Torchlight 2: A Rocky Story

[Zavon]

Ok, I'll be honest, I was worried about Torchlight 2 when it didn't release before Diablo 3 (in December). I know at least a few of you were as well (e.g. I remember having a conversation with Aeinna maybe?). Then when Diablo 3 came out, I was thinking: Damn, this game won't do very well now. D3 is going to hog up the market.

However, it still hasn't come out, and it looks like Diablo 3 is a mess. People were quitting left and right, and demanding refunds. I'd have never guessed that blizzard would shoot themselves in the foot as bad as they did. Now, when it does release, it looks like it can't possibly do it at a better time.

There are loads of people already sick of Diablo 3. For all the reasons people are hating Diablo 3, Torchlight 2 shines like a Torch in the night (ba dum pish).

I can't wait for it to come out.

Thoughts?

[Zoobi]

I'm anticipating it, but I was before Diablo 3 even came out. I was wanting Diablo 3 more, but I knew I would play Torchlight 2 regardless. Still waiting on that release date.

[Ziel]

Grim Dawn.

[VKhaun]

He had me until he said Titan Quest. TQ was the shittiest ARPG I've ever heard of. Boring enemies, boring skills, no strategy. Very pretty. It's like watching TV and having to keep hitting buttons to watch the same channel. I laughed out loud when he tried to say 'frenzied satisfying combat'. TQ was not only bad, it was slow.

This genre is one giant failure of game design. The studios capable of making a decent game think ARPG means just an RPG where you click things, and the studios that make terrible games make the good ideas look like terrible ideas by association.

[Sillywilly]

Yeah the thing is every once in awhile I catch myself wishing D3 had been at least OK so I would have something to mix up my gaming routine with. I have FPSs that I'm mostly burned out on and I have TOR and LotRO if I want to MMORPG, so it'd be nice to have had D3 for when I had that hack n slash feeling. So in the end I'm going to want that type of game at some point, and D3 won't be it like D2 was. I enjoyed the original Torchlight (got it off xbox live arcade) and with Torchlight 2 my wife and I can play it together and thus I'll probably end up snagging two copies of TL2 instead.

[VKhaun]

Yeah the thing is every once in awhile I catch myself wishing D3 had been at least OK so I would have something to mix up my gaming routine with. I have FPSs that I'm mostly burned out on and I have TOR and LotRO if I want to MMORPG, so it'd be nice to have had D3 for when I had that hack n slash feeling. So in the end I'm going to want that type of game at some point, and D3 won't be it like D2 was. I enjoyed the original Torchlight (got it off xbox live arcade) and with Torchlight 2 my wife and I can play it together and thus I'll probably end up snagging two copies of TL2 instead.

D3 is such a complete failure it makes me want to vomit, but it can serve as the hack and slash game for me because I am a huge fan of the genre. I get the problems and can work around them. Like HG:L before it, I just wish people would just stop hating it so blindly that they ignore the good things they did.

Do you realize how completely revolutionary something like the 'arcane sentry' affix is? Or enemies that don't path straight at you? Or a final boss that changes it's attacks based on what range you're fighting it? I can't get excited over Torchlight 2 or (Grim Dawn now), because Torchlight 1 (and TQ) showed me very clearly that the team has no respect for the action part, and think it's fine to just make more loot pinatas.

[Ero Elohim]

D3 is such a complete failure it makes me want to vomit, but it can serve as the hack and slash game for me because I am a huge fan of the genre. I get the problems and can work around them. Like HG:L before it, I just wish people would just stop hating it so blindly that they ignore the good things they did.

Do you realize how completely revolutionary something like the 'arcane sentry' affix is? Or enemies that don't path straight at you? Or a final boss that changes it's attacks based on what range you're fighting it? I can't get excited over Torchlight 2 or (Grim Dawn now), because Torchlight 1 (and TQ) showed me very clearly that the team has no respect for the action part, and think it's fine to just make more loot pinatas.

Yeah. The ARPG genre is going to go the way of the JRPG - so adherent to its own traditions that it'll suffocate itself.

Diablo III is a decent successor to Diablo II. It has a better skill system, more interesting enemies, and a level of difficulty that Diablo II never attained. Most of the affixes for monster packs actually require you to move around, kite, or somehow separate the pack. It fails a bit on the creativity side (i.e., no curse spells, too many defensive skills, imbalance in the class' unique resources), but is otherwise a pretty great game. It boggles my mind when people claim it's a shitty game because they "only got 100+ hours out of it."

Fact is, the ARPG genre is going to die because there's not much else you can do with it without the purists claiming it isn't an ARPG anymore. I would've loved to see Diablo III incorporate more skill and strategy elements, like an MMO or a typical action game (i.e., Devil May Cry, Bayonetta), but the core playerbase would have a fit. They want a gear treadmill they can waste 1000's of hours grinding away at, instead of an engaging game that challenges their skills.

[VKhaun]

I think D3 is a failure for lack of balance. Note my wording. Not 'bad balance' but LACK of balance.

Affixes don't check what kind of monster they're going on. Monsters don't have stat caps to avoid bad affixes like super fast things getting extra fast affix or fast enemies that swarm around you getting fire chains and jailer to the point you no longer have the gameplay the affixes were intended to create. Same with items, there's nothing saying wizard only items don't get useless stats or that skill specific stats can't be paired with things for other classes. The stagger mechanic completely favors monsters in every direction like they just threw stagger in there and forgot about it. Some attacks are projectiles or swings you dodge, others are attacks that once they 'attack' you you're hit and there is no indicator of which is which beyond trial and error. The game is just full to the brim with sloppily designed systems that don't check one another and all Blizzard has to say about it is 'LOL RNG' as if all they had to do was sell a random number generator to people for $59.99.

[Ero Elohim]

I think D3 is a failure for lack of balance. Note my wording. Not 'bad balance' but LACK of balance.

Affixes don't check what kind of monster they're going on. Monsters don't have stat caps to avoid bad affixes like super fast things getting extra fast affix or fast enemies that swarm around you getting fire chains and jailer to the point you no longer have the gameplay the affixes were intended to create. Same with items, there's nothing saying wizard only items don't get useless stats or that skill specific stats can't be paired with things for other classes. The stagger mechanic completely favors monsters in every direction like they just threw stagger in there and forgot about it. Some attacks are projectiles or swings you dodge, others are attacks that once they 'attack' you you're hit and there is no indicator of which is which beyond trial and error. The game is just full to the brim with sloppily designed systems that don't check one another and all Blizzard has to say about it is 'LOL RNG' as if all they had to do was sell a random number generator to people for $59.99.

I'd agree, except that all of this was present in Diablo II and people act like Diablo III is some way not living up to the standards Diablo II set.

It's a poorly designed genre. Unfortunately, the core audience keeps demanding the bad design decisions stick around.

[Sillywilly]

I'd agree, except that all of this was present in Diablo II and people act like Diablo III is some way not living up to the standards Diablo II set.

It's a poorly designed genre. Unfortunately, the core audience keeps demanding the bad design decisions stick around.

I wouldn't say that but sorta agree in a way too.

Think about DAoC and what we tolerated with it. D2 was really sorta the first of it's kind. A lot of people, myself included, haven't really played hack n slash except for the Diablo series. D2 was such a big venture from what we saw in the original Diablo that honestly I don't think most people would notice broken or lacking until they were already hooked.

With D3 it's really not doing anything new, but it's also doing all the old shit bad again. That's 2 MAJOR strikes against it. They should have known venturing away from the skill system would be hit or miss with the majority of it's population. If Blizzard released a WoW2 and it used an Elder Scrolls type skill system you'd have a large portion of the population saying "yippie" and a large portion going "wtf is this shit!?".

Diablo 3 was just done poorly. Granted some of that poorly done material may be reminiscent of D2, but D2 has the excuse of being the first. With D3 old things should have been done better at the very least and new things should have been inspiring. Some familiarity in a series is also to be expected. Halo Reach is another example of a game that screwed up the familiar portions and didn't do anything new to make it worth tolerating.

D3 failed in all of those categories. It added voice overs and dialogue to a genre that quite frankly I enjoy because it didn't have that shit. It made what to me is a boring skill system that IMO was designed simply because it took less effort than fully fleshed out skills trees like were present in D2. The graphics weren't really anything to write home about, etc, etc.

In the end my final verdict for Diablo III was that it didn't do the old stuff better, it didn't do anything new that was interesting, and the battle.net experience was complete shit just like it was the first weeks/months with Diablo 2. So there was just absolutely no reason to not get a refund.

[Ero Elohim]

Diablo was the original. It was kinda shitty when you really look at it (16 floors, 3 classes with no real differences except their sprites and their stat caps), but it was a casual roguelike with the big benefit of being online. Battle.net was awesome compared to everything else at the time.

Diablo II took Diablo and made everything bigger. Five unique classes instead of three similar ones. Skill trees you had to choose from instead of random drop spells. New gear slots. New weapon types. Four acts each about the size of Diablo's entire game world. More bosses. More enemies. Basically, take Diablo and expand on everything. They didn't really change any of the gameplay, though. Just gave you a wealth of options to take through the game.

Blizzard couldn't have done the "expand on everything" route with Diablo III. It would've been absurd. Where do you go from Diablo II? They already had a huge number of equipment types and seven classes. It would've reached overload levels and become too complicated. So, Blizzard decided to try to redesign parts of the genre. Remove the stat allocation and skill trees because, as many people have pointed out, these were false choices. Add in item crafting to give players a bit more control over their gear. Create entirely new classes instead of rehashing the Diablo II ones.

I'd argue the biggest failure Diablo III made is that Blizzard didn't innovate enough. They let the game get caught between being "pay homage to Diablo II" and "expand the ARPG genre." At its core, the gameplay is still stale clickfests. The endgame is nothing more than an endless farm for better stats. But it's all glitzy and full of new 3D engine goodies, a renovated skill system, and new item modifiers, without addressing the problem at the core: It's a 16 year old game.

It's also worth noting that Diablo II was a lot like Warcraft III in that they didn't necessarily become popular because they were incredible games (though they were good). The two games became popular because after a few years, they were really easy to get for free and pirate, hence the large foreign/underage populations in D2 and War3 (mostly DotA).