Titan Quest II - Greek mythology action-RPG sequel by SpellForce 3 devs

[JarlFrank]

I liked Diablo and its clones in my teens because exploring different biomes and finding new gear is fun, but you can have that with better gameplay in other RPG subgenres. The core gameplay just isn't that interesting, and the worst problem of Diablo clones is that most of them copy Diablo 2's structure almost verbatim.

 

[Anomander]

There was a video about that. Diablo 2 wasn't a game for autists, but devs misunderstand that and now almost all of them concentrate on wrong things.

Ok I found it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I22Ivb8ELzQ

 

[abija]

Not devs, players. And devs go after the money.

 

[kalemonvo]

re: autism
I don't know what caused this, but there has been a shift in what players want from these types of games. The focus is now on "the endgame" and how long that lasts, and the campaign is now just the slow part you have to slog through to reach the fun stuff. I always thought it was a boring way to play a game but it looks like I'm in the minority.
I'm hoping the game doesn't follow suit with the trends and instead can have a nice singleplayer campaign. Don't really even care about the story, I just don't want the developer's focus to be on what can be done after the campaign, but instead on making the campaign as good as possible.

I'm optimistic about the game so far.

 

[mediocrepoet]

re: autism
I don't know what caused this, but there has been a shift in what players want from these types of games. The focus is now on "the endgame" and how long that lasts, and the campaign is now just the slow part you have to slog through to reach the fun stuff. I always thought it was a boring way to play a game but it looks like I'm in the minority.
I'm hoping the game doesn't follow suit with the trends and instead can have a nice singleplayer campaign. Don't really even care about the story, I just don't want the developer's focus to be on what can be done after the campaign, but instead on making the campaign as good as possible.

I'm optimistic about the game so far.

MMO mentality bleeding into everything else since there was a push for MMO style products by offering so much stuff as a "live service" even though all that does is make single player games shitty and multiplayer games expensive and probably shitty.

 

[abija]

It's not that simple. Part of the problem is that you didn't get actual builds by the end of the campaign so people wanted something to do when the chars were finished.

 

[Ryzer]

That's why I always preferred Titan Quest over other Diablo 2 clones, because it offered so many interesting and iconic maps reminescent of legends: Athens, Knossos the minotaur and Talos, Parnassus mountain, Memphis, Giza, Valley of the kings, Great wall of China, ice mountains of Himalaya, Chang' an, Olympus, the Styx, plains of hell, Hades castle.

Not even Diablo 2 has as many iconic maps as Titan Quest, in fact Diablo 2 maps are pretty bad in comparison, which clearly favors Titan Quest.

 

[mediocrepoet]

That's why I always preferred Titan Quest over other Diablo 2 clones, because it offered so many interesting and iconic maps reminescent of legends: Athens, Knossos the minotaur and Talos, Parnassus mountain, Memphis, Giza, Valley of the kings, Great wall of China, ice mountains of Himalaya, Chang' an, Olympus, the Styx, plains of hell, Hades castle.

Not even Diablo 2 has as many iconic maps as Titan Quest, in fact Diablo 2 maps are pretty bad in comparison, which clearly favors Titan Quest.

The maps are nice, but the game play is so bland. Just seemed even more than many games in the genre that you just hold down click and occasionally drink a potion until the enemy falls over.

 

[Ryzer]

That's why I always preferred Titan Quest over other Diablo 2 clones, because it offered so many interesting and iconic maps reminescent of legends: Athens, Knossos the minotaur and Talos, Parnassus mountain, Memphis, Giza, Valley of the kings, Great wall of China, ice mountains of Himalaya, Chang' an, Olympus, the Styx, plains of hell, Hades castle.

Not even Diablo 2 has as many iconic maps as Titan Quest, in fact Diablo 2 maps are pretty bad in comparison, which clearly favors Titan Quest.

The maps are nice, but the game play is so bland. Just seemed even more than many games in the genre that you just hold down click and occasionally drink a potion until the enemy falls over.

Blame Diablo, it's literally a copy and paste of its gameplay.

 

[mediocrepoet]

That's why I always preferred Titan Quest over other Diablo 2 clones, because it offered so many interesting and iconic maps reminescent of legends: Athens, Knossos the minotaur and Talos, Parnassus mountain, Memphis, Giza, Valley of the kings, Great wall of China, ice mountains of Himalaya, Chang' an, Olympus, the Styx, plains of hell, Hades castle.

Not even Diablo 2 has as many iconic maps as Titan Quest, in fact Diablo 2 maps are pretty bad in comparison, which clearly favors Titan Quest.

The maps are nice, but the game play is so bland. Just seemed even more than many games in the genre that you just hold down click and occasionally drink a potion until the enemy falls over.

Blame Diablo, it's literally a copy and paste of its gameplay.

It's close, but more dull. Even Diablo 1 had spikes like the Butcher that required you to move and such. I get what you're saying though.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Potion chugging is definitely the weakest part of diablo. Sadly it's been replaced with obscene amounts of lifeleech, which is even worse.

Ultimately what the genre needs to be good imo is two things:

1: Heavily restricted healing, such that losing any health at all during a run is a problem. I'd do something like player gets 2 flasks, they heal you to full over 60 seconds, and you've got no way to refill them without resetting the entire dungeon. Now losing 10% of your health to a trap is a big deal, not something you completely ignore. And you'd have a risk/reward factor of how close to death you want to get before using that potion to get the most out of it.

2: More involved enemy and player mechanics, instead of just mowing down swarms of fodder with fireballs or face tanking a boss. PoE almost gets this right; the skills and bosses have cool mechanics that promote awareness and positioning well and not constantly attacking. But then it shits all over that by making the bosses die in 3 seconds and giving you enough health and mana recovery to just stand in the fire and spam literally any skill in the game as fast as it can be cast.

I don't know what caused this, but there has been a shift in what players want from these types of games. The focus is now on "the endgame" and how long that lasts, and the campaign is now just the slow part you have to slog through to reach the fun stuff. I always thought it was a boring way to play a game but it looks like I'm in the minority.

I would imagine a large reason for this was campaigns going from fast paced to agonizingly slow sequences of cutscenes, monologues and gopher quests with all the good loot shoved into the last 20%. Who the fuck wants to listen to some ugly old dude tell you how he's rewarding your courage for killing a rat for the 19th time? Just give me more shit to fight and treasure to find.

 

[abija]

D3, PoE and D4 all started with limited healing/leech/regen. Same for 2nd point, mechanics mattered and bosses surely weren't evaporated when originally introduced. Players didn't like it though and devs caved.
First thing needed is a game that sticks to the original design.

 

[Damned Registrations]

They were never really limited though, because you can just portal out to refill flasks. Technically that's limited in PoE but 30 healing flasks is way beyond anything you'd ever actually need. It's functionally limitless.

I'm not sure it was even a matter of players not liking it. I think it's a matter of power creep generating hype. You want players to come back, offering them some OP shit to try out will probably do the trick more often than anything else. "Hey come play season 14 it's the same as 13 but now you die twice as fast" isn't a great sales pitch. The sad thing is though, I feel like PoE solved that aspect with their league mechanics. They totally could have gotten away with zero power creep just by continuing to make crazy league mechanics people enjoy. Didn't help that a bunch of the devs are fucking sadomasochists that thought the instant death fire enchants from D2 were a fun idea they need to replicate, causing players to feel pressured to overkill shit before it even appears on screen to stay alive.

 

[Ryzer]

I don't remember any regen/leech power in the early game in Titan Quest except for hunting mastery which was op and nature which was ok but weak in retrospective.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Gameplay

 

[codexian reject]

Looks as pretty and as boring as the first one.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

This just looks like D3 in just about every manner possible. Oh well. Moving on.

 

[BrainMuncher]

Gameplay

I wonder if it stutters that badly in game or if it's just a bad recording.

 

[S.torch]

>The whole 30 minutes gameplay trailer is killing trash mobs
There are people who thinks this is fun..........

 

[ArchAngel]

>The whole 30 minutes gameplay trailer is killing trash mobs
There are people who thinks this is fun..........

Poe1 and Diablo 4 fans..

 

[Cryomancer]

Seems great >

 

[BrainMuncher]

That one stuttering badly as well. At times it looks like 30fps and he said he had to record at 720p.

Sounds like this game is going to run like shit

 

[ArchAngel]

Seems great >

I would not say great but seems like something to try in 1-2 years after I get bored of PoE2.
Kind of like how I played GD after I got bored of PoE1.

 

[abija]

You know there's quite a high chance PoE2 will run like crap for a while?

 

[ArchAngel]

You know there's quite a high chance PoE2 will run like crap for a while?

Lets hope not :D