Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Schizophrenic monolog]

This game sucks.

With SUCH deep analysis I have no choice but to agree...

 

[Jarmaro]

Why is the Last Castoff less emotionally invested in his story than I am?

Maybe he's stoic

 

[Sothpaw]

Hmm so first Tyranny flops then this flops (talking sales wise). I would maybe start to worry if the POE2 campaign wasn't so successful. I suppose you can write it up to Tyranny being a new IP and Torment simply not having a large appeal (shit gameplay, all story). Admittedly I haven't purchased Torment because it looks boring as fuck. Also fuck making the UI work for consoles, that can never lead to good things.

 

[Shadenuat]

Here is an observation: The game is constructed like a museum, everything is splayed like an exhibit and you are on a tour. It feels very artificial, like you aren't truly part of the world, but an outside observer who needs guides and things explained at them. Just like a museum, an interactive museum, but one nonetheless. This is why the inquisitive tone of the protagonist bothers me so much.

Doesn't help that the game is very small. It is very small, a miniature, like a snowglobe. Sagus which is supposed to be big city is around the size of Mortuary, give or take a few territories. Local "dustmen" work in a place that in PS:T would be a small single hut with a single NPC living in it.

 

[Lurker King]

They spent a lot of money with these ports. Techland money my ass. Fargo gonna Fargo.

 

[Luckmann]

Hmm so first Tyranny flops then this flops (talking sales wise). I would maybe start to worry if the POE2 campaign wasn't so successful. I suppose you can write it up to Tyranny being a new IP and Torment simply not having a large appeal (shit gameplay, all story). Admittedly I haven't purchased Torment because it looks boring as fuck. Also fuck making the UI work for consoles, that can never lead to good things.

Tyranny and Torment both share the fact that they're just plain unfinished and was hacked to pieces during development. Tyranny has stronger mechanics and Torment has a stronger narrative, but that's about it.

What's sad is that Tyranny being shitty is more understandable, because it was a side project. How the fuck inXile could fail with Tides of Numenera and botch development this bad, that's anyone's guess.

 

[GloomFrost]

Hmm so first Tyranny flops then this flops (talking sales wise). I would maybe start to worry if the POE2 campaign wasn't so successful. I suppose you can write it up to Tyranny being a new IP and Torment simply not having a large appeal (shit gameplay, all story). Admittedly I haven't purchased Torment because it looks boring as fuck. Also fuck making the UI work for consoles, that can never lead to good things.

Tyranny and Torment both share the fact that they're just plain unfinished and was hacked to pieces during development. Tyranny has stronger mechanics and Torment has a stronger narrative, but that's about it.

What's sad is that Tyranny being shitty is more understandable, because it was a side project. How the fuck inXile could fail with Tides of Numenera and botch development this bad, that's anyone's guess.

Also Tyranny havent been in development for 4 years and had a much smaller budget.

 

[Prime Junta]

What's sad is that Tyranny being shitty is more understandable, because it was a side project. How the fuck inXile could fail with Tides of Numenera and botch development this bad, that's anyone's guess.

IMO the crucial missing ingredient is a clear vision of what it should be about. I don't know if CMcC just didn't have it, or was too soft/nice to enforce it. It feels like a potluck, a buffet of stuff lots of different people brought to the table but with no real coherence to it.

This is completely unlike Planescape: Torment which has this utterly laser-focused thing it's doing, with everything revolving around and supporting that one thing. Where it fails, it fails because that laser-focused thing wasn't finished, not because it went and did something unrelated instead.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Banner Saga 2, Tyranny, S:HK, Torment, all bombed. Pillars maybe managed to still get funded, but have you seen the completion rates? 95% of buyers bought it but never finished it. 55% of buyers never made it to Defiance Bay. There is no chance in seven hells Pillars 2 will sell nearly as good as the first game. And you know what that means - Fig investors will make fuck all worth of profit, and for the future they'll decide it's much better investment to put all of their money on red in a casino.

So yeah, enjoy the remaining days of our mini-incline people, because the 90s grim reaper is in town again.

 

[Jarpie]

What's sad is that Tyranny being shitty is more understandable, because it was a side project. How the fuck inXile could fail with Tides of Numenera and botch development this bad, that's anyone's guess.

IMO the crucial missing ingredient is a clear vision of what it should be about. I don't know if CMcC just didn't have it, or was too soft/nice to enforce it. It feels like a potluck, a buffet of stuff lots of different people brought to the table but with no real coherence to it.

This is completely unlike Planescape: Torment which has this utterly laser-focused thing it's doing, with everything revolving around and supporting that one thing. Where it fails, it fails because that laser-focused thing wasn't finished, not because it went and did something unrelated instead.

Pillars of Eternity had the same problem, it felt like mishmash of ideas from the different people without clear focus. I wonder if the development and management style has changed since the 90s and early 2000s, where as I imagine they had very "Finnish"-like "Management by Perkele" management/lead style.

 

[Parabalus]

Banner Saga 2, Tyranny, S:HK, Torment, all bombed. Pillars maybe managed to still get funded, but have you seen the completion rates? 95% of buyers bought it but never finished it. 55% of buyers never made it to Defiance Bay. There is no chance in seven hells Pillars 2 will sell nearly as good as the first game. And you know what that means - Fig investors will make fuck all worth of profit, and for the future they'll decide it's much better investment to put all of their money on red in a casino.

So yeah, enjoy the remaining days of our mini-incline people, because the 90s grim reaper is in town again.

I doubt the completion rates for the IE games were much better at release, they were probably even lower - I don't think it's a good judge.

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder if the development and management style has changed since the 90s and early 2000s, where as I imagine they had very "Finnish"-like "Management by Perkele" management/lead style.

If anything the opposite is true, formalized "Game Director" and "Creative Lead" roles are something that appeared in the last decade and a half. Before that RPGs were typically developed by groups of "designers", who were also the writers.

If PS:T was more focused it's because most of it was made by one guy, it's as simple as that.

 

[Lurker King]

If PS:T was more focused it's because most of it was made by one guy, it's as simple as that.

MotB was made by the same team of ToN, and was much more lively and imaginative.

So yeah, enjoy the remaining days of our mini-incline people, because the 90s grim reaper is in town again.

If the heavy hitters can't be successful without the novelty factor, then yeah, we're fucked.

The real incline rests on indies now, like Overhyped Studios and ZA/UM.

 

[Bleed the Man]

Banner Saga 2, Tyranny, S:HK, Torment, all bombed. Pillars maybe managed to still get funded, but have you seen the completion rates? 95% of buyers bought it but never finished it. 55% of buyers never made it to Defiance Bay. There is no chance in seven hells Pillars 2 will sell nearly as good as the first game. And you know what that means - Fig investors will make fuck all worth of profit, and for the future they'll decide it's much better investment to put all of their money on red in a casino.

So yeah, enjoy the remaining days of our mini-incline people, because the 90s grim reaper is in town again.

Divinity OS 2 should allow us to form a more accurate opinion on the matter. The original was the most successful RPG of the lot, its sales should be indicative of what the interest for this type of games going forward is, and like Pillars and the other RPGs, its completion rates are also very low. If the heavy hitters can't be successful without the novelty factor, then yeah, we're fucked.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Banner Saga 2, Tyranny, S:HK, Torment, all bombed. Pillars maybe managed to still get funded, but have you seen the completion rates? 95% of buyers bought it but never finished it. 55% of buyers never made it to Defiance Bay. There is no chance in seven hells Pillars 2 will sell nearly as good as the first game. And you know what that means - Fig investors will make fuck all worth of profit, and for the future they'll decide it's much better investment to put all of their money on red in a casino.

So yeah, enjoy the remaining days of our mini-incline people, because the 90s grim reaper is in town again.

I doubt the completion rates for the IE games were much better at release, they were probably even lower - I don't think it's a good judge.

Come on, why do you think Josh set out to rework so many of the mechanics out of a sudden, after he already spent a year patching Pillars 1 and has a polished system ready to go?They need to popamolize it because half of the playerbase are bouncing off the game and never even finish the first act. That's what it is.

 

[pippin]

Completion rates in games have always been less than ideal, which explains how the game guide business has survived for so long. Actually, the push for making games shorter and linear is partly explained because all of those users complaining about not being able to understand and or complete their games.

 

[Moth]

I wish there was even a surface level of recognition when one of your companions permanently dies.

In my case,

Spoiler

despite Adariis already playing the role of decoy, the Sorrow opted out for nuking Matkina from some distance, permanently killing her. I carried on, accepting her fate, expecting there to be consequences for her demise. Not even Erritis, in his spiel about how awful the slaughter of non-Erritises was, bothered to mention her death.

Really disappointing.

 

[Jarpie]

I wonder if the development and management style has changed since the 90s and early 2000s, where as I imagine they had very "Finnish"-like "Management by Perkele" management/lead style.

If anything the opposite is true, formalized "Game Director" and "Creative Lead" roles are something that appeared in the last decade and a half. Before that RPGs were typically developed by groups of "designers", who were also the writers.

If PS:T was more focused it's because most of it was made by one guy, it's as simple as that.

Titles are absolutely meaningless if your management style doesn't reflect them, they might have game director and creative lead titles nowdays but if they don't impose structure and clear focus or vision, then they do not matter. I don't have any knowledge how, for example PST team worked but even if they might not have had official titles, it doesn't mean they didn't take the lead.

 

[Bleed the Man]

I wish there was even a surface level of recognition when one of your companions permanently dies.

In my case,

Spoiler

despite Adariis already playing the role of decoy, the Sorrow opted out for nuking Matkina from some distance, permanently killing her. I carried on, accepting her fate, expecting there to be consequences for her demise. Not even Erritis, in his spiel about how awful the slaughter of non-Erritises was, bothered to mention her death.

Really disappointing.

Wait, not even some banter during combat from at least one companion like in Pillars?

 

[Shadenuat]

I wish there was even a surface level of recognition when one of your companions permanently dies.

In my case,

Spoiler

despite Adariis already playing the role of decoy, the Sorrow opted out for nuking Matkina from some distance, permanently killing her. I carried on, accepting her fate, expecting there to be consequences for her demise. Not even Erritis, in his spiel about how awful the slaughter of non-Erritises was, bothered to mention her death.

Really disappointing.

Interesting. It might be random, because I had same happen to me and Erritis shouted like Luke Skywalker NOOOOO MATKINAHH that even startled me

 

[Moth]

The real incline rests on indies now, like Overhyped Studios and ZA/UM.

No Truce with the Fur(r)ies really looks like it has potential. The citation of both PS:T and Kentucky Route Zero in the same sentence is enough to inspire a spark of both interest and hype in me.

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder if the development and management style has changed since the 90s and early 2000s, where as I imagine they had very "Finnish"-like "Management by Perkele" management/lead style.

If anything the opposite is true, formalized "Game Director" and "Creative Lead" roles are something that appeared in the last decade and a half. Before that RPGs were typically developed by groups of "designers", who were also the writers.

If PS:T was more focused it's because most of it was made by one guy, it's as simple as that.

Titles are absolutely meaningless if your management style doesn't reflect them, they might have game director and creative lead titles nowdays but if they don't impose structure and clear focus or vision, then they do not matter. I don't have any knowledge how, for example PST team worked but even if they might not have had official titles, it doesn't mean they didn't take the lead.

PS:T had a Lead Designer, Chris Avellone, who obviously assumed a de-facto Creative Lead role. Nobody remembers Fallout 2's lead designer though, because he wasn't very important. Nor was Fallout 1's really (no, it wasn't Tim Cain).

But anyway, structure matters, but I'm more interested in the effect of the modern separation between "design" and "writing" roles, which as I said used to be combined. I think that could lead to what appears to the player like a "lack of focus".

 

[GloomFrost]

Banner Saga 2, Tyranny, S:HK, Torment, all bombed. Pillars maybe managed to still get funded, but have you seen the completion rates? 95% of buyers bought it but never finished it. 55% of buyers never made it to Defiance Bay. There is no chance in seven hells Pillars 2 will sell nearly as good as the first game. And you know what that means - Fig investors will make fuck all worth of profit, and for the future they'll decide it's much better investment to put all of their money on red in a casino.

So yeah, enjoy the remaining days of our mini-incline people, because the 90s grim reaper is in town again.

Divinity OS 2 should allow us to form a more accurate opinion on the matter. The original was the most successful RPG of the lot, its sales should be indicative of what the interest for this type of games going forward is, and like Pillars and the other RPGs, its completion rates are also very low. If the heavy hitters can't be successful without the novelty factor, then yeah, we're fucked.

Divinity Os wasnt a proper kickstarter project, it was almost finished when they decided to do kickstarter. Also it came out before every other game on that list.

 

[Moth]

Wait, not even some banter during combat from at least one companion like in Pillars?

Interesting. It might be random, because I had same happen to me and Erritis shouted like Luke Skywalker NOOOOO MATKINAHH that even startled me

I might be wrong, but I am pretty sure I just got a run of the mill combat chirp, like "She can't be really dead, riiiiiiiiiiiight?"

I could be mistake. I played this level twice (due to the pathfinding based demise mentioned on the previous page) and both times Matkina died, and the first time the Skywalkeresque line was shouted, the second time the above. I'm not sure if I've ever let her become incapacitated before, so I am uncertain if this is just a regular quote from him, or some sort of recognition of her demise. Still, so far, she seems to be completely erased from the game, with no further opportunity for me to discuss her death.

Not that many CRPGs do let you do that, of course. I'm not putting unrealistically high expectations on T:TON, but it would have been a good opportunity for them to prove that it is actually a responsive game. Nothing preventing them from making a few scripts that could fulfill this task.

 

[CRD]

The game must be flopping like crazy in sales. 7.300 max simultaneous players while wasteland had 18.576 and it doesn't even appear on the top sellers.