Game News Age of Decadence September Update

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

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[Ninjerk]

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[Rake]

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[Tigranes]

AOD's been in development for so long that it has naturally exhausted the various avenues of butthurt and idiotic conversation. Now, all that remains is blissful enjoyment.

OK, so I know nothing can exhaust butthurt, Codex or elsewhere, but I feel like having only played Demo R1 and R2, the design philosophy is clearly enough felt that there should be no surprise on that front.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Image from October 9th but I've only just discovered it:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,3445.msg106618.html#msg106618

This looks awesome

 

[hiver]

Yeah. I saw it yesterday but forgot to re-post it.

Im also watching some AoD Lets Plays on youtube now. There`s several already. (one attempt by some obviously next gen teenager was kinda funny - although he isnt some douchebag, he just went in expecting he wont need to figure out anything).
Another found the combat... not accessible

 

[UserNamer]

Just wanted to say that I played the public demo recently, good stuff and I sunk quite a few hours into it.

I had success with the combat on my very first character, managing to defeat the assassin and cado's thugs without too much of an hassle, just a few reloads, and I think the "reasonable" fights- by which I mean the ones where you are facing 1 to 3 opponents or where you have allies- are not hard at all and require just a little bit of effort. What is significantly harder are the suicidal fights, like clearing the mines or the camp, but I'm confident those are doable too.

I'm sold on the setting and of course the demo is truly impressive when it comes to multiple questlines, multiple solutions to quests, multiple viewpoints on the main plot according to the starting class, and so on. That's obviously the strongest area of the game\demo.

A few words on the visuals. I don't think they are nearly as shitty as many claims, they are much better than most indie and classic rpgs and have some charm to them. Judging from the latest screenshots they managed to improve on those and they are shaping up to be quite interesting in my opinion. Music is nice and the portraits art is fitting, I'm especially fond of militiades, what a lovable guy. The small details like the slaves working, the soldiers patrolling, and the poor squatting around are simple but add to the atmosphere.

I intend to play the eventual full game as a combat focused character (or maybe a combat proficient guy with some diplomatic skills) but it's nice that you can mindlessly win dialogues until someone stabs you and it's game over. My concern was that the diplomatic builds would have been completely effortless to play but at least it seems that you need to pay a modicum of attention.

In conclusion, the demo felt very solid to me as an overall product. Maybe it's not perfect and it's not perfect in all the areas, but as a sum of its parts it felt more solid than most c&c and story heavy rpgs released in the last 17 years. I hope the team manages to finish the game- I'm confident it will be a truly interesting experience, and I'm sort of glad that they decided to follow a personal vision instead of trying to appeal to everybody. We already have more than enough of those games and they often end up being totally worthless. I don't know if and when the full game will be ever released, my impression is that it will be 2015 at best.

PS I like the town map teleporting. Fuck walking back and forth in the same already fully explored town hundreds of times

 

[Dickie]

PS I like the town map teleporting. Fuck walking back and forth in the same already fully explored town hundreds of times

Thank you. I thought I was the only one.

 

[hiver]

The only real problem with teleporting was that it was mandatory - unavoidable - forced on the player.
As an option - its great.

 

[Goral]

Seconded, although I've said it already somewhere on the Codex. Compare it to Fallout New Vegas (or shitty Fallout 3) where you had to walk for hours (literally) and there was even a button that once pressed allowed you to go make a tea while my character would automatically run at a tortoise pace. Sure, there was fast travel but it didn't work too well and you still had to waste hours on walking (not only to discover a location but also at a certain location which often were very big and unlike in F1/F2 you could not choose a section/district while fast travelling).

 

[Saduj]

Complaining about teleporting in AoD is for .

Complaining about the camera in AoD is for .

 

[Ninjerk]

Complaining about teleporting in AoD is for .

Complaining about the camera in AoD is for .

No

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

PS I like the town map teleporting. Fuck walking back and forth in the same already fully explored town hundreds of times

That's actually the thing I hate most about most rpgs/mmos. Well, that and the pointless grinding that happens while you walk back and forth (insult to injury). TBH, teleporting was a little jarring at first, but I quickly got used to it. The camera is fine.

 

[UserNamer]

yes you really end up wasting hours walking from point A to point B to do chores and it's the worse kind of filler in my opinion. But apparently some people really like it including a real life friend of mine. For him removing that sort of stuff was removing "the game". I'm convinced many are fully immersed in the wonderful experience of simulated pacing back and forth.

Some don't really seek occasional escapist fantasies, but increasingly they desire constant 24h a day computer simulated escapism into the mundane. Social interaction games like facebook.com, stuff like the sims or the sims with cars and cutscenes (gta), hiking simulators (oblivion I-II, we all know how many people just like to play those "being immersed in the world" doing pointless shit like picking up mushrooms and insects or simulating clothes washing quests), MMO games, are all a sign of this. People just need to live through the computer, including living through your character doing stupid chores around the town for the billionth time. To me chores is something that can be skipped and left to the imagination of the player.

 

[J_C]

PS I like the town map teleporting. Fuck walking back and forth in the same already fully explored town hundreds of times

That's actually the thing I hate most about most rpgs/mmos. Well, that and the pointless grinding that happens while you walk back and forth (insult to injury). TBH, teleporting was a little jarring at first, but I quickly got used to it. The camera is fine.

yes you really end up wasting hours walking from point A to point B to do chores and it's the worse kind of filler in my opinion. But apparently some people really like it including a real life friend of mine. For him removing that sort of stuff was removing "the game". I'm convinced many are fully immersed in the wonderful experience of simulated pacing back and forth.

I don't know. If the game has a beautiful art style and a great soundtrack, travelling back and forth is not a chore to me. Great example are the infinity engine games. Walking from place to place in Targos, listening to the amazing music was part of the experience for me. If I teleported from battle to battle , it would have cheapend that experience.
I don't like pointless wandering around in opern world games like Skyrim, but in a more confined place like in Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate, it is not a problem.

 

[UserNamer]

well it depends of how much walking back and forth is required for me. Also if the game requires plenty of shopping around to prepare for fights some sort of centralized town interface like in darklands is ideal.

also Temple of Elemental Evil just came back to my mind. BEAUTIFUL visuals but too much walking around the town plus a very clunky interface for doing so.

 

[General Maxson]

I think Fallout is an example of good "walking through the town" design. You felt like you really are in a PA town with all its glory like - some form of police, various merchants (general, guns, books), organizations (like caravans), various people and their abodes, "important" people slightly extravagant abodes, bars, homes/buildings you can enter/lockpick/find something etc. It was NEVER boring for me to wander around towns in Fallout, especially since you could choose in which district will you approach the town in. It added to immersion (especially with great Mark Morgan soundtrack) while not being tedious.

IE games on the other hand were boring, as I always had the feeling of walking on beautiful wallpapers with my characters.

I agree Darklands approach is also great, only if it had more variety...

 

[UserNamer]

Fallout was a relatively short and tight game so obviously walking around never became tedious (at least if I remember correctly)

 

[General Maxson]

Fallout was a relatively short and tight game so obviously walking around never became tedious (at least if I remember correctly)

Well Fallout 2 wasn't short and tight and it still had great approach to that too. Overland travel with random encounters, you could discover locations and put them on your map on your own accordance, not only when someone puts it there via conversation, and all the other stuff I mentioned. Quick, if you want it to be, much expanded if you want it to be (if you like to walk around, explore etc.). But never tedious. Only tedious stuff was tutorial, but you can be quick about it too (although I agree it's pretty shitty and "mandatory).

 

[hiver]

Pointlessly wandering around Skyrim is the best gameplay in the game.

Anyway.... waiting for the October UPdate.

 

[EG]

Seconded, although I've said it already somewhere on the Codex. Compare it to Fallout New Vegas (or shitty Fallout 3) where you had to walk for hours (literally) and there was even a button that once pressed allowed you to go make a tea while my character would automatically run at a tortoise pace. Sure, there was fast travel but it didn't work too well and you still had to waste hours on walking (not only to discover a location but also at a certain location which often were very big and unlike in F1/F2 you could not choose a section/district while fast travelling).

A better comparison might be KotoR, since AoD doesn't seem to be going for the whole "50 square miles of copy-pasted wasteland to 'explore'!"

Being able to explore a location at your leisure (even if it's just a location limited in scope) is something I value in games, particularly if the in-game art and AI is well done. Yes, poorly designed fetch-quests can limit or remove this enjoyment, as well as unrealistically expecting the player to sit there for two hours while their character saunters to the next location, but that's up to the game designer to correct through things such as an over-world map and only including fully-realized areas.

In KotoR, the locations are limited in size, and are generally well populated with NPCs and set pieces. Rather than an hour or two to walk somewhere, it's usually only a handful of minutes (give or take a few minutes if you don't skip cut scenes) between quest points, ignoring parts of Dantooine and Kashyyyk. Fallout is a better example of travel done right, ignoring 2's sometimes-massive NPC spawns.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Being able to explore a location at your leisure (even if it's just a location limited in scope) is something I value in games...

Which is something you can do in AoD. You can explore the town all you like and find things you wouldn't see otherwise. Teleporting kicks in within quests and saves you the trouble of walking across the town to talk to or report to someone.

 

[EG]

Being able to explore a location at your leisure (even if it's just a location limited in scope) is something I value in games...

Which is something you can do in AoD. You can explore the town all you like and find things you wouldn't see otherwise. Teleporting kicks in within quests and saves you the trouble of walking across the town to talk to or report to someone.

I'd rather not be rail-roadbed into it just because I choose to take on a quest, unless there's a specific reason for its application within the quest itself, such as simulating travel with companions. You find walking troublesome, I don't (in most cases).

Not that I can't live with it in AoD or understand why you made this decision in AoD.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Which is something you can do in AoD. You can explore the town all you like and find things you wouldn't see otherwise. Teleporting kicks in within quests and saves you the trouble of walking across the town to talk to or report to someone.

I've only just started playing the demo, but as I played the initial mercenary tavern quest, the thing that bothered me about the teleporting wasn't primarily the leasure aspect, but that it seems to take positioning and preparing for encounters in that sense out of the picture. Did you do a similar thing as with FO2, where positioning for encounters is decided by things such as Perception, or is it always the same (or did I miss some option)?

 

[hiver]

btw, hows the new demo coming along?