Preview RPG Codex Re-Preview: The Age of Decadence

[Elhoim]

Elhoim If so, great! My understanding from what hivemind was saying earlier was that the game was a shallow and incomplete experience unless you minmaxed through metagaming and save-scummed. I'll be very happy if I misunderstood, or he misreported.

That's quite far from the truth, I'm pretty sure you misunderstood. The game is far from shallow or "incomplete" even if you run from combat or just go through the questlines. Basically:

- The way that we designed the game is that you play through it with the character you decide to make, and experience a story crafted around that type of character. You definitely won't be able to all the content in a single play through. Your character can fail quite a bit and you can continue playing. In combat you die if you reach 0 HP, but... check the next point.
- Most combats are avoidable. It's the player choice in many situations to get into it, or they are a consequence of a previous action. We do not intend you to grind to win fights, but you are able to do it if you are into it.
- There are some very hard to reach places that are geared towards specific builds, but they are not mandatory and represent a very small amount of the total content (kinda like secret levels in the games of old). Truth be told, I think there are less than 5 situations that require very "extreme" builds, which is not a lot in a game with almost 100 quests and 22 locations.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

I'm troubled by the suggestion that it is designed to require multiple save-loads per combat and metagame min-maxing in order to fully engage with the game.

The key word here is "require". AoD does not require this at all, in fact doing this is pretty detrimental to the overall enjoyment to the game I've found. I think a lot of players end up feeling like this is required, however, because completionism is a very common way to play games. But AoD is specifically designed for the non-completionist. It's much more fun to play semi-ironman, where you allocate your skill points immediately and play the game trying not to get your character killed. You'll miss out on stuff, for sure. Much of the side content is difficult to see unless you have a build designed for it, but at the same time you'll see content that other builds won't thanks to the skills you picked and the way you choose to progress through the game. AoD is a game that's meant to be replayed, and it can be replayed several times before metagaming knowledge even enters into the equation, thanks to the fact that most characters will simply have much different experiences based on their background and skills.

The metagame min-maxing to try to experience all the content the game has to offer thus is really just for experienced players, who have already replayed the game several times and are intimate with its mechanics (and clearly enjoy them, given the amount they've played the game). Again, I would call this a strength, because it provides another fun reason to replay the game, even if at that point you had already played it through 4 or 5 times.

And a correctly built combat-oriented character will most certainly not need to reload several times for most encounters. For the hardest encounters, sure, but that's true of any good game's hardest encounters.

 

[Twiglard]

Hearing of writing's quality makes me aware of missing on all that. Having harsh checks over dialogue for the slightest possibility of success makes me skip over the text just to get these damn checks out of the way. It's clearly not representative of the larger player base, but something you might want to put into perspective.

 

[hivemind]

MRY
Pretty much what AIN'T said

It's not that the game is shallow without min-maxing, which is not the case at all(just playing through the faction questlines, which are fairly easy to get through and each offer many different ways to go about them, in combination with the more easier side objectives can provide hours upon hours of quality entertainment), it's that the fun min-maxing possibility adds another layer on top of it.
When the second city was released I had gone and seen pretty much all the content there was with different characters(apart from the thief guild which I'm saving to see for release), now in any other game I would have probably stopped playing at that point as you know I have already seen everything(or well 80-90% of stuff). Now in AoD it simply lead me to play more and start fidgeting about with making optimized builds which either try to see as much content as possible or try see neat combinations of content, and this kept me hooked on the game for dozens of hours on top of what I had before.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm troubled by the suggestion that it is designed to require multiple save-loads per combat and metagame min-maxing in order to fully engage with the game.

The key word here is "require". AoD does not require this at all, in fact doing this is pretty detrimental to the overall enjoyment to the game I've found. I think a lot of players end up feeling like this is required, however, because completionism is a very common way to play games. But AoD is specifically designed for the non-completionist. It's much more fun to play semi-ironman, where you allocate your skill points immediately and play the game trying not to get your character killed. You'll miss out on stuff, for sure. Much of the side content is difficult to see unless you have a build designed for it, but at the same time you'll see content that other builds won't thanks to the skills you picked and the way you choose to progress through the game. AoD is a game that's meant to be replayed, and it can be replayed several times before metagaming knowledge even enters into the equation, thanks to the fact that most characters will simply have much different experiences based on their background and skills.

The metagame min-maxing to try to experience all the content the game has to offer thus is really just for experienced players, who have already replayed the game several times and are intimate with its mechanics (and clearly enjoy them, given the amount they've played the game). Again, I would call this a strength, because it provides another fun reason to replay the game, even if at that point you had already played it through 4 or 5 times.

And a correctly built combat-oriented character will most certainly not need to reload several times for most encounters. For the hardest encounters, sure, but that's true of any good game's hardest encounters.

This.

 

[Absinthe]

Unfortunately VD, with the current reduction in skillpoints people have to grab the right build to pass a lot of quests. It seems you're balancing AoD for someone with perfect foreknowledge of the game who is reloading for optimal skill combinations rather than a new player who just wants to assign his skillpoints and discover what happens.

I think this goes back to the low problem-solving issue, since it seems you're depending too much on skillpoints to set the difficulty for the game.

 

[Vault Dweller]

We didn't have time to fine-tune the balance yet. Most players agreed that the player was given too many SP in Maadoran, which caused the difficulty to drop. We reduced it, probably went too far, which affected the hybrid builds, not 'normal' builds.

New player won't last more than 5-10 minutes, which is normal. Basically, you need to understand how the game works because the rules differ from one RPG to another (unlike, say, shooters or RTS). In one game speech skills means getting better rewards and occasionally skipping a fight. In other game it can be a viable path or a way to unlock extra content (like PST which was probably the first game where everyone wanted to max INT and WIS). In one game you can beat the crap out of everyone without investing a single point in combat, another game may require a constant investment).

Here is what I wrote earlier:

Here is how I see it (at leas that's how I play games):

- make a balanced build first, enter combat, see what happens.
- if almost beat your opponents (i.e. if you were very close), try again
- if not even close, change stats - see what you can do without. If a charismatic fighter can't win a fight, see if an ugly fighter can. If he can't, see if a dumb and ugly fighter can.
- simultaneously, start decreasing skills' spread. Start with a balanced distribution, see where it gets you. If nowhere, start decreasing. It's a trial-n-error style approach, but in 3 attempts you should have a very good idea of where you stand and what's required to beat the fight you're stuck on.
- so, eventually you should lock down the stats and skills and move to weapons and attack types.

If it sounds too complicated, it really isn't.

To win any fight you need to watch 3 factors:

- your THC (to hit chance); it determines what you can do in combat - different attack types and such;
- damage you deal, which can change from one fight to another (a lighter weapon might be sufficient against lightly armored opponents but would barely scratch heavy armored guys)

Usually, THC and damage are at the opposite ends of the scale, so it's hard to have both high THC and high damage. Sometimes, higher THC is better, sometimes even 40% THC will do the trick if you can kill the opponent in 2-3 hits.

- damage taken, includes both the frequency (how well you dodge) and amount (your armor and shield's DR)

So, step 1 - if your damage is low and your THC is low, your build doesn't work well and you won't get far.

How THC is determined?

- skill
- Perception bonus
- weapon type (lighter weapons often offer a THC bonus)
- attack type

For new players, I'd suggest to start with swords, axes, or hammers. Swords work great with Critical Strike, Axes do savage blows, and hammers work well against DR. Put 4 or 5 points there, don't be stingy.

 

[hiver]

There is no need to reload combat that much, especially not to abuse RNG, as i said earlier.
That only happens if you take a completely wrong approach to combat by basically not using any of the many options but one and thus causes such consequences yourself.

Poor MRY has me on ignore so he is doomed to read ignorant posts of others. Serves him right.


The problem with reloading and meta gaming actually happens in diplomatic or civic playthroughs.

Not that i didnt suggest a good solution for that already. That would still keep the general AoD spirit and style of the game.

 

[Twiglard]

Unfortunately VD, with the current reduction in skillpoints people have to grab the right build to pass a lot of quests. It seems you're balancing AoD for someone with perfect foreknowledge of the game who is reloading for optimal skill combinations rather than a new player who just wants to assign his skillpoints and discover what happens.

From memory it dates back to dedicated users on ITS forum discovering overly easy sequences of events. That was "fixed" by repeatedly lowering rewards, though difficulty representable to that of common player, was fine. That Vahhabyte can find a cheesy path with his patience and time spent, is an outlier.

For me it turns out parts that don't require excessive skill level micromagement like AG line are enjoyable, but TG is overkill. It's challenge of the wrong kind, can't be thought of as "challenging gameplay" that's rewarding to pass.

Come to think of it, traditionally in RPGs skill checks were used as a "bonus" path with no-skill path still a decent choice. Here, much of the content is gated. The game doesn't go into the effort of providing "failsafe" approaches in general.

- simultaneously, start decreasing skills' spread. Start with a balanced distribution, see where it gets you. If nowhere, start decreasing. It's a trial-n-error style approach, but in 3 attempts you should have a very good idea of where you stand and what's required to beat the fight you're stuck on.

I haven't found an approach into Teron TG non-combat line that isn't gimping the character by requiring overly-spread investment. For sneaking to steal the full shipment there wasn't even enough SP, considering preceding quests' requirements. I mention TG specifically since quest line is interesting, but that idea of a "challenge" detracts from it.

By Maadoran with AG attack on the temple there wasn't even leeway to spend on combat skills to proceed with that.

 

[TigerKnee]

I don't know if the demo is representative of the full game, but it did feel to me that some pathlines have a satisfying range of options to accomplish your goals and some are way too meta-gamey/too few options/pidgeon-holed.

Though it could be potentially because I never discovered the possible extra path, but the 2nd Merchant Guild's quest (convincing Mercato) comes to mind as being an example of the latter.

 

[Niektory]

Now that we have the re-preview out of the way, who's going to write the pre-review?

 

[Absinthe]

Vault Dweller, I'm actually discussing noncombat paths. It's pretty easy for someone to want to dabble slightly to no avail or not dabble and discover they need skillchecks which they don't have. Teron Thieves Guild being a prime example as a grifter needs sneaking and a thief needs combat. Punishing hybrid builds is also a great way to ruin the Praetor's day though since the Praetor is set up to be a hybrid diplomat/fighter.

Twiglard, Vahhabyte isn't the only one who can find cheesy paths though. I know I've done some ridiculous bullshit myself. I ran around a 4 stat terminator and a silvertongued loremaster thief terminator assassin in the open beta. Hybrids are actually one of my favorite playstyles although I don't have beta access anymore so I couldn't tell what's up with the current ones. (I'd have to pay for Early Access and I don't like paying for steam so the only steam coins I have are what I got from exploiting the market. I already used those to gift someone else AoD and my account has been running low ever since. More's the pity.)

 

[Vault Dweller]

I don't know if the demo is representative of the full game, but it did feel to me that some pathlines have a satisfying range of options to accomplish your goals and some are way too meta-gamey/too few options/pidgeon-holed.

Though it could be potentially because I never discovered the possible extra path, but the 2nd Merchant Guild's quest (convincing Mercato) comes to mind as being an example of the latter.

There are quote a few options there:

First, you can talk to Cado and accept his help or not. It would make things easier on the short term, unpleasant on the long term. Second, you can play dice with Mercato and either attempt to win or attempt to cheat (dexterity/streetwise) to get him into debt. If you're caught but have high Charisma, he'll spare you and you can talk. If Mercato loses a lot of money, you'll have extra options.

Overall, there are 3 different checks: trading/persuasion, streetwise/persuasion, streetwise. A merchant is expected to have these skills: for example, you need 2 in trading and 2 in persuasion to pass. Hardly unreasonable.

You can also threaten him, which will make things easier short term, but harder in the last quest in Teron, possibly ending with an ambush.

 

[TigerKnee]

I never tried "passing" the stat checks at the start before but I guess OK, I'll give you that one.

for example, you need 2 in trading and 2 in persuasion to pass. Hardly unreasonable.

You guys must have updated this in your final version because in the demo, I basically eventually failed at the last check of Trading/Persuasion in a row and I think you could only pass it with 4 trading/4 persuasion, which was pretty damn high for that point of time.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller, I'm actually discussing noncombat paths. It's pretty easy for someone to want to dabble slightly to no avail or not dabble and discover they need skillchecks which they don't have. Teron Thieves Guild being a prime example as a grifter needs sneaking and a thief needs combat.

Why? You can play the entire Teron TG questline without entering combat.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I never tried "passing" the stat checks at the start before but I guess OK, I'll give you that one.

for example, you need 2 in trading and 2 in persuasion to pass. Hardly unreasonable.

You guys must have updated this in your final version because in the demo, I basically eventually failed at the last check of Trading/Persuasion in a row and I think you could only pass it with 4 trading/4 persuasion, which was pretty damn high for that point of time.

Apologies, meant for the first check, but no 4/4 isn't "pretty damn high", considering that you can start the game with 4/3 and get your primary skills to 5/4 by the time you start the faction questlines.

 

[Absinthe]

You can but not everyone is going to have their Thief be the one who manages to reroute the shipment. After they take the "spreading thin = bad" lesson to heart they might go for a pure thief and suddenly have to handle a combat encounter without the appropriate skills.

That reminds me, the traps skill really needs help too.

 

[Esquilax]

You can but not everyone is going to have their Thief be the one who manages to reroute the shipment. After they take the "spreading thin = bad" lesson to heart they might go for a pure thief and suddenly have to handle a combat encounter without the appropriate skills.

That reminds me, the traps skill really needs help too.

This is really the crux of the issue regarding metagaming. In isolation,it's easy to say "Oh, that's an easy check, you can have almost the right amount of skill from the very beginning", but the TG questline, by it's very nature due to the jack-of-all-trades nature of being a thief (i.e. anything from slick-talking charlatan, to anti-social infiltrator a la Garrett, to brutal thug) means that it's very, very easy to spread yourself thin. Doubly so when you look at the overall deficiency of skill points.

A particularly egregious example would be trying to steal the mantra from Antidas' palace; you need enough physical attributes to get up on top of the roof, enough sneak/lockpick to infiltrate and get into the display room, enough Traps to disable the triggers on the display case, and enough lore to get the mantra. Mind you, I've never succeeded in the last two steps that I've mentioned; I only know this exists due to others mentioning it, and was not able to find the mantra even with an optimized build due to lack of skill points.

Obviously, my character doesn't need the mantra and it's simply a bonus, but the point is, that by investing in the skills to collect this special bonus, I can kinda fuck myself later on. That's because even if I were to be able to get the mantra, I would still end up hitting a dead end down the road because escaping Teron would be damn near impossible because I just spent all my points getting this stupid scroll, and I don't have enough leftto invest in either (a) diplomacy to talk my out of town or (b) combat to fight my way out of town. It's very easy to paint yourself in a corner like this in AoD at the moment, because the SP issue can create a domino effect where being unable to complete a quest means that you lack skill points to invest in skills to complete another quest, and all of a sudden, you find that your build is unworkable. I think a lot of the complaints here stem from this.

Regarding synergies, they are a great idea in theory, but in practice you'll only use one weapon the whole game. SP are very, very scarce, and you need to save as much as possible, so investing in more than one weapon is a bad idea, because it presents an opportunity cost; points spent in a secondary weapon is points lost in learning defensive skills, crafting, alchemy, lore, etc. Also, because of the difficulty of combat (which, btw, I agree with), there is a disincentive to having a secondary weapon, because you won't hit a fucking thing with it. So you pretty much have to stick with whatever it is you've invested points into.

I know that this is something that you guys are addressing and that I have mentioned before on the ITS forum, where you devs knew it was an issue that needs to be resolved. I appreciate VD's desire to adhere to a philosophy where only certain characters can explore certain paths, but the gating is too severe. Which is a shame, because when you can explore content in AoD it's such a well-crafted, thought-out setting that had a lot of love put into it. You guys already have plans to add more skill points to the game, which is a great move that would alleviate metagaming and allow players to play around with skills more and experiment. It won't eliminate the issue of metagaming (I think that this is unfortunately inherent in the design, though the game's strengths make up for it, IMO) but it will at least make it much less of an issue.

 

[hiver]

Ill say this in vain again...

The various civic skill checks should be synergistic themselves, to a certain point. Which will make hard blocks just a bit softer - NOT completely soft.
So, for example if you need two skills at level that gives a score of for example 10 altogether, then any combination of those two skills that gives score of 10 altogether should work.

Secondly, making skill checks in the starting, opening location be too high results in only one thing - meta gaming and people giving up on the whole game.
And the game getting unfavorable reviews for no good reason at all.

YOU DONT REALLY NEED TO HAVE EXTREME HARD SKILLS CHECKS IN A GAME WHERE GAMEPLAY IS BRANCHING SO MUCH.
Except in some rare situations where the internal logic and coherence of the script would demand it.

The game as it is designed now is designed by someone whos plastering extreme hard skills checks all over - because of meta overview - which - no surprise - results in meta gaming.



The combat does not suffer from this so much because - no wonder - it has softer skill check options. Not extremely soft, but definitely not so crude and extreme as diplomatic gameplay does. Which SHOWS.

DUH.

 

[MRY]

My faith is restored.

 

[CRD]

So excited for this. Bought it time ago when the game was released on steam, now just wait for the release and some post-release patches

 

[Goral]

@MasterSmithFandango

Character System
Regarding Perception, fighters don't need that stat above 4 unless they're using (cross)bows/throwing (and if someone invests in these he can become a hybrid fighter/talker). Also, civil skill points can be used for combat purposes and investing in Alchemy or crafting is a must if one wants to make even the toughest fights much easier. Your concern here is invalid and your suggestions are baffling. You also don't know what the word "optimize" means, lol.

About civil skill points synergies, Oscar has answered this on IT forum: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,5178.msg126044.html#msg126044
Besides, there is a synergy of sorts. Most (all?) skill checks require a sum of skills, e.g. to convince someone that you're a bro you need persuasion+streetwise=7 (but both need to be at level 3 at least), so whether you have 3 streetwise and 4 persuasion or 4 streetwise and 3 persuasion the result is the same and you succeed.
And since you mentioned lack of feats I assume you're one of those Steam achievement tards. You not only have those but you also have prestige, word of honour and unique titles like "Godslayer", "Champion Arena", Terminator, etc.

Combat System
It's not entirely true that you may lose encounters due to unfavourable rolls. You can have a 70% success rate or better if you know what you're doing (and as someone mentioned before people who mastered the system like Brandon, Vahhabyte and others have it much higher). Also, most fights can be avoided so...

When I reload to do the fight again, I don’t really do anything differently to adapt to the battle – I just hope the RNG doesn’t screw me as badly.

I had to quote you on that because what you're doing is basically what MCA was doing when playing Arcanum. AoD provides multitude of options to increase your chances in a fight you just need to be observant to see them.Using the alchemy, crafting, right weapon (for example, when I was a hammer guy I used two handed hammer most of the time but against agile opponents I had to switch to 1-handed hammer to increase my THC - which is logical, of course you can swing a 5 kg hammer faster than 20 kg one), nets/bolas, the right positioning, etc.

Moving away from someone who's beside you in combat gives them an attack of opportunity, so your best bet is almost always to engage unless you need to retreat to your support to prevent being totally overrun.

Moving away is the most optimal move on several occasions. Because it's a proper turn-based game the sequence of your actions do matter. Let's check this fight for example: http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/28482212341397668/EF4B7336AD21FCFA4B24174AD42449CF2C8EEA40/
Firstly, it matters who you kill first. Killing the wrong guy might make it easier for others to flank you (plus you can lose more HP because you left someone with high THC and damage per turn alive). Secondly, it matters what initiative your opponents have and in the case of the screenshot above if I go to the right square I can get rid of one opponent for a while because he has to take the long way since his comrades who had higher initiative blocked him passage so they could attack me.

In practice your best bet is probably to engage one guy at a time and beat him until he’s dead

But that's true in any good game. Would you rather fight two 1-armed men (who have their dominant arms intact) or one two armed man?

I would be interested in seeing this system when I can control more than one character to really explore the tactical depth it provides, but at the same time I can't really give it a pass simply because of the single character constraints. (...) At the same time it's easy to acknowledge how this goes against the idea of specialization central to the design, but holding to that design leaves this element of gameplay feeling incomplete.

Yeah, except that if you could control all your allies you would have significant advantage, i.e. everyone would receive orders from a collective (like the Borg) making them super efficient. As things stand now your allies might be a handicap which adds an interesting twist IMO. Even more so since they're not as retarded as Fallout allies which can often kill you along with the opponent.

I might comment on the rest once I have time but tl;dr version is: you wrote a shitty preview. You have a way with words but your reasoning is baffling.

 

[tuluse]

escaping Teron would be damn near impossible because I just spent all my points getting this stupid scroll, and I don't have enough leftto invest in either (a) diplomacy to talk my out of town or (b) combat to fight my way out of town.

I remember using a crossbow, running away and letting my allies fight the way out for me.

Regarding synergies, they are a great idea in theory, but in practice you'll only use one weapon the whole game. SP are very, very scarce, and you need to save as much as possible, so investing in more than one weapon is a bad idea, because it presents an opportunity cost; points spent in a secondary weapon is points lost in learning defensive skills, crafting, alchemy, lore, etc. Also, because of the difficulty of combat (which, btw, I agree with), there is a disincentive to having a secondary weapon, because you won't hit a fucking thing with it. So you pretty much have to stick with whatever it is you've invested points into.

You need to get better at math. Once you hit 5 points in a weapon skill, it's about as efficient to raise a secondary skill to 4 as it is to go to 6 points, but they're smaller chunks. So you can spend 15 points raising bow to 3 and 10 points on a civic skill or 25 points to raise crossbow to 6.

The first give you +6 to attack and you can go from 2 to 3 in a civic skill or get +10 to attack with the latter choice.

Bow and crossbow also give bonuses to throwing, which is very important if you're not actually that good at fighting.

 

[Athelas]

Yeah, except that if you could control all your allies you would have significant advantage, i.e. everyone would receive orders from a collective (like the Borg) making them super efficient. As things stand now your allies might be a handicap which adds an interesting twist IMO.

Uhm...have you ever played a party-based RPG in your life? Yes, being able to control multiple party members is not realistic. It does however allow combat to be a lot more complex, interesting and fun than merely controlling a single character. If a game allows you to control multiple party members, the enemy encounters will obviously be designed with that in mind.

 

[Goral]

Yeah, except that if you could control all your allies you would have significant advantage, i.e. everyone would receive orders from a collective (like the Borg) making them super efficient. As things stand now your allies might be a handicap which adds an interesting twist IMO.

Uhm...have you ever played a party-based RPG in your life? Yes, being able to control multiple party members is not realistic. It does however allow combat to be a lot more complex, interesting and fun than merely controlling a single character. If a game allows you to control multiple party members, the enemy encounters will obviously be designed with that in mind.

You can't read with comprehension. I've presented the advantage of the current system (i.e. it often makes the game harder and more unpredictable by preventing you from maximizing each characters abilities and fighting in prefect sync) and you're talking about how controlling a party allows combat to become more complex, lol.

Besides, games like Baldur's Gate or even Wasteland 2 prove that it's often better to focus on one character combat system rather than watered down party system.