Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

The persuasion checks are one of the most pathetic ones I've ever seen. Freeing Rhin from the slaver was nonsensically handled, you basically say "lolol release her, even though you need her to stop killing people hurr durr" and she immediately agrees. There is no persuasive argument, there is no argument at all.

Have you played DAO? Is it worse than that?

 

[Moth]

Just got the fragment of the Oasis that remains in the game.

How tragic. The swimming animations are very nice and the environment is beautiful.

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

Bros, I'm playing this game and it feels weird.
It's like buying a cheap hooker and forcing her to wear a wig, so she can look like your beautiful ex girlfriend. You still have fun, I guess, but it just seems wrong.
Thought-provoking stuff bros.

Or even better! Forcing her to take the wig off and discover she's actually a dude!

...Wait what?!...

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

The persuasion checks are one of the most pathetic ones I've ever seen. Freeing Rhin from the slaver was nonsensically handled, you basically say "lolol release her, even though you need her to stop killing people hurr durr" and she immediately agrees. There is no persuasive argument, there is no argument at all.

Have you played DAO? Is it worse than that?

What's wrong with DAO?!
It's the only game in the history who let you be a gay lesbian!
Confused?! So are Bioware writers....

 

[Luckmann]

[...]

The few cool things you do get to see are barely explored (if at all), instead they're quickly cast aside to be replaced with something else. Less would've been more (why do so many games fail at this?).

[...]

Oh god, this. So much this. For example, let's take the Valley of Dead Heroes (actual minor spoilers incoming):

Valley of Dead Heroes

This is the Valley of Dead Heroes:

Each spot I've marked with red represents a somewhat meaningful interaction with considerable exposition. By this I mean that you have a conversation, or a gameplay-related relatively meaningful outcome (such as skill tests, information, a character to talk to, a quest, etc.). Immediately when you land in the area (red box), you face three cultists that will not let you leave the "area" until two guys that have run away from them are found. This "area" consists of the red box, in which you "search" three spots that are readily apparent by holding down tab - which you have to do in this game anyway, to find anything.

Apart from that small little area being atrocious (they speak as if this was intended for a much larger area, and why can't these people just check the few alcoves there themselves?), each of these points are practically self-contained and do not relate to eachother in a meaningful way at all. You basically see something, go "Oh, how weird", take two steps forward, get another dump on you about something "Oh, how weird", take another three steps forward, find yet another instance of "Oh, look, how fucking weird!", and none of them even relate to eachother. It's an upside-down floating pyramid there, a backflash-inducing floating crystal there, an odd statue overe there, a three-headed dude here, an ultradimensional traveller in the middle, a pool of sulpher, an obelisk, and a memorial, and more. All within spitting distance from eachother.

It becomes absolutely freakishly absurd after a while. This problem was apparent in Sagus Cliffs already, and I was going to bring it up in theoretical post discussing how Tides of Numenera could be fixed, suggesting that if they ever made a Director's Cut version that actually included another city (which I consider a pure fantasy) that they'd simply move some content from Sagus Cliffs to the new city, but then I got to the "Valley" of Dead Heroes and it's at least 400% worse. It's shockingly bad.

Well.. maybe no that shocking. But it's still awful.

I get the feeling that they had a ton of stuff worked out and written, but then ended up with nowhere to place it, because I cannot believe that it was intended to be like this, with the "Valley" essentially being one extremely small area that ended up crowded to hell and back. This looks more like the "end area" of the Valley, like the Cultist's fort, than anything near what's even described in the Explorer's Guide. I believe this also happened to Sagus Cliffs when The Oasis was cut - that they had content that was simply "moved" (in a theoretical sense, since it was never really "placed" in The Oasis to begin with), or when many of the Sagus Cliffs areas were cut (Ports & Docks, Crefton, Ancient Tower - the Underbelly also seems like it was supposed to be much larger, not simply a small area with the slums, mines and a factorium crowded together on a single map).

The content density combined with what DeepOcean discussed earlier makes for an extremely jarring and uneven experience. It's simply amateurish and honestly a bit shocking. A little bit, at least.

It's like they felt a need to include all the content they possibly could, regardless of the impact on the game, in order to somehow compensate for the other shortcomings of the game, but it's honestly just infuriating to see, because I would rather have seen this stuff cut and then introduced later. In addition to all other issues we can discuss (lore-dumping, narrative hurrying in order to advance the plot rather than have the player advance it himself, trying to establish a wider world rather than staying grounded in the here and now, etc.) I think there's tons of content that is simply begging to be relocated to new areas.

Just got the fragment of the Oasis that remains in the game.

How tragic. The swimming animations are very nice and the environment is beautiful.

If you want to be a little bit more depressed, I posted a map of Jerboa (and more, including some links) here. (Edit: There's also a map of Sagus Cliffs, in case anyone wants to check it out in relation to my aforementioned thoughts on stuff being cut from Sagus Cliffs. /Edit)

 

[1eyedking]

This game is a fucking trainwreck and looks ugly as all hell: I'd rather stare at an aardvark's anus than look at any of Numenera's screenshots.

 

[Luckmann]

This game is a fucking trainwreck and looks ugly as all hell: I'd rather stare at an aardvark's anus than look at any of Numenera's screenshots.

Some of the areas are pretty nice, though. I was thinking I may extract them from the game as possible and use for PnP:s.

 

[Grotesque]

 

[Parabalus]

So from the beginning you can tell everyone you are the Changing God, and you can be quite insistent about it.

Does it have a real effect?

Spoiler

I got to the part where the Spectre *SHOCK* tells you he is the changing god himself, but you can still keep telling him that you are the real one. Can you BE the real guy and turn all the other castoffs into tang and drink their essence? Or am I mistake this for a good game?

Yes, that's a part which isn't badly handled.

Jarpie -- Make sure you're on the Severed Child quest before you meet Inifere. Apparently it's easy to sequence break things.

Did you intend for your writing to be chained behind a badly designed backer area? The Necropolis is the most boring area in the game, it's quite the shame imo.

Oh god, this. So much this. For example, let's take the Valley of Dead Heroes (actual minor spoilers incoming):

Valley of Dead Heroes

This is the Valley of Dead Heroes:

Each spot I've marked with red represents a somewhat meaningful interaction with considerable exposition. By this I mean that you have a conversation, or a gameplay-related relatively meaningful outcome (such as skill tests, information, a character to talk to, a quest, etc.). Immediately when you land in the area (red box), you face three cultists that will not let you leave the "area" until two guys that have run away from them are found. This "area" consists of the red box, in which you "search" three spots that are readily apparent by holding down tab - which you have to do in this game anyway, to find anything.

Apart from that small little area being atrocious (they speak as if this was intended for a much larger area, and why can't these people just check the few alcoves there themselves?), each of these points are practically self-contained and do not relate to eachother in a meaningful way at all. You basically see something, go "Oh, how weird", take two steps forward, get another dump on you about something "Oh, how weird", take another three steps forward, find yet another instance of "Oh, look, how fucking weird!", and none of them even relate to eachother. It's an upside-down floating pyramid there, a backflash-inducing floating crystal there, an odd statue overe there, a three-headed dude here, an ultradimensional traveller in the middle, a pool of sulpher, an obelisk, and a memorial, and more. All within spitting distance from eachother.

It becomes absolutely freakishly absurd after a while. This problem was apparent in Sagus Cliffs already, and I was going to bring it up in theoretical post discussing how Tides of Numenera could be fixed, suggesting that if they ever made a Director's Cut version that actually included another city (which I consider a pure fantasy) that they'd simply move some content from Sagus Cliffs to the new city, but then I got to the "Valley" of Dead Heroes and it's at least 400% worse. It's shockingly bad.

Well.. maybe no that shocking. But it's still awful.

I get the feeling that they had a ton of stuff worked out and written, but then ended up with nowhere to place it, because I cannot believe that it was intended to be like this, with the "Valley" essentially being one extremely small area that ended up crowded to hell and back. This looks more like the "end area" of the Valley, like the Cultist's fort, than anything near what's even described in the Explorer's Guide. I believe this also happened to Sagus Cliffs when The Oasis was cut - that they had content that was simply "moved" (in a theoretical sense, since it was never really "placed" in The Oasis to begin with), or when many of the Sagus Cliffs areas were cut (Ports & Docks, Crefton, Ancient Tower - the Underbelly also seems like it was supposed to be much larger, not simply a small area with the slums, mines and a factorium crowded together on a single map).

The content density combined with what DeepOcean discussed earlier makes for an extremely jarring and uneven experience. It's simply amateurish and honestly a bit shocking. A little bit, at least.

It's like they felt a need to include all the content they possibly could, regardless of the impact on the game, in order to somehow compensate for the other shortcomings of the game, but it's honestly just infuriating to see, because I would rather have seen this stuff cut and then introduced later. In addition to all other issues we can discuss (lore-dumping, narrative hurrying in order to advance the plot rather than have the player advance it himself, trying to establish a wider world rather than staying grounded in the here and now, etc.) I think there's tons of content that is simply begging to be relocated to new areas.

If you want to be a little bit more depressed, I posted a map of Jerboa (and more, including some links) here.

The entire game has this problem. Whenever I entered a new map, I would press tab and walk between the highlighted interactions to get "goodies" . They were in 90% of the cases self contained, which made everything feel incredibly banal. The majority of the game is made up of curios you click on, get a bit of xp/stat pool, move on and continue, forgetting all about it. No game I have played had such a pronounced feeling of pointlessness, fucking prosper is better than the majority of the shit in game.

Did you finish the Valley and get through the Necropolis? That's another beauty .

 

[Lacrymas]

A question about the Circles in Red quest:

Spoiler

The only one I'm certain is not the killer is Mallet. The other two are shifty, but none of them give enough evidence to suggest either of them. The cannibal alien is the only one who has seen the circle and can draw it, while the unhappy woman has been seen muttering something about hollow circles (but the circle isn't hollow). I lean towards the cannibal woman because I think she left the hand so she can lie about it, but the blackouts the other woman experiences can also point to her. So, any help?

 

[Parabalus]

A question about the Circles in Red quest:

Spoiler

The only one I'm certain is not the killer is Mallet. The other two are shifty, but none of them give enough evidence to suggest either of them. The cannibal alien is the only one who has seen the circle and can draw it, while the unhappy woman has been seen muttering something about hollow circles (but the circle isn't hollow). I lean towards the cannibal woman because I think she left the hand so she can lie about it, but the blackouts the other woman experiences can also point to her. So, any help?

Trust your instincts, even if you're wrong it's interesting, perhaps even more so.

 

[Anthedon]

Thoughts so far (about halfway through):

Setting is literally The Flinstones, most of it is just the same old with a different name, the shower is a mammoth and the mailbox is a pelican.
Wiki dialogue is terrible, feels like interacting with a vending machine instead of actual people. Completely unnatural.
NPCs remind me of the tranny in Dragonspear. "Hi, my name is something really cool and *special*, I come from a tribe where we loredump on anyone we come across for no reason!"
Game keeps teasing me with interesting things that I'll never get to see.
The few cool things you do get to see are barely explored (if at all), instead they're quickly cast aside to be replaced with something else. Less would've been more (why do so many games fail at this?).
There's barely any actual gameplay. Effort mechanic is a joke and combat moves at a glacial pace, despite being so basic it might as well resolve itself.
Most things you get are completely superfluous. I haven't used a single cypher so far, just spam magic missile and basic attacks.
UI is sluggish, unnecessary animations everywhere.
Side quests are mostly self-contained, largely irrelevant in the bigger picture (so far at least).
Interacting with machines gets tiring after a while, even something as simple as a 2 way portal gets 3 paragraphs describing it.

I'm still managing to get some enjoyment out of the Cool Weird Shit(tm) but the game screams of mismanaged development. Reaching the Bloom is the only motivation I have left.

This sums up my feelings pretty well, good post.

Does anyone know how faithful the implementation of PnP system is? Very basic systems easily fall flat on their face in the digital realm. They should've chosen something with way more heft for a videogame.

And are all the lore similarities with PS:T inXile's work or are those lifted from the setting?

 

[MRY]

Parabalus I didn't design the area or the quest's "blocking," just the internals (if that makes sense?). One thing I'm pretty comfortable saying is that I think TTON did a really good job of integrating backer content, especially in comparison to other titles. I've always felt that backer content is essentially a way of letting random people vandalize your game for relatively small amounts of money, but to be honest I can't really tell what's backer content and what isn't, with a few exceptions, like the giant floating Ouya or Razr or whatever.

Sagus Cliffs was one of George's areas, by the way, so I think the quests there had their genesis with him, though the specific elaboration would potentially be someone else's, and the dialogue is mostly by others. I think the Fifth Eye was mostly Colin but I'm not sure.

 

[Twiglard]

Did anyone like the ending here? I have low standards but cringed anyway.

If it wasn't a PS:T sequel after 18 years but a new franchise I'd probably like the game.

 

[Lacrymas]

Trust your instincts, even if you're wrong it's interesting, perhaps even more so.

Spoiler

In the end I went with the young woman, I decided that she started killing people because she became impatient in her quest to find her "father". Turns out it was less subtle than that and she ate a cultist who 'infected' her. A pity.

 

[Parabalus]

Parabalus I didn't design the area or the quest's "blocking," just the internals (if that makes sense?). One thing I'm pretty comfortable saying is that I think TTON did a really good job of integrating backer content, especially in comparison to other titles. I've always felt that backer content is essentially a way of letting random people vandalize your game for relatively small amounts of money, but to be honest I can't really tell what's backer content and what isn't, with a few exceptions, like the giant floating Ouya or Razr or whatever.

Yeah, too bad about it. I agree with you generally, I had no idea what was backer or not and didn't really care, compared to PoE etc. , just that the Necropolis is jarringly bad by comparison.

Did anyone like the ending here? I have low standards but cringed anyway.

Aye, it signaled my torment was finally over.

 

[Luckmann]

[...]

Did you finish the Valley and get through the Necropolis? That's another beauty .

No, progress is very slow, unfortunately, I'm pretty meticulous and I keep reloading because of various reasons (mostly tides, honestly, because it's like rolling a roulette wheel - they seem to have particular difficulties gauging Indigo vs. Gold, it's extremely common that "Do it for the future" or "Do it for the community" has resulted in Gold rather than Indigo. It's fucking weird that they failed so hard with the Tides, considering that the tides are pretty well-defined).

But yeah, I'm fully expecting more awful. So far the game is crazy uneven. Overall it's actually worse than I expected, but some parts are pretty good. But they're so few and so far between. I really do mean what I said earlier in the thread, that this game really could've been great. It's so, so close, yet so, so far away.

Spoiler

Fun fact: I had completely missed that I had to go to the Valley of Dead Heroes. The game just kept mentioning Miel Avest and Mazzof, I completely missed that we had to go to the Valley of Dead Heroes. I only realized it when speaking with the Airship Captain, and only upon reaching The Valley of Dead Heroes did someone repeat (I assume I missed it the first time...?) that the entrance to Miel Avest is hidden - even though apparently every fucking Castoff in the entirety of a hundreds-of-years-long-war knows where it is.

I think that it's in Valley of Dead Heroes that it's mentioned the first time just how fucked up the Endless War is, too, in that it restarts/recreates reality, which is consistent with the descriptions in the PnP Explorer's Guide for Tides of Numenera. It threw me off that before the group of veterans in Valley of Dead Heroes, the Endless War was described as a relatively conventional war that only continued because Castoffs are essentially immortal, which clashed pretty hard with, like, the first paragraphs of the source book.

 

[MRY]

Parabalus I thought the concept of the Necropolis was a clever solution to the bazillion backer tombs that were required, but I have no idea how the concept translated into practice.

 

[Twiglard]

This game is a fucking trainwreck and looks ugly as all hell: I'd rather stare at an aardvark's anus than look at any of Numenera's screenshots.

General lack of focus is worse. And more important. Wish they took a way limited cross-section of the setting. Wish PC didn't trip over recalling events and vision-inducing devices ALL THE FUCKING TIME. In PS:T it signalled importance but here's just a trite, overused mechanic.

No, progress is very slow, unfortunately, I'm pretty meticulous and I keep reloading because of various reasons (mostly tides, honestly, because it's like rolling a roulette wheel - they seem to have particular difficulties gauging Indigo vs. Gold, it's extremely common that "Do it for the future" or "Do it for the community" has resulted in Gold rather than Indigo. It's fucking weird that they failed so hard with the Tides, considering that the tides are pretty well-defined).

Can you get Silver without being Stupid Evil?

Parabalus I thought the concept of the Necropolis was a clever solution to the bazillion backer tombs that were required, but I have no idea how the concept translated into practice.

You get named tombs with totally out of character names. Like teenager nicknames.

 

[Lacrymas]

No, progress is very slow, unfortunately, I'm pretty meticulous and I keep reloading because of various reasons (mostly tides, honestly, because it's like rolling a roulette wheel - they seem to have particular difficulties gauging Indigo vs. Gold, it's extremely common that "Do it for the future" or "Do it for the community" has resulted in Gold rather than Indigo. It's fucking weird that they failed so hard with the Tides, considering that the tides are pretty well-defined).

They've been pretty random so far, actually. The only consistent one seems to be the blue tide. I'm also not role-playing a particularly altruistic person, but I'm half blue, half gold. Sometimes just asking "what's wrong?" results in a gold tide. I've had some moderate red or indigo tides out of nowhere, too.

Have you played DAO? Is it worse than that?

I haven't played DAO in literally years, I think I was still in school when I played it last lol, but from what I remember, it's basically the same. Just a very vague "you are evil for being a slaver, release him/her/it/xir" and they agreeing immediately.

 

[ArchAngel]

So out of 3 crisis I tried so far (1 tutorial and 2 real ones) two crashed on first try... fuck this game. I had it enough for today.

 

[Lurker King]

I've always felt that backer content is essentially a way of letting random people vandalize your game for relatively small amounts of money.

 

[MRY]

Can't you only get to the named tombs if you know the combination, though?

 

[Lacrymas]

Now that I mentioned slavery, how does THAT make sense in this setting? I can accuse Rhin's slaver of being evil, yet slavery is legal?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Parabalus I thought the concept of the Necropolis was a clever solution to the bazillion backer tombs that were required, but I have no idea how the concept translated into practice.

Yeah, I thought it was a cool idea too.

You get named tombs with totally out of character names. Like teenager nicknames.

And similarly stupid epitaphs. Fuck off with your "Look ma, no hands", plz.

So, yeah, fuck backer content. But the implementation was cool, though.

Can't you only get to the named tombs if you know the combination, though?

You can enter random combinations and also any combination. I did not do that yet, nor am interested to, but obviously you can access all of them. Regardless of that, there are backer graves in the tombs that you need to visit.