Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Lurker King]

I wrote a Steam review.

Did you always want to gently massage the rim of a giant alien's sphincter in order to climb up it? Listen to endless people drone on about Legacies and whether their life matters or not in paragraph after paragraph of wordy, description-heavy text? Go bake a cake while the game plays itself, as masses of enemies march around endlessly in unavoidable Crises? Read stories and look at pictures which looked like they were made by highschoolers with a too-high opinion of themselves? Succeed in every skill check because you're awesome, they're awesome, everybody's awesome? Congratulations, Torment: Tides of Numenera is just the game for you.

For my part, next time I'm in the mood for this level of entertainment, I'll just wash the dishes. At least that gives a certain sense of accomplishment.

 

[Turjan]

Sometimes, I'm not sure what most of you even want. Take that old UI for example. Huge portraits, lots of wasted space, takes up more than half of the screen. The positive aspect is the adjusting text window, but otherwise, I already criticized that old UI when I first saw it.

Also, if I see this correctly (I'm not done yet), the Bloom has nearly as many maps as Sagus Cliffs. I don't know how much content each map has though, so let's see how this turns out.

 

[Lurker King]

all the money from the tworment ks went into developing wasteland 2, then they wanted to inject the bard's tale 4 money into tworment but bt4 got a lot less than they'd expected, and so the end result is what it is

Comrade Bernie Madoff will aprove.

But the money from the w2 kickstarter went to what then?

 

[t]

Torment is not selling. While PoE can get into top 12 top sellers with a random sale on steam and DivOS released almost 3 years ago is higher on the gog top seller list with the generic discount they have been giving for two years now. This cannot be because of some puny autist forum drama, but I can't help but feel a little bit of satisfaction after the journey inxile took from red boots to actually doing the red boots.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Oh, it's all because of codexer downvotes

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

 

[GloomFrost]

Why is everyone so surprised that 2015 footage looks a lot better then the final release with the better UI and VO. InXile did exactly the same thing like Ubisoft when they released fake Sleeping Dogs or the Division footage which looked nothing like the actual game. Or did you really think that just because Torment isn't an AAA blockbuster Fargo wouldn't try to pull a fast one? HA
Btw the Bloom location is a lot better thne the rest of the game is because it was written by Zeits alone.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

It's released at last!

Run away! Run away!

 

[mastroego]

Ok, so now the debate is: would this count as "raping of Planescape"?
After all it's a new IP, so I say no.

 

[Lurker King]

Ok, so now the debate is: would this count as "raping of Planescape"?
After all it's a new IP, so I say no.

Yeah, I bet that they earned more then 5 mill in funding because it was just a new IP. *sigh*

 

[Anthedon]

All the "similarities" are pretty rapey.

 

[mastroego]

Ok, so now the debate is: would this count as "raping of Planescape"?
After all it's a new IP, so I say no.

Yeah, I bet that they earn more then 5 mill in funding because it was just a new IP. *sigh*

I just tried to stay positive for once.

 

[Iznaliu]

Probably only 10-20% of the world's population is "white", whatever that means.

I have been vindicated:

National Geographic Proves Teaching on Mr. Yakub

The prestigious National Geographic Society has reported that scientists studying DNA have now confirmed that “Europeans as a people are younger than we thought.” Using the unbiased measure of genetic science they point to the same birth date for the European as did The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Prof. Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, analyzed DNA from ancient skeletons and found that the genetic makeup of modern Europe was established just 6,500 years ago.

It is Mr. Muhammad who, in the face of much mockery and ridicule, taught that the White man first appeared 6,000 years ago on the Island of Patmos (or Pelan), in the Aegean Sea, where they had been “made” by a 600-year process of selective breeding called “grafting.” Under the command of a Black scientist named Yakub, the 59,999 Blacks who came with Yakub to the island were placed under a system of mating that was based on skin color, in which only lighter-complexioned babies were allowed to survive. Over the course of many generations the population of Patmos began to grow lighter and lighter until, after 600 years, the people became very pale with blue eyes and blonde hair. From this island-based tribe of white-skinned albinos came a behaviorally aggressive race of rulers—namely, the Caucasians—who then spread into every corner of the world and who now represent 9 percent of the world population (1 in every 11 human beings).

 

[FeelTheRads]

I wrote a Steam review.

Don't worry, I'll write one for the Codex also. Maybe a little longer than this one.

Man, that's kinda brutal.

I wouldn't say it's that bad.

 

[Repulsive]

Shit fart

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I wrote a Steam review.

Don't worry, I'll write one for the Codex also. Maybe a little longer than this one.

Man, that's kinda brutal.

I wouldn't say it's that bad.

I guess it will depend an awful lot on whether you like your RPGs full of filler text or prefer some hand-placed combat to break up the monotony.

 

[Tacgnol]

I wrote a Steam review.

Don't worry, I'll write one for the Codex also. Maybe a little longer than this one.

Damn, I'm actually in agreement with you for once Prima.

 

[Lacrymas]

The concurrent players graph is telling of a lot of things, mainly that no sales are happening lulz. Well, so much for Torment and InXile then.

 

[Turjan]

I don't think we will see any Director's Cut or further content for this. With sales that high, why even bother? It's not really economically prudent.

 

[Luckmann]

Nicer GUI, NPC portraits and all that VO!
Video from 2015.
Dammit I was so fucking hyped.. like a virginal teenage girl being introduced to Justin Bieber in the backstage.

What the fuck happened to those amazing portraits? And the UI...

I remember when I first saw this trailer, I was so hyped. Fuck you inXile, I hope they crash and burn

I can watch that today and still get hyped. That 3-minute trailer is more enjoyable and thought-provoking than the entire 20-hour game that came afterwards. I think I'd honestly rather rewatch that trailer 1200 times than to replay Tides of Numenera.

 

[felipepepe]

I don't think we will see any Director's Cut or further content for this. With sales that high, why even bother? It's not really economically prudent.

Depends on how much effort they put into it... after a launch this bad, a re-release isn't such a bad idea.

Fix bugs, make some small changes and call it "PC-exclusive Director's Cut" (so you don't need Techland & wasting money on console certification, retail version manufacturing & distribution). Of course, if it's a honest upgrade or a cash grab all depends on what they change.

 

[Lacrymas]

Is the game even salvageable though? Band-aid fixes won't cut it.

 

[Luckmann]

I don't think we will see any Director's Cut or further content for this. With sales that high, why even bother? It's not really economically prudent.

Depends on how much effort they put into it... after a launch this bad, a re-release isn't such a bad idea.

Fix bugs, make some small changes and call it "PC-exclusive Director's Cut" (so you don't need Techland & wasting money on console certification, retail version manufacturing & distribution). Of course, if it's a honest upgrade or a cash grab all depends on what they change.

To do a genuine upgrade and make Tides of Numenera go from trash to great, it would take a lot of work. It's just so many small things all at once, and a few major ones, that need to be addressed and expanded upon. They'd have to review and remake the flow of the game and the narrative, re-place content & quests, fix the UI, add factions & foci, add Jerboa & The Oasis, rewrite/revisit many, many dialogues, add CNPC:s, unrandomize tidal affinity, tighten up combat, rebalance skill tests, and the list just goes on and on.

"Director's Cut will fix it" is a pipe dream. InXile would have to sink months of full-time, full-team development into it, and it's just not going to happen. It's just not a reasonable expectation. If they'll do anything, it's fixing the UI and adding a token list of Foci, similar to what they did for Wasteland 2: Definitive Console Edition, just substitute perks or traits for foci. But Torment would need more, a lot more, to become a good game.

Is the game even salvageable though? Band-aid fixes won't cut it.

Salvageable? Is it? I would say yes. I maintain that it's close to being great, but that all the issues comes together for an utterly terrible whole. But that's only in a technical sense. I don't think it's financially defensible for someone looking to make money, and I think it's precisely the misunderstanding that this game had to make money on release/post-release that hamstrung it, and now inXile is in such a position in which it's simply a necessity.

I just don't think it's going to happen. It would involve inXile essentially continuing full development, and actually making in-depth changes even to the established narrative and the flow of the game. It would be no small feat and I've never seen that done. I doubt inXile is going to be the first.

 

[Daedalos]

Oh , and looks like it finally achieved "Mixed" rating on Steam.

Well then folks. It's time we light a candle for Brian and co.

Showing "mostly positive" ratings reviews for me, not mixed. 71 % positive out of 900. That's hardly mixed I guess?

71 % considering all the obvious troll downvotes from codex, edgies, autism, hatecrusades and other angries, 71 aint bad ^^

 

[Prime Junta]

Is the game even salvageable though? Band-aid fixes won't cut it.

Everything's salvageable, given enough dedication and resources.

• Go over the text and cut about the Old Testament's worth of description, unnecessary verbiage, pointless sidequests, and vanity NPCs, and adjust the rest so it reads like actual dialogue rather than exposition dressed up as dialogue
• Fix the most glaring ugliness in the maps (badly-fitting textures, polygons showing, ugly/out-of-place designs), give them proper lighting, and re-render them
• Replace the audio design with something that doesn't sound utterly generic
• Redesign the UI
• Redesign the encounters so they have about 1/4 the number of participants so turns don't last forever; also speed up the way they run in general
• Redesign some core skills so they're not STUPIDLY exploitable (e.g. Hide lets you bypass just about all combat, even if you didn't invest a single point in Speed or Stealth; as it is it's a blessing because combat is so awful)
• Redesign and rebalance all game mechanics so you'd at least need to make a little effort to craft a party that lets you pass all skill checks all the time
• Rewrite the ending, as it is the finale scene is Mass Effect 3 level derp
• Make some actual use of Mark Morgan's music, or tell him to get his ass in gear and compose something worth hearing because we know he can
• Fire all the artists, hire some who are actually able to paint, and redo all the art for the Meres, it's uniformly awful

Alternatively you could cut your losses and spend all that effort making a whole new game.