Game News AoD demo released

[Vault Dweller]

New version is coming soon. Wait a bit.

 

[youhomofo]

With that new build that (mostly) corrected the screwed up saves problem I finally managed to complete the demo.

I did so as a dodgy spearman. Trident, arm guard and murmillo helmet. Not a bad combo, though I found it extremely difficult to fight any enemy that could consistently beat my dodge, and the three/two on one battles were decided as much by luck as they were skill.

My bread and butter tactic was simply to keep my distance. Jab at the legs and back off, jab them as they try to close in. Move up, attack a weak spot, back off. Rinse and repeat. It was quite a bit of fun, actually. I think next up I'm going to go with a heavily armored fighter with a tower shield and a gladius, see how that compares.

My only issue, 6 months of testing or not, was with ranged weapons, which seem to get an inordinate number of crits. I found myself rushing at enemies for fear of their deadly axes. The Ordu bowman was far more trouble than his sword-brandishing companion.

 

[PlanHex]

New version is coming soon. Wait a bit.

Awwwwwwww! I was just enjoying my 10-20 crits on each hit with my dagger/critical strike with Mack's 1AP knife.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

How many is "most" and where did the rest go? I'm just trying to understand why you're having difficulties.

Blimey i didn't think it was so important! I mean i remember at Fallout you could win a fight with literally any build, it was mostly tactics and wits, besides knocking OUT opponents would "SAVE" you when you were desperate... because you know, fighting isn't so important, it's like easy enjoyable moments of blood between puzzles. I hope it is so in here as well.

I got 170 in Hammerin', 43 block, 50 critical,
10 str, 10 dex, 8 con.
And i put the rest in etiquette because it's cute to lay blows with a "if you will, old chap".

More specifically?

oh you mean how they get me.
Well the bowman doesn't do much, especially if i use good armor and shield. But the rapier-boy rapes me. I tried A LOT of tactics so far.

I REALLY hope it's not a matter of not having powerplayed the character enuff, or at least i hope it's just a DEMO issue, as someone already said. I usually make supporting classes in my games. Medics, scientists, fixers, and possibly all crippled, or at least if he fights, she/he's mediocre at it. I would be extremely disappointed if the full AoD game required much attention into (imo)boring Diablo-type numbers allocation. Rpg's aren't math games, imo, and i suck at math thingies, and hate the very word "optimization"... but this clearly doesn't mean i would accept lowering the difficulty bar.

And to top my angry accusation......please play the game in my signature, folks.

 

[Melcar]

You're not getting anywhere with either of those block and critical scores. At the stage you're in you really should be looking at +100 in both your primary and secondary skills.
The combat in the actual game won't be this hardcore and you should be able to have more liberties in character creation. From VD's description of the game, I take it that this demo is an exaggeration of the combat (in terms of how powerful you can make your character), so you're almost required to be a munchkin to beat the demo. Remember that VD is of the inferior "RPGs are about character" school .

 

[Jasede]

So, how do I talk to people? The only peeps having any dialogue in my game are the standard shopkeeper and the arena master and that standard shop only sells trash.

 

[Gragt]

Did you pre-order AoD? If you did then you should have received an email with a link to your pre-order bonus. That file unlocks the special shop that allows you to buy powerful magic weapons.

If you didn't pre-order, then sucks to be you.

 

[Temoid]

Am I missing something? By the time you fight the two Ordu you only get enough points to have about 150 weapon skill and 60-70 of a secondary skill, whether is block or dodge. It's not nearly enough. Where are all these hundreds of points that people talk about?

 

[Melcar]

Leave your weapon at around 100 points. Pump the rest into your secondary (dodge, block, cs) until you're around 150. Pump your primary afterwards.

 

[Ion Flux]

Really nice work guys. The art, interface, music, and even the splash screen exceeded my expectations. Very professional. The combat is fun, and from what I've seen of the dialogue/gameplay, you're still on track for a winnar.

Having said that, I'm having constant CTD's when I try to rotate the camera. Both with and without AA enabled at the video driver level. I haven't been able to get to the second fight because of the crashes. I'm running WinXP SP3 with a Radeon X1650 Pro AGP.



Thanks for the demo. I'm still planning to purchase the final release next Thursday.

 

[Elhoim]

Really nice work guys. The art, interface, music, and even the splash screen exceeded my expectations. Very professional. The combat is fun, and from what I've seen of the dialogue/gameplay, you're still on track for a winnar.

Having said that, I'm having constant CTD's when I try to rotate the camera. Both with and without AA enabled at the video driver level. I haven't been able to get to the second fight because of the crashes. I'm running WinXP SP3 with a Radeon X1650 Pro AGP.

Thanks for the demo. I'm still planning to purchase the final release next Thursday.

Are you using Direct3D? Use OpenGL and see how it goes. Also try this fix:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/in ... 244.0.html

That's not the issue you are having, but maybe it can help.

Am I missing something? By the time you fight the two Ordu you only get enough points to have about 150 weapon skill and 60-70 of a secondary skill, whether is block or dodge. It's not nearly enough. Where are all these hundreds of points that people talk about?

By that time you can get around 200 points (including the intial 50 for weapon selection). So you can easily get around 150 on primary and 100-110 on a secondary one.

 

[Shannow]

Dunno if this came up yet:

In case you can't read it: I did 6 points of dmg although my min dmg is 11.

Up to now the game's ok. Two-handed + dodge seems overpowered (at least until I got to that guy and he could walk up and crit me for 27 in the first round...
Some points:
Completely loosing your shield after 2-3 hits from an axe is far too harsh and severely reduces the usefulness of shields when compared to dodge. The shields slowly deteriorating and/or less criticals would do much to improve balance.
Thrown weapons should either be usable in melee or do some more damage. At the moment they seem far inferior to (cross)bows.
More tool-tips and more ingame info on how the skills work, pls.
27 points of dmg on a crit with a knife and I only do something around 18 with a two-handed axe? I'd really like some info on how crits work...
The camera won't pan.
Counter-attacking should be reduced to max 2 times per round with dodge and once with blocking (or something to that effect).

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

You're not getting anywhere with either of those block and critical scores. At the stage you're in you really should be looking at +100 in both your primary and secondary skills.
The combat in the actual game won't be this hardcore and you should be able to have more liberties in character creation. From VD's description of the game, I take it that this demo is an exaggeration of the combat (in terms of how powerful you can make your character), so you're almost required to be a munchkin to beat the demo. Remember that VD is of the inferior "RPGs are about character" school .

That's VERY good to hear.

So the demo doesn't have any dialogue and/or multiple solution puzzle, right?

Just powerplaying combat things?
If so then i can just discard it
Btw the animations are splendid, but when the character blocks with his shield a blow that's coming from a direction different to the one he's facing, the character simply blinks in the direction of the mentioned blow to do the shield anim.

 

[JarlFrank]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/in ... 259.0.html

There's a new version out.

 

[quasimodo]

You're not getting anywhere with either of those block and critical scores. At the stage you're in you really should be looking at +100 in both your primary and secondary skills.
The combat in the actual game won't be this hardcore and you should be able to have more liberties in character creation. From VD's description of the game, I take it that this demo is an exaggeration of the combat (in terms of how powerful you can make your character), so you're almost required to be a munchkin to beat the demo. Remember that VD is of the inferior "RPGs are about character" school .

That's VERY good to hear.

So the demo doesn't have any dialogue and/or multiple solution puzzle, right?

Just powerplaying combat things?
If so then i can just discard it
Btw the animations are splendid, but when the character blocks with his shield a blow that's coming from a direction different to the one he's facing, the character simply blinks in the direction of the mentioned blow to do the shield anim.

This is not the game demo. It is the "combat beta demo" to run the combat by a larger audience. There will be a real full game demo later......much later.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

Made a new char, took hammer at 110, left it there, increased block and critical.

With this "template"(ooh is world of warcraft all over again?)I am stuck about 3 fights earlier than the ordu-boys. At this point i must assume HAMMERS have been left out of the balancing work, and that they're underpowered. And i keep crashing.

well i never thought i'd say it but im very disappointed with AoD... but again, it's just combat demo. We can't powerplay the characters in full game since we need to increase non-combat skills... so i'd like NPC companions that do the fighting, and im sure there will be.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Here's a walkthrough of the demo by yours truly

 

[Melcar]

I'm doing a hammer swinging blocker. The butcher is butchering me like expected, but all other fights up to that are a piece of cake. Blocking is darn powerful, but it sucks ass that even a simple hand axe can render your character useless and that you're limited to being a heavy tank (though the actual game might allow for more flexibility in this regard).

Made a new char, took hammer at 110, left it there, increased block and critical.

With this "template"(ooh is world of warcraft all over again?)I am stuck about 3 fights earlier than the ordu-boys. At this point i must assume HAMMERS have been left out of the balancing work, and that they're underpowered. And i keep crashing.

well i never thought i'd say it but im very disappointed with AoD... but again, it's just combat demo. We can't powerplay the characters in full game since we need to increase non-combat skills... so i'd like NPC companions that do the fighting, and im sure there will be.

By the time of that fight I had 100 in hammers and I think 150 in block. Both Ordu barely hit me (the archer ran out of arrows). If you want to excel, you really can only afford to specialize in two skills; for the purposes of this demo of course.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

I beat the ordu boys with the first template... 50 block, 170 hammer. With a 2-handed, and exclusively well laid head blows. Juicy.

In any case, i don't like fiddling with this stuff, in a good RPG any build should have a chance to win, in its own way. There shoudn't be builds that are better than others. I'm sure Vince knows that.

I appreciate powerplaying regarding C&C, tho. Multiple solutions are good, but there should be one that's better than the other, but that's HARD to find and complete.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I beat the ordu boys with the first template... 50 block, 170 hammer. With a 2-handed, and exclusively well laid head blows. Juicy.

In any case, i don't like fiddling with this stuff, in a good RPG any build should have a chance to win, in its own way. There shoudn't be builds that are better than others. I'm sure Vince knows that.

All reasonable combat builds can beat the demo. You just beat the ordu with block 50 while some people can't beat them with block 150. It's all in your strategies and tactics.

You can beat the demo with heavy defense or without a point in defense. You can focus on one combat skill or you can split your offensive points between a chosen weapon and critical strike. In the new version, the synergy value is much higher so you can try different weapons.

 

[Forest Dweller]

But that new synergy is not indicative of the full game, right? Or are you testing it?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Just giving people access to more weapons for now.

 

[Phelot]

Just tried the demo, really great stuff, I've played for about 2 hours and its really fun. I appreciate how quickly turns can go and I'm loving all the weapons and items. Can't wait to see the rest.

One thing: the Arena manager dude curses like it's the 21st century

 

[jagged-jimmy]

As a new version is out, how to uninstall the old one? That might sound silly, but the game does not appeare unter "Software", but there are some entries in the windows registry, so i want a clean deinstall.

And while i am at it, where does the game saves the savegames (haha)?

 

[Vault Dweller]

As a new version is out, how to uninstall the old one? That might sound silly, but the game does not appeare unter "Software", but there are some entries in the windows registry, so i want a clean deinstall.

Just delete the folder. I don't think the game adds anything to the registry. Can you be more specific?

And while i am at it, where does the game saves the savegames (haha)?

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