Issue with levelling System

[Palandus]

Why does Grimrock 2 bother with a levelling system when it is basically soft capped at LV 18? And by soft capped, I mean that to go from 18 to 19, you need 1,000,000 experience points. Try getting that amount without cheating.

I can understand a linear curve with experience in a game like D&D but it kinda seems like levelling is tacked on in this game as an afterthought. Think about it for a moment: In a game like D&D as you gain levels the monsters around you gain in difficulty and provide an appropriate level of experience and challenge. In D&D it takes about 10-11 kills of monsters of the same level as you. So if you need to get 30,000 XP, then monsters of the same level are about 2,800 XP each. And in D&D as you gain levels your ability to deal damage and soak up damage increases.

Whereas in Grimrock 2, the biggest and nastiest monster (non-boss) is the ogre, who can eliminate entire parties by itself (particularly if you don't dodge away from its charge) but only gives 750 XP. Seriously??? Only 750 XP? Most difficult monsters do not give an appropriate level of XP, and when you do finally gain a level, it hardly ever feels good. Why do skills have a cap of 5 skill points? Why not allow a character to continue to invest in a specific skill as much as they like... a LV 20 Fire Magic guy might be able to keep up in damage with the rest of the group.

And then of course is how much the XP scales upwards. Starts at 1000 XP, then 3000 XP, then 6000 XP (while most monsters are only giving 65 to 150 XP around those levels AND there is hardly that many monsters to begin with; yes they respawn but you have to wait like an entire 2-3 days for that to happen).

Truthfully I don't know what can be done. Having played Grimrock 1, and hated the levelling and skill system there, and although Grimrock 2 is a major step in the right direction, it still feels like Grimrock 2 is not about dungeon crawling so much as it is about solving puzzles. And if you are like me and don't really care for puzzles, that doesn't really sate the dungeon crawler in me. If you stripped the puzzles from the game, you would be left with a barebones game with not so great levelling systems, loot systems, spells, or combat system (By this I mean that Protection is always better than Evasion).

What does everyone else think on this matter?

[Dr.Disaster]

Grinding up a level 18 party is overkill. There is absolutely no need to do that. You can have everything done at level 14 to 15.

Dungeon crawlers have puzzles. Taking them away would reduce the game to just another first person shooter.

Having max 5 skill levels is both a design and a balance choice. No infinite power-ups in LoG!

[Palandus]

I've played many a dungeon crawler (ie Ancients, Dungeons of the Unforgiven, Moraff's World, Might and Magic, Morrowind/Oblivions/Skyrim, Malevolence, etc...), and this is the first to have puzzles, unless of course you are including the Elder Scrolls games; although, Elder Scrolls puzzles are not as annoying.

Yes levelling a party to 18 is overkill. However, there is a strong desire to have skill points that cannot be achieved any other way unless you find tons of skill books, which are rarer than levels.

The majority of the game my characters feel vastly underpowered and can only barely handle threats even at higher levels. Its one thing to feel on-par with threats, its another to constantly feel weak and not feel like when you gain a level up that it did any real good.

[sapientCrow]

Grid based dungeon crawlers have and I hope always will be about the puzzle solving and the exploration. Strategic grid based battles are similar to board games. (checkers, chess, mahjong) Of course it is not as sophisticated as those can be. Again with multiple elevations there are some serious potentials.
Regardless the core of the game a little more so than LOG1 is puzzle solving and exploration. Fighting is an obstacle not a core game mechanic.
Why would you play LOG1 or 2 if you did not enjoy puzzling? There are so many beautifully done puzzles in this game!

With that said I will agree that in my opinion they went too minimalist in character development with 1 skill and a cap of 5.
I recently started up LOG1 after 3 playthroughs of 2 and realized that I think the skill system and skill point awards in LOG1 was better than LOG2.
Some added strength and dex and reduced carry capacity as well as adding special attacks and increasing damage and numerous other improvements were in 1. With 4 skill points per level we had a feeling of more progression which I think is a good thing. I would of liked to see a more robust progression system myself in 2.

However my feeling is that they intended to go more puzzle centric which was accomplished and then some!!
Probably the only criticism I can give the game from 1 to 2 is that the progression system is very scarce. I myself in addition to puzzling like the feeling of the progression of a character.

[Palandus]

Why would I play them? Because from my experience a dungeon crawler is about loot, gaining levels, and killing monsters. Every single grid-based dungeon crawler I've played plays like that and the few puzzles that might have been present were straightforward and easy to accomplish once you had the right item. So, it was natural for me to assume that Grimrock 1 would play like that as well and from the varied forums I visited people were really interested in Grimrock and when I first saw the trailers it reminded me of my old-school dungeon crawling games... same with many people who have played grid-based dungeon crawlers. I personally never finished Grimrock 1 because the puzzles got to the point where I was spending more time outside of the game looking at guides then playing the thing. That's not fun. I like some occasional challenging puzzles; I don't like a challenging puzzle every couple minutes that if I can't bypass it without using a guide then that implies that this is probably not the game for me.

I figured that Grimrock 2 would solve a lot of the inherent problems of its previous combat and spell system, but I was wrong. They fixed one problem and created several new ones. In order to progress in the game you HAVE to solve the puzzles. I liked in Grimrock 1 where several puzzles were optional, whereas now all puzzles are mandatory to succeed.

Yes, I have realized that they went more a puzzle centric route too, which allows them to fill in a niche. But for the rest of us who wanted a Grid-Based dungeon crawler with great loot, great progression and great combat, Grimrock has left us wanting. I think its a great game for those that love puzzle solving, but not a great game for those who wanted an old-school dungeon crawler where progression was the focus and puzzles were a side-thing.

[Dr.Disaster]

You wanted a first person shooter or a rogue-like but not a dungeon crawler.

Some puzzles are optional in both LoG 1 and 2 but you need to solve several of them to advance and finish both games.

[Palandus]

No I wanted a dungeon crawler without a puzzle-centric gameplay. What other Dungeon Crawlers have YOU played that had a puzzle-centric focus OTHER than Grimrock? Come on name some for me!

Most first person shooters lack explicit progression (other than oooh got a big new gun). Progression is mostly a RPG or Strategy game mechanic.

[Phitt]

Why would I play them?

Not sure what you're talking about here. Grimrock is clearly a homage to Dungeon Master, and Dungeon Master has the same mix of puzzles and combat as Grimrock.

Grimrock 1 having more optional puzzles than Grimrock 2 simply isn't true, plus the semi-open world of Grimrock 2 makes it easier to skip some of the non-optional puzzles, at least for a while. Personally I only had to ask for help once to finish Grimrock 2, and that was only because I forgot about a hint I found earlier (I didn't solve some of the optional puzzles though).

The puzzles are a very important part of Grimrock, just like they were a very important part of Dungeon Master. If you removed most of them and/or made them all optional Grimrock would become a stupid hack and slash game like Diablo. If you don't like puzzles that's fine, but quite obviously the devs designed the game for people who do like them. It's not a 'problem', it's just a type of game you personally don't like.

[Dr.Disaster]

Most of the dungeon crawlers i played since the mid-80s were puzzle centric: DM+CSB, EoB series, Wizardry series, Ultima Underworld I+II ..
There were a few exceptions like the Bard's Tale series and those never motivated enough to play them a second time.

In each and every RPG system progression is finite. Once you hit the top-end it's up to the player to think up strategies to deal with powerful encounters. LoG2 hits this top-end a lot earlier then LoG1 but overall characters are more powerful because they can max out 3 skills on average instead of only 1 (if any at all).

[thufir]

No I wanted a dungeon crawler without a puzzle-centric gameplay. What other Dungeon Crawlers have YOU played that had a puzzle-centric focus OTHER than Grimrock? Come on name some for me!

Most first person shooters lack explicit progression (other than oooh got a big new gun). Progression is mostly a RPG or Strategy game mechanic.

Every dungeon crawler prior to the console generation of dungeon crawlers had a lot of puzzles. "Puzzle-centric" is an opinion statement, but I remember quite a few puzzles in games like the Might and Magic and Wizardry series that spawned dungeon crawlers back in the 80s. By the time Dungeon Master came around having a dungeon crawler without a lot of puzzles would have been unthinkable.

It's actually interesting to see people who seem to be new to the whole dungeon-crawling thing get into dungeon crawlers and then exclaim when they encounter one with a lot of puzzles in it. It's easy to see why game designers made the decision to reduce or exclude them, especially seeing complaints like this one, but also a little sad.