Preview Torchlight II Beta Preview at Gamebanshee

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Eric Schwarz; Runic Games; Torchlight II

In today's other hack'n'slash news, Gamebanshee's Eric Schwarz has done a three-page preview of Torchlight II based on his hands-on experience with the game's beta. Have a snippet:

As much as I enjoyed the varied classes, I also had to say that the balance on a lot skills and even entire character types needs some work. I started out with an Outlander, a gunslinger character who can cast spells, and found that the low damage output from dual pistols simply didn't compete with two-handed bows, for example, and my basic starter skill, Throw Glaive, was far more useful at first level than some of my other skills and spells even when they had multiple points put into them. Meanwhile, my Engineer's Gun Bot, a summon-able robot with a machine gun attached, was so powerful that it could easily dispatch bosses in seconds without me ever having to take a swing myself. The Embermage, meanwhile, had some fun spells, but they were a bit too expensive to cast without chugging down Mana Potions constantly, and there was no way to boost Mana regeneration that I came across.

Last, while the basic combat was a ton of fun and well balanced on Veteran difficulty, the boss fights I played were a pain despite being well designed, due to excessive HP bloat. I am not exaggerating when I say that the first major boss took me about ten minutes of kiting and potion-quaffing, as well as multiple deaths and resurrections to beat, despite me being at the recommended level and having reasonably good equipment. That same boss, however, was a complete joke when played in multiplayer with other people, or when played on the Normal difficulty setting. In fact, Normal as a whole was a complete cakewalk, and at one point I had over 100 unused Health Potions sitting in my toolbelt - while it's recommended for new players, the game was positively boring on that setting and posed no challenge. A lot of tweaking needs to be done to ensure that all difficulty settings are both fun and challenging for different players, and in both solo and multiplayer contexts.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, despite those balance problems, I had a blast with the time I spent playing the Torchlight II beta. Runic have shown they're hard at work tweaking the game and collecting bug reports, so I expect things to improve that way once the game hits store shelves and digital distribution platforms in (hopefully) a few months. The improvements to the game world, character system and combat as a whole are very substantial, and despite being a budget-priced title, Torchlight II is set to pack a serious amount of gameplay, as well as a great deal more variety and more features than the original game ever did.​

Torchlight II, Diablo III, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn. I guess you hack'n'slash fans must be happy.

 

[Metro]

Call me draconian but the balance issues (among a host of other things) makes me wonder what Runic has been doing after all of these delays. I would be shocked if this were ready to go after only another two weeks of beta and a month of 'polishing' (they claimed to be in the polishing stages since last December). I've not seen the developers officially comment on this but it seems like bosses don't scale up or down depending on the number of the people in the game -- huh? That just seems like a gross oversight. I could be wrong but the only thing I've seen mentioned on it was a glib comment on how they want to make them challenging for multi-player but balanced for single player. Additionally the bosses (at least the ones in the beta which is limited to Act I) are fairly bland and uncreative. I'd expect more in the way of interesting mechanics, use of environmental props, 'phases,' etc. But most are just straight up run around and beat on it until it's dead. From that standpoint there's pretty much zero improvement from the bosses in TL1 and, as Sea mentions, on Veteran and Elite the amount of hp bloat just make them tedious in single player.

Trash mob wise it's only a real challenge on Elite (at least with the engineer class). On Elite you simply can't rush in and roll face (you can pretty much do this even on Veteran), rather, you have to pick and choose when to duck in and out and use your abilities to snare, stun, nuke, etc. But, again the problem with single player elite is that when you get to bosses... you're looking at a thirty minute fight. And an uninteresting one at that. Health potions are almost non-existent as drops on Elite so you have to buy a couple of dozen before you leave town.

Unfortunately, Torchlight II stumbles in actually explaining its world and characters. Supposedly Runic Games hired on a professional writer for the game, but truth be told it's impossible to tell. Who is General Grell, and why is he attacking me? Who, exactly, are the Zeraphi people, and why are they clad in golden armor? Why is my character taking orders from the Grand Regent? What are these "Guardians" that are being corrupted? Many of these characters and things are brought up, but given almost zero explanation - the game presents universe and story, but never bothers to make players feel remotely invested in it, because it never goes beyond the MMO-style quest dialogue boxes.

Agreed with this 100% -- the guy they hired, JD Wilker, had an account on the TL2 forums and would dip in and out and trump up his role and blah-di-blah but, again, there is no noticeable improvement in either the main plot line or the side quests (that encompass about two sentences of description). What they paid this man for I have no idea. Maybe they got him to sort of create a mini 'bible' of the Torchlight Universe but I don't see why Max or some of the other devs couldn't have done that.

Overall I would call this Torchlight 1.5. They added multi-player (which people argue should have been in the first game). They added somewhat distinctive classes with somewhat improved talent trees (which people argue should have been in the first game and, some of the talents are, in fact, straight out of the first game, anyway). They added an overworld which wasn't that difficult as it's just a matter of making larger tile chunks and connecting them with the teleporter/instance lines (you have to cross a boundary every so often the world is not seamless). There isn't much in the way of gold sinks or interesting vendor npcs (in fact they took out the gambler and, at least for now, haven't implemented crafting/transmutation). All of that isn't to say the game is bad, it isn't. However, it just isn't a major step forward. It basically just puts some Spackle and paint over the noticeable holes that existed in the predecessor. Perhaps I was unreasonable in my expectations for this and some of the stuff I wanted to see implemented will have to wait for their planned MMO but I'm just not seeing why this took as long as it did. Still, worth $20. Better at $15 in a four pack. Great deal at $5 during the inevitable Steam sale.

 

[good little toastboy]

So it's a mess just like the first one? I only played the ranged class and there were basically only passives and one active skill - some kind of explosive shot - that were worthwhile. Please do correct me if I'm wrong as I've only played until some kind of fiery place before I got bored of it. Diablo III Beta was more interesting than Torchlight.

In before:

So it's the same mess as the first one? I only played the ranged class and there were basically only passives and one active skill - some kind of explosive shot - that were worthwhile. Please do correct me if I'm wrong as I've only played until some kind of fiery place before I got bored of it. Diablo III Beta was more interesting than Torchlight.

Cool story, bro.

 

[Metro]

It's not the 'same mess.' As I said it basically just fixes the obvious flaws in the first game (which was almost a beta unto itself). The classes and talents are a bit more dynamic this time and -- except for the mage -- can all be a bit distinct depending on which tree you invest in. The mage doesn't even have a summoner tree but I guess that's because of technical limitations in multiplayer where they didn't want dozens of minions running around. In fact, the mage is basically a WoW mage: fire, ice, and 'arcane.'

 

[Gregz]

Call me draconian but the balance issues (among a host of other things) makes me wonder what Runic has been doing after all of these delays. I would be shocked if this were ready to go after only another two weeks of beta and a month of 'polishing' (they claimed to be in the polishing stages since last December). I've not seen the developers officially comment on this but it seems like bosses don't scale up or down depending on the number of the people in the game -- huh? That just seems like a gross oversight.

 

[Metro]

From the Beta Forums:

So, some insights on story (and the development of the story) in Torchlight II.

The story has evolved quite a bit, for various reasons, since I first began working on it. Some of that has to do with input from other developers; some of that has to do with gameplay requirements (the "ludonarrative"); some of it has to do with issues of font style and size, and how much text we can fit into a dialogue box without forcing the players to scroll through it. (We started at a character limit of 900; we're down to about 500 now, including spaces.) And, of course, there's the big roadblock of writing for games: The fact that so many players just don't bother reading the text, anyway.

There are some valid points in these posts that I'm going to try to address in time for the actual release, but keep in mind that suggestions that alter the voiceovers probably cannot be implemented without another (possibly multiple) recording sessions--so some of the most important bits that explain the story are effectively "baked in." We can add dialogue to incidental NPCs (like the Estherians hanging around the waypoint in the Estherian Enclave, for example), but we can't actually force the players to read those, so that's more like a Band-Aid than an actual solution. That's actually why the quest introductions and quest completions are so brief, but the "return" dialogues are so long; the players most interested in figuring out the story are the ones who are most likely to click again for more information.

And, as Max has previously pointed out, the game is an ARPG, with the focus on "action": A more intricate and nuanced story would most likely get lost amid all the monster-killing and loot-collecting--and, in fact, that was one of the design issues we had with earlier, pre-Beta builds. Too many side quests early on kept players from being able to follow the main (and therefore more important) quest.

If you were to play through the game and only play the main quest, you would see a pretty straightforward story: Bad Guy spreads destruction, attacks the MacGuffin Guardians, and then buggers off to Act Two. By the time the player reaches the end of Act Two, however, it should be clearer what the Bad Guy is up to, and what the stakes are, and why the Grand Regent's transformation from "Quest NPC" to "Act Boss" is important. (And you will see more of him, later.) But I realize that a lot of that has to be extrapolated, because the main quest for Act One actually lines up as: Go to town; go kill Grell; follow Regent; get keys; kill Regent; return to town.

And that doesn't convey a lot of backstory or lore, which is why I'm dropping in elements like the Alchemist's notes in the ice caves, and the evolving passive dialogues of the non-quest NPCs. (But keep in mind that they are "the little people," and are more concerned with what's happening to them than what's at stake for the world; they will never have the full story.)

All that being said: I'm planning on doing another pass through the return dialogues and passive dialogues to fill in more information about why the Guardians are so important to the Estherians (and the humans), why the Grand Regent is someone you should care about, why there are so many dead people around the Estherian Steppes, and so on. Your feedback has been heard, and I'll do what I can to address your concerns.

Thanks for your comments, and for your patience.

JD Wiker
Lead Writer
Runic Games

Translation: I'm overpaid.

Edit: Ruh roh!

Edit edit: RUH ROH!

 

[sea]

(snip)

All valid points. I think the thing that I like about the game is that the combat is a lot more dynamic and interesting (no generic enemies, you have to actually pay attention to their modifiers etc., secondary effects like stun and knockback matter now), and the pacing provided by the exploration is a lot better. You're always stumbling across new stuff to find. I agree at this point that the game is really badly balanced and needs a lot of work in that department, and it's hard to believe that the game is still in this state after so long... but then, that's what public playtesting is for. Maybe they needed more real players hands-on earlier in the dev cycle to work out the kinks. Even with those problems, though, I found myself having more fun than with any of the other hack-and-slash games out right now.

Also, it should be noted - a dedicated writer can be responsible for a lot in a game this size, and designers have other things to work on. There is a lot of text (journal entries, skill descriptions, item descriptions, quest descriptions, dialogue, etc.) and it takes time to write and refine. It's hard to say where the blame should rest, on the writer or Runic's own management and priorities. Examples like the change from 900 to 500 characters is drastic enough to, say, require re-writring huge portions of the game's text, which suggests bad planning and a lack of focus more than anything else. Same goes for recording dialogue before the story and universe even make sense. However, other issues such as the story not making a lot of sense even on the critical path, while requiring the player to talk to incidental background NPCs just to fill in necessary details - that's just bad writing period.

 

[Metro]

Yeah, I replied to the guys post on the beta forums and pointed out stuff like this which was written a full year ago. Why can't we see some of that injected into the game? Like you said, I had absolutely no idea who those bear people were or who Grell was... it's never explained... they just sort of exist. You could easily flesh things out a bit by having some mini quest where you find 'Orders from General Grell' in one of those overland villages (hell just use the one where you get those blacksmith plants) and take them back to the enclave for some xp and an exposition dump.

 

[good little toastboy]

Yeah, I noticed and corrected it in the actual post though not in the not funny gag part. Sorry about that. Also didn't see you comment before posting nor read more than the snippet which oddly matched my experience with the first one. Maybe I should lurk more and post less hastily.

 

[Metro]

No worries, that was probably the only time I've said something valid!

 

[sea]

Wait, so General Grell, one of the top bosses in the first act, has nothing to do with the story at all and is just some filler mook? I thought he was working for the Alchemist guy. If he's just a random dude, then why didn't they just put a "kill General Grell" quest in there to explain that the Estherians can't get anything done with him harassing him? And wait, he just happened to be at the Guardian's place right then for no reason? Or was he trying to corrupt the Guardian? So was he working for the Alchemist all along and they just never mentioned it? But... but then maybe he was forced to help the Alchemist, and fights nobly to the death even though he knows he'll probably lose, making it a tragic victory, except he never says anything? Arhggh now there's blood coming out of my ears.

 

[Metro]

He might be... I dunno. Wiker's been working for Runic for nearly two years and if he's limited to 500-900ish character sized lore chunks I can't see why stuff like this isn't more developed. He's their full time 'lead writer' not just contracted out. I mean, I'm pretty sure I could write a few convincing side quests to introduce these characters without a decade of experience in the RPG and MMO industry.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Hey sea, after playing Path of Exile, Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2, what would be the major differences between these games ?

EDIT: Nevermind, I have seen quite some comparisons of yours in the RPG Discussion thread.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Torchlight II, Diablo III, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn. I guess you hack'n'slash fans must be happy.

I know I'm happy. I already pre-ordered it. Now if only they'd make a Sacred 3, then I'd be very happy for all my actiony HnS needs/wants/demands.

I do hope the end game of Torchlight 2 is better than Torchlight. I was a little disappointed in the final fight. It was really, really easy but very, very long which made it rather boring.

 

[Menckenstein]

I got really bored, really fast with Torchlight but I'll be willing to give this one a shot if it's a solid improvement over the original.

 

[Metro]

I do hope the end game of Torchlight 2 is better than Torchlight. I was a little disappointed in the final fight. It was really, really easy but very, very long which made it rather boring.

Unfortunately that's what all bosses are like on the harder (the ones you have to play if you actually want a challenge) difficulties. As Sea has mentioned the amount of hp bloat is moronic. The developers didn't learn anything from that mistake in TL1.

 

[cutterjohn]

Gonna suck LARGE hairy donkey balls IMNHO. They've missed MANY delivery dates(last holidays, couple of months ago) which is even MORE surprising give that they HAD a "beta" test in May


Sadly all I got when enquiring on their forums was a bunch of ABSOLUTE WHINING from the "developer" about how he had, unsurprsingly, no life outside of finishing T2 unfortunately his idea of beta and mine are aeons apart, and now he's paying for it, whinging on their forums, etc(oh hay I got banned for asking logical reasonable questions... e.g. progress, delivery dates, little things like that...) so anyways my reccomendation ATm is to say FUCK them and move on. Go pre-order grimm dawn IF you really need an ARPG fix.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Sounds reasonable. Best to rush your game like Blizzard did with D3, even if it means skipping over something so basic as an actual PvP mode. Why would you want your game to be polished from release? That's what DLCs are for!

 

[Metro]

At this point TL2 is anything but 'rushed.' And, yeah, posting on their official forums is useless -- you'll get mobbed by the half dozen or so regulars (complete with faggy signatures) who circle jerk all around Runic when anyone dares question their four hour work days.

 

[Jaesun]

At this point TL2 is anything but 'rushed.' And, yeah, posting on their official forums is useless -- you'll get mobbed by the half dozen or so regulars (complete with faggy signatures) who circle jerk all around Runic when anyone dares question their four hour work days.

That is honestly a pretty stupid and ignorant statement from you.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Yeah, everyone knows they only have two hour work days.

 

[Metro]

At this point TL2 is anything but 'rushed.' And, yeah, posting on their official forums is useless -- you'll get mobbed by the half dozen or so regulars (complete with faggy signatures) who circle jerk all around Runic when anyone dares question their four hour work days.

That is honestly a pretty stupid and ignorant statement from you.

Is there some reason you a fixation with Runic where you immediately jump to their defense? Yes, I question how hard they're working over there when it has taken them this long to put the game out. If Max, Travis, and the gang have the same kind of work output as the 'writer' they hired does then I would amazed if they average over four or five actual hours of work a day.

 

[shihonage]

This reminds me, I still got a card from one of the Flagship Studios guys. It's p. cool. Don't think his email is working anymore, though.

 

[SerratedBiz]

But the thing is, what kind of authority are you supposed to be? Are we to believe you know something about game development in general, or specifically about TL2's development, that you're in a better position to judge Runic's work process than they are?

I mean, you should have said earlier that you'd be *amazed*. We can probably manage a Wikipedia reference out of that one.

 

[Gregz]

Well, based on that review and Metro's comments I'm probably going to wait on T2.

I know next to nothing about Grim Dawn, but Path of Exile has been fantastic over the two months I've played it. I truly believe it has the potential to surpass D2 (except perhaps in story, cinematics and voice acting but those elements aren't very important in a H/S). They've even got Brother Laz, developer of Median XL (AKA the best D2 mod ever made) working with them.

Right now they're hammering out PvP mechanics and finalizing a 3rd act. The expected release date is roughly 4-6 weeks from now. You can play right now for $9 but the open beta will wipe all characters/alts/mules so be forewarned about that.