Torchlight : Mythos-reborn

[Dufresne]

Originally Posted by scharmers

No.

I like Torchlight because it does a good job on letting me click on monsters and grabbing their loot, then going away to do something else. I do not want a "rich, deep world" in lightweight ARPGs.

Except he's talking about the not-at-all lightweight MMORPG that Runic is making, not an ARPG.

[scharmers]

Originally Posted by Dufresne

Except he's talking about the not-at-all lightweight MMORPG that Runic is making, not an ARPG.

Eh, make it up as they go along then. If I want an MMO with lots of lore bombs, I'll play LOTRO. Hey, funny, I play LOTRO. Never mind.

[Chris Nahr]

I'm also somewhat confused why anyone would want a fleshed out world with story and lore and stuff in Torchlight, of all things. It's the anti-story game.

[Mordrak]

Originally Posted by scharmers

No.

I like Torchlight because it does a good job on letting me click on monsters and grabbing their loot, then going away to do something else. I do not want a "rich, deep world" in lightweight ARPGs.

Err, I disagree. Perhaps change it to think carefully rather than deeply. Diablo's stories aren't particularly deep, but it's carved out a particular place for itself not only aesthetically but in terms of its world building. It's a fantasy world that eschews generic fantasy races, embraces gore as particularly well defined kind of horror fantasy background that no PC RPG that I've played has really replicated as a basis for its setting.

Those kind of considerations, what kind of world are we in, how does this inform the setting and gameplay, are very important parts of the design process and should be as well considered as balancing the loot to kill ratio.

[thinkingork]

Hellgate: London has a fleshed out world, it even has its own comic at release. See what happened to it.

Don't change the way you guys do things.

[Squee]

Oh shit. I was playing this just now and I noticed that shift-tabbing to get to Steam chat no longer counts as hitting tab to swap skills, which it previously used to.

Don't know if Runic or Valve patched that, but thank you whoever did it.

[Stepsongrapes]

Originally Posted by thinkingork

Hellgate: London has a fleshed out world, it even has its own comic at release. See what happened to it.

Don't change the way you guys do things.

Bah, Flagship just did their math wrong with Hellgate.

Somehow during budgeting, they spent 80% on promoting the brand and 20% on the actual game. The reverse would have been nice.

[Dave Long]

Been playing this the last two days for a couple hours at a time.

Even with the ability to send my kitty cat back to sell stuff, I feel overburdened by... stuff. If 99% of the greens and all the greys/whites or whatever I pick up are going to be useless, why include them? It just adds time I need to go through and identify them and then sort them for sale.

Despite that inventory sub-game, I'm still having a good time. Mainly because I enjoy the combat. It's visceral and kinetic while still remaining mostly kid friendly, so I can play it while my kids are around. That's cool.

I suppose I could just leave all that stuff lying around, but it seems like whether I sell it or transmute it, the time all of that takes is really dragging me away from actually playing the game. I'd rather just get lumps of gold and an occasional item drop that's exciting, even if its a weapon or armor that I can't use right away. Fewer, better items would make each item gain a treat instead of like having to sweep up after each fight.

[RepoMan]

LEAVE IT THE FUCK LYING AROUND THEN, ACE!

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
"Then DON'T DO THAT!"

If it's white, I don't fucking spend another nanosecond on it. Same deal in Diablo, Borderlands, whatever. And if I miss a rare white (fuck you Borderlands), I DON'T CARE. Life's too short.

[Dave Long]

Wow, I clicked to display your post because I thought maybe you would have given me some help but instead you simply reminded me why I had you on ignore in the first place.

Thanks for reminding me!

[Fugitive]

I finished it a couple days ago and liked it a lot overall, though I did find a few annoyances:

- I switched to using a ranged attack for the latter half, and the shift-attack is indeed great, but it also resulted in either me or my kitty accidentally picking up tons of useless junk. A flag like D2's /nopickup would be great.

- The map doesn't really make it clear when paths are blocked off since impassable exits often still have an 'open' edge, so it's hard to tell from the overall dungeon map where there might still be unvisited areas.

- After getting to the level that splits into three others you can do in any order, I was expecting a bit more variety in deeper levels, but it never really fulfilled that and it felt a bit samey for a long stretch in the middle.

- The different qualities of gems aren't very distinctive since they're so small, so I had to constantly mouse over them to see if they were 'dull' or 'discoloured' or whatever.

I still enjoyed it enough that when I have the free time (ha!), I'd like to go back and try a melee build on VH/HC, though.

[merryprankster]

Anyone else having issues with the demo randomly minimizing? I like the game and want to pick it up, but this is pretty annoying. Sometimes it will even lock my computer when it happens.

[kerzain]

Originally Posted by Fugitive

- I switched to using a ranged attack for the latter half, and the shift-attack is indeed great, but it also resulted in either me or my kitty accidentally picking up tons of useless junk.

It sells for GOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can't just be leavin' GOLD(!!!!) lying around!!! Send your pet to town with all that junk and it will return with GOLD!!!!!!

Also, you can combine like gems, and as they get higher quality the graphics tend to stand out more.

[RepoMan]

Originally Posted by Dave Long

Wow, I clicked to display your post because I thought maybe you would have given me some help but instead you simply reminded me why I had you on ignore in the first place.

Thanks for reminding me!

You're welcome! I can't imagine what kind of help you were hoping for, because your situation doesn't seem amenable to any kind of help whatsoever. (Aside from mine, that is.)

Wow, I'm on Dave Long's ignore list! Wonder who else is on there?

[metta]

YES:

-The art style!
-Dual-wielding pistols!
-The music!
-The price!
-The pet!
-The length!

NO:

-Pet pathing.
-Too much skill overlap; feels like they get three skill trees each 'cos that's what the devs wanted, not because they had tons of cool ideas for skills and ways to make classes distinct.
-Pygmies again?
-Too much junk to sort through or ignore or click on accidentally while holding shift 'cos you're a ranged class.
-Too much junk with 8 or 10 minimal stat upgrades you need to be a Talmudic Scholar to evaluate. +2 to who cares?

7/10
Will play again

[Mark Asher]

Originally Posted by Chris Nahr

I'm also somewhat confused why anyone would want a fleshed out world with story and lore and stuff in Torchlight, of all things. It's the anti-story game.

You know what I always liked? The flavor text on Magic: the Gathering cards. I have no idea about the lore behind that game world, but the flavor text were these little hints at a world that often sparked my imagination. I always thought the treasures in a game like Diablo would be more fun with flavor text for rare items.

[Chris Nahr]

True, there's already a good deal of flavor text in the NPC dialogues (or rather monologues). Something similar for unique and set items might be nice.

[Lynxara]

Lore for sets and uniques would make me happy. Of course, Torchlight makes me pretty happy just as it is.

[malkav11]

You know what has to be the most bizarre complaint I've encountered about this game? PC Gamer's review (while overall quite positive) spending an entire paragraph to bitch about the game being isometric. Uh, what?

"Romanticizing over the good old isometric days doesn't seem to gel with the fresh approach that Torchlight offers."

I'm lost as to what perspective, exactly, the writer thinks would have been superior.

[Ranulf]

Originally Posted by merryprankster

Anyone else having issues with the demo randomly minimizing? I like the game and want to pick it up, but this is pretty annoying. Sometimes it will even lock my computer when it happens.

Are you running AVG anti virus 9.0? There is a bug in it, at least if you upgrade directly from 8.5 that causes it to steal "focus" from programs 1-2 times an hour and thus alt-tab out of the current main window.


Malkav, a boob cam view for the rogue character would be what PCGAMER was looking for me thinks.

[tiohn]

No way, PCGAMER is down with curvilinear perspective.

[Cory]

Are there any good mods out for this yet?

[Pogo]

Originally Posted by RepoMan

LEAVE IT THE FUCK LYING AROUND THEN, ACE!

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
"Then DON'T DO THAT!"

If it's white, I don't fucking spend another nanosecond on it. Same deal in Diablo, Borderlands, whatever. And if I miss a rare white (fuck you Borderlands), I DON'T CARE. Life's too short.

While I agree with you, I kind of have to wonder why those things are included in the first place. They serve to muck up the screen. I wondered why Titan Quest even bothered showing the whites/greys, and then included a filter to disable seeing them for pickup. I don't know if enemies drop their weapons every time they die in Torchlight as happens in TQ, but it doesn't make much sense to include those things, even to sell, since you get money from that type of game from all the useless yellows you find.

[Pogo]

Originally Posted by Squee

Oh shit. I was playing this just now and I noticed that shift-tabbing to get to Steam chat no longer counts as hitting tab to swap skills, which it previously used to.

Don't know if Runic or Valve patched that, but thank you whoever did it.

I think that's probably a Runic fix. Any other game where I use the in-game interface, hitting TAB will activate whatever command that game uses for it (the map screen in Borderlands, for example).

[Tracy Baker]

Originally Posted by Pogo

While I agree with you, I kind of have to wonder why those things are included in the first place. They serve to muck up the screen. I wondered why Titan Quest even bothered showing the whites/greys, and then included a filter to disable seeing them for pickup.

I kind of like the way it's handled in the same way I like to see candy spew out of a pinata, but it shouldn't lead to an inventory management sub-game. It should be possible to instantly transmute all greys/whites to gold on pickup, or have them added in aggregate to a single inventory slot if you want to make players manage inventory by weight. I've never understood why so many developers have decided to streamline everything other than the inventory management in this genre, because it would be one of the easiest things to rejigger.

And yeah, you can just leave it all behind, but people who are really into min/max games like this aren't the kind of folks who find that acceptable. That's gold lying there, dammit. Shiny stuff. Me want.

[Staff Sergeant]

So hold shift while clicking it and your pet will pick it all up, and then send him to town every time he is full. Then you can focus your own inventory on stuff that is actually potentially useful.

[Tracy Baker]

Originally Posted by Staff Sergeant

So hold shift while clicking it and your pet will pick it all up, and then send him to town every time he is full. Then you can focus your own inventory on stuff that is actually potentially useful.

I do, but it's still a huge pain in the ass. Especially with all the loot that drops in this game that forces you to burrow through endless stacks of text tags, guaranteeing that at least a few items you don't want to sell end up in the dog's pack, requiring further sorting. It's all a tedious timesink that detracts from the two aspects of the game I really want to focus on: Killing Shit and Upgrading Shit.

[Dave Long]

Originally Posted by Tracy Baker

I do, but it's still a huge pain in the ass. Especially with all the loot that drops in this game that forces you to burrow through endless stacks of text tags, guaranteeing that at least a few items you don't want to sell end up in the dog's pack, requiring further sorting. It's all a tedious timesink that detracts from the two aspects of the game I really want to focus on: Killing Shit and Upgrading Shit.

EXACTLY.

[Disconnected]

Originally Posted by Cubit

Are there any good mods out for this yet?

Sort of. There's a couple of mods that lower floaty-font size and the borders on the name boxes of dropped stuff. There's also a re-spec mod if for the unlucky suckers who didn't figure out half of each skill tree is filler before wasting points on the pointless.

I'd provide links, but Torchlight is the wife's obsession, not mine, and I trust your Google-Fu is at least as good as mine.

[Foxstab]

Originally Posted by metta

Talmudic Scholar

BAHAHAHAHA! AN OXYMORON!