Age of Decadence Reviews

I heard InXile is hiring new writers and you would be a valuable contribution to the team, since you can increase the word count and stuff.

 

AoD is not beyond criticism. Nothing is beyond criticism. It's possible for someone to dislike the game and give solid reasons, but...

Compared to other games, AoD attracts a much higher percentage of utterly brain-dead, ignorant nonsense among the negative reviews it receives.

It's a trait I've noticed in other things that are genuinely innovative.

 

The problem is that most criticisms are red herrings and when you bring to light what they are trying to say, they are complaining about a game feature they are not used to it. For instance, they are not used to scripted events, punishing reactivity, harsh skill/stat checks; and then they complain that the game is a CYOA or too restrictive. If you consider that on top of that AoD consciously try to punish players for their bad cRPG habits (help the poor girl, kill everyone, deliver the package, choose any option without thinking), then you have the receipt for eternal butthurt. They think that being used to a feature X because most developers are lazy to try anything else give them a justification to complain about the game, almost as if the good design commandments were all writen in stone decades ago.

 

We do not disagree.

 

WTF is happening? Why Azrael the cat gives "Racist" to VD?
It is happening all the time no matter what?

I'm too curious and lifr is too short.

Edit
DA FUCK IS GOING ON????

 

Hitlerfist>brofist old boy.

 

There is some much to understand and explore on Codex...

 

Honestly have no idea how that rating got there. It was aliens. Probably.

 

Since March the third there have been 15 reviews and 10 negative. All negative reviews are of either "it's too hard" or "it's too ugly" kind. What's funny is that out of those 10 negative reviews exactly half of them is from the players who played less than 2 hours (at some cases it's not even 10 minutes, which means someone clicked on character creation randomly, started playing a bit and quickly turned it off OR he only spent his time in the creation screen and it was too complicated for him), 3 other reviews are from players who played less than 5 hours (it's closer to 3 hours actually) and only two are from those who played at least 10 hours. Retards, retards everywhere.

One of the two players who played more than 5 hours (he played 13 hours) wrote this:

It's just so typical, and 99% of all negative reviews derive from that.

Here's the one where he played only 10 minutes:

45 minutes:

And then there's this retard who can't figure out even the most basic things (although this retard might actually be smarter than the previous ones who didn't even try and probably had similar problems):

He couldn't figure out how to load an arrow or how to use a map .

There are more such retarded reviews (and these are only from the last 3 days) but it's already getting tl;dr so lat me finish with the:

It's one of the few ones (out of all negative reviews) with actual arguments and examples and from someone who played more than 10 hours. But saying that you can't be a forger because you're working on a street is just silly. Firstly, at the very start, just after you've created your thief there's info about your background and you can learn that you've been working for Cado for quite a while so you're not low-level. Secondly, it's a post-apocalyptic world so as a thief you don't have THAT many opportunities with just pickpocketing so it's understandable that you should also have some different skill set ready (like a cutthroat who's good with a knife or a forger). Thirdly, if you go with your typical thief skills, i.e. pickpocketing, stealing, sneaking and traps you shouldn't have problems finishing the main quest.

Anyway, thief background is the hardest to play because it requires the widest range of skills to succeed in EVERY thief quest but in reality you can finish the game even if you fail in most thief quests. This happened to me when I went to work for thieves as a mercenary.

Something similar happened with Torment Numenera recently, we finally got something different than your usual fantasy (like bland Obsidian games) or tablet games from Harebrained Schemes and with no hand-holding and what's the reaction? Too long, didn't read / too difficult, I don't know what to do: 0/10. The signal that developers will get is this: don't try to be original (like choosing a different character creation system than GURPS/Fallout clone or D&D clone), just copy/paste ideas that worked and deliver another Baldur's Gate/Fallout/Skyrim clone.

 

The controls are clunky, the animations are choppy, and the sound is tinny. That's all completely true, and it can be quite difficult for people who are used to a much smoother experience to acclimate to. The game looks and feels ancient and outdated, because it is.

Codexers and a small minority of hardcore gamers are willing to accept this; no one else is, and they're going to continue cranking out the negative reviews. There's no point writing paragraphs about it, because you'll never convince them (even if they actually see your posts, which they won't); and here, you're preaching to the choir.

BUT GRAPHUCKS DON'T MATTER!!!!!!!!111 Yeah, well, good-looking 3D graphics are okay, and good-looking 2D graphics are okay, but blocky, ancient-looking 3D graphics are actively off-putting, even with competent or good art direction. I recall discussing this with Vault Dweller at some point in the semi-remote past, and last I checked he acknowledges it as an issue stemming from the game's long development cycle and financial limitations. Colony Ship is going to look a lot better.

Hell, I'd take handsomely-executed ASCII over blocky, old-ass looking 3D. Personally, I really wish that full 2D was more viable, but apparently it's significantly more costly than 3D shit depending on what kind of game you're making.

 

I would not mind having hardcore games being "not recommended for casual gamers" if the same was true for casual games being "not recommended for hardcore gamers". And by hardcore gamers I mean gamers with a half of a brain who care about games. But we never get warnings like that, that the game is only for filthy casuals, it never gets to the cons parts of games reviews. Reviewers never gets worried about "hardcore" gamers being excluded, but always are worried what casuals will think of the game.

The same applies for the movies. We often get a warning that the movie is "slow" and there is "not enough action" or that it is "difficult to follow" but rarely we will get warnings that the movie is "too fast" or completely "dumbed down and without an original thought". We will get warnings that the movie is "very violent"(often when there is hardly any violence in it), but we will never get warnings that the movie "lacks violence and a punch".
Sad, sad, sad

 

I agree with many points the last guy quoted by Goral mentioned. They are not dealbreakers for me, in fact, I enjoy the chellange, but this guy clearly knows what he is talking about, put time and effort into the game and just doesn't like the design. I have not problem with people like that.

 

You know, I agree with this review a lot. I do like AOD, but I disagree in large part on the choices made by VD for the quests.

The thief background is the hardest because VD wanted it to be like this, because the solutions that VD offered for the quests he invented only work that way. But in several moments of the game you could think of 4 or 5 different ways to fulfill a certain quest that aren't offered by the game. Well, of course we can't say that's the "fault" of the game, after all, it's impossible to predict and think of all possible ways to achieve some goal, and even if the designer could think of most of them, it would be impossible to implement them all. No one have infinite money/time. But the fact that certain paths are particularly harder than another is a design choice. Thief could very well be the easiest way of the game if VD wanted it to be that way. But he didn't.

In the overwhelming majority of games, quest solutions are "extra" options beyond the basic combat path. Even in Fallout, virtually any character has a good chance to win most of the fighting challenges in the game, and the other solutions to the quests are built around it. In AOD, we traded the "combat path" as the baseline for the "specific path created by VD's mind for the type of character he envisioned with this specific backgroud". Of course with a good knowledge of the game (metagame) you can get some freedom in your choices, but this isn't the point. The point is that there is a specific ideal path created by you for the different stories and you need to think like him (and agree with him) that certain skills/characteristics would be needed for this kind of path. If you don't agree, you are simply wrong, and need to try again. It's his way, or no way. Do it again.

It's easy to see how this kind of design can be frustrating for some people, especially for people who have a way of thinking quite different from the designer.

 

I don't disagree, that's why I said that "It's one of the few ones (out of all negative reviews) with actual arguments and examples" and mentioned only one thing that I find silly.

 

And yet he keeps playing. He had 14 hours when he posted the review, now it shows 24.

 

He knows he must play it 7 times.

 

The thief playtrough is one of the easier campaigns by far, especially at Teron. In most quests you have 4 or 5 paths.

In most games you have little choices and the alternatives are fluffy. In AoD you have plenty of choices, but gamers get insulted because they can suffer from mistakes. Thus, the game that is most restrictive and linear is wrongly perceived as the one that has more freedom, and the one that provides more choices is perceived as more restrictive because you have actual limitations and you can die from your mistakes. It's an inversion of values. When you complain about lack of freedom you are actually complaining about the relevance of your variety of choices that you didn't have in other games.

VD's mind... compared to what? Generic game worlds that let you do anything because they pander to your ego and always treat like you the chosen one? Of course the checks are envisioned by him, but they make sense, which is more than can be said about most developers. And what is this constant bitching about metagaming in cRPGs? I don't see any player complaining about this in other genres. A ten year old that dies in Super Mario, has no problem understanding that he must reload to beat the game, while in cRPGs grown men talk about metagaming as if it was the worst thing in the world. It's not surprising that most cRPGs are so bad. Developers created a world of bad gaming based on design vices, thus ensuring that players are completely insensible and unmoved by anything that deviates from these shallow formulas.

 

First, I agree that the game has way too many flaws, which I attribute to inexperience. We fixed what we could but going beyond that and 'excavating the foundation" would be a major project. However:

I don't think it's a problem that can be fixed (not even sure it's a problem) as some players would always feel that there should have been another solution that fits their character better. In general, I feel that we should provide at least 3 options (fighter, talker, thief) and that each option should involve 2-3 skills (1 main, 1-2 supportive). To a certain degree that's what we did in that thief quest:

You’re playing a thief, which means you can be a fighter (highwayman), a talker (con artist) or a stereotypical thief (sneaking, stealing, traps, etc). Your guild wants to ambush the caravan (strength in numbers). Your options are:

- Go with the flow and attack the caravan (fighter)
- Suggest to use explosives if you dabble in Traps (fighter/thief)
- Suggest to reroute the caravan to the thieves’ save house (talker/thief)

To reroute the shipment you need a mandate ordering for the caravan to change the route. You need Lore skill ranging from 2 to 4 (i.e. very low values that you can get while still in chargen) based on your Perception, so if you’re blind as a bat you need 4 to do that, if you have good or high Perception, you need 3 or 2.

Stealing the signet ring is optional, if you have good speech skills you can go without it (i.e. a thief won’t have a problem stealing the ring, a talker won’t have a problem convincing the caravan’s guards that the mandate is legit). Thus we cover all options while keeping the checks fairly low. Sure, it’s possible to fail if you spread your points too thin and go for the jack of all trades, but neither a good fighter, nor a good talker, nor a good thief would have a problem with this quest.​

Which isn't a good thing.

Which is a bad thing.

You didn't really trade it because you can play a fighter in all questlines but the merchant.

I'd agree with you if the quests had a single solution requiring very specific skill levels. Since most quests have 3-4 solutions (some even 5-6) you aren't forced to do things a certain, designer-approved way.

 

In which you need to have chosen to invest in certain specific skills. Isn't this exaclty the point?

You missed the point. That's great for you, but your definition of freedom isn't the same as the other people. It's not "how many option the game offers for you", but how you can access these options.

Compared to the mind of everyone else.

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But I agree. I don't think there is a solution to this problem, if this is to be called a problem at all. It's a design choice. It's an inescapable consequence of the way you chose to create your game - some people will like it, others won't. It's the same for any other choice.

I'm not saying that it's good or bad thing. I'm just saying that's those are different ways of making a game and some people prefer one instead of the other, which is perfectly acceptable.

Well, "can" here needs to come with an asterisk. Yes, you can, but the difficulty level of the AOD's combat is very high (for most people, I'm not talking about the specific public of hardcore fans). You "can" be a fighter + other things, but for most people, the option to fight is so hard that it's like not being an option in the first place. Hell, many people make pure fighters and still think that the game is too hard. I'm not saying it's wrong to be difficult game, just acknowledging that for many people it's simply unfeasible. You can see this in the reviews a lot.

In my experience, many of these solutions are scattered according to the different paths/backgrounds that you define during the game, right? I may be wrong, but it's what I saw - when we're in a certain "path" we usually have only one or two plausible choices, the rest we would only be able to access if we had created a completely different character. But I may be wrong, of course, I only finished the game twice. It may be more reactive than what it looks.

 

By the time I made my thief playtrough I was already acquainted with the game. I allocated some skill points without any fear and the quests felt like a breeze. I even made a post saying that all playtroughs should be similar in its scope and variety, because I beat the quests without hoarding skill points.

And by the way, there is not such a thing as “freedom for you”. Either freedom is one thing, or is not. And let’s be clear about this: what you want it’s a linear predictable path in each you can’t fail due to a bad build. And that’s fine. You are entitled to your preferences. Just don’t phrase it as something else, because it is dishonest.

Everyone else? Maybe you mean, the mind of modern developers that feed players with generic predictable cRPG tropes that don’t make any sense.

 

Thief is easiest background.

You have so many Thief--only ways to make thru challenges and to get better outcomes.

Like not paying thugs in Slums at all (not just once) OR rescuing Miltiades without hard (one of hardest) fight.

Also trainers that are exclusive to Thief.

 

Sucker is at 35 hours already.
This is why I try to refrain giving out impression or review things right of the bat. You really need to spend way more time to finalize your thought.

 

Why do people even bother writing reviews before they've finished a game? That makes no sense.

There should be some penalty.