my ramblings on TQ

[hooby]

Originally Posted by Prosoro

Bro Titan Quest is awesome. Just accept it!

Do you think it is good enough that nothing bad I could possibly say about it, would really hurt it?

Good enough that there's no reason to fear a detailed discussion of some of its quirks, or to get upset, that your believe in it, could get damage?

Good enough there's no reason to get upset, or to feel attacked or take on an defensive stance when talking about it?

Good enough to be able to stand above a bit of critizism, and take it easy?

Is it?

[Renevent]

Originally Posted by Malpheas

I disagree, in the case I've given.

Skills in TQ had a more profound effect on gameplay. For example, in D2 with frenzy, my damage with those was still only around 3,000 physical damage per swing; and after synergies (which were taken as bonus only with points spent and not +skill bonuses) you were given +20% magic damage). With +skills and other more powerful mods (because other things were more important) you were affecting a couple of different damage types as well as statistics had a profound effect on item damage as well.

That and the fact that skills in diablo 2 had less depth than Titan Quest. Say you had Marksmanship, a single active with 3 passives (if I remember correctly). If you had a plus to skills on all those, you would get 4 different buffs total for that one active skill. And that's just how the skill is set up.

'Synergies' in TQ were affected by +skills whereas in Diablo 2 synergies were not; I suppose, unless you counted general wide cover passives like say cold mastery and blizzard orb.

I think plus to skills was far more valuable in TQ, which is why they limited it so much; regardless of how much I wanted them to ease that limitation.

I can only imagine the shenanigans your level 200 character with 75 skill levels will get up to now that he or she is a jack of EVERYTHING.

Anyways,

Devil's Advocate,

Malpheas

I see what you are saying...but I still would say D2's +skills had a more drastic effect on character effectiveness especially when it comes to raw damage.

Perhaps in TQ the effect is more horizontal and across the board though...while in D2 it's more focused.

[Naven]

y'know before i played TQ, i had never heard the word synergy used in relation to games and skills...took me much trawling through old tq net posts to get a handle on what was meant (proc was another ball game altogether..but i digress)

What i noticed more was not, for example, that scattershot was a synergy of marksmanship (it was a progression of the original skill), but that for example. Dream skills synergised with Hunting skills to create very nice defensive bonii, or that Defense and Rogue (strong trees each) complimented each other wonderfully to create the fun filled mayhem that is the corsair

Hooby...good arguments

Asylum et al....equally good arguments

i almost think your pissing against the same tree from different sides

.....ahem...err.... carry on

Naven

[hooby]

Well what about that other methods of meows - nobody commentet on that yet.

There's D2 1.10 where those strange +% damage from other skills appeared - which technically do not qualify as a real meow. I hope we can at least all agree, that those weren't good.

And then there's those in-combat meows of Guild Wars 2 -> arrows flying through firewall = fire arrows.
I think that's a pretty cool idea - if done right this could be real good.

[medierra]

I think the biggest problem with TQ is that it feels very slow paced at the start and the combat is rather unsatisfying. A lot of players just don't have the patience to continue on with a game that doesn't hook them in the first 30mins or less. This is something that we have vastly improved in Grim Dawn. I actually find it very difficult to go back and play TQ now.

In terms of raw number of unique items, TQ definitely surpassed D2 but I think due to our slow pacing of loot and crappy drop system, players only get to see a tiny fraction of it unless they play through legendary a couple times. We've fixed the drop system in GD and we plan to more evenly distribute the loot and create some more interesting low-level affixes.

I think the main problem with skills is that absolute damages didn't scale very well. I think this works much better in D2 because item / enemy base damages and hitpoints don't scale up as quickly while percent-based modifiers play a more significant role. I plan to balance GD more along these lines as I think it will provide a number of benefits beyond just skills. In TQ the cart kind of lead the horse, so to speak, in that I think we ended up with a damage / hitpoint progression that was driven more by the number of base items we had, how we paced them out, and our desire to see constant and noticeable damage increases as they tiered up. Instead we really should have created a over-arching play for damage / hitpoint escalation and then based items and skill off of that. This is what I've done for GD, so I think we will see better results in this regard.

Part of the reason things are as they are in TQ is that we hadn't initially thought about whether we would have an epic and legendary difficulty. It wasn't until we were about half-way through development or more that we decided to slip that in. So a lot of system weren't originally designed to accommodate progressive difficulties. We went back and tried to retrofit everything but I think skills are an area where this failed somewhat.

I'm proud of what we did on TQ, especially given our lack of experience and some of the circumstances under which it was developed. However, there is definitely room for improvement. I feel like we have the basics nailed down now, we have some systems that work very well, and we can turn our attention to raising up the aspects of gameplay that fell a little flat in TQ. I'm sure Grim Dawn won't be perfect, we have a different set of challenges facing us this time, but I think we've learned a lot and you'll see a lot of improvement.

[hooby]

I'm really looking forward to see what you are doing with GD.

And I guess I have to admit, that I'm possibly more excited about GD, than about Diablo 3...

Blizzard/Activision has become quite a Monster, and Diablo is cleary evolving farther and farther from it's roots. Part one was Dark Fantasy with heavy influences from the Gothic Horror genre. Part two was somewhere inbetween, probably fitting into Sword & Sorcery, newly introducing having to save the world, and the eternal good vs. evil struggle (how creative). And Diablo 3 now completes the transition to full fledged High Fantasy - Tolkien Style. Since that is the most mainstream thing you can do. I'm not very happy about that...

But when I look at Grim Dawn, I smell Dark Fantasy or even Alternate History - with a bit of Steampunk perhaps?
Now that's intriguing stuff

[Harlequin]

Originally Posted by hooby

And I guess I have to admit, that I'm possibly more excited about GD, than about Diablo 3...

Heh, I know what you mean.^^

[dr_bowtie]

I never played Diablo....honestly i dont plan too...I mean i like the looks of D3 but hey I am tired of waiting on Blizzards crap...

I still play TQ/TQIT and I rather enjoy it time to time...the issues most complain about dont concern me...I just look for something to fill the time I am wasting...

currently its Worms Re-Loaded...awesome sause

[Malpheas]

Originally Posted by Renevent

I see what you are saying...but I still would say D2's +skills had a more drastic effect on character effectiveness especially when it comes to raw damage.

Perhaps in TQ the effect is more horizontal and across the board though...while in D2 it's more focused.

Yup, which is why TQ skills played better; at least in my opinion.

[Malpheas]

Originally Posted by Naven

What i noticed more was not, for example, that scattershot was a synergy of marksmanship (it was a progression of the original skill), but that for example. Dream skills synergised with Hunting skills to create very nice defensive bonii, or that Defense and Rogue (strong trees each) complimented each other wonderfully to create the fun filled mayhem that is the corsair

What I think is relevant here, is that 'synergy' is a misnomer. I get hooby's point about inter-skill by play and their weakness, but also think that some skills worked very well with others.

Sometimes I did feel as though the skills in TQ were a little randomly placed; like for example in Underlord - Munderbunny placed the trap tree and all its augmentations under hunting instead of under occult. That worked better. I'd like to see a better thought out skill collection with GD as well.