Torchlight II - 5/20 hours

I realize now that I've played this game before. Not Torchlight II, precisely, but other games with the exact same reward progression. The way you balance short-term equipment rewards with long-term character development awards has been incorporated into a whole mess of superficially different games like Kingdoms Of Amalur and Borderlands. From what I understand, this is due to common descent from an immensely influential game, Diablo, which strikes me as interesting.

I wonder if things like this happen by accident, where you have a small team of designers who try something they think will be fun, and it turns out to be this perfect psychological trap. Or was it a studied decision? Did they consult behavioral research and then build their game around its conclusions? I know that since then people have, but I like to think that 1996 was a more innocent time.

I don't mean to be excessively cynical here. These addictive mechanics can add value to a game. There is something genuinely pleasurable about getting a rare and useful piece of equipment that would be lost if the loot gains were rigorously predictable. Just because a game features a gambling mechanic doesn't mean it is intentionally exploiting gambling addicts.

Torchlight II, for example, is not a game that I worry about ruining people's lives. The loot system is generally enjoyable, but it has altogether too much cruft. I'm only five hours in, and I'm already drowning in more common items than I have the energy or attention to evaluate. And the wonderful sensation of finding a rare item is somewhat undercut when you find out you can't use it because it's for a different class. As it stands, I'm finding the random component of the game to be startlingly inessential. I imagine that would change if I got really invested in Torchlight II, and had a bunch of alternate characters from the various classes to which I could distribute my good stuff, however, I don't imagine I'll be playing for that long.

That's not to say I dislike the game. I have literally no complaints about it (even that thing I just said is more of an observation - it's not like I want to become addicted to a new video game), and there are actually some unique things that it does that I really enjoy. My character is a magician who dual wields pistols, which is a nice change of pace from the bulk of fantasy fiction, which seems to say that nothing invented after the 18th century can possibly be magical unless it is also post-modern. Plus, he has a pet alpaca, who in addition to being a useful beast of burden, may well be a deadlier combatant as well (seriously, I found some unusually rare pet equipment that boosts ol' Softy's stats to a ridiculous degree).

My assessment of Torchlight II thus far is that it's a pleasant diversion which is unlikely to blossom into an obsession, and I'm fine with that.