Game News Age of Decadence Demo Released

[Excidium]

Ok trying merc 2 now. Went with IG this time, didn't know you could choose factions the first time. Shit's been pretty easy except the IG missions. First one was easy, but the tower, how the fuck are you supposed to do that? Block 60, Crit mid 50's or so, sword 40's. Doesn't matter if I go inside the tower or outside, those fuckers chew me and my groupmates up. Manage to kill 2-3 or so.

Try using nets.

This. Nets are great.

(In before perception as dump stat)

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Yes, but you get a dodge penalty, maybe if it was affected by the strength score..And yeah, two-handed builds are the ones where I can see dodge being viable, for obvious reasons.

There's another boon to dodge. Your counter-attack chance is significantly higher than with block. The badest (worst?, bad-assed?) dude I had was a DEX 10 dodge 2H hammer fighter with only leather armor (AP 12). He would basically counter-attack each and every time. Most enemies were down to near death or severely wounded before I even started to target them, just from the counters.

 

[Excidium]

Oooh, that I didn't know. I thought counter-attack was just based on the weapon default chance and the character's weapon skill. Good to know.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

1. Will some sort of Journal be implemented? I want to know what has been said and what i've said.
2. Any reason ESC or M/I/etc keys that bring up different windows don't also dismiss them?
3. I have no idea where the Aurelians's ruins are, Dellar talked about them but... no Journal maybe I missed some directions? the city map does not feature them... oh they're on the world map... uumm can you implement something like when you leave the city area you are presented with the world map? my first reaction was to try click on the black wall after I got out of the city but was useless.
4. Oh and on the Map menu the words LOCAL and WORLD should be made more different because for me atleast "LOCAL" and "LOCAL WORLD" seem pretty much the same so at first I thought that was just a descriptor and not actual buttons with different functions.
5. Ask Oscar if he can make the game pause when not in focus, while I like the background music I kinda expect the game to go to sleep in silence and not use any CPU resources if I alt-tab out of it.
6. Try to sneak into the Aurelian dig site, fail, bluff them, succeeded, got escorted inside... why is my character model STILL in the sneak position ?
7. I can't quit the game while in dialog mode, I need to kill it if I want to close it ( not to try another dialog choice but to close the computer or go to eat or whatever ). I loved that in DE:HR one could Alt-F4 anywhere in the game and be presented with a Yes/No dialog.
8. Why can't I skip the intro screens with ESC and Space but only with a mouse click?

 

[Tigranes]

Journal is already there with bunch of things, but doesn't seem to have a dialogue log. ESC does dismiss all windows.

The last point should be optional at least, I love that it keeps going, if there's a turn with 8 people doing 0 damage to each other I'm going to alt tab out and let it run.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

ESC does dismiss all windows.

yeah, except the Map, and I find it easier to just use the same button ( say I or M ) to dismiss a window since I already have the finger on that button, rather that to sweep my hand to ESC or sweep my mouse to the X and such. I also presume it's pretty easy to add this to the code.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Still, plays like a puzzle - which skill to increase first - no room for error.

It's like one of those old-school ones with no save options. The type where you fight through 21 levels with only 4 lives, then get to the end to fight the Big Bad Dragon. If it's your first time, you die horribly. Then have to go through all 21 levels again.

But by then, you start to learn the secret to the jumping puzzle on level 7... you need lots of nets. You make sure to stock up before you get there because you know it's coming.

You figure out the little trick that gets you easily through the mob on level 9... shields and blocking. You make sure you've got the best shield you can afford in your inventory, thanks to your fore-knowledge.

You make sure to buy the good anti-pierce armour before talking to the dude on level 16... you know he dumps you in a fight and that specific armour has just the right amount of pierce protection to counter your opponents' weapons. But you have to buy it the minute you walk into town otherwise you miss the chance to go shopping.

Then eventually, you figure out the end boss fight. You have to duck when the monster is making a funny noise because that means he's about to use his flame attack - which is always so high it goes above your head when you crouch. Then you know that he's going to follow that up with a claw attack but before he does, you've got just enough time to get in and strike (just enough time for one strike though, not two) before backing up to get out of the way of the claw. Rinse and repeat. Win.

 

[circ]

Yes, but you get a dodge penalty, maybe if it was affected by the strength score..And yeah, two-handed builds are the ones where I can see dodge being viable, for obvious reasons.

There's another boon to dodge. Your counter-attack chance is significantly higher than with block. The badest (worst?, bad-assed?) dude I had was a DEX 10 dodge 2H hammer fighter with only leather armor (AP 12). He would basically counter-attack each and every time. Most enemies were down to near death or severely wounded before I even started to target them, just from the counters.

Well, I gave this a shot sort of. 8 dex. 50 dodge for Flavius. Everything up to Flavius was doable, 50 reloads later I gave up, had enough kills so I got intimidate on bandit camp. Pumped up dodge to 54 or something, couldn't handle triple thief ambush. Maybe a few reloads and it's doable but no, dodge monkey is not as good as block merc. I don't dodge a shitload and I'm running around with a 0 dodge penalty shit tunic.

 

[Johannes]

You kinda get used to the auto travel, it's mostly the fact that there's this big town to run around in, so you set out expecting you'll actually be running around and interacting with the environment, but then it slowly turns out that the 3D world is mostly just a decoration and the text adventure screens are the meat of the gameplay (plus combat minigame). A mismatch between what you see, and what you get.
A different interface, similar to that in BaK (that of towns/taverns, not the walking around part) for example, or would've helped since people wouldn't have wrong expectations about what kind of gameplay the game has. And when the travel would always be fast, there'd be no need to have separate ways of fast and slow traveling.
Of course it's not something to change now, the current interface is totally serviceable after all (font issues etc. aside). But I guess it goes to show how changing the games design mid-development can create this kind of issues - if there was things like the stealth minigame, and whatever else interactivity you had planned, having the whole town rendered would make a lot more sense.

And yeah, the overall difficulty kinda forces you to metagame a bit too much into what order you'll need to increase your skills in.

 

[Livonya]

Started up a Mercenary and killed the assassin on my second try. I was expecting that battle to be impossible, just to let you know that combat is dangerous... so it surprised me when I won.

Went back and played some more with a different thief build... a lot of different stuff happened.

The skills actually matter. I am impressed. Can't wait to play the finished game.

You kinda get used to the auto travel, it's mostly the fact that there's this big town to run around in, so you set out expecting you'll actually be running around and interacting with the environment, but then it slowly turns out that the 3D world is mostly just a decoration and the text adventure screens are the meat of the gameplay (plus combat minigame). A mismatch between what you see, and what you get.
A different interface, similar to that in BaK (that of towns/taverns, not the walking around part) for example, or would've helped since people wouldn't have wrong expectations about what kind of gameplay the game has. And when the travel would always be fast, there'd be no need to have separate ways of fast and slow traveling.
Of course it's not something to change now, the current interface is totally serviceable after all (font issues etc. aside). But I guess it goes to show how changing the games design mid-development can create this kind of issues - if there was things like the stealth minigame, and whatever else interactivity you had planned, having the whole town rendered would make a lot more sense.

Yeah, the 3D town is almost in the way. I actually prefer the fast travel and wish I didn't have to manually go from street into the houses/shops (would prefer to just fast travel right into the building). I guess they needed the 3D stuff for the combat maps, so it isn't a complete waste to have the 3D town... and there are some random encounters in the town, so you need to wander around at least once.

I think they could have just skipped the 3D town and gone straight up text based adventures with turn based combat.

Text based adventures work pretty well... I loved the text adventures in Space Rangers, and to a lesser degree in King Arthur... it works quite well.

 

[Percy]

I like it but I dont know how to rotate the camera.

 

[Livonya]

I like it but I dont know how to rotate the camera.

The same thing happened to me. But then I pressed the scroll up/scroll down button on my mouse and the screen suddenly rotated. I actually thought it couldn't be rotated for 30 or so minutes... I thought that was odd.

 

[Aldebaran]

You can also press delete and page down to rotate the camera.

 

[Livonya]

I do have one complaint, and I am sure someone else has commented on this, but I will add my voice to theirs...

There needs to be some sort of text that appears when the cursor turns yellow to inform you that you have found something that you can interact with (before you actually click on it).

This system works just fine when it is just a door or a single chest, but I got into a storage room that had at least 5 different things that I can select... the problem is that I can't tell if have found something new, or am just over the same thing... so I end up clicking on the same thing but in different places over and over... it is just too vague.

A single word should appear somewhere that corresponds to what is causing the mouse to highlight that way you can see if you have found something new or just more of the same.

Clearly when I click on the item text appears, so I can tell if I have selected something new or not, but it causes a lot of mindless clicking.

 

[Percy]

I did the assassins thing with a drifter who used an axe. Very good. I was toast until I smashed the centurion's shield with my axe.

I wouldn't mind if the game was reduced to vignettes or whatever the fuck it is called when you have that instant transportation. Saves time, although some of the encounters may go as a result.

I liked the writing and the combat. The fights with npc companions were more fun though. Navigation was the worst part, but will start a new game and try page down or delete so I can rotate the camera.

The best thing was that everything seemed to be approachable in a number of ways.

 

[Grimlorn]

Anyone know how much lore and crafting you need for the final check for the machine in the mines? Had like 46 crafting and 42 lore and still failed. Wonder what the secondary thing the machine does is.

 

[Kenneybounces]

Ok i've finally killed everything this game threw at me successfully. Phew..
I've revised my original build. Here's my new min-maxed build:

10 str - For fast strike max damage
7 dex - 9 Action points for 3 hits with the spear.
8 con - 50 hp worked out nicely.
7 perception - +5% to hit. Useful for last fight.
4 int
4 cha

Suggested killing order:
1) Go around town, kill all innocents which are not flagged by the guards. Build up your skills.
2) Join imperial guards, finish first mission easily with custom crafted full bronze armor(crafted during battle as you get a FREE set of full bronze raider armor) and spear +harden 1.
3) With full bronze armor, kill every encounter in town. Make sure to save up all your steel daggers - 3 nobles near palace, merchant near inn, noble ambush with two guards, the guy who set up the ambush.
4) With this, you should have 50 spear, 50 block, 50 critical strike. Go ahead and visit house daratan via the critical strike route. You get a nice +5 bonus to critical strike and a full set of iron armor.
5) Now head out to the bandit camp, Critical strike the leader, and then start hacking all the raiders. It should be relatively simple at this point.
6) It's time for an upgrade. With 40 crafting, craft a full set of iron armor and weapons.
7) Now head out to the mines. Make sure you have a trident (this is the key to winning this encounter). Everything should die easily to you except for the captain in full steel armor and sword. He won't attack you once you back away from him, so save him for the last. You CANNOT beat him easily.. so use a trident and run around until he is dead. Your HP should ideally be around 30 before fighting the captain.
8) Get the full set of steel armor, head back and heal. Now head back to the mine and kill all the slaves. (easy, no worries). Head back to town for your reward.
9) You should have enough points now to get crafting up to 60. Immediately smelt everything you have, and make a full set of steel armor with +3 harden and +1 AP. If not, you can save this for after the next step.
10) Head back to the mine (it will be under the control of house daratan, with a captain equipped with a full set of steel armor. Mwahaha.) Start killing everyone. With your improved full steel armor you should be able to kill the captain without using the trident. If you wanna play it safe, use the trident.
11) Make your new steel weapons.

Now before you finish the game...
Remaining town encounters: A mercenary with a 2 handed hammer and the guard at the trade center. Kill them both with fast strikes.
Guard town encounter: A patrol comes along if you have murdered a flagged innocent. If you succeed your only reward is you get exiled and the demo ends. FUFUFUFUFUWTF?

Only proceed on after you are ready to end the game.
12) Tower fight - Block, and fight the guards outside the tower. The first target to kill is the lone archer. Immediately follow up by slaughtering the other two guards with fast strikes. It will be a moderately difficult fight. Fast strikes should allow you to win this encounter.
13) Final fight - Immediately attack Antidas. Kill him in 3-4 turns. After this, attack the two long spear users. Then attack dellar. Kill him with fast strikes. At this point, all the imperial guards should have died. Now you need to retreat to the throne chair where only two targets can hit you. (this is why we took down the two long spear users early on). If you get hit by a -1 dex early on, immediately reload. You MUST have 3 fast strikes to survive this encounter.. 2 fast strikes will not cut it.
14) End game fight - You are given a dagger with no armor. No worries.. the two guards die easily. Just wack em both for a while.

The problem with this is that i had to min-max in order to beat the demo as a melee bruiser. When my character originally had 6 dex i wasn't able to beat the final fight after multiple attempts. I restarted the whole thing with 7 dex and that let me beat it on my 2nd attempt.
Vince, you might wanna cut the players some slack and save min-max requirements for optional encounters. You might argue that this is optional had i put in some intelligence+cha+persuasion+streetwise but my argument is that this is the main storyline. A player wouldn't have finished the story after hours of playing because of some min-max that he missed, and that makes sad pandas.

Here's a picture before the final fight:

 

[Kenneybounces]

Anyone know how much lore and crafting you need for the final check for the machine in the mines? Had like 46 crafting and 42 lore and still failed. Wonder what the secondary thing the machine does is.

I passed it with 50 each. It just says you need more power. Pfft.

 

[Topher]

Finally played it a bit, so far I don't really love it or hate it, it's really more if a mixed bag, though I've played very very little. Combat was fun and challenging, so I liked that, though I wish dual wielding was represented graphically/had it's own related combat moves/combat style. I can see why people felt like there isn't quite enough to do during each combat turn and I wasn't totally clear on all the mechanics or their operation. For instance, my dagger was listed as a passive weapon, is that like an off-hand blade? was I secretly dual wielding? or does it mean something else entirely?

I really don't see what all the difficulty fuss is about (people dying on the first fight and all that, I got through it just fine with my drifter using a combat build). Sure it's hard, maybe a bit too hard but I'd much rather have that then slightly too easy combat (I'll just be sure to have plenty of save files for proper save scumming). I think the inventory screen used for looting corpses is a pain in the ass but I'm probably using it wrong (can you pick up and drag items between the two inventories ala Fallout or do I have to actually click transfer? oddly enough I didn't really check for myself) ...and it's sucks that dropping stuff on the ground causes it to disappear, maybe that's location specific? Personally I find that the 3D game world, interface (in general) and the little description box (lower left corner, used for combat text and whatnot) take some getting used too. I'd really like to see a short break between each entry into that descriptor box because it's hard to read at a glance in my opinion, my eyes just glaze over it but in Fallout I always followed it quite easily, whereas here I find that I'd rather ignore it (maybe it's the font choice, or font color, I don't particularly like either but a small line break between each entry, just something tiny would be great... or maybe you could color code it. Set player combat text in green, enemies in red, so on and so forth, anything to break up that giant white wall of text).

I should also mention that I found what I can only assume to be a glitch. I go talk to Deller for the first time, take both quests, walk away and murder the first guard I see. When I wander off after the fight a few guards/centurions/whatever stop me and kindly let me know that killing is wrong "okay" but it's cool this time, no worries. Here's the problem, after we talk for the first time and they let me go, every few steps i take causes them to show back up and we go through the same thing all over again... basically I can't leave a little five foot wide invisible box?!? Just thought I'd mention it.

*To add some context to my combat comments, I played with a Dex 10 char, because seriously why the fuck wouldn't you?!?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Kenneybounces would also kill helpless kittens and puppies if SP is at stake. Jesus, that bodycount

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Anyone know how much lore and crafting you need for the final check for the machine in the mines? Had like 46 crafting and 42 lore and still failed. Wonder what the secondary thing the machine does is.

I passed it with 50 each. It just says you need more power. Pfft.

There's a chest with a mcguffin that needs to be unlocked. You can also get the powertube from the Aurelians when posing as loremaster, you can't kill them then though.

 

[Percy]

I have the re-occurring cut scene where the guards tell you off about killing innocents too. Serves me right I guess. How the fuck did you get 83 kills kenneybounces?

 

[Ulminati]

Still, plays like a puzzle - which skill to increase first - no room for error.

It's like one of those old-school ones with no save options. The type where you fight through 21 levels with only 4 lives, then get to the end to fight the Big Bad Dragon. If it's your first time, you die horribly. Then have to go through all 21 levels again.

But by then, you start to learn the secret to the jumping puzzle on level 7... you need lots of nets. You make sure to stock up before you get there because you know it's coming.

You figure out the little trick that gets you easily through the mob on level 9... shields and blocking. You make sure you've got the best shield you can afford in your inventory, thanks to your fore-knowledge.

You make sure to buy the good anti-pierce armour before talking to the dude on level 16... you know he dumps you in a fight and that specific armour has just the right amount of pierce protection to counter your opponents' weapons. But you have to buy it the minute you walk into town otherwise you miss the chance to go shopping.

Then eventually, you figure out the end boss fight. You have to duck when the monster is making a funny noise because that means he's about to use his flame attack - which is always so high it goes above your head when you crouch. Then you know that he's going to follow that up with a claw attack but before he does, you've got just enough time to get in and strike (just enough time for one strike though, not two) before backing up to get out of the way of the claw. Rinse and repeat. Win.

DarkUnderlord nailed it.

The AoD demo is easy when you know exactly what every dialogue option is going to entail, the exact mechanics used to resolve combat, the skill tresholds needed for options and which persons to speak to in which order to obtain the optimal gear. The game is perfect and we are all retarded for not posessing encyclopedic knowledge of the demo the first time we play it.

Sorry VD, but a number of prople have raised very valid concerns about the game forcing them (often via the conversation-teleportation you love so much) into situations that are only survivable if you posess knowledge a first-time player (and by logical extension the character in-game) cannot be expected to have. Your response to most of these as far as I've been able to gather is "NOOB! L2P!"

As a demo that is supposed to be representative of the final product, it has failed to impart on me any desire whatsoever to impart money for more of the same. It feels like a less humorous, more pretentious version of "I want to be the guy". That game is also extremely easy if you know in advance where all the hidden traps are. I wish your the best of luck with your final product, but your PR in this thread has reached Bioware-levels and noone is served by that. Least of all you as a person trying to make us give you our money.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Sorry VD, but a number of prople have raised very valid concerns about the game forcing them (often via the conversation-teleportation you love so much) into situations that are only survivable if you posess knowledge a first-time player (and by logical extension the character in-game) cannot be expected to have. Your response to most of these as far as I've been able to gather is "NOOB! L2P!"

I've only commented on claims about the combat's difficulty.

As a demo that is supposed to be representative of the final product, it has failed to impart on me any desire whatsoever to impart money for more of the same.

Fair enough.

I wish your the best of luck with your final product, but your PR in this thread has reached Bioware-levels and noone is served by that. Least of all you as a person trying to make us give you our money.

First, I'm not trying to make anyone give me money. Like I said many times before, I didn't expect everyone to like the game and thus I didn't expect everyone to give me money. I'm ok with it.

Second, I post in my usual manner and I've been a member of this forum for a long time. Just because we released a demo doesn't mean that my posts have suddenly become PR. God forbid I disagree with someone, eh?

 

[Haba]

VD stating his personal opinion is hardly Bioware PR - or PR at all. Maybe suicidal PR.

The man is making the kind of game he wants to see made and that is it. Now of course the interesting question is what is the role of this "beta". Is it just reinforcing our pre-existing opinions (and identifying bugs) or do you actually want actual feedback?

I see the same issue as others have pointed out - after living and breathing AoD for months (or years), the testers and developers are both quite blind so some glaring features in design. Personally I'm not sure if I should even bother pointing them out or rather just decide myself whether I'm willing to live with them in the final product (the font issue being an exception to this, it is a total show stopper).

AoD is never going to be everyone's cup of tea, especially when it comes to such a diverse audience such as (c)RPG fans are. If no compromise is in horizon, better state it out fairly instead of fighting the windmills at forums.