You can if you’re in offline mode and if your internet connection drops while you’re playing Torchlight 2 you don’t get kicked out (I’ve had that happen in Diablo 3, very annoying)

2. Gear type affect how your skills behave. So if you want to become “the most amazing lightning wizard of all time” you equip gear that gives you more damage. If you want your lightning to life steal – equip that. This goes for all skills in the game and all damage or on hit effects. So there’s room for insane customization, not to mention runes that come with every skill as well.

3. Don’t know if you are familiar with the D2 scene, but the game was basically ruined by gold sellers, item sellers, item duping and various hacks. Always Online is there to improve your playing experience, when the game mechanics are run server side there is little possibility for hacks. And whats the point of playing offline if you can’t share or sell your loot? It’s 2012 time to move on from all this offline bs.

4. Price? Torchlight has to be cheap. That’s their only chance to compete with Diablo. If Torchlight was sold at the same price as Diablo no one would buy it.

5. You can easily consider every major patch for Diablo 3 as free DLC. They game is out for only 5 months now and already there are many improvements and new additions to the game via major patches. Like the recent one with infernal machine and monster levels and there’s still PvP matchmaking to come. Expansion is on the way as well and if you look at previous blizzard expansions for warcraft, wow and starcraft – they all are like a brand new game, not just few new levels and minor improvements, so I don’t understand this whole money problem. The content that you get is well worth it.

In what way does steam suck…? It isn’t “game related software” it is more of a way to connect to friends that you want to play games with. A social networking site with a game store… By the way with a single push of a button I can turn off my network card too… How does that change anything?

Blizzard failed to make any kind of compelling argument for any of the features that they changed from the formula that had worked so marvelously with the previous two games and was, instead of being motivated by making a decent game, were motivated by some bad ideas (probably to potentially expand the player base to include more casual types of gamers) and greed.

The Torchlight franchise is now the king of the hill for anyone paying attention to these things and the giant that was once the darling of gaming perfection has toppled.

I’m just glad I have a decent loot based ARPG to play after the horrible taste left in my mouth from my Diablo III experience.

My thought too, upon reading “roleplaying,” was, “that’s not how it’s defined in the WoW community.” Still, I think it was pretty obvious, from the context, that he was talking about that particular CRPG mechanic.

Personally, I like that you can, “[break] your character by putting all your points into say Agility then getting yourself one shot later on when the damage is higher than your health pool.” That seems to me the point of an RPG: you can level up in different ways and with different emphases to suit your own personal play style.

(Putting most of my points into Agility is exactly how I built my first Torchlight II character, actually.)

Amen to that Dorian, 0 Frustration… tons of loot, SMOOTHE gameplay, no crashes or frame rate lag. I love Torchlight 2!

Steam is the worst gaming related software out there. Period. And NO “we are NOT always connected to the internet” with a few clicks I can disable my network card. If I want to play a SINGLE player game offline I will choose to do so. So F#$K steam, it can go to hell.

I do disagree with this, roleplaying is acting. Nothing more, nothing less. Allocating stats isn’t roleplaying.
It’s a CRPG mechanic, but it’s not roleplaying.

Different games “inside the genre”. Are you kidding? The only real difference is, that D3 focused on profits first and player happiness last. Torchlight 2, focused entirely on giving players what they want. Torchlight 2 is more Diablo in spirit than D3 can ever hope to be.

If you can’t compare T2 and D3, then you can’t compare anything. This isn’t like comparing Mortal Kombat to Cooking Mama, you clownshoe. They’re practically the same game only one was made by people who don’t show daily contempt for their fanbase, and the other is Blizzard.

Different audiences, my ass. F’ing ridiculous that you said that with any sincerity.

We can’t all have Jay Wilson telling us what “fun” is. Some of us have to think for ourselves, from time to time.

He’s saying Blizzard pays for good reviews while Runic doesn’t need to. I think.

I purchased my copy directly from Perfect World Entertainment, and don’t use Steam. Educate yourself, before you open your mouth. You can also play Steam games offline, as DJag said.

The game is avaiable from their site as well, not just Steam. Also: Steam works without internet.

Total BS. 1 we are always connected to Internet.
2 without Internet you can’t get to steam to start up the game…

Blizzard is a different company now. Schaefer and many others no longer work for them, and Runic’s existence is a result of that. This game is the original developer’s way of giving back to the community that made the genre as successful as it is today. I whole-heartedly agree with you on this point. In fact, in reason #3, I wrote – “Torchlight II is more of a Diablo II sequel than Diablo III is.”

Thank you very much for the wonderfully written comment!

Diablo 3 was a complete departure from the series (which is now basically over, save for one expansion I’m sure), and that’s it’s biggest and most noticeable weakness. Torchlight 2 feels like more of a sequel to Diablo 2 than Diablo 3 was, and that should be the biggest insult to Blizzard – the very fact that another company created a better experience from their own series, by the very people they let go; and at a discounted price on release no less.

Torchlight 2 sounds, plays, and feels like Diablo 2, which is what Diablo 3 should’ve done. Torchlight 2 changed “just enough” of the gameplay formula around to still work like Diablo 2, but to have their own feel. If Blizzard had done this first, we wouldn’t even be talking about this.

That is precisely why Torchlight 2 is better. It is a better sequel to a completely different series – thanks to the original developers of the series.

It’s called a “disconnect.” You can completely and unequivocally tell that Diablo 3 was made by a different troupe – you should never do that to a series, in the middle of the series. Diablo 3 is the result of this action, and Torchlight 2 is the evidence.

“Diablo 3 does away with the possibility of breaking your character by
putting all your points into say Agility then getting yourself one shot
later on when the damage is higher than your health pool.”

…and yet the first patches put in place for Diablo 3 were to fix broken mechanics regarding combinations of skills that made players literally invincible (such as the Wizard and Demon Hunter). Then later a patch to fix and nerf the speed bonus/buffs that players were abusing to do unintentional amounts of damage against the game’s biggest bosses – which everyone complained about out loud en mass.

The very fact that the game has been patched to oblivion shows that their original design had massive flaws in the first place. The “fixes” they put in place, literally changed how you played the different characters – these were not just “bugs” they were vast changes. This was a problem because Blizzard wanted to take power away from the players. Why? I’m getting to that.

This is on top of the fact that Diablo 3 was patched very hard to favor the use of the Auction House (which Blizzard made money off of per transaction). This is also on top of the fact that the Auction House itself, broke Diablo 3’s loot system, and exploration designs.

The very fact that TL2 has given us the ability to pick our own stats and upgrades, means that Runic has given US, it’s players, the power to decide our own roles based on the stats we choose (hence the article).

Why is this important? Simple! If players are free to use skills that we customize and choose from, to break the game, then there is no need to purchase items from the Auction House, which is the “bread and butter” of Diablo 3.

The other problem I have is there’s just sooo many random affices on drops, that I usually don’t find much for upgrades anyhow. I’m still using lv 2 Greens at lv 19. So i feel like I’m playing D3 with slightly higher drop rates (actually finding “A Mysterious something”, though most have been useless). Maybe RNG is especially disfavorable to me.

I hope the mod making kit is out soon, so someone/I can hopefully change some of that, and give the game a much more in control feel. A pathfinder for that Backflip move would be great, especially with the awkward aim it has, and getting caught on the tiniest corner is very aggravating.

In short, I feel the customisation is better, but the combat is worse.

he just said what everyone’s thinking. diablo 3 sucks as a dungeon crawler, it sucks as a game. it’s made by activision’s marketing people with making profit at every corner in mind. they wanted it to be as good a cash cow as wow was, and that shows.

I never said I had bad luck with drops, totally the opposite. I’ve received awesome gear and pretty much have most of the way through. The point I was making was that getting a full inventory of junk every 5 minutes doesn’t necessarily mean the loot is better.