I’ve played TL3 14.5 hours so far (and will certainly play through all the acts). The game is an insult to every PC gamer, especially for the ARPG genre. It is and will remain a mobile game!
There’s you’re problem.
PWE is shite. A Chinese shekel maker.
Any Chinese publisher will prod the studio dev into doing what they want.
I knew TL3 would crash and burn immediately after the press release.
For future I wouldn’t touch anything from any Chinese publisher/studio.
PoE, Lol, to name 2 big ones.
I dunno man, Genshin Impact is a pretty fuckin rad game for a free to play title. Ive been loving it. Publisher is mihoyo (Chinese). Personal peference, of course.
Yeah, stars good to build investment momentum. Then they will inundate the game with micro-transactions, it is how it works. Capitalize and enjoy it early.
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Have been, and will continue to, up to the day it is ruined if such a day comes to pass. I will not spend any money on it.
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i dunno… its a pretty complex thing when you’re dealing with chinese publishers. its true that they tend to lean heavily toward turning every game they touch into power creep mmorpg lootbox heavy grind casino machine. but when the studios themselves are not chinese originally, the cases depends on the studios’ original vision.
runic games originally design torchlight to be accessible loot hunt arpg for all kinds of audiences, based from the original fate games by wild tangent. they start to be optimistic about turning torchlight 2 into mmorpg like to compete with diablo 3, but they still want to make tl2 single player focused with good moddability. but the market for mmorpg diablo-like are kinda dried up at the months around tl2’s release, leading to runic’s downfall and its leaders splitting out.
i do understand they want to make torchlight mobile game to rake in some profits to cover up the loss they got from the mess of trying to turn tl2 into mmorpg. the hob game was a nice side project to support the studio. i kinda wished they try to create more new series like hob to have stable financial support instead of insisting on railroading torchlight series into the risky mmorpg market & ruining their reputation with torchlight fans who’s gameplay orientation are like titan quest & grim dawn players (single player build theories sandbox, with some multi for fun instead of competition).
ah well, if i get torchlight 3, i play it only to support runic/echtra games & the torchlight series. not to support chinese style mmorpg casino publishers like perfect world.
its a shame that poe & lol have been trapped under the grip of chinese casino publishers too. their developers originally can go independent without being involved by the chinese market power creep, but it seems the world of multiplayer games are teetering toward that direction. unless the gamer communities can resist the chinese casino power creep and demand them to change their greedy nature of turning every games into casino number machines.
i kinda feel like an old gamer already. these days, when playing games like grim dawn/torchlight/titan quest, i just want to wander around the game worlds, immersing myself in those world and their lores, without having the developers/publishers/communities forcing the games to become casinos or esport stadiums. heh, even with LoL, i don’t care about playing the competitive matches. i’m more interested in seeing how LoL’s CANON (please no alternate universe pool party star guardians like fanservices) lore develops. same with Grim Dawn, Torchlight, & PoE.
Hob was a bit of a surprise, as it seemed it got released without much advertising, (at least it seemed to me) could have been a good game, if the devs carried on with it, maybe add another expansion. But sadly, the studio was shut down a bit after it was released. Either the game wasn’t that successful, or the studio was in more trouble then they had thought.
I do lay the finger partially at PW as well. its sad to see Runic shutdown, I’m sure they would have made a far better TL3 then the current pretender.
Not sure if it will have modding support, maybe not. At least with the TL 1 and 2 engine, the devs did add modding tools to keep the game going. (at least for 2) I just look at the videos and see a pretty shallow game. Sad really, like I said, might pick it up on sale, certainly not worth the asking price.
Maybe the devs will add more content? I think I read they may continue to support the game. but to me, they going to have to add a huge chunk of content. and maybe add more end game stuff. (seems thast either none existent or poorly balanced.
I probably will try TL2 again with some mods, but so far, playing other games on the side.
Hi! I have some some news, one good and the other sad:
The Good News is that latest update is now live. Among other things it introduces a new class, the Cursed Captain.
The Bad News is that ‘Echtra Games’ will stop working on Torchlight III. ‘Perfect World’ will take over from here. Here’s the official announcement:
By Echtra May 25, 2021 12:28 pm
Hello Torchlight III Community,
This message is a bittersweet one. We are very excited about the Cursed Captain update, and everything it comes with. The Cursed Captain is an amazing new character class with awesome summoning skills, giant cannons salvaged from ships to blast enemies in the way, and a salty, ghostly personality to match. It’s really a lot of fun to play. We’ve also added a ton of new pets, including ferrets, two new types of dogs, stags, glittersprites, and more. There’s a new contract to play through, new wardrobes and fort props, and significant improvements to every character class. We’ve killed countless bugs, made several UI fixes and enhancements, and added lots of quality of life improvements. And very significantly, we’ve improved performance to a meaningful degree on every platform. In short, we feel like this puts Torchlight III in a good place.
But this is also a sad message because it marks the end of Echtra Games’ work on Torchlight III. As you may have heard in the news, we were acquired by Zynga back on March 2nd. As a result of this transition, we are moving on to new (and exciting) things, and we will be passing the baton back to our partners at Perfect World. We absolutely enjoyed our time with Torchlight III, and only hope for the best for the future of the franchise. We are grateful for the opportunity to have worked on it. But more than that, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of you who took this journey with us. We had ups and downs, but through it all, we learned so much, and a lot of that credit goes to all of you. Through thick and thin, you gave generously of your time, provided expert and valuable feedback, and made the trip enjoyable and worthwhile for all of us at Echtra. We hope you’ll keep tabs on us in the future, because we’re doing some incredibly exciting things that you’ll be very interested in. We look forward to seeing you on the other side, and will certainly keep tabs on Torchlight III. Thank you again for everything, we love you, we love Torchlight, and we will always cherish the memories!
Your Torchlight Captain,
Max Schaefer
Source and Patch Notes https://www.torchlight3.com/en/news-article/11488893
Can’t say I’m surprised that he wants to tuck tail and run far, far away from his game. It’s been nothing but a bomb from the word go.
Not really surprised by the news either. I really wonder if Perfect World will really continue development of the game? or will kill it off in the same way that the Dawn of war 3 devs did to that game, because if too was a huge flop.
I don’t expect there will be many more updates for TL3, it will just be marketing to say that updates are still coming. Also the direction of the game rests squarely on the shoulders of Perfect World themselves.
If they hadn’t of changed direction mid development, then perhaps things would have been different? But anyway, I think this will be another dead game soon, and Perfect World will can it and shove it on the back burner. (and move onto another franchise to destroy)
Yea I can’t see PW continuing on with it either. If they do I don’t expect much or for long before they wash their hands of it.
It’s almost kinda sad to see Torchlight as a series to have fallen so very low. Torchlight II, even, could have been so much better with more love and time put into it. Unfortunately, Runic was already falling apart by the time it released and I don’t think it got much “after-care” following that.
It’s weird seeing the mess other dev companies make of themselves and then looking back at GD (and Crate) and seeing what can be done by a small team - a team that sticks around and gives their game “moar”. All these other devs out there need to be taking notes.
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torchlight 1 2, grim dawn and titan quest gave more impact and long lasting impression than torchlight 3, most likely because of good mod support by the communities and also because they stick their gameplay designs as single player arpg loot games.
torchlight 1 and 2 were never meant to be AAA games that could match diablo 3 and the like. they are meant to be simple non-competitive arpg loot games that is approachable to all gamers but also offer some deep challenge for those who seek it. torchlight 3 had great art design and some interesting gameplay ideas, but the developer and publisher’s history of forcing it to become some grand multiplayer arpg looter makes the game stray far from the spirit of its predecessor.
ah well. torchlight 1 and 2 are still there. though i have a wish that some new small-sized dedicated developer team would try to remaster torchlight 1 and 2 while emulating how crate entertainment treat grim dawn and its communities.
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My thoughts are exactly the same as powbam and kukuhimanpr’s. Torchlight 2 from the time I’ve spent playing is a game with a lot of potential but I feel has never taken full advantage of it.
For a few examples, there’s a massive variety of skills but there’s no point having a good chunk when some of them just don’t deal enough damage or offer enough utility to sufficiently level them, some skills are so far ahead in terms of damage and/or usability that it’s downright unfair, some mechanics that a skill may be based on just don’t scale well into end game at all etc., the respec system of last 3 points spent discourages experimenting in multiple skills. There’s more but I don’t want to drag on longer than I have.
It’s still a fun game, I have fond memories exploring the areas and secrets, even just fishing in hub towns and chilling with friends but otherwise, every problem I can think of and have experienced with Torchlight 2 has at one point or another been addressed with Grim Dawn and they’ve gone the extra mile (more like marathon to be frank) with it and it shows in my play time for both games:
And then whenever I look at anything regarding Torchlight 3, it looks like it has some cool, creative design ideas around the various character classes and the visuals look great, definitely has it’s own theme going on that I really like but other than that, everything I read about the gameplay sounds like they’ve ripped the soul out and left nothing in it’s place. Yikes.
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Damn, fishing. I wish GD had a fishing hole. One of my favourite childhood games, Fate, had unlimited fishing holes spawning randomly throughout the dungeon. I would spend hours trying to get legendaries, gems, and pet mutators.
fate was like the alpha version of torchlight 1.
its too random in its itemization though. and the story is very weak for me.
also, in the fate games, melee and ranged builds only have generic auto attacks and a singletype 360 aoe strike (which isn’t available in vanilla fate), forcing every builds to partially spec into offensive or charm magics to have decent aoe alternatives. there’s no feature like PROC FIREBALLS OR SOMETHING when you auto attack, a serious flaw for auto attackers, and only until torchlight 2 does that feature showed up. meanwhile grim dawn has been doing that procs upon procs upon procs on skills and auto attacks for ages.
unless you enjoy fate’s extremely gamble’y rng, i suggest sticking to torchlight 1 and 2 for its similar design and arts. only revisit fate for nostalgia trip.
there’s been no news of what Perfect World would do to Torchlight 3 after Zynga acquired Echtra Games (probably to develop their own arpg title?). I’ve been playing Torch 3 on and off at steam in multiplayer mode (solo play though). some people (casual and hardcore) appears from time to time in the towns.
gotta say, even thought there are some bugs and stripped features from its predecessors, i’ve found out that i still like torch 3. there’s fewer limitation on your character customizations (not limited to attributes, only what class/relic/gears/legendarium skills you chooses. so its kinda like borderlands series (in borderlands games you got so many skill points at max level that there’s few varieties of builds you can do because every characters have lots of flexibilities, with gears being the most important factor in determining your builds). the art styles, animations and sound effects are great. though some random map layouts are reused too often. there’s still a lot of combos you can do (the shared legendarium skill choices between characters gives you some end game goal to farm what shared skills you want for your builds.
i hate the lack of normal items vendors though. you are forced to use the gambler merchant to get equipments from shopping. this is the worst aspect of torchlight 3 imo. thankfully the items you get from farming are usually good, especially if your luck tree in your fort had nice +luck%. speaking of fort, i really enjoy designing the fort as some kind of trophy room for my efforts of playing the game (gd 2 really need this feature). honestly i prefer the fort designing aspect rather than the mundane fishing mini game (which does not exist in torch 3). i wouldn’t mind it if fishing comes to torch 3 though.
the transmog and dyeing options are great features in torch 3. though its annoying that there’s no feature to hide the cosmetic helms like torch 2, because some of the hairstyles look good (some of the hairstyles also look SO WEIRD AND UGLY though…)
end game seems lacking in varieties (only 1 end game dungeon like torch 1) but its mostly because echtra don’t have the chance to finish development before they got acquired by zynga. i don’t care that much about end game though, there’s still a lot of build combinations that we can took for a spin to enjoy their stylish dances and fireworks among mobs and bosses. been playing at ridiculous (max difficulty), and it seems to be the right difficulty between veteran and elite from torch 2. i really like that monsters move faster in higher difficulties (fighting slow mobs and bosses are boring).
torch 3 probably gets around 6/10 in my book. its got some spirit of its predecessors. the artstyles, sound effects and animations are fun. story is just filler like torch 2 and 1. its fun to play casually and semi hardcore. you have to be cautious of the bugs that other players had experienced, and find ways to get around them. i haven’t encountered any serious bugs though, and i haven’t had a crash (i play in my old 2017 laptop).
though the saddest thing that makes many torchlight players turn away from torchlight 3 is that echtra didn’t get the chance to offer players modding tools for torchlight 3… i’ve seen someone make a few skin mods for the game (how did they do that when the dev give no mod tools?), but thats the only mods i heard available for torch 3… if perfect world got any common sense to polish torch 3 (very unlikely…) to the series’ standard, they should find some studio that can give modding tools for it and fix the bugs. at the moment PW seems to just have some small server maintenance for torch 3 multiplayer and leave it at that. i haven’t tried partying with torch 3 players, but be careful when you do it, because some of the bugs i heard occurs on multiplayer parties.
its truly a shame to watch a game with great art/sound/animation designs be forgotten and left in limbo because of the schism between publisher/developer/communities. torchlight 3 can still be salvaged and fixed if there’s some studio willing to brace themselves against perfect world’s infamous practice and truly care for the communities’ feedback.
i feel like grim dawn merchants’ famous quote “Come See What’s Left of My Wares” is what Torchlight 3 would like to say if it can talk.
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