Playing Grim Dawn, questioning online nature of PoE

Another dumb venting thread by me - don't mind me GGG too much.

So, recently I got pretty tired of PoE. Problems that aren't fixed for years now, and there is no solution in sight finally pushed me over the edge.
Because I'm a aRPG junkie, I needed some other fix. Grim Dawn just released a DLC, so I tried it out. And then came some thoughts...

I never really paid much attention to Grim Dawn because I love trading in games. I love browsing market, I love tracking prices - that is something I like to do.
You may be surprised, but I loved trade system in Ragnarok - walking around Prontera clicking on vendors selling their items. It worked in Ragnarok because the loot system was tailored for it. It didn't need billions of mods for items to be interesting.

Now back to PoE. A game with loot so random that you have to take a good look before knowing whenever it is worth something. Heck, sometimes even looking at it isn't enough and you have to do a search.
There are tons upon tons of item to browse, and even more to identify to ever find anything good.
So, loot system is pretty much bound to trade. You find something good, but it will most likely not be good for you. So you sell it and buy something that is useful for you.
Well, that is the theory...

In practice, you are juggling shit that is worthless. Inefficient inventory, inefficient trade, borderline terrible economy and ever-growing pool of unique items (which are 1c-shit tier, but still good enough for leveling) which make different classes of rare items obsolete.

This is where I start questioning whenever I like trading enough to do all shit stupid busywork to actually enjoy trade. And if I'm to ignore trade, well... Grim Dawn is simply far more enjoyable.

Why? It has a simple loot filter which does the job. It has good crafting system. Bosses actually drop interesting loot. Pretty much any build can be made to work. It isn't even worse in terms of build diversity - it actually has more choices to be made. Devotion system, 2 class system...


GGG has some weird vision about their game, and they refuse to change it. They will make the game crash and burn until they realize that, it seems. It happened it the past - we had no lockstep because hardcore mechanics, cuthroat loot filter, so no perm allocation and probably more I can't remember now.
What they did to xbox trade is good indication to that. They are so afraid to make changes to the rest of the game, so they go with objectively shitty and frustrating system. And then rationalize its usage.

/vent

Sorry for jumping around the topics and not the best of structures. I have a lot of different thoughts about PoE/Grim Dawn thingy atm, can't quite stay on one topic at the same time. :V Hope you get what I'm talking about and don't boil it down to a oneliner. kek.

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Perq wrote:

Why? It has a simple loot filter which does the job. It has good crafting system. Bosses actually drop interesting loot. Pretty much any build can be made to work. It isn't even worse in terms of build diversity - it actually has more choices to be made. Devotion system, 2 class system...

Also, it is offline meaning you don't have to rely on GGG and ISP to not have hiccups, which in turn leads to making bossfights which can only be fucked up by you being not ready, not by something you have no control about.

instant logout and 'second life' given to known scammers are in the same weird 'design universe' i canno understand

when you ban someone isnt that because you want them gone? why this witness protection scheme with new accounts etc?

it is not at first connected with the OP but.. it is. it is weird vision noone really understands and developers spend a good deal.rationalising

btw you can trade in Grim Dawn if you want. it is clunky but works. best part - you can reliably SSF that game WITHOUT being.rained loot at every step

and the crafting is great

Well yes, PoE has improved in a massive way when it comes to production value and amount of content we get in time. But while we get a lot of new content, we don't really get changes to issues that has been with PoE for long, long time. Even worse - we're getting so much new content each patch that these problems accumulate and multiply. Pantheon system is a good example of how these things look. Ascendancy is another.
Also, why is trade chat still even a thing is beyond me. This simply makes me think that GGG is ok with what it is now.

And believe me - Grim Dawn is nowhere near to Titan Quest in terms of build diversity. I haven't played a whole lot of GD yet (well, not at least as much as I did PoE), but it seems there is tons of builds there. Conversion is rampart, there are build-enabling items, and systems are actually interconnected. You can actually ignore survivability in one tree and get all of it somewhere else. There are tons of skills that are on items, devotion tree, even add-ons to items.
The game doesn't have crazy scaling like PoE does nowadays, meaning the numbers aren't as volatile. The different between super-great build and babys-first-build is probably 200% more damage. In PoE these numbers go into thousands of %.
And going back to adding content - adding content is nice. But now we ended up with so many modifiers (which are highly volatile, because of the multipliers) that properly balancing the game seems almost impossible.

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鬼殺し wrote:

All PoE has going for it right now is build diversity

Don't kid yourself, GD has more diversity with far less options because unlike ggg, all the mechanics are worth something, they don't butcher things and never revisit them.

So many things need love or a full rework in this game but they launch in China and on Xbox instead.

What does poe even bring to the genre? No loot from bosses/chests? This game is so watered down right now, all you do is destroy trash mobs to find currency for the AH, which needs outside sources to run it for them because they refuse to address that too....

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bwang008 wrote:

Your measurement of build diversity is awful. If all you have to do to measure success is finish act 10 then nobody cares about your opinions because that is not how the most dedicated players of this game play.

I think you're in the minority, because I hate running through a1-10 multiple times,and end game mapping with builds on my fav layouts are what I enjoy the most.

Poe has been nerf in end game more and more making it less and less fun. Less survivability, more bullshit one shots, less diversity at end game, and more boring balance chances I.e nerf pack sizes and double boss life. OMG so fun!!!!

Charan's measurement of build diversity is just different. A lot of people care about his opinions, as his input is very accurate and GGG pays a lot more attention to that (not to mention that being one of the few essential supporters that actually helped PoE when it was needed, still holds some weight).

I always enjoy running through the storyline content and many other players do too. To say that the only goal of PoE is end game content is narrow minded at least.

PoE still needs "nerfs" and "buffs" to get the game in line regarding the obscene lack of balance.

The pack size nerf should have had been doubled by an increase in HP on the normal/magic/rares monsters side, along with keeping the same/increasing the EXP/loot ratio from before.

Doubling boss life was the right choice, although it should have also payed to take a look at all the boss mechanics and "keep them fair" along with improving the abysmal danger/reward ratio of bosses EXP and loot wise.

Not everyone needs to obliterate a few screens at time, or delete bosses instantly to consider PoE "fun".

Some of us are having a blast and await the further improvements, as long as they will further keep a better danger/reward ratio - too skewed towards danger at the moment, unfortunately...

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鬼殺し wrote:

As I said, I define build diversity within the core game of acts 1-10, give or take (a few bosses still need tweaking in part 2). Not the top end, which I also addressed in my former post. And I've run enough weird fucking shit through most of core game to know the diversity is alive and well *there*. Accuse me of being arbitrary for my personal stance if you'd like, I can't really deny it. But I can say that a lot of players do see core game as 'it', although the transition from act 10 to mapping is a lot smoother now so I wouldn't be surprised if that increased the number of players mapping.

Gdawn I played up to what I believe was the end of the third act. It's not always easy to tell which act you're in (probably by design, to keep you playing). I was a nightblade/demolitionist thingy. Very similar to my dream/warrior of TQ. Did just fine but I found the amount of buffing and skill juggling tedious. But yeah, GDawn still has TQ's o-skill items, build enablers, 'green' items, very fleshed out class skill trees, and so on. It's entirely possible if not probable that Gdawn has more diversity within and between the classes through core and endgame.

But diversity also means flexibility, and I believe flexibility is the word I used earlier in this thread to underscore my idea of diversity. I can do a Slayer here that throws fireballs, or a Necromancer that uses static strike and charged dash. An Assassin Archer. A Deadeye with daggers and a cannon backing her up. An Inquisitor with fuck all TT dps ripping through hefty swathes of monsters with a sword. And so on. And that's self-found, no hand-me-down oskilly items. Like or not, a Demolitionist/Nightblade in Gdawn is by and large going to use the class skills thrown at him, give or take oskills from items. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just more 'by the numbers' than PoE. It was always going to be that way, since the devs of Crate never got to make the game they wanted to make with Titty Quest, which had a heap of committee interference.

It's apples and oranges really. You want a well-made, balanced ARPG with fucktonnes of loot and an old-timey feel? You go GDawn, unless post-apoc isn't your thing, as it is not mine. You want to do stupid shit, be a trade tycoon, like achievement hunting from scratch, or just like weird settings that flagrantly mock organised religion? PoE.

Grim Dawn actually creates the illusion that your choices are impactful and that even if your build may not be the op Inquisitor or old OP SS build that did like 100000000000 damage, you could still feel like you are making a solid build that can do all content in the game (as in end game content) if you try hard enough to make it work (and without having to spend an inordinate amount of time farming).


Path's problem is that it doesn't have alot of choices that feel 'impactful.' The ones that are end up being super meta, i.e. RF, Burn Spectres, KB, etc.


One of the major issues that GGG has is that some of Chris's demands and vision are simply incompatible inherently from a design standpoint. He wants to create a game where there's a ton of build diversity and impactful choices, but he also wants a cut throat hardcore game that can at any point challenge or kill the player no matter how hard they have farmed or how long they've invested into the game. That is simply incompatible no matter how you look at it. Thus why we have silly ass fucking economic balancing along with wacky damage/defense balance on both ends.