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

[hiver]

the character portraits - were all done by Chang Yuan. http://changyuan.cghub.com/

Chang is a great artist and did many Wasteland 2 portraits, but Nils Hamm, Axel Steinhanses and Lee Pfenninger are also responsible for the majority of the portraits.

Nils and Chang did most of the robots and mutants. Axel and Lee did most of the humans.

Amber Sanders, Justin Sweet, Vance Kovacs, Maxx Kaufman and Daniel Kim also did portrait work.

Just looking at them, they seemed as if they were all done by a single artist. The guys really hit the same art style and visual expression. I am very impressed.

 

[Nihiliste]

What "people" are you talking abut, staticspine?
How many are there?

I've seen some on other gaming sites/forums.

The opinion was "I do not like Wasteland 2 beta, so Torment: Tides of Numenera will be bad"

It's not that I think it will be bad, it's just that I find it a little concerning. Sure the teams are made up of different people but ultimately this is the same organization with the same leadership building two games with a similar foundation so I don't think it's unreasonable to be worried that some of the less effective design decisions may be passed from one game to the next. I am comfortable that the writing will be good based on the group they've assembled and the amount of time they've had in preproduction but if the execution isn't there during production it won't necessarily matter.

As a drunk corollary to this post, my side business is building houses/developing suburban communities and at although a number of the houses I build have different crews, at the end of the day my strengths and weaknesses as a manager are transmitted down the chain of each project to the end product. I fear that the same weaknesses that plague wasteland 2 will be transmitted down the chain to piss away the potential of numenera.

 

[hiver]

What "people" are you talking abut, staticspine?
How many are there?

I've seen some on other gaming sites/forums.

relax, it was not rpgwatch

 

[80Maxwell08]

What "people" are you talking abut, staticspine?
How many are there?

I've seen some on other gaming sites/forums.

The opinion was "I do not like Wasteland 2 beta, so Torment: Tides of Numenera will be bad"

It's not that I think it will be bad, it's just that I find it a little concerning. Sure the teams are made up of different people but ultimately this is the same organization with the same leadership building two games with a similar foundation so I don't think it's unreasonable to be worried that some of the less effective design decisions may be passed from one game to the next. I am comfortable that the writing will be good based on the group they've assembled and the amount of time they've had in preproduction but if the execution isn't there during production it won't necessarily matter.

As a drunk corollary to this post, my side business is building houses/developing suburban communities and at although a number of the houses I build have different crews, at the end of the day my strengths and weaknesses as a manager are transmitted down the chain of each project to the end product. I fear that the same weaknesses that plague wasteland 2 will be transmitted down the chain to piss away the potential of numenera.

I think there's different leads actually. If Project Lead is the same as Lead Designer than there's Chris Keenan for Wasteland 2 and Colin McComb for Torment. Granted Kevin Saunders is Lead Designer of Torment but he's already said on these forums that he's basically just trying to keep things as efficient as possible while helping Colin take charge.

 

[Infinitron]

What "people" are you talking abut, staticspine?
How many are there?

I've seen some on other gaming sites/forums.

The opinion was "I do not like Wasteland 2 beta, so Torment: Tides of Numenera will be bad"

It's not that I think it will be bad, it's just that I find it a little concerning. Sure the teams are made up of different people but ultimately this is the same organization with the same leadership building two games with a similar foundation so I don't think it's unreasonable to be worried that some of the less effective design decisions may be passed from one game to the next. I am comfortable that the writing will be good based on the group they've assembled and the amount of time they've had in preproduction but if the execution isn't there during production it won't necessarily matter.

As a drunk corollary to this post, my side business is building houses/developing suburban communities and at although a number of the houses I build have different crews, at the end of the day my strengths and weaknesses as a manager are transmitted down the chain of each project to the end product. I fear that the same weaknesses that plague wasteland 2 will be transmitted down the chain to piss away the potential of numenera.

I think there's different leads actually. If Project Lead is the same as Lead Designer than there's Chris Keenan for Wasteland 2 and Colin McComb for Torment. Granted Kevin Saunders is Lead Designer of Torment but he's already said on these forums that he's basically just trying to keep things as efficient as possible while helping Colin take charge.

Kevin isn't the lead designer (that's Adam Heine), he's the "Project Director". Also, I think he's being a bit modest about his role.

 

[Sensuki]

Chris Keenan was a producer on WL2 before he was promoted to Design Lead IIRC

 

[hiver]

by Dilbert.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Kevin isn't the lead designer (that's Adam Heine), he's the "Project Director". Also, I think he's being a bit modest about his role.

Huh how about that. I swear when the kickstarter first started it said he was lead designer. Also I've never heard of lead designer being called design lead. Is that something else?

 

[Adam Heine]

Kevin is the Project Lead. His role is essentially producer, as he's in charge of making sure everything gets done and everyone works together. In terms of the things you guys are discussing, Kevin is the guy in charge of them (and to that end, he's (1) ridiculously good at his job, (2) taking lots of lessons from WL2, and (3) supremely modest and will never admit to (1)).

Colin is the Creative Lead. He's in charge of the story, the characters, and the writing.

I'm the Design Lead. I'm in charge of the systems, rules, and tabletop adaptation.

All three of us tend to get our fingers in everything, but those are the official roles. You may carry on with your informed discussion

 

[80Maxwell08]

Kevin is the Project Lead. His role is essentially producer, as he's in charge of making sure everything gets done and everyone works together. In terms of the things you guys are discussing, Kevin is the guy in charge of them (and to that end, he's (1) ridiculously good at his job, (2) taking lots of lessons from WL2, and (3) supremely modest and will never admit to (1)).

Colin is the Creative Lead. He's in charge of the story, the characters, and the writing.

I'm the Design Lead. I'm in charge of the systems, rules, and tabletop adaptation.

All three of us tend to get our fingers in everything, but those are the official roles. You may carry on with your informed discussion

Thanks for the insight Adam. It sounded a lot like Kevin was basically a producer with a fancier name. Still he and Colin are the 2 main reasons I pledged. Hell when I heard they were leading it I knew I was going to go for the collector's edition before the kickstarter even came out.

 

[imweasel]

Update.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/791136

 

[Infinitron]

The governmental structure of Sagus Cliffs is an aristocratically elected council, with a leader selected by the councilors. The Slave Families each send a representative to the council. These representatives choose one of their own to serve as leader of the council for a year. Other representatives on the council include: one chosen by the Memovira, the de facto ruler of the Bloom and a member each from the Sounders’ Guild (the sailors), the Bridgers’ Guild (the infrastructure and road people), the Mercantile Exchange, the Slavers’ Consortium, and a representative from the University – this latter being more frightened of the real-world power of the Slave Families and thus easily cowed by one faction or another.

The city is a morass of competing influences: economic, political, social, religious, and intellectual. The blatant corruption of the system makes cynics of all its residents. They trust few people, have mercenary hearts, and are quick to take advantage of others. Even the altruists of the city must approach their dealings with cynicism, lest they be taken advantage of by less scrupulous partners. They consider themselves cosmopolitan, able to deal well with people from all walks of life… but they fear to venture far from the city’s walls, and they are quick to judge those who venture within.

Today, Sagus Cliffs is a city of maybe 90-100,000 people. They regard themselves as the rulers of the entire Protectorate, but in practice they rule little outside their walls; the city’s leaders are more concerned with besting one another politically and socially than with maintaining the land outside their shell. They scheme and jockey for position, retaining the city's imperial pretensions and enslaving its residents to the mindset that their glory will rise again. Sagus Cliffs shows every sign of an empire in decline, with decadence the order of the day.

Vault Dweller Brofisted this.

 

[StaticSpine]

This is the kind of updates I love most of all - lore updates!

 

[Infinitron]

It's time to do the Josh Sawyer quote dump thing with Adam Heine: http://www.adamheine.com/

hightechzombie asked:
Do you intend to add self-mutilation to Tides of Numera like in Planescape: Torment during Ignus "lessons"?

Probably asking this way too early, considering that you are still in pre-production. Still, this is very important to me!

Backstory (because my audience includes non-Torment fans as well):
In Planescape: Torment, you played the role of an immortal who lost his memories each time he died. Because you're immortal, we were able to include moments like plucking out your own eye and replacing it with a demon's, or having a powerful wizard (Ignus) teach you how to use powerful fire magic by, literally, burning the lesson into your body.

In Torment: Tides of Numenera, you don't play an immortal, but the castoff shell of a man who cheats life by jumping from body to body (he doesn't realize the bodies he leaves behind wake up and have their own lives after he leaves them).

So you're not immortal, but the castoffs are quite hard to kill. We haven't drilled down into the details of every area yet (which is where a lot of this stuff will surface), and I'm not allowed to give spoilers, but there is definitely the opportunity for PST-like moments like Ignus and Ei-Vene.

Surface Rlf says:
Hi Adam, very nice of you to provide this channel into your brain.

Gm intrusions... how about achieving them through gameplay itself. You mentioned a simple example of getting a sword knocked out of players hands so im going to stick with that (because its easy). How about it is done by some enemy or some monster in the game? Or an environmental event, or some artifact in another scenario or situation... and so on?

You also mentioned player being able to revert his latest action? Is that like some quick time travel backwards... like some kind of Prince of Persia sands of time mechanic - trick?
Just checking.

Great to hear that changing Foci will cost something - and even better hearing you dont like respecing... respeccing? (what an awful word too). I was afraid that might be included.

GM Intrusions
A brief definition for those new to Numenera: GM Intrusions are a means for the GM of a Numenera game to spice up a situation by introducing a difficulty, without making the players feel like he's screwing them over just because. This is accomplished by giving players an out; if they accept the complication, they gain 2 XP, or they can refuse the intrusion by spending 1 XP.

In Torment, this is trickier to pull off because there is no GM and because intrusions have a way of reminding the player he's playing a game (a thing we'd rather not do in a CRPG).

Your suggestions, Surface, are pretty much along the lines of what we've been thinking. As I said in that interview, we haven't solidified how GM Intrusions will work in Torment yet, but we do have some goals that give us a framework:

1. Intrusions should be cool (not "good," but cool), something the player wants to accept. Of course, giving them XP is a major part of this.
2. Intrusions should change an encounter in interesting ways, not just make things harder for the sake of making things harder.
3. Intrusions should be framed as complications arising from external events, not from the PC screwing up (pretty much what you said, Surface).

Some ideas we've had along those lines are things like: extra guards appearing, a bridge going down (changing the terrain and the tactics of an encounter), a Broken Hound confers a Diseased fettle in addition to their normal attack, an item turns out to have been misidentified doing something different from what the player thought it would, etc. Will these feel right? We won't know until we can prototype them and try them ourselves, but it's in the right spirit.

In my mind, the real hard part is not what the intrusions will be, but how they're presented to the player. We have yet to delve into that UI in depth.

Reverting an Action
(Surface's question here is in the context of the interview again, where I mentioned that the player might be able to spend XP to undo a recent action.)

The tabletop game doesn't explain how this mechanic works narratively, probably because it's easier to immerse yourself in a story told around a table. We haven't talked about how this will be explained in-game for Torment. It might not be explained at all, simply something you can do, just like how you can use "renown" in Banner Saga to purchase items and food.

But the way you describe is not out of the realm of possibility. Numenera does actually have an "Undo" ability that lets you do exactly what you describe, taking back a character's most recent action. For Torment, we're talking about additional abilities along these lines as well, ones that let you fiddle with time in interesting ways.

The Ninth World is a strange and magical place, where nanites live in the air and dirt, where mysterious forces can be called on by someone who knows what they're doing -- or even some people who don't. It's entirely possible that this XP mechanic is one such situation.

 

[hiver]

Very nice update.

Sagus - Bloom interplay as one of the starting (presumably) and bigger areas in the game, sounds very good.

Three sections of the city to explore and deal with, populated by casts of a sort, Iron Rains affecting the outer, slum part... and Bloom to explore. Yummi.

 

[agris]

Nice lore update, but the logic of this section breaks down

Take Numenera’s Carries a Quiver focus, for example. Four of the abilities granted by that focus have to do with training in making bows and arrows. Taken at face value, that seems fine, though not necessarily suited for a CRPG. The tabletop game expects you to look beyond face value; it relies on the players' imaginations and collaboration with the gamemaster (GM) to expand "making bows and arrows" into cool things like fashioning bows and arrows out of azure steel instead of wood, or attaching some kind of phasing nodule to the bow to create a more powerful weapon. There is no limit but what the players can think of and the difficulties decided on by the GM.

In a CRPG, "face value" is all we have. If a CRPG gamer were told he had an ability that could make bows and arrows, he'd be like, "Can't I just buy those?"

So in Torment, we expand the focus for you. For example, at first tier maybe you automatically replenish arrows whenever the party rests, saving your coin for other purchases. At higher tiers, you could choose to make different kinds of arrows: piercing arrows, smoke arrows, blast arrows, etc. At the highest tier, you could even make arrows that phase through armor or replicate themselves to hit more targets. All this stuff is supported by the core rules, but making the abilities explicit like this helps the focus feel right in a CRPG.

Why can't I buy a quiver of plenty, piercing, smoke and blast arrows? Maybe that wasn't the best focus to use as an example.

 

[Infinitron]

Nice lore update, but the logic of this section breaks down

Take Numenera’s Carries a Quiver focus, for example. Four of the abilities granted by that focus have to do with training in making bows and arrows. Taken at face value, that seems fine, though not necessarily suited for a CRPG. The tabletop game expects you to look beyond face value; it relies on the players' imaginations and collaboration with the gamemaster (GM) to expand "making bows and arrows" into cool things like fashioning bows and arrows out of azure steel instead of wood, or attaching some kind of phasing nodule to the bow to create a more powerful weapon. There is no limit but what the players can think of and the difficulties decided on by the GM.

In a CRPG, "face value" is all we have. If a CRPG gamer were told he had an ability that could make bows and arrows, he'd be like, "Can't I just buy those?"

So in Torment, we expand the focus for you. For example, at first tier maybe you automatically replenish arrows whenever the party rests, saving your coin for other purchases. At higher tiers, you could choose to make different kinds of arrows: piercing arrows, smoke arrows, blast arrows, etc. At the highest tier, you could even make arrows that phase through armor or replicate themselves to hit more targets. All this stuff is supported by the core rules, but making the abilities explicit like this helps the focus feel right in a CRPG.

Why can't I buy a quiver of plenty, piercing, smoke and blast arrows? Maybe that wasn't the best focus to use as an example.

Because those are too exotic to be available at your everyday store, obviously

You might as well ask why crafting exists in RPGs at all

 

[tuluse]

Or since this is Dying Earth genre, everyone has forgotten how to make them and you've uncovered the secret.

 

[agris]

Both of those responses are logical, but since Mr. Heine doesn't provide any rational the "why can't I just buy those" question still stands and I think the reason crafting exists in a lot of RPGs has more to do with fan expectations than logic.

 

[Xeon]

Body means corpses? Will they make it so every time the PC jumps to another body the model changes or something? Wouldn't that be really expensive to morph the various body types to all sorts of items and equipment or will it be similar to Torment where the appearance doesn't change with the equipment.

I also wonder if the PC can jump willingly to any body he wants as long as he fulfills certain conditions.

 

[Infinitron]

Body means corpses? Will they make it so every time the PC jumps to another body the model changes or something? Wouldn't that be really expensive to morph the various body types to all sorts of items and equipment or will it be similar to Torment where the appearance doesn't change with the equipment.

I also wonder if the PC can jump willingly to any body he wants as long as he fulfills certain conditions.

You're not the spirit jumping between bodies. You ARE one of the bodies. RTFK!

 

[Xeon]

Yea, I gotta be honest I don't know how that would work with you jumping from your body to another one of your bodies and then your previous body getting an identity of its own.

a lot of gibberish

Googled RTFK and couldn't find the meaning but I did find the meaning for RTFM so I would assume its the same but for kickstarter.

You are the Last Castoff, the final link in the chain of the lives of the being they call the Changing God. He once was a man who discovered a way to use the relics of the ancients to cheat death and skip across the face of centuries in a succession of bodies. But he never knew that his bodies lived on as his consciousness fled, a new consciousness arising in each. Now he has awakened an age-old enemy, the Angel of Entropy, and his days of change are gone as the Angel hunts him and all his works. That includes... you.

Castoff means "no longer wanted; abandoned or discarded." so you are kinda of an abandoned god, who can jump from body to body and that about the only thing I got from this, I don't think they mention how the PC jumps! unless it was covered in an update. Anyway, I'll check the wikia and see if it was covered

Thank you!

 

[Infinitron]

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/448904594479779840

Look who's talking.

 

[Infinitron]

That was quick! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/797498

Updated our Journal (30): George Ziets Joins Full Time

Congrats G Ziets!

 

[DeepOcean]

That was quick! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/797498

Updated our Journal (30): George Ziets Joins Full Time

Congrats G Ziets!