Torchlight : Mythos-reborn

[tbaldree]

I just can't figure it out from a business standpoint. A game like this is going to be gone and forgotten in six months once everyone has done the single player. Games like Diablo are STILL being played today because of the multiplayer.

So, instead of adding multiplayer and greatly extending the life of your game, you instead decide to compete at some point inside an over saturated MMO market.

My gut instinct is that Torchlight isn't going to do nearly as well as it would if it included multiplayer, meaning less money for development of the MMO portion. And everyone knows that you can't half ass things in an MMO nowadays if you're planning to actually be successful.

It was actually a pretty straightforward decision. We had under a year, and no budget to expand ( we were NEGATIVE 6,000 in the bank in December when we finally landed a deal ), and just came from a project that was scuttled a month before release, and lost everything. That sort of experience, and an economy that dropped off the cliff the moment we incorporated, were both part of the decisionmaking process.

Multiplayer is non-trivial to add, and would easily have doubled the development period, and more than doubled the cost - probably tripled, I'm speculating. Add to that the fact that for it to be successful ( and not massively hacked ), we'd have to host a centralized server system (which would have to be free to players, and at a very expensive cost to us ), and it just wasn't something we could afford to do out of the gate. So we took a look at what we COULD get done with the time we had, and said 'well, how can we make this worth people's consideration? 20 bucks - and moddability'.

Now, you can also say at this point - well, why make an ARPG at all? If you can't do multiplayer out of the gate, what's the point?' For us, it had to lead into the next project - we couldn't afford to spend a year making a game and throwing it away - it had to contribute to the next thing in a meaningful way.

So far, the response has been great, and it seems to have worked. We all would have loved to have done multiplayer right away, but pragmatism and a desire to survive in the wake of Flagship's VERY publicized and painful meltdown really made the decision fairly easy. And post-release, I think it was the RIGHT decision.

[wigglestick]

Originally Posted by Chris Nahr

Right, that was an excellent feature in Titan Quest. Torchlight doesn't have an equivalent, though. Just blanking out grey items wouldn't work anyway because all the gems show up as greys, too.

Something like Angband's user-configurable per-item squelching would be cool.

[wigglestick]

Originally Posted by tbaldree

It was actually a pretty straightforward decision. We had under a year, and no budget to expand ( we were NEGATIVE 6,000 in the bank in December when we finally landed a deal ), and just came from a project that was scuttled a month before release, and lost everything. That sort of experience, and an economy that dropped off the cliff the moment we incorporated, were both part of the decisionmaking process.

Multiplayer is non-trivial to add, and would easily have doubled the development period, and more than doubled the cost - probably tripled, I'm speculating. Add to that the fact that for it to be successful ( and not massively hacked ), we'd have to host a centralized server system (which would have to be free to players, and at a very expensive cost to us ), and it just wasn't something we could afford to do out of the gate. So we took a look at what we COULD get done with the time we had, and said 'well, how can we make this worth people's consideration? 20 bucks - and moddability'.

Now, you can also say at this point - well, why make an ARPG at all? If you can't do multiplayer out of the gate, what's the point?' For us, it had to lead into the next project - we couldn't afford to spend a year making a game and throwing it away - it had to contribute to the next thing in a meaningful way.

So far, the response has been great, and it seems to have worked. We all would have loved to have done multiplayer right away, but pragmatism and a desire to survive in the wake of Flagship's VERY publicized and painful meltdown really made the decision fairly easy. And post-release, I think it was the RIGHT decision.

And, despite the minor quibble I just posted in this thread a little bit ago, I'd agree with you. This is a very fun, addictive, mostly-superbly-designed, highly-polished game even BEFORE you consider the ridiculously low price point. I'm not much for multiplayer anyway, and I would definitely have paid 30 or 40 or even 50 bucks for a game as fun as this, as is.

[peacedog]

Originally Posted by wigglestick

Something like Angband's user-configurable per-item squelching would be cool.

Every Diablo like Action RPG needs this, with simple configuration (it would help to classify gems as their own special type of loot, and maybe color appropriately).

Of course, this needs to be followed with easy looting. I don't need to click everywhere. Just give me a vacuum key.

[Shadari]

Originally Posted by tbaldree

Now, you can also say at this point - well, why make an ARPG at all? If you can't do multiplayer out of the gate, what's the point?' For us, it had to lead into the next project - we couldn't afford to spend a year making a game and throwing it away - it had to contribute to the next thing in a meaningful way.

FWIW, I can't wait to get my hands on the MMO. Have you guys considered giving registered owners of the singleplayer game a gift that they can redeem in the MMO -- maybe something cosmetic like a different type of pet or some such. Seems like a good way to leverage the MMO hype to sell some copies of the singleplayer game.

Originally Posted by tbaldree

So far, the response has been great, and it seems to have worked.

So do you guys know how the game has sold so far? On the day of release, roughly a third of my friends on Steam bought it, which is pretty impressive! Granted, most of my friends on Steam are from Qt3. But still....

[Vincent19]

Despite my (really, really strong) desire to play Torchlight with my friends, the single player only decision does make sense. Clearly, focusing on gameplay systems and polish with no need to worry about multiplayer scaling and net code has paid off. I've found that the level of polish in a game is really important to me, and can be the difference between a game I obsess over and one I put down early. Polish is thrilling.

[Mister Widget]

Great game, and all the more amazing when you find out how quickly it was put together; kudos to all who worked on it.

I know some people in this thread have had characters deleted, and I had a very strange variant on this happen. I was playing a level 8 Vanquisher, and when she killed a yellow unique, she suddenly gained three (3) levels. When I logged her out, it turned out that I now had two Vanquishers with the same name. One of them was level 7, the same level that she was then I had started that session. The other one was level 11, thanks to the bizarre 3-level jump. And my level 11 Alchemist, who I hadn't been playing at all, was now gone. Soooooooo that's pretty strange. Was my Vanquisher cloned and the Alchemist deleted in two separate and unrelated bugs, or did my Alchemist become transmuted into a Vanquisher?

I had already decided to keep playing the Vanquisher instead of the Alchemist anyway, and level 11 is no big deal, but it certainly makes me worried about the endgame. I've started backing up the save files just to be sure.

[tempus67]

Originally Posted by Eric Majkut

I just can't figure it out from a business standpoint. A game like this is going to be gone and forgotten in six months once everyone has done the single player. Games like Diablo are STILL being played today because of the multiplayer.

You may be right, but I'm not so sure. The game's cheap and easy to mod. I suspect this game will be around for years to come despite the lack of multiplayer, and periodically this thread or some successor will pop up when a cool new mod gets released.

[Eric Majkut]

And yes, Runic, not Relic. Similar names and I was half asleep. So sue me :P

[Chris Nahr]

Also, a multiplayer game being played for a long time incurs costs to the developer (for server hosting) but not necessarily revenue. Unless it's an MMO subscription model, and do you really want that?

[scharmers]

A game like this is going to be gone and forgotten in six months once everyone has done the single player.

Yeah. Just like FATE.

Diablo 2 is STILL being played today because of the multiplayer.

Fixed.

D2 is an aberration -- not many 8 year old games are still being played today, period. And I'm thinking design has something to do with it, yes? Nobody is playing TQ or Sacred 2 multi. Of course, neither one has an 11-year-old multiplayer infrastructure (Battle.net) behind it either.

So maybe it's safer to say that multiplayer games with big, expensive server infrastructure backing last a very long time. Who knows.

I'm not sure where your sense of multiplayer entitlement comes from with a game that was advertised day one not to have MP. :/

[Tim James]

Travis, your story makes a lot of sense, which makes me wonder why you'd bother with an MMO for your next game!

Or am I understanding it wrong and it's really more like a multiplayer action RPG than a standard MMO?

[mouselock]

Originally Posted by scharmers

Yeah. Just like FATE.



Fixed.

D2 is an aberration -- not many 8 year old games are still being played today, period. And I'm thinking design has something to do with it, yes? Nobody is playing TQ or Sacred 2 multi. Of course, neither one has an 11-year-old multiplayer infrastructure (Battle.net) behind it either.

I'm not all that convinced that D2 is being played because of the MP anyway, really. Maybe I'm abnormal, but I never logged into MP diablo to play it MP. I just wanted an easy way to transfer gear and tweak the difficulty/loot drops, so I tended to use battle.net as a single player experience with persistent character storage and easy methods to work around the lack of a shared stash.

The reason I played D2 as long as I did (and still consider going back) had tons more to do with the deep item/skill tree combos and how they radically changed the gameplay depending on what class/build I took, as well as some fairly massive patches that really changed things up yet again at strategic times.

Seems like the modability here would allow for similar setups.

On an entirely seperate note, I've been playing a vanquisher on hard on my laptop after doing an alchemist on normal on my desktop for a while. I noticed today when I got to the storyline event on level 4 involving Brink that it was much harder to kill the evil guy on the vanquisher. I was using the electric trap (since the flame trap sucks on bigger monsters with all the glancing blows) and a standard, store-bought grey bow, and it took forever kiting him around. Was this luck/equipment (and not having had a better ranged weapon drop) or am I missing something? It seems like the damage from the electric trap with 2 points in it is a joke, but I can't be far off in my setup with a couple points in an electric trap, one in fire trap, and one each in the ranged weapon requirements/crit chance talents at level 5, can I? Is it the vanquisher that's harder or is it just that normal -> hard is that different?

[mouselock]

Originally Posted by Tim James

Travis, your story makes a lot of sense, which makes me wonder why you'd bother with an MMO for your next game!

Or am I understanding it wrong and it's really more like a multiplayer action RPG than a standard MMO?

I thought the idea was Torchlight as a free-to-play MMO with a microtransaction support model. Which would seem to me like a natural evolution from Torchlight as a single player game (though I'm worried about the microtransaction MMO model since all I can conceive of is XBox Live Arcade style "A Unique Ring has just dropped. Would you like to A) Buy 150 torchlight points to loot it as is or B) Loot it as a rare ring instead?")

[wigglestick]

Originally Posted by mouselock

I thought the idea was Torchlight as a free-to-play MMO with a microtransaction support model. Which would seem to me like a natural evolution from Torchlight as a single player game (though I'm worried about the microtransaction MMO model since all I can conceive of is XBox Live Arcade style "A Unique Ring has just dropped. Would you like to A) Buy 150 torchlight points to loot it as is or B) Loot it as a rare ring instead?")

Are there XBLA games that work like this? It sounds awful.

[porousnapkin]

Originally Posted by mouselock

On an entirely seperate note, I've been playing a vanquisher on hard on my laptop after doing an alchemist on normal on my desktop for a while. I noticed today when I got to the storyline event on level 4 involving Brink that it was much harder to kill the evil guy on the vanquisher. I was using the electric trap (since the flame trap sucks on bigger monsters with all the glancing blows) and a standard, store-bought grey bow, and it took forever kiting him around. Was this luck/equipment (and not having had a better ranged weapon drop) or am I missing something? It seems like the damage from the electric trap with 2 points in it is a joke, but I can't be far off in my setup with a couple points in an electric trap, one in fire trap, and one each in the ranged weapon requirements/crit chance talents at level 5, can I? Is it the vanquisher that's harder or is it just that normal -> hard is that different?

I have played through Brink on Hard with an Alchemist and a Vanquisher, and my experience is that it took about the same amount of time -- which was WAY longer than on normal

[Tyjenks]

Mod Database site. Yay.

Wait, did someone post this link? My brain hurts.

[CustodianV131]

Originally Posted by tbaldree

So far, the response has been great, and it seems to have worked. We all would have loved to have done multiplayer right away, but pragmatism and a desire to survive in the wake of Flagship's VERY publicized and painful meltdown really made the decision fairly easy. And post-release, I think it was the RIGHT decision.

Looking at the situation, I would have done the same thing. Plus now you've people interested in the world/setting and eager to play the MMO. I know I am!

[scharmers]

Originally Posted by porousnapkin

I have played through Brink on Hard with an Alchemist and a Vanquisher, and my experience is that it took about the same amount of time -- which was WAY longer than on normal

It doesn't help that this particular opponent (probably SPOILED already, but I'll be circumspect) is far easier for melee pounding, since said Foozle doesn't fire off ranged spells (and no iceberg storms) when you're pounding him. Poor vanqs and alchys have to kite the guy and suffer all those long-range spell effects.

[Rob_Merritt]

Originally Posted by tbaldree

So far, the response has been great, and it seems to have worked. We all would have loved to have done multiplayer right away, but pragmatism and a desire to survive in the wake of Flagship's VERY publicized and painful meltdown really made the decision fairly easy. And post-release, I think it was the RIGHT decision.

It was a great decision in my opinion. I rather buy great single player games like Torchlight that took a year to make than a $60 game that took 3 years to make, has a multiplayer that I will never touch, and a gimped single player. (*cough* Brutal Legend *cough*)

Plus, Torchlight is extremely giftable at that price. I'm giving copies to bough my sons and a couple of my friends.

[Nawid A]

I like that this is single player only.

[Tim James]

Originally Posted by Rob_Merritt

Plus, Torchlight is extremely giftable at that price. I'm giving copies to bough my sons and a couple of my friends.

We've always been friends, right?

Just kidding, I own it.

[rei]

I gifted two copies.

[rei]

You can get goggles for your dog. Doggles.

http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2637

[Talisker]

Big patch coming in a day or two (hopefully):

Originally Posted by travisbaldree

A) Missing saves - obviously this is a critical issue, but the circumstances of it seem pretty variable. We are under active investigation and trying to solve this as quickly as possible. We are gathering a few guinea pigs to take test builds to see if we can isolate and protect against this issue. ( Overwrite protection added, as well as save backups for last save - we don't consider this resolved yet, though - 11:46AM )
( OVERWRITE FOUND! WORKAROUND POSSIBLE! DO NOT press Enter to create your character - use the OK button. If you do not, there is the potential of using the wrong savefile name when entering the game, thus wiping a previous character. Fixed 9:49PM)

B) Long load times - We are actively investigating this now, and have some possible leads (UPDATE - FIXED - 2 fixes actually! ISAWHIM's fix, as well as several internal fixes to the way that resources are handled should really help this )

C) Poor ingame performance on certain machines, when there really shouldn't be - this may be related to B) - under investigation ( UPDATE - some improvement due to B's fix as well! )

D) Certain antivirus programs (Avira Antivir) incorrectly report that the Torchlight.exe file in the packages from Perfect World and Runic is infected with TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen. We are in contact with the vendor to address this issue.

E) Needle arc XP issue - fixed

F) Stacking Shadow Armor effects - fixed

G) Vendor Dupe bug with always-available vendor items - reproduced, should be fixed today. (UPDATE! Fixed 12:32PM )

H) Startup issues on some hardware/resolution combinations. We think we know what this is, and are probably going to refactor some of the startup fullscreen code in an attempt to take care of it. We may gather a few guinea pigs to help us out. ( UPDATE - FIXED! 2:43AM! I AM GOING TO BED! )

I) Brink bug ( Brink doesn't follow you on subsequent plays, and fails to show up at cinematic ) Fixed

J) Store 'thief' bug - fixed

K) Right clicking in inventory casts certain spells - ( Fixed Oct 29th 3:00PM )

L) Console not activating on Steam builds - fixed

M) ADDITION : Rimlights, HW Skinning, and VSynch can all be altered from the Settings menu now.

N) Syl Bug : Fixed issue with Syl not being "skippable" during first boss fight. ( FIXED Oct. 29th 1:20pm )

0) DOT Deaths not dropping loot. ( FIXED Oct. 29th 1:20pm )

P) Quest items no longer allowed in stash ( Fixed Oct 29th 4:00PM )

Q) Several level fixes for a few places where things overlapped, or collision was missing, or stuck-issues cropped up

R) Fixed texture/mesh/ replacement stuff for mods

S) You can now change difficulty level on the fly from the console without being branded a Cheater ( UNLESS you're playing hardcore ) ( Oct 29th 11:46AM )

T) Some minion kills not providing Fame from champions ( most seem to work - perhaps an exception? ) - ( Pet minions were not awarding fame - fixed )

U) Fixed issue with loading Mods taking the game an excessive amount of time to start up. - FIXED Oct. 31

V) Pets inherit your spell masteries

W) Magic find takes the max value between you and your pet when pets or pet minions make a kill

X) Visible/increasing chance of stripping enchants via enchanter. Price based on # of enchants.

Y) Troll and Aloe Gel pets were possible to kill - fixed

Z) Tree Boss could be charmed - fixed

A1) Checkpoint Server issue - in investigation at Yummy
You have our great apologies if you are experiencing one of these issues ( or other issues not listed here yet ).

B1) Returning to town if you died by the Ember Colossus or Medea would make them dormant on return - fixed.

B2) weapon + shield doesn't count as 'dual wielding' ( 4:07 PM 11/03/09 )

B3) Shimmering Scale ( and 2 other socketables ) now work properly ( 4:07 PM 11/03/09 )

B4) Ember lance/ Ember Lightning balance changes.

B5) Aloe Gel provides better healing

B6) Equippables that provide bonuses to passive skills were not working properly ( FIXED 7:35PM 11/03/09 )

Possible Fixes that Might Make it into the patch:
A) Hardware skinning issue with Pets on the Main Menu - Fixed
B) Bad state when fighting the first henchmen attempting to save Syl - Fixed

http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2030

[kerzain]

K) Right clicking in inventory casts certain spells - ( Fixed Oct 29th 3:00PM )

This is really the only fix I've had enough problems with to create a sense of relief at news of a fix.

I bought the game after enjoying the demo and it has been monopolizing my time.

[Douglas on QTT]

I have to take back what I said about buying this game only to support the MMO version since I'm not really a single-player click-and-kill kind of guy. I planned to play Torchlight for an hour tonight before jumping back into Dragon Age; I actually ended up playing for the rest of the night and I'm addicted like crazy. If I wasn't working on an important project at work I'd pull a QT3, but that would not be wise for me to do for the next seven business days.

I have to second the suggestion for a pet window, and buffs being permanent and merely reserving a portion of your mana pool as opposed to having to recast every 20 seconds or whatever. I'm not sure if these changes would be too big to add into this game, but something to consider for the future! As a split keyboard user I'm having a heck of a time trying to keep up maintaining things in this game.

[Pentadact]

You can now change difficulty level on the fly from the console without being branded a Cheater

Awesome, this is a game that needs it more than most.

Visible/increasing chance of stripping enchants via enchanter. Price based on # of enchants.

Good idea. Right now it feels like I can just enchant forever and get more powerful faster than I can level. I haven't pushed my luck, but I'd very much like to know how far I've pushed it already.

-

[ImaTarget]

Originally Posted by Nawid A

I like that this is single player only.

QFT! Id rather have them expand the SP experience then do the MMO dance which is flooded and I am not interested anymore. Too bad. I wish them the best of luck though! Hopefully the Modtools will have the modders working on expansions soon. Great Runic took the time to give them to the players.

[MikeSofaer]

What is the thinking behind requiring a click for every shot? Particularly with the enemies as hyperactive as they are in this game, it's really annoying (like Carpal Tunnel annoying) to have to speed-click constantly. Please let me hold the button down.