Torchlight on sale for $9.99 this weekend!

[averyblund]

vlad321 said:

Words Of Wisdom said:

vlad321 said:

See the differencec is that there is VERY little added to the Diablo 2 formula. They added a pet, and that's about it when it comes to significant changes. At least I'm hoping Blizzard themselves innovates upon D2 with Diablo 3. I really liked the boss that tore the barbarian in two pieces in the trailer they played, also the heavily destructive evironments would be amazing if used correctly. Also clones are never good because they are just clones, they can never be as good as an original game.

I disagree with pretty much everything you just said.

There should be no significant changes to existing franchises.  People like franchises for what they are so if you're majorly revamping gameplay then you should be doing so with an entirely different game.  For example Diablo 3 should be a hack'n'slash game, not an RTS, because that's the core gameplay of Diablo.  Sequels and clones shouldn't be looking to revamp, they should be looking to refine.  Take the elements that everyone loves and improve upon those, add minor things which will make the game better, however avoid adding so much that the game deviates from what makes it great in the first place.

Torchlight is great because it takes some of the elements that made Diablo 2 excellent and adds to them.  The result is that it pleases existing fans of these games like myself and opens the market to new players who've never played a game quite like this.  Will it be better than Diablo 3?  Probably not, but that doesn't make it bad.

The great games do introduce changes to their franchises though. Warcraft, Mario, Half-Life, Zelda, etc.

To take Half-Life as an example. Yes Half-Life 2 was still and FPS like HL1, but I'm sure you'd be hardpressed to find many other similiarities outside of the str and characters.

Clones don't work because mods exist. You can update graphics a little and change your basic gameplay around. If I can do that why should I be bothered with blowing money on a clone? The answer is that I shouldn't. Torchlight is basically Diablo 2 with 3D graphics and a pet. I would also label it as a Diablo clone not a Diablo 2 clone since Diablo had the archer/warrior/caster model, while D2 had 5 classes that were completely different.

As another example, Diablo 2 wouldn't be a clone of Diablo 1. Besides the obvious increase in classes, with 30 distinct skills each, they also added way points, mercenaries, and so on and so forth. There were huge changes. Meanwhile the changes between Torchlight and Diablo 2 can be classified as a new coat of paint plus a little more options to your mercenary. No thank you.

Not sarcastic, but you must hate L4D2 and most other FPS from the last decade. There is so little change in the formula it even frustrates me, and I'm far less concerned with genre expansion than you.

I guess I just expect less, but I don't think a game need to be genre defining to be a winner, if it did I would only be able to play about 1 or 2 game a year.

 

That said the Diablo example is right on.