*IT* IS COMING. (Diablo 3 beta)

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I'm looking forward to Torchlight 2 a lot but no bro. No.

This would be better illustrated with screenshots, which I leave to you because I'm too lazy.

It's entirely possible D3 could be released in time for Christmas with Activision pushing it out the door. That's not to say it'll actually be ready for release but it could be released nonetheless.

Don't kid yourself. If they thought they had enough content / quality to sell their game for the same price, don't think they wouldn't just to give "a big fuck you to Blizzard." They probably have less than a tenth of the resources Blizz does, and they know it, thus your "aggressive pricing." That's not aggressive pricing, that is what their game is worth. What do you think their sales would look like at say, $40 a pop? It is what it is. Don't get me wrong, I wish the Torchlight guys all the best and think they have a smart approach, but they're not even competing with Diablo 3.

Yeah, sure.

Torchlight was a boner attempt to cash in on the Diablo crop because Hellgate failed.

There, I said it.

No plot = Fail.

Any research to back up your claims?

Everything I've seen and heard suggests that this is not a "budget game", but a serious effort, financed with their money from Torchlight.

A story in 3 acts (2nd act taking place in a desert - sound familiar?), identify scrolls, town portals, armor sets, varying enemies, and minor enhancements to the existing gameplay formula (random wilderness quests, monsters carrying chest keys, pets selling vendor junk).

It even has cinematic cutscenes, again, like Diablo 2 did. And LAN play, like Diablo 2.

It also has day/night cycle and weather effects (rain and snow).

In addition to the D3 beta video, I've looked through TotalHalibut's "WTF is Torchlight 2" videos, and listened to the game's director -Max Schaefer, founder of Blizzard North, also lead designer of Diablo 2.

This particular snippet of interest took place (slightly paraphrased):

TotalHalibut: "So, this is like your own Diablo 2?"
Max Schaefer: "I guess, and that's a bit awkward, because Diablo 2 was also my Diablo 2"

Everything I heard Schaefer talk about, sounded like he was making improvements on the Diablo 2 formula, not creating some subpar clone of it.

On Torchlight 2 random layout generation

And yet, when they decide to drop the price, cynics all around the Internet start to assume that the game's actual value is low.

If there's one shortcoming I foresee, is that it will only have the equivalent of "open battle.net" (no closed battle.net). But that is easily remedied by playing with people you actually know.

I dunno, I'd like to think you're right but the same ex-Blizzard North folks had a chance to do that with Torchlight 1 and they didn't deliver. It was a fun game but I got far more replay out of Diablo I vs. Torchlight, let alone Diablo II vs. Torchlight.

I realize they had a small budget, but I remember thinking the basic design decisions just didn't feel right, like the way they implemented gem transmutatation. A good idea on paper, but implemented in an awkward and imbalanced way.

The RPG elements were so RNG based that it didn't feel like a story the way Diablo did. Diablo has memorable characters and lore, there was nothing like that in Torchlight. Who knows, maybe it was a budget issue and they have fixed it by hiring good writers, artists and voice actors...here's hoping.

Look, I know it's cool to bash Blizzard but Torchlight 1 was trash. It copied the basics of the Diablo 2 formula, made some tertiary improvements/changes, and failed to actually deliver even a fraction of the heart and soul. I was far too sick of Torchlight to even come close to finishing one playthrough. Meanwhile, I've played through D1/D2 a million times.

There's zero reason to believe Torchlight 2 will be any different. When it comes out, maybe I'll have to eat my words... I doubt it, though.

I doubt D3 will be as good as the first two but the beta videos do look promising.

Torchlight was a "please finance us" project. It appealed to noobs who did not burn out on the formula just yet, and were capable of stomaching a Diablo-like game in single-player (I never could).

I bought it for 20 bucks, played it for 3 minutes, uninstalled.

However, plenty noobs got enjoyment out of it, so it turned out to be a profitable (and smart) move by a studio that was trying to establish its footing.

But that is not the point. The point is that Torchlight 2 isn't made from scratch. They had the basic gameplay and renderer already, and that offloads an ASTRONOMICAL amount of work from the sequel.

Plus, they had the money earned by the previous game.

IMO, the $20 price tag on the sequel is a sort of an apology to people like me, who put their faith in Runic by basically paying $20 for wishful thinking with the first game.

I think/hope they're about to deliver.

I'm all for collecting kounter kulture kredits but no bro. No.

I'm not going to argue Torchlight 2 is going to be as polished or contain as much content as D3 but, at the very least, Runic charges what they're game is actually worth rather than charging $50 for ten hours of content like a lot of AAA developers.

Look, you have some kind of weird narrative here where Runic Games is like the original keepers of the holy Diablo gameplay or something, sticking it to Blizzard and fighting for a true interpretation. Sorry, I'm just not buying it.

If you require research before you'll accept Blizzard is a much, much bigger company than Runic Games you're beyond help. It is not unreasonable to surmise that if Runic Games had Blizzard's resources they would not have split Torchlight into multiple stages. And they could have justly charged more for their product. In this scenario, it might be a bit like the Modern Warfare vs Battlefield thing going on at the moment. Feel free to go read Torchlight reviews if you don't believe the low price tag helped generate positive buzz in the face of the low amount of content and production value. Further, Torchlight was positioned as a taste of Diablo style gameplay, an accessory or appetizer rather than a true competitor.

Torchlight 2 seems set to capitalize on what the first one did, and that's great. And probably irrelevant to Diablo 3.

Woo wee. Let's see here.

Somehow, Blizzard being a much larger company means that Runic is unable to produce a quality competing product? Okay, this may be true if they were both making Gears of War 4. But they're both making Diablo clones using low-res textures, low-res models, and mostly forgo the need for level designers because 95% of the game is randomly generated.

Let me put it this way... there's a certain quality ceiling that you hit, before Diablo stops being Diablo and starts becoming something else.

Also, I base my assumptions on actual information I gathered about Torchlight 2, while you base yours on... Torchlight 1, Runic's goals for Torchlight 1, and their marketing for Torchlight 1.

Finally, a game that looks and plays a whole lot like Diablo 2, is somehow "irrelevant" to Diablo 3?

Y'know, I'm not psychic, and I didn't get to play the game. Yet while I can merely speculate about quality of Torchlight 2, you don't even make an attempt to find out anything about it. You sound positively religious.

Christmas 2012. No way it's coming out in 2011.

Yes, bro. Yes. Torchlight 1 had boring, repetitive, corridor levels with boring, feature-less enemies. Character creation was boring, character abilities were boring, loot was boring. It was so incredibly easy, even on the highest difficulty, that it was pointless to even pay attention. You could play through up to the first boss fight and quit forever and you wouldn't miss anything in the game. On top of all the tedium, you couldn't even play with a friend and suffer together. It was like someone with no design talent whatsoever spent a lot of time copying Diablo on a smaller budget.

So, yeah, Torchlight 1 was shit.

But you could fish and feed your pet the stuff. Also, seriously, gRPG?

This quote shows how biased you are.

Plus, TL2 doesn't even have interesting environs and models. It looks bland, regardless of fidelity.

Your location and avatar show how biased you are.

Torchlight was fun for $5. I look forward to Diablo 3 and will be surprised if it is actually shit. Don't know why people are bitching about the graphics. Technically it looks good, art-wise it looks good. I don't see the need to go balls deep in polygons or whatever just because games like Crysis exist now.

I couldn't get into Torchlight. The skills all felt like nothing special, so did the items. Finally, the cartoony graphics killed it. That and ridiculously oversized weapons. From what I've seen, T2 will not change by much. I'll still pick it up sometime thoough, especially if it comes out first.

And Diablo 3... cautiously optimistic. The fanboy in me is strong, but not enough to forego the mandatory demo from tpb first. Will see if the WoW-ification and character system changes break it.

I've seen some beta videos spring up on jewtube & all. Will have to check it out once I get me some free time again.

Main downsides of Torchlight were

- too easy

- skills really lacked that special something ( most of them were pretty generic, the description was misleading, how much damage they did was also unclear) and half of them were shared by all classes which is just lazy design

- loot was bad <- this is the thing that kills most hack'n'slash games for me. When they make shitty loot that doesn't really affect your char other than raising 1 number. It is really a thing that D2 and Median xl got right. You could have a multitude of wacky builds just because some items had special properties that could be used for some good effect. What I especially hate is a scaling loot/scaling affixes on items based on char lvl. D2 with 3 tiers of items and hard coded uniques (well, almost, they had some range on damage and some %) is still the way to go. TQ had similar approach to uniques but they were bland and mostly nothing special. Especially some runewords in D2 were great. Enigma, Insight anybody?

- me love some pet classes. Torchlight pet AI designer should be shot, along with his family. The way they stuck on every fucking piece of invisible debris was just mind blowing. Again, D2 skelliemancer was great due to AI not being THAT dumb and teleporting your minions to you if they wandered too far from you/got stuck

- gfx are a matter of taste, didn't particularly like it, didn't hate it

- the plot in D2 wasn't anything to write home about but I still can't remember the fuck was happening in Torchlight. Also lawl at the random quest given every odd dungeon floor. Also no unique rewards tbh. Everytime you would get some shitty weapon which could not compare to your pimped out gemmed enchanted one.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending D3. Will buy it probably but I'm kinda anxious to see how they got this new skill system to work and how will it perform for me.

If T2 could improve on the things I said above I would buy it, seems like a basis for a solid game but with too many flaws.

My location? Riiight. Maybe so, I was actually hoping that TL1 would have been at least half as fun as D2, but not even close. I had, until then, no reason to be biased against RG yet the whole game screamed of discombobulated staleness and, from what I've seen, TL2 has a very similar feel to it, even though the environs are no longer restricted to the very linear underground-level formula. Characters and skills are not really impressive and being a Diablo fan has nothing to do with it.

What's interesting is that all Diablo-related threads degenerate into trolls coming in saying how TL is a superior investment, as if trying to convert consumers. It's fucking retarded. Enjoy your game, I sure as hell haven't tried, nor will I try, to convert any TL fans into playing Diablo 3. Both games aren't even on the same scale, just looking at the budget and scope.

What exactly does D3 even have left for character customization? AFAIK, it's down to runestones (You add one of 5 quirks to each of your abilities) and deciding what to spend your money/crafting materials on. Since the crafted items are going to suck balls (Otherwise you'd never be excited to get loot drops) this basically amounts to deciding whether your barbarian wants to add a mage oriented stat bonus to his gear, or a barbarian oriented stat bonus. Wow. Riveting choices there.

The only other thing that could possibly make this worth playing without interesting stat crunching mechanics is really good, challenging combat with a high skill ceiling. Not going to happen in a game like this. It'll be simplistic shit where you trade hits with enemies because they're going to drop healing anyways and can't possibly kill you before you kill them.