Torchlight 2 Catch-All

Rezzy wrote:
juv3nal wrote:

:shock:

Fine. I guess I'll do it:
... And with a final shuddering yelp she collapses into the sand. As I gather my tattered leggings I vow to remember the lesson my chakawary taught me today: The goggles do nothing.

I was only left with the sad, solemn song of my memories and a Dannon Light &Fit Smoothie (tm).

I regret nothing.

Speedhuntr wrote:

I regret nothing.

You should definitely regret something!

Rezzy wrote:
juv3nal wrote:

Goggles, people, goggles. What's your chakawary going to do when it gets a sandstorm all up in its face?

Hug it close to me and let it snuggle its head into safety of my warm chest. I would comfort it and tell it that the storm will pass soon. We would fall asleep huddled together, only to wake a little while later to silence. The moon now peeks through the fading clouds and the storm has passed. I glance down and see that she is watching me. Looking into my eyes. She shifts slightly, her eyes never leaving mine. Now I feel the claws under my cloak, curious and probing... I...
I'll be in my bunk.

I laughed out-loud, spilled water over my desk and disturbed my office mates as they fled the building for the weekend.

Bravo!

Natus posted this in the sale thread, and it's the first I've seen such a detailed breakdown: Facebook link.

I want this game so bad.

Hyetal wrote:

Natus posted this in the sale thread, and it's the first I've seen such a detailed breakdown: Facebook link.

I want this game so bad.

It was actually added to today's Runic Games Not-a-blog.

Why am I not playing this game already?!

I know Runic probably doesn't care about my selfish mini-rant, as I pre-purchased on Steam the day it went up, but with every passing week with no release date, I get slightly more irritated. The game's approximate release, from Runic themselves, went from "a month after Diablo 3" (so, mid-June) to "late July or August," not to mention the rather lengthy closed beta (and an open stress test) that ended back in May. I just read their latest "Not A Blog" post, and from the sound of it, the game likely won't be released for at least another full month.

This means that whenever Torchlight 2 - a game that I've been very much anticipating - is finally released, I probably won't touch it for quite a while. Two other games that I'm anticipating have also been pre-purchased, Guild Wars 2 (Aug 28) and Borderlands 2 (Sept 18), both of which will be released before Torchlight 2 it seems. By the time I get around to playing TL2, probably November if I spend as much time with Borderlands 2 as I did with the original, I suspect most people here will have moved on. Pity though, as I was looking forward to some multiplayer TL2 action with fellow GWJers.

I don't think most will have moved on, as I'm relatively certain a lot of people who are interested in TL2, share your interest in BL2 and GW2 (and the other games also coming out this fall). I know I do.

In either case, I don't think your rant was selfish. You make a good point, and I wish they hadn't been so eager to estimate a "sort of" release date. Like four times. They've never promised anything, but it's nevertheless, as you said, somewhat irritating.

It is a bit vexing. Their initial "comfortable" release date was June of 2011. If you want to do the "it's done when it's done" development model, that's cool, just don't print any release dates until you've inked those last clauses on the manufacturing contracts and you're sure you've got it nailed.

I wonder if the game is being fine tuned, or are they waiting for the right time to launch. If it's the latter then that perfect time is right now.

I disagree. The perfect time was 2 months ago. I'm all for "polish" (God, am I sick of that word in reference to this game), but I agree with MeatMan. I was really excited to play TL2 with my kid this summer. We got her a new laptop for Christmas, and I made sure the video would be adequate to play TL2. Now she's back in school, and with 3 AP classes, 3-5 hours of homework per night, and running cross country, she has almost no free time.

I think back to this time last year when Max was, I won't say promising, but hopeful that it would be out before the end of 2011 and I feel completely mislead. Pre-orders were when? May? June? And it's still another month away? It's gotten a bit ridiculous. I believe I read someone at Runic saying, "We promised it this summer. Just remember summer goes until late September."

I've always supported them taking the time to get it right, but it's getting much harder the longer they've had my money. This wasn't a kickstarter, but a preorder. Again, feeling pretty mislead.

I don't have anything to add. Just that I saw this thread pop on the first page reminded me that I have a pre-order all set up in Steam. Completely forgot.

(and I'm in the same boat Meatman - GW2 followed by BL2). Good times they are a commin'!

I've said before, when a company starts taking money, something has to be released pretty imminently. I'm also wondering whether they thought they were going for a v1 release, and then saw a load of things they wanted to change, so the initial release is going to be a reworked v2 compared to that. It's their game to decide when it's ready, but I fear the "perception is reality" thing might be working against them with their fans.

And I'm still not sure what to make of people trying to decide when the 'right' time for release is.

I'd forgotten about that.

Now I'm sad.

Hyetal wrote:
Speedhuntr wrote:

I regret nothing.

You should definitely regret something!

Right now I regret pretty much everything I've ever done.

DMan wrote:

The perfect time was 2 months ago.

Yep. Now I've played Diablo III, and I'm playing Darksiders 2. Borderlands 2 hits on September 18th and that's going to monopolize my time for a while. These are all loot games, and unless they want to push Torchlight 2 until winter, they've missed their window for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still play it, but I'm not sure there's any room for it to spend any time as my go-to game.

I am in the same boat and glad I didn't pre-order yet. "Summer 2012" sounded to sketchy for a company founded by former Blizzard employees. The latest "Report from the trenches" doesn't help with stating that they just now finished polishing act 2 and creating the act 3 content, meaning act 3 will need polish as well.

I agree that anytime past now until spring will be a bad time to release, because end of summer marks the begin of the 6 month long "triple AAA game release every 2 weeks" season (GW2, WoW Pandamonium, Dishonored, BL2, AC3 to just name a few), which is nothing they can compete with. After all, they are a non-indie company with an indie marketing budget.

MeatMan wrote:

Why am I not playing this game already?!

...

This means that whenever Torchlight 2 - a game that I've been very much anticipating - is finally released, I probably won't touch it for quite a while. Two other games that I'm anticipating have also been pre-purchased, Guild Wars 2 (Aug 28) and Borderlands 2 (Sept 18), both of which will be released before Torchlight 2 it seems. By the time I get around to playing TL2, probably November if I spend as much time with Borderlands 2 as I did with the original, I suspect most people here will have moved on. Pity though, as I was looking forward to some multiplayer TL2 action with fellow GWJers.

D-Man777 wrote:

The perfect time was 2 months ago. I'm all for "polish" (God, am I sick of that word in reference to this game), but I agree with MeatMan. I was really excited to play TL2 with my kid this summer. We got her a new laptop for Christmas, and I made sure the video would be adequate to play TL2. Now she's back in school, and with 3 AP classes, 3-5 hours of homework per night, and running cross country, she has almost no free time.

This is what I was saying exactly 2 months ago (pg 24, June 15th)!!

But mostly, I agree with you MeatMan in that, with every passing week, I wonder why the game isn't on my hard drive. At the very least, Runic is helped by the fact that it's a $20 title and not a $60 title, so it's that much easier to get a BL2 or a GW2 alongisde TL2 (lots of "2s" in there...), but TL2 will still be competing for time, and that's a commodity many people won't have in the Fall alongside everything else many folks have going on.

Unless there's a magic time-making machine out there. That'd be cool.

Luggage wrote:

After all, they are a non-indie company with an indie marketing budget.

And an indie game price.

Scratched wrote:

And I'm still not sure what to make of people trying to decide when the 'right' time for release is.

I think it's the perfect Internet topic; it gives everyone something ultimately moot to argue about.

From reading Travis' not a blog posts, it would seem like there are only a couple of people actually working on the game. He seems to be doing the bulk with one other guy and the art staff pitches in when needed. What are the other 20 or so employees I thought they had doing?

Testing?

And seriously, it is not impossible to have a mute point... Just saying ;P

Day one DLC?

Copingsaw wrote:

From reading Travis' not a blog posts, it would seem like there are only a couple of people actually working on the game. He seems to be doing the bulk with one other guy and the art staff pitches in when needed. What are the other 20 or so employees I thought they had doing?

Isn't that at risk of falling into the trap of "20 times the workforce = 20 times faster"? There's going to be a mix of specialisms there, and not all of them can accelerate the process. For something like game design I would think adding more people would slow it down.

OK, just plunged the preorder $20 usd on steam and got a free gift of Torchlight(the first one, not torchlight 2) to the first one who sends me a PM asking for it, send me your steam handle to send a friend req and gift!!

I finally gifted my copy to GWJ member. Happy that someone else will get to play the game.

On the plus side, the ridiculous delay of this game forced me to send Portal 2 to a friend so we could play through the multiplayer. I'm pretty late to this party, but hell yeah this is awesome. Thanks Torchlight 2!

fangblackbone wrote:

Testing?

And seriously, it is not impossible to have a mute point... Just saying ;P

No, if its a mute point... then you aren't saying. Just saying.

The release date of the release date: http://www.torchlight2game.com/news/...

We will announce our release date on Friday, August 31st.

What are the odds they're going to delay the announcement?

Meta release dates are dumb. At least give us an ARG to allow us to believe we can earn an early release.