KickStarter Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness - Tales of the Moon Cult expansion on the way

[ImprobablePause]

i've played a bit of early access version already and the first impression is that story feels like it was written by a schizophreniac.

I'm touched that you feel I am creative enough to think everyone's out to get me.

 

[Fargus]

That's paranoid schizophrenia i guess :D

 

[Ismaul]

Also there's some things that I don't really understand with regards to party, but I think the more you use certain party members together the more synergy they develop with each other? Also, you get some sort of bonuses for making your party more well rounded in class composition.

That party system sounds quite interesting. Not sure I've seen one before in a proper cRPG.

I do that in my PnP games: give the party benefits for their shared deeds, how they fight, how they're seen, magical bonds and protection, etc. Party advancement based on C&C rather than character build.

 

[Sykar]

So what does joyous cooperation exactly mean?

?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So what does joyous cooperation exactly mean?

?

That one actually doesn't work atm, it applied to a feature they reworked.

Speaking of things not working, the EA is surprisingly not that buggy. Of the bugs I can think of that I encountered:
I've had one broken side quest due to an NPC's dialogue behavior missing.
A few lootable containers are out of reach.
The level 3 aoe heal over time spell also affects enemies despite it stating it only affects allies.
If you trigger a chest trap you can still detect it but it can't be disarmed nor triggered again.

I've played a lot of fully released gamed with way more bugs.

 

[Sunri]

Why did you post something that you can't even read? This is not a positive review.

thumbs up = positive in steam's rating system and algorithm, so yes, it is a positive review regardless of what the text says.

this you?

so you give a positive rating to absolute broken popamole dogshit game and a negative review to based yakuza 7...

and you have the nerve to call rusty a shill? lmao

I got Yakuza for free from Sega it's an interactive movie not a game, so it deserves negative reviews yakuzatards will eat anything.

 

[Faarbaute]

When is the game expected to have its full release? Been looking forward to this for a long time but I don't like playing early access.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

When is the game expected to have its full release? Been looking forward to this for a long time but I don't like playing early access.

March 17th.

 

[Faarbaute]

Thanks bro.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Why did you post something that you can't even read? This is not a positive review.

thumbs up = positive in steam's rating system and algorithm, so yes, it is a positive review regardless of what the text says.

this you?

so you give a positive rating to absolute broken popamole dogshit game and a negative review to based yakuza 7...

and you have the nerve to call rusty a shill? lmao

I got Yakuza for free from Sega it's an interactive movie not a game, so it deserves negative reviews yakuzatards will eat anything.

You will never be a woman.

 

[Cryomancer]

Honestly, I"m re playing as a wintermage and loving it.


They improved magery a lot. Now spells scale with caster level and aren't like 5E where spells doesn't scale with you. I'm really curious if you can build a golem like the golems patrolling the capital at high level. IMO creating such large creature would be amazing but should require high level and ultra expensive components as in the game site they say :

"Can build Ice Golems from a certain (very high) level" for wintermages

And note that they use golems in plural. That would be interesting to have golems protecting your own state after you

Chapter 1 minor

Become a lord

I also liked the town design.

So far people compare this game with PoE but honestly, this game is much better than PoE.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Alright, played some more and I'm going to wait for the full release(4 real this time.)
I was looking for criticisms as I didn't really have any, so here they are:

Enemy AI isn't very good. This comes with a caveat, however.
Some of the areas feel too empty the further I go. Lots of placeholder NPCs, very few unique ones. As there's still (supposed to be) a major patch on release, I have no idea what it will be like at release. OTOH, there seems to be a lot of areas, many of them seem to be entirely optional.
I wish my companions had more to say in dialogue. They do interject a bit.

And I actually kinda like the main story, it's growing on me. It feels very... definitely not epic, but still heroic. The politics between the king and the council(and intra-council) were more than I expected and has a rather interesting dynamic for the player character.
Sometimes the game surprises me a bit too. I rested near a caravan of traders and got ambushed, the traders joined in and helped me rather than standing around being useless NPCs. This wasn't scripted or anything, I just decided to rest there.

With regards to enemy AI, the caveat is that the system for the AI is actually in place -- it uses a behavior tree. They just haven't gotten around to implementing that many behaviors yet... but a lot of nodes, which are like the building blocks of behavior trees. You can find some of the behaviors in the included data files it uses(it's just a zipfile) and the behavior tree implementation in the code itself. There's about a hundred nodes in the code, about half of them are related to combat and the other half to general AI stuff. From what I've leafed through(such as the spell selector node,) it seems quite competently made.

My concern is that unless they're releasing a very large patch -- which is entirely possible given their roadmap for release -- I think they may be releasing too early.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Chapter 1 minor

Become a lord

Spoiler

They do a good job of making you feel like nobility(most people in towns will refer to you as Lord when greeting you, be extra courteous, etc.,) and make you feel like a shit-tier noble compared to absolutely everyone else.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

rusty_shackleford how starved are you for gold? Need to spend it frequently on consumables etc., or can you manage that stuff?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

rusty_shackleford how starved are you for gold? Need to spend it frequently on consumables etc., or can you manage that stuff?

if I bought more than a few consumables I'd probably be pretty poor, but I've been saving my gold

difficulty affects shop prices btw, everything costs 2x as much on the highest

[e]
and there's BG2-like

Spoiler

strongholds in the data files. The only one included so far is the fighter one, a barracks. It seems to have 5 unlockable wings.

 

[Cryomancer]

IDK if is implemented in the EA or not but the game is supposed to have a "greed" mechanic, so IDK if hoarding is a good idea. I'm playing assuming that it is truth. So far to enter a city you can talk to the guard claiming a story fact, you can say that you want to study if a magic user and so on. Many dialog options seems to react to your class, title, attributes and skills.

BTW, I've played solo in some places and did some quests solo, din't even completed chapter 1 and I'm almost lv 7. As for the lv cap, I believe that is around 13/14. Because I'm getting a new spell tier each 2 levels like in original D&D. After reaching lv 40 in WoTR this is a fresh experience. Honestly I like it. A off topic curiosity. They mention blue blood in the game but did you know that the blue blood therm come from Iberia peninsula and his colonies? That is because most people from nobility in this places had pale skin and visible blue veins?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

/14. Because I'm getting a new spell tier each 2 levels like in original D&D. After reaching lv 40 in WoTR this is a fresh experience. Honestly I like it. A off topic curiosity. They mention blue blood in the game but did you know that the blue blood come therm come from Iberia peninsula and his colonies? That is because most people from nobility in this places had pale skin and visible blue veins

Yeah, because they were to only ones who could afford blue cheese, which tends to pigment your haemoglobin cells.

 

[Cryomancer]

In therms of the game "epicness", so far seems more epic than BG1 but less epic than BG2.

In therms of innovation, the game brings a few interesting new mechanics to the CRPG "table" for eg :

• Party XP :
• Greed mechanic
• Elevated energy spell slot

In therms of party XP, if you play a lot with the same party, the party bounds level up and you get perks as people start to thrust each other more and it allows you to make changing the watch turns more efficiently, in other hands if you constantly change your party, you get "diversity" bonus and a lot of perks in that way. The greed mechanic, is interesting as if you become too creedy, the world is affected by your actions as you are the hero, it affects shop prices, quest outcomes and so on. Quite interesting. The elevated energy spell slot is a variation of the vancian spellcasting which allow casters to endless spam non powerful spells and have a limited amount of powerful spells. At lv 8, my spellweaver companion can only cast fireball one time per rest. However, a less powerful tier 3 spell such as Freezing fingertips can be cast 5 times by a lv 8 wintermage. In general, powerful AoE spells and powerful summons are way more limited which is interesting.

So far, this game is a Is not as great as BG2 but brings a lot of interesting new things to the genre. TBH I'm liking this game way more than other modern CRPG's, yes, Wrath of the Righteous included. When I first played it, I was not liking that much as spellcasting was awful except summoning. Now that spellcasting resembles more AD&D 2E and less 5E, I'm liking it a lot.

Edit : Got a lv 13 companion. She is incredible powerful.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The greed mechanic, is interesting as if you become too creedy, the world is affected by your actions as you are the hero, it affects shop prices, quest outcomes and so on. Quite interesting.

Why doesn't anyone pay attention when I explain the same thing?

 

[Cryomancer]

The greed mechanic, is interesting as if you become too creedy, the world is affected by your actions as you are the hero, it affects shop prices, quest outcomes and so on. Quite interesting.

Why doesn't anyone pay attention when I explain the same thing?

IDK.

------------

But this game is very big. I'm at chapter 1 and played for a lot of time this weekend and still in chapter 1. When I played at EA launch, the game was only up to the circus part. Now I have 14 hours played and still in ch 1.

 

[agris]

Quantity is equivalent to quality.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Quantity is equivalent to quality.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

 

[Lhynn]

My concern is that unless they're releasing a very large patch -- which is entirely possible given their roadmap for release -- I think they may be releasing too early.

Definitely sounds like they are releasing too early and that the game will be half finished.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

My concern is that unless they're releasing a very large patch -- which is entirely possible given their roadmap for release -- I think they may be releasing too early.

Definitely sounds like they are releasing too early and that the game will be half finished.

The data files are marked clearly as to when they should be released. One set is "EA", another is "P2", and presumably the last major update will be "P3" as outlined in their roadmap. So if they actually have a major patch in waiting, it might be fine.
The time between EA release and P2 release was only 3 months, after all. I'm pretty certain most of this stuff is actually done at this point, refer to the writer posting in this thread who moved on from the project because he was finished, and that was a while back at this point.

If not, and it releases as is is, well... no, I can't recommend it.

 

[Acrux]

IDK if is implemented in the EA or not but the game is supposed to have a "greed" mechanic, so IDK if hoarding is a good idea. I'm playing assuming that it is truth. So far to enter a city you can talk to the guard claiming a story fact, you can say that you want to study if a magic user and so on. Many dialog options seems to react to your class, title, attributes and skills.

BTW, I've played solo in some places and did some quests solo, din't even completed chapter 1 and I'm almost lv 7. As for the lv cap, I believe that is around 13/14. Because I'm getting a new spell tier each 2 levels like in original D&D. After reaching lv 40 in WoTR this is a fresh experience. Honestly I like it. A off topic curiosity. They mention blue blood in the game but did you know that the blue blood therm come from Iberia peninsula and his colonies? That is because most people from nobility in this places had pale skin and visible blue veins?

There's a response from the dev in a Steam thread about the greed mechanic. It sounds like loot hoarding will effect it, but not looting (in and of itself).

Regarding this aspect of greed system: one of the benefits of being generous (= slower increse of World Greed) is smaller inflation in shops. It means you can eventually buy some very strong items that would be extremely expensive (= cannot be purchased even with all money you have) in the greedy scenario. So playing a generous style doesn't mean you can't carry a lot of gold, but that you are forced to get strong magical items from killed enemies or questgivers as rewards, and not from shops (your gold is worth little), for example. Having said that, since the game is in Early Access, all this requires a thorough balancing process (which is currently in progress).

NPCs not reacting when you empty their chests in many places seems to be a bug that will be fixed - thank you for the confirmation.

The game won't punish for looting, for a simple reason: when you pick up gold or an item you want to buy, the intention might not be greedy and it's impossible to distinguish this from a greedy intent. Not greedy intent: you want to use the gold to become stronger, for a greater goal etc. (and even to support the poor - so basically greedy vs. generous only depends whether you actually will use i.e. spend your reserves or will hoard them forever.) A more technical design decision, based on Zornilsa lore, could have been that any looting or possession of things makes Zornilsa stronger and thus increases world greed and chaos, but the RPG player community wouldn't tolerate it. Looting is a fundamental concept of RPGs and even the slightest impression (true or not) of being punished for it will infuriate thousands of players, except a very narrow niche.