Diablo III

[Pext]

I like the logic of that random dude; "you made the fastest selling game of all time".

uh yea, it sold so fast because of its legacy. ie not haga's doing.

I'm quite surprised at the level of unprofessionalism in that whole mess. The guy gave his honest feedback and they're acting like children who just got their sand castle knocked over.

well ~ i guess they thought their facebook conversation to be private in some sense.

[Transient]

They're also banning people from the forums for posting anything with a negative slant in that thread.

Surprise!

[Mogul]

rofl, finally finished the game on Inferno. I don't really feel compelled to play anymore. I guess I could sell all my gear on the RMAH...

[xer0s]

Cause it got boring, fast. At least for me it did. I don't think I made it past 50 on my Barbarian. I had high hopes for this, but it just couldn't keep my attention...

[Mogul]

The reason I'm not playing Torchlight 2 is the realization that many of your character customization choices are permanent. No way in hell will I spend, say, 40 hours on my first character, then have to start over from scratch because I changed my mind about what kind of build I wanted to use. That shit is so fucking stupid. Why in the fuck would a developer in 2012 make that kind of design decision?

Edit: Furthermore, allocating stat points is so incremental that it just feels dumb to me for a couple of reasons. Oh, leveled up! Time to put a single fucking point into this or that stat, increasing the effect of the stat by an undetectable amount (gameplay-wise), and oh, better put enough points into this stat so I reach the arbitrary minimum in order to equip these boots! Again, what the flying fuck. To me, I look at Diablo 3's systems and it's lightyears ahead. They actually understand that nobody gives a shit about incremental stat increases -- they want gameplay changes based on your build decisions, and those build changes shouldn't require a god damn re-roll just because you didn't quite know what you were doing when you were leveling/building your first character. Jesus.

I criticize D3, too, though. I agree with many that the auction house system really ruined the game. Especially at this point. You can buy very powerful legendaries for like $5 on the RMAH. If you can buy all of your gear, and not only that, you can buy the BEST gear, that completely neuters the item hunt, which is the entire point of the game. Diablo has its own problems, but to me, its gameplay is so far superior to Torchlight's that I have a hard time imagining investing in TL2.

If I'm completely missing the point about Torchlight, I wish somebody would educate me. I'd really like to be wrong about it. It looks fun.

[Psyche911]

The reason I'm not playing Torchlight 2 is the realization that many of your character customization choices are permanent.

Bump for this very, very useful Rapid Respec mod.

Complete recustomisation - names, pets, aesthetics, skills and stat points and does not flag you as 'cheating'.

From the Torchlight 2 thread.

[Mogul]

I read this last night and decided to give it another shot. On principle, though, having to use this program to hack your character file is kind of fucked. If I can deal with the leveling grind and almost complete lack of community resources, I will report back. (games like this make you really value resources like Elitist Jerks for WoW or Kripparian's YouTube channel for Diablo barbarians... this game's theorycraft "community" is very fragmented and hard-to-find )

[Deathshroud]

I completely avoided Torchlight 2, because I was already burnt out on the hack-n-slash genre from playing D3. Is Torchlight 2 really that different that I should bother playing it?

[Mogul]

Its character progression system is very different from D3's. If you liked D2, you will appreciate Torchlight's progression systems, I think. If you really enjoyed D3, you'll probably really dislike Torchlight's systems. Gameplay-wise, yeah they're pretty similar.

[Deathshroud]

Yea, if the game is similar to something that I was finished playing 12 years ago, I'll pass. At least D3 strays from their past conventions a little bit.

[Mogul]

The implication of saying there's more variety in builds in a game light Torchlight over D3 probably overstates the reality of the situation, even if it is literally true to some extent. Seems to me that the biggest differences are going to be stat point allocation -- a totally boring, barely noticeable (apart from extreme point allocation differentiation) difference. Jay "Fuck that guy" Wilson, lead designer on D3, explains this problem with D2/Torchlight in some video interview he did a few months prior to D3's launch.

Also, any game with a big enough community will produce cookie cutter builds. Even Torchlight has them -- just go to any class' forums on the Runic site, and you'll see. There aren't as many cookie cutter builds, I suspect, because the community is so fragmented and there doesn't seem to be a centralized forum where the most knowledgeable players are able to math out and debate what the best builds are (a la Elitist Jerks for WoW).

[Mogul]

Experimenting is a huge part of the fun. Not when each experiment might cost me 50 hours or whatever.

[xer0s]

But should you be forced to use a mod to have a good time? The game you pay for should be the full package...

[Mogul]

I intend to use the character hacking program you mentioned as I give the game a second chance, Memphis. I hope this information calms you down a little bit.

[xer0s]

I think I'll try Torchlight 2...

[xer0s]

I see your point...

[Deathshroud]

How are the drops in Torchlight 2? Torchlight 1 rarely dropped any good loot, which made character progression pretty difficult in the mid to later levels.

[mrd]

If you keep it up I'm going to personally knit-you a hair-shirt from what you're gonna cause me to lose and make you wear it going down the longest fibreglass slide in existence, whilst on fire

I might have to try this shit out

Did you ever try Hellgate: London? IIRC that was basically an FPS version of Diablo made by (I think) Max Schaefer (D2 dude) and perhaps one other D1/D2 guy. Is Torchlight from the same company? Hellgate pretty much fell flat on its face from what I recall, which is a shame because the notion is pretty cool.

[SoM]

i played some Hellgate London, it was shit, only descent thing were the CGI's

[U4EA]

I'm not playing Torchlight 2 because the combat engine pales next to D3's.

Also, Hellgate London was utter garbage.

[Mogul]

But should you be forced to use a mod to have a good time? The game you pay for should be the full package...

Well that's all well and good, except how do you define 'full package' to design decisions in game mechanics? I've explained how it's a legitimate route to have taken, to encourage re-rolling new characters and experimentation with a slow-burner approach to longevity. Those that do want to roll one character and tweak away on-the-fly and beat it one go, still can. However, that's not and never has been the point of playing pretty much any RPG ever, action or otherwise. It's a bitter pill for the insta-gratification crowd and those that don't want to invest serious time on a single game (which btw, includes me) - but then why even cater to this alone, when it would be detriment to the game's whole underlying foundation - to build a suitable character to progress through the content? They've kept the game in the game, not without merit - yet those that want it gone and have it their way, still can.

Ironically, I've spent something like 200 hours on Diablo 3 so far and would spend more if it had a legitimate endgame. I can barely stand 2 hours of Torchlight 2 lol.

[Don Carlos]

So having never played any of the Diablo games before, I tried the demo on PS3 and I am likely to purchase this when I get paid. Fucking hell it's addictive

[MKJ]

it's apparently 20 times better on console.
(i bought it, havent played it yet.)

[Don Carlos]

Really? I assume because there is such a big difference between the release dates that they fixed all the issues and listened to people bitch about how bad it was and fixed that as well?

[U4EA]

Probably because there's no AH [gold or real money] cheese factor.