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Help Wanted / One common project (to rule them all ?)

« on: April 30, 2017, 01:08:12 am »

The modding philosophy is to give the user as much freedom as he wants, to cherry-pick changes he wants and changes he doesn't want, leading to him getting an optimal experience.

But when you're new and arrive in the Workshop page, there are so many mods out there ! And you have no idea who is compatible with who.. So people will try to arrange a load order approximately, and then will get a suboptimal experience because some mods will overwrite the files of some other mod.

Given that we got some heavy modders out there, that I know produce mods of great quality, why not create some kind of project where our respective mods would just be part of something of a scale way bigger than what we can achieve all alone ?

When I look at what you guys have done on the Workshop, I see :

• A lot of new classes : the amazing TL1CP project, but also there's the Variant classes compilation maintained by doudley and Viz
• LAO 3.0 by RnF : not only does it provide an endless game, but it also provides more fun with items in general, and seems to rebalance the damage/armor graphs as well
• Brother in Arms Warbound : some people release DLCs for less than that it completely changes how you play the game, because you have someone else to take care of. And you can imagine synergies between your companion and yourself
• Various quality of life improvements

I'm quite sure there's a lot more that can be added in Torchlight 2. What would we gain from working together ?

1) It would be the overhaul mod to use for an optimal experience, gathering a maximum of interesting features in the Workshop. No more going through the whole thing and min-maxing your 10 mod limits
2) By working together, we would ensure our respective mods are compatible and playable with each others. This could also involve direct feedback between us, allowing to fine tune our mods more easily.
3) Generally it's just more motivating when there's several people working together. But you guys already did that for TL1CP ;p
4) Some of our mods make the game easier, some make it harder.. Working together means we can sort it out and leverage the difficulty, providing an optimal experience for the player
5) Help each other out !

The thing I'd like to see in Torchlight 2, but that none of us can do alone :

• Provide endgame challenges. Similar to Synergies, but without the farm-fest that it is currently. With very tough encounters.
• Rework and rebalance the vanilla classes
• Maybe some other stuff too!

If we can manage to put it all together, we would have a very strong mod that would bring to Torchlight 2 even more than Synergies! I wouldn't want it to be the Median XL of Torchlight 2, because MXL changes way too much.. But the players should have a great time playing this combination of mods, because it would be designed for it.

Instead of each of us doing things on our own, we would be creating the overhaul/megamod of Torchlight 2.

That's for the basic idea. Now for the realization, there are quite some questions to be asked :

First of all, would you be willing to do this ? It's a big change in the workflow, and perhaps you prefer to work alone, which is totally fine.

Then, what kind of organization should there be ? Is it technically possible to work on a single mod with several people ? How to ensure no one breaks anything before pushing an update publicly ? :P

Last but not least : obviously we will all have different visions for the game at some point. Do you think it would be an obstacle ? I mean, personally. At some point, changing key features could mean discussing it before-hand, which is harder to do than working alone

I'd be very interested in participating in such a project. Torchlight 2 is the ARPG with the most potential out there - and I believe that with the right modifications/additions, it can become a truly awesome experience.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it.

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Modding Discussions / On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how

« on: July 05, 2016, 02:23:59 pm »

I'm cutting down the work of overhauling TL2 into several categories :

• Classes
  
• Gear
  
• Potions
  
• Pets
  
• One-shots
  
• Spells
• Stats
• Units
• Bosses
• NG+ system

I will progressively give my thoughts about each of them.. This is a non exhaustive list, but these are the main points to consider.

Sorry if it's a bit of a mess, but I figured it would be cleaner to keep this in one thread instead of spreading it accross multiple sections of the forum, since it all relates to Balance.

I will write them on the go, and modify this original post to link to each of them as I'm writing it.

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Say Hello / Hello !

« on: July 01, 2016, 12:09:57 pm »

Hi there,

Nice to see there's a community around here !

You can call me potty - I used to play a lot of Torchlight 2 until multiplayer became very sparse.

I have done some modding with GUTS - my project was to get a near-perfect experience of Torchlight 2 by modifying what was annoying me the most, namely :

• The lack of end-game content
• The lack of challenge once you know the tricks
• Boss fights being just plain boring and unchallenging (corpserunning ftw)

The mod Synergies provided proper end-game content as well as a more challenging experience - so I wanted initially to build a mod on top of that, and focus on the leveling content.

The mod i had been working on was then called Potty's Synergies Add-on, and was starting to feature the following:

• Scaling all the maps to lvl 100, so that overleveling is not possible anymore (a lot of fights become easier because of overleveling)
• Changing drop rates to have one unique per boss and per golden chest
• Bosses repleneshing their health when player dies. I implemented it with the first half of all the Act 1 bosses, with a Trigger Sphere around the boss - whenever the player walks out of it, the boss regenerates completely. I also had to change the room so that the fights are in close quarters (makes the fight also more interesting !)
• Some changes to bosses - for example I have added spider adds to Window's Veil so that you have the feeling to be literally swarmed and pressured by spiders (sorry arachnophobiac people)

However, right now Synergies is a bit of a mess. The respec potion is broken because of the recent changes done to the Embermage - some people prefer the old version of the Embermage by the way. The Paladin has an entire tree which just doesn't work. And also, there are a few things that I do not like in Synergies :

• Some areas are way too overcrowded. Not only is it bad for the TL2 engine who barely supports it, but it also requires you to spend a long time to travel through an area.
• The endgame farm is just insane. When I was playing TL2 I could afford to spend hours on it, but right now I just can't. You have to get enough DR skull, then you have to farm all the bosses until you have the right stuff (that's for Tier 0), and then you have to farm endlessly in Tier 1 as well..
• The reflect effect is just insanely broken. Characters like Embermage get insta-killed if they use prismatic bolt.

However, the main ideas were great, and I would maybe like to provide a similar experience (just without the broken stuff). The main thing that was retaining me from going forward is motivation. It's hard to get motivated when you know that few people still play TL2 nowadays.

So, what I would like to do in the next couple of months :

• Fire up vanilla TL2 again, and try to feel the difference between this and Synergies. What is so awesome in Synergies that isn't in vanilla TL2 ? This will give me some clues to get a direction to my mod.
• Start again with modifying the boss encounters. This is really the biggest con of the game in my opinion.

In particular, I've just read Mtaurs' mod pack and I'm interested in the change in the potion mechanism. It's true that the current mechanism forces you to spam the potions. And it was even worst in Synergies, as the rejuvenation potions could be obtained from 1 health potion and 1 mana potion.

Some other mechanisms that I might change :

• Damage reduction - just remove the Limoany skull, which is way too overpowered. Damage reduction should be something that is proper to a couple of items, but it should not be the meta.

Some of the Synergies stuff that I believe were a very nice addition:

• Doubling the Champion spawn. Fighting a single Fire mage is nice - fighting two of them is insane
• The random affixes to the monsters. It would be nice if these were Diablo 2-ish, so basically each monster of a Champion group shares the same affixes.

And about the NG.. Right now I think the mechanism is completely unchallenging, as it's just an increase in lvl and nothing more. It would be a lot more challenging if it was accompanied by a decrease in resistance, and also by adding more skills to the monsters (for example the Ratlin archers would be able to cast Firestorm in NG+). However, I have no idea how doable it is. I think that currently the engine only allows to have an increase in lvl.

But there is this area with waves of monsters that is available only in NG+ - so maybe it's possible to do something more than just increasing the level.

Anyway.. Hoping to hear from you guys :-) I still think that TL2 has the best potential as an ARPG, and I hope to get some feedback in this forum, as well as providing some for you

potty