It’s wild to say that, 10 years ago today, an upstart studio shipped a little game called Grim Dawn. What’s mind-blowing to us is that that game went on to not only become a success beyond our wildest dreams at the time, but to become a staple in the ARPG genre. Grim Dawn’s success enabled Crate Entertainment to grow from a studio of just 8 people to a team of 29 today, with 4 projects currently in development. Your early support has allowed us to not only stay independent from publishers, b...
I have briefly tried path of exile. It is also a good game, but maybe not for the casual aRPG player.
What I find really strange about PoE is that active skills you cast are tied to putting gems in your gear. As I continued to play, I found it frustrating. I might find a piece of gear that has good stats for my character, but the gem sockets are the wrong color for my gems that contain my skills. This necessitated grinding materials to re-roll the gem sockets, which was RNG. I found this to be a clunky way to change your skills too.
In grim dawn, you acquire active skills and stats as you level up and put points in your mastery. So if you want a skill, you base mastery must be raised high enough to unlock it, then you put a point in the skill. Putting additional points in the skill makes it stronger.
In terms of leveling up and making your character stronger, the system for spending points was pretty daunting in PoE. Resetting your points gets more and more expensive as your character levels up in PoE. This juxtaposed with the gem system for active skills just felt super clunky.
In grim dawn, leveling up your mastery gives you stats like physique, cunning, and spirit. If you are putting points into a base mastery for an arcanist, those base mastery points will overall give you more spirit per level; which means more energy regen for casting, and more magic damage. If you’re putting points into base mastery for a night blade, over time that gives you more cunning, for weapons based attacks, crit, and bleed. Putting points into base mastery for the soilder gives you more physique overtime, which gives you health regen, and the ability to avoid attacks. What I’m getting at here is the mastery system gives you the correct balance of stats. (Remember, you get to pick a second class/mastery at level 10.) As you level, you also get points to put into your characters base physique, cunning, or spirit which can help make you more well rounded, or boost a stat your are lacking due to the class choices you make. (Like a soldier + nightblade give you way more physique and cunning, and you might be running out of energy because you’re lacking spirit, you have a way to put points into spirit only to rectify this.) Reclaiming mastery points has a fixed cost and isn’t expensive the way it is in PoE.
The class/mastery system vs cost to make changes felt rewarding. It encouraged experimentation. PoE wanting/needing to make changes felt more punishing. I found in PoE I often waited to add points to my skill tree for a long time because I was worried about gem socket color on gear i might find, and the types of active skills I would find. Eventually I’d get locked into a play style and experimenting wasn’t rewarding in PoE.
The complexity of PoE eventually caused me to put it down. Grim dawn has the right balance of being more complex than Diablo 3, and simpler than PoE. Easy to pick up, with lots of depth too.
I actually wish there was a game that had a level of complexity in between POE and Grim Dawn.
I enjoyed Grim Dawn but I really felt like your build has a lot more to do with your gear. And the skill system was just a little too simple for me.
However, I’ve been playing games with randomized loot less often over the years. I just don’t have the time and my autism brain gets frustrated when I can’t just experiment with builds easily.
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I have briefly tried path of exile. It is also a good game, but maybe not for the casual aRPG player.
What I find really strange about PoE is that active skills you cast are tied to putting gems in your gear. As I continued to play, I found it frustrating. I might find a piece of gear that has good stats for my character, but the gem sockets are the wrong color for my gems that contain my skills. This necessitated grinding materials to re-roll the gem sockets, which was RNG. I found this to be a clunky way to change your skills too.
In grim dawn, you acquire active skills and stats as you level up and put points in your mastery. So if you want a skill, you base mastery must be raised high enough to unlock it, then you put a point in the skill. Putting additional points in the skill makes it stronger.
In terms of leveling up and making your character stronger, the system for spending points was pretty daunting in PoE. Resetting your points gets more and more expensive as your character levels up in PoE. This juxtaposed with the gem system for active skills just felt super clunky.
In grim dawn, leveling up your mastery gives you stats like physique, cunning, and spirit. If you are putting points into a base mastery for an arcanist, those base mastery points will overall give you more spirit per level; which means more energy regen for casting, and more magic damage. If you’re putting points into base mastery for a night blade, over time that gives you more cunning, for weapons based attacks, crit, and bleed. Putting points into base mastery for the soilder gives you more physique overtime, which gives you health regen, and the ability to avoid attacks. What I’m getting at here is the mastery system gives you the correct balance of stats. (Remember, you get to pick a second class/mastery at level 10.) As you level, you also get points to put into your characters base physique, cunning, or spirit which can help make you more well rounded, or boost a stat your are lacking due to the class choices you make. (Like a soldier + nightblade give you way more physique and cunning, and you might be running out of energy because you’re lacking spirit, you have a way to put points into spirit only to rectify this.) Reclaiming mastery points has a fixed cost and isn’t expensive the way it is in PoE.
The class/mastery system vs cost to make changes felt rewarding. It encouraged experimentation. PoE wanting/needing to make changes felt more punishing. I found in PoE I often waited to add points to my skill tree for a long time because I was worried about gem socket color on gear i might find, and the types of active skills I would find. Eventually I’d get locked into a play style and experimenting wasn’t rewarding in PoE.
The complexity of PoE eventually caused me to put it down. Grim dawn has the right balance of being more complex than Diablo 3, and simpler than PoE. Easy to pick up, with lots of depth too.
I actually wish there was a game that had a level of complexity in between POE and Grim Dawn.
I enjoyed Grim Dawn but I really felt like your build has a lot more to do with your gear. And the skill system was just a little too simple for me.
However, I’ve been playing games with randomized loot less often over the years. I just don’t have the time and my autism brain gets frustrated when I can’t just experiment with builds easily.