I’ve thought about it more and more and now have a changed stance in all this. Earlier I stated that I acknowledge that they stated that a timer wouldn’t be there and then decided to add a soft enrage mechanic which is essentially a timer that ramps up the difficulty over time. When I think to another roguelike game that I enjoyed I think of Risk of Rain 2.
How it functioned was pretty much almost the exact same as Torghast. You enter a level, you kill for currency and opened chests to get upgrades, activate the boss at the end, kill them and then head to the next level. Something worth noting too was the timer was more based on how long you were in your run and it was forever scaling. So having knowledge in what to grab and doing so quickly so you’re not getting extremely hard enemies early game was definitely something you’d naturally wanted to do. You could also hit these pylons where more than one boss would spawn and when they were defeated, your reward was even bigger.
But since Torghast is already scaling itself up in difficulty per level, a timer isn’t necessary in that department. I think what’s important is allowing players to set the difficulty themselves. For me personally since I’m not really new and usually have time for content such as this a timer doesn’t affect me. But after much thought I can understand how it can be an issue for others and already had the thought of how it contradicts what was advertised.
So here’s my suggestion. Remove the timer. But add extra parts to the Tower that make things more risky but it’s only risky because the player decided it to be so. Extra bosses, secret rooms with obstacles or rooms that apply those affixes that are being added, alternate pathways ect. ect.
For me, the timer isn’t a dealbreaker. So it’s not going to affect me one way or another. But for growth of the game and retaining players excitement, I’d say the smarter move would be to retain what you had before the torments and change your direction to allow players curiosity to set the pace of the run, rather than trying to give players a small push to not AFK mid run. Which at the end of the day, what’s the risk of allowing them to do that in Torghast?