KickStarter Grim Dawn

[Renevent]

I personally don't think that's true, but you are entitled to it. Leveling up even while in the same basic area can have pretty significant effects. Even if you are just pumping 3 points into a mastery that level that will pump up your health (at least at early levels) fairly nicely and give you a nice boost in dmg/oa/da depending on what mastery you have.

Regarding Gut Worm/SoT I'm not understanding...isn't the fact you can encounter them early and be completely unprepared a *good* thing? I also think you overstate the player's options in those circumstances...Gut Worm for instance can be beaten even by a lower level character with the right tactics...it's not easy but it's doable.

You could still encounter them early even if they weren't level scaled.

Beating Gutworm(or any other of the harder optional areas) at a lower level requires cheesing or a fairly specific build and good gear. I wouldn't call rolling a ranged character or a summoner and kiting him around for 10 minutes much of a challenge. So in that context it would be more beneficial if they were high level from the get go, so the process of getting that better gear wouldn't actually make them harder for you to do.

Hell, in the earlier betas you could probably clear Depraved Sanctuary naked right after accessing the place by exploiting bugs in Bloody Pox.

While true, I'm not sure what difference that makes. If your position is that any level scaling = bad then sure there's really nothing I can say that will change that. But if the discussion is does the level scaling in Grim Dawn still has opportunity for the player to increase in power to his relative surrounding and has opportunities of great disparities in enemy challenge, well I think they have accomplished that. Of course it still needs some tweaking but it's done well where we still get the sense of progression and leveling matters.

Regarding Gut Worm...I've personally beaten him with a vastly lower level melee toon using hit and run tactics. It's hard and took a while but it doesn't require specific builds. I guess you can call that "cheesing" but how else are you supposed to kill something that is so much more powerful? Stand toe to toe? Dodging his attacks (some of which stun/trap) and getting in hits takes some level of skill and understanding of his attack patterns.

I think even in Diablo 2 it was possible to run certain builds naked using specific builds...that's kind of the fun of these games. Regardless, you are pointing out exploiting a bug...I'm not sure what that says about the game in general to be honest.

 

[Sykar]

Forgot to add that Grim Dawn has level scaling.

Doesn't bother me that progression is rendered pointless in a game about progression

FTFY

How is it rendered pointless? That areas you go through again aren't brain dead easy?

This can be fixed with good design. Something that apparently was more prevalent in the 90's. Now these lazy devs cannot be assed to do their jobs. I don't remember Diablo or Diablo 2 having areas that were brain dead easy unless you twinked your character. At the moment leveling up in Grim Dawn is a detriment to your character due to the way how Hit Chance and Critical Hits work. The only progression happens via gear. Level ups are largely meaningless to your characters overall power. What's the point, then? If leveling up doesn't make you more powerful, do you NEED to have level ups in your game? The answer is no.

No it wasn't done "better" in other Hack&Slays. Not in D1 or D2, not in TQ, or whatever you fancy and this min and max level per area isn't exactly new either. Heck, they were so lazy they just had fixed level so at a certain point you just breezed through 99% of the content effortlessly. Chain lightning/Apoc Sorc in D1 just roflstomped the entire content.

The basic issue still stands that the enemies gaining stats nullifies progress you gain from leveling up. At the moment I think the scaling ranges are around 5-10 levels on normal areas. I think there's still plenty to tighten there and I hope Crate does it.

And like I mentioned in my earlier post, Gutworm for example can be first encountered around level ~10-15 and he stops scaling at lvl 39. And SoT scales over the level cap at the moment as well. Neither of those are supposed to be done without good gear, which leaves the options of being extremely lucky or grinding your way to max level to start grinding for gear. I could understand them as harder challenges when the levelling has stopped or atleast slowed down significantly, but in their current form they are pretty stupid. I don't understand why they aren't high level from the get go, other than this still being the beta.

No, just no, this is wrong. This isn't even remotely in the same ballpark as the retardation that Oblivion did.

 

[Hobo Elf]

"What's the point, then? If leveling up doesn't make you more powerful, do you NEED to have level ups in your game? The answer is no."

Say what? Leveling up in Grim Dawn makes you tons more powerful. Leveling makes you more powerful not just in small ways either, but significant numerical ways. A level 30 character with no gear vs a level 1 character with no gear the level 30 character will have a huge increase in just about every metric. HP, raw stats,damage, OA and DA...it's a giant difference. Hit and crit chance is largely based on OA, which can be manually pumped up via leveling (stat points and mastery points) and leveling up skills both passive and active that increase this as well (and there a quite a few skills that affect OA).

Like it was said before, your level gains are virtually meaningless when the enemies are leveling up with you. Some less, some more, it varies depending on the enemy. Look, let me explain to you where I'm coming from: I spent 70 hours making theory builds and doing nothing but leveling up characters to try different skill builds, stat builds, gear etc.. This was before Act 2 was out, so, early alpha, beta, whatever they want to call it. I used Salazar as a baseline for my characters power. The end result was an Occultist specced in DEE for physical damage. I had spent most of my level up stats on Cunning and only the bare minimum in Physique and Spirit so I could use gear. This was the most optimal character I had built then and it still holds true now. I had enchanted everything I could with Roiling Blood for more OA and all the items I had used were the highest grade gear I could find at the time. Everything had a good +OA and gave good +Physical damage. I believe the max level at the time was 25. At 25, with this Occultist, I wrecked Salazar quite hard. None of my attacks missed and they hit for massive damage. Then, when they finally raised the level cap, I went and acquired said cap for my Occultist, while not upgrading my gear because nothing better was dropping. When I came back to Salazar with the exact same equipment that I had used to previously wreck him, guess what happened? Half my attacks were missing and I wasn't doing nearly as much damage as before. So, tell us all again how this is level scaling "done right", or that it's "decent" level scaling. This is the absolute worst kind of level scaling possible, but they put a cap on it. So? Limiting shit design is not going to stop it from being shit design. If it creates situations like this where you are going backwards when you level up then the leveling system has failed its intended purpose and is a meaningless mechanic.

I forget who said it, but someone on the 'dex put it quite well (not word to word, but this was the spirit of what was said): When a developer or designer is making an RPG, the first question they should ask themselves is should the player level up in the first place.

No it wasn't done "better" in other Hack&Slays. Not in D1 or D2, not in TQ, or whatever you fancy and this min and max level per area isn't exactly new either. Heck, they were so lazy they just had fixed level so at a certain point you just breezed through 99% of the content effortlessly. Chain lightning/Apoc Sorc in D1 just roflstomped the entire content.

I see. You're a Grim Dawn fanboy and highly delusional. Casting Chain Lightning only worked in Diablo 1 when you were suitably high level and it was a huge mana drain. So was Apocalypse. The only way you could spam these spells to no end (epsecially Apocalypse) was if you cheated yourself gear. Not to mention that those are the only two examples. Magic was absolutely the worst in the beginning of Diablo 1 since you were barely scraping by trying to procure enough mana to kill shit. It took quite a long time before you got to that phase where you could "roflstomp" the content. It wasn't something that came to you since level 1. Diablo 2 was obviously much better balanced.

 

[4249]

I personally don't think that's true, but you are entitled to it. Leveling up even while in the same basic area can have pretty significant effects. Even if you are just pumping 3 points into a mastery that level that will pump up your health (at least at early levels) fairly nicely and give you a nice boost in dmg/oa/da depending on what mastery you have.

Regarding Gut Worm/SoT I'm not understanding...isn't the fact you can encounter them early and be completely unprepared a *good* thing? I also think you overstate the player's options in those circumstances...Gut Worm for instance can be beaten even by a lower level character with the right tactics...it's not easy but it's doable.

You could still encounter them early even if they weren't level scaled.

Beating Gutworm(or any other of the harder optional areas) at a lower level requires cheesing or a fairly specific build and good gear. I wouldn't call rolling a ranged character or a summoner and kiting him around for 10 minutes much of a challenge. So in that context it would be more beneficial if they were high level from the get go, so the process of getting that better gear wouldn't actually make them harder for you to do.

Hell, in the earlier betas you could probably clear Depraved Sanctuary naked right after accessing the place by exploiting bugs in Bloody Pox.

While true, I'm not sure what difference that makes. If your position is that any level scaling = bad then sure there's really nothing I can say that will change that. But if the discussion is does the level scaling in Grim Dawn still has opportunity for the player to increase in power to his relative surrounding and has opportunities of great disparities in enemy challenge, well I think they have accomplished that. Of course it still needs some tweaking but it's done well where we still get the sense of progression and leveling matters.

Regarding Gut Worm...I've personally beaten him with a vastly lower level melee toon using hit and run tactics. It's hard and took a while but it doesn't require specific builds. I guess you can call that "cheesing" but how else are you supposed to kill something that is so much more powerful? Stand toe to toe? Dodging his attacks (some of which stun/trap) and getting in hits takes some level of skill and understanding of his attack patterns.

I think even in Diablo 2 it was possible to run certain builds naked using specific builds...that's kind of the fun of these games. Regardless, you are pointing out exploiting a bug...I'm not sure what that says about the game in general to be honest.

The difference would be that they could actually tune the challenge for the end game and for mostly or fully developed builds, instead of scaling the monsters up every time the player levels.

I'm not calling hit & run cheesing. That's the basic tactic on melee characters in the game anyways. What I'd call cheesing is for example attacking him from the bridge atop him with a ranged or a summoner character, so that he won't even aggro you. Not sure if that works anymore though.

 

[Renevent]

I personally don't think that's true, but you are entitled to it. Leveling up even while in the same basic area can have pretty significant effects. Even if you are just pumping 3 points into a mastery that level that will pump up your health (at least at early levels) fairly nicely and give you a nice boost in dmg/oa/da depending on what mastery you have.

Regarding Gut Worm/SoT I'm not understanding...isn't the fact you can encounter them early and be completely unprepared a *good* thing? I also think you overstate the player's options in those circumstances...Gut Worm for instance can be beaten even by a lower level character with the right tactics...it's not easy but it's doable.

You could still encounter them early even if they weren't level scaled.

Beating Gutworm(or any other of the harder optional areas) at a lower level requires cheesing or a fairly specific build and good gear. I wouldn't call rolling a ranged character or a summoner and kiting him around for 10 minutes much of a challenge. So in that context it would be more beneficial if they were high level from the get go, so the process of getting that better gear wouldn't actually make them harder for you to do.

Hell, in the earlier betas you could probably clear Depraved Sanctuary naked right after accessing the place by exploiting bugs in Bloody Pox.

While true, I'm not sure what difference that makes. If your position is that any level scaling = bad then sure there's really nothing I can say that will change that. But if the discussion is does the level scaling in Grim Dawn still has opportunity for the player to increase in power to his relative surrounding and has opportunities of great disparities in enemy challenge, well I think they have accomplished that. Of course it still needs some tweaking but it's done well where we still get the sense of progression and leveling matters.

Regarding Gut Worm...I've personally beaten him with a vastly lower level melee toon using hit and run tactics. It's hard and took a while but it doesn't require specific builds. I guess you can call that "cheesing" but how else are you supposed to kill something that is so much more powerful? Stand toe to toe? Dodging his attacks (some of which stun/trap) and getting in hits takes some level of skill and understanding of his attack patterns.

I think even in Diablo 2 it was possible to run certain builds naked using specific builds...that's kind of the fun of these games. Regardless, you are pointing out exploiting a bug...I'm not sure what that says about the game in general to be honest.

The difference would be that they could actually tune the challenge for the end game and for mostly or fully developed builds, instead of scaling the monsters up every time the player levels.

I'm not calling hit & run cheesing. That's the basic tactic on melee characters in the game anyways. What I'd call cheesing is for example attacking him from the bridge atop him with a ranged or a summoner character, so that he won't even aggro you. Not sure if that works anymore though.

But they are implementing end game challenges, and the content only scales fairly limited. There's also going to be further difficulty levels which will scale the challenge even further. Even Diablo is fairly easy on normal...it only gets difficult in the later game.

Glad you don't see it as cheesing...so that does show it doesn't require cheesing or special builds. It's perfect example of how the scaling isn't interfering with the challenge and how player skill can overcome.

 

[Renevent]

"What's the point, then? If leveling up doesn't make you more powerful, do you NEED to have level ups in your game? The answer is no."

Say what? Leveling up in Grim Dawn makes you tons more powerful. Leveling makes you more powerful not just in small ways either, but significant numerical ways. A level 30 character with no gear vs a level 1 character with no gear the level 30 character will have a huge increase in just about every metric. HP, raw stats,damage, OA and DA...it's a giant difference. Hit and crit chance is largely based on OA, which can be manually pumped up via leveling (stat points and mastery points) and leveling up skills both passive and active that increase this as well (and there a quite a few skills that affect OA).

Like it was said before, your level gains are virtually meaningless when the enemies are leveling up with you. Some less, some more, it varies depending on the enemy. Look, let me explain to you where I'm coming from: I spent 70 hours making theory builds and doing nothing but leveling up characters to try different skill builds, stat builds, gear etc.. This was before Act 2 was out, so, early alpha, beta, whatever they want to call it. I used Salazar as a baseline for my characters power. The end result was an Occultist specced in DEE for physical damage. I had spent most of my level up stats on Cunning and only the bare minimum in Physique and Spirit so I could use gear. This was the most optimal character I had built then and it still holds true now. I had enchanted everything I could with Roiling Blood for more OA and all the items I had used were the highest grade gear I could find at the time. Everything had a good +OA and gave good +Physical damage. I believe the max level at the time was 25. At 25, with this Occultist, I wrecked Salazar quite hard. None of my attacks missed and they hit for massive damage. Then, when they finally raised the level cap, I went and acquired said cap for my Occultist, while not upgrading my gear because nothing better was dropping. When I came back to Salazar with the exact same equipment that I had used to previously wreck him, guess what happened? Half my attacks were missing and I wasn't doing nearly as much damage as before. So, tell us all again how this is level scaling "done right", or that it's "decent" level scaling. This is the absolute worst kind of level scaling possible, but they put a cap on it. So? Limiting shit design is not going to stop it from being shit design. If it creates situations like this where you are going backwards when you level up then the leveling system has failed its intended purpose and is a meaningless mechanic.

I forget who said it, but someone on the 'dex put it quite well (not word to word, but this was the spirit of what was said): When a developer or designer is making an RPG, the first question they should ask themselves is should the player level up in the first place.

They only level up with you if you come back to the same area at a higher level (so it doesn't interfere with you actually leveling up), and only to a certain point (there are hard caps).

Regarding your Salazar experience I've never had that issue...and I did go back to earlier areas trying to farm Blood of C'thun with roughly the same equipment. Not trying to discount your experience but maybe it was an issue with an earlier build of the game...I actually took a pretty long break from playing the game somewhere around the late teen builds (which was right around act II coming out) They are still tweaking it, so hopefully it gets more enjoyable for you.

Anyways to the nugget of wisdom you posted...in Grim Dawn's case it is to get more powerful, to specialize and build your character how you want it, and to tackle greater challenges. I believe Grim Dawn accomplishes all of those goals admirably.

 

[4249]

Glad you don't see it as cheesing...so that does show it doesn't require cheesing or special builds. It's perfect example of how the scaling isn't interfering with the challenge and how player skill can overcome.

Well, atleast on veteran hardcore it's not worth it to try the "challenge" of dodging his skills for 10 minutes only to be one shotted by a lucky crit because your defensive stats aren't up to bar or you don't have Menhir's Will. A case of git gud I guess in some sense, but that's not why I play these games in the first place.

 

[abija]

This can be fixed with good design. Something that apparently was more prevalent in the 90's. Now these lazy devs cannot be assed to do their jobs. I don't remember Diablo or Diablo 2 having areas that were brain dead easy unless you twinked your character.

That's all you needed to say tbh and no idea why people still argue with you. How dare these "lazy devs" waste time trying to fix issues you didn't have.

 

[Renevent]

Except that's simply untrue? Diablo 2 had plenty of easy areas where you basically waltz through with little effort. Heck, I'd say overall Grim Dawn is actually more difficult (at least comparing the first difficulty levels) than Diablo 2. Whether or not that holds true with Grim Dawn as more difficulty levels are released is yet to be seen is another matter...guess we will have to wait and see.

 

[Hobo Elf]

That's only true if you experienced the training wheels of Diablo 2 i.e Normal. Nightmare and Hell is where the real shit is at, when monsters start having immunities. And even then it's only Act 1 that is really easy. Act 2, 3, 4 and 5 have many difficult areas. Especially Act 5. Fucking Nihlathak, man. Grim Dawn has some challenging areas and boss fights, but they are all optional ones. The main story areas you are faceroll easy.

 

[Renevent]

That's only true if you experienced the training wheels of Diablo 2 i.e Normal. Nightmare and Hell is where the real shit is at, when monsters start having immunities. And even then it's only Act 1 that is really easy. Act 2, 3, 4 and 5 have many difficult areas. Especially Act 5. Fucking Nihlathak, man. Grim Dawn has some challenging areas and boss fights, but they are all optional ones. The main story areas you are faceroll easy.

I said as much, which is why I mentioned the difficulty levels and questioned if it would hold true still later. Grim Dawn will also have more difficulty levels just like Titan Quest/D2. I'm not sure I agree with your second point though, Diablo 2 normal is pretty easy throughout, save for maybe 1 or 2 boss fights. So in that sense I do think Grim Dawn is actually more difficult compared to D2 normal...since even in normal we do get challenging areas...even if they are optional. If you enjoy challenge why wouldn't you do them?

 

[Aeschylus]

Just quickly dropping in to say that the idea that levelling up has no (benficial) effect in GD does not track for me.

I recently picked the game up again after the release of B24 and most of chapter 3, hopped on to my old witch hunter, and tried it out on Veteran. I mostly got steamrolled. Then, I farmed a bit and leveled up 5 times to the current cap of 40, selected a few critical skills (energy drain and more chaos damage) and became able to use a few nice items, and started facesmashing everything. So, in a game that is mainly about 1) itemization, and 2) creative skill builds, the fact that leveling up grants you access to both better items and more beneficial skills pretty much renders the argument that leveling up is meaningless moot. The stat system I agree is poor in the way it scales, giving a mostly flat progression, which is boring.

Now whether or not level scaling is a good idea, that's another question entirely. I have pretty mixed feelings about it -- GD has pretty linear progression and map exploration, so in theory if all you're doing is trying to play through the single player game while making a bunch of different characters, then level scaling really has no place. But because the game design encourages a lot of farming and 'boss runs', the higher level scaling in certain areas holds a bit more appeal if only to keep the game a bit challenging when you hit that phase. Personally I do wish there were lower level scaling caps in some areas, but I do kind of like that it allows the 'challenge areas' like Steps of Torment to actually remain somewhat challenging. I disagree with the assertion that it eliminates any progression curve though, since 'progression' in GD is really 'getting items and skills', and finding good items boosts your power in a way no level scaling can overcome.

 

[Sykar]

I forget who said it, but someone on the 'dex put it quite well (not word to word, but this was the spirit of what was said): When a developer or designer is making an RPG, the first question they should ask themselves is should the player level up in the first place.

No it wasn't done "better" in other Hack&Slays. Not in D1 or D2, not in TQ, or whatever you fancy and this min and max level per area isn't exactly new either. Heck, they were so lazy they just had fixed level so at a certain point you just breezed through 99% of the content effortlessly. Chain lightning/Apoc Sorc in D1 just roflstomped the entire content.

I see. You're a Grim Dawn fanboy and highly delusional. Casting Chain Lightning only worked in Diablo 1 when you were suitably high level and it was a huge mana drain. So was Apocalypse. The only way you could spam these spells to no end (epsecially Apocalypse) was if you cheated yourself gear. Not to mention that those are the only two examples. Magic was absolutely the worst in the beginning of Diablo 1 since you were barely scraping by trying to procure enough mana to kill shit. It took quite a long time before you got to that phase where you could "roflstomp" the content. It wasn't something that came to you since level 1. Diablo 2 was obviously much better balanced.

What an utterly retarded post. It was piss easy to get money and magic stat and since you went mana shield anyway and could skip going Vita this was a no brainer. Getting to level 25-30 and max magic especially with the Spectral Elixir glitch is something I can accomplish in one rainy saturday+sunday, but even without the that glitch knowing what to sell for good money every time you went to town let you swim in money? No if you actually had a clue what you were looking for.
Magic is hard first 4 levels. It gets considerably easier starting with catacombs and it's a easy compared to Warrior until you arrive in the 16th level. Triple immune Soulburners were the only minor annoyance but nothing a shopped Apocalypse staff from Adria or a Stone Curse+Golem+Baranars/King's Sword/etc couldn't handle. Easiest char is still Rogue in D1 overall but she doesn't get that late game power a Sorcerer has who is nigh invulnerable with 800+ mana and 100% damage absorb mana shield which also reduces damage taken by 25% inherently spamming CL or Fireball at his heart's content. Heck the hardest part is not skipping Butcher on level two in the game. Diablo himself is cake walk in comparison.

I can see now that your name fits your intellect considering your grossly misinformed posts.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I forget who said it, but someone on the 'dex put it quite well (not word to word, but this was the spirit of what was said): When a developer or designer is making an RPG, the first question they should ask themselves is should the player level up in the first place.

No it wasn't done "better" in other Hack&Slays. Not in D1 or D2, not in TQ, or whatever you fancy and this min and max level per area isn't exactly new either. Heck, they were so lazy they just had fixed level so at a certain point you just breezed through 99% of the content effortlessly. Chain lightning/Apoc Sorc in D1 just roflstomped the entire content.

I see. You're a Grim Dawn fanboy and highly delusional. Casting Chain Lightning only worked in Diablo 1 when you were suitably high level and it was a huge mana drain. So was Apocalypse. The only way you could spam these spells to no end (epsecially Apocalypse) was if you cheated yourself gear. Not to mention that those are the only two examples. Magic was absolutely the worst in the beginning of Diablo 1 since you were barely scraping by trying to procure enough mana to kill shit. It took quite a long time before you got to that phase where you could "roflstomp" the content. It wasn't something that came to you since level 1. Diablo 2 was obviously much better balanced.

What an utterly retarded post. It was piss easy to get money and magic stat and since you went mana shield anyway and could skip going Vita this was a no brainer. Getting to level 25-30 and max magic especially with the Spectral Elixir glitch is something I can accomplish in one rainy saturday+sunday, but even without the that glitch knowing what to sell for good money every time you went to town let you swim in money? No if you actually had a clue what you were looking for.
Magic is hard first 4 levels. It gets considerably easier starting with catacombs and it's a easy compared to Warrior until you arrive in the 16th level. Triple immune Soulburners were the only minor annoyance but nothing a shopped Apocalypse staff from Adria or a Stone Curse+Golem+Baranars/King's Sword/etc couldn't handle. Easiest char is still Rogue in D1 overall but she doesn't get that late game power a Sorcerer has who is nigh invulnerable with 800+ mana and 100% damage absorb mana shield which also reduces damage taken by 25% inherently spamming CL or Fireball at his heart's content. Heck the hardest part is not skipping Butcher on level two in the game. Diablo himself is cake walk in comparison.

I can see now that your name fits your intellect considering your grossly misinformed posts.

So Diablo is an easy game if you use a glitch or win the RNG lottery and get exactly the spellbook(s) you need? 'kay. You still have nothing of value to say.

 

[Sykar]

I can see now that your name fits your intellect considering your grossly misinformed posts.

So Diablo is an easy game if you use a glitch or win the RNG lottery and get exactly the spellbook(s) you need? 'kay. You still have nothing of value to say.[/QUOTE]

The same RNG lottery as in all other god damn Hack&Slay of that type you effin moron. Yeah the game is easy. There is a reason why the fastest speed run is at 3 minutes. Of course if you are a retard who doesn't know what the good drops are, how to milk Wirt or Griswold and in general sucks, then the game is hard. Boo hoo.
As to "value" where is the value in the retarded shit you post? You haven't made a single argument, just empty assertions without any substance whatsoever. Until you actually make an effort to form more than idiotic bullshit I conclude that all you can do is talking out of your ass.

That's only true if you experienced the training wheels of Diablo 2 i.e Normal. Nightmare and Hell is where the real shit is at, when monsters start having immunities. And even then it's only Act 1 that is really easy. Act 2, 3, 4 and 5 have many difficult areas. Especially Act 5. Fucking Nihlathak, man. Grim Dawn has some challenging areas and boss fights, but they are all optional ones. The main story areas you are faceroll easy.

So what exactly is the fucking problem with level scaling and how does this relate to the main campaign being to easy? Answer, nothing.
It's a problem of either:

Monster density
Monster stats
Monster abilties
Group dynamics/encounter design

Or any combination of those.

 

[Hobo Elf]

And also the fact that when you level up you have not gained any character progress. Adding skill points into skills is useless since gear that gives +Damage% to the type of damage you are using is far better than adding skill points is. In fact many skills have break points where going beyond X amount of skills is bad for your overall DPS since the Energy cost does not cover the damage. This is something that can be fixed with balance and Crate have said that they are still going to revise all the skill trees since they aren't in the same level as the arcanist, but we'll have to wait and see if they fix it or not. This is just one of the many examples of how and why leveling up ranges from meaningless to harmful whereas finding gear doesn't have this impact. You only need to meet the minimum requirement for zones and bosses and you'll be a-ok.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Is there ISO RPG/Action game which doesn't have diablo style random loot? It killed Kommissar boner for newest Divinity game.

 

[Sykar]

And also the fact that when you level up you have not gained any character progress. Adding skill points into skills is useless since gear that gives +Damage% to the type of damage you are using is far better than adding skill points is. In fact many skills have break points where going beyond X amount of skills is bad for your overall DPS since the Energy cost does not cover the damage. This is something that can be fixed with balance and Crate have said that they are still going to revise all the skill trees since they aren't in the same level as the arcanist, but we'll have to wait and see if they fix it or not. This is just one of the many examples of how and why leveling up ranges from meaningless to harmful whereas finding gear doesn't have this impact. You only need to meet the minimum requirement for zones and bosses and you'll be a-ok.

I am easily blasting mobs 2-3 levels above me. Level scaling has no impact whatsoever. And no, leveling up gives major impact on progress. After gaining Aether Ray I melt mobs like no tomorrow. Gaining Trozans Sky Shard gave me great burst on short CD and the freeze mod doubled it's effectiveness easily as a quick CC and burst move rolled into one.

Same for defense, early on Arcanist just sucks. Now with Mirrors and Maivens I have a pretty good survivability. Flash Freeze helps as well. Level scaling has no effect on the effectiveness of these skills, I can tank anything with Mirrors up. Dots and debuffs are not a big problem with Nullification.

 

[Hobo Elf]

And also the fact that when you level up you have not gained any character progress. Adding skill points into skills is useless since gear that gives +Damage% to the type of damage you are using is far better than adding skill points is. In fact many skills have break points where going beyond X amount of skills is bad for your overall DPS since the Energy cost does not cover the damage. This is something that can be fixed with balance and Crate have said that they are still going to revise all the skill trees since they aren't in the same level as the arcanist, but we'll have to wait and see if they fix it or not. This is just one of the many examples of how and why leveling up ranges from meaningless to harmful whereas finding gear doesn't have this impact. You only need to meet the minimum requirement for zones and bosses and you'll be a-ok.

I am easily blasting mobs 2-3 levels above me. Level scaling has no impact whatsoever. And no, leveling up gives major impact on progress. After gaining Aether Ray I melt mobs like no tomorrow. Gaining Trozans Sky Shard gave me great burst on short CD and the freeze mod doubled it's effectiveness easily as a quick CC and burst move rolled into one.

Same for defense, early on Arcanist just sucks. Now with Mirrors and Maivens I have a pretty good survivability. Flash Freeze helps as well. Level scaling has no effect on the effectiveness of these skills, I can tank anything with Mirrors up. Dots and debuffs are not a big problem with Nullification.

It's mostly an issue with boss and optional monsters since they scale more than regular mooks do. I'm not entirely sure since I didn't test it out extensively, but at the time I was doing my character build theorizing it felt like they were scaling up faster than my level ups gave me power. Blasting mooks has never been much of an issue in Grim Dawn. I always used bosses as baselines for character growth. How effectively and fast I could do away with them was my measurement of success and failure. Most of them aren't that difficult because you can easily kite them around (now that's another discussion right there: bosses need more varied and interesting attack patterns and skills. Warden was gud, but the rest that came after was too samey, and where the hell are the Chthonians? All I see are Aetherials), but they turn bloaty and you start missing most of your attacks if your gear isn't up to snuff.

Lets look at Spirit for a Magic-User: gives you more mana and more damage, but Cunning is still a far more valuable stat since reliably hitting the enemy is objectively better than the high possibility of missing. This is true for all the specs. OA > pretty much everything else. The stat balance is whack.

A lot of the problems I have with Grim Dawn are fixable, but given how slowly Crate works, I'm not holding my breath. After all they had promised the Arcanist was going to be in the next update and then it took them another year before they finally released it.. and it ended up being a banal and crap spec. Hopefully fixed by now, but it was piss poor on release.

 

[abija]

Except that's simply untrue?

Exactly. It's obviously untrue, guy is a moron, stop arguing with him. You can't use any arguments when he can't even fathom other people might have had a different experience.

 

[Sothpaw]

That's only true if you experienced the training wheels of Diablo 2 i.e Normal. Nightmare and Hell is where the real shit is at, when monsters start having immunities. And even then it's only Act 1 that is really easy. Act 2, 3, 4 and 5 have many difficult areas. Especially Act 5. Fucking Nihlathak, man. Grim Dawn has some challenging areas and boss fights, but they are all optional ones. The main story areas you are faceroll easy.

On normal. Just like D2 normal. And immunities in D2 are the worst form of difficulty. It makes soloing as so many builds a chore.

 

[Sykar]

That's only true if you experienced the training wheels of Diablo 2 i.e Normal. Nightmare and Hell is where the real shit is at, when monsters start having immunities. And even then it's only Act 1 that is really easy. Act 2, 3, 4 and 5 have many difficult areas. Especially Act 5. Fucking Nihlathak, man. Grim Dawn has some challenging areas and boss fights, but they are all optional ones. The main story areas you are faceroll easy.

On normal. Just like D2 normal. And immunities in D2 are the worst form of difficulty. It makes soloing as so many builds a chore.

Immunities were the epitome of lazy design. It's one of D2 major weak points.

 

[DeepOcean]

Ehh... what are you people talking about? Diablo II was piss easy even on Hell mode, yeah sure, the enemies had more life and did more damage and had some immunities that were very easy to avoid unless you gone all in on a damage type. The only thing you needed to do was some crowd control and avoid getting surrounded by the rare monsters mobs what is standard gameplay on Diablo 2 clones since Diablo 2. Unless you were playing a really underpowered build, you could stomp any enemy on your way to Hell. I remember farming Hell Diablo with absolutely sub optimal gear, with some good uniques, I probably would be able to kill him much quicker. Anyway... Grim Dawn has difficulty modes implemented?

 

[Renevent]

No, not yet but it is a planned feature. They do have optional challenge dungeons, though.

 

[Aeschylus]

Anyway... Grim Dawn has difficulty modes implemented?

It has a toggle-able 'Veteran Mode' which has been made fairly tough in the latest patch. Causes a lot more boss spawns, increases mob health and damage a lot, etc.