how old are you if I may ask?

Given that my age is completely irrelevant short of an intent to use in an ad hominem attack, you may not.

As to the venom in my last few posts, I am a proponent of utilizing critical thought in all facets of life (especially with regards to things I am passionate about, like gaming), something I have become more enthusiastic about after acquiring my minor in philosophy and started working on my JD (this is data that I have shared elsewhere, so I see no need to conceal it to make my age harder to guess, not that it is remotely relevant). Whenever someone lets loose with merely one bit of reasoning that gives formal logic and critical thought the finger, it's akin to nails on a chalkboard to my brain, and three produce that effect in stereo with the volume turned up to 11. Whenever someone follows that up by brushing aside a discussion of why said line(s) of reasoning are not valid by saying that "all you want to do is argue", my experience generally tells me that trying to do any degree of damage control with how society has ignored a key definition of the term "argument" is fruitless as this behavior generally (though not always) indicates that the person is intensely averse to developing logical reasoning in the first place. I apologize if you are offended by my phrasing in my responses to both of your offending posts, but I will not apologize for the core message that I was attempting to convey, namely that your reasoning is flawed for the reasons given and that your response to criticism of your reasoning indicates a high probability that attempting to do so much as correct the damage that modern society has done to the word "argument" is fruitless.

I admittedly write this partially out of likely misguided sense of optimism that I might be wrong on this count, but mostly I write it for the benefit of anyone else who might actually care.

What I care about is not having any hostilities, hard feelings, or even mild tension with anyone in here. Whatever was said to cause the argument and or confusion I really would just like to forget it all. Life is way too short and I would just feel a lot better knowing that despite our differences we are cool with each other.

23-24 I'd guess ;-)

It all boils down to what platform it is designed for. Torchlight shows all the signs and workings of a PC Action RPG, if you had tried to port the game to a console, a lot of its design elements would break down, and a lot of the depth would melt away.

That said, it would be nice to be able to move with ESDF keys, and reassign the other hotkeys. However, since everything in this game could be accomplished through mouse-clicking, it wouldn't be a wise use of development resources to change the paradigm of controls, especially since there are no precedents for the kind of control scheme you want implemented being successful.

Bastion. The PC version uses a control system exactly like this by default, and the only way it could have possibly improved was by having the PC face in whatever direction the mouse is pointing to get the best idea of where the next blow/shot will go.

I actually couldn't play bastion using keyboard for movement... only getting eight directions of movement simply wasn't enough. I used the alternate scheme, where the mouse moves the character, and then I reassigned all attack keys to the keyboard. That way the mouse was only for moving, and attacks were all on my left hand. Worked well for me.

I'd think that in a game where there isn't as much danger of falling off of the scenery, the keys could be used for movement without too much trouble though. Actually I played Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light that way, but it was occasionally annoying to only be able to jump in eight directions.

True, that setup had problems (ideally pressing the keys should cause movement in a certain direction relative to where the mouse is pointing), but it makes far more sense than this business of clicking to attack and ever so often taking a few precious seconds to try to find the optimal place to backpedal to to get off enough shots/spells.

Yeah, the key is separating movement controls and combat controls. My modified scheme for Bastion did this well (and the default scheme does too, even if movement control is limited), but Torchlight and many other action-RPGs don't do a great job with it.

That's because Basion was designed with console controls in mind. Bastion doesn't have 10 assignable skill slots, or a complex loot/item management system.

PS : I played through Bastion with a Gamepad. It feels better that way.

Plenty of iso-shooters manage this. The Alien Shooter games, for instance, and the gameplay isn't that much different. 8-directions-of-movement doesn't detract from the game, and you can still move by clicking on a spot. I think that's done with RMB, which would take the place of using your RMB skill / spell.

Even so, it's possible and quite playable.