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Morning Discussion

by Alice O'Connor, Nov 11, 2009 6:00am PST

Greetings, website viewers. I wish you a pleasant morning, afternoon, evening or night. May you experience the sensations and emotions that typically accompany a Wednesday, which I hope are pleasant. Perhaps you intend to discuss new video game releases or maybe even old or upcoming ones--all topics we heartily approve of. Other topics for discussion are, of course, available should you desire.

Until we Internet again. Yours fondly yet not overly so, Shacknews.com.


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  • #7250
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    By: SqueegyTBS x
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    Torchlight is awesome, yet disappointing.

    It's been a long time since Diablo II, yet Torchlight follows it more literally than I think that time gap dictates that it should. Here are a few big gripes gripes I have about the core gameplay, that also was an issue in Diablo II.

    1. Potions.
    Not dying is simply a matter of buying enough potions and hitting that button before you get too low. And sometimes retreating for a second while it does its thing. The ability to carry huge amounts of super cheap potions, and making them not have a cooldown trivializes combat to a great degree. If I am in a bind I know I can just pop a potion and will probably be fine. Survivability boils down to how closely you watch your health gauge, which in turn lets you know when to drink.

    2. Tiered active skill tree.
    Most notable when playing as my caster alchemist, I realized early on that I wanted Ember Lance as my main attack. So I had 2 choices: waste points in an attack spell to get to the level where I could unlock the one I want, or smack shit with staves and wands until I got to that level. I ended up choosing a bunch of passives while I slowly killed stuff with my wand. When I finally got Ember Lance my damage output went through the roof.

    So early skills that you dont want in your build (or aren't even viable at high levels), you have to ignore and suffer few a painful game experience until you get the skills you actually do want to use. Diablo II solved this partially later on via synergies. WoW solved it by giving players all skills, and making them all viable through the game at any level. Titan Quest seemed to have skills that scaled well to high levels. I just hate feeling like I am wasting points at first, or that I have gimp myself in order to be string later.

    I know Diablo 3 is addressing the potion thing with health globes dropped in battle and less potion dependence. Not sure about #2 though. I remember building a Frozen Orb Sorceress that was miserably useless until level 30, and then instarape.

    All that said, the game is fun and love loot whoring. But still, it's time we upped the ante in the core gameplay mechanics of Action RPGs.
    Nov 11, 2009 8:10pm PST
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