My PAX 2009 Torchlight Gameplay Experience

[ombra]

Thank you very much. There is nothing better, than reviews from actual gamers! I was convinced before, but i am much more convinced after, and i am gonna send my friends your personal review.

Thank you very much.

[Haze]

What a great preview, thank you.
The more I read about the game the more I want it, I might have to get myself a timemachine to get to the 27th now because I'm so excited.

It boggles me how much of a programming work horse Travis is, like.. what.. how do you.. where do you get all that energy from?, you truly sound like some kind of demi-coding-god.

[Webbstre]

This is a great post and totally newsworthy. Thanks so much Jerich!

[MMOLover]

Thank you so much for this great preview!

[chasehuber]

just as everyone has said already... ty for this. ^_^

[FrontTowardEnemy]

I was at PAX for all three days w/ a friend of mine. With so much to see, and so many amazing games on demo, we still went back to the Torchlight booth three times.

Yes, it *was* that fun. On our way home, my friend and I were discussing our high points for the weekend, and Torchlight came up several times. We're both really looking forward to release day.

Just a side note: Runic, if you need some last minute quality control, I'm available.

[hawkn]

Yeah, i think runic should have some playtesters. If so, i'm open to doing that for them. Great preview. (oh, by the way, what were so many people doing up that early?)

[Jerich]

Great review! At last we start to get some actual information ... even if it might have to be updated later.

I added your review to my site: http://pctalk.info/Games/Torchlight/Pages/Misc.php
Please let me know if I need to change anything.

The skill description seems right. I am pretty sure I did not get most of the names right. The chain lightning type skill is an alchemist ability whereas fireball is a spell any character can use.

If buying the game (single player) on the release day in any way guarantees MMO alpha access they I'll definitely be there as soon as its available.

I am sooo ready to put my WoW account to rest.

I stopped playing WoW recently too even though I love that game and miss my guildies(I was around 2000th in the world for achievements at one time). There are so many awesome games coming out and I don't want to miss them. I also want to do some programming and modding on the side and WoW is just a big time sink.

As far as an update to my original thread...
I called up one of my friends and am able to confirm that he saw three skill trees for each class. I asked him about the passive skills being in each tree and he said that he thinks so. He also saw the blue town portal type scrolls, so I was not hallucinating about that.=)

[TaylorBalbi]

Definitely the best preview since GDC I don't remember a big write up being done from E3, come to think of it. Rock on man, we newsed it and made it a featured article on our website: http://www.TorchlightInsider.com Good work!

[travisbaldree]

It sure as heck isn't just me working hard - everybody here is busting their hump like crazy - Marsh and Greg are doing insane amounts of coding, the entire art staff is up late polishing, tuning, cramming in every last thing they can. We have an amazing team, and if you liked the game after playing, they're the reason why - totally the most dedicated and awesome group of people to be working with. I think we really lucked out getting to stick together.

[travisbaldree]

Answering a couple of previous questions -

Yes, three skill panes per class. The tiers unlock every 5 player levels, and there are currently no skill prerequisites - however, you can't hoard and dump points all at once into a level 25 skill - subsequent levels have increased level requirements.

We ended up taking the perks and mixing them in with the skills - now they're passives. It was just cumbersome and clunky to have another 'skill' pane and made leveling up a chore. Oh well.

3 resurrection options on death - XP/Fame loss and immediate res, gold loss and back to the level entry, no loss and back to town. There will be waypoints every 4 levels or so in the story dungeon.

Yes, TP scrolls and ident scrolls - also learnable spells for both (at least at present )

[travisbaldree]

More info - the skill trees on display at PAX weren't quite done. The Destroyer and Vanquisher each have at least 4-6 other skills that need to be completed, and the Alchemist 2 or 3. There's also plenty of balance left to do on them, and probably a good bit of tree rearrangement. There were also several skills (mostly area buffs/debuffs like Frailty and Spectral Decay ) that had placeholder sounds and particles.

[hawkn]

Cool. Now i can't wait for the mmo, because i love skill trees designed for party play.

[Spock]

... three skill panes per class. The tiers unlock every 5 player levels ...

Any chance of getting the text definition file for these so I can start extracting the skill trees for display? Even if they aren't finished, enough will be there that it won't take much to get the tables exactly right later.

[travisbaldree]

They're actually all separated out into separate bits and pieces for easy moddability (usually via the editor) - and skills are sometimes made of multiple skills ( this skill casts this skill that casts on impact, or on unit death, or yadda yadda ) and the skills reference affixes ( which are bundles of effects ) which are also in external files. And those reference CURVES. And layouts - and some of the skill data is in the layouts, so it sort of gets spread around.
Gimme another week or so with 'em and maybe we can find a way to get a legible dump that'll be easy to parse.

[Spock]

... Gimme another week or so with 'em and maybe we can find a way to get a legible dump that'll be easy to parse.

Anything would be appreciated, just don't do anything special just for me. You must be extremely busy as it is and I'm amazed you have the time to visit in the forum!

It will be hard to wait but a bug-free, polished game on release is more important than getting a little information preview.

[Jerich]

It sure as heck isn't just me working hard - everybody here is busting their hump like crazy - Marsh and Greg are doing insane amounts of coding, the entire art staff is up late polishing, tuning, cramming in every last thing they can. We have an amazing team, and if you liked the game after playing, they're the reason why - totally the most dedicated and awesome group of people to be working with. I think we really lucked out getting to stick together.

Hehe, sorry Travis. I didn't mean to imply that you were the only Torchlight member that was working hard and incredibly talented. I was just super impressed with the staff and used that story of you as an anecdote to describe how dedicated you all were. The whole "demigod coder" comment quote may have been a little over the top.=)

The other people I met were equally awesome. Wonder and Jeff and Matt and the other people I talked to were also friendly, knowledgeable and demonstrated a palpable pride with the game and competency without coming off as arrogant. Your art team is amazing. I haven't seen characters as crisp and alive for a long time.

What I meant by the whole demigod coder can be read in the following context.... I personally am a decent programmer and got As in most of my UW classes. I always thought I was really good until I saw one of my best friends code (he worked at Microsoft as a security lead for a long time and now works for Amazon). While I always thought I was fast at coding, he programs even complex stuff like drivers almost faster than I can type and much of it compiles perfectly the first time with no logical or syntactical errors. I have heard managers say that coding speed between a good programmer and a great programmer can be as much as 10 times. I definitely believe it. Anyway, judging by the speed with which you guys have put Torchlight together makes me think you have quite a few "great" level programmers on your staff.

- Jerich

[travisbaldree]

Hahahahaha! You don't have to apologize for telling me I'm awesome.
Just spreadin' the love to the deserving.

[Notmyhandle]

I agree, Jerich, the visuals are very impressive. If you liked Mythos, these are even better.

For me, it was pretty funny walking up to the game and not knowing how to do anything. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out that the control scheme was exactly like Mythos' original configuration - just click where you want to go... But then I was on track and everything was just fine. I did like the ability to quickly switch between my alternate skills (left click is regular attack, probably changeable, and the right click is whatever you want; you can set an alternate skill for your right click) by using the Tab key.

I was surprised to see that the Destroyer only had about 5 active skills available (strangely, out of the three trees, the middle column tended to be the "active skill" column). Destroyer had cleave/war stomp (AOE 180 degree arc at melee range), a charge ability with fixed damage, shadow armor with fixed damage, and the giant sword slamming the ground ability (electric, fixed damage), and maybe one or two other abilities that required higher levels to unlock. Each active skill's damage increases based on your stats. Some are strictly dependant on Strength, while I think the giant sword slam ability gained bonuses from Magic and Defense (odd). I can't remember if the melee arc attack gained damage based on my weapon's attack, but it was my primary ability of choice because it was doing much more damage than the giant sword slam (I had pumped everything into Strength and Dexterity so I could wield burly 1 handed Axes).

For equipment, you guys are probably not going to like the defense stat requirement that appears. When I saw it, I was very confused - I've never seen a defensive stat affect one's ability to carry something. For me it's just unprecedented, but not a bad thing. Imagine defense being the successor to Vitality - which would surprise anyone as being a requirement. At the PAX build, 2 handed equipment aside from Bows had not been implemented, but Kyle said they were still going to put them in.

When you die you get three options: start at the exact spot you died at, but lose XP; start at the entrance to the floor, but lose gold, or start back at town with no loss (this was on the highest difficulty). I was sad that the hearthstone wasn't in my inventory, so when I ran out of scrolls I was pretty screwed (although they kindly placed one before the first boss battle).

Kyle pointed out that they want to make the environment more interactive, so I came across a "plunger" object in the cave tileset that blew open a nearby door when pressed. Hopefully they put more of these fun doodads into the game.

There is voice acting for the major parts of the game - it's very cool.

I also have to agree that the Runic staff is pretty down to earth. The fact that the majority of them participate in the discussions on the forums should make their attentiveness and desire to incorporate feedback evident. After meeting the two representatives from Perfect World Entertainment, I am very pleased that they have formed a cooperative business relationship.

I took some photos, but only one of the screen up close. Runic - do you mind if I post it? It's of the Vanquisher pause screen (camera rotation, skill tree open, and character pane open).

Edit: I was also shown the command console. You can bring it up during the game to modify things - cheat (gold/level up) or teleport through the dungeon. This will be necessary for testing the game while building your own maps. I talked with some guys (Sirio and Brock?) about possibly having unlockable content for the console. Since the gameplay has many features that need to be introduced and expanded on, this is definitely at the bottom of the priority list.

A quick shout out to the staff I met: Max, Travis, Peter, Wonder, Kyle, Sirio, Brock, Marsh, Leo, Matt Lefferts, Mike, and I think Ben was there on Saturday. And of course Jason and Alex from Perfect World.

[travisbaldree]

There are actually other 2-handers besides bows already in - Crossbows, Staves, and Rifles.
Kyle is talking about Greatweapons, which are just honking big.

Destroyer had a bit more than 5 actives (and these may be old names, I lose track of how many times we rename them), Titan Stomp, Crushing Burst, the big Slashy thingy, Stampede, Shadow Armor, Spectral Decay, Spectral Blade. He also has a Thorns aura. He'll be getting 4-5 more actives, but Alchy and Vanq got more love first.

Defense is only required for a subset of gear - there is gear for every other stat as well ( usually with some sort of class intent, which you can of course ignore for
'different' builds ).
Stat requirements in general are a little low - they also ONLY appear on enchanted gear. All gear has a level requirement ( unless it is level 1 or 2 ).
All of these requirements can be dropped through magical effects or some skill investments ( gear masteries drop them - there are magical, melee, ranged, and armor masteries )
Defense is a straight multiplier for your armor, basically. Armor acts as soak here, not avoidance as in Mythos and Diablo. A roll of 50-100% of your armor value occurs vs the damage incurred.

Magic investment also doesn't really affect Mana - there's an innate Mana/health increase by level ( and of course lots of gear modifiers). Magic actually modifies elemental damage - some weapons are 100% elemental damage ( wands, staves ) and some have a split, and of course you can add elemental damage through various means ( enchants, socketables ). Elemental damage bonuses also COMBINE with ranged/melee damage bonuses. So investing in Dex and Magic will be excellent for wand-wielders ( ranged, 100% elemental items )

Of course, all of the requirements ( or removal of them entirely!) is absolutely moddable so you could change the whole thing around in not a great deal of time - especially since item definitions 'inherit' from base item definitions, and the values are on curves. It is very quick to make sweeping changes to the system and test them out.