Preview Tyranny Gamescom 2016 Previews at PCGamesN and RPGWatch

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Don't people geek out about spellcrafting in Morrowind and complain about its removal in Skyrim

I think the idea of translating the Elder Scrolls system circa mid-2000s into an isometric game is pretty interesting in and of itself.

The Elder Scrolls series had spellmaking from the beginning. The spellmaking systems found in Arena and Daggerfall were similar to that used later in Morrowind.

 

[Fenix]

Spellcrafting looks incredibly "why even bother" levels of banal.

No, spellcrafting looks like it was plagiarised or reinvented from\after Evil Islands.
But Russian game did it first! Tu-tu-ru-to-to-to!

Tyranny is different: for a sword to become legendary, it needs to accomplish something.

It smells like MMO spirit.

When you find an artifact weapon, the character who equips it gains access to a new ability, such as powerful debuffs or special attacks.

Something arcade-like?

Even if that would be all (and I'm sure what you wrote are just a few examples and I hope there will be more options), you can create your unique spells with it, instead of the usual ones which you always see in RPGs.

Interesting that Evil Islands has more rich and flexible spell- craft system.

Also while I agree with most critique, I kinda feel you are a little too harsh with game - just give it a chance!

 

[Outmind]

So far, my only nitpicky complaint about this game is:

WHY IN THE WORLD did their UI designers think it would be a visually pleasing / cool idea to put a useless, glaring daytime tracker widget smack dab in the middle of the interface? On one hand, it's not 1996 any more. On the other, if it neds to be in there for some inexplicable reason, couldn't they have made it less intrusive and more in line with the rest of the ui?

 

[Sensuki]

Sigh. With every release of information, this game looks and feels worse.

It'll be interesting to see whether it sells or not (2 english press going to the presentation doesn't bode well) but it is definitely just a cheap rehash the same technology game. Pretty much everything I've read about it from the beginning has just been "Nope."

 

[V_K]

Have you watched the vid?

Pick damage type (Frost, Fire, Lightning, etc)
Pick Shape (Cone, Circle, Cilinder, Self, etc)
Pick secondary effects (bleed, increase range, urmom)

That's boring as fuck.

What exactly do you expect a comprehensive spellcrafting system in an isometric RPG to look like? It has to have all those things.

Have you played the Trazere duology?

 

[Fenix]

Examples from Evil Islands (someone of you can actually wisper to Tranny devs where they can find inspiration):

It is item-craft. Weapon consist from blueprint - that gray bone spear, material may be different, like different kinds of bones where bones of green dragon is a better from all.
Quality of material determines the quality of the finished product - damage, defence and energy wich determine how many times you can cast spell from inner reserves of item.
Also it determine level of difficulty for item, which determine how strong will be a spell you can embed/insert in item.

Spell craft is different a little.
You also have blueprint (or basis or how it was translated) which you can use as basic spell, or you can enhance it with runes.

There are many of them http://evilislands.narod.ru/magic_runes.htm
Rine adds difficulty for spell and increase stamina consumption for casting.
Runes R+ and R++ are Range of Action - how far your average fireball can fly.
Runes T+ and T++ are Additional Targets - your spell will affect additional 1 or 2 targets besides main.
Runes A+ and A++ are Area of Effect - doubled and tripled AoE for spell.
Runes E+ and E++ are Enchancement where you get doubled and tripled effect of your spell.
Runes L+ and L++ are Long Term Action for your spell, doubled and tripled.
Runes S- and S-- are Stamina Reserves - lessen stamina needed for cast.

And there are special runes.
Rune Sa allow to cast spell from item every time you hit with item or this item was hit.
Rune Ca allow to cast spell from item continously untill item's energy running out.
Also there are 4 runes (+ and ++) that allow item to regenerate energy faster or lessen consumption of it.

Also there are runes that define target of spell - spell with En acts only on enemies, same for Fr - on friends, Hu for human only, also goblins, orcs and lisards, also they are rarely used.

Let's see if spell craft in Tyranny will be more rich than in Evil Islands.

 

[Roguey]

It'll be interesting to see whether it sells or not

Paradox hides their numbers, we'll never get an honest answer.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Animations look better. Might be fun. I dont understand this focus on rtwp combat, where is the role playing?

 

[Excidium II]

Animations look better. Might be fun. I dont understand this focus on rtwp combat, where is the role playing?

You seem to imply combat is not roleplaying.

 

[Lurker King]

Another useless news for another shit Obsidian game that everybody will hate. Meanwhile, Overhyped Studios is releasing one update after the other for the excelent Battle Brothers and gets no coverage whatsover. I will post their last updates here, since this is the closest they will get to the news page:

Spoiler

Dev Blog #81: Progress Update – Other Improvements
Progress is going well with redoing the perk system of Battle Brothers. While it’s not quite ready to go yet, we have improved the game in other aspects as well. That’s what we’re going to talk about this week, so let’s start!

Talent & Backgrounds
Certain backgrounds, like sellswords, could vastly exceed other backgrounds in effectiveness if you could afford them. That makes sense, of course, in a game that is about sellswords, but what if some farmhand or former militiaman were talented enough to eventually catch up or even surpass them?

All characters now have three attributes in which they’re especially talented – how talented is determined by a star rating of between one to three stars. The way that attribute increases on levelup used to work, you couldn’t predict exactly how character attributes would develop, and if your men would always manage to take away the right lessons away from what they experienced. Being talented in a particular attribute now means that this variance and randomness is lowered or even removed; characters will consistently roll higher on attributes in which they’re talented. Of course, the more talented, the more rare. Can you find that prodigy that has full stars with all their attributes?



In addition, we’ll be introducing two new backgrounds to the game with the coming update. We’ll also add a whole bunch of new events that take into account your party composition. Depending on the characters in your employ, you’ll have different options with events and may gain access to rewards that you otherwise couldn’t. For example, that historian you hired might just be able to make sense of the old map that appeared useless at first glance. We’re currently at 18 new events, but that number is likely to grow further before the update launches.

Shields
Attacks missing in combat happens all the time, but it can still feel frustrating as veteran mercenaries make themselves look incompetent by seemingly swinging at nothing but air. In reality, they’d miss because the opponent does their best to avoid getting hit, of course, as they dodge, block and parry the attacks. When it comes to shields, that’s something we’ll emphasize more from now on.

Any attack that misses because of the defense bonus granted by shields, or in other words because the opponent uses their shield to actively block the attack, now actually does hit the shield. This is shown visually, accompanied by different sound effects depending on the material the shield is made of, and actually damages the shield by one point. The durability of shields has been increased, so one point doesn’t mean that much, but it can slowly whittle down shields in prolonged engagements. To effectively get rid of shields, the best way is still to use the “Split Shield” skill of axes and some two-handed weapons, just like it used to be.



These changes should help to make combat feel more authentic, and misses less frustrating, as you’ll have a better idea of why you didn’t hit, and even if you didn’t hit, you may have still caused some damage to your opponents.

Overwhelming and Surrounding
Time to do some cleaning-up. The Overwhelming mechanic has been in the game since the very beginning – way back in the public combat demo that was released in 2014, a full year before the game became available on Steam Early Access. And yet, it’s remained one of the more nebulous things for players. It’s not that intuitive to understand, and even if you do understand how it works, it leads to awkward use of the wait-function in combat to make the best use of it.

Come next update, Overwhelming will be replaced by Surrounding. The new mechanic is quite easy to understand; every ally beyond the first that is adjacent to an enemy counts towards the Surrounded bonus, which increases the hit chance of anyone attacking that target in melee. It goes for you just as well as for your opponents, and there’ll be new perks interacting with this mechanic in interesting ways. And if you think that’s how Overwhelming already worked, that’s just one more reason for why this changed was needed.

Banners
The next update will also include a rework of the banners that you can choose from when creating your mercenary company. We did the current ones way back when we scrambled to get the game ready for Early Access, and we’ve now taken the time to create actual unique mercenary banners that are distinct from those of noble houses and much more detailed.

Update released to Beta Branch!
Here we go – the new update is now live for the beta branch of Battle Brothers!

What’s new?
This update started out with two major goals: reworking the perk system and introducing more complex injury mechanics. Both are included in this update, and while were were at it, we’ve also included lots of other changes and additions. Here’s the shortlist of features.

• A new contract
• 25 new illustrated events
• 18 new and detailed mercenary banners to pick from for your company
• 3 new character traits
• 2 new character backgrounds
• An ironman mode
• A reworked perk system, less constricted and with more perks to choose from
• New injury mechanics with different types of injuries and usable temple buildings
• A talent system whereby more talented characters regardless of their background can reliably reach high skill
• More powerful but also more rare named weapons, armor, helmets and shields of every type hidden across the world
• More tools to use in combat, like bandages and poison
• Changed shield mechanics in combat
• Changes to weapon progression and balance
• New sounds for humans; every character uses one of six different voices now to shout and scream. More sounds for all voices incoming.
• Various bugfixes and smaller improvements, such as to AI

Note that this update is not compatible with older savegames. You will have to start a new campaign!



Why put this in a beta branch first?
This update makes changes to many of the game’s mechanics with a rework of the perk system, the introduction of temporary and permanent injuries, and lots of smaller things all over. Extensive changes like these will inevitably upset the game’s balance and introduce new issues. Participating in the beta is optional for everyone that wants to experience the new content now and doesn’t mind a few hiccups – we’re thankful for your feedback and bug reports! Everyone else may want to wait a few weeks until the game is more balanced and any issues that popped up have been ironed out.

Please report any issues you encounter in the forums here. Do not leave them as comments to this dev blog, they’d only get buried and lost.

How do I access the beta branch?
In order to access the beta branch of Battle Brothers you need to do as follows:

• Go to your Steam library.
• Right-click on ‘Battle Brothers’ and select ‘Properties’.
• Go to the tab labeled ‘BETAS’.
• Select ‘beta’ from the drop down menu.

Steam should now download the beta branch and once it is finished you can normally run it via your Steam library.

 

[J_C]

Offtopic! Summoning Infinitron to move this post to the correct thread.

 

[tuluse]

It'll be interesting to see whether it sells or not

Paradox hides their numbers, we'll never get an honest answer.

Might want to check steamspy again

 

[Sensuki]

This whole game to me kinda seems like Feargus attempt at an "Icewind Dale", where Tyranny is Icewind Dale and Pillars of Eternity is Baldur's Gate. It's probably not a dungeon crawler but it seems like they've just copy pasted the shit out of the Pillars of Eternity production schedule and game components and then changed a lot of them slightly.

Granted that's not too surprising as this used to happen with engines in the 2000s. I remember Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring playing almost exactly the same as Battle Realms, the main difference being some of the unit skills.

Doesn't seem like it's generating a pre-release buzz though, which seems important today. I honestly doubt they'll do more than 250,000 units over a year, but who knows.

 

[J_C]

Doesn't seem like it's generating a pre-release buzz though, which seems important today. I honestly doubt they'll do more than 250,000 units over a year, but who knows.

I'm expecting Paradox pushing some marketing before release. 250K for a year is very pessimistic, they will easily sell that number in 6 months. The game is more streamlined for today's audiance, and it has some interesting unique elements. I think (hope) the RPG audiance will like it.

 

[Tigranes]

250k in a year would be the worst full length game Obsidian's ever released. I don't see it selling more than POE, but I could imagine 500k in a year. Obviously nobody has any reasonble basis for a real prediction within the range of the probable, though.

Given what we've seen, and if Obsidian aren't idiots, then they will have budgeted accordingly to how the game has been perceived so far: POE's little bro, or as you say, BG's IWD. And I'm fine with that strategy, I think it's a good one for them and for the players (regardless of how you feel about Tyranny itself as a game).

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

Another useless news for another shit Obsidian game that everybody will hate. Meanwhile, Overhyped Studios is releasing one update after the other for the excelent Battle Brothers and gets no coverage whatsover. I will post their last updates here, since this is the closest they will get to the news page:

Spoiler

Dev Blog #81: Progress Update – Other Improvements
Progress is going well with redoing the perk system of Battle Brothers. While it’s not quite ready to go yet, we have improved the game in other aspects as well. That’s what we’re going to talk about this week, so let’s start!

Talent & Backgrounds
Certain backgrounds, like sellswords, could vastly exceed other backgrounds in effectiveness if you could afford them. That makes sense, of course, in a game that is about sellswords, but what if some farmhand or former militiaman were talented enough to eventually catch up or even surpass them?

All characters now have three attributes in which they’re especially talented – how talented is determined by a star rating of between one to three stars. The way that attribute increases on levelup used to work, you couldn’t predict exactly how character attributes would develop, and if your men would always manage to take away the right lessons away from what they experienced. Being talented in a particular attribute now means that this variance and randomness is lowered or even removed; characters will consistently roll higher on attributes in which they’re talented. Of course, the more talented, the more rare. Can you find that prodigy that has full stars with all their attributes?



In addition, we’ll be introducing two new backgrounds to the game with the coming update. We’ll also add a whole bunch of new events that take into account your party composition. Depending on the characters in your employ, you’ll have different options with events and may gain access to rewards that you otherwise couldn’t. For example, that historian you hired might just be able to make sense of the old map that appeared useless at first glance. We’re currently at 18 new events, but that number is likely to grow further before the update launches.

Shields
Attacks missing in combat happens all the time, but it can still feel frustrating as veteran mercenaries make themselves look incompetent by seemingly swinging at nothing but air. In reality, they’d miss because the opponent does their best to avoid getting hit, of course, as they dodge, block and parry the attacks. When it comes to shields, that’s something we’ll emphasize more from now on.

Any attack that misses because of the defense bonus granted by shields, or in other words because the opponent uses their shield to actively block the attack, now actually does hit the shield. This is shown visually, accompanied by different sound effects depending on the material the shield is made of, and actually damages the shield by one point. The durability of shields has been increased, so one point doesn’t mean that much, but it can slowly whittle down shields in prolonged engagements. To effectively get rid of shields, the best way is still to use the “Split Shield” skill of axes and some two-handed weapons, just like it used to be.



These changes should help to make combat feel more authentic, and misses less frustrating, as you’ll have a better idea of why you didn’t hit, and even if you didn’t hit, you may have still caused some damage to your opponents.

Overwhelming and Surrounding
Time to do some cleaning-up. The Overwhelming mechanic has been in the game since the very beginning – way back in the public combat demo that was released in 2014, a full year before the game became available on Steam Early Access. And yet, it’s remained one of the more nebulous things for players. It’s not that intuitive to understand, and even if you do understand how it works, it leads to awkward use of the wait-function in combat to make the best use of it.

Come next update, Overwhelming will be replaced by Surrounding. The new mechanic is quite easy to understand; every ally beyond the first that is adjacent to an enemy counts towards the Surrounded bonus, which increases the hit chance of anyone attacking that target in melee. It goes for you just as well as for your opponents, and there’ll be new perks interacting with this mechanic in interesting ways. And if you think that’s how Overwhelming already worked, that’s just one more reason for why this changed was needed.

Banners
The next update will also include a rework of the banners that you can choose from when creating your mercenary company. We did the current ones way back when we scrambled to get the game ready for Early Access, and we’ve now taken the time to create actual unique mercenary banners that are distinct from those of noble houses and much more detailed.

Update released to Beta Branch!
Here we go – the new update is now live for the beta branch of Battle Brothers!

What’s new?
This update started out with two major goals: reworking the perk system and introducing more complex injury mechanics. Both are included in this update, and while were were at it, we’ve also included lots of other changes and additions. Here’s the shortlist of features.

• A new contract
• 25 new illustrated events
• 18 new and detailed mercenary banners to pick from for your company
• 3 new character traits
• 2 new character backgrounds
• An ironman mode
• A reworked perk system, less constricted and with more perks to choose from
• New injury mechanics with different types of injuries and usable temple buildings
• A talent system whereby more talented characters regardless of their background can reliably reach high skill
• More powerful but also more rare named weapons, armor, helmets and shields of every type hidden across the world
• More tools to use in combat, like bandages and poison
• Changed shield mechanics in combat
• Changes to weapon progression and balance
• New sounds for humans; every character uses one of six different voices now to shout and scream. More sounds for all voices incoming.
• Various bugfixes and smaller improvements, such as to AI

Note that this update is not compatible with older savegames. You will have to start a new campaign!



Why put this in a beta branch first?
This update makes changes to many of the game’s mechanics with a rework of the perk system, the introduction of temporary and permanent injuries, and lots of smaller things all over. Extensive changes like these will inevitably upset the game’s balance and introduce new issues. Participating in the beta is optional for everyone that wants to experience the new content now and doesn’t mind a few hiccups – we’re thankful for your feedback and bug reports! Everyone else may want to wait a few weeks until the game is more balanced and any issues that popped up have been ironed out.

Please report any issues you encounter in the forums here. Do not leave them as comments to this dev blog, they’d only get buried and lost.

How do I access the beta branch?
In order to access the beta branch of Battle Brothers you need to do as follows:

• Go to your Steam library.
• Right-click on ‘Battle Brothers’ and select ‘Properties’.
• Go to the tab labeled ‘BETAS’.
• Select ‘beta’ from the drop down menu.

Steam should now download the beta branch and once it is finished you can normally run it via your Steam library.

Watched some gameplay videos on YouTube ... Looks great!

Did they announced a release date?

 

[Lurker King]

Watched some gameplay videos on YouTube ... Looks great!

Did they announced a release date?

No, but is worthy it. I have more than 100hs on early access with an incomplete game and still can’t get enough. The game is surprisingly polished, plays really smooth and is challenging.

Are you reading this Infinitron? This type of reaction is the reason why these updates need to be posted on the news page instead of being hidden on those fanboy ghettos that we decide to call sub-forums. This is the only way to attract new players and build hype. To insist on promoting games that already have receive cover from other sites and hiding the rest on sub-forums is completely unjustified.

 

[Infinitron]

But the Battle Brothers thread isn't in a subforum. In fact, the games that you hate are more hidden than the ones that you don't.

 

[Lurker King]

That is a manner of speaking. The game is hidden in a thread of the general RPG forum that is only read by the game fans. Battle Brothers needs to be promoted on the news page. If shallow games like Battle Tech and Tyranny can be promoted, there is no reason not to promote these other games besides pedigree.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Myrthos offers a detailed description of his gameplay demo and complains about the game's more casual mechanics.

Feels kind of biased that this overlord of Tyranny, Myrthos, gets to preview his own exploits, sounds really biased and corrupt. But I guess if you're an absolute tyrant of a land in despair, you get to do pretty much what you feel like.

 

[Morality Games]

250k in a year would be the worst full length game Obsidian's ever released. I don't see it selling more than POE, but I could imagine 500k in a year. Obviously nobody has any reasonble basis for a real prediction within the range of the probable, though.

Given what we've seen, and if Obsidian aren't idiots, then they will have budgeted accordingly to how the game has been perceived so far: POE's little bro, or as you say, BG's IWD. And I'm fine with that strategy, I think it's a good one for them and for the players (regardless of how you feel about Tyranny itself as a game).

I can't really feel this comparison, unless it is referring specifically to reuse of the same engine. Pillars of Eternity is its own Icewind Dale and Tyranny has companions and factions, elements that wouldn't make sense in IWD.

 

[Tigranes]

Uh.