Development Info Age of Decadence March Update

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Dont you know we are in the anti happy-pony magic field around here? Dont throw those spells unless you want to be turned into a tranny.

More minor stuff:

Is there an option to "inspect" enemies/allies in combat? If not, it should be in. (I know it says wounded etc. when you stand close.)

Map should always open, even if you are in a house. Right now, need to run out, then use map. Bug? Feature? Also mark pc location on the map.

Enemies try to throw weapons/shoot arrows through walls (i.e. i am outside the house, they are inside and missing me a lot - tavern thieves fight).

Also i cheated a bit on skills to check whats possible in one go. Some nice stuff. Second imperial guards fight is still tough. I have the best armor in game and block/axe/criticals 70-80. I am not saying it cannot be done - but it is just some 2. quest ffs and if you are playing a brute this must be managable. With this cheater setup it is still very challenging.

EDIT: Tried again and somehow my buddies killed everyone in tower and even came down to help me. This is wierd, because they all died on all occasions leaving me alone behind. What is up with Antidas fight? Should it be "hard", encouraging you to negotiate? Because all of the allies in this are just meatbags. Tried 2 times - always end up vs. all enemies - 1/2.

Should killing a Lord in his own "palace" be easy?

For the record, there are two scenarios there: a) you're expendable and given other expendables. b) you've proven to be a valuable asset and given veterans.

BROS OKAY I HAVE GOT THROUGH 3 QUEST LINESW PRAETOR ASSASSIN AND MERCHANT AND TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH I REALLY REALLY LIKED PLAYING THE COMBAT TYPES MOST FUN I HAVE HAD WITH A DEMO IN A WHILE THE PROBLEM IS THAT BEING A SHORT DEMO IT IS EASY TO MEMORIZE THE WHOLE THING AND SUCCEED IN THE NARROW MARGIN ALLOWED WITH A COMBAT CHARACTER

THE MAIN PROBLEM WITH THIS GAMES IS THAT COMBAT IS A MAINSTAY IN RPGS BECAUSE MUCH OF THE ESCAPISM IS THAT YOU GET TO KILL THINGS AND IN THIS GAME THE EASIEST WAY TO WIN IS TO BE A TOTAL PUSSY

SO MY UPDATED LIST OF PROBLEMS

COUNTERINTUIVE COMBAT BUILD IE HIGH INTELLIGENCE CAN BE THE BEST
NARROW RANGE OF EFFECTIVE BUILD FOR COMBAT
IN ORFER TO BEAT ALMOST ANYONE IN COMBAT YOU CANNOT DO GOOD AT NONCOMBAT STUFF
NO REAL REASON TO EVER KILL ANYONE BECAUSE TRYING IS RARELY WORTH IT
HELMETS ARE WORTHLESS

BRO HERE IS MY PROBLEM WITH THAT SITUATION ISNT IT HIGH INTELLIGENCE THAT PROVES YOU ARE A VALUABLE ASSES!!!??

A STRAUGHT UP TERMINATOR KILLING MACHINE WILL GET YOU THE BAD SETUP WHICH AGAIN SEEMS COUNTERINTUITIVE ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ARE UNEXPECTEDLY THRUST INTO THE LEADER ROLE YOU BASICALLY JUST TELL THE COMBAT BUILD LOLLOLLOLLOL WRONG GAME BRO

I WAS HOPING FOR A MORON STYLE ANIMAL KILLING MACHINE FOR MY MERC BUT INSTEAD I NEEDED MINIMAL STRENGTH AND DEX TO GET THE SKILLPOINTS

THE SOLUTION OF THROWING OUT EXTRA SKILLPOINTS IS BAD VD AS YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED THE TALKING EASY PATHS ARE EASY ENOUGH THE GAME MIGHT NEED REBALANCING AND GIVEN ITS STRUCTURE THIS WILL BE VERY VERY DIFICULT

Well yeah. I think Blob has a point. Atleast I think we're talking about the same thing. Or are going to.

It just makes little sense, since you at this point will probably have solved a lot of quests fucking shit up with your weapon. And so you'll probably have a rep as a motherfucker that gets the shit done.
In short, you're a valuable motherfucker. But didn't you guys sort of fix this? Elhoim, um something, mentioned changing the check to something else?

Anyway, fucking shit up by this point. But no, you have to do none of this shit no sir. You just have to have an int score of 6+ (and charisma of 6+ if you want more good shit), to get an optimal result.
So optimal that with some builds, lacking int 6+, you are completely fucking fucked in the fucking ass.

Yeah, mr Centurion Prime was probably just testing you. In a stupid way. No, after that bunch of IGs stupidly threw themselves at us, they won't dare hit us again. OH WAIT. Fuck. They hit us again we're gonna have to reload too like that stupid shit who didn't have int 6. Look at him. All muscle. Shield block 80. What a badass. But we just put 20,000 arrows in his ass. Fuck man, yeah I'm gonna die in a sec. But. Do you have any idea how fucking painful that is? I mean yeah, hitting the ass cheeks is one thing, that's a lot of fat. But a lot of those arrows are sticking out of his asshole. I mean fuck, oh fuck uuuuuuuuuuuugrrhhghgh.

Considering how the game forces you to hyper-specialize to be able to do shit, adding 7 INT requirement for a fighter is counter-intuitive at best. A default merc doesn't get that kind of int, while a praetor can't get into the IG questline. Maybe 5 would be a better INT requirement in this particular case.

Plus the difference in difficulty whether you choose to gimp yourself by having 7 int or putting those points into strength or perception is huge, so in the end diverting 3 stats points from where they are traditionally needed on a fighter is sometimes the only way to beat the demo. Who's to say that the full game doesn't have a similar situation where 7 Charisma is required? Or 8 Int? Will people who've struck a dead end 75% into the game have to reload from hours ago or start over?

Indeed. Basically, VD, if you want to offer difficult and hard stuff that's unbeatable with builds different from a small amount of specialized ones (like in that case a high-ish INT and CHA fighter), make it optional. As far as I can tell from the demo, the fight is mandatory if you want to follow the IG quest line.

So yes, it's logical that fighting a Lord in his own palace is hard, although one might argue that in that case the general is well aware of it and sends a capable enough force in the first place. Secondly, and more importantly, it's not good game design, imho, to put that high hurdles on mandatory quests in the early game.

Of course, I admit that it's entirely possible that I just have a too different understanding of "fun". Restarting a game numerous times because I yet again found that my character is not up to the task (after playing an hour or two), no matter how much common sense I might have thought to have put into him considering his role/class is not part of it in my case, anyway.

Normally yes, but i would've thought that Imperial Guards would not try it unless they felt it was doable. Of course, if the demo does not show how i can become a valuable asset, then it's all right. If there is more to the quest line in the final product - then it make sense.

EDIT: Ah, Gord said it.

Adding a combat/bodycount check to the second Imperial Guards mission is an excellent solution. I wonder, though, if it still requires high intelligence? If so, it would certainly help to make smarter fighters stand a chance, but would probably also exclude most specialised fighter builds.

Traditional fighters would still have to deal with the frontal assault, which is problematic not so much because you end up being one man short, but rather because of the extreme accuracy of the archers. The Daratan archers hit basically all the time, and for very high amounts of damage (armour piercing arrows, perhaps?). Even with a tower shield, 9 DR armour and 50+ block they manage to shoot me down in no-time.

The raider camp archers, in contrast, were manageable with some good armour and 45-50 block. Even the Aurelian crossbowmen were blockable, at least with a cavalry shield and some prudent positioning. Seeing how the raiders are able to match the Aurelian legionnaires in battle, and how Daratan and Aurelian forces are more or less of similar quality, I find it quite odd that these particular archers are so adept at their job. I would recommend lowering their skill just a bit, since it makes precious little sense for Daratan archers to be near-unblockable for heavily specialised combat characters.

The fight, as it is, might not be impossible to beat within the constraints of the demo, but it is definitely far too difficult for a mandatory quest.

My manipulator / kingmaker merc (6 6 6 6 8 8) disagrees about the impossibility of hybrids - sure, no terminator rank for him, but he still got a bodycount of 16 (no bums and other cheese, 3 reloads max for all combats he did fight in) and the (arguably) most interesting "talky" quest resolutions possible (see above). Sure, it was my 10th char to finish the demo or so (and would've been raped hard if it was the first one), but I think it's sort of set in stone that AoD requires learning the game to succeed - and "fail for a few days until you learn how to succeed" seems to be the unofficial motto of the game... Or did you expect to both achieve the best combat rank and the best conversational rank possible with the same character? That's hardly a "hybrid"

Unfortuantely that's the case. There are great chunks of game that offer no real gameplay i.e. player himself doing something to achieve desired goal. It all too often boils down to figuring out that at such and such point you need skill A, and a moment later skill B. In other words, it's not you doing the thinking, it's the game thinking for you - whether you have what it desires or not.

In PnP terms it would be the equivalent of GM who arbitrarily LARPs for you if you have enough points in desired skill and forbids you to use any other even if it makes sense. The player's input is reduced to saying: "So I use the XXYY skill".

Mind you, it still might turn up a fine game... with some issues.

If you're a straight up terminator killing machine, you should care only about acquiring and terminating targets, not about the setup.

We wanted INT to be useful not just to talkers and explorers, but to fighters as well. Looks like we made it too useful, but we're tweaking it now.

It's a very hard fight (for people who like hard fights; if not, don't play this questline - it's not going to get any easier). You have to be a combat specialist, but you don't have to have a very specific build to succeed. If you decide to put the points into INT and CHA, making a well rounded fighter, the game rewards you by making the palace fight easier.

However, it looks like some people are still struggling and see the easier fight as hard, and hard as impossible. /Taking notes.

Any ETA on the updated demo? I haven't had the time to try the current one yet, and I'm wondering whether it's worth holding out a bit longer.

You are a giant among men, Varra. Or a man among fags. I haven't decided. Either way:

It's worth waiting, considering the number of improvements. No ETA yet - working on it, a lot of stuff is already done and being tested. Adding alternative quest solutions will take until the end of the week, probably, and then we'll need to test them too.

Lighten up, bro.

I wanted to make sure Skyway fails. He only plays games 7 times.

Well, what I found is that aside from RNG being a bitch, the difficulty of certain combats can depend a lot on small changes to your character. Just giving your character a slightly better armor (due to higher DR) or different weapon (esp. switching from 2handed to 1h and shield, or using a wepon with slightly higher damage, more easily surpassing the enemies DR) can transform an impossible fight to a stroll in the park.
This does make sense to a degree of course - you should have to adapt your strategy to the enemy, but in the case of the examples I used here, it's certainly attributed to defense (with DR and blocking being king) being so important right now.

Anyway, I think that this is probably one of the reasons why some people struggle even on some of the "easy" fights.

I'm all in for getting a new, better demo of AoD, but what's the bigger plan here? Keep testing builds of it until the Codex is happy (100% vaporware), or just try some ideas, see what sticks and go for the full game?

To me it's fine (or excellent even) to give use for intelligence, charisma, and non-combat skills in getting better combat setups. But the problem might be that intelligence is such a good stat for combat chars either way since those skill points help you to build combat stats too, so it turns into a no-brainer to have decent intelligence on any PC, when it's not a tradeoff of combat power for talkan prowess, but actually best of both worlds to take intelligence.

Originally, we planned to release the demo, fix the bugs, and start finishing up the rest. However, some criticism couldn't be ignored, so we had to fix the main issues (outlined in our March update). Hopefully, the new build will address most of them. The feedback will determine what we do next.