Poll: Torchlight 2 release setbacks

[Bradeck]

I am really looking forward to the release of TL2, mainly because I am interested to see if the lowly indie developer can come close to beating Blizz, with all their billions. My concern is, after their recent (November 20th) announcement that the game was again being postponed indefinitely, "in order to make it as perfect as possible", that the game itself if hyping up to be something it is not.

I am glad they did not release early, and Flagship their game into oblivion, however, saying you are releasing in April 2011, then June, then November, then possibly 1st quarter 2012, possibly. I am all for releasing a finished product, but when I see the line;

"...getting a game of this scope up to the quality and polish level we want to achieve is going to take a little longer; especially since we want to run a small beta before release to ensure that our launch is smooth."

It makes me feel as though "polish" is not the reason for delays. If it were "polish" then why has there been no videos, no press, no early teasers. If I were ready by April of this year, but unsatisfied with the product, I would still have early product videos. SOMETHING.

So, tl;dr, is this bothering or worrying you, that TL2 is getting pushed further and further back (6 months and counting)?

 

[Neverhoodian]

Personally, I feel that developers can take as long as they want if it means a legitimately better product in the end (as opposed to sitting on their asses like 3D Realms did with DNF).

Take Team Fortress 2 for instance. It took a whopping nine years for Valve to release it, but in the end I'd say the wait was more than worth it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's not the how long it takes but their premature announcements, postpone it once and it's cool we get it you set the date a long time ago and it wasn't realistic.

But when you do it several times... means someone can't get their shit straight, is the game that broken, are there problems you don't know how to fix, did your top people leave,...
It may be a sign that things are not going right and that does worry me because as many Diablo clones as there were we are yet to get someone to really raise the bar, and if anyone can it's these guys who made Diablo in the first place.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Ya know, I just never got the enthusiasm for Torchlight. I tried it out. It was fun enough, I suppose. But it was painfully derivative, and never really felt like anything more substantial than a fitfully amusing distraction.

 

[Fappy]

I don't know if its a good or bad thing that Runic cannot afford a proper marketing campaign. On one hand we'd be getting some interesting videos, photos, etc, etc. throughout the development cycle, which is a plus in my book. On the other hand you run the risk of revealing too much about the game too early, making promises they can't keep (which they have done regardless) and/or promoting the game the wrong way (look at how Bioware markets their products since EA took over).

The delays do bother me not because I fear for the quality of the product, but because I believe these setbacks will ultimately harm sales. The closer they release to D3 the worse their sales will be imo.

 

[Bradeck]

Fappy, I think you raised a great point. Does anyone believe that these guys are balsy/stupid enough to launch their game, right next to Diablo 3? It seems that way. Everytime Blizz pushes back Diablo 3, Runic pushes back Torchlight 2. Perhaps it's the other way around? Runic is worried they will release, and then get slaughtered by Diablo 3?

In any event, Mr. K, also raised a good point, in that these are the guys who designed Diablo. Lest we forget, what happened to the last Blizzard employees to leave and start up their own IP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

EDIT:

Just realized, Runic are the guys who jumped ship from Flagship, so in effect, we may be seeing an entirely same scenario here. Flagship misses deadlines, looses backing, screws over paying customers, and eventually goes bankrupt. I hate to sound like Chicken Little, but these guys are not known for their marketing chops.

 

[romanator0]

Fappy, I think you raised a great point. Does anyone believe that these guys are balsy/stupid enough to launch their game, right next to Diablo 3? It seems that way. Everytime Blizz pushes back Diablo 3, Runic pushes back Torchlight 2. Perhaps it's the other way around? Runic is worried they will release, and then get slaughtered by Diablo 3?

In any event, Mr. K, also raised a good point, in that these are the guys who designed Diablo. Lest we forget, what happened to the last Blizzard employees to leave and start up their own IP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

Max Schaefer and his brother Eric are also co-founders of Runic. Considering how successful they were with Torchlight 1 it would seem that they learned from their mistakes with Flagship.

 

[Bradeck]

Fappy, I think you raised a great point. Does anyone believe that these guys are balsy/stupid enough to launch their game, right next to Diablo 3? It seems that way. Everytime Blizz pushes back Diablo 3, Runic pushes back Torchlight 2. Perhaps it's the other way around? Runic is worried they will release, and then get slaughtered by Diablo 3?

In any event, Mr. K, also raised a good point, in that these are the guys who designed Diablo. Lest we forget, what happened to the last Blizzard employees to leave and start up their own IP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

Max Schaefer and his brother Eric are also co-founders of Runic. Considering how successful they were with Torchlight 1 it would seem that they learned from their mistakes with Flagship.

While I enjoyed Torchlight, I would say it was not successful. As of July 2011, they had sold 1 million units combined, both platforms. Xbox and PC. I loved the game. But it wasn't Portal, which was made as a joke, before you claim Valve vs. Runic, and it wasn't even Bastion, which sold 500k in it's first 4 months.

EDIT: I wanted to add, I apologize if I sounded like a tool. I was not refuting your assertion, just posting my own opinion.

 

[romanator0]

Fappy, I think you raised a great point. Does anyone believe that these guys are balsy/stupid enough to launch their game, right next to Diablo 3? It seems that way. Everytime Blizz pushes back Diablo 3, Runic pushes back Torchlight 2. Perhaps it's the other way around? Runic is worried they will release, and then get slaughtered by Diablo 3?

In any event, Mr. K, also raised a good point, in that these are the guys who designed Diablo. Lest we forget, what happened to the last Blizzard employees to leave and start up their own IP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

Max Schaefer and his brother Eric are also co-founders of Runic. Considering how successful they were with Torchlight 1 it would seem that they learned from their mistakes with Flagship.

While I enjoyed Torchlight, I would say it was not successful. As of July 2011, they had sold 1 million units combined, both platforms. Xbox and PC. I loved the game. But it wasn't Portal, which was made as a joke, before you claim Valve vs. Runic, and it wasn't even Bastion, which sold 500k in it's first 4 months.

EDIT: I wanted to add, I apologize if I sounded like a tool. I was not refuting your assertion, just posting my own opinion.

1 million copies for a game that was only made in 11 months? Sounds pretty successful to me.

Runic has built up a following of people with the original Torchlight and what people have seen and played of Torchlight 2 has been praised pretty well.

A comparison between Torchlight and Portal is completely absurd as the 2 games have almost no similarities and while Torchlight and Bastion are both from the same genre and similar playstyles the 2 games have very different hooks. Bastion was a game focused around delivering a great story experience in a unique setting while Torchlight was a game that revolved entirely around its combat and finding new and better and different loot.

 

[Bradeck]

Fappy, I think you raised a great point. Does anyone believe that these guys are balsy/stupid enough to launch their game, right next to Diablo 3? It seems that way. Everytime Blizz pushes back Diablo 3, Runic pushes back Torchlight 2. Perhaps it's the other way around? Runic is worried they will release, and then get slaughtered by Diablo 3?

In any event, Mr. K, also raised a good point, in that these are the guys who designed Diablo. Lest we forget, what happened to the last Blizzard employees to leave and start up their own IP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

Max Schaefer and his brother Eric are also co-founders of Runic. Considering how successful they were with Torchlight 1 it would seem that they learned from their mistakes with Flagship.

While I enjoyed Torchlight, I would say it was not successful. As of July 2011, they had sold 1 million units combined, both platforms. Xbox and PC. I loved the game. But it wasn't Portal, which was made as a joke, before you claim Valve vs. Runic, and it wasn't even Bastion, which sold 500k in it's first 4 months.

EDIT: I wanted to add, I apologize if I sounded like a tool. I was not refuting your assertion, just posting my own opinion.

1 million copies for a game that was only made in 11 months? Sounds pretty successful to me.

Runic has built up a following of people with the original Torchlight and what people have seen and played of Torchlight 2 has been praised pretty well.

A comparison between Torchlight and Portal is completely absurd as the 2 games have almost no similarities and while Torchlight and Bastion are both from the same genre and similar playstyles the 2 games have very different hooks. Bastion was a game focused around delivering a great story experience in a unique setting while Torchlight was a game that revolved entirely around its combat and finding new and better and different loot.

I was referring more to time/sales. 1 million copies for a game that was made 2 years ago, vs. games made recently for less, that sold more in 4 months. Ok, Portal was a bad comparison, if you are comparing game styles. I was more comparing effort in production, but I'll go further. Portal was a game made by the developers of Half Life, as a side thing, with no intention of ever going live. It received no initial mega game launch, no major advertising, and no major publisher. It is now one of the greatest games of all time. Bastion on the other hand, was a major release. It wasn't a AAA game, but it had all the backing and support. Bastion also had a much smaller budget, staff, and release window. They had 7 editor staff, versus 32 for Runic. So in effect, Supergiant was able to do much more, with hardly a third of the people.

Now, if you want to go strictly off game genre, alright. I can't say you're wrong, because I don't know that many other top down dungeon crawlers/loot gathering rpgs, or successful ones for that matter. There is Titan's Quest, but that was a major developer, so that isn't a fair comparison. I'm honestly stumped for exact comparisons of games that achieved success. I think all we can really compare is level of support.

That all being said, I think I have dragged this too far away from the original point, which was does the constant setbacks worry you as to the status of TL2?

 

[romanator0]

Fappy, I think you raised a great point. Does anyone believe that these guys are balsy/stupid enough to launch their game, right next to Diablo 3? It seems that way. Everytime Blizz pushes back Diablo 3, Runic pushes back Torchlight 2. Perhaps it's the other way around? Runic is worried they will release, and then get slaughtered by Diablo 3?

In any event, Mr. K, also raised a good point, in that these are the guys who designed Diablo. Lest we forget, what happened to the last Blizzard employees to leave and start up their own IP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

Max Schaefer and his brother Eric are also co-founders of Runic. Considering how successful they were with Torchlight 1 it would seem that they learned from their mistakes with Flagship.

While I enjoyed Torchlight, I would say it was not successful. As of July 2011, they had sold 1 million units combined, both platforms. Xbox and PC. I loved the game. But it wasn't Portal, which was made as a joke, before you claim Valve vs. Runic, and it wasn't even Bastion, which sold 500k in it's first 4 months.

EDIT: I wanted to add, I apologize if I sounded like a tool. I was not refuting your assertion, just posting my own opinion.

1 million copies for a game that was only made in 11 months? Sounds pretty successful to me.

Runic has built up a following of people with the original Torchlight and what people have seen and played of Torchlight 2 has been praised pretty well.

A comparison between Torchlight and Portal is completely absurd as the 2 games have almost no similarities and while Torchlight and Bastion are both from the same genre and similar playstyles the 2 games have very different hooks. Bastion was a game focused around delivering a great story experience in a unique setting while Torchlight was a game that revolved entirely around its combat and finding new and better and different loot.

I was referring more to time/sales. 1 million copies for a game that was made 2 years ago, vs. games made recently for less, that sold more in 4 months. Ok, Portal was a bad comparison, if you are comparing game styles. I was more comparing effort in production, but I'll go further. Portal was a game made by the developers of Half Life, as a side thing, with no intention of ever going live. It received no initial mega game launch, no major advertising, and no major publisher. It is now one of the greatest games of all time. Bastion on the other hand, was a major release. It wasn't a AAA game, but it had all the backing and support. Bastion also had a much smaller budget, staff, and release window. They had 7 editor staff, versus 32 for Runic. So in effect, Supergiant was able to do much more, with hardly a third of the people.

Now, if you want to go strictly off game genre, alright. I can't say you're wrong, because I don't know that many other top down dungeon crawlers/loot gathering rpgs, or successful ones for that matter. There is Titan's Quest, but that was a major developer, so that isn't a fair comparison. I'm honestly stumped for exact comparisons of games that achieved success. I think all we can really compare is level of support.

That all being said, I think I have dragged this too far away from the original point, which was does the constant setbacks worry you as to the status of TL2?

I'm going to get back to the original point of the thread and just answer the question.

No, the setbacks don't worry me. Why? Because they aren't really setbacks. Max Schaefer just needs to learn a little self control when it comes to announcing release dates.

The game hasn't been in development for all that long and it definitely hasn't been long enough for me to start worrying about the state of the game. Admittedly if there is little to no sign of the game coming out by at least the beginning of the second half of the year I will most likely start worrying.

As it stands now the game doesn't seem that far from completion and I would guess that it would be coming out sooner rather than later.

 

[Monkeyman O'Brien]

Take as long as you need just don't fuck us around.
Hell, don't fuck yourself around either trying to force a set of deadlines that you clearly can not meet.
Just get to work on it and when it finally is good to go then give us the release date.

 

[LookingGlass]

From a gamer's perspective, I love game delays. If the Deus Ex guys didn't manage to negotiate an extra six months dev time (and funding) out of their publisher, we wouldn't have the same all-time great game we have today. Delays mean a better product for consumers. Considering I gave up on Torchlight after about 10 hours because I found it so repetitive (and this is from someone who hates not finishing a game he starts), I'd be hoping the delay results in more varied gameplay that can keep me interested.

It potentially means less income for the developers in this case (if they don't beat Diablo 3 to market), but if they released a sub-par game today they'd probably be trading sales today for sales down the line anyway. It would be easy to release a mediocre game in the holiday season and watch the money roll in from those who can't wait for Diablo 3, but they didn't. That's commendable.

As for the lack of gameplay footage and press time... I'd chalk that up to a small company with a small marketing budget not wanting to waste it long before the game is released.

 

[isometry]

I am really looking forward to the release of TL2, mainly because I am interested to see if the lowly indie developer can come close to beating Blizz, with all their billions.

Runic is not indie, after releasing Torchlight they were bought by Perfect World Inc, a chinese F2P MMO company.

As far as F2P publishers go, Perfect World is fairly good about not drowning the customer in essentially mandatory micro-transactions, and they say that they let their Western subsidiaries (Runic in this case) control a lot of those decisions because of perfect world's relative inexperience in the western market. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the main reasons for delaying Torchlight 2 is to work out a micro-transaction based business model.

 

[Bradeck]

I am really looking forward to the release of TL2, mainly because I am interested to see if the lowly indie developer can come close to beating Blizz, with all their billions.

Runic is not indie, after releasing Torchlight they were bought by Perfect World Inc, a chinese F2P MMO company.

As far as F2P publishers go, Perfect World is fairly good about not drowning the customer in essentially mandatory micro-transactions, and they say that they let their Western subsidiaries (Runic in this case) control a lot of those decisions because of perfect world's relative inexperience in the western market. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the main reasons for delaying Torchlight 2 is to work out a micro-transaction based business model.

Thank you for the correction. That was not discovered in my quick review of runic. I appreciate the helpful info.

 

[VladG]

At this point I think their delay isn't a problem. Diablo 3 was delayed too and I believe that, counter-intuitively, releasing at the same time (or just before) would be better for them. Better than trying to get the jump on D3 and miss some polish.

I see a lot more people excited about TL2 than Diablo3, and since TL2 is the underdog, promising to beat the over-hiped, bloated and corporate Diablo at it's own game, people might buy it instead of D3 (cheaper too).

Personally I don't think it will quite manage to be as good as Diablo3, Blizzard have far greater resources at their disposal and are known to polish a game until it's as close to perfect as you can get. But if it's at least as good as TL1 (no reason not to believe it'll be better) I'd buy it in a flash to keep me going until Diablo 3 finally launches. After D3... well, maybe when I grow bored of D3.

 

[AD-Stu]

From a gamer's perspective, I love game delays. If the Deus Ex guys didn't manage to negotiate an extra six months dev time (and funding) out of their publisher, we wouldn't have the same all-time great game we have today. Delays mean a better product for consumers. Considering I gave up on Torchlight after about 10 hours because I found it so repetitive (and this is from someone who hates not finishing a game he starts), I'd be hoping the delay results in more varied gameplay that can keep me interested.

It potentially means less income for the developers in this case (if they don't beat Diablo 3 to market), but if they released a sub-par game today they'd probably be trading sales today for sales down the line anyway. It would be easy to release a mediocre game in the holiday season and watch the money roll in from those who can't wait for Diablo 3, but they didn't. That's commendable.

As for the lack of gameplay footage and press time... I'd chalk that up to a small company with a small marketing budget not wanting to waste it long before the game is released.

While it's true that some developers will use the extra time to turn out a better game, it's not always the case.

And while I can give some credence to the lack of marketing being down to a small budget, let's face it, this is the age of the internet, social media and viral marketing. Sure, traditional advertising campaigns can be expensive but if Runic has a game they can show footage of then they could get it out there for people to see virtually free of charge.