Review RPG Codex Review: Mordheim: City of the Damned

[Darth Roxor]

Loading times are severely reduced compared to release version now at least.

 

[Endlösung]

WHY can’t I speed up animations in single player?

Cheat Engine. Speed hack.

A problem might be if the devs are too clever and time shit for the AI, so that it thinks it wasted too much time while actually it didnt. I never encountered it before though. Usually only played back animations are tied to real time.

 

[Saark]

Great review, great game, and I certainly hope to see more stuff made by Rogue Factor in the future. While they really had a lot of performance issues on release they managed to fix them quite well and the game itself was not only fun, but fun enough to wade through minute long loading screens for hours on end. They also managed to do the Mordheim atmosphere justice, if only the multiplayer would've been fleshed out properly this could've become quite huge.

 

[MicoSelva]

Looks like Roxor is over his depression and able to review games again.
Thanks, Roxor, you have convinced me to buy this*.

*at a reasonable price, when I have more free time to play it

 

[Ellef]

Yea the price is p.steep.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah, but it was 50% off like three weeks ago or sth, so that's bound to happen again sometime.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Why would anyone oppose having a larger viewing area?

Larger than what?

 

[Maelflux]

Good review.

I personally loved the game, and it is one of the few games that has managed to keep my interested for more than a week, which says a lot these days.

I really loved the Injury system, and the personality and obstacles it added to the characters. One of my first injuries playing as Empire, was one of my main guys losing an arm. This guy I kept throughout the entire campaign, as he then gained a bonus to dodge, which made him really good, when specced for this - so he could now often make good solo standoffs, as he was very hard to hit, and could still dish out some damage, or make small choke-points to allow my other slow moving units to come to his aid.

 

[ushas]

Moving on, I have some very serious doubts regarding Mordheim’s RNG. I usually don’t tend to complain about weird rolls, but this game’s dice roller is completely crazy. Sometimes it feels like it’s hard-coded to produce series of successes/failures no matter what, and I’m not even joking. One time, I had seven failed 90%-chance spellcasts in a row, followed by the enemy succeeding on three 5% magic resistances. I also often get absurd streaks of failed 95% melee hit chances, and, like I said, the most striking in this is how it’s always streaks of failures. Not singular ones, but streaks.

This could actually indicate that the game uses more random (pseudo)random generator than others.
By their nature they can give sequences of the same results like that.

People usually tend to more remember when it happens to their disadvantage (as the example above). I think, Julian Gollop mentioned the negativity bias in the Matt's interview, lately. Though likely you might be aware of that.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Moving on, I have some very serious doubts regarding Mordheim’s RNG. I usually don’t tend to complain about weird rolls, but this game’s dice roller is completely crazy. Sometimes it feels like it’s hard-coded to produce series of successes/failures no matter what, and I’m not even joking. One time, I had seven failed 90%-chance spellcasts in a row, followed by the enemy succeeding on three 5% magic resistances. I also often get absurd streaks of failed 95% melee hit chances, and, like I said, the most striking in this is how it’s always streaks of failures. Not singular ones, but streaks.

This could actually indicate that the game uses more random (pseudo)random generator than others.
By their nature they can give sequences of the same results like that.

People usually tend to more remember when it happens to their disadvantage (as the example above). I think, Julian Gollop mentioned the negativity bias in the Matt's interview, lately. Though likely you might be aware of that.

If there is one thing I remember vividly about this game, it is the instane RNG defying the laws of probability. Wish I could somehow collect the data about it (as in comparing the nominal % chance vs the actual result for a few thousand attacks) and shove it in the devs face, along with booby-trapped box of shit.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Someone did that - albeit for just 900 rolls, and concluded that the RNG works fine.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/276810/discussions/1/487876568239260235/

 

[ushas]

Someone did that - albeit for just 900 rolls, and concluded that the RNG works fine.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/276810/discussions/1/487876568239260235/

Haha, that's nice. That discussion is hilarious

If there is one thing I remember vividly about this game, it is the instane RNG defying the laws of probability. Wish I could somehow collect the data about it (as in comparing the nominal % chance vs the actual result for a few thousand attacks) and shove it in the devs face, along with booby-trapped box of shit.

If I recall correctly from the thread, posted above by vonAchdorf, you have actually some means at disposal to do it in this game if you want - there is a combat log output and, for convenience, one of the posters even provided a java program tailored to parse it here.


Just for the moment lets assume that RNG works as intended (and it looks like the OP and others in the steam thread provided somewhat supporting evidence). It's just one of the tools. I think, what matters is how it's used when tailoring a game. In the end, aside from mind playing tricks, people complaining about RNG might simply disagree on some of the design decisions or came with assumptions from other games. Now it doesn't outright imply whether Mordheim is good or bad. Darth Roxor gave us a fair comprehensive review for that.

I haven't tried this Mordheim so my observation of features (aka design decisions) influencing perception of RNG is possibly inaccurate (feel free to correct): First of all, no save/reload, thus the player will actually stick with the odds, not discrediting chances by reloading. Secondly, I got the feeling that a lots of outcomes stand heavily on percentages and probability rolls and that there are not many easy to get to situations with 100% guaranteed success?* For example, the hit probability chances (not sure about others) are hard limited to lie in the range 1%-95% (no matter how much one tries to stack hit modifiers, except when stunned?). Those last 5% mean a lot. Complexity of the system also feels different when there are several rolls which modify the outcome of one action. For example: the hit roll and the subsequent dodge roll if the former is sucesfull (is the critical hit also rolled separately?); or the case of three magic rolls mentioned in the review. etc.

PS*: So it seems to me that, beside the usual strong character building emphasis in RPGs, and the turnbased squad fun, this game actually challenges players to exercise their risk management skills. Which is a fair approach, if all the needed info is provided...

 

[Prince Kaine]

Hello everybody, just wanted to correct/update some of the review points. I am partial, of course, as for me it's the best game available for tactical squad management since the first x-com (the original, not firaxis clone)

1st one is the customization, honestly lacking. We hope for an upgrade with a DLC, but nothing confirmed yet. Yes there is customization available, yes it APPEARS to be huge, but at the end you end up with very clone like units.

2nd money in Mordheim. It is not tight AT ALL. You just need to know how to manage it. Maybe the reviewer missed some of the ways to make money, but a level 5 WB can have a lot of money, provided you did not waste it. And by level 10 all my warbands are around 10 to 12k gold, allowing me basically to recruit/train freely. There is also the veteran system alleviating the hard early game when funds are effectively a bit tight for the newcomer.

3rd the pay2win assumption. NOT TRUE AT ALL. What the DLC heroes provides is diversity in the warband builds, not OP guys that can't be dealt with if you don't have them. If you do not want to play them it will not impact your winning chances at all. OK 1 unit is a bit more useful than the others at low level, because of an innate active skill that can do a lot of damage used properly. But it falls off very quickly, and is by no mean impossible to deal with. The move is not questionable, itis a necessity for RF to make money in order to keep developping the game, and they did it the clever way, they do not add power, they add diversity.

4th the campaign missions..... They need 2 things, a warband at least matching the scenarios requirements, but mainly a good knowledge of what is going to happen in the scenario. That is not something you will have going naked into the scenario, and the game being what it is it won't hold your hand to explain you how to. Easy answer, 1st send 4 low level expandables to get a feel of the mission. But if you go in butt naked yeah, expect a hard time, because understanding what you have to do while fighting is quite demanding. Here, same as with the money, I believe the reviewer missed some of Mordheim very specific needs, such as basic scouting.

5th the AI...... a difficult talk to have.... Yes the AI does stupid stuff from time to time (mainly due to pathing issue, some things are recognized as obstacles when they are not while true obstacles are ignored). They are working on it, trying to improve, but it's a slow process. Furthermore I'd like to remind players that most of those coming to Mordheim allready CRY about the difficulty of the title. If you put a Big Blue AI in front of a standard human he won't stand a chance. After that, yes, when you know the game ins and outs, it is very abusable (even if it is STILL able to kick the ass of any seasonnned veteran with some good tactical moves thanks to the massive buffs in the highest difficulty).

6th the stability issue. Here I must say it is a blatant lie from the reviewer, or an unforgivable ignorance. YES there was a problem of performance with AMD cards ONLY. It is stated everywhere in the forum AND the bug section. And it is also stated that it is NOT a M:CotD issue, but an AMD driver issue (for those of you on the technical side AMD had issue managing 3D display from unity and refused even to acknowledge that for 6 months). It was not impacting Mordheim alone, but plenty of other games. And it is now corrected, AMD finally released a working driver. No more issue.


Just the points I wanted to argue about. After that there is some flaws not mentioned, let's be fair:

1 the grind. It's HUGE. Honestly. Reaching level 10 with a warband is maybe 20% of the way, you still have 80% of the real work to do, and that takes time. A truly maxxed out warband takes more than 200 hours to reach.

2 the multiplayer games. It is very easy to find games, if you use the forum/leagues, only issue is...... those guys don't play Mordheim, they play arena. In bloodbowl words, they play a match without a ball, just as a bashing contest. If you want things a bit more on the tactical side you will have to find/bring the right buddies. But this is community issue, and not something easily fixxed by the devs.


Last point like usha's stated, the game uses EXACTLY the same background mechanics of risk assesment/management as BB or Necromunda. The goal is to win with the least dice rolls possible, and you have all the informations available to do so (even if, let's be fair, they were harder to find in may than today). If you do not know how to handle that stay away from this title, it will eat you alive.

 

[Ninjerk]

Darth Roxor hear that, liar?

 

[Darth Roxor]

*cracks knuckles*

2nd money in Mordheim. It is not tight AT ALL. You just need to know how to manage it. Maybe the reviewer missed some of the ways to make money

Enlighten me then and tell me what those ways are. Picking up every piece of garbage from the map to sell it for 2 gold does not count.

a level 5 WB can have a lot of money, provided you did not waste it.

Define "waste". I know there are people who just hog gold like crazy without ever spending it on anything, but if you ask me, that's hardly effective money "management".

They need 2 things, a warband at least matching the scenarios requirements, but mainly a good knowledge of what is going to happen in the scenario.

I hope you realise that the second thing is effectively impossible to have if you don't consult any guides or whatever, because the in-game briefings are so stupidly uninformative?

That is not something you will have going naked into the scenario, and the game being what it is it won't hold your hand to explain you how to.

There is a difference between not holding your hand and being obtuse. It is downright criminal how in missions such as the slaaneshi mansion you cannot pick up the corrupted warpstones before killing the alluress for the first time. It's not even a matter of any explanation, it's just a stupid "gotcha!" moment meant to waste your time. The same applies to your comment about "understanding what to do while fighting" - there is nothing to understand in Mordheim's campaign missions. There's only stupid, pointless busywork.

Easy answer, 1st send 4 low level expandables to get a feel of the mission.

If you think this is good design, then you should probably consider brain surgery. Not to mention that in many instances this won't do you any good, because those 4 scrublords will get overwhelmed fast and die before reaching any objective. The best you can get through this is getting a look on the overhead map and checking where you start.

I believe the reviewer missed some of Mordheim very specific needs, such as basic scouting.

"Basic scouting" aka starting a mission just to waste time failing it? Are you autistic? Also, I'd love to see your "basic scouting" working in Raven Barracks, or the mansion, or the human showdown with Merga.

Also, if you pulled your head out of your ass, maybe you would have noticed that my first and foremost complaint about the story missions is their stupidly low variety of objectives, and how the vast majority of them boil down to "gather x things around the map and bring them to y places/your wagon". Does "Basic Scouting" (tm)(c)(r) also manage to somehow alleviate that, by magically pushing quest items into your dudes' inventories at the start of the map? Does it grant you more Sister characters at the human edition of Statue of Count Wossname to turn off those idiotic obelisks faster?

Furthermore I'd like to remind players that most of those coming to Mordheim allready CRY about the difficulty of the title.

oh no will someone think of the newcomers

6th the stability issue. Here I must say it is a blatant lie from the reviewer, or an unforgivable ignorance

yeah man i lied about getting ctds and memory leaks because i just felt like doing it

Btw I don't have an AMD card. Joke's on you.

 

[Prince Kaine]

1st point:
OK, here are 2, that anyone taking 20 sec can learn either reading the forum, or just thinking and analyzing the way the game works:
1st don't sell stuff to the merchant. Keep everything you loot, wiait for the +50% buy event, and sell at that time.
2nd learn to use wyrdstone market, never sell to secondaries unless they are at 100% and only sell in full rep bulk. If you want screenshots of the money+skills +equip they are easy to provide.


2nd point:

Investing money on henchman, not focusing it on the main combat unit, allowing the main combat units to die, not sacrificing the unskilled to allow a rout..... Mordheim basics since TT days. If you do that you do not have any financial issue. 6 warband maxxed out. Screenshot available again.

3rd point
Wrong. Again scout. If you don't WANT to it's your problem. It worked for everybody with a bit of sense. You are above that? Cool, assume your pride and take your beating.


4th point:
Again your opinion. Do it your way, you loose and gets hell. My way I passed all missions flawless. Others do too. If you think failure is the best option keep going, and incriminate the gamedesign.


5th point
I'm not trying to judge it good or bad, just saying there's ways to do it that guarantee success. WE passed it easily. YOU ran around pointlessly. Looking for solutions is what makes a game complex, especially when you have to think out of the box. Again, screens available, stream available for the witchhunter complete campaign. YOU find this stupid? keep dying/rowing on the sand.

6th point
Yep I did it a different way here, because there is some other ways to scout. You don't see them/want to use them/consider autistic to take dispositions to avoid failure? Cool keep failing again. Do not incriminate the devs for your lack of imagination

7th point:
My head's square on my shoulders, thank you, screenshots available here again. THE WHOLE GAME IS DESIGNED TO BE LIKE THAT FROM THE TT IN THE 90's. If you do not have the datas at least try to get them. You even state it at the end that you do NOT have a CLUE of what is RF and what is GW. So less concern for my head please, and consider a pin for your ego.


8th points:
I don't care about newcomers, I care about an excellent company taking FLAK because there's allready 90% of players unable to understand the basics of their game. Add a really challenging AI and you bring it down to 1%. You need a challenge? Try a human, we will see your level. Not sure you will stand 3 rounds but hey you might surprise me.


Last point:
Then check your system, been streaming for 6 months, 0 slowdown, 0 memory leak, and maybe 2 crashes ... Not even sure I had those. With XSPLIT+Vocal+my anime on others screens. Game works fine. Gave you 2 choices, you placed yourself were you belong, I did not. Again, there's proofs the game works fine online.


And BTW, I am polite with you, you do not seem to be able to do the same? Inferiority complex and you need to try to insult people to bring them to your level? Missed here, sorry, more mature than that.

 

[Prince Kaine]

Oh and your krack knuckles may frighten people.... I'm not impressed. If you think threatening is the way to deal with the internet, that's your problem, I prefer constructive arguments. You missed that too btw.

 

[Maelflux]

Prince Kaine, whatever good points you might have had, are completely lost on me when you stick to your guns on some rather stupid points:

"2nd money in Mordheim. It is not tight AT ALL"
- Not tight AT ALL? Really? Your solution is then to wait for specific events or boost a market that takes a long time? Yes, it can be done, but that is in no way the same as it not being "tight AT ALL".

"send in scouts to die to learn how the battlefield is".
- This is as stupid as it gets. It already takes quite a while to do the large missions, and saying that this is a common/good solution is just crazy talk. You are making it sound like it is a great idea, and adds to the experience. Bullshit. They could have just added 3 more lines of text or something, so you didnt need to guess what the hell was happening. And even for "immershun" it makes even less sense, which is actually one of the really cool things about the game, that you come to love your warband with its heroes and flaws. Then I dont want to just hire 4 random guys (and lose valuable cash), and then just send them to die.

 

[Drowed]

Barely Literate

Seems accurate.

 

[Darth Roxor]

And BTW, I am polite with you, you do not seem to be able to do the same?

Nigga, I've seen my share of """politeness""" on the Internet, so you can kindly stick your passive aggression up your ass.

As for the rest, you are largely trying to "argue" three points, so I will address those in a bulk.

Cool, assume your pride and take your beating.

For some ungodly reason, you are assuming that I kept getting clobbered by the campaign, which is by and large untrue. I didn't really have to repeat that many of the story missions, unless I got caught by bullshit "gotcha" (Alluress et al) or some freak accident happened (like a dramatis personae getting critstunned and murderised).

You are also trying to make this weird point that sending a mob of lvl 0 henches to the meatgrinder just to see the map layout is somehow going to improve your performance. Spoiler, it will not. It will not let you carry the 10 or something barrels of gunpowder faster in quayside. It will not let you grab and refill the flasks of holy water in the ruined cathedral faster. It will not let you disable the obelisks around Merga faster. It will not let you grab the warpstones around the Alluress faster. It will not let you run back and forth between broken lever -> anvil -> locked doors faster in Raven Barracks. At best, you will only get to see the enemy starting positions, and that's an advantage that hardly matters in the grand scheme of things (plus, it takes away the very few precious enjoyable moments of the story missions, when you are actually surprised by an enemy warrior placed in an inconvenient location and forced to readjust your tactics).

I will also not even comment on the absurdity of your claim that doing these lvl 0 zerg rushes is somehow enjoyable, and I certainly don't give a rat's ass that "it worked for everybody". You know what also worked for everybody? Oblivion.

I also find it amusing that you claim to have passed all missions "flawlessly" by using those suicide rushes. You don't pass a mission flawlessly by failing it first, chump.


As for your second point:

Do not incriminate the devs for your lack of imagination

You know what really screams "lack of imagination"? A series of missions that boil down to gathering x items and placing them in y places, and that's Mordheim's campaign structures in a nutshell. If you have to "use your imagination" to try to go around stupid design (and considering your solution to this is just even more stupid busywork and metagaming such as those suicide rushes, I would argue that's hardly imaginative), then odds are that said design is not the game's strength. I mean, seriously:

If you think failure is the best option keep going, and incriminate the gamedesign.

Do you not see the hilarious irony here? Your supposed solution is exactly a claim that failure is the best option to keep going, and you accuse ME of this?


And your last point, which I find honestly quite perplexing, is that you seem to be assuming that I hated the game and that I'm lambasting it for the lulz (like saying that I lied about having technical issues), when I mention it many times that I had a lot of fun with it.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

 

[Niektory]

 

[The Bootymancer]

I find something about playing this game oddly unpleasant. In theory, I love the concept, the ruleset, the squad-building and campaigning, but for some reason when I play it it just doesn't click and I find something about the moment-to-moment playing of it... unenjoyable. Wrong in some way. It's very strange. I can't really blame the game because I can't quantify it at all, but it is what it is.