Review GOG Plays The Age of Decadence

[hiver]

No commie we read your stupid shit. And you just repeat it - because you want a party based combat. Same as Mrowak.
Thats all there is to it. Youre both cheap hypocrites who are pathetically trying to present their preference as the actually better, correct option by obfuscating, inventing stupid shit and overblowing the rest of your stupid shit.
And you talk like a fagg.

Not to mention that godamn avatar.

I wasn't able to get past the merchant ambush with my hammer warrior after retrying several dozen times. Not sure what other strategies I could have gone for.

I suggest returning to Oblivion.
Strategies - he says....what other then retrying dozens of times to score that lucky hit!


- Volly is smarter then most of you.

 

[Saduj]

I wasn't able to get past the merchant ambush with my hammer warrior after retrying several dozen times. Not sure what other strategies I could have gone for.

I also used a hammer for that fight and had alot of trouble with it at first. Placement of your character from the 1st turn on makes a huge difference.

 

[commie]

I wasn't able to get past the merchant ambush with my hammer warrior after retrying several dozen times. Not sure what other strategies I could have gone for.

I also used a hammer for that fight and had alot of trouble with it at first. Placement of your character from the 1st turn on makes a huge difference.

Congratulations, you unlocked the puzzle! What VD should do is give out a rating out of 3 stars for each combat encounter like Angry Birds does. It would be more in keeping with the nature of the game and sycophants like Hiver would happily replay each encounter hundreds of times to get all the stars and unlock the secret combat levels.

Derp

Oh Volly, you so cute....

 

[hiver]

Dont make me give Volly my password!!

r00fls!

 

[Infinitron]

commie Uh can't you read? GOG accepted the game.

 

[Carrion]

Nets reduce your opponents' THC and Dodge. Less THC - higher chance to survive. Bolas can immobilize your opponent for a few turns, letting you focus on and deal with other opponents, which is a big help. Obviously, bolas, much like ranged attacks aimed at the legs, should be used before your opponents get close to you.

See my comment about not being able to position the PC before the fight. Sure, you can immobilize a single opponent, which is a really cool thing, but that only helps so much if there are two or three other guys who will be engaging your character in melee the very next round, or if the enemies have ranged weapons and your character is standing out in the open without any kind of cover. The demo has several encounters like that as far as I remember.

I do like it that the game punishes you for getting into stupid fights, I really do. Engaging three or more enemies in melee is in general a terrible idea for any thief, and doing so should certainly get you brutally killed in most cases. However, it'd be nice if AoD allowed me to make those mistakes myself instead of just throwing my character in the middle of some very rigid (and in some cases unforeseeable) set piece where my character's best skills are next to useless.

 

[commie]

commie Uh can't you read? GOG accepted the game.

Redding is teh hard...BUT... I read their 'it's not quite what we think our customers would want bit' and didn't bother checking out the links so I assumed that they were taking a wait and see approach. On the NEWS part I would have expected at least a summary as to whether it was accepted or not and there wasn't any.

I'm sorry for having doubted you Infinitron...if it was you doing the Cutpasta you would have surely mentioned that GoG accepted it for lazy bastards like me, thus earning your brofists.

 

[Haba]

Walls of Pointless Text, the Thread

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, personally I still think single-character TB is boring and giving you control over companions would infintely enhance AoD's combat experience. It's not so much that the system is weak, it's that the system does not play out its greatest strength - tactical combat is even more tactical if you have more than just a single unit at your disposal, which would allow for more varied group tactics. It's not that the combat is bad, it's actually quite solid, but it'd be even more fun with controllable companions.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

I stopped playing after having finished the first beta with ~6 character builds (so as not to spoil the complete game further), but in my experience the combat portion tends to appear a lot more simplistic and boring than it really is if you insist on thinking conventionally (and basically playing the game as if it was a more or less straight Fallout clone). Even if I disregard the numerous options to improve combat odds by the actions you take outside of it, even situations that appeared almost unbeatable could be handled once you started experimenting with radically different approaches and tactics rather than relying on lucky rolls (the only time I ended up completely screwed was at the end of the thief playthrough where my suboptimal skill set and choices forced me to go through 3 (4?) difficult combat encounters in a row and even then only because I simply ran out of arrows). At times the solution was almost puzzle-like in how dramatically the outcome was changed by applying a somewhat less intuitive approach. (Note that I'd personally still opt for giving the player occasional control of support NPCs in combat if only for variety's sake, but I essentially think single player TB works surprisingly well for not having taken the Fallout/Underrail route of being simple and fun rather than overly tactical.)

All in all, what I think may prove the trickiest thing about the game for VD & co. is that despite his well-known quote it in fact is in most aspects quite revolutionary (with the way combat is handled, but especially as it is designed so that replaying is not really an option but a requirement for full understanding and enjoyment); while on the surface it invites comparison to classics that are in fact designed in a completely different manner (and it is sadly very easy to misunderstand and underestimate the design, especially if you do not try out several significantly different characters and playing styles). It's kind of like people watching only one segment of Rashomon and judging the film based on that.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Thank you.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I also used a hammer for that fight and had alot of trouble with it at first. Placement of your character from the 1st turn on makes a huge difference.

Congratulations, you unlocked the puzzle!

Try not to get surrounded and position yourself so that you fight the thugs one at a time is a puzzle solution to you? Thought it was common sense.

I'm actually upset not just being a hator. I wanted this game to succeed but the lack of party is the real killer here that makes combat a puzzle based chore: one way of doing things right, 100 wrong ways. OH and before VD mentions alchemy or ranged or whatever as alternatives, let me just retort that picking an alternate combat option in no way alleviates the inherent lack of variety as it just replaces one 'all or nothing' type of attack with another.

For the record, alchemy isn't an alternative to melee or ranged. It's a supportive skill:

"First, alchemy can do group damage and separate enemies, which is an invaluable ability, if you use it wisely. Second, it has unique abilities like stripping DR from armor, more AP for dodgers, more raw damage (berserk) that makes fast attacks very useful, etc. Third, it's the most versatile skill, useful in and out of combat in many quests. Crafting is also used out of combat but a lot less."

 

[quasimodo]

I like AoD combat. I don't think I've ever played a single character game with better TB combat, but the best use of TB is with a controllable party.

Some time after Thursday finally gets here I hope to see a party based game with the same combat system.

 

[Tigranes]

^pretty much. AOD is shaping up to be a kind of epitome of single-character TB RPG combat, and I like the fact that its stripped down, unforgiving nature (you're always working with limited resources and options rather than 27 different spells exploding everywhere) really amplifies the setting; the way you think to overcome AOD's combat encounters really gets you into the mindset of pretty much the adventurer as an unkempt practical thug rather than Mysterious Heroe. But I do hope that the next game provides a more 'abundant' party-based combat.

 

[Mrowak]

I like AoD combat. I don't think I've ever played a single character game with better TB combat, but the best use of TB is with a controllable party.

Some time after Thursday finally gets here I hope to see a party based game with the same combat system.

^pretty much. AOD is shaping up to be a kind of epitome of single-character TB RPG combat, and I like the fact that its stripped down, unforgiving nature (you're always working with limited resources and options rather than 27 different spells exploding everywhere) really amplifies the setting; the way you think to overcome AOD's combat encounters really gets you into the mindset of pretty much the adventurer as an unkempt practical thug rather than Mysterious Heroe. But I do hope that the next game provides a more 'abundant' party-based combat.

Yeah... all those aspects are great, BUT they would really shine in a proper party-based game. Here they strike as a fraction of what they could have been.

 

[hiver]

The thing is that for it to be party based, you would have to loose the different paths through the game and its replayability.
I know some of you would like that. And yes, the next answer to that is that different playthroughs can be achieved in different ways - presumably by letting the player just choose which path to take.

I dont care.
It wouldnt be AoD as we know it.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah. I'm happy for AOD to be like this, and for AOD2 to do party-based. But I would like AOD2 to actually be made in less than 17 years...

 

[Vault Dweller]

But I do hope that the next game provides a more 'abundant' party-based combat.

The next one will be a party-based game.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah this is shaping up to be the ultimate Fallout-like RPG, including the one bad decision of Fallout and Arcanum - non-controllable party members (although in Arcanum it was okay when you used real-time mode).
VD has his reasons - I think he said he prefers when you play your character and the henchmen aren't just slaves to your will - but from a gameplay perspective, it's a bad decision. Still, the underlying system is rock solid and I like the different special items like throwing nets that offer really useful effects in combat. A sequel or spinoff with full party control would be just glorious.

The best about AoD is definitely the faction system and the C&C, though. Complaints about combat are only secondary.

 

[Cromwell]

for the people who played the beta, is it possible to build a thief like char with good speech skills or am I then relatively fucked in the combat?

 

[JarlFrank]

When you build a thief with good speech, you'll usually try non-combat solutions to your problems anyway.

 

[Cromwell]

When you build a thief with good speech, you'll usually try non-combat solutions to your problems anyway.

yes of yourse, but it may be possible to be forced to fight anyways, and I do hope I will not suffer to much.

 

[tuluse]

If you're not investing a lot of points into combat skills, you should be avoiding combat, which is not hard to do.

 

[hiver]

Yeah, i would dare to split skill points like that only after playing through the demo several times.
- probably not even then.

 

[AbounI]

But I do hope that the next game provides a more 'abundant' party-based combat.

The next one will be a party-based game.

Sounds like an official declaration.