Decline Nerd Commando Guide Channel (ex-funbuilding & stuff)

[baturinsky]

It would be interesting to approach character building, and consequential play style, from the point of replayability. That is, how to make game experience as much different as possible from previous playthrough(s).

 

[Pope Amole II]

It would be interesting to approach character building, and consequential play style, from the point of replayability. That is, how to make game experience as much different as possible from previous playthrough(s).

Well, I usually do that in my shorter videos with quirky games, if the game allows that. On the global scale, that's not easy to do verbally, I think.

In other news, I've made this steam guide for Lords of Xulima.

I've also recorded funbuilding for it, but it's too late to process it so I'll upload it in about 14 hours or so.

 

[Zdzisiu]

It would be interesting to approach character building, and consequential play style, from the point of replayability. That is, how to make game experience as much different as possible from previous playthrough(s).

Well, I usually do that in my shorter videos with quirky games, if the game allows that. On the global scale, that's not easy to do verbally, I think.

In other news, I've made this steam guide for Lords of Xulima.

I've also recorded funbuilding for it, but it's too late to process it so I'll upload it in about 14 hours or so.

Very nice guide. I may restart with a more suitable party. Not that mine was utter crap, just not focused enough.

Also, funny thing but speed is here just as essential as it was in Wasteland 2, in the sense that acting many times in a turn is king.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Also, funny thing but speed is here just as essential as it was in Wasteland 2, in the sense that acting many times in a turn is king.

Y'know, I'm not even aware of any turn-based system where action points- or initiative- defining stat is not the king of it all. If such stat is present, of course.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Also, funny thing but speed is here just as essential as it was in Wasteland 2, in the sense that acting many times in a turn is king.

Y'know, I'm not even aware of any turn-based system where action points- or initiative- defining stat is not the king of it all. If such stat is present, of course.

Fair point, I just wasnt that aware of this up until your recent videos.

 

[Pope Amole II]

And it's up:

 

[Pope Amole II]

And series grew down from weekly to moar like bimonthly. That's predictable, though - the majority of rpg require a lot of time investment to break down their systems and, well, as much as I'd love to do nothing but cracking RPGs, there are other life issues to attend to. Anyhow, I kinda forgot to update the thread previously - I've done two vids in the december. Classical stuff - Arcanum:



And Divine Divinity:

 

[Baron Dupek]

Thanks for Arcanum and DivDiv videos. Glad to remind about Arcanum (that I won't play anymore, except maybe addon Dung of Lost Souls), and still doing attempt for DivDiv (game is great but even one day of pause results in abandoning).

 

[I_am_Ian]

In the Xulima thread your recommendations are being questioned particularly your stance on energy being a dump stat. Would you mind clarifying your reasoning in that thread?

 

[Pope Amole II]

I don't mind but you need to elaborate further than that. List the points that interest you and I'll comment.

As for the energy - it's a dump stat because late game spells cost so much that they pretty much nullify your investment. You gain measly 2 PP per energy point (and that's if you already have 10+ energy). Even if you invest into it each level, you gain 1 energy point per level. That means that 12.5 levels give you one extra 25 PP spell. 25 level are required for a 50 PP one. And a fucking 100 PP spell (which is not even the limit, mind you) requires 50 levels of invesment. That's just not worth it - consider how plentiful money are in the game, it's much easier to just drink a PP potion and, since casters' spells cost a boatload and they can't really cast each turn, losing a turn to do so doesn't mean much. Simply put, in the easy battles you don't need that high of an energy pool, in the hard ones you'll probably depend on potions anyway and there are no other uses for the energy stat. As for having the minimal PP pool - all the casters are pretty skill-rich (or, at least, are not starved) so they can easily afford to invest into meditation and later on you accumulate such an amount of non-level up stat boosts that natural energy really ceases to matter anymore. Investing into con is much more beneficial.

 

[I_am_Ian]

Okay here I will copy/paste roshan's post from the other thread:

"Don't rely on that guide, a lot of the stuff there is just one person's style/opinions, it is by no means the best or only way to build your characters and some of the stuff is flat out stupid, and frankly the advice on con for casters is one of the stupidest things on that guide.

I only played with the cleric, but..... Most of the cleric's high level spells are game changers and single castings are enough to turn battles around. High HP is practically useless because high level healing and regeneration spells are really powerful and will be what keeps your party alive, not bloated base HP. A maxed out mass regeneration heals your party members 60 HP per turn, and if we assume it lasts each character 20 turns (I am totally guessing here, I don't have any idea how long it lasts, depends on the character's speed) your cleric is trading 120 pp for 7200 HP across the party. So PP or HP? Choice is quite obvious.

Quaffing potions is totally a waste of a turn and it's better for your cleric to spend that turn mass regenerating or mass healing the party, or divine healing someone on the verge of death. Level 3 divine healing trades you 68 pp for 300-500 HP (I never increased beyond this since it's basically a full heal already), level 5 mass heal trades you 80 pp for up to 900 hp across the party.

PP is also a much more rare and valuable resource. Consider that a point of energy only gives you 2 pp whereas a point in con gives you 4 hp. Or that equivalent potions of the same level give half as much pp.

TLDR: HP is cheap. PP is valuable and should be hoarded. PP can be converted into huge amounts of HP through spells whereas HP cannot be converted into PP. Quaffing PP potions wastes turns which could be used for healing HP instead. Guide is stupid, don't believe."


Can you address his points for me? Thanks.

 

[Pope Amole II]

First, talking about high levels only in this game is stupid - the majority of challenge in Xulima lies in the early-to-mid game and by the high levels you're so overpowered that you encounter troubles only when you try to chew something that's, like, 20 levels or so higher than you (i.e., something you won't encounter often and are not exactly bound to fight). And in the early game, say, the first ten levels, having 10 extra levels in con means having 34 extra vitality points - considering that cleric gains 2 vitality per level and rest of the pure casters gain even less, that makes a crapload of difference and really saves your skin when fighting anything with any kind of reach. Even by the level 20, 74 extra hit points mean a lot. And while even the early game regeneration spell heals much more than that, theoretically, it heals them only when your character is actually alive, y'know. So having a necessary vitality pool is a must have. In the early game, constitution and only constitution provides that for casters.

Second, it's not like regeneration stacks. You need to cast it once and, since it lasts 20 turns, pretty much only once. In the absolute majority of combats. Also, as I've said, spells are freaking expensive so that "you need to spend your turns casting mass heal" is pretty much a lie. Mass heal costs 80 PP. That's 40 levels of investment for one extra cast. Your cleric, even if you go full retardo with energy, taking it at each level up, will have about 500 PP pool. Maybe 600 (but note that natural level up PP will be making 120 Points of that - so even a 100% investment will give you a 20-25% increase). That's 6-7 casts (actually 1 less as you also spend 120 PP on mass regeneration). When your average endgame combat lasts 10 turns, minimum. So, at the very least, you'll have 3-4 turns of doing nothing spectacular. Praying, maybe, but that only matters that much in the early game (that's another reason why, for clerics specifically, PP in the early-to-mid means even less). I mean, you still pray in the late game, but it takes a lot of turns to regen for at least one spell.

Third, healing spells are powerful & stuff, but they work only if you can actually cast. If you cleric is somehow disabled for a couple of turns (which isn't that uncommon), his PP don't do jack. On the other hand, having a HP bloat gives him the chance to survive until he's unmuted. But that's kinda repeating the first point. Another thing is that your party must be build really, really badly for it to require a healing cast each and every turn.

Fourth, with 50 levels of constitution, my endgame casters had, like, 400 vitality each. Don't remember exactly as I probably don't have my saves. Without it, that would be 200. Considering that they were taken to lower than 200 rather often (and often in huge, violent swings - it's not like you can do much to increase their resistance to physical damage, well, apart from having a paladin in your party, but even that doesn't work that well against late game bosses), I guess they'd be insta-killed rather common without that extra bloat. And, I'll repeat myself, don't even get me started on the early levels. Good luck keeping your casters alive without 10 early levels of constitution.

 

[I_am_Ian]

Makes sense to me but I don't really know any better. If you want to debate with others more knowledgable than I am you should check out the main Xulima thread. I'd like to read the discussion.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Vogel. Vogel never changes...

 

[Hobo Elf]

43 hours in and I'm at the last steps for each 3 major quests. Starting to feel fatigue due to how huge the game is, but at least I'm finally getting there. Right now I'm getting wrecked hard in Angierach when I get thrown down into the monster pit.

Btw, Pope Amole II you said that Arcane Lore is crap, but that's not completely true. Some skill books need a certain amount of AL with Sage Lore not helping you at al, for some raisin.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Actually, I know that. But that still doesn't exactly justify the investment - 12 skillpoints is a huge, huge amount. Lots of better stuff can be done with it, in my opinion.

 

[Pope Amole II]

This week on our channel is a shitload of Ziggurat. Wished to make it somehow quicker but we're talking about 100 perk, 33 weapons, 17 amulets + a dozen of characters to review - a lot of everything. Dunno, the game is kinda mediocre but if you find a way to start it with everything unlocked (there should be one, right) it can be worth fiddling around.

 

[General Maxson]

I like your videos and channel. Good work!

 

[Pope Amole II]

I find your lack of faith disturbing, Codex.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Why so hate, codex? I'm in a very butthurt mood, to be honest. I mean, I've spent a shitload of time to do some quality LPs and videos for the community - is it too much to expect that the community would give back at least a couple of hours (not even each member - in fucking sum!) to provide the feedback on my game?

I know it doesn't look like anything a codexer would be interested in, but FFS, I've made the gameplay to be pleasing to the complex RPG fans. Is it so hard to believe? And even if the game is shit (which it can easily be - it's not like I can judge), at least I'd want to hear that after someone has played it, not with the demo being pretty much ignored everywhere.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Love your funbuilding videos (using your advice for my kotor replay), don't care about smhups D:

 

[Pope Amole II]

Love your funbuilding videos (using your advice for my kotor replay), don't care about smhups D:

But it's not a traditional shmup. It's gameplay is wildly different from your traditional shmup (know about many shmups where guns actually require any kind of precision or where you can combo your way out of level without taking any hits?) and it's a fucking rpg. Yes, atm, it's without a story, but even that is nothing that can be solved - we can always tighten our belts for another couple of months, hire and artist an do something about that. But then, what's the point if we have zero feedback on our combat gameplay?

If you have trust in my advice why can't you (and all the codex, btw) give me a measure of faith on this?

 

[Cazzeris]

I voted for it on Greenlight through 3 Steam accounts and downloaded the demo. The game really seems to feature a full-developed RPG system and looks definitely interesting, but I don't think a non-experienced RPG player with a low English level (like me) is the right person to provide feedback to this kind of project. Although I must say that a shmup that appears to be so complex/hardcore right on the tutorial may confuse a lot of your possible customers, so I'd suggest a friendlier learning curve that taught players how to get into the game before looking directly at the character creation screen; since it can be very confusing for some to get into this kind of mechanics even before knowing how the game actually plays.

Again, I feel sorry for being incapable to give further opinions regarding the game's design or the gameplay itself; but I wish you luck with your project.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Although I must say that a shmup that appears to be so complex/hardcore right on the tutorial may confuse a lot of your possible customers

Well, we wanted to go for the complex/hardcore crowd. With out shitty graphics, it's not like we can please the broad audience. And the whole starting experience is supposed to be something like "you tinker with the attributes, die, die and die for about an hour and then you reach enlightment and that's supposed to feel cool". It really did in my own case.

As for the language barrier - well, none of us know spanish so that's a bit tough. I guess if you feel like spending more time on us you can try out these builds:

Spoiler

30 Defiance, 20 Transcendence, Logos, Apostle-Penance, Liturgy, Lamenter soul II, Right Hand of Heaven

25 Dominance, 25 Poise, Messiah, Rosary-Exodus, Grace, Lamenter II, Terminal Power

10 Dominance, 40 Poise, Cornerstone, Gehenna-Schism, Grace, Lamenter II, Empty Walls (this is one of the lulziest bulids in the game - it has 3 ways of killing foes very unfairly)

20 Pride, 10 Acumen, 20 Transcendence, Testament or Pontiff, Communion-Penance, Conversion, Screamer II, Right Hand of Heaven

50 Transcendence, Pontiff, Apostle-Penance, Anathema, Pleader, Eternal

Anyways, thank you.

 

[Snorkack]

Hey! I gave it a shot and... boy, this game is confusing. It doesn't feel like a shmup but more like some sort of space invaders, where you have to fight shittons of aliens with a highly customizable set of cutlery and chopsticks.
It might very well be that I am too dumb for this game, but I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I just click a ship together with skills and traits I don't know jack about (im desperately missing a description of each). Then I get thrown into a game with tons of undodgeable shit. I might be lucky and most enemies fire these slim blue tickle lasers and I survive for a bit. But mostly, there are these white balls ricocheting from left to right and those instagib hitscan lasers, and I'm done in about .8 seconds. Your videos don't clarify anything tho: You seem to suffer the same fate too.
The particle effects are sweet, so is the music on the greenlight page. Animations of the enemies would be nice. How this qualifies as an RPG is beyond me right now.
So far I couldn't find much joy in this demo yet. Too much wtf is going on?! Sorry!