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What are your thoughts on significant time skips to facilitate better C&C? That's the way I found personally most feasible to show radical changes based on the player choices.
It worked ok in DA2, but the city itself never changed. If the changes are significant (like Gaelius' kingdom vs Meru's theocracy), it will still require too much work to implement it as you'd need two different states of the world, two different sets of problems, vastly different quests, etc. We did experiment with parallel questlines and such but the change we're discussing would go far beyond that.
If dialogue or text is the only outcome to C&C the text needs to be incredible and touching on a personal level.
Also, yeah, I am looking forward to a negative review. Not because I dislike you - honestly, you of all people should know I respect you. But that doesn't mean I like this game in particular. Like I've said before it takes the parts of Fallout that, to me where the least interesting, and builds on them: slides, single-character combat. It also uses a free camera, which makes me nauseous. That doesn't mean it might not be a great RPG, but it's not one I am gonna play or enjoy. But I still bought it and hope you keep making more, only I also hope you do some for other RPG subgenres, too. I'd like to see what you can do with a dungeon crawler.
Why?
I'm genuinely curious because this seems to be a common complaint and I just can't get my head around it.
What is the problem with being able to move your camera around as you see fit ?
Oh and I thoroughly recognize AoD tactical combat is not any worse than almost all RPGs.
It's just that I've already criticized those so much that I'm tired of getting into it. Only one I really like is KotC. ToEE close but it lacks a good interface. DOS also has good potential in terms of mechanics but execution needs a lot of improvement. I don't know what else... Blackguards really isn't bad, but there are unnecessarily tedious encounters.
Actually some console RPGs are pretty good too: Gladius is one, Valkyria Chronicles is decent. Maybe FF-Tactics, but I haven't really gotten into it.
For tactical combat, one of the major things I like is the addition of uncertainty (I don't mean RNG) in combat, where the decision isn't obvious, that you have multiple (3+ is ideal) possible decisions that may or may not work.
Where you have to have a plan in terms of thinking ahead.
Secondly, what I mean by position being important, is rather about fighting over position, or in other words maneuvering. In other words, it's not just about choosing the right position, but about you and the enemy vying for the same optimal position. That also leads to the decision whether to emphasize position vs emphasizing a direct kill advantage. Maneuver vs attrition.
In Chess this is referred to "strategy vs. tactics." Both try to gain a similar advantage, but in different ways. A strategic playstyle hopes to be attack enemy once a clear positional advantage is set, but is willing to take short term sacrifices of pieces. However a tactical playstyle tries to attack quickly and use a numbers advantage a propagate further kills, but is willing to sacrifice position which may backfire if his position is so disadvantageous that the enemy can overcome the propagation in the middish-laterish game.
Back to AoD examples, there should be more decisions than: against dodgers you do "this,"against blockers you do "that." Instead it should be, against dodgers you may do "this" but you may also do "that" and you have to decide whether "this" or "that" more effective, taking into account things like whether a short term advantage is more possible/beneficial than setting up for a long term advantage that is more possible/beneficial.
I don't want one or two choices. I want a variety of choices where you are uncertain which choice is better.
AGAIN AoD is still no worse than like 90% of other CRPGs. I'm just talking about it because... I'm being aspie right now.
---
My current main hope actually is Numenera, because phase-based combat is very new to CRPGS and has potential to be done well. It may bring something similar to Frozen Synapse, which would be cool as fuck.
It's fine if Roxor doesn't like the game but for me this is the most engrossing game I've played since Bloodlines. It's the best RPG I've played in the last 11 years.
I enjoy the dialogue and writing (particularly the fragmented lore, and snippets that have that Lovecraft feel to them), the reactivity (even outside of the main questlines, there's something you can do if you don't kill a bandit leader, different outcomes with Miltiades, helmet of destiny dialogues etc), the combat is tactical (I still think it's more tactical than BG2, in AOD understanding the system lets you build hybrid characters and trying different options to get different outcomes, in BG2 understanding the systems just leads to ROLF stomping everything, Inquisitor to destroy mages, magic protection scroll for demilich, etc), all the various endings, also all the various weapons and combat builds you can do (I'm looking forward to see the possibilities for party building when the dungeon crawler comes out).
I'm happy to put it there with my favourites (Original Fallouts, Planescape, Bloodlines and Gothic 2 ), congrats to Iron Tower on a job well done.
Which is no different than saying that you don't give a shit about dialogues because they are massively overrated and RPGs should only be about combat. We all have personal preferences and there are things that I care about a lot (like setting in RPGs, for example) and things that I don't care about it like Bioware's personality dialogue options, which I fucking hated in Shadowrun, btw. Still, it's nothing but a personal preference, not a design flaw.
I'm a fan of AOD and it has strengths but I just can't agree with this. Whether or not the combat is "better" can be a matter of opinion, but BG2 is geared towards combat in a way that AOD simply isn't. As soon as you admit that BG2 has more classes, more spells, more monsters etc., you have to admit that there is more tactical variety, provided implenentation isn't completely retarded. And while RTwP has its flaws, the implementation of it in BG2 is not completely retarded.
With all the variety you don't just get battles decided by melee brawn, you also get things like
- mage battles (with huge differences based on levels) with selective stripping of mage protection layers,
- battles decided by backstabs and traps,
- cleric use and tactical healing,
- use of 1/day items/HLAs (if playing with ToB) or other limited skills,
- party positioning to protect squishies or exploit choke points and ability/spell AOE (and both kiting and rushing),
- selective buffing to counter damage types (or builds based on different resistances, such as damage resistance/magic resistance or an elements resistant char that uses items triggering elemental area effects),
- different setups of spell orders in battle, and spell synergies to maximize potential (for example affecting saving throws, mobility or resists),
- battle preparation that includes which spells and contingencies/spell triggers to prepare and which buffs to spend,
- selective equipping of gear,
- selective use of damage types (like hitting high level enemies with stat drain weapons, lowering spell resistance drain, debuffs etc.)
- a huge variety of summons with different uses (like spell drain, ele resist, spell resist, phys resist).
Now multiply those things with the huge differences in classes, the addition of kits, the possibility of varied solo builds and vastly different enemy strengths, and you have combat that is on a different tactical level. If the problem is difficulty, you can limit yourself with difficulty level, how often you sleep, number of party members or, best of all, mods like SCS (yes it's a mod, but it's a mob that wouldn't be possible within the AOD systems). Try taking out the Twisted Rune solo in the first chapter and tell me that it's as easy as picking your nose.
I would make a detailed comment about this, but I don't have the energy. Instead, I will just say that despite all these options, you can blow most of your enemies to smithereens with a few spells or simply smash them with brute force. So you have all these options, but at the same time, they are not really that special, because the game allows you to do everything being just an one trick pony.
If Roguey was posting shit about grognards and Sawyer, would you take him seriously, too? Please, don't feed the fucking troll. Trolls don't give a shit about arguing, all they want is dissent and irritation. In order to succeed, they need your attention. Just ignore them. You could just as well trying to debate with a stand up comedian over the inaccuracies of a joke. Life is too short to waste with these people. Fuck them.
I mean in AoD specifically, where gameplay primarily consists of the interactions in turn-based combat/CYOA encounters.
I don't think it's unfair to be upset that, considering the focus of the game on reactivity, you don't get to play through the consequences of major choices in actual game scenarios.
If Roguey was posting shit about grognards and Sawyer, would you take him seriously, too? Please, don't feed the fucking troll. Trolls don't give a shit about arguing, all they want is dissent and irritation. In order to succeed, they need your attention. Just ignore them. You could just as well trying to debate with a stand up comedian over the inaccuracies of a joke. Life is too short to waste with these people. Fuck them.
lmao. Why do you even post here? ITS forums too slow? You sound exactly like the kind of person people try to avoid when they flee from official communities to a place like the codex. Harsh comments = nasty trolls!!! ;(
Thank you for the free lecture! Do you think this top ten list of strategy games is good? Everything I read about JA2 is impressive. I think I will play this before other cRPGs of my "To Play" list.
I will say this - if you think talky playthroughs don't have enough CC, you evidently haven't played the game enough. Reactivity is there, a lot of it is just not immediately apparent. If you replay the game with the same class, things may turn out quite differently from what you expected.
Normally that sort of invisible C&C would certainly be a flaw, but if you're playing full pacifist, how exactly would you expect this to work? The only "difference" C&C can make for a pacifist, is you'll be shown different text at some point, because reading text is all you actually ever do.
#1 complaint I've had while playing a full pacifist, is that's its a completely reactive (don't confuse with reactivity) experience. The only challenge you'll ever face, is figuring out how much to raise Persuasion. But given how many different talky playthroughs you can attempt (Merchant, Praetor, Thief, maybe something else), talky builds are an interesting addition to the game, especially since you can pretty much speed-run them.
The "true" AoD experience is making hybrid builds. That shit really requires you to know the game in and out, plan your characters carefully, know how to squizze as much SP as you can out of the game, and so on. Both full combat and full talky paths are mere tutorials that prepare you for the real deal.
Choices and consequences in this game regress with time except for inaccessible areas due to lack of Lore/Crafting. They are very significant during Character Creation and Teron and become a lot weaker and less impacting for the immediate game experience(rather than storyfag stuff) around Ganezzar. Nevertheless, the situations the PC needs to overcome change significantly depending on character and which faction they join, or which faction they piss off. An agent of the Merchant Guild may lack freedom of action a lot of times, but there is one chance to betray them in Maadoran at least, and designing a game like this with the degree of reactivity necessary to allow massive world changes within the time frame of it would come at the price of one more decade of development limbo minimum or eternal vaporware given how long it took for it to finally be released.
IMO it's somewhere between and , with genuinely challenging optional combat, good to good for what it is* writing and its range of C&C starting from character creation, it is worth its price but not the greatest thing ever some of the Iron Tower crowd believes in or the "overrated piece of shit" FeelTheRads and Darth Roxor appear to consider it like. And it's different from most games outside of some pure CYOAs. There aren't many games with the quantity of handcrafted C&C AoD features, and to go farther it almost always requires procedurally generated content such as in NEO Scavenger which arguably has more Choices and Consequences than The Age of Decadence, but in almost purely systemic and procedural ways save for a few CYOA sequences in the same game. Here are some of the shortcomings I see with AoD:
One of the surviving pre-war artifacts the characters with enough skills to gain access to gives no real choices for those with the Lore needed to activate it. You can either bring it to Ganezzar or do nothing with it regardless of the fact Daratan would love to have it. It almost feels like a "DLC area" from how little role something like it plays in the rest of the game.
Some of the factions would have very little motivation to care about the temple, but nevertheless you are forced to find it and there is no alternative, no way to even pass a skill check to convince a NPC of the futility of trying to locate it. It feels a bit tacked, specially for characters without lore skills.
It's a pity that Kingmaker is nothing but a red herring, with the only real consequence being the chance to avoid a somewhat difficult battle.
The Thieves Guild has too broad and exclusive skill checks and after Teron becomes a serious disappointment, when side opportunities for thievery go down dramatically and they start looking really like nothing more than less capable Boatmen, where hybrid or, to a much worse degree, master thieves who prefer to act like ghosts instead of making loud, noisy and messy battles hit a literal wall and balancing between minimum skills to progress and combat abilities is extremely meta.
Lore/Crafting is overused to the point crafting becomes a near mandatory skill for a Loremaster, which is otherwise is a complete waste for a diplomatic rather than hybrid or combat-focused Loremaster.
Returning to Teron in mid or late game feels very pointless because there is almost nothing new to be done there besides buying more bolas and nets.
Heavily armored dodgers have a massive advantage over lightly armored ones, specially with crafting or one of the low armor penalty unique armors.
Other than for the final optional battle where the higher base skill makes a serious difference and for hastati, blockers are underpowered. If armor penalty still only applied to dodge, then I believe it would be more balanced because even without armor penalty, you're still sacrificing THC and have a chance of still taking damage in spite of the shield..
Throwing is as useless as it was in Fallout 1 and 2.
The lack of a party limits significantly tactical options in combat. What you do before the battle, from equipment to distributing skill points, has the largest influence by far in your chances of winning it, except for a few encounters (Hermon in the Slums), but usually there is only one really useful tactical move to increase odds of victory in most of such harder encounters
RNG tends to be way too significant in combat, specially in early game when neither side usually has a THC above 60%
There is only one overarching plot and there is no way to skip the main linear exploration: Teron -> Maadoran -> Ganezzar -> Temple, differently from Fallout 1 and 2. Drifters may attempt to stay guildless forever, but it's the nightmare mode.
There are other flaws as well, and some bugs yet to be fixed, but it's a good game.
*
Ancient Aliens and Stargate SG-1 also are good for what they are.
Normally that sort of invisible C&C would certainly be a flaw, but if you're playing full pacifist, how exactly would you expect this to work? The only "difference" C&C can make for a pacifist, is you'll be shown different text at some point, because reading text is all you actually ever do.
The thing is, how MG questline does it is very boring. The build is intuitive, the skillpoints are abundant, you're never in any real danger to fuck up after Teron, and there's not much difference in how you can tackle things. Yes, you get to participate in some coprorate shit, which is its saving grace, but as far as CYOAs go it's nothing to write home about. For contrast, try playing a pacifist Thief. You get options, you get uncertainity of where to put your hard-earned SP (though it's a bit too much with some things), you get failure states and everything MG doesn't have.
lmao. Why do you even post here? ITS forums too slow? You sound exactly like the kind of person people try to avoid when they flee from official communities to a place like the codex. Harsh comments = nasty trolls!!! ;(
Yeah, I fucking love the game and I find Lurker King's blind defense of the game far more irritating than Darth Roxor's edgy criticism. I liked the game more than Cassidy did, but I can't really disagree with any of the shortcomings that he pointed out either.
The thing is, how MG questline does it is very boring. The build is intuitive, the skillpoints are abundant, you're never in any real danger to fuck up after Teron, and there's not much difference in how you can tackle things.
Playing a pacifist merchant doesn't mean that you can only tackle things in one way. Sure, you put point to persuasion and streetwise, but I for example also dabbled in alchemy and crafting, so when the time came, I could solve quest otherwise than persuasion. Let's say I had to get an item from somebody, but my persuasion and trading skill was not high enough to do that. So I just went and fixed the machine I needed the item to myself. Or crafted the missiing item. Sure, these are all presented through dialogue screens, but you have the option to use different skills of your character just like a hybrid thief for example.
I believe you should learn to read, J_C, I was talking specifically about MG questline, which doesn't involve fixing of any kind. All you have are your talkiing skills checks and a straight way until the split in the very end. Extra shit like Saross is available to any character good enough to pass skillchecks and doesn't matter in the discussion of guild\house quests.
and 
, with genuinely challenging optional combat, good to good for what it is* writing and its range of C&C starting from character creation, it is worth its price but not the greatest thing ever some of the Iron Tower crowd believes in or the "overrated piece of shit" FeelTheRads and Darth Roxor appear to consider it like. And it's different from most games outside of some pure CYOAs. There aren't many games with the quantity of handcrafted C&C AoD features, and to go farther it almost always requires procedurally generated content such as in NEO Scavenger which arguably has more Choices and Consequences than The Age of Decadence, but in almost purely systemic and procedural ways save for a few CYOA sequences in the same game. Here are some of the shortcomings I see with AoD:
