Game News Runic Games still hammering away on Torchlight II

[Zed]

Tags: Runic Games; Torchlight II; Travis Baldree

Travis Baldree from Runic Games explains what's been happening lately in the development of Torchlight II in a blog post called "not a blog redux". There's a lot about recent game changes and game polishing. For instance:

Erich has been steadily making uniques cooler, and making more special drops for bosses. Those skill-on-item changes I mentioned earlier were done for that reason. You can find uniques that shatter shields, perform skills on strike (or swing), or at other triggering events. This allows for much more interesting uniques that are well and truly unique - instead of just more powerful in terms of a given arrangement of passive properties.​

It looks like Blizzard could take a lesson or two from these guys. Click here to read the entire thing.

 

[SerratedBiz]

We made skills queueable, added Function key binding for skills, added inventory sorting

we want to add a checkbox to new game creation in the lobby so you can force a 'reroll', which will reseed your entire game and repopulate it.

It's like they've played the game or heard from someone who has.

 

[LeStryfe79]

As much as I prefer noncartoony graphics, I like TL2 art over D3. At least it's consistent and knows what it wants and is faithful to a singular vision. D3 gets worse the longer you play and is unfaithful to its milieu. At this point I'm not convinced D3 is better than TL2 in any capacity and Blizzard had 10 times the budget at the very least. It's almost ludicris to think this shit actually went down the way it did. HAHAHA

 

[Metro]

It looks like Blizzard could take a lesson or two from these guys.

Maybe in design but certainly not in terms of efficiency or production goals. They've been 'polishing' Torchlight 2 since last December. They employ a full time writer who put out little more than two or three dozen two-sentence generic quest descriptives. I'd say there is little chance of them hitting their 'Summer 2012' goal especially when they'll be at PAX displaying the game (which occurs the first or second week of September). I suppose September 20th is still 'Summer 2012' but come on...

 

[Stabwound]

I don't like Torchlight and I'm not super excited about TL2, but it's funny how they and the Path of Exile guys are clearly steering away from the direction D3 went and make pretty transparent comparisons to that game.

 

[godsend1989]

I`m tankful

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

I'd be surrprised if they read about some of the troubles and limitations D3 had and still tried to imitate it. Why copy stuff that just pissed off the customer base?

 

[mbpopolano24]

.... Does the World really need another Diablo clone?

 

[sea]

Interesting. As much time as it takes to implement stuff though, Runic are not very efficient and I'm not really sure what takes so long. Yes, game development is a lengthy process, even for basic stuff - but they have tools they are already familiar with and have had most of the basics of gameplay, art, etc. done over a year ago. 20 minutes to add a new enemy ability is very fast, even a day is quick... so why did they wait so long to add those? What were they doing? It's not like they're making some super-long game with tons of depth, dialogue, cinematics, etc. Maybe they have a very, very small team, but I was under the impression they had at least 30-40 people working for them.

The worst is that if you try to ask them about it, I'm sure all you'll get is "we're professional developers, your expectations are unrealistic." I guess those 4 hour work days catch up with you?

 

[Grunker]

Still more excited for Path of Exile, but will give this a spin too.

 

[Metro]

... but I was under the impression they had at least 30-40 people working for them.

They do.

 

[Jaesun]

And unlike Blizzard, as soon as you purchase your game, you can play it.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Basically, last fall Runic had a pretty good hack n Slash for the $20 price tag. The goal was to release it fast and cheap.Then at some point they realized that Diablo 3 was going to stink, and decided to spend an extra 6 months adding quality and quantity to Torchlight 2. Their goals changed because Diablo 3 was bad enough that Runic realized they could challenge it head on. Of course they won't admit this, but it was quite obvious if you followed developments in their forums. All this talk of "polish" is just PR bullshit.

 

[Tycn]

It looks like Blizzard could take a lesson or two from these guys.

Maybe in design but certainly not in terms of efficiency or production goals. They've been 'polishing' Torchlight 2 since last December. They employ a full time writer who put out little more than two or three dozen two-sentence generic quest descriptives. I'd say there is little chance of them hitting their 'Summer 2012' goal especially when they'll be at PAX displaying the game (which occurs the first or second week of September). I suppose September 20th is still 'Summer 2012' but come on...

Decade per sequel, efficiency? The Diablo 3 videos from years ago also look strikingly similar to the state it is in now.

 

[Metro]

...as soon as you purchase your game, you can play it.

Except when you preorder and they keep pushing back the release date target.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Metro]

 

[Castanova]

This just looks to me like they had a mediocre game on their hands and D3's failings showed them what they were doing wrong, themselves. Now the game will be less mediocre when it is released in like late 2013. It's not comforting that the team who is supposedly the ones with the heart of D2 in mind seem to have made the same mistakes D3 did (except for the DRM obv).

 

[Ulminati]

Path of Exile looks better and better with every Torchlight update

 

[LeStryfe79]

http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=30536&p=271074#p271074

 

[Metro]

 

[LeStryfe79]

 

[Metro]

In all seriousness, though, if I were in the gaming industry then Runic would be the perfect place to work with its four hour workdays.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Yeah the Kool Aid post deserved a solid , but here is an image I can't resist posting:

 

[Metro]

Like I said elsewhere, it's good to see someone at Runic took thirty minutes out of their four hour work day to make that graphic. Trust me, I was hyped for this game... about a year ago. Now they just need to fucking release the thing. For a rosier picture you can always hang out on the Runic forums where they have that half dozen or so cadre of circle jerkers who praise every post.