Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[hexer]

So they started handling this the right way. Finally!
Fingers crossed for a properly voiced version one day.

 

[Fairfax]

Avellone made two companions, but the only thing he tried to implement (a mental dungeon) was cut.

MCA said here in that he didn't want to be Lead Writer at Obsidian anymore, and we don't know why he ended up only doing 2 companions.

He leaved Obsidian, criticized them many times,

He's never criticized Obsidian as a whole, only management. In fact, he's praised the developers and PoE's team several times.

including giving passive agressive talks about the type of role that Sawyer had in PoE, and stopped following most of them (including Sawyer) on social media.

Are you talking about the presentation on team hierarchy? MCA did criticize something Sawyer likes to do, but he wasn't called out or anything. The presentation was simply about how he believes things should be run.

You don’t need a conspiracy theory to conclude that he is one the main factors in Avellone’s departure.

Sawyer and MCA working together did end poorly for MCA's content almost every time, but it's a lot more likely that the partners were the main factor. After all, if Sawyer was the only problem and MCA wanted to stay, all he had to do was avoid Sawyer's projects.

 

[vivec]

The worst instance in the game is the ending:

Spoiler

You try to convince the Spectre that he is NOT the Changing God (TCG) by making the argument that Consciousness needs to be continuous and TCG lost that continuity when the PC was created and that the Spectre is just a backup and not the real TCG. To which the spectre rightly replies that this is sophomore-level philosophy. *Then* you can ask him that "does he have any doubt whether he is TCG at all"? This question would be idiotic under his previous response. Here's where the ball drops. Having just refuted the argument of continuous consciousness as childish THIS last question suddenly makes the spectre change his mind and he allows you to take over TCG persona without combat (optimal ending). WTF. This is exactly the problem with the game: its a sophomore-level philosophy disguised under the hood of being a successor to PST.

 

[ArchAngel]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/272270/announcements/detail/630906986336404150

What Comes Next?

Since release, we have been tirelessly reading your feedback, comments, and reports, and using that to plan at least one or two patches for the near future. These will be primarily focused on fixing some pesky bugs that a some of our players have encountered, as well as performance and stability optimizations. You can expect to see our first patch coming in the next couple of weeks.

But, we also want to address the longer term. Four years is an extended development timeline for an RPG, and it is a hallmark of our ambition for the game. Torment has the longest script we've ever produced at over 1.2 million words, and provides more nuanced reactivity and more complicated quests and stories than we have ever done before.
Despite that, there were some features we wanted to include in the game that we weren’t able to finish in time for release. Companions, in particular, were a production trade-off where we reduced the number slightly. Not only does a single companion take many months of work from writers, scripters, designers, and artists, but because we wanted companions to interact and react to the game world and conversations in a deep way. Their implementation needed to happen later in the development process, when quests and area design were mostly complete. As we were iterating on the companions, we felt the time was best spent building them out deeper as opposed to slamming in a few more on a surface level. These development decisions are never black and white, but we always approach it from a position of what we truly believe is best for the game.

But, there's a saying that no work of art is ever truly complete. We certainly know that many of you were looking forward to some of the things we couldn't squeeze into our release build, and it just didn't sit well with us leaving those behind. Now that we have had a time to see your feedback on the game, we also have a better sense of where we can focus our resources to improve.

To that end, we are pleased to announce that we will be working on additional content and updates for Torment post-release. These updates will include:

• Oom ("The Toy" companion).
  
• Voluminous Codex.
  
• Crisis system improvements.

Our initial updates to the game will focused on bug fixes, optimizations, and other improvements, while the content additions will come later down the line. Both the patches and content updates will, of course, be completely free for all Torment owners. We will have more news on these in the coming weeks and months!

It's your incredible support that allows us to continue making the games we love. We can't stress to you enough how amazing a journey working on this new Torment game has been, and we are excited to see how we can continue to improve it even further.

I guess I should put the game on pause for few months and play the Ultimate GoTY Enhanced Edition when it is out.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/272270/announcements/detail/630906986336404150

What Comes Next?...

Once again the people who backed it and played early miss out on the best experience. Why can't devs just fucking finish the game

 

[Lacrymas]

The only thing they managed to do in 4 years is put strings on the limbs of a mangled corpse and parade it around, making it do a little dance for our amusement (and Fargo's pockets), like a macabre marionette. Too bad almost nobody was amused. I don't have hope they'll save this game in only a few months, maybe not even a year.

 

[TT1]

This should be a new emoticon in the codex. Looks like we´ll need this a lot.

I guess I should put the game on pause for few months and play the Ultimate GoTY Enhanced Edition when it is out.

Yep! This is actually a nice idea. Maybe September TTON will be complete.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wow, I honestly didn't expect them to commit to large content updates despite T:TON sales tanking so badly, Better late than never, I guess. Although I kind of wonder if announcing that a week after launch won't kill the sales even more, with people holding out for inevitable DC/GOTY.

Still, I can respect that. InXile may do a lot things wrong, but their the post-release support so far is always excellent.

 

[Morkar Left]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/272270/announcements/detail/630906986336404150

What Comes Next?...

Once again the people who backed it and played early miss out on the best experience. Why can't devs just fucking finish the game

Since release, we have been tirelessly reading your feedback, comments, and reports, and using that to plan at least one or two patches for the near future. These will be primarily focused on fixing some pesky bugs that a some of our players have encountered, as well as performance and stability optimizations. You can expect to see our first patch coming in the next couple of weeks.

They surely need that community manager. Half the people will already be pissed off after reading this introduction before they reach the end of the announcement where inXile promises more content.

For me it means I can wait another year till playing it.

 

[Lacrymas]

These are things that are probably already 80% done, since The Toy (and the Codex) was a stretch goal. Nobody in this fucking game has any connection to the narrative, another random companion in there won't be out of place, i.e. it's easy to implement without any thought whatsoever. It's already a box of random toys you can pick up, put down and forget. This time it's literal.

 

[valcik]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/272270/announcements/detail/630906986336404150

New PR manager seems to be competent. Tier 1 PR stuff right there, lemme tell ya!

 

[Merlkir]

Huh, looks like I'll be waiting until they patch this to the Director's Cut version or whatever. Glad I didn't start playing on release.

 

[GloomFrost]

HA hit Fargo where it hurts the most. It took him more then a week to realize that no matter how many "positive" reviews from kotaku and ign the game got, no matter how many tweets praising the game it got, it did not help the sales one bit. And sales is by far the only thing he cares about. Hopefully it will teach other RPG developers a good lesson as well.

 

[Jarpie]

Wow, I honestly didn't expect them to commit to large content updates despite T:TON sales tanking so badly, Better late than never, I guess. Although I kind of wonder if announcing that a week after launch won't kill the sales even more, with people holding out for inevitable DC/GOTY.

Still, I can respect that. InXile may do a lot things wrong, but their the post-release support so far is always excellent.

Nah, it's just out of desperation, and "throwing something small to the backers", like Lacrymas said, they were probably already 80% done. I imagine The Toy was pretty much written already but they didn't finish just some animations, it's pretty much "Damage Control 101 doing as little as possible", only reason they're doing this is to try to pacify pissed off buyers and backers.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Incline for Age of Decadence.

Spoiler

You can tell the Council that you created him, also you can wait very long for the Council to have time for you and the hole party gets demoralized

Finally someone notices the Clerk.

I actually really liked the clerk. No joke. He's actually well written, non-cringy, and would've fitted well into a Tormentesque game.

My theory is the idea for this character came from a real life clerk that Brian Fargo had to deal with when filing for his Gamer Shoes™ patent.

 

[Prime Junta]

Wow, I honestly didn't expect them to commit to large content updates despite T:TON sales tanking so badly, Better late than never, I guess. Although I kind of wonder if announcing that a week after launch won't kill the sales even more, with people holding out for inevitable DC/GOTY.

Still, I can respect that. InXile may do a lot things wrong, but their the post-release support so far is always excellent.

Nah, it's just out of desperation, and "throwing something small to the backers", like Lacrymas said, they were probably already 80% done. I imagine The Toy was pretty much written already but they didn't finish just some animations, it's pretty much "Damage Control 101 doing as little as possible", only reason they're doing this is to try to pacify pissed off buyers and backers.

What boggles my mind is that they still haven't wrapped their head around the painful truth that if they want any of the damage control to bite, they need to admit that they fucked up in the first place. Instead they're going "lookit all these awesome reviews we're getting! we're awesome! you're awesome! everyone's awesome!"

Which I think may kind of be the reason they're in this situation in the first place. If CMcC or whoever had had some standards from the start, this wouldn't have happened.

Prime Junta's thesis: if they have no standards for cobblestones, why would they have standards for anything else?

 

[MRY]

Incline for Age of Decadence.

Spoiler

You can tell the Council that you created him, also you can wait very long for the Council to have time for you and the hole party gets demoralized

Finally someone notices the Clerk.

I actually really liked the clerk. No joke. He's actually well written, non-cringy, and would've fitted well into a Tormentesque game.

My theory is the idea for this character came from a real life clerk that Brian Fargo had to deal with when filing for his Gamer Shoes™ patent.

No, he is based on the recurrent clerk characters in Jack Vance novels, particularly the clerk from Araminta Station. It probably helps (?) that I spent a decade working in government.

 

[t]

Provided you gave us your correct shipping address by January 27th, 2017, you will be ready to receive all your physical goods when they ship.

No shit Sherlock, I wouldn't expect to receive stuff when it actually ships.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wow, I honestly didn't expect them to commit to large content updates despite T:TON sales tanking so badly, Better late than never, I guess. Although I kind of wonder if announcing that a week after launch won't kill the sales even more, with people holding out for inevitable DC/GOTY.

Still, I can respect that. InXile may do a lot things wrong, but their the post-release support so far is always excellent.

Nah, it's just out of desperation, and "throwing something small to the backers", like Lacrymas said, they were probably already 80% done. I imagine The Toy was pretty much written already but they didn't finish just some animations, it's pretty much "Damage Control 101 doing as little as possible", only reason they're doing this is to try to pacify pissed off buyers and backers.

Of course it's all PR and damage control, same with WL2 DC, or with Witcher's 3 "free DLCs". Doesn't really matter what their motivations are, as long as we get a better game.

I'd imagine they were always going to patch it heavily, same as WL2. It's a fucking shame that it bombed so badly on the market. As much as I enjoy seeing Fargo get a kick in the nuts so hopefully they get their shit together, but had it sold well the patches would have been much more extensive I'm sure.

In time this might have been much improved game, the potential is there.

 

[Jarpie]

Wow, I honestly didn't expect them to commit to large content updates despite T:TON sales tanking so badly, Better late than never, I guess. Although I kind of wonder if announcing that a week after launch won't kill the sales even more, with people holding out for inevitable DC/GOTY.

Still, I can respect that. InXile may do a lot things wrong, but their the post-release support so far is always excellent.

Nah, it's just out of desperation, and "throwing something small to the backers", like Lacrymas said, they were probably already 80% done. I imagine The Toy was pretty much written already but they didn't finish just some animations, it's pretty much "Damage Control 101 doing as little as possible", only reason they're doing this is to try to pacify pissed off buyers and backers.

What boggles my mind is that they still haven't wrapped their head around the painful truth that if they want any of the damage control to bite, they need to admit that they fucked up in the first place. Instead they're going "lookit all these awesome reviews we're getting! we're awesome! you're awesome! everyone's awesome!"

Which I think may kind of be the reason they're in this situation in the first place. If CMcC or whoever had had some standards from the start, this wouldn't have happened.

Prime Junta's thesis: if they have no standards for cobblestones, why would they have standards for anything else?

Yeah, it's basically the classic "We're sorry we got caught for fucking up" instead of "We're sorry we fucked up". I don't buy it for a second that they were too busy making the game and didn't think of telling the backers that they cut out content, they (IMO) intentionally stayed quiet in hopes that no one notices till after the release.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/272270/announcements/detail/630906986336404150

What Comes Next?

Since release, we have been tirelessly reading your feedback, comments, and reports, and using that to plan at least one or two patches for the near future. These will be primarily focused on fixing some pesky bugs that a some of our players have encountered, as well as performance and stability optimizations. You can expect to see our first patch coming in the next couple of weeks.

But, we also want to address the longer term. Four years is an extended development timeline for an RPG, and it is a hallmark of our ambition for the game. Torment has the longest script we've ever produced at over 1.2 million words, and provides more nuanced reactivity and more complicated quests and stories than we have ever done before.
Despite that, there were some features we wanted to include in the game that we weren’t able to finish in time for release. Companions, in particular, were a production trade-off where we reduced the number slightly. Not only does a single companion take many months of work from writers, scripters, designers, and artists, but because we wanted companions to interact and react to the game world and conversations in a deep way. Their implementation needed to happen later in the development process, when quests and area design were mostly complete. As we were iterating on the companions, we felt the time was best spent building them out deeper as opposed to slamming in a few more on a surface level. These development decisions are never black and white, but we always approach it from a position of what we truly believe is best for the game.

But, there's a saying that no work of art is ever truly complete. We certainly know that many of you were looking forward to some of the things we couldn't squeeze into our release build, and it just didn't sit well with us leaving those behind. Now that we have had a time to see your feedback on the game, we also have a better sense of where we can focus our resources to improve.

To that end, we are pleased to announce that we will be working on additional content and updates for Torment post-release. These updates will include:

• Oom ("The Toy" companion).
  
• Voluminous Codex.
  
• Crisis system improvements.

Our initial updates to the game will focused on bug fixes, optimizations, and other improvements, while the content additions will come later down the line. Both the patches and content updates will, of course, be completely free for all Torment owners. We will have more news on these in the coming weeks and months!

It's your incredible support that allows us to continue making the games we love. We can't stress to you enough how amazing a journey working on this new Torment game has been, and we are excited to see how we can continue to improve it even further.

FFS.
They really fucked up didn't they?

 

[existential_vacuum]

inXile new propaganda poster:

Know what I hate about this poster the most? Grammar.

"Did you know that... 90 fully unique cyphers"

"Did you know that... 69 abilities obtained from types, foci, companions and through story events"

Some work, some fuckin' don't. But nevermind, let us have our own bullshit poster:

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah, it's basically the classic "We're sorry we got caught for fucking up" instead of "We're sorry we fucked up". I don't buy it for a second that they were too busy making the game and didn't think of telling the backers that they cut out content, they (IMO) intentionally stayed quiet in hopes that no one notices till after the release.

You know, I think it would be worse if it wasn't intentional.

That would mean they forgot completely, which means they really don't give a shit about us or the promises they made, after they got our shekels.

It would be interesting to hear which it is.

 

[Jarpie]

Wow, I honestly didn't expect them to commit to large content updates despite T:TON sales tanking so badly, Better late than never, I guess. Although I kind of wonder if announcing that a week after launch won't kill the sales even more, with people holding out for inevitable DC/GOTY.

Still, I can respect that. InXile may do a lot things wrong, but their the post-release support so far is always excellent.

Nah, it's just out of desperation, and "throwing something small to the backers", like Lacrymas said, they were probably already 80% done. I imagine The Toy was pretty much written already but they didn't finish just some animations, it's pretty much "Damage Control 101 doing as little as possible", only reason they're doing this is to try to pacify pissed off buyers and backers.

Of course it's all PR and damage control, same with WL2 DC, or with Witcher's 3 "free DLCs". Doesn't really matter what their motivations are, as long as we get a better game.

I'd imagine they were always going to patch it heavily, same as WL2. It's a fucking shame that it bombed so badly on the market. As much as I enjoy seeing Fargo get a kick in the nuts so hopefully they get their shit together, but had it sold well the patches would have been much more extensive I'm sure.

In time this might have been much improved game, the potential is there.

I doubt they'd put stuff back unless they'd be desperate, they didn't put back anything cut or make any content changes in WL2DC afaik, and they had reason to make WL2DC with the console ports, there's no such reason in here. The impression I've gotten from inXile people is that they don't have humility to admit they've fucked up, or that they had to cut out sizeable chunks out of the game due screwing around.

 

[Jarpie]

Yeah, it's basically the classic "We're sorry we got caught for fucking up" instead of "We're sorry we fucked up". I don't buy it for a second that they were too busy making the game and didn't think of telling the backers that they cut out content, they (IMO) intentionally stayed quiet in hopes that no one notices till after the release.

You know, I think it would be worse if it wasn't intentional.

That would mean they forgot completely, which means they really don't give a shit about us or the promises they made, after they got our shekels.

It would be interesting to hear which it is.

I think both are pretty much equally bad. Either they're scumbags or scumbags.