Game News Age of Decadence Demo Released

[Tigranes]

That was, like, 2004.

 

[Infinitron]

People have been talking about AoD as a game that's all about QTEs ("Quality Text Events", of course) and doesn't have much environmental interaction for quite a while. Apparently not every paid attention...

 

[PrzeSzkoda]

All issues aside, this game is pretty kewl. Just replayed an assassin and betrayed my bros, then went with the IG. Totally awesome to be the most hated person ever (had subzero reputation scores with every faction, excluding the IG which only had 3 measly points anyway, and then betrayed them again, fuck yeah). I can't wait for the full game to see how it all plays out to the end.

 

[hiver]

That's a very good point, and sometimes the game does bear it out. My persuasion-heavy Praetor was able to talk Dellar into making the raiders fight IG, but when I talked to the raider guy it was either Streetwise or a Persuasion-Trading combination, meaning I couldn't get it done.

What would be really cool is if, as metzger says, the skills become a lot more exclusive, and then, faction reputation / general reputation / traits introduce new possibilities. E.g. instead of a situation where you need to use streetwise to persuade a thief or a persuade-trading combo, you might have a streetwise option, then a persuade-reputation combo. i.e. although the thief can see you don't speak his language, he can see you have a strong reputation with the thieves or as a hardened fighter, and is prepared to listen to your more highbrow persuasion. In that case, (1) the exclusivity of skills means you know what you're specialising in and you know what to expect more; (2) but you still maintain some possibility of branching out and being more flexible through the actions you take in the gameworld.

Perhaps some of this already happens - I didn't see too many instances where traits/reputations factor in dialogue in the demo, but I assume they will very much as you progress in the game. There's a lot of potential there and I hope it is used.

This, this, THIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!



is this so hard to see damnit!

and make dodge work again.

 

[kazgar]

So random die rolls and player decisions. A good combination of both seems to be acceptable for combat.

But how do you bring multiple die rolls and player choice into a single dialogue path?

Not sure about player decisions, but adding die rolls to non combat skills would allow for some interesting variation and reduce some of the metagaming parts. If a skillcheck of streetwise > 50 was replaced with streetwise + d20 > 55 (for example) it would allow someone with a high streetwise to make it through the same part, but also allow someone with a lower streetwise (ie 40) to make it through sometimes. I guess along the lines of trap detection/removal in NWN/D&D.

Wouldn't see a huge impact on balance I think, though there's a chance it would mean more skillpoints in the system. On the other hand, people wouldn't need to save scum/allocate points/retry as often, as occasionally they'd get through the check and would save afterwards with skillpoints intact. Might allow more points in the system without a tagging or point multiplier. Would also allow a better immersion, or at least less breaks to retry sections. Also adds some randomness which may improve the experience over multiple replays.

 

[Excidium]

It would make people reload even more to get a roll good enough to pass the test with their skill level.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Since there is no rolling, how about a bit of telegraphing the odds of whether or not you'll succeed at the skill check? For example, if you're just a bit below or just a bit above the required limit and you're about to undergo a situation that could mean quasi-certain death in case of failure, there could be a little added warning (you're confident in your abilities but rather tense about this). The one who invested almost nothing in a particular skill will know that picking the option means his doom to begin with. The one who heavily invested in it knows he's virtually guaranteed to succeed. The one who invested fairly in something but isn't sure, which would represent a fair amount of the people pondering picking something to get out of a bad situation, would know he at least has a fair shot. It would also have the advantage of not spoiling the skill check in advance, while not turning it into a Fighting Fantasy situation, and not forcing the addition of content for moderate failure.

Or forget it if it's just a facepalm type of idea.

 

[kazgar]

It would make people reload even more to get a roll good enough to pass the test with their skill level.

reloaders gonna reload.

if they wanna play that way good on em, but adding some randomness may scrape you through a situation or too and leave you in the game you're currently playing, instead of a instant pass/fail. Or you may just be able to blame the RNG and accept the failure and keep playing with it instead of going for the best run (or reloading to add skillpoints/try again, though the option is there as well)

It potentially provides more playthroughs, or more reloads.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I have no idea what problem Grunker sees though, other than his own mental illness caught up in his hyperbole.

Oh the irony. You really can't see it, can you?

Sorry Grunker, but when I say AoD is a "choose your own text adventure" with broken combat, I mean AoD is a "choose your own text adventure" with broken combat.

You either accept AoD for what it is, in which case it achieves what it set out to achieve and absolutely no adjustment is necessary. "That's the game" and you lump it. In which case the game, literally is, perfectly playable. That is, it can be completed as it was designed to be completed and nothing is wrong. This is AoD as it was intended to be.

Or you see a game that's missing a half fuck-tonne of content and options. So many options and so many things that need to be "fixed" in fact that it's a major re-design. Not a slight patch job that can be fixed by forcing things on players, a major re-design. And you can see the re-design suggestions that have been offered. This doesn't mean there aren't people who don't think the game is "good for what it is". But it does mean the people who don't aren't going to be satisfied with silly half-assed, band-aid solutions. And these are the people who are save-scumming.

The problem to missing content and options is not "force those options on people!". That's like having a broken lock on a door and thinking the solution is to leave the door open... The problem is much deeper than a quick-fix which solves nothing.

My problem with what you're saying is that on one hand you accept that (it's bad-bad-bad etc...), but on the other you keep saying the problem "is not that big", while agreeing with those who propose some pretty major re-designs... Which to me, makes no sense. I don't see the middle ground in this scenario, that is, if we're accepting the problem is indeed that "bad-bad-bad" stuff that's encouraging the save-scumming in the first place.

Not sure about player decisions, but adding die rolls to non combat skills would allow for some interesting variation and reduce some of the metagaming parts. If a skillcheck of streetwise > 50 was replaced with streetwise + d20 > 55 (for example) it would allow someone with a high streetwise to make it through the same part, but also allow someone with a lower streetwise (ie 40) to make it through sometimes. I guess along the lines of trap detection/removal in NWN/D&D.

Wouldn't see a huge impact on balance I think, though there's a chance it would mean more skillpoints in the system. On the other hand, people wouldn't need to save scum/allocate points/retry as often, as occasionally they'd get through the check and would save afterwards with skillpoints intact. Might allow more points in the system without a tagging or point multiplier. Would also allow a better immersion, or at least less breaks to retry sections. Also adds some randomness which may improve the experience over multiple replays.

It would make people reload even more to get a roll good enough to pass the test with their skill level.

Is that any different to reloading combat when you die? But again, look at combat. You can "win" perfectly and come out completely unscathed... or you can face the battle of your life and barely scrape through with 2 HP left and broken equipment... or you can come out somewhere in-between. All of those are quite fun ("Boy, I barely survived that one!" or "Man, bitch got pwned!") but that's 3 options on surviving vs 1 where you die.

Combat has so many variables to play with. I might engage you from mid-range with a two handed hammer. You swing at me and miss. I swing at you and hit but then your armour absorbs most of the damage. But then if I re-load that, your first strike might hit me and critically damage my arm, leaving me unable to swing my hammer, so I run away a bit during my turn. So we can re-load sure, but the fight might play out completely differently each and every time based on the die rolls and our choices. And that's just within the first couple of moves.

... and man, I could go on! There's your Strength, Aglity and so many skills that come into play in combat, there's how many HP you have at the time (maybe you've only just survived an earlier encounter), what state your armour is in, whether you bought the better hammer yet... In dialogue there's... umm... the specific dialogue skill that option requires.

In dialogue there's no "you took a hit, you've lost HP!" option and your "equipment" doesn't break or need time to re-load. There's no real choice as to which skill to use (Hammer vs Sword) or which armour or whether you're counter-arguing or accepting and responding with a fallacy. You don't scrape through dialogue by the skin of your teeth and go "Gosh, I barely got out of that intellectual debate just in time!" or "Man, he totally got pwned by my mad speech skillz". You kind of... just pick an option and continue without batting an eyelid.

There's some sort of hokey mini-game that can be designed out of this I'm sure...

But because AoD is such a text-heavy game, the duality - the WIN / DIE - of dialogue has been brought front and centre.

 

[Excidium]

Yeah, I agree with you. That duality is absolutely horrible for any check, that's why most P&P systems came out with rules for degrees of success and failure. But that would be very hard to implement in a video game with so much C&C like AoD, I think some checks have that to an extent (an example is setting the bomb for the merchant ambush with the thieves guild) but to have DoS and DoF in every choice would be crazy.

 

[Cassidy]

Or you see a game that's missing a half fuck-tonne of content and options. So many options and so many things that need to be "fixed" in fact that it's a major re-design. Not a slight patch job that can be fixed by forcing things on players, a major re-design.

Like I mentioned elsewhere, is it really worth considering how many further Thursdays we would have to wait for a major redesign?

If VD decided to fix most of the problems and faults mentioned, including the lack of environmental interaction, chances are we'd see Grimoire and Wasteland 2 released first.

 

[zeitgeist]

I have to wonder, with there being so many reasonable Codex posts exposing design problems and offering fixes in great detail in such a short time since the release of the demo, what was the exact nature of the feedback given by the testers throughout all these years?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Or you see a game that's missing a half fuck-tonne of content and options. So many options and so many things that need to be "fixed" in fact that it's a major re-design. Not a slight patch job that can be fixed by forcing things on players, a major re-design.

Like I mentioned elsewhere, is it really worth considering how many further Thursdays we would have to wait for a major redesign?

Yeah, that's why I'm against any attempted half-assed fixes. Those fixes are intended to resolve problems that only a major re-design can achieve. Now if there's not enough time for a re-design / new content / +whatever, then it means the game literally must be in the "like it or lump it" category. Right now, it is what it is, as it was designed to be. And if people don't like that, well, tough.

And if the game, as it is, encourages save-scumming and skill-point hoarding and whatever else among a handful of people (or whatever that number of people is), well, that's just what the game is. You either like that and accept it, or you don't but you leave those people to their save-scumming.

 

[Shiki]

Not a slight patch job that can be fixed by forcing things on players, a major re-design.

I dare say that nothing short of being remade *from scratch* just keeping the sounds and art (3d models, textures,...) would save this game from the hole it dug for itself. Even the engine needs to be remade or switched because there is something terribly wrong with the performance of a game that looks so much like crap. I don't care that much for the graphics, but I do care when the performance sucks when neither the art nor the engine can justify such a thing.

How would you compare it to this other game I've heard of? Why does that work where this fails?

I don't think anybody got too excited over optimized allocation of INT, WIS and CHA stat points in PS:T.

In PST, those characteristics meant you were likely to take on the wizard class, and your character was still very useful in combat.

 

[Shiki]

The game could really use a whole redo on the game system to make it more like a normal RPG, but surely that is just numbers and data changes so it's not like redoing the whole project like the guy above me laughably suggests.

It's nearly like redoing the whole shit since the game does stupid shit like teleporting you from dialogue to dialogue right from the beginning with little or no continuity. You'd have to redo the whole game balance and make changes to all of the maps. You might as well just put this garbage where it belongs.
And as I've said in the GRPG thread, the writing and NPC are so uninspired that you'd have to rewrite the whole fucking dialogue if you wanted to make it any good. It's really no pst and there is no way to fix it. The dialogue is important because the fucking game relies on it for everything outside of combat.

The whole thing is garbage. Let it rot.

 

[made]

Sup with DU anyway? When was the last time he went to such great lengths to dissect a game - any game?

 

[Volrath]

The game has problems sure. Some major, some minor. And I don't degree with some of the design decisions like the almost complete absence of world interactivity and the constant teleportation between quests.
But I get the feeling that most Codexers believed that they would have gotten Age of Van Buren with PST's writing on top. That's completely unreasonable.

 

[Starwars]

I brought up all these issues in the first combat demo like hoarding skillpoints because otherwise they get stuck, combat being too hard or easy, block not being affected by armor while dodge is, and the game system in general just won't work when the encounters aren't carefully graduated and if you have criticals the combat becomes way too lolrandom. My response was that I was a stupid trolling a-hole. Vince was polite but everyone else shouted me down, and it seems every issue I pointed out was just ignored.

Now a lot of the same guys from ITS forums are saying the same things that were obvious way back then even before you had a more free-form game to play. So I'd say the feedback was something along the lines of "raging fanboy lovefest".

Don't flatter yourself too much. A lot of these concerns have been brought up but I think Vince would rather keep this game on bone-hard side rather than the easy side, and he also probably feels (rightfully so in my opinion) that re-desigining the game becomes less and less desirable since the game has already been in development for so long. There were fairly heavy re-designs late in the closed beta, I believe the Codex preview was based on the earlier, easier builds. Somewhere along the line it was brought up that the skill rewards were far too heavy (which I agree with and I think they feel much better now and you don't have many situations where you've all of a sudden gained like 40 skill points). In the same update, skill checks were also heightened (and many were split into checking two skills, like Persuasion/Streetwise) and combat was made more difficult.
I never had the time to test these changes too extensively but I felt, just as a gut feeling, that it was slightly overboard and hurt the roleplaying of the game a bit.

And for the other guy posting, the game has not been tested "years". This demo has been tested by a few people for (I think) 7 months, and it has seen a lot of improvements, changes and additions. It was a pretty different thing back then.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Sup with DU anyway? When was the last time he went to such great lengths to dissect a game - any game?

Well, what was the last game I gave a shit about?

The game could really use a whole redo on the game system to make it more like a normal RPG, but surely that is just numbers and data changes so it's not like redoing the whole project like the guy above me laughably suggests.

As Shiki said, that is a re-design. Changing the numbers isn't just a tweak here and a fix there, it means comprehensively revamping a large chunk of the system. Possibly getting into the code to change a few functions around, mess with how some things are calculated, how some die rolls are performed, what comes into consideration and when and so on. Then you have to test it all again.

Just removing the teleportation alone means messing with all those dialogues to remove those options, making sure the player can then walk to where they need to get to and then changing how dialogue is initiated at the other end. You then need to mess with those dialogues to tidy them up (make sure the NPC says goodbye, etc.. so the player can get away) and then from a game balance perspective, asking about what happens now that the player has some freedom.

What happens if they don't immediately rush to speak to the new guy they have to? What happens if they go off, cavorting around the place, kill a bunch of guys and then talk to him? What if they mess with something that changes that quest - like kill the first guy they spoke to? What if they come back even higher skill level than was anticipated because they did a bunch of other stuff first? And what if we change the game mechanic for steal and allow players to break in and raid stuff from people? What happens if they steal a crucial quest item? All of that needs to be taken into consideration and accounted for. You can't just brush these issues aside.

On the lesser end, you can tweak some of the dialogues but that means adding in extra options. Adding in extra skill checks. Making sure those skill checks are viable for where we expect the player to be at that point in the game. Asking ourselves about what happens if they're not and so on. Given this is some of what the problem is in the first place, it's not easy to "just fix it".

... but, the thing is, VD has obviously made a bunch of decisions that have ended up creating this game as it is. He's made those decisions because this is the game he wanted to make (either that or he's been drunk for the last 7 years). We always tell developers (well, sometimes) to stick with their gut, ignore the fans and just make the game they want to make. To trust their instincts. If this is the game VD wanted to make, it should live or die on that basis rather than being re-designed by committee. And if after release, VD wants to do an Enhanced Edition or an Expansion that adds a bunch of stuff, well he can do that then.

 

[Elwro]

What an arrogant post. I knew all that from the combat demo which came way before the current demo

I don't see how you could know that difficulty has been increased last month (higher skill checks, fewer skill points) just from playing the combat demo.

Anyway, I played the merchant a few times and I didn't really get the "binary" impression...

 

[RK47]

trolling the brilliant Vault Dweller due to jealousy, not pointing out serious gameplay problems.

 

[Black]

trolling the brilliant Vault Dweller due to jealousy, not pointing out serious gameplay problems.

It's badly optimized for one. Like seriously, loading times are horrible and while the game runs in the background it slows down the PC a lot. I can't even watch yt videos while the game is alt-tabbed, meanwhile Diablo 3 runs faster, loads faster and I could even play Diablo 2 while having D3 run in the background.
Also, instances. Hate them. It teleports you around too much, it feels like... an instanced rpg. More, game disarming you randomly for some reasons or changing your equipment. Start as an assassin, you don't have your hood on- why?

 

[Lumpy]

Suggestions?

Well I've got one. It's completely irrelevant to AoD but still:
Skillpoint hoarding as the central gameplay mechanic. Basically, the same system you have now, but streamlined!
Say your skills are Crit - 40, Trade - 50, Streetwise 30, and you have 20 XP. You're presented with the options:

[Crit - 50] - Stab the bandit leader.
[Trade - 55] - Exchange your goat for the prisoner.
[Streetwise - 50] - Challenge him to a breakdance contest.

You can invest skill points in dialogue - and you can't fail a check, you can only choose it if you have enough skill to succeed. This would obv ruin some of the surprise (all choices 'within reach' are displayed). However, it gives you choice, since the options not only use different skills, but have different consequences. Here, clearly, Street option is the best, but is it worth investing 20 points in a skill you might not need? Trade is the cheapest - but you lose your goat .

For all its obvious flaws, I actually believe this system would work much better. Essentially it's not very different, except it takes reload out of the equation, unless you screw up really hard (i.e. waste all your skillpoints on pointless skills).

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

Vault Dweller, Oscar & co.: finally went through all backgrounds and quest lines; here are my thoughts:

The core game (text adventures + combat encounters) may not be perfect, but I found it both original and entertaining. It also got better with each subsequent playthrough (the narrative structure practically makes AoD the Rashomon of cRPGs). Enjoyed the writing, the humorous parts more so than the serious ones. Had no fundamental problem with combat difficulty or encounter design (although I see why some people do). All in all, I'm ready to pre-order.

Suggestions:

1. Eliminating bugs and technical issues goes without saying, but I'd like to single out reducing loading times as a particular priority, given the magic appeal of reloading in AoD.
2. If at all possible, allow the player to configure camera controls, font size and keyboard shortcuts.
3. Also, if feasible, make the environment more interactive in a meaningful way. Encourage exploration by adding more minor side quests, bits of dialogue (especially for NPCs like the healer, or faction leaders in the situation when your character works for a different faction), small objects of interests, pieces of lore, allow the player to use their skills in interaction with the environment in a few selected spots (cf. Feng's house). Nobody wants to smash barrels for gold or see tons of fluff, but a little bit here and there will make the world really come alive (and give players another option to earn that extra skill point for a crucial skill check).
If there is to be no interactivity, fine, but in that case do away with it altogether. Even smashing barrels feels heavenly compared to pointless clicking on highlighted "locked" doors (especially if you invested 50+ points in lockpicking), or having interactive objects in exactly one location in the game (again, Feng's house) and nowhere else.
4. The partial success mechanic and all the degrees of influence skill checks have on combat encounters are some of the best parts of the game's design, the more instances of these you can add, the better.
5. Extremely difficult combat encounters are fine even at the very beginning of the game, as long as they can be avoided without requiring specific skills to do so (cf. praetor). If you let the player create a character that will inevitably die in the game's first fight, it's neither educational nor fun.
6. This is probably not going to happen, but I couldn't help but wonder how difficult it would be to add/balance direct control of companions in those combat encounters where you have them. Adding this would apparently make many people happy (and add tactical depth to combat).

That is about all I can think of right now. Congratulations on what you've achieved so far and best of luck with the rest of the development.

 

[commie]

People have been talking about AoD as a game that's all about QTEs ("Quality Text Events", of course) and doesn't have much environmental interaction for quite a while. Apparently not every paid attention...

I thought that was just trolling, you know like the thousands of endings in Fallout 3...

Anyway, on to the meat. How is this dialog-heavy gameplay? Ultimately, I think this game proves that it's not a terribly viable form of RPG gameplay. I have no doubt there will be a niche audience but this skill-check heavy CYA is just not very satisfying to me nor, I imagine, most people. What's the point of sticking points into a particular social skill? There is literally no feedback from doing so. It's all 100% behind the scenes.

How would you compare it to this other game I've heard of? Why does that work where this fails?

I don't think anybody got too excited over optimized allocation of INT, WIS and CHA stat points in PS:T.

You weren't teleported from one binary situation to another for one. You could explore or do something else, the sheer volume of various encounters meant that getting a failure here or there wouldn't be critical and you'd tend to let it slide. In AoD it's virtually one straight road and you either get past said encounter or you don't, making the correct allocation of all these stats and skills pretty much crucial to advancing.