Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[KK1001]

The destruction of 2D franchises, though tragic, came along with a lot of innovation; you gotta take the good and the bad.

Since 2003-2004 things stagnated; from 2007 up until recently it drastically declined. Things have gotten noticeably better in the past few years, but the industry isn't by any means healthy.

 

[Lady_Error]

On top of that, using those numbers doesn't make any sense. Torment didn't sold 400k in three days, and neither did BG2 sold 1 M copies in the same amount of time, they sold those numbers in about one year since release. Comparing them to what PoE and TToN sold in half a week is retarded.

PST sold 150k in first year and 400k total, if the numbers can be trusted. I think that comparing the first three days of TTON and POE numbers does give us a pretty good idea of what to expect, that is 25% of POE sales for TTON.

 

[felipepepe]

Remember Warhammer 40k, the dark age of consoles technology and all that? True story.

In the Warhammer setting the Dark Ages of Technology isn't a real Dark Ages, though. The empire just uses that story to cover up the fact they live in declined times.

Sorry, meant the Age of Strife.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

I think they even admitted the ran the campaign on the fly, adding stretch goals out of thin air. This of course we saw before, i think larian also fell into that trap with their first original sin (we will add a 42 level dungeon if we hit this number peeps!)

Compare that to an hbs campaign, with modest strecth goals that are actually considered, vetted and aproved before the campaign started, and a tight realistic release schedule (i didnt really follow their mech game, talking about the shadowfall games).

And after running a bs campaign, they are silent about cutting and slicing their game to a skeleton of what was promised without informing anybody. That was a fatal mistake imo.

 

[Zeriel]

Remember Warhammer 40k, the dark age of consoles technology and all that? True story.

In the Warhammer setting the Dark Ages of Technology isn't a real Dark Ages, though. The empire just uses that story to cover up the fact they live in declined times.

Sorry, meant the Age of Strife.

It's a good comparison in a way, though. Modern games journalists: "Look how far we've come! Thank god we don't live in the perilous Dark Age of Technology, when those idiots had to make do with benighted plagues like 'turn-based combat'. Anything old is evil--uh, unless it can make us money, then we must reproduce it using the Holy Blueprints--but make sure it's extra casual."

 

[MRY]

The destruction of 2D franchises, though tragic, came along with a lot of innovation; you gotta take the good and the bad.

I'm going to lay down a marker and say that no 3D adventure game added any good innovation, period. Grim Fandango is a great game, but that's despite its awful tank-control "innovation," not because of it. And the rest all were lousy and added nothing. The 3D Contra game on Playstation was terrible, too.

Since 2003-2004 things stagnated; from 2007 up until recently it drastically declined. Things have gotten noticeably better in the past few years, but the industry isn't by any means healthy.

That's craziness. You can't look upon the ruin of one man's pet genre and sing the themesong to The Facts of Life and then turn to your own pet genre and act like all change is bad change. There have been VAST innovations in RPGs: quest compasses, walkthroughs incorporated in the form of journals, difficulty rebalancing to invite in all players, ubiquitous romances of every conceivable variety, action-based combat in lieu of turn-based combat, real-time spell effects that cover the whole screen, etc., etc. Most players love that stuff. We don't. But I also don't like the crap that was done to my 2D franchises, even though there was "innovation" that allowed Super Mario World to become Super Mario Galaxy and Super Metroid to become Metroid Prime and Megaman to become Mighty Number 9 and so on. :/

 

[santino27]

The destruction of 2D franchises, though tragic, came along with a lot of innovation; you gotta take the good and the bad.

I'm going to lay down a marker and say that no 3D adventure game added any good innovation, period. Grim Fandango is a great game, but that's despite its awful tank-control "innovation," not because of it. And the rest all were lousy and added nothing. The 3D Contra game on Playstation was terrible, too.

Since 2003-2004 things stagnated; from 2007 up until recently it drastically declined. Things have gotten noticeably better in the past few years, but the industry isn't by any means healthy.

That's craziness. You can't look upon the ruin of one man's pet genre and sing the themesong to The Facts of Life and then turn to your own pet genre and act like all change is bad change. There have been VAST innovations in RPGs: quest compasses, walkthroughs incorporated in the form of journals, difficulty rebalancing to invite in all players, ubiquitous romances of every conceivable variety, action-based combat in lieu of turn-based combat, real-time spell effects that cover the whole screen, etc., etc. Most players love that stuff. We don't. But I also don't like the crap that was done to my 2D franchises, even though there was "innovation" that allowed Super Mario World to become Super Mario Galaxy and Super Metroid to become Metroid Prime and Megaman to become Mighty Number 9 and so on. :/

That list of innovations made me sad. I will go drink now, and it is your fault.

 

[Malpercio]

Spoiler

How is this so boring, holy fuck.

 

[Excidium II]

Spoiler

How is this so boring, holy fuck.

lol

 

[KK1001]

I'm going to lay down a marker and say that no 3D adventure game added any good innovation, period. Grim Fandango is a great game, but that's despite its awful tank-control "innovation," not because of it. And the rest all were lousy and added nothing. The 3D Contra game on Playstation was terrible, too.


That's craziness. You can't look upon the ruin of one man's pet genre and sing the themesong to The Facts of Life and then turn to your own pet genre and act like all change is bad change. There have been VAST innovations in RPGs: quest compasses, walkthroughs incorporated in the form of journals, difficulty rebalancing to invite in all players, ubiquitous romances of every conceivable variety, action-based combat in lieu of turn-based combat, real-time spell effects that cover the whole screen, etc., etc. Most players love that stuff. We don't. But I also don't like the crap that was done to my 2D franchises, even though there was "innovation" that allowed Super Mario World to become Super Mario Galaxy and Super Metroid to become Metroid Prime and Megaman to become Mighty Number 9 and so on. :/

My own pet genre? RTS, Fighting Games, Action-adventure (linear movies or open world snoozefests) Shooters, RPGs - all have seen marked decline, not to mention needless cross-pollination, where every RPG is now an action game and every shooter (and sports game) is now also an RPG.

 

[Gepeu]

Spoiler

How is this so boring, holy fuck.

I like the deep, impactful and meaningful dialogue options our character can express himself with.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Torment: Interviews of Numenera.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I'm not here to befriend idiots with fucked up chromosomes; I am here because (unlike all of you) I actually like rpgs and thought for a minute this was a site for people like me. I now know it isn't. It is a site for console fans who happen to also be children who do not care if the game they play is an rpg or not to shit on rpgs. The correct name for this site is ConsoleChildrenCodex.

What happened to your subforum for real rpg fans, Roqua?

 

[Malpercio]

This would be cute if they didn't reference Planescape every 5 seconds.

 

[Zeriel]

There have been VAST innovations in RPGs: quest compasses, walkthroughs incorporated in the form of journals, difficulty rebalancing to invite in all players, ubiquitous romances of every conceivable variety, action-based combat in lieu of turn-based combat, real-time spell effects that cover the whole screen, etc., etc.

This sounds like a call to arms. You could start a new ISIS with such rage-inducing quotes. I would gladly join a death cult if it would mean an end to the above.

 

[Keye_]

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but HaasGamings reviews are mostly good.

 

[Stokowski]

I just cannot get my head around how a company pisses away $5M in backing money and at least two additional years of development time to excrete a half-finished, half-baked title, and be disappointed with sluggish initial sales because few are willing to part with $50 for a product worth, at most, $30.

Is Brian Fargo really such an incompetent manager, or is there some clever tax-break deal going on here?

 

[Excidium II]

InXile is a mess, didn't iirc roguey post a company review from an ex-employee that said the place was a mismanaged circus?

 

[Zeriel]

I just cannot get my head around how a company pisses away $5M in backing money

It's really easy to piss away money. Hell, trillions of dollars were pissed away producing absolutely NOTHING during the dotcom boom, and that was an example of much more mainstream business types.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Wonder what they spent on the whole circus of writers and "big names" they had during preproduction and how much they actually contributed to the finished project. Were things like the novellas really worth investing in, when the actual game was cut back so much?

 

[Lady_Error]

At least they had Guido Henkel for the cuts on PST (and his face on the cover).

 

[janjetina]

What I want to understand is why they make most quests unimaginative. Of course, there is lack of talent, but is not just that.

I don't think the lack of talent is the main issue, although there's that too. Seems to me, as evidenced by the cut content shenanigans and 6 gorillion release delays, that the biggest problem was dismal management pretty much from day 1. Seeing as how InXile are a bunch of SJWs and hipsters, they probably operate by the "everyone is important, everyone should have a voice!" mentality and were in dire need of a brutal CEO-type of person to slap the shit out of everyone, get them to focus and cut out the unnecessary stuff that bogs the game down as well as assign more work to the actual talent in the company instead of the novice writers they've hired.

Right now, the game feels like the classic "too many cooks spoil the soup" syndrome, which is something that would've easily been done away by a proper manager.

They had Kevin Saunders (who is a competent project manager who knows how to work within temporal and financial constraints - see MOTB) and they let him go. Irrational upper management (Fargo) decision to turn the PC game into a console game in the middle of development was probably the key factor, but we must not disregard that primadonnas like McComb probably don't take kindly to being ordered around and are running to daddy Fargo for protectiion every time they hear something resembling an order.

 

[Excidium II]

He really does come off like a bitch in his personal stuff.

 

[Harry Easter]

I played through it in almost one day and I got what I expected: a playable novel. A good one, although emotionally colder than Planescape and some of it's part didn't match. On the one hand, the story is tighter than in Planescape (where you ran aimless around until the second half of the game), but you aren't as much invested in the world. I like the artdesign though and it get's weirder, that's a plus in my book.

As for companions:

Tybir turned out to be a lot of fun, Erritis was a blast (and his companion quest was the best written) and Aligern could have been alright, but felt unfinished. I should have ditched him and take Rhis with me (I felt bad when I left her) or Matkina with me. Did anyone include Matkina into the group?

Overall, at the moment I would give the game 7 out of 10. Maybe a 7.5, when I had more time to reflect on it ... or a 6.5.

 

[Luckmann]

Remember Warhammer 40k, the dark age of consoles technology and all that? True story.

In the Warhammer setting the Dark Ages of Technology wasn't a real Dark Ages, though. The empire just uses that story to cover up the fact they live in declined times.

That's not entirely true. The Dark Age of Technology is considered a dark age not to cover things up, but because they (primarily the Cult Mechanicus) genuinely consider it an age of decadence and hubris that ended with humans becoming corrupted and the entirety of human civilization collapsing, sparking the Age of Strife. Most new 40k fluff is shit and it completely forgets that the universe is genuinely fucked up, and the the "evil" of the Imperium is brought about by necessity, not malice.

I just cannot get my head around how a company pisses away $5M in backing money and at least two additional years of development time to excrete a half-finished, half-baked title, and be disappointed with sluggish initial sales because few are willing to part with $50 for a product worth, at most, $30.

Is Brian Fargo really such an incompetent manager, or is there some clever tax-break deal going on here?

He's a jew, jewing around like jews always do. That's about it, really.