I'm not saying there's a conspiracy or anything, but it sure seems like god-game Reus and Firaxis' 2012 XCOM have a lot in common. They may even be... the same game! Oh, you're laughing? You call me crazy? Well, how crazy is this?

1) Neither one is really fun. I loved XCOM. I thought it was a brilliant reintroduction to a game that blew my mind as a kid. It was simultaneously tense and intense, and made you really sweat every decision. Game of the year contender? Indeed! Fun? No! Playing XCOM, at least on Ironman/Classic as I did (which means no saves and an unforgiving enemy) was a stress-inducing nightmare, but it was all worth it, because every time I sent an alien packing with a dose of hot plasma, it was a little taste of heaven. The permadeath-laden tactical combat of XCOM was simply too terrifying to enjoy, but those moments of victory made up for it.

Reus is the same way. What starts as a joyous time filling the world with fish and blueberries turns into a hellish nightmare. As soon as you really have something worth protecting, your subjects will start fighting with each other and burning your carefully planned cities to the ground. There's so much to take care of that every decision, as reversible as they may be, feels overwhelming because even minor changes can quickly propagate and leave you in a real mess. Upgrading that shrub to a tree might seem harmless, but not if that shrub was providing a bonus to another plant which was in turn making your wolves more dangerous which in turn was keeping your city from becoming greedy and rampaging across the land. Not necessarily fun, definitely stressful, but crazy rewarding, just XCOM.

2) When it rains, it pours. Losing a veteran soldier in XCOM hurt. It could happen in an instant, usually just as you said "hmm, I probably shouldn't be doing that," and the game would just carry on as if nothing happened. The grizzled warrior you had raised from pup would lay in pieces,and all you could do was double down and unleash on the soon-to-be-ex-aliens that had done the deed. To add insult to injury, you had to then face the next mission's even more pressing odds without your star player, which inevitably lead to more fallen heroes.

Reus does the impossible by creating a death spiral even more spectacular than XCOM's. If you spoil your cities with too many riches, they head out and beat up the next city down the road. As an added bonus, though, cities that win a fight then become more likely to pick another fight. Furthermore, cities like to pick on weaker neighbors, so if one of your cities manages to destroy another, the odds are a cool hundred percent that they'll be back in a few minutes to wipe out the puny little village that springs up from the ruins. It's stupidly easy to reach a critical mass of angry villagers and defenseless victims, and when you do, you'll understand that some people simply want to watch the world burn. Your world, as it turns out. That you made for them. Ingrates.

3) Both put you in control of four characters at once. XCOM eventually bumps it up to six, but don't be fooled, people. Reus is just an XCOM palette swap. It's also pretty damn brilliant.

Also Reus and XCOM are both four letters. I'm getting chills.

Stay safe, believers, and be ever vigilant.

After a week or so away from it, I used the recent 1.03 patch as an excuse to get back into Diablo III. I grabbed my low-level Wizard and started breaking down skeletons for parts with my ice beam, but it wasn't long before I felt an emptiness inside. It had nothing to do with the patch, which is a benign piece of work; it's just that the Diablo III magic had faded in the 150+ hours I'd spent with it. I'm a big fan of a lot of the mechanical choices in Diablo III, but now that the novelty of those mechanics has worn off, I'm stuck realizing that the game just isn't that fun. It's pornography sex – technically proficient, but you really don't get the feel that anyone is having any fun in the process.

Make no mistake, I don't regret my purchase at all and still think you should try it. In fact, my last act at Gamespot was to give Diablo III a positive review (and the shitstorm I got for using complete sentences and suggesting that good mechanics should be reflected in a game's score are why I'm over at Giantbomb now). I've tried every possible permutation of solo/group and hardcore/softcore (talking about Diablo here, not the pornography), with my favorite being solo/hardcore (that one might actually work for both). But something's just not working for me anymore, and I think I've got it figured out.

1. The items don't interest me. I'm glad that Rare and Magic items are so useful, but the dearth of Set and Legendary items is a bit of an issue. In Diablo II, collecting Set and Unique items felt like collecting little pieces of the world, like I was actually involved in the lore and setting. I've found exactly one Legendary item in Diablo III, so I've got a whole bunch of Rares which, while effective, don't have much character. When I look at my inventory I see stats but no soul.

2. The world has as much charm as a cactus and just as many pricks. In bringing my various characters up to level I've seen some parts of the game maybe 15 times, which means I've had to deal with the lifeless world, irritating characters, and useless plot about 15 more times than should be allowed by law. The problem is that without a good backdrop, the gameplay lacks context and everything starts to feel like a meaningless grind.

3. The lategame content makes the Hindenburg seem carefully designed. When I first unlocked the Nightmare difficulty, I thought it was brilliant. The drops were cooler, the enemies had new and exciting characteristics, and I had a nice arsenal of skills available. I had a similarly positive response to the Hell difficulty, but after stepping back for a bit, I realize that I was way off the mark. I'm all for a challenge, but Hell and Inferno bring it without bringing any fun along for the ride. Enemy mobs get laughably powerful traits and the spike-heavy damage model in which you either escape a battle unscathed or not at all becomes more readily apparent and problematic. Frankly it feels like sadism on Blizzard's part and masochism on the player's, as you must really hate yourself to slog through the tedium of Hell and Inferno for the sake of an in-game achievement. Oh, the humanity.

So here I am, looking at a game that has all the right bullet points but no soul. However, I think there's hope for those seeking some actual fun in their ARPGs. This is going to sound strange given that I had some real concerns about the beta, but I'm actually really looking forward to Torchlight II (for the curious: My Good-ish But Not Great-esque Time With Torchlight II's Beta). It feels a bit more amateuish, but it's all about having fun, and maybe that's worth more than I give it credit for.

Welcome back to Talkin' Shop, where we take a look at some of our favorite issues in the world of game design. This week, we're looking at a little system with big implications: lockpicking!

I'm a huge fan of Bethesda Softworks, and can can think of no digital worlds I've been as happy to wander as the ones found in the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. And while 2011's Skyrim represented a huge step forward from its predecessors in a ton of meaningful ways, there's one thing that still has some issues: lockpicking. I'm not talking about the lockpicking minigames, though – I'm talking about how the ability to interact with locked objects is related to character development. Both series bring their own approach – in Fallout, locks are broken into five tiers, and players can not attempt to pick locks of a given rank until they've allocated enough points into the Lockpicking skill. The Elder Scrolls also breaks locks into five tiers, but without the limitation on what you're allowed to unlock. In this edition of Talkin' Shop, we look at the limitations of both of these systems and see if we can do any better.

The Fallout Approach:

If you played Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas, I want you to take a few seconds and think about the skills that you pumped the most points into as soon as possible. All done? Cool! Did Lockpicking make your list? What about Science? If you're anything like me, you put a lot of early points into these skills because you didn't want to miss out on things just because they were hidden behind a lock or a computer terminal that wan inaccessible due to your skill levels. So whether you were a big lumbering brute with a minigun or a sneaky assassin with a knife, you needed these skills. They aren't support skills, they're access skills since you might not be able to access certain (optional) things without them.

And you might be thinking, “but hey, there are always multiple ways to approach things in Fallout. Sweet-talking, sneaking around, or just killing any and everyone who gets in the way – they can all get you where you need to go.” And that's true on a pretty large scale, but not universally. Not every locked chest in the game has a key for you to steal or loot off of a corpse, so at some point you're going to find yourself unable to access something in the game because your Lockpicking skill isn't high enough. And sure, it's true of most skills (you'll miss out on certain conversation options if your Speech isn't high enough, for example), but it's different with lockpicking, as being unable to unlock chests can make some experiences simply feel less rewarding. Killing a room full of Super Mutants only to find that you can't collect your full reward just isn't satisfying, and that's what makes the Lockpicking skill a must-have. Likewise, foregoing the Science skill means missing out on tons of great Fallout lore hidden away on locked computer terminals, so you need to max Science to get the most out of the game world.

The Elder Scrolls Approach:

In the other corner is Bethesda's other open-world series, The Elder Scrolls, in which a freshly minted level one character can try to pick any lock they see, provided they have the patience and lockpicks to spare. While it's refreshing to know that you're not going to be missing out on anything the game has to offer just because it's locked, this approach comes with its own design issues, chief amongst them being, “how we get players to care about lockpicking?” In Oblivion, the lack of discrete choices when it comes to character development makes this a bit of a moot point – as you pick more locks, you get better at it, and the “points-free” leveling system means you never have to choose to boost your ability to pick locks at the expense of other skills.

Skyrim, however, introduces skill points which are earned at the rate of one per character level and can be spent on “perks” from certain skill trees to gain new bonuses or abilities. One such skill tree is Lockpicking, and while there are some cool perks on there (like one that makes you more likely to find special items), the core tenet of this skill tree, “make lockpicking easier,” is inherently unrewarding. When you take perks from the Lockpicking tree, you aren't gaining access to new locked areas, you're simply reducing the number of picks you'll break when trying to pick a lock. And while you might find this handy that one time you forgot to stock up on lockpicks before heading out, it's less useful and fun than choosing perks in pretty much any other tree (and it won't even save you as much money as putting one point into the Specch tree, which adjusts item prices by ten percent in your favor).

I'm On A Role!

One thing we musn't lose sight of here is that both Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are role-playing games that live and die by their sense of immersion, by their ability to make the player feel like they are part of a world that acknowledges their existence. This is why something as minor as lockpicking can be such a big deal in these games; the flaws in the lockpicking systems force players to put game mechanics ahead of role-playing. In Fallout, you’re forced to invest in lockpicking no matter what type of character you play or you risk missing out on rewards and lore. In Skyrim, you're punished for role-playing as a lockpicking expert because the associated perks don't really improve your character's abilities in any meaningful sense (and are just plain boring). In both cases, there's disconnect created between how the player imagines their character and the way that they spend skill points. Sure, players could make their skill point choices stay true to their character, but if it means ignoring lockpicking in Fallout or embracing it in Skyrim, they'll be punished for it.

My Pick:

Overall, I think that the less restrictive Skyrim system is more enjoyable than Fallout's “dear lord I need to improve my lockpicking” situation. The uselessness of Skyrim's Lockpicking tree is a disaster, but I think making it relevant again has a pretty simple solution: make lockpicking happen in real time. Under the current system, in-game time pauses while you pick locks, so you're just as likely to get caught picking a lock if you takes you thirty real minutes as you would if it takes you thirty real seconds. However, if you're the kind of character who needs to pick locks quickly – perhaps to avoid getting caught breaking into a house by the city guard, or to empty out a chest before that troll wanders back and destroys you- then you'd benefit from taking some Lockpicking perks. In fact, it would even make sense to cut the number of lockpicking perks down to 1-3 and throw them into the Sneak tree, as the ability to pick locks quickly without detection probably wouldn't matter much to characters who would prefer to just kill the troll and take their time with the locked chest. You'll be able to access everything no matter what, but you'll still be rewarded for making some investments in lockpicking, and that sounds like good news for all players.

I think it's worth noting that lockpicking is clearly an issue for the player community – mods have popped up for the Fallout games that remove the restrictions and there are mods for Oblivion and Skyrim that add them. So while part of this issue comes down to player preferences, I believe the real-time system captures the rewards of Fallout and openness of Skyrim in a way that should appeal more broadly than either existing system does on their own.

Also, it was awesome in Thief.

As always, feel free to chew us out in the comments or PM us with a topic idea. Join us next time when we take a look how to keep turn-based strategy games fresh and fun.

Welcome to Talkin' Shop, where we take a look at some of the big issues in game design. This week, we take a look at something called "anti-fun," check out a few examples of it in action, and talk about its roots in a game's design.

The Hell IS Anti-Fun?

The term "anti-fun" was popularized by Zileas, design director at Riot Games (of League of Legends fame). In a forum post Zileas said: "Anti-fun is the negative experience your opponents feel when you do something that prevents them from 'playing their game' or doing activities they consider fun." An important distinction here: anti-fun is not simply "not having fun," it's a specific method of not having fun in which your agency as a player is severely damaged or entirely eliminated by things outside of your control. When we play a game, we like to bring our own style to the table, and anti-fun is what happens when you're forced to simply respond to someone else's style instead of playing your own.

Anti-Fun is Everywhere, But That's Fine!

In a multiplayer context, pretty much everything a player does is going to create some amount of anti-fun for the opposing players. For example, if you're playing some Battlefield and your preferred style is to run in with guns blazing, then that sniper who puts you down as you cross ground is creating anti-fun for you. However, we wouldn't say that sniping is a broken game mechanic in this case, and it's largely a case of magnitude. The skill of lining up a good sniper shot and the thrill of landing it generates far more fun for the sniper than anti-fun for the hapless target. Will the run-'n'-gun player need to change their style in response to the sniper? Yes, but it's not unreasonable - they simply stick to cover when crossing open ground, or use a vehicle to get to the destination and then go all Rambo. If the map is designed in such a way that there is truly nothing to be done about the sniper, however, then that's a big problem. If you've ever played a multiplayer first-person shooter, you can probably think of a few levels that you either love or hate based on your relationship with their balance issues.

So anti-fun is bound to pop-up in multiplayer games - after all, if you don't have to respond at all to what the enemy does then it's not exactly a multiplayer game - but it doesn't really become an issue until it dwarfs the amount of fun going on. Let's take a look at some genuine anti-fun in practice.

Example 1: DOTA's Mana Burn

This is the one that Zileas references in his post, so let's start with it. In DOTA, the Nerubian Assassin character had a "Mana Burn" ability which would remove a chunk of the target's mana (used for all skills) and deal some damage. This is perhaps the pinnacle of anti-fun, as if you are on the receiving end of a mana burn, you now don't have any mana to use your skills. Because of one little thing the enemy did, your ability to make choices and play the game with your own style gets thrown out the window, as you're reduced to using your basic attack, which doesn't use mana. What really makes the mana burn a prime offender is that there's no real way to dodge it - it's what we call a "direct damage" spell, so if you're in range and the enemy uses Mana Burn, you're out of luck, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Example 2: Harassing in Warcraft 3

You're a few minutes into a multiplayer round of Warcraft 3 when an enemy hero, most likely and Orc Blademaster, shows up in your base and chops up your peasants. The risk to the enemy is relatively minor, as the Blademaster can pretty easily land a few kills and escape, but you, as the victim, need to pretty much drop everything and handle this shit. Suddenly, everything that you bring the table when you sit down for some Warcraft gets thrown out the window because you have to go into full reaction mode. Your entire experience is now defined not by how you roll, but how your enemy rolls. Back in my Warcraft 3 days, I got harassed quite a bit and learned to effectively counter it, but having an effective counter to an anti-fun scenario doesn't always make it better - you're still being shoehorned into a particular set of actions based entirely on what someone else is doing. You're not playing your game, hell you're not even playing Warcraft - you're playing Counter the Harass. Choosing to harass is the trump card that says "I will have a disproportionate say in how everyone will play this game," and that's anti-fun at its worst.

Example 3: Stunlocking

Once again, DOTA was a big offender here. With the right items and a character that specialized in attack speed, you could keep an enemy hero stunned ad infinitum. Fun for the stunner? Hell yes, but at an absolutely atrocious cost to the poor sap on the receiving end. The biggest telltale sign of antifun is when a player literally can't do anything but respond to another player - stunlocking takes it further, making it so a player simply can't do anything. Period.

A Curious Case: Judges in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Yuuuuup, anti-fun can pop up in single-player games, too, though it certainly has a different feel because you're not balancing the anti-fun of one player against the fun of another. In FFTA, every battle began with a judge banning certain weapon or skill types. Failing to adhere to these rules resulted in harsh punishments. This is a clear-cut case of anti-fun, as the player gets to watch their agency vanish before their eyes. Through no fault of their own, the player is now being told how they can or can not play the game.

Balance or Design?

In reading those first three examples, the word that might have popped into your mind is "balance." That word, however, is not always the answer In the first example, you could make changes to the mana-burn skill, like making it a skill-shot projectile or tweaking some numbers, but at the end of the day, mana burn isn't a balance issue, it's a design issue. It's a skill whose sole purpose is to severely limit a player's options, and making some minor changes to its implementation isn't going to fix that. And sure, you could counter a harass in Warcraft, so it's not really a balance issue - it's a design flaw that has the enemy's choices taking precedence over yours. If they play the Harass Card, that sets the tone whether you like it or not. Stunlocking, on the other hand, is more of a balance issue. Stuns and other disables add a lot of depth to games like DOTA, but they need to be incorporated in such a way that they don't spiral out of control. Using skillshots, combos or triggers, cooldowns, or other such limitations help ensure that such tools feel good to use but not frustrating to receive. After all, if I have an opportunity to dodge out of the way of a skill-shot or delayed AoE stun, then there's fun on both ends - fun for me trying to dodge and fun for the enemy trying to hit.

Final Thoughts on Anti-Fun

As players, we don't want to spend all of time reacting to other players, and that's what anti-fun boils down to: you're just reacting. And I'm not promoting the unreasonable notion that players should be able to play however they want without interference, I am saying that there's a give and take, that the overall experience should depend on what all players bring to the table.

We hope you've enjoyed our look at anti-fun and that your next game will be free of it! Do you have any other examples of anti-fun from games you played, or disagree with our take on things? Let us know in the comments! Have ideas for topics or our format? Shoot us a PM! Talkin' Shop will return with the next installment, Access Denied! and a look at some of Bethesda Softworks' games.

It would be wrong to say that Guild Wars 2 doesn't have a resource mechanic. Tempting, but wrong. Sure, there's no real "cost" for using a skill (with a few class-specific exceptions like the Warrior's "Burst" skills), but there's a lot going on behind the scenes that you can easily miss. I know this because Arenanet's official forums are full of people missing the point. So get yourself educated as we take a look at how the seemingly simple world of Guild Wars 2 combat is actually pretty nifty.

The Resources

Ok, so there's no big blue orb of resources to spend on skills, so what exactly am I on about? As I see it, you have four resources: Health, Endurance, Position, and Time. Managing these resources carefully might not be important in a pushover, but it separates the sheep from the goats when things get a bit trickier. Let's take a quick look at what I mean by...

Health: Your most important resource, since it keeps you alive.

Endurance: Used for performing an evasive roll. It regenerates slowly in combat and a full supply is enough for a measly two rolls.

Position: Where are you relative to the things that want to kill you?

Time: Your enemies are wearing you down as much as you're wearing them down. It's just a race to see who gets there first.

So to see how all of these pull together, let's take a look at one encounter, a solo battle against a Veteran Ogre Champion (we'll call him "Fluffy" for short) through the eyes of an Engineer (based on my personal experience in this exact situation). I will put resources in bold and Skill Names in italics.

The Showdown:

My Engineer is a dual-pistoling, condition inflicting, boon-elixir-potion-chugging fiend. So when we enter the battle, I have good position and want to keep it. I set up my Rifle Turret and in order to maximize my damage before Fluffly can destroy it, I use Glue Shot to set up a puddle of glue, slowing Fluffy's advance. My turret gets a few shots off before Fluffy wails on it and I blow it up in his face to squeeze in some extra damage. However, Fluffy is now looking to get me, so I trade some endurance for some position by rolling backwards. I immediately realize that I should have instead stood my ground, blinding Fluffy with Static Shot and getting in a few shots before rolling away. Fluffy nails me with a thrown boulder, knocking me down. I've lost a lot of health and position, as by the time I'm back on my feet, Fluffy has closed to melee range. I blind him, but some bad timing means it doesn't do me a lot of good, so I have to spend all of my endurance to roll out the other way. At this point I'm stalling for time because my stun and my slow are on cooldown, so I have no way of controlling Fluffy. I use my healing skill, but it's clear that I can't outheal Fluffy's damage - I need to maximize my damage or I will run out of time.

So to help me out, I down an Elixir B for a damage boost and then get clever: I use my 9th skill to swap to a grenade kit, which replaces my weapon skills with grenade skills (while my weapon skills still recharge their cooldowns). That's how I make the most of my time! I unleash my grenade skills one after the other, then swap back to my normal weapon skills. They're ready to go, and I use my slow and blind to buy me more time to stack more conditions on fluffy and set up a new turret. However, a few seconds later I find Fluffy right in front of me about to hit me with a big swing. I'm backed into a corner, so I have to roll past him, meaning I'll hold on to my health, which is about half-full, but I don't really gain in position, as I'll still be within melee range.

I find myself running short of endurance throughout the battle, and since rolling backwards is the easiest way to gain position, it mean's I'm short on that, too. My Elixir B skill gives me a damage boost, but also a speed boost, so I have to choose between downing it and opening up on fluffy for max damage, or slamming it down and then turning to make a full retreat using the speed boost. In a sense, both are keeping me alive, as the shortage of endurance means that the occasional boulder or massive club will connect with my head, so killing Fluffy quickly is just as important as staying out of harm's way.

I opt to put some distance between us, so I have a few seconds to unload before Fluffy closes in again. However, he's still well out of melee range when I make a terrible mistake: I spam a skill. I use Static Shot just because I can, but the blind goes to waste because Fluffy is still far away anyways. He closes in, and I'm out of endurance, so I can't dodge out. I pay for my mistake with almost all of my health. A minute later I make another mistake: I blind Fluffy and then spend some endurance to dodge out of the way of his attack, even though the poor blind ogre is guaranteed to miss. That one cost me, too, but not fatally.

And after some close calls, I slay the mighty Fluffy (those two other players who came in at the end were lovely, but unnecessary, I assure you). Sure, I wasn't juggling mana costs or anything like that, but I was making cost-related choices nonetheless. I had to make the most of my skills and use them at the right time, not just whenever they were available. And rest assured, this is not unique to the Engineer. Melee classes tend to place a lower premium on position, so they can use their endurance to simply evade attacks and preserve health. Or maybe they need to pay a little health up front to wade into a big group of enemies and to make the most of a devastating area attack. The point is, Guild Wars 2 has a lot going on, but most of it is going on in the actual field of combat, not some mana pool off to the side, and I think it works.

I hate MMOs. Or at least, I hate what we think of of when we think of MMOs. The original Guild Wars drew me in because it was essentially a Collectible Card Game (CCG, like Magic: The Gathering) and eventually left me feeling cold as it became bloated and unbalanced and picked up more of the typical MMO trappings.

So it might come as a surprise to hear that Guild Wars 2, which is technically a MMO in the way that the heavily instanced Guild Wars was not, is pretty much my favorite thing - at least from what I've played of the beta. There are tons of things to talk about, but I'll just pick the few biggest winners and losers here and save more detailed item-specific analysis for other posts (or the ensuing flame wars in the comments).

What I did: Over the two "Beta Weekend Events" (BWEs), I tried out 5 of the 8 available classes. I tried 2 of the 5 races (Human and Norn) but didn't spend much time outside of the human zones because I didn't want to see everything before release. I spent a vast majority of my time in PvE, though I did play some team PvP and the server showdown "World vs. World vs. World" large-scale PvP (we'll call it WvW for short).

What Worked:

1. You actually want to see other players. Loot, experience, resource nodes, you name it - you sacrifice none of it when you run across other players out in the world. This has had a huge effect on the social dynmanic in-game: players frequently call out for help or to point out a new event happening that they want other people to experience. If a typicall PvE experience in an MMO is "dog eat dog," Guild Wars 2 is "dog help dog." It was actually relaxing. Is that possible?

2. The scaling. You never really feel out of place in Guild Wars 2. For example, in a typical MMO, a level 20 character is going to steamroll a level 5 area, but in GW2, you're scaled down to an area's level if you're way above it. Sure, you'll have the added bonus of your better equipment and skills, but you will not be a god amongst insects. The effect is twofold: first, you can always return to (or explore other) low-level areas and still find a challenge and second, you won't see any super-high level characters griefing you in the starter areas. Also, Dynamic Events (think "quests") scale depending on the number of players involved, and while the extra firepower you get definitely makes things slightly easier, you don't have to worry about an event becoming trivial just because a lot of people are working on it.

3. The feel of combat. Simply put, it's active and fast-paced. This is not a "hit your skill bar and trade hits" type of game. You'll need to dodge and maneuver to make it through the day, and if you're anything like me, you'll feel like a champ when your skills (usually reserved for paying the bills) allow you to take down higher-level enemies. Skills feel general enough to be consistently useful but complex enough that you'll be rewarded for using them smartly.

4. Versatility. Arenanet has long talked about how they hope to break the "tank-heal-DPS" model for MMOs (and really, any team-based RPG), and I have to say, they've done it and then some. Every class can do a little of everything, but more importantly, they do it all differently. For example, my Engineer survives by using Blinding attacks and an AoE slow, whereas my Thief uses Interrupts, Stealth, and skills with built-in Evasion, and my Warrior uses thick armor and some tactical skills (or a shield if I'm feeling like it). For damage, it's the same idea: my Engineer prefers damage over time, my Thief goes for big spikes, and my Warrior likes to start off with a rifle before swapping to a greatsword to charge in for the kill. The ability of most classes to quickly swap between two weapon sets and use a variety of ranged and melee weapons just drives home the fact that you can make any class do just about anything, but without making the various classes feel any less unique.

Some Issues:

1) Lots of buttons. You'll end up with 10 skills in your bar (5 weapon skills, a healing skill, 3 utility skill, and and "Elite" skill) as well as up to 4 "class" skills that live ABOVE the skill bar and are accessed using the F1-F4 keys. Trying to access the right skill at the right time while dodging about and keep the camera where you want it can be an iffy and sometimes painful proposition. I found using Shift+1-5 to use skills 6-10 helped a bit, but my left hand still felt a bit overworked.

2) Bigger isn't better. I think that GW2 has been at its best in groups of 4-6 people (EDIT: 4-6 for boss events, 2-4 for most everything else). At that scale, everything feels social and active without being a clusterfuck. A lot of it has to do with the visual style of the game, which is very active and as a result can quickly feel very busy. It's why the 5v5 PvP feels far messier than the original Guild Wars' 4v4, even though it's only an extra 2 players. In the massive WvW events where it's typical to see 40-man battles, you really just spam your skills and hope for the best. The thing is that GW2 eschews a traditional resource system (skills don't cost anything to use, they just have a cooldown), and while it really works on a small scale where the nuances of the combat system feel present and important, that system loses its precision when things get big. As a result I found myself spending a lot more time in PvE than PvP.

I'm On The Fence About:

1) WvW. The scale and grand strategy of it are pretty impressive, but the combat is just too unsatisfying to do it justice. It's like watching a brilliantly written and directed movie with terrible actors. Sure, it's a great movie, but it's not always that much fun to watch because at the end of the day, it's the actors you have to live with. WvW is an incredible setting for a meal that isn't that satisfying. It's an awesome spaceship but it's made out of toothpicks. It's [metaphor or simile of your choice].

EDIT: I also had massive framerate hits in WvW, which certainly killed the sense of precision. Hopefully I'll have some new hardware in before the next BWE, and we'll see if that helps.

2) Dynamic Events. When the events connect to other events or make some sort of tangible (but fleeting) impact on the world, they really work. Like this one event where you have to clear out a cave full of troublesome Grawl and then, if you succeed, you have to gather resources to build an ice sculpture in their cave? That was cool! Or the one where bandits try to poison a reservoir and if they fail to stop them, it triggers a new event where you need to run around killing blobs of toxic ooze and collecting samples? That was nice because the result felt immediate. However, too many of the events are boring escort affairs or glorified (and usually overly drawn-out) variations on "Kill Ten Rats" for the whole thing to get a solid stamp of approval.

Final Comments:

I have other minor quibbles with Guild Wars 2 as it is right now, but I think we've covered all the love/hate/maybe in the game's fundamental systems. In short, it's absolutely brilliant. Much like Skyrim, it feels like there is really no wrong way to play it - you just jump in and start doing whatever works for you and you'll have a good time with it. This might not work for hardcore MMOers who misinterpret the flexibility as simplicity, but it's perfect for anyone looking for some solid mechanics in a world that would rather reward you for your victories than punish you for your shortcomings. What's even more incredible is that in my time with the beta, I've not once said to myself "man, I wish this other player would just leave me alone." It's too soon to tell if that's the result of a good community or of sharp design that supports collaboration over confrontation, but whatever it is, it has to be a first for games like this.

Or maybe there aren't games like this, and that's the problem.

About two weeks back I spent some time with the Torchlight 2 beta. Let's break down the things that did, didn't, and might work, all while trying to avoid comparisons to Diablo 3 (spoiler alert: there will be comparisons to Diablo 3). Keep in mind that this is not a review or representative of the release product (since that's not really possible yet...) it's just a collection of the ups and downs that I experienced in my few days with the beta.

What I did: I played with all four of the game's classes: The Outlander, the Engineer, the Berserker, and the Embermage. I took three of them to about level 13 and took the engineer all the way through the beta's content, which went up to about level 20. I played on the “Veteran” difficulty (one higher than default, one lower than the hardest).

What Worked:

1. The world. The story is setup from the get-go, you have a sense of purpose, and the landscape is filled with interesting characters, some of which offer you side quests and fun little backstories to go with them. Be it in a dungeon or the overland areas (new to the Torchlight series), this is a world that just begs to be explored.

2. The art. Don't let the cartoonish vibes fool you – Torchlight 2's art has got some real legs. It was more than capable of conveying a sense of dread and gloom to match the game's story, which starts off in a similar fashion. Characters look fantastic in their various bits of equipment, with rare and powerful items giving an equally significant bit of visual flair to let your enemies know what they're up against.

3. The skills. Packed within the traditional 3-branched skill tree are a bucketload of skills that are fun to use and even more fun to look at. Even the lowest-level skills look dramatic and feel powerful enough that they'll maintain their usefulness even as you start unlocking new skills.

4. The loot. That sweet, sweet loot. A steady supply of level-appropriate equipment poured out of chests and defeated foes, and oh, it was glorious. I was even able to complete a 4-piece set by level 20!

Things That Concern Me

1. Permanent builds. Much like the orignial Torchlight (and almost all other ARPGs since Diablo 2), gaining a level in Torchlight 2 gives you points to spend both on your characters stats and their skills. However, once you make those choices, they are pretty much permanent. There is a very limited skill respec system (unlimited respecs up through level 10, and no respecs at all after that) and all stat point allocations are permanent. It turned what should have been the joyous experience of leveling up into a bit of a worry, as each new level brought a decision I would have to live with forever. Coming from Diablo 3, which allows me to try out new builds on a whim, I found the added stress most unwelcome and incredibly disappointing.

2. Character development railroads. Advocates of Torchlight's traditional leveling system will be quick to argue that it allows for more creativity with builds than one might find in recent AAA action RPGs (yes, I'm talking about Diablo 3), but Torchlight 2's stat system simply has too many shoehorns built into the stats for that to be true. For example, the “Focus” stat increases elemental damage, expands your pool of mana (spent to use skills), and, if you're dual-wielding similar weapons, increases the odds that you will perform an “Execute” attack that attacks with both weapons simultaneously. However, if you're playing as a character that doesn't dual-wield or do a lot of elemental damage but needs more mana available for skills, you're out of luck. Sure, you could put points into Focus to get the mana you need, but doing so puts you at a relative disadvantage, as you're only able to capitalize on a fraction of the what the Focus stat is all about. So you have a choice – either put points into focus and effectively cripple your character's other stats (it take a LOT of extra focus to get a meaningful bump in mana) or forego Focus and stick to using your basic attack, which uses no mana (and would be incredibly dull).

3. The potion spamming. Not since the late great Titan Quest has a game so heavily relied on potions as the main mechanism for managing resources. One thing I love about Diablo 3 is that the ebb and flow of health and mana (or its equivalent) is central to the gameplay and is handled via cleverly designed skills, not potions. Torchlight 2, on the other hand, has a pretty simple “spend mana on skills, get it back with potions” setup that just feels hollow. One major exception to this is the Engineer class, which has an absolutely incredible charge mechanic that elevates the game above the potion-fest (see my other post, Why The Engineer is the Best Thing About Torchlight II for more on that). Worst of all, boss fights usually come down to the question, “did I bring enough potions to win this fight?” which is just criminal.

I'm On The Fence About...

1. The “Charges”. All four classes build up a charge as they damage enemies. This charge's effect varies from class to class – Embermages, for example, gain the ability to cast spells for free (and with some extra oomph) when their charge bar is full, while filling up the Berserker's charge bar grants him a brief period of fury in which every attack becomes a critical hit. While the Engineer's and Berserker's charge effects add a great deal to how those characters play, the effects for the Embermage and Outlander (who simply gains passive damage bonuses based on how full the charge bar is) feel pretty lousy. The Embermage's charge might be more satisfying if it were functionally different from drinking a mana potion, which has a measly seven second cooldown.

2. Enchanters. Instead of having an enchanter in town who can add random effects to your items for a cost, you find enchanters scattered about the game world. While it's nice to have a huge reward for exploring the world, I'm not sure I like the idea of having to venture out into the wilds every time I feel like enchanting something or the fact that I might just not find any enchanters at all (only one of my four characters found an enchanter at all).

3. The difficulty. The good news is that combat is more about surviving consistent damage, which is more fun than Diablo 3's all-or-nothing spike fest. The bad news is that the difficulty can be all over the place. Things jump around between too easy, too hard, and right-on-the-money without any real explanation. Some bosses are pushovers, some are near impossible, and others just require you to keep downing potions as the fight drags on and on and on...

4. The gems. To encourage you to actually use your gems (which can be placed in socketed items to gain bonus effects), Torchlight 2 has done away with the practice of combining multiple copies of a gem to create a more powerful version of that gem. So now you can just throw a gem into a socketed item without worrying about the fact that you're actually throwing away an opportunity to create a better gem down the road. The only downside is that I didn't see any way to remove a gem once it had been inserted into an item, meaning that if you want to replace that poison damage gem with a fire damage gem, you're out of luck.

My Final Comments:

All in all, my time with the Torchlight 2 beta was huge fun at times, but far too uneven. At the moment it definitely feels like a step forward from Torchlight, but the original Torchlight was itself a mere step sideways from other action RPGs. Coming from Diablo 3, the Torchlight 2 beta definitely felt old-fashioned, and while it does the old-fashioned stuff as well as it's ever been done, it still feels far behind the times overall; for example, it's got some great skill trees, but it doesn't fix the issues that have plagued skill trees since the dawn of time (one-point-wonders, buyer's remorse, etc). I'm hoping that between now and release that Torchlight 2 can move from being a good Torchlight game to being a properly great action RPG.

And hey, don't forget to check out my other article, Why The Engineer is the Best Thing About Torchlight II, which talks about... well, you can probably figure it out.

My time with the Torchlight 2 beta featured some incredible highs and some disappointing lows. A lot of things about the game felt carelessly designed, which can't be shrugged off with a “well, it's just a beta,” especially with the expected release date so quickly approaching. However, the Engineer class offered a glimpse into what the future could hold for Torchlight.

The biggest problem I had with Torchlight 2's actual action was the lazy resource management system. Need mana? Drink a potion! It's not an incredibly deep system, especially compared to how resources are implemented in Diablo 3, with each class having various ways to spend and recover their skill-using resource. Of course, Torchlight 2 has another resource, the class-specific “charge” resource, which is built by damaging enemies but has class-specific effects and usage. However, I found that the charge mechanic didn't bring enough to the table to make resource management interesting, with one massive exception: The Engineer. Let's take a look at how the Engineer's charge mechanic brings some much needed depth to Torchlight 2 and makes it more than a potion-drinking simulator.

The first thing you need to know is that the Engineer is the only class whose charge is measured in discrete stages, from zero to five charges. Sure, you can have 3.5 charges, but that extra half a charge won't have any effect on skills that are based on charge level – it's just progress toward your next charge. There are three things you can do with an Engineer's charge: build it, spend it, or use it to empower skills without actually spending it (we'll call this “accessing” charge). The way these three facets of charge interact both with each other and the Engineer's mana pool creates some of the best action RPG combat I've ever seen. There's simply incredible risk-reward action going on, and the need to balance mana, charge, offense, and defense keeps things fresh and exciting in a way I just didn't get with the more passive charge mechanics of the other classes. Let's take a look at the faces of charge and why they work so well for the Engineer:

Building Charge:

Since charge quickly fades when you're out of combat, you'll usually enter a battle with no charge and full mana. You can build up your charge rather slowly by using your basic attack, but doing so means that you're delaying access to your charge. Meanwhile, your mana is sitting there at full, so your mana regeneration is going to waste. Fortunately, the Engineer has access to skills that will generate more charge than a normal hit, but cost some mana to use. This creates an interesting bit of risk-reward gameplay – use your charge-generating skills overzealously and you won't have enough mana to use skills later in the battle. Get too stingy with the skills, however, and you won't have enough charge to spend, which will greatly limit your defensive and offensive abilities.

Accessing Charge:

Some skills don't spend charge, but instead just gain bonuses based on how much charge you currently have. For example, the skill Ember Hammer can be used regardless of your charge level, but does an extra 10% damage for each level of charge you have. Since Ember Hammer doesn't spend charge or have have a cooldown period (some skills do), you can unleash a flurry of consecutive extra-damage attacks – provided you have the mana. This is the “reward” part of the risk-reward aspect of building up charge; if you were able to build up charge without spending too much mana, you'll be able to use the fully-empowered Ember Hammer more times (and you'll get a better return on your mana than if you used Ember Hammer more times at a lower charge). The fact that you don't lose any charge with this skill (and several others like it) help make the “race to the top charge level” a fun and rewarding experience.

Spending Charge:

While no skill requires that you have any charge, many skills will consume some or all of your charge if any is available. In return, the skill will gain bonus effects. Two such skills are Flame Hammer, an area attack which will use one charge to gain extra range and damage, and Forcefield, which creates a defensive barrier around the Engineer that absorbs a small amount of damage, but will consume all available charges and increase the absorption amount based on the number of charges consumed. The bonuses for spending charge tend to be better than the bonuses you get for merely accessing charge, which makes sense since you're actually losing charge in the process. But now you have a lot of (fun!) questions to ask yourself in a battle. Should you spend some charge with Flame Hammer to try to thin out the herd of enemies as early as possible at the cost of being able to use fewer fully-charged Ember Hammers? Should you wait until you have all five charges before using Forcefield to get the most defensive bang for your mana, or will that leave you with no charge and not enough mana to quickly rebuild it?

In short, what makes the Engineer's charge mechanic work so well is that it functions as an interesting resource, something that Torchlight 2 appears to be sorely lacking. While the interplay between charge and mana would be even more special if you couldn't have your cake and eat it too by just spending mana to build charge and then drinking a mana potion, it still works as-is. When compared to the other “get a bonus for filling it up” charge mechanics for the other classes, the Engineer's charge provides versatility, depth, and most importantly, fun. When you build that charge quickly using the right combo of skills and basic attacks, access it for a series of powerful attacks, and then spend it to either mop up your enemies or gain a defensive edge against tougher foes, it feels absolutely incredible. And when you fail miserably, you know it was because you didn't balance your mana and charge needs very well. The other classes in Torchlight 2 have this sort of inevitability about them – you either have the stats required to win a fight or you don't, and that inevitability and lack of excitement is mirrored in their charge mechanics. With the Engineer, though, every battle is a hands on affair, and it's a thing of beauty.