What Every (Former?) D3 Player Should Know About TL2

[ComaPrison]

Is veteran the highest difficulty? There's a higher "elite" difficulty isn't there?

[mibuwolf]

There's a higher "elite" difficulty isn't there?

Yes.

[ComaPrison]

Anyone know if drops in "elite" difficulty are better?

[MrMagikarp]

They are not.

[mibuwolf]

Anyone know if drops in "elite" difficulty are better?

Game doesn't reward you for higher difficulty. No.

[Shadelotus]

Anyone know if drops in "elite" difficulty are better?

Higher difficulty with no drops is like this....
No better loots, okay its cool, I got skills...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx1XhlPIeEM

We all want to be that guy. With better loots it just ain't the same.

[Snarkyneno]

Hmmm. Seems to me that about 80% of the complaints about D3 center around the itemization and drop rates. While it's all well and good for those of us with experience with Torchlight 2 to assure people that you will be able to advance on your own without incessant farming or trading - just your own rewarding drops, a picture is worth a thousand words. This spoiled portion is directly from the Torchlight 2 website:

Spoiler: show

Recently Erich Schaefer compiled data on loot drops for a test character, and made this amazing infographic. This was sent internally for us to see how a specific character may encounter possible drops. Keep in mind that another character's loot drops will be affected differently depending on elements like play style, quests, and character.

It's rare to get such an elaborate and clearly defined loot breakdown, and we wanted to share it with you. As we continue to balance all aspects of the game, statistics like these will change. This isn't final data, but it's a great peek at just how much there is to find. Thank you Adam for the experiment, and Erich for creating this on your weekend.

http://www.torchlight2game.com/assets/235/torchlight_2_loot.png

In response, Jerich came up with this analysis to the potential loot drops:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=22365#p201908

[Zidders]

This spoiled portion is directly from the Torchlight 2 website

Spoiler: show

[amb2010]

-snip-

I am so jealous of his 1337 pie-chart skillz

Is veteran the highest difficulty? There's a higher "elite" difficulty isn't there?

To be more specific, there's Elite and then you'll be able to do Newgame+ that will make it more difficult as well.

[syrianrue]

New here, played TL1, long time d1-d3 player. Without going into my own rants about d3, you can just assume i hate it for all the same reasons as everyone else posting here. With that being said, what do I as a player want out of tl2 and ex-blizz north employees? The same thing that made d2:lod so great...items, and the ability to actually PLAY the game how i want, not how some community manager thinks we should be playing the game. Which naturally would involve some awesome embermage build that revolves around blowing everything up as fast as possible to loot items that actually have interesting stat-rolls on them. I played d2 for hammerdins and Forb sorcs and CL sorcs and for perfect rolled enigmas and infinity's....I don't play d3 because homogenized classes, nerfs, WoW-mentality, pay2win, and lack of interesting stat rolls on items. Yes i realize i contradicted myself in saying i wasn't gonna rant, but oh well. Heres looking forward to TL2.

P.S. hellgate london and mythos rocked, screw anyone that thought otherwise....Long Live CONDOR/Blizz North/Flagship/Runic

[manthos63]

Excelent! Thanks for the answers . This is exactly what i wanted. The ability to play at my own pace, sure i might want to farm once in a while to get a cool item but i want to do so at my own choise and not be forced to do so because the game wants me to. Having to adapt to new mob mechanics is fine, its part of the challenge. Its a fair way to increase the difficulty and as long as i know i just need to try a bit more to kill the mobs i'll be having my fun. For now i'll just play the waiting game...

[fercac]

"2- They Conflict with the future Torchlight MMO. If you want a secure economy, server-only saves, a game without cheats, competitive PvP, etc, you will want to wait for the Torchlight MMO, which will be the same kind of game as Torchlight 1 and 2, but with that secure server situation and a lot more content. It won't be changing the playing style at all."

I think this is a bit strange. How can a game be a MMO and have the same play style as a ARPG? Typically you kill raid bosses that drop BoP items in MMO:s. And you raid with 20-40 other players..or more. At least this is what is typical in theme park MMO:s. Sandbox MMO:s are not like that. But they are also not at all like ARPG:s. In ARPG:s you can solo and get the best items in the game solo. And all items can be traded..nothing is BoP/BoE. Playing with a small team is optional. No big raids or massive PvP events.

As far as I know MMO:s and ARPG:s are two different genres. And a lot of classic ARPG-fans are not very interested in MMO:s.

[Webbstre]

"2- They Conflict with the future Torchlight MMO. If you want a secure economy, server-only saves, a game without cheats, competitive PvP, etc, you will want to wait for the Torchlight MMO, which will be the same kind of game as Torchlight 1 and 2, but with that secure server situation and a lot more content. It won't be changing the playing style at all."

I think this is a bit strange. How can a game be a MMO and have the same play style as a ARPG? Typically you kill raid bosses that drop BoP items in MMO:s. And you raid with 20-40 other players..or more. At least this is what is typical in theme park MMO:s. Sandbox MMO:s are not like that. But they are also not at all like ARPG:s. In ARPG:s you can solo and get the best items in the game solo. And all items can be traded..nothing is BoP/BoE. Playing with a small team is optional. No big raids or massive PvP events.

As far as I know MMO:s and ARPG:s are two different genres. And a lot of classic ARPG-fans are not very interested in MMO:s.

MMO is not actually a genre, it's a level of multiplayer capability. MMOs have existed since before raids or sandboxes existed, and some of them were far more ARPG-like than the generation that spawned after Everquest (sometimes considered the predecessor to WoW). An MMO ARPG (if you want to call it that) plays like a Diablo game, but allows you to interact with more people. A typical example is where the characters start in hub towns, where they can interact with other players, but once they leave the town everything is instanced for the current group. In other examples the entire Overworld is shared and only the dungeons are instanced. I've yet to see an example where you have 40+ players in an MMO ARPG situation and have an army of monsters attack, as in the past hardware capabilities couldn't handle it. It's possible we'll see that level of interaction with the Torchlight MMO, but no one knows.

Either way, MMO is exactly what is stands for "Massively Multi Player." The things you associated with it are applied to the RPG part of the game (thus MMORPG being the proper term), and there are many types of RPGs out there.

[wbox]

Just going to leave this here for future reference.

[Lonami]

This thread is pretty nice, thanks for posting it .

I wish it got sticky'ed, but it won't with that title .

[Webbstre]

Let's be honest, it won't be long before this thread won't be needed any more. Once there is a demo out all we'll need to say is "Go download the demo, it's free." Until then, there is this thread.

[JoystickMonkey]

Thanks for posting this, Webb!

[Acrylik]

snake? snake. SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!
bump

[Cyberg]

I'm another D3 player that is switching to TL2.

I'm one of the few that enjoyed every minute of D3, up to Inferno. 1.3 came too late for me.

Anyways, I played D1 and actually never really got into D2. I've per-ordered TL2 and I'm now playing TL.

I'm not expecting a Diablo killer, just another gaming experience.

[Futon]

Quality read. Thanks for the post. I do have a couple questions/comments though. I was a huge Diablo 2 fan and really liked Diablo 3 right up to the end game. The itemization and tediousness of the end game really ruined the fun. I beat inferno a few weeks ago and just have no reason or desire to play it. I heard about the Torchlight series and with the steam pre-order for just 20 bucks i got 2 games.No brainer! So now i'm playing torchlight and really enjoy everything about it. Anyways here are my questions.

1) You say that in the multiplayer peer to peer mode you can only play with people that have the same mods as you. Will it list their mods? So like if i want to play with a friend will it show me what mods he is using so I can go get them to join him?
2) In Diablo 2 you could name your games so people would join based on what was going on. For instance if i'm trading or i'm pvping people could just join and do those things with me. Is that how the matchmaking works? So I know what kind of game i'm joining?
3) How does loot work for end game items? What i mean is in Diablo 2 items such as Windforce were extremely rare. Are there items like that in Torchlight? Like just really rare amazing items?

Thanks for responses.