Titan Quest in 2019 - Toughts and Opinions

[sauruz]

Hello!

As the year is almost ending, and i doubt there will be anyhting new for the game in next days , i was thinking in doing litle feedback about whatt happend with the game during this year.

Note: this is based on my opinion, you can agree and disagree at your will

Lets get started

In  9th May , Titan Quest had new brand expansion "Atlantis", wich brings a new side adventure with new monsters/areas/ itens and 2x new skills per mastery. All sounds good in paper...right? But it was a disaster in many aspects.

1-Most of newest areas had and still have low performance, which can cause crashes. *Tartarus arena*

2-Most of the itens (legendarys) didnt drop ingame and if they do they were blank. ( i think they still dont drop (?))

3-Lv 40 skills,  its seens it were copy past from something else, like doppleganger on dream mastery, while some are kinda bad ( lighting dash), and the rest *Phalanax*

4-Mods, duo of "brand new modding tools" all the mods or 90% of then didnt work on current version of the game, i beleive, you can judge me, caused a serious damage , specially on modding community. The worse thing is they took nearly two month to "fix the issue" , sadly older mods do not work anymore, for exemple lith.


After the release, the game had six patches, wich it resolve ( well more or less) some major problems but sadly it brought more bugs ( like the freeze invisible effect).

Was 2019 good for Titan Quest ? Well...Yes and No.

It is good to see the game getting updates and having more content, but in the way it was show and implemented was not the ideial. I still like and love the game, as you know nothing is perfect , being honest i hope in 2020 be more focus in fixing the major problems and balacing the current content , than doing more expansions.

What do you think ? Was 2019 good for TQ ?

[botebote77]

5-Random lines appearing on screens
6-Worthless quests (all of them)
7-Pets not allowed still doesn't make sense (is it allowed now?)

and i don't know now but early release of Atlantis, it wasn't just legendaries that have blank stats.. iirc i got many MIs that don't have stats

[Prosoro]

Woah so much salt in here lol

A good topic Sauruz, theres definitely been a lot that has happened to Titan Quest in the last year or so.. for better or worse.

My perspective is that the release of Atlantis, if nothing else, shows there is an interest in the franchise and therefore potential for future content.  Of course after reading that I'm sure many will instantly reply with something like "yeeeah but if the future of TQ means moar buggy/imbalanced/unoptimised content etc etc then no thanks.."

But the thing is; Really? who are you kidding? It's 2019 and we got an all new DLC for a beloved game that came out in 2006! That's some rare odds, like Revenant Plate rare. 

And if there's a chance of something new in the new year, whatever form it may take, I can bet we'll all be there for it because it's TQ and we're fans. Ultimately, IMO we want to see this game continue. 
I think the salt comes from people wanting the best and seeing something that falls short, and I get that for sure, but I guess I look at both the bad and the good.  It's always easy to point out the flaws in things, and @sauruz @botebote77 this is not targeting you guys, I just mean in general :J

Anyway, so now I guess you might be thinking "Okay Prosoro, what's the other side of the coin? Where are these good points eh?"

Well, the first is what I detailed above right - New content which means longevity, continued support and a potential future for TQ

As for Atlantis:

a) New locations (always welcome after playing the other acts for yknow - Years!)
b) New assets (As a modder this is awesome)
c) New gear and build potential (until recently I didn't realise that a great majority of these are broken/currently cannot drop ingame - but nonetheless! It's there and surely this will be fixed)
d) More attention on the game - Atlantis (and Ragnarok) helped to reach new players, grow the community, and inspire fresh mods
e) QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS (seriously, this DLC added a fair amount of these, some minor and others highly requested!)
f) Music lol (okay this one I only add to fill out the list but atleast for myself I thought the Atlantis OST was great and fit well with the ancient world vibe)
g) Of the Tinkerer (a single affix yet this one thing has a huge impact, and since it only drops in Atlantis there's incentive to play here)
h) Graphical enhancements (complain about fps and optimization if you want, but this imo is not only welcome but also quite necessary to keep up in 2019)

So yeah I believe it has been a good year for Titan Quest > overall < and I'm looking forward to 2020   

[botebote77]

lol don't want to sound salty.. i like that masteries now reaches lvl 40..... aaaand honestly that's the only good thing i see in Atlantis.. but hey at least there is one

QoL -I've read many people liked this.. but for me, i guess because i got used to old games that don't have many QoL features so this doesn't really help me in any big way.. only one when I'm playing sage.. what CrocMagnum said in his avenger guide, that casting squall + study prey all the time will burn your fingers or something, i really experienced that when i made a sage.. quick cast eliminated that problem.. but really it's just for one character that i don't play much anymore

of the tinkerer is good but i think it's mostly good for jewelries.. so you can just portal to Gadir, shop farm the merchants, portal to other acts, then portal back to Gadir.. no need to play Atlantis lolz.. i guess it's also good for helms for double crystal of erebus.. too OP, don't want to do that.. weapons? i don't use weapons lolz

but hey there's still a little bit of positives.. just that they could've done it much better

[sauruz]

Im not salty or saying anyhting bad , i just collected some data from numerous places , specially the point number 4 wich affect me alot, being honest i was litle frustrated,  as i said nothing is perfect, i still love and enjoy Titan Quest very much, as its still my main game.

Of course Atlantis have good things, like the scenary visuals,  the monster models ( about time we have aquatic monsters variety) but its important to point the bad things as well. To help then get fixed.

I do beleive the game will be become even better for nexts years.

2020 will be good year specially with alot of mods coming to TQ 

[efko]

I believe next period will bring more positive opinions since some people are working to improve all the things that they can. And without doubts, incoming year will be even better (maybe Lilith II is incoming or something similar, who knows) 

[WNG]

I wholeheartedly agree with you Sauruz.

• Atlantis was a very dissapointing addition. Not only would it add a mostly uninteresting bonus area (though it looks nice visually), it would also come with a load of issues. Low FPS, more crashes, more bugs. How do you break the artifacts so you can craft them without needing reagents? This is beyond me.
• Most of the new Atlantis items are very uninspired. Most of the MIs are copy-pasted (all Reefguard items are the same, all Goldfang are the same.) Granted skills are either Tier 7 or already existing, over-used skills (why is Runeword: Explode at so many places even...)
• The issues caused to the modding scene seriously made me want to quit modding at all. Some people may argue but without modding, this game wouldn't be where it is right now. Without mods, the playerbase would be much smaller. Look at how many people crave for a new Soulvizier, it should tell you something. While modding shouldn't be Nordic's absolute priority, they should be careful to not make it harder for us.
• Maybe it is just me but this attempt at being in touch with the community with the Blog posts feels really weak. It feels like they are being written in 15 minutes.

I really hope they have something good in store for 2020, after they finish controller support and DLC port to consoles. I seriously wish the best for this game, but sometimes I doubt if the devs even care.

[Hector]

I don't use Atlantis and I know I never will.. the reasons are already laid down above so I can only add that IT DOES NOT HAVE THE SOUL ORIGINAL TITAN QUEST HAS.. the same claim can be made for general atmosphere, maps, items, quests, skills, you name it..

I know that no one will agree with this part, but I also don't like Ragnarok that much either.. they should have never deviated from the original mythology in the first place.. I mean there are still many many legends/stories to be utilized in Greek mythology.. another cultural theme was never needed IMO..

Additionally, the game got buggier and buggier as the expansions came out.. performance wise, item balance wise, skills wise, everything got worse instead of getting better..

I pray for the new Soulvizier mod.. it is the only thing that keeps my attention on this game for the moment.. I hope that we will be able to play it without this worthless Atlantis addition..

   

[icefreeze]

.........
.. I hope that we will be able to play it without this worthless Atlantis addition.. 

Eh, new Soulvizier mod require Atlantis 
https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=349.msg13540#msg13540

[soa]

Just adding a question here : I read somewhere that it's not possible anymore to create mastery mods with more than 32 levels if you don't have Atlantis. And that it is hardcoded or something.
If this is true, it would be another reason why I can't make SV work without Atlantis.