Torchlight 2: A Design Review

Torchlight 2: A Design Review

Opening Notes: Who Did What Right

            For the most part of this review I will be going over and talking about a few of the gameplay aspects of Torchlight 2.  I will attempt to point out what works, what doesn’t, and what could have been done better.  In doing such, I will also spend a small amount of time comparing then to the game design aspects of Diablo 3, as I feel this is useful and inevitable.

Characters and Skills: All Sales Final

            They say there are only 20 original ideas and that all others are variations or combinations of those.  Torchlight 2 is no different.  It has four of your basic RPG classes (Warrior, Mage, Archer, Paladin) but, they have been done in gratifyingly creative ways.  If you really get down to it, the classes in TC2 are very similar to these iconic RPG classes, but each one has their own flair that brings enough character to them that they almost feel original, even if intellectually you see that they aren’t.  In essence, that’s what is important.  If you can make someone feel that you have created something different, unique, and fun, that’s how people will view it, regardless of the underlying truths.

While Torchlight 2 has succeeded in bringing a solid amount of character to their classes (mostly through style, art, and animation), the class designs from a gameplay standpoint feel flawed, lackluster, and in my opinion, outdated (though it is a classic model).  This is where I feel that Torchlight 2 has the vast majority if not all of its flaws.

No Respeccing – I know that some people, especially those of the old Diablo 2 crowd, like this, but I for one do not.  I feel that not being able to respec your character’s stats and skills is just a cheap way to create longevity in a game.  Players invest ten’s of hours into their character as they play through the game, but if they end up finding out they made a mistake, or they can no longer progress because of their choices 30 levels ago or so, it’s just frustrating.  Yes, there is something to be said for creating the “perfect” character, but there are ways to create this feeling outside of anything permanent.  Your choices should matter, but they should not be permanently limiting, causing you to have to invest another huge chunk of time just to fix it.

Point holding – For those who don’t know, point holding is when you choose to not spend your skill points upon level up, instead waiting a few levels (sometimes 30+ levels) to spend them.  Because the system is built without respeccing, and with the later available skills stronger than the early ones, players will often hold onto their skill points instead of spending them.  While this is a player choice, the system encourages is.  It is quite possible, and often done, that a player will hold several or even tens of skill points throughout the early levels waiting to get the stronger ones.  Gameplay throughout these lower levels becomes vastly boring.  Instead of feeling a sense of increased growth and power, players deal with a sense of weakness and lack of abilities for a large part of the game content, sometimes all the way until the endgame.  This style of character building does not create enjoyable or intuitive play.

Lack of experimentation – Once again, because of the lack of respeccing, there is a severe lack of experimentation of builds and skills.  To create an optimal, or even an on par character, you have to have your build planned from the start, or at least continue to invest in skills that you’ve already invested in.  If you pick up a skill, but down the line feel that its usefulness is subpar to another skill and so you will no longer use that skill, you have still permanently lost the points from your original skill.  On top of that, skills in Torchlight 2 evolve, gaining new abilities or changes to their effects at certain skill levels, however, by the time you reach these levels, it is already too late to undo your choices.  It is literally impossible to experiment with different builds and skill choices in Torchlight 2 without creating entirely new characters and investing many hours into them.

Not intuitive/Lack of Synergy – It might be just me, but I don’t feel that the class skill sets are intuitive as a whole.  Each individual skill is easy to use and different ways to use them do come intuitively, but how the skills work together as a whole is not as intuitive.  In truth, aside from the passives, they might not even work together.  It seems that the skills were designed individually rather than being designed to work together as a whole.  It seems the best path is to pick one or two main skills, then use the rest of your points to pick up use and forget spells/passives.  Too many skills are spammable, and the few cooldown based abilities are either very mechanical or use and forget.  There are very few, if any, reactionary skills in Torchlight 2.  Unlike in Diablo 3, where you create a build in which all 6 skills are used in synergy with each other, and used often, Torchlight 2 feels like you really only need/have 1 skill that gets any use.

Pointless Skill Leveling – In Torchlight 2, each skill has 15 levels, each point you put into a skill increases its effectiveness.  However, this is a exercise in futility.  Experienced players will always max a skill that they pick up (with some very rare exceptions) for they know that it is better to have 1 or two fully powered skills than 7 or 8 weak ones.  This causes TC2’s skill leveling system to be futile.  If the best path (often even as much as the only viable path) is to max out your skills, your points lose their value.  You might as well just have the skills level as you do and create a point system that creates meaningful choices with less points and at less intervals.  As it stands, the choices you make for your skills aren’t all that meaningful on their own, but add up over the levels.  For example, tossing a point into X skill causes it to do 2% more damage per level.  That’s not much at all, not really worthy of a skill point, but 15 levels for 30% damage is.  Player’s make the choice of what to max, not how many points to put in each skill.  In essence, while you have over 100 skill point choices, you really only have about 5 or 10 meaningful choices.

No Skill Trees – If I remember correctly, this was a last minute decision by the design team, so they get a little bit of slack for that.  I’m not really sure if I agree with it though.  While it’s neat to be able to pick anything you want, not having any form of control or buildup, not having pick up earlier skills to reach the later ones, really makes having a level requirement on any of the skills pointless as well as detrimental to gameplay.  If there is no need to build up to something, then there should be no need to have to wait several levels to invest in it.  The level requirements without a skill tree are another contributor to point holding and discourages players from playing as they level, but rather playing towards an end goal.

Creating Useless Loot: As a small note, a permanent and locked in system such as this ends up causing a lot of loot found by a player to become useless to a player.  Certain builds revolve around one type of weapon or certain stats, and with no way for you to change your original path, your gameplay cannot flow with what you find.

In summary, the system that Torchlight 2 has created falls back into the old Diablo 2 mindset.  Your choices are permanent and there is no forgiveness for mistakes.  Not only is this frustrating to players, and vastly time consuming to perfectionists, but it also constrains experimentation rather than encouraging it.  While the skills themselves are neat and fun to use, as a whole package there is a lot left to be desired.  One or two skills make up your entire arsenal, while anything else just seems almost useless, just extra flair rather than synergizing together and becoming an integral part of your build.  The skill leveling design is superfluous with only 1 out of 15 (maybe 1 out of 5 in some cases) leveling choices actually being meaningful.  This hampers the casual players, while being unfulfilling to the hardcore ones.  Because the skills do not synergize well and boils town to spamming one or two of them and your basic attacks, a very large portion of being good at the game doesn’t even involve playing the game, but rather researching optimal stat/skill builds in relation to items available at the very end of the game.  Everything about the class design points to the endgame with seemingly little consideration for the beginning of the game, or rather even the first play through which ends roughly at level 40+.  It’s a classic system, but it’s a flawed one.

Loot: My Shinies

            Torchlight 2 handles loot superbly.  As you play, you constantly feel like you are finding items.  Uncommons and rares drop at a solid rate from everything around you.  Chests, rocks, normal mobs and the like all drop good quality items at a solid rate.  Each new item feels like it could be an upgrade when it drops.  This is how drops should feel.  On top of that, TC2 added in a fourth level of gear as opposed to Diablo 3’s three tiers.  Unique item’s, TC2 come at a slow but decent rate and they come at a low level.  Just from clearing Act I you are guaranteed 1 from each of the two bosses (as well as from every boss in each Act) and are highly likely to find 2-4 additional uniques through the Act.  People like to feel that they have found something special even before the endgame.  The uniques in TC2 fit this perfectly.  They are few enough in between to feel rare, but not so far apart that the odds of finding one feel astronomical.  Once the endgame is reached, the final tier of items begins to show up, legendaries, and the odds of finding one are sufficiently low, however, because of uniques and their frequency, it still feels like you are finding useful items, even while you search for those rare, optimal legendaries.

Difficulties: It’s My Choice?

            Being able to choose your own difficulty allows players to play and progress at their own pace.  In most cases, this is a good thing and it works well for Torchlight 2.  TC2 however, doesn’t have to deal with the competitive spirit of players.  Being the underdog and not being held to a certain level of competition among players, TC2 is allowed to follow this route, with very few players feeling cheated because of difficulties, or that other players are cheating for being at a lower one.  It’s an easier place to be in terms of design.
            Having said that, I think the difficulty of Torchlight 2 is very solid.  I mostly played on the Elite and Hardcore settings.  I found the difficulty of this to be very fair.  It required you to pay attention, be careful, and go at a slower pace.  Rushing forward or taking needless damage could get you killed, but you are punished and killed by a single mistake, rather by many mistakes at once (there are some exceptions).  Elite feels very playable, with a decent, if not actually hard challenge that is not excruciatingly frustrating like Diablo 3’s Inferno.

Endgame Content: Again and Again and Again

            Torchlight 2 has two things going for it when it comes to endgame content that set it far apart from Diablo 3.  When it comes to an action RPG based so much around the content after the game itself is important, having the right things to make your endgame content enjoyable is essential.

            The Mapworks: Welcome to Torchlight 2’s challenge mode.  This is essentially an area of limitless possibility. The Mapworks allows you to “warp” into new and old dungeons of varying levels and gives those dungeons unique modifiers.  Things like the player gains 25% life steal while the enemies have a 50% chance to poison and burn.  The Mapworks is a place where old content is recycled in new ways with new, if not always engaging, elements to overcome.  With The Mapworks not only is old content recycled, but new content can be easily created and added to the game to challenge players as well as refresh their gameplay.  In short, The Mapworks helps keep things different.  I will say though, that the full potential of The Mapworks is lost because of the TC2 Skill System.  Being unable to redesign and experiment, content designers are unable to create new “maps” that encourage player to try to things, or to build a dungeon based on a certain playstyle, seeing if players can figure out and execute the right strategies.

            Enjoyable and Rewarding Exploration:  Torchlight 2 has many good reasons for you to explore all of the areas of any given map as well as open/break every object possible.  Aside from the plentiful drop rate from just normal mobs, there are several elements in each map that encourage exploration.  Each map has its own quests, several dungeons offering rewards outside of killing mobs, phase beast challenge zones, a key to a Golden Chest, various event objects, and champion packs.  Beyond that, you never know when opening a rock will yield a shower of gold and gems, or even a unique item (the chance is pretty decent), not just a few coins.  Chests offer up good bounties, with 2-3 uncommons or rares in each of the middle tier chests.  Mimics and chests trap also keep things interesting, taking a little bit of the monotony away from opening them.  NPC’s that offer a variety of enchantment services better than what you can find in towns also frequent the games zones.  All these things make exploring TC2’s maps enjoyable as well as rewarding.  In a game where you will be repeating content countless times, it’s a great idea to discourage creating farming routes while encouraging exploration and actually playing the game. 

Game Mechanics: How Things Work

            Torchlight 2 has refined most of the action RPG genre’s mechanics.  Status effects are unique, useful, and wide spread.  Basic attacks from weapons are all different (from single target to splash, to spread) and the attacks themselves are useful, which is good cause a lot if not most of your attacks are going to be basic ones.  There is a lot going on in the game mechanics that keep things fresh.  Various elemental damages that each have their own special status effect.  A galore of weapon and armor enhancements that include anything from the basic +damage modifiers to status effects or spell casts on proc.  None of it is overwhelming though.  You don’t need to have one or the other, and the basic ones are easy to understand while the more proc related enchantments are nice flair and perhaps really useful.  All but one thing of the game’s mechanics is well done and refined, as step from previous installations of the genre.
            The one mechanic that I feel is out of place, is that of non-normalized armor and damage.  Percentage based reductions make sense.  It keeps a player from reaching the point of being both untouchable, and being unable to touch the enemies.  It’s a design choice more than anything, but it’s one that allows things to get out of hand and places a much higher emphasis on slow weapons than it does on fast.  Take two weapons for example; weapon A does 100 damage 10 times per second and weapon B does 1,000 damage one time per second.  They both do 1,000 damage per second to targets without armor, but against a target with 50 armor, the A would only do 500 damage per second while B would do 950, a very significant difference.  On a normalized scale, the armor would provide a % reduction rather than a flat reduction, causing both weapons to do the same damager per second.  Normalized mechanics allow strength and weakness to progress at a steady pace, where as non-normalized mechanics cause cliffs and plateau in damage as well as proc rates.  Normally, this ends up causing certain weapons and builds to vastly outshine others, limiting a player’s viable choices.

A Few Small Things: Because Even Small Details Matter

            Just  a few small things I wanted to point out, cause even the small things can make a big difference.

            Scrolls – Not too much to say here, just that there’s really no need for them.  Just another item to pick up and take space (though that’s not an issue).  No real reason to have them, and a small nuisance when you don’t.  Go the Diablo 3 way, just remove them, but leave their functions.

            Quest NPC’s Issue – Clicking on them doesn’t pause the game and brings up a window that covers half your screen.  I’ve died by accidentally clicking on these guys, or clicking on them when nothing was around, only to have something appear and kill me before I can see it.  Simple enough to fix.

            Modding – A great way to extend the life of a game and another way for the community to get involved.  I’m not sure how this effects the safety of the game in terms of loot generation or hacking though.  I haven’t tried it, but I could see it causing easy access to levels and loot that if the game had a competitive edge to it, would cause problems.  Perhaps you have to make a character specifically for modded games.  I’m not sure, but it is a benefit when competitive spirit is not an issue.  TC2 should find a lot of extended life out of this.

            Offline vs. Online – Another good addition to Torchlight 2, but at the same time, not a safe one.  It’s a lot easier for hacking and cheating to be done in an offline environment than an online one.  I think it’s a luxury that TC2 has to be able to have an offline mode that Diablo 3 does not have.

What TC2 Doesn’t Have to Deal With: Perks of the Underdog

            There are 3 very big factors that Torchlight 2 does not have to deal with when designing their game.  I feel it’s only fair to make some mention of them, as they are things that Diablo 3 designers have had to deal with and understand throughout the whole process.

            Security – Torchlight 2 doesn’t have to deal with a much security issues as Diablo 3 does.  If TC2 gets hacked and people start to duplicate items, or give their character stats and skills they shouldn’t have, it’s not going to be that big of a deal.  Sure, the team will attempt and work out a solution for it, but it’s not going to a scandalous event like it would in D3.  TC2 can afford a few security breaches in the game and because of such are able to build in things like modding and an offline mode into their design.

            Competition – Such a huge aspect of Diablo 3 that Torchlight 2 does not have to deal with.  D3 designers could not make a game that was simply enjoyable, but had to make one that was as balanced and fair as could possibly be.  People progressed and competed on a global scale and any advantage that a class was found to have caused resentment and a sense of unfair play that should have been caught and tested from the developers at the start.  It takes an extra level of effort to create designs that are unique, varied, enjoyable, and fair.

            Game Longevity – Diablo 3 is/was expected to last years and years.  I expect, as do many others, that people will be playing Diablo 3 for the next 5-10 years as they did Diablo 2.  This is the mindset that the developers had to create D3 with.  Torchlight 2 developers did not have this need.  I’m sure they wanted to and have tried to, maybe successfully, but it was not a requirement of their build.  This allows them to focus more on the short term enjoyment than the long term.

Lack of Innovation: Tried, True, Safe

            Torchlight 2 has refined and improved on the vast majority of action RPG elements.  The varied combat mechanics, elements providing status effects, pet shopping, environments to explore that are enjoyable, and more that I’ve listed.  Their skill system, while still flawed in my opinion, has made some improvements to the old model, but it still is an old model.  While TC2 has done these things well, even admirably in some areas, the game really has no innovation.  It uses a tried and true formula and doesn’t seek to branch out from it.  The game offer’s nothing new, just and updated experience.  Simply put, it TC2 feels like an updated version of Diablo 2, rather than something new and exciting in its own right.  If you liked D2’s style, you’ll love TC2, but for me, the gameplay got boring before the end, becoming very repetitive and without need for reactionary gameplay.  Boiling it down, it’s a game I’ve played before without having played it.  I’m a little saddened by this.  What TC2’s design team has done to update the genre is amazing, I wish they would have tried to innovate it as well.  I hope that in the next installment they do.

In Closing

            Torchlight 2 is a top quality game.  It stands alongside Diablo 3 and holds its own.  In fact, it does a lot of things better than Diablo 3 itself does.  I’d go far as to say that TC2 beats Diablo in every category except for character design, however, in a game in which character design is so important, this is a big down fall.  Torchlight 2’s gameplay is fun, repeatable, and continually enjoyable, however its characters quickly become boring.  Diablo 3 has the opposite problem.  It’s class design is amazing.  It pushes the boundaries of the genre and shows an immense amount of innovation and design creativity, but they failed on the basics and the game isn’t enjoyable.  Both of these flaws are deadly and hurt their respective games dearly.  If you’re looking for a short term, experience at a casual pace, I’d recommend TC2 over D3, but if you’re looking for something longer lasting, with deeper character design and more potential, I’d recommend Diablo 3, in about a year or two that is.

            If you take anything away from this article, I hope it’s this.  Torchlight 2 does all the basics right.  The designer’s have improved upon a huge host of the action RPG genre’s features.  However, they played it safe, choosing only to update, not to innovate.  If you don’t innovate, you will never be head of the pack, only the followers.