KickStarter Grim Dawn

[Cynic]

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.

Hmm but then isn't it true that by this point in the full game you would have progressed beyond this point and would be facing tougher enemies by now?

 

[Sensuki]

It's the same on a straight run through to the end. For characters that have finished the Alpha it's not as good because where you farm for XP / items is now a bit more limited

 

[Castanova]

Has anyone who disliked TQ given this game a try yet? I suppose probably not but worth asking.

 

[Cynic]

FWIW I never played TQ

 

[Metro]

That surprises me given how gung-ho you are about Grim Dawn. The fact that I played TQ (plus IT) is the very reason I'm skeptical about this game.

 

[Sensuki]

What didn't you like about TQ?

 

[sea]

I got an alpha key and played for about an hour.

For an alpha, this game is already exceptionally polished. Visuals are excellent and might be the best I've seen in a Diablo-like game ever, music is very nice in that it keeps the creepy, sombre mood of Diablo without just ripping it off, the setting seems interesting and rife with potential, and the overall feel and challenge of combat are just about spot-on. Even early on I have come close to dying, and things are not getting any easier. Class selection so far is mostly stock-standard, as is the character progression if you played Titan Quest, but if it's not broken...

The environments themselves lack random elements, but they make up for it in design. There isn't a lot of repetition and it seems like you'll be seeing new things every few minutes. If there is any copy-paste it's hidden quite well so that you probably won't notice it. Instead of endless expanses of wilderness like you got in Titan Quest, there is much more variety in Grim Dawn. Loot balance seems slightly better, too, in that I'm not finding magic items every 5 seconds. Despite the game using health regeneration, this only really works out of combat - in combat, potions can be quite limited so you have to be smart about when you use them, but you aren't forced to constantly go to town after every fight or two.

I have had a couple of issues so far. The first is a widely-reported and persistent video stuttering/freezing that seems to occur every few minutes and lasts several seconds - even worse is that the game continues running while the freeze occurs, so you can often find yourself surrounded by enemies if you freeze up in combat. The second is that the visuals, while fantastic, are occasionally distracting. Due to how dark and grungy the graphics can be at times, sometimes the enemies aren't distinct from the backgrounds, and containers just get completely lost. Even if you are constantly hovering the mouse around, picking out a pile of bones you can loot from one you can't is not much fun.

Also, sound effects are pretty weak and voice acting is extremely sparse. I assume this will improve over time but even a few more random voice samples when talking to NPCs and removing some of the obvious stock sound effects would be nice. The music is good but the rest of the audio can't match it right now.

Comparing Grim Dawn to Path of Exile, I'd say Path of Exile is slower and has a weightier feel to combat that's closer to the original Diablo, while Grim Dawn feels closer to Diablo II as far as character movement speed goes. It's not quite as fast as Torchlight II, but close. Diablo III is the slowest of them all I'd say, but it also probably has the best-playing combat, at least as far as skills and enemy variety go - Grim Dawn is a close second to it though.

 

[Metro]

What didn't you like about TQ?

Meh I've listed my reasons too many times already in the past: soulless, boring, no weight/impact to attacks, big open area after big open area with a hundred mobs, etc. Probably in the bottom third of all the Diablo clones out there.

 

[Sensuki]

GD remedies the weight/impact to attacks, mass open areas and stuff. The level design is pretty good.

 

[sea]

I think the levels in Grim Dawn might get a bit too large as you go on, but they aren't oversized or nearly as repetitive as in Titan Quest, at least not so far. Comparable to Diablo II, and unlike that game, exploration actually seems somewhat rewarding. There's actual level design too, unlike most games of this sort.

 

[Metro]

I'll definitely give it a fair shake. By the time it gets released I'll probably be interested in Diablo-clones but right now I'm fairly burnt out on them.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah, I'll second sea here - the world has much less "grindable empty space" so far. Areas get large, but it's more designed so far, and the few places that are pretty "empty" you quickly learn to avoid (or find a carrot at the end of the path that rewards you for sticking through).

What I also like is the running speed, it doesn't take too long to get from Point A to Point B, even if you have a horde of demons after you, which greatly facilitates boss runs.

And yeah, bosses don't suck, they're actually kinda fun, so far it's been more D2/TQ/PoE style bosses with a lot of different abilities and a fat health pool, as opposed to D3's gimmicky scripted battles and turret offensives.

 

[Cynic]

Running speed seemed really nice and fast without feeling that I was flying over the environment that's for sure.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah. What's also neat is that there seems to be at least 2 items that can affect the player running speed (possibly more? Didn't see so far), pants and boots slots. Had a nice +10% at one point, certainly helped the "Oh crap" situations.

 

[Sensuki]

I think I've got around +17% to movespeed atm on my main, in TQ I always had max ms (166%)

 

[Cursed Platypus]

Why isn't the codex more enthusiast about this?

They are trying to bring incline into Hack'n Slash genre by making it not a phat loot farming simulator. They pretty much said directly that they wanted this game to be about explorations, quest, factions and not gear grinding.
And the 19th century apocalypse theme is pretty cool, with some Dracula inspiration too (the cultist reminds me of van Helsing, the true one, not the shit movie one)

 

[General Maxson]

Why isn't the codex more enthusiast about this?

They are trying to bring incline into Hack'n Slash genre by making it not a phat loot farming simulator. They pretty much said directly that they wanted this game to be about explorations, quest, factions and not gear grinding.
And the 19th century apocalypse theme is pretty cool, with some Dracula inspiration too (the cultist reminds me of van Helsing, the true one, not the shit movie one)

We're waiting to see how will it actually be. Alpha seems promising so far. I don't want to get my hopes up too much till it's finished.

 

[Stabwound]

Why isn't the codex more enthusiast about this?

They are trying to bring incline into Hack'n Slash genre by making it not a phat loot farming simulator. They pretty much said directly that they wanted this game to be about explorations, quest, factions and not gear grinding.
And the 19th century apocalypse theme is pretty cool, with some Dracula inspiration too (the cultist reminds me of van Helsing, the true one, not the shit movie one)

That sounds good in theory, but who knows if it's true?

For people in the alpha: is this game like Divine Divinity at all? That's one game I'd consider an actual action RPG rather than a farming simulator.

 

[Zewp]

Not yet, it feels a lot more like Titan Quest than it does Divine Divinity.

 

[sea]

I finished the alpha content. A few more thoughts:

1. The game is fun, and well paced, but only when you are in the level range appropriate for an area, and experience rates, especially if you die, are too slow to permit you to go from area to area - you are basically forced to grind or at least do all side-quests and explore the maps fully if you want to be at the expected level for a map. This gets especially bad right at the end when you fight numerous level 20 boss monsters while you are likely to be level 18. I am also almost positive that your XP is scaled both up and down based on level so there is less benefit to fighting harder enemies - thus you have to stay in your comfort zone to level up, and then move on, instead of just going from point A to B.
2. If you are in the right level range, things play well. Going against harder enemies, the game kind of degenerates into a mess of endless kiting, whether you are ranged or melee. Melee characters don't have quite enough HP to properly tank most strong enemies (bosses, uniques), and you don't have to give up any HP to go ranged, so ranged characters actually have a pretty big advantage. Some bosses are also stupidly overpowered - they will rarely 1-shot you but often they will 2-shot you very quickly, which means if you play melee you will often take big damage simply closing the distance to an enemy.
3. The health system overall needs tweaking. I like health regen if you can avoid taking damage, but as I said it encourages kiting too much. Health potion drop rates are much lower than they probably should be (though they're basically the only thing worth buying in stores right now), and they have a long cooldown. The idea is smart, but compared to say, Diablo III, you have no way to heal while fighting (health orbs etc.). This means that you are going to rely upon running circles around enemies and lots of backtracking, luring enemies out in smaller groups etc. to survive. It gets tedious and I'm not sure there is a good solution to this problem other than decreasing potion cooldowns or providing more and earlier modifiers to health (i.e. leech) on items. And unlike Diablo (the first), the gameplay is on the quicker side and the levels are pretty sprawling, so there seems to be a bit of a conflict between the modern hack-and-slash game pace and the way the health system works.
4. I like the item enhancement system. Less rigid than gems, but also like gems you basically are going to want to save up your components to smash together into better ones, and so you'll never use anything you get until it's been upgraded quite a bit. However, their benefits are pretty good and more significant than gems tend to be in these sorts of games. Other games have solved this problem by letting you regain either the item or the enhancements, so Grim Dawn feels a bit behind the times.
5. Unlike Diablo III and Torchlight II, I feel that there is a higher skill ceiling and overall difficulty level to Grim Dawn. Abilities have small subtle qualities that need to be considered while fighting, like the 0.3 second wind-up time to throwing a ranged nuke. You can't really spam stuff effectively because of these little additions, and it makes positioning a little more important than in your average hack and slash.
6. Also unlike Diablo III, you can too easily get away with spamming the same skill over and over, and the leveling system encourages upgrading one or two skills in a linear fashion rather than grabbing a wide variety of abilities. This makes combat feel a bit repetitive. Some classes also have nearly identical abilities which have only subtle differences, like slightly bigger AoE for an attack. I wish the soldier class was more than just "you do lots of damage hitting stuff" or "you have more health" for example. The way they implement things is interesting (i.e. you get bonus damage every 3rd attack) but there doesn't seem to be much if anything to encourage party-based play or to otherwise shake up the whole DPS race.
7. Universe and setting are cool but the story is nearly non-existent and the lore etc. is very vague at this point. Not sure if it's bad storytelling or by design, or just lack of complete content.
8. Reputation system has potential but I have no idea how it's going to work - is the game going to be linear or have multiple story paths for instance? Could be cool but it also sort of seems like needless clutter that's been thrown in to elevate what is otherwise a pretty simple game.
9. Loot drop rates need tweaking. Still too many pointless magical and normal items, not enough rare ones (though unique drop rates are spot-on). Item drops seem to exist solely to give you a reason to go back to town (selling stuff) and to click on things in between combat, because 99% of what you find outside of upgrade items is useless. I think the game needs to have some subtle loot bias based on your class and skills, to avoid the issue of going for 5 levels using the same gear yet constantly seeing cool new stuff you can't use that's intended for other classes. Also, you can still find quest items after you have completed quests, which seems weird. Does that mean in multiplayer you can just give a new player the items needed for a quest and he/she can complete it instantly?
10. I wish they just stuck with a fixed camera perspective. Rotating the camera is not intuitive control-wise or good for navigation, and many walls and objects can't be seen through properly (tall trees, cliffsides, etc.). This means that you will often find your view obstructed by terrain, and you'll have to awkwardly turn the camera to see what you need to see.
11. I still think interactive objects and enemies blend in too much with the backgrounds. The day/night cycle is purely cosmetic and makes it impossible to see stuff at night for no good reason, and many containers are very hard to pick out without hovering your mouse cursor everywhere. I frequently miss sparkling, glowing chests simply because of lighting, camera positioning and so on. There is such a thing as "too much detail" if all that grit and grime obstructs critical objects. On the other hand some players might like the old Diablo-style "pixel hunting".

 

[Sensuki]

Couple of reactions to your points:

Level scaling in Build 8 used to be better. The scaling cap of the very first level was 14 and then it slowly decreased after that, Wightmire might have been 20 and around Burrwitch was 25.

After complaints about the level scaling, the scaling caps were reduced significantly - which introduces the problems that you were talking about. I was one of the people complaining about the scaling, but after the change I thought that the way they had designed the game the higher scaling caps was actually better.

by letting you regain either the item or the enhancements

This can be done by Kasparov's Apprentice chick who you find in a cellar under the Burrwitch Estates.

The drop rates of rare and unique items were reduced in Build 10, before the rate of finding them was quite good (I would say a bit higher than Titan Quest), now it's like or less than Titan Quest.

I like the old pixel hunting style I guess, but I agree about the camera.

I am also almost positive that your XP is scaled both up and down based on level so there is less benefit to fighting harder enemies

Wrong. I finished one of the secret areas with a level 15 character and all enemies were level 25. I went to level 16 so quickly by doing this that I farmed this area to get to max level.

 

[Cursed Platypus]

I finished the alpha content. A few more thoughts:

1. The game is fun, and well paced, but only when you are in the level range appropriate for an area, and experience rates, especially if you die, are too slow to permit you to go from area to area - you are basically forced to grind or at least do all side-quests and explore the maps fully if you want to be at the expected level for a map. This gets especially bad right at the end when you fight numerous level 20 boss monsters while you are likely to be level 18. I am also almost positive that your XP is scaled both up and down based on level so there is less benefit to fighting harder enemies - thus you have to stay in your comfort zone to level up, and then move on, instead of just going from point A to B.
2. If you are in the right level range, things play well. Going against harder enemies, the game kind of degenerates into a mess of endless kiting, whether you are ranged or melee. Melee characters don't have quite enough HP to properly tank most strong enemies (bosses, uniques), and you don't have to give up any HP to go ranged, so ranged characters actually have a pretty big advantage. Some bosses are also stupidly overpowered - they will rarely 1-shot you but often they will 2-shot you very quickly, which means if you play melee you will often take big damage simply closing the distance to an enemy.
3. The health system overall needs tweaking. I like health regen if you can avoid taking damage, but as I said it encourages kiting too much. Health potion drop rates are much lower than they probably should be (though they're basically the only thing worth buying in stores right now), and they have a long cooldown. The idea is smart, but compared to say, Diablo III, you have no way to heal while fighting (health orbs etc.). This means that you are going to rely upon running circles around enemies and lots of backtracking, luring enemies out in smaller groups etc. to survive. It gets tedious and I'm not sure there is a good solution to this problem other than decreasing potion cooldowns or providing more and earlier modifiers to health (i.e. leech) on items. And unlike Diablo (the first), the gameplay is on the quicker side and the levels are pretty sprawling, so there seems to be a bit of a conflict between the modern hack-and-slash game pace and the way the health system works.
4. I like the item enhancement system. Less rigid than gems, but also like gems you basically are going to want to save up your components to smash together into better ones, and so you'll never use anything you get until it's been upgraded quite a bit. However, their benefits are pretty good and more significant than gems tend to be in these sorts of games. Other games have solved this problem by letting you regain either the item or the enhancements, so Grim Dawn feels a bit behind the times.
5. Unlike Diablo III and Torchlight II, I feel that there is a higher skill ceiling and overall difficulty level to Grim Dawn. Abilities have small subtle qualities that need to be considered while fighting, like the 0.3 second wind-up time to throwing a ranged nuke. You can't really spam stuff effectively because of these little additions, and it makes positioning a little more important than in your average hack and slash.
6. Also unlike Diablo III, you can too easily get away with spamming the same skill over and over, and the leveling system encourages upgrading one or two skills in a linear fashion rather than grabbing a wide variety of abilities. This makes combat feel a bit repetitive. Some classes also have nearly identical abilities which have only subtle differences, like slightly bigger AoE for an attack. I wish the soldier class was more than just "you do lots of damage hitting stuff" or "you have more health" for example. The way they implement things is interesting (i.e. you get bonus damage every 3rd attack) but there doesn't seem to be much if anything to encourage party-based play or to otherwise shake up the whole DPS race.
7. Universe and setting are cool but the story is nearly non-existent and the lore etc. is very vague at this point. Not sure if it's bad storytelling or by design, or just lack of complete content.
8. Reputation system has potential but I have no idea how it's going to work - is the game going to be linear or have multiple story paths for instance? Could be cool but it also sort of seems like needless clutter that's been thrown in to elevate what is otherwise a pretty simple game.
9. Loot drop rates need tweaking. Still too many pointless magical and normal items, not enough rare ones (though unique drop rates are spot-on). Item drops seem to exist solely to give you a reason to go back to town (selling stuff) and to click on things in between combat, because 99% of what you find outside of upgrade items is useless. I think the game needs to have some subtle loot bias based on your class and skills, to avoid the issue of going for 5 levels using the same gear yet constantly seeing cool new stuff you can't use that's intended for other classes. Also, you can still find quest items after you have completed quests, which seems weird. Does that mean in multiplayer you can just give a new player the items needed for a quest and he/she can complete it instantly?
10. I wish they just stuck with a fixed camera perspective. Rotating the camera is not intuitive control-wise or good for navigation, and many walls and objects can't be seen through properly (tall trees, cliffsides, etc.). This means that you will often find your view obstructed by terrain, and you'll have to awkwardly turn the camera to see what you need to see.
11. I still think interactive objects and enemies blend in too much with the backgrounds. The day/night cycle is purely cosmetic and makes it impossible to see stuff at night for no good reason, and many containers are very hard to pick out without hovering your mouse cursor everywhere. I frequently miss sparkling, glowing chests simply because of lighting, camera positioning and so on. There is such a thing as "too much detail" if all that grit and grime obstructs critical objects. On the other hand some players might like the old Diablo-style "pixel hunting".

Can you post this on their official forums? THe devellopers are pretty bro and they actually reply and adress well written Initial Impressions. Mostly because the forums isn't really active.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=801ca24fd79a946942ab411a8e7e2607&f=27

 

[sea]

Can you post this on their official forums? THe devellopers are pretty bro and they actually reply and adress well written Initial Impressions. Mostly because the forums isn't really active.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=801ca24fd79a946942ab411a8e7e2607&f=27

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=105160

Done, enjoy tearing apart my noob impressions.

 

[Fart Master]

This is extremely promising. The alpha crashes every 5 minutes for me but what little I've played it seems far better than Path of Exile which has good character customization and ass everything else.

Game looks and sounds great. If it has good and hard end game content I'm sold.

 

[Cynic]

Just got back from Europe so gonna get into this shit finally now!