Torchlight 2 game design post-mortem

Torchlight 2 game design post-mortem

I played TL2 back in the day when it first came out and just recently played through it again. I know a lot has been said about the game over the years and this post probably isn't necessary, but I just wanted to post my thoughts on the overall design of TL2.

Yes, I know mods exist that can fix most any problem. This is discussing the base game of Torchlight 2 as it was delivered to players from the developers, and is mostly about the decisions they made in creating the game.

I will admit that throughout all of normal mode, first playthrough, the game is pretty well balanced. You can get a lot of hours out of this game without feeling these design decisions...however, it feels like the game was barely playtested at NG+ and beyond.

One of the game's single biggest problems in my opinion is the stats. Many elements that surround them are odd decisions that end up forcing players to act a certain way in order to have a good time with the game and play well.

* **Every class except engineer is a glass cannon (vitality sucks)**

The only reason the engineer avoids this is due to his forcefields, and to a lesser extent his healbot. Only his skills could override this design decision that affects everyone.

This is because vitality ends up being useless long term. Eventually all enemies kill you in one or two hits, and if for some reason you had spent all your points every level on vitality you *might* get to the point where all enemies kill you in two or three hits instead. But all those wasted points would make it much harder to actually kill enemies, meaning you've gained one reprieve from death but end up mobbed and attacked that much more often...not a winning strategy.

And this is sad because it's *fun* to be able to play around with different builds. Imagine if, I don't know, let's say there was a melee embermage skill which cost very little mana to use (because it was designed for you to build with points into vit instead of focus). You pump up vit and throw on a shield and wade into the enemies and wreck them, they can barely touch you! A viable tank wizard would be a lot of fun to play around with. Same for berserker or outlander. But those options are just plain off the table.

How this could've been fixed: either grant a lot more health from vit, scale enemy damage lower, or have points in vit slowly increase resist all damage.

* **Dex also sucks**

Unlike all the other stats, everything dexterity increases has diminishing returns. There is no class or build that wants to stack up dex beyond a certain point. I don't know why you would make only one stat like this.

Not only that, dodge is the most useless defensive mechanism -- it only works against small enemy auto-attacks, not enemy skills, traps, "brute" enemies, or most bosses. It only works on about a third of damage sources in the game. Not a mechanic you can rely on.

How this could've been fixed: I wouldn't actually want the game to make ALL stats have diminishing returns, but at least it would've been fair. Ideally they could've found something for the stat to do that's not percentage-based. Or, something other games have done, let the percentage just keep increasing linearly and have later game enemies' attacks *reduce* that number. So you've got 1200% dodge but the enemies ignore 1150% of your dodge so the chance is actually 50%. There could still be a cap like 75%. just don't have diminishing returns.

* **No incentive to invest in stats other than strength and focus**

So you're going to be a glass cannon no matter what, and the diminishing returns of dexterity mean a few points on your gear can be nearly as effective as investing in it. You do like most people do and put all of your points in strength or focus, depending on your class.

Items in this game have required stats to equip them...OR being at a certain level. 

 So you can completely ignore the stat requirement with a little patience. By comparison, Diablo 2's items had a required level, and *also* required strength and/or dexterity. This made your builds slightly more interesting, because you knew that even spellcasters were going to have to figure out how to get a few points into those stats. You would design your whole build around them...will you plan on this awesome helm that requires 80 strength? Or expect that you'll have to go with a lesser helm that only takes 50 strength? You ended up with slightly more well-rounded characters due to this.

How this could've been fixed: Essentially, all the things I mentioned above. Another thing that more modern games have been doing with stats, particularly Pathfinder and D&D, is tying each stat to a particular class as well, as their "main" stat that their abilities scale off of. Outlanders could've had dex-based skills, engineers could've had vit-based skills, that sort of thing. This would again help differentiate the way you build the classes instead of making them all focus/str.

* **Resist all damage is far too important**

The one thing everyone eventually learns to itemize for is % resist all damage. Everyone farms for Eye of Grell and other items that increase this percentage. Eventually building all your characters to focus on resist all damage at the expense of everything else is not fun. There should not be one or two socketables that everyone uses all the time in all gear.

How this could've been fixed: If vit was more effective, or if vit itself gave this effect and you couldn't find items with it, then players would feel more freedom in trying other types of builds and gear.

* **NG+ restrictions are silly and frustrating**

Due to the way item drops work, some specific items you might want like the Skull of Limoany (5% resistance) drop most often in NG+. If you're at NG++ or higher, you're just out of luck, you can never go backwards. It also fractures the player base when many players simply can't play with each other because they moved forward, or perhaps chose to stay behind.

How this could've been fixed: Just let people change their NG+ status at will. We can already change the game's difficulty in every LAN/online game, why not this?

* **Max skill tiers are earned way too late**

The meat and potatoes of the game, the most fun stuff, is often what you get from the skill tiers. There are some great bonuses in there that really change the way the game is played. Every 5 points in a skill, you feel powerful, and the game gets a little bit more fun.

However, all skills finally finish off with their third tier at level **92+**. This is really high, and takes a lot of effort to get to. Your build is basically complete long before this, once you get this high you've been in grinding mode for a long time already and it just doesn't feel as beneficial as it could've earlier.

How this could've been fixed: simply grant each tier at every 4 points instead of 5, but keep the 15 point cap. This would mean you get tier 3 at 12 points invested...and then there are 3 more points that you might decide to invest in to squeeze a little more power out of the skill, or choose to enjoy the tier 3 bonus and invest elsewhere. This would be *so beneficial* for enabling more types of builds! And you would get tier 3 on your skills from levels 58 to 78, which is much more attainable. It would become an NG+ thing rather than NG++ or higher.

* **Unbalanced classes**

This may be more debatable/controversial, but I think it's fairly well accepted that the best classes in the game are engineer and embermage. Outlander and berserker were just...poorly designed, or oddly designed by comparison. The engineer has actual survival skills and some really useful pets, and is essential in any group. The embermage is incredibly powerful without even trying due to the brands directly boosting prismatic bolt, and just as in other ARPGs like Diablo 2, teleport makes them the ultimate farming class. The others are just left hanging without a role or niche that makes them equally good.

How this could've been fixed: there could've been rare methods to get skills from other classes, like a set bonus that grants 1 point of teleport or force field. When systems like these are included in ARPGs they always add a lot more utility and build types.

That's about all I have to say for now, I think that hits most of the major points for me. In spite of all this it's a pretty fun game, but these design elements add up to a flawed experience that is a bit more lackluster than it needed to be.