I dunno, but it looks neat.

Grim Dawn Screenshots/Media

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKtV0EP22c8[/video]

I bought into Grim Dawn and it was really fun for the time I played it. Their dev team (at the time) was really small so it took them quite awhile to get anything new out and I lost interest. Maybe it's time to look back into it. That being said, I think Path of Exile is one of the best games out there right now, and definitely the best D2 clone. If GGG could work on quality of life stuff they would absolutely dominate.

Funnily enough I found out about Nevergrind from the Grim Dawn forums. Coming full circle I guess?

It's a fun game, but it's not finished, which means it's a little limited in character evolution. I've spent a couple hundred hours on it though, and I've nowhere near exhausted character building, I just wanted a break until it gets some higher level caps and they release the next system of character building and customisation.

It's fun, the game is very good looking, atmospheric, however at times the animations feel a little stiff, but that's, I think, a relic of the fact that it's built on a modified Titan Quest engine, which always felt stiff. They're always working on tweaking animations however.

If that's not enough for you, they recently picked up Eric Sexton, a designer who worked on Diablo I and II. So he's bound to help with the atmosphere and artistic direction. Thread of his hiring.

Welp, I should have been paying more attention. They just released an update the day before, increased level cap. Guess I'm gonna dive in.

Very cool. In a lot of ways I think Diablo 2 is an almost perfect game aside from some quality-of-life issues.

It's funny you mention Diablo II being a perfect game, because in many ways, it's what spawned Path of Exile, which to many action RPG fans, is the perfect looting simulator.

The main issue I got with PoE which I used to play religiously, is they're really draconian with their nerf bats. They'll take a build that used to be good and completely gut it.

I used to have a really solid facebreaker build until the nerf bats destroyed it. Facebreaker mitts was a unique that gave up to +1000% unarmed damage, with 1000% being max rolls. The particular build relied on being able to run several auras to be viable. Those auras were essential, because they filled in gear holes that would have been enormously expensive gear out of. Like expensive to the point where it would be so far out of the realm of possibility I'd have to scrap the entire build. I would have needed a BiS rare in at least 1 slot, and some really close to BiS rares in a couple of others. What GGG didn't like about it was that it was sorta a budget build that was very good. The core items were Facebreaker mitts, bringer of rain, and meginord's girdle. I ended up finding a bringer of rain and meginords, and paid 2ex for a perfectly rolled 1000% facebreaker. Happened to have a decent pair of boots and a couple damage rings, and bought a damage amulet which got amplified by 1000% from the gloves. Had about 26k DPS, and this was AOE DPS. And the DPS was misleading, because it didn't take into effect the bonus damage from infernal blow explosions which were based on the HP of the enemy that was killed. Basically, the stronger the mobs the more DPS I did with infernal blow explosions. I could swing into a group of mobs, and it would be a chain reaction of explosions that turned them all into hamburger meat. But compared to the legitimately overpowered builds which could hit for several hundred K or even up to a million DPS, and kill high level map bosses in a few secs, this facebreaker build was just a poor mans way of having a viable end game build. I teamed with a discharge build that could 1hko a level 76 map boss on a team of 4. That is overpowered.

And sporker, they nerfed that too. One of the only ways to make a build that could effectively kill stuff efficiently, and with junk MF and item quantity gear equipped. You could make a sporker into a poor mans loot farmer which considerably raised the odds of netting a valuable piece, but I guess GGG didn't like people being able to do that either. I ended up finding several nice drops on my sporker, including a soul taker, voltaxic rift, and a bringer of rain. I'd have never saw those items otherwise because it wasn't viable to run MF gear on most builds, because if you had a resist hole, the game would severely punish you for it. Lets take a game that already takes an insane amount of time and dedication to get ahead in and make it even harder to get there by nerfing low cost effective builds and efficient farming strategies. That appears to be GGG's philosophy. Great game, great concepts, tons of depth, didn't like the direction they were going. I'd have preferred they just give us the bonus content while keeping the nerfs to stuff that was legitimately broken OP. Like righteous fire.

Eh, metas always shift in ARPGs, and most other games for that matter. Nerfing and buffing and releasing new stuff will change things constantly. The only the I really didn't like about PoE, and this is purely personal preference, is that I didn't feel like my account really got any more powerful while my character did, which is something that D3 did VERY well. I loved the depth of PoE and I will probably roll some kind of toon as soon as the new content launches very soon but it's the kind of game that almost feels like work while your playing and for some reason that kind of game play exhausts me. Like I said earlier, if PoE could fix some of its quality of life issues, ala D3, I think it would dominate the ARPG market.

I think Diablo 3 had a lot of potential, but absolutely shot itself in the foot with homogenisation of their itemisation.

The game is simply "this does x% more damage" for almost everything. Otherwise it's just unlocking another skill rune. Very few items viably alter skills in a meaningful or interesting way. Carnevil is probably one of the few items that comes to mind that's actually pretty cool.

There's also no flavour in the gameplay... I've played it for hundreds of hours, albeit mostly as a solo player, so I never got very high on the paragon levels or rifts etc, since 4 player parties are a 100% necessity if you want any kind of meaningful gearing and levelling progress. It's basically do rifts, or be horrendously inefficient.

Thought I'd share. My hardcore Inferno Diablo kill back in September 2012. The #213 kill ever in hardcore mode. I should have done it way sooner. I wasted so much time trying with Wizard. I lost six wizards in hardcore mode. Monk was so easy in the early D3 days. I never died with Monk.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFEVAvZe4fA&list=PL730630034A74E756&index=8[/video]

Grim Dawn is good right now but can be great. I'm praying the devotion system fixes the lack of "fun" builds in the current game. Not really digging any of the classes.

With that said, the game only has 50 character levels but plans to have 100, so we are getting half the skill points. Good game though.

I was a Grim Dawn Kickstarter backer in May 2012. I was a long-time Titan Quest player, so it made sense at the time.
I played for an afternoon to farm Steam Trading Cards and get a Level 1 Badge. It was fun and addictive and all of those things you'd expect from a decent ARPG.
Pretty much haven't played it since. FML.

Hang in there. Your kids will be recruits soon enough lol.