AoD September Update

[likaq]

So, today the update is early. The big news is that we started beta-testing 2 weeks ago or so. Now, instead of me telling you how much work the game still requires, other people can step in and tell you the same thing.


Gareth: "To sum up my initial impressions : The core game is there and solid. Text adventures are golden, they give you a great sense of having a personal story, without it being linear. It's also really cool to see events from multiple angles. And the game is looking great, lots of rich details.

That being said, it's not ready for primetime yet. The game needs 'fluff', interactions and non-essential NPCs to talk to as you wander around and discover the setting. This lack of interaction makes the world feel empty, not because there aren't people but because you can't interact with them.

Also, even though the game isn't about holding your hand, if you wander outside the core interactions you quickly get lost, in terms of what you could or should be doing. A lot of this is due to that lack of fluff, which can be used to subtly nudge the player.

Overall, you can see the potential in the parts, but the whole experience still needs to 'come together'. And it's the more 'fluffy/subtle' elements that do this. Lots of work still to be done."


Brian: "Just finished a first playthrough. My initial impressions are:

The setting and story were very interesting and I wanted to hear more about the world and politics of the local region, but finding my way around town and locating critical NPCs and new quest givers was exceptionally difficult due to the way buildings are marked and critical NPCs are lit. There's a few things I would recommend to help draw new players to key areas:

-The town has a lot of very similar buildings with similar colors chemes. For key areas or buildings with critical NPCS or quests, you want to make them stand out. A lighter color roof, flags, colorful plants, special lighting or sounds, signs, wall decals would help the player better distinguish where they were (landmarks) and whether the building had anything of interest inside.

-Doors that don't open should look much different from doors that open to know if the building could be entered. I had to mouse over doors to figure out if I could enter the building. Windows should also be closed. Consider making generic buildings (that can't be entered) a different color.

-Light NPCs differently than the world lighting so they don't blend in with the environment. You could also slightly tweak the saturation of their models to make them pop a bit more. I could not spot Feng immediately after entering his building (which took me a long time to find).

-Try to make non-speaking generic guard/town NPCs use a similar model. Assign special colors/models to NPCs (shopkeepers, guards, quest givers) with dialogue - it creates a visual language that makes it easy to spot who has dialogue. For example, if a guard has dialogue, he has his helmet off, if on, he never has dialogue. This can be subverted in cases where the conversation auto-starts (the imperial guard conversation, for example).

-Have no idea who the factions are, critical NPCs are, or where the quests are. Having minor NPCs or shopkeeps/bartenders gossip about the area would help a lot.

-Dialogue is very reactive, which is nice, but I often have only one thing to say at any time and it feels very linear. Even putting in two different ways to say the same thing would help.

- I'm running around looking for the next quest or part of the quest chain and frequently not finding anything. Is there anything I can do with the map quest past going to see Antidas? It's difficult to find NPCs and figure out if I can do anything with them at the moment. I have found several with portraits but have only been able to get as far as an audience with Antidas. More emphasis should be placed on specific areas and people the player needs to see - even with a journal, players need important info repeated, especially in a fantasy world where they are coming into the world without any prior knowledge of events, places, people. The story parts are very intriguing (really!) so I want to get to the next points of interest as quickly as possible. "


Galsiah: "Overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot. I've always thought the concept of one situation played from multiple perspectives for the vignettes was great, but I hadn't anticipated that so much of the game would be like that. Having the actions of one PC form the background of quests for others really brings things to life.

E.g. the thieves guild quest to intercept a shipment of gold would seem highly generic in isolation, but once I'd arranged the payment myself with a merchant character the situation felt a lot more real. Similarly with the Carrinas situation - having played from the IG side, the motivation of those who want him dead is much clearer. I'm sure there a quite a few overlaps/interactions I haven't yet come across, but I love the overall approach when compared to more separate quest lines for each guild.

Probably the largest negative so far is simply wanting more options in many situations. However, in large part that's a consequence of the design - a dialogue choice might have five or more potential options, but any one character will often have only one or two; and clearly you need to restrict options for some characters in order to make earlier decisions meaningful. After playing situations with more than one character, things seem more open, but when playing through the first time things can feel a bit linear at times.

Another aspect I've found a bit problematic is judging the combat/non-combat skill balance for a character who's not going entirely one way or the other. Things are pretty simple for a
primarily combat-focused character, or an entirely non-combat character, but it's harder to know that a moderate investment in combat skills won't just be wasted - most combats that are challenging for a combat-focused character will be suicide for characters with only a modest investment, and it's hard to anticipate the difficulty of combats ahead of time. Quite a bit of that might come down to the ironmanism of the current build though - it's clearly more vexing to have to start over, than to get a second attempt or to try another approach.

As I said before, I also think the character generation could be a bit more interesting/effective if the player had more to think about in allocating skill points. Right now a character is almost entirely determined by stats, leaving the player with not a great deal to decide. Once he's done a tiny amount of quests - e.g. the vignette, and talked to Feng, -, he already probably has more skill points to allocate than in character creation, which makes the skill allocation part of character generation feel pretty trivial. Obviously you need to keep stats having a highly significant impact on initial skills, but there's a lot of ways to maintain that while giving the player more significant direct skill decisions.

A small thing that's bothered me a little is having major characters from different guilds have nothing more to say than "Yes?" or similar, when there's no quest associated with them. Right now that makes them come across a bit too much as mechanical quest dispensers who have none to give you, than as characters. Having a few just-for-colour responses to dismiss the PC without significant conversation might help. Alternatively, going for something similar to the Dias response after the first story - "Dias tells you a story, and another, and..." - something that describes the interaction indirectly.

The combat is certainly challenging - though the ironman sudden-death and no-cure-for-stat-damage aspects make things a bit frustrating at times right now. Maybe there could be a bit more variety in equipment possibilities, but I think once crafting is in that should be significantly improved. So far I've been playing high-AP dodgers for the most part, and once I've got a decent iron weapon, there's not much choice in equipment terms (though maybe I should use nets more, even with the expense). But I guess with crafting there'll be more of a decision to be made between various bonuses. If the 'Craft' script isn't lying, 40 crafting seems to be enough to get a fair amount of options.

Fundamentally I think it's very good - most of the improvements I can think of are small things to make the existing situation flow more smoothly and/or better exploit existing variety. Of course the wanting-more-options issue is larger - but that amounts to saying that the problem with ice-cream is that there's not more ice-cream."


PS. Other testers can share their impressions freely.

One question remain unanswered: When the demo will be relaesed?

 

[Vault Dweller]

When we deal with all the issues. Aiming for November, but if it takes longer, well, then it takes longer.

 

[mikaelis]

When we deal with all the issues. Aiming for November, but if it takes longer, well, then it takes longer.

And the final release will be more like:

a) a year from the demo release

b) we have no frigging clue but rather closer to 3 year mark

?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

 

[mikaelis]

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Well, that was actually a serious question . No bitching or trolling.

I could imagine that you want to give it to the broader audience to show what you've got so far and then have your time collecting feedback, adding things, removing things, polishing, adding more content (afterwards "demo" means that you are showing limited content and there is a whole lot more waiting in the final release).
I would thing it can easily take another year for indie dev. But then again, I was not following every news regarding AoD, so I don't know how you guys are proceeding with your stuff.

 

[Secretninja]

inb4 black

 

[Haba]

So... Cleve has his "son" blog about his experiences with Grimoire and few weeks from that Vince has people post their experiences with AoD... Coincidence? I think not!

 

[Gwendo]

So, I knew the dialogues would have stat checks, but didn't think that that would mean no choice of our part, beside the stats we choose to increase.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Nobody said that.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/in ... l#msg72270

"It's a thought, but I think the trouble is that you'd lose the clarity that's present at the moment, in that you know what you say will matter. To take an example, when going into a bandit camp to secure the release of a prisoner, I get three options:

(1) "The prisoner. Hand him over."
(2) [some critical strike option]
(3) "I'm here to negotiate."

Now it might be that I'm playing a straight-to-the-point, hard-nosed tough-guy who might be naturally inclined to go for (1). However, I'm in an enemy camp, surrounded by about 6 or 7 reasonably armed fighting men, so getting anyone annoyed is quite likely to get me killed. Given that previous dialogue choices have all been significant, I can be pretty sure that there'll be a different outcome between (1), and (3), so I've chosen to avoid (1) on the basis that I don't want to end up dead.

If there had previously been a load of flavour options allowing me to say the same thing in different ways without consequence, I might well have expected (1) to be simply a tough-guy-wants-to-negotiate line, and have gone with that - only to be surprised when I got horribly maimed.

An advantage of the way things are is that there's consistency, and so the player knows what to expect: when you see a choice, it matters. Of course not every case is a life-or-death situation, but the player can judge things on that basis: I've been much more careful what I say in situations where I'm surrounded by armed guards. Once the player knows that choices will have consequences, it allows the designer to throw some harsh outcomes around. If there were too many just-for-flavour options, the player wouldn't be sure which options were likely to be significant, and might well feel unjustly screwed after some just-expressing-my-character option got him killed.

In general, I'm all for character expression, but I don't see why expressions of character should be removed from game world consequence. I'd prefer that a few more somewhat significant options were added, each with some element of character expression, rather than a whole load of objectively meaningless options. By all means there should be options to take a no-nonsense tough-guy approach in some cases - but you shouldn't be surprised if that approach gets you disliked/ostracised/attacked/betrayed/killed. Having character expression be separate from game world consequences just makes the whole thing a rather trivial exercise.

I quite like that AoD has a world where characters who go around saying whatever they like regardless of context end up dead. The more just-for-flavour options you add to seemingly dangerous situations, the less that can be supported. If you're not dealing with the consequences of a PC's character, then you're not really role-playing that character in any significant sense."

 

[GarfunkeL]

Oooh, excitement level rising!

 

[Mangoose]

You make a very good point about the consistency. One of the tenets of AOD is that choices are important and have consequences, so if you throw in "fluff" choices, how would the player know what's fluff and what's important?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Galsiah did, after playing the demo. It's his quote.

 

[Surf Solar]

Now that the similar topic is on the spot, do you still go with displaying what actual skill will be used at dialogue node xy? Like

"[Loremaster] I do know this area well enough blablawalloftext"

?

I really wonder, since I personally would prefer it NOT knowing what exact skill will be used there, just like it was in the original Fallouts. I can understand that it gives the player some sort of accomplishment feeling, like "hm, I've put some points into this skill, I think I go with this one, as it is even displayed" etc.

What I personally do in my game, is not to show these skills at all, but make it "obvious" in the actual node what skill will be used there. Like, some silly example I just made up:

"Being experienced on the critters inhabiting the wasteland and their anatomy for quite some time, you quickly realize that this wound was caused by a molerat and is probably poisonend."

instead of


[Outdoorsman] lol I heal u

and so on..

I know, these are bad examples, but I hope you get what I mean. It's ofcourse just my opinion, but I'm curious why you chosethis particular path. As for the demo and the game ofcourse, godspeed, I wish you best luck and can't wait till I can lay my hands on.

In general, I'm all for character expression, but I don't see why expressions of character should be removed from game world consequence. I'd prefer that a few more somewhat significant options were added, each with some element of character expression, rather than a whole load of objectively meaningless options. By all means there should be options to take a no-nonsense tough-guy approach in some cases - but you shouldn't be surprised if that approach gets you disliked/ostracised/attacked/betrayed/killed. Having character expression be separate from game world consequences just makes the whole thing a rather trivial exercise.

I quite like that AoD has a world where characters who go around saying whatever they like regardless of context end up dead. The more just-for-flavour options you add to seemingly dangerous situations, the less that can be supported. If you're not dealing with the consequences of a PC's character, then you're not really role-playing that character in any significant sense."

I really like that! Some behind the scenes question - how exactly do you realize that if there's the case the player behaves like a total dick in those "flavor" options, or chooses constantly "bad" ones when speaking to generic townsfolk etc - do you "punish" the player instantly during the ongoing dialogue, or do you have some variable in the background running which adds up if the player does these actions all the time, kind of like emulating that the npc create rumors about you, word gets spread that you're a total asshole etc - delaying the consequences?

 

[deuxhero]

I'm personally fine with it, as it allows the player to know their skill investments are working, and a character should know where they are getting their knowledge from.

 

[LibertyRansom]

I'm with SurfSolar. I know this idea was discussed in the IronTowers Forum before but i thought it might bear repeating.

Instead of showing the skill your using in the dialogue, you should display the skill after the player has clicked on his dialogue choice. Have something like Loremaster flash for a second in the dialogue box. This way it doesn't direct the player to the "right" choice or skill oriented choice, but it shows he gets some satisfaction of knowing his skills effected his dialogue options after the fact.


Regardless, not displaying the skill at all is a great choice too. Very pumped to hear the game is rolling along and I'm sure everything is great!

 

[Country_Gravy]

I am getting excited...and by that I mean aroused.

Once the demo comes out I might end up

=========D~~~~~~~

 

[Vault Dweller]

Now that the similar topic is on the spot, do you still go with displaying what actual skill will be used at dialogue node xy?

Yes. It's a personal preference. I think it worked very well in ToEE (at least I really liked it). The tags give you a good and accurate feedback about your skills.

What I personally do in my game, is not to show these skills at all, but make it "obvious" in the actual node what skill will be used there. Like, some silly example I just made up:

"Being experienced on the critters inhabiting the wasteland and their anatomy for quite some time, you quickly realize that this wound was caused by a molerat and is probably poisonend."

instead of


[Outdoorsman] lol I heal u

First, these are not mutually exclusive options. It can easily be:

[outdoorsman] "Being experienced on the critters inhabiting the wasteland and their anatomy for quite some time, you quickly realize that this wound was caused by a molerat and is probably poisoned."

Second, in a game with multiple conversation skills and reputation stats, it's harder to convey clearly which stat/skill/rep gave you this or that line.

In general, I'm all for character expression, but I don't see why expressions of character should be removed from game world consequence. I'd prefer that a few more somewhat significant options were added, each with some element of character expression, rather than a whole load of objectively meaningless options. By all means there should be options to take a no-nonsense tough-guy approach in some cases - but you shouldn't be surprised if that approach gets you disliked/ostracised/attacked/betrayed/killed. Having character expression be separate from game world consequences just makes the whole thing a rather trivial exercise.

I quite like that AoD has a world where characters who go around saying whatever they like regardless of context end up dead. The more just-for-flavour options you add to seemingly dangerous situations, the less that can be supported. If you're not dealing with the consequences of a PC's character, then you're not really role-playing that character in any significant sense."

Again, Galsiah said it after playing the demo, not me. I should have been more clear when I posted it.

I really like that! Some behind the scenes question - how exactly do you realize that if there's the case the player behaves like a total dick in those "flavor" options, or chooses constantly "bad" ones when speaking to generic townsfolk etc - do you "punish" the player instantly during the ongoing dialogue, or do you have some variable in the background running which adds up if the player does these actions all the time, kind of like emulating that the npc create rumors about you, word gets spread that you're a total asshole etc - delaying the consequences?

We have all kinds. In some cases it's instant (usually when you say/do shit you shouldn't have, unless you are tough enough to handle the consequences). In some cases, it's scripted to bite you in the ass later. Like double-crossing or treating NPCs the wrong way. And in some other cases, it's a reputation meter, if you keep pissing people off, eventually they'll get tired of your ass.

 

[Mangoose]

Well I agree with Galsiah then =P Though I haven't read the counterpoints in the thread.

 

[almondblight]

Galsiah's points make sense only in certain situations though. Of course, if you are going to negotiate with bandits, then "tell me about the history of bandits in this area" probably doesn't make much sense. But being able to ask for some background from Questgiver A does make a lot of sense in the way that it fleshes out the world.

If the game starts feeling like it has a silent protagonist (basically, people tell you to do things, and you respond, "yeah, sure"), then it needs to be retooled. It's a pretty simple thing to fix, though.

 

[Black]

inb4 black

))))))))))

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

In after Black.

 

[Mangoose]

Talking about "combatless RPGs" in GRPG made me curious, VD - Did you ever consider adding more complexity to the dialogue system? Or did you plan (realistically) from the outset to use the dialogue tree and simply implement it well?

I suppose the text adventure segments are pretty "innovative" in terms of dialogue mechanics (barring Darklands...). Were there any other unique dialogue concepts (or even just general non-combat mechanics) that you threw out?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Lots of work still to be done.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Talking about "combatless RPGs" in GRPG made me curious, VD - Did you ever consider adding more complexity to the dialogue system?

Not sure I understand the question. Like what?

The way I see it, it's a well defined and already complex feature (although in most games we get the most basic implementation). So, before one decides to add more complexity to it, one should learn and hopefully master what was done before.

Or did you plan (realistically) from the outset to use the dialogue tree and simply implement it well?

I hoped that I would be able to implement it well.

I suppose the text adventure segments are pretty "innovative" in terms of dialogue mechanics (barring Darklands...).

Well, we can't say that it's innovative while acknowledging that Darklands had it more than a decade ago. The AoD text adventures are a mix of what Darklands and Planescape gave us. One focused on action, the other on object manipulation.

Were there any other unique dialogue concepts (or even just general non-combat mechanics) that you threw out?

I don't think there is anything else.

Dialogue trees (there are different designs, of course) take care of anything you wish to say and do while interacting with an NPC. Text adventures handle any actions (without the need to animate everything) that your character can do while interacting with environment.

 

[Butcer]

So, today the update is early. The big news is that we started beta-testing 2 weeks ago or so. Now, instead of me telling you how much work the game still requires, other people can step in and tell you the same thing.


Gareth: "To sum up my initial impressions : The core game is there and solid. Text adventures are golden, they give you a great sense of having a personal story, without it being linear. It's also really cool to see events from multiple angles. And the game is looking great, lots of rich details.

That being said, it's not ready for primetime yet. The game needs 'fluff', interactions and non-essential NPCs to talk to as you wander around and discover the setting. This lack of interaction makes the world feel empty, not because there aren't people but because you can't interact with them.

Also, even though the game isn't about holding your hand, if you wander outside the core interactions you quickly get lost, in terms of what you could or should be doing. A lot of this is due to that lack of fluff, which can be used to subtly nudge the player.

Overall, you can see the potential in the parts, but the whole experience still needs to 'come together'. And it's the more 'fluffy/subtle' elements that do this. Lots of work still to be done."


Brian: "Just finished a first playthrough. My initial impressions are:

The setting and story were very interesting and I wanted to hear more about the world and politics of the local region, but finding my way around town and locating critical NPCs and new quest givers was exceptionally difficult due to the way buildings are marked and critical NPCs are lit. There's a few things I would recommend to help draw new players to key areas:

-The town has a lot of very similar buildings with similar colors chemes. For key areas or buildings with critical NPCS or quests, you want to make them stand out. A lighter color roof, flags, colorful plants, special lighting or sounds, signs, wall decals would help the player better distinguish where they were (landmarks) and whether the building had anything of interest inside.

-Doors that don't open should look much different from doors that open to know if the building could be entered. I had to mouse over doors to figure out if I could enter the building. Windows should also be closed. Consider making generic buildings (that can't be entered) a different color.

-Light NPCs differently than the world lighting so they don't blend in with the environment. You could also slightly tweak the saturation of their models to make them pop a bit more. I could not spot Feng immediately after entering his building (which took me a long time to find).

-Try to make non-speaking generic guard/town NPCs use a similar model. Assign special colors/models to NPCs (shopkeepers, guards, quest givers) with dialogue - it creates a visual language that makes it easy to spot who has dialogue. For example, if a guard has dialogue, he has his helmet off, if on, he never has dialogue. This can be subverted in cases where the conversation auto-starts (the imperial guard conversation, for example).

-Have no idea who the factions are, critical NPCs are, or where the quests are. Having minor NPCs or shopkeeps/bartenders gossip about the area would help a lot.

-Dialogue is very reactive, which is nice, but I often have only one thing to say at any time and it feels very linear. Even putting in two different ways to say the same thing would help.

- I'm running around looking for the next quest or part of the quest chain and frequently not finding anything. Is there anything I can do with the map quest past going to see Antidas? It's difficult to find NPCs and figure out if I can do anything with them at the moment. I have found several with portraits but have only been able to get as far as an audience with Antidas. More emphasis should be placed on specific areas and people the player needs to see - even with a journal, players need important info repeated, especially in a fantasy world where they are coming into the world without any prior knowledge of events, places, people. The story parts are very intriguing (really!) so I want to get to the next points of interest as quickly as possible. "


Galsiah: "Overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot. I've always thought the concept of one situation played from multiple perspectives for the vignettes was great, but I hadn't anticipated that so much of the game would be like that. Having the actions of one PC form the background of quests for others really brings things to life.

E.g. the thieves guild quest to intercept a shipment of gold would seem highly generic in isolation, but once I'd arranged the payment myself with a merchant character the situation felt a lot more real. Similarly with the Carrinas situation - having played from the IG side, the motivation of those who want him dead is much clearer. I'm sure there a quite a few overlaps/interactions I haven't yet come across, but I love the overall approach when compared to more separate quest lines for each guild.

Probably the largest negative so far is simply wanting more options in many situations. However, in large part that's a consequence of the design - a dialogue choice might have five or more potential options, but any one character will often have only one or two; and clearly you need to restrict options for some characters in order to make earlier decisions meaningful. After playing situations with more than one character, things seem more open, but when playing through the first time things can feel a bit linear at times.

Another aspect I've found a bit problematic is judging the combat/non-combat skill balance for a character who's not going entirely one way or the other. Things are pretty simple for a
primarily combat-focused character, or an entirely non-combat character, but it's harder to know that a moderate investment in combat skills won't just be wasted - most combats that are challenging for a combat-focused character will be suicide for characters with only a modest investment, and it's hard to anticipate the difficulty of combats ahead of time. Quite a bit of that might come down to the ironmanism of the current build though - it's clearly more vexing to have to start over, than to get a second attempt or to try another approach.

As I said before, I also think the character generation could be a bit more interesting/effective if the player had more to think about in allocating skill points. Right now a character is almost entirely determined by stats, leaving the player with not a great deal to decide. Once he's done a tiny amount of quests - e.g. the vignette, and talked to Feng, -, he already probably has more skill points to allocate than in character creation, which makes the skill allocation part of character generation feel pretty trivial. Obviously you need to keep stats having a highly significant impact on initial skills, but there's a lot of ways to maintain that while giving the player more significant direct skill decisions.

A small thing that's bothered me a little is having major characters from different guilds have nothing more to say than "Yes?" or similar, when there's no quest associated with them. Right now that makes them come across a bit too much as mechanical quest dispensers who have none to give you, than as characters. Having a few just-for-colour responses to dismiss the PC without significant conversation might help. Alternatively, going for something similar to the Dias response after the first story - "Dias tells you a story, and another, and..." - something that describes the interaction indirectly.

The combat is certainly challenging - though the ironman sudden-death and no-cure-for-stat-damage aspects make things a bit frustrating at times right now. Maybe there could be a bit more variety in equipment possibilities, but I think once crafting is in that should be significantly improved. So far I've been playing high-AP dodgers for the most part, and once I've got a decent iron weapon, there's not much choice in equipment terms (though maybe I should use nets more, even with the expense). But I guess with crafting there'll be more of a decision to be made between various bonuses. If the 'Craft' script isn't lying, 40 crafting seems to be enough to get a fair amount of options.

Fundamentally I think it's very good - most of the improvements I can think of are small things to make the existing situation flow more smoothly and/or better exploit existing variety. Of course the wanting-more-options issue is larger - but that amounts to saying that the problem with ice-cream is that there's not more ice-cream."


PS. Other testers can share their impressions freely.

One question remain unanswered: When the demo will be relaesed?

Never it does not exist , aog is a vaporware