Torchlight 2, My Impressions...

[I.S.T.]

So I got to interview Max Schaefer while I was at E3 last week, and it was so much fun! We ended up discussing the future of the Torchlight series including the MMO, Diablo 3 and why it’s release has been very good for Torchlight 2, the now infamous ‘Error 37’ and why he hopes they’re fortunate enough to experience it, Torchlight 2 on XBLA & Mac, how Minecraft could meet Torchlight, plus his overall inspirations in games design.

Check it out and let me know what you think. It's pretty in depth, and I'm sort of proud of this one.

http://eat-games.tumblr.com/

I keep forgetting to say this, but thanks for including my question.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well, on the Runic forums, there's a bit of a ruckus. People are upset at still no game or release date, especially as people gave their money on pre-orders, thinking the game wouldn't be far off (given that Runic are taking pre-orders). So there's a bit of love turned to hate, and a heck of a lot of frustration. Even more so when the weekly updates are nothing about the game, but other incidental stuff.

So it looks like Runic have reinstated a developer blog/post/news article that this week explains what's been going on, why the game still isn't out, and how things are progressing towards a release. It's quite long, but a pretty good read.

Many folks are anxious to see the game released - many have preordered, and want a date! We've been deliberately vague on this point. My hope is that if I give you an idea of what we're doing, what it takes to do it, and the scale of it, it will make it apparent why that is.

 

[Grall]

From the wording of that (perhaps context-challenged) excerpt, it sounds as if release is more like months away rather than weeks. What the hell's taking so long?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

From the wording of that (perhaps context-challenged) excerpt, it sounds as if release is more like months away rather than weeks. What the hell's taking so long?

Short answer: Polishing, and dealing with issues from the beta test. They are nearing the end.

Long answer: Read the article and you'll find out. I could have pasted the whole thing (not that you would have read it, it seems ), but the quote was just a taster. You're supposed to click on the link and read the article, because we're not supposed to steal other sites' content wholesale.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

New blog post from Travis explaining why Torchlight 2 is taking so long. This week he's talking about what polishing they have done in the last week, and the scale differences between Torchlight 1 and Torchlight 2, including this graphic:

 

[Malo]

Wow, that's a good way to make your point Besides, waiting this long I believe has been beneficial to them considering the general community outcry of Diablo 3. By the time T2 ships, players will be beating at their doors hoping it will be "Diablo Done Right"

 

[pcchen]

Actually that's probably too long. The best time for Torchlight 2 to be released is probably after one month of Diablo 3's release, because that's when Diablo 3 was at its weakest form, and the public is still interested enough in this genre, so they can save a lot of marketing effort. September will be too late. Even now it's a little too late.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I think they are finally getting there. My take on it is that it sounds like they have another week of polishing left on Acts 2 & 3. Then that leaves Act 4 which will probably take another week because it's shorter, and there will be more people available to work on in. I'd predict the second half of August for a launch.

I think a month after D3 would have been better because the D3 hype would still be in peoples' minds, yet they would have had a chance to get D3 out of their systems.

Still T2 has a million plus pre-orders, so Runic can't be too far off.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I think they are probably better of launching not within the same time as D3. D3 hype is, as the name indicates, D3 hype. People are hyped about D3 so thats the game they wanna play so they buy D3, not torchlight 2.

Bought torchlight 1 today. First time I played this type of game but having fun so far. Though up until now it's really easy on normal setting. Hopefully it will get a bit harder.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

The major problem with D3 is that it's not like D2. That's where Torchlight 2 will come in, by being able to present something that's more like an upgraded D2 than D3 is. I think a lot of people who didn't like D3 but are looking for a sequel to D2 will be very tempted by Torchlight 2. And for $20, it's easy to take a chance on liking it.

 

[Grall]

Though up until now it's really easy on normal setting. Hopefully it will get a bit harder.

The original TL got hard for me when I reached the underground waterfall levels, the mobs there hit really hard and were tougher to kill than in the past. I died a couple times there, which was new for me at that point. Then it got easier again until the lava stages, where I died again a couple times.

This probably depends a lot on what drops you get and how kind the RNG gods are to you. If you have good weapons and armor, obviously things will get easier. The pet is a big help in Torchlight IMO; it's very tough, and will pull out enemies ahead of you letting you blast them down (I played as ranger, or hunter, or whatever they call it.)

I've yet to actually finish the first difficulty of the original TL, but it was a decent enough game for sure. Especially since I only paid €5 for it I believe... There are too many item affixes and many are obscure and difficult to judge wether they're actually an upgrade, sidegrade or downgrade, and the skill trees are wacked, but what the hell. Minor gripes really.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

More "Not A Blog" posts from Travis.

In the upcoming week, it is my aim to complete Act 2 polish entirely if I can, and then to do go through all the class skills and do a tier polish pass - then I will move on to help Marsh out in his pass on Act 3. Then we'll both jump to Act 4 and polish the last short stretch of the game together, doing some passes through NG+ stuff as we do ( Matt will be working on that as well, probably while we're still wrapping Act 3 ). After that, well, we're done.

Next week QA will be hitting Act 2 hard now that it is nearly tied off, looking for balance issues and any progression bugs that may have cropped up due to my changes, or obscure network issues with scripted events ( the more complicated they are, the more testing they require in multiplayer )

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

More Torchlight 2 Dev Updates:

I'm now done with everything in Act 2 except the last boss - which I hope to mostly complete over the weekend. There will probably be a few trailing animations and FX that get picked up on Monday, but my aim is to be wrapped on Act 2 at that point. This makes me very happy. I think Act 2 has turned out really well, and am pretty jazzed about how very different it feels from the other acts. I was hoping to be done with the whole Act by the end of the week, but didn't quite make it, largely due to some unexpected bugs cropping up that chewed up a good day and a half of time.

We ended up putting together some new art this week for the three superchampions in Act 2 part 2 ( which are part of a boss chain ), and they came out pretty cool. Their previous incarnation was 'meh', and this is a big improvement.

My plan for next week is to focus almost entirely on skill tree polish for the classes (although I may switch gears throughout the week to help Marsh out on Act 3 )

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

More Dev progress updates:

Act 2 polish is done - yay! Barring any multiplayer quest issues or balance problems that are exposed during testing, it's in the can. I went through a round of fixes for multiplayer quest-related issues over the week and things are feeling pretty solid. Matt also put together some new sounds for some of the monsters and bosses. Slick!
I went on to work on the player skill pass. I finished my pass through the Outlander and am about halfway done with the Engineer. I hope to be done with the Engineer by the end of the weekend.
Marsh has continued work on Act 3, and I hope to join him in about a week to help bring it home.

Here's my rough plan - next week, I'll finish with the Embermage and Berserker skill passes. Once completed (guessing Friday), I'll move over to start helping Marsh out on Act 3. In the following weeks we'll wrap Act 3 together, partitioning duties, and then move on to split the last Act ( which is quite small) and finish up.

Is it three to four weeks from completion?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

More not-a-dev-blog (actually from the end of last week):

Quick update for the week -

I'm done with my Skill pass! Hooray! All classes have been gone through and skills touched up, or reworked where lacking. That means that tomorrow, I move over to Act 3 to work with Marsh on getting it wrapped. As per usual, everybody is working like crazy to get this ready for ship.

QA and went through and did a bug purge this week, and the number of bugs we are left with is surprisingly low. Again, hooray!

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Release date is coming:

Happy Friday! We'll get right to it - we have some news for you:
We will announce our release date
on Friday, August 31st.

August 31 kicks off of our favorite con, PAX Prime, and we'll be there to show Torchlight II and tell everyone the official Torchlight II launch date!

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Nearly there!

It's gonna be short and sweet this week folks -

We are super-buckled-down over here, trying to get everything bolted into its final location.
I've made it halfway through Act3 and am almost totally caught up with Marsh now. He's further into Act 3 than me (I'm right at the halfway point ), but it only took me 6 days to get there, so we are really rolling.
The game is awesome.
As has been mentioned, we will be telling everyone the Release Date next week.
We are still aiming for Summer.
it's 8AM til midnight every day for me until release, (with the exception of 3 days for PAX), my wife has a sitter to help out with the kids, all waking hours go to wrapping this up.
Everyone is working like crazy.

Thursday night I will let you know the release date here in the forums. You guys deserve to know first.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope when you have the game you feel that it was rewarded.

that's all! Hope I see you at PAX.

Travis

 

[Grall]

I've never felt particularly stoked or impressed when an entity announces they're going to have an announcement. Just fucking announce it and be done with it. This wait has gone on far too long already.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. The announcement of a future announcement is pretty poor when it still not the info you want. At least now we know when we'll be getting a date, instead of just this lingering limbo, and hopefully the release date will be within a couple of weeks of that.

I just think that if there's any two games that are going to give maximum fun this year, it's going to be Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2, so they are worth waiting for.

 

[Grall]

Worth waiting for, sure. But when preorder has been running for like 7 months already without even a hint of a release date (and I ordered pretty much when preorder became available), you feel a tad miffed when it's dragged out this far.

I am very curious about the game though. Just hope it'll run OK on my macbook!