Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Grunker]

You should review them for the Codex. I'd be very interested in reading such a review, and it's pretty relevant to the interests of the Codex, considering it will be used in a new Torment game. You're quite the sharp chap and can write alright as far as I see. Interested?

I'll review them for the Codex.

Boss. Keep me updated on the process over PM, and I'll add to our content-queue and post it when it's done

 

[hiver]

One other important angle to keep in mind when it comes to using Tb combat in new Torment:

Wasteland 2 will already have a new TB combat system. Tested, working. Same engine. Developed by same people.
For a game going through Kickstarter and with limited resources - this is very important.

It will be much, much easier and cheaper in every sense (time, money) to adjust Wasteland 2 TB system to new Torment then to develop another system from scratch.

Especially since encounter design will be of prime importance, wont rely on trash mobs or grinding and seeing how most combat will be avoidable.

 

[Irenaeus]

One other important angle to keep in mind when it comes to using Tb combat in new Torment:

Wasteland 2 will already have a new TB combat system. Tested, working. Same engine. Developed by same people.
For a game going through Kickstarter and with limited resources - this is very important.

It will be much, much easier and cheaper in every sense (time, money) to adjust Wasteland 2 TB system to new Torment then to develop another system from scratch.

Especially since encounter design will be of prime importance, wont rely on trash mobs or grinding and seeing how most combat will be avoidable.

 

[Infinitron]

I've already told you that isn't an important factor, hiver. Expect disappointment.

 

[hiver]

What you told me is irrelevant, Infinitron. And to claim it is not an important factor is really just stupid.

for fuck sake, Kevin clearly said it is an important factor.
That doesnt mean they will use it - i never claimed that at all.
And neither did he.

-get yer shit together man-
I wont be disappointed even if they do go with RtwP - if they keep with what they actually said about encounter design and the rest.

-edited....-

 

[Infinitron]

What you told me is irrelevant, Infinitron. And to claim it is not an important factor is really just stupid.

In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm not making these things up out of my head. Again - you should prepare to be disappointed (and that's even if Torment does end up TB, because it will be nothing like Wasteland 2)

 

[hiver]

The only way i would be disappointed is if they made the entire combat and its system that is worse then PT.

mkay?

Stop imagining what i think or feel, man.

 

[buzz]

Since when some retard gets to claim he is the ONE who will get to tell me that Torment should be an CYOA adventure game and that combat should be removed?

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Wait, did you just compare JA2's turn-based system with Quick Time Events in adventure games?

I like how you dismiss CYOA as automatically shit because hey, King of the Dragon Pass sure was a shitty game (no, it's not a CYOA I know that but neither was the combatless Torment that I was describing).

Now I can understand the mad. I hate when a developer thinks that it's better to remove what's broken rather than fix it. I just have this feeling that combat really wasn't relevant much for PT from the beginning. Probably because every time I read about the game on the Internet people advise to play as a mage with high wisdom/intelligence for the sake of bigger dialogue branching.
I'm just saying that this would've been a great occasion to innovate and make some non-combat type of cRPG.

However, I do believe the possibility ofcombat should probably exist at nearly every turn, if desired by the gamemaster/players (or player/developers, in the case of a cRPG). In other words, if at any time the player decides to attack a bystander, insult an angry drunk, charge recklessly into a creature's lair, thumb his nose at the local constabulary, burgle someone's house (and get caught), or simply goes berserk and begin stabbing/shooting things, combat can and will happen, preferably with satisfying mechanics to make it work.

Yeah, for me it felt like Avellone and his mates desired that players should play TNO mostly as a smart guy with the ability to self-introspect and analyze the esoteric settings and characters, not as a fucktard. Which is why I think a spiritual sequel could've got away with no combat.

 

[Blaine]

The actual reason for the existence of RTwP (to wit, agents of the decline pushing for action-oriented gameplay) is enough to make me oppose it, although its pervasively negative affects on what might otherwise be strategically satisfying gameplay—note that I'm not referring solely or even primarily to PS:T—are really good reasons to oppose it. Rolling over and accepting RTwP simply because it happens to decrease the amount of time you'll spend suffering through badly-designed combat is obnoxious. Most of the people who've been quoting my posts, banging out variations of MORON!, and crashing their index fingers triumphantly into their carriage returns do allow that they'd be delighted if the Torment successor's combat is turn-based, provided it's actually good. I knew all of this earlier, but now that I'm having my coffee, I'm becoming mildly outraged that Codexians would sell out the incline in order to fast-forward through some piss-poor game design.

I mean really, when Codexians glumly accept RTwP in a game that should by all rights feature turn-based combat, who's left to fight the decline? NeoGAF? RPG Watch? Something Awful? You've got to be shitting me. I bet No Mutants Allowed would back me up on this, although perhaps not anymore.

I'm certainly not suggesting that all games or all cRPGs should be turn-based. However, a cRPG featuring six fucking party members and utilizing turn-based tabletop mechanics definitely qualifies.

Spoiler

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, for me it felt like Avellone and his mates desired that players should play TNO mostly as a smart guy with the ability to self-introspect and analyze the esoteric settings and characters, not as a fucktard. Which is why I think a spiritual sequel could've got away with no combat.

All right, now you're pushing for you-can't-kill-that-because-we-said-so or no combat at all. I don't like those options, I will never agree with you for any reason, and I piss upon any seditious argument designed to suggest that such blatant decline is in any way desirable.

 

[Lord Andre]

Back in the day, when a nigger was expressing opinions on a game he did not play, we put that boy in the ol' hotbox.

 

[hiver]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

What..the..fuck... does that even mean?

Wait, did you just compare JA2's turn-based system with Quick Time Events in adventure games?

No... i compared you stupid, ignorant strawman with another obvious strawman. Moron.

I just have this feeling that combat really wasn't relevant much for PT from the beginning. Probably because every time I read about the game on the Internet people advise to play as a mage with high wisdom/intelligence for the sake of bigger dialogue branching.

Thats just the usual human desire to get all the content at once. NOW!

Actually, it is best to go through the game as a fighter first, (preferably with a focus on axes or punch daggers) then do a rerun as a mage.
Thats how you get the most out of the game - Including taking different companions with you.

 

[hiver]

In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm not making these things up out of my head. Again - you should prepare to be disappointed (and that's even if Torment does end up TB, because it will be nothing like Wasteland 2)

And who said anything about being like Wasteland 2?

What the..... fffff..... figgls!?

 

[buzz]

Like I said, I didn't really want to be pushed in this direction. But you leave me no choice

Planescape Torment was and is FUCKING . It was a shitty game by cRPG standards, it failed to do much of what is mechanically imposed on such a genre. I fucking loathe the popularity that it has in a crowd from which I expected better.
Party creation and customization? NO, have some predetermined characters with pretentious background info.
Dungeon crawling? NO.
Random encounters? NO.
Turn-based combat? NO.
GOOD combat? HELL FUCKING NO.


The only good RPG things that it did was to gracefully make conflicts and dialogue interesting and relevant rather than fluff.

This is why I think Planescape Torment should've been something else entirely. Because it's a POS RPG that gets unlimited praise.
In a couple of days Jaesun will show us the results behind the voting and I'm pretty fucking sure that this travesty of an RPG will be top dog, over games like Wizardry 7, Realms of Arkania, Pool of Radiance or Fate: Gates of Dawn.

The simple fact that you talk about PT as it was some sort of hardcore master stroke of depth in gameplay and the perfect RPG that would somehow be tainted if it would have no combat is a joke. Planescape Torment (or more directly Baldur's Gate), Morrowind and Diablo are the triumvirate of shittyness which ultimately lead to the death of the party-based dungeon crawling, of the freedom in exploration, of the C&C and of the multiclassing. Oh, multiclassing

At the moment the best thing to come out of kickstarter for me was the Iceblink Engine. Not Project Eternity and certainly not this.

 

[Infinitron]

I didn't know random encounters were a core element of the RPG genre.

 

[Blaine]

Ah, buzz is one of those "only old-school dungeon crawlers, SSI Gold Box titles, and a select few games of my choosing are real cRPGs" types.

Well buzz, if it makes you feel any better, there are in fact more than a few Codexians who agree with you.

 

[Lord Andre]

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I mean really, when Codexians glumly accept RTwP in a game that should by all rights feature turn-based combat,

Glumly? Fuckers are overjoyed about RTwP in Project Shiternity, because OMG it's an IE spiritual successor. Doesn't matter that the rest is pissed on by Sawyer to the point that the game will have pretty much nothing to do with IE, the combat will be RTwP so it's great! Also, of course, RTwP in IE was the best thing ever so why change it????

 

[buzz]

Ah, buzz is one of those "only old-school dungeon crawlers, SSI Gold Box titles, and a select few games of my choosing are real cRPGs" types.

No, I just think that the entire discussion is fucking worthless CONSIDERING.

You're saying that removing the combat from Planescape Torment is a decline of RPGs. How exactly since PT was already so far away from the spectrum of what RPGs usually do? Even when you compare it to its contemporaries the game is poor as part of this genre. Fallout is a better RPG, Baldur's Gate is a better RPG (shittier writing notwithstanding), so?

edit: If Witcher 2 or Mass Effect had turn-based combat but was the same in everything else, it would still be a shitty RPG. Because it flunks everything else

 

[Brother None]

I don't think registering the Torment IP actually cost any money besides the usual lawyer fees. Brother None would know more.

Yeah. The IP simply "died" because no one was using it and he swooped in and registered it. No extra costs. Anyone could've done it, but Fargo was smart enough to have been watching it like a hawk for years now.
Note that if a PS:T:EE had been announced and in the works by now they could've claimed the mark was in use and it would not have become available. Hah.

Wasteland 2 will already have a new TB combat system. Tested, working. Same engine. Developed by same people.
For a game going through Kickstarter and with limited resources - this is very important.

It's important but I dunno about very. The goals for combat in NumNum Torment are so different than those of Wasteland 2 there's only little you can use. WL2's combat is tactical, complex and engaging, a big focus of the game, whereas NumNum's focus on combat is to - among many other things - a) have rare, unique-feeling combat encounters, b) integrate combat mechanics with the bigger narrative and c) make sure the character system's strategic and tactical choices make sense. etc etc. It's very different. The focus is more on infrequent encounters that feel unique than constant engaging fights. Plus it's much more close combat than ranged. So there's not too much you can recycle.

Now, how about a blast from the past? 1998 Torment team photo, posted by Tim Donley on his own storystream (and MCA's, and with MCA's 2005 friends that's basically just "public", haha)

Fat Chris Avellone (grey sweater) hiding behind Eric Campanella. Guido Henkel rocking the Guido look next to Tim (the guy in an oversized red shirt). And last but not least, CMcC as the ultimate "90s kid" including goatee (on the far left).

Tim Donley, for those who are unaware, was the lead artist on Planescape: Torment, as well as doing art for Fallout 2 (he told me years ago he created the Vertibird helicopter design for Jason Anderson in the early days of Fallout 2's design). He's been recently working at Vigil as the design director on Darksiders II, which certainly had a pretty striking aesthetic even if otherwise I didn't love it (well, to be fair, I did like it, but for some reason the inventory and map screens took like 10-15 secs to pop up and that made it unplayable for me).

Him and all of Vigil is on the market now after THQ failed to auction the studio off Hope he lands on his feet, he's a really good guy.

 

[Infinitron]

Hope he lands on his feet

Hmm, I wonder where he could possibly land?

 

[hiver]

Planescape Torment was and is FUCKING .

hah!...whoooeee....
hehehe...

And this is what three pages were being wasted on?

It wasnt a party based combat heavy game where you can create the whole party? No shit?
It did have elements of dungeon crawling but that feature doesnt make an RPG game by itself. It just one of the many secondary features any game can use.
Random encounters? So what? It also didnt have many other things due to various other constraints during development - of which you should learn a thing or two.
Turn based combat mechanics is also something that doesnt define an RPG.
And seeing that you retardedly think an RPG has to be in one single form to please your stupid self - we come to the conclusion i came when i saw your first post on this matter - you are a stupid dumbfuck, besides making it clear that your opinon on combat in new Torment is entirely irrelevant and moronic.


Let me tell you how it goes. There is a great wheel of good RPGs. Fallout on one side - Planescape Torment on the other.
This wheel is intersected with another one, where party based combat simulator RPGs and action rpgs reside.
And a lower third one where all shitty RPGs go to.
Fallout is more orientated to combat, non linearity, sandbox gameplay - Planescape Torment orientated more towards story telling, subverting tropes and questioning some philosophical aspects.
We all know singular parts of it were less then stellar.

But, as many other games, it is actually praised and loved because of gestalt effect its many features create.
Not just because of the story, not just because of the themes it deals with, not just because any other single thing.

Planescape Torment is a many splendored thing.

You cant take a part of it out.
What you can do - is strive to make these parts better.

 

[Blaine]

You're saying that removing the combat from Planescape Torment is a decline of RPGs. How exactly since PT was already so far away from the spectrum of what RPGs usually do? Even when you compare it to its contemporaries the game is poor as part of this genre. Fallout is a better RPG, Baldur's Gate is a better RPG (shittier writing notwithstanding), so?

I don't believe that pure game mechanics are the sole defining pillars of cRPGs, as you (and others—you're not alone) seem to. In my mind, "RPG" is a much more intangible concept. I've played tabletop RPGs for years, and I do enjoy "crunchy" game mechanics, yet the rules of character creation, combat, enemy encounters, and so on are only a portion of the whole. Atmosphere, storytelling, interaction with the environment, characterization, dialog, and meaningful choices are very important to me. I wouldn't call myself a storyfag, though, since I also enjoy cRPGs with meaty mechanics and tacked-on stories (most dungeon crawlers, for example).

Hang on a moment, though. PS:T may have had pre-made characters, but you could customize the main character's attributes, class, skills, spells and so on before the game began. You could also choose how your party members' statistics progressed as they leveled up. You could equip them with a wide variety of items. There's combat involving spells, weapons, status ailments, HP and die rolls, and a variety of monsters. There aren't elaborate, grid-based dungeon crawler maps, but there are still dungeons/dangerous areas full of traps and enemies to explore. Your "mental" statistics affected conversation options and the outcome of some conversations. There are skill checks for doing a variety of miscellaneous things in the game world.

Oh, but it's almost not even an RPG, because those aspects sucked or weren't handled well enough or aren't close enough to the way Wizardry did it, right?

edit: If Witcher 2 or Mass Effect had turn-based combat but was the same in everything else, it would still be a shitty RPG. Because it flunks everything else

Now that's just fighting dirty.

But, as many other games, it is actually praised and loved because of gestalt effect its many features create.
Not just because of the story, not just because of the themes it deals with, not just because any other single thing.

Planescape Torment is a many splendored thing.

You cant take a part of it out.
What you can do - is strive to make these parts better.

Couldn't have put it better myself, except to improve the grammar. An RPG isn't a list of features and mechanics, but rather a gestalt. It's not simply the sum of its parts.

 

[Irenaeus]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

What..the..fuck... does that even mean?

Shitty internet catchphrase (meme).

 

[hiver]

Wasteland 2 will already have a new TB combat system. Tested, working. Same engine. Developed by same people.
For a game going through Kickstarter and with limited resources - this is very important.

It's important but I dunno about very. The goals for combat in NumNum Torment are so different than those of Wasteland 2 there's only little you can use. WL2's combat is tactical, complex and engaging, a big focus of the game, whereas NumNum's focus on combat is to - among many other things - a) have rare, unique-feeling combat encounters, b) integrate combat mechanics with the bigger narrative and c) make sure the character system's strategic and tactical choices make sense. etc etc. It's very different. The focus is more on infrequent encounters that feel unique than constant engaging fights. Plus it's much more close combat than ranged. So there's not too much you can recycle.

a) TB combat is good for such encounters as any other combat system
b) TB combat is good for such feature as any other combat system
c) TB combat is perfect for strategy and tactics

The focus is more on infrequent encounters that feel unique than constant engaging fights.

Yes, so? Where does it say TB combat is in any way negatively predisposed towards infrequent encounters or uniqueness? Where does it say Tb combat must have constant engaging fights?

Did i not spent a lot of effort and time arguing against that on W2 forums?

Plus it's much more close combat than ranged.

So? TOEE? What the hell?

Are you telepathic again and like Infintron imagine i think they should just copy-paste Wasteland 2 system into new Torment?
Did i say that - anywhere?

Now, how about a blast from the past? 1998 Torment team photo, posted by Tim Donley on his own storystream (and MCA's, and with MCA's 2005 friends that's basically just "public", haha)

Fat Chris Avellone hiding behind Eric Campanella. Guido Henkel rocking the Guido look next to Tim (the guy in an oversized red shirt). And last but not least, CMcC as the ultimate "90s kid" (on the far left).

whaaaa.... :lolcopter:

I seriously couldnt find MCA if you didnt point him out. Guess all that rich money from slam dunks went for plastic surgery.


(luckily all my earlier pictures from younger days are destroyed - i looked more like a zombie, if you must know)