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KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

Curratum

Guest
Today I saw their backerkit store was selling $10 addons for ingame "faction banners" that boost the morale and rally nearby faction members. There are no factions in the game. So basically the people who bought this addon... euch... :(
 

Curratum

Guest
"Bart & Bertha – We have their skulls rigged and animated, they have all their voice lines, and we just need to hook them up safely in Marcaul and QA them a bit more. We expect this to be added shortly after launch. The skulls are still being QA'd.

Clarifying and looking into how we can effectively modify our game's current save system is one of our top priorities right now.

We understand it can be very challenging to play this game before we push another update addressing some common performance issues and bugs, and we appreciate your patience as we work on this."

:hahyou:
 

RoSoDude

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
727
I admire some parts of the hacking system, but it has two very poor aspects.

1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around. It's the old, "don't use the easy way to open that door, I'll lose the XP from opening it the hard way" trap, a trap that Prey avoids. DXMD fixes this by giving XP for using passwords, although it's still not perfect. But DXMD doesn't fix...
Absolutely, which is why I praised the hacking minigame individually but not its greater utilization in context -- this is what I meant by XP micro-rewards, and they're antithetical to DX design principles by incentivizing certain playstyles for non-organic reasons. MD did a much better job balancing the rewards, but it's bandaids on a broken system as far as I'm concerned. I'd also criticize the over-use of the hacking minigame, as the removal of lockpicking/electronics means that EVERYTHING is opened by hacking, so even a non-hacker build will be playing the minigame quite a bit. Still much better than Bioshock though, both in the actual minigame and its frequency.

2: RNG. It's just a huge invitation to savescum. This kind of mini-game should be based on skill, not RNG slightly lessened by stats and consumables.
Another issue of utilization. On its own, I actually think the RNG is great. I have played through HR/MD with no upgrades to Hacking: Stealth or Fortify, relying completely on strategic use of softwares to complete the harder hacks. It actually works quite well, and I only had to buy softwares a handful of times. The RNG adds a dimension of dynamic strategy rather than pure puzzle solving, legitimizes differential character investment, and creates some genuine risk/reward especially when the real-time hacking puts you in danger of being spotted (this is all HIGHLY similar to what I like about SS2's hacking system). That it encourages savescumming is an unfortunate consequence of Save Anywhere more broadly speaking, as many more of the game's systems encourage and are destroyed by savescumming than just hacking (see: mashing F8 when spotted). This feature is endemic even to the classics to various degrees.

Speaking of hacking minigames, I think one area where Prey definitively loses to its competitors is its hacking minigame. God, it's so friggin' boring. They should have put some Pac-Man ghosts in there or something. Plus the "difficulty" makes no sense, Level 2 hacks are actually the hardest by far because the doubled timer wasn't balanced for the tighter layouts, while Level 3 and 4 hacks are the easiest because the layouts had to be more open to accommodate more nodes while the timer was only scaled up linearly. Really backwards stuff.

I think those were maybe my single biggest dislike... the frozen time, the unskippable mini-cutscene, and the fact the resulting body position was randomised so it made stealth runs frustrating.
They're easily the worst part of the gameplay. I think I could happily recommend HR/MD otherwise, but the takedowns are such an embarrassment that I can only be lukewarm at best. The devs noticed very late how badly takedowns unbalanced the experience that they had to slap on a huge energy cost (they've literally admitted as much), but this doesn't fix the enormous underlying problems. I could go on and on about the flaws of these games, but none put a damper on the experience like time-stopping fade-to-black canned animation win-button goddamn takedowns. Ugh.

That I am more eager to discuss and tepidly praise the systems design of modern AAA fanfiction/tributes to games like Deus Ex and Thief over that of the new indie release from the original developers of those games engenders a profound numbness in me.
:despair:
 
Last edited:

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
These gems, posted by one of their devs on Steam:

Flarechess [developer] 58 minutes ago

So I've been here at OtherSide since late August of 2017. It is absolutely NOT true that "production on Underworld Ascendant simply stopped." The team was still busy hammering away at finishing up core systems before we could polish. I'm pretty sure we had mostly placeholder art for many of the enemies at that point, as is natural for that point since we had just released our pre-alpha build.

Get that, the core systems were being finished in Aug 2017 and they spent a year polishing this game. Yup. Lol.

We kept our KS backers and progress public as we worked on the game with each month as Underworld Ascendant came together.

That one is even better.

So yeah, their progress was so public that nobody was informed of the lack of factions, dialogues, interconnected dungeon or the saving system, and was discovered just 2 weeks before the release.

This is pathetic.

Anyone who has been playtesting for us since August 2018 knows that we've made great strides since then. Our usual workflow has always been like this. Yes, some bugs fell through the cracks, and we had a hard deadline we had to meet. We paid for development costs out of pocket to meet November 15th, and we squeezed as much as we could into the launch build. This does NOT mean we have given up on the game, or have ever. I know it would be helpful to have a more in-depth post-mortem, but I think that honor should go to a developer who's been on the project since the beginning.

I have no words.

They've made no fucking progress since Aug 2018. All the same bugs are still there at release. They even cut even more features ( goodbye diving underwater ) as a welcome launch surprise. The physics, which everybody complained about, is exactly the same as in the alpha build. No, I lied, it's even worse. In the beta builds you were not glued to water when walking in a puddle.

In my entire gaming career of 30 years I've never seen a developer make such dishonest and pathetic answers for their poor game.
 

Curratum

Guest
My favorite part was

Yes, some bugs fell through the cracks, and we had a hard deadline we had to meet. We paid for development costs out of pocket to meet November 15th, and we squeezed as much as we could into the launch build.

Well, rather, something that resembles a game a bit fell through the cracks in your bugs...

But also

Faction Banners are still in the game, but the description and use has changed since then for scope. The usage with relations to Factions is still preserved.
 

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
I couldn't contain myself and posted an answer to this guy in the Steam forums. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up being banned.

How this guy has the balls to claim that the KS backers were kept informed of the progress of the game, simply infuriates me.
 

BEvers

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
808
More dev posts:

As for the state of the game, we did the best we could when meeting this launch date. Of course there's still more we wanted to put in and polish, but this was the date we had to meet. Some of the core systems are still intact and just need to be polished up, and there have been a lot of improvements from just last month's build to the launch build alone.

We understand your position, and you're still allowed to be critical. Now that we're back from the Thanksgiving holiday, we've been holding a long series of meetings going over what we need to improve on for the liveops stage, and what the game still needs.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742226629874946695/#c1742226629875351937

All right, more than a LITTLE bit of polish. That's true.

Some features (like the semi-operational way to "swim" underwater) were not meant to be cut. They were bugged out. Other features were nebulous as we worked on them earlier this year, so it was hard to confirm anything until they were in or not.

I've mentioned before that we could pinpoint a lot of mistakes that were made during the development process, but a lot we also can't talk about right now.

In the meantime, we're working on changing up our production pipelines to make things more efficient during liveops.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742226629874946695/#c1742226629875439953

Liveops? Improved production pipelines? Are they planning to strike it big with the console release?
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=7062.0

Hey everyone!

A weekly update a little later in the day than usual...

So the team has returned from Thanksgiving travels and we spent the majority of today alone just having meetings and brainstorming how and where to go from here. We already have a list of priorities we'd like to work on as quickly (and safely) as possible, and try to maximize our time.

We have another hotfix queued up for this week, particularly tackling crashes near the beginning of the game (before even Marcaul!) and common movement bugs, like the player being sluggish in water. We're aiming to have a lot of other fixes in too related to bug reports we've received about AI and combat issues. Additionally, the fullscreen exclusive option and turning subtitles off will be available.

Other issues we're working on are upping the consistency of arrows (sometimes they fire, sometimes they disappear, etc), more combat and AI issues (especially to show when they're afraid / low on health and want to flee, etc), performance in areas past the Underswamp, and of course making the save system more accessible while we also work on bugs. (Like putting "swim-crouching" back in!)

In the meanwhile, it will be really busy in the office for us as we continue to coordinate with you and our KS backers on your digital and physical rewards. After this week's hotfix, we're also working on an improved save system and improving more performance issues by mid-December.

As always, we're open to hearing your feedback and suggestions - and bug reports!

Thanks Sam!

You guys can help us in three of the areas we're looking to make improvements. In each of these areas, can you give us more specific and detailed feedback of some of the issues you're having or seeing? A good example of being specific is: with player movement people were having issues getting out of water (a bug that we've fixed and are testing). That type of feedback will help our engineers and designers target fixes. Here are those three areas
- Player movement
- AI
- Combat (melee in particular)

Note we're doing a lot more that what's on that list, like working up a better save game system, fixing holes and other visual glitches in levels, balancing combat/mana/economy, skill progression, etc. We're planning a bigger update later this month to address some of the things we're seeing in those areas. We're planning future updates and hotfixes after that to continue to improve them. We'll likely ask for some playtesting again, although the turnaround time will be pretty tight.

Last, as Sam noted, we have hotfix 1.03 planned for later this week. We're testing a new build now that has a bunch of fixes in--we'll provide more detail when we feel like we know what's going to make it in or not. Sam alluded to some good things in her post.

Thank you for sticking with us -- we're not giving up and we appreciate that you haven't either.

:avatard:
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,429
Location
Grand Chien
RE: newer Deus Ex games XP rewards for hacking; not only does it incentivize certain activities over others, but the reward is massively different compared to the original Deus Ex.

In the original, XP bonuses were nice, but ultimately they didn't have such a huge effect on your character because they only rewarded you with skill points, not augmentations. But in HR/MK, these XP rewards lead directly to more augmentations, so it's a huge deal to make sure you get each and every XP reward on each level.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
Patron
Joined
Oct 22, 2013
Messages
3,348
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Grab the Codex by the pussy Serpent in the Staglands
https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=7062.0

Hey everyone!

A weekly update a little later in the day than usual...

So the team has returned from Thanksgiving travels and we spent the majority of today alone just having meetings and brainstorming how and where to go from here. We already have a list of priorities we'd like to work on as quickly (and safely) as possible, and try to maximize our time.

We have another hotfix queued up for this week, particularly tackling crashes near the beginning of the game (before even Marcaul!) and common movement bugs, like the player being sluggish in water. We're aiming to have a lot of other fixes in too related to bug reports we've received about AI and combat issues. Additionally, the fullscreen exclusive option and turning subtitles off will be available.

Other issues we're working on are upping the consistency of arrows (sometimes they fire, sometimes they disappear, etc), more combat and AI issues (especially to show when they're afraid / low on health and want to flee, etc), performance in areas past the Underswamp, and of course making the save system more accessible while we also work on bugs. (Like putting "swim-crouching" back in!)

In the meanwhile, it will be really busy in the office for us as we continue to coordinate with you and our KS backers on your digital and physical rewards. After this week's hotfix, we're also working on an improved save system and improving more performance issues by mid-December.

As always, we're open to hearing your feedback and suggestions - and bug reports!

Thanks Sam!

You guys can help us in three of the areas we're looking to make improvements. In each of these areas, can you give us more specific and detailed feedback of some of the issues you're having or seeing? A good example of being specific is: with player movement people were having issues getting out of water (a bug that we've fixed and are testing). That type of feedback will help our engineers and designers target fixes. Here are those three areas
- Player movement
- AI
- Combat (melee in particular)

Note we're doing a lot more that what's on that list, like working up a better save game system, fixing holes and other visual glitches in levels, balancing combat/mana/economy, skill progression, etc. We're planning a bigger update later this month to address some of the things we're seeing in those areas. We're planning future updates and hotfixes after that to continue to improve them. We'll likely ask for some playtesting again, although the turnaround time will be pretty tight.

Last, as Sam noted, we have hotfix 1.03 planned for later this week. We're testing a new build now that has a bunch of fixes in--we'll provide more detail when we feel like we know what's going to make it in or not. Sam alluded to some good things in her post.

Thank you for sticking with us -- we're not giving up and we appreciate that you haven't either.

:avatard:

Everyone at some point has professional failures, it's just part of life. This has got to hurt though.
 

sk2k

Novice
Joined
Jan 8, 2005
Messages
38
What irks me a lot is that they want 30 Euro for this mess. They should significantly reduce the price.
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,773
Location
Australia
1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around

If you're going to harp on DXHR for stuff like this, you need to begin at the fact that it is far more rewarding to knockout every person in a building than it is to simply sneak by them. You can still receive the Ghost and No Alarm EXP rewards this way too, allowing you to double up on insane EXP gain.
 

Zakhad

Savant
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
284
Location
Gurtex
1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around

If you're going to harp on DXHR for stuff like this, you need to begin at the fact that it is far more rewarding to knockout every person in a building than it is to simply sneak by them. You can still receive the Ghost and No Alarm EXP rewards this way too, allowing you to double up on insane EXP gain.

Oh yeah, that too.

The whole incentives system was messed up.
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,773
Location
Australia
1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around

If you're going to harp on DXHR for stuff like this, you need to begin at the fact that it is far more rewarding to knockout every person in a building than it is to simply sneak by them. You can still receive the Ghost and No Alarm EXP rewards this way too, allowing you to double up on insane EXP gain.

Oh yeah, that too.

The whole incentives system was messed up.

It was clearly designed to guide the player towards stealthy options, but the gameplay already does that. Try playing a combat-focused build on the highest difficulty. It's not fun.
 

Curratum

Guest
The official UA forum is something else... :|

qtYjUTX.png
 

Avonaeon

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 20, 2010
Messages
593
Location
Denmark
Whyyy?! Just make a normal save system! Really seems like they're overthinking it.
 

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