KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Old Hans]

whats the time to crate in this game? in case anyone wondering what ttc is:

Time To Crate is a metric used to assess the quality of video games. It is expressed in terms of the time between the start of a level (t == 0), and the point where the level designer gave up, ran out of ideas and just started putting in crates. A lower TTC is considered desirable.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Wasn't the TTC review system an Old Man Murray thing?

Zep--

 

[agris]

The fact that you rate shadowrun shits (and trannytech) as "good" while you're undecided about a clear incline that are Vigilantes, says more about you than it should.

"than it should" indeed. Those are all kickstarters I backed, and I'm not going to pass judgment on games that I haven't played, no matter how glowing the praise is here.

 

[Nyast]

Summary of my streaming session in one clip:

 

[Zombra]

- The lizardman look like muppets. It's their bigass mouth that does it.

This is a tiny thing but what ruins them for me is the googly Cookie Monster eyes. One simple texture change could make them so much cooler looking.

 

[Gord]

Maybe Infinitron (when not fully commited to his hate-fueled crusade against the game) is right with his idea that they should have settled for something of much smaller scope (which we anyway got).
The few levels I've visited so far (somehow I needed to satisfy my curiosity), with the way they are separated from each other and their gamey, parcour-like design would be a good fit for a game in which you're imprisoned for the amusement of some higher power. You'd have to beat the areas to advance and maybe acchieve your freedom.
In turn, the whole Marcaul hub-area, the butchered factions, etc. could have been thrown out.

 

[glass blackbird]

If they had gone all in on designing stealth gameplay it might have been ok. I mean, I like stealth games! Wouldn't be an RPG but it would be something. What the fuck is Ascendant actually trying to be?

 

[Glic2000]

Dude, it's got emergent gameplay. Which is basically just a buzzword for "we didn't design any gameplay and we're hoping you would somehow figure out how to have fun."

 

[AMG]

Chris Siegel claimed right before release that this game has 80% of stealth from Thief

 

[Nyast]

Some people have a certain sense of humor in their Steam reviews...

You play as the titular Ascendant as you go around the titular Underworld, your quest is to defeat a very menacing (and very loud) Evil McGee known as Typhon. The menacing bad is the main enemy of Zeus, who cast him into a very big hole in the ground and now it's your job to make sure Typhon doesn't get out. Along the way you will meet the Saurians, whose mouths dont move when they talk, who will help you unite the three factions which are made up of Dwarves, Asshat Elves, and Mushroom people as far as I can tell. All three of these groups are responsible for stopping Typhon but have decided that's too hard so you have to convince them to do their job.

 

[Child of Malkav]

The mobility in this game is.... something else. After playing Dark Messiah, Dishonored, Prey I can't go back to anything inferior.
Simply moving is like walking on glue, invisible walls occasionally, crouching and then walking over a brick or anything really that is a bit higher than the ground causes you to get into an upward position, though not always, it's very inconsistent, chains moving by themselves like wanting to say "hey here I am wanna jump" no I don't, again inconsistent when grabbing chains, sometimes the enemies know exactly where you are even in pitch black darkness after throwing a distraction, enemies pathfinding is just.....sad, fire seems to be the answer to everything, can't experiment with spells because the devs are in the process of discovering the possibility of actually saving the game, at will, by the player (I know, crazy right?), textures missing or loading low res, whatever.
When it works it's good.
I'm not usually criticising games because of bugs but this game.....damn, makes Bethesda games look like having Rockstar/Blizzard levels of polish, which I didn't think was possible.

 

[Raghar]

SitS
KCD
Star Traders: Frontiers
BEDLAM
Battletech

What's SitS?

 

[taxalot]

If they had gone all in on designing stealth gameplay it might have been ok. I mean, I like stealth games! Wouldn't be an RPG but it would be something. What the fuck is Ascendant actually trying to be?

It didn't become what it tried to be so it had to be something else and it ended up being nothing.

 

[Gord]

I don't find the movement so bad, but there's a certain inertness to it. Similar to Kingdom Come, somehow.

Anyway, I just finished my first "mission". Returned to Marcaul, Cabirus tells me to grab my reward. I go to the Lizard-Woman and it's an... empty coin purse.

 

[agris]

What's SitS?

Serpent in the Staglands, a flawed gem from Whalenought Studios for those who liked IE combat and tabletop RPG systems similar to AD&D 1e. The codex reviewed it too harshly imo, but that's why I give the caveats that I do; if you don't like either of those things, you won't like SitS.

I really do mean if you like tabletop RPG systems, reading the manual is a must, and the lore compendium Erlein's Handbook as well. And you'll need to keep notes on quests, there's no journal and zero hand-holding.

Unlike other wanna-be AAA RPG developers, the manual and lore content are well written, concise, and evocative. I highly recommend the game.

 

[Mikeal]

Summary of my streaming session in one clip:

This is actually lit.

 

[BEvers]

Apparently they've accidentally released the Linux version

I originally downloaded the Windows version on Linux (with SteamPlay) and then last night got a 4.6 GB Update and am on a native Linux version now (UA 64-bit elf, md5 4c3c2976b52620355589206463d87f5f, UMPlauncher.sh., UMPRemover.sh).

- there's some encoding issue with the launcher script:
$ LC_ALL=C sh UMPLauncher.sh
UMPLauncher.sh: line 2: $'\r': command not found
sudo: apt-get: command not found [...] [can be fixed by pasting the content in a new file] [it uses sudo and installs system packages; not fa fan of that]
- title screen flickers
- skin tone selection character model is rendered incorrectly
- in-game everything is black, can only see crosshair
- performance is great

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/3020122487776622006/

 

[agris]

From their (lack of) communication in the steam forums, I think they're going to let this die an early death.

To be stillborn or be aborted, which is better and why? If only the poor thing weren't conceived with 22.5 pairs of chromosomes.

 

[Curratum]

I watched Nyast stream level 5. The game is basically the non-ironical Goat Simulator of RPGs.

Also:

 

[Nano]

From their (lack of) communication in the steam forums, I think they're going to let this die an early death.

They were just talking about there being DLC coming after launch. It's legit offensive that they could develop such an abomination and still be thinking about DLCs, but we'll see how things go.

 

[Max Heap]

So I got out of my fish collecting situation. Here's the thing:

If you die, it resets your progress on the mission and closes the portals if they were open. So you cant return to Marcaul even if you technically finished the mission.
But you still got the fish in your inventory.
I had two stacks. One with one fish and one with five.

So I drop both stacks out of the inventory and collect them again and well.... the progress says I collected 2 out of 6 fishes (the fiver stack came out as one fish as well, however it was five in the inventory). Logical! Of course!
So I split the item stacks and collect them individually. Nothing. I reload. Nothing. But the progress is still there. Somewhen I lost one of the two stacks. It was just gone. So that's another bug I encountered.
Then I died, dropped/recollected the remaining stack again and it said 3 out of 6 fishes.
I did this another two times and it said 5 out of 6. Then the stack I kept recollecting also disappeared.
So I just looked for another fish and the portals opened again.

At all times I had more fish in my inventory than my progress said I had.
This was a simple collect quest. And even that is broken as fuck, because BOTH the inventory AND the quest system isn't working properly.

I then did a kill quest (lizards in underswamp). I died on it once. The enemies were reset on their original position. Even the dead ones. And the fun part is: Their status is set to "alive", but they are still corpses! So they glitch after you floating over the floor, hissing. It's hilarious and terrifying at the same time!
You gotta whack them once so the kill counts cause... yep.... the progress is set back when you die. One was invisible and i couldnt hit him, so i lured the guy (actually the hissing sound) to a reaper who just hits everything and also that invisible guy who suddenly appeared and died (again?).
The last lizard was behind a metal door and I couldnt be bothered to find the key, so I just attacked the door and hit the lizardman behind it so hard it glitched through. Killed it and got the fuck out of there.

I can't even properly articulate it.
It's everything. Just everything is so fucked in this game. Especially concerning level/progress persistence. THAT is why they don't have a save system. Because the data in the background is a fucking mess!
I gotta say - in a sick way - I'm starting to enjoy this.

Hey and one thing is true: You gotta be creative. But that's just so you can get around all the god damn bugs!

I don't find the movement so bad, but there's a certain inertness to it. Similar to Kingdom Come, somehow.

Anyway, I just finished my first "mission". Returned to Marcaul, Cabirus tells me to grab my reward. I go to the Lizard-Woman and it's an... empty coin purse.

Oh you will be getting a LOT more of those, believe you me.
The items/rewards are completely unbalanced. Just take a look at the shop.

 

[Child of Malkav]

In most games if the max stack size is 20 if you have 19 of the same item in one slot and another 6 of the same item in another slot, if you would drag the 19 slot over the 6 slot it would simply switch the place in inventory, or the 19 slot becomes 20 and 6 slot becomes 5, right, one goes to the other?
Well, not here. If you do what I did, you lose the 19 water arrows for example, they just vanished. Not always, it's inconsistent, but fair warning.

 

[Gord]

Yes, had almost the same thing happening to me today while trying to do some shopping. Moved around a few stacks and they just vanished into nothingness.

 

[V_K]

Moved around a few stacks and they just vanished into nothingness.

So it also simulates stock trading? Innovative!

 

[Shackleton]

Christ I hope Doug Church is more than just a 'consultant' on System Shock 3.