Been Playing Titan Quest (Musings)

[MarkQuinn]

My entire entry to the world of hack 'n' slash, surprisingly, started with WOW. My girlfriend got me started playing that and I really liked the whole process of grinding, getting better loot, grinding again, etc. But I hate MMOs. So I searched for something that would give me that grinding-WOW feel but didn't force me to pay a monthly fee or make me have to deal with idiots online who bother you constantly for assistance or simply set out to ruin your game experience. I found this in Silverfall, which was actually great because it allowed me to play on LAN with my friends.

SF lead to my purchase this last weekend of Titan Quest and its expansion. Never played it before now.

Obviously TQ is a more polished product. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but there are some drawbacks. I very much miss the "technololy vs. nature" aspect of SF. That enhances the role-playing experience immensely. Also, as cool as the whole Greek mythos is to play, my heart will always lie with the more Tolkienesque world of elves and trolls. Beyond all that, in my opinion, the ONLY thing TQ really has over SF is the fact that it performs so much better. People complain about SF's camera but honestly I LIKE being able to spin around my character, get up really close and see the sky, etc. That's not the problem. The problem is the performance. The poor frame rate, as has been mentioned on this forum earlier. Monte Cristo really needs to release a patch that will address performance issues. I'm running on a dual core processor with 2 gigs of RAM and a 7800GTOC, so my system isn't the problem. It's also possible that a patch can't solve our problems, as this may just be inherent to a pretty flawed game engine.

Either way, after playing both games enough to compare, I would still recommend SF but ONLY if you've already played TQ and are waiting for the next big release.

Edit: Oh, performance isn't the only thing I like about TQ more than SF. I forgot one thing: the creatures. Yeah, Silverfall has a lot of creatures (as compared to, say, Oblivion), but it's NOTHING compared to the sheer diversity you can find in TQ. I like that. I like the fact that every region I visit has new and interesting baddies to kill. /musings

[dumb machine]

Being an ancient history nerd I loved TQ... and I think their caracter class mixing is tops... but ultimately the strict linearity (i.e. hallway-like maps) of the game bored me.

Have you played Sacred? Its dated now, but I love the more open-ended gameworld of Sacred (not to mention Oblivion, but thats a different nut). Sacred II is coming out early next year.

Having said that... I think I enjoy the more open-spaced world of SF more than Titan Quest... but is there anything for us to find while just out exploring??? I have yet to find any side quests outside of town, secret areas... and I certainly dont need to ever go experience-grinding to level up. Well, I guess I'll find out... I'm still realtively early in the game I think.

[Angelus_Lacrima]

Have you played Sacred? Its dated now, but I love the more open-ended gameworld of Sacred (not to mention Oblivion, but thats a different nut). Sacred II is coming out early next year.



Seriously? That is too awesome. I thought Sacred was pretty cool for its time

[kaboro]

Being an ancient history nerd I loved TQ... and I think their caracter class mixing is tops... but ultimately the strict linearity (i.e. hallway-like maps) of the game bored me.

Have you played Sacred? Its dated now, but I love the more open-ended gameworld of Sacred (not to mention Oblivion, but thats a different nut). Sacred II is coming out early next year.

Having said that... I think I enjoy the more open-spaced world of SF more than Titan Quest... but is there anything for us to find while just out exploring??? I have yet to find any side quests outside of town, secret areas... and I certainly dont need to ever go experience-grinding to level up. Well, I guess I'll find out... I'm still realtively early in the game I think.

If you like side quests and secrets in a Titan Quest/Sacred type of game you have to try Divine Divinity, you will be surprised how good the game can be, it has a pseudo sequel (Beyond Divinity), i seen a package containing both games in stores a while ago.

[MarkQuinn]

I haven't played Sacred but I'll have to check it out, definately.

Another one I'm looking forward to (also another nut altogether) is "Two Worlds". But I'll have to see. At this point, judging from screenshots, videos and previews, it could either go the way of Oblivion (my favorite game of all time, though I admit it's not without it's major downfalls), or Gothic III (a game which sucked so completely and profoundly that the German government should issue a formal apology for allowing it to be exported throughout the world). Six months ago they were telling us that you could only play a male character. Now that is apparently false, and we can play male AND female characters in the single player campaign (Gee, thanks for small favors!). However, unlike multiplayer, we canNOT chose any other race besides human. This, they tell us, is in order for the game to "make sense".

Let me tell you something. I cannot even begin to fathom a storyline so strict and ridged that chosing to play, for instance, a dwarf instead of a human would bring the plot and focus to a grinding halt, leaving the player perplexed and bewildered and stopped dead in his tracks with no clue how to proceed. It's just simply unfathomable. Take NWN2 as an example. You know when I started the game and chose to be a human player, I really WASN'T that confused by the fact that my paternal guardian was an elf. Why? Because it was explained very early on that he was my STEP-FATHER. Any story-teller with half an imagination can devise small tricks to ensure it "all makes sense". Any game designers with too little imagination to do so (like the designers of Two Worlds) make me skeptical right off the bat.

To me, the whole thing smacks of laziness and short-sightedness on the part of Two World's Polish developers. But we shall see, I suppose.

Sorry for the rant, and sorry for taking this thread way off topic. I guess I've just had it with all these games that give us ONE great thing or TWO great things but fail miserably on something else. It just seems to me like it shouldn't be so hard to give RPG fans what they want: open-endedness, lots of character creation and character level-up options, a story which at least makes sense and moves forward, the ability to mod/customize, a stable, polished game-engine and for F-sake THE ABILITY TO BE A DAMN DWARF IF I WANNA BE!

Okay, sorry again. Too little sleep last night. ;)

P.S. - The linearity of TQ (hallway-like maps is a great description) is beginning to bother me too.

[kaboro]

Gothic III (a game which sucked so completely and profoundly that the German government should issue a formal apology for allowing it to be exported throughout the world).


Gothic III sucked? :bulb: Why is that?
Guess that proves everything is a matter of taste.
I bought Gothic III, Oblivion and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic at the same time, all 3 are excellent games, Oblivion most polished of the three but becomes a bit tedious at some point.
Of the three games, i liked Gothic best, by far.
In terms of graphics, Gothic makes Oblivion look a bit dated (at max settings), gameplay is more fluid, offers total freedom. In Oblivion you follow the story, in Gothic you make the story.
Wonderful game, a pity it doesnt work well on too many systems.

[MarkQuinn]

Kaboro it's been my experience that people either love G3 or hate it --- no in between.

Remember in Oblivion you don't just follow one story --- you follow many. And unless you play silly like my girlfriend ;) who had a single character that was the head of the Mages Guild, head of the Dark Brotherhood, halfway through the Fighters Guild and oh, champion of Cyrodiil too, then you'll have more than one character and do the activities that fit his or her pesonality best (no offense intended if you played that way Kaboro - just an inside joke with me and my gf).

Anyway you speak about story. But what about character? There seems to be two camps in RPG-making nowadays. Gothic 3 falls into that camp where the designers really don't care to let you make your own choices about who you're going to be, your gender, your name, your race. That's why I posted that message above where I was so upset about Two Worlds (which I'm STILL buying, BTW). As a male, I play a male character 90% of the time, but my girlfriend and my other close female friend simply refuse to play games like Gothic, Fable or Dark Messiah because they just can't bring themselves to identify with the character. Oblivion on the other hand not only allowed you to chose your name and gender, but also added an avdanced face creation system and a choice of many races that aren't names only. Each race has distinct bonuses, and more importantly, a crucial role within the Elder Scrolls mythos. Go into any bookstore and find a multitude of books on the history of each race. It's amazing, and I truly hope they don't abandon that depth in the next ES.

But I mean I know you know this stuff already. I guess I'm just saying it to illustrate how, for me, the creation of a new character carries with it a whole new kind of existence in the game world, and a whole new way to play the story. As for the story itself (main quest at least, which is the only one of the quests you really can't avoid), many times I just pretend that whole opening sequence with the emperor never happened, or perhaps it happened many years ago in my childhood and I have this relic --- the Amulet of Kings --- in my possession but really don't know what to do with it. Doing that (sometimes with the help of a quick-start mod that removes the opening dungeon altogether) I can very easily postpone or avoid the MQ and it makes sense in my mind. Playing that way, it's completely open-ended and you're free to make your own way, your own story.

As for the graphics making OB look a bit dated, I wouldn't know --- I'm one of the ones whose system didn't like Gothic 3. ;) Nevertheless I'll load it up again and try it again on your recommendation. But before I do, have any tips on effectively fighting? :confused:

[kaboro]

Agreed with almost everything you said MarkQuinn, Gothic is a rather unusual game and thats why some players love it, some hate it, no in between just like you said.
As for the effective fighting......i can only tell you what worked for me.
I found the fighting itself to be a little rough around the edges but the skill system makes up for it.
When you level up you only get learning points nothing else, its up to you to find the different trainers (not always an easy task) and convince them to increase your melee, ranged, magic or thieving skills.
I invested early on in the ranged (bow) skills and that almost made the game too easy.
Use the bow on animals, sword on human/orc opponents as a rule of thumb. The hit and run works great most of the time, enemies wont chase you long.
Sword fighting is needed often too, I managed to defeat all opponents rather easy by only using the weak fast attacks, the slow strong ones and the fancy special attacks only got me killed so i gave up early on those.
Bow cannot be used for pulling mobs out of a group but the "get near one enemy until it agroes then run" works fine.
Dam this post is getting rather long and i doubt you will like the game too much if you hated it so bad first time :P

[NilmarM]

The problem is single player replay, if everything is the same and nothing changes, if I know where all the map triggers are and everything simply repeats then the game has no replay value, a case in point is Titan Quest, even the drops are exactly the same on replay and on higher difficulty levels.

I love Diablo style games, point and click, hack and slash, swords and sorcery, dungeons and dragons. Nothing fancy but I love this stuff. I don't want to have an endless learning curve, I just want to sit down and play for a few hours. I also don't want to have to do a hardware upgrade every time a new game comes out, I went down that road with Oblivion only to realize very quickly I didn't like the first person console "WASD" style game.

I played through Titan Quest in a few days, Immortal Throne in a few more, start to finish. I played through Divine Divinity and Dungeon Siege, much better games than TQ IMHO. I got fed up with Sacred and Sacred Underworld though, boring, pointless chasing around going back and forth endlessly over the same outdoor areas. I really have to think twice about buying yet another Sacred sequel, it would have to have MUCH better quests, dungeons and underground areas, all of these games lately have way too much outdoor area for my taste, the point of these games, the uber quest for me is going down, deeper and deeper towards hell with weird stuff bubbling up out of the floors and critters coming out of the walls, eerie, dark, moody environments.

Games like Diablo are few and far between, I still find myself replaying Diablo II LOD and some of the fan written mods for it like Chaos Empire. Darkstone wasn't bad but not as engaging as Diablo. Harbinger sucked, too bad really because the sci-fi theme could have been fun but they blew it bigtime.

Silverfall is fun. I haven't figured out how to get to Steel??? yet but I like the steampunk theme and the graphics, the different areas are great. I'm not crazy about the navigation system or the skill system but they're not showstoppers. I've tried some different characters, nature oriented and technology oriented plus a totally neutral battlemage, it's a fun game with good replay value.

I'm looking forward to Hellgate London being released next month IIUC.

Does anybody know of any other good point and click Diablo clones out there???

[dumb machine]

http://www.planetdiablo.com/diablo3/

[Provokator]

Gief item sets plix!! :P...its what silverfall is missing 4 real.TQ has those if i remember right,and lots of it.As it has been said before,each game almost misses something.Guess as the man said,we wait for diablo 3 and toss each of these games in trash.

[Engelvonreue]

Planetdiablo.com said it themselves, its all speculation on d3 because it was never officially announced by Blizzard North. Im a huge fan of the diablo series. its a solely unique game gameplay wise. and i have yet to encounter a game worthy enough to match it. the only game i didnt play yet mentioned in this thread was Sacred. I fell into the category of "didnt like" Gothic III, and aside from the early Elder Scrolls games( Arena, Daggerfall, ect) I love that series as well. The depth the creators go in the ES lore is amazing, with hints to amazing weapons and armor in rare books, or from asking about rumors or even exploring the rich worlds, its close to being a perfect, dare i say, rpg. of course the "perfect" rpg doesnt exist by anymeans, for to please every consumer would be the same as to displease them, but Bethesda did a very good job at making me happy with my copies of Morrowind:goty and Oblivion.

[NeoNaka]

I'm running on a dual core processor with 2 gigs of RAM and a 7800GTOC, so my system isn't the problem. It's also possible that a patch can't solve our problems, as this may just be inherent to a pretty flawed game engine.




The game, to be a cartoon cell-shader is actually very complex in detail. I run the same as you Dual Core, 2 Gigs RAM, 2 7800GT's in SLi Mode and STILL have performance issues. Course I crank the details to MAX but in SLi mode you would think I could run a cartoon im max setting.... guess not :( .... I still believe SF has some major potential IF... IGN will take interest in the game and add a SilverfallVAULT section so players can MOD the game and make huge player worlds for everyone to use and download. Give resources to the map builders like they did with NWN and NWN2. To me thats what made NWN/2 was the vault and all its resources to expand on the game where players could use thier imagination to complete works of art. SF has the same potential. I purchased SF for the Editor in hopes that I could compile one of the largest player worlds to be constructed and allow others to connect to it and have fun.

I just hope this dream can be realized. The editor itself has HUGE bug issues and is super complex when set next to the NWN toolset. It's much more powerful but reminds me of building a map in Unreal or Quake. It uses the HL2 engine for building which is awsome because the textures are so crisp and clean... but if you crash every 10 seconds from bugs how can you build a player world?

Sorry I went off in la-la land there for a second, just thought I could give us some new direction or take on the game to talk about.

[MarkQuinn]

NeoNaka, I've only looked at the editor briefly, but it reminds me a little of the Elder Scrolls Construction Set (Oblivion Editor). Did you ever play around with that?

As for your rig, there is NO WAY two 7800GTs should have problems with this game on ANY setting. Just no way. That tells me SF indeed has some engine issues but it also confirms my belief about the 7800. It's a great card, best one I've ever owned, but I think it has problems with certain games and no matter what you do, it just performs weak. Other games it blows away.

On a side note, I'm thinking of upgrading to an 8800. Does anyone think the added muscle over the 7800 is worth it for the price?

[NilmarM]

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMzNCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Here's a link to an article comparing the 7600 to the 8800 card, apples to apples. Plus XP vs Vista OS comparison. HTH

[kaboro]

On a side note, I'm thinking of upgrading to an 8800. Does anyone think the added muscle over the 7800 is worth it for the price?

I use an MSI 8800gtx and i can say i never regretted the fortune i spent on it.
So far i dont think there is a game on the market that you cant play at maxed settings flawlessly on this card. A short list of games that i played at maxed settings and 1600x1200 and/or 1280x1024 resolutions: Fear, Gothic 3, Everquest 2, LOTR online, Vanguard, Oblivion, Saga of Ryzom.
I only encountered card related problems on the Matrix online game, known issue only happening on the 8800 cards :(
Keep in mind the card requires two power connectors so make sure your power supply has that.

[MarkQuinn]

Thank you NilmarM and Kaboro for the info. I've installed a new harddisk and a new sound card on this syetem (Best Buy installed the 7800), but I honestly couldn't tell you if my power supply has two power connectors. Forgive my noobishness here, but....

It has all sorts of chord things coming out of it which connect to the various components of the computer: harddisks, graphics card, mother board, etc. So it would seem it has many connectors, as all power supplies do.

Or do you mean something else?

[SoulForge]

As for your rig, there is NO WAY two 7800GTs should have problems with this game on ANY setting. Just no way. That tells me SF indeed has some engine issues but it also confirms my belief about the 7800. It's a great card, best one I've ever owned, but I think it has problems with certain games and no matter what you do, it just performs weak. Other games it blows away.

This has NOTHING to do with the card. If you have issues with certain games then its most likely the game. Also on a side not NVidia cards do better with OpenGL based games then ATI cards. And of course ATI is better with Direct3D. ATI has never been a fan of trying to support OpenGL too much with their drivers until more recently, but NVidia has been doing it for a long time. Hince the reason in traditional benchmarks NVidia almost always beats ATI when it comes to the Doom 3 test. Keep that in mind before calling cards 'weak' when not specifying details on how it performs 'weak'.

[MarkQuinn]

As a proud owner of a 7800GT I firmly stand by my right to say the card is performing strongly or weakly as I see fit. Additionally, I don't feel I need to 'prove' the matter to anyone by posting frame rates. Simply put, playing the games, I know.

Obviously my first reaction is to think the game is flawed. In the case of SF, I still do. But when people with cards or setups less than mine report a flawless gaming experience, I know it can be one of two things. Either my standards are higher (admitedly, I demand a high frame rate and, barring that, smooth fps transitions), or in fact something about their setup is responding better to the game than mine.

I don't know what kind of ATI card my friend has, even though I helped pick out her system. I do know it's not as good as the 7800GT. A fairly low-budget system overall. We both got Oblivion at the same time and I reported to her that it was playing miserably on my system. She said it was smooth as ice on hers. For a couple months I hated her for it. I had, afterall, bought this system for Oblivion, mainly. Then one day I played on her system and couldn't believe how poorly it played. I had to drop down to 1024x768, remove all shadows, turn off the grass, HDR, turn down draw distance, you name it. Even then, when it wasn't performing as well as mine I turned her down to 800x600, and finally her performance began to approach mine. So why did she say, initally, how well it performed on her system? Easy. She was very new to PC games and didn't know what good performance was. Subsequently playing Oblivion on my rig (which performed much better once I learned the max frames render ahead trick), she was disgusted with her Oblivion performance and decided to play World of Warcraft instead.

Bottom line, yeah, SoulForge, you're probably right about everything you said. But there have been too many times when people with lesser cards have reported flawless gameplay to my mediocrity on certain games for me to simply chalk it up to a case of "different standards".

As a side note, I've often spoken to people with very similar setups to mine that play a game well when I cannot, or vice versa. A great case in point is Silent Hunter IV. I have to basically turn everything off to get that game to run well. With the higher shader setting and certain options on, I get so much lag it becomes unplayable. Others using a 7800 series with 2 gigs of ram, a suitable processor and the latest drivers are reporting smooth gameplay at the highest settings. That remains a mystery to me (and pisses me off more than a little bit).

[MadJack]

*cough*
Back to topic...

I've seen copies of Titan Quest in EBGames but thought it was cheezy looking so I didn't bother. I like most hack and slash games; I loved the Dungeon Siege franchise. So, I'm wondering if Titan Quest has what it takes to interest me.

Anyone willing to light up my torch? ;)

[NilmarM]

Here's one to blow your mind. I have two modified EMachines chasis one with a Celeron 340 chip and one with a Celeron 335, same MB and 2gb RAM on both. Both XP SP2. Both with GeForce 6200FX PCI 256mb cards. Latest driver updates. I know it's pathetic, obsolete hardware but we're on a tight budget and it works. Different software mix but nothing that should affect the game. One machine is connected to a 17" standard monitor, the other to a 19" widescreen monitor. The standard monitor machine runs Silverfall flawlessly, the other one has a weird glitch, when you mouse to the right side to rotate the camera the game does an alt-tab to desktop. Only happens on the right side, go figure. I'm wondering if the widescreen monitor is causing the glitch???? Other than that the game runs fine.

[NilmarM]

I wasn't thrilled with Titan Quest, I finished it in five days and Immortal Throne in seven. It's extremely linear, you follow a road from point to point and do the quests in order. The voice acting sounds like being in a deli on the lower east side of NYC, "Ya vant a shmear mit dat" the replay value is zero because when you start a new character the triggers, quests, maps, drops, NPCs and critters are EXACTLY the same. Most of the game is outdoors, the caves and temples are VERY small. Most of the quests consist of some critter standing outside a cave, "some beasties stole my thingie", go in, clobber the beasties, bring the critter the thingie and "Tadaa" you've completed the quest..........yawn.......receive 2500 experience points....it's a very pretty game and it has a terrific skill system. Lots of glitches and some crashes, some instances of your character getting stuck in the wall..........the crafting system absolutely sucks. Oh and there's no stash in the base game, the expansion has a caravan system which helps a little but also adds to the frustration as it fills up with incomplete crafting items you can't use yet...................

[kaboro]

It has all sorts of chord things coming out of it which connect to the various components of the computer: harddisks, graphics card, mother board, etc. So it would seem it has many connectors, as all power supplies do.
Or do you mean something else?

Your 7800GT requires an external power connector too so check your card and look for a power cable from the power source to the card.
If it does not have one, then that might be the source of your problems.
These cards will work without the power connector but the performance will be reduced and usually you get a warning message at start up but not always so you might want to check it out.
If the connector is there, check to see if you have a second connector like it available since the 8800gtx requires two of them.
Power source should be 400W minimum for the 7800GT, 500W recommended for the 8800gtx.

[Angelus_Lacrima]

I liked Titan Quest for the most part but I hate the inability to customize my char. Maybe this is because I am a girl who gets bored visually easily. But I got tired of the same tanned greek girl with the muscled thighs and black ponytail. This is also why I got bored with my character on Sid Meier's Pirates! You get tired of looking at the same guy.
As for Gothic 3, can you only be the guy? It didnt' give me any other options. That game also is a major CPU hog, even on my dual cores. If it freezes one more time after I go kick some orc teeth in, I am gonna use the disc like an AOL frisbee.

[NilmarM]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Dungeon Siege Broken World" which was also a pretty good Diablo clone, much better than Titan Quest IMHO.

We've touched on some of the others. None of them quite get the mix right. Is anyone else hoping that "Hellgate London" lives up to it's hype???

[dumb machine]

The ability to blend character classes in Titan Quest was awesome.

So many times I wished my Sacred Battlemage could get dual wielding + Attack skill for some close-in fighting fun. That opens up so many possibilities for replay (which, unfortuneately, the uber-linear gameplay of TQ squelches.)

I'd suggest plying it once or twice if you can find it for sale cheap.

[Zangarh]

I bought Titan Quest GOLD and must say its a really good game! I like the idea of combining to classes into one unique.

I will still play Silverfall but TQ will take more of my spare time for sure.

Z

[t0v3]

Seriously, Titan Quest is way, way, way better than Silverfall, no question about it

[Nordoki]

*cough*
Back to topic...

I've seen copies of Titan Quest in EBGames but thought it was cheezy looking so I didn't bother. I like most hack and slash games; I loved the Dungeon Siege franchise. So, I'm wondering if Titan Quest has what it takes to interest me.

Anyone willing to light up my torch? ;)

With all the RPG games being produced, this game included, reviewers and players like to call them "Diablo 2 clones". Well, if you have actually played D2 you would understand how off the mark these kind of comments are.

Titan Quest comes the closest to being a true D2 clone. Like D2, you get to choose 1 race character to be male or female to be what class you wish. Difference being that at level 8 you get to choose a 2nd class to compliment your primary one.

Like D2 the game is linear. You also have to play thru the same game 2 more times fighting more and harder monsters in order to "finish" the game. These are Epic and Legendary levels. You cannot change the difficulty until you have played thru.

Like D2 you find set items. You find relics & charms that can be socketed into armor, weapons and jewelry.

So, if you loved D2, you will more than likely love TQ. I recommend you play Titan Quest Immortal Throne since it has enhancements to the game not in the original such as a banking system that permits you to pass along items to other characters you have created. You can create "mules" to help store many of the items you might wish to pass along to future characters should you love the game to play it over again with a different class combination.

Hope I covered everything.

[NilmarM]

I just started playing Silverfall again after about three months and I have to say I'm enjoying it more than I did the first time. This is a really good game. I'm following the "technology" path this time and it's giving me new quests that I didn't get on my first run through. I hope they make a sequel.