Together in Battle - the next strategy RPG from Telepath Tactics developer - now available on Early Access

[aweigh]

Currently, you can turn off the zoom-in and zoom-out and boost movement speed by up to 4X; it makes things go quite fast!

can one turn off the fag shit?

 

[Jenkem]

Remember that time in Fire Emblem when Marth fucked a unicorn and warned of the dangers of bigotry?

 

[aweigh]

the thing that keeps them from being a mad lib

but u are a mad lib

 

[Mustawd]

Currently, you can turn off the zoom-in and zoom-out and boost movement speed by up to 4X; it makes things go quite fast!

can one turn off the fag shit?

Craig Stern, this is also my question.

 

[vazha]

Is there a chance you'd add a game mode free of your romance stories [censured] "C&C" with just the combat and nothing but the combat?
Or just a skip the whole scene button for everything that happens out of the combat?

You can just click through and ignore it, but pretty much the same thing will happen as if you just mindlessly click through responses in Baldur's Gate: you're probably going to end up with pissed off party members that eventually leave. It doesn't stop being C&C just because you don't like the visual presentation or diversity in the cast. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Could you incorporate some characters / backgrounds that from your viewpoint are complete immoral racist & rapist & intolerant & insensitive & bigoted & whateverist assholes, so we normal people can play them? Please?

Craig Stern Please? I love playing your games for their battles and wealth of tactical approach, but the last games writing just... hurt my soul.

 

[Kalarion]

It's just incredible how retarded the conversation becomes when people get obsessed with detecting woke.

Oh fuck off. No one needs to be "obsessed" with detecting woke to see it here. It's on full and unashamed display. Craig has made effort to declare it, and he is proud of it. The pump has been primed for years in general, and it was primed for Sinister Designs in particular since the release of the Telepath Tactics Mission Statement:

4. The game’s politics are unusual. (

)
...Games symbolically represent a world, characters, and systems, and the player must mentally model them in order to interact successfully and meet their goals within the game world. Over time, this mental modeling can condition a player to reflexively employ those ways of thinking outside of the game space.

As a developer, I take this stuff seriously, and so I make an effort to act responsibly when I construct my characters and themes. Consequently, Telepath Tactics consciously sidesteps the traditional politics of the strategy RPG genre, which are seldom all that progressive.

Let’s look at class politics to start with...

...In short, protagonists in these games are overwhelmingly kings, princes, and people tasked with carrying out the will of kings and princes. These are games about the upper classes, and their plot lines mirror that focus... Telepath Tactics averts this tendency entirely... Telepath Tactics focuses on the dehumanization and exploitation of common people by private industry. Rather than spending its time romanticizing the bloody wars of the ruling classes, it touches on themes that are actually germane to most players’ lives.

But why stop at class politics? Telepath Tactics also has unusual gender politics. You surely don’t need me to recount the litany of regressive gender tropes that abound in games generally, with RPGs in particular suffering from the overuse of tropes such as the Damsel in Distress and Guys Smash, Girls Shoot.

Telepath Tactics doesn’t merely avoid a lazy reliance on gender stereotypes, however: it actively takes gender-related tropes and flips them around...

...Significantly, the game never explicitly calls attention to any of this. I think that’s important, because subverting all of these tropes without the game making a huge deal about doing it normalizes the treatment.

Emphasis and smiley mine.

Of the 6 points in that post, number 4 (the game's politics and religion) was by far the longest. Going solely by word count, the normalization and indoctrination (through subversion of non-progressive tropes) of woke politics was more important than strategic determinism, moddability, and an interesting world to explore combined. Word count is of course not a fair way to measure commitment to a particular ideal :D. But it is illustrative of where Craig's heart is; his political leanings and pedagogy are the most explored topic in that post.

Considering all of the above, Craig's politics and what they look like in his games are fully within scope for criticism, even from the top of your great and mighty hill of moral neutrality.

For the rest of the gameplay that I saw, everyone else has already made what critique I would have thought to add. The move to the new graphics engine was indeed a good choice, those fireballs look comfy.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Telepath Tactics focuses on the dehumanization and exploitation of common people by private industry.

neat, the dev just gave us the go ahead to pirate his games

 

[Craig Stern]

if you go with the Muh Realism card, you'd also have to explain how all those people coming from discrete population groups from all over the planet find themselves together to fight for the player. And same for the non-humans characters, who would have evolved in different areas from the humans and so on

They're showing up to fight in an internationally renowned gladiatorial tournament; it's pretty much the first thing the game tells you. (Oh, and there's no need to explain that for the non-human species; they are quite literally different species who can't crossbreed with humans. There is no need for geographic separation to explain phenotypical differences between them and humans, any more than you would need geographic separation to explain the differences between humans and...I don't know, pigeons or squirrels or what-have-you. They can and do occupy many of the same environments, but in different ecological niches.)

Could you incorporate some characters / backgrounds that from your viewpoint are complete immoral racist & rapist & intolerant & insensitive & bigoted & whateverist assholes, so we normal people can play them? Please?

Well yeah--asshole characters already definitely exist in the game. But you don't play as them: you just hire characters and then find out what they're like. If you want to personally be an asshole, well, all you have to do is make dickish decisions in the game's branching sidequests and events--just as in any WRPG.

 

[Alter Sack]

Why do you have to bring in current (more or less) political issues regarding the story?

I play RPGs as a form of escapism so that I can forget about the shitty real world and real life politics.

In the current political climate where political issues are permeating more and more aspects of real life it's especially annoying.

Sports and computer games are now the only things left for me to get a rest from this shit. But even that can't be left alone by some busybodies.

Furthermore I think that a computer game is a rather inadequate medium to seriously address these topics.

Exploitation of people by evil private corporations, man can it get more cliche?

 

[Joggerino]

Why do you have to bring in current (more or less) political issues regarding the story?

I play RPGs as a form of escapism so that I can forget about the shitty real world and real life politics.

In the current political climate where political issues are permeating more and more aspects of real life it's especially annoying.

Sports and computer games are now the only things left for me to get a rest from this shit. But even that can't be left alone by some busybodies.

Furthermore I think that a computer game is a rather inadequate medium to seriously address these topics.

Exploitation of people by evil private corporations, man can it get more cliche?

You wouldn't want to ask a woke person something like this, they have an answer to everything and it's as insane as you would expect. But I doubt Craig is really woke since they are big on guilt by association and engaging people here would be a big taboo. He's probably just left leaning/liberal.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's a fantasy universe, dude. Liberals are not a thing in this game. And you're going to get people with different skin colors in any realistic world where discrete human populations evolved with varying levels of exposure to sunlight (and thus, differing need for melanin to prevent melanoma and other skin cancers). That doesn't mean that this game has real-world racial politics in it.

Same deal for homosexuality: it occurs naturally at rates of up to 10% (see e.g.) across all cultures. So it's represented here too. That doesn't mean your characters are going to run around in Speedos, swiping on Grindr, organizing pride marches or what-have-you. They're just regular-ass people who have differing sexual preferences. There's nothing political about representing real human variation in a game set around a tournament with international reach.

Tbh, I don't even know what "obvious political charge" it is that you think this game has, but as the guy who actually made this thing, I'm telling you that you're making unwarranted assumptions. Maybe chill and wait for the game to actually come out so you can make an informed judgment.

Neat.
Will you be accurately representing female human strength in your game? Almost all male humans are stronger than >99% of female humans. Your average male human is stronger than most female human athletes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8477683

The women were approximately 52% and 66% as strong as the men in the upper and lower body respectively. The men were also stronger relative to lean body mass.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7253873

It was hypothesized that while men are significantly stronger than trained women athletes, such differences may be removed once body size characteristics are controlled. MANOVA and MANCOVA were utilized to test hypotheses. Results indicate that untrained men have greater upper and lower body strength than trained women athletes in terms of both absolute and relative strength.

To really put it into context: The absolute strongest female athletes in the world have a handgrip strength that's average for an untrained man
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17186303

The results of female national elite athletes even indicate that the strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men.

 

[aweigh]

Don't leave your kids around anyone who plays Together In Battle.

 

[Craig Stern]

stuff

That's all well and good, but this isn't an MMA sim: unarmed combat isn't a thing in these games (at least, not for the human characters).

I explained this back in the Telepath Tactics thread, but it's relevant to TiB, so I'll reprise it here. The weapons TiB characters come armed with are really quite light: about 2-3.5 pounds, historically. Even untrained modern adult women are more than strong enough to manipulate these weapons without issue. (Source: I own a couple of historical replica swords that my female friends have been able to use quite easily; and I've taken co-ed HEMA classes where I've witnessed the same thing.) But what about in combat? Well, a huge part of swordfighting centers on using leverage as a force multiplier: you can parry blows from stronger opponents without issue as long as you're catching the weak of their weapon with the strong of your own and directing the blow correctly. (Think The Viper vs. The Mountain.) That's 100% about technique and training.

Despite what fantasy-themed media might tell you, raw strength is really not super important for determining attack effectiveness either. It takes exceedingly little pressure to break human skin with a bladed weapon--and realistically, you're not getting through armor with a weapon like that regardless of how buff you are. After a certain point, added strength just doesn't help that much--and trying to use it to make a strike stronger can actively hinder. Since weapon quality, skill, and technique matter much more, both TT and TiB employ a damage model focusing on those factors.

Why do you have to bring in current (more or less) political issues regarding the story?

I'm not sure what this means. Are you asking about Telepath Tactics? 'Cause that's a different game with a different plot.

 

[Craig Stern]

things

I'm glad you like the look of the new engine! That article isn't a mission statement, though: as the first paragraph of the article states, it's just a list of angles the media can use to cover the game, written as part of a big marketing push. Given the media environment of the time, I thought some publications would take a stab at covering the game on political grounds. (Like literally, I wrote: "There are a number of critics out there doing really interesting work exploring the politics of video games....I would be delighted to see some of them critique Telepath Tactics.") This...did not work. Turns out, that crowd is mostly just interested in finding things to hate and dogpiling them.

Speaking of which: are we all done with the political purity tests? Can I go back to talking about TiB now?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Gay characters appear in the game at the same rate they appear in real life: 10% of the population. It's literally realism. If that hurts your fee fees, sorry, I don't know what to tell you.

Pretty sure that number is way, way high. I don't even think the gay rate of Millenials reaches that high, even though they soak up any woke bullshit that goes their way. In fact, there's this:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gay-population-by-state

Which kind of shows the effect of propeganda on culture in the United States. You'd think Brazil would be pretty gay, but the United States, after a good decade of gay shoved in our faces, is three times higher than Brazil with the U.S. having 4.5% identifying as gay. So, throwing out a number of 10% kind of proves the point of a lot of people in this thread.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

but this isn't an MMA sim: unarmed combat isn't a thing in these games

???
Grappling and unarmed fighting are an incredibly important part of melee combat. There's no manuscript worth reading that doesn't cover this. Even fencing renaissance fencing manuals covered it thoroughly.

I explained this back in the Telepath Tactics thread, but it's relevant to TiB, so I'll reprise it here. The weapons TiB characters come armed with are really quite light: about 2-3.5 pounds, historically. Even untrained modern adult women are more than strong enough to manipulate these weapons without issue. (Source: I own a couple of historical replica swords that my female friends have been able to use quite easily; and I've taken co-ed HEMA classes where I've witnessed the same thing.) But what about in combat? Well, a huge part of swordfighting centers on using leverage as a force multiplier: you can parry blows from stronger opponents without issue as long as you're catching the weak of their weapon with the strong of your own and directing the blow correctly. (Think The Viper vs. The Mountain.) That's 100% about technique and training.

If you've taken HEMA classes then you should be completely aware of how important grappling is. And as soon as the fight goes to the ground, it would be completely over.

 

[Craig Stern]

Grappling and unarmed fighting are an incredibly important part of melee combat. There's no manuscript worth reading that doesn't cover this. Even fencing renaissance fencing manuals covered it thoroughly.

Yes. But this is an RPG, not a Renaissance combat sim. Not many RPGs incorporate a grappling/wrestling system into their combat, and TiB doesn't either. So it's kind of a moot point.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Grappling and unarmed fighting are an incredibly important part of melee combat. There's no manuscript worth reading that doesn't cover this. Even fencing renaissance fencing manuals covered it thoroughly.

Yes. But this is an RPG, not a Renaissance combat sim. Not many RPGs incorporate a grappling/wrestling system into their combat, and TiB doesn't either. So it's kind of a moot point.

So why is your RPG focusing on simulating characteristics of the population then if you don't care enough to do it with combat?

 

[Craig Stern]

So why is your RPG focusing on simulating characteristics of the population then if you don't care enough to do it with combat?

Two reasons:

(1) This is a game focused on endless replayability. That means supporting as much character variety as possible to keep things from getting stale. Adding in a new system that actively makes half the characters non-viable in close quarters combat would work against that pretty hard.

(2) There's a pretty huge difference between flipping a sex preference boolean or picking a different skin palette versus coding a whole combat subsystem. If you've played Telepath Tactics or Together in Battle, you know that these games already have a ton of interlocking systems in play during combat. I know other RPG devs who have taken design inspiration from my games, but who still won't implement half the mechanics I do because of how absurdly hard it is to both code and bug test a possibility space that big. (Not gonna name names, but it's a thing.)

If I'm going to add in yet another subsystem to combat with the possibility of spawning unexpected bugs from here to kingdom come, it's gotta be because it's damned interesting, it plays well with the game's other mechanics, or both. This game's combat is all about tactical maneuvering and repositioning, and as such I've actively avoided mechanics that root multiple characters in place for turns on end. (I considered and rejected zone-of-control mechanics for similar reasons.)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So why is your RPG focusing on simulating characteristics of the population then if you don't care enough to do it with combat?

Two reasons:

(1) This is a game focused on endless replayability. That means supporting as much character variety as possible to keep things from getting stale. Adding in a new system that actively makes half the characters non-viable in close quarters combat would work against that pretty hard.

(2) There's a pretty huge difference between flipping a sex preference boolean or picking a different skin palette versus coding a whole combat subsystem. If you've played Telepath Tactics or Together in Battle, you know that these games already have a ton of interlocking systems in play during combat. I know other RPG devs who have taken design inspiration from my games, but who still won't implement half the mechanics I do because of how absurdly hard it is to both code and bug test a possibility space that big. (Not gonna name names, but it's a thing.)

If I'm going to add in yet another subsystem to combat with the possibility of spawning unexpected bugs from here to kingdom come, it's gotta be because it's damned interesting, it plays well with the game's other mechanics, or both. This game's combat is all about tactical maneuvering and repositioning, and as such I've actively avoided mechanics that root multiple characters in place for turns on end. (I considered and rejected zone-of-control mechanics for similar reasons.)

You're pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining.

Adding in a new system that actively makes half the characters non-viable in close quarters combat would work against that pretty hard.

You're the one that decided to defend an inclusion in the game with real world data. I merely pointed out that the meat and potatoes of the cRPG genre in the game doesn't pass that test.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I'm not sure what this means. Are you asking about Telepath Tactics? 'Cause that's a different game with a different plot.

I'm pretty sure he talks about your LGBT shit.
You might think it's a good idea because Shittywood turned into a giant circus but the Tactical RPG niche genre doesn't mix well but maybe you don't care much about sales.
I'm foreseeing mixed reviews, a lot of drama in steam forums, a lot of refunds and not much cash flowing but maybe you don't care about that.

Of course, i'd understand if you were funded by a LGBT lobby/fund, other than this, it makes no financial sense.

 

[Craig Stern]

You're the one that decided to defend an inclusion in the game with real world data. I merely pointed out that the meat and potatoes of the cRPG genre in the game doesn't pass that test.

That's not what "meat and potatoes" means. CRPGs almost never feature grappling! It is neither the meat nor the potatoes of cRPGs; it is, at best, a slice of lemon sometimes placed tastefully on the side of the plate so you can squeeze it over your dish if you desire.

I addressed the realism of the game's mechanics only because you were accusing the game of being politically charged based on unrelated National Library of Medicine studies. But realism, on its own, doesn't do the job of telling you what to include in a game. The fact is, no game can incorporate every factor that goes into real-life combat: the real world is too complex to simulate with that degree of precision. Inevitably, you must pick and choose those elements of reality you wish to represent. What's more, "realistic" doesn't necessarily mean "fun." It's the job of a designer to select elements that support the game's structure and which produce a fun interplay. With that in mind: TiB is a strategy RPG with proc gen characters and a social simulation layer. In my judgment, social interactions between men and women are just way too laden with the potential for interesting wrinkles and emergent drama to pass up for the sake of including mechanics that heavily disfavor female characters (and doubly so for mechanics that would remove tactical positioning decisions from the player). Sorry if you think that's, uh...leg piss? It's the truth, dude.

 

[Lutte]

you're not getting through armor with a weapon like that regardless of how buff you are

No, not with a sword, no, but polehammers/polaxes pointy ends can in fact get through plate armor (not like all people wore plate armor either way, that shit's expensive as fuck), and strength in sword fights among people who wear plate armor is VERY important considering the amount of grappling people do to get at the other person's weak point.



Well made plate armor has very few weak points. Hitting them is hard. So guess what happens in a melee duh? You grapple against your opponent trying to immobilize parts of him while you try to plunge your pointy end where it can do something. Because that's literally the only thing a sword can be used for if your opponent wears plate armor.

Which is why polearms and blunt weapons rules. Anyone hit in the head by a large mass will get a concussion whether their helmet is still in one piece by the end of it or not.

 

[almondblight]

Which kind of shows the effect of propeganda on culture in the United States. You'd think Brazil would be pretty gay, but the United States, after a good decade of gay shoved in our faces, is three times higher than Brazil with the U.S. having 4.5% identifying as gay. So, throwing out a number of 10% kind of proves the point of a lot of people in this thread.

That's LGBT. Gay/Lesbian rates in the U.S. are 2.1%, according to a recent Gallup poll, and that's higher than in the past. There's been a big uptick in the amount of people calling themselves bisexual, but if you look at marriage/cohabitation rates of the people identifying as bisexual the vast majority are with members of the opposite sex (17.2% are married to someone from the opposite sex spouse, 1% are married to someone from the same sex).

 

[Craig Stern]

Y'all realize that 10% is just a number I threw in there more or less arbitrarily, right? It will take literally 10 seconds to adjust it up or down. The game is still in alpha. Chill.