Torchlight Infinite Drama

Recently i've been heavily invested in poe2 that i've neglected many of my other diablolikes.

One of them being torchlight infinite (TLI). i've sang praises for it previously, and have always recommended it.

one of the key detriments that i turned a blind eye to is the pet system which is essentially it's p2w system.

the reason why i turned a blind eye is because if you did not get the p2w pets you did get other bonuses in return to balance out the fact you did not use p2w pets. also, at the end game, the pets can boost your power by maybe 10%? you still need to farm and craft your gear, which is where most of your power came from so in a way it was kinda neglible.

in fact XD (company behind the game) recently made changes to the monetization where heroes (think poe classes but beyond the first 3 need to be unlocked by earning hero points in game to purchase or just buying them with cash) were unlocked by default except the new seasonal hero (which would be then unlocked at the end of the season unless you bought a battle pass).

they also introduced ways to earn the p2w pets for free players. so its an overall win for f2p players.

recently i've been updating myself on TLI, i knew a new season was announced and wanted to see what it was all about.

its always interesting for me to see what new stuff is being added.

but besides the new season info i learned something else that i found highly disappointing.

maxroll has discontinued their partnership with XD.

In a lengthy post they talked about how their relationship was with XD and how they had always been against p2w. they also detailed how they suggested XD to make 2 versions of the game, one to cater to western market with less/no p2w while the other with TLI "as is" for the eastern market. their suggestions were met with deaf ears. there were also a lot of empty promises. similar to how the game was not going to be p2w but ultimately ended up p2w.

theres a lot being said but the most important bit is how they highlighted that XD has reworked their pet system so that the pets provide MUCH MORE BONUS.

this widens the gap between paid players vs non paying players. in the post they highlighted how a single pet can now boost drops by an estimate of 70%. you can equip 3 pets!

reading on the subreddits and elsewhere people point out that with the new pet systems in place, with optimal pets, players can double their damage output.

this is definitely not the game i praised and defended. 10% player power from pets was not good but it was something i felt i could turn a blind eye. but DOUBLE the damage? fuck no. this has gone full p2w.

recently XD has released a statement, more or less saying thanks for the previous partnership and respectfully moving forward. saying they're listening to feedback but making another western version of the game would take too much resources and that they prefer it as is.

p2w is a slippery slope. i would still say tli is a good game but with it heavily leaning more into p2w. i no longer would vouch/defend or recommend this game.

people have pointed out that the players that go for challenges such as the free pet challenge are usually p2w-ers. the clear rate for that challenge is abysmal and is paradoxical in nature. in order to clear the free pet challenge you need to be super strong. to be super strong u need p2w pets. if you have p2w pets you likely dont really need the free pets. on the flipside if you're a free player its just insanely difficult to accomplish that you practically just cant earn a free pet.

nothing has changed except the free players get to eat shit.

it saddens me that it ended up this way. i personally dropped a few hundred bucks supporting this game buying COSMETICS instead of pets.

it still is a good game behind all the p2w bullshit and you still can get somewhat far without paying. but with the current direction of further leaning into becoming even more p2w i just cant support it any more.

its also sad to me because of another 2 reasons.

1. it carries the legacy of being a "torchlight" game. tl3 sucked ass, many tl lovers dont consider tli as part of the "main series", but as much as they dont acknowledge it, TLI is the successor to the TL series.

2. i like more diablolikes to be successful because i like the genre. in a way i like other diablolikes to be successful also because they can pose competition to GGG and encourage them to do even better. i know that ggg is no blizzard, but thats what happened to blizzard. they were overconfident thinking that their diablo brandname and nostalgia will carry their company forward. they got damn complacent and after their last expansion released i lost all interest in their franchise.

i know ggg would not make that same mistake but competition is always good. as is poe2's biggest competition could be poe1.

lol, i see you read that weird ass maxroll rant huh? as per the double damage thats if you have all 3 pack spirits of the best kind for your build. 1 pack spirit generally gives 20-30% damage, theirs also very easy ways to get these packspirits for free especially after the changes they did.

yeah i read the rant. its more than a rant tho as they actually cut their partnership with them.

there definitely are ways to get some low tier pact spirits for free easily such as progression.

but it takes a very long time to get the better ones. and getting them leveled is another issue.

to me the biggest detractor is the magnitude.

for example its reasonable to assume a player could get 3 pets that give more drops. 25% more drops each as it's their level 1 bonus.

that totals to 75% more drops

but getting them to level 6, which is what whales COULD do, would give them a bonus of roughly 75% more drops EACH. that gives a grand total of 215% more drops.

thats just using drops as an example. if we took a pet spirit thats damage based. you can see how big of a difference the numbers can get.

of course you could pretend the free draws you get is enough. but thats just a lot of copium.

having weaker pets makes it harder to clear content and takes you longer to amass wealth.

it simply feels bad to be weaker because you dont pay.

imagine if we played poe and you could pay to get an extra 2 additional ascendancy points, 20 additional passive points and 30 atlas passive points.

you technically could play poe without them but it feels bad to know that you're weaker than the player that paid.

I'm gonna guess that Maxlol have been looking to cut their ties with TLI for a while, it's not a particularly popular game (12k max player count on Steam for the brand new season) and thus doesn't bring them much ad revenue. Their guides are really suffering at the moment because they have a load of people making guides for 5 different games and the quality of the guides is suffering, especially older guides that got updated by someone who isn't even playing the current version. Maybe if they stop trying to cover so many games the quality might get better.

I agree, it's bad that this happened to TLI. I play on ssf and in the rating the player is in first place with a pet with +2 quantity to proj. There is almost no way to get this in the game. I won't even mention farming specific mechanics without pets. It remains to wait for GGG to release PoE2, I believe only in them.