Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[undecaf]

On a quick skim, it looks surprisingly neutral and, at times, even favoring the decision. I was expecting something more glaring like this:

 

[MicoSelva]

Good thing that voting nonsense is over. It was pretty obvious that they will go TB unless the RTwP option gets an overwhleming number of votes. I'm glad it didn't, but I'd have been fine with either result.

On an unrelated note. Does anyone else have the feeling that Torment will be delayed a lot? I'm guessing that the original plan assumed they would be done with Wasteland 2 by now with the production team moving on to work on Torment after finishing with W2. W2 delay moved the schedule back, by at least three months (maybe more), extending the pre-production phase. In the long run this should be a good thing, or at least I hope so.

 

[Infinitron]

Good thing that voting nonsense is over. It was pretty obvious that they will go TB unless the RTwP option gets an overwhleming number of votes. I'm glad it didn't, but I'd have been fine with either result.

On an unrelated note. Does anyone else have the feeling that Torment will be delayed a lot? I'm guessing that the original plan assumed they would be done with Wasteland 2 by now with the production team moving on to work on Torment after finishing with W2. W2 delay moved the schedule back, by at least three months (maybe more), extending the pre-production phase. In the long run this should be a good thing, or at least I hope so.

Torment is set to be released in 2015 anyway, so I think we can worry about that later.

 

[MicoSelva]

Who said anything about worrying? ;-)

 

[hiver]

well, well... i got me a final warning:

"This warning is for numerous personnal attacks on the UserVoice Torment forums, most recently the post with “(i mean you, hatred filled gas bags)”
This is your final warning. The next time you insult other users you will be banned."
"inXile"


No fucking joke "inxile"?

really?

That was an insult? A "gas bag" is an insult? How about stupid lying shitstain? How about a pathetic lying turd?
Do you even comprehend who i was referring to you fucking imbecile? Or is it another of your "righteous judgements" on who is insulting and who is not?
Based only on who screams the louder and who is the poor victim in your idiotic point of view.

numerous personal attacks

Thats a blatant lie you shit - not to mention a proper cavalcade of actual personal insults thrown from the other side all the fucking time.

-edit-

it was - A FEW - not fucking "numerous" .

 

[hoverdog]

 

[Athelas]

 

[Infinitron]

It's RPS time! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/09/the-turn-based-tides-of-numenera-torment/

To his credit, the OP is pro-TB.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Good thing that voting nonsense is over. It was pretty obvious that they will go TB unless the RTwP option gets an overwhleming number of votes. I'm glad it didn't, but I'd have been fine with either result.

I still can barely bring myself to follow this thread - it would be so easy for inXile to give in to the louder voices and suggest they'd made a mistake.

 

[tuluse]

Bro, you should let us know who's written the article on RPS. I don't want to accidentally give Grayson a click.

A mostly boring article really. Just updating people who haven't seen the direct update from InXile.

 

[The_scorpion]

so another public majority deccision for a TB game. And this time - where it hardly matters - i bet the Dev's will actually follow that majority decision

 

[Infinitron]

A mostly boring article really. Just updating people who haven't seen the direct update from InXile.

The point is the comments, not the article.

 

[hiver]

a.smith :

the combat will be thoroughly and entirely turn-based. Hurrah!

And it’s the best kind of draw. The one that my side wins.

what? whats wrong with the article?

You know who else prefers real time with pause? Hitler. And your mum.

That’s who

Real time with pause is 10,000 times worse than anything Hitler ever even dreamed of doing.

 

[DreadMessiah]

its boring duh.

 

[DalekFlay]

The "why have turn-based in 2013?" comments are the best.

Sippin' tears with my morning coffee.

 

[Infinitron]

Colin tells it like it is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/talharbash/status/409359373916336130

Were these peoples' parents killed in turn-based combat by a turn-based murderer? Seriously WTF is their problem

 

[janjetina]

Colin tells it like it is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/talharbash/status/409359373916336130

Were these peoples' parents killed in turn-based combat by a turn-based murderer? Seriously WTF is their problem

Walter White? More like Walter Whine.

 

[Infinitron]

Matt Barton comments on the selection of turn-based combat in Torment: http://mattchat.us/?p=458

After reading this update, I thought a lot about my favorite CRPGs, I think we can boil all this down to two CRPGs that I think everyone here probably loves as much as I do: Pool of Radiance and Baldur’s Gate. Pool of Radiance, of course, featured turn-based, tactical combat, whereas Baldur’s Gate introduced us to RTwP. Since a great deal of time in both games was spent in combat, it was obviously of key importance to the designers to get it right. What we end up with, though, are two very different approaches that have their own strengths and weaknesses. As for which one’s better, though, I have to go with turn-based.

When Pool of Radiance was published in 1988, the games industry was a very different place. The bulk of gamers owned cheap game consoles and spent most of their time playing arcade and action games. For most of these gamers, “role-playing game” meant something as childish as Super Mario–The Legend of Zelda. Fortunately, at this time there was a solid alternative: the computer. While most platforms had their share of action games, of course, there was also a healthy market for more complex, adult-oriented fare such as Pool of Radiance.

Many of these computer gamers were well-steeped in both tabletop role-playing gaming and also wargaming. In many cases, the combat in these games could be quite “tedious,” if by that we mean all of the calculations that you to perform to execute combat. By contrast, the computer RPGs took much of this burden away, in effect relieving much of this tedium. Thus, a wargamer of the time looking at the combat sequences in Pool of Radiance would never think–”Wow, that’s tedious!”–but rather, “Wow! That is so much easier than doing it by hand!”

Baldur’s Gate was released a few days before Christmas in 1998. Significantly, Blizzard’s Diablo had been out for two years, shattering sales records and dramatically closing the gap between computer and console RPGs. Essentially, Diablo was an effort to make a Legend of Zelda style game for computer gaming adults, and it worked. Of course, it also helped that CRPGs as a whole had been declining, with mostly derivative titles that, for a variety of reasons, just didn’t capture the imagination the way the earlier Gold Box titles had. The few standouts, such as Fallout (1997), were saddled with “B-grade status” and improperly funded even by publishers who should have known better (Interplay, in this case).

Bioware naturally wanted to duplicate the success of Diablo, but recognized that the sophisticated rules of D&D just couldn’t be reduced to clicking a mouse on the bad guy and quaffing potions. The result was the kludge called RTwP, which tried to capture the “excitement” of Diablo but that would still let you pause the game at any time to pop open the hood and make adjustments.

Bioware was mostly successful with its compromised solution, though it’s debatable whether the game would have been worse off with a more traditional turn-based engine. I’d like to think that the game’s excellent production values and great story would have been enough to quell dissent that the game wasn’t enough like Diablo. In any case, I doubt any publisher would have been interested in a turn-based game anyway given that title’s success.

I think many gamers who were fans of the older turn-based style were probably put off by Baldur’s Gate RTwP. However, it really had been a long time since we had a CRPG with such excellent production values, and it was “good enough” to keep us playing–hey, at least it wasn’t Diablo. Eventually, once you got into the game, you quickly forgot (or were willing to overlook) how often RTwP combat can be painful, tedious, and awkward. Was getting to see some flashier spell animations really worth all this constant pausing and fighting with the AI?

In short, I don’t think turn-based combat is boring or tedious at all. Rather, it’s just that Diablo was so successful that publishers (and many gamers who hadn’t experienced anything else) were suddenly convinced that it was a throwback. That prevented the natural development we’d expect to see in interface and AI design. We’re just now finally starting to see what a modern CRPG with turn-based combat might look like, thanks mostly to X-Com and Shadowrun. However, neither of these games comes anywhere close to the raw passion and craft we got in Baldur’s Gate.

If anyone is in a position to update turn-based combat and make it fun again, it’s Torment’s developers. Fortunately, we are finally back to a position where gamers can and have overridden the publishers to get a new turn-based game that won’t suffer from lower production values. I, for one, am excited to see what the team eventually comes up with.

Not sure what he's on about with Diablo and Zelda, though. O_o

 

[DraQ]

Matt Barton comments on the selection of turn-based combat in Torment: http://mattchat.us/?p=458

After reading this update, I thought a lot about my favorite CRPGs, I think we can boil all this down to two CRPGs that I think everyone here probably loves as much as I do: Pool of Radiance and Baldur’s Gate. Pool of Radiance, of course, featured turn-based, tactical combat, whereas Baldur’s Gate introduced us to RTwP. Since a great deal of time in both games was spent in combat, it was obviously of key importance to the designers to get it right. What we end up with, though, are two very different approaches that have their own strengths and weaknesses. As for which one’s better, though, I have to go with turn-based.

When Pool of Radiance was published in 1988, the games industry was a very different place. The bulk of gamers owned cheap game consoles and spent most of their time playing arcade and action games. For most of these gamers, “role-playing game” meant something as childish as Super Mario–The Legend of Zelda. Fortunately, at this time there was a solid alternative: the computer. While most platforms had their share of action games, of course, there was also a healthy market for more complex, adult-oriented fare such as Pool of Radiance.

Many of these computer gamers were well-steeped in both tabletop role-playing gaming and also wargaming. In many cases, the combat in these games could be quite “tedious,” if by that we mean all of the calculations that you to perform to execute combat. By contrast, the computer RPGs took much of this burden away, in effect relieving much of this tedium. Thus, a wargamer of the time looking at the combat sequences in Pool of Radiance would never think–”Wow, that’s tedious!”–but rather, “Wow! That is so much easier than doing it by hand!”

Baldur’s Gate was released a few days before Christmas in 1998. Significantly, Blizzard’s Diablo had been out for two years, shattering sales records and dramatically closing the gap between computer and console RPGs. Essentially, Diablo was an effort to make a Legend of Zelda style game for computer gaming adults, and it worked. Of course, it also helped that CRPGs as a whole had been declining, with mostly derivative titles that, for a variety of reasons, just didn’t capture the imagination the way the earlier Gold Box titles had. The few standouts, such as Fallout (1997), were saddled with “B-grade status” and improperly funded even by publishers who should have known better (Interplay, in this case).

Bioware naturally wanted to duplicate the success of Diablo, but recognized that the sophisticated rules of D&D just couldn’t be reduced to clicking a mouse on the bad guy and quaffing potions. The result was the kludge called RTwP, which tried to capture the “excitement” of Diablo but that would still let you pause the game at any time to pop open the hood and make adjustments.

Bioware was mostly successful with its compromised solution, though it’s debatable whether the game would have been worse off with a more traditional turn-based engine. I’d like to think that the game’s excellent production values and great story would have been enough to quell dissent that the game wasn’t enough like Diablo. In any case, I doubt any publisher would have been interested in a turn-based game anyway given that title’s success.

I think many gamers who were fans of the older turn-based style were probably put off by Baldur’s Gate RTwP. However, it really had been a long time since we had a CRPG with such excellent production values, and it was “good enough” to keep us playing–hey, at least it wasn’t Diablo. Eventually, once you got into the game, you quickly forgot (or were willing to overlook) how often RTwP combat can be painful, tedious, and awkward. Was getting to see some flashier spell animations really worth all this constant pausing and fighting with the AI?

In short, I don’t think turn-based combat is boring or tedious at all. Rather, it’s just that Diablo was so successful that publishers (and many gamers who hadn’t experienced anything else) were suddenly convinced that it was a throwback. That prevented the natural development we’d expect to see in interface and AI design. We’re just now finally starting to see what a modern CRPG with turn-based combat might look like, thanks mostly to X-Com and Shadowrun. However, neither of these games comes anywhere close to the raw passion and craft we got in Baldur’s Gate.

If anyone is in a position to update turn-based combat and make it fun again, it’s Torment’s developers. Fortunately, we are finally back to a position where gamers can and have overridden the publishers to get a new turn-based game that won’t suffer from lower production values. I, for one, am excited to see what the team eventually comes up with.

Not sure what he's on about with Diablo and Zelda, though. O_o

Minor brain damage resulting from being subjected to smutboy's inane rants?


Thankfully it seems inconsequential and the rest is spot on.

 

[Ninjerk]

Minor brain damage resulting from being subjected to smutboy's inane rants?


Thankfully it seems inconsequential and the rest is spot on.

Spoken like a true xenophobe.

 

[Roguey]

Matt Barton is an ignoramus, BG went into development before Diablo had been released and was real-time because they had an RTS engine, that's all.

Likewise Diablo was envisioned as a prettier, streamlined roguelike that turned out to be a lot more fun when someone disabled turns on a whim.

 

[hiver]

nothing wrong with his Diablo - Zelda comment.

It was so, in a way. He meant - a game as popular as Zelda - for "adult" pc audience. git it?
tsk..

 

[throwaway]

Now over to more important questions: will there be hexes? Please tell us there'll be hexes InXile.

We don't even know if it will have a grid at all. Not having one could help appease those who voted RTwP due to concerns about "immersion".

Adam Heine ksaun Comments?

We're planning to first try no grid at all, but none of the options have been ruled out.

Come next week when we get our hands on the WL2 beta, we may find out Wasteland 2 combat ends up being horrible, but it will be too late then

Torment won't be taking the WL2 turn-based system wholesale. We'll certainly be paying attention to what people like and don't like from WL2's combat, but Torment has different needs anyway. We can use much of the foundation, but one shouldn't draw conclusions about Torment's combat from WL2's as we'll change quite a bit so that it's what's best for Torment. The experience the programmers have from developing WL2's system is what will be most beneficial.

Sorta late to the party but props for that. Anything (even small details) that would make the switch to TB seem more natural would go a long way in helping the, pardon my French, immersion.
If you do, in the future, opt for a grid, try getting the engine upgraded to vectors or hexes rather than something as arbitrary as squares.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

http://it-tormentrpg.tumblr.com/post/70230341757/intervista-a-chris-avellone

New interview.

So the first thought after reading through the companions was – wow, we have a grim bunch. Like, really grim. You feel sad and terrible after reading most of them, although there’s bright points of light (the Toy, for example, and Pat Rothfuss’s character, who is great, and also Nathan Long’s character, which fulfills another important role I’ll get to once revealed). In the end, I recognized one important companion signpost in Torment lies in characters like Morte and Nordom – one provides humor naturally in irreverence, the other provides humor in being a fish out of water. The companion I’m doing in Torment is another take on adding some levity to the situation, whether intended to or not. I’ve played him in a few Numenera tabletop sessions, and so far, he adds a lot of… energy… to encounters. Plus, he’ll be a lot of fun to write, and I think he’ll lead to some interesting adventure possibilities

Finally, I’m aware of your passion for unusual characters and nonconventional settings (as well of your racist feelings against elves ). Since Pillars of Eternity is a deliberately conservative game in both areas, can we expect something “bolder” in the feature of Obsidian (don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have a game with the same feeling of Icewind Dale/Baldur’s Gate)? Maybe a Ghost in the Shell RPG or a Kickstarter game where players are supposed to collect everyday noises and arrange them in powerful spells?

I can understand what you mean about traditional fantasy – if I had the choice of a fantasy world, I’d probably start by destroying it and stomping up and down on it a few times with some steel spiked boots.

As for the games you suggest, I would like to do the last two (Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite series of all time), and the collecting SFX as a spell mechanic has always been something I’d like to try (I think it surprised our audio director when I first mentioned it years ago when we were discussing how we could blend audio and gameplay).

I don’t have anything against traditional RPGs, as long as they’re reaching for something new, I just often find there’s plenty of traditional backdrops already out there – why not try something new? Flip the world on its head, and then let the player deal with all shattered clichés.

 

[tuluse]

Chris Avellone needs to play Loom.