Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[ga♥]

Wrong! I guess it was bound to be boring if you were expecting BioWare tier shit with a waifu to chase after in a revenge tale against an ancient evil. I liked it, and I'd rate Thaos above BG1's Sarevok.

Nice bait. I will just reply to this, mostly because I don't even care to prove the lack of variety combatwise in POE, it's self evident to anyone who played the game and the billions of xaurips.

Are you trying to say that POE plot and setting are better than BG1?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Sea is so full of shit...

 

[Sentinel]

Wrong! I guess it was bound to be boring if you were expecting BioWare tier shit with a waifu to chase after in a revenge tale against an ancient evil. I liked it, and I'd rate Thaos above BG1's Sarevok.

Nice bait. I will just reply to this, mostly because I don't even care to prove the lack of variety combatwise in POE, it's self evident to anyone who played the game and the billions of xaurips.

Are you trying to say that POE plot and setting are better than BG1?

I'm trying to say that PoE's plot is better than BG1. In terms of setting, Forgotten Realms takes a fat dump on PoE from high up above. PoE, in terms of setting, is boring dull shit. I'd much rather have Tolkien-esque races with unique racial characteristics (elves are gay fags who are too romantic and emotional, dwarves are too drunk and overly eager to go into battle, orcs are stupid and violent) than PoE's "WELL THERE'S BAD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE" shit where nothing is unique.

 

[Seaking4]

Nice bait. I will just reply to this, mostly because I don't even care to prove the lack of variety combatwise in POE, it's self evident to anyone who played the game and the billions of xaurips.

"It's self evident to anybody that played PoE that there are only 3 types of monsters so I'm not even going to try and prove it. I'm not full of shit you're full of shit. Also, I don't care."

k. Nice bait bruh.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

SteamSpy updated. 87k units yesterday, 88k today. Sunday on a launch weekend.

 

[Sentinel]

This song is lovely. Thanks for getting me comfy.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Not sure what I think of the game so far; been playing it in bits and pieces whenever I can find some time -- about to leave Sagus Cliffs now. I might write up my impressions on writing, combat, and exploration once I've played enough. For now, I'd say it definitely shows a lot of inexperience with pacing and area design, but also a lot of enthusiasm and cleverness. Wasteland 2 was much more "by the book." At the same time, in contrast to W2, this one doesn't feel like a "full-scale" RPG but more like a sketch or proof of concept (of what, perhaps, could have been). The fact that combat is so bare-bones doesn't help.

Unfortunately I'm getting zero party banter. The only time my companions talked to me or each other was at the very beginning, upon leaving the crash site. Not sure whether that's a bug or supposed to be this way, but if it is the former then I am seriously considering putting the game away for the time being and restarting in a few months once most bugs are fixed.

I think Callistege and Aligern were a really poor choice for the two starting companions. Tybir is not that interesting either. This is, I believe, one area where the beginning of the game fails most. I guess Callistege is, at least, technically linked to the weirdness of the setting (but still manages to be boring so far), but the other two might have as well been in a standard fantasy RPG a la PoE or BG. Erritis is amusing but only if you have Scan Thoughts; not sure that was a good design choice.

I really like Rhin though; she's just so meta. Whoever wrote her did a great job -- not least at trolling the typical RPG player because she's just so weak for a prolonged period of time and minmaxers are bound to hate her (which is exactly the kind of subversion I'd expect from a new Torment game -- a meta-systemic subversion, if you will; a radicalization and subversion of the RPG power curve). Her writing is also extremely manipulative (pointedly melodramatic, waaah i'm a helpless little girl :clutches your hand: ), meant to coerce the do-gooder player into keeping her in the party. But there's also a lot of nuance when you start actually talking to her about her "god" etc; that part is simple but well-done. I hear she also gets pretty powerful later on -- but, again, in an unusual way: she doesn't belong to any given class, and the ability that makes her powerful has to do with cypher use, which makes her a natural part of the setting and not just a companion who could as well be in any other RPG.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I really like Rhin though; she's just so meta. Whoever wrote her did a great job -- not least at trolling the typical RPG player because she's just so weak for a prolonged period of time and minmaxers are bound to hate her (which is exactly the kind of subversion I'd expect from a new Torment game -- a meta-systemic subversion, if you will; a radicalization and subversion of the RPG power curve). Her writing is also extremely manipulative (pointedly melodramatic, waaah i'm a helpless little girl :clutches your hand: ), meant to coerce the do-gooder player into keeping her in the party. But there's also a lot of nuance when you start actually talking to her about her "god" etc; that part is also simple, but well-done. I hear she also gets pretty powerful later on -- but, again, in an unusual way: she doesn't belong to any given class, and the ability that makes her powerful has to do with cypher use, which makes her a natural part of the setting and not just a companion who could as well be in any other RPG.

She was written by Rothfuss. And yeah, it's definitely the riskiest thing they've done in the entire game, it's the kind of trope deconstruction I would expect from *gasp* Avellone.

 

[felipepepe]

For now, I'd say it definitely shows a lot of inexperience with pacing and area design, but also a lot of enthusiasm and cleverness. Wasteland 2 was much more "by the book." At the same time, in contrast to W2, this one doesn't feel like a "full-scale" RPG but more like a sketch or proof of concept (of what, perhaps, could have been). The fact that combat is so bare-bones doesn't help.

Yeah, I hated W2 for being a boring by-the-book game with zero creativity, but Numanuma is more nuanced...

It's undoubtedly creative and trying new things, but the problem here is the execution & pacing. FFS, the game opens with like an hour made purely of exposition, forcing the player to immediately deal with the game's plot, backstory, villain, two companions, combat system, character creation, etc... then goes "here's a fetch quest, go explore this crazy theme park we made".

Everything is so front-loaded that you could leave the starting room, go directly to the end game battle and it would still form a complete story.

 

[TT1]

Someone can please tell me WTF IS THIS?

https://psprices.com/region-gb/game/1212114/mindforged-synthsteel-plating-

 

[TT1]

Fuck this. I'm done with inXile

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Someone can please tell me WTF IS THIS?

https://psprices.com/region-gb/game/1212114/mindforged-synthsteel-plating-

Red Boots DLC.

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

Someone can please tell me WTF IS THIS?

https://psprices.com/region-gb/game/1212114/mindforged-synthsteel-plating-

Techland's pound of flesh.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, in all fairness, this is Techland selling it just on consoles, I don't think they went that far on PC. Still extremely bad taste though after all the Fargo's antics mocking the big bad publishers for doing this exact thing.

 

[Lurker King]

Meanwhile in InXile's forum:

It's telling that Torment is selling armor DLC now after inXile went out of their way to mock the whole concept in Wasteland 2. This kind of drastic change in policy doesn't just come out of nowhere.

Depressing as fuck.

Right, but that's not how video game ratings work, though. Years of score inflation by the gaming media have created a situation where 10 is instant classic, 9 is great, 8 and 7 are good, and anything below 7 is shit. And T:TON is juuust about there, currently sitting at 71% and piking down. I think at 70ish it will hit a "Mixed" rating at which point you can kiss any serious sales goodbye until it goes on a discount.

Of course some of InXile folks could probably interact with the community a little bit more, maybe address some concerns, but they're currently too busy gushing on Twitter to 9/10 reviews from mainstream press.

Felipepepe telling the truth...

It's dangerous how these things pile up...

Five years ago InXile were spearheading the old-school RPG revival, bringing back old-school PC RPGs, talking to the community, blaming publishers for everything evil, making fun of DLCs, promising "open development", the RPG Codex raised $10,000 for the W2 Kickstarter, etc...

Now their RPGs are all multi-platform (with obvious compromises), they are making publisher deals and selling DLCs, "open development" became cutting promised content in secret, W2 was disappointing to a lot of people (myself included), the RPG Codex was blacklisted and had nothing but snark over W3's Fig campaign...

Old-school RPGs are a niche with a very faithful community. Look at SteamSpy's related page: people buying Torment all have PoE, W2, D:OS, Shadowrun, Tyranny... You don't need a massive scandal, losing supporters little by little and building resentment is enough.

I myself happily backed W2 and Numenera, but stopped there after hating W2 and seeing consoles & graphics become increasingly important.

InXile is the accurate portrait of Fargo.

 

[YES!]

Someone can please tell me WTF IS THIS?

https://psprices.com/region-gb/game/1212114/mindforged-synthsteel-plating-

Who cares it is only for console idiots. Good for inXile for milking those fucking peons.

 

[DeepOcean]

Wall of text on the Planescape setting:

Spoiler

There is an old codexian discussion that maybe it was the weirdness of it all that condemned Planescape Torment to cult status, people didn't like Torment because it was so weird beyond being too wordy for most RPG players. Planescape had a ton of rules and there was an extensive back catalogue of the main aligment based planes with the people that lived in there, it was very interesting but I just imagine a DM trying to make sense of this to all the players that didn't read any of the bazillion source books.

You didn't have the luxury counting that the players would know how things worked by basic logic, logic itself is highly questionable on Planescape. A shitty DM nightmare of a setting. It is already hard for a DM to make sense of all this, counting that Planescape had alot of material with lore of each plane to work with, imagine if you were trying to DM a story on a setting where nobody fucking knows how things worked on Earth already, imagine trans dimensional shit and the DM must invent all that shit from zero... DM mind exploding on 10 mins. Numenera was shoehorned to be something that it wasn't. It couldn't be surrogate for Planescape.

If you were to make a surrogate for Sigil on Numenera, you would need to come up with all sorts of different planes, with different creatures, different rules, different landscapes and a fucking ton of lore or just shoehorn things and make your NPCs coming from all those crazy planes that you conveniently don't need to develop because everything is so mysterious in numenera. You can cut corners like that and pretend everything is so mysterious , you will end with weird for weird sake as any shitty DM would do.

Mah God, I just meet a NPC with two heads from a plane where everyone is a tranny... gimme a Tanarii and a Bathezu or a Githezrai any day of the week please.

I have to admit I didn't read alot on Numenera but there is a basic premise on the setting where you are on a post apocalyptic land where knowledge was lost and even dangerous. Post apocalyptic settings tend to be settings about the discovery of an unknown world this is alot different from Planescape. Planescape biggest quality was allowing the player do alot of different things on wildly different places on wildly different rules. The unknown was banal on Planescape, the unknown was the normal of the setting, you did things not to know some weird shit but to experiment different rules, to actually travel on wild surreal landscapes with weird rules like they came from a dream and the player would not only getting to know weird shit but to do surreal shit.

Like saving a city from slipping on another plane trying by convincing the people in there to not be such douchebags. Crazy shit wasn't special, it was everywhere, how would you use this weird shit was that was important.

A CRPG done on a Planescape setting would be a nightmare, imagine you with limited resources trying to make sense of a setting where the player could go on places with completely different realities, rules and landscapes? You can't count on PnP abstraction and the resources are limited. What you gonna do?

Make a personal story by using things that Planescape allow on clever ways, again, making good use of weird shit (like your companions being bound to you literaly by the suffering you caused them), and choosing only one location, Sigil, the place where you can have the biggest variety of companions and NPCs without going plane hopping. Planescape and Sigil are only the background however, Torment without the really well done personal story is like a straight Planescape game by some unimaginative DM where you can't leave Sigil. Planescape provides the spice but it is story the real meat of the game. Eating spice alone isn't that fun.

NumaNuma seems alot more appropriate for a Fallout kind of story with something of Star Gate in it, of the discovery of an unknown world that will always remain beyond understanding. The contrast of ignorance and misery of the now with the wonder of discovery, a misterious past made from beings that seem like gods, the conflict that the discovery of this technology can lead with the people that get their hands on it oppressing and dominating the rest.

It would be cool to start as a miserable peasant on some village and seeing you village being victims of Sagus Cliffs hunger for slaves and how their knowledge of Numenera allowed them to oppress and dominate the whole region but no... trying aping Torment 100% without understanding on a few months of pre production, that is the wise idea.

 

[TT1]

Yeah, in all fairness, this is Techland selling it just on consoles, I don't think they went that far on PC. Still extremely bad taste though after all the Fargo's antics mocking the big bad publishers for doing this exact thing.

 

[YES!]

For now, I'd say it definitely shows a lot of inexperience with pacing and area design, but also a lot of enthusiasm and cleverness. Wasteland 2 was much more "by the book." At the same time, in contrast to W2, this one doesn't feel like a "full-scale" RPG but more like a sketch or proof of concept (of what, perhaps, could have been). The fact that combat is so bare-bones doesn't help.

Yeah, I hated W2 for being a boring by-the-book game with zero creativity, but Numanuma is more nuanced...

It's undoubtedly creative and trying new things, but the problem here is the execution & pacing. FFS, the game opens with like an hour made purely of exposition, forcing the player to immediately deal with the game's plot, backstory, villain, two companions, combat system, character creation, etc... then goes "here's a fetch quest, go explore this crazy theme park we made".

Everything is so front-loaded that you could leave the starting room, go directly to the end game battle and it would still form a complete story.

The fact you hate WL2 shows you are a new school retard who doesn't actually like crpgs. Why don't you fire up some pokemon and Zelda and stay the fuck out of my hobby you fucking poser.

 

[Lurker King]

Wall of text on the Planescape setting

It's not about the setting, it's about the writer and the quality of gameplay. I'm sure that if the development process were similar to the one in PS:T, the game would be much better with Numenera.

 

[Lurker King]

Someone can please tell me WTF IS THIS?

https://psprices.com/region-gb/game/1212114/mindforged-synthsteel-plating-

Who cares it is only for console idiots. Good for inXile for milking those fucking peons.

Retard. They could be just as well selling mobile games then.

 

[DeepOcean]

Wall of text on the Planescape setting

It's not about the setting, it's about the writer and the quality of gameplay. I'm sure that if the development process were similar to the one in PS:T, the game would be much better with Numenera.

That is the question, Chris Avellone good?

 

[felipepepe]

Why don't you fire up some pokemon and Zelda and stay the fuck out of my hobby you fucking poser.

FUN FACT: Pokémon is a turn-based RPG with much deeper combat than Wasteland 2.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Why the hell not? There's plenty of good work in T:TON, so these people can write. It's just that what they ended up writing is a collection of short-stories, some brilliant, some bad, but never converging into well planned novel. With more oversight and better execution, who knows what could've been. I can't help but think that Avellone also had it easier, working with a well-fleshed out, battle tested setting. I haven't read much about Numanuma, but it was still very much a work in progress when they started the production.

 

[Lurker King]

FUN FACT: Pokémon is a turn-based RPG with much deeper combat than Wasteland 2.

Sad, but true. That is a pattern that I’m noticing about cRPGs. I got in love with the genre because I thought I could find more complexity than in other genres, but the more games I play, the more disillusioned I get. You can find more challenge in platformers and race games; better combat in strategy or stealth games; better graphics and story in triple-A games; better art in indie experimental games, etc. It seems that I’m a sucker holding a bag of excrement in the vain hope that some day developers will suddenly learn their craft.