Preview The Age of Decadence Demo Preview

[Metro]

Steam version better have TF2 hat.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Dude I just stole an HDTV. They should really lower their prices.

 

[Cassidy]

This thread has 6 pages and the thread on Mass Effect 3 demo only 1 reply.

I never thought I'd witness something like this in RPGCodex after Troika died.

Dude I just stole an HDTV. They should really lower their prices.

Stealing a truck filled with Modern Warfare 3 DVDs != illegally copying through a torrent without removing anything from an inventory.

Not that I think anyone who pirates AoD and never pays for it isn't a gigantic faggot and douchebag.

I'd still buy the boxed version despite the price, depending on the availability of distribution channels. Meanwhile I'm hoping Demo's thursday won't take too long.

Downloaded Crusader Kings 2 is $40, for comparison purposes.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Are you really going for that "non-removed from inventory" justification? It doesn't have to be something physical. The entire concept of intellectual property would not exist if that were so.

 

[Metro]

Stealing a truck filled with Modern Warfare 3 DVDs != illegally copying through a torrent without removing anything from an inventory.

The only difference is the twenty-five cents worth of blank CD's they'd copied it on and the flimsy boxes they put them in...

 

[tarkin]

Brofists to the devs and all but after all this years i can't get myself get excited about a preview of a demo, i'm totally flaccid. If i can't get my hands on the game then i don't care anymore. All i want to hear is: AoD went gold, gib moneys. And i will give you your 20 to 50 bucks.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Brofists to the devs and all but after all this years i can't get myself get excited about a preview of a demo, i'm totally flaccid. If i can't get my hands on the game then i don't care anymore. All i want to hear is: AoD went gold, gib moneys. And i will give you your 20 to 50 bucks.

This...just this.

 

[SerratedBiz]

This is like that thing that bell was toiling about.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Colbert. Sometimes he's funny. I prefer Stewart, though.

EDIT: Weren't you from Germany, too, TftC? New computer games games could almost always be gotten for 40€ or less. Especially when you talk about a few years ago. Now computer games seem to have moved towards consoles in pricing too and one will see more 45€ games, but still... Nothing changed with the packaging, though. The vast majority of normal editions comes in a DVD case with a 5-20 page booklet.
I don't really care about packaging and booklets though I'll probably go for the digital version.

Germany yes. My memory may be playing tricks on me, as I said it is literary years ago that I bought a new game. yeah the 55 Euro I mentioned is way too much, 45 euro seems a more appropriate number. But I definetely remember some games coming close to the 50 euro mark, I may be mistaken though. Anyways, as others have said, 50 dollars for a boxed edition with manual and map seems pretty standard, a good deal for me.

 

[commie]

I'm not saying that walking around and exploring is boring. I'm saying that running between maps to deliver a message or going back and forth between NPCs is boring. Some examples:

The Witcher: "Yaevinn (in the swamps) will ask you to deliver a letter to Golan Vivaldi in the Temple Quarterand then return with his reply."

You run through the streets, leave the town - loading screen, go to the dock, travel to the swamps - cutscene/loading screen, run around in the swamps, get a quest to go back to the town (running back to the dock, loading screen, enter the town - loading screen, run to another district - loading screen, and then do all over again to return with the reply. I think it was the first quest I've turned down because the traveling was too much.

The way I see, when you do a non-combat quest, the best part (or the only good part?) is dealing with different people and trying different ways to accomplish your objective. Not running for 10 min, hoping that you'll be ambushed to break the boredom.

Other memorable examples are the city of Athkatla in BG2, ToEE's Hommlet's quests, and even some Arcanum's quests, like the crystal ball one - talk to A, she sends you to B, B gives you the ball, bring it back to A, something happens, go talk to B again. Thank God they were on the same map. It's not a bad quest, but 90% of it is running back and forth between A and B.

Aha I see what you mean. Well in a way adds a kind of realism to the whole questing thing in that once you undertake a task you go through with it until the end rather than the traditional way in which you accept to deliver the magic boots or whatever to character x in some village then go off and do a hundred other quests before eventually months later getting around to it. Like this it certainly makes sense to cut out the traveling bit as you are focusing on one particular active task. On the other hand...

When you abruptly go from one location to another just to pick an answer from a list it kind of misses the point of a role playing game in the traditional sense...

In what way?

Well let me explain what I mean by first asking how do you handle quests where you have to see someone that lives in a place you haven't been before or haven't ever seen? Do you still just show up or are the quests written in a way that you meet some guide to tell you directions etc. some background explanation as to how you find yourself at that person? This is what I meant by 'traditional sense' in that usually you'd have to discover the locations and people yourself going out and adventuring. Does AoD have traditional 'go out and explore' quests taking into account that it's not a sandbox?

...but then again AoD is set to redefine what is meant by the term 'RPG'...

It really isn't. AoD draws heavily from the old games, so it doesn't redefine anything, but rearranges RPG concepts in a different way. RPGs are the most diverse genre (dungeon crawlers, sandbox, story-driven, tactical, etc), so AoD is our contribution to it, nothing else.

Eh that was just me being a fucker...I certainly hope it redefines something though: that there is a spot in this current gaming world for a proper ambitious RPG from an independent(ie. not some parody sprite based crap).

Maybe I'm being a bit too picky and probably if I followed AoD's development more closely I wouldn't have had such worries but I'm really actively trying to read as little about AoD as possible as I'd like to not have any spoilers or exaggerated expectations or fears about it until it comes out.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm interested in how it will pan out in practice, though. I'm of the firm belief that filler serves a purpose, and sometimes, is important for a game - though of course, the much more common sin is excessive filler. I remember that when I was playing FNV for the 5th time or so just to see what I hadn't seen, I was using console commands to teleport between areas when there were such walk-here quest fillers. At first it was great, but after a while I realized I wasn't really getting enjoyment from the game, and I wasn't really playing it at all. Now, some of that is due to playing it so many times, and the fact that the game wasn't designed for this, but I think there is definitely something to be said about having different paces to a game, instead of being delivered to the next Interesting Hotpoint immediately, and to giving the gameworld a bit more life. Other examples might be using the frame skip / speed up functions a lot on emulators of older games, or using Ctrl+J to teleport in IE games.

That isn't necessarily a criticism, as I don't know how AOD does it - I imagine it doesn't teleport you all the time, and there's still plenty of opportunity to do 'leisurely' strolls. But combined with the confirmed fact that there are quite a lot of text adventures which really is an extreme of what we're talking about here, it'll be interesting to see how it's done.

 

[Cassidy]

I'm interested in how it will pan out in practice, though. I'm of the firm belief that filler serves a purpose, and sometimes, is important for a game - though of course, the much more common sin is excessive filler. I remember that when I was playing FNV for the 5th time or so just to see what I hadn't seen, I was using console commands to teleport between areas when there were such walk-here quest fillers. At first it was great, but after a while I realized I wasn't really getting enjoyment from the game, and I wasn't really playing it at all. Now, some of that is due to playing it so many times, and the fact that the game wasn't designed for this, but I think there is definitely something to be said about having different paces to a game, instead of being delivered to the next Interesting Hotpoint immediately, and to giving the gameworld a bit more life. Other examples might be using the frame skip / speed up functions a lot on emulators of older games, or using Ctrl+J to teleport in IE games.

That isn't necessarily a criticism, as I don't know how AOD does it - I imagine it doesn't teleport you all the time, and there's still plenty of opportunity to do 'leisurely' strolls. But combined with the confirmed fact that there are quite a lot of text adventures which really is an extreme of what we're talking about here, it'll be interesting to see how it's done.

All I have to say on this: Age of Decadence is not a hiking simulator and I appreciate their design choice on that matter.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Fap ad infinitum

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

That isn't necessarily a criticism, as I don't know how AOD does it - I imagine it doesn't teleport you all the time, and there's still plenty of opportunity to do 'leisurely' strolls. But combined with the confirmed fact that there are quite a lot of text adventures which really is an extreme of what we're talking about here, it'll be interesting to see how it's done.

You go around and explore normally. The game doesn't teleport you all the time. It does so only when it's a text-adventure, or if you're in a go to A then B then back to C situation, to provide a shortcut. Sometimes you can say "Go there later." and then have to go there yourself. Example: you show the map to your quest giver, he tells you to show it to a loremaster. You get 2 dialogue options:
1) Go to Feng (which drops you infront of Feng's, saving you the time to walk there)
2) Do something else. (stay where you are)

 

[commie]

I see, well that's what I was hoping for, the option to hike if you want or do something else in certain quests. So the text adventures are a different category altogether. I had them as similar to the regular types of fed-ex quests. I can understand the text adventure being a one shot including teleport kind of adventure which you play out to completion in one go, but it's good to see that normal RPG fare quests can still play out in a traditional way.

 

[Starwars]

In all fairness though, one of the criticisms against the demo by some beta-testers *are* that there is not enough to do outside the text-adventures/actual quests though. Vince and the guys added some little "side-events" to the town to remedy this fact. But I definitely think that there will be a fairly large amount of people who will be turned off by the lack of "classic RPG gameplay". Exploring the town, speaking with NPCs, rooting out new quests and such. The meat and potatoes of the game is absolutely in the A) text-adventures and B) combat (if you choose to pursue a more combat-centric career).

I think there will be a clash for a lot of people when they see Teron. Teron looks like a classic RPG city, it looks like you should be able to explore it and uncover things in its alleyways. But the content is very much concentrated in the faction quests. There is not much to find when exploring on your own.

Personally, I go both ways on it. On the one hand it makes the town feel a bit empty and lifeless at worst. But on the other hand, it's extremely refreshing to have a game which has a *lot* of depth, yet you can play it very quickly because there is no filler either. This is extremely pleasing to me. You can create a character very quickly if you're so inclined, and after a very brief "vignette", you are right in the middle of things. No killing rats, no tutorials, no linear opening quests. No bullshit.

But I do think that some people's expectations (even old-school gamers, who are expecting an old-school game) will work against the game unfortunately because they are expecting that classic RPG formula. AoD is in some ways very much an old-school game, but it also plays pretty damn differently from any game that I can think of in terms of the overall experience.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Thanks for the insight Starwars. Interesting, and a bit disappointing to be honest. If there's one thing I love about RPGs (besides good combat), it's exploring towns, discover every nook and cranny, talk to NPCs and get new quests along the way. Even a far-from-perfect RPG like Baldurs Gate 2 left a positive mark in my memory because it gave me interesting towns and cities to explore.

Anyways, I'm interested to see how the lack of this element will work out in AoD. I'm pretty sure the faction quests and text adventures will have more than enough depth to make up for the reduced exploring. Very much can be done trough text-screens. Many classics didn't feature proper town exploration at all, cities in Betrayal at Krondor for example consisted mostly of navigating trough pictures and texts. Well, we'll see.

 

[Starwars]

You should be excited to play it. There's a lot of shit to uncover in the demo alone, things to try out. Don't get me wrong, there are some things I'm not absolutely crazy about (like in every game) but it's kinda worth it when you get Critical Hit skill-checks for insta-kills in the text adventures, or when, after a few tries, you barely you survive that and challenging huge fight with like 4 HP left. Or like that time when I.... etc etc.

It's full of those things that make up for wonderful individual player stories if you get creative.

 

[Jaesun]

Glad to see you posting again Starwars.

I agree, the lack of "filler" stuff might be a turn off for some, but I think VD did the right decision to focus mainly on the strengths of AoD (non-linearity of the main quests and all of the C&C etc....). Personally I'm more bored of generic filler shit myself. But good quality "filler" quests/events are always a plus. But they are few and far between.

 

[curry]

Filler content isn't a problem if it's high quality. I have no problem with exploring an interesting location and killing a few mobs that are not connected to the story. It becomes a problem when you have to run back and forth killing generic mobs in recycled dungeons or do "Go pick 5 items and bring them to me" quests (I'm talking to you, BioWare )

 

[Skittles]

Other than the Hive Thugs, did PS:T have much filler? Are rose-tinted glasses fogging my view?

I guess I'm asking what PS:T did right about filler. I thought its content was sufficiently densely packed--where it wasn't, there was a specific "this is a dungeon you're exploring," or "this is a battle you have to fight through" set-up, so it didn't seem like the game was holding back on the 'main game' with filler. Is that what you mean? Or have I just blanked Planescape's filler from my mind?

 

[Black]

The whole game was filler

Deep.

 

[Commissar Draco]

I have enough fillers in Skyrim, FNV and KoA... give me game with tight plot and interesting characters and I will pay fifty Kwanzanian dolla. Some random contest would be nice though.... not fedex BS but thugs in the alleys and refuges met on the road or such. This game seems to be different that all which is peddled since Oblibion and is whining. Fucking

 

[Roguey]

Other than the Hive Thugs, did PS:T have much filler? Are rose-tinted glasses fogging my view?

I guess I'm asking what PS:T did right about filler. I thought its content was sufficiently densely packed--where it wasn't, there was a specific "this is a dungeon you're exploring," or "this is a battle you have to fight through" set-up, so it didn't seem like the game was holding back on the 'main game' with filler. Is that what you mean? Or have I just blanked Planescape's filler from my mind?

There were a ton of boring fetch quests. TNO even makes snarky comments about them in his journal. Also nearly every instance of combat is filler.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I would define filler as things you do in a game that you're not engaged in.

If you are simply walking across a screen to get to a destination, that's filler.

If you are engaged in PST's dialogues, they are not filler. It never ceases to amaze me how people can make that claim.

If you are running around trying different shit in order to solve a puzzle in an adventure game, it's not filler, provided the puzzle is intellectually stimulating enough to grab your attention.

If that adventure game is Broken Sword, then it's filler.

If you are playing good, engaging combat, like in AOD, it's never filler.

But if you're playing combat that's repetitive and uses the same enemies every time, requiring you to automatize your playing process, then it's filler, because you're not engaged. Witness the Derp Roads in Dragon Age, or nearly any jrpg.