I bought Torchlight 2 on launch. Yesterday, about two hours into it, I found myself wondering why I wasn't having fun. And... it's because Torchlight 2 was more of the same - just more Torchlight. Torchlight itself was an exercise in frustrated design - it had so much promise that was ruined by poor mechanics and a misunderstanding of fun. How?
Well, the first and most egregious offender is the loot system. Torchlight throws you piles and piles of loot. And 90% of it is trash, because half or more of the stats are useless, and items share from several pools of stats, meaning that most loot is under-utilizing its itemization budget. As such, the game expects you to sell or disenchant most of the drops, and it's an unsatisfying way to fuel player progression. I don't care about item drops in Torchlight, because they mean nothing. Contrast this to a different game I bought recently where I'm lucky to get three item drops per game, and each one changes the entire way I play.
The second glaring issue with Torchlight is the skill system. You get one skill point per level to spend. The game has maybe 27 active skills and 9 passive skills per class, each with 15 ranks. Which is to say, you can dump 15 levels of skill points into "generic bonus damage on-swing move, #2." As such, my tendency is to find a "good" AoE clear skill and max it. The remaining skill points go into the most useful passive. This results in a retardedly strong character that is absolutely no fun to play. Walk into enemies, cast only spell twice, loot corpses. Repeat. This is compounded by the fact that spells almost exclusively can be described as damage, shield, or buff, with no interesting interactions.
Now, they tried to make spells a bit more interesting - they added a mechanic that any other game would call a rage bar; it decays over time, is gained by smacking things, and grants your abilities bonuses. And this is sort of cool (except that all the classes have this same snowball-into-fights mechanic), except for the fact that spells never speak to each other. No spell makes any other spell better or worse, there's no concept of combo'ing or synergy. And the rage mechanic tries to force you into more and more fights faster and faster while the intentionally gratuitous amount of loot tries to slow you down - you lose half a rage bar collecting loot after a skirmish, but the only alternative is to walk through the whole level again afterwards, looting the corpses.
I made Torchlight 1 fun by choosing a ranged character, specializing in traps and mobility, and buying non-class-restricted spells from a vendor, giving me blink spells, speed spells, dodge spells - a host of interesting utility. I'd drop traps, blink away from enemies, speed up and dodge past a pack to turn around and blow them up with my ranged attacks. It was fun because they had the mechanics to enable interesting gameplay, they were just hidden as class-less spells. Torchlight 2 hides its first spell vendor in Act 3. Of 3. Which left me as a player with the feeling that the classes just aren't... enough. Damage spells, buffs, and passive bonus damage and stun chance are not enough to save Torchlight 2's gameplay from being repetitive and uninteresting.
Well, the first and most egregious offender is the loot system. Torchlight throws you piles and piles of loot. And 90% of it is trash, because half or more of the stats are useless, and items share from several pools of stats, meaning that most loot is under-utilizing its itemization budget. As such, the game expects you to sell or disenchant most of the drops, and it's an unsatisfying way to fuel player progression. I don't care about item drops in Torchlight, because they mean nothing. Contrast this to a different game I bought recently where I'm lucky to get three item drops per game, and each one changes the entire way I play.
The second glaring issue with Torchlight is the skill system. You get one skill point per level to spend. The game has maybe 27 active skills and 9 passive skills per class, each with 15 ranks. Which is to say, you can dump 15 levels of skill points into "generic bonus damage on-swing move, #2." As such, my tendency is to find a "good" AoE clear skill and max it. The remaining skill points go into the most useful passive. This results in a retardedly strong character that is absolutely no fun to play. Walk into enemies, cast only spell twice, loot corpses. Repeat. This is compounded by the fact that spells almost exclusively can be described as damage, shield, or buff, with no interesting interactions.
Now, they tried to make spells a bit more interesting - they added a mechanic that any other game would call a rage bar; it decays over time, is gained by smacking things, and grants your abilities bonuses. And this is sort of cool (except that all the classes have this same snowball-into-fights mechanic), except for the fact that spells never speak to each other. No spell makes any other spell better or worse, there's no concept of combo'ing or synergy. And the rage mechanic tries to force you into more and more fights faster and faster while the intentionally gratuitous amount of loot tries to slow you down - you lose half a rage bar collecting loot after a skirmish, but the only alternative is to walk through the whole level again afterwards, looting the corpses.
I made Torchlight 1 fun by choosing a ranged character, specializing in traps and mobility, and buying non-class-restricted spells from a vendor, giving me blink spells, speed spells, dodge spells - a host of interesting utility. I'd drop traps, blink away from enemies, speed up and dodge past a pack to turn around and blow them up with my ranged attacks. It was fun because they had the mechanics to enable interesting gameplay, they were just hidden as class-less spells. Torchlight 2 hides its first spell vendor in Act 3. Of 3. Which left me as a player with the feeling that the classes just aren't... enough. Damage spells, buffs, and passive bonus damage and stun chance are not enough to save Torchlight 2's gameplay from being repetitive and uninteresting.
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