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

[Haba]

First time is best time, why ruining it with a skeleton?

 

[StaticSpine]

First time is best time, why ruining it with a skeleton?

This is usually totally my point of view (for Wasteland 2, Underrail, Age of Decadence), but it works the opposite for TToN.

I was so happy when it was announced and now I'm looking closely to every bit of info I can get from the updates/interviews etc. So I want to check the alpha mechanics test, just to try the game earlier than the others, it won't spoil the story, it'll be the very beginning of the game (as said in the latest update). Of course, the beta spoils the story much stronger, but it will be awesome to try the beta version and the release version and mark the things that changed. And overall, I'm not that spoiler-butthurt/storyfag gamer. I pay more attention to the atmosphere/feel of the game.

 

[Morgoth]

You can try the Alpha and Beta for free on the PB. No point in paying twice for the same game.

 

[Infinitron]

Leave him alone guys, he's helping to make the game better.

 

[StaticSpine]

You can try the Alpha and Beta for free on the PB.

Nah, bro. That's not my type of thing to do.

Leave him alone guys, he's helping to make the game better.

 

[Morgoth]

It's only immoral if you don't pay for the finished game.

 

[Roguey]

Monte Cook's tabletop hackery exposed:

Is anyone here familiar with Numenera? I heard Cook basically went crazy and made the wizard class even more broken than traditional DnD. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Compared to the Glaive (fighter) the imbalance is hilarious, as in the wizard gets to do cool wizardry shit while the fighter gets to sacrifice health to do an extra point of damage.

Although that's accurate, it would be more accurate to say the wizard gets the ability to literally move mountains, at the same level that the fighter gets the ability to kick someone as an extra attack in a round. What's particularly dumb is both the fighter and the wizard gain their abilities by shoving technology into their body. So you can choose to shove the tech into your body that lets you teleport anywhere in the universe and shift mountains around OR the tech that lets you kick someone after swinging your weapon. Balance.

So ToN will likely be faithful to its predecessor in that the wizard class will be the only one worth playing. Might as well just cut out the option to play as the other two.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I doubt TToN will have stuff like moving mountains; it could well be possible that, within the constraints of a given crisis and given the limited (and, I assume, shared) access to technology within the game, the wizard's options won't be that much better than those of a fighter.

 

[Morality Games]

I doubt TToN will have stuff like moving mountains; it could well be possible that, within the constraints of a given crisis and given the limited (and, I assume, shared) access to technology within the game, the wizard's options won't be that much better than those of a fighter.

Let's be real. The Nano will be the only real class.

 

[Infinitron]

You're forgetting that the game's designer might be reading this thread at this very moment.

HEY ADAM ARE YOU PLANNING TO MAKE THE NANO RIDICULOUSLY OVERPOWERED AND THE OTHER TWO CLASSES USELESS??

 

[Crooked Bee]

Seriously, in theory ( ), balancing this kind of stuff is considerably easier in a CRPG where you can strictly control what the player can and cannot do.

 

[Roguey]

I'm predicting the class balance will be not unlike Dragon Age: Origins. Three classes and yet the spellcaster is the undeniably superior option. Completable with no spellcasters, but a party full of 'em for the instant win.

 

[Morality Games]

Intention is irrelevant; one class is a mage, the others are not.

I'm predicting the class balance will be not unlike Dragon Age: Origins. Three classes and yet the spellcaster is the undeniably superior option. Completable with no spellcasters, but a party full of 'em for the instant win.

Maybe. My Nano will still have non-mages in his party because he feels like its important to his image to be seen helping them.

 

[Roguey]

Intention is irrelevant; one class is a mage, the others are not.

The jack is a half-mage.

 

[Morality Games]

Intention is irrelevant; one class is a mage, the others are not.

The jack is a half-mage.

Yeah, we'll see. Looks like a pet master class/rogue class

EDIT:

Although in fairness a Jack is probably the most thematically appropriate class for such a being.

 

[dryan]

when release

 

[Crooked Bee]

release when

 

[roll-a-die]

It's really debatable in the rulebook whether either of the Pure Classes are better, yeah a Glaive may seem weaker, but the sheer damage, and sheer defense of a Glaive might be crazy enough to win out. The nano has more utility, sure, but the glaive is specialized enough to make up for it by the end of the leveling track.

Really move mountains isn't, YOU LITERALLY MOVE A MOUNTAIN LOOK HOW AWESOME YOU ARE.

It's, Congratulations you just took a minimum of 4 damage to collapse a house on top of someone. The weight limit is like 9 tons if I remember right.

EDIT: And with proper spending a glaive can use any of his abilities without taking damage by my understanding of the rules.

 

[Adam Heine]

HEY ADAM ARE YOU PLANNING TO MAKE THE NANO RIDICULOUSLY OVERPOWERED AND THE OTHER TWO CLASSES USELESS??

No.

 

[Ninjerk]

HEY ADAM ARE YOU PLANNING TO MAKE THE NANO RIDICULOUSLY OVERPOWERED AND THE OTHER TWO CLASSES USELESS??

No.

Like you mean it.

 

[Blaine]

I'm predicting the class balance will be not unlike Dragon Age: Origins. Three classes and yet the spellcaster is the undeniably superior option. Completable with no spellcasters, but a party full of 'em for the instant win.

http://a.pomf.se/hrpkod.webm

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

HEY ADAM ARE YOU PLANNING TO MAKE THE NANO RIDICULOUSLY OVERPOWERED AND THE OTHER TWO CLASSES USELESS??

No.

He is just messing with us. Secretly he is planning to make fighter overpowered and nano underpowered just to make us smartasses look dumb for trying to foresee this.

 

[Roguey]

New criticism

It's that every fighter ability is "do more damage" while the wizard gets unlimited Hold Person spells with no resource cost at level two. And the fighter/wizard is 95%+ copy/pasted abilities from the other two classes.

But that's the banal bad part. The painful part is how there ARE some really cool character creation concepts that are so wide open it seems like the game is begging you to make up your own stuff. But then they are completely unbalanced, very crunchy and often a grab bag of loosely-themed powers rather than something tightly designed. That leaves you without appropriate guidelines on how to invent your own and creating them takes a lot of effort given how crunchy they are. And they really are a kitchen sink so the game ends up feeling like RIFTS: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Fun to look at but you wouldn't want to play it.

Time to blow the dust off of "banal shit boring."

I'm predicting the class balance will be not unlike Dragon Age: Origins. Three classes and yet the spellcaster is the undeniably superior option. Completable with no spellcasters, but a party full of 'em for the instant win.

http://a.pomf.se/hrpkod.webm

Reminder that ToN has a max party size of four or five at the most, also not unlike DA:O.

 

[Infinitron]

Class balance in a vacuum is all well and good, but this is a game that's a much more controlled experience, even more than PS:T. You won't even be able to enter combat outside of carefully curated set-pieces. So looking at the rules and saying "HAH, this won't be balanced if I run it in a combat simulator with full party creation!" isn't very interesting, even if true.

Reminder that ToN has a max party size of four or five at the most, also not unlike DA:O.

Reminder that Planescape only had 1.5 mage companions so you couldn't have a "party full of em" even if you wanted to. But please, feel free to compare this game to Dragon Age and not to the game it's supposed to be a spiritual successor to.

 

[Infinitron]

BTW, I think people may have forgotten what Torment's companions are going to be like: http://numenera.gamepedia.com/Companions

• A fallen priest who pulls his writhing tattoos from his arms to spill horror upon his foes
• A cold, calculating jack with a blade in her pocket and acid in her soul, who caries mind-altering mists around her neck, and who has found a way to control light and shadow.
• A sybil whose visions of the world refract through her madness and who can see your other castoff siblings for what they are.
• A crippled beggar who devours magic to feed his addiction to the energies that flow through the numenera - and who can call upon that power to blast his foes with waves of pure force
• An ultradimensional traveller who peers through the veil of flesh to the life forces beneath, and who is capable of snuffing those forces with a thought
• The Toy is a changing ball of goo.

How many of these sound like a vanilla "Glaive/Jack/Nano" template even applies to them? They're going to be specced up the wazoo with Numenera artifacts and have all sorts of unique abilities.

Class balance just isn't that relevant here, because everything is so suis generis. It's the companions themselves who need to be balanced, and all the artifacts you can find in the world to kit them out with.