Torchlight II and Borderlands 2 - What the hell went wrong?

[KungFuJazzHands]

I'm sure I'll get just as many hours out of Borderlands 2 as I did the first one, but I'm going to do it grudgingly. The difficulty difference between single-player and co-op -- especially in TVHM -- is jarring, as is the difference in drop quality. Dropped items in single-player just plain suck, that's all there is to it.

After over a hundred hours in B2, I just finally found my first orange non-boss item drop; in B1, rares were still hard to find, but the game handled the process reasonably. B2, on the other hand, limits the game's best item drops exclusively to the game's hardest bosses, thereby making "randomness" an illusion. The overall suckiness of the weapon tables doesn't help matters either -- there's no wild variety to any of the guns. I treasure that fire/acid/shock pearlescent SMG my Siren found in the original Borderlands all the more because of the lack of creative weaponization in B2.


I really can't comment on Torchlight 2. I've played it multiple times with multiple characters, and each time I quit shortly after getting into Act III. I simply get bored with it at that point, and I don't know why.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Can't really comment on TL2 but for Borderlands 2:

Loot -I've played through one character (my assassin) exclusively as single-player and I got plenty of great loot. Did I have to farm a couple of bosses? Ya but not as much as you'd think. The Warrior almost always seems to drop something good and so does Terra. Hunter Helquist also seems to have a pretty high drop rate of The Bee and it's very easy to farm him quickly. Maybe I'm just lucky but I always seem to find a nice shiny new weapon to replace my old favourite just when things start to get rough.

Environments -I personally loved the variety but I guess that's just a preference thing. BTW, for any of the bigger areas, there are at least 4-5 quests in each of them. Not sure what you mean by never returning (unless you're talking about just story missions).

Difficulty -Honestly, I find this game pretty easy. This is coming from someone who is almost through UVHM as the squishiest character. I'm sure you know this but certain weapon types make certain enemies much easier. I try to have one of each weapon element in my inventory so that I'm always prepared for any situation (it's not that hard to find one of each) and I always slag my enemies. The only non-raid boss fight I found to be truly frustrating was the Badassarus. No Boss fight in a shooter game should take place in an arena with no cover when the boss reflects your own bullets back at you (ya I fought him the hard way, not the hide terrified behind the entrance area way).

Anyway, you can probably tell that I don't really think anything went wrong with this game. This and Dishonored were my two favourite games of last year.

 

[Nuxxy]

The only problem with Torchlight 2 is maybe too many drops of mediocre to useless items. I would rather kills gave money and only the bosses dropped items. All the weak-sauce items just take a lot of time to manage.

Still, at that price, who can argue. It is awesome!

 

[Zeldias]

On TL2 vs. D3...

I find Diablo 3 so boring that it's criminal. I recently played again a bit as a Barbarian (originally was a Monk, but I realized I was only having fun with the game because I was talking shit to my friend while we played), and was really only mildly diverted. As in, I played for a while, asked myself if I was having fun, wasn't certain, so I kept playing to continue considering the quandary. Finally, I went "Oh! I get it. I'm just slightly interested. Like reading a magazine in a reception area." I find the graphics boring (I love the general aesthetic, I think they just managed to make it look boring as opposed to D2, which really managed to capture my imagination in some areas), the music tasteless (like "Gee, this plain oatmeal sure does lack flavor!"), and the voice acting either terribly bland or banal and insipid, which are adjectives I'd reserve only for the story (a story which I Found vaguely interesting in D1 and D2!).

TL2 is more interesting to lack at, the battles are more frenetic and the skill synergies are more interesting. The classes have more personality. The story is completely forgettable, but I can't think of a game like one of these that kept me engaged and curious other than like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2, and I think that was because there were class quests.

All that said, I'd be willing to play D3 with a group of people who were similarly interested. I'd just say that when I'm alone, I don't find it barely engaging. Playing with people would probably make it a little more fun. TL2 is something I can enjoy alone, though, and friends just make it much better.

All I can really say about BL2 is that I found it a complete improvement in every way except for Zer0 not being as fun of a melee character as Brick, and that issue has been mightily resolved with Krieg. I still find that 98% of the jokes fall flatter than a pancake throwing itself from a high-rise building after being dumped by it's fiancee', but I generally don't care. I just tune most of it out unless something sounds a little promising and chop up baddies.

I haven't had a loot issue in any of these games. Course, I have yet to do the intense loot hunt in D3 (which people claim has been hamstrung by Blizzard in an effort to go after that RMAH money), but I don't much care and if I wanna play the game without it (and presumably with adjusted loot rates), I'll get it on console. Hell, I might anyways, because click to move sometimes aggravates my wrists.

 

[safeandsound]

Gotta say definitely disagree on the environment variety in BL2. One thing that got grating playing the original BL is how samey everything looked; just desert after desert after desert. Really appreciated there was so much more diversity in BL2. As for lack of quests, meh. The main story may not have been evenly spread across all the different areas, but I thought there was ample side stuff in each place.

As for not liking BL2 as much, my guess is you burnt yourself playing too much BL1. I think they made a lot of nice changes to BL2, but at it's core, it's still more Borderlands. If you had your fill in the first game, there just isn't enough different here to bring you back. I feel that's what happened to the Bombcast crew as well, as they were less than enthused with BL2 (though I had to laugh at Brad trying to compare BL2 to Dead Island Riptide a few weeks ago). I remember some of those guys put a ton of time into the first game.

 

[Echo136]

I agree about the difficulty in Torchlight 2. Im on act 2 right now in nightmare and ive died over 200 times. All my money has been spent on potions. Its pretty ridiculous.

 

[Silly Hats]

I don't really get the problem with BL2/TL2. They're both incredibly fun, they both look incredibly beautiful and were two of my favourite games from last year.

Hell, I'm replaying Borderlands 2 for the 4-5th time (after a good break) and I'm still enjoying it like I was when it first came out. AS someone that loves exploring and experimenting with gamplay styles, this really makes the game incredible enjoyable. There's also a level of humour injected into it that makes it much more enjoyable that other games, granted some jokes are just eye roll worthy but others are just perfect.

 

[NathLines]

Ehm. I don't know what to say about Torchlight 2. I started by finishing it on Elite, then I breezed through it twice on Veteran Hardcore(perma-death). Elite is hard(I died like 80 times), but Veteran is really, really easy. Sure, I had a lot of experience from Elite, but you shouldn't have that much trouble with it. I also played the game entirely by myself. Connection issues with my friends

With Borderlands 2, I just feel that every single thing they did was an improvement.

-Better story. There was no villain in the first one. You were just a guy looking for the Vault and an increasing number of people randomly got in your way. I'm thinking about your complaint for Torchlight 2's story here.

-More everything. More weapon combinations, enemy types and enviroments.

I think the loot feels bad because there is much more of it dropping than in the first game, even in single player, which means more trash. I also dislike weapons that eat up multiple bullets per shot and enemies becoming bullet sponges in multiplayer.

I have to mention that the PC version is joy to run. Seriously, the game could have been worse than the first and I would still have liked it more.

To me both games beat their predecessors hands down. I think it sounds like you're a bit bitter. I know it happens to a lot of people playing games; no game really interests you but you play them anyway out of habit, you don't have time due to school/woork etc. etc. Basically the game magic of your childhood is gone!! D8

Or the games just don't click with you. Just play the games you like instead. I don't think there's something you've missed that will suddenly make you like the games. No need to mourn them.

 

[FunkyzeitMatt]

Im not great at shooters, but Borderlands is always about managaing inventory.

Before every fight, I look at what enemies are there and adjust accordingly. If there's loaders I get out the corrosive stuff and put on my corrosive damage class mod. Adjust for enemies.

Figure out how your action skills compliment your weapons. For instance, Ill chuck a singularity grenade at enemies then use my phaselock (Ive got Ruin activated) and it just rains slag, acid and shock down on them. Then Ill just spam my tediore grenade guns and its a massacre.

If Im low on heath, Ill put my +6% health return for every enemie kill class mod and shottie some of the weaker enemies to restore my heath.

Basically, you have to take time with BL2 to really think about how you attack. I still die, but Im pushing through TVHM.

Now Ive never had a legendary, and I dont farm. Ive tried a few raid bosses on playthrough 1 and got my arse handed to me so thats my main challenge in TVHM

 

[taciturnCandid]

Ok, some of your point made no sense whatsoever and others are highly dependent on your personal point of view but lets get started.

Torchlight 2 drop rate: I find this one just plain odd as I tend to get either a set-piece or a rare every 1/2 an hour to an hour. (Single Player, Veteran difficulty with mods that don't affect drop rate).

Don't play multiplayer so I can't comment on it.

Torchlight 2 Environments: Much more subjective, I personally liked the different mobs in the various areas of the map.

Torchlight 2 Story: I agree, the TL2 story is balls.

Torchlight 2 difficulty level: What? I've done multiple Veteran runs and most deaths were due to me entering areas above my level or stupidity (and one spectacular case where my forceshield died just before a troll smashed me).


Borderlands 2 environment: Err you like backtracking?

Borderlands 2 enemies: They can be spongy, but using elemental damage helps.

It's funny how the issues I mentioned keep overlapping one another, in this case the drop rates crash with the enemy problem. Elemental damage helps, but not much if I'm trying to take down a super badass loader with a green-rated caustic SMG I might have gotten like 5 levels ago.

I have to stress how much the environment issue with BL2 confuses even me, since I literally said out loud multiple times that if only the first had had more variety in that regard, I would've held it as a perfect game. But I still stand by my words: BL2 felt like pissing away potential by crafting tons of unique and interesting locations, used them for like 1 or 2 missions, and then forgot about them altogether. Like the (correct me if I remember falsely) Friendship Gulag, which was a whole area of its own, and you have exactly one mission to do there in the whole game. That brings up another issue I forgot to mention in my post: the amount of missions compared to how fast you level up. This was already a minor issue in BL1, but in the second I had a dozen missions from like level 12 when I was at 22, some of which took place entirely in locations specifically designed for the missions in question. They didn't offer any challenge, experience rewards or worthwhile gear, so I just skipped them entirely on my further playthroughs, missing out on the locations.

The friendship gulag is actually important because Roland gets taken there if you don't kill the boss holding him captive fast enough. I purposely fail because it is actually an interesting fight.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I love the thread title, it's adorably pretentious.

"What the hell went wrong?"

Nothing. They're both great games that received significantly positive critical acclaim, were liked by a vast majority of those who bought them, and both sold a significant number of copies.

I, for one, enjoyed the hell out of Torchlight II. I only stopped playing because another game I wanted to play (GW2) came along and stole all of my free time.

Just because YOU didn't like them doesn't mean everyone else has to hate them along with you.

Or in other words, your entire argument is summarized thusly:

Ehhh... go back and actually read the post. I never once say either of them is a bad game. I say multiple times that I personally didn't like either of them as much as the originals, and the phrase "What the hell went wrong" desn't refer to them being broken or bad games, but to the fact that there's something wrong about them that prevents me personally from enjoying them to the full. At the end I even ask if anyone else feels the way I feel about these games. And if you read any of my other posts in this thread, I'm not forcing my viewpoint on anyone. Be careful when writing such smug and condescending posts.

 

[CrashertheSmasher]

But... Torchlight 2 is a good game