Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Haba]

Uh nuh.

How do the skill checks work in this game?

Are there multiple success states for the checks?

As an example, I perform a memory skill check for recalling some crap. I don't have the actual memory skill, so I just brute force it with effort and succeed in the check. Yet the result seems half-assed, like I don't get the full result.

Are other skills like this? Like lore: mechanics or whatnot.

 

[felipepepe]

T:ToN has some pretty cool ideas somewhere in there, but it took off in the wrong direction really early in the process. Nothing short of a complete remake could salvage it.

And the crazy thing is that it's a game that needs more cutting than adding. Once could probably turn this into a very interesting 10hs game.

 

[cruelio]

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).

Ya there's never been a minmaxer-favorite rpg character that starts out useless shit and then turns into the best character in the game with some nurturing because they advance exponentially while everyone else advances linearly. They could call them, for example, "wizards."

 

[Prime Junta]

And the crazy thing is that it's a game that needs more cutting than adding. Once could probably turn this into a very interesting 10hs game.

It would be a pretty different game. You know what would be a cool T:ToN game? If you were Erritis, and started out in the Bloom.

His back story is way more interesting, poignant, and personal than the PC's, fits the far-future setting to a T, and explains how come he's so confused about everything. (And of course if Erritis was the PC, he wouldn't have to be a glaive; there's nothing about his story that mandates that.)

Seriously fuck you Chris Avellone, why do you keep writing all these bit parts that are way better than the thing they're in, instead of making a whole thing like that? Pull yourself together and give us something new already, instead of this warmed-over human stretch goal crap.

 

[Daedalos]

PoE's problems were superficial? Lolwat. As I recall, the majority of criticism towards PoE was exactly directed at the sloppy expositionary writing, the quality thereof, and the jumbled quests - especially the main quest - which fizzles out around act 2, and left many people bored and just quit. That hasn't changed a bit with all the "superficial" fixes to the balance, performance and so on.

It's funny that people hate on torment now, saying the writing is bad, incoherent and not very Tormenty, while almost giving PoE a free pass? Interesting.

So far for me, the writing has been quite good in Torment, and some ways better than PoE, noticeably so. There are, however, obvious problems with the main story and side stories, as several of you have pointed out already. The messy intertwining of quests or that tacked on feeling disconnected from the rest. Some quests haveh downright sloppy writing, too, and it shows which areas got some love and which didn't. Obviously, it also comes down to the writers of the stories themselves and the qualities they bring, and that's a very uneven feeling, unfortunately. Overall, though, it hasn't been enough to break my immersion as of yet.

I'm 14 hours in, I'm not through to The Bloom or even Valley of dead heroes yet, but the consensus amongst you seems to be, that these areas are actually the better ones, compared to Sagus.
I'm captivated by the stories, eventhough they might seem tacked on, and the "WOW CRAZY UNIVERSE" vibe does get abit much at times when meeting new NPCs at what not.

I am a sucker for stories that revolve about past events, and how and why it effects the present and future, and I loved those bits in PoE aswell through the watcher story, but unfortunately they just never did delve deeper into it.

Other than that, the gameplay of Torment feels extremely easy. They need to balance out the skillchecks, and make it harder to achieve effort, skills and so on, especially as a Nano.

 

[Prime Junta]

PoE's problems were superficial? Lolwat. As I recall, the majority of criticism towards PoE was exactly directed at the sloppy expositionary writing, the quality thereof, and the jumbled quests - especially the main quest - which fizzles out around act 2, and left many people bored and just quit. That hasn't changed a bit with all the "superficial" fixes to the balance, performance and so on.

It's funny that people hate on torment now, saying the writing is bad, incoherent and not very Tormenty, while almost giving PoE a free pass? Interesting.

Thing is, Pillars isn't only, or even primarily about the writing. The main focus is on combat and exploration. Sure, the writing did get some criticism, but the main reason for people really hating it was that the combat didn't live up to expectations. And in version 1.0, it didn't: the AI would mob your first-line character making tank-and-spank stupidly effective, abilities were out of which meant you'd discover one rote tactic that worked and then just keep applying that same rote tactic until you slogged through to the endgame, and your reward would be a mountain of loot with weak, near-identical, effectively-interchangeable effects. There were also way too many repetitive trash mobs. All of this they changed in the patches.

In version 3.0, the game is fun to play, and you don't have to go out of your way to dig out that fun. PotD now is legit hard without being grindy, Hard is a nice comfy level of difficulty where if you know what you're doing you'll only risk TPWs in boss battles but you do have to play actively, and Normal is... well, probably the right difficulty for a first play-through. (I still think there would be room for another difficulty level above PotD but eh, you can always gimp yourself if you're into that sort of thing. As it is, the archmages, dragons, and some of the bounties are between hard and punishing, depending on how early you go into them.)

T:ToN on the other hand is all about the story and the writing. That's what the game is. Bad writing in it is a much bigger deal, since if you remove that, there's not a whole lot left -- and Crisis gameplay is downright awful.

 

[bataille]

Imagine how this world would have felt if there was no exposition. They don't even need to do anything, just cut the explanations entirely, and here you go, you have achieved the dreamlike, magical feeling that a surrealist painting evokes. If there was no name to the creature in the cage, no explanation what it is, how it behaves, etc. You'd get a delightful area called 'Circus Minor' that in itself would invoke all the feelings the RATIONAL (but misplaced) words fail to convey. You see, you show the creature in a cage, and it's strange enough already. But you call the place 'Circus Minor', and here you go, you have transcended the strangeness for strangeness sake and have the real fuel for imagination, a known concept that interacts with the fantastical element. Or better yet, you have transcended THE NEED FOR EXPLANATION ITSELF.
Making something strange and alien and then explaining it to someone -- is the biggest crime against good taste you can commit. It's completely nonsensical, stupid and UNWARRANTED. For example, magical realism works because the fantastic element almost effortlessly creates an extra layer of meaning, an undergoing plane that
reinforces what is happening in the main plot. It's very fragile. To destroy this thin substance you just need a few meaningless explanation. With 'explaining' it, you detract everything while giving nothing.

I think I have finally pinpointed what is oh so wrong with this game. It's made of FILLER. The useless, idiotic crap that buzzes around, flashes with all the colours, distracting you from the fact that nothing meaningful is happening, there is no sense or purpose to this game. They didn't create it to say or express something, but to make a continuation, which in itself is a symptom of cargo-cultism. PST began with a purpose. A guy wanted to explore a few topics, subvert a few cliches and conduct a general EXPERIMENT. You cut out all the planescape fluff, and you have a solid buddhist parable. However meaningful (or -less) it may be for you, it's there, and just that makes the two torment incomparable. It was born of life and thought (I'm not talking about their depth, just their presence). Then cargo-cultists came, devoid of all meaning, empty shells. And their game began on the premise of repetition, cementing an experiment, one of a kind ordeal.
PST, while a great game, isn't much in the bigger sense, in its relation to the real world and its culture, but numenera is even less than that. So it makes it *just* a game, a toy that doesn't impact or affect you. It just flashes. And buzzes. Makes a general mess. And in the end, you come from it the same person you'd been when you started it.

But such is *industry*, I guess. You need only one person to write a piece of SOMETHING, whatever it is that important to them, but making a tasteless, bizarre set of flashes, sounds and distractions requires 5 million dollars and 10 crazy monkeys with typewriters whose eyes burn with zealotry. And not much else.

 

[Luckmann]

[...] but it's also a fact that they cut out entire sections of the game. With a butcher's cleaver.

I disagree. Well-kept cleavers are actually quite sharp. But there is nothing sharp about how the game got cut up.

How to take the sphere at the Order of the Truth?

Hate these puzzles, never understand them.

I hated that one, because it's practically impossible without actually tabbing out of the game, unless you're literally a professional working with colours. I'm fine with having to use a pen and paper to note stuff down and then work puzzles out, but who the fuck has memorized the colour-spectrum? Also, there's at least two different solutions.

I noticed how they're not rolling out updates every 2 hours. Could it be desire to be mod friendlier than obshitian?

I think the official policy on patching is that you shouldn't push one out the door until Bester has made a mod for it. Do a mod for it and you'll see that we'll get 1.0.2 right away.

It is easy to say this now, but I remember vividly that everybody thought this was a good idea, because what made PS:T good was the exploration, the companions and the narrative premise, not the combat. Avellone, though, was more realistic regarding player’s expectations and consciously added trash mobs because he was afraid that players would be bored. I think they wouldn’t, but ToN doesn’t have the relevant part that made PS:T great, so the result is even worse than would be if they have a bunch of trash mobs.

I dunno, I think that the trash actually served it's purpose. I'm an avid reader and a huge fan of Torment, but I think that the combat encounters helped "cleanse the palate".

I also maintain that while combat was Torment's weakest part, the fundamental system was still solid and combat encounters in themselves weren't detrimental to the experience whatsoever. The only time I ever felt that the combat was out of place or were just trash encounters was in the warrens/catacombs. In Tides of Numenera, the combat is actually detracting from the game by virtue of it's sheer awfulness, not because it's combat, but because it's just bad.

Not gonna lie, former Fargo supporter here. This is fucking hilarious watching InXile crash and burn. But in all seriousness we can't let this guy start another kickstarter.

He can't keep getting away with it.

I finally could progress beyond the first market square area into underbelly, then some vithrack-like creature teleported or "tunnelled" me to some lair... I feel lost.

Tides are what? Reputations/dispositions? I can't keep track of why I'm getting which tides... benevolent & deceptive acts both gave me silver tide at different points, got red & gold after similar acts also, then got some indigo... colorful game!

It's essentially an alignment system that is never explained in-game, likely because they cut the in-game Codex.

But not only have they not understood what alignments are, the implementation in Tides of Numenera amounts to pretty much nothing. Like has been discussed earlier, even if you consciously stick to certain options, what you gain certain Tides for is more or less random. For example, at one point, I was speaking to my fellow Castoffs, and expressed that as a family, we have to stick together. Solid, obvious Indigo, right? Wrong - I got Gold. Similarly, you often gain very tiny amounts of Blue for simply asking basic questions. But not consistently - only sometimes. And because the tone of what you're saying isn't always obvious, you have no idea if you'll get Gold, Silver, or Red. You expressed wanting to stab someone in the face? The game decides for you if that was passionate (Red) or if you were merely threatening in order to establish dominance (Silver).

You very often gain Silver and Red for being a douchewad, and you gain Blue/Gold by being a good guy that tries to get your bearings. Getting Indigo is completely random - often you get it for simply being pragmatic, but it's almost invariably paired with something else. You expressed that someone should do something to serve as an example for other people? Again, solid Indigo, right? No, fuck you; either you did it because you're Good™, and gain Gold instead, or you did it because you're Evil™ and gain Silver.

In a nutshell, Red = Chaotic, Silver = Evil, Gold = Good, Blue ≈ Lawful, Indigo = Fuck you.

 

[Haba]

I hated that one, because it's practically impossible without actually tabbing out of the game, unless you're literally a professional working with colours. I'm fine with having to use a pen and paper to note stuff down and then work puzzles out, but who the fuck has memorized the colour-spectrum? Also, there's at least two different solutions.

There is a cheat item numnanuma you can use to make the puzzle trivially easy.

 

[Iznaliu]

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.

Everything Fargo says in this video has proved to be complete BS. It's not even funny anymore

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

PoE's problems were superficial? Lolwat. As I recall, the majority of criticism towards PoE was exactly directed at the sloppy expositionary writing, the quality thereof, and the jumbled quests - especially the main quest - which fizzles out around act 2, and left many people bored and just quit. That hasn't changed a bit with all the "superficial" fixes to the balance, performance and so on.

It's funny that people hate on torment now, saying the writing is bad, incoherent and not very Tormenty, while almost giving PoE a free pass? Interesting.

Thing is, Pillars isn't only, or even primarily about the writing. The main focus is on combat and exploration. Sure, the writing did get some criticism, but the main reason for people really hating it was that the combat didn't live up to expectations. And in version 1.0, it didn't: the AI would mob your first-line character making tank-and-spank stupidly effective, abilities were out of which meant you'd discover one rote tactic that worked and then just keep applying that same rote tactic until you slogged through to the endgame, and your reward would be a mountain of loot with weak, near-identical, effectively-interchangeable effects. There were also way too many repetitive trash mobs. All of this they changed in the patches.

In version 3.0, the game is fun to play, and you don't have to go out of your way to dig out that fun. PotD now is legit hard without being grindy, Hard is a nice comfy level of difficulty where if you know what you're doing you'll only risk TPWs in boss battles but you do have to play actively, and Normal is... well, probably the right difficulty for a first play-through. (I still think there would be room for another difficulty level above PotD but eh, you can always gimp yourself if you're into that sort of thing. As it is, the archmages, dragons, and some of the bounties are between hard and punishing, depending on how early you go into them.)

T:ToN on the other hand is all about the story and the writing. That's what the game is. Bad writing in it is a much bigger deal, since if you remove that, there's not a whole lot left -- and Crisis gameplay is downright awful.

I would also add that PoE's writing may be hit-and-miss in terms of pacing and verboseness, but it still dug some themes (especially religion and faith) pretty deep.

 

[Luckmann]

Yeah, let's not get ahead over ourselves, writing in this may be uneven, but when it's good it absolutely shits over Pillars.

I have to give you this one. There are isolated nuggets that are actually good. They're few. They're far between. But it would be unfair to say that they're not there. It's funny that many of these nuggets are outside of the actual quests and encounters, but are random, likely largely unintentional side-effects of filler writing, which to me suggests that a lot of the bad writing comes from trying too hard, or something. Tides of Numenera is extremely uneven in so many ways, but the few best pieces that are there, I agree, shits all over the many more good-ish pieces of Pillars of Eternity.

I remember exactly one encounter in Pillars of Eternity that made me feel like a horrible piece of shit and prompted me to reload, and that's surprisingly enough an encounter written by (I believe) Sawyer, and it's when you run into the boy in Defiance Bay that wants a knife. You can actually slam him into the ground and break something in him (it's never mentioned what, just that there's an audible crack), crippling him, and leaving the child as a crying pile. This really stuck with me as an excellently written encounter, even though it was nearly completely self-contained, with no "choises or consequensus hurr hurr", because it gave you the options to truly be a horrible human being. It also allowed you to be reckless, machiavellian, benevolent, wise, and almost everything in-between. Unfortunately, this clashes with the vast majority of content in PoE, such as how Bleak Walkers really were just Blackguards by any other name, or, my pet peeve that I scratch at every opportunity, how you couldn't return the noblewoman in Dyrford's Crossing to her father/uncle/fiancee.

Meanwhile, I think I've run into at least a few encounters like that in Tides of Numenera already. One very small one that's stuck with me was the mutant girl in the Underbelly, that is fishing. She's clearly malnourished and her entire tribe is dead. While it's not nearly as open as the aforementioned encounter with the boy in Defiance Bay, the writing is actually excellent, and the way she behaves, reacts to what you say, and so on, is very emotionally loaded, without the words words words words words words words that plague 90% of the game. The entire thing is just fucking tragic. My only real annoyance with it is that it's so obviously tragic, yet you cannot react to it - this would be an excellent opportunity to hand out some Gold Tide for giving her a coin. Plus points if it ends up backfiring in classic Kreia fashion, with the mutant girl getting mugged because you gave her shins or something. The choice between keeping the Cypher you get from the encounter is also simply between being an ass or being stupid. It would've been appropriate to be able to actually pay her for it; instead, you either take it, or you give it away, you're either an evil asshole, or a good philanthropist. Nothing in-between.

I'm also loving Erritis so far. Since that is fraught with spoilers, I'm not going to mention it. But it's extremely well-written

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.

Shit gets taken out of the game for everyone, you muppet.

Among the IE games, I'd say BGII is best suited for new players.

No. No it isn't. Like, no, it really isn't.

(Sauce? It was the first IE game I played, and I really really really really really REALLY hated it, keeping going out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Until then eventually it clicked and I started to really love it. The great thing about BG2 is that the more you know about it, the better it gets. The bad thing is, if you don't know anything about it, it really wants to make you hate it. Simple example: you'll be running into enemies with immunity to nonmagical weapons almost from the get-go. If you haven't played BG1, IWD or similar, you won't be expecting this, and you will be getting mugged without understanding WTF just happened to you and why.)

Too fucking true. BG2 built on the success of BG1, and it was created with that in mind. It's almost sad that many games today allow you to import things from the previous game (BG2 practically didn't), but each game is completely self-contained in it's expectations, meaning that it's essentially "reset" in terms of complexity, instead of getting progressively more interesting. The same will be true for PoE2, I'm sure; there will be nothing in it that will assume that you know how things worked in PoE1, because it would interfere with sales figures and popularity amongst those that have no experience in the previous game, even though those people will represent an insane minority of all customers.

The IE days were almost the perfect example of what I talk about when I pitching an evolutionary approach to development, the only difference being that I want changes to be retroactive - which was, ultimately, more or less the case with BG1/2 (when BG1 was able to be played with the BG2 changes). Could've been done better professionally, though.

 

[Luckmann]

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.

You're behind the times, ga <3

POE is considered now and in a couple years, when the butthurt has decreased, the same will be said of Torment.

yup. that's how codex butthurt works. they find whatever new thing to hate, and they will love the previous stuff they said they hate. it's a pretty entertaining cycle

Yeah, right. People just changed their opinion about PoE out of nowhere. It's not like Obsidian released an expansion and constant patches for over an year addressing various concerns with the original release.

Remember that part with the hard counters, and how they were all convinced that they sucked, and then in that one expansion there were suddenly counters up the wazoo? Remember that?

Good times.

I just wish that they would've gone back and revised existing content, but I keep bitching about that and it never happens, so whatever.

Hopefully they actually learned something. Based on PoE2, it sounds like they learned some things, at least.

I would also add that PoE's writing may be hit-and-miss in terms of pacing and verboseness, but it still dug some themes (especially religion and faith) pretty deep.

I didn't see that at all. There were some extremely basic questions posed, but it never really dug into it or discussed it. It simply made statements as to the nature of the gods and how the Engwithans despaired and created their own ones. It was pretty superficial. Not that that is necessarily bad, I think we need to accept that not all games need these "muh depth" dimensions, and I certainly think that Tides of Numenera tries much too hard at times, and falls flat likely because the writer is trying to engineer some point or something "deep", instead of trying to understand the issue(s), or wants to make some point based on their own flimsy grasp, but ultimately, many classics weren't classics because they were inspiring or had some concept of 4th-dimensional chess philosophy, but because they were simply emotionally engaging and had good mechanics, describing an interesting scenario and setting, conveying that to the player.

Even if you'd consider there to be such a depth to Pillars of Eternity, it doesn't really excuse how this is conveyed to the player, and the pacing is pretty bad.

I hated that one, because it's practically impossible without actually tabbing out of the game, unless you're literally a professional working with colours. I'm fine with having to use a pen and paper to note stuff down and then work puzzles out, but who the fuck has memorized the colour-spectrum? Also, there's at least two different solutions.

There is a cheat item numnanuma you can use to make the puzzle trivially easy.

What? Really? What item? I'm compulsively hoarding everything.. oh, wait, it's the fucking starfish, isn't it? Alright, fair enough, got me on that one, Tides of Numenera. I cede the point, that's actually pretty cool. A bullshit-y non-quest encounter that can be resolved with a random item found in the game. That's actually pretty much 10/10 as far as I'm concerned. Consider me well and truly rused.

 

[Prime Junta]

PoE's writing

I thought PoE's writing was serviceable. Nothing brilliant, nothing unforgettable, with some notably good bits and a few irritatingly bad or out-of-place ones, in need of more editing, but in general not off-puttingly bad.

T:ToN's writing is, in general, off-puttingly bad. There are some good bits there, but it's easy to miss them because more likely than not your eyes will have glazed over from the verbosity.

 

[Prime Junta]

who the fuck has memorized the colour-spectrum

:me raises hand :D

I also occasionally use Roy G. Biv as charname...

 

[Jarpie]

Here's my take on how to fix some of the problems in TToN: Scrap the intro completely in your mind, don't introduce The Sorrow right from the start, at least not that openly, don't spell it out in the beginning that you're castoff of the changing god but use the amnesis/flashbacks to introduce the concept gradually. Those things would bring back the mystery back into the game, which it's sorely lacking, although the "Hurr durr I can't remember anything" or amnesia thing is so overused in games it has become so fucking grating.

I don't get why devs have to nowdays need to explain and spell out every fucking thing about the setting to the players, I don't remember games like Arcanum doing it either even though it's completely new and different setting.

 

[Luckmann]

who the fuck has memorized the colour-spectrum

:me raises hand :D

I also occasionally use Roy G. Biv as charname...

...I had to Google Roy G. Biv, and I guess that makes sense.

 

[Tacgnol]

I wonder who will get picked to write the positive review for this one?

Even Prima seems fairly negative about it.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I wonder who will get picked to write the positive review for this one?

Even Prima seems fairly negative about it.

Another urgent mission for Decado?

 

[Darth Roxor]

the "Hurr durr I can't remember anything" or amnesia thing is so overused in games it has become so fucking grating.

The entire amnesia shtick is something completely missed here imo. If so far your body has been a puppet for the changing gawd and your "consciousness" only comes to life after he ejects, then you shouldn't be losing your memory, you should have no memories at all, period.

 

[Jarpie]

I wonder who will get picked to write the positive review for this one?

Even Prima seems fairly negative about it.

Relatively unknown Sebastian Hill will write it.

 

[Jarpie]

the "Hurr durr I can't remember anything" or amnesia thing is so overused in games it has become so fucking grating.

The entire amnesia shtick is something completely missed here imo. If so far your body has been a puppet for the changing gawd and your "consciousness" only comes to life after he ejects, then you shouldn't be losing your memory, you should have no memories at all, period.

True, I think they wrote themselves to a corner with the whole "no memory" thing, because it's very hard to write anykind of characterization for the main character into the game. I don't mind blank state character or playing someone who's not very dynamic or engaging as such but a very common complaint I've seen is that TToN isn't "Emotionally Engaging", which I'd actually like, because fuck emotions.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

The most boring and difficult to get through scene in the original PS:T:



00:00 - 07:25

This lore-dump was so bad it remains in my memory as the worst moment of the entire game, nearly made me quit as I began to wonder if the whole game would be like this. It's moments like this that make you dream of at least some trash combat to break up the monotony a bit. If this scene is the scene that the new game is trying to emulate then, sure, they've missed the point of what made PS:T good, cos it wasn't the lore dumps, it was everything else being interesting enough not to worry too much about the occasional lore dump.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Really? Dhall is the worst moment in the game?

Kill yourself.

 

[Lilura]

The UI is one of the worst I've seen in a dialogue-heavy RPG; just awful. Also, lolUnity.