Friday Update 4-6-12

[Mannam]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/06/torch ... -diablo-3/

Confirmed for releasing after Diablo 3, if it wasn't implied concretely enough for you already.

[carrierx]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/06/torchlight-2-will-ideally-launch-shortly-after-diablo-3/

Confirmed for releasing after Diablo 3, if it wasn't implied concretely enough for you already.

Cool. Got that out of the way.

[Scheckig]

Love it, I dig everything about the idea.I wonder if it will be reliable enough to base builds around or if it'll just be an "oh crap" button...

[Mannam]

Seems I posted that in the wrong thread.

Anyhow, I hope it's not too difficult to change the text that appears when hitting enemies.
I like floating numbers, but I don't really see any reason for the game to announce that certain things are critical hits and that certain numbers correlate to gold.

Wouldn't it cause much less clutter to just have normal hits, critical hits, and gold all tied to their own colored numbers?

[JoystickMonkey]

While it looks cool, the slowdown doesn't actually happen in-game (you can't really do time slowdown stuff in multiplayer unless you do it for everyone, and that would get annoying).
Also, Dexterity reduces the fumble penalty, not the chance for it to happen. Instead of doing a lot less damage when you fumble, you do a little less damage. There are other ways to actually reduce the chance of fumble.

[Ingmartin]

While it looks cool, the slowdown doesn't actually happen in-game (you can't really do time slowdown stuff in multiplayer unless you do it for everyone, and that would get annoying).
Also, Dexterity reduces the fumble penalty, not the chance for it to happen. Instead of doing a lot less damage when you fumble, you do a little less damage. There are other ways to actually reduce the chance of fumble.

Can you also apply that fumble reduction stat to Adrian Peterson of the Vikings for the '12 NFL season?

[PatrickB]

Seems I posted that in the wrong thread.

Anyhow, I hope it's not too difficult to change the text that appears when hitting enemies.
I like floating numbers, but I don't really see any reason for the game to announce that certain things are critical hits and that certain numbers correlate to gold.

Wouldn't it cause much less clutter to just have normal hits, critical hits, and gold all tied to their own colored numbers?

There are settings for different degrees of how much floaty text you want to display on screen for Damage.

[Seer]

I still have in mind that TL2 cinematic tease

[Derekffs]

Needs a fade out option, and drag to move option. Agree?

[Derekffs]

Its Ok but It needs fade and drag option for obivous reasons

[qian]

charge bar for...

Engineer -
Cool, when charged we get some skills that deal more damage
(hope this includes chance to stun enemies)

Embermage -
Sweet, power surrounds you and hurts enemies
(is that like... a damage aura kind of thing?)

Outlander -
Attack speed and run speed increase would be like haste spell from torchlight 1 right?
If so, that's okay I guess, I still like it

Beserker -
I planned to invest in chance to critical hit 26%, 34%, 51% or higher in the first place
(the mentality that 1/4 hits or less will be a crit)
If their charge bar just makes crit 100% it feels a bit weak

What I would have preferred was chance to dodge, life stolen per hit, life stolen when hit, or immune/highly resistant to impaired effects (like stun, knock down, sleep, etc.) while charge meter is full
or maybe chance to explode target non-boss monster on death?

Unless there are monsters that can curse the player which reduces chance to critical hit then I completely support the Beserker's current charge meter

[Ragnar119]

Ooh, that looks great. Watching it 10 times now. Cant wait to play it.

[xani]

100% chance to crit is pretty good, especially if there will be passives with "on crit" trigger, altho it makes stacking crit less efficient (unless you get more charge by critting )
Look at 0:25 it looks like it charges pretty fast when using some abilities, so it's more case of "nice boost quite often" than "huge boost but happens rarely"

[qian]

100% chance to crit is pretty good, especially if there will be passives with "on crit" trigger, altho it makes stacking crit less efficient (unless you get more charge by critting )
Look at 0:25 it looks like it charges pretty fast when using some abilities, so it's more case of "nice boost quite often" than "huge boost but happens rarely"

Good point
Other than bigger numbers and explosions from critical hits,
there might be other effects this time around
damn... and I thought I knew what class I wanted to play first

[Jackalhead]

Any chance there will be a way to mod out the glowing orbs around the player's hands while they are frenzied?

[PsychoticHamster]

Honestly, the next update should be something along the lines of a release date, or atleast a hint. D3 comes out in May and PoE is probably releasing in mid summer so where does that leave TL2?

[Ragnar119]

Honestly, the next update should be something along the lines of a release date, or atleast a hint. D3 comes out in May and PoE is probably releasing in mid summer so where does that leave TL2?

Release for PoE, or open beta?

[Chthon]

I'm still not quite sure what Recovery and Fumble mean, but it sounds like it might affect that too

I'm guessing that "recovery" is the same as D2's "faster hit recovery" stat.

The dev quote on "fumble" seems perfectly clear to me: Every time you land a hit, you have a X% chance to fumble that hit, in which case you will do Y% less damage than normal.

A couple of thoughts crossed my mind when watching this video. I can't imagine how challenging it must be to balance TL2 with these charge bar mechanics built-in - it seems like there would be a fine line between over turning the content or under tuning the charge mechanics so hopefully you guys have found that 'sweet spot'.

I agree. Though it does look like they hit the sweet spot for berserkers (as best one can tell from a video). btw, I said almost the exact same thing a week ago.

And here's a copy/paste of my post-video thoughts about the charge-up mechanic:

Gee, you'd almost think that someone at Runic was reading this thread....

Anywho, my thoughts:

1. I could not tell from the video if the berserker's charge was building up based on "hits landed" or "damage dealt." The difference is hugely important because a "charge up per hits landed" mechanic is going to prove virtually unbalanceable. The traditional tradeoff in action games of all stripes (including ARPGs) is that attack speed and damage per hit are inversely correlated. (ie Things like hammers deal huge damage but swing slowly; Things like daggers swing quickly, but deal low damage. Overall DPS works out the same either way (or at least it's supposed to if the game is balanced properly).) However, a charge bar that filled on a per-hit basis and awarded extra critical hits would directly correlate damage per hit to attack speed. This would push berserker build optimality into a 1-peaked configuration centered around the fastest possible attack speed, leaving everything else as "neat, but too slow to be any good."

This, btw, is quite similar to what happened with TL1 enchanting allowing you to arbitrarily increase damage per hit (but not do much about attack speed) of any weapon -- base attack speed became the be-all-end-all of weapon stats. (Aside to Runic, please make sure that enchanting does not return in anything even remotely resembling its TL1 form.)

The other classes are going to have pretty much the same issue with a "hits landed" charge-up system.

So, to sum up, charging should be based on "damage dealt." [but see below]

(Self-contradictory thought: A "damage dealt" charge up system passes through the unpredictability of the damage system, which can make it hard to play the system tactically. A "hits landed" charge-up system is totally predictable and therefore lends itself to tactical use. So, pick your poison: a charge-up system that unbalances everything in favor of max attack speed or one that is hard to make intelligent use of.)

[Actually..... the more I think about that, the more I feel that (1) being tactical-use-friendly may well be the more important issue, so perhaps a "hit based" charge-up system would be better; and (2) the fact that you have to break something either way takes me back to wondering if maybe the best answer of all is no charge-up system.]

2. The ease of charging/overall uptime ratio seen in the video seemed... well... just about right. It looked like you could simply ignore the whole charging business and treat it like a baseline DPS boost inherent to the class; OR approach the charging up tactically (timing and target selection conscious of the charge bar) and reap a slightly higher practical DPS when and where it matters; with the difference between the two roughly in proportion to the added costs in terms of concentration and repositioning/holding back. Either Runic tested this out or they got really lucky.

At least for the berserker.

If the outlander is merely getting an IAS/IMS boost, it should work about the same as the berserker.

I'm most worried about the embermage. Free spells with fast casting sounds a lot more potent than auto crits. Where the berserker seems (as best one can judge from a single video) to have hit the sweet spot between the charge-up mechanic being pointless and being all-important, the embermage may tip over into having a charge-up mechanic that's all-important.

Sounds like the engineer is going to play like a D2 Phoenix Strike Sin -- charge up, release, lather, rinse, repeat. That's fine I guess, but I would like to see non-charge-up-based builds being equally viable with charge-up-based builds. Or at least a variety of finisher moves to avoid a situation where there's really only one viable engineer build.

[***EDIT***]
Xani proposes a really good solution. Charge the bar in an amount inversely proportional to attack speed. That's both predictable and doesn't skew balance in favor of attack speed at the expense of all else.
[***END OF EDIT***]

And finally:

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/06/torchlight-2-will-ideally-launch-shortly-after-diablo-3/

Confirmed for releasing after Diablo 3, if it wasn't implied concretely enough for you already.

People shouldn't snidely ignore that link like they have been. It comes within a hair's breadth of being a specific release date from an official source. (And sooner than I was expecting too!)

[Deadnoob]

I'm a little unclear on something regarding the charge mechanic. Upon filling the charge bar, does the character automatically enter the frenzy/trance/etc state, or must the player consciously activate the state?

It may well be 6 one way, half dozen the other, but it occurs to me that manual activation allows for more tactical use of the benefits. I can see arguments for and against this, though.

[gold163]

I think it depends on the class. I think the Berserker's is automatically activated for sure, and the Embermage's sounds like it would be too. I think since the Outlander's is stacking, it applies benefits as you continuously attack to gain stacks and drains back to 0 constantly. The Engineer's is probably manually activated.

I can see what you mean about manual activation offering tactical benefits, since it might feel more rewarding for the player to be more in control. However, it can make the game feeling one-sided if the player has that much control over such beneficial abilities (save charge up, only use it for a tough boss). I would rather have there be a consistent catch to using the charge meter so that players have to think more carefully about how they use it, which in my opinion can only occur if the player does not have the ability to manually trigger the benefits at will.

EDIT: I'm watching the Gamespot video from PAX right now. At first I thought it might be manually activated but it looks like it's automatic, and only when the charge meter is full.

It looks like it slowly drains back to 0 anyway when it's not active. So you can't just sit on charge.


Runic's probably not going to see this, but I have a question/suggestion for you guys: When the charge meter is active, it should slowly drain back to 0 to indicate the amount of time the ability is active. It would be a better visual indicator of how long charge lasts. Is it clearly stated anywhere how long it lasts?

Also, "EVIL ALCHEMIST?" WHY ALCHEMIST WHYYY