Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Roguey]

Even when it's free, they could only get a peak of 349 people to play this today. I suppose Sunday will be the big day, but ouch.

When's the next Kickstarter Figfunder, btw?
I need some more lulz and gamer sh00z.

Likely after Bard's Tale IV drops. They're likely going to need it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Holy shit those numbers.

 

[Roguey]

24-hour peak of...
Tyranny: 550
Pillars of Eternity: 1021

inXile is a walking corpse.

I wouldn't say it's anything against inXile specifically, just that they hit the ceiling of people interested in playing a successor to Planescape Torment a long time ago. Pretty brutal to find out that even decades later and with an expanded player base, the interest in such a title hasn't expanded at all.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, there are way more than 300ish people who want to play a Torment "spiritual successor". The problem is that Numanuma is garbage, the worst and most nonsensical game I've played recently and that's including Tranny.

 

[Infinitron]

Something I said on Shoutbox recently:

Oct 17, 2017 at 7:10 PM - @Infinitron: Here's the thing about games like Tyranny and Torment IMO - they're not great, but many people in the Codex community kinda allow themselves to be even more negative about them because they also failed or disappointed commercially
Oct 17, 2017 at 7:11 PM - @Infinitron: Especially with Torment, it's not really WORST GAME EVER but because it flopped it's fun to beat on it

Conversely, Codex criticism of PoE and even moreso D:OS 2 has been blunted by those games' commercial success.

 

[Roguey]

The problem is that Numanuma is garbage, the worst and most nonsensical game I've played recently and that's including Tranny.

You're overestimating how many computer game players know or care about the particulars of Numenera to have an opinion about it.

 

[Iznaliu]

You're overestimating how many computer game players know or care about the particulars of Numenera to have an opinion about it.

I would say there are still a good portion of potential players who have been turned off by its lacklustre reception.

 

[Roguey]

I would say there are still a good portion of potential players who have been turned off by its lacklustre reception.

It's free. All it costs is a few hours of time to get a first-hand impression of whether or not it's worth more of it, but of all the Steam players online today, only hundreds could be bothered to even do that.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

There are also all the cut strech goals, which were prominent on many sites around the release. I imagine that might have turned off a number of people.

But yeah, you'd think some more people would play it for free. Apparently not.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yup. It doesn't even have a long-tail, it's just dead.

 

[Infinitron]

I think what Roguey would say is that Torment got hammered with negative Steam reviews primarily because the audience of players who would have appreciated a game like it turned out to not really exist. The negative reviews came from players who were expecting a more traditional RPG experience, and there was nobody else to counterbalance them.

inXile mismanaged the game's development, sure, but their fundamental problem is that that they set out to make a game with basic design parameters that few people wanted.

 

[Lacrymas]

Uhm, no, it's just very bad. It didn't do well commercially because it didn't have anything to appeal to a larger audience and neither did it have anything to appeal to a niche audience. Numanuma flopped by any kind of standard for its budget and that's because it's bad, not because nobody wants to play a Torment spiritual successor. Unless I'm wrong and the only people who are interested in such are the people on the 'Dex. How would that be proven, however? Make a good Torment game and we'll see about that.

 

[Infinitron]

Uhm, no, it's just very bad. It didn't do well commercially because it didn't have anything to appeal to a larger audience and neither did it have anything to appeal to a niche audience. Numanuma flopped by any kind of standard for its budget and that's because it's bad, not because nobody wants to play a Torment spiritual successor. Unless I'm wrong and the only people who are interested in such are the people on the 'Dex. How would that be proven, however? Make a good Torment game and we'll see about that.

I'm not talking about Torment spiritual successors in general. I'm talking about games with this particular Torment spiritual successor's basic design parameters (which were already set in stone in 2013 and Kickstarted to the tune of 4+ million dollars, and thus not a result of mismanaged development)

 

[Cross]

One possible explanation for T:ToN's commercial failure is that it took so long to be released that it faded from public perception. T:ToN was one of the figureheads for the cRPG renaissance, but by the time it was released, not only had plenty of high-profile cRPG's been released, but several of those cRPG's had even become sequalized franchises. The positive buzz that made T:ToN's kickstarter campaign so succesful was gone by the time the game was finally released and to the average fan T:ToN was just another run-of-the-mill modern cRPG.

Lack of commercial success aside, there were so many red flags surrounding T:ToN's development that it was always a pipe dream that it could be a worthy Torment successor. You have:

• a company with zero experience developing RPG's whose last released game prior to kickstarting T:ToN was Choplifter HD;
• a disorganized development team spread out not just across different locations, but even across different continents;
• a lead writer who hadn't worked in game development for a decade and a half and who was responsible for the weakest parts of the original Torment.

It's hardly a mystery the game turned out the way it did.

 

[Lacrymas]

If it was good by its own particular parameters it will have the status of cult classic quite quickly. But it doesn't. Because it's not. Do you think there was a realistic possibility it wouldn't have flopped this hard had it had a RTwP combat system? That sounds incredibly far fetched to me.

 

[Infinitron]

If it had decent enough, well-paced RTwP combat to break up the text-walls? Quite possibly yes, it would not have gotten hammered as badly by negative Steam reviews and consequently sold a bit better.

 

[Lacrymas]

You mean like PoE? Maybe, but is turn-based combat so universally despised that PoE can sell so much more copies than Numanuma simply because it has RTwP combat? There are a lot of other factors that decrease the potential audience with each layer.

 

[Infinitron]

Obviously the problem is less the type of combat and more the quantity and distribution of it, although for a PS:T spiritual successor many people probably were expecting RTwP specifically.

 

[Roguey]

Uhm, no, it's just very bad. It didn't do well commercially because it didn't have anything to appeal to a larger audience and neither did it have anything to appeal to a niche audience. Numanuma flopped by any kind of standard for its budget and that's because it's bad, not because nobody wants to play a Torment spiritual successor. Unless I'm wrong and the only people who are interested in such are the people on the 'Dex. How would that be proven, however? Make a good Torment game and we'll see about that.

68% positive Steam score means that there are perhaps a bit over 70,000 people who enjoyed it. That's a comfortable niche if your break-even point is in the low ten thousands.

 

[Lacrymas]

There are probably more than 70k people who enjoy eating shit in the world, so that doesn't really say anything. I'm sure shit will have a 68% positive rating on Steam as well, granted it was marketed towards that specific audience. Maybe the whole audience is the people who donated to the Kickstarter and some stragglers here and there, but that's enough. They could've ran a Kickstarter campaign for each consecutive game and gotten 4M$ every time had they made a good game. If they launch a Kickstarter now for a Numanuma sequel I doubt it will even reach its goal, or it will barely reach it, but it will be very far away from 4M$

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

If it was good by its own particular parameters it will have the status of cult classic quite quickly.

Er, no. It's a good game by it's own parameters and it accomplished what it set out to do.

It's just what it set out to do, is shit.

It's a shitty game idea based around a shitty concept that doesn't work. That is all there is to it. It's not about lack of audience, and it's not about missed stretch goals and it's not about troubled development. The whole concept in its entirety is shit.

Does anyone seriously think that even if they fulfilled all the promises and didn't cut any stretch goals, it would be a much better game? Fuck no man. It would still be shit, there just would be less of a backlash.

The entire game is deeply flawed on a fundamental level. There are many individual bits of excellent quality, writing is often brilliant if inconsistent, Bloom is one of the coolest levels in any RPG ever, a lot of the art was good, companions are hit or miss but Rhin and Ertits were fun...but as the whole package, shit sucks.

 

[Fairfax]

Conversely, Codex criticism of PoE and even moreso D:OS 2 has been blunted by those games' commercial success.

Codex tastes do not align with the vast majority of commercially successful games, so I don't see why you'd expect the criticism here to be validated by a game's commercial performance in the first place. It can be validated by how a game is received by fans, and I'd argue that's partially the case with PoE at least. The game's extremely low completion rate and declining review average on Steam support a lot of the criticisms from Codex users.

 

[Infinitron]

It shouldn't be, but it is. Not for all types of games obviously (nobody here has problems hating on Fallout 4)

But I mean, it's obvious that if for example D:OS 2 had undersold the first game, a bunch of people here would be dancing on Larian's misfortune and the game's dreaded armor system would have become a memetic totem blamed for its commercial disappointment. Because the game massively succeeded, it's gotten more of a muted "Oh, phooey"-type reaction instead.

 

[Roguey]

They could've ran a Kickstarter campaign for every game and gotten 4M$ every time had they made a good game.

Current number of owners for the C&C king with builds that can totally or almost-totally avoid combat with more text than Planescape Torment, nigh-universally praised by the Codex with a swell 81% positive Steam score, Age of Decadence: 82,740 ± 8,661

There's not much of a market for this niche regardless of how high quality the title is.

 

[Cross]

They could've ran a Kickstarter campaign for every game and gotten 4M$ every time had they made a good game.

Current number of owners for the C&C king with builds that can totally or almost-totally avoid combat with more text than Planescape Torment, nigh-universally praised by the Codex with a swell 81% positive Steam score, Age of Decadence: 82,740 ± 8,661

There's not much of a market for this niche regardless of how high quality the title is.

Considering the bulk of T:ToN's 144k owners are likely from the 75-100k backers it had, that means Age of Decadence technically outsold it.