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AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex

harhar!

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Your mom recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex
 

Drowed

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The best thing and the most positive thing about AOD is exactly the same as its biggest defect and its biggest negative point - VD's design philosophy.

On the positive side, AOD ends up presenting a unique and very different vision of RPGs. The CYOA style of the game creates a bifurcated story, making certain choices become a rolling snowball of events that ends up leading you to completely different experiences. You can play the game twice in a row and, apart from a few more general quests, you will follow very different stories. The setting is also very unique in the way it portrays enemies, opponents and magic. Although you can actually create an extremely powerful character if you have that goal, in general, the game gives a good sense of mortality, and you don't really usually feel like an all-powerful chosen one, but "just another guy" who ended up getting involved in a bigger story than himself, in which you could actually die on any corner if you take a wrong step.

Which, as I said, is also the biggest downside to AOD. The fact that the choices are like a snowball means that you will usually follow a very specific path created by VD during the game (which can be expanded somewhat with meta-knowledge). As the mechanics of the game are not implemented organically, but rather in predetermined scenes, this means that you can only use a certain skill of your character uniquely and exclusively in the exact location where VD decided that your character could use. Did you arrive in Maadoran and while fulfilling some quest, you wanted to use stealth to listen to a conversation behind the door or even sneak in and kill the NPCs? My bad, by clicking on the door you will automatically be teleported into the house, will be placed in a specific part of the scenario and will start a conversation with the NPCs, whether you like it or not. Deal with it.

Also, as you are always dealing with "the professional side" of people (according to what VD himself has already said on topics here), this means that your experience with the characters is essentially the same with all of them. They are all lying scumbags motherfuckers. Some are intelligent motherfuckers, some are violent motherfuckers, some are diplomatic motherfuckers. But your mother is so fucked up in this game that she would make any porn actress feel like a virgin. Which, again, is something good and bad! On the bright side, the game actually brings a very unique experience, I don't remember another game in which my immediate reaction when dealing with any NPC is "how this son of a bitch will try to fuck with me"? On the negative side, this after a while causes most NPCs to blend into a large bubble of pessimistic sameness. "Oh hey, one more fucker who wants to use me and possibly cheat me and steal from me, how peculiar".

What makes me like AOD is exactly this different view of VD that permeates all aspects of the game. Which, at the same time, is what in my opinion ends up preventing the game from taking that extra step, and being even more than what it ended up being in the end.
 

Goral

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So the alternative where the game presents you that option in places where it makes sense and in moments when it makes sense is just the best thing we can get. That pragmatist and logical approach is what I love about AoD and is the exact opposite of retarded Bethesda games where you can belong to every faction because it's supposedly a sandbox game.

Looks like JL is talking about being allowed to pick a bad moment to betray your faction (which is a valid point, even if you'd just get fucked over), not that you should be able to do it anytime and succeed just as if you'd picked a good time.
Read what he writes please or stay out of this discussion:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...ism-from-the-codex.127381/page-4#post-6118005

You can't just decide spontaneously "You know what, I hate my current faction. I'll march over to their rivals and sell them out for a decent reward.", you can only decide such a thing when the current quest you're in offers you the opportunity.
And you're also wrong suggesting that whenever you will decide to betray someone it will end up as success (that's not what I was saying). At times the success is illusionary only and you might end up dead because you backed up the wrong guy (or girl, like in Lorenza's case). But the moment you do it isn't batshit crazy at least and that speaks volumes about the game. If VD would allow to betray anyone anywhere and at any time it would probably be along the lines "you acted like a retard and now you're dead, game over" which would trigger the same people anyway. The stats (main attributes) no lower than four prevent us from acting retarded in AoD and that's another reason why it's so good. You can't play as dumbfuck in AoD. On the other hand in games like Fallout 1, F2 and Arcanum when you're playing as a retard you are meta gaming. Otherwise a character like this would have no chances of reaching Necropolis/Enclave/The Void (e.g. he could never know how to go through forcefields or use access cards or computers or function in a world without a guardian).
 

toro

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fanboy.png


I also have this tag, so I know a thing or two about fanboys. This game has plenty of them.

When Safav Hamon is the reasonable poster then you know the end is near :)
 

Urthor

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
A lot of the criticisms for AoD are reasonable, but honestly when you compare it to all the other pieces of shit the gaming world has produced it's pretty great in my books.

There really are not that many "good" games going around.
 

JarlFrank

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So you want to be able to click and roam around, like it's an action game, with NPC behaving like they have a life. I mean, that's a very big ask from this type of game, with what I assume wasn't overabundant budget. Even original Fallouts didn't have that level of environmental fluidity, every major mission checkpoint was heavily scripted in comparison to open world with static NPCs.

Do I, though? All I thought up in this post was an alternate way of designing a quest from the game, with the only change being more player involvement in the exploration and discovery part. Where the fuck did I make any comparisons to action games? Why would you claim I want to do it "like it's an action game"? You could click and roam around in Fallout, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Dark Sun, Wasteland 2, Torment: Numenera, Knights of the Old Republic, Underrail, Divinity... uhhh yeah great list of action games right there guess I have to update my genre definitions.

Also my specific example doesn't require NPCs behaving like they have a life, just some simple scripting to simulate a living city to a decent degree. The example quest I cited above, where during the night the noblewoman's mansion would have more guards but during the day there'd be passersby on the street that can see you attack the guards, would only require a simple script that adds or removes generic commoner and guard NPCs during certain times of day. It doesn't even require any NPC schedules. You can just place three additional guards in the mansion and give them a script tag that makes them only appear when the time of day is after dark. Easy. As for the passersby on the street during daytime, just make a patrol route from one end of the map to the other so commoners walk along the road. Make a simple script that spawns one commoner NPC at one edge of the map, then makes him walk to the other edge and despawn once he reaches it. Make the script have a total amount of between 10 and 13 commoners on the map, so that a constant stream of commoners walk along the road. Poof, you got yourself passersby who can see you attack the noblewoman's guards if you go for a frontal assault during the day.

You don't need a full "open world" style of game to create a quest approach like the one I suggested above. You just need to think of creative solutions.

To script and put in motion how you've described it every single scenario in AoD would take the budget of EA to support it. There is just too many variations, I don't know if you're aware of just how many there are. Like, it trumps most classics in that regard.

Would it though? Let's see how much it would take to create the scenario I described above:
- place a bunch of guards and civilians and make their spawning on the map dependent on the time of day
- add unique dialogue options to the guards if the player is female and wearing a harem girl outfit as a disguise
- add an interaction to the balcony based on the player having a grappling hook and rope in his inventory

And uuuuh yeah that's it. I'd argue it even takes less time than scripting every interaction as a node in a CYOA segment because you can let some things be governed by the systems. Give guards patrol routes (very simple to set up, just put patrol points on the map and have guards walk from A->B->C->D->A etc), make them initiate dialogue if they spot the player, make the stealth skill reduce chance of detection. Granted, for that they'd have to implement a decently workable stealth system, but guess what - Fallout and Arcanum also had such a system so can't claim that "even the original Fallouts didn't have that" for this feature. Other than that, everything else is actually easier to script and implement. Instead of writing 3 different CYOA nodes where the player gets captured by guards, you just have "player gets captured by guards" happen as a natural thing when a guard detects the player. Because you can let the systems deal with a lot of scenarios dynamically, it's actually less work than having to write each scenario variation manually.

I personally prefer shortcuts to and from quest locations, because why would I want to spend time walking and traveling through load screens.

Yeah I can't disagree with that. The town map shortcuts are one of the best things in AoD: just click on "Market" and you are at the market, no walking required. Cool shit. It does get a bit excessive during quests though, where giving the player more direct agency and a chance at exploration might improve the experience.

Choosing approach by action instead dialogue option would be nice, but it seems a silly reason to get stuck on in a game that's clearly not AAA. Also, this is only present sometimes, plenty of times you can do it by action.

Yes, sometimes you can do things by action and those are my favorite parts of the game.
Also, a game doesn't need to be AAA to pull off a more interactive playstyle. You're exaggerating the effort required for it - in fact, it might even cost less effort than the meticulously crafted CYOA approach of AoD.

Another point I wanted to address, unlike Skyrim, the world, major players and events unfold and what player does carries consequences. This is why there are restrictions of travel in early game and mini endings. I was pissed off at first, but then I accepted that's just the way game meta works, and once you learn meta, game becomes beautiful and easy to appreciate.

If you have issues it's not fully open world, go play Witcher 3.

Fallout 1,2, PST etc all required players to learn meta, AoD is just more annoying than most. Toughen up son.

Uh yeah. Just play Witcher 3. Ok :lol:

I don't know where you've picked up the idea that I want a fully open world game from AoD. I never claimed anything like that. The quest example I described above still is a self-contained quest that would fit well into the overall chapter structure of AoD.

Also, you seem to consider me to be one of the AoD haters. I'm not. In my first post in this thread I even said "I like the game, but..."
I got over 30 hours and 60 achievements on AoD in Steam, so yeah, I obviously enjoyed my time with it and I occasionally replay it to try different paths. But I still recognize the issues people have with it, understand why people have these issues (such as the feeling of being railroaded), and personally would have approached quest design in an entirely different way than VD did. It's not bashing the game or "not being tough enough" to enjoy it, it's a valid criticism of AoD's approach and a suggestion of a different approach that might have been more enjoyable to those who don't like AoD.

AoD has plenty of choices, yes, but they all lead you down relatively narrow paths - it's why people tend to call it a "CYOA RPG". You pick a choice, then you're railroaded down into the next choice, and so on.
Well technically paths are narrow but you have so many paths and crossroads that it doesn't matter. It's not a sandbox but at the same time if offers way more choices than any sandbox game I know.

And yet the narrowness of the paths is why the game feels somewhat railroading to some people. You can disagree with that assessment but it's an understandable position, isn't it? It definitely feels more constraining than, say, Fallout 1 and 2, which are AoD's most direct inspirations.

if you joined them, you don't get the option to betray them and work for a different faction instead
lol
That's just a straight out lie. You have the option to betray your faction and work for another, whatever it is you're smoking I suggest you stop because you're getting holes in your brain.
People talking out of their ass now. Game constantly offers opportunities to switch sides and loyalties. Most of complaints here derrive from butthurt because game didn't scale to your level.

These opportunities are game-driven though, not player-driven.

You can't just decide spontaneously "You know what, I hate my current faction. I'll march over to their rivals and sell them out for a decent reward.", you can only decide such a thing when the current quest you're in offers you the opportunity.
Oh, so now you're changing your tune and saying that "you can betray your faction pretty often BUT it's not at times when you want it". Are you serious? Grow a pair and admit that you're talking out of your ass.

I'm not changing my tune. That's what I meant with my first post already. You don't get options to do things on your own initiative - you only get reactions to situations you find yourself into. It's not the player saying "I will decide to do X now", but the game telling the player "You must decide X now". Maybe you should put some more points into your reading comprehension, then you'd understand what I actually mean here.

These opportunities are game-driven though, not player-driven.

You can't just decide spontaneously "You know what, I hate my current faction. I'll march over to their rivals and sell them out for a decent reward.", you can only decide such a thing when the current quest you're in offers you the opportunity.
Almost as if game waits for an opportunity for your character to be in a position of power / value to the opposing faction for them to consider you worthy of conspiring with. Crazy.
What ScrotumBroth said. Plus you can do it only when it's beneficial to you and you want to play as an opportunist, not being able to play as a retard or a crazy man is a quality not a flaw. Going against a faction on their territory or at a moment when you will be able to hugely profit from them (by being paid by them and getting more influence and power) would be just retarded. Same goes for going into the enemy territory undisturbed (usually they shoot first, ask questions later) and presenting them some interesting information. How do you imagine would they react to it if it came from an enemy? Firstly they would be sceptical, secondly, you wouldn't be able to leave until it was confirmed, thirdly, even if it had been confirmed why would anyone want to have a traitor among their ranks? It would be easier to kill you in case you would decide to switch sides again.

That's the thing with traitors, unless they have a damn good reason to betray instead of your spontaneous idea
they become the lowest of the low. And these are problems only from the top of my head, in reality it's much more complicated and creating a storyline that would make sense in such case would require some amazing writing skills.

Then kill off the player if he makes such a stupid decision. Oops. You betrayed your faction to the assassins, and the assassins killed you because you're untrustworthy. Choices and consequences, bitch. You now get an ending slide that mentions your lack of judgment. Only a naive idiot would betray his faction to the assassins and think he gets out of it scot-free.

Instead, what AoD does is that once you've joined one faction, you cannot even talk to representatives of the other factions even if they were approachable before. The NPCs just get hard locked, no talking to them unless a quest specifically requires it. This is another reason why AoD sometimes feels railroaded. There is little interaction between the different paths - as you yourself said at the start of your post, the paths are rather narrow.

Or the problem in "you need the lockpick skill in order to succeed because it's the only way forward".
There wasn't one moment like this in the game, don't understand why you're lying like this JF.

The game pits you in several situations where if you have not specced a minimum of points in "XY" skill you're dead, and have to start over, and does this for purely the sake "being hardcore". ... You're not playing the way you want to in this game; you are playing the way you must do to succeed. That is, you're not role-playing your character, rather you're manipulating your character's stats once you've found out through trial and error what stats your character needs to have to progress.

This is the only legitimate complaint and it's a weakness of hard gated design - ie "you need 18 skill in lock picks and anything less is a fail" instead of "the higher your lock pick skill is, the less resources you need to succeed."

Or the problem in "you need the lockpick skill in order to succeed because it's the only way forward".
For example?

Nah, this one was just a response to Tavernking's general criticism of hard gating rather than to anything specific in AoD.

Personally I don't mind hard gating, and thing hard skillchecks are a decent choice and better than dice rolls which encourage savescumming and re-trying the same check over and over until it works, rather than encouraging clever character builds.
As long as there's always an alternative way out of a situation, or the possibility of progress despite failure (that is, fail states beyond "game over").

AoD does a well enough job at providing different approaches for different character builds even within each of the narrow faction paths. I even remember some quests where you can fuck up and still progress, which is really cool.

Hard skill checks > dice roll skill checks. That's a good part of AoD and one I hope you'll keep for Colony Ship RPG.
 

JarlFrank

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If VD would allow to betray anyone anywhere and at any time it would probably be along the lines "you acted like a retard and now you're dead, game over" which would trigger the same people anyway.

No I would be extremely fine with that.
 

AbounI

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Betraying your own guild/master/lord isn't something you can think about when you get up one day, there must be some serious motivations and in front of that, someone who would be willing to accept you knowing you're someone who must not be trust with closed eyes. The guy in front of you got to have strong reasons to accept you as a new member of his guild/faction/house. Specially in a harsh world such as AoD. So the best to give PC (and not the player) any opportunity to betray his master is to give him a serious breaking point ina story wise manner. And there are many occasions to betray those PC is working for (Feng with Cassius, Dellar with the Aurelian, House Daratan with the IG, Commercium with the 40 Thieves at Teron or even the Boatmen later in Maadoran, the 40 Thieves during the Great Cart Robbery, the villagers in Mountain Village, the Stone Demon too when he ask you the ring while you gave him your word etc etc). In fact, I don't remember many games that gives the player so many betraying opportunities.

Leaving a guild is a thing, betraying it is another as well as been expelled from it

edit : Don't forget the reputation system too, it's also there to offer or reject opportunities. With a negative reputation, why would someone accept a traitor in his ranks ?
 
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hivemind

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Is disliking AoD a sign of mental retardation?(possible environmental causes)

You read some of these posts, and you just have to ask yourself, are these people fucking serious? How can anyone be so stupid? Did they drop on their head as a child? Maybe they regularly drink from lead pipes or their house is slowly giving them CO2 poisoning. I just don't know any more. These posts have no rhyme or reason, they are simply dumb. The guys who make these posts are cowards. They know nothing about high powered cut-throat environments of the business world mirrored with a sublime combination of realism and artistic exaggeration into the game world. They are clueless, and still dare complain. Pride and no substance. They can't handle defeat, they are incapable of learning, how dare is there an internal game world logic present here? Why does my 4 int char not have the funny dumb lines like in fallout? Why is every single moronic decision not completely simulated and presented as a viable choice? How else am I meant to compare it to my own life and feel immersed? I just want to know if they were this stupid before their clueless parents had them vaccinated. I don't think so. Mental midgets who prefer the tedium of small animated legs clumsily making their way through the city instead of the patrician comfort of teleportation induced narrative tension. Don't even get me started on the camera. You dumb ass. You fool. You clown. Why does this game not work like a VR simulated reality piece from my wet dreams that are completely devoid of any design temperance or good taste? Just shut the fuck up. Stupid idiots. They are larpers. Playing the game for them doesn't mean engaging with the game world and system, it simply means a one way ticket to escapist lalaland where they are liberated from the necessity to think or engage with problems. They write lines and lines of text pointlessly. The only thing they learned from VD is the autistic style of line by line quoting. Have they ever heard of Hegel? No. The dialectical perfection of AoD is beyond these base animals. Have you killed the Zamedi demon, you pretentious idiot who sullies the name of his great game? Trick question, moron, he isn't a demon, in fact, it could be argued that the player character is the real demon, you just don't get that in other games. Listen to me, I have seen the inside of Meru's hidden library, there isn't even an achievement for that, it's a hidden reward for killing Meru after his mind got infected with foreign entities just like your own got infected with extreme levels of retardation. You cannot even begin to talk to me about this game. I know everything, and you know nothing. Why is there a lockpick check? You fucking moron. If you asked me this in real life I would have my boyfriend beat you to a pulp. I actually don't have a boyfriend but if I did I would have him do that. There should be more reactivity if you play a woman? Maybe true, but did you know that in the thieves guild quest in Teron, Cado berates you for being late if you stop by Linos to tell him about the heist and says he will never work with a woman again? Subtle, but realistic, men often complain to women about things they would tolerate from other men. That's what social reactivity is about, not dressing up in harem clothing to appease loser nerds who just want to have a quick wank before dying to the bossfight because they are too stupid to build their characters properly. Yes, there are proper ways to build your character? Don't like it? Go live in a conformist utopia, you absolute mongrel. That's how life works, you live or you lose, you figure out what is the correct path through. People who complain about this are probably the same sort of a troglodyte that studies STEM or CS as a westerner in the 21st century in hopes of getting a well paying job even though all of your fields are oversaturated and getting outsourced overseas. Go dagger and crit, grab some dodge, max one or two non combat skills. There. Your problems are solved. Moron. Don't ever complain about AoD again. I will kill you.
 
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I'll admit that I've felt the same way the OP does. I've tried getting into AoD twice and can't quite seem to get a feel for it. I love the concept, but the game itself just never quite seems to click with me. Just here to say, hey, thanks for the arguments for and against. I'm gonna give it another shot and hopefully this time I get into it.
 
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Sacred82

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You're not playing the way you want to in this game; you are playing the way you must do to succeed. That is, you're not role-playing your character, rather you're manipulating your character's stats once you've found out through trial and error what stats your character needs to have to progress.

Greatest problem is, contrary to real classless, skill based games like Fallout, there are only two different kinds of paths: play to the archetype that the devs had in mind for you or fail. Your path is pre-ordained throughout the game.

Overall Dungeon Rats was the vastly superior Iron Tower game, and coincidentally, also much more fitting to their resources. They shouldn't try to combine open worlds with dialogue, it's not their forte, and the scope of such projects is apparently too large for them (and for indies in general).
 

AwesomeButton

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I don't get people who miss the exploration and the immersion effect of walking around ugly blocky city with a 3d top-down camera.

In my view, AoD's accent is on the branching storyline and quest C&C, plus the great combat system, which you don't need to experience at all, if your character is not a fighter.

These features already put AoD above 90% of RPGs.

The worldbuilding is achieved mostly through the writing, the music, and the environments which allow you free movement. But the image the environements give is low-resolution, it's just the general idea. The details always come through the writing. In the end AoD manages to get the most from its strong sides, while using the less developed sides as support. This works well enough for me, because all parts are coherent.
 

Parabalus

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You're not playing the way you want to in this game; you are playing the way you must do to succeed. That is, you're not role-playing your character, rather you're manipulating your character's stats once you've found out through trial and error what stats your character needs to have to progress.

Greatest problem is, contrary to real classless, skill based games like Fallout, there are only two different kinds of paths: play to the archetype that the devs had in mind for you or fail. Your path is pre-ordained throughout the game.

The only difference between Fallout and AoD in this regard is that the former is a much easier game.

If you increased the skill checks / combat difficulty in Fallout, without tweaking the game system, you'd also have to make more specialized characters to succeed, and hybrids/do-it-alls would be harder to make, but still possible, like in AoD.
 

Deleted Member 22431

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One thing most people seems to forget is that AoD is a text based game and not a free exploration game based, so it's easier to feel railroaded.
I can't get into Darklands and King of Dragon Pass. I feel railroaded!
 
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I did read it, besides you quoted his entire post in your reply so that link is pointless. The point of that post was pointing out how you misinterpreted

JarlFrank said:
You can't just decide spontaneously "You know what, I hate my current faction. I'll march over to their rivals and sell them out for a decent reward.", you can only decide such a thing when the current quest you're in offers you the opportunity.

as "I should be able to sell my faction out whenever I want" when he meant it as "I should be able to try to sell my faction out whenever I want". Meaning, more freedom to make bad decisions.

The funny part is that this bit suggests you almost got it, but the fanboyism got in the way.

If VD would allow to betray anyone anywhere and at any time it would probably be along the lines "you acted like a retard and now you're dead, game over" which would trigger the same people anyway.
 

AbounI

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I don't get people who miss the exploration and the immersion effect of walking around ugly blocky city with a 3d top-down camera.

In my view, AoD's accent is on the branching storyline and quest C&C, plus the great combat system, which you don't need to experience at all, if your character is not a fighter.

These features already put AoD above 90% of RPGs.

The worldbuilding is achieved mostly through the writing, the music, and the environments which allow you free movement. But the image the environements give is low-resolution, it's just the general idea. The details always come through the writing. In the end AoD manages to get the most from its strong sides, while using the less developed sides as support. This works well enough for me, because all parts are coherent.
That is true, but I've noticed some minor unconsistencies too during the translation I'm working on it, such as the Ordu who are stranger with the concept of currencies, while some dialogs in Harran Pass tell the player that the IGs stationned there trade from time to time with them. Or that you see a bald man (speaking of Abukar) while the guy always wears a turban :lol:. Some small inconsistencies that can tarnish the global narrative quality for anyone who pay an extreme attention to what they read.
 

Vault Dweller

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That is true, but I've noticed some minor unconsistencies too during the translation I'm working on it, such as the Ordu who are stranger with the concept of currencies, while some dialogs in Harran Pass tell the player that the IGs stationned there trade from time to time with them.
Trade as in barter. The Ordu have no use for gold.

Overall Dungeon Rats was the vastly superior Iron Tower game, and coincidentally, also much more fitting to their resources. They shouldn't try to combine open worlds with dialogue, it's not their forte, and the scope of such projects is apparently too large for them (and for indies in general).
Forte or not, AoD vastly outsold DR and has a very strong following (for an indie RPG).
 
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Sacred82

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You're not playing the way you want to in this game; you are playing the way you must do to succeed. That is, you're not role-playing your character, rather you're manipulating your character's stats once you've found out through trial and error what stats your character needs to have to progress.
Greatest problem is, contrary to real classless, skill based games like Fallout, there are only two different kinds of paths: play to the archetype that the devs had in mind for you or fail. Your path is pre-ordained throughout the game.

The only difference between Fallout and AoD in this regard is that the former is a much easier game.

nop. There are no clear archetypes anywhere in Fallout defined by either the mechanics or the gameworld. Basically, anything that ensures your survival in the wasteland goes.

You could of course have an archetypal fighter character with low Int, high Str and melee skills, but you don't have to, and the game never treats you as if you were expected to fall into any clear categories. When you're asked to solve a problem for someone, they don't care how you do it. They just want you to succeed.

When you enter a hub in Fallout, you're going to look around for opportunities to use your skills and attributes succesfully, not conform to any expectations that result from the game being tailored around specific paths. AoD OTOH expects you to play in an I'm an assassin, I only do assassin things mindset.

As for Fallout being easy, it depends. You can have wildly or mildly succesfull characters, and you can have characters who are going to scrape around a lot but who shine in certain situations. IMO that kind of thing is more interesting to people who care about mechanics and mastering the game; you try to find those things that make the game easy/ are required often, so you can replay with some unusual oddball character but avoid pitfalls that would make a new player fail with that kind of character.

If you increased the skill checks / combat difficulty in Fallout, without tweaking the game system, you'd also have to make more specialized characters to succeed, and hybrids/do-it-alls would be harder to make, but still possible, like in AoD.

It would still not be the same thing because Fallout isn't an on-rails experience like AoD is. It would simply mean more effort is required for a player to learn what abilities are handy in what ways and when/ where. It would prevent more builds from being succesful, yes. But that's not the vital difference we're talking about here.

Forte or not, AoD vastly outsold DR and has a very strong following (for an indie RPG).

Personally I got turned off by AoD and probably wouldn't have bought Dungeon Rats if you guys weren't Codex favorites. Failed my shill resistance check. I'm glad I did it, because DR is a pretty sweet game. But for someone who just stumbled on AoD this might be different. In fact I might have seen AoD in a different light if I had bought it after DR because I was looking for more of the same. As it is now I played the game with the simpler but more effective design later, and I somehow don't want to go back.
 

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It would still not be the same thing because Fallout isn't an on-rails experience like AoD is. It would simply mean more effort is required for a player to learn what abilities are handy in what ways and when/ where. It would prevent more builds from being succesful, yes. But that's not the vital difference we're talking about here.

Yep. The main difference between Fallout and AoD is its structure. In Fallout, the only mandatory things to do are:
- get water chip
- kill master
- destroy military base

Anything you do in-between these quests, or the path that leads you to these quests, is up to the player to decide. A speedrunner can just hurry to Necropolis and get the water chip, with the pre-knowledge of previous playthroughs. Then just hurry down to the Cathedral and confront the Master. Anything in-between is not required by the game, but the layout of the world map encourages the player to explore and do quests in the Hub, Junktown, etc.

In Age of Decadence, you have to join someone in Teron, you have to follow one of the many possible questlines until you reach Ganezzar, and only then does the world open up for some exploration and you can go to those ancient ruins and do the endgame content. You can't just rush to the temple with pre-knowledge of its location and confront Agathoth at level 1, like you can theoretically do in Fallout with the Master. There's a whole bunch of mandatory stuff you have to do first.

That doesn't mean AoD's structure is bad, it just means it's different. Comparing AoD to Fallout is, despite Fallout being AoD's greatest source of inspiration, not really applicable when we talk about things like structure. They operate on completely different design principles.

AoD is more similar to Arcanum in that regard, which also has you follow a quest path with forks (but much, much fewer forks than AoD has) and you can't just rush to the endgame at level 1 if you so please, but then Arcanum also has a more open exploration and no funneling during quests.

Honestly, when it comes to structure AoD is a singular game. There isn't anything else in the genre that works exactly like AoD so comparisons with the classics will always end up not really working.
 

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God help me, I'm still not done picking at this game.

The issue I have with content-gating isn't what MRY and a few others have assumed it to be ITT. I'm fine with my character being locked out of a lot of content in a first playthrough, and I'm fine with hybrids being something you can only play once you've gotten a feel for the game and a few of its paths and know which rules to bend, so to speak. But I think I speak for a sizeable contingent of the playerbase when I say that characters past the two or three first ones will be purpose-built to access specific content. It's where the real fun of replaying games like Fallout lies: "oh, I wonder what's behind this door I couldn't open! Let me make a character who can open it." Quite often, what lies behind the AoD door is another skill check, the nature of which is hard to predict. Examples include most of the ancient ruins in the game, and some specific ones I ran into include the Abyss and the hangar as well as the chamber which can be reached by swimming down the well in Maadoran. Maybe if you're a huge fan you'll see this as another incentive to replay the game again, but for me it only serves to make me question whether I'm prepared to gamble another two hours for another chance to see what I am playing the game to see.
 
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I agree for the most part, except:

That doesn't mean AoD's structure is bad, it just means it's different. Comparing AoD to Fallout is, despite Fallout being AoD's greatest source of inspiration, not really applicable when we talk about things like structure. They operate on completely different design principles.

Thing is, if you're simply replacing classes with archetypes, you still have a class based system. It's not really classless and skill based in that case.

In fact in that case, even a simple class system would be preferrable and make for more emergent gameplay. Give me a priest, fighter or thief. If there are pre-ordained paths, make them simply dependent on attribute checks... or maybe don't rely on checks too much at all. Make it a really consequence driven game.

An assassin e.g. is really anyone who can murder someone and get away with it. As long as I can escape afterwards, the real motives and my employer remain unknown. AoD's punishing mechanics really just tie down the player even more. If you say "you really have to sneak into people's houses and murder them in their beds and sneak out again, or you gun get fucked", you're just taking choices away from the player.

Punishing mechanics work great in DR because that's what the game is about, and the party system means you're taking some heat off a character when needed.

AoD is more similar to Arcanum in that regard, which also has you follow a quest path with forks (but much, much fewer forks than AoD has) and you can't just rush to the endgame at level 1 if you so please, but then Arcanum also has a more open exploration and no funneling during quests.

Honestly, when it comes to structure AoD is a singular game. There isn't anything else in the genre that works exactly like AoD so comparisons with the classics will always end up not really working.

You can compare anything to anything else with similar elements. AoD is not unique enough to escape that.

I think the comparison works better with Fallout than Arcanum, exactly because Fallout is coming from a completely different angle but is similar when it comes to skills and choices, while Arcanum is too middle of the road here. In fact I can't remember playing Arcanum without deviating wildly and regularly from the actual objectives to just fuck around and grow in power. Then you go back to the story path again, then you move off it again. Rinse and repeat. Arcanum has way more handholding than either Fallout or AoD. I would summarize Arcanum as "fuck around in Fantasyland with no fail states".
 

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Honestly, when it comes to structure AoD is a singular game.

Couldn't agree more. Honestly, I can respect people who don't like AoD's design principles. It is their view on things, and that's the risk a designer takes when he innovates. However, I would expect people on the Codex to be able to respect and appreciate AoD's unique view on things, even if they prefer other designs themselves.

I say this, because it seems to me that a lot of people here would rather have Fallout/Baldur's Gate/Skyrim clone #4653 instead of games starting there and then trying something interesting and fresh (and by the way, I love 2 of those 3 games, and a lot of their successors). Well, AoD started from Fallout/Arcanum, and tried an approach that is unique, interesting and fresh. The approach itself can be debated, but it should be respected. It is not like VD did that to sell out.
 
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Safav Hamon

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Couldn't agree more. Honestly, I can respect people who don't like AoD's design principles. It is their view on things, and that's the risk a designer takes when he innovates. However, I would expect people on the Codex to be able to respect and appreciate AoD's unique view on things, even if they prefer other designs themselves.

I don't consider it innovative.

There are many CYOA games with RPG systems on steam. Age of Decadence is hardly unique, and actually feels more railroaded than most other games like it.










 
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Safav Hamon

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Traps for Winners is sublime. It has way better C&C than Age of Decadence.

Anyways, I fail to see what makes AoD innovative. You choose from a limited selection of archetypes and are funneled down a narrow path. What's groundbreaking about that?
 
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