Game News Age of Decadence Demo Released

Exactly, deep games tend to make the player feel a little lost at start, but once he understands the game he will face a good, smart challenge. They are games made to last, be replayed countless times, not just "have fun on the first 5 minutes or you are doing it wrong" banal shit boring games that the only reason to replay is killing bloted HP/Damage enemies in hard mode and get an achievement. Your first playthrough may be rough, but the 6 others will be getting better and better as you understand the system.

Playing JA2 for the first time will result in countless deaths, reloads, restarts, "I should have picked merc X", and dumb rage at stuff like how your custom made sniper bro can't find a fucking sniper (believe me, I played JA2 for the first time 3 years ago, I remember it). But after the initial rape, you'll start to understand the game more and can build better and better squads, challening yourself until finally finishing the game, and immediatly wanting to replay it again with another setup just to try different things and where it could lead.

And that's exactly how I felt playing the AoD demo, so to VD and ITS bros.

 

I guess the term got stuck because the representation of the non-combat parts reminds of it in so far as it is often a sequence of low-interactivity cutscenes:
Get teleported somewhere ("Read page x"), Make a decision, often between 1) Skill check A (if succeed: "read page y" if not "read page z") or 2) leave ("back to page w") and sometimes also 3) Skill check B ("read..."). Success usually means continuation along the same principle, failure either combat, death or back to starting point.

Nothing inherently wrong with that, the fact that you are offering all these possibilities for using non-combat skills, especially the number of options is something you usually don't see (and I often miss).

As I have written in my earlier post, I'd offer more "in-between" resolutions, or partial-successes. If I just barely miss a skill check, why does it mean automatic failure or even death? Why not implement a imperfect closure? Why not give the chance to "save" the situation by using another, fitting talent or attribute as a follow-up.
You are already doing similar stuff, like (and that's just one example) in the last thief quest, where your skill level seems to decide how many people will leave through your diversion.
But generally those situations are far fewer than the simple binary outcomes.

By blurring out the measures a bit, instead of demanding a certain value that's set in stone, I think players are encouraged more strongly just to keep playing a certain character, as it means that even if I'm not able to perfectly resolve every obstacle, I can still go on without worrying too much about fucking up completely and how to spend my skills to prevent that.
Yet it doesn't mean that the whole thing gets watered down, you still have to focus and not spread out too much. Too low skills still mean complete failure.

In the situation where this works, it's something I try to do, too.

Yet there are some situation where you will just die or simply can't continue unless you have raised exactly the right skills.
For the former, sometimes I'd wish to get a kind of fitting warning.
E.g.: Breaking into a house with the thief character through the window. Don't have raised traps? Too bad...
Would be nice if the quest-giver gave you a hint like "Be careful, the guy is known to have some dangerous security measures in place." Or if you could inspect the place before (with PER deciding how much info you get).
If you don't heed the warning, well, your problem then, but you got one and can prepare.

The latter struck me with the mining outpost. If you don't have a combat character, fighting is pretty much out of question, I think. So you get multiple approaches, but they are always a combination of two somewhat disconnected skills and you need both.
Bandits need high INT and then also streetwise? or persuasion?
Disguise as loremaster needs also Lore (even if you got the mantra through persuasion).
Sneaking in needs also high DEX.

If you don't have both skills/attributes for each option, you are stuck and can't finish the quest as far as I can tell.
It's a matter of probability. It's far less probable that I have two different skills above a certain value at the same time than just having one.
(This is probably only really an issue with the Praetor, as you need to do it to continue).

 

Thats not the problem for me either. If i can play on with reasonable consequences thats fine. If i come to a full stop because i didnt invest in some skill that just pops up all of a sudden then making me spend skills points as i get them will make me rage quit, delete the game, flush from memory.

 

The way I see it, players hoarding Skillpoints make a conscious choice to gain flexibility at a later point, while denying themselves options along the way.

For instance, a Praetor hoarding skillpoints can put them massively into lore when the mine quest comes up, as that's an obvious investment, but he'll miss the little Etiquette and Streetwise checks along the way, which would've brought better results.

 

Just realised another thing that bothers me with the combat stuff. The only defensive 'attributes' from all sources here are damage reduction, critical protection and either block or dodge (because going with both seems real dumb). What is this missing? Resistances. No blunt/slashing/piercing resistance, no acid resistance, nothing. Which also leads to a tricky question - does that mean you'll be fighting generic sword-wielding dudes till the end of your life and/or will there be lightning/acid traps that do exactly the same kind of damage to heavy metal armour and clothing?

 

It takes time, but I'll see what we can do to increase the number of such options.

As it should be.

Because a single stat/skill is a single 'path' to victory.

There are two ways to balance game's difficulty. You can balance it for the first playthgrough, but then the game becomes too easy. You can balance it for subsequent playthroughs, but then the first playthrough is too hard. Choices & consequences.

 

Good dialogue screen from a recent game:



IE rehash, basically. AoD dialogue interface just feels dead.

Oh great. Game postponed to 2015.

 

Traps are done in the text-adventure style. They don't damage armor.

99% of enemies are "generic sword-wielding dudes", but once alchemy is added, they will be using poison and acid flasks. You do have poison resistance, determined by your Con. As for acid, there is no resistance (i.e. it will destroy the armor if the throw is successful), but such flasks are rare.

 

True, but in the AoD demo the existence of the second skill/attribute check is not known until you encounter it.
You cannot prepare for it. It's encouraging a test/reload approach to quests with skill-checks.
You can choose the sneak path with a thief, only to fail at the next step because your DEX is too low (and that can't be raised).
Maybe I would have liked to see an optional second (and much harder) sneak check there.

I'll admit that it's hard to balance that without running into a problem eventually, though.
Choices & Consequences indeed...

 

Destroy as in "remove from inventory" (like shields) or turn armor unusable, but the metal remains, so you can melt and reforge the armor?

 

The metal remains. 80% of it, if I recall correctly.

 

Ok thought I hit a CTD bug, but not quite. No, I don't have a save as it doesn't autosave or anything and I was in Antideswhatever's throne room fighting him and his goons.
Anyway. This brings ye olde reload back with a vengeance. It's all a crap shoot. Whose idea was it to equip every IG with bronze weapons, probably not even hardened, and the opposing force all with apparently steel weapons, probably hardened too.

Anyway bug. No, no save, but it switched to desktop and I thought shit hit the fan. Gave this message:

HEADER:
..\..\..\..\..\Engine\source\ITS_common\gameIO.cpp(298):Fatal
FOLLOWED BY:
CPathfinder::getRelativePath() - none of the directions match.

Then Torque asked if I wanted to start up debugger. I could now switch back to AoD but sound was laggy. Oh, just before the lag hit I killed the second longspearman, then I was suddenly transported next to the throne even though I was about 8 steps away. Well, that's what I thought at first. I got cloned. An invisible me was still in the old spot, getting pounded to fuck by guardsmen, and then a visible me was next to the throne, blocking spears thrown by the other half. Hmm I don't remember when the pop-up came, probably when I killed the last longspearman.

EDIT: Oh also, speaking of such options, I'm assuming quest variations, I noticed thief get some extra options with the muggers/Livia. She even joins the thief guild later and does stuff. BioWare stuff! No. But stuff. That was cool. Also gave you SP without a fight. Nice. Also kebab guy had other options with thief and assassin. But that's about it. Now these may seem like assquests, but still, throw in more options all over. Also wasn't aware of intimidate option with Mewhatthefuckisyourname, also easy SP there. Miss out on some steel though.

 

Played it for five minutes, quit because of the tiny font and the godawful "answers on top, questions on the bottom"-interface. I'd prefer not to break my neck playing a video game.

Did look promising though. Also, still needs a lot more in the sound department.

 

Is there a reason to fight the Assassin at the beginning of the Gladiator game? He seems really tough, I have to make combat-only build to beat him, and he doesn't leave anything good behind, always leave me almost dead, which forces me to skip next non-combat encounter.

Other than that I don't seem to like the game very much, the combat system is good but would work much better on larger areas and with controllable party memebers, and the game feels really claustrophobic at the time. All I can do is go to the quest-giver, be teleported into adventure, try to pass checks (thanks for the tip to wait with skill point distribution) and if I can't try different quest. Perhaps full version will be better with more exploration.

 

Fun story, (apropos target audience, Vault Dweller): My nephew, who is 14 years old and a colossal Oblivion and Skyrim-fan (we've argued on the subject before, especially about Oblivion) saw a facebook-update I made and decided to try out Age of Decadence. He didn't tell me about it, just downloaded that shit. He just completed it and he loved it. This is a 14 year old whose most hardcore RPG before AoD is probably Fallout: New Vegas. I logged into League of Legends today and he sent me a message:

Him: "Hey Casper! I just finished Age of Decadence!"

Me: " What did you think?"

Him: "I thought it was awesome. I especially liked how the different "backgrounds" were woven into each other..."

Me: "Yeah, that's pretty cool."

Him: "One thing that annoyed me a bit is how few skill points you get. Though I know it's a demo so I guess you get more later on. You also get too few stat points in my opinion."

Me: "Yeah, but don't you think it'd be boring not to have to sacrifice anything?"

Him: "Yeah, I guess you're right. And at least stats matter A LOT. I can really see what you mean when you talk about numbers in Skyrim not mattering... I played an assassin by the way, with Persuasion and Sneak, a little combat. I did think it was a little sad that it seemed you had to focus on either talking or killing. I'd have liked to switch a little. Also didn't like how if you focused on one skill you could be punished for it. Like I used sneak to get into a quest to get an object, but then I couldn't get it because my Lore wasn't high enough, so sneaking didn't help me much."

Me: "Well, I think you should expect to fail some quests. I don't think they intended you to win everything."

Him: "True, true. The way the game is made, it would be pretty shitty if you could just win at everything. I liked the challenge. All in all it was really good, especially how what you did affected stuff around you like you do things in this way something else happens than if you did it the other way." [he doesn't know what choices and consequences is ]

Me: "Yeah, definetely!

Him: "What did you play?"

Me: "I played a Praetor focusing on Block, Etiquette and Hammer."

Him: "Well, etiquette is pretty useless. Block is SOOOO over-powered. I tried using dodge but it's really bad compared to Block.

Me: "They're talking about buffing dodge."

Him: "I hope so! By the way, I think there needs to me more Lore-explanations and that kindda stuff. I don't really know what a Praetor or Grifter is, and the small explanation on the character screen isn't really enough to make me understand what they are."

Then we talked about some other stuff, and before we left he said:

"See ya. Gonna try a mercenary next. I want to kill some shit now. I never seem to be that good at avoiding combat anyway, and my assassin wasn't really made for it :p

Thanks for showing me the game uncle."

That right there is some major motherfucking , Codex!

:soproudofhisnephew:

 

I can't remember if merc killing assassin gives any more rewards from the innkeeper, but if you make a combat-oriented (not 100% combat) character, it's not very difficult to kill him then go on to help Vardanis. I actually even saved Vardanis in one of those, by killing the two thieves in two turns, I think with something like 35 axe and 35 block and combat-geared but not quite min-maxed attributes.

Also, total brofist to the 14yo.

 

Sad that most people trying the demo will be like "what, I'm getting killed on the first fight????", will uninstall it, and never try it again.

 

Meanwhile I finally discovered the MAJESTIC power of crafting. With my EPIC masterwork hardened edge iron gladius every time I click on an enemy something AWESOME happens. And my hardened masterwork armor made my mercenary nearly impervious to damage. Finally did the damn IG tower quest, after killing everything else (bandits+mine). Apparently you need about 60 block to pass the "solo distraction" check compared to the 50 block needed if you are not the only target. Still with the steel gladius of AWESOME and Praetorian hardened iron armor it was surprisingly easy.

Although I wish I had more steel. The amount present in the demo (outside of what you can get by killing the commercium shopkeeper which triggers the "leave or get raped" squad) isn't enough to craft both a max 9 AP armor and a gladius. So I just got a gladius.

However I feel that it is totally pointless to use shields better than a buckler. The attack penalty, combined with the ridiculous dodge/block rates of some of the tougher opponents, makes them a crappy choice. Unless want to tank a barrage of arrows. I can see how dodge can be worth it at higher levels though, especially with it's higher counterattack rate and a two handed axe of maiming. But as far as the demo is concerned block is just superior IMO.

 

I think it's the lack of decent armour for dodgers what makes that route very difficult. You can't really craft anything better than the armours you can buy (unless there are some secret techniques I didn't find) because +1DR masterwork is unavailable for light armours and the masterwork that reduces armour penalties is crap. Instead of lowering the penalties by 5 percentage points, it reduces it by 5% of total value, meaning that the penalty goes f.e. from 10% to 9%.

 

That's probably a bug.

 

Yeah, that's true. Dogde requires you to use shitty armors and never use shields, but offers no other benefit than perhaps more AP. Having a hand free from the shield doens't mean much, as dual-handed weapons are not that great, and apperantly you can't dual-wield.



[perception] Still, we have those pics on the user image gallery at ITS Forum...so, Vault Dweller , dual-wielding is a WIP or was discarted due balance issues (or I'm just dumb and didn't realise it was in the demo, like decomposing)?

 

You can always have a net on your off-hand if you don't benefit from a shield. Or bolas, but I don't know what they do. I thought they tripped the enemy but when I used nothing happened (might be because he was already netted, wouldn't use it otherwise because the hit chance is low and it costs a fortune).

 

Ha ha ha. This almost brough a tear to my eye. Nice to see ARPG people actually enjoying this game.

 

Ironically, I've found in both combat demo and here, that the way to go with dodge is to wield gigantic two handed weapons and use your high AP to lay the smackdown dealing lots of damage, all the while relying on your dodge to stay alive. It works well enough to be an entertaining and effective character build, but I've always thought it interesting that the best dodgers are wielding giant hammers.

Dual wielding is still possible in the demo btw, though I don't really see the advantages of it.

 

Like in that pic? The way it worked for me was that I had a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, using either one or another (they don't appear ath the same time in the model, like in those pics), so I could mix attacks that best suited my AP. As you said,that doens't give much of a advantage...I was thinking more of attacking with both weapons at the same time with reduced AP cost or something...