Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Lurker King]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/272270/discussions/0/133258593388244774/

Some of you have lost your fucking mind over this game.

J_C 5 hours ago
Another sign that transparent development is not always a good thing.

Poor developers. They are receiving some criticisms because they are being "too transparent".

 

[DeepOcean]

Played a Crisis where drones that had a huge movement speed came from the other side of the map to attack me then I realised I could kill them with a single hit from my Nano with an effort charged novice flash and two artifacts that improve the damage for esoteries and they could only hit me for 5 of damage... man, who designed this wasn't trying very hard for sure."

Is there a reason to replay with a glaive or a jack? Nano is overpowered as fuck and you can pretty much ignore 99% of the fights anyway. I don't know if having this Edge stat was a good idea, after edge 3 on intellect and a few points on lore machinery, mystical and natural, you can't pretty much pass on checks 100% of the time without wasting too much effort and you can get this right on Sagus. I had specialized + on lore machinery and on perception long before I left Sagus.

Actually, intellect is way overpowered, with a few rare exceptions where might effort and speed effort are used, you use intellect effort on most persuasion, deception and lore checks, I rarely fail on persuasion checks and this with pretty shitty novice persuasion. On the rare occasion you need to intimidate or pass a speed check, you can easily use Arritis and Maktina for this. building on the respective edges for them, you will pass on all stat checks and won't take long for this to happen.

They could have solved this by having more than three stat pools and not giving those huge effort pools for companions and by making more use of might and speed. However, all of this is kinda pointless, you can easily join the Cult of the Changing God for a free rest, right at the start on Sagus and rest after every single quest done and even later, even you paying by that time you will have so much edge that you won't consume stat pools that hard and there are rare situations were you are doing a quest far from an sleeping point.

If their intention was to force some resource management, they were way too generous with the player.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It's interesting that during the beta people were praising Avellone's Erritis and criticizing Rothfuss' Rhin, and now after release that seems to have reversed itself to an extent.

If Rothfus wrote Rhin then I'm sad I got rid of her; should have fed her to the corpse-eaters or something. Yech.

 

[DeepOcean]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/272270/discussions/0/133258593388244774/

Some of you have lost your fucking mind over this game.

J_C 5 hours ago
Another sign that transparent development is not always a good thing.

Poor developers. They are receiving some criticisms because they are being "too transparent".

Fanboys are the kind of people that would gladly go burn on an a Nazi incineration chamber and would attack anyone that thinks is a bad idea because that is offending their developer senpais. Only Freud can explain.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/272270/discussions/0/133258593388244774/

Some of you have lost your fucking mind over this game.

J_C 5 hours ago
Another sign that transparent development is not always a good thing.
I have been reading a lot of feedback during the development about Torment, and the things I read made me realize that sharing the ups and downs of the development process is not always beneficial, and I recommend developers to stop doing that.

Whether we talk about Double Fine's Broken Age, Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity or Inxile's Torment, there were news which might seem a big problem to the gamers, but in reality, they are a common things in the world of game development. When there is a slight financial problem, or you have to cut some content from the game, or you have to change the game mechanics, this might send a bad message to some players, and result in some bad rep among them. Not realizing that these kind of things happen all the time, but usually we don't know about it, we just see the end product.

The same with Torment. Some people blame the devs for cutting content, like it wasn't an everyday occurrence when you make a game. Tell you what, your favourite game probably had cut content, and the devs cut it out because it was either not fitting to the game, or they couldn't flash it out as much as they wanted to.

In the end, although it seems nice when the devs share every detail with us, I would urge them to hold back some of the information, because there are people out there who will twist these information in a bad way.

He doesn't even own Torment.

 

[DeepOcean]

That never stopped J_C cuckness before.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

They could have solved this by having more than three stat pools and not giving those huge effort pools for companions and by making more use of might and speed. However, all of this is kinda pointless, you can easily join the Cult of the Changing God for a free rest, right at the start on Sagus and rest after every single quest done and even later, even you paying by that time you will have so much edge that you won't consume stat pools that hard and there are rare situations were you are doing a quest far from an sleeping point.

If their intention was to force some resource management, they were way too generous with the player.

Yeah I'm puzzled how is the advertised replayability supposed to happen, when you can pass all the check with some tricks and cheese. They've made a big bruhaha about only being able to see half a game after one playtrough, but I just don't see how is that claim remotely possible. Sure maybe on 2nd run I'll be passing checks with intimidation instead of persuasion or whatever, but what the fuck difference does it make, slightly changed flavor text?

 

[DeepOcean]

Pick that reading minds talent at the start of the game, specially if you are going to play with Arritis and Rhin, there is some nice interaction you will only see if you can read their minds.

 

[vivec]

Is there a reason to replay with a glaive or a jack?

That is a throwback to PST. You know what this means only if you played PST.

 

[vivec]

Damn... how the fuck can you make combat worse than WL2?

Might as well make it Real time with pause, FFS.

Actually, the Combat is really good. The encounter design and the resource management not so much. This system with some tweaking has GREAT potential, especially in a storytelling game.

 

[MRY]

Moth Projas Ivan Thanks for the kind words.

Moth Naturally, I know what happens if he doesn't die, but probably best not to share.

Azarkon I've always thought that paragraph from AToTC is a prime example of overwriting. Everyone remembers "It was the best of times, it was the worst times" but the paragraph as a whole drags on, an "epoch" feels really forced. Plus, winter and spring aren't dichotomies, and somehow Dickens seems to have missed (?) the obvious allusion to Richard III's "now is our winter of discontent made glorious summer." Bah. Humbug! Dickens is just a rip off of Fielding anyway, and never matched the sheer brilliance of "why, why would you marry an Irishman?" Or the wonderful reversal of this: "for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity." The final catastrophe indeed.

[EDIT: Only mention of Inifere on Steam. I feel fulfilled: "Is father's Inifere's dialogue just the worst? I didn't understand a word he was saying..."]

 

[ERYFKRAD]

J_C how the fuck are you still sucking that Double Fine cock man?

 

[Ivan]

it's a shame that these have more Torment in it than most of Faggus Cliffs

 

[Ganymede]

So this game pissed everyone off and sold like shit? Sounds like the genuine Torment article. Can't wait for it to become a cult classic in 5-10 years.

 

[YES!]

I would like some examples of games with good combat from the people stating the combat of this game is bad? PS:T? Clicker hero? KotOR 1 and 2?

fallout

I love fallout but save scuming invincible one man versus armies is not good combat.

 

[alkeides 2.0]

Moth Projas Ivan Thanks for the kind words.

Moth Naturally, I know what happens if he doesn't die, but probably best not to share.

Azarkon I've always thought that paragraph from AToTC is a prime example of overwriting. Everyone remembers "It was the best of times, it was the worst times" but the paragraph as a whole drags on, an "epoch" feels really forced. Plus, winter and spring aren't dichotomies, and somehow Dickens seems to have missed (?) the obvious allusion to Richard III's "now is our winter of discontent made glorious summer." Bah. Humbug! Dickens is just a rip off of Fielding anyway, and never matched the sheer brilliance of "why, why would you marry an Irishman?" Or the wonderful reversal of this: "for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity." The final catastrophe indeed.

[EDIT: Only mention of Inifere on Steam. I feel fulfilled: "Is father's Inifere's dialogue just the worst? I didn't understand a word he was saying..."]

It's easy to miss the whole Severed Child quest IMO, because you need to go to the edge of the screen in the Valley to see the crystal. Inifere makes a lot more sense if you do it and if you don't he does seem incoherent.

 

[Somberlain]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/272270/discussions/0/133258593388244774/

Some of you have lost your fucking mind over this game.

J_C 5 hours ago
Another sign that transparent development is not always a good thing.
I have been reading a lot of feedback during the development about Torment, and the things I read made me realize that sharing the ups and downs of the development process is not always beneficial, and I recommend developers to stop doing that.

Whether we talk about Double Fine's Broken Age, Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity or Inxile's Torment, there were news which might seem a big problem to the gamers, but in reality, they are a common things in the world of game development. When there is a slight financial problem, or you have to cut some content from the game, or you have to change the game mechanics, this might send a bad message to some players, and result in some bad rep among them. Not realizing that these kind of things happen all the time, but usually we don't know about it, we just see the end product.

The same with Torment. Some people blame the devs for cutting content, like it wasn't an everyday occurrence when you make a game. Tell you what, your favourite game probably had cut content, and the devs cut it out because it was either not fitting to the game, or they couldn't flash it out as much as they wanted to.

In the end, although it seems nice when the devs share every detail with us, I would urge them to hold back some of the information, because there are people out there who will twist these information in a bad way.

Keep fighting the good fight, Jarring_Cuck

 

[Prime Junta]

You know what particularly pisses me off about the Oasis debacle? It's inXile's slimy excuse of "oh we just made the Bloom the second hub" ... when they had a post-Kickstarter funding drive specifically to extend the Bloom.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/988605

If you’d like us to restore George Ziets’ Bloom design and fully implement it according to his original vision, consider spreading word of our continuing crowdfunding (or increasing your pledge) to help us reach this goal. All of your friends who missed the Kickstarter can still contribute to making the best Torment ever.

It's not about "lack of transparency" or whatever. It's that the fuckers lied to us all along in order drum up hype and get us to give their money, went "it's awesome! we're awesome! you're awesome! everybody's awesome!" for several years, then went "LOL JK."

 

[Excidium II]

I would like some examples of games with good combat from the people stating the combat of this game is bad? PS:T? Clicker hero? KotOR 1 and 2?

fallout

I love fallout but save scuming invincible one man versus armies is not good combat.

lol savescumin

 

[Gepeu]

ISIS's behaviour is meant to be a revival of the early Islamic Golden Age (with all of the bad parts taken out). The Caliphates and other great Islamic empires such as the Ayyubids, the Seljuks, etc, provide constant inspiration for modern political movements. The title of your video; "We have always been scared" is a perfect example of how people always assume their ancestors were the same as them.

What? Ban this retard. I know this is the 'Dex and all, but this is way too much. Submit to Allah

Shhhh, brother. Have patience. It's not the time yet.

 

[MRY]

I would like some examples of games with good combat from the people stating the combat of this game is bad? PS:T? Clicker hero? KotOR 1 and 2?

fallout

I love fallout but save scuming invincible one man versus armies is not good combat.

lol savescumin

In fairness, if you use luck as a dumpstat without thinking about what you're doing, there's really no other way to handle combat because of random critical-hit kills.

 

[you know what time it is]

why the sad songs are cheaper than happy ones, she says "because there are more of them

What's up with Wilson pic? Is it his quote or smt?

 

[Wulfstand]

Which of the followers are most interesting, story-wise? Which interact the most with your conversations? Currently I don't know if I should kick Rhin in favor of getting Erritis.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Here's why the combat/gameplay are vaguely bland and unsatisfying:

Numenera doesn't have tactical combat challenge, or character building challenge, or even dialogue puzzle or mystery solving challenge; what it has is resource management and resource management only. That is it's first and only type of challenge. Playing this game feels like playing Monopoly by myself. Sooner or later you will own the board; just a matter of making enough trips around.

Resource management is only interesting when resources are finite, you're competing against other players, or there's a time limit. Normally RPGs make resources finite within dungeon runs, but I'm pretty far into Numenera and I have yet to see a single dungeon, so that seems moot. I have seen time limits on some side quests, which is good. But you can't have a game that dumps 20 quests on you and puts time limits on all of them. That would not be a fun game. So there's almost no shortage of resources and no time limits, and thus no challenge. This may be a problem due to the translation from tabletop to videogame. In a tabletop RPG, the GM will usually not overload the PCs with quests, and he can also punish them if he feels they are resting too much. In a computer game there is no GM to tune things on the fly. But that is the least of the game's issues.

In Numenera there are no stats, only mana pools, and all characters have the same types of mana, only in slightly different levels. Characters with more mana can perform more tasks without resting, but they aren't really better than any other character. Everyone is just as strong, smart, and fast as everyone else, as long as you have full mana and put some effort into it. This is pretty absurd in the face of it; either you can bench 200lbs or you can't, no amount of effort is going to let a spaghetti-armed nerd do otherwise. It's like the Care Bears RPG; the end result of the Self-Esteem generation. Baby's First RPG.

Imagine a game of D&D where you had 3 players, all fighters, and the only difference between them was they each had a different resistance stat that allowed them to take half damage from a certain elemental damage type. The DM puts the 3 fighters in a dungeon filled with unavoidable traps; the traps only go off once and deal a fixed amount of elemental damage. The challenge of the game would be to figure out the damage type of each trap and have the fighter with the appropriate resistance trigger it to minimize the damage. Keep doing this until every trap is triggered or they run out of health; in that case the fighters just leave to restore their HP, then come back and keep blundering into the traps.

The players might just ignore the resistances entirely and take full damage from the traps, but it wouldn't really matter, it would just require them to rest more until they "win." That's Numenera's design in a nutshell.

Besides being absurdly unrealistic and failing utterly as a simulation, it's not really much fun either. Another huge problem with the game is that it uses the same mana pools for combat and non-combat tasks. I know indie hipster tabletop RPG dorks love this, because they all think a sword duel should be no different mechanically than building a birdhouse or conducting international diplomacy. Unified resolution systems are all the rage but it only takes 5 minutes of play time to see why they are a bad idea.

Let's say you're playing a variant of 3E D&D where Rogues have a resource pool called "Subterfuge Points," and they have to spend these points every time they pick a lock or make a sneak attack. A first level Rogue has 4 Subterfuge points, it costs 1 point to open a lock or sneak attack. You come across a locked chest, are you going to open it? Hell no, that's one less effective attack you'll be able to make in the next combat. Combat is life or death, the chest will still be there. Big deal. So the rogue is skipping a trivial task in order to make sure he can survive fights. That's not very fun.

Making matters even more bizarre, let's say Fighters get subterfuge points too, but it costs them 2 points to pick a lock. Wouldn't matter though, because Fighters use "Martial Points" or whatever for their attacks. So the skilled expert lockpicking rogue avoids spending his precious points on tasks he is good at, and lets the big dumb meathead fighter pick locks instead, because he's not going to use his mana for anything else.

Welcome to Numenera, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Final note, about Ciphers. Some people are wondering why a combat system full of overpowered consumables isn't all that balanced, and that's because it can't be. What part of 'overpowered consumable' is supposed to get balanced? Ciphers are just scrolls; the game pits 1st level characters against each other but gives one side a couple of Fireball scrolls. How do you balance this encounter? Give both sides fireball scrolls? Whoever wins initiative wins the fight.

If a DM handed out high level scrolls to a low-level party and claimed it was balanced because the scrolls were single-use, that DM is an idiot. Ciphers are functionally cheat items built into the game. Players will either use them or not; cheats can't be used to 'balance' a game.

*edit* Spelling, grammar

 

[Ivan]

Which of the followers are most interesting, story-wise? Which interact the most with your conversations? Currently I don't know if I should kick Rhin in favor of getting Erritis.

you should have both. Callistege>Alibore. But I'm rolling w/ Rhin, Erritis and Matkina.