Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[likaq]

is there a steam page yet?

 

[Infinitron]

is there a steam page yet?

No, but when it does show up it'll probably be here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/272270/

 

[DosBuster]

lol I'm pretty sure this isn't intentional but I've seen numerous characters talk about "decline" and one mention "the age of decadence".

 

[Infinitron]

lol I'm pretty sure this isn't intentional but I've seen numerous characters talk about "decline" and one mention "the age of decadence".

Screenshots, please

 

[DosBuster]

lol I'm pretty sure this isn't intentional but I've seen numerous characters talk about "decline" and one mention "the age of decadence".

Screenshots, please

It's nothing special and you can find it yourself.

What is interesting is that (minor conversational spoiler):

Spoiler

A lady in front of the council building called me Adahn and mentioned a lot of things that makes me think there's a deeper connection to Planescape than what we first thought.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't have the beta dude.

Oh hey, look, Disunity now supports Unity 5: https://github.com/ata4/disunity/releases/tag/v0.4.0

Let's extract some portraits.

EDIT: Ah crap, it's not fully supported yet

 

[Echo Mirage]

OK. Has anyone been able to complete the fight...

Spoiler

In the changed gods sanctuary? Its like some school children's game fighting these Abykos. They have 4 phases of which you can only hit them during one of them. Then after their first area of effect attack they become completely incorporeal. No attack can hit them and no attack can hurt them. They just spam area of effect or melee attacks over and over.

 

[DosBuster]

So I'm dumb and I can't figure out how to...

Spoiler

Fix the clock? It mentions a tidal burst but I don't get a dialogue option to perform one?

 

[Echo Mirage]

So I'm dumb and I can't figure out how to...

Spoiler

Fix the clock? It mentions a tidal burst but I don't get a dialogue option to perform one?

I don't remember that part.

Spoiler

After speaking with the female cult leader I just examined the clock and got a flashback. Then it told me that objects in the area had become active. Go to each and match the correct dates to each stone. And that fixed it for me.

 

[DosBuster]

Alright, decided to stop playing, it has some great promise and the content (which is the element that has the most polish) is pretty good. That being said, I don't think they should release this on Early Access for at least another month. While the content side of things is there the systems side is very much unfinished. Trading isn't implemented, nothing is really explained and there are a lot of critical and blocker bugs.

If you're not saving ever 5-10 minutes you highly risk losing progress, you'll randomly lose all input and be forced to quit the game completely and reload before input is restored.

Quests don't "finish" they end story-wise but the journal stays on the last objective which is annoying since the journal doesn't have a filter for quests yet.

I'm pretty sure when my attributes were at -1 I was able to roll a critical success for every Effort task.

I definitely think this will be an October release for sure, it can't go into November - December since then it has to compete with Blockbuster titles and any earlier it won't have the polish it deserves.

EDIT: Warning! If you do not have more than 10gb of RAM you should not play. The game was using up to 7.5 gb at times during exploration.

 

[Gruncheon]

If you're eager for writing criticism, I'll give an example of what I would consider overwriting.

First couple of screens in the opening:

Spoiler

"The wind buffets and burns your eyes, but you don't need to see the details of the far-away ground to know that you're in serious trouble. You won't survive a fall from this stratospheric height (a part of your frantic mind babbles that technically you probably fell from a thermospheric height)."

Bleh. All the writer needs to get across here is the PC is falling from a great height. "Stratospheric" conveys this very well. Tossing in a parenthetical with another Greek-rooted word is inelegant at best.

Does the fact the PC fell from the thermosphere have some relevance to the story? If not, make that sentence go away.

To be honest, the little aside in parentheses is a much-needed bit of levity in a game like this, where you're reading reams upon reams of dense text with made-up words. Probably the bigger problem is what the other posters have identified: the overwriting. It's imprecise and relies too much on unnecessary adjectives. I'm not sure rushing air would buffet and burn at the same time, and the alliteration seems a bit amateurish. There's no need to be told that the ground is 'far-away' or that the trouble is 'serious'. Of course your mind is 'frantic' in the situation and having two adverbs, 'technically' and 'probably' in there weakens the entire sentence, it'd be fine as "a part of your mind interjects that - technically - you're falling from a thermospheric height"

I do like the writing so far though, it's just I have a feeling my brain will white-out pretty quickly from reading so many dense and verbose passages.

 

[DosBuster]

I found that only the opening section of the game carried that writing style, after that it's mostly just dialogue and some descriptive prose.

 

[likaq]

Narrator voice

 

[Fry]

I found that only the opening section of the game carried that writing style, after that it's mostly just dialogue and some descriptive prose.

This. It does get better after the first bit.

Unfortunately, it's been voice acted so taking another pass at the opening might not be an option. Though the narrator stumbles over his words once or twice, so it might be a good idea anyway.

 

[---]

So this beta is overall good? I'm glad to read this

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Unfortunately, it's been voice acted so taking another pass at the opening might not be an option. Though the narrator stumbles over his words once or twice, so it might be a good idea anyway.

That's why voice acting can be a bad choice even if there are resources for it.

 

[Daedalos]

So this beta is overall good? I'm glad to read this

Yes, the beta is pretty cool. Most real complaints so far have been about the writing (which is IMO fine and good so far) and too much information given to the player at an early stage (I disagree). Also, people seem to have a problem with the companions (SJW / not weird enough) and also being introduced too early

Other than that, the combat, the ui all need alot more work. But still, it plays "ok", it isn't obstructing in any real way

 

[Irenaeus III]

Seems like a shitton of complaints.

I still didn't get around to playing this, but I had a great time with the alpha.

 

[---]

Thanks, it's quite refreshing to read impressions that doesn't take in consideration fucking - and disgusting - SJW 'problems' :D

 

[MRY]

Anyway, I'm not blaming anyone here. It's my shortcoming, not yours.

I wanted to revisit this because I realized I had neglected to say something important here. (Or, important to me, anyway. Like everything else I post in this thread, I'm writing in my own capacity, not as the Mouth of Fargo.)

I strongly feel that when someone doesn't like my work, it is my fault, not theirs. When someone doesn't understand the mechanics of a puzzle in Primordia, or misses what I thought to be an obvious plot thread, or whatever, what that means is that my work failed to reach them. Obviously, nothing can reach everyone, but that just means that human beings are doomed to fail, it's just a matter of mitigating that failure as much as possible. It is no good for me to say, "How could he not understand me? I was shouting as loud as I could in his face?" Or "I kept hitting it with a hammer but it wouldn't go in -- stupid bolt." For some creators -- like Vince -- that kind of mentality may be critical to maintaining the integrity of his vision. But for me, it would just be an excuse to evade criticism.

For example, I've read lots of things with strange words that have drawn me in so that, despite being flummoxed by the language, I kept going. Sometimes they were so good that they made me linger over the words I didn't know to try and master them. In the Meres I've written, if someone gets sick of my word-choice and that closes his mind to the narrative, that's on me. It might be a problem with the word-choice, it might be a problem with the narrative. But there should be something there to reach the player so that his engagement isn't broken. Which is to say, I don't think writers should write exclusively to the least common denominator (although, IMHO, the pejorative use of that term is silly -- building from universal, shared qualities is a good way to get initial buy in, and then you guide the reader to appreciating your idiosyncrasies), more that I think the writing should be throwing out a variety of hooks in hopes that at least some will snag the reader.

I've read through the (many) comments in this thread and the other one. I don't really think it's useful for me to respond to questions about the character designs or the overall narrative. The game needs to meet those arguments, not me, and in any case it's hard to respond without spoiling stuff. I do enjoy engaging on the more specific stuff.

Incidentally, DosBuster seems not have noticed a couple of easter eggs I threw in, but sadly seems to have missed my favorite of the bunch. . . .

 

[Prime Junta]

A'ight, played some more.

There are some areas that are between moderately and really neat, Undercity for example. The infodumping and hand-holding however continues. First thing -- literally -- you see when you get into Sagus Cliffs is a helpful greeter to helpfully offers to help you by explaining all about the city's districts and stuff, and doesn't even want to be paid. He's standing right in front of the entrance, like, specifically for you. This is really clumsy compared to PS:T's "Tout! Tout!" who you could, you know, approach and pay for general information if you want it. And the same thing is repeating itself all the time. Seems like everyone I talk to is happy to give me a dissertation about his/her/hir/its people in excruciating and irrelevant detail: if I talk to a fish-headed person I do not need to be informed that she "has temporarily chosen to be female." I don't want to fuck her (or steal her eggs for caviar) so her sex/gender and whether it's temporary or permanent is completely irrelevant, and she looks like a freakin' fish for crying out loud. It's doing that kind of thing all the time -- infodumping, spoon-feeding, and handholding.

The quest structure is really hand-holdy as well. I'm spoon-fed objectives ("Find Matkina"), and it just so happens that there are scads of people who have the information I want, but they want me to run an errand before they give it to me, and it also just so happens that these errands are all neatly tied to The Changing God and my general objectives. They're all just standing there waiting for me to show up, and their objectives inexplicably mesh perfectly with mine. That's downright cack-handed.

On the positive side, I stepped into some goo which zeroed my Might pool so I figured I'll take an extra rest, and consequently Something Bad happened while I was napping and now I'm in trouble with one of the people for whom I'm supposed to run errands. That was neat. Also there does seem to be a quite a bunch of different ways to approach probelms, which is also neat.

Soooo.... I'm digging the premise and the background, but the presentation so far is just plain bad. I don't have the space to discover or figure out stuff by myself; I'm having my nose rubbed in it all the time.

Mechanically, this game is really RNG-based, and I'm having to actively resist the temptation to save-scum. Task resolution is trinary (fail, success, critical success), with the probabilty for success reported right in the UI. This makes it really tempting to game the system by saving before attempting any challenging interaction.

Again, maybe it'll get better later on but so far CMcC and others I am disappoint. This isn't horrible by any means, but it's more Planescape: Torment pastiche/fanfic than the genuine spiritual successor I was hoping for.

So far.

 

[Fairfax]

I love that response.

"Not many complaints, really...just the writing,plot, pace, companions, combat and the UI."

I'll post my impressions later, but although I'm fairly skeptical about the game myself, I doubt there's enough to judge the plot and companions. I've been reading the game's docs and their personal stories can change quite a lot.

 

[Irenaeus III]

When someone doesn't understand the mechanics of a puzzle in Primordia, or misses what I thought to be an obvious plot thread, or whatever, what that means is that my work failed to reach them.

(...)

Incidentally, DosBuster seems not have noticed a couple of easter eggs I threw in, but sadly seems to have missed my favorite of the bunch. . . .

Primordia was awesome, I'm sure your writing will be good here too, Yohe. Here's a tip: Don't listen to DosBuster

I love that response.

"Not many complaints, really...just the writing,plot, pace, companions, combat and the UI."

I don't ignore this clown for entertainment purposes.

 

[Infinitron]

There are some areas that are between moderately and really neat, Undercity for example. The infodumping and hand-holding however continues. First thing -- literally -- you see when you get into Sagus Cliffs is a helpful greeter to helpfully offers to help you by explaining all about the city's districts and stuff, and doesn't even want to be paid. He's standing right in front of the entrance, like, specifically for you. This is really clumsy compared to PS:T's "Tout! Tout!" who you could, you know, approach and pay for general information if you want it. And the same thing is repeating itself all the time. Seems like everyone I talk to is happy to give me a dissertation about his/her/hir/its people in excruciating and irrelevant detail: if I talk to a fish-headed person I do not need to be informed that she "has temporarily chosen to be female." I don't want to fuck her (or steal her eggs for caviar) so her sex/gender and whether it's temporary or permanent is completely irrelevant, and she looks like a freakin' fish for crying out loud. It's doing that kind of thing all the time -- infodumping, spoon-feeding, and handholding.

Eric Fenstermaker gets the last laugh?

 

[ArchAngel]

A'ight, played some more.

There are some areas that are between moderately and really neat, Undercity for example. The infodumping and hand-holding however continues. First thing -- literally -- you see when you get into Sagus Cliffs is a helpful greeter to helpfully offers to help you by explaining all about the city's districts and stuff, and doesn't even want to be paid. He's standing right in front of the entrance, like, specifically for you. This is really clumsy compared to PS:T's "Tout! Tout!" who you could, you know, approach and pay for general information if you want it. And the same thing is repeating itself all the time. Seems like everyone I talk to is happy to give me a dissertation about his/her/hir/its people in excruciating and irrelevant detail: if I talk to a fish-headed person I do not need to be informed that she "has temporarily chosen to be female." I don't want to fuck her (or steal her eggs for caviar) so her sex/gender and whether it's temporary or permanent is completely irrelevant, and she looks like a freakin' fish for crying out loud. It's doing that kind of thing all the time -- infodumping, spoon-feeding, and handholding.

Sounds like a game you white knighted - PoE. Funny.