the base mechanics from TQ. The biggest shame of the game is that they couldn't live up to their ambitions of having a non-linear open world ARPG with lots of C&C.

Well, GD still has basicly 2 long corridors one after the other that surely are wider than those of TQ, but still pretty much corridors. There are some side areas and secrets, but it's still a very linear game at it's core.

I'm interested to see how much Wolcen(previously Umbra) needs to give up on the open world design during their development cycle. They've already got level scaling where lower level monsters are always scaled up to your level, which sounds a bit alarming. I think Grim Dawn's level scaling with level ranges is a fairly good option, although I think the ranges could be tightened some more.

 

GD never promised to be anything more than it is.
It main problem are player skills (too generic), not level design.

 

Eh, I love the game but even I can't bullshit myself that hard, they absolutely did promise more than it currently is.

There absolutely is a central story and it's completely on rails and linear. As for having open world design... Sure, you can enter Act 2 areas when you get the resources to do so, but you wont progress past Homestead or Fort Ikon if you haven't progressed enough in the main quest. And between Devil's Crossing, Homestead and Fort Ikon it's just a linear corridor.

Every playthrough is basicly the same. There are no "set piece spawners" that mutate areas to be unique, just different blocked passages.

 

Yeah. I even remember some threads a long while ago where the director would discuss about the difficulty of implementing C&C and an evolving world. He wanted to let you attack any NPC, spawn rover camps randomely or turn Devil's crossings in your own custom garrison.

 

There was also talk about factions being more than WoW-esque reputation grinds for gear. I remember reading about all the factions being Neutral to the player and you could ally with any faction, even one of the alien ones, since that paired well with the original open world design. All of these ideas were chucked away somewhere between the completition of Act 1 and when they started working on Act 2, however.
Taken from the KS page:

I mean, technically it exists. But let's not split hairs and pretend that the way they implemented them is in any way the same as how they were being advertised. They made it seem grander, deeper and more meaningful.

 

As last poster said, it was all implemented but I guess not to your expectations.
Still quests have more C&C than both PoE or D3 and the game still less linear than both.
And they don't have GD's faction system.

 

The factions are pretty gimp, I'm not really sure how much of a plus that's supposed to be. You get certain rewards for killing generic faction associated enemies and doing their quests to run down a corridor and kill a boss you've probably already killed before. Enemy faction rep just gets you a few more boss spawns. Death's Vigil and Kymon's Chosen are only really different as far as which gives rewards more relevant for your character, and The Outcast just slows down your Black Legion rep for some caster rewards and a few extra quests. Is this really a big plus for you?

 

That's not even what he said. Neither are the quoted parts describing the current game.

 

The Crucible is out for 5,49€. Will be on a -15% release discount for a week.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/483840/

I was kind of thinking the price would be even lower, considering how lackluster it sounds. Meh, I think I'll wait 'till it's cheaper.

 

As a KS backer I don't mind it. Only lack of enough interesting and diverse player skills.
It would be worse if there were h&s rpgs that did the c&c and factions better but there are not

 

This is my biggest gripes with Grim Dawn along with boring, uninspired itemization. Came from an Eastern Sun/MedianXL Ultimative and endgame PoE background. Perhaps if I enjoyed TQ (it is so terribly slow) then skipped the games I've mentioned and when straight to Grim Dawn, I might not feel the same way.

Thankfully class mods or DAIL can help, albeit only to an extent, fix the diversity problem. I've spent more than 300+ hours (even made a PB guide back when it was still viable) on the vanilla game though so I can't complain.

 

Bought and played it a bit and it is really lackluster. Just a lame farming method at max level.