Age of Decadence Reviews

[HeatEXTEND]

I got it, it was a complete non sequitur. So either he's dumb or fishing for responses, you know, trolling.

That's why I asked:russiastronk:

 

[Mustawd]

I got it, it was a complete non sequitur. So either he's dumb or fishing for responses, you know, trolling.

He's neither. He just expresses his points in a very convoluted fashion, and also tends to go to the extreme logical conclusion of an issue without much provocation. Aenra is ok, if only sometimes hard to comprehend. Of which of course I've told him a number of times, so it's old news, etc.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I got it, it was a complete non sequitur. So either he's dumb or fishing for responses, you know, trolling.

tends to go to the extreme logical conclusion of an issue without much provocation.

That explains why I read his post as saying "grass tends to be green"; NO SHIT SHERLOCK BUT BROWN GRASS IS SUPERIOR IN EVERY SINGLE WAY GODDAMNIT

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totally not an AoD fanboy btw, ahum

 

[Ackermanus]

In general, crafting and looting aren't easy to balance. Loot has always been an important factor (a reward for a tough fight, for exploration, etc). Crafting represents an alternative way of acquiring powerful gear, thus competing directly with looting. Reduce looting and you decrease rewards and increase dependency on crafting, making it a forced skill. Increase looting and players start thinking that crafting is useless. We did the best we could but if anyone has a better suggestion (for future games), I'd like to hear it. In games like Diablo it's usually handled via rare ingredients, which makes looting part of crafting, but I'm not sure if it's the right way to go.

You can make high level crafting something that improves the powerful gear players can acquire through looting and exploring (which I'll call "artifacts" from here on), rather than something that (necessarily) competes with it. Preferably, these improvements should come in the form of unique bonuses, rather than something like + damage or + crit which you can already apply to standard weapons via "normal" crafting.

In terms of raw power, it would be something along the lines of Improved Artifact > Unimproved Artifact = Crafted Item, the latter part being more or less what we have now and what some people are complaining about.

Within the setting, of course, the character might not be actually "improving" the artifact, he might just be restoring it to its original state (just like with the power armor in AoD).

Here's an example (that is in no way stolen from 3E D&D):

Spoiler

After fighting Badassius Assassinius, the PC takes his star metal sword (the artifact). He notices the blade is slightly unbalanced but, if his crafting skill is too low, he will simply assume the sword was made by an incompetent smith who somehow got his hands on metal he was clearly unfit to handle.

The PC will still probably use the artifact as his end-game weapon (if he is trained in swords), because he won't find another sword made of star metal, and the thing can cut through pretty much everything anyway.

A master craftsman, however, will recognize the weapon as one of the few quicksilver swords that were made in the days of the Empire, originally created to give legionnaires a fighting chance against constructs (which were otherwise highly resistant to slashing attacks). These weapons contained a dense liquid metal inside the hollowed hilt, which would shift into the (likewise partially hollow) blade upon striking at an enemy, in order to increase weight at the tip. This particular sword, however, was damaged on the hilt, and the precious fluid had left the blade long ago.

After refilling the artifact with mercury, the player would be left with a (high quality) sword that, instead of causing bleeding, would use the axe's extra damage passive. Or a sword capable of ignoring parts of the enemy's damage reduction from armor. Or something along those lines.

Correctly handled, this approach would probably have a couple of advantages, IMO:

1- Obtaining artifacts would be as rewarding/encouraged for crafters as for non crafters.

2- You would still encourage the player to craft his own stuff . Take the quicksilver sword I used in the example: it would be a fine weapon, but in some fights you wouldn't need a fancy armor piercing sword, you would just need to bleed your target out. And for those situations, you'd use a (regular) crafted sword with a +% passive chance. This would also:

2a - Make (the results of) crafting far more interesting to use in combat, because you'd have to change weapons mid fight or at the very least before a fight to maximize your odds against certain opponents. Improved artifacts could also provide unique abilities that would allow you to change your playstyle significantly (using the power armor as an example once more, the ability to regenerate can certainly alter how you handle encounters).

Note that I do not think crafting is weak at the moment (or at least it wasn't when I last played the game) compared to the other combat support skills, if only because whetstones are a thing. I do agree with others, however, in that it can feel pretty underwhelming depending on your choice of weapon and on what you find during your run.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I do agree with others, however, in that it can feel pretty underwhelming depending on your choice of weapon and on what you find during your run.

But crafting 10 is massive overkill in terms of combat power, no ? How does massive overkill feel underwhelming ? Really curious, what's the part that makes it feel underwhelming ?

 

[Lurker King]

Within the setting, of course, the character might not be actually "improving" the artifact, he might just be restoring it to its original state (just like with the power armor in AoD).

That's good, but in this case, the player would need an additional skill (lore, occult, etc.) to realize that this artifact is "that weapon". You could make this an additional thing for crafting: allow you to create your own weapons and modify others with additional skills. When you restore a weapon, you use lore, but you could also tweak it with additional improvements – this will be easier to in the next game with skills such as medical, mechanics and electronics.

Notice that this symbiosis is exactly what is behind Underrail’s crafting. In fact, you don’t see any crafting skill in it. You have tailoring + biology, or mechanics + electronics + tailoring, etc. This is more natural, but it takes a lot of work and additional skills.

I also think that the player should be able to choose the names of their customized weapons and even add their little stories to it, if they choose to do so.

Let's say the setting is the Spanish Inquisition and you'd like to forge your own sword. Which techniques would you consider interesting or varied?

You could add an empty space in the blade to produce hemorrhage (I don’t know what is called in English, but you will find this feature in bayonets).

or some thorns that open inside the target but retract when you remove the sword, or a better grip that will give you some bonuses, etc. In order to make this interesting, you will need to ignore the limitations of present thecnology.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I do agree with others, however, in that it can feel pretty underwhelming depending on your choice of weapon and on what you find during your run.

But crafting 10 is massive overkill in terms of combat power, no ? How does massive overkill feel underwhelming ? Really curious, what's the part that makes it feel underwhelming ?

Not reallly, power armor is too good not to use it, so the only thing you would improve upon with crafting 10 is your weapon. Much better to use one of the blue steel weapons laying around and invest those spare points elsewhere.

 

[Lurker King]

power armor is too good not to use it.

Not true. Power Armor requires three power tubes + Lore 10 + less 2HP permanently to unlock it fully – that’s a lot. It can’t be used with two-handed weapons and it has lower DR than most heavy armors.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Only use for power armour is the ability to regenerate health in poisonous areas, for dodge builds, anyway.

 

[Black Angel]

That's good, but in this case, the player would need an additional skill (lore, occult, etc.) to realize that this artifact is "that weapon".

How about this, even if you don't have Lore, any good smith would have heard about what the artifact can do and, based on that knowledge, tries to reverse-engineer the mechanism, hence Ackermanus's initial example. It's like when you have to deal with Old Facility closed gate, you can either examine the symbol (Lore + Crafting) or the keyhole (Lockpick). With artifacts, you can examine the identity of said artifacts (seeing if it matches any description from any ancient scroll) or examine the physical form (looking at the mechanism and tries to make sense of it/guessing its purpose).

 

[Lurker King]

Only use for power armour is the ability to regenerate health in poisonous areas, for dodge builds, anyway.

If you drink the regeneration potion, you don't need the power armor for this ability.

How about this, even if you don't have Lore, any good smith would have heard about what the artifact can do and, based on that knowledge, tries to reverse-engineer the mechanism, hence Ackermanus's initial example. It's like when you have to deal with Old Facility closed gate, you can either examine the symbol (Lore + Crafting) or the keyhole (Lockpick). With artifacts, you can examine the identity of said artifacts (seeing if it matches any description from any ancient scroll) or examine the physical form (looking at the mechanism and tries to make sense of it/guessing its purpose).

I disagree. The blacksmiths’ expertise is the ability to build weapons, not the ability to identify old ones. You could have heard about Excalibur, but you are not qualified to discern it among other old artefacts.

 

[Black Angel]

Even then, I still think any blacksmiths who are in the business should've heard of other smith's works. After all, a weapon made artifact still need a smith's hands when created, no? And thus this smith would have their name known by smiths across the world.

Actually, now that I think about better example, when you are offered that special 'Blue' Steel Axe by a trader in the Temple District of Maadoran. With sufficient Crafting you can identify that the weapon is, in fact, not made of Blue Steel, but regular Steel, yet you identified that it's still a pretty good axe.

 

[Ackermanus]

I do agree with others, however, in that it can feel pretty underwhelming depending on your choice of weapon and on what you find during your run.

But crafting 10 is massive overkill in terms of combat power, no ? How does massive overkill feel underwhelming ? Really curious, what's the part that makes it feel underwhelming ?

I haven't played AoD in a while, but let me use Dungeon Rats to illustrate my point. My last playthrough (on psycho) I went with a high charisma/intelligence/Per character, with alchemy and crafting maxed first and crossbows increased more slowly as needed (no defense skills until very late in the story, my PC just stayed way back).

Spoiler

You expect alchemy to be all about consumables (and so resource management) that can be pretty powerful, but are somewhat limited in number. The latter part wasn't exactly on point in the version I played then (although it might have been changed afterwards), but in any case, the skill felt highly useful. When you blocked someone's path with greek fire, the skill felt like a worthwhile investment. Same can be said for going nova and blowing someone up with a series of black powder bombs. Even creating healing salves felt highly useful, and then you reach the end game and you can enhance your body and regenerate. The skill feels very rewarding.

Now onto critical strike. If your main character has high enough charisma, you can recruit two characters later on with a lot of ranks in the skill (one of them has 10 from the start, in fact). When you have them fight side by side with your other characters, you will easily notice the difference those points in the skill make, and those two guys feel like the death machines they are. You expect critical strike to be about dealing massive damage per strike, and the skill doesn't disappoint.

With crafting, however, your experience may vary a lot. For example, throwing weapons in general are in somewhat short supply, and good throwing weapons even more so. So crafting throwing knives for Roxanna feels tremendously useful, and it is: later on she can reliably help fight shielded constructs solely relying on the enormous to-hit and passive chance bonuses. You compare what you find and what you craft and you know you chose wisely.

But, if you are playing with, say, a dagger build, you will find that at many points in the game, the daggers you craft are only marginally better than the ones you loot. Crafted armor generally remains quite better than found armor throughout, but light armor is very limited in protection anyway and when you do get hit, you rarely feel the investment in crafting was worth it.

As I said, I don't think that, even in the latter case, the skill is weak (or drastically weaker than the two mentioned above, if you prefer) because the damage bonus of whetstones is very strong. But the skill doesn't feel (even if it may, in practice, be) as rewarding as critical strike, for example.

You expect crafting to provide you with superior equipment. Instead, it may just end up giving you marginally better gear and bonus damage via sharpening. But if you wanted bonus damage... you'd have taken critical strike.

TL;DR: As I said, I don't think crafting is weak, but if you end up finding a lot of good items for your particular build, it may feel "meh". The main draw becomes using whetstones, instead of crafting amazing™ (by comparison) stuff.

I disagree. The blacksmiths’ expertise is the ability to build weapons, not the ability to identify old ones. You could have heard about Excalibur, but you are not qualified to discern it among other old artefacts.

Even then, I still think any blacksmiths who are in the business should've heard of other smith's works. After all, a weapon made artifact still need a smith's hands when created, no? And thus this smith would have their name known by smiths across the world.

Actually, now that I think about better example, when you are offered that special 'Blue' Steel Axe by a trader in the Temple District of Maadoran. With sufficient Crafting you can identify that the weapon is, in fact, not made of Blue Steel, but regular Steel, yet you identified that it's still a pretty good axe.

Honestly, this is one of those things that can (and probably should) be abstracted a bit. Someone used to fighting with a sword and shield isn't necessarily great at fighting with a two handed sword, yet in the game we accept that both styles fall within a general "swords" skill because creating a separate skill for two handed swords is a needless complication and probably brings few advantages gameplay-wise. Likewise, someone used to creating healing salves isn't necessarily great at making things go boom, but we find it acceptable that both actions use the same alchemy skill.

Following this reasoning, I wouldn't find it particularly jarring if (high level) crafting included the knowledge of famous weapons/armors and, perhaps, bits and pieces of the techniques used to forge them.

 

[Lurker King]

Honestly, this is one of those things that can (and probably should) be abstracted a bit. Someone used to fighting with a sword and shield isn't necessarily great at fighting with a two handed sword, yet in the game we accept that both styles fall within a general "swords" skill because creating a separate skill for two handed swords is a needless complication and probably brings few advantages gameplay-wise.

But that’s precisely the type of thing that would make crafting more interesting and immersive. Instead of having one general crafting skill with bonuses of different kinds, we should have different skills that could be combined to create different types of weapons with different effects. Your comparison with the two-hand sword user is a non-starter because nobody asks for more variety in swords, but many players want more weapon effects, etc - again, see how "crafting" is done in Underrail.

 

[Black Angel]

I think all of these suggestion to make Crafting more Interesting™ can't really be applied to AoD or DR anymore now that the boys are working on a new project. However, since we're also talking about how crafting is done in Underrail, maybe these suggestion can be taken as a feedback for ITS when designing how crafting work in The New World.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I do agree with others, however, in that it can feel pretty underwhelming depending on your choice of weapon and on what you find during your run.

But crafting 10 is massive overkill in terms of combat power, no ? How does massive overkill feel underwhelming ? Really curious, what's the part that makes it feel underwhelming ?

I haven't played AoD in a while, but let me use Dungeon Rats to illustrate my point.

But you can't compare the functionality of crafting between those games :/, I mean you can but what's the point :/

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I do agree with others, however, in that it can feel pretty underwhelming depending on your choice of weapon and on what you find during your run.

But crafting 10 is massive overkill in terms of combat power, no ? How does massive overkill feel underwhelming ? Really curious, what's the part that makes it feel underwhelming ?

Not reallly, power armor is too good not to use it, so the only thing you would improve upon with crafting 10 is your weapon. Much better to use one of the blue steel weapons laying around and invest those spare points elsewhere.

That's the point, "massive overkill". Power armor isn't needed for anything by a stretch.

 

[Zer0wing]

Blu steel imperial armor FTW.

 

[Lurker King]

I think all of these suggestion to make Crafting more Interesting™ can't really be applied to AoD or DR anymore now that the boys are working on a new project.

You bet.

I’m noticing a pattern here. Crafting in Underrail is diversified in Tailoring, Mechanics, Biology, Electronics, and Chemistry. Speech in Age of Decadence is diversified in Persuasion, Streetwise, Impersonate and Etiquette – ‘body count’ is used for Intimidation purposes. In fact, most skills in AoD can be used in dialogue in one way or another, so that Speech has a much important role even when the skills used are not just the ones I mentioned. You could expect an improvement in gameplay terms involving the diversification of every other skill, including Stealth.

 

[Lurker King]

That's the point, "massive overkill". Power armor isn't needed for anything by a stretch.

Massive resource hog. You have to sacrifice a bunch of stuff to acquire it.

 

[Ackermanus]

But that’s precisely the type of thing that would make crafting more interesting and immersive. Instead of having one general crafting skill with bonuses of different kinds, we should have different skills that could be combined to create different types of weapons with different effects. Your comparison with the two-hand sword user is a non-starter because nobody asks for more variety in swords, but many players want more weapon effects, etc - again, see how "crafting" is done in Underrail.

Sure, but how much more powerful would crafted items have to be, compared to items you loot, if instead of investing in one skill you had to invest two or more to forge gear? If one of Vince's issues is that he doesn't want crafting to be too powerful compared to looting, this wouldn't really be viable.

Only way I see around this is if each individual "crafting" skill is used mainly for the "text adventure" part of the game (that is, you create chemicals/gadgets/whatehaveyou to solve problems without using direct violence) OR if the particular skill works like alchemy (you get new fun stuff to use in battles). That way you could justify requiring more than one skill to craft stuff, without having said stuff be extremely strong.

If this is what you were suggesting, then I actually like the idea. Particularly since the colony ship game will be party-based, so you can afford to be a bit less picky with skills.

As for the comparison with swords, that was made in direct response to the "blacksmiths aren't supposed to know ancient weapon lore" thing. Nowhere did I say having less weapon effects was a good thing. In fact my example was all about using crafting to achieve a new effect in an otherwise unremarkable weapon. What I am saying is that I don't buy into the whole "highly skilled craftsmen don't know about ancient weapons/armor/techniques in a world where old-world tech is best tech", when you have skills like lore and alchemy that are also quite generous in the topics they cover.

I think all of these suggestion to make Crafting more Interesting™ can't really be applied to AoD or DR anymore now that the boys are working on a new project. However, since we're also talking about how crafting is done in Underrail, maybe these suggestion can be taken as a feedback for ITS when designing how crafting work in The New World.

Pretty much. Since TNW will also feature lost tech (energy weapons at the very least), I was posting mostly with the new game in mind.

But you can't compare the functionality of crafting between those games :/, I mean you can but what's the point :/

Fair enough. I don't remember being particularly impressed with crafting in AoD, but since it's been too long since I played it I'll have to defer to you.

 

[Lurker King]

Sure, but how much more powerful would crafted items have to be, compared to items you loot, if instead of investing in one skill you had to invest two or more to forge gear? If one of Vince's issues is that he doesn't want crafting to be too powerful compared to looting, this wouldn't really be viable.

But if crafting were dissolved in different skills, you would allow every player to craft their own items without forcing them to invest in crafting. In Underrail you have five skills responsible for crafting (see the Technology section below) and they are all useful for other purposes:

Besides, you could just as well invest in other skills and easily compensate the lack of better gear, which is also what happens in AoD.

 

[Vault Dweller]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinm...rpgs-looting-the-treasure-trove/#768193133afb

The Steam Summer Sale is a treasure trove of RPGs that are there for you to loot. Here are some games to consider before the sale ends on July 5.

Let’s start with an RPG that may not be as familiar to some as the other games covered in this article. The Age of Decadence is a unique and compelling game that deserves a look from anyone interested in RPGs that demand immersion in the world they create. Your character can be many things but whatever you choose, you're best served by focusing clearly on your core skill set. Combat is difficult and Jacks of all trades die more than most.

Many RPGs advertise that your decisions make a difference but in The Age of Decadence they really do. Important characters and quest lines appear or disappear depending on your actions with the result that the game can change radically depending on your character build and the decisions you make along the way. The Age of Decadence is rough around the edges which will put some players off, but I’ve played hundreds of RPGs since the 1980s and never seen anything quite like it.

 

[Goral]

They've also mentioned DR:

If you enjoy the squad-based tactical combat in The Age of Decadence, Dungeon Rats is a straightforward dungeon crawl with crafting and alchemy that features the same combat system. It’s on sale at $6.74 discounted 25%.

Meanwhile on GOG another 2/5 review appeared:

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Old school is not always better by SoManyGoblins

God, the game might have wondrous story, but I wouldn't call the gameplay and general useability of the game as "old school", more like "obsolete". How did the dev team not use a proper designer to help them with the UX of the game, is beyond me. I don't care much about cool awesome graphics, I still think Deus Ex is uncomparably superior to Deus Ex Mankind Divided; but these graphics are worse than Baldur's Gate 1, and the animations are so stiff that take out of any immersion the game might have had. The transition between different parts of the quests are a horrible idea, just a fade to black and you appear in another place, two lines of dialogs, another fade to black, then in another place; no continuity whatsoever. The combat, while I understand is not the focus of the game, is atrocious, no other way to put it. A lot of people seem to really love this game, but I couldn't, for the life of me.

 

[Goral]

I like that you instantly voted it unhelpful

Well, duh, it would be strange if I found a retarded review helpful.