Preview RPG Codex Preview: Blackguards

[felipepepe]

I think is more related to stuff like the mage's staff now properly regeneration Astral Points, or armor sets giving bonuses...

 

[Robcat]

Cheers Io, again I appreciate you affirming the intent of the team and I get that you are still tinkering, balancing etc. Hearing you discuss that intent a bit more is reassuring, even if I will still wait for the game to release before deciding whether to purchase full price or maybe check it out cheaply much later. Rest assured I will be keeping a very close eye on this game, it looks really sweet ;-)

So why did we tune down difficulty in comparison to the press version? Because we felt it was a bit too hard at that time, at least for what we though a fight in the second chapter should be, judging by the feedback we got.

This is the crux of my concern as it seems you may have ignored the codex feedback of the challenge being pretty much spot on by giving more weight to those finding it too hard, hence adjusting the difficulty to cater to a wider audience. To be clear, this is not my firmly held belief, it is merely a concern (though important to me obviously), which is quite possibly just symptomatic of the trials and tribulations of releasing alpha access anyway. Again I appreciate you are still in development and it gives me hope that you say you guys overshot the mark adjusting the difficulty. And to be fair, it's all rather moot anyway if difficulty levels haven't even been implemented yet, though I trust you take my concerns in the right spirit. Your thoughtful responses here suggest that you do. Thank you.

Long story short, I want to believe but need to protect my hopes... because of how good the game appears to be.

 

[Nekrosis]

Hi Folks,
first of all I want to thank IO from Daedalic for joining these forums. I really appreciate on how you guys at Daedalic do business. I saw you on different external forums and you are very active on the Steam Community Hub. That's awesome.

For the game I can say that it is very good for an Early Access version. I encountered one major bug that was fixed with the next patch 1 or 2 days later. I love the tactical depth of the game and the way you guys included the environment. That's pretty cool IMO. So far I have no major complains about the game and can highly recommend it to everybody enjoying good roundbased strategy. Can't wait to get my hands on Act 3. Please hurry with that! I'm currently in vacation XD

 

[Io-Daedalic]

Hi Codexers,

I wanted to give you another reply just before the holidays. As you noticed, not only has the third chapter arrived. We also announced that there will be an advanced character creation mode that will allow you to customize a character at game start to your liking. It will basically allow you to spend the starting AP where you want them to go. Not all abilities and spells will be available to skilll at that point though. Premade characters will still be around if you do not want to spend time in customization and just start right away. We hope that you'll like that new option. It is scheduled to ship it with a patch prior to the game's release (i.e. when Early Access ends).

Also, if you bought the Special Edition (Deluxe / Contributor), you'll find new bonus content in the game's Steam folder on your hard-drive from today.

Cheers Io, again I appreciate you affirming the intent of the team and I get that you are still tinkering, balancing etc. Hearing you discuss that intent a bit more is reassuring, even if I will still wait for the game to release before deciding whether to purchase full price or maybe check it out cheaply much later. Rest assured I will be keeping a very close eye on this game, it looks really sweet ;-)

So why did we tune down difficulty in comparison to the press version? Because we felt it was a bit too hard at that time, at least for what we though a fight in the second chapter should be, judging by the feedback we got.

This is the crux of my concern as it seems you may have ignored the codex feedback of the challenge being pretty much spot on by giving more weight to those finding it too hard, hence adjusting the difficulty to cater to a wider audience. To be clear, this is not my firmly held belief, it is merely a concern (though important to me obviously), which is quite possibly just symptomatic of the trials and tribulations of releasing alpha access anyway. Again I appreciate you are still in development and it gives me hope that you say you guys overshot the mark adjusting the difficulty. And to be fair, it's all rather moot anyway if difficulty levels haven't even been implemented yet, though I trust you take my concerns in the right spirit. Your thoughtful responses here suggest that you do. Thank you.

Long story short, I want to believe but need to protect my hopes... because of how good the game appears to be.

Just after my last post, the team told me that the difficulty changes actually made it into the chapter 3 patch, in contrast to what I said before. This was a last minute change, so I didn't know that before. Sorry.
It also means that all EA players can try out the "new" difficulty in the chapter 2 fights right now and test if it is more of a challenge now. As always, your feedback is much appreciated.

Hi Folks,
first of all I want to thank IO from Daedalic for joining these forums. I really appreciate on how you guys at Daedalic do business. I saw you on different external forums and you are very active on the Steam Community Hub. That's awesome.

For the game I can say that it is very good for an Early Access version. I encountered one major bug that was fixed with the next patch 1 or 2 days later. I love the tactical depth of the game and the way you guys included the environment. That's pretty cool IMO. So far I have no major complains about the game and can highly recommend it to everybody enjoying good roundbased strategy. Can't wait to get my hands on Act 3. Please hurry with that! I'm currently in vacation XD

You're welcome . Thanks for letting me be at least a very small part of the RPG Codex boards! Also thanks for your kind words!

As Christmas approaches fast, I won't be around here any more this year. Again, thank you for all you efforts, feedback and support so far. I really hope you'll not only have great holidays, but also a good start into 2014.

Cheers,
Io and all of the Blackguards Team

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Daedalic are bros.

 

[Zeriel]

For example, at first we created the cities to be walkable and fully 3d as in regular RPGs, but unfortunately it slowed down the whole game a lot and we needed to find a different way doing the same without breaking the fun. It was not our intention to add more useless game time to the game because you need to run from one point to another so we came up with the version which is now inside of the game.
Pretty same for the world map, we started with a full 3D map/world it looked great, but we discovered a lot of problems linked to it. This time is was more technical problems linked to the engine.

Oh god, Unity! I knew it. We're doomed. Tides of Numenera, Project Eternity, they're all going to run like ass.

 

[Infinitron]

For example, at first we created the cities to be walkable and fully 3d as in regular RPGs, but unfortunately it slowed down the whole game a lot and we needed to find a different way doing the same without breaking the fun. It was not our intention to add more useless game time to the game because you need to run from one point to another so we came up with the version which is now inside of the game.
Pretty same for the world map, we started with a full 3D map/world it looked great, but we discovered a lot of problems linked to it. This time is was more technical problems linked to the engine.

Oh god, Unity! I knew it. We're doomed. Tides of Numenera, Project Eternity, they're all going to run like ass.

Shadowrun Returns doesn't run like ass.

 

[Zeriel]

Aren't all its levels the size of a postage box, though?

That might have something to do with it. I am hoping PoE and Numenera skate by on virtue of being largely 2D, at least Unity browser games with cutesy 2D art can manage glorious 30 FPS.