Interview Age of Decadence - Big in France

[MetalCraze]

There we go skyway: "It still takes Steam about 90 seconds to realize I have no internet connection".

Apparently we're not waiting the mandated 2 minutes. After that it supposedly pops up the "Start in offline?" mode option.

Except
"Note:
You have to be online somewhere at least once to perform all of the following steps."

I waited for 2 and a half minutes - it was still showing me the window that it can't connect with only two possible options
"Retry/Cancel"

 

[bhlaab]

I hope this doesn't turn out too difficult. I'd say Fallout is a good marker as far as that goes, anything too far beyond that could end up just being annoying.
I personally can't really stand going too old school with my crpgs for that very reason.

Iis there going to be a difficulty slider?

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

The posted quote doesn't make sense. The RoA example shows why challenge is good, and has nothing to do with the merits of turn based combat. Next up, it claims AoD is tactical because it has a system where you pick the attack which matches the targets weakness. Kind of like square peg goes in square hole.

Hearing about this games combat system makes me want to play a diplomat.

I did not see this when I read the text, perhaps you could enlighten me as to which statements you digested in order to come up with this theory?

Also, please enlighten me on what makes turn based combat good in your opinion, and which games you would use as prime examples.

 

[kingcomrade]

Which you can't enable unless you are uh oh connected to the internet.

Um, no, I just checked it while being disconnected.

So tell me how did you get past login screen while being disconnected in Online mode in order to set Offline mode?

And also probably you can explain why steam must be running when I want to play any of the singleplayer games from it, easily eating 200+ MBs of RAM and CPU resources causing games to lag?

 

[Vault Dweller]

I hope this doesn't turn out too difficult. I'd say Fallout is a good marker as far as that goes, anything too far beyond that could end up just being annoying.

Fallout was way, way too easy.

Iis there going to be a difficulty slider?

No.

 

[Shannow]

And also probably you can explain why steam must be running when I want to play any of the singleplayer games from it, easily eating 200+ MBs of RAM and CPU resources causing games to lag?

Would you stop bitching? Bloat/spyware is good for you. Now go buy some more games via STEAM.

 

[Lomer]

I hope this doesn't turn out too difficult. I'd say Fallout is a good marker as far as that goes, anything too far beyond that could end up just being annoying.

Fallout was way, way too easy.

I am very happy to hear that since I am simply craving for some challenge in modern CRPGs. I am afraid, however, that the contemporary game public has simply lost the habit of playing challenging games, which may have negative impact on your sales. On the other hand, AoD is not targeting the casual gamers anyway, so you must have calculated that risk.

Do you have any idea how difficult AoD is compared to some of the last relatively challenging RPGs such as BG2, Wizardry 8, IWD 2 (and perhaps HotU and SoZ at very hard difficulty mode)?

 

[Dire Roach]

u have to be pro to play AoD, if not I recommend NWN

 

[Vault Dweller]

Hard to say since these games have parties and various spells/powers(which could shift difficulty), so my experience with Wiz 8 could be different from someone else's. I'd say the game is definitely harder than BG2, IWD and NWN games.

 

[Lomer]

I'd say the game is definitely harder than BG2, IWD and NWN games.

Perfect :D.

 

[obediah]

<blockquote>RT combat is “combat simplified”. It fits perfectly into the “even a 10 year old should be able to beat the game easily” mentality championed by publishers. TB combat is a “chess party”. It’s about taking your time to consider different tactics and go over all available options. If done right, TB combat is about presenting the player with a combat puzzle and giving him a wide range of tools to try to come up with solutions that may work.

Here is an example:

I’ve decided to replay excellent Realms of Arkania: Star Trail. I made a party of different characters and went adventuring. A few minutes after I left the starting town a text message popped up informing me that five orcs are attacking a priestess who wouldn’t mind some help. Five orcs? Hah! They’ve gotta be kidding me. Must be a tutorial. I have six capable party members. We should be able to stop at least two orcish armies and maybe even invade a small country. I join the battle feeling bad about ganging up on poor orcs like that. Five minutes later my party is dead. Dead. Orcs 6, me 0. That’s turn-based combat in a nutshell. You either think and plan carefully or you are dead.

AoD combat system offers a lot of different attacks and options: aimed, normal, fast, power, special attacks plus throwing nets to entangle your opponents, acid to burn through armor, rare neurostimulants, liquid fire, black powder bombs, etc. Fights are hard and are not designed to make sure that you win (in fact, they are often designed to put you back into your place), so you’d need the turn-based system to have a fighting chance.</blockquote>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.gamebanshee.com/">Game Banshee</A>

What a colossal heap of pompous horse shit. Difficulty and RTvTB are orthogonal concepts. Any correlation between the two are the results of financially motivated decisions rather than the capabilities of either system. Combat in RoA was difficult because they wanted it to be, not because it was turn based. Combat in Ghouls and Ghosts was difficult because they wanted it to be, not because it was real time.

Even if you replace difficulty with "thinking and planning" then RTwP is capable of being just as complex and challenging as TB. All of the features mentioned for AoD would work under RTwP.

The non-bs version of this answer:

"We want combat in AoD to be a mental challenge. You have a lot of options, and we want players to feel threatened in each battle and carefully choose their actions. The players interested in this sort of combat overwhelmingly prefer turn based combat to RTwP, and we are happy to oblige them."

 

[Shannow]

Difficulty and RTvTB are orthogonal concepts. Any correlation between the two are the results of financially motivated decisions rather than the capabilities of either system. Combat in RoA was difficult because they wanted it to be, not because it was turn based. Combat in Ghouls and Ghosts was difficult because they wanted it to be, not because it was real time.

This I fully agree with.

Even if you replace difficulty with "thinking and planning" then RTwP is capable of being just as complex and challenging as TB. All of the features mentioned for AoD would work under RTwP.

This not so much. Simply because if you have the same density of reflective decision making in an RTwP game as in a TB game (read: every decision per round is important and has an impact on whether you(r party) survive(s) the encounter) your RTwP game will consist of: *pause* comand* un-pause* single action* pause * next command* unpause* single action* and so on* until.....* fuck* paused too late and had a total party wipeout in ironman mode.... You would have fared better simply going TB.
RT of course has its advantages but with a challenging game that requires constant "thinking and planning" it simply can't stand up to TB.

 

[obediah]

Even if you replace difficulty with "thinking and planning" then RTwP is capable of being just as complex and challenging as TB. All of the features mentioned for AoD would work under RTwP.

This not so much. Simply because if you have the same density of reflective decision making in an RTwP game as in a TB game (read: every decision per round is important and has an impact on whether you(r party) survive(s) the encounter) your RTwP game will consist of: *pause* comand* un-pause* single action* pause * next command* unpause* single action* and so on* until.....* fuck* paused too late and had a total party wipeout in ironman mode.... You would have fared better simply going TB.
RT of course has its advantages but with a challenging game that requires constant "thinking and planning" it simply can't stand up to TB.

I specifically omitted "fun" and "playable" in my list of adjectives in which RTwP has parity with TB. Every complex and challenging RTwP game I have played has ended up being too tedious for my taste. With the correct rules for auto-pause, and a slow playing speed you achieve a transcendental level of control - at the cost of many many many hours of your time, 98% of which is incredibly dull. So you back off the control and get pasted by the bad guys, then you turn down the difficulty to compensate, and then it's just BG2 lasso and click combat.

But RTwP is not "dumber" than TB. It's problem is that no one has invented the right interface for it yet, not that it is incapable of the complexities of turn based combat.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Which you can't enable unless you are uh oh connected to the internet.

Um, no, I just checked it while being disconnected.

So tell me how did you get past login screen while being disconnected in Online mode in order to set Offline mode?

And also probably you can explain why steam must be running when I want to play any of the singleplayer games from it, easily eating 200+ MBs of RAM and CPU resources causing games to lag?

What shenanigans!

 

[User was nabbed fit]

Yeah, mine only takes up 8 MB and that's on 64 bit Vista.

 

[Forest Dweller]

kc's name is Clayton?

 

[Volourn]

"RT of course has its advantages but with a challenging game that requires constant "thinking and planning" it simply can't stand up to TB."

Don't bullshit.

 

[Ardanis]

That’s turn-based combat in a nutshell. You either think and plan carefully or you are dead.

Actors' stats and AI, which determine the difficulty of a fight, and the whole TB/RT/RTwP concept are two different dimensions. The only notable connection between the two is that TB is easier, as one can painlessly take their calculator out of the desk and devise the best tactic.
Talking about RT being winnable by 10 year old, it's more a matter of AI, as I rarely have seen one that would try to avoid projectiles (Might & Magic VII is an example here).

 

[Shannow]

...

K, I can live with that. The other thing I dislike about RTwP is simultaneous action.
Let's sketch a situation:
Horde of gibberlings attacks in BG and in ToEE.
BG: Cast fireball. Now I don't know exactly when the spell will trigger, because turns aren't clearly separated and I have no knowledge how the initiative rolls worked out. So I have to guess where to aim to get as many gibberlings as possible without frying my tanks. Adding to this BG didn't show the radiuses of your spells so you had to be extra careful. Casting Aoe spells with friendly fire was pretty much a gamble and I didn't use them much.
ToEE: When it's the wizard's turn it's his turn. Whatever he does then will affect everybody in spell radius. He can decide where to place the fireball for maximum effect. He can adapt to the situation in that exact moment.

Of course it's a matter of preference but I just love that kind of control.

 

[Volourn]

"Talking about RT being winnable by 10 year old"

What's hialirous is about this is that ten year olds have absolutely no problem 'winning' turn based games. Not hard at all. Difficulty has NOTHING to do with tb vs rt.



"That’s turn-based combat in a nutshell. You either think and plan carefully or you are dead."

More utter bullshitic crap from the peanut gallery that has no basis in reality. TOEE is turn based. It is also one of the easist RPGs ever. *shrug*

 

[Dark Matter]

RT combat is “combat simplified”. It fits perfectly into the “even a 10 year old should be able to beat the game easily” mentality championed by publishers.

Please elaborate. Are you implying RT combat can't be challenging?

 

[elander_]

It's a shame AoD doesn't have party combat. TB games are much more than just better control. There's a fuck load of combined team tactics we can do with a party that are very hard or impossible to do in real time or even rtwp. It should be cool to play in TB with only on controllable char anyway. I agree that in TB combat should be quick and lethal and playing against complex enemies, otherwise it's worse than real time. Fallout 2 maps where we kill hundreds of rats one after another comes to my mind.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Oh boy... I'm so embarrassed right now. Look ->

I should have known better than to make such silly statements. Youse guys have argued with such passion and conviction that I no longer have any doubts about RT and RTwP awesomeness and loads of depth. I assume that there is a reason why no examples, y'know, RT equivalents of Jagged Alliance, XCOM, Realms of Arkania and any other game with a complex TB system, were posted. Such examples are, undoubtedly, far too numerous to mention.

What? Some conditions haven't been met yet? No super awesome interface has been designed yet, you say? Not enough alien technology has been salvaged? ITZ isn't quite here yet? Well, keep me posted then.

 

[Dark Matter]

Oh boy... I'm so embarrassed right now. Look ->

I should have known better than to make such silly statements. Youse guys have argued with such passion and conviction that I no longer have any doubts about RT and RTwP awesomeness and loads of depth. I assume that there is a reason why no examples, y'know, RT equivalents of Jagged Alliance, XCOM, Realms of Arkania and any other game with a complex TB system, were posted. Such examples are, undoubtedly, far too numerous to mention.

What? Some conditions haven't been met yet? No super awesome interface has been designed yet, you say? Not enough alien technology has been salvaged? ITZ isn't quite here yet? Well, keep me posted then.

Obviously since RT combat is easy, dumbed down stuff that even a 10 year old can master, I'm sure someone who managed to beat such mind-blowingly deep and challenging games like Jagged Alliance and X-Com should be able to start up a game of Starcraft, Ninja Gaiden, Operation Flashpoint, Ikaruga etc. and pwn everybody, right?

Face it, your notion of TB combat somehow being more challenging than RT combat is a fucking joke.

 

[Monocause]

Face it, your notion of TB combat somehow being more challenging than RT combat is a fucking joke.

TB is a purely intellectual challenge, and I believe that's what VD meant.

It's funny you should mention Starcraft. I happen to know the guy who won the second place in some tournament a couple of years ago, getting nice cash for a then sixteen year old guy. What he said amounted to "No, there's no thinking. You need to be lightning fast, know how to assign hotkeys to groups to optimise your speed and the order of buildings and units you need. You pick a strategy and stick to it, if it fails you're screwed no matter what you do, there's no time to rethink or to change anything mid-game".
I've seen complete and utter retards owning everyone in SC and W3. RT rewards your speeds, not your smarts. Smarts are useful, but not necessary to win. I can't even imagine someone brilliant but sluggish winning a Starcraft match.