Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Iluvcheezcake]

Play 'n' forget.

Like Tyranny

 

[Rev]

It’s the logic of trying to please two incompatible audiences at the same time. They inserted this handhold retardness to please their main audience, consoletards, and now promised to implement the option to turn that of to please grognards. When they say that “none of the crisis encounters were ever designed with the objectives element in mind” what you should read is “the publisher force us to implement these idiotic screens to please consoletards", which is not true by the way.

Consoletards are not their main audience, they don't even know this game exist.
It's just that inXile is a bunch on incompetent fucks that want to expand their audience while being completely clueless as to how to do it effectively, therefore they go the easy route of "casualize and simplify every game system", which is downright idiotic in a game that was fueled by old "hardcore" (as in, they are hardcore when compared to today's standards) games nostalgia.

Fuck fargo. Fuck techland. Fuck consoles.

No console ownere wants to play a game like this, why do they even bother?

The funny thing is that I've yet to see a single consoletard who even know about this game's existence.
Hopefully, this port will fare terribly, even more than the WL2 console versions did. Not that it would do much good, since I don't think Fargo would learn his lesson even after that and would probably double down on the consolization of his next games to achieve better scores, but it would still be satisfying to see it.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

To clarify, i will play it. There is a (good?) chance i wont like it and that i will have my hopes crushed by Fargo & Co, but i dont think the storyfag in me could resist.

 

[Irenaeus]

The funny thing is that I've yet to see a single consoletard who even know about this game's existence.
Hopefully, this port will fare terribly, even more than the WL2 console versions did. Not that it would do much good, since I don't think Fargo would learn his lesson even after that and would probably double down on the consolization of his next games to achieve better scores, but it would still be satisfying to see it.

Yeah, I think Fargo is incapable of learning. And at this point in life just doesn't care.

 

[Rev]

Yeah, I think Fargo is incapable of learning. And at this point in life just doesn't care.

I would care little too if I was a millionaire who can turn to crowdfunding to pay for his next trophy wife whenever he needs the extra cash. Still hope he gets something back at him for his douchery, tho.

 

[Lurker King]

The funny thing is that I've yet to see a single consoletard who even know about this game's existence.

But they don’t need to know about the game’s existence or even play it after they bought it. The only thing they need is to buy the game at release under the influence of game journos and don’t ask for refunds. That’s all. Most people who bought PoE never played BG2 in their lives, and never will. That’s how perverse the system is.

 

[Rev]

But they don’t need to know about the game’s existence or even play it after they bought it. All they need is to buy the game at release under the influence of game journos and don’t ask for refunds. That’s all. Most people who bought PoE never played BG2 in their lives, and never will. That’s how perverse the system is.

PoE had commercial success because there is a market on PC for that kind of games. On consoles on the other hand it's much smaller, you only need to look at D:OS which has been an incredible commercial success and the PC version totally smashed both consoles combined sales (like 4:1 sales). Source: Swen's own interview with the Codex (in which he said the game was over 1.5 mil overall, and just on Steam the game is 1.2 mil, although it was maybe about 1.1 mil at the time) at last Gamescom, Steamspy and basic maths.
And console journos don't care that much about this game either, they won't cover it extensively like they do with AAA titles or like they will do with ME: Andromeda, which will be released less than a month after T:ToN.

 

[Lurker King]

You just need to look at the insignificant percentage of players who actually finish PoE or DO:S to realize that the numbers of sales don’t reflect in any way the actual size of the PC game community. It’s a mixture of market gimmick and opportunity. If these game journos drop the ball at some point or simply stop caring about these new cRPGs when novelty wears off, no publisher in the world will keep these sales up.

 

[Irenaeus]

I finished PoE but not D:OS. I will finish Tworment, you can count on that.

 

[Rev]

You just need to look at the insignificant percentage of players who actually finish PoE or DO:S to realize that the numbers of sales don’t reflect in any way the actual size of the PC game community. It’s a mixture of market gimmick and opportunity. If these game journos drop the ball at some point or simply stop caring about these new cRPGs when novelty wears off, no publisher in the world will keep these sales up.

I don't know what you think I'm arguing for, but I'm not trying to say that they would've sold as much as they did without all the nostalgia and good words from both the community and the press.
I'm saying that they wouldn't have been able to sold that much on consoles, because the vast majority of console users don't even consider this kind of games wherein PC gamers have more tolerance for indies and not-so-appealing graphics.
Just look at D:OS numbers: 1.5+ mil of sold copies, of which 1.2 are on Steam (and I'd guess that GOG and other marketplaces hold at least another 100k) totally crushed what both PS4 and XB1 sold combined.
It's not like The Witcher 3, where console users see amazing graphics and action gameplay and think it might be a cool game and proceed to buy it en mass (PC was still the best and more successful platform, but it didn't outsold both the other versions combined and by that huge margin as D:OS did).

 

[Lurker King]

Of course, trying to port these types of games to consoles is retarded, I agree, but you said that "PoE had commercial success because there is a market on PC for that kind of games". That just isn't true. These numbers are bogus.

 

[Rev]

Regardless of the poor completion rate and whatever else you might thing of, it did achieve those good numbers, something that wouldn't have been possibile on consoles under any circumstances for this kind of games.
Also, Tyranny sold rather poorly but its marketing was as low-effort as they come and was always perceived (and it actually is) as PoE's poor cousin, which affect its sales negatively. D:OS2 on the other hand is going rather well, as far as EA goes (more than 100k already).
We'll see how PoE2 and D:OS2 fare but even if they sell half of their predecessors it would still mean there's a sizeable (and sustainable) market for these games, one that is a lot bigger than on consoles.

 

[Infinitron]

Both Swen Vincke and Brian Fargo consider their games' console sales to have been good.

therefore they go the easy route of "casualize and simplify every game system"

Grogs in Numenera, LOL

Do you know what game system you're talking about here? If they made it more simple it would cease to exist. Butthurt about health bars aside, I'm pretty sure Torment's combat system is actually more complex than the Numenera PnP rules.

 

[Prime Junta]

Butthurt about health bars aside, I'm pretty sure Torment's combat system is actually more complex than the Numenera PnP rules.

Yeah, it is.

(Although "more complex than Numenera" is like "hairier than an egg.")

 

[roll-a-die]

Both Swen Vincke and Brian Fargo consider their games' console sales to have been good.

therefore they go the easy route of "casualize and simplify every game system"

Grogs in Numenera, LOL

Do you know what game system you're talking about here? If they made it more simple it would cease to exist. Butthurt about health bars aside, I'm pretty sure Torment's combat system is actually more complex than the Numenera PnP rules.

That is definitely debatable, the mechanics in Tabletop Numenera rely a LOT on GM-PC interaction. Essentially bargaining is encouraged by the ruleset during the establishing difficulty phase. This could be simple,

GM: This is a rank 3 roll you are trying to beat a 9.

Player: Okay.

Or it could be more complex.

GM: This is rank 7 you need to beat a 21.

Player: Spend 2 Effort to lower the rank. And I have because of being on the higher platform of a staircase, while my opponent is on the stairs themselves. I feel you should lower it one rank further.

GM: I'll give you the effort, but the staircase thing could be disadvantageous for your weapon, so I'm not going to allow it. You're against a rank 5 challenge. You need to roll a 15 or higher.

This adds a little dynamism, and the GM could choose to allow another rank down, but introduce somesort of complication too it, like falling down the stairs if they miss, etc. Again Numenera's system isn't built on exact numbers and hard values, but around interplay between the GM and the players too gain social complexity at the cost of mechanical complexity.

(EDIT: Also I haven't played Numenera in 6 months so I could be wrong on what rank means what difficulty.)

 

[Rev]

Both Swen Vincke and Brian Fargo consider their games' console sales to have been good.

Of course, it's very rare that devs openly admit when things turned out differently (aka worse) than they expected.
It's simple math for D:OS, though. 1.5+ mil copies sold as said by Swen, Steamspy has the game on more than 1.2 and that doesn't count all copies from GOG. You can easily see how console sales are almost meaningless compared to the PC version. In fact, D:OS2 is coming first to PC, and will only (probably) be ported to consoles later on.

Also, when talking about simplification of game systems I wasn't talking about health bar or referring to the fact that Numenera is a complex ruleset in comparison to T:ToN or whatever. I was referring to the fact that it's a lot more simplified than its inspiration.
Beyond that, putting quest objectives on screen is a new level of popamolism, it has nothing to do with the ruleset but it still shows how inXile is casualizing the game in any way they can (even with completely retarded ideas such as this one).

 

[Infinitron]

A 25% increase in sales may not be as meaningless as you think.

 

[Rev]

Except making those console ports cost money and time, there are royalties to pay to Microsoft and Sony, it's harder (maybe it even costs a bit, iirc) to update the game with patches, and in general they get less out of a single copy than what they get out of a PC one, so it's not like a neat +25%.
I mean, it probably generated a small profit so it's okay, but it's a minor market that doesn't deserve much attention aside from being an afterthought to try and gather some more money. And it's how Larian is approaching it, apparently, unlike inXile.

 

[Fry]

If they didn't make a decent profit off WL2 console sales, it seems unlikely they'd be trying it again.

 

[roll-a-die]

Except making those console ports cost money and time, there are royalties to pay to Microsoft and Sony, it's harder (maybe it even costs a bit, iirc) to update the game with patches, and in general they get less out of a single copy than what they get out of a PC one, so it's not like a neat +25%.
I mean, it probably generated a small profit so it's okay, but it's a minor market that doesn't deserve much attention aside from being an afterthought to try and gather some more money. And it's how Larian is approaching it, apparently, unlike inXile.

So let's say, they earned 8 dollars out of every 50 dollar sale after expenses and such, they sold 300,000 copies on consoles roughly. According to your numbers.

That means, they earned in those 300,000 sales on consoles, 2.6 million dollars. Or roughly two and a half times what their initial kickstarter campaign brought in JUST from those console sales. And that's with a craptastic lowballed percentage profit. It's more likely they earned around 10 dollars or even 12. But for the purposes of this 8 was enough to demonstrate the point.

 

[Rev]

If they didn't make a decent profit off WL2 console sales, it seems unlikely they'd be trying it again.

Yeah, I said they probably made a profit albeit small compared to PC version, but we're talking about the guy who took down Interplay and tried to save it by going after consoles, only managing to make it die sooner and depriving us of a good Fallout 3. It's not like he hasn't make bad business decisions in the past, especially concerning consoles.

So let's say, they earned 8 dollars out of every 50 dollar sale after expenses and such, they sold 300,000 copies on consoles roughly. According to your numbers.

That means, they earned in those 300,000 sales on consoles, 2.6 million dollars. Or roughly two and a half times what their initial kickstarter campaign brought in JUST from those console sales. And that's with a craptastic lowballed percentage profit. It's more likely they earned around 10 dollars or even 12. But for the purposes of this 8 was enough to demonstrate the point.

Now make the same estimations for the 1.2+ milion copies sold on Steam, on which they get about 70% of the consumer price, do the maths and compare.

 

[Kem0sabe]

You guys are all assuming the majority of those sales were full price, and not heavily discounted sales and kickstarter 20€ pledges, or even CD key resellers.

Same applies for consoles, a lot of people wait for sales on the digital console stores.

 

[roll-a-die]

If they didn't make a decent profit off WL2 console sales, it seems unlikely they'd be trying it again.

Yeah, I said they probably made a profit albeit small compared to PC version, but we're talking about the guy who took down Interplay and tried to save it by going after consoles, only managing to make it die sooner and depriving us of a good Fallout 3. It's not like he hasn't make bad business decisions in the past, especially concerning consoles.

So let's say, they earned 8 dollars out of every 50 dollar sale after expenses and such, they sold 300,000 copies on consoles roughly. According to your numbers.

That means, they earned in those 300,000 sales on consoles, 2.6 million dollars. Or roughly two and a half times what their initial kickstarter campaign brought in JUST from those console sales. And that's with a craptastic lowballed percentage profit. It's more likely they earned around 10 dollars or even 12. But for the purposes of this 8 was enough to demonstrate the point.

Now make the same estimations for the 1.2+ milion copies sold on Steam, on which they get about 70% of the consumer price, do the maths and compare.

I wasn't making a claim that it was significant, I'm making a claim that it is more than insignificant, especially if you consider that the potential 2.4 million they took home from the console versions would pay for a year of 60 developers at a wage of 40k USD per year. Which may or may not be over paying, but lumping numbers like this is easier than it is to go in and see what Larian's wages are for the average tester and developer. And calculate a number from that.

If you think about it logically, rather than with a strong anti-console bias, it does in fact make sense, to put things on consoles, from a business perspective. The expenditures on average will be made up with dividends by the point where they matter.

 

[Zombra]

If you think about it logically, rather than with a strong anti-console bias, it does in fact make sense, to put things on consoles, from a business perspective. The expenditures on average will be made up with dividends by the point where they matter.

That's monetary expenditures only. They're also squandering the goodwill and interest of their PC audience. If they sell 10 copies on console and lose 100 PC customers because their games got too childish, they did a dumb.

 

[Lurker King]

That would make sense if their PC costumers were a uniform or rational group. I bet that most PC costumers don’t care about porting to consoles. You just need to look in InXile forums. I would say that only autists on the Codex complain about this type of stuff, but even on the Codex most people didn’t complain about the way the Codex was treated by inXile, etc. What is worse, I bet that most people here who complained about T:ToN on consoles went ahead and backed BT4. At the end of the day, we are just useful idiots to support their games and give them free advertise by word of mouth. Useful idiots that have no self-respect.