Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[fantadomat]

The game is mediocre at best. It is very forgettable,just like the text in it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

And you're wrong for savescumming themby the way, because that's one InXile promise that came somewhat true and there places where failure leads to interesting outcomes. The fight with Quarro right at the start of the game is one example. You can send him away by talking, but should you fail and have to fight, it leads to better xp reward.

I did fail and rolled with it, hence why I was able to evaluate the crisis.

I know, hence why I'm explaining that if you do win, the ultimate outcome is worse.

 

[Zombra]

FWIW, in TTON (as far as I played it) I found "failing forward" to be perfectly palatable. Fail speech challenge, dude gets pissed at you, interesting thing ensues. Fail chest opening challenge, hmm, let's see if I can get somewhere without whatever key was in there. I save scummed every safe and toaster in Wasteland 2 but somehow I'm at peace with failure here. Not a con or done badly in my opinion.

 

[Prime Junta]

FWIW, in TTON (as far as I played it) I found "failing forward" to be perfectly palatable. Fail speech challenge, dude gets pissed at you, interesting thing ensues. Fail chest opening challenge, hmm, let's see if I can get somewhere without whatever key was in there. I save scummed every safe and toaster in Wasteland 2 but somehow I'm at peace with failure here. Not a con or done badly in my opinion.

How in the name of Mog did you manage to fail at anything?

 

[Lhynn]

tl;dr: the writing isnt that horrible if you skip all the horrible parts

Yeah, that seems to match with my experience.

Also i disgree with you on the setting, it feels incoherent and lazy. The kind of thing you come up when you dont even want to bother trying to lay the groundwork for an actual setting.

 

[iZerw]

Is the game decent enough? Is it worth playing while waiting for fully patched Elex?

 

[fantadomat]

Is the game decent enough? Is it worth playing while waiting for fully patched Elex?

Better play unpatched ELEX. I already finish it and is far better that that mishmash of pointless writing and random ideas.

 

[Iznaliu]

How in the name of Mog did you manage to fail at anything?

It was probably by not trying to succeed.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

How in the name of Mog did you manage to fail at anything?

It was probably by not trying to succeed.

That's my motto in life.

 

[Iznaliu]

That's my motto in life.

Would you recommend it to others?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

That's my motto in life.

Would you recommend it to others?

Absolutely. You'll never have to face disappointment or failure if you never try to succeed in a first place.

 

[Twiglard]

Interesting how the Early Access area in TTON was really decent-looking compared to several stock-asset areas just later. More fun to play too. Fucking Briar Faggo salesmanship.

MotB had great narrative/combat pacing

As long as you like epic level dire badgers.

 

[ArchAngel]

MOtB was terrible combat design wise. They just level scaled everything and sent you to kill it like you are random <10 lvl adventurer.

HotU for NWN1 did epic level content much much better.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Roguey said the pacing, which I guess was alright. The level-scaled, boring enemies and boring fights were there, though.

 

[Cross]

Interesting how the Early Access area in TTON was really decent-looking compared to several stock-asset areas just later. More fun to play too. Fucking Briar Faggo salesmanship.

MotB had great narrative/combat pacing

As long as you like epic level dire badgers.

I don't remember any epic level dire badgers. Epic gnolls on the other hand...

I did a search and apparently I wasn't the only one with this particular gripe.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/nwn2-motb-epic-level-gnolls.54209/page-2

Was there ever any official "explanation" for the existence of the ultra gnolls posted anywhere? And who it was that was responsible?

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/vi ... m=121&sp=0

Those gnolls are actually very tough. Super Thayan Gnoll Guild members.

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/vi ... m=121&sp=0

Once you start with the fact that your character went from 1st to 30th level in the equivalent of one year of time, I think it becomes an awful lot easier to accept ultra-powerful elite Thayan gnoll fighters and packs of Red Wizards in the high teens/low twenties.

The gnolls have been enhanced and re-enhanced repeatedly due to years of experiments being performed on them at the Academy of Shapers and Binders. Despite retaining the outward shape of gnolls, they are more akin to magical beasts than anything else and are unique as servants and soldiers of the Academy.

In short - a wizard did it.

And for good measure http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/663645946

Did you work on Mask of the Betrayer? One of Obsidian's best games. (technically an expansion but who cares)

I only helped out with a little combat balance, which was very hard with a 20th+ level D&D game. All of the writing, quests, and other stuff (that people really liked about MotB) was done by other people.

So let's pin it on Sawyer and Husges. Jerks.

 

[grotsnik]

I think the fuss over MotB's scaled enemies is kind of overblown, tbh. Sure, they unforgivably bumped up the stats of some armoured dogmen beyond the immutable realism of its fantasy realm, so that it takes you a few goes to knock them over. You're also in a small town where the merchants have stock worth millions of gold pieces, the barrels by the docks are filled with hundreds of coins, and all the nearby caves are filled with all-powerful weaponry.

Throne of Bhaal and HotU try to 'make sense' of the bullshit of epic-level adventuring by throwing the kitchen sink at their settings, at the expense of coherence (and even then there's tons of handwaving to go around: high-level goblins in Undermountain, the Valsharess' army apparently made entirely of over-levelled duergar minions...mega-powerful random palace guards in Saradush, too, I think?)

MotB works harder to keep its tone and sense of place consistent, so it fudges some enemy stats to make them fit the story while presenting a reasonable challenge to the over-levelled player.

That's...fine with me, really.

Not great, sure, and the game's never going to be remembered for the quality of its encounter design - like Roguey said, the combat's pretty much there to pace out the storyline, which it's fine at. But I don't really get why it's remembered as particularly bad over other expansions of the same kind, especially when 'nuh-uh, this magical walking tree is more powerful than the rulebook says it should be!' is so irrelevant to what it actually does well.

 

[ArchAngel]

No it is not fine. There are also overleveled undead, an encounter with Thayan mages that looks more like a random traveling encounter than a fight vs bad ass Thayans that did a lot of shit in the world to accomplish their level, inn keeper that has a power to permanently lock you out of his Inn even with your being a lvl 21+ character and similar shit like that.

What game actually should have allowed you is to burn everything to the ground if you wanted and any tougher fight should have been a special encounter that was well explained why it is such. But it was easier to fill it with random shit so they can also put in some smart words in it and call it a finished game.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Why did they have to take shitty enemies and level scale them instead of just using strong enemies... or use enemies that don't require such imbecilic scaling.

Oh yeah, it's cheaper and less work and Obsidian.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Everything about MotB was incredibly half-assed apart from the story.

 

[Prime Junta]

Everything about MotB was incredibly half-assed apart from the story.

I wouldn't quite put it that way. It played poorly because of general D&D3 epic-level derp -- really hard to rescue, that -- and a really spongy engine.

With those givens I think they did a commendable job of it. The environments were cool and atmospheric, the music was nice, and there was plenty of variety in the combat encounters too.

 

[fantadomat]

Everything about MotB was incredibly half-assed apart from the story.

I wouldn't quite put it that way. It played poorly because of general D&D3 epic-level derp -- really hard to rescue, that -- and a really spongy engine.

With those givens I think they did a commendable job of it. The environments were cool and atmospheric, the music was nice, and there was plenty of variety in the combat encounters too.

So people who don't care about the board game,will see no problem with the game?

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem has always been the engine and the not-very-good implementation of high-level combat. As in the already mentioned epic gnolls and similar. Most of the encounters are there just for the player to fight something, as opposed to them logically being a threat in the original ruleset.

 

[Roguey]

Oh yeah, it's cheaper and less work and Obsidian.

They had an expansion-sized budget.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Throne of Bhaal and HotU try to 'make sense' of the bullshit of epic-level adventuring by throwing the kitchen sink at their settings, at the expense of coherence (and even then there's tons of handwaving to go around: high-level goblins in Undermountain, the Valsharess' army apparently made entirely of over-levelled duergar minions...mega-powerful random palace guards in Saradush, too, I think?)

You start Hordes of the Underdark between level 12 and level 15. The Undermountain will be in this range. The Valsharess part of the game is mostly Beholders, Illithids, Vampires, Golems, Winged Elves, Drow with a sprinkling of Duergar, to which the duergar are the weakest opponents and are made troublesome by being well positioned with lots of crossbows (as it is with the Drow in the Undermountain). The true Epic Levels come when you get transported to the Hells, which is very fitting.

 

[Roguey]

By the way, while I was too dumb to reset my router taking a short vacation from the Codex, I went through the backer credits and noticed a name that made me double-take

So you think Milo really spent $75 on this, or does he just have a super fan willing to sign his name?