Hey everyone, thanks for sharing your thoughts. However, you don't need to be too concerned. You've seen many of our stretch goals so far, and others, like the Ascension, the Labyrinth and its added elements, expanded epilogues, deeper companions, etc. will show up too.
The main one that I haven't seen mentioned, but should address, is crafting. During development, it became very clear that a traditional crafting system wasn't meshing. We had some early design done, but everything ended up feeling like an MMO-style system, and that just didn't fit Torment's gameplay. Instead, we repurposed those resources, adding significantly more and better Cyphers and Artifacts to the game. We also added some elements that are thematically in line with crafting, like surgical procedures, companion armor upgrades, and essences.
I think what this helps illustrate is that game development is never a straight line to the end. Building an RPG this big is a huge endeavor on both creative and technical levels. This sometimes means ideas don't work out the way we expected, and sometimes new ideas will appear and be so compelling we can't help but add them. When content changes, that doesn't mean we're just yanking it out and tossing it on the floor - in all cases it means that we're using those same efforts to improve other parts of the game, or adding brand-new things entirely.
Our focus with Torment has always been on quality, and we know we'd be doing you guys a disservice if it was any other way.
