10-09-2012, 06:17 AM
(10-08-2012, 11:12 PM)FoxBat Wrote: Brevik works for "Gazillion" or whoever on the upcoming Marvel Heroes, not Runic. If you got whatever impression purely from Schaefer's comments then that's your perogotive...
True.
I think whenever one comes away disappointed with a game that they had expected to be enjoyable there is a level of cognitive dissonance that settles in. Like any instance of cognitive dissonance the individual can respond to it in multiple ways. Buyer's remorse is by definition, post-decision dissonance. I've gotten into many arguments over the last few months with individuals related to their disappointment over Diablo III. I'm sure many of them would love to rationalize me as "just a Blizzard fanboy", but the reality is I'm just extremely interested in getting to the core of where the the dissonance these people are feeling is and in turn figuring out what real problems exist with these games and what can be done to amend them. It progresses nothing to say "I hate Diablo III because you are forced to use the RMAH to progress" when that is a patently false statement. The only purpose it serves is masturbatory self congratulation and an easing of your own personal dissonance. Let's dig deeper and try to find the real underlying cause creating our dissatisfaction.
I find myself in a similar situation now with Torchlight II. Why is it that this game has left me with such a negative feeling? I think in part that my inherent feelings towards the game are amplified having, on some level, been neck deep in rampant fanboyism related to Diablo III the last few months. This murky sea of negativity looks for any evidence to support and reaffirm their beliefs and this has resulted in a great level of generalization regarding the "original Blizzard North people" and their great hatred of everything Diablo III. It's possible that I've conflated statements or interviews and miss-attributed them to the wrong persons.
This, however, only accounts for the amplification of my feelings. What are the core issues that cause me frustration?
- Firstly, and most importantly is the level of competition. Diablo III really lifted the bar for the genre in terms of scope and grandiosity. Even the much maligned auction house is a huge step in how it incorporates massive trading networks directly into the game. If Diablo III has expanded the genre vertically, Path of Exile is putting in serious work expanding it horizontally. Succeed or fail, a lot of the stuff they are doing in that game is really the wild wild west of ARPGs. So going into Torchlight II the question was "where are they going to plant their flag?" And... they don't. Not only do they not plant a flag, but often while playing the game it felt like they didn't even bring a flag. They just pointed at other flags. "This is an interesting area it feels like Zangermarsh. Oh..." "Hey look, I'm in Silverpine. Oh..." "Hahah that enemy just cast Arcane Sentry! Oh..." In that one of Torchlight's most unique resources is entirely wasted. When they trumpeted the fact that you were going to be able to explore the world of Torchlight I really expected more from them than what seems like a mishmash of other cool ideas. (Having said that, I can say that their character animators consistently hit home runs and all accolades they receive are well deserved.)
- As for actual gameplay I think they really dropped the ball on character development. (*Disclaimer* Everything in this section is related to playing the Engineer as that is the only character I've played currently. It is entirely possible that other characters are done more successfully.) If Path of Exile has shown anything it's that there is ample room in the genre for customization and point allocating. And yet in the early stages of Torchlight II (as melee) it really feels as if there is no reason to allocate points into anything other than passives. On top of that the melee player seems to be constantly punished as every boss fight is a constant spawn of minions forcing you to spend 90% of your time running in circle waiting for summon spells to come off cool down or for an odd opportunity to whack an erstwhile minion to try to generate a bit of charge. This may not be an issue on lower difficulties, but on Veteran and Elite it is excessively punitive and really belittles anyone that chooses to play a melee character. (Like I said before, it feels like Diablo III only if every champ pack was Immune Minions.)
Add to that the issue that Frag brought up earlier in that certain classes (melee engineer included) are extremely dependent on lucky drops and you have great odds on higher difficulties that you will hit dead ends. In other ARPGs the go-to solution is to go back to earlier areas and farm levels or gear until you are ready to proceed. In Torchlight II the areas are cleared. Solution? Go outside of your single player campaign, start a LAN game, and here in the sub-options you are able to repopulate a game. All this so that you can proceed in your basic single player game.
The end result of all this is that by the end of the game I lost all care for trying to play decently and just wanted to get it over with.
Maybe I'll pick it back up here and there when I'm bored and try to tease out interest in it. Maybe it would have been better had I actually waited to play it when other games of it's like were not so fresh. I'm definitely interested in hearing other people's viewpoints as to possibly educate my perspective but all-in-all I found Torchlight II to be a frustrating experience. (I would definitely be interested in hearing more about Monty's experiences with the 2-hand Engineer as that is what I played as well.)