RGF's Official PAX Interview Questions Thread

[Webbstre]

UPDATE: The interview with the answers to the questions are here: http://www.runicgamesfansite.com/conten ... s-all.html

It's that time of year again, folks! We're fortunate this year to have both Jerich, AND hawkn (who won a contest for a 3-Day pass) to be going to PAX this year, and as such we'll be conducting interviews with the Runic Games developers, the results of which will go up on Runic Games Fansite for you all to see. All you have to do is put your questions for the developers in this thread (or the corresponding post on RGF) and near the end of the month I'll draw as many new questions as possible for our representatives to ask the developers! Unfortunately Jerich will likely be spending a lot of time on Guild Wars 2 around this time, so he won't have as many articles as he wrote last year, but fortunately the game is nearing release as it is so it shouldn't matter too much. Plus, if we're lucky, hawkn MIGHT be able to swing a video interview (which would be MUCH easier for us to get online quickly than a transcript).

Ask your questions for the Runic Games developers below! I'll parse through the duplicates or questions with known answers later, so feel free to ask whatever you want!

(Hidden rule: You you should stop yourself if you just want to ask the same question about big breasted succubus monsters over and over again - seriously, we're not asking it as it's pretty self evident what the answer is!)

[TyrantPotato]

my question is very simple.

throughout testing what is the craziest most insane psycho what da **** weapon/armor piece that has dropped?

[Zidders]

Here's my question:

When the f**k is it going to be released?







What?
lol

[Kurrus]

What would you consider the biggest mistake done during TL2's development, and how was it fixed/will it be fixed/will it be prevented during development of the next game or expansion?

[gold163]

uh-oh, even Zidders is getting impatient!

I'll post again if I have any questions to ask. I don't have any right now but I'm interested in the thought process that went into certain aspects of the game.

[Ulvaak]

Since TL2 being fully moddable is a selling point for the game and one that has a lot of people excited, I would like to ask if Runic has any plans to help players manage the mods that they have downloaded.

There was a short discussion in the following thread where I had offered an idea about including a mod manager in a game launcher similar to the one we saw in the beta. http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=29131 Would there be anything like that? or do players still have to manage mods through TorchEd?

In general, will there be any decent official help files/notes/guides/tuts for TorchEd2? or is it pretty much a release and forget scenario leaving it for the community to figure it out for themselves?

[Azaael]

Alrighty, I'll attempt to shoot a kinda basic one!

I notice Torchlight 2 is very much designed with the PoV of 'Fun on the player's own terms.' What I mean is that it seems to be built to be open with things like character builds both 'regular' 'offbeat' and everything in between, fully open to the mod community, being able to play online with friends and offline and everything, and even customizing character looks(which granted doesn't affect gameplay). How challenging was it to get a balanced and working action-RPG while still trying to leave it open and not cutting down player choice when it comes to builds, gear setups, and the like?

[Glass]

Now that Torchlight 2 is coming out, has there been any thought given to making Torchlight 1 open-source?

Also, since OGRE 3D is open-source, does Runic contribute patches (features, bug-fixes) back to the project?

[Ingmartin]

Boxers, briefs or freedom?

But seriously...

It was mentioned previously "in another life" that combining ARPG elements with MMO and sandbox styles would be of great interest for further projects down the road (Max discussed some of this in an interview a while back). Care to speculate or expand upon these thoughts...reiterate SPECULATE.

[Cactuscat222]

Awh sweet; I'll be making it up to PAX this year as well.

I don't have any questions off the top of my head, but I'll come back and edit with some.

[D2Hans]

I think the most important question would be to ask Falcor "If he was a tree what tree would he be?"

I would ask if there was a feature you wanted to add to the game but felt at the end that it did not fit into the game for whatever reason.

[Glass]

Now that you Runic has had good success with Torchlight 1, are on the verge of releasing of releasing Torchlight 2 and seem to be in a very good position, if you could turn back the clock and prevent the closure of Flagship (you wouldn't have formed Runic but would have continued working on Mythos/Hellgate), would you?


(Are we allowed multiple questions? I guess technically I've asked 3 now but my first 2 were related )

[UncleJim]

I think the most important question would be to ask Falcor "If he was a tree what tree would he be?"

It would definitely have to be a tree with bark.

[Bibblesquash]

In order to gain insight into the convoluted minds of the devs I'd like to ask what class/build do you play and why? It's a TL2 psych evaluation! An additional question would be who is the best TL2 player at runic?

[Arkham]

Are you planning on adding purchaseable hats and an "Ember-conomy" to the game?

No, no, okay, seriously. My real question:
Your current plans as far as we know extend up to the Mac port of TL2. Any info you can give us on what you're thinking about doing next, or is that still too far out?

[ishikabe]

While making the TL series, what freedoms did you use to create content that you were limited from doing at Blizzard North?

[subedii]

Torchlight 1 sold about 1 million units last I heard, and was considered pretty successful. Given the development of Torchlight 2, how many units do you think it would have to ship / how much would it have to earn to break even?

And in case financial questions are off the cards for whatever reason: How many pre-orders have you had for the game so far?

And if sales stats are also out of the question (I realise these topics can be a bit dicey to answer): MMO's in recent months (and years) have been going F2P like crazy, the most recent prominent example being Star Wars: The Old Republic. Given that the Torchlight MMO is still tacitly on the cards, what are your thoughts on the best ways to do an MMO today, and the best ways to monetise it without turning it into a Pay-2-Win fest (like a lot of the Easter MMO's seem to follow)? Are there any key pitfalls that you want to avoid? And more importantly, aren't you worried that there simply isn't enough of a userbase to go around all these MMO's? That a lot of them are cannibalising each other? What would prevent a Torchlight MMO from falling into the same pitfall? EVE for example, is small compared to the big games in the genre, but it's very unique, and that drives a hardcore fanbase that's stood for a long time now, so what would be unique about a Torchlight MMO to make people want to play it over the other games out there?

Actually, I realise that's actually several questions in that last paragraph, so let me just put it a different way: What design of Torchlight MMO do you envision as being successful, and why?

[shakbugi]

Has there been a revamp of the scaling of embermage skills as to being either purely DPS-based or level-based? Or were they purposefully designed that way?

.

[subedii]

Actually, a couple of mod related questions:

- If you saw a community mod or addition that you really liked, would you consider making it an official part of the game? And what would that take? I'm thinking of Team Fortress 2 here, although really, the model in question could be completely different.

- On that note: Is Steam Workshop still on the cards? I realise not all version of TL2 are going to be using Steam (and I imagine some successor to Torchleach will come in for those), but for those that do, I think this would be a huge plus point. It's been awesome for games like Portal 2 and Skyrim.

[BrianEvol]

The mod system is fantastic, but are there any plans for Runic developed official DLC? Such as extra acts, new classes, new pets, etc. I have had good experiences with small cost DLC from other games and would be interested in purchasing more Runic developed content for TL2.