Reasons People Quit Playing the Single Player

[Jerich]

How to read this review… I have already written positive reviews about Torchlight. This is my more critical review and is mainly designed to illustrate the design decisions that limit the single player longevity. While the multiplayer obviously will be more polished and have community, competition and cooperation as added player motivations, I think several of these designs for single player need to be critically looked at in preparation a transition to MMO.

Torchlight has the responsive gameplay, great graphics and sounds, loot, skills, stats, and quick paced ARPG action that fans have been waiting for since Diablo II. It is an incredible game.

• I love this genre.
• I love this game and have said so multiple times. (and still think it is the best value of the year for the money)
• I should be addicted playing it right now.
• I want to be addicted to this game right now.
• Why then… can’t I bring myself to play it?

Every time I try to load Torchlight, I dink around for a few minutes, then quit and load up another game like Dragon Age or Guild Wars and play that for a few hours instead. And it is not just me… I bought a copy of Torchlight for three of my friends and convinced four more to buy it. How many are still playing it? … two. ( and they haven’t even won it yet)

What the heck is going on?

First off, many of you will say duh, the answer is obvious… it doesn’t have multiplayer. Multiplayer increases the replay of almost any game. While this may be an issue, most of my friends play single player games. One of them just finished all of the Heroes 5 campaigns and I have all the Dragon Age Origins Achievements done already. So a lack of multiplayer is not the only reason. We have all been addicted to single player RPGs before. So I ask the question again… What the heck is going on?

To find the answer to this question, I posed the following question to the friends I either bought Torchlight for, or convinced to buy it:

Question: What, other than lack of multiplayer, are the main reasons that you are not playing Torchlight right now?
Answers: Click on the Spoiler tags for my friend’s answers.

Spoiler: show

Friend 1: I don’t play Torchlight because I don’t have any goals. The reason I play RPGs is for the character development… I like to be planning out my dude’s skills and try out combos. The Torchlight skills just seem blah to me… The passive skills just aren’t interesting. I walk into a room and kill everything in one hit. Why should I worry about my skills if it is so easy? And the fact that all the characters share the same passive skills makes them all feel the same. Why the hell would I want to play a melee Alchemist? Ok… maybe I might, but the melee passives should be completely different from the destroyer.
And the items are not fun to get. In Diablo II there were cool bows that shot fireballs and items that did amazing things. In Torchlight, I am just not excited about the items that drop. I plan on playing it later, but we will see.

Friend 2: I don’t know… I installed windows 7 and just haven’t got around to reinstalling Torchlight yet… I just don’t feel like it. I am not excited about character development. I don’t feel like my character has a future. Also I feel the graphics are kind of cluttered. Stuff is not as visible as it was in Diablo II… I can’t completely put my finger on why I don’t get the same feeling form Torchlight as Diablo, but maybe you can articulate it better Tim.

Friend 3: I want to play a pet build on very hard, but it dies way too fast in the later parts of the game. I have researched the builds online and wasn’t able to find a satisfactory pet build, so I stopped playing.

Friend 4: I breezed through most of the content on very hard with my first character and found it so easy that I was playing recklessly and then got WTF pwned from a random monster near the end. And the end boss was way harder than the rest of the game. I cheesed the fight by pulling him to the entrance and killed him by porting back in over and over. I was going to make a destroyer, but fell asleep when I was making him and haven’t logged on since.

Friend 5: I don’t know why I am not playing Torchlight any more. It was fun, but the lack of meta goals or achievements made me not want to play it over and over. Why retire your character if it is too easy the first through. Also, the story was stupid and shallow and the side quests were more of the same. It would have been better if Runic created 10 or so great side-quests with their time rather than making an inane and repetitive non-motivating randomized quest system. Also, the Diablo II levels felt like they had more character than the Torchlight levels. When I went into the Cathedral or the Catecombs, it always felt different than the Arcane Sanctuary or maggot lair (for instance).

Friend 6: I am still playing Torchlight, but it crashes on level 26 every time I get to the end. I have worked with tech support and they told me to download the new version. I did that and it still crashes the same place. I made a new character and got to level 26 and it crashes again. I like the game, and my only complaint is that the I have way too much gold… although maybe that is because I have replayed the same level 50 times.

Friend 7: I have been busy… I loaded Torchlight… played it a few times… and then got involved in other projects. I love the art style, but it hasn’t hooked me in yet.

Friend 8: I love Torchlight. I play it once every two weeks or so for a couple hours. I don’t have a whole lot of time because I have my band, my work, my friends and my family.

As you can see, my friends have mixed reactions to Torchlight. I think their critiques of Torchlight can be organized around the three main motivations that people play single player RPGs for: A sense of progress, exploration, and problem solving. After each critique, I have put my suggestions for tweaks in spoiler tags.

Core Motivation #1: A Sense of Progress… that delivers the goods, but lacks the stamina for long term satisfaction.

Character development, the staple of almost every great fantasy book series and RPG ever made. Cliché, but it has worked over and over again. The perception of growth affirms some innate human need inside of ourselves and makes us continue to play games… sometimes even at the expense of real life goals. Here Torchlight delivers the mechanisms for growth that we have come to expect: skills / spells, levels, stats, items, quests, and changing dungeon areas. The development starts off strong, but unfortunately fizzles out after the first couple play-troughs.

Skills / Spells – “I sunk 10 levels into flame trap and all I got was this stupid tshirt.”

As I listened to my friends, I was surprised that several of them did not like the skills / spells. I think the spells are a lot of fun. I was even more surprised when one of them said that he was having trouble seeing the action… that it was kind of muddy. This forced me to think more critically about the skills. While ultimately, I think the skills / spells in Torchlight are great, they are not optimal:

• Skills: I really like a lot of the skills. Flechette trap, for instance, is done brilliantly. There are several problems, however, that ruin sense of progress with skills
  
  • Issue #1: Skills are too powerful. Everyone likes to kick ass with their character… but we want to feel like we earned that right. One problem with skills in Torchlight is that we start kicking ass from the get go. Even in very hard more it is way too easy with the right skills. Where is the motivation to try new combinations of skills if my newbie Vanquisher friend was able to beat very hard mode on the first go with little trouble? Maybe this is just a problem with certain skills, but several of my friends complained the game was too easy (one in normal mode and one in very hard mode), and they are not usually the types of people to complain about that.
    
  • Issue #2: Summons are too weak. Summons in general are way too weak at high levels. Where is the payoff of putting points in summoning builds if monsters go straight for the caster? The main purpose of summons is to provide a meat shield and this strategy does not work. Summoners have always paid the price for this uberness by having to move slow and babysit a bunch of monsters. Also, with high end gear they usually are not as good. My friend who mainly loves summoner builds quit playing because of this issue.
    
  • Issue #3: Shared Passive skills limit replayability. All my friends hate shared passive skills. No one seems to like this feature at all. I think this comes down to the fact that it is nice to see a difference with every point you spend. That way each level is a big milestone. Putting a point into a generic passive skill just doesn’t feel like much of an achievement. They also limit my desire to try different classes if I feel like I have to put 10 points into both critical strikes and armor handling for both a Destroyer and Vanquisher. Class specific passive skills are great. Shared ones are not as fun. (As a side note, I completely dislike the barter and adventurer skills).
    
  • Issue #4: Particle effect density is too high. Part of what makes people feel like they are getting more and more powerful is increased particle density over time. While Torchlight does this some, I think the particle effects start off way too high and then scale up way too fast. The end result (combined with floating damage numbers) is a screen that is more difficult to see than it needs to be and that characters lose their sense of visual progress.
  • Issue #5: Skills don’t scale enough with skill level. Let’s look at Flame trap… At level 10 it does about 50% more damage and lasts twice as long… Was that really worth 10 points? I believe that each point should feel a lot more meaningful than that… 50% per point wouldn’t be ridiculous.
  • Issue #6: The trees are not bloated enough. Part of this is because of time constraints, but overall there aren’t enough good unique skills that don’t overlap function. Part of what makes people want to replay a game like this is the constant thought of “what if I did that instead?” Unfortunately, it is fairly easy to cherry pick the best skills of a build fairly early in your leveling process. This fails because the quest for total build awesomeness is more fun than the attainment.
  • Issue #7: Skills don’t scale with gear well enough: Weapon skills are great in that they scale with gear. This provides another measure of progress. Level skills and stat skills do similar things for their respective measures. Ultimately, though, all of these should be combined so that any upgrade will directly affect a player’s skill. Of primary importance to an MMO, level based skills will not work in the long term. Every MMO that I have played that has used level based skills (Druid in Wow, Monk in EQ) has had to eventually change them to be tied to equipment.
  • Issue #8: Skills ascend too early: If the maximum level is 100, there should probably be some type of skill that cannot be maxed until 100. That way people are faced with the choice between retirement or continuing to level to see how awesome their skills become. It gives high level people something to look forward to.
• Spells: The spells are a great idea, but there are a few problems that keep them from being as fun as possible.
  • Issue #9: Buff / Summon timers are ludicrous… Several of my friends griped about this point. Summon and buff duration are ridiculously low. My personal opinion is that any buff or summon that lasts less than 10 minutes is needlessly grindy. What is the point of making them last less? Just to make the character have to stop playing and cast more often? A 30 second buff with a 30 second recharge? Ridiculous. With timers like this, using a spell feels more like a punishment than a privilege.
  • Issue #10: Spells are too weak. What is the point of fireball? Why put an awesome skill like this in the game and then nerf its recharge? If non-support spells like this are going to be in the game, I think they should be as good as skills for some situations… better yet… remove their spell status and put them in a skill bar.
  • Issue #11: The method for spell gathering is un-fun. I am going through the dungeon and a ton of spells drop, but that doesn’t do anything for me. Why? Because I am limited to 6 active spells and unless I find an upgrade to one of those, spell drops become meaningless. Bring back Diablo’s method of spell leveling. Give me a grimiore and allow me to increase the levels of all my spells one book at a time then swap spells in town. And remove spells from the vendor… no one wants to farm a vendor over and over to find the right spell. That is boring and removes a sense of progress.
• Suggestions to maximize a sense of achievement with Skills / Spells for the MMO.

Spoiler: show

• Limit spells to support skills and make them truly powerful at max level. Players should feel like they are having to choose between a ton of great choices. Buffs should probably be set to either party-wide-always-on auras or really long times. Summons should be permanent unless killed.
• Spells should be collected in book form and added to a character grimiore that can be swapped in town.
• Skills should start out low powered with low particle effects and ascend to ridiculous levels of power. To prevent a player from maxing out a skill at low levels, a high level may be needed to reach certain skills abilities.
• Shared Passives should be either removed or changed. Perhaps they could be combined with achievements and players could have bar of equipped passives similarly to player equipped spells that they can drag in as needed. Another option would be to change them to be class specific passive skills.
• More skill bloat in skill trees. There should be so many useful skills, that it is impossible to get them all for a particular build.
• Here is an idea to allow for tons of particle effects without making the screen blurry. Why not have characters have a mode that players can turn on during boss fights to make them open a can of whoop ass? It would be kind of like Bankai from Bleach. This mode would increase particle effects for a short time during the boss fight. I might put this in another thread.

Stats – “What the heck is defense?”
Statistics are a measure of a characters innate ability. In this regard, it is nice to be able to visualize what it means for a character to have a high stat in one area. Torchlight does statistics mainly right, but I think there are couple issues here

• Issue #12: What is defense? I can visualize someone who is very strong (Arnold Schwarzenegger). I can visualize someone who is dexterous (Jacky Chan, Gene Kelly). I can even visualize someone who has high magical power (Gandalf, Anime martial artists etc). I can relate to all of these stats on a personal level and can feel an artificial sense of accomplishment envisioning my avatar having one of these stats. Defense does nothing for me? What is it? Why did it replace vitality? I don’t get a sense of accomplishment when I put points in defense…. It feels like punishment.
• Issue #13: Stats do not affect skills enough. Many skills do not scale with stats at all. All they really do for some builds is decide what equipment is.
• Issue #14: Stats do not affect enough secondary stats… Why doesn’t magic effect mana? Why isn’t there a vitality stat that adds to hit points? Why doesn't dexterity add to defense or attack? Secondary stats are some of the main reasons statistics are fun!
• Issue #15: How stats are used to effect equipment is clunky. I can’t use half the stuff that drops for me because it requires a stat I don’t have. Why does some plate mail require magic? This may be personal preference, but I prefer the old way of all armor requiring strength and weapons requiring strength or dex. Some wands requiring magic would be ok. Better yet, remove requirements altogether. Then I would not feel compelled to save a bank of 50 stat points in reserve in case I get better stats.
• Issue #16: Splitting resistance into 4 categories is not fun. Both EQ and WoW started with resistance and they quickly realized that it was not fun. What is the point of finding a good item if you can’t use it because dungeon A requires fire resistance gear and dungeon B requires cold resistance gear? WoW basically removed resistance as a factor for gearing your character and EQ just added resistance to every item you get. Both outline its uselessness. I think it is better to just have physical and magical resistance and leave it at that.
• Suggestions to maximize sense of achievement with stats.

Spoiler: show

• Have primary statistics affect secondary statistics like health, mana, attack and defense.
• Have statistics affect powers more
• Remove statistics as a requirement for equipping items
• Get rid of defense
• Merge the elemental resist into one secondary stat

Items – “Painters mix tints to form vibrant colors, but too many colors mixed together always forms the same dirty brown.”

Item hunting is perhaps the most defining aspect of the ARPG genre. Items need to be memorable and a power path for leveling needs to be clear. Torchlight seems to deliver on this front, but suffers from a few serious problems that break the sense of achievement.

• Issue #17: Enchanting adds a ridiculous number of attributes. The human brain can only really process 3-7 (depending on the person) pieces of information at once. More than 3 stats is risky, more than 7 is ridiculous. At that number items start blurring together and it becomes increasingly difficult to measure whether one item is better than another. This destroys the sense of item advancement.
• Issue #18: Players can buy or enchant better items than they can find in the dungeon. This makes finding dropped gear from bosses anticlimactic.
• Issue #19: There is a lack of truly cool and unique properties. Diablo II had skill increasers at low level (the Tarnhelm), bows that shot fireballs and things that processed (proc in MMO lingo) cool abilities like Dracul’s grasp and life tap. Skill adders like wands and scepters were actually fairly common. Torchlight does not have anything this cool.
• Issue #20: There is a lack of low level iconic unique items. In Diablo II an early unique usually has interesting properties that cannot be matched by normal items (i.e. the Tarnhelm or a dwarf star, etc). Torchlight lacks this diversity.
• Issue #21: The method of requiring stats limits player’s ability to equip items. In Diablo II, you really only had to pump strength and maybe a little dexterity and could equip almost anything, in Torchlight things you find that may be good for you could use 2 or 3 different stats that you are not really pumping. It makes finding good items less exciting.
• Issue #22: Some Unique Items that have completely random stats are not fun. People play games partially because the real world is so overwhelming and chaotic. We want patterns we can recognize. Rare items are bad enough (I dislike them), turning a unique item into rare is even worse. One to three varying stats is fun. More than that is not fun. Ok, this is only a few unique items here… but I wanted to voice my dislike of rare items somewhere.
• Issue #23: Gems are annoying. They are hard to distinguish and combining them together is not fun. This is a part of Diablo 2 that is bad to implement... I find WoWs gem system is much more fun and less grindy, especially for an MMO. Perhaps if the gems looked better and we had an inventory tab for them, this would be less of an issue
• Suggestions to make items have a bigger sense of achievement

Spoiler: show

• Change enchanting so that you can only add up to two sockets and one or two big effects to an item. These effects should be a different color from the main attributes so as to facilitate mental chunking.
• Make enchanting and gemology player crafting skills that use a small number of drops as components.
• Add better effects to unique items
• Limit randomization in unique items to two or three attributes (but have it in this case)
• Make more iconic lower level unique items that have effects not normally seen on that level bracket.
• Unique / unique crafted gear should typically be the best in slot for anything and there should be incredibly rare / difficult to obtain unique items at the high end.
• Remove stats as a requirement for items (this is a personal preference)
• Merge elemental resistance into one stat

Meta-game – “The Meta-game is the main reason that people play games over and over.”
Meta-game is difficult to pull off in a single player game since the motives of competition, community and cooperation drive a lot of meta-games. Guild Wars vanity armor highlights this principal in its basic sense. People are willing to farm for an incredibly long time, just to look more prestigious than the average peon playing the game. That being said, some meta-game components do translate to the single game and I will mention them here.

• Issue #24: Enchanting hurts the item hunt mechanic. Part of the reason people delve over and over into dungeons is to find the perfect item. The fact that enchanted items blow any drops out of the water degrades this motivation. The lack of truly interesting iconic unique items with stats that can only be found on that unique doesn’t help.
• Issue #25: Lack of achievements in all versions. Not everyone likes them, but for those who do, achievements form a huge motivation. This would not be as big an issue if achievements were easily moddable. That being said, achievements have been released on the Steam version so players who really want them have that option.
• Issue #26: Retirement doesn’t work with the current difficulty. Retirement is a fun principal and could serve as a useful meta-game. The problem is that there is really no challenge in the game that requires a retired character with heirloom items to beat. Luckily the game can be modded to make it more difficult. I believe the MMO, however, needs to have parts that are much more difficult than very hard mode in order to make this a valid meta-game criterion.
• Suggestions to make meta-game give players a bigger sense of achievement.

Spoiler: show

• Add achievements
• Modify enchanting
• Add ultra rare unique items at the high end that are hard to get and are game changing.
• Make parts of the game more difficult so that retirement is necessary to beat it
• The other standard things that MMOs do for meta-game (prestige items, trading, group challenges, pvp, social things, etc)

Core Motivation #2: Exploration
Exploration is the second core motivation that people play MMOs long term for. We like discovering new content and lore. Ultimately, I think Torchlight delivers for its price tag, but as we move to the MMO, several things should be modified here to make exploration more interesting.

Level Design – When 3D becomes 1D
The level designs of Torchlight are breathtaking and graphically outstanding. The different tile sets are interesting. Overland levels will add a lot to the variability of levels. There is one major issue that probably should be addressed, however.

• Issue #27: Dungeons are all too linear. The bigger chunks make for beautiful dungeons, but a byproduct is that they make each dungeon feel too similar in its linear form. It is ok to have some linear dungeons, but they all are. In Diablo 2, the Caves, Catacombs, Sewers, Arcane sanctuary and Maggot Lair all are incredibly divergent from each other. The big thing is that some are linear with high branching and some are true two dimensional maps. Sure, everyone hates the maggot lair, but it is definitely something we all love to hate. The end product of the current Torchlight formula is that I don’t feel like I am advancing to a new area. Instead I just feel like I am seeing a different tile-set.
• Ways to make the level design increase exploration

Spoiler: show

• Modify the linear branching factor in linear dungeons and modify the chunk size. Put smaller chunks in some dungeons that connect to the bigger chunks and therefore add a more 2D effect to the layout. Layouts like the Durance of Hate and Maggot Lair, as annoying as they are, should be allowed in the system.

Quest Design – Too much random
Random quests are a great idea, but I don’t think anyone has ever done them justice. There are several problems with the Torchlight quest system that need to change for the MMO.

• Issue #28: Not enough quests variety: I wrote a separate article about quest types. Needless to say, Torchlight does not have enough of it.
• Issue #29: No iconic quests: In Diablo 2, there are iconic quests that people look forward to with great rewards that provide people with progress benchmarks. In Torchlight, I do not get that sense of progress. The quest rewards are typically random items, which is not nearly as fun as custom made rewards.
• Issue #30: Random quests are placed in the wrong area: If random quests are used, it is best that players find them on the dungeon where the quest is, right at the beginning. The player could then turn them in at the end of the dungeon.
• Ways to make the quest design increase exploration

Spoiler: show

• Increase quest variety
• Add static benchmark secondary quests with great rewards. Players should feel like they want to get to a certain area just for the option of picking up an amazing quest.
• Put random quests in dungeons.

Lore – The MMO will have more lore, so I will ignore this point.

Core Motivation #3: Problem Solving
Problem solving is another core reason people play games like this. We are trying to adjust our builds, items and strategies to conquer difficult parts or streamline our playing process.

Issue #31: Difficulty too easy overall?
A few of my friends said that the replay of the game was broken for them because they had no incentive to plan builds. If they were able to mow through everything with the first build they tried, what was the point? A part of this problem is that the passive skills are not fun to put points into, but the main problem is difficulty as a whole

I think part of the difficulty problem is that these friends always pick normal difficulty for any game they play. They want to clean up on normal, but they still want a challenge. Unfortunately, Torchlight’s normal mode is ridiculously easy until the last few levels. Pretty much everything dies in one hit, which is ok for minion monsters, but not ok if you are using a level 1 skill to do this. Even my friends who started on very hard (because they typically play games on very hard) complained it was too easy almost all the time and that easiness instantly changed to getting killed without seeing what was coming.

Issue #32: Potions and resource management.
Potions in Torchlight are incredibly powerful. Characters basically have unlimited health and mana as long as they can click potions fast enough. This causes a few problems. First, death by attrition is never possible. Second, resource management becomes a non-issue. Third, there are two more buttons to click. This is ok for a single player game, but resource management should be a factor in an MMO.

Suggestions for MMO

Spoiler: show

• It is almost impossible to please everyone with difficulty. One thing I would suggest is to make the normal game about as hard as hard mode and ramp up from there. Normal is just way too easy for the majority of people who will play this game. Perhaps there should be an option to pick easy for the true newbie.
• More mixed tactics areas and environmental effects playing a role. It would be interesting if there are areas that are completely stacked against the player. Perhaps they are being pelted by archers that are behind a shield while they figure out some way to flank the archers.
• Put a timer on potions.

Ok that is it for now.=P I am going to stop on problem solving because I think I already covered most of the problem solving points in previous sections. Here is the conclusion.

Conclusion –

Torchlight is one of the best gaming values to be released this year. The art style and game-play are fantastic. There are some problems, though, which limit single player replayability. Although the MMO will have multiplayer as a strong motivating force, single player motivations are also a big part of MMO motivation. While many of design considerations can be fixed in the single player by modding, they should be re-evaluated as the MMO is designed.


Would I play the MMO if none of these issues are fixed? Most definitely. Will I be able to convince my friends to play with me if nothing changes? Probably, but I am not so sure.


- Jerich

[jamesL]

lot to read, but one thing I'll comment on is that I love the defense stat
I picture bullets bouncing off superman's chest every time I put a point it

I never quite understood defense and armor in diablo
dexterity decreases my chance of being hit, but if I am hit I take the full amount of damage ?
what good is that ?

I quit playing for a week to try the D2 1.13 patch
that was a complete waste

then I played more TL, but I've quit again because I'm waiting for the skill rebalance coming in a few weeks

[Drunkenvalley]

I only needed to read one of your friends' first lines to realize the problem condensed into a single line. Hell, I'll copy-paste it here:

I don’t play Torchlight because I don’t have any goals.

...That's about it. If you actually want a lvl 100 destroyer you'll level it like mad. If you want to actually defeat Ordrak naked on VH/HC then you'll really try and do it.

It's all about a goal that makes the replaying fun. You can ignore just about anything else about the game as long as you have a goal.

[Zidders]

Excellent read, and I'll have to admit that I agree with quite a bit of it. The replay value, at least for me, has always been the moddability. Every time a new mod comes out, I get excited...but usually, after trying it for a bit, I go back to a game of the same genre that I think has a lot more replayability. Titan Quest. Obviously, a game that had a lot more development time, a bit bigger dev team and a much bigger budget (and price point on release) is going to be a bit bigger in scope. While the games not perfect, It still has a LOT more content, especially when it comes to creatures, areas to explore, lore and quests.

Still......I think the game performs well for what it is. I DO still play it, from time to time. As an arpg title with a low price point, it's one of the better ones out there. I still wish there were more to it. I wish they'd done a multiplayer game with the breadth and scope of Diablo 2 or Titan Quest...but it's served it's purpose. It's gotten most of us interested in the F2P mmo.


I dunno...I love torchlight, still play it, wish it were bigger and better but it's damn good for what it is.

[Webbstre]

Excellent post as always, Jerich! I agree with most of what you say, but I have a few points that I don't exactly disagree with. I'll just go in order of things as they show up in the post.

The lack of goals and quests once you finish the game is pretty much the reason I start to get bored after a while. Sometimes I decide to clear out my mods, retire a character, and then play the new character with a fresh and different set of mods just to try to get a different experience out of it. There are a few good quest mods out there, but not enough to really flesh-out the end game.

Issue #1: Skills are too powerful. Everyone likes to kick ass with their character… but we want to feel like we earned that right. One problem with skills in Torchlight is that we start kicking ass from the get go. Even in very hard more it is way too easy with the right skills. Where is the motivation to try new combinations of skills if my newbie Vanquisher friend was able to beat very hard mode on the first go with little trouble? Maybe this is just a problem with certain skills, but several of my friends complained the game was too easy (one in normal mode and one in very hard mode), and they are not usually the types of people to complain about that.

Issue #4: Particle effect density is too high. Part of what makes people feel like they are getting more and more powerful is increased particle density over time. While Torchlight does this some, I think the particle effects start off way too high and then scale up way too fast. The end result (combined with floating damage numbers) is a screen that is more difficult to see than it needs to be and that characters lose their sense of visual progress.

These two go together for me. It'd feel better if the spells did scale more to level, and if the effects scaled depending on how many points you put into the skills. I like that you can use starter skills towards the end of the game and not feel like you wasted points, but somehow I feel like it could be better managed either by taking the Synergies route, the Mythos route (where passive skills specifically targeted one main skill to power it up), or by some combination of the two.

Where is the payoff of putting points in summoning builds if monsters go straight for the caster?

100% agreement with this statement

Issue #6: The trees are not bloated enough. Part of this is because of time constraints, but overall there aren’t enough good unique skills that don’t overlap function. Part of what makes people want to replay a game like this is the constant thought of “what if I did that instead?” Unfortunately, it is fairly easy to cherry pick the best skills of a build fairly early in your leveling process. This fails because the quest

I think this could be easily managed if all the active skills in the game had several passive skills available to power them up (like Mythos did) in unique ways. That way the three stomp skills the Destroyer has could actually end up being different.

Issue #8: Skills ascend too early: If the maximum level is 100, there should probably be some type of skill that cannot be maxed until 100. That way people are faced with the choice between retirement or continuing to level to see how awesome their skills become. It gives high level people something to look forward to.

I didn't see this as much of a problem, as it took a long time to get your final skill maxed out. Once again, Mythos-style branching skill trees could solve the problems of maxing out a spell too soon.

Issue #9: Buff / Summon timers are ludicrous… Several of my friends griped about this point. Summon and buff duration are ridiculously low. My personal opinion is that any buff or summon that lasts less than 10 minutes is needlessly grindy. What is the point of making them last less? Just to make the character have to stop playing and cast more often? A 30 second buff with a 30 second recharge? Ridiculous. With timers like this, using a spell feels more like a punishment than a privilege.

I'll agree with the buffs and summon statements, but I definitely don't want to see a bunch of worthless recharge timers in the MMO. I feel like if you force the player to use recharge timers it means your support skills aren't developed well enough.

Just a note on spells, I think just about everyone agrees that a spell book would have been a lot more fun.

Onto Stats, I disagree with the Defense comments. I think Defense is a great stat, but needs to be more affective. I really don't feel like you get enough value for the number of points you put in it. I did a half Strength half Defense Destroyer once and still his defense was pathetic. Resistances too didn't make much sense, since it seems like no matter how high you get it the damned Dragon guys at the end smoke you alive. I like the concept of resistances that let you basically remove X amount of damage from an attack (as opposed to the percentages of Diablo, which just sucked), but it doesn't feel like you get enough bang for your buck.

And yes, the other stats could use a little tweaking, but mostly just to tie them to skills better. Instead of the old Vitality stat I would prefer something along the lines of the Passive Health Bonus skill in one of the mods out there. Every skill point you put into it you get an addition percent to your maximum health and health regen, similar to the advanced casting skill, but for health.

I didn't have a problem with the colors or armor. More color variation would be nice (like to turn that dragon armor from red to blue or something), but otherwise I thought everything looked great.

Onto Meta-game stuff... I honestly don't know a good way to handle enchanting right now. Disenchant pissed me off so much that I installed a mod that completely removed them from the game, but at the same time I found myself enchanting items over and over and over to create uber-items with no personality and that stopped being fun anymore. I think removing disenchanting (or allowing some kind of Elite Enchanter to be found someplace in the game who couldn't fail) is important, but perhaps other options and limitations need to be available. Perhaps one person is an Enhancer, who enhances the bonuses already on the item. Regular Enchanters of various levels could be in the game who have different limitations on the maximum number of times they can enchant something, and also have different success rates and different levels of how powerful an enchantment could be. Perhaps one guy can only enchant green magical items, and only once, but when he does it is a very very strong enchantment, while another person can enchant up to three times, can enchant any rare or set item, but has a high failure rate. Meanwhile Enhancers could be in the game who have different rates of success on enhancing the stats already on an item depending on how much that item has been tampered with by enchanters already.

Random thoughts by the end there, but more variety and less general penalty would make enchanting great.

Achievements are great, especially if they give actual character bonuses, like Mythos did. I also wouldn't mind them being replaced in part by Fame, which you could spend on Perks. They were going to do Perks originally, but it got cut from the single player game due to time.

I like your thought on making retirement necessary to become powerful enough to get through some areas. Retirement would be great in the MMO, but would need reworking I think.

Exploration is important. I don't feel like I am exploring in the single player game, I feel like I am being guided along a hallway that occasionally has a door to a small room with something amusing in it, but leads nowhere.

Ok, I would love to finish replying now, but my wife is calling me so I'll get back on the rest later.

[Achilla]

I have some critiques for this review, though not much.

1) You say skills are overpowered and in general it's not a big sense of accomplishment to max out a skill if it can be done early and the boost from next levels is marginal ... well, if you wanted the skills to not be overpowered but change much more dramatically with every level, you would create an issue with early- and mid-game builds, which use many level 1 skills not only as utility skills but also crucial skills for the build to work. This also adds up to the problem if equally sharing skill points to all needed skills makes you 'master of nothing, sucker of everything' incapable of killing alone and surviving at the same time.

2) Attributes. Torchlight is meant to be accessible. D2 was widely popular, but it's confusing 'Strength, Dexterity or Vitality for 'best build'? In what proportions to not 'screw up' my build permanently?' created endless topics. Eventually people brought up calculators and started all those conspiracy theories what is better and started producing those elaborate guides to classes and 'best builds'. Well, I will tell you what? Your average player just wants to play. Heck, if 10% of your average dudes and dudettes feel committed enough to register on any forum connected with the game they play, you should feel happy, same if more than 20% of them search guides and other information. Attributes in Torchlight are very easy and intuitive ... you hover your mouse, read the description and you know what you need. Hardcore mode, probably a lot of survivability needed? Let's add a lot of defense and minimum amount of STR/DEX/MAGIC in order to use weapons and be able to kill stuff. I want to be damage-oriented instead and kill everything fast? Let's assign the attributes vice-versa.

3) Items. There is much more than that. There is lack of balance due to different weapon speed, overpowered +knockback enchant. Also, there is lack of 'integrity' with certain weapon types. For instance, for my roleplay enjoyment all rifles should have slowest attack speed but best ranged damage. Rifle which reloads faster than crossbow simply ruins the immersion and entire feeling attached to the weapon archetype of slowly reloading, aiming and then firing a deadly shot. Skills also aren't balanced in interesting way, but that's debate for entire new thread. It also doesn't matter whether said 'weapon type - rifle' has very fast or very slow attack speed, as long as all weapons which are rifles have the same attack speed. If you can have two one-handed very fast dirks for your Rogue-like character, it adds to the experience, base damage might not be too high but weapon DPS powers up skills immensely and allows you to interrupt foes with fast attacks. Now, when you find a one-handed mace, hammer or big ass sword which has just the same 'very fast' attack speed ... then it not only doesn't make any sense, it also deviates the experience. How I see it - rifles should be very slow, pistols average, crossbow slow and bow fast. As for melee, slowest one-handed weapon should be hammer and heaviest of maces with 'slow' speed, average speed for big swords and axes, fast speed for lighter weapons and finally very fast for dirks, daggers and small rogue-like swords. As for two-handed melee weapons, it would start from slowest attack speed and end on average attack speed. Now THIS adds to the experience, the weapon you chosen to use has it's very own, unique feeling attached to it. It works different than the others weapons, it has a 'character', it's not just another dull weapon with overpowered stats you found in a random dungeon. It's weapon of your choice!

4) Other. You didn't mention modding. Not that it applies to MMO Torchlight, but it's also reason why people quit. You have modding enthusiasts who bought the game to mod it but found the game engine somewhat buggy and editor too (not to mention hard to edit some stuff and understand it). Plus, users who wanted to download and use mods, but found lack of moderation and quality-reviewing on them dull ... (e.g. no pinned topic with best and compatible with latest version mods) and might as well not bother with them at all and look for another moddable game like Dragon Age.

Other than that, good critique thread. A lot of constructive stuff and I especially liked the part about 'meta' and how many different things assemble to overall replayability value.

[Bissrok]

Well, I didn't read too closely, but if you're list of complaints is that long, I'm sure I'm on the same page as you.

The MMO will probably be great, but TL is as shallow as a demo for Bejewelled. There's not much for us to really sink our teeth into or discuss. Despite the short development time and small team, I still feel like they made some decisions that really hurt the replayability... All I can think to say about the MMO is to not do what they did here. It felt like they took a few steps backward after what they did with Hellgate and Mythos. I'm kind of looking forward to the revived Mythos more than the Torchlight MMO now, because I know Mythos is a solid game I can put time into.

[Jerich]

It looks like the biggest criticism people have about my post is that they like defense as a stat. As I look back to my time at PAX, I guess I liked defense as well. JamesL provided a good description in the whole superman comparison. I also understand Achilla's argument about the desire for the stat system to be easy to understand for the common person and that right now all the stat explanations are reasonably self-explanatory. The stats are not nearly as big an issue as enchanting, but they still feel off to me. I will try to explain why.

One item is my expectations as a roleplayer. Strength has usually been the stat that people need to use heavy armors and hit and do damage with melee weapons. It has usually increased melee weapon damage as well. Dexterity often increases dodge percentage, hit and damage with missile weapons and is required to wield range weapons and some types of melee weapons. Magic usually increases the power of spells, the mana pool, the damage of magical weapons and is required to use some types of staves or robes. Defense, I don't really have any expectations for.

The main problem I have with Torchlight stats is that the three stats strength, magic and dexterity all feel exactly the same to me. They each power up a weapon type, power up a subset of skills and allow wearers to equip items. I can wield plate mail that takes magic, dexterity or strength. This just doesn't feel right. I expect bow users to have less mitigation and more avoidance and magic users to have to use spells to maintain a good defense. I don't understand why some spells utilize certain stats and others utilize others. I don't like it that I can only wear 1/3 of the plate mail that drops.

How about combine all three of the stats into one stat called offense? This would balance nicely with the defense stat and be even more understandable. This is basically what the current stats are doing. Some very successful game systems have simple stats like this. If that seems too basic, then I would do at least one more more of the following:

• Think about adding secondary perks to the main three stats to give them different flavors... Perhaps avoidance for dex, armor penetration for strength, and better spell-casting for magic.
• Remove stat requirements from equipment and instead divide armor into light medium and heavy categories. Anyone can wear anything. Do the following, though, to encourage diversity.
  
  • Heavy armor slows down spell casting, ranged and small weapon attacks
  • Light armor gives a significant bonus to magic damage.
• Switching heavy armor to high strength required, Medium armor to low strength required, and magic robes to magic required. Dex characters should get avoidance (from the dexterity) to compensate and magic using characters should have some magical tools in their tool chest to be defensive.
• Give heavy armor high penalties unless people put points in a certain skill. Perhaps melee classes get this skill for free.

Responding to Achilla's comment 1), I think Webbstre's idea of skills that boost others would help with this. I don't think, however there is necessarily a contradiction in what I said. When I say skills should ascend later, I mean something like the following. Let's assume we are talking about a fireball...

• Level 5 - Fireball level 1 becomes available. It does 35-50 damage * Modifiers
• Level 14 - Fireball level 2 becomes available. It does 75-150 damage * Modifieers
• Level 26 - Fireball level 3 becomes available. It does 200-340 damage * Modifiers
• Level 40 - Fireball level 4 becomes available. It does 400-600 damage * Modifiers
• Level 54 - Fireball level 5 becomes available. It does 850-1000 damage * Modifiers
• Level 100 - Fireball level 10 becomes available. It does 5000-6500 damage * Modifiers

In all cases the modifier looks like this... Magic Attribute / 100 * (Weapon DPS / Standard weapon DPS for that level) damage.

The benefit to this system is that the player is not bombarded by choices as they level. Not every skill will have a new level each time they progress. They will still choose, but they will be choosing between 4-5 skills instead of 20-30. This would also give players something to look forward to as they level up and your build never plateaus until you are at max level (and even then, better gear will increase your damage).

As for your point 3) I think the things you mentioned will get balanced fairly fast in an alpha / beta test. Although skill balance is a big deal, it will get balanced over time. I was mainly trying to list things that are key design decisions that may not be able to be changed once the game is underway.

For point 4) They gave us a production level modding package. It is to be expected that it takes a learning curve to use. It has not been dumbed down or polished for the masses. I think people will learn to use it over time.

I still think the single player is an amazing game, especially considering the time frame. I am sure I will probably get back into it some time. It would be nice if the Devs considered the issues I raise, but I don't think the game will be killed even if they don't fix them (except maybe enchanting). I am really looking forward to the MMO and even coming back and playing single player intensely one of these days.

- Jerich

[nazdia]

//about the difficulty

I agree that the single player game is easy as hell, even on VH, (HC not so much, but still doable). Like said earlier, have the game start at the hard difficulty, maybe normal++ if its an issue, and have certain areas that are hard or very hard (in the overworld if there is one) or sell hard - very hard maps. possibly sell one-chance (pseudo-hardcore) maps where if you die you leave, end of story (your character isn't ghosted though).

I haven't wanted to play torchlight in possibly months (beat it first week... slipped out of my mind immediately afterward) and I was disheartened, mainly because I didn't even have the urge to come back on these forums or read anything anyone's said.

On to other issues. Definately think enchanting hurts item hunting alot, and sadly, the damage was already done after i got my OP rings. I had to DL the new patch where things can't get out of hand due to enchanting, but I had already had mine magicked up the wazoo. As for spells, I find them boring. What's more, is it feels like an efficiently made character has to specifically use one to two of them as opposed to two to four of them like in other ARPGS. I also like passive bonuses that specifically increase skills in trees, not general luck pumps or +stat skills.

Bleh. Off Topic isn't nearly as fun as it used to be. I recently found reddit though, and reading that is good. Hopefully things will be lit up when the mmo is announced.

[polarbearoughey]

I think removing Vitality as a stat and replacing it with Defense was brilliant.

Most Diablo players who have read even a few Blizzard forum posts know that pumping Vitality is the number one most useful stat, unless you have an Energy Shield Sorceress or a glass-cannon Amazon. A stat that directly raises health points will almost always overshadow every other stat. The stats in Torchlight are all equally useful for every character, every class and every skill build. Removing Vitality as a stat was a measure against every Torchlight player eventually dumping points into one stat and reluctantly getting the other stats for gear requirements.

I do agree with you that passive skills need to be made class-exclusive. Each class should still have the ability to raise their blocking or their mana regeneration or their martial weapons damage, but each class could have different scales for how these attributes are improved. Each class could also have different secondary effects for their passive skills. For example, a Destroyer's Block and Parry skill would offer a greater percent to block from the other classes and could also apply a Retribution damage effect for each skill point. An Alchemist's Offensive Spell Mastery skill could have an increasing chance to cast multiple shots of the same spell.

EDIT: Having unique items that are truly unique, in that only that item has a certain modifier is dangerous. It is the culprit of the main thing about Diablo II I don't like: that some items are just so good because of their unique modifiers that they eventually become needed for certain builds. This in turn causes players with the means to duplicate these items because of their extremely high value. Then entire sub-communities devote themselves to the duplication and exchange of these items (sometimes for real-world profit) which ruins the in-game economy. Torchlight's system of not having truly unique items with their own special modifiers and instead having items being considered unique for their special arrangement of several useful modifiers is the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, item finding may never be as fun as it was in Diablo, but on the other hand, the in-game economy will be much more manageable for Runic and fair to all players.

Great post by the way, thank you for putting in such an effort.

[Omnifas]

I agree with ALL of what you stated Jerich.

I do feel that the Defense stat is Unnecessary, and don't think of it as a replacement for Vitality. The removal of Vitality would have been enough. In all honesty I feel the Defense stat exist for 1 purpose: less work for the developers. Lets look at the Stats:

Strength is usually attributed to Physical Stature. Physical Offense(Power of a Sword Swing) and Physical Defense(How much of a hit the character can take).
Dexterity is usually attributed to Agile Stature. Ranged Offense, Keenness and Avoidance.
Magic is usually attributed to Magical Stature. Spellpower, Elemental Offense, and Magic Capacity.
Vitality is usually attributed to Cardio. Health.

What did Runic do exactly?
They Simplified the system by condensing Defense into a singular stat, and by doing so remove 1 form of Defense(Avoidance) and as a side effect the effects of stats on skills means little to none.

Defense IMO is just an Extra stat. More points into Offense will always outdo that defense in Torchlight. Simply put, all we really need is Strength, Dexterity, and Magic, but with the defensive half of those stats intact. What is Defense in Torchlight, but the Defensive half of Strength?

In fact wouldn't it be even simpler if every stat had their defensive halves back.

Edit:
Im not an RPG fanatic, just giving my opinion...
Honestly, nothing felt connected...as if everything was a "test"...if you catch my drift.

[polarbearoughey]

That's a sharp point too, Omni.

My only concern is what would happen to stat requirements to items like shields. Currently, an Alchemist with low Strength, but high Defense can wield shields with low Strength requirements as long as they meet the Defense needed. Most shields only require you to have a high Defense to use them. If we removed Defense, I would imagine characters that want to wield shields would need to invest many more points into Strength than they do now in order to wear those same shields, which I imagine would feel like a burden to many players, after being able to wear some awesome shields without needing Strength. Having Defense as a stand-alone stat allows players to fine tweak their characters between offensive and defensive capabilities.

However, I do agree that including some additional effects to stats would be a good addition for the MMO or even a future Torchlight patch.

[blue552]

First of all, nice to see a more critical thread which goes deeper into Torchlights game play mechanics. Here is my reply;

Core Motivation #1

Skills/Spells

All these suggestions would vastly improve the skill system. Yet we have to realize that this game is limited in content and depth as it was built with the attitude of "short but sweet" [which I think turned out pretty good]

Extending this content lies in the power of modifications. The Respec mod [re-distribute skills] has re-vitalized my love for this game.

Mods are extremely easy to maintain if you have TorchLeech.

Stats

I agree that stats via gear can be very annoying but I guess it's to balance builds. [Maybe making an ninja vanq as good as a marksman vanq?]

I think removing Defense is more a matter of opinion. I see Strength, Dexterity and Magic as 3 offensive skills which I choose between. Where as Defense is for, well defending myself. I like having a stat there which I know I should put points into.

Items

Hmm, see I like the vast variety of having multiple enchants. After a while though enchants just stack onto each other.

I find that unique items are stronger then high enchanted blue items, but only ones I receive from the gamblor. The developers obviously wanted people to find unique items early on in the game. Yet if these where the best items they would ever see again it could get boring fast.

Gems are annoying? see I am the complete opposite - Gems at the moment are what keep me playing this game, using my high level character to get awesome gems for the lower down ones, even then I'm reluctant to put them in items because they are so shiny and pretty

Meta-Game

Steam has achievements yet any mod disables them

I do like the idea of Ultra-rare items and maybe side-missions which are extremely hard.

I smarter item-drop system would be nice. Something that detects what weapon and armor you already have and then gives you something better. [Seriously I don't want your dam wand no matter how good it is]

Core Motivation #2

Level Design

Sorry but I disagree. I like the linear design because I hate back tracking through already discovered places, I also like exploring the entire floor I'd feel like I'm going around in circles too often.

More tile sets and sections would be awesome though.



If I have not mentioned the issue it's because I agree completely with you.

The biggest step up for the MMO in my opinion is simply more content, A LOT MORE.

They have the engine up, the biggest hurdle is networking and balance [which will occur over several patches I'd imagine]

Besides that it's just pumping hundreds of new models, effects, levels and stats into the game.

[Omnifas]

About Dungeons, I feel they need more variety, not as in more tilesets, but rather gameplay wise. Travis can ask Patrick to create 50 chunks per chunkset(NE, WE, etc) for every tileset and no matter how unique each looked the goal is the same: Kill and walk in the chunk until you reach the next chunk. Puzzles that lead into traps if you fail, or individual goals per chunk would provide good variety. I wouldn't mind longer dead ends, but their should be something eventful on the end of the road.

Lore, I think its more a matter of presentation than how much. Of course Main Plot Quests will deliver some Lore, but there should be other manners of presentation. A library in the capital city, but no library is ever complete. This is where I would connect exploration, problem solving and Dungeon Variety with Lore. The history of any world is never completely discovered, if the Overworld is a Ruin filled historyfest then why not leave a few dungeons Unmarked and waiting for discovery. With each Unmarked Dungeon it leads to more Lore, with more lore it leads to Secret Treasure. Exploration and Adventuring at its best. I've been thinking of creating a thread in the MMO section Titled, "We are Explorers, and We are Adventurers" for the sole purpose of proposing what I stated in this paragraph. There is nothing more Thrilling and Adventurous than finding a hidden dungeon and then delving into it to discover its secrets. We all want to be Indiana Jones

[wolfmane]

I'm kind of curious about whether or not all of the people that are saying very hard was easy for them on the first pass were playing the Vanquisher class. I'm curious about this because it seems almost as if I'm playing a different game.

I had a friend that played the vanq and was telling me how he was just smoking levels. Meanwhile I'm on the alchemist struggling along a bit on the normal mode. I finished with him and then went over to the Destroyer, which to me felt like the best put together class out of all of them. It's tree just felt more connected and just right for what the Destroyer was supposed to be billed as and had the bonus that figuring out scaling wasn't nearly as difficult (better weapon, better ouput). I've played through twice with destroyers and once with the Barbarian mod. One destroyer build I did completely offensive and the other destroyer I built as a defensive character. The defensive destroyer I switched over to the barbarian because of the slightly better retune to the defensive skills. Therefore it makes me think a little bit when someone says something like 'offense is always the best way to go'. In my experience my offensively built warrior would have issues with getting gibbed when trying to wade into large monster packs if I wasn't paying close attention. My defensively built characters didn't have that same issue and were a measurably better playing experience because I stacked large armor bonuses and high defense point expenditure.

The results of playing the game in the way that I did gives me the perspective that defense can be very useful and I have doubts that I'd have been able to beat very hard difficulty levels with the destroyer or barbarian, if I hadn't defense specced them. It would seem however, that a vanquisher specced into range combat would completely circumvent the issues I had with the melee class in that I actually have to make contact with large groups of monsters in order to kill them. When that's the case, defense, to me, becomes very important. If that's not the case then you've totally negated an entire stat and all of the gear required to support reducing incoming damage.

So I'm wondering if part of the real heart of the matter all comes down to class balance. Not only making the skills better and unique across classes, but also making sure one class's mechanics aren't inherently better than another class's mechanics.

[Bebop]

Wow that is one hell of a thread so far. Anyways thanks to everybody especially Jerich for this. Lots of things to think about and to be honest a lot of it we feel quite the same way about. All I can say is I have read it and I can pretty much say the entire office will be reading it soon enough( sent it out as an email ).

[AttackGorilla]

I like what has been written, but I just don't know that I agree with all of it, especially relating to MMOs (take PvP into consideration, not just grinding and questing).

Just to hit one note for example:
I personally love multiple resistances (#16), diversity is almost always better in my opinion. In an MMO if I specialize in fire then I want it to actually be different than someone that specializes in ice (other than side effects and graphics). This of course is dependent on if skill trees and damage types are set up parallel to the resistance structure. If you can add to fire resitance as an individual resistance then you have to be able to add to fire damage (which you can to some degree in Torchlight).
If you were going to limit it to just physical and magic, why stop there? why not just do a blanket armor rating?

[Tiamat]

Good read, lots of well-thought out criticisms.

I'd like to know your breakdown on why Flechette Trap is brilliant and Flame Trap is not (they scale at the same rate). Is it because Flechette Trap works fine by itself (high armor pierce), and flame trap requires synergies to remain effective (heavily soaked)? That sounds to me like Flechette is another "one-too-powerful-skill".

[Webbstre]

Wow that is one hell of a thread so far. Anyways thanks to everybody especially Jerich for this. Lots of things to think about and to be honest a lot of it we feel quite the same way about. All I can say is I have read it and I can pretty much say the entire office will be reading it soon enough( sent it out as an email ).

Good read, lots of well-thought out criticisms.

I'd like to know your breakdown on why Flechette Trap is brilliant and Flame Trap is not (they scale at the same rate). Is it because Flechette Trap works fine by itself (high armor pierce), and flame trap requires synergies to remain effective (heavily soaked)? That sounds to me like Flechette is another "one-too-powerful-skill".

Now this is why the Runic devs have the best community interaction of any devs I have seen. I've never heard of anyone else taking their fans' critiques so well.

[Jerich]

Thank you for all the posative feedback guys. I was a little worried when I wrote the post trying to stay as objective as I possibly could without being too critical or too uncritical. I spent a couple weeks reading it and asking close friends for feedback. Anyway, a few people raised some good points and I want to put my 2 cents in on them.

Unique Items versus Rares
With regards to polarbearroughey's comment on unique items. I understand your points, but I think the problem with Diablo IIs economy is not the great uniques, bu the rampant duping. No economy will be great if there is duping. Luckily, the MMO will be much more secure than Diablo II. I understand your main point to be that powerful rare items will make for a better economy than powerful unique items. I would like to argue the opposite.

Items are serious business in an MMO. In games like WoW people even write programs that crunch the item attributes, take the players spell rotation into consideration, the players attributes then spit out a list of the in game items ranked for power. Even the best build guides from Diablo II would often give a top ten list for equipment for each stat. Some people would say this leads to conformity, but I think it leads to a better economy.

The reason is that it is difficult to decide between two pieces of equipment. When I shop on the diablo II.net forums, the WoW auction house, or the EQ Bazaar I usually have researched what uniques are good for my character and about how much the going rate is. I go through a lot of bother to gear up once my characters reach the high end. In this process, I ignore rares. Why? Sometimes they may be better than a unique, but it is too hard to figure out which rare is better for my character. The more attributes on the rare the harder it is to make this distinction. I don't typically have the time to sift through hundreds of rare items and then a few minutes per item deciding if it is really an upgrade and then what the price will be. I want to trade in items that get traded enough that I can tell if I am getting ripped off. I think a lot of people are like me.

Now to the question of whether there should be unique items that are Godly and rare. I would say definitely. As a gamer, I was rarely at the top of the loot curve, but I was always striving to ascend. The few times I made it to the top I lost interest since the striving is much more fun than the achieving. I want items in the game that I don't have a hell of a chance of getting, and if I do manage to get those items I want to feel proud of the accomplishment. I want to be able to look at a person who is decked out in incredible gear and feel a pang of both jealousy and respect. If I some how attain that status, I want to be flashy and unique.

In an MMO, everyone is incredibly wealthy. We all make loads of money and spend it just as fast. We go through multiple sets of armor and weapons and throw away the old ones as if they are trash. In a society like this, positional or status good are increasingly important. They are a huge motivating factor for a significant segment of the population. Hard to get items or cool vanity items fit this bill. They help us to feel that are character is special because we have something that is highly sought after. Rare items just don't give this sense of satisfaction. You can be sporting one of the best rare items in the game, but unless it is an incredibly high dps rare weapon or something, the average person will never know how awesome you are.


Level Design
In response to blue552 - We will have to disagree on this point. Linearity is often good, especially for group and dungeons, but I think it is more important that dungeons feel different. There are a ton of different ways to mitigate backtracking yet allow for unique dungeons. For instance the Arcane Sancturary in Diablo II could have had a port at the end of each wing that ported you back to the enterance (nax in Wow had somethign like this). You can also have circular dungeons with a central hub that require you to beat a few sections to unlock the circle, or use events to lead a player back, or even a linear dungeon that winds in on itself... climbing a tower with a more open roof. That being said, I think some dungeons should be sandboxes where players have to search in every nook and cranny to discover everything (works best for dungeons targeted toward single players or small groups), or perhaps even a maze.

In response to Omnifas - I agree with you completely about exploration. Individual puzzles, quest events, etc per chunk would be a great edition. For instance... It would be amazing to come to a chunk and have to protect and NPC from a wave of horrible monsters. If the NPC survives they either reward you with treasure, a quest, or open a secret side passage that leads to more loot. Perhaps at the end of a long side path, there is an NPC that wants you to escort him back to to the main branch of a more linear dungeon. I could go on listing examples forever, but all these things would make incredibly interesting chunks.


Is the Game too Easy or is it just not balanced?
To Wolfmane - I have mainly played the vanquisher. My friend who complained about very hard being too easy played an explosive shot Vanquisher, but my friend who complained about normal being too easy played an alchemist. I think the problem is a mixture of both balance and the fact that normal is just too easy. I believe people have done ironman in very hard with all three classes and they did it within a month of the game being released. In a game where retirement buffs up your items significantly, I don't think this should be possible. Once people obtain a goal like that, they are likely to lose interest and quit. I believe the pursuit of a difficult goal rather than the attainment that is most fun.

About Resistance
You make valid points AttackGorilla - In particular you talk about the fact that a fire mage should have a different feel than an ice mage. It is possible to make the case that separate resistances for monsters are a good thing. It is good to have to switch your tactics around. I don't think, however, they are good in a player versus player environment, and here is why:

Let's take your cold mage into consideration. Let's say he is pvping against warrior. With resistance this can go three ways.

• Warrior has little frost resistance --> The mage wins easily
• Warrior has tons of frost resistance --> The warrior wins easily
• Warrior has average frost resistance -->Skill / tactics decides who wins.

I would say the third case is much more interesting than the first two. I am all for a rock paper scissors style of pvp, but deciding who wins based on what gear the warrior chose to wear before going into pvp seams arbitrary.

Edit: As I think about resistances, I guess the thing I don't like is seeing an item four lines of +resist stats. If most of those were consolidated to + resist all, then split resistant would not be as big a deal to me. I just want to be able to read what an item does better.

Now let's look at three PvE cases.
Case 1: In Original Everquest, there were originally two big boss fights. For the Dragon Nagafen players needed lots of Fire resist. For the Dragon Vox players need Cold resist. This meant that a serious raider had to farm 3 separate sets of gear. Now Ruins of Kunark came along and it added poison damage, and magic damage monsters. Now people needed to farm and store 5 separate sets of gear. Over half their bank (and bags) were full of resistance gear. This was not fun. Eventually Everquest started putting resistance on every item that dropped so that every player was now capped at resistance. It became a meaningless stat.

Case 2: In Original WoW, the first main raid dungeon was the molten core. You needed fire resistance (2 sets of gear). Blackwing lair also needed fire resistance. Then an ice dragon and ice dungeon was added (3 sets of gear). Then Nature dragons were added (4 sets of gear). These dungeons also had the problem that no one wanted to bring a frost mage to a frost dungeon or a fire mage to a fire dungeon. Eventually it got unmanageable and current dungeons can be done without any resistance gear.

Case 3: In Diablo II getting your resistance high enough is basically what allows you to farm hell mode. If you have really bad resistance you have to be incredibly careful. I personally don't enjoy constantly trying to juggle resistance (Other people however enjoy this).

I am not saying individual resistances are untenable. There may be a great way to make them work and I would be interested to hear a proposal. I just have never seen a successful implementation of them. I think having elemental side effects (frost slows the target, fire causes burn damage, etc) is another way that different effects can be made to feel different.

For Tiamat
I have not done a whole lot of testing of the two skills and am mainly going from my gut reactions. In my first trapper build I had both maxed and used them both. From the first point I put into flame trap it consistently got a ton of glancing blows and Flechette trap always seemed to do at least some damage. That is not the main reason I like Flechette trap, however. It feels more responsive, seems to have a better range and sounds and looks cooler. In terms of balance, I don't think traps are nearly as powerful as guns. The damage doesn't seem to be affected by anything (including other skills except devouring trap). I just happen to like Flechette trap even though it is not as powerful as something like explosive shot.

Wow that is one hell of a thread so far. Anyways thanks to everybody especially Jerich for this. Lots of things to think about and to be honest a lot of it we feel quite the same way about. All I can say is I have read it and I can pretty much say the entire office will be reading it soon enough( sent it out as an email ).

Good read, lots of well-thought out criticisms.

Thanks guys. The Runic Staff is one of the main reasons that I am so excited about the MMO. You are the best in the business. I am not exaggerating when I say you have have the best developer / community communication of any game I have ever followed.

- Jerich