Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

[Zorba the Hutt]

Can we get a draft of the manual, Cleve, even if it's not finished?

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Can we get a draft of the manual, Cleve, even if it's not finished?

I am hoping to get it out by the weekend with a major update and likely the Steam API compiled in.

Wasted time today by going to a job interview. Was halfway there and suddenly realised it was just a bad habit. Better to spend my time getting the manual fixed up and the game into final condition.

Another office job with braindead hipsters pretending to work while I do everything for them as usual. I can't take it right now. I am so sick of hearing how this is a team effort but I seem to end up writing 100% of everything. Rather work on finalising Grimoire and starting work on my next game(s).

I got a call a couple months back from an auditor doing a code review at the company. He asked me how much of the program I had written. I told him 100%. He said that's impossible, the code had a copyright notice from the company with somebody's else's name beside it. I told him right, comments don't count. Actual code, I wrote 100%. They will lie to you there and lead you down the garden path and take six hours to explain how they also pitched in. It's not true. That code you are looking at is all mine. Even though I had not worked there in years, I told him I still expected all the code he would look at was 100% written by me. The permanents there now probably worked on the installer, that's about it.

 

[DavidBVal]

Wasted time today by going to a job interview. Was halfway there and suddenly realised it was just a bad habit. Better to spend my time getting the manual fixed up and the game into final condition.

Another office job with braindead hipsters pretending to work while I do everything for them as usual. I can't take it right now. I am so sick of hearing how this is a team effort but I seem to end up writing 100% of everything. Rather work on finalising Grimoire and starting work on my next game(s).

Dude, never get a regular job again once it has been proven the things you create are loved and gladly paid for by people.

 

[Banana Smuggler]

Who knew mighty Neanderthals could have such frail egos?

 

[Boddler]

You have attracted hordes...who have simply bought the game, played it a few minutes then given it a bad review, bringing me down into "Mixed."

Your "totally broken and totally unbalanced" crap is nothing but detrimental. I would ask you to avoid playing the game in the future, you are doing nothing but hurting it as it gets polished.

Grimoire's characters and progression are heavy with numbers that mean very little. There is no large blissful multi variable calculus to figure out here.

This game implies that you have a cargo cult-like understanding of why stat-heavy games are made by, and appeal to, other people.

Your lifetime of delivery shows that your talents are best suited for molding physical things.

 

[DavidBVal]

If we donate enough, can we get a BLOBERT review of Grimoire?

 

[hello friend]

I'd buy THAT for a dollar

 

[Rpguy]

If we donate enough, can we get a BLOBERT review of Grimoire?

BROS I AM BEEING REDY!!!!1 I OWN GRIMOR

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

You have attracted hordes...who have simply bought the game, played it a few minutes then given it a bad review, bringing me down into "Mixed."

Your "totally broken and totally unbalanced" crap is nothing but detrimental. I would ask you to avoid playing the game in the future, you are doing nothing but hurting it as it gets polished.

Grimoire's characters and progression are heavy with numbers that mean very little. There is no large blissful multi variable calculus to figure out here.

This game implies that you have a cargo cult-like understanding of why stat-heavy games are made by, and appeal to, other people.

Your lifetime of delivery shows that your talents are best suited for molding physical things.

They mean very little to you. The assumption on your part is that magically, you know more than I do. If that were true, link me to your game. I am not holding my breath on this end.

 

[Decado]

Correct me if i'm wrong but CON going down were a staple o AD&D weren't it? Happened wi raise dead spell but not wi ressurection, unfortunately as a drawback ressurection worked on Elves while raise dead didn't, one step forward two streps back eh?

It didn't happen in Baldur's Gate II, therefore nobody fucking remembers this. But yes, there were CON penalties for bringing back the dead in DnD.

 

[ben_reck]

Isn't "mixed" kind of an accurate perception of the game? Hasn't the developer himself repeatedly described the game as having a great deal of appeal to a select group of people? It was never intended to have mass market appeal. Am I missing somthing?

I do share his antipathy for working in an office but perhaps not from such an egotistical point of view.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Isn't "mixed" kind of an accurate perception of the game? Hasn't the developer himself repeatedly described the game as having a great deal of appeal to a select group of people? It was never intended to have mass market appeal. Am I missing somthing?

I do share his antipathy for working in an office but perhaps not from such an egotistical point of view.

If just a few people had been able to move over the years I would not be so bitter over it.

People who are infinite everything but do nothing in thirty years (you think that is crazy Cleve's delusion but you don't know regression analysis by international metrics demonstrated it in 2012) are just reprehensible people.

You work with these guys for 25 years and just once I wish one of them could have pitched in instead of standing there and looking so perfect. Just once. All of these people perfect in every way and not one minute of productive work in decades according to the hard science.

It is Australia and I understand now that the rest of the world is not like this. It couldn't be. Society would collapse overnight.

In this country I really am the world's smartest man but I doubt if that holds true outside it's border. Remember, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

So just by showing up in pants and being able to hit keys like a retarded monkey makes you the most productive hominid on Australian soil.

I'd probably be thrown out of Google's offices as a hopeless loafer ... but no joke, here in Australia I am usually the only thing that is not static. Just by trying a little I outstrip them all and most places I am trying not to get much done deliberately.

I can't understand how somebody who literally never does anything can still think that these people they hire (contractors) are just there to "help out" when helping always consists of doing everything they were supposed to be doing over the last ten years.

I call it "Neanderthal Fairy Day" when they are all out sick with the flu. I go through the offices and fix every single system in the building while they are out and repair the entire server. They come in the next morning and for the first time in six years they can log into Sharepoint with the correct permissions. Want to really understand Australians? Most of them don't even notice.

I'll tell you a few other things.

The men aren't safe to leave around women and children. They have the highest rates of domestic abuse and violence in the world against both. I never trust my wife or daughter around them if I can help it. My fears have been demonstrated to be true more than once in this regard.

Most Australian women would rather die old maids than marry Australian males.

Australian managers have the lowest ratings on the entire planet by their own staff. 90% of all Australian managers regarded as grotesquely incompetent by their own people in anonymous surveys.

International investors increasingly describe Oz as an economic "dead zone." Trappings of a first world country but most of them would not touch it with a ten foot pole. The glory days of a better public image and Crocodile Dundee are long in the past. It is said to be a nation that is good at burning up investment capital without producing anything whatsoever in return.

When I got here I got this cliche from them about "being a little behind the U.S. in some ways." 25 years later they are 50 years behind the United States - in fact showing no progress in anything whatsoever. Obviously, the problems are a little more serious here than they are willing to talk about.

Even if I was making a grand a day, it would not be worth it anymore. I may have to do it again and I dread it. I can't stand to look at them being so perfect and arching one eyebrow like Tom Cruise and going into and out of meetings and sitting around smirking at how perfect they are. When does all of this get properly diagnosed as what it is - frontal lobe damage that is clearly present in the entire population? That is what makes them think they are perfect in every way. You can't talk to a person who is perfect, they won't listen and they don't accept there is any room for improvement.

Twice I have worked with immigrants right off the boat, no interference from Australians - and I had such fun teaching them good practice, how to run a source control server, how to build CI process. It was fantastic. A glimpse of how wonderful Australia could really be ... without all those damn Australians.

Too tired, I have to get to bed. I like writing when I am exhausted because I tell the truth and do not censor anything. Truth serum composition.

 

[Decado]

Croikey!

 

[Decado]

Isn't "mixed" kind of an accurate perception of the game? Hasn't the developer himself repeatedly described the game as having a great deal of appeal to a select group of people? It was never intended to have mass market appeal. Am I missing somthing?

I do share his antipathy for working in an office but perhaps not from such an egotistical point of view.

If just a few people had been able to move over the years I would not be so bitter over it.

People who are infinite everything but do nothing in thirty years (you think that is crazy Cleve's delusion but you don't know regression analysis by international metrics demonstrated it in 2012) are just reprehensible people.

You work with these guys for 25 years and just once I wish one of them could have pitched in instead of standing there and looking so perfect. Just once. All of these people perfect in every way and not one minute of productive work in decades according to the hard science.

It is Australia and I understand now that the rest of the world is not like this. It couldn't be. Society would collapse overnight.

In this country I really am the world's smartest man but I doubt if that holds true outside it's border. Remember, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

So just by showing up in pants and being able to hit keys like a retarded monkey makes you the most productive hominid on Australian soil.

I'd probably be thrown out of Google's offices as a hopeless loafer ... but no joke, here in Australia I am usually the only thing that is not static. Just by trying a little I outstrip them all and most places I am trying not to get much done deliberately.

I can't understand how somebody who literally never does anything can still think that these people they hire (contractors) are just there to "help out" when helping always consists of doing everything they were supposed to be doing over the last ten years.

I call it "Neanderthal Fairy Day" when they are all out sick with the flu. I go through the offices and fix every single system in the building while they are out and repair the entire server. They come in the next morning and for the first time in six years they can log into Sharepoint with the correct permissions. Want to really understand Australians? Most of them don't even notice.

Two random observations from me:

1) You've spent a long time working on a very difficult project, all by yourself. Even Neanderthals are susceptible to stress, burn-out, and overwork. Every reaction that you would normally have in these circumstances is now magnified by a 100. You're fucking tired, man. Take a break as soon as you can.

2) Maybe a dumb ass office job for 6 months is exactly what you need.

 

[Decado]

Also, just checked Steam, it is listed as "Mostly Positive." Give it a few days, it will level out.

 

[ben_reck]

Cleve, let me share an anecdote. A couple of decades ago I tried to teach English at a Philadelphia high school. I quit after eight week for various unflattering reasons. But when I was there, I learned about "the room." This is the limbo which housed teachers who were too toxic to actually put in a classroom or too burnt out to actually do anything in a classroom. It was easier to store them there than fire them.

Your comments also remind me of The Wire if you've seen it, how rare "good police" were.

Another anecdote: I once worked as a technical editor/writer contractor at Microsoft. There was some social event and I asked some random guy in the group about what he did. His response was that he converted oxygen into carbon dioxide. His non-sardonic reply, I should add.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

FelipePepe, I wish you had never played Grimoire. Seriously. You have attracted hordes of popamolers who have simply bought the game, played it a few minutes then given it a bad review, bringing me down into "Mixed."

Your "totally broken and totally unbalanced" crap is nothing but detrimental. I would ask you to avoid playing the game in the future, you are doing nothing but hurting it as it gets polished.

You are the worst thing that has happened to Grimoire and I wish you had taken no notice of it. You were never a fan of these sorts of games and did not qualify as a reviewer, being mostly a fan of Pokemon. Not good to run a review from that kind of millennial on the front page.

Shouldn't a negative review detract these people from buying the game?

 

[DavidBVal]

FelipePepe, I wish you had never played Grimoire. Seriously. You have attracted hordes of popamolers who have simply bought the game, played it a few minutes then given it a bad review, bringing me down into "Mixed."

Your "totally broken and totally unbalanced" crap is nothing but detrimental. I would ask you to avoid playing the game in the future, you are doing nothing but hurting it as it gets polished.

You are the worst thing that has happened to Grimoire and I wish you had taken no notice of it. You were never a fan of these sorts of games and did not qualify as a reviewer, being mostly a fan of Pokemon. Not good to run a review from that kind of millennial on the front page.

Shouldn't a negative review detract these people from buying the game?

Felipepepe's review has been read by Codexians which for the most part already knew Grimoire was out and already knew what was going on from the Steam reviews and the multiple threads here. I'd say its influence on sales has been zero. Also I can't see how a "popamoler" would buy a game after reading that review, I wonder if Cleve has read it at all.

 

[Rpguy]

FelipePepe, I wish you had never played Grimoire. Seriously. You have attracted hordes of popamolers who have simply bought the game, played it a few minutes then given it a bad review, bringing me down into "Mixed."

Your "totally broken and totally unbalanced" crap is nothing but detrimental. I would ask you to avoid playing the game in the future, you are doing nothing but hurting it as it gets polished.

You are the worst thing that has happened to Grimoire and I wish you had taken no notice of it. You were never a fan of these sorts of games and did not qualify as a reviewer, being mostly a fan of Pokemon. Not good to run a review from that kind of millennial on the front page.

Shouldn't a negative review detract these people from buying the game?

Felipepepe's review has been read by Codexians which for the most part already knew Grimoire was out and already knew what was going on from the Steam reviews and the multiple threads here. I'd say its influence on sales has been zero. Also I can't see how a "popamoler" would buy a game after reading that review, I wonder if Cleve has read it at all.

If it had any influence it was because of how Cleve responded to it.

 

[Viata]

Funny how the game had already almost got into "mixed" thanks to Cleve fucking up save games. But apparently, it is thanks to felipepepe's reviews.
I think how Cleve responded to it is the true reason.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

A couple of weeks ago it was mixed, now it's back to mostly positive again. Not sure any of this has had much effect as it's been borderline all the way through. With a rather unique (and polarising) game I think Cleve would be better off just ignoring stuff like Steam ratings.

 

[DavidBVal]

Another hipster indie developer making faux-retro RPGs explaining how seriously he balanced his game. Will probably make some of you sick to see how he bends his creative vision and sells it to the whims of his testers. And he did it for months:

With the luxury of time, Greenberg enlisted a collection of friends and fellow D&D fans to put the game through its paces. In addition to finding bugs, they helped Greenberg to balance the game: “I began with an algorithmic model to balance experience, monsters, treasure, and the like, and then tweaked and fine-tuned it by collecting data from the game players.” Their contributions were so significant that Woodhead states that “it would not be unfair to credit them as the third author of the game.”

http://www.filfre.net/2012/03/making-wizardry/

 

[Dorateen]

Applicable to Grimoire:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

 

[ben_reck]

Another hipster indie developer making faux-retro RPGs explaining how seriously he balanced his game. Will probably make some of you sick to see how he bends his creative vision and sells it to the whims of his testers. And he did it for months:

With the luxury of time, Greenberg enlisted a collection of friends and fellow D&D fans to put the game through its paces. In addition to finding bugs, they helped Greenberg to balance the game: “I began with an algorithmic model to balance experience, monsters, treasure, and the like, and then tweaked and fine-tuned it by collecting data from the game players.” Their contributions were so significant that Woodhead states that “it would not be unfair to credit them as the third author of the game.”

http://www.filfre.net/2012/03/making-wizardry/

You must remember that Greenberg did not have to draw upon a pool of Australians for his outside experts.

 

[Lhynn]

Maybe against conventional wisdom in game design, but in this forum it's kind of generic. We have a sarcastic sawyer's head balance button for christ's sake.

And yet people are talking about lack of banalce in this game, which doesnt matter.

Also what could "nothing is broken" mean besides that at least some balancing exists?

Im not vying for an extreme, im just saying, no real effort is required, no balancing is required. Some stuff can be really OP, some other stuff can be really bad, learning which is which is part of the game.