Finished White March in anticipation of this coming out next week. That DLC's ending is so fucking metal. I can honestly say that Tyranny could have a shit combat system and I wouldn't care. I need Obsidian story telling in the veins!
Too many good games coming out this fall. No way I can afford all of them. Think I'm going to try to afford this one, though.
I'm friggin terrible at playing infinity-engine style games but I always make an effort anyway. The stories are too good not to. And it looks like they've streamlined this one a bit, at least if the reduced party size is any indication.
Watching the animator geek out over the combat animations in that last dev diary was awesome. If only we all could love our job that much.
@Duffel If it'll help at all, come and post questions ask for suggestions here. Not to humblebrag, but I spent a lot of time reading about Pillars of Eternity's combat system recently (replaying it for WM expansions), and there were a lot of complex eccentricities about the system that I didn't know until digging it up. (I.e. the Larder Door is a trap shield, because its Bash attack switches your character to dual-wield attack timing, basically replacing one of your mainhand weapon's attacks, and since it pretty much always misses at higher levels, doing shit damage and has no bonuses, it actually lowers your tank's DPS compared to just using a regular shield that you enchant up.)
There are also a ton of trap talents and abilities, and a lot of bizarre synergies. (Barbarian's Carnage is one particularly exploitable one. And apparently Kalakoth's Minor Blights is actually balling, to my surprise.) These sorts of games require a lot of investigation and information-sharing to be good at them.
Thanks! My main problem, playing these sorts of games, is that it seems like they have so many moving parts and every encounter is in a way kind of a puzzle. Sometimes it seems to me they're very oriented toward people who are used to playing PnP RPGs with a group, and, by extension, really used to thinking of each party member as a separate asset that can be fitted together as a kind of machine for solving each encounter. But that's something I've never done before, so all the different variables at once seem like a huge amount of information to take in.
Like, in PoE I tried to make what I thought was a fairly straightforward character (Rogue with good attack/speed and a little bit of intelligence for dialogue checks), and it worked OK for the earliest parts of the game where the encounters were really simple. But once I got my party filled out with more complex types of characters like Pallegina and Kana, trying to figure out WTF I was supposed to be doing with stuff like the chanting, knowing what abilities from your mage were wise to use, and so forth... it got really bewildering.
Still had an easier time of it than when I tried to play Baldur's Gate 2 in high school, though.
0
kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
edited November 2016
I suggest everyone check out age of decadence. Amazing indie effort that seems to have taken the same approach as Tyranny has - a relatively short game but it offers meaningful branching choices throughout that game.
I suggest everyone check out age of decadence. Amazing indie effort that seems to have taken the same approach as Tyranny has - a relatively short game but it offers meaningful branching choices throughout that game.
In particular the combat is awesome - it is legitimately hard but also optional and can be worked around. Not your usual hack and slash dungeon crawl.
It's definitely worth playing, and there are some things the game does in terms of actual role-playing that all the major RPG studios could learn from - specifically in how they craft stories and outcomes out of what a character should and should not be able to do. It's pretty cool to have a game where the studious scholar can win by fixing a machine thanks to a scroll he has read, but he's going to get dead real fast if he argues and tries to fight with a single thief.
My biggest issue with it is that the replayability and wide variety of outcomes comes at the expense of depth. The game often feels like the story and situations are sketched in the briefest terms. I really would have liked to have had more time and ability to just walk around that world, talking to people and taking in the setting as you can in a more traditional RPG.
Still, it's a pretty impressive effort for a very small team working over a very long time.
Thanks! My main problem, playing these sorts of games, is that it seems like they have so many moving parts and every encounter is in a way kind of a puzzle. Sometimes it seems to me they're very oriented toward people who are used to playing PnP RPGs with a group, and, by extension, really used to thinking of each party member as a separate asset that can be fitted together as a kind of machine for solving each encounter. But that's something I've never done before, so all the different variables at once seem like a huge amount of information to take in.
Like, in PoE I tried to make what I thought was a fairly straightforward character (Rogue with good attack/speed and a little bit of intelligence for dialogue checks), and it worked OK for the earliest parts of the game where the encounters were really simple. But once I got my party filled out with more complex types of characters like Pallegina and Kana, trying to figure out WTF I was supposed to be doing with stuff like the chanting, knowing what abilities from your mage were wise to use, and so forth... it got really bewildering.
Still had an easier time of it than when I tried to play Baldur's Gate 2 in high school, though.
My OCD in terms of exploring every inch of a map, talking to every NPC, taking every sidequest, and looking in every container helps a lot in Infinity Engine games and their modern successors. By the time I get to a hard fight, I've overleveled and geared up to the point where my strategy is just to click a bunch until things fall over.
There doesn't seem to be any pre-order discounts but there are two pre-order items. So far, the only places selling Tyranny are steam and gog. Maybe greenmangaming will have the game on a slight discount after the release.
Can I say I love being out of the loop on these games: I have ZERO clue Obsidian had a PoE "sequel" coming out, let alone this Thursday.
Checked out a little of the game from the dev's, the art style looks amazing. I wasn't a fan of the shimmer of the previous game, but this looks really nice. I'm glad this is dropping before Divinity, so that there's no overlap from these massive ass games.
"Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
0
imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
Cautiously optomistic - not a day 1 purchase, i'll be watching to see if they tightened up combat responsiveness at all.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
I'm actually considering picking up the physical release of this solely because of how much stuff is apparently being crammed into the box. A soundtrack CD and printed art book sound like pretty nice bonuses to me, and that's just what you get with the most basic version of the game.
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Can I say I love being out of the loop on these games: I have ZERO clue Obsidian had a PoE "sequel" coming out, let alone this Thursday.
Checked out a little of the game from the dev's, the art style looks amazing. I wasn't a fan of the shimmer of the previous game, but this looks really nice. I'm glad this is dropping before Divinity, so that there's no overlap from these massive ass games.
If I'm not mistaken this one is meant to be a shorter adventure comparatively.
Cautiously optomistic - not a day 1 purchase, i'll be watching to see if they tightened up combat responsiveness at all.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
Oh shit I thought this was just me. I hated clicking on an action and thinking "Ok this will be set to do. . ." and then you look back again and nope. . .the ability is still on cooldown.
And I don't mind a shorter adventure. . .I never got around to finishing PoE even with a great story. 20/30 hours of content and I'm good to go. I don't need 50+ hours for a main adventure (and I've never understood why that's a selling point for a lot of people).
"Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
+3
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Cautiously optomistic - not a day 1 purchase, i'll be watching to see if they tightened up combat responsiveness at all.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
Oh shit I thought this was just me. I hated clicking on an action and thinking "Ok this will be set to do. . ." and then you look back again and nope. . .the ability is still on cooldown.
And I don't mind a shorter adventure. . .I never got around to finishing PoE even with a great story. 20/30 hours of content and I'm good to go. I don't need 50+ hours for a main adventure (and I've never understood why that's a selling point for a lot of people).
I actually prefer these games to be shorter too but I totally understand why it's a selling point for people.
The longer jrpgs(or western RPGs like Witcher and Mass Effect) are the better for me. If I really enjoy my time with a game I want to continue to experience that joy for as long as possible. If given the option of experiencing great joy for 20 hours vs experiencing that joy for 80 hours... well I'll gladly take an extra 60 hours of joy.
Especially if it's a game wherein I care about the characters and a world I like spending time in. Once it ends that's it. I don't get to have that experience any more in my life.
I like the Fallout 3/New Vegas way of doing content; the main story wasn't really that long (FO3 in particular), but hooboy if you REALLY enjoyed the world you can spend a massive amount of time in the world. Same with FF6 (and I hope FF15).
I'm definitely optimistic about Tyranny from just the developer preview, but honestly my top-down fix is still firmly attached to Divinity. The brief bit I allowed myself to play with the alpha oh man.
I see there was discussion about Kyros one month ago.
If it will turn out that actually there is no Kyros at all, just power hungry council of something that simply pretend that there is some higher authority, i will be pissed off.
Can I say I love being out of the loop on these games: I have ZERO clue Obsidian had a PoE "sequel" coming out, let alone this Thursday.
Checked out a little of the game from the dev's, the art style looks amazing. I wasn't a fan of the shimmer of the previous game, but this looks really nice. I'm glad this is dropping before Divinity, so that there's no overlap from these massive ass games.
If I'm not mistaken this one is meant to be a shorter adventure comparatively.
I may have been misinformed though.
I think I recall that statement somewhere too. That they were aiming for a shorter single playthrough, but they saw people replaying as the experience will vary dependent on your choices. I think when they mentioned the shorter playthrough they compared it having limited time for 100 hour games, so I'm not sure if they've ever estimated a playthrough may take.
Cautiously optomistic - not a day 1 purchase, i'll be watching to see if they tightened up combat responsiveness at all.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
Oh shit I thought this was just me. I hated clicking on an action and thinking "Ok this will be set to do. . ." and then you look back again and nope. . .the ability is still on cooldown.
And I don't mind a shorter adventure. . .I never got around to finishing PoE even with a great story. 20/30 hours of content and I'm good to go. I don't need 50+ hours for a main adventure (and I've never understood why that's a selling point for a lot of people).
Yeah. Learning how to manage the cooldowns in that game was hard. For a while, I used to stick my casters in heavy armor, because I was like, well there's no armor penalty! Except there kinda was, but I just didn't realise it.
What would have been nice if there was like... an auto-pause when your character came back up available for action, but that'd be a huge pain in the ass, since it'd fire all the fucking time. Still, it was super-annoying to be like, "Cast Fireball here!" ... ten seconds later, casts fireball on your whole party.
(Honestly, the IE engine games had the same problem, with the 1 spell/action per round. Took a while for me to figure out I had to prioritize my actions, or even hold my spells so I could Breach/spell removal later in the same round.)
That auto-pause is at the end of your character casting a spell. So if you order the character to cast another spell, you have to wait through the recovery time. (On the other hand, you might want to MOVE your character as soon as they cast the spell, and that doesn't require recovery time, so there's not really a winning combination.)
Cautiously optomistic - not a day 1 purchase, i'll be watching to see if they tightened up combat responsiveness at all.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
Oh shit I thought this was just me. I hated clicking on an action and thinking "Ok this will be set to do. . ." and then you look back again and nope. . .the ability is still on cooldown.
And I don't mind a shorter adventure. . .I never got around to finishing PoE even with a great story. 20/30 hours of content and I'm good to go. I don't need 50+ hours for a main adventure (and I've never understood why that's a selling point for a lot of people).
I actually prefer these games to be shorter too but I totally understand why it's a selling point for people.
The longer jrpgs(or western RPGs like Witcher and Mass Effect) are the better for me. If I really enjoy my time with a game I want to continue to experience that joy for as long as possible. If given the option of experiencing great joy for 20 hours vs experiencing that joy for 80 hours... well I'll gladly take an extra 60 hours of joy.
Especially if it's a game wherein I care about the characters and a world I like spending time in. Once it ends that's it. I don't get to have that experience any more in my life.
Even if it's a game I'm really enjoying (PoE, Witcher 3, and Wasteland 2 all come to mind), I'll eventually get bored and stop. I'd much rather play a sub-30 hour game because I'm much more likely to finish it.
Cautiously optomistic - not a day 1 purchase, i'll be watching to see if they tightened up combat responsiveness at all.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
Oh shit I thought this was just me. I hated clicking on an action and thinking "Ok this will be set to do. . ." and then you look back again and nope. . .the ability is still on cooldown.
And I don't mind a shorter adventure. . .I never got around to finishing PoE even with a great story. 20/30 hours of content and I'm good to go. I don't need 50+ hours for a main adventure (and I've never understood why that's a selling point for a lot of people).
I actually prefer these games to be shorter too but I totally understand why it's a selling point for people.
The longer jrpgs(or western RPGs like Witcher and Mass Effect) are the better for me. If I really enjoy my time with a game I want to continue to experience that joy for as long as possible. If given the option of experiencing great joy for 20 hours vs experiencing that joy for 80 hours... well I'll gladly take an extra 60 hours of joy.
Especially if it's a game wherein I care about the characters and a world I like spending time in. Once it ends that's it. I don't get to have that experience any more in my life.
Even if it's a game I'm really enjoying (PoE, Witcher 3, and Wasteland 2 all come to mind), I'll eventually get bored and stop. I'd much rather play a sub-30 hour game because I'm much more likely to finish it.
Yea. Just a preference thing.
I don't get bored of games I like so more hours is just more enjoyment therefore better. You tell me I'm getting 100+ hours of content on a single playthrough (of a rpg with characters and a world I'm interested in) and I'm far more excited to play it.
I get liking a long RPG, you're building a character and you want as much life with them as possible, I'm not big into replaying but typically that's because it's like Infamous or Dishonored or Bioshock 1, a pathetically binary choice that has not much real impact, whereas this is just what kind of evil you want to be, so the outcomes seem to be a bit more varied.
I'm a fan of the AI-Enabled PoE characters, it works pretty well for easy fights, and then tona of pausing works fine for hard ones. The recovery system definitely isn't ideal though, so I hope they change that.
I've always been intrigued by the 'really bad guy with good intentions and possibly even good results' stories, like the dwarf story in dragon age origins or the dark lord in mistborn.
For another more fictional examples: Code Geass, Lelouch. Evil bastard using evil methods to fight other evil bastards with good intentions and good results.
In comic books, there's Namor, Dr. Doom, and Black Adam. Some versions of Cyclops and Magneto fit as well.
I was all about Code Geass. Politics, rebellion, mechwarrior... then it turned into fucking gundumb...
As for Tyranny.
I will impose Order and Law upon the land.
Punishment is meant to be Cruel and Unusual.
It is so you will not commit that Crime in the first place.
I'm hoping for a Black Company type of feel myself. Kind of reminded about how terrible the empire was, but it was remarked on at least one occasion that a lone virgin travelling the roads alone was safe.
I'm hoping for a Black Company type of feel myself. Kind of reminded about how terrible the empire was, but it was remarked on at least one occasion that a lone virgin travelling the roads alone was safe.
Anything that invokes feelings of The Black Company gets an automatic extra letter grade in my eyes.
I still feel like Dragon Age Origins was the gold standard for party AI. There were a bunch of if x then y conditions you could set up for each character. However, given the complexity of the spell system you would still be rewarded for micromanaging casters by firing off spell combos. The only black mark was tactics slots being tied to the cunning attribute, which was fixable with a mod.
POE combat relies too much on micromanaging. The AI options feel limited and ineffective, but I'm not sure if that's by design.
"I see everything twice!"
+4
imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
I still feel like Dragon Age Origins was the gold standard for party AI. There were a bunch of if x then y conditions you could set up for each character. However, given the complexity of the spell system you would still be rewarded for micromanaging casters by firing off spell combos. The only black mark was tactics slots being tied to the cunning attribute, which was fixable with a mod.
POE combat relies too much on micromanaging. The AI options feel limited and ineffective, but I'm not sure if that's by design.
The micromanaging would actually be completely up my alley if they could fine tune the combat to feel more responsive - i want pausable dawn of war 2 basically
Posts
But then again, he/she's a mastermind that conquered the world, probably feeling pretty ballsy.
The answer may surprise you.
I'm friggin terrible at playing infinity-engine style games but I always make an effort anyway. The stories are too good not to. And it looks like they've streamlined this one a bit, at least if the reduced party size is any indication.
Watching the animator geek out over the combat animations in that last dev diary was awesome. If only we all could love our job that much.
@Duffel If it'll help at all, come and post questions ask for suggestions here. Not to humblebrag, but I spent a lot of time reading about Pillars of Eternity's combat system recently (replaying it for WM expansions), and there were a lot of complex eccentricities about the system that I didn't know until digging it up. (I.e. the Larder Door is a trap shield, because its Bash attack switches your character to dual-wield attack timing, basically replacing one of your mainhand weapon's attacks, and since it pretty much always misses at higher levels, doing shit damage and has no bonuses, it actually lowers your tank's DPS compared to just using a regular shield that you enchant up.)
There are also a ton of trap talents and abilities, and a lot of bizarre synergies. (Barbarian's Carnage is one particularly exploitable one. And apparently Kalakoth's Minor Blights is actually balling, to my surprise.) These sorts of games require a lot of investigation and information-sharing to be good at them.
Like, in PoE I tried to make what I thought was a fairly straightforward character (Rogue with good attack/speed and a little bit of intelligence for dialogue checks), and it worked OK for the earliest parts of the game where the encounters were really simple. But once I got my party filled out with more complex types of characters like Pallegina and Kana, trying to figure out WTF I was supposed to be doing with stuff like the chanting, knowing what abilities from your mage were wise to use, and so forth... it got really bewildering.
Still had an easier time of it than when I tried to play Baldur's Gate 2 in high school, though.
I liked Pillars but enjoyed this more. http://store.steampowered.com/app/230070/
In particular the combat is awesome - it is legitimately hard but also optional and can be worked around. Not your usual hack and slash dungeon crawl.
It's definitely worth playing, and there are some things the game does in terms of actual role-playing that all the major RPG studios could learn from - specifically in how they craft stories and outcomes out of what a character should and should not be able to do. It's pretty cool to have a game where the studious scholar can win by fixing a machine thanks to a scroll he has read, but he's going to get dead real fast if he argues and tries to fight with a single thief.
My biggest issue with it is that the replayability and wide variety of outcomes comes at the expense of depth. The game often feels like the story and situations are sketched in the briefest terms. I really would have liked to have had more time and ability to just walk around that world, talking to people and taking in the setting as you can in a more traditional RPG.
Still, it's a pretty impressive effort for a very small team working over a very long time.
My OCD in terms of exploring every inch of a map, talking to every NPC, taking every sidequest, and looking in every container helps a lot in Infinity Engine games and their modern successors. By the time I get to a hard fight, I've overleveled and geared up to the point where my strategy is just to click a bunch until things fall over.
Checked out a little of the game from the dev's, the art style looks amazing. I wasn't a fan of the shimmer of the previous game, but this looks really nice. I'm glad this is dropping before Divinity, so that there's no overlap from these massive ass games.
I -still- say that POE was an obnoxious chore of asking your chars to do stuff and having them not really feel like doing it
If I'm not mistaken this one is meant to be a shorter adventure comparatively.
I may have been misinformed though.
Oh shit I thought this was just me. I hated clicking on an action and thinking "Ok this will be set to do. . ." and then you look back again and nope. . .the ability is still on cooldown.
And I don't mind a shorter adventure. . .I never got around to finishing PoE even with a great story. 20/30 hours of content and I'm good to go. I don't need 50+ hours for a main adventure (and I've never understood why that's a selling point for a lot of people).
I actually prefer these games to be shorter too but I totally understand why it's a selling point for people.
The longer jrpgs(or western RPGs like Witcher and Mass Effect) are the better for me. If I really enjoy my time with a game I want to continue to experience that joy for as long as possible. If given the option of experiencing great joy for 20 hours vs experiencing that joy for 80 hours... well I'll gladly take an extra 60 hours of joy.
Especially if it's a game wherein I care about the characters and a world I like spending time in. Once it ends that's it. I don't get to have that experience any more in my life.
I'm definitely optimistic about Tyranny from just the developer preview, but honestly my top-down fix is still firmly attached to Divinity. The brief bit I allowed myself to play with the alpha oh man.
If it will turn out that actually there is no Kyros at all, just power hungry council of something that simply pretend that there is some higher authority, i will be pissed off.
I think I recall that statement somewhere too. That they were aiming for a shorter single playthrough, but they saw people replaying as the experience will vary dependent on your choices. I think when they mentioned the shorter playthrough they compared it having limited time for 100 hour games, so I'm not sure if they've ever estimated a playthrough may take.
Yeah. Learning how to manage the cooldowns in that game was hard. For a while, I used to stick my casters in heavy armor, because I was like, well there's no armor penalty! Except there kinda was, but I just didn't realise it.
What would have been nice if there was like... an auto-pause when your character came back up available for action, but that'd be a huge pain in the ass, since it'd fire all the fucking time. Still, it was super-annoying to be like, "Cast Fireball here!" ... ten seconds later, casts fireball on your whole party.
(Honestly, the IE engine games had the same problem, with the 1 spell/action per round. Took a while for me to figure out I had to prioritize my actions, or even hold my spells so I could Breach/spell removal later in the same round.)
Even if it's a game I'm really enjoying (PoE, Witcher 3, and Wasteland 2 all come to mind), I'll eventually get bored and stop. I'd much rather play a sub-30 hour game because I'm much more likely to finish it.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
and get off my lawn.
Yea. Just a preference thing.
I don't get bored of games I like so more hours is just more enjoyment therefore better. You tell me I'm getting 100+ hours of content on a single playthrough (of a rpg with characters and a world I'm interested in) and I'm far more excited to play it.
Still three days to go.
I was all about Code Geass. Politics, rebellion, mechwarrior... then it turned into fucking gundumb...
As for Tyranny.
I will impose Order and Law upon the land.
Punishment is meant to be Cruel and Unusual.
It is so you will not commit that Crime in the first place.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Anything that invokes feelings of The Black Company gets an automatic extra letter grade in my eyes.
POE combat relies too much on micromanaging. The AI options feel limited and ineffective, but I'm not sure if that's by design.
The micromanaging would actually be completely up my alley if they could fine tune the combat to feel more responsive - i want pausable dawn of war 2 basically
Not funny anymore, pre-order cancelled.
(Not actually cancelled, still looking forward to game. But augh.)
Not a good comparison.
Nobody knows what Kyros looks like, but Trump is going to have his orange mug on every flat surface in existence.
But if he gives me magic powers and tells me to go out and subjugate California the tiers, it's all good.