Tyranny + Bastard's Wound Expansion Thread

[Excidium II]

Infinitron I don't think Belgium is a big game development sector

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not sure how it stacks up with Socal but it's not a cheap place.

 

[Urthor]

The first Sunday after release is usually the day when a game hits its lifetime peak of concurrent players. Tyranny's numbers actually fell from Saturday to Sunday, which is a bit unusual, but I guess it might be really great weather outside in Australia or something. In any case, they're not gonna get any higher on Monday, and we can now compare lifetime Steam peak player numbers:


It's still too early to speculate about total sales, but you'd have to hope that Tyranny was significantly cheaper to make than D:OS.

We'll have an indication of what total sales look like next week and the week after post drop off. Once we see what a typical week looks like for Tyranny in terms of Steam sales then we'll know just how successfully it has done. The Paradox angle has meant it'll be much more GoG heavy than PoE though, I would lower any sales from PoE's numbers they'll more than break even and probably have enough to greenlight future product.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Aarklash: Legacy had an action queue with visible icons three years ago.

And "weird" companions as well.

 

[Excidium II]

^ Both MAGA and prestigious, that's a lot of extra fists.

 

[Bubbles]

We'll have an indication of what total sales look like next week and the week after post drop off. Once we see what a typical week looks like for Tyranny in terms of Steam sales then we'll know just how successfully it has done.

What did PoE's launch week and the first 5 to 6 weeks afterwards look like?

 

[ArchAngel]

Must have been. They had the engine and most systems ready.
All they had to do was remove anything that made combat remotely interesting. Can't imagine having a guy pressing "delete" costs a lot of money.

They didn't need to delete anything as PoE combat is barely interesting.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, no idea where people are getting this notion that PoE's combat was interesting.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, no idea where people are getting this notion that PoE's combat was interesting.

3.0/White March.

 

[Azarkon]

Couldn't you get Leliana (lol DA:O) to spill all her "secrets" in the tavern you meet for the first time in? Basically the same thing here. You can ask Barik how he masturbates the first time you see him, soooo. Verse is kinda multiple-personality disorder because she's a completely different person once you get some loyalty with her.

Character development pacing is a huge problem with Obsidian CRPGs, mainly because of the poorly implemented player-initiated dialogue system. The idea behind it is that, when you give the choice to the player as to when to talk to their companions, you won't get random heart to heart conversations like the old games in the middle of a dungeon. And yes, you don't get such interrupts, because what most players do with this sort of system is have ALL the talks right away.

So given that you then gate character development behind these conversations, which Obsidian loves to do, those character developments become instant. You don't get the time to digest each development; instead you get a character information dump, which screws up the pacing even worse than had the companions initiated the dialogue randomly during rest. Even worse when the character goes from I don't know you to close friends & changing his/her views within the space of a few minutes.

These developments should not happen right away, and a proper player-initiated dialogue system should hide more than it should show. You should not be able to interrogate your companions as thoroughly as you are able to in Obsidian's games, as soon as you meet them. There should also be more room for companion initiated dialogue, so that it doesn't feel so one sided.

Personally, I hated the system in Pillars of Eternity where you felt obligated to go through a massive dialogue tree the moment you got a new companion, and observe that it is the same system in Tyranny. This violates both the proper pacing of character development, and the show, don't tell rule of writing. Information dumps are boring, even more so when we don't even give a shit about the character yet. Maybe they'd be easier to accept when we already care about the character, but most definitely not the moment we meet them.

People will bring up Planescape: Torment as an example of player-initiated dialogue. And yes, Torment did have player-initiated dialogue. But there were multiple plot gates and everybody lied, or were otherwise so ignorant that they could not tell you who they were even had they wanted to. That's a very different experience than modern Obsidian games where most of the character development happens in the first few minutes of meeting a character, followed by long stretches of boring.

 

[rado907]

Beat it on hard - took 17 hours. Sided with the Disfavored. Built my main with a sword-and-shield and maxed out the leadership tree. The freak in the armor did about half the party's damage with a two-handed build, can recommend him. The rest (my main, an archer and and a water mage) did some work but not as much as the freak. The game became very easy toward the end as my characters got geared and began to max out. Only drank 2-3 health potions and not a single other potion during the entire game.

The second act is much better than the first; but the third one is iffy. The third act misses a proper final fight - especially given that one can skip some of the final encounters. I think Obsidian should have added about one more hour's worth of content involving a few heavy encounters.

Restrictions on resting have been largely abandoned and you have tons and tons of campfires. The multi-character combo attacks are extremely OP - to win the harder battles you just chain two or three of those combos. Throughout the game, you mostly fight packs of goons. From about the halfway point, you start finding "artifacts" - i.e. items that are real items rather than just stat-sticks. Can also craft items and brew potions.

OK game but not as good as the old IE games. Though I'm still glad someone ripped off the old IE games. 7/10, will play whatever Obsidian make next. (PoE2?)

 

[Lacrymas]

3.0/White March.

Are you serious? I still haven't played White March... I haven't played PoE at all after the first time I finished it when it came out, so I honestly don't know if they've fixed the combat. If you are serious then I'm going to try it again after Dungeon Rats and Tranny.

snip

Isn't that why Grieving Mother and Durance's plots advanced only after resting/time has passed? Because Chris knows that instant character development not only doesn't work, but is also jarring and gamey? The massive dialogue trees are present in Tranny as well, where you read for 15 minutes their entire backstories/motivations/development and then looong stretches of nothingness and they start feeling like puppets. What I find good is that your companions aren't average Joe's, they are special in some way and that makes them qualified to do what they are doing. Bioware's characters are all normal people and that's one of the reasons they are so cringey. PoE had the same problem of run-of-the-mill people who happen to stumble across you (except Durance and GM) and somehow have the capabilities to go against everything the game throws at you. I kinda digressed a little. What the problem here is that characters aren't involved in the plot/setting or with other characters, they are museum exhibits that you exhaust all possibilities with. And like good little exhibits they are relegated to being walking information dispensers, you have the option to ask every single one of them setting questions and they start blathering on about shit nobody really cares about. I've already forgotten the economic state of the Free Cities or the geography of the Tiers and I learned that info a few hours ago. That is not critical to the plot, it's fluff that takes extra space that could be used for more interesting things. But it's easy writing a setting, isn't it? Just conjure up whatever nonsense you can cram into a paragraph and everyone will believe you, because "suspension of disbelief". Ugh. Can you imagine Dak'kon going on and on about Sigil and the planes, deities and factions, something that doesn't pertain to him as an individual? Ugh, horrible, nightmare-inducing crap. I.e. learn to write characters, Obsidian!

 

[Sentinel]

Must have been. They had the engine and most systems ready.
All they had to do was remove anything that made combat remotely interesting. Can't imagine having a guy pressing "delete" costs a lot of money.

They didn't need to deleted anything as PoE combat is barely interesting.

Certainly was more entertaining than wait-for-icon-to-light-up simulator.

 

[Roguey]

Are you serious? I still haven't played White March... I haven't played PoE at all after the first time I finished it when it came out, so I honestly don't know if they've fixed the combat. If you are serious then I'm going to try it again after Dungeon Rats and Tranny.

I'm not the only one who believes so, e.g. Grunker, Excidium.

 

[Gremius]

Are you serious? I still haven't played White March... I haven't played PoE at all after the first time I finished it when it came out, so I honestly don't know if they've fixed the combat. If you are serious then I'm going to try it again after Dungeon Rats and Tranny.

I agree that The White March part 1&2 have much better combat/battle design, better pacing, itemization, than base game. I was honestly sad when I've finished the addons and I had to continue the main story of base PoE.

 

[Sentinel]

I just skimmed through Steam Reviews and the amount of people leaving negative reviews because the game doesn't have any romances is really astonishing. What the fuck is wrong with these guys?

 

[Urthor]

What did PoE's launch week and the first 5 to 6 weeks afterwards look like?

Haven't a clue, if it's not on Steamspy I don't know anything. But PoE obviously was launched and marketed well by its kickstarter, so it'll be bigger simply because of the huge marketing investment from that. Tyranny's launch should be lower all things considered, and overall it'll be a fraction of what Pillars pulled, we'll just have to see what fraction.

 

[Mortmal]

Must have been. They had the engine and most systems ready.
All they had to do was remove anything that made combat remotely interesting. Can't imagine having a guy pressing "delete" costs a lot of money.

DOS got cheaper workforce though.

Far from it... Gent is in flanders the expensive part of belgium around 19.6k euro yearly average wages, average wage, qualified jobs like senior developper are way higher,more like 50K.

 

[yes plz]

The game probably would've benefited from deeper personal relationships with the party members. As it is now once you go through their personal background info dump they don't really have anything else to add to the game. They also don't have much of a reason to stick with you through everything, especially if you go against their faction. Developing some sort of connection with Barik (i.e. a Garrus type friendship), for example, could've at least been used to justify why he'd go against the Disfavored.

 

[Fairfax]

We'll have an indication of what total sales look like next week and the week after post drop off. Once we see what a typical week looks like for Tyranny in terms of Steam sales then we'll know just how successfully it has done.

What did PoE's launch week and the first 5 to 6 weeks afterwards look like?

April 5th (oldest archived data): 245,807.
May 6th (~6 weeks): 334,163.

77,000 backers + extra copies from higher pledges (at least 3-5k), so roughly 250-260k copies sold in the first 6 weeks.

 

[Urthor]

250k that's a metric ton more than Tyranny is selling. Time for pessimism I guess

 

[MRY]

So what's the consensus? Sounds much better than expected?

 

[huckc]

Bronze-age brutal setting sounded very interesting.

Of course then I looked at the screenshot and saw the fireballs, cartoon colors, and pixie dust particle effects. Yeah no thanks...

 

[tripedal]

Man the ending really sucks.

Spoiler

Why the fuck did I collect all that evidence? It literally never comes up. Did I miss some point where I could go to trial and present the evidence against Ashe/Nerat? I went independent, so I had to kill both, is that why the evidence was irrelevant in the end? Or is there a route that lets you take our Ashe/Nerat by presenting evidence to Tunon?

Also holy shit I screwed up some things...not killing the stone archon, and not returning the helm to Lethien's crossing...

Also is there a way to save the library? It got edict of fire thrown at it in conquest mode, can that be avoided?

 

[Sentinel]

So what's the consensus? Sounds much better than expected?

Mediocre everything with shit combat.