Game News The Age of Decadence Released

[Cassidy]

Age of Decadence, like KOTOR, is a game you have to finish at least seven times before coming up with a definite conclusion about it.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Interesting drama by the usual suspects in the last pages, which works as a mirror to or a mini Roxor PoE "review" farse (I have to admit I can't read his shit, he triggers me and gives me PSDT, which is a actually a compliment). This time I have leveled above this petty squabble.

To put things in perspective, people in this place (RPGCodex) play Twitcher 3, Skyrim and other shitty games meaning their tastes are plebean. I would include the Shadowrun games, which at first looked like a cheesy cultural leftist leaning setting with really bad anime was a mistake ching chong graphics, but I have yet to play them (I have them installed), so I'll give them a pass.

I really wish for a new wave of Fallout 1 & 2 and PS:T reviews, but I don't think anyone will go the distance. I'll be here waiting.

Age of Decadence, like KOTOR, is a game you have to finish at least seven times before coming up with a definite conclusion about it.

Make it one hundred, like I said earlier.

 

[Jaesun]

RPG Codex: Your one stop source for D R A M A

 

[Elhoim]

- it's one more RPG where i feel we got too many classes for our own good. Would have been better served with a condensed version, where grifter was merged into assassin, drifter into merchant and praetor into loremaster. There are classes where the game encourages you (CYOA + logically thinking about how they'd play) to spread out your capabilities into both the social and combat factor, except oops, VD doesn't like spread out characters. Whatever allusions to a different gameplay are stopped short, and only at a point where you got to delete said char entirely and start over. In much, much stricter patterns.

Except they are not classes but backgrounds, with a different starting point in the story. You can play a "grifter" with no charisma and focus on combat skills. You starting meeting Petra, you won't be able to get the extra rewards from the trader, and then you join the IG. Grifter, assassin, drifter, are just starting points in the story, you can develop them however you want.

As if the above is not bad enough, the number crunching appears to have been stopped way short of its goal. Barring alchemy, i just don't see how they even think a Dex-based character can play through this game.

I don't understand what you mean with "Dex based". I mean, dexterity is fucking brutal for combat builds. What are you referring with "dex-based"?

Guys, wtf really. So Roxor has some trolly comments, big fucking news. No reason to white knight the shit out of the game.

Yep. I could explain the reasoning behind the monastery decisions, and we could talk about how it could have been done in another way, maybe even "showing" via dialogue what happened between the first fight and the second (in which the stairs the leader had next to him where already placed in the wall) but I have the feeling those were not the points of the post.

In any case, Roxor, can you tell me any other location the collision is missing? I know about Maadoran and this one. Thank you.

 

[agris]

Still waiting for dialogue selection via the numpad to get acknowledged as a feature request Elhoim and Vault Dweller

 

[Aenra]

Elhoim deep respect for your work mate. But forgive me for failing to reply when:

- You pick one line, separate it, quote it, and reply in a way that has nothing to do with the context in which it belonged
- 'neglect' addressing all the other points mentioned
- cherry pick between superficial categorisations (backgrounds you called them, classes i called them) in order to eschew an issue that is quite prevalent, and described adequately. Regardless on whether it is ameliorated by the quality of the rest of the game

 

[Vault Dweller]

Still waiting for dialogue selection via the numpad to get acknowledged as a feature request Elhoim and Vault Dweller

We'll take a look but can't promise it at this point.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

Regarding hybrid character builds, I haven't played the game that extensively, but I don't feel like they're quite as impossible to play successfully as they're sometimes made out to be. They require more preparation and familiarity with the systems, but you also tend to get some sort of middle ground where your non-combat skills may not be quite high enough to allow you to avoid combat completely but at the same time make it easier (diversions, extra helpers, elimination of enemies in dialogue) compared to the way it is for a straight fighter. To me at least a lot of the game's appeal comes from trying to figure out how to deal with situations where you've seemingly painted yourself into a corner -- and I've found even those that I initially thought were completely out of the question can often be quite manageable.

 

[agris]

We'll take a look but can't promise it at this point.

Thanks. I think it should be a simple input polling option, not a large backend overhaul.

 

[Elhoim]

Elhoim deep respect for your work mate. But forgive me for failing to reply when:

- You pick one line, separate it, quote it, and reply in a way that has nothing to do with the context in which it belonged
- 'neglect' addressing all the other points mentioned
- cherry pick between superficial categorisations (backgrounds you called them, classes i called them) in order to eschew an issue that is quite prevalent, and described adequately. Regardless on whether it is ameliorated by the quality of the rest of the game

VD hacked my account, sorry about that!

Joking aside, maybe my head is kinda foggy due to the lack of sleep, but I understood the rest of the post based on the premise of "clases", which is why I adressed it before continuing the conversation. And didn't understand the dex-build thing.

Whoever knows me here a little knows how open I am to critisism and thoughtful discussion (not witty and edge comments or one liners). Can you please explain me your post again? Thanks.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Regarding hybrid character builds, I haven't played the game that extensively, but I don't feel like they're quite as impossible to play successfully as they're sometimes made out to be. They require more preparation and familiarity with the systems, but you also tend to get some sort of middle ground where your non-combat skills may not be quite high enough to allow you to avoid combat completely but at the same time make it easier (diversions, extra helpers, elimination of enemies in dialogue) compared to the way it is for a straight fighter. To me at least a lot of the game's appeal comes from trying to figure out how to deal with situations where you've seemingly painted yourself into a corner -- and I've found even those that I initially thought were completely out of the question can often be quite manageable.

Pretty much.

 

[Elhoim]

Aenra, let's try again:

- it's one more RPG where i feel we got too many classes for our own good. Would have been better served with a condensed version, where grifter was merged into assassin, drifter into merchant and praetor into loremaster. There are classes where the game encourages you (CYOA + logically thinking about how they'd play) to spread out your capabilities into both the social and combat factor, except oops, VD doesn't like spread out characters. Whatever allusions to a different gameplay are stopped short, and only at a point where you got to delete said char entirely and start over. In much, much stricter patterns.

I don't really understand what you mean with merging them. That's what I mean with the distinction of backgrounds, which are more like the ones in Arcanum that gave a few differences but you could take them in any direction. I don't see the benefit of merging the backgrounds. For example, I don't understand what you mean, mechanically, to merge "Drifter and Merchant". How do you see that done?

Now, you might be referring to archetypes, like Talker, Fighter, "Thief", etc, which is something we took into account when doing questlines. For example, MG questline: Talky Merchant, Tough Merchant. IG questline: Fighter, and Smart Soldier. AG: Fighter, "Suave" Assassin (we could have had some more options for this one), TG: Burglar, Fighter, Speech (yes, 3, damn us ), Praetor: Fighter / Talker. The game works quite well when following them, but certainly the middle route is hard.

a) If you force me into very specific character builds (and do not forget the above, "drifter" my ass), i'd expect them to be more or less equally viable and/or capable of taking me through the whole story in a way that justifies a difference between say Assassin and Grifter. Currently? Come here and tell me where you skill your assassin, and how combat as an assassin differs from combat as a drifter. Or where.

Again, my point of drifter just being a story background, not a mechanic one. Even for Assassin. Anyone who becomes a member of the AG becomes an Assassin. We give training in CS to point towards that skill being like the "assassin" skill. The rest of combat skills you can develop as you want.

b) Harsh world and harsh circumstances may or may not call for harsh combat, but when you do have it, you cannot have a loremaster creaming through everything. Way too antithetic. Especially when high Int/Cha playthroughs require the least amount of thinking. Am i being rewarded for taking the easy way out?

Maybe I'm stupid today, but I don't fully get what you mean. By creaming you mean kinda like killing everyone? Or avoiding it? What's exactly the critique?

As if the above is not bad enough, the number crunching appears to have been stopped way short of its goal. Barring alchemy, i just don't see how they even think a Dex-based character can play through this game. I honestly don't. See above regarding spread-out skills and stats.

What is a dex based character? Where are the issues of having a dex 10 character? Dex helps with Dodge, climbing, AP that determines number of attacks, sword, dagger... Just trying to get both to talk the same language and understand your suggestions.

 

[Severian Silk]

Vault Dweller

Your game sucks.

 

[Mustawd]

Vault Dweller

Your game sucks.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Aenra, let's try again:



I don't really understand what you mean with merging them. That's what I mean with the distinction of backgrounds, which are more like the ones in Arcanum that gave a few differences but you could take them in any direction. I don't see the benefit of merging the backgrounds. For example, I don't understand what you mean, mechanically, to merge "Drifter and Merchant". How do you see that done?

Now, you might be referring to archetypes, like Talker, Fighter, "Thief", etc, which is something we took into account when doing questlines. For example, MG questline: Talky Merchant, Tough Merchant. IG questline: Fighter, and Smart Soldier. AG: Fighter, "Suave" Assassin (we could have had some more options for this one), TG: Burglar, Fighter, Speech (yes, 3, damn us ), Praetor: Fighter / Talker. The game works quite well when following them, but certainly the middle route is hard.



Again, my point of drifter just being a story background, not a mechanic one. Even for Assassin. Anyone who becomes a member of the AG becomes an Assassin. We give training in CS to point towards that skill being like the "assassin" skill. The rest of combat skills you can develop as you want.



Maybe I'm stupid today, but I don't fully get what you mean. By creaming you mean kinda like killing everyone? Or avoiding it? What's exactly the critique?



What is a dex based character? Where are the issues of having a dex 10 character? Dex helps with Dodge, climbing, AP that determines number of attacks, sword, dagger... Just trying to get both to talk the same language and understand your suggestions.

Good post!

 

[UnknownBro]

An interesting and fresh perspective of a genre lacking innovation and a bold move from an indie developer.

Most certainly not :incloosive:

 

[Aenra]

Elhoim no worries
Nice and simple: Loremaster is too easy, too dumbproof, too SP-ridden, to the point i knew not what to do with them. I also had to try to fuck up. On the contrary, "hybrid" builds are way too difficult (or at least start so?), because SPs scale with Int, and leaving Int aside would be ok for combat, except you made combat so hard, i'm forced to look for other solutions. Solutions that are usually beyond me, as i lack the skills for them. Because you guessed it, i lack the Int.

Different backgrounds should have different ways of attempting solutions, i get that. Am ok with that. Am also ok with some being easier/harder than others. It felt to me however that the game goes beyond that.
It makes some too punishing compared to others, and most of all, it makes some backgrounds give a sense of 'openess' (in terms of all the various solutions one could go through) whereas others to give a sense of 'monotony'. Too little SPs for combat toons, too few skills. At best one or two solutions you click on again and again, plenty of dying in between.

Yes, there is a good part in this, you can replay with different skillsets over and over again. I just do not think that helps when they are so ..strict?.. compared to non combat builds. Maybe it's just me, but i felt the game rewards one way too much over the other. Rewards as in making it interesting, deeper, more diverse.

Edit: As far as backgrounds vs actual builds, i know what you mean. You give us a story, we fill in the stats as we please. But let's face it, you pick a Merc, you're not going for Einstein, you're going for a brute more or less. Yeah? And therefore the expectations you'd have of a brute. Likewise with an assassin. And the expectations you'd have of one. Except, ingame, theory-aside, my assassin ends up acting just like a merc or a Praetor; ie when it comes to combat, the actual fighting, i did not see many differences, it's a toe-to-toe; When it comes to combat, you get the same deal. Hence my saying that maybe fewer "backgrounds" would have been better. In the sense of your spending time not in extra writing, but in fleshing out.

 

[Dreaad]

Vault Dweller you made a wonder, it's not perfect but I will remember this game for decades

 

[Elhoim]

Some random thoughts:

- Combat variation is based more on skills than defined archetypes, since there are no classes, so no particular abilities for assassins or Mercs. Combat plays very differently if you choose block or dodge, 1h vs 2h, and weapon selection. Apart from that, yes, if you play the assassin questline with a 9 STR brute with a shield and a hammer, combat is no different than the IG questline. What we did was to focus a bit on different combat scenarios for the different questlines. IG is mostly group fights with a few "duels", trying to give a more legionary vibe. AG has extensive use of CS, plus a few non-combat ways via poisoning, and focus on "targets". For praetor we tried to go with a bit diplomat-assassin, but we didn't have many combats there. TG in general we tried to go with teamwork. But it's true, that at the end, combat is similar. Perhaps it would have been nice to get a few unique traits, like especial moves, when you work for a faction. For example, assassins getting an especial attack that on critical can outright kill a character, or IG getting a bonus when fighting alongside a party member. But then, those traits could be given on higher skills in different skills. What I'm aiming at is that all characters start as blank slates, and then your skills set the way they play and the faction they fit better.

- In general, combat SP is kinda plentiful for the full game. I agree it feels a bit stingy when you are in Teron, but overall you get around 90-100 combat SP in the game, which you can use to bring a skill to level 8. Considering a combat build only needs to focus on one attack skill + one defense skill + one supporting (CS, Alchemy, Crafting), it is quite considerable already, if we take into account character creation, location and quests SP. But, it's true that as you said, more combat builds go into 1 max attack, 1 max defense, 1 max secondary, and that's it. They can't do much more. A lock, even minor? Forget about it. Speech? They can get a thing here or two, but not much. I believe that the main thing is the lack of side exploration for different levels of investment, with side skills becoming almost all or nothing. Your "full" fighter shouldn't be able to unlock every chest in the game, but if he invests 3-4 points he should get some extra things. For example, I really like what we did in Miltiades Teron. You first fight the two goons, and there's a locked door. After you kill them, if you have a bit of investment in lockpick, you can open that door to create a chokepoint + a sharpening stone and 2 lbs of steel (very rare in Teron). Basically, your side investment paid off in a way that also helps the main focus of your character, without overriding it nor becoming "A master of all skills". The plan is to continue adding side content like that, more "spread out" over the 1-10 scale of skills, instead of having just a few instances. Lore is a skill we did really great, IMO, since there is meaningful content for every point you invest, and it always pays off in some way or another. Speech skills are fine, but sometimes their utility is more confined to the faction questlines than freeform content. Thieving will get some love in the upcoming updates.

I think that more or less covers it. Personally, I do not want blanket solutions like "Just add more SP!" or "Make a combat difficulty option!", but instead focus on expanding the content you can get with the skills, and add the SP based on that content. While AoD is a finished game, and we are really proud of it, it's not a perfect masterpiece, and we want to continue refining it, and what can't be changed, we'll improve in our next game.

 

[Irenaeus II]

The plan is to continue adding side content like that, more "spread out" over the 1-10 scale of skills, instead of having just a few instances. Lore is a skill we did really great, IMO, since there is meaningful content for every point you invest, and it always pays off in some way or another.

Thieving will get some love in the upcoming updates.

Personally, I do not want blanket solutions like "Just add more SP!" or "Make a combat difficulty option!", but instead focus on expanding the content you can get with the skills, and add the SP based on that content. While AoD is a finished game, and we are really proud of it, it's not a perfect masterpiece, and we want to continue refining it.

This is everything I wanted to hear!

 

[Goral]

help i'm being stalked by angry cultists

i better hire a bodyguard before it's too late

Don't flatter yourself, I'm not one of your 22 stalkers. You don't have to be Sherlock to know that attention whore like you will run to your followers seeking approval and comfort after you got butthurt.

 

[Sranchammer]

How are the romances?

 

[Irenaeus II]

How are the romances?

Lurker King

 

[Darth Roxor]

Don't flatter yourself, I'm not one of your 22 stalkers. You don't have to be Sherlock to know that attention whore like you will run to your followers seeking approval and comfort after you got butthurt.

o Infinitron my loyal stalker, please come here to approve of me and comfort my butthurt

Yep. I could explain the reasoning behind the monastery decisions, and we could talk about how it could have been done in another way, maybe even "showing" via dialogue what happened between the first fight and the second (in which the stairs the leader had next to him where already placed in the wall) but I have the feeling those were not the points of the post.

The points of the post were that the entire scenario is largely absurd and makes little to no sense. The raider head honcho sudden teleportation to the monastery is just one part of it, and the way it is now, I can't honestly accept any of the supposed completely logical handwaves that have been posted so far because they are just that - shameless handwaves. Remember how in Curse of Monkey Island Guybrush lands on Skull Island and the boatman tells him to squint his head a bit to look at it? That's basically what's been going on for the last pages. So yes, some kind of a dialogue window right after the fight or when going up the ladders or anything would have helped tons, although I'd probably still find it weird. But like I said, that's only one of the elements of the whole thing. There's also the fact that I can't scale the broken bridge even though the way it looks in-game makes it look perfectly fit for crossing as a ninja character with 10 dex and a grappling hook. There's also the church of Simo Hayha inside the monastery. And, in fact, the more I think about it - why doesn't the Finnish sniper division just take shots down the ladders as the raiders scale them, or, you know, JUST PUSH THEM AWAY FROM THE WALL?

In any case, Roxor, can you tell me any other location the collision is missing? I know about Maadoran and this one. Thank you.

I'll start noting them down now. I'm almost certain there was another one in Aemolas' village and at least another one somewhere around Teron, but can't remember now.

 

[Tigranes]

Just finished a dumb merc playthrough, and christ, there's a lot of SP to go around. I had 8 Axe / 8 Block / 4 CS, 5 Streetwise, 6 Alchemy, 8 Crafting, and about 100 SP left over since I was already overpowered and bulldozing through combat. Seems like he could easily have become a bit more hybrid. Not sure yet whether it's to do with SP distribution later-game, and we'll have to see how it looks when you start with a true hybrid.

Collision is missing in a number of places. Roxor pointed out the Slums, but there's also other areas where it looks like it'd provide cover and it doesn't (e.g. the barrels in the middle of the room in the Forty Thieves Ganezzar hideout), places where you don't fight but you still have issues (you walk through bookshelves at bottom of Saross), and places where you're clearly around the corner of a wall but still get shot through (the broken walls and even the 'house' where you fight the Thieves' minions just before reaching Neros). The collision is also nonsensical in some places, e.g. the Outpost (the crossbowman on the platform can't hit you if you're behind the spiked fence to the right, but he can if you're behind the spiked fence to the left, even though the angles are identical) and the Bandit Camp (if you stand by the fence on the south side, e.g. by starting combat standing next to the right hand bowman, you can be hit from projectiles north of the fence.)