The extreme example was intentional. I was interested in where the border of acceptable choice possibilities lies. You don't have to click it, and you wouldn't need to use the "click here to finish the game" button either. You're saying that the choice of item stats is nonsense, which implies you have a subjective threshold for freedom annoyance, just like I do.

These things could be handled like difficulty settings. Have a "set up your game" screen before you start the character. Check the "I want to be able to change my build" box and you're all set. Perhaps even a pop up that points out that you can't change it later. Just like with the hardcore setting I so love. You could just decide to not use a character that dies, and I've done it in other games, but having it enforced is just more fun.

Torchlight 2 stores your characters locally, so you actually will have a choice when someone makes a character editor. Diablo 2 probably had several of 'em.

I get what you're trying to say about the cookie-cutter character, but don't agree with it. The other guy built the character he's playing. You built yours.

I don't feel like every game should have freedom either. Neither did the creators of Torchlight 2. There are games that do it already, so why shouldn't the ones who wish to cater to the wishes of the few do so? That wasn't a real question, I just wanted to seem all philosophical and smart.

See how I responded to the other guy.
Essentially what I was saying is that it's not a matter of black and white. It's a matter of getting your shade of grey right. How do you do that? Well you have a discussion.
On the one side you can put the novelty argument - saying that getting novelty value out of your character is important. On the other side you can put the practicality argument. You shouldn't be subjected to a 10h time sink formality in order to try something slightly different. It's up to you how much value you attribute to either argument. Games in general have opted for the former and all I'm doing is questioning that. Genres do develop, often for the worse, often for the better. But in any case I see little value in arguments like "this is how you should do it because that's how it has always been done" by the "core audience" because pigheaded opposition to change is counterintuitive.

Yeah, Diablo 2 also has character editors but those are for SP chars and the SP element in an ARPG is very limited.

Now as far as 'building your own char' goes, once again I see little merit in that. All it does is encourage people to go online and plan out their builds as opposed to actually playing the game. That's not what a game should be advocating. And like I also said earlier, it encourages you to save up skill points because you want your end character to be great.

What we are looking at here are the life spans of the games in question. The question is: do we provide a singular experience lasting say a dozen hours, or do we provide entertainment for potentially up to hundreds of hours? In the former case skill allocation on the as-you-see-fit-basis is more than valid, but not so much for the latter because you instate a 10-20h entry barrier to this entertainment. The thing is that the players who will be playing the game beyond the 10-20 hour mark will prefer the latter approach.

Just imagine you were playing a FPS and the game was designed in a way that encouraged you to play with a knife for 10 hours in order to have access to the most powerful guns at the end of that. It's an abysmal concept. ARPGs these days unfortunately still do follow this antiquated concept. I fail to see the reasoning behind permanently investing into a skill that will provide me a benefit for the immediate 5 hours but will become a wasted cost for the following 50+.

It is, I mis-spoke, I meant to say "Steam DRM-free".

FraterPerdurabo, weren't you one of the people complaining the loudest about others "trolling" the D3 tread, especially if they hadn't even played the game? Funny how things change. If you're eager to have a discussion about different philosophies in aRPG design then perhaps you should create a new thread for it, rather than trying to derail this thread.

I did misunderstand you-- my mistake! I don't think you necessarily have to study an external source to maximize enjoyment of the game. You may have to study a source to maximize your efficiency. For my part I'm not all that worried about efficiency, because I'm more interested in exploring and playing through the game than in ensuring that my character has an optimal build. Well, why don't you think players should be able to freely switch between classes? You've said players should have options, so why not this option? Why should I have to go through all that tedious leveling if I decide I want to start relying on spells instead of guns?

As you say, it's a question of degree, so it's overly simplistic to say "choice is good" and leave it at that. Sometimes more choice can hurt the game. I think in a good game the early levels should be more than an entry barrier. They should be enjoyable in and of themselves, even on a second playthrough. The idea that the early game is a tedious "leveling" process that you must grind through to get to the real stuff sounds kind of perverse to me. Hmm, to me 400 hours of trying out different skillsets sounds like pure tedium. I guess we have different ideas of replayability and fun.

Of course I'm not saying your ideas are wrong, but I don't think it makes sense to say, as you did, that a skill system without free respecs is "antiquated." It's not antiquated, it's just aiming to offer a different experience, which may or may not be to your taste.

Not sure as to what you're trying to say here?
I created a thread about D3 gameplay so that people could discuss D3 gameplay in that thread and keep all of the DRM arguments in any number of the other threads? Every once in a while I got eggy whenever people didn't adhere to that simple request.

The course of the discussion in this thread dictates that it is no longer about TL2 price and 'new' details as this has become obsolete? I don't see how saying "Shame about the antiquated skill system though... I find that very offputting" is out of line, especially as there seems to be no specific thread dedicated to TL2 discussion (apart from this one one).

Agree to disagree I suppose, but I do think that you're still missing the crux of my argument. My argument was: "Let's look at this thing specifically and see how we can improve it" as opposed to "let's find a solution to this issue and then apply it to another."

That's absurd, there's a fully functioning singleplayer game in TL2, I don't see any difference in that regard to TL, except that there's now also a multiplayer game as well.

I take it you never actually played TL, because the graphics aren't any more colorful for TL2 than they were for TL. In fact the graphics are largely the same as they were previously. I'm not seeing much improvement or changed in that regards. I also don't think there was any reason to.

By the time you get to Act II, it's mostly brown anyways.

Bugs are eternal, no matter how well you test you can't test every possible configuration. Even Apple had that one bug 10 years back where OSX would delete an entire partition if the first character in the label was a space.

It's unclear to me that everybody was hit by this bug, but I'm not sure how you know that it wasn't something peculiar to specific game profiles.

Our views on these games differ to a great degree. I enjoy the beginnings. I've seen 'em a lot in just about every ARPG I've played, and if I haven't seen and liked the beginning a lot, I haven't liked the game a lot. Being an awesome baller super sayan isn't my goal in the game either.

I remember my friend using a character builder for multiplayer character in Diablo 2. You're probably talking about Battlenet. 'tis a silly place.

Well, I just finished the game with my embermage and have now started on a new-game+. Game was great start to finish. The gameplay was extremely satisfying, with skills feeling very powerful and fun to use, but still requiring you to remain always alert as the tide of a battle could shift very quickly. Also some great tactics and synergies that could be found in using various skill combinations (for instance, with my embermage a tactic I found to quickly take down champions was to throw up an ice prison around them, hit them with an ice wave to freeze them, then unload with fire spears to quickly stack up the fire brand and frost brand damage). Boss fights were also some of the most intense I've come across in the aRPG genre while not feeling like the bosses were just being given stupidly high HP or damage (the third part of the Alchemist fight was absolutely nuts, and incredibly fun).

Also, aside from new-game plus, they carried over some of the ideas from TL1 with maps you can buy to random dungeons with various level ranges, providing plenty of dungeons to run for gear and experience without having to retrace the same game areas. They also seem to have vastly improved the selection of loot from the first game; there seem to be plenty of more common sets that you'll run across on a fairly regular basis, while at the same time there are also rarer sets composed entirely of uniques, along with the extremely rare legendary items. Overall it's looking like it should provide quite a bit of entertainment (may even end up edging out Titan Quest as the aRPG I keep going back to).

Yeah, I am. I thought Unique gear (yellow) was top tier, didn't know there was a real legendary tier on top of it. Certainly did not get one for my character in TL1. Are there even Legendaries in TL1?
But still cool though, since all my yellows are for the Engineer and Outlander classes, even the rings. First gamble paid off. My gambles in TL1 have mostly resulted in Green or Blue gear.

The Legendary items are a dark orange (almost red) color, and you'll know it when you find one (it shows up on the ground as "A Truly Spectacular Find"); I don't there there was such an item class in TL1. I've had some pretty good luck with the gambling as well, getting some very nice unique set items well suited for my embermage.

Lololol, what's Claptrap doing in TL2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDHeYq7hiMA

I like games that reward me for playing well, not long.

I feel more attached to my characters for every decision made in making it. If I find someone who has a better build, swapping out to it with my current character cheapens every minute I spent playing with them. Areas and bosses are memorable for how you defeated them.

I'm currently playing a second Berserker with a drastically different build to my first, the early game is a lot harder, and the difficulty is fun. I would never have that if I could just swap out my skills with my first Berserker.

I never did the Diablo 2 rush-rush-rush to high level. It defeated the point of playing the game to me. Skipping the whole game just so your new build is great for pvp or end game farming. I'd rather try builds that are fun for playing the whole game, not just the end.

Think the forums mentioned that the best loot drop from the end-game bosses. This guy seems to have gotten a level 65 one:
http://www.runicgamesfansite.com/torchlight-2-general/5452-legendary-items-yes-legendary-items.html

Oh, the gambler npc? I only gambled once and I got that Unique Wand. In TL1 at least you can get greens or blues or crap if you gamble, had gambled a few times I didn't get any Uniques. Think it's more or less the same here in TL2.