KickStarter Grim Dawn

[roll-a-die]

Not being cheap... it's that floaty Titan Quest combat is mediocre.

Also, I bet you bought it at 50% off.

Since you've clearly played the game, tell us more about your opinions? Until then, just, continue making unfounded claims, being butthurt, and revealing just how little you know.

No seriously though, what are you adding to this discussion?

 

[Metro]

Some much needed levity since you drag it down with your hall monitor demeanor.

 

[roll-a-die]

Some much needed levity since you drag it down with your hall monitor demeanor.

Nah, not hall monitoring, just wondering. You seem to, well, have this self conceit that anyone actually cares what anyone thinks.

 

[you know what time it is]

Didn't touch it for a couple of months, but one of the latest updates must have done something right, since most of my FPS issues seem to be solved now. There are still a few hiccups here and there, but at least I don't get random fps drops down to 5-10 for no good reason and overall it feels much smoother.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

How's the netcode? I got my dude to the hhigh 20s before dropping it for now while they flesh it out. I found myself thinking it would be fun to co-op.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I have a lot more technical issues with the game now.It stutters a lot, especially when I loot iron bits. It's very annoying. I even have a far superior computer now compared to my 4 year old rig that I played the game with last time.

 

[Aeschylus]

How's the netcode? I got my dude to the hhigh 20s before dropping it for now while they flesh it out. I found myself thinking it would be fun to co-op.

It's mostly functional. It's pretty fun to run co-op, and there's not many serious issues, but there's a lot of visual bugs, and a few issues that only come up in multiplayer (like burning DoT applying to your character forever until you restart, maybe they fixed that one).

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Thanks. Maybe I will wait for the full bake. I would rather wait and have the best experience.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm finding that the Devotion system has limited use for a pure summoner. The passive bonuses for pets are certainly nice, but I can't use any of the skills gained from the pet-focused constellations since they are all procs off attacks. I enhanced my weapon with a component to get one of those generic item based spells to bind the plague hound to it (wow another hound summon, so original Crate. Must've taken you a long time to make that fucking color swap), but the spell is shitty and puts me in harm way so it's not really worth using. Might invest 1 point in DEE to make this work, but that'd be kinda gay. They should at least make some of the pet based devotion skills proc off the pets themselves.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Extra summon "stars" are nearly all need similar basic spells son I gave up on them. So i'm using gregs eye with Sheperd buff other than that I mostly got stars that my summons can use. Gave hellhound that orbiting eye passive for example.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Crate didn't really think this one through.

 

[Zdzisiu]

I dont really like the Devotion system either. Those are just passive stat increases such as +10 phys/c/spirit or sometimes resistances (those I like but I bet they will get useless with legendary gear in the game) or maybe health/mana regen. Or you get some proc skills that you have to associate with a skill to even allow them to level up. There are no skills on the tree that you can just take, even stuff such as turtle shell that activates when you get to low life requires to be associated with an aura/buff to work.

Another thing I dont like about it is that shit is difficult to clearly see. The zoom out level is not enough to see the whole thing at once, and the constelations are too close to each other, and not bright enough to clearly see where is what. I do have a real trouble with finding constelations on the tree.

I dont like the "unlock" system for constelations. You need to gather enough of those "aspect points" and how do you get them? By completing constelations. The problem is, that you get them only when you complet a constelation, taking all the stars inside it. If you just wanted to take the three first stars because you needed the resistances and wanted to skip the last two stars because they give spirit or some useless shit like that, you will not get any aspect points and wont be able to progress further into the tree. So you either take some inefficient/useless for you stars or you get no way to progress to the more usefull constelations, and some of them require a lot of the aspect points, like 20+ which with the limit of 50 devotion points would require almost exclusive focus on completing only the constelations that give a fair amount of this particular aspect points. For example, there is the constelation that requires 20 blue aspect points, and to get that many blue points you would have to complete around 6 other constelations of maybe 5-6 stars each. If you even would have access to so many constelations that give a lot of blue points without investing into some other constelations to get red/gold/whatever aspect points to unlock the blue giving constelations. And all that while getting shit that is of no use/or very little use for you build like mana regen for my Warden (I never get under 80% mana), or spirit or piercing damage increase or stuff for pets or shitload of stuff for shields only etc. And in the end, when you finally get the aspect points to unlock the constelation you want, it is nothing gamechanging, it just gives you more stat increases, just bigger ones.

Yet another thing is, that I can hardly find anything on the tree that would be really good for my two handed melee build. There is nothing exclusive for it (There is something for two handed ranged even, and shitload for shield builds). All I can take as a two handed melee a one handed melee can take too, and he can use the shield focused constelations too.

All in all, I use the devotion system to just get more resistances or life (around 11k life right now on my Warder).

But can we take a moment and discuss the resistances? Who the hell thought that it will be a good idea to have 10 resistances in the game? Good luck trying to get decent resistances to all of them. Every fucking enemy group seems to have their own "element" with shit like aether/chaos/vitality/bleeding/piercing damage that is something completly separate from fire/cold/lightning/acidpoison damage. And then you have stun resistance and a stat that decreases the freeze time, because aparently the cold resistance is not good for it. And the worst thing about it? There is no indication which enemy mob does what type of damage. Sure, there are the basic, common sense rules that when somebody throws fire at you, you use fire resistance, but what about all the demons and Cthonics? Do they use chaos? Bleeding? Vitality damage? Who does use aether damage? Only aetherials? Or mages too? It pisses me because I have no idea which resistance I should increase not to be hit so hard by Chthtonic Bloodletters and Harbringers. Those are the only enemies that will destroy 5k of my hp very quickly. But they do similar damage to my other chars with less hp, so I suspect that their damage may not be flat but rather %based, which is fucking stupid.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Agreed. Too many goddamn passives in the devotion system. Many of them are nice and useful, but not unique and thus do not to warrant a whole new progression system. It also takes a lot of devotion points before you start getting any of the more interesting and meaningful proc abilities, most of which you probably aren't even going to get to try yet because we are capped at about 23~ points at the moment. But, yeah, a whole new progression system that doesn't really offer anything that new or exciting that character equipment didn't already offer. I don't mind its existence, but I'd like to see them squish it down to more meaningful choices rather than a hundred lazy passives and a handful of good procs.

Fake edit: I mean there's a wow factor to the Devotion system because of how big it is, but when you start to actually get into it you'll soon realize that there's probably around 10+ meaningful choices in there. And the customization is also limited to what skills you can assign the procs to in the first place. I thought it'd be 100% open and up to the player, but it's not, which sucks.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I think they tried to copy PoE s skill tree system and try to "innovate" it a bit but failed mostly.

 

[LizardWizard]

75% off or bust.

 

[Aothan]

similar issues were raised with Path of Exile's skill tree design in times yonder, a long time ago the tree was vastly more chaotic and the more important 'notable' skills were also more diffuse. Now skills are clustered and streamlined so that leveling can seem rewarding no matter what direction a player takes. I imagine a similar process of refinement might take place in Grim Dawn, and by all other impressions it sounds like it is becoming a good action rpg for those so inclined

 

[Kruno]

75% off or bust.

I thought Bethestards would pay full price plus season pass, and not a penny less?

 

[gestalt11]

similar issues were raised with Path of Exile's skill tree design in times yonder, a long time ago the tree was vastly more chaotic and the more important 'notable' skills were also more diffuse. Now skills are clustered and streamlined so that leveling can seem rewarding no matter what direction a player takes. I imagine a similar process of refinement might take place in Grim Dawn, and by all other impressions it sounds like it is becoming a good action rpg for those so inclined

The devotion thing is certainly similar to PoE skill tree, but since there is still the mastery element to the game and it it is very important, its not as make or break as the skill tree issue in PoE. You can actually get a pretty substantial boost to resistances of DA or OA with some fairly simple planning from devotions, that alone is pretty big since it changes your item budget. With 25 devotion points I can get like +8% attack speed some 50% or so extra lightning damage and about +10% OA and +50 OA, plus a proc or two. That is quite strong and when consider my masteries are already contributing alot each level its seems quite fine as a multi-layered system.

PoE's problem is the skills were soloely itemization so the only thing you got from level was a drop of skill points in a lake of a skill tree. GD doesn't have that problem at all due to masteries AND stats being level based.

 

[Renevent]

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26748

Jesus Christ them new graphics.

Those look great, Aside from just having a lot more detail I really like the new signs and how much they add to the atmosphere.

 

[Aothan]

PoE's problem is the skills were soloely itemization so the only thing you got from level was a drop of skill points in a lake of a skill tree. GD doesn't have that problem at all due to masteries AND stats being level based.

advancing in levels expands the degree of complexity accessible in Path of Exile's notable design, whether through skills or item types. I don't want to inadvertently prompt a comparison between games where both, by all impressions I have, are good games. I'm looking forward to Grim Dawn to see how it fares, indeed of recent I've been considering trying it out just as I was playing Path of Exile a few months before beta went into the open beta and full release stage

 

[gestalt11]

PoE's problem is the skills were soloely itemization so the only thing you got from level was a drop of skill points in a lake of a skill tree. GD doesn't have that problem at all due to masteries AND stats being level based.

advancing in levels expands the degree of complexity accessible in Path of Exile's notable design, whether through skills or item types. I don't want to inadvertently prompt a comparison between games where both, by all impressions I have, are good games. I'm looking forward to Grim Dawn to see how it fares, indeed of recent I've been considering trying it out just as I was playing Path of Exile a few months before beta went into the open beta and full release stage

I wasn't saying the tree system was bad, i never had a problem with it, but the complaints of some are not really applicable to GD due to masteries and stat points. Again I don't think the PoE ability system was bad either, but since it was loot based it did not support things the way GD masteries do. Personally I think the criticism of PoE was kind of dumb, but some people need their crack ...I mean... carrot. I think its especially dumb since Diable-eque ARPGs are easily as much about loot as they are about levels. More about loot really.

 

[Aothan]

I was contemplating earlier how well single classes play in Grim Dawn. Understandably this is not the intention of the design, but it is a habit I have developed from earlier playing of online NWN (1 & 2) worlds, where the rule was to find effective multiclasses yet 'pure' classes such as Paladin, Druid and Ranger (and though I did not play them the Barbarian, Fighter and most of all Rogue) could work feasibly well and were even potentially very interesting for the increased effect of class specific abilities. Likewise actually with .. Titan Quest and some of the higher level abilities that benefited from focused levels

I'll probably start on Grim Dawn sooner or later so a few thoughts about playstyle and how the melee classes fare within their own specialisations have been on my mind

 

[ArchAngel]

I was contemplating earlier how well single classes play in Grim Dawn. Understandably this is not the intention of the design, but it is a habit I have developed from earlier playing of online NWN (1 & 2) worlds, where the rule was to find effective multiclasses yet 'pure' classes such as Paladin, Druid and Ranger (and though I did not play them the Barbarian, Fighter and most of all Rogue) could work feasibly well and were even potentially very interesting for the increased effect of class specific abilities. Likewise actually with .. Titan Quest and some of the higher level abilities that benefited from focused levels

I'll probably start on Grim Dawn sooner or later so a few thoughts about playstyle and how the melee classes fare within their own specialisations have been on my mind

I done more than one character that is one class only. On average they work worse than multiclass, especially if you want more survival abilities.
For example solo Nightblade is much weaker in survival than one mixed with Soldier. I complained about it on official forums more than once and I was always given the answer that "I am playing it wrong".

 

[Aothan]

I see, well that is to be expected where single classes can accentuate their abilities and yet become relatively weaker by way of comparison, even so if the possibility for interesting class playstyles with their higher abilities remains feasible there is a chance I will give those types of characters a try

 

[Haba]

Pure soldier does. not. care.