Together in Battle - the next strategy RPG from Telepath Tactics developer - now available on Early Access

[rusty_shackleford]

You're the one that decided to defend an inclusion in the game with real world data. I merely pointed out that the meat and potatoes of the cRPG genre in the game doesn't pass that test.

That's not what "meat and potatoes" means. CRPGs almost never feature grappling! It is neither the meat nor the potatoes of cRPGs; it is, at best, a slice of lemon sometimes placed tastefully on the side of the plate so you can squeeze it over your dish if you desire.

I addressed the realism of the game's mechanics only because you were accusing the game of being politically charged based on unrelated National Library of Medicine studies. But realism, on its own, doesn't do the job of telling you what to include in a game. The fact is, no game can incorporate every factor that goes into real-life combat: the real world is too complex to simulate with that degree of precision. Inevitably, you must pick and choose those elements of reality you wish to represent. What's more, "realistic" doesn't necessarily mean "fun." It's the job of a designer to select elements that support the game's structure and which produce a fun interplay. With that in mind: TiB is a strategy RPG with proc gen characters and a social simulation layer. In my judgment, social interactions between men and women are just way too laden with the potential for interesting wrinkles and emergent drama to pass up for the sake of including mechanics that heavily disfavor female characters (and doubly so for mechanics that would remove tactical positioning decisions from the player). Sorry if you think that's, uh...leg piss? It's the truth, dude.

Combat is the meat and potatoes of a cRPG. You decided that it wasn't important enough to be more detailed or based on actual historical combat. That's fine, it's fantasy.
But you went on to justify other changes that really have nothing to do with an RPG just by pointing to dubious statistics based on real life.

I'm not sure why you're treating us like we can't tell what you're doing, or why you're lying about it.

 

[Craig Stern]

You...think I don't find combat mechanics important? Lol. Dude, no offense, but you should probably stop posting.

 

[fantadomat]

Y'all realize that 10% is just a number I threw in there more or less arbitrarily, right? It will take literally 10 seconds to adjust it up or down. The game is still in alpha. Chill.

LoL 10% is number you read on twatter or in some sjw garbage news network and decided to put it in. Stop pretending that you are not some libtard cunt.

 

[Jenkem]

So have we decided who's going to do the Codex review for this game?

 

[fantadomat]

So have we decided who's going to do the Codex review for this game?

LoL for that someone have to play it first. I nominate Jenkem because he have bad taste and dislikes games without combat. I prefer good RPGs like disco communism,the codex goty

 

[Craig Stern]

LoL 10% is number you read on twatter or in some sjw garbage news network and decided to put it in. Stop pretending that you are not some libtard cunt.

Sorry, I thought this was a site for RPGs; I didn't realize I'd accidentally posted on Stormfront Junior! My mistake.

 

[fantadomat]

LoL 10% is number you read on twatter or in some sjw garbage news network and decided to put it in. Stop pretending that you are not some libtard cunt.

Sorry, I thought this was a site for RPGs; I didn't realize I'd accidentally posted on Stormfront Junior! My mistake.

Yes,it is a site for RPGs,not a place for your degenerate political shit. Now go fuck yourself faggit.!.

 

[vazha]

So have we decided who's going to do the Codex review for this game?

LoL for that someone have to play it first. I nominate Jenkem because he have bad taste and dislikes games without combat. I prefer good RPGs like disco communism,the codex goty

If you turn the blind eye to all his incloosive nonsense, his games are pretty decent as far as tacticools go. I enjoyed both the Servant of God (iirc that's how it was called, had more tolerable plot as well) and the Tactics (That's where cancer firmly took roots) and completed both of them. I think I ll give this new one a go as well, let's see how bad it can get.

 

[Tigranes]

Well, let's talk about RPG mechanics, since this is supposed to be, you know, a grognard RPG forum

Two reasons:

(1) This is a game focused on endless replayability. That means supporting as much character variety as possible to keep things from getting stale. Adding in a new system that actively makes half the characters non-viable in close quarters combat would work against that pretty hard.

I think this is the fundamental question when I look at TiB - what kind of 'character variety' is suited to procedural generation and the kind of gameplay you've got going? My guess is that more Maslow-ian, "flat" psychological traits, however unrealistic they are for describing actual people, often work better with the kind of games we have because you can quickly translate them into tangible modifiers. If you have a character with randomly generated traits of "glutton" that needs to eat 3 times as much (Battle Brothers), then it's obviously easy to work with that on the gameplay side.

But what's interesting here is that the dev's example mentioned a procedurally generated character who might have a randomly assigned "hobby", such as write a novel, and a "secret", such as lacks empathy. The thing about this is that with a game on the extreme end of hand-crafted (e.g. written by peak Avelllone), then those traits are at home in a game with copious amounts of carefully handwritten dialogue that builds on those traits. With a procedural half-sim half-dungeoneering game like TiB, the question is what kind of gameplay interaction happens with these traits? Would such a character gain extra XP from exploring strange areas of the dungeon as "inspiration", for example? Or perhaps encounter a scenario in combat where they refuse to cooperate because they 'lack empathy'?

It's hard for me to imagine that I'll grow attached to a randomly generated party member whose hobbies and secrets are primarily represented by generic,interchangeable lines about how they "write in a journal and their mood improves." Rather, I would be inclined to treat it as I do Battle Brothers traits: this guy is a "coward", but it doesn't really get fleshed out in a human way, it's more about being able to see this motherfucker break in morale faster during a critical combat moment. Perhaps this is in practice whta TiB looks like? I think with TiB it's hard to put a finger on it, because the dialogue screenshots seem to evoke a more 'handwritten RPG story' format, for example.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

LoL 10% is number you read on twatter or in some sjw garbage news network and decided to put it in. Stop pretending that you are not some libtard cunt.

Sorry, I thought this was a site for RPGs; I didn't realize I'd accidentally posted on Stormfront Junior! My mistake.

The Codex has always been free for all, including for political stuffs so yeah, this will comes up a lot. It comes with the site, altho if you are willing to look past that you probably can get good feedback for RPGs.

That being said, any narrative component especially when it has 1. romance 2. non-straight white male being prominent will results in the local conservatives coming out from their den being massively butthurt

Now for some feedback to counterbalance the shit flinging the last 3 pages:

1. You don't really need to defend the inclusion of racial minority nor LGBT content by citing data or whatever. In the end of the day, it is your game. That being said understand your target audience as I said above.

2. Mixing RPG with a dating sim is not a new concept. Countless JRPGs have done that. Fire Emblem gets a second breathe of life because of that. That being said your choice of art is . I am pretty sure you can procure a good, appealing art for a dating sim/visual novel part from any country in SEA which has a decent mainstream appeal for cheap. Some shovelware gacha mobile games have better art than this. I am sorry but your game currently looks like some cheap dating sim Steam shovelware. This makes your inclusiveness all the easier to attack as the internet is not lacking in examples of "bad woke artists".

Considering the dating sim aspect and how close these kinds of SRPG to JRPG, anime-ish art would work. Even if you insist on a more "western" looks there are a lot of artists in Devianart that could make something better than this. If I see the current art on a store page I will close it without a second thought. Heck, even something simple works and probably looks better. Looks at https://store.steampowered.com/app/763890/Wildermyth/ for example on proc gen characters with simple looks but I would argue is much better than what you have now.

3. Works on your dialogue and writing if you are going for a more narrative-focused angle. Currently what you have felt "fanfic"-ish especially when it tries to "romance". Sometimes simpler is better. Wildermyth also has "proc-gen" character with personality traits. Dialogue is short, has decent flavor, but never overstay their welcomes.

4. In general I like Telepath Tactics on the gameplay front and really have no major issue with the writing. That being said what do you want to "sell" in this game? I would argue that the tactical RPG part is your strongest suit. The resource management is also a decent staple of the genre. But from the steam page you are also trying to sell hard on the characters and social aspect, which honestly due to number 2 and 3 above would probably require more work on your part. If budget is a constraint, as I pointed out, sometimes less can be more. The player can fill in the rest with their imagination. Let's be real here, writing an actaully likeable characters are hard enough when you are actually trying to write one, leave alone having random algorithm do it.

 

[Johannes]

Arguing about politics and realism is tiresome. It doesn't really bring the mechanics of the game up or down whether a characters sex affects their strength this or that much, or how big a percent of people are fags. If a guy on your team rapes another gladiator, that's potentially interesting whether they did it to a warrior woman or a male sorcerer.

What matters is how interesting the various traits and events are, and that you're allowed to react to them in mechanically different ways, allowing you to customize your team in both mechanical and narrative terms. With no single playstyle / team composition being an obvious best choice - so both a gay orgy team or a monastic brotherhood have their positives and negatives.

Is the game focusing on just intra-team sexual relations, or can your guys also have families / relationships / slave girls / brothel visits with the general population?

 

[Craig Stern]

Is the game focusing on just intra-team sexual relations, or can your guys also have families / relationships / slave girls / brothel visits with the general population?

Characters do each have families outside of the team, members of whom can show up in events and dialogue--but I think you mean having children, yeah? Right now, romance is strictly inter-team. Romance without some kind of interplay between fleshed-out characters is boring IMO, so for the moment it's limited to the characters who are fleshed out. With that said, though, I do want to introduce persistent, proc gen NPCs to the game at some point. It's already on The Giant List of Stuff I Have to Do.

As for brothels...that's a fun idea! Giving a character the "hobby" of visiting brothels could cause all kinds of drama. Gonna stick that one on The List.

 

[Craig Stern]

Woo! Last night I finally found an artist whose style fits and who is down to redo all the portrait assets in a more painterly aesthetic. This is going to be damned expensive, but hopefully it pays for itself in boosted sales. Just sent off the contract!

 

[bandersnatch]

Getting tired of this woke normalcy stuff in games. I travel a lot for my job and everywhere I go I hope I will see a glimpse of less woke crap in real life and some hope for humanity, but honestly it feels like it's getting worse each day. I'd at least like to find some games being made that don't ram the libtard down our throats when we get off work. We can already expect that from the AAA devs now until the day we die.

I don't believe games like this are primarily made with fun as their main goal anymore but to educate us on how we are supposed to think instead. Or how we are supposed to "feel." The AAA libtard devs have been already wanting to do this for years, but you used to find a bit less of this from the indie devs. I know there are all types of games for all types of people, but really if I wanted an RPG about woke libtard feelings and romance I wouldn't be mining the Codex for hidden gems and would just fanboy games like Boyfriend Dungeon instead.

Someone please just put us out of our misery. Are libtard RPG devs really all we have left to look forward to until the very day we die? We seriously need something to hope for or it's going to be tits with cocks and feelings rammed down our throats until they push us into the nursing homes and force feed us it though a straw. We need a new hope in the RPG space. Help us Obi-Wan!


(WARNING: Incoming LRN (Libtard Response Network) alert!)

 

[Jenkem]

can't wait to see the new art, make sure to post it here when it's ready

 

[fantadomat]

can't wait to see the new art, make sure to post it here when it's ready

It will be glorious jenk,i will do my best to make the gay scenes as american as possible!

 

[rashiakas]

god this shit looks gay as fuck

 

[Haba]

As for brothels...that's a fun idea! Giving a character the "hobby" of visiting brothels could cause all kinds of drama. Gonna stick that one on The List.

Very few fantasy thingamoes stop to think what would actual human beings do if they had magical mystical psionical whatever powers.

As an example, in one D&D/Pathfinder -inspired Chinese novel, there is a side character who has a druid as a lover just because the druid can take an animal shape.

 

[Darth Roxor]

CRPGs almost never feature grappling!

And they are all worse off for it. Meanwhile I can't think of a tabletop rpg I've played that wouldn't have grappling in some form.

 

[Craig Stern]

can't wait to see the new art, make sure to post it here when it's ready

Lol, she backed out after she saw the full list of everything that would need to be redone. The search resumes!

 

[vazha]

If you did send her some of the screens you've posted here, there might be another reason behind her refusal.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

can't wait to see the new art, make sure to post it here when it's ready

Lol, she backed out after she saw the full list of everything that would need to be redone. The search resumes!

The codex will pitch in and make you some art for free

 

[Craig Stern]

Dang, I was going about this wrong before! I made a post on Reddit calling for artists this morning just as kind of a shot in the dark--and now I have just shy of 50 email applications sitting in my inbox. Some of them are really good.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[vazha]

Tame.