Game News Age of Decadence September Update: Release date - October 14th!

[Goral]

We planned to release on the 15th but Valve suggested that 14th is a better date. I assume they know better.

Indie rpg developer known for going against popular opinions of mainstream gaming says about massive corporate conglomerate 'they know better'

Half-life 3 engine for Age of Decadence 2 confirmed.

 

[Jaesun]

AoD will have more reviews than POE on the codex.

Calling it now...

 

[Lurker King]

Improved combat AI: until now the enemies used 3-4 different attacks based on their to-hit-chance and your armor; the new and improved combat AI includes all attacks, use of alchemy, and quick switching from melee to ranged when needed.

Ouch! I read in another thread that this was a game only for storyfags. I guess someone was lying, eh?

 

[Lurker King]

Just two weeks after last month's update, Vault Dweller has published the September update for The Age of Decadence, announcing the release of the game's final location to the Early Access version and its final release date.

You forgot to add the new art for Ganezzar.

 

[Jaesun]

:ForeverWaitingForThursday:

 

[Azael]

A release date? Wow, I thought I'd turn 40 before this game comes out.

 

[Elhoim]

You have to finish the game 7 times before you can review it.

 

[shiteatingnippledick]

God I've been waiting for this since the first public beta. I started it week ago just to muck around and it took a lot to resist playing it properly.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Are Valve going to give you guys positioning on the store page or a news item?

 

[Vault Dweller]

No idea yet.

 

[Forest Dweller]

We planned to release on the 15th but Valve suggested that 14th is a better date. I assume they know better.

Fuck Valve. They don't know the true power of Thursday.

 

[M0RBUS]

I still remember when this game was supposed to come out in 2006.
Congratulations on the release date, I can't wait to FINALLY get to play this beauty, and since it's going right up against Wasteland 2 Director's Cut, October is gonna be a hell of a month!

Man is this year a great one for RPGs

 

[kazgar]

It'll come out Thursday Oct 15 in parts of the globe.

Spoiler

:australia:

 

[Ellef]

Will there be time for optimisation for day one? Last time I played, the game made by graphics card sound louder than TW2 on max settings.

 

[Nael]

Been having a lot of fun with this game lately in its current form. Can't wait for the finished product to do my due diligence. This is coming from someone who is probably a casual compared to most Codexers so don't be afraid of the "HARDCORE!!!!!1111" tag a lot of people try to hang on it. Its a challenge to be sure but a fun and rewarding one. Don't be afraid to fail is all I have to say.

 

[Ellef]

I'll be very interested in the sales figures (i'm not the only one ofc). My negative thought is that this is super niche, and most of us have already bought and played it already. It doesn't have instant appeal with some markets like post apocs do with Russians, or fantasy kitsch with various.

Regardless, I'll leave a steam review for the first time after it's released and reasonably optimised. Good luck with the sales o7

 

[Havoc]

To be honest, this is going to be a tough game to review. Very scripted and contextual, hard to analyze systemically, everybody will have his own opinion and his own experience. I guess that'll have to be good enough.

So one objective review and three kissing ass and apologetic reviews?

 

[Forest Dweller]

So one objective review and three kissing ass and apologetic reviews?

No telling how long before the real review comes out.

 

[Elhoim]

Will there be time for optimisation for day one? Last time I played, the game made by graphics card sound louder than TW2 on max settings.

If you have a very good computer not capping the fps allowing it to go through the roofs in less demanding areas. Turn VSync on for better GPU usage.

 

[Ellef]

If you have a very good computer not capping the fps allowing it to go through the roofs in less demanding areas. Turn VSync on for better GPU usage.

Unfortunately VSync seems to introduce a lot of mouse lag.

 

[Grotesque]

I bet Vault Dweller is sick with this game and can't wait to get it over with.

 

[Ellef]

I bet Vault Dweller is sick with this game and can't wait to get it over with.

I'd bet that you're wrong :D

 

[Pope Amole II]

The patch changes are pretty bad, though. I dunno, in the summer, when I was starting my LPs, the game had much better balance than now. It was much harder (which is probably for the better) and while it had certain issues (not enough non-combat skill training, some weapon schools sucking), most of them were not that difficult to address. At the very least, not requiring the avalanche of needless changes that followed.

I mean, let's review this crap. The combat balance portion, of course.

- 4AP weapons can fit into the belt bag (except for hasta).

This one should've been under the combat balance section - it's there that it matters. It's a huge buff to the weapon&shield style, especially for the STR 10 DEX 6 (or even DEX 4) hammer builds as now you can use nets, bombs & liquid fire with much greater efficiency. When you have only 6 AP per turn, every single one of them counts. And while this is not as OP as small crossbows fitting your pockets (that one boosted the corresponding build by a huge margin), it's still plenty of power gained. And it's not like hammer & shield was a weak build - quite on the contrary, 10-4-8 build during the first august patch was the easiest time I've had with the game. Dodgers are affected much less, though, as they already have a free second hand and, in general, they have more action points.

- Masterwork weapon technique now 4-20, from 5-25.

Well, considering how easy it is to have 8-10 crafting ATM, I guess that's ok. Even though it really spoils the feeling of reward from having high crafting.

- Chopper damage increased by 1, chance to damage armor increased by 30.

Chopper won't be fixed by this. First, swords are utter crap. Easily the worst weapon school in the game atm and whenever you have the sword, you wish you had the spear. Or hammer. Or dagger. Depending on how you wield it. Besides, the biggest advantage to any crafted weapon is the bonus to the weapon's skill (as long as its good which is why the swords suck) which chopper lacks.

- Qantari weapon damage increased by 1.

Once again, the biggest advantage is the passive skill bonus (which it doesn't have), besides, this thing comes so late that it doesn't really matter anymore. I guess if you're helping Meru, then having a second thoughts about it, maybe for that ending, but that's such a stupid direction to take anyways (it's just blatantly and obviously stupid thing to do from the very beginning of plotlie) that I'm not sure why would you follow it (apart from morbid curiosity).

- Base armor damage from weapon type (AP cost) doubled. Now 5-50, before 0-30.

Armor damage is one of the worst things to happen with the AoD. First, it's an absolutely redundant mechanic. You want to bypass enemy armor? You can have 10 strength and an Axe. You can use poison. You can use criticals to strictly bypass armor. You can use leg/armor massed crits to kill them by the stat damage, even if the criticals themselves don't do any damage (the 4 str dagger, for example). You can use head shot/artery strikes to strike at weak/zero DR. Piercing arrows are superb. Crafted throwing weapons are cool too. In fact, the current problem of AoD is that it's so easy to bypass armor that strength barely even matters (unless you play hammer & shield - I guess you can go axe & shield too, but hammer is simply superior).

So all this armor destruction tinkery is absolutely needless - it adds nothing extra to the game. Apart from some extra randomness in combat when you quickly have 4-6 points of your damage destroyed, thus losing the battle pre-emptively. And even that is not that big of a problem under the new skill costs & aimed strikes - too easy to ramp up your dodge/block and to nullify the opponent's hitting chance with the aimed:arms.

- Hardened technique now 12-20 for weapons and armors, from 10-50 (weapons) 10-30 (armors).

And now you can't even reinforce your armor properly. Well, it's not like reinforcement helped much in the first place - stuff like some random fucks with the bronze mallets obliterating your fully upgraded Power Armor already happened. And even iron stuff was way too effective against the supposedly awesome hand-crafted mithril.

- Range penalty is now 3 THC per tile, less than 3 tiles gets no penalty.

One thing I really liked about AoD's ranged weapons is that you could've actually use them from, you know, range. It's not like it really changed anything - even as a very strong archer, attacking something like monastery raiders (a rather mild encounter, mind you) led to 1-2 casualties tops. After all, they all get to you after 3 or 4 rounds of shooting, even if you attack them from as far as possible. So why do we need another "archers are blind morons who can't hit shit from 10 meters"? It wasn't broken in the first place, especially since most battles don't even give you the opportunity to snipe.

- Armor Damage Chance (ADC) for arm and legs attacks reduced by 50 (from 20)

Won't change the arms & legs shots from being the most common attacks. Especially now when they're dirt cheap.

- Flurry ADC is -25.

Yay to destroying the only meaningful use of flurry remaining. Yeah, previously, flurry was strong. But after the change to the dagger's bonus, it turned into crap. As well as the daggers themselves, but that was fixed by the skillpoint influx and cheap aimed shots. However, it's absolutely meaningless to do anything but aimed after aimed after aimed with the dagger now. I mean, before this, you could've at least tried to craft a super-hardened dagger and do some denting by flurry. It wasn't the most efficient thing, but it was at least something. Now it's just another useless attack type.[/quote]

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Ash_Firelord]

I tried this about a year ago, enjoyed it sufficiently and decided to wait for release. I fear it will clash painfully with my completionism OCD.