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Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,655
Berliner, please.

Nah, along side Underrail and AoD, the one to replace Torment as part of the new Trinity would be Grimoire: Herald of the Winged Exemplar.

Doubt it, blobbers were never that liked on the Codex.

Really? Top70 suggests PS:T, F1 and F2 or possibly PS:T, Fallouts and BG2.

All the previous polls included Arcanum as the third.
 

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
"What does one life matter?" doesn't. Like, how would you even answer that? A little? A lot? Not at all? It's just a stupid question.

Sorry but you're being edgy here. The answer to "what does X matter" doesn't have to be a quantity, or if it is a quantity the elaboration on it would go beyond that. What does one life matter? It matters enough for X. It matters enough that Y did Z. The stories you can tell about the answers to such questions are the real point of them, anyway.
To be clear, I agree with Prime Junta and think that it's a fucking stupid question, but it's actually worse than that, because you're actually correct in that the stories you can tell about the answers to such questions are the real point of them anyway. The problem, "the worse" so to speak, is that there is no way, no how, they were ever going to explore that, because the potentially interesting stories that can be told in relation to such a question all touch upon very sensitive subjects in our current cultural climate of decline.

We all know the answer they had in mind from the start, whether spelled out or not, and that's that all lives matter and are infinitely valuable and so on and so forth. It is so culturally ingrained in the west that questioning such a fundamental tenet is near-unthinkable. Not only is it a stupid question, but any potential exploration of the question on a more fundamental level (nature vs. nurture, causality, moral implications, etc.) was hamstrung the second the question was asked, and the game doesn't even manage to be edgy or counter-cultural, but is painfully predictable, is about as thought-provoking as a popsicle, and illicits all the emotional response of a wet blanket.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Technically, your own answer to the question of "What does one life matter" is pretty much crucial to all your end choices in the game. The topic is also touched upon in several places during the game, like in all those "Endless War" stories, and in a banal way with your companions. This doesn't amount to much, but it's definitely there.
 

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
Technically, your own answer to the question of "What does one life matter" is pretty much crucial to all your end choices in the game. The topic is also touched upon in several places during the game, like in all those "Endless War" stories, and in a banal way with your companions. This doesn't amount to much, but it's definitely there.
I think we all know that it's there, but the point is that it's shit.
 
Joined
Apr 27, 2015
Messages
821
Location
Isometric realm
Here is a response from Sea on Steam when a user complained about the time it took for InXile to release the first patch vs how fast Obsidian patched Pillars of Eternity :
sear [developer] 9 hours ago
e_v:
When was TToN's patch released to fix combat freeze, inspiring presence devilish sound, dialogue UI bugs - the most common complains? A month.

"Thanks for your feedback!

What's not always intuitive about bugs is that sometimes what seems like it should be easy to fix, can be extremely complicated. It's often difficult to anticipate how much time a specific fix will need, especially if it's a lower-level issue. The combat freezes, for instance, took several weeks to rework those parts of the codebase and solve the root causes.

When it comes to speed of updates, there are tradeoffs. Releasing a patch isn't simply a matter of fixing bugs and releasing a new build. You need time for QA to test and verify the fixes work, or that there aren't new ways to reproduce the same bugs. You often need to test the entire game to make sure that the fixes don't cause other bugs elsewhere. Since it's rare for a single fix to be done in isolation, you need to do regression testing across multiple builds over time. The more frequently you update, the more you run the risk of introducing new bugs or creating poor-quality code that breaks in future updates.

With every update, we try to hit the best balance between speed, and stable builds which actually addresses the problems people are running into. At times this means updates can take a little longer, but the flip side is that they often come with more fixes, and have been tested more thoroughly. But that said - as a gamer, I totally sympathize with the annoyance of running into an issue and needing to wait for a fix.
happymeat
"
 
Last edited by a moderator:

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Well, it does seem like he and BN are among the few who do ANY kind of work in that company. No wonder inXile is in the state it is when Fargo is frying his brain in VR and the other high-ups sit on twitter trying to out-do each other in political correctness. This company is not being run by anybody, looks like.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Apr 27, 2015
Messages
821
Location
Isometric realm
also by Sea on steam :
What you're identifying is completely valid, of course, and it always sucks to find a bug, especially if it's something that is affecting your gameplay experience directly.

When we go to fix bugs for our patches, we look at the ones which are affecting the most users, the severity of those bugs, plus the costs, challenges and risks associated with solving them, and we prioritize based on that. Is it a minor display issue that appears only in certain conditions? A crash affecting 50% of people? A damage calculation oversight? An item dupe issue that some are exploiting? A single line of text that's wrong, but otherwise doesn't break anything? Those are all bugs that people will likely find and many will notice, but not all are necessarily equally severe, so we need to make sure we can identify, reproduce, test and resolve the biggest ones first.

This all boils down to resources. While inXile isn't a tiny bedroom studio, the number of people and the time we have to fix bugs are limited, and not every person is able to fix every bug (bugs fixed by scripters are different from writers, which are different from engineers, which are different from designers, and so on). Availability of those people can absolutely be a factor. You mentioned Obsidian, and while I don't want to make too direct comparisons with other studios - we're all in the same #gamedev boat - I can tell you that Obsidian is significantly bigger than inXile. Obviously from players' standpoints that's not always clear, and many may not care, but it does affect what we're able to accomplish and how quickly.

And yes, this does factor into communications. I'm not a dedicated community manager. It's one role I handle, along with several others, but most days I am a system designer. While it'd be great if I was able to jump into every forum thread and respond to every post, bug report, etc., that's not a practical reality most days (and even weekends). That said, you will be pleased to know that we are bringing on a dedicated CM very soon, so that should definitely help on that front!

These are factors that all developers contend with to varying degrees. That's not me trying to make excuses or trivialize any issues you're running into - but I hope that gives some background. Meanwhile, you can rest assured that we are committed to resolving as much as we can, as quickly as we can, and in ways that benefit the most users.
 
Weasel
Joined
Dec 14, 2012
Messages
1,865,661
What program is that? Probably proprietary, I'd imagine? Maybe? Look, I don't know.

http://tormentrpg.tumblr.com/post/74867831962/updated-our-journal-28-what-have-i-got-in-my

“To that end, we have some news related to our environment art: late last March, we announced that we’d be collaborating with Obsidian Entertainment on technology. This primarily meant their conversation editing tools, which provide a very strong foundation for the dialogue reactivity we seek for Torment. We’ve been prototyping conversations with these tools since last summer and have been adapting the technology for Torment’s specific dialogue needs.”
 

ShadowSpectre

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
333
Location
Limbo
25% off coupons for Tides of Numenera and a number of the Codex keys weren't even claimed yet, to be given away to anyone now. It really says something about the state of the game. . .
 

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