Game News Age of Decadence Released on Steam Early Access

[hiver]

:loud maniacal laughter:

Although the last suggestion is pretty cool about the rival heroes.

:even louder maniacal laughter:

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Rival heroes in a game where you're not a hero.

 

[I_am_Ian]

Rival pissants.

 

[hiver]

maybe it could be the revenge of the awesome guy? while another villanous hero plays the usual suspect?

or maybe the awesome guy got so butthurt that they booted him out of his awesome game mode that he became a split personality - so he could play both of these rival heroes battling it out and running around doing and finishing player quests before the player could get to them.
maybe he also got an obsessive impulse to collect pointless "furniture items" sold as dlc for his player owned house too.
and then he meets this other dude who is into soaps - who blows up his house and burns all those dlc items down with it - which starts their rivalry... not to mention that insane chick that they are both into

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Quests auto-resolve. That seems sufficient for me.
Wouldn't say no to someone of the right mindset(*cough* Miltiades*cough*) taking credit for some of our actions and stealing our glory. That'd be interesting.

 

[t]

Not yet. Will be added in the upcoming updates.

Sweet!

Also, Al Sazir is a pussy, killed him on the second attempt with 6 crossbow / 6 crit guy, but for the love of cute kittens I have no idea how to kill those two thugs at the bar. Guess crossbow has its pros and cons.

The game crashed on me a few dozen times already. Does the game create a log that I should send you? The only place in which the game crashed consistently was a weird buggy situation with bronze bolts that I couldn't sell. The game broke when I dropped them and then exited the inventory.

There is also this weird perception check in the abbys that I cannot pass with 10 in perception...

 

[Vault Dweller]

The game crashed on me a few dozen times already. Does the game create a log that I should send you? The only place in which the game crashed consistently was a weird buggy situation with bronze bolts that I couldn't sell. The game broke when I dropped them and then exited the inventory.

Yes, there is a log, generated after each play session. So, if your game crashed, send us the log (it's where your save games are) before starting a new game as that would overwrite the log. Thanks.

There is also this weird perception check in the abbys that I cannot pass with 10 in perception...

Strange. Which check (there are several)? What does the text say?

 

[t]

Ok, will try to recreate those crashes.

The abyss -- I sucessfully pass the first perception check and see the 'M' letter. I go in that direction anyway. Then I am supposed to examine the second area, with the broken collumn, lightning and a white fireball. This perception check I fail.

 

[toro]

The game crashed on me a few dozen times already. Does the game create a log that I should send you? The only place in which the game crashed consistently was a weird buggy situation with bronze bolts that I couldn't sell. The game broke when I dropped them and then exited the inventory.

Yes, there is a log, generated after each play session. So, if your game crashed, send us the log (it's where your save games are) before starting a new game as that would overwrite the log. Thanks.

The superior "Bioware" approach to this kind of debugging/beta-testing is to implement a auto-email functionality which on game restart will ask the user about the permission to send the last log file or not. This will avoid things like "it's where your save games are" and it will not confuse the popamole user regarding emails and attachments.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ok, will try to recreate those crashes.

The abyss -- I sucessfully pass the first perception check and see the 'M' letter. I go in that direction anyway. Then I am supposed to examine the second area, with the broken collumn, lightning and a white fireball. This perception check I fail.

Sorry. It has a hidden INT check. You need 7 or higher to realize what the next sign is. We'll probably lower it to 6. It's hidden because you find nothing at first and then you realize what the sign is.

 

[hiver]

How are the sales coming along? 2000 steam units passed?

 

[Elhoim]

Ok, will try to recreate those crashes.

Nick is working on a tool to catch them, they are quite hard to reproduce and the logs are telling us nothing... We'll be uploading that tool next week if everything goes fine.

 

[Tigranes]

I finally tried a spear/dodge and have been struggling. For some reason even with 4/4 spear and a +10% passive chance weapon I very rarely seem to interrupt - and the fact that you don't trigger interrupts if the enemy is diagonal and adjacent to you and then moves to a square next to you maens in small rooms the spear is very weak. (Which is as it should be.) Even with 4 spear 5 dodge and plenty of alchemical things and crafted items I couldn't find any way to beat the bandit camp or the outpost. We'll see, maybe I'll try an axe, though they seem a lot less appealing now that their special ability changed.

 

[t]

Sorry. It has a hidden INT check. You need 7 or higher to realize what the next sign is. We'll probably lower it to 6. It's hidden because you find nothing at first and then you realize what the sign is.

I thought that this was an INT check, but it checked for the intelligence of the player, not the character. As in 'don't go down there, dumbass!'

How are the sales coming along? 2000 steam units passed?

I have heard it might be aginst Steam policy to share sales figures. Can you check, VD, before responding, just to be sure?

 

[hiver]

I finally tried a spear/dodge and have been struggling. For some reason even with 4/4 spear and a +10% passive chance weapon I very rarely seem to interrupt - and the fact that you don't trigger interrupts if the enemy is diagonal and adjacent to you and then moves to a square next to you maens in small rooms the spear is very weak. (Which is as it should be.) Even with 4 spear 5 dodge and plenty of alchemical things and crafted items I couldn't find any way to beat the bandit camp or the outpost. We'll see, maybe I'll try an axe, though they seem a lot less appealing now that their special ability changed.

Aha!

Spears too easy eh? ha!

Yes, interrupts are rare at the start - and thats as it should be. I only got more of them when using a Krokspar.
and ive been able to beat the outpost only because i poisoned their food with a stronger poison.

 

[Saduj]

I finally tried a spear/dodge and have been struggling. For some reason even with 4/4 spear and a +10% passive chance weapon I very rarely seem to interrupt - and the fact that you don't trigger interrupts if the enemy is diagonal and adjacent to you and then moves to a square next to you maens in small rooms the spear is very weak. (Which is as it should be.) Even with 4 spear 5 dodge and plenty of alchemical things and crafted items I couldn't find any way to beat the bandit camp or the outpost. We'll see, maybe I'll try an axe, though they seem a lot less appealing now that their special ability changed.

Aha!

Spears too easy eh? ha!

Yes, interrupts are rare at the start - and thats as it should be. I only got more of them when using a Krokspar.
and ive been able to beat the outpost only because i poisoned their food with a stronger poison.

Remember: Spears are only overpowered with an "assassin build".

They have their advantages in certain fights but IMO, it doesn't outweigh the disadvantages in close quarters. I'd personally pick any other melee weapon first.

 

[toro]

Watching hiver in actions clearly shows that AoD is a better game than Dark Souls.

 

[hiver]

Remember: Spears are only overpowered with an "assassins creed build".

fixed.

 

[A user named cat]

Hi Vince, The problem is folks may not wish to restart to explore the other content. Making a new character also suggest not deep character development. What this game needs is this in my opinion... From my experience to finishing it one time to the end it needs to be about 100-250 times bigger + deeper character design... Then that woudl warrent a $25 price point. I've seen spiderweb software makes games for cheap offer 100 hours of gameplay and deep character design and ask for less money. As for this game the graphics are a bit better, events are interesting but then I think of never winter nights they where a big game, deep character design and was a classic... At any rate the game is way to small, I think what you should concentrate on is adding a way for maybe the houses to constantly be at war a sort of never ending war with one another ... It would be interesting to join a house and to have your house raided. There is a game called Depths of Peril try that game and you'll see and get some ideas how you can make this game more enjoyable. What they do is they have guilds fight one another in real time adding a pvp element of heroes fighting each other... That was in real time even if it was in turn based that still be ok... I think doing quests for your house is ok but to set a way for you to fight for your house and be raided, or having joint invasions this will compensate for the lack of a small world..... Another good game was warlords battle cry 3, the game itself is not great however because it's a deep hero development design it makes up for it and will cause the player to keep playing leading his armies ... Having one thing to keep people coming back will be good... One thing I'd love to see rpg developers do is having rivaling heroes who do what you do they quest, they get parties and they hunt u down it would be nice to see a house recruit adventurers who try to beat u to goals laid out .... Dungeon Keeper 2 kinda got it right but doing that with this rpg style I think would be more enjoyable.... Just some ideas for you, aside from that the short time playing it was fun but it's not worth $25 and if that was 60% of the game that's not good

VD, you should hire dogma7 to answer these type of posts. I can only imagine how white-knuckled and angry-faced you are replying in a calm and civilized manner with some of those morons on Steam.

 

[Zombra]

Dateline: RPG Codex, January 2004.

Zombra argues with Vault Dweller about CRPG reactivity, providing the initial inspiration for Age of Decadence.

Until we reach uber-cyber-brain levels of AI technology, CRPGs will not and cannot adapt in these ways, regardless of whether a development team is pretty damned talented or not.

That I think is the common mistake and a reason for the current state of gaming. People used to technology, rely on it, and expect it to do the work for them, i.e why think of a way to replicate the abundance of choices now when we can wait 50 years till we have some uber AI who'd respond to players actions. I believe that we should see more of games like Prelude and Geneforge coming from small companies featuring much deeper gameplay then that of mainstream pseudo rpgs. Hell, may be even I will do one

I wanna be in the credits.

 

[hiver]

Yeah, put him in as "Retard who thought it cannot be done without uber-cyber-brain (whatever the fuck that is) levels of Ai technology".

 

[Monty]

Dateline: RPG Codex, January 2004.

Zombra argues with Vault Dweller about CRPG reactivity, providing the initial inspiration for Age of Decadence.

Until we reach uber-cyber-brain levels of AI technology, CRPGs will not and cannot adapt in these ways, regardless of whether a development team is pretty damned talented or not.

That I think is the common mistake and a reason for the current state of gaming. People used to technology, rely on it, and expect it to do the work for them, i.e why think of a way to replicate the abundance of choices now when we can wait 50 years till we have some uber AI who'd respond to players actions. I believe that we should see more of games like Prelude and Geneforge coming from small companies featuring much deeper gameplay then that of mainstream pseudo rpgs. Hell, may be even I will do one

I wanna be in the credits.

Dateline: RPG Codex, January 2004

Zombra slags off the dialogue in Torment, providing the initial inspiration for Bioware to move gaming into the modern age, reducing the amount of annoying reading

In a computer game, there's only so much dialogue you can have before the game starts to bog down with reading text on a screen (*cough* Torment *cough*)

Possible entry in the ME4 credits, 'dialogue wheel' section?

 

[Zeriel]

Oh wow. Codex is apparently a learning animal.

 

[Johannes]

A learning animal that's going down the toilet

 

[Angelo85]

So about Steam not displaying Early Access games on the front page any longer: "Maia" is displayed for me with 25% on the front page banner. Newest Early Access title.
Did Steam reverse the "no Early Access games on front page" policy and F over AoD and Project Zomboid big time in the process?