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

[Zed]

Fun fact: Obsidian stole inXile's art director: https://touch.www.linkedin.com/?sessionid=6176350419235061&as=false&rs=false&can=https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-nesler-469773#profile/1892817/name:ufUT

That was a pretty good headhunt, leaving inXile with these chumps https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxx-kaufman-47b9a74 http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,205213/

I didn't even know they had art directors. I assumed they had regular artists just do whatever. They're like... the Herve brothers of art direction.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

What people are complaining about is beyond me. The "UI" complaints - do you people also complain about a book's cover?

Yes? And if I was in charge of book cover art or UI development I'd be glad someone actually cares about my work.

This stawman is so boring and weak that I don't even want to answer, but ok, look. How many times have you posted on goodreads anything along the lines of "it's a good book, but i just couldn't read it with that ugly book cover, sorry the book gets 0 stars from me"? If the answer is "0", then don't even bother trying to trick me that you care about book covers, cause you don't. As long as the UI is 1) functional, 2) doesn't look like some indie shit out of Prosper's mind and 3) behaves in a very expected way you're used to, then it has fulfilled all its functions. It's a bonus if it's an extremely beautiful UI, but that's it. This UI is good looking. Claiming otherwise is just pathetic, cause You know and I know that it, at the very least, looks professional. You don't like it? Tough. But that's just tastes.

 

[Roguey]

How could you not expect quality art direction from the guy who brought us http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/File:MB2.jpeg and http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/File:Elite_guard_RTCW.jpg

 

[Excidium II]

This stawman is so boring and weak that I don't even want to answer, but ok, look. How many times have you posted on goodreads anything along the lines of "it's a good book, but i just couldn't read it with that ugly book cover, sorry the book gets 0 stars from me"? If the answer is "0", then don't even bother trying to trick me that you care about book covers, cause you don't. As long as the UI is 1) functional, 2) doesn't look like some indie shit out of Prosper's mind and 3) behaves in an expected way you're used to, then it has fulfilled all its functions. It's a bonus if it's an extremely beautiful UI, but that's it. This UI is good looking. Claiming otherwise is just pathetic, cause You know and I know that it at the very least looks professional. You don't like it? Tough. But that's just tastes.

Is anybody even saying that, master of hyperbole? "UI sucks not playing lol"

it's that kind of thing that has to be almost impossibly bad to be a dealbreaker. But it's there and oughta get criticism like everything else.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Is anybody even saying that, master of hyperbole?

There were some strong reactions, yes.

 

[Excidium II]

How could you not expect quality art direction from the guy who brought us http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/File:MB2.jpeg and http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/File:Elite_guard_RTCW.jpg

Ain't nothing wrong with the 2nd pic. All women should have nazi catsuits.

 

[Roguey]

Ain't nothing wrong with the 2nd pic. All women should have nazi catsuits.

Those heels are junk.

 

[Zed]

As long as the UI is 1) functional, 2) doesn't look like some indie shit out of Prosper's mind and 3) behaves in a very expected way you're used to, then it has fulfilled all its functions. It's a bonus if it's an extremely beautiful UI, but that's it. This UI is good looking. Claiming otherwise is just pathetic, cause You know and I know that it, at the very least, looks professional. You don't like it? Tough. But that's just tastes.

All aspects of a game can be more than the bare minimum, with a little effort and good ideas. That's usually what makes games great.
I don't know what you're comparing this interface to but it's far from good-looking. I'm guessing you're not much for UI/UX -- maybe not much for art in general? You're a bit of a philistine?

The interface in a game is much more than what a cover is for a book and you're a psychopath if you think otherwise. It's an insane comparison to draw. Are you a lunatic?


Anyway, it's an early version of the UI.

Spoiler

they said the same about WL2 and it still launched looking like ass

 

[Roguey]

Wasteland 2's UI was like that bit in that Simpsons/Critic crossover episode where Burns says "We did 20 takes and that was the best one."

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Zed , it's so weird to hear people complain about UI in 2016 where most games are indie, with their indie shitty UI. And this one is professional.

And no, UI doesn't make great games in the slightest, the content does. An easy example is Dark Souls. The UI was a from horrible PC port and yet the game achieved true greatness.

You say I'm a psychopath for thinking that UI isn't all that. But it depends heavily on the game (some games are made up of UI 100%, others are 10% UI etc), and I think in this game the UI isn't very important. The writing, the music, the atmosphere, the mechanics are important. Not the UI, and not even the graphics (although the beautiful graphics do help with immersion, that's for sure). Or actually one UI element is important - the font, and it's good.

What is it exactly that you despise about this UI? I don't even know, genuinely have no clue. I'll try to guess.
- The color palette? It's just a color. Original Torment had grayish green palette fitting the drab looking world, and this one has purple that fits best the scify-ish setting of Numenera.
- The general look? In certain aspects, like the inventory grid, TToN's UI looks almost identical to that of Kotor, yet I doubt that you complained so vehemently about Kotor's UI, you probably just played and enjoyed it.
... I don't even know what else to think of.

Like, I know why I hate BGEE's UI - it's blurry and indie looking. TToN's UI is sharp and smooth, professional, fits the setting. So what is it exactly that's bothering you?

 

[Fry]

 

[Prime Junta]

The UI is clearly unfinished, with pretty basic stuff missing. There aren't any key mappings (C for character sheet, I for inventory, J for journal etc.), the icons have no relation to the functions (I'm always staring at it for a couple of seconds to figure out which one's the journal and which one's the character sheet, and then click the wrong one), and so on.

I'm quite sure inXile will fix those, as it's so elementary, so I haven't been complaining here.

 

[Zed]

Zed , it's so weird to hear people complain about UI in 2016 where most games are indie, with their indie shitty UI. And this one is professional.

And no, UI doesn't make great games in the slightest, the content does. An easy example is Dark Souls. The UI was a from horrible PC port and yet the game achieved true greatness.

You say I'm a psychopath for thinking that UI isn't all that. But it depends heavily on the game (some games are made up of UI 100%, others are 10% UI etc), and I think in this game the UI isn't very important. The writing, the music, the atmosphere, the mechanics are important. Not the UI, and not even the graphics (although the beautiful graphics do help with immersion, that's for sure). Or actually one UI element is important - the font, and it's good.

What is it exactly that you despise about this UI? I don't even know, genuinely have no clue. I'll try to guess.
- The color palette? It's just a color. Original Torment had grayish green palette fitting the drab looking world, and this one has purple that fits best the scify-ish setting of Numenera.
- The general look? In certain aspects, like the inventory grid, TToN's UI looks almost identical to that of Kotor, yet I doubt that you complained so vehemently about Kotor's UI, you probably just played and enjoyed it.
... I don't even know what else to think of.

Like, I know why I hate BGEE's UI - it's blurry and indie looking. TToN's UI is sharp and smooth, professional, fits the setting. So what is it exactly that's bothering you?

It's not sharp, smooth nor professional.
It looks like a midi player from the 90s.

I'm not talking about the HUD portion of the UI, by the way. Not the dialogue stuff. I'm talking about the menu stuff, character screens, and so on. Probably the most unfinished bits.

I don't think the UI will make or break the game. But I will call it out on amateurish design because they're actually paying people to do this.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

So you can't even put it into concrete words? Everything can be explained in technical terms.

 

[Caconym]

Just for a reference point, this is the tabletop's "UI":

I feel like it's missing something. Not quite busy enough for me.

 

[DosBuster]

Worth mentioning inXile just migrated to an entirely new UI system (UGUI) so at this point it's more about getting it working and doing things before the visual aspect becomes a focus. Besides, they said it was placeholder, and the fact they pointed it out knows they know it's ugly.

On another note, programmer Steve Dobos tweeted he was working on a custom memory allocation system for Unity. Perhaps this may solve Unity's infamous performance issues?

 

[Prime Junta]

By the way.

I've been pretty critical of the beta. It's worth noting that much of the criticism springs from the "Planescape: Torment spiritual successor angle." The infodumping, handholding, and early-game companions in the early game is par for course for most cRPG's these days for example.

If approached entirely on its own merits, it's clear that T:ToN is going to be a very good, even great cRPG. The writing is on the whole good, the setting is original and varied, and a LOT of attention has been lavished on alternative approaches and resolutions to quests; in terms of reactivity it's top-notch. I have no doubt at all that I'm going to enjoy it when it's finished.

But they did promise us a Torment spiritual successor, and on that front I'm not as confident. At this point anyway it's lacking the mystery and coherence -- thematic, visual, etc. -- of the original, and feels more like a pastiche, homage, or fanfic rather than a genuine spiritual successor. We will see to what extent that perception changes as the beta progresses.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Funny how the official beta subforum is all gushing and cheering. Well, save this ukrop:

And now, for the worst. I've been very patient. I never complained about the delays, rather I was happy to wait a year or even two years more than originally promised if it was necessary to make this game as good as we all want it to be. But now, after seeing the beta, it suddenly dawned on me:
- We are already more than a year behind the original schedule.
- That makes it 2.5 years in development (assuming it started right after finishing the kickstarter campaign).
- UI, Audio, Combat and everything else except the world and the dialogues is still "a first pass across the board".

Please, please don't get me wrong, but what the hell happened to your programmers team, inXile? Writers are doing the best possible job, as I already said. Artists are definitely occupied too, although I think this beta still doesn't look as good as Pillars of Eternity visually, but I'm ok with that as long as it's not as bad as Wasteland 2. And there's likely a lot of scripting going on to properly support all these branching quests (sure, they are still buggy, but that's what beta-testing is for). And programmers? Non-scripting ones?.. What did they do all these 2.5 years? Other games? Are you still in pre-production phase or what?

I don't know what betas of W2 or PoE looked like, but, despite all the warnings "to set expectations", I'm still shocked. Your UI isn't "stylistically unfinished" - it's downright broken and lacking the most basic of functionalities (C/I/J/M hotkeys, anyone? known issue "can't trade cyphers" - really?!). I don't envy the developers who have to use it themselves on a day-to-day basis to test their work, because I know all too well how easily bad tools and interfaces can cripple your development processes (and how good ones can boost them immensely). Opening almost every screen takes forever, most of the options are missing, music playback is glitchy, loading times are horrible. That's not what they call "beta" in real gamedev - *that* I know firsthand. Technically, that's probably not even pre-alpha. So it seems to me that something is very, very wrong with the project management here...

Ok, that's enough ranting. Just one question. How much time are you still going to put into that actual game you promised, not just its story/dialogue/world part?

Otherwise 's all good, some people wanting quest compass though, reading is teh hard.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't know what betas of W2 or PoE looked like

Haha. Has somebody told him?

 

[Prime Junta]

In all fairness, even the first Pillars beta looked pretty good...

 

[Fry]

-We are already more than a year behind the original schedule.
- That makes it 2.5 years in development (assuming it started right after finishing the kickstarter campaign).
- UI, Audio, Combat and everything else except the world and the dialogues is still "a first pass across the board".

He definitely has a point. I guess now we know why they replaced the project lead.

 

[Infinitron]

Except that there's something wrong about his assumption.

 

[Neanderthal]

By the way.

I've been pretty critical of the beta. It's worth noting that much of the criticism springs from the "Planescape: Torment spiritual successor angle." The infodumping, handholding, and early-game companions in the early game is par for course for most cRPG's these days for example.

If approached entirely on its own merits, it's clear that T:ToN is going to be a very good, even great cRPG. The writing is on the whole good, the setting is original and varied, and a LOT of attention has been lavished on alternative approaches and resolutions to quests; in terms of reactivity it's top-notch. I have no doubt at all that I'm going to enjoy it when it's finished.

But they did promise us a Torment spiritual successor, and on that front I'm not as confident. At this point anyway it's lacking the mystery and coherence -- thematic, visual, etc. -- of the original, and feels more like a pastiche, homage, or fanfic rather than a genuine spiritual successor. We will see to what extent that perception changes as the beta progresses.

What do you wanna bet that anyone who voices this complaint will get the response of: Well we aren't just going to make a carbon copy of Torment. Course nobodys said that or asked for it, but ten to one it'll be used. Thing is I noticed lotta same complaints on Obsidian boards an a few other places, seems like theres lot o people agree that they ant nailed down Torment feel right, not nough for a spiritual successor as they promised.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

I don't know what betas of W2 or PoE looked like

Haha. Has somebody told him?

Someone had, yeah, but it wasn't very descriptive. Remembering all this shenanigans with savegames, combat, bugs and beetles - heh, T:ToN beta looks like God-tier.

_____
As for me, I'm still playing it, will probably post more spoilery detailed impressions later, but right now I can say that the game is a big improvement from Wasteland 2, but, sadly, it's not the PS:T 2.0.

The Good

• Some of game's writing is genuinely good, but you'll need to be patient to reach it. Right now the beginning is needlessly verbose, full of adjectives and prolonged for no good reason at all. The writing in the second location despite all its numenera and trying to be different, kinda failed to impress me, because it's still overly verbose and we're not given any narrative hooks why should we care about it, save maybe getting some cyphers. But when you reach Sagus Cliffs - well, there are some lovely quests with reactivity and C&C, interesting NPC dialogues and places descriptions. Quality varies though, as are writing styles. I don't know who did NPCs and quest in SC, but either it were multiple people and there was not enough unifying editing, or if that was one man/woman/tranny - he/she/xhe wrote it during a long period of time with long pauses, and it still needs to be edited for consistency.
  
• Music is really good, though something is missing to make it truly great. Mark Morgan is very talented musician and composer, though I confess I like his earlier works (Fallout 2, PST) way better then the newer (Wasteland 2, Stasis). This time he delivered again, music is very good, it conveys various mood very effectively - but either I became old and cranky, or the main theme in particular, and overall soundtrack in general can't hold a candle to PS:T. Still, you'll hear some familiar motives reminding you of it, but overall music is distinct and stands on its own. It's just not a masterpiece.
  
• Most quests are very interesting, if somewhat conservative. By conservative I mean that they are made in the same vein as PS:T, mostly through dialogue and some FedEx. So when the writing of some quest is good, it really reminds you of all good times in PS:T, but sometimes writing isn't up to task, and the quest then looks like it came out from BG. Still, most are good, they are reactive, they respect your choices (save some quest flag bugs, but it's beta), and there are some real, not cosmetic consequences of your actions. Still, there are boring FedEx elements as well.
• Locations visual design is quite nice. It isn't a generic fantasy landscape #9000, like some feared, but, sadly, it can't compete with Planescape. It isn't coherent enough, it isn't as otherwordly and mysterious. All and all, it has some good elements, some bad, but definitely better than PoE, or (God forbid) W2. There are some technical problems, mostly with their overpaint, cobblegate wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded, the texture is p. shit and lowres, since it's overpainted 3d, it won't change with resolution, so it's not a LOD problem. Quite a few others have a similar rushed feeling. Still, some elements are genuinely different, interesting, and nice to look at.

The Bad

• Locations are too small. If the demo is really one third of the game, it's real bad news for me. Sigil was quite big, not as big as Athkatla, but full of content (and way better designed). Sagus Cliffs is, well, maybe a third of Sigil, maybe less. Locations not only are small, they feel small (due to props and NPC placement), so there's no sense of discovery of some hidden map corner, or building, or other point of interest. It's better than empty PoE locations though, at least.
  
• Combat is broken. It's not a complaint about it, at least not fully, but right now combat is almost unplayable. It's unintuitive, unresponsive and very slow even for TB. And I'm a fan of TB. Also combat interface hasn't got a grid, which is my main complaint right now, and movement points and combat points indicators are really need to be reworked for more clarity. Right now half of the cyphers doesn't seem to work, AI breaks all the time, turns are getting stuck, etc, etc.
  
• There's too much handholding. Right when you enter the city, you will meet a kind soul, which explains you about the Sagus Cliffs free of charge, and the info is legit. NPC in general know too much what you need to do and some quest and make suggestions for your course of actions (go there, talk to this guy) even if they aren't quest givers themselves, or even if they are, but have no reason to even remember where to go, or who is to blame for their predicament, etc (Death-of-Self). Sometimes they give you clear directions. It's not bad in itself, and I already seen people asking for quest compass (probably not trolling even), so some hand-holding is a given. But I can't help but remember mage class quest in PS:T. And also nobody told you "Find Pharod. He's a criminal martermind, a fallen noble, has an adopted daughter and lives in Buried Village, you can get there from Ragpickers Square" right off the bat.
• There's too little argot, or cant in NPCs speech. For me Planescape's argot was a really different experience. I'm not a native speaker, so I didn't know many UK slang words, not to mention Planescape specific ones, and was forced to research them. It only added to experience, and really helped the atmosphere. Granted, it's a highly subjective complaint, but it's sad that TToN has some unique words, but not a unified slang.
  
• Character models are ugly as fuck, and also very tame in design. I'm not a graphix whore, I can even live with most of ridiculous portraits (which are mostly shit-tier, but it's again subjective opinion). But character models are fucking ugly. Especially fem!PC. She looks like a Chernobyl survivor or an extra from Wasteland 2 in her portrait, and also as a fucking mutant if we look at ingame model. She is ugly, and not "cool ugly" as TNO, she is pitiful ugly. Party members are sometimes better, but still, they are both ugly and somewhat boringly designed. I'm not even talking about Tumblr haircuts, but from all PST party members only half could've fit in BG's party, for example. Here all of them, save maybe Callistage could have easily fit into both PoE and W2, at least visually.
• Interface is a mess. I know that it's a first iteration or something, but it really looks like some more ugly Vista themes, with gradient, bold lines everywhere and rounded edges. It's unresponsive, clunky, and, frankly, hideous.
  
• Numenera game system. I don't like it. It's needlessly complex for newcomers, and for storyfag RPG in general too, but also not really fun to tinker with for systemfags. I couldn't test it in combat other than in tutorial battle with tentacled pieces of shitSorrow, but I don't think it would appeal either to combatfag or a systemfag. Also it doesn't punish realoding, so if you don't want to spend effort in many cases you can just save and reload until you pass attribute check in conversations. I'm not sold on Tides too, but I've seen too little of their effect in beta, so I don't have a final opinion on the matter.

The Neutral

• Party members. I'm not sure I like them, but it's a Beta. OTOH they are way less talky and distinct then PST ones, on the other - they are better then most PoE companions already (save GM and Durance). Still - I want more interactions. If what I got during the beta is the full (or near to it) extent of their conversations - well, it won't do. Also my complaints about their visual design still stands. And I still find their portraits ugly and amateurish.
  
• Interactions with the world consist of mostly using text interface. It's a PST thing, sure, but tech is marching forward, so I would have liked to see some more dynamic parts of the environment, changes matching text descriptions. It's a minor gripe though, and I'm mostly neutral on the subject.
  
• CYOA parts. They could work, sure, but right now they fell awfully disconnected from player. Why should I care about the whale, for example, if I know that this is the past, and probably would be only mentioned once again in a minor conversation with clerk? Strongest PST memory stories were tied to TNO or to his party members, or to Deionarra. The whale though? Eh.

tl;dr Right now what I fear the most is the game's length. If the beta is really a 30 or so percent of the full TToN, then it would be shorter not only than PST, but also PoE and W2. Also in its current state it's not a PS:T 2.0 EE, it's a, well... If PS:T was a movie, then TToN is its basic cable TV series adaptation. It's a good game on its own, no mistake, but it's not a RPG genre saviour.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

What is current predicted release date?