KickStarter Grim Dawn

[Haba]

I am actually happy that I didn't get the alpha access. Even with the years of wait, it is better for me to go with the complete product than torture myself with the promise of something good.

 

[Angthoron]

Played a little more, got to a first "miniboss". Clearly more challenging than Diablo 3 bosses in terms of pure mechanics use, but then again, what isn't more challenging than turret bosses...

 

[MicoSelva]

I so want to play this game right now, but I will not admit it.

No worries, bro. I feel exactly the same.

 

[Sensuki]

I'm a few hours in now

There are some problems I have with the game as I go along - Shallow creature pool for amount of map/time covered and level scaling, so far 90% of the monsters have been scaling with my level. In earlier encounters, some mobs would be scaled but some wouldn't. As I play along, now every encounter is scaling, the pace of the game has not changed however.

I also am not a huge fan of the Demolitions class so far. To be an effective caster in TQ you needed a good cast speed (and thus items that boosted it) but yeah I am playing a Demolitions/Soldier build and most of the time using skills is a bit of a waste, because thats 2-3 hits I could be getting in without having to wait for the cast animation to throw a slow aoe projectile with a delayed explosion.

I am sure Demo goes better with Occultist as you will likely wear more gear that has faster cast speed.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah, cast animation thing is a problem, especially with melee cleave, it takes like a second from click to actual cleave happening, which's stupid and annoying.

 

[Average Manatee]

Is the view rotatable yet? One of my major complains with TQ was that the perspective used made it so that the effective range on your ranged attacks suddenly dropped by half when engaging an enemy to the South, leading to horribly rape as they shot you from a screen and a half away. This was usually avoided in TQ by making 90% of the game paths go east and west or south to north, but if GD is going to be open world things are going to suck.

The gun in that video definitely feels weak (impact-wise). Shouldn't be hard to fix.

The impact and weight of the melee attacks look better. I can only hope that slashing weapon have some kind of decapitation or blood spurt on death.

Like how it appears they aren't drop-spamming you. Truly the achilles heal of the diablo clone genre, stupid developers thinking that players who like finding loot will appreciate finding 1000 items an hour.

Would love to get a list of the classes and skills so far. Loved dual classing in TQ. One of the best features of TQ IMO and it's my favourite type of class system, avoiding the railroading of single classing and the vagueness of class-less.

Visually it looks amazing. Just amazing.

 

[Angthoron]

Is the view rotatable yet?

Yes.

The gun in that video definitely feels weak (impact-wise). Shouldn't be hard to fix.

Guns are eh p.nice, I use them on bosses usually.

The impact and weight of the melee attacks look better. I can only hope that slashing weapon have some kind of decapitation or blood spurt on death.

Not sure if the blunts are different, but yeah, there's gore.

Would love to get a list of the classes and skills so far. Loved dual classing in TQ. One of the best features of TQ IMO and it's my favourite type of class system, avoiding the railroading of single classing and the vagueness of class-less.

3 so far, I don't think the "trees" are final yet, but it's very TQ the way it is.

Visually it looks amazing. Just amazing.

Caves are a little TOO dark, but otherwise, yeah, really pretty. Jumps a bit sometimes, but I'm not sure if it's something with my card, which decided to start herpderping in Eador last night.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

I so want to play this game right now, but I will not admit it.

No worries, bro. I feel exactly the same.

Seconded. But damn, the game seems so...atmospheric. I'll wait some more and see if it turns to be another Torchfail.

 

[Angthoron]

I so want to play this game right now, but I will not admit it.

No worries, bro. I feel exactly the same.

Seconded. But damn, the game seems so...atmospheric. I'll wait some more and see if it turns to be another Torchfail.

Not so far at least.


Also, health regen thing is kinda weird, I can sort of appreciate it and sort of not. It's hilarious to be running circles from a crowd of angry undead though. Or mellow undead, no idea what their moods are.

 

[Sensuki]

Nice, tightly integrated UI, with mini map and character portrait on the same pane, so it doesn't obstruct needless screen space.

However the map screen is too big and if you're trying to run south with the map open you end up stopping heaps due to the lack of space between the map and the bottom UI

The Heath regen thing starts to make a bit more sense as you go along, the beginning is terribly easy (but then again D2 was terribly easy for a while) but then it gets harder

 

[Angthoron]

Completed the alpha. Overall, very positive feeling about this. Some things need changing/tweaking like cast times, map and some of the level scaling (at times it feels more like you have to play catch up rather than have gotten stronger at the moment) etc, but overall, as a show of what the game is like, the thing does admirably.

After finishing, I went off and played a bit with a mem editor to see how various skills work and affect the gameplay (especially at later levels once you get more stuff). Overall, the skills are fairly neat, a lot of passives for pure Soldier that are, in fact, fairly interesting when they trigger. Cast times on non-passives suck however, and the overall feel of the melee is that occasionally it's a bit too squishy compared to, say, getting a rifle and killing stuff from range. Like I said earlier, I used rifle for any and all of the bosses pretty much since they hit for absolutely obscene amounts of damage in melee and it's way safer to range it, which's a bit iffy, especially since I usually play as melee in pretty much any game.

But yeah, pretty sure that's tweakable.

Also, at least at the levels I was playing, the item upgrade stuff a-la TQ was very powerful and in a way gamechangey. You'll WANT to upgrade your loot and not keep that stuff for later because some of it gives very noticeable advantages (especially resists and defense, which are, shock and horror, actually important right from the early-ish game). Stats seem to be a bit fewer than in TQ I think, but they all work quite nicely.

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah I finished it last night as a Commando and then started again as a pure Solider. It's actually very bad to level a second mastery (or at least Soldier and Demo together are shit early on) this early in the game, puts you severely behind.

My soldier run is more successful so far.

And yeah I am not a huge fan of the level scaling - you never get to experience the moments where you peak above the difficulty of the game and start smashing shit, it's always the same amount of hits per monster or one more if you start to fall a bit behind.

You never found out if these guys are part of a quest or anything did you?



I found two groups of em

 

[Lockkaliber]

It has level scaling? All my interest in this game just died.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah I finished it last night as a Commando and then started again as a pure Solider. It's actually very bad to level a second mastery (or at least Soldier and Demo together are shit early on) this early in the game, puts you severely behind.

My soldier run is more successful so far.

And yeah I am not a huge fan of the level scaling - you never get to experience the moments where you peak above the difficulty of the game and start smashing shit, it's always the same amount of hits per monster or one more if you start to fall a bit behind.

You never found out if these guys are part of a quest or anything did you?

I found two groups of em

Rovers? So far it looks like they're just random vendors and a "safe spot". Letting a few of them get killed off yields nice items.

I think level scaling will be tuned, seeing as this is an alpha.

 

[Sensuki]

It has level scaling? All my interest in this game just died.

Yeah it does, it's going to be an Open World ARPG in the end and they've gone with the capped level scaling approach. Personally I fucking hate level scaling as it takes away the feeling of improvement.

I'm interested in seeing what the community response is to it, if they don't remove it I think it will at least be tweaked a bit better (more custom caps on areas/mobs).

 

[Angthoron]

It has level scaling? All my interest in this game just died.

Yeah it does, it's going to be an Open World ARPG in the end and they've gone with the capped level scaling approach. Personally I fucking hate level scaling as it takes away the feeling of improvement.

I'm interested in seeing what the community response is to it, if they don't remove it I think it will at least be tweaked a bit better (more custom caps on areas/mobs).

Well, from my "cheated stats" test, you definitely do get to feel progress vs level-scaled stuff eventually, but you DO need to reach a critical mass with trait points first.

 

[Zewp]

Is there going to be more classes than just the current three? What I loved about TQ was the variety in specialisations you could choose and how you could mix and match various different specs.

 

[Sensuki]

5 classes in the full game, more in expansions

 

[Cynic]

While I am always opposed to level scaling on principle, I think capped scaling CAN work. Need to see what it feels like in the alpha before I pass judgement but the fan feedback on this seems quite negative, perhaps they will change there minds or at least tweak the scaling a lot to accommodate.

 

[Mastermind]

Are they gonna have a proper public beta? I wanna give it a try but I like eating regularly more.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Wow, level scaling? Screw you. I really despised that stuff in Sacred 2.

 

[Sensuki]

If they do a public beta (unlikely) it probably won't be until shortly before the game release. Ages ago they said August, but it won't be August. That's a more likely time for the closed beta.

They have just implemented a patch to the alpha build that gives the first few areas a scaling cap. So I will see how that plays.

 

[Gurkog]

Wow, level scaling? Screw you. I really despised that stuff in Sacred 2.

I think Sacred 2 had a bigger problem with how EVERYTHING respawned in seconds. Oh, and the shitty DRM was the worst problem with it.

 

[Cynic]

The dev on the forums is saying that the level caps for level scaling for the alpha was made a bit more high due to them wanting people to gain more levels and test more skills.

There's a bit of an uproar about it over at their forums so they may reconsider it...lets see how it pans out.

 

[Sensuki]

They actually changed the caps today and I thought it made the game worse (too easy) on a character that has already finished the game.