Grim Dawn

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Hateyou_sl said:
What other class and skills you rolling with? I've got four characters so far and the occultist just feels like a gimp compared to the others. I only have it to 10 or 11, mainly due to not knowing what to pick with it. I was going to probably wait til Arcanist to sub, but if something works decent now I'll give it a shot.
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I just started playing this over the weekend, and have an Occultist to level 14 or so right now. I have no idea how it compares to other classes, but I'll give my take on it.

I sub-classed as Nightblade, which sort of forces me into a melee roll, which is probably not the best option for an Occultist, but I haven't found a gun that even comes close to competing with some of the melee weapons I have. Prior to subclassing, I had sort of gone for the pet build, so my only substantial points are in raven, hellhound, and that eyeball thing that dots them. And then a couple of points into the buff that adds chaos damage to your weapons. So coupled with dual-wield from Nightblade and the flurry of knives throw, that's pretty much all I have right now. The hellhound is pretty beefy, and the nuke from the raven is higher than the damage I do myself, per hit. And if I'm facing a bunch of creatures or a tougher one, I throw that eye at them and it does like 190 damage over 5 seconds. There is no recast delay on that one, and it doesn't cost a lot, so I can spam a bunch of those out there and as long as I avoid them for 5 seconds, between the dots and my pets, shit pretty much dies. (EDIT to add, I don't normally do that, I typically wade in and melee, but just saying if there are a ton of mobs or tough ones, I can use that tactic.) Boss mobs are a bit tougher because I don't have much burst dps, and if they have any sort of ae ability my pets die, but technically I can kite them around with that eye if I have the room.

Like I said, no idea how that compares to other classes, but I typically play a fighter so I wanted something a bit different this time around. I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, all things considered. I sort of despair over the fact that I'm pretty sure getting to the upper tiers of skills is going to entail playing the game multiple times on harder settings, and as I posted months ago in this thread, I'm tired as fuck of that game mechanic after Diablo III. I want to be able to get max level on one play through, or at least close to it, depending upon how many side quests and farming runs I do. But that requires making more game zones, which means more money, so unfortunately I'm probably stuck with it for a long time to come in this sort of game.
 
Pyros

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In Titan Quest(the game they made before that), you would reach a high enough level in the first playthrough that you could spec into the last tier of a class and have some spare points for a sub. It wasn't the cap mind you, but you had access to everything virtually. There was 3 difficulties settings, and by the end of the 2nd you would be level capped(in the normal game, expansion increased level cap). The way it worked is simply because each skill has multiple points to be put in them, similar to D2 and shit, you unlock the higher shit fairly early but you couldn't max all your good skills until later on. Makes the later difficulties a bit meh in terms of improvement though, but makes that first playthrough nice.

I would assume it'll be fairly similar in this, but only once they add all the acts and at the speed they're going I wouldn't expect that to be done until 2016 or whatever.
 
Void

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Yeah I played Titan Quest, and I get what you are saying. But since they allow you to dual-class, essentially, you're not going to hit that last tier of a class unless you almost completely ignore the other one on the first playthrough. Part of the fun of TQ and GD is that you get to mix the two, and if you can't substantially mix them at the higher tiers until you've played it through at least twice, that's sort of what I'm getting at. Don't get me wrong, I still like this better than the Diablo III model where you didn't even unlock shit until you were 59, and thus almost through your third playthrough. So this is definitely better. But I'd kill for a game that just required one time through to unlock max level on everything. While I'd love for there to actually be that much unique content, with these games it doesn't even really seem like it would be that difficult, since a large percentage of the kills/xp are from random shit. Just make it further between each major quest point perhaps, allowing you to reach level 60 or whatever the max is if you finish practically every sidequest. And if you don't want to do that, you can always just do the main quest and then start the higher difficulty.

Not everyone wants to play the same game twice (or more) just to get access to the cool abilities we see further down the skill tree. I wish someone, somewhere would finally realize that.
 
Pyros

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Hmm unless you mean you want to get the max skills in your 2 sub classes at the same time, it works like that already. In TQ you reach the last tier of a particular tree by like act2. You can then potentially max another tree by act3. The only thing is you probably wouldn't because it's a lot more efficient to put 8points and max one skill that you're using a lot than just unlocking every skill with 1point, but you get access to everything in a given tree fairly quickly. Most of the time you design your build as main class+sub class and not 2 equal classes, so you don't max the 2nd(most of the time you unlock first or 2nd tier and get some synergetic skill that works with your main class). Even in Grim Dawn you can see that, if you put all your points in a mastery and only 1pt per skill, you can unlock a fairly large amount already even though the cap is low atm. Think you need more than in TQ though.

Now I also get what you're saying, it'd be nice not to have to replay the game over and over. There isn't a very easy way to do it though, increasing zone size generally leads to sluggishness and repetition so people get bored more easily. That said most of these games tend to take 20-25h for a single playthrough, which is an acceptable amount if you design some sort of endgame(which you just copy from other games, aka maps, randomized content, easy to make). Currently they seem to be intent on making the duration to reach max level be something like 50+hours and they do that by looping the content but I agree it's fairly unnecessary. Just have a harder mode that unlocks once you're done that's all max level(similar to the last difficulty in those games already) so you can do that if you want but don't have to, then endgame shit, and let people "finish" the game in 20hours. I think I remember reading some numbers on people who play ARPGs and there was like only 30% that played past the first playthrough anyway, most finish the game on normal and stop, so the looping is pretty pointless.
 
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Angry Amadeus_sl

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Hateyou_sl said:
What other class and skills you rolling with? I've got four characters so far and the occultist just feels like a gimp compared to the others. I only have it to 10 or 11, mainly due to not knowing what to pick with it. I was going to probably wait til Arcanist to sub, but if something works decent now I'll give it a shot.
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Occultist is pretty gimp. Which is kinda why I like it. I can't explain that shit, either. Somehow I'm viewing it as penance for all of the bullshit Diablo 3 put me through and I willingly endured like a schmuck.
 
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bolok

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Act 2 just patched up via steam today. Decent amount of patches to the game besides the new act and some substantial changes to the nightblade class. Still no multi-player, but the steam greenlight action did let them hire a networking coder who worked with them previously on TQ. So that should be coming sooner than later.
 
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Droigan

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Crafting was implemented yesterday. Can pick one of two blacksmiths, both giving some unique aspects to the things they can craft.

Veteran mode is also enabled, giving more elite spawns and loot drops (veteran mode is something you can enable to your existing Normal game) and they have made the mobs spawn more randomly.

Shaping up to be quite the decent arpg.
 
Pyros

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Yeah made a new char for the patch in veteran mode, pretty fun. It's quite challenging and the pack size is increased so there's a lot of shit to kill. They also made some nightblade changes and fixed their god awful character screen stats so now you can actually tell better what's going on with stats. Made a cold nightblade using the new Gambit(which is more reliable and also more cold heavy) and so far going well, I just started act2 which I hadn't done since they added it.

I kinda wish they would have patched the Arcanist by now as one of the biggest downside of the early acess atm is the low amount of classes. Hell even once they're done it'll be low compared to TQ, most of the fun in TQ was combining 2 weird classes and doing cool shit with them but it's going from 8 to 5 classes so that kinda sucks.

I guess by the end of the year it'll be a pretty great game. For now I'd say it's about worth the price, maybe better to wait for a sale, it has a decent amount of content but it's not that much. They said the early part of act3 should be ready this summer, or at least that's their plan, so we'll see.
 
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bolok

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Well now. Multiplayer just got patched in. The patch notes warn of potential bugginess, but eh the multiplayer in TQ was always a bit off. Tons of other background changes/patches too. Prolly gonna roll up a newb and give it a whirl in a bit.
 
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Droigan

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They just patched in parts of act 3 along with a level increase up to 40. They expect full release of act 3 in March 2015.

Currently 50% off Steam.

At the $10 or so pricetag, this is a steal for people who enjoy hack and slash games. Unless they completely mess up later on, this game will be a hit come release. I already enjoy the level system, loot and world atmosphere better than Diablo 3. If you pick a class, settle for it and steamroll forwards doing everything, but only once, it will probably take you roughly 40 hours? That's based on me only getting to start of the second part in 20 hours with some parts repeated. On the second part I met a "your build is shit" wall of death which made me start over, so put the game on hold until they patched it a bit more.
 
meStevo

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bolok_sl said:
Well now. Multiplayer just got patched in. The patch notes warn of potential bugginess, but eh the multiplayer in TQ was always a bit off. Tons of other background changes/patches too. Prolly gonna roll up a newb and give it a whirl in a bit.
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How is multiplayer now? The typical 4 max?
 
Caliane

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yeah, saw this on steam sale and was reminded of it. almost bit, but then remembered. "hey Path of Exile is amazing, why do I want to check out another arpg?"

So, where does this stand in relation to PoE?
 
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Droigan

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Caliane_sl said:
yeah, saw this on steam sale and was reminded of it. almost bit, but then remembered. "hey Path of Exile is amazing, why do I want to check out another arpg?"

So, where does this stand in relation to PoE?
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Smaller, less developed, but more "world focused" ? If that is a term that makes any sense. With the maps and such, PoE quickly got an all over the place sort of feel, where the focus of the world as a whole got lost into just character progression. In Grim Dawn, so far at least, your character is tied to the world and its progression. Every area is technically open, but you require items to "craft" the paths to the new acts. Items required, and the amounts, forces the world progression along with the character.

Grim Dawn is also more streamlined to PoE. Like Titan Quest, you have several skill trees, you pick two, and they are locked. From those skill trees, there are several progression paths. That part I like better with PoE because it adds another element of loot, and these games are at their core all about loot progression.

PoE is bigger in every way currently, but if you regard this as a new arpg, then it is just that. New skills and abilities, enemies, stories, etc. Nothing you haven't seen before, but it only takes 20 minutes to drive the comparisons to Titan Quest than any other new arpg. If you have several high level PoE characters, and you enjoy these games, I highly doubt you will be dissatisfied with purchasing Grim Dawn. Especially if you enjoyed Titan Quest as I believe the core team behind this game made that.
 
Caliane

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I grabbed it, because I too can be a hypocritical idiot at times.

First impression is, yeah obviously titans quest succession. Much smoother gameplay though.
Much fewer class trees atm. obviously early access.

Biggest flaw i see outright, is the same issue Titan quest had. No progressively generated levels. or well, at least not what I saw so far. obviously didn't play that much yet. It might be a mix? can't tell exactly from the website.
What levels I did see, do not feel like they were properly built knowing they would be run repeatedly. Alot of dead space that will be skipped. Don't build a maze in an arpg. once people know the right path, the maze is pointless. Chaos sanctuary and foothills are great examples of how to do it, in d2. Multiple "paths" to a midpoint. At that mid point in chaos sanc, you break off, clear switches, to head back to the center. for foothills, you hit that mid point, then spread back out for multiple paths and a miniboss at the end.

hosting/joining for multiplayer. ugh. At least it uses steam for it, thats a huge improvement. But, its no Bnet, or Poe's system, which frankly I love too.

Overall, first impression did enjoy what I saw, but those mentioned issues do hold it back in comparison.
 
Pyros

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They have maze like mechanics that get blocked randomly, so you need to figure out a new path everytime, though it's fairly limited. In some cases it does force you into a different area. It's pretty fun overall but not finished by a good margin and will sadly be much smaller than Titan Quest even when finished(way less classes especially).
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Caliane_sl said:
oh, like the wagons, etc blocking paths move? that is neat then.
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Yeah rocks and wagons and all that crap that seem a bit out of place blocking paths move around, so sometimes you can't like go through a town and have to go around in the swamps and shit. It's fairly minor though. Also caves and shit are random, sometimes they're not open, besides obviously quest ones. It's not as random as a lot of other arpgs, but it's more random than TQ. The lack of classes is what's the most annoying to me compared to TQ, they have a lot of items giving unique skills though like the original, and they added the alternate effects on spells shit(transmuters iirc?) so there's some decent variety, but still not quite as much as TQ with Immortal Throne which had like 9classes to mix.
 
Hateyou

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Droigan_sl said:
They just patched in parts of act 3 along with a level increase up to 40. They expect full release of act 3 in March 2015.

Currently 50% off Steam.

At the $10 or so pricetag, this is a steal for people who enjoy hack and slash games. Unless they completely mess up later on, this game will be a hit come release. I already enjoy the level system, loot and world atmosphere better than Diablo 3. If you pick a class, settle for it and steamroll forwards doing everything, but only once, it will probably take you roughly 40 hours? That's based on me only getting to start of the second part in 20 hours with some parts repeated. On the second part I met a "your build is shit" wall of death which made me start over, so put the game on hold until they patched it a bit more.
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This isn't quite right. They are releasing act 3 in 3 waves...wave 2 is in March. Full release will probably be in June or July.

With that said this game is solid enough to buy and play as is. I've put 200+ Hours in to it off and on over the past year trying different builds and farming, without act 3.

The classes in this game are well done, yes there are only 5 compared to Titan Quests 8, but they did a much better job with synergies and itemization in this game so there are much more viable builds than TQ which had a lot of useless abilities. The itemization, crafting, and the recent addition of weapon augments makes the game much deeper than it first appears.

I've only been able to run through the current act 3 once but it was fantastic, they did a good job with it.

I ended up giving up POE for Grim Dawn mainly because I don't have to min max my character, and I can farm and actually find useful items myself.

This is a steal at $20. $10 is just obscene.
 
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Osiris The Everliving_sl

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Bought this , just cant seem to fix this constant stutter i have. Went fullscreen windowed and it stopped but then after about 30 minutes of play it returns. Annoying but game is fun , and for the price well worth it.
 
Selix

Selix

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I bought this and it's OK. It doesn't do pet builds very well which Titan Quest did do and Diablo 2 did the best. To get a pet build going in this game requires a significant amount of farming just so you can have more then 2 pets 1 of which is largely useless) The other non-pet builds seem to be ok though.
 
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