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

[ironyuri]

I think a Codex Vigilance Thread is in order to fight and scare off the morons, like we did for W2... Seems like this will be even worse. I just hope enough of intelligent crpg fans will jump in the Numenera forums and fight "the good fight" there.

Honestly, there's just no point. It's very clear now that people are going to turn up in every vaguely RPG-related Kickstarter crying out about how their unsolicited idea should be the developers' top priority, and that idea is some weirdly specific nonsense about full voice-acting (and they want Nolan North/Felicia Day to be the actor!), or a romance with an innocent girl-next-door type like her out of Firefly, or a new NPC I came up with in a tabletop session who resembles me only he's a mysterious ninja with a dark past, or actually the project needs to have a compelling villain exactly like Saren in Mass Effect because he really made my FemShep hate him even though she understood his reasoning, maybe he could be voiced by Saren's actor?

There's no stopping them. There's no debating the issue with them. They're backers too; isn't the entire point of Kickstarter that the developers are supposed to listen to them? In fact, now that you've rudely criticised their brilliant designs, they'd better start an Official Voice-Acting/Romance/Ninja/Saren Appreciation Thread just to prove to the developers how much support there is for their idea. They need to make their opinions heard above all of this meanness and negativity! And so the bladderful of reeking piss bloats and swells and consumes everything.

Just take a deep breath and don't fucking engage, I say.

That said, I think we need to demand that they bring fucking Sheena Easton back.





Fuck anyone who disagrees with me.

Oh Sheena, light of my Hebridean loins. When will you be mine.

 

[General Maxson]

I still think there should be newspost or something like that, so that, when the time comes, Codexers can do the "right thing" and vote for . There are a lot of guys that aren't as active here, but still lurk from time to time. I would hate to miss the opportunity for a "perfect" game because some mass of people decided to vote for 3D instead of 2D for example...

I like the idea of a Kickstarter suggestion awereness thread on the crpg forum, kept up to date with all the major issues being discussed/voted on Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Shadowrun and Torment. Go to it!

I think there's no need for Shadowrun, as they are pretty much set what they will make, so no voting. Only voting I remember was about another extra city, and people voted Berlin. And I'm pretty sure they won't even put it in the original game, but they will add it later, in an DLC or an expansion. As far as I know, original game will "only" be in Seattle. I don't think anything else was voted for. Nor that it will.

 

[Rake]

I wish that a kickstarter comes along that the devs have the balls to say from the start: "Have you played Mass Effect, Dragon Age 2, Oblivion, and Skyrim? We too and we consider them crap. If you are looking for something similar don't even bother to pledge".
I'm curious how much money a kickstarter would make purely from old school fans without the Biodrones who come whenever someone says "story" and "game" in the same sentense, and are asking for BS

 

[General Maxson]

I wish that a kickstarter comes along that the devs have the balls to say from the start: "Have you played Mass Effect, Dragon Age 2, Oblivion, and Skyrim? We too and we consider them crap. If you are looking for something similar don't even bother to pledge".
I'm curious how much money a kickstarter would make purely from old school fans without the Biodrones who come whenever someone says "story" and "game" in the same sentense, and are asking for BS

Ah, that would be sweet. If only for the butthurt. But that'll never happen. Not from someone of any caliber anyways. Well maybe crazy Lord British surprises us, really. Imagine a good pitch, like: You think Skyrim is a good sandbox? Well think again! I present you what a real sandbodx crpg should look like.

 

[Rake]

I wish that a kickstarter comes along that the devs have the balls to say from the start: "Have you played Mass Effect, Dragon Age 2, Oblivion, and Skyrim? We too and we consider them crap. If you are looking for something similar don't even bother to pledge".
I'm curious how much money a kickstarter would make purely from old school fans without the Biodrones who come whenever someone says "story" and "game" in the same sentense, and are asking for BS

Ah, that would be sweet. If only for the butthurt. But that'll never happen. Not from someone of any caliber anyways. Well maybe crazy Lord British surprises us, really. Imagine a good pitch, like: You think Skyrim is a good sandbox? Well think again! I present you what a real sandbodx crpg should look like.

Yeah, i know. But the butthurt would be supperb. Imagine the comments... that alone would worth the 10$

 

[Kem0sabe]

Ah, that would be sweet. If only for the butthurt. But that'll never happen. Not from someone of any caliber anyways. Well maybe crazy Lord British surprises us, really. Imagine a good pitch, like: You think Skyrim is a good sandbox? Well think again! I present you what a real sandbodx crpg should look like.

I´m not sure browser technology has evolved enough to permit the Sandbox RPG British want's to make...

 

[Infinitron]

Here are two articles from yesterday that I didn't newspost. The initial pitch was so thorough that it didn't really seem necessary, but they do add some additional detail.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/03/06/tor...morality-tides-explained-inxile-discuss-plot/

“We don’t to go for a cheap emotional hook here,” McComb replied. “We want to build relationships with our NPCs and we want to build ways that we can track the choices that you make within the game.

“To do that we developed what we call the ‘Tides’ system, which is essentially our alignment system. It’s more complex, more nuanced than just ‘law versus chaos’. It’s an internal thing that manifests itself through external powers.”

Saunders then added by saying, “When looking at the Tides we looked at what things motivate people, what the results of their actions are, and what the concept of a legacy is. We realised that weren’t really words in English that were quite right for the concepts we were imagining.

“We decided to extract the Tides into colours that would represent various facets of complex forces at work in our world. Unlike an alignment system in D&D – where you have good or evil – the Tides are not directly in competition with each other.

“In a way they’re competing for your attention in that we’re tracking you favour them, and that will have effects on both gameplay directly, and on how people will respond to you. We don’t want to describe to the player what the answer to the question is. We don’t have the answer to ‘What does one life matter?’

McComb then cut in to add, “Our players are going to find this out for themselves, and we’re going to guide them, challenge them and make them think, but we’re not going to say, ‘Here’s what one life matters’, because it’s going to be different for everybody depending on how they play.”

To help differentiate each moral Tide, inXile has colour-coded them for ease of reference. Game parameters such as choices and NPC reaction may change if you have ten points in blue, and five points in red for example. The indigo Tide may stand for justice, there could even be another for unity, or one for the end justifying the means.

“Part of the reason we colour-coded these choices is that they don’t have exact analogues in the English language”, McComb continued. “Something like the gold tide will be similar to empathy, charity or sacrifice, but at he same time if we called it an ‘Empathy Tide’, people would attach all of their pre-conceived notions about what empathy is to that.”

Saunders added, “Players were learn about this two-fold, through the outcomes of their actions in the game and through myths and legends told within the game world.”

http://www.destructoid.com/inxile-talks-torment-story-details-and-crowd-funding-247907.phtml

Numenera doesn't have the plethora of classes other role-playing games may boast, instead using a focus to allow players to customize and define their characters. Torment will be doing the same, though there may be additional foci created by inXile in conjunction with Monte Cook. These foci are essentially super-abilities that can be used by any of the three classes, the Glaive, Nano, or Jack (ostensibly the trinity of warrior, mage, and rogue).

Colin revealed some of the potential focus abilities that player could select. "You can speak with the dead, you can ride the lightning, you can control animals, you can master a weapon to an almost supernatural extent." Having such disparate abilities makes me think that this will be a title that will demand to be played multiple times.

There is a synchronicity between the foci and the unique tide system, Torment's answer to the unyielding alignment system in Dungeons & Dragons. "Somehow, your character has been constructed in a way that manipulates these invisible forces," Colin explained, "so the choices that you make will reflect your tides, and they change throughout the game and will have a visible effect on you and people will react to you based on the choices that you made."

Instead of their being good, or evil, or having deities and external judgements, these tides are families of concepts that help to define the player character. They are named after colors rather than literal ideals, though there are ways of thinking, emotions, and concepts that are attached to these color-coded tides.

One example was the blue tide, which in part represents things like reason. Not only will actions align players more to that tide and have an effect on the people who interact with the protagonist, it also relates to certain foci that require a more logical mind and greater wisdom. Five tides exist in the Ninth World.

 

[Tzaero]

Those focus abilities will make for some pretty interesting situations.

 

[hiver]

$1,709,389


ka - chinnng...

 

[General Maxson]

Well, all I can really say is (about the stuff Infinitron quoted):

 

[Rake]

Tides actually remind me of Magic the Gathering colors.

 

[Blaine]

Honestly, there's just no point. It's very clear now that people are going to turn up in every vaguely RPG-related Kickstarter crying out about how their unsolicited idea should be the developers' top priority, and that idea is some weirdly specific nonsense about full voice-acting (and they want Nolan North/Felicia Day to be the actor!), or a romance with an innocent girl-next-door type like her out of Firefly, or a new NPC I came up with in a tabletop session who resembles me only he's a mysterious ninja with a dark past, or actually the project needs to have a compelling villain exactly like Saren in Mass Effect because he really made my FemShep hate him even though she understood his reasoning, maybe he could be voiced by Saren's actor?

There's no stopping them. There's no debating the issue with them. They're backers too; isn't the entire point of Kickstarter that the developers are supposed to listen to them? In fact, now that you've rudely criticised their brilliant designs, they'd better start an Official Voice-Acting/Romance/Ninja/Saren Appreciation Thread just to prove to the developers how much support there is for their idea. They need to make their opinions heard above all of this meanness and negativity! And so the bladderful of reeking piss bloats and swells and consumes everything.

Just take a deep breath and don't fucking engage, I say.

I took one look at the comments to satisfy my morbid curiosity, and that'll probably be the last time.

People should be more like me: Pledge as much as you are able and willing, then shut the fuck up for the next two to three years (in terms of yammering where you hope the developers might see), unless your feedback is solicited. I'm absolutely patting myself on the back here, because I'm the perfect role model. Donating $20 and then fancying oneself the auxiliary project lead is so intensely obnoxious and out of touch with reality that I can barely stand it.

These developers are all-around good guys, and are older (for the most part) and more experienced in the industry than I am. I trust they too find Biodrones et al repulsive.

 

[Infinitron]

Old photo of Colin McComb and Fat MCA:

 

[Tzaero]

Is it just me or dosen't he sorta look like Cleve.

 

[Grunker]

I think a Codex Vigilance Thread is in order

Most definetely.

 

[Grunker]

Old photo of Colin McComb and Fat MCA:

MCA is a wigger. Whodathunk?

 

[Jaesun]

Ah, that would be sweet. If only for the butthurt. But that'll never happen. Not from someone of any caliber anyways. Well maybe crazy Lord British surprises us, really. Imagine a good pitch, like: You think Skyrim is a good sandbox? Well think again! I present you what a real sandbodx crpg should look like.

I´m not sure browser technology has evolved enough to permit the Sandbox RPG British want's to make...

http://unity3d.com/webplayer/

 

[Infinitron]

I think a Codex Vigilance Thread is in order

Most definetely.

I think Jaesun decided that the main discussion threads in GRPG would also serve as "vigilance threads". And I think I agree with that. Especially since Torment won't have a proper forum.

 

[Kem0sabe]

http://unity3d.com/webplayer/

I was failing miserably at being sarcastic.

 

[mr.Ermac]

But I'm sure you guys are already aware of this.

 

[Lockkaliber]

Everyone on /v/ is going apeshit over Tony Evans supposedly having some sort of feminist agenda.

 

[Infinitron]

Everyone on /v/ is going apeshit over Tony Evans supposedly having some sort of feminist agenda.

On the basis of this comment? http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/362133043/comments

 

[Captain Shrek]

Everyone on /v/ is going apeshit over Tony Evans supposedly having some sort of feminist agenda.

On the basis of this comment? http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/362133043/comments

 

[Lockkaliber]

Everyone on /v/ is going apeshit over Tony Evans supposedly having some sort of feminist agenda.

On the basis of this comment? http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/362133043/comments

Yup.

edit: Bringing up DA2 as an example of any kind of game design is incredibly stupid since pretty much everyone, even biodrones, thought the game was shit.

 

[Infinitron]

I suppose you could say he's talking to the 'drones in a language they understand.