Game News Colony Ship Update #45: The Armory

[Infinitron]

There's a dissonance between these complaints about AoD and how easy it is to actually play a dialogue-focused character in it. Like, what are you even complaining about? Pacifist characters are the game's easy mode. I finally played it for the first time this year and was expecting so much worse.

Regarding choices that aren't driven by skills, I think the big one if you're a merchant is choosing to betray the Commercium and becoming an Aurelian praetor. And as praetor, you have various ways to resolve the siege of Ganezzar. I love how seamlessly it all connects, great design.

 

[Thac0]

There's a dissonance between these complaints about AoD and how easy it is to actually play a dialogue-focused character in it. Like, what are you even complaining about? Pacifist characters are the game's easy mode. I finally played the game for the first time this year and was expecting so much worse.

Regarding choices that aren't driven by skills, I think the big one if you're a merchant is choosing to betray the Commercium and becoming an Aurelian praetor. I love how seamlessly it connects, great design.

Enjoying a game is not about finishing it, its about taking a path in it that leads you to the good bits of content, to the interesting stories, the clever fights and the cool places.
Do you watch a movie finale on Youtube and then say that you cant understand how the pacing in the movie drags, its so easy to just reach the ending?

There is a fundamental problem there that you are on rails the entire game. You just choose what rails you are on by clicking a different class in the character selection screen. Sometimes you get the opportunity to hop over to a different set of rails, willingly or unwillingly.
Its the opposite of C&C.

 

[Infinitron]

But the rail-jumping opportunities are extremely cool. They are the game's large-scale decision points. You're not being fair to it if you only look at each "path" as its own separate game.

In general, I think Age of Decadence doesn't get enough respect for the overall structure of its design. The discussion is always all about the hardcore skill checks and the hardcore combat and whether people love them or hate them. I wasn't impressed by either of those elements as much I was by its overall quest design. I love the act-based story and how events progress from city to city, the various "lore" areas that you can explore in any order throughout, and how it all comes together. It's great stuff and should be the first thing other RPG developers learn from the game.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You were asking me for examples where you were fucked out of content for decisions made in the characterbuilder. I delivered.

I responded (asked for examples) to:

In AoD you get fucked out of content hours after a choice and the only way to redo it is play the entire game again.

It says nothing about the chargen.

 

[hivemind]

AOD is best the RPG ever made and the "inflexible" and "requires minmaxing waaah" design is the reason for that. Like literally what is the problem with having to know the game to get like very specific outcomes? Do you expect to be able to world conquest as Bremen the first time you turn on EU4 or get every mission to Silent Assassin at first attempt in Blood Money?

I hope CSG doesn't stray too far from the original design in order to appease people who don't really enjoy the core premise of video games.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I hope CSG doesn't stray too far from the original design in order to appease people who don't really enjoy the core premise of video games.

We want to improve the overall design and make a better game, but we know who our core audience is.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Can I ask about game length compare to AoD? Game looks really nice. I think the art style could be a little bit more smart but I know its fucking hard to get decent artists.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Can I ask about game length compare to AoD? Game looks really nice. I think the art style could be a little bit more smart but I know its fucking hard to get decent artists.

Hard to say because AoD's length varies from one playthrough to another. If I have to guess taking some abstract average, I'd say it will be 20-25% longer, but we won't have 5 parallel questlines anymore.

 

[Diggfinger]

Disco Elysium-style

It was a bit more inspired by this game with vertical text

No idea why we went with center low at first. I guess we wanted to give it another go, change the style, but it was definitely not good for our long paragraphs.

Honestly I find The look...kindda decadent

 

[Forest Dweller]

- We wanted to show the skills (you can see them leveling up while talking) but you'll be using all skills not just speech and there's no room to fit them all. Maybe something like index tabs on the side?

Well since Disco Elysium has already been brought up, you could do what they did and simply have the full character menu accessible at any point in a conversation.

 

[Dr Schultz]

But the choice who gets to be leader of Madoraan is not made by the player aswell but by stats. Wether you can convinve the one noble or the regent in the end is dependant on your attributes.

So... You should be able to convince him no matter your character's persuasion skill? I'm not sure I like that kind of design.

In any case, CSG will be more flexible than AoD. The game is less chapter locked, there are more side-quests to do and exploration. Dialogues in general are not hard checks but add to the disposition score, so it's not an "auto failure" to fail a check.

To summarize, if anyone's complaint about AoD was that you needed the an exact amount of skill level in a very specific way to be able to pass a dialogue check, or that the lack of exploration limited a lot your options and character development, we heard you and we are improving that area in this game. If your complaint is that NPCs should listen to you just because you are the player, no matter your characters skills, or that you should be able to back away from any bad consequence without consequence, well, you will be disappointed with CSG.

What I found lacking in the non-combat part of AoD (compared to the combat part that I've genuinely appreciated even tough, as a rule, I detest single-character turn based combat) is not the necessity of very specif builds in order to get certain results, not the lack of randomness in non-combat interactions: It's the total absence of emergent gameplay, which - to me - is the most defining characteristic of a PnP RPG.
Every PnP system ever conceived allows clever players to toy with the rules, to get unexpected results and overcome their character limits. What you need in order to replicate this in a videgame are systemic interactions. In AoD there is nothing like that. The only results you can get are the ones built in the quest structure and further limited by your character build. This makes the game more similar to a choice-your-own-adventure book than to an actual RPG. Maybe this was intended, I don't know. But if the design goal was to replicate as faithful as possible a PnP session, the end result missed the mark by a country mile. Which doesn't mean AoD is a bad game, don't get me wrong. Combat and narrative alone are more than enough to justify its price.