Grim Dawn - Forgotten Gods Gameplay

All the ARPGs seem to be guilty of "fireworks" combat. Even with a melee character in GD you have your 1, 2, BOOM firework hit within the first 5 minutes and end game the screen is full of effects. D3 is the same. POE is the same. You can't seem to escape it.

That's why I seem to prefer a closer 3rd person perspective these days. Something like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter World is the best.

I think its just hard to make isometric perspective appear like melee hits are actually making contact so they cover it up with fireworks. With 3rd person you have a camera angle where it appears like it could have hit even if it comes up short. Sort of like fake punches in movies. Side on you could see that it misses, isometric or birds-eye you could see the gap, but when the blade goes right in front of them with a little blood to hide the tip it looks real enough.

What we really need is a new Hellgate London style ARPG but with a much deeper melee combat system that relies less special moves and more on fighting game style combos.

ARPGs are too easy to play. There is no getting good; only gear checks. That's pretty much the essence of a grindfest. Spamming mouse clicks and using abilities on rotation puts me to sleep - no matter how good the graphics are.
 
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I do think Grim Dawn is a pretty and graphically pleasing game, and I hate the too colorful crap schemes that lots of games use these days. I have 30 hours into it, but haven't played it in a long time, just too busy with other games and stuff. But I did think it was very fun when I was playing it. Granted, I'm not really that much of an action rpg fan, to be honest. Diablo is not something I liked or found enjoyable, for example. But for me, Grim Dawn is a fun action rpg.
 
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Would be interesting if you actually knew what you were talking about but since you have no clue how I feel about the game you as usual in most things make up total bullshit. Basically this says that you are more interested in bullshit and whatever than truth.

Darth Tagnan said:
Translation: you likes the game, and therefore any criticism is shallow or wrong.

It's not terribly complicated. You are who you are. It's common for human beings to take these things personally.

As I said, you need a certain level of maturity to handle it without making it into something personal. A lot of people can't do that - and that's ok. You're really no worse than most in that way. What I find particularly annoying with you is your pretense of objectivity and the "I'm so reasonable" act - because it's so counter to the reality about you.

My original statement was in jest and it even had a smiley - and someone took it to heart. That's how these things work sometimes.

We could, of course, have had a productive discussion about the finer points - and one which wouldn't be so shallow, as you put it - but that would have required an ability to be objective and forthcoming about a difference of opinion on your part, and it's long past that point. The fact that you still communicate with me at all - given your obvious personal issues with my "shallow and uninformed" opinions tells me that you don't understand what a good use of your time would be.

I played Yakuza with KB/M and I switched to controller - because movement was imprecise and awful, and I find beat-em up combat much more natural with a controller. I don't really need more than that to have an opinion about it.

If you expect a scientifically proven opinion whenever you ask others for help, then I must wish you good luck :)

Grim Dawn is a fine game if you're into what it does well - and it does many things well. The overall experience will be subjective, however.

Anyway, we're done here.
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you said:
Would be interesting if you actually knew what you were talking about but since you have no clue how I feel about the game you as usual in most things make up total bullshit. Basically this says that you are more interested in bullshit and self importance than truth.
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Yeah, I love bullshit and self-importance. It's like nectar ;)
 
JDR13 said:
It's easy to cherry-pick a screenshot with a lot of effects going off at once, but that doesn't accurately represent what the game looks like most of the time.
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Uh so you're saying you're not fighting most of the time? Fighting means pink and green and blue neon colors. There are short moments in the game where there are no effects, e.g going to the shop to sell stuff, that hardly means the game most of the time looks dark - it really doesn't.
 
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That screenshot was a fair enough representation of Grim Dawn - as that's pretty much what it looks like for the most part when you're fighting.

As I said, the weak particle effects are extremely overdone. What's worse is the performance hit involved with them.

Personally, I do like myself a good particle show - but it has to be compelling and it has to support the gameplay in a much more entertaining way than in Grim Dawn.

Still, Neon Disco is definitely not a very good description of the game. Not to me, anyway.

I actually thought he was talking about Diablo 3 :)
 
Oh, and as for "gear check" - that's only true if you think of the primary challenge as beating the content.

That's not really the challenge of the genre, at least not for my part.

The challenge is to optimise performance of the character.

It's sort of like DPS raiding in WoW. It's not about beating the bosses - which quickly became trivial. It was about optimising your damage output, which was exceedingly challenging as it was essentially an infinite obstacle.

Beating a new raid boss in WoW is extremely similar to defeating a boss in Dark Souls - or any other "skill-based" ARPG you care to mention, except for the challenge involved in coordinating a large team, of course.

But, once you have the pattern down - it becomes easier and easier - until such time as it's trivial. With Youtube guides and what not, that challenge is pretty meaningless - at least to me. If you go into it blind and without guides - then it's an interesting challenge, I suppose - but it's inevitable that you will succeed, as the game is designed around that inevitability. With that in mind, I find the whole notion of it being "skill" highly amusing.

But, optimising your output is another thing. Maintaining #1 DPS is one thing (though you're competing against other people, which automatically means it's a greater challenge than any solo experience) - but constantly evolving and outdoing yourself is quite another thing.

Anyway, not everyone understands the genre - or the appeal of the progression-oriented design.

I find a lot of criticism directed towards these games - and I'm not just talking about Grim Dawn or Diablo - is based in ignorance or a lack of interest in what the appeal is designed to be about.

The vast majority of these games are trivially easy to beat in terms of content - and that goes for the highest difficulty levels too. It truly is a gear check - well, skill can be a factor - but only if you're under-geared.
 
SirJames said:
All the ARPGs seem to be guilty of "fireworks" combat. Even with a melee character in GD you have your 1, 2, BOOM firework hit within the first 5 minutes and end game the screen is full of effects. D3 is the same. POE is the same. You can't seem to escape it.

That's why I seem to prefer a closer 3rd person perspective these days. Something like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter World is the best.

I think its just hard to make isometric perspective appear like melee hits are actually making contact so they cover it up with fireworks. With 3rd person you have a camera angle where it appears like it could have hit even if it comes up short. Sort of like fake punches in movies. Side on you could see that it misses, isometric or birds-eye you could see the gap, but when the blade goes right in front of them with a little blood to hide the tip it looks real enough.
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I don't think making the animations connect is the problem. I've been learning about combat animation, and using inverse kinematics and blending, this is not so hard. If you view melee game combat in slow motion, what they often do is just slide the characters into the correct position for the strike animation, which isn't really perceptible at speed.

I think it's more to do with the fact that these types of games are really more like shoot-em-ups (where your weapon is like a short-range "shot") than melee combat games, and the effects are often more in that ballpark.

EDIT: If interested, this time-slowed video of Arkham combat is quite useful. You can see Batman does a fair bit of ice-skating. The end result is impressive, but it's mostly just hopping into position, and playing from a lot of pre-set animations between the bodies. Then the enemies use a ticketing system, to ensure that no more than a couple engage the player at once. Easier said than done, but you can see how it works.
 
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vurt said:
I'm on Veteran Difficulty.

vi5m4.jpg


The game is a neon disco, it's probably one of the most colorful games i've seen.
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Yeah, you are right the effects are colorful. I thought you were talking about the game world and backgrounds.

Veteran difficulty is not very difficult, correct. It's a bit like normal+. The game really only gets fun after lvl 50, which is a huge weakness.

I only played it a short while the first time I picked it up, and got bored. Then after some updates I started playing again and it was really fun after I got a bit further in the second difficulty.
 
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Darth Tagnan said:
Oh, and as for "gear check" - that's only true if you think of the primary challenge as beating the content.

That's not really the challenge of the genre, at least not for my part.

The challenge is to optimise performance of the character.

It's sort of like DPS raiding in WoW. It's not about beating the bosses - which quickly became trivial. It was about optimising your damage output, which was exceedingly challenging as it was essentially an infinite obstacle.

Beating a new raid boss in WoW is extremely similar to defeating a boss in Dark Souls - or any other "skill-based" ARPG you care to mention, except for the challenge involved in coordinating a large team, of course.

But, once you have the pattern down - it becomes easier and easier - until such time as it's trivial. With Youtube guides and what not, that challenge is pretty meaningless - at least to me. If you go into it blind and without guides - then it's an interesting challenge, I suppose - but it's inevitable that you will succeed, as the game is designed around that inevitability. With that in mind, I find the whole notion of it being "skill" highly amusing.

But, optimising your output is another thing. Maintaining #1 DPS is one thing (though you're competing against other people, which automatically means it's a greater challenge than any solo experience) - but constantly evolving and outdoing yourself is quite another thing.

Anyway, not everyone understands the genre - or the appeal of the progression-oriented design.

I find a lot of criticism directed towards these games - and I'm not just talking about Grim Dawn or Diablo - is based in ignorance or a lack of interest in what the appeal is designed to be about.

The vast majority of these games are trivially easy to beat in terms of content - and that goes for the highest difficulty levels too. It truly is a gear check - well, skill can be a factor - but only if you're under-geared.
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The main designer of grim Dawn has mentioned several times that the main focus of the game was not the competitive maximizing you enjoy, but rather to make the game fun for average arpg players who finish the game once or maybe a few times. They try to cater to the hardcore crowd as well, but they are not the focus.

They want the players to be able to "finish" a character, which suits my life and preferences very well. I enjoy the game a lot and will likely buy the expansion :)


(BTW using the ;) smiley can make posts seem smug. I'm guessing that's why they reacted negatively to your first post.)
 
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SveNitoR said:
The main designer of grim Dawn has mentioned several times that the main focus of the game was not the competitive maximizing you enjoy, but rather to make the game fun for average arpg players who finish the game once or maybe a few times. They try to cater to the hardcore crowd as well, but they are not the focus.
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I'm talking about the genre and what some people enjoy about it - including myself.

It's not "competitive maximizing" - it's the challenge of improving yourself and your performance. It's just one way these games can be so enjoyable.

It's not just for this genre, though - but it's particularly prevalent in this genre.

It doesn't matter that it's the "focus" - just as long as it's possible, which it is in all of these games.

That said, I think you misunderstood the designer - because he's likely talking about not having to maximise a character to defeat the content. That's not what I'm talking about at all.

No modern ARPGs require you to maximise a character to defeat content. That's something from the past that modern game developers tend to shy away from.

They want the players to be able to "finish" a character, which suits my life and preferences very well. I enjoy the game a lot and will likely buy the expansion :)
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Great :)

(BTW using the ;) smiley can make posts seem smug. I'm guessing that's why they reacted negatively to your first post.)
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No, it's because I spoke against the game. You can see this every day on this and all other gaming forums. People take that sort of thing to heart.

Of course, there are ways to minimize the effect - like saying "The game isn't really for me - but I'm glad other people enjoy it."

But, you see, I find the inability to accept negative opinions about things you personally enjoy petty and pathetic - which is why I don't do the whole polite approach. I want to antagonize the people who're weak and petty - because that's how they learn to finally accept it. Once you've been frustrated by the terrible people who don't agree with you to a sufficient degree - you will eventually realise that it's not really that bad - and that it's actually ok for other people to dislike what you like.

Once you've learned to accept that other people can dislike what you enjoy without being smug, uninformed or "incorrect" - you have become a reasonable person within this context. It's from there that we can have a fruitful discussion - and we don't have to hide our opinions from each other in order to smooth things over.
 
Darth Tagnan said:
But, you see, I find the inability to accept negative opinions about things you personally enjoy petty and pathetic - which is why I don't do the whole polite approach. I want to antagonize the people who're weak and petty - because that's how they learn to finally accept it.
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Eh, it is pretty hard discussing the other things you write when you drop this thing in there. That behavior you describe is socially unacceptable and counter productive if you want discussions. I actually thought it was a misunderstanding, but you actually want to upset others?
 
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SveNitoR said:
Eh, it is pretty hard discussing the other things you write when you drop this thing in there. That behavior you describe is socially unacceptable and counter productive if you want discussions. I actually thought it was a misunderstanding, but you actually want to upset others?
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I'm not looking for a discussion with petty people, no.

That would seem to be extremely counter-productive.

Yes, I want to upset those people - because it will help them mature. It won't make them like me, though - but that's not a concern of mine. I don't find being liked by strangers that are petty a very compelling prospect.

If you're not mature enough to handle an opposing opinion without becoming personal about it - then I highly recommend not interacting with me within that context.

I'm not likely to be a very pleasant encounter, in that case.

Of course, if you actually want a productive exchange - and you can accept that we don't agree about this game, that's another matter entirely. I can be very productive and pleasant under those circumstances.

That said, I rarely actively go looking for a discussion. I'm much more interested in exchanging useful information - which discussions are rarely about.
 
Here's some interesting info on the new mastery:
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79819

Some movement related skills. A bit of retaliation buffs that may or may not enable retaliation chars to deal with ranged enemies by buffing their active attack… but reflect stays useless. I'm not sure this is enough for me to retry…

(Also: Darth, I don't think your "lessons" work out like they are supposed to... :p)
 
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Seems like a decent enough Mastery. Will the expansion change the other Masteries?
 
I'm sure there will be some buffs/nerfs and some new items.
There definitely are new constellations, which affects all. Nothing ground breaking, unless you count interaction with the Oathkeeper.
 
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I always go for the rogue-like characters, and I didn't enjoy the one in GD very much. But the theme was cool and if they added or changed something, maybe I should give it another look sometime.

I also particularly liked how items could grant entirely new active skills - which made for some pretty elaborate builds.
 
Yup, right. It's nice how you can get skills in many different ways, via items and constellations.

But I don't think there will be any significant changes to the rogue-ish mastery, that is the Nightblade. Maybe it gets some additional mobility if mixed with Oathkeeper. Not sure how well that works, I don't think I ever really tried Nightblade.
 
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Ripper said:
I don't think making the animations connect is the problem. I've been learning about combat animation, and using inverse kinematics and blending, this is not so hard. If you view melee game combat in slow motion, what they often do is just slide the characters into the correct position for the strike animation, which isn't really perceptible at speed.

I think it's more to do with the fact that these types of games are really more like shoot-em-ups (where your weapon is like a short-range "shot") than melee combat games, and the effects are often more in that ballpark.

EDIT: If interested, this time-slowed video of Arkham combat is quite useful. You can see Batman does a fair bit of ice-skating. The end result is impressive, but it's mostly just hopping into position, and playing from a lot of pre-set animations between the bodies. Then the enemies use a ticketing system, to ensure that no more than a couple engage the player at once. Easier said than done, but you can see how it works.
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Yeah, true. I haven't played Batman, but I've seen this sort of thing in Shadows of Mordor, Ryse, Assassins Creed, etc. They also tend to use a slotted combat turns system where they take turns attacking you so you're not too overwhelmed.

You don't see a lot of sliding into position in Diablo clones. Left-click is movement until you're close enough for it to be a "short-range shot". I suppose, in the end, no one's playing these games for the combat. They just want to kill everything quickly for the loot. :)
 
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