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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.
Grampy_Bone you're making some good points there. However I think you're also missing one pretty big one.
Numenera isn't a combat game.
It just isn't. Combat is peripheral, a little side dish that might happen every once in a while. The main challenges should be elsewhere. You shouldn't be worried about dying in combat, you should be worried about a nanofungus invading your system and turning you into a metazombie before you manage to find your way to Dalht Fla where you've heard Qibloone the mad aeon priest grows the Crystalline Lilies of Dhume which are able to cure it. Cyphers are these crazy-dramatic things you can use in surprising ways to get past obstacles in your way, or combine them to craft new ones, or use them to build artefacts, or whatever.
That's why Numenera combat is bland by design. The thing that's supposed to spice it up is (1) GM interventions and (2) cyphers. (Also, glaives suck ass. Don't play a glaive.) And that's why the unified pools work in it. You won't be hoarding your pools for combat, because if combat is the thing you're most worried about then your GM is running the campaign... not as intended, and you should probably be playing something with an actual combat system in it.
And if T:ToN gameplay is bland, then it means that the people who made the game failed to put in sufficiently interesting noncombat challenges.
(For the record, I got bored of Numenera pretty quickly. We had a campaign that ran for a half-dozen sessions, then we just wrapped it up. There's only so much fun to be had from a constant barrage of Weird, and also I got frustrated by the complete lack of coherence, depth, or structure in the setting.)
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.
Save one for the next playthrough. I had Erritis work off his debt to the balloon guy and that had some pretty hilarious and clearly MCA-written interactions.
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.
Aren't they bringing back the Oasis in the DLC? So it's not like it's gone forever and ever. But yeah, the game would have benefitted from more content.
Sure, but what does it matter? Whether it's combat or dialogue or skill checks, success comes from spending "mana" (resource pools). If you run out, rest to refill. Done and done. Spend points -> Win Game. The End.
Part of the problem I think is that everything can be done untrained. They should have restricted allowed checks for different classes (No Intellect for glaives, no Might for nanos, etc) or required at least one point in a skill to make a check for it. To be fair the game does open some dialogue choices only if you are trained in the right skill, which is something.
Still it's really dumb that my slow-ass nano can beat the Ultimate Karate Fighter Guy in a duel just by resting and spending a lot of effort.
Maybe Numenera just isn't suited for a video game. The extemporaneous nature of tabletop gaming tends to add a lot of gameplay regardless of the actual RPG system; lose that and all we are left with is bare mechanics. That's why games with a a lot of 'crunch' translate better into cRPGs. But making 'crunch' in tabletop is hard, time consuming, maddening to balance, and not all that necessary for a lot of play styles.
Torment was probably doomed from the moment they chose to partner with Monte. A bare-bones SRD implementation of 3.5E D20 would have made a better game; hell I'd enjoy this a lot more if they remade it using the Dragon Age: Origins mechanics.
Your complaint was that you cannot pay for Rhin's freedom to the slaver since "money was what the slaver really wanted", which is simply false. And once you find Rhin and she comes with you, you find out the slaver's reason for wanting her. Your complaint is simply stupid.
Read the post, you muppet. If you still can't figure it out, it just goes to show that you haven't actually played the game. The slavers motivations are completely irrelevant to what I was talking about at that point.
Of course, except the slavers motivations are exactly what you were talking about. You whined that the slavers "only wanted money" and that you couldn't pay them for Rhin:
There is no way to think that you're not actually functionally retarded. Am I being fucking memed? Are there hidden cameras in my study? Is the joke behind your name that you're always in error, on purpose? Or is this real, and I actually have to deconstruct my own sentence in order to hand-hold you through it, even though it's obvious to everyone but you what I'm saying? I mean fucking christ, you even quote me where I make it clear that I'm talking about the thugs, not the slavers. It means you went back, looked at my post, and grabbed that one section of it, without comprehending a single fucking sentence of what I wrote.
I'm talking about the thugs that walk up to you when you find Rhin, not the slavers that initially gives you the quest to find Rhin or that you can take Rhin to. The ones that, as I wrote, is read with Scan Thoughts and revealed to expressly only doing this because they feel that they have to. That's the core of my entire annoyance with that scene, that it's made expressly clear, yet you cannot act on it. The point of the issue didn't just go over your head, you didn't even understand the fucking sentences. You might genuinely be the densest fucker I've met all year, so far - and I doubt it's going to be topped.
It's ok. You can't really fail on them. Once you stop thinking of the game as a game and as an interactive novel, and stop thinking of the skill checks as skill tests and instead thinks of them as choices, it actually becomes better.
Maybe Numenera just isn't suited for a video game. The extemporaneous nature of tabletop gaming tends to add a lot of gameplay regardless of the actual RPG system; lose that and all we are left with is bare mechanics. That's why games with a a lot of 'crunch' translate better into cRPGs. But making 'crunch' in tabletop is hard, time consuming, maddening to balance, and not all that necessary for a lot of play styles.
I think it would've been possible to make a cRPG system based on Numenera, and still have it be interesting while retaining some of the unique features of the PnP system. This ain't it though, tacking on the standard 3 defences + health, getting rid of the recovery system, and nerfing cyphers just turns it into a watered-down version of Every cRPG System Ever.
My God steam reviews are pure retarded. A lot of them are unhappy with too much text and turn based combat.
Age of Decadence did warn people that the game is not for pussy players, TTON should have done the same.
Some of them must be trolling or something, I mean look at this:
Can't recommend this game for one simple reason. The whole plot is crafted with no links to reality and made so complicated its impossible to understand what is going on and hence immerse yourself in the game.
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.
So, it basically exactly like the original? Utterly fails at all rpg-mechanics (character systems, combat) but provides reasonably interesting world and character interactions? Fells like a decent quest/adventure game combined with shit bland rpg?
Grampy_Bone you're making some good points there. However I think you're also missing one pretty big one.
Numenera isn't a combat game.
It just isn't. Combat is peripheral, a little side dish that might happen every once in a while. The main challenges should be elsewhere. You shouldn't be worried about dying in combat, you should be worried about a nanofungus invading your system and turning you into a metazombie before you manage to find your way to Dalht Fla where you've heard Qibloone the mad aeon priest grows the Crystalline Lilies of Dhume which are able to cure it. Cyphers are these crazy-dramatic things you can use in surprising ways to get past obstacles in your way, or combine them to craft new ones, or use them to build artefacts, or whatever.
That's why Numenera combat is bland by design. The thing that's supposed to spice it up is (1) GM interventions and (2) cyphers. (Also, glaives suck ass. Don't play a glaive.) And that's why the unified pools work in it. You won't be hoarding your pools for combat, because if combat is the thing you're most worried about then your GM is running the campaign... not as intended, and you should probably be playing something with an actual combat system in it.
And if T:ToN gameplay is bland, then it means that the people who made the game failed to put in sufficiently interesting noncombat challenges.
(For the record, I got bored of Numenera pretty quickly. We had a campaign that ran for a half-dozen sessions, then we just wrapped it up. There's only so much fun to be had from a constant barrage of Weird, and also I got frustrated by the complete lack of coherence, depth, or structure in the setting.)
Maybe Numenera just isn't suited for a video game. The extemporaneous nature of tabletop gaming tends to add a lot of gameplay regardless of the actual RPG system; lose that and all we are left with is bare mechanics. That's why games with a a lot of 'crunch' translate better into cRPGs. But making 'crunch' in tabletop is hard, time consuming, maddening to balance, and not all that necessary for a lot of play styles.
I think it would've been possible to make a cRPG system based on Numenera, and still have it be interesting while retaining some of the unique features of the PnP system. This ain't it though, tacking on the standard 3 defences + health, getting rid of the recovery system, and nerfing cyphers just turns it into a watered-down version of Every cRPG System Ever.
I agree completely with these posts. I think it was a tremendous mistake to try to use the Cypher System, instead of taking just the Numenera setting. The strong points of the Cypher System - insofar that it has any - lies in narrative focus and ease-of-playing, with a very light rules system that is extremely adaptable by the GM. The strengths simply do not transfer to the CRPG format, and what's worse, the parts that could've (such as character creation) was compromised. At the same time, they kept parts of the system that is widely considered detrimental even in the PnP, but that are there precisely to make playing it easier, such as single-roll attacks and flat damage. While these things can be considered acceptable in the PnP for what it tries to do (regardless of whether someone likes that or not), there is absolutely zero point to it in a CRPG - THAC0 and shit like that might've gone the way of the dodo in D&D, and sure d100 systems with their various kinds of dodging, parrying, two different damage mitigations and opposed attack rolls can be a handful in a PnP, but in a CRPG, all of that is automated anyway.
That's the benefit of the CRPG format, that it automates things and allows someone to play a solo RPG with zero setup (because the developers, the GMs in the context, have already done that).
So in my opinion, Tides of Numenera takes all the strengths and weaknesses of the system on which it is based, compromises with it, retains the vast majority of the weaknesses, while failing to capitalize on any of it's strengths. Now, someone can argue that it probably saved time not having to engineer their own system, but I have a hard time believing this, since they have still made significant departures from the system and had to implement it in a rigid fashion anyway. For example, something that many may have difficulties grasping, the Cypher System doesn't have set skills. This might sound absurd, but it doesn't. A skill could be literally anything, and it's up to the players and the GM to consider and argue implementation for the purpose of bonuses. That means that the developers had to go in and create specific skills anyway. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
GM interventions? Out the window. It does not exist in Tides of Numenera. Which is actually a pity, but I can imagine how that would play out with the modernist crowd of mouth-breathers, seeing how they are expressly meant to interfere with the player and take their agency away (..while still retaining it if they spend XP, which is honestly a bit BS, but alright). Tides of Numenera could've been better with it, with a floor suddenly crashing when you walk into a building and things like that - although that would've pushed the game even further into "Adventure Game" territory, I guess. Either way, it's a positive of the Cypher System, and it's simply not there in Tides of Numenera, and it's arguable if it could even be done well in the CRPG format at all.
Cyphers? Doesn't work properly in a CRPG. In the Cypher System, the titular Cyphers can do almost anything. It could mean teleporting through a wall. It could mean growing an extra eye. It could mean literally destroying a city block. It could mean stabbing everyone in the room with a monowire flashbang. Some of this, but far, far, far, far from all can be replicated in a CRPG of this type, meaning that Cyphers in Tides of Numenera becomes.. what? Combat-focused. Like, completely. But you never get to use the vast majority of them.
This in itself is not necessarily a problem, but it becomes a problem when there's no combat to speak of. Yes, we're all aware that Torment's focus was never combat, but even though combat was completely secondary, it was still there, it was occasionally (and consistently) necessary, and even though it didn't have anywhere near the robustness of Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate II, the foundation was still pretty fucking solid. The same cannot be said for Tides of Numenera. I reject the idea that the Cypher System/Numenera is not a combat system, because it's ultimately not relevant when judging this game - if the system is flawed, change the system, which is something the Cypher System even supports and encourages, even if I think that doing so would defeat the point of using said system. I also reject the idea that Tides of Numenera itself is not a combat-centric game, and therefore the combat doesn't need to be good - the crises are still there, and the combat is still there, saying that it can be awful just because it's not a combat-centric game is a cop-out, especially since the vast majority of apparel, items and cyphers end up being combat-focused because how could they not be?
tl;dr: Good ideas, bad implementation, Cypher System not suited for CRPGs, no matter the strengths of the setting.
I would've even preferred RtwP or a direct porting of the Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny combat system (the latter which is superior but flawed, and whose magic system could work really well in Numenera, if restricted to Nanos and abilities granted by numenera. Sue me.
Well at least this time we're not getting a console version instead of the game being improved, so there's that. Maybe they'll actually make a PC version instead.
When we get the chance to comment on another upcoming CRPG and bitch about how X was better in Times of the Nu-men-Era, thereby idealizing it and forgetting about all it's issues, obviously.
I'm not hearing any positive buzz, really. How did WL2:DC go on consoles? I have a hard time believing that it did very well, and Tides of Numenera, for all it's faults, is an ever bigger departure in terms of what appeals to the console 'tards. I honestly do believe that the reason for Tides of Numeneras high review scores from the mainstream media is largely due to virtue-signaling and the fear of insulting what in context could be described as "high culture". Talking shit about Tides of Numenera is much like badmouthing the first work of someone that's been touted as the return of Rembrandt, and few have the courage to actually point out that the Emperor is indeed naked.
Hipsters pretend themselves purveyors of high culture, when nothing could be further from the truth.
77% is worse than Wasteland, and that was barely playable on launch and LA area stayed broken for 3 months. Torment is actually quite polished, the reviews were good-to-great, they had extra marketing from Techland, they had more backers to spread the word, it's a successor to much more popular franchise. It should be doing a lot better and you know it. And InXile know it too, or they wouldn't be out on Twitter asking for positive reviews and Sear wouldn't spend entire day doing damage control in the Steam comments.
So can we drop the pretense how having entire front page full of negative reviews has no impact.
And yes, I've skimmed briefly through those top 20 negative reviews and some of them make good points, but most of them are utter nonsense. Apparently half of game has been cut, entire core of game has been removed, there was some conspiracy to make the game turn-based, money was spent on console development, and more of completely inane drivel like this.
But these reviewers are getting their narrative from somewhere, and that's InXile's own damn fault. They've been shit at communicating since WL2, and it only got worse. Review manipulation in time of controversy is of course a thing, but again, that's developer's job to get control of the messaging rather than sit on their ass, and then act surprised and beg for positive scores on Twitter.
It's an embarrassment that they still don't have proper community manager. They were supposedly oh so sorry about "forgetting" about cut companions and were supposed to fix their approach, but evidently nothing was done.
If this game flops commercially it's gonna be a problem, because I guarantee you they were planning to tunnel the profits into BT4 and WL3. Do you see them making BT4 that they promised, for mere 1.5 million? Not a chance.
I'm pretty happy with T:TON, it has it's issues but it honestly exceeded my expectations so far and I'd rate it a lot higher than WL2. But let's not beat around the bush, the launch is a trainwreck.
High culture is subjective, Fuckmann. Stop treating your opinions like they are objective truth. BTW, high culture is not necessarily superior to 'lower culture'; it is just more popular. With the critical praise T:TON of shit is generating, it is the high culture of this day and age, IMO.
BTW, high culture is not necessarily superior to 'lower culture'; it is just more popular. With the critical praise T:TON of shit is generating, it is the high culture of this day and age, IMO.
Your complaint was that you cannot pay for Rhin's freedom to the slaver since "money was what the slaver really wanted", which is simply false. And once you find Rhin and she comes with you, you find out the slaver's reason for wanting her. Your complaint is simply stupid.
