Demons Age by Bigmoon Studios - turn-based RPG "highly inspired" by Chaos Chronicles

[passerby]

Eh no, no it doesn't. You can have preset characters as the default and an advanced option to start with a custom character.

There is, however, a plan to develop a Custom Character Creator in the near future.

On consoles predefined chars will do fine, but on PC you can only loose on review scores by not having chargen interface on day one. Most people will bitch about it, casuals won't care, no one will consider it positive.
If you have some time due to console certification, it should be your team first priority to deliver simple, single screen minimalistic chargen on day one.

 

[Alienman]

8000 hours. That is dedication right there.

 

[Jimmious]

121 hours Back In Action

 

[Purple Dogg]

I won't be digging back old posts but, given the latest subject of preset characters, it was a hard call. I don't particularly like it myself, but it helps to ease up the constraints new players have when jumping into this kind of games.

Eh no, no it doesn't. You can have preset characters as the default and an advanced option to start with a custom character.

There is, however, a plan to develop a Custom Character Creator in the near future.

Cool! How near future do you suppose that'll be?

I agree with you. But, given that the game was meant to be multi-platform from the start (PS4/X1/PC) and that the rate of hardcore cPRG players on consoles is not that high, since we wanted to make sure the game is appealing that audience too, aligned with the first tests we made with people that chose classes that didn't have much synergy with the races (hindering their chances to progress in the game, because the difficulty would rise), we decided to create 16 characters with all races with the most suitable classes for each of them.

We already have a functional custom character creator (for test/dev purposes) and we intend to release it after the retail release which will happen later on in july. As I think I've mentioned, that was my first issue as soon as I laid my hands on the game, so I'm with you on this and I hope this gets released soon too

As for why are the portraits in 3D, it's a fully rendered image of your character with whatever you have equipped. So it changes whenever you equip something, instead of being a 2D static image. I'd rather have it as it is, in this case. I like to see changes on the portraits as I equip something.



Janise: what? No Friends add? Pffft
bear in mind that I go waaaaaaaaaaaaay back. I'm an old dude... games like Jagged Alliance I, II, Crossfire and Wildfire and so many others were played thoroughly prior to having its' playtime counted on steam Also, around 3000+ hours of dota are streaming/watching watching games or simply afk because I went to bed and left it running Also, recently i've been playing offline so that my kids can use the shared games feature to play on the steam link. Cool feature.

EDIT - 75h on GameMaker... i WISH it had only been 75h

 

[Andhaira]

I won't be digging back old posts but, given the latest subject of preset characters, it was a hard call. I don't particularly like it myself, but it helps to ease up the constraints new players have when jumping into this kind of games.

Eh no, no it doesn't. You can have preset characters as the default and an advanced option to start with a custom character.

There is, however, a plan to develop a Custom Character Creator in the near future.

Cool! How near future do you suppose that'll be?

I agree with you. But, given that the game was meant to be multi-platform from the start (PS4/X1/PC) and that the rate of hardcore cPRG players on consoles is not that high, since we wanted to make sure the game is appealing that audience too, aligned with the first tests we made with people that chose classes that didn't have much synergy with the races (hindering their chances to progress in the game, because the difficulty would rise), we decided to create 16 characters with all races with the most suitable classes for each of them.

Are you using a customer game engine instead of 3.5e or Pathfinder? Because that is the only way this statement makes any kind of 'sense' to me. Otherwise in base d20 games like 3e/3.5e and Pathfinder selecting a race only gives you a minor negative. Even if someone is stupid enough to not put any points in strength if they are playing say, a fighter, that has nothing to do with race selection and honestly that type of person probably should not be playing rpgs at all. ( unless if they did it for roleplay reasons)

 

[Darth Roxor]

aligned with the first tests we made with people that chose classes that didn't have much synergy with the races (hindering their chances to progress in the game, because the difficulty would rise), we decided to create 16 characters with all races with the most suitable classes for each of them.

i can see the hidden message here clearly

"These are the consequences of you pulling out of the beta, codex. Hear this dirge and despair."

 

[Scruffy]

Purple Dogg

so... neckbeard shitlord's alt?

 

[felipepepe]

I agree with you. But, given that the game was meant to be multi-platform from the start (PS4/X1/PC) and that the rate of hardcore cPRG players on consoles is not that high, since we wanted to make sure the game is appealing that audience too, aligned with the first tests we made with people that chose classes that didn't have much synergy with the races (hindering their chances to progress in the game, because the difficulty would rise), we decided to create 16 characters with all races with the most suitable classes for each of them.

It's VERY hard to tell who this game is for...

At one hand you have no character creation and there's goddamn AUTO LEVEL UP. Guess this is for casuals then. On the other, it's a tactical turn-based combat on hexes, with PERMADETH OF COMPANIONS. Oh, and their equipment vanishes entirely when they die. Seriously, I don't see your average joe getting past the intro dungeon without A LOT of reloads, especially if they pick a mage.

Also, apparently there are some traces of Chaos Chronicles / another game concept left:

Those tent surely seem like resting points, especially since they have huge campfires and places to rest... yet there's no resting in the game. :/

 

[Purple Dogg]

Are you using a customer game engine instead of 3.5e or Pathfinder? Because that is the only way this statement makes any kind of 'sense' to me. Otherwise in base d20 games like 3e/3.5e and Pathfinder selecting a race only gives you a minor negative. Even if someone is stupid enough to not put any points in strength if they are playing say, a fighter, that has nothing to do with race selection and honestly that type of person probably should not be playing rpgs at all. ( unless if they did it for roleplay reasons)

Custom game engine. It's greatly inspired by OGL 3.5 but we changed quite a few features. And yes, while plenty of early testers were into RPGs, not all of them were. And, by my own personal book, that's fine. As I said, we don't intend this to be a strictly hardcore cRPG fan game. It's not an easy game (and I'm ever so grateful for that! I hate those babysitting games) but we don't want it to drive away those who feel casually attracted to RPGs.

Bottom line? I didn't like not having a custom character creator when I first launched the game. BUT I reckon I can wait for it. I don't mind playing it through 2 or 3 times and then create my own character to my own liking.

It's VERY hard to tell who this game is for...

At one hand you have no character creation and there's goddamn AUTO LEVEL UP. Guess this is for casuals then. On the other, it's a tactical turn-based combat on hexes, with PERMADETH OF COMPANIONS. Oh, and their equipment vanishes entirely when they die. Seriously, I don't see your average joe getting past the intro dungeon without A LOT of reloads, especially if they pick a mage.

Oh I felt that pain... My first character was a mage. RIP in Pepperoni.

 

[JarlFrank]

Also, apparently there are some traces of Chaos Chronicles / another game concept left

Some traces? Lol, when I saw the game presentation at Gamescom, they had entire segments taken from Chaos Chronicles, including the capital city, which had the exact same name as the one in CC.

They've taken more from that game than they care to admit.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

At one hand you have no character creation and there's goddamn AUTO LEVEL UP.

Question: Do you mean not only can you not create the char as you see fit, you also have no say in how to level up, what feats to pick etc? That would be a deal breaker imo.

 

[ArchAngel]

I don't want to go into many details because they can still fix some of this stuff before release (that was moved 2 weeks), but what I am playing currently is a beta version. A very unpolished one.
Just one example and there are many of these and some much bigger: You open a map and there are 4 arrows to scroll it (or you can use arrow keys on keyboard) but if you press down it scrolls it up and up is down and left is right and right is left..... Also when you start the game and press Continue it does not load your last save but it loaded an older autosave for me :D
And I found a lot more bugs and polish problems.
And design problems or lack of normal stuff like Attack of Opportunity or Flanking or Charging.. I said I would not talk about it. Ok I will stop now :D But there is more. And this is only from first 30 minutes of playing :D

 

[felipepepe]

At one hand you have no character creation and there's goddamn AUTO LEVEL UP.

Question: Do you mean not only can you not create the char as you see fit, you also have no say in how to level up, what feats to pick etc? That would be a deal breaker imo.

Exactly. Started as a mage, didn't get to pick my spells... "well, it's a premade char".

Got to Lv 2, didn't get any level up screen.... because the game DOESN'T HAVE SKILLS to level up. *sigh*

And then I reached Lv 3... and the game automatically gave me Acid Arrow, Bear's Endurance, Blindness and Deafness. Tears came to me.

This is all you get. Again, WHO IS THIS GAME FOR?

Also, I really hope this is an old beta I'm playing, because I get two Lv 5 companions right at the start, but they begin with 0 Xp! So while I'm like 3,000/6,000 XP for the next level, they are 0 / 16,000 XP.

 

[Roguey]

It's great when even the grogs get burned by cargo cult design.

 

[Achiman]

So the story so far: "game that was promising, then died, then resurrected, then died, then chopped up into pieces and franke-inserted into a new game with assets and maps etc stripped wholesale - might not be any good/is disappointing".
This does not bode well for Grimore release.

 

[deama]

Exactly. Started as a mage, didn't get to pick my spells... "well, it's a premade char".
Got to Lv 2, didn't get any level up screen.... because the game DOESN'T HAVE SKILLS to level up. *sigh*

 

[Viata]

At one hand you have no character creation and there's goddamn AUTO LEVEL UP.

Question: Do you mean not only can you not create the char as you see fit, you also have no say in how to level up, what feats to pick etc? That would be a deal breaker imo.

Exactly. Started as a mage, didn't get to pick my spells... "well, it's a premade char".

Got to Lv 2, didn't get any level up screen.... because the game DOESN'T HAVE SKILLS to level up. *sigh*

And then I reached Lv 3... and the game automatically gave me Acid Arrow, Bear's Endurance, Blindness and Deafness. Tears came to me.

A RPG where you have no control on your character development.

 

[Roguey]

Neither did Knights of the Chalice or all those 2e games and that's fine. The biggest problem would be the lack of even being able to choose your spells, feats, and ability score increases. They don't want you to make a bad decision, so rather than remove the bad options, they just removed the ability to choose.

Like a jrpg where all you can customize is what kind of character can start with and your equipment. Jeff Vogel's dream game.

 

[mediocrepoet]

You can even choose abilities in SCL.

 

[felipepepe]

What's really bizarre is how they combine all this "character creation & development is too hard for casuals!!!" with with things that are MUCH more difficult.

Like, death is permanent. Got a critical hit on your Wizard? Game Over.
But worse than that: companions cost A LOT of money and also die permanently... spent all your monies on a companion but he died? Better reload, 'cause now you're alone, poor and all the gear on him vanished.

Also:

Game just wasted one of my talents by giving me Crossbow Focus... yet I haven't found a single crossbow yet.

 

[Viata]

The game even know you are going to use Crossbow anytime soon and is helping you. That's some next level spoiler if I do say myself.

 

[Saark]

Someone somwhere did market-research and came to the conclusion that no player-made character creation and development was the right way to "appeal to the masses". Were those people retarded? Are console-players retarded? Did console-players do the research and thus miraculously came to the right conclusion? Stuff like this keeps me up at night.

 

[Prime Junta]

market-research

Projects this small don't do market research. It's obvious that they don't have character creation or levelups because they haven't gotten around to implementing them.

This is how this kind of thing happens. The project is late. Things are badly broken. Money's running out. Emergency meeting gets called. They list all the things that are broken. They agree that they'll be dead, broke, or both before they manage to finish half of them. Then somebody says, "OK guys, what is the absolute, total, complete minimum we have to do to turn this into a playable game?" Then chop, chop, chop.

If it's a rookie team who didn't know how to prioritise and spent their time on fluff, then at this point they'll end up cutting what should have been core features. The end result will be very weird, with something of the original design intent showing through -- groggy, hardcore mechanics, punishing difficulty -- with the bits that really should have been there to make them work left on the floor. Always assuming they don't find a quick-and-dirty way to bring the rest of the game in line with its new shape, e.g. by getting rid of permadeath and such.

tl;dr it's a mess but market research isn't to blame, just plain ol' inexperience.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

At least that answers the question if it's worth playing. Sorry, but DnD game with no char creation and no level up because some console players "might be too stupid" to properly build their character? Building your party is half the fun in DnD games. Thanks , but no thanks.

 

[Galdred]

There is absolutely no point to use OGG if you don't allow character creation, or at the very least, choosing perks and skills on level up. You will only alienate the player base.
If you wanted to go for a system without much level up decisions and faster character creation, you should have taken DnD2 instead.