Review RPG Codex Review: Tyranny - Kyros Demands Better

[Prime Junta]

My personal feeling is that it's because of the equipment system, since it's very, very easy to get end game equipment in this game once you get the ability to upgrade your equipment, and it likely makes a much bigger difference than your skills.

Well that doesn't exactly help but I don't think it's the crux of the problem. The real trouble is that the abilities are weaksauce and interchangeable, especially the attack abilities. Anything you or the opposition does boils down to a minor, short-duration debuff or chipping off a few HP. Pick the enemy with the lowest defences and hit him in the opening with your strongest attacks, and a lot of the time he'll be still standing. If you run one of your characters forward and get the entire group of enemies attacking him at once -- which should be a Really Bad Move -- his health will most likely still be in the green zone.

Consider DA:O (not my favourite game by a long shot, but a good reference for the style of mechanics Tyranny attempts). If you get hit by an enemy special attack, from shield bashes to fireballs to that nasty pull thing revenants do, you will notice. Similarly, you can get some pretty lulzy abilities right from the start, that one spell that makes the target immobile and invulnerable, for example, which you can use on your squadmates or the enemy, depending on what you want to do. Yet despite these genuinely impactful abilities, the combat is challenging.

So no, I don't think it's crafting or any other subsystem; it's that the whole thing is incoherent and lacking in impact. It's cRPG combat for people who don't like cRPG combat.

 

[Excidium II]

Would have been much better to have fewer but more impactful abilities, I think everyone can agree on that.

They're MMO devs and designed the game to be played with AI and you controlling one dude, so they wanted to give you a lot of buttans to spam and keep occupied.

 

[GloomFrost]

Yeah man I still remember when i made a diplomat/mage without putting any points into physical attributes and still managed to pass every athletics/subterfuge tests. How was that possible?? Even in the DA;O you couldnt use some weapons or pick some dialogue lines if your stats were not high enough. Jesus Obsidian could they fuck up so badly???

Do you use companions? Because you can use your companion's stats for all out of conversation skill checks.

I dont think you could use your companion's stats for the dialogue checks.

 

[Prime Junta]

They're MMO devs and designed the game to be played with AI and you controlling one dude, so they wanted to give you a lot of buttans to spam and keep occupied.

Either that or they just didn't know WTF they were doing. I'm inclined to think the latter.

 

[Azarkon]

Yeah man I still remember when i made a diplomat/mage without putting any points into physical attributes and still managed to pass every athletics/subterfuge tests. How was that possible?? Even in the DA;O you couldnt use some weapons or pick some dialogue lines if your stats were not high enough. Jesus Obsidian could they fuck up so badly???

Do you use companions? Because you can use your companion's stats for all out of conversation skill checks.

I dont think you could use your companion's stats for the dialogue checks.

No, but you can use it for certain map checks.

 

[Excidium II]

They're MMO devs and designed the game to be played with AI and you controlling one dude, so they wanted to give you a lot of buttans to spam and keep occupied.

Either that or they just didn't know WTF they were doing. I'm inclined to think the latter.

I dunno, if they didn't know WTF they were doing they could just have straight up ctrl+c ctrl+v'd PoE (and it would be imminently better). Considering their system designer has most of his experience with MMO, I go with mine.

 

[Excidium II]

Yeah man I still remember when i made a diplomat/mage without putting any points into physical attributes and still managed to pass every athletics/subterfuge tests. How was that possible?? Even in the DA;O you couldnt use some weapons or pick some dialogue lines if your stats were not high enough. Jesus Obsidian could they fuck up so badly???

Do you use companions? Because you can use your companion's stats for all out of conversation skill checks.

I dont think you could use your companion's stats for the dialogue checks.

No, but you can use it for certain map checks.

You can use your companion stats for dialogue checks. In the sense that it always uses the highest score in the party.

 

[Prime Junta]

their system designer has most of his experience with MMO

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Then yeah you're probably right.

 

[Infinitron]

Which system designer - Nick Carver? I don't see him on Mobygames, he's a newbie who did QA on Pillars before this.

Maybe Excidium means the project director, Brian Heins.

 

[vortex]

What needs to be added in the gameplay to be fun and interesting? I believe Tyranny won't be the only title in this project.

Wrong thread?

I addressed some of that in the review. Can expand on it if you like.

Yes. It should go here.

I'm particulary interested in cooldown system. How to make it, in your words, strategic resource management if possible. If not, does that mean, PoE system is preferable?
Or some modified PoE system?

 

[Excidium II]

Which system designer - Nick Carver? I don't see him on Mobygames, he's a newbie who did QA on Pillars before this.

Maybe Excidium means the project director, Brian Heins.

No, the older guy that was on one of the twitch streams. Iirc he's also ex-wildstar.

Nick Carver is p. much Obsidian promoted intern, his entire linkedin is climbing Obsidian chain.

 

[Excidium II]

Actually nvm, I searched for the stream and the guy's just a community manager. Is nick carver the actual lead? lmao

 

[Prime Junta]

I'm particulary interested in cooldown system. How to make it, in your words, strategic resource management if possible. If not, does that mean, PoE system is preferable?
Or some modified PoE system?

I'm not a fan of cooldown systems precisely because they trivialise strategic resource management. So my first choice would be just to dump it and go with a lightly modified Pillars system. Just rename the spells, give them new icons, invent a few extra-special per-encounter and per-rest abilities for your special snowflake, and Kyros is your aunt/uncle.

If you want to have both strategic resources and cooldowns, you need to make consumables a central gameplay element (like Numenera attempts). Otherwise you're just stuck with some variant of Wounds/Injuries/whatever which isn't really strategic resource management as much as a penalty for screwing up a fight.

If you have to have cooldowns, then have fewer abilities with, perhaps, longer cooldowns, but make them genuinely impactful, and make it so that you wouldn't use them just because the timer wound down. Again, if there is such a thing as cooldowns done right, then DA:O is the closest example I know of. It's hard enough that managing your consumables becomes significant, which gives it a degree of strategic resource management.

Edit: additionally, don't be afraid to spike difficulty. One of Tyranny's big problems is the uniform and inverted difficulty curve. The fights are really repetitive. Just doing the same thing every time will win. Even the boss fights are all more or less the same. Again, contrast this with DA:O -- there are optional encounters all over the place which will kick you in the nuts hard if you go after them. This shakes things up and gives a real sense of accomplishment when you beat them. That one revenant in the Brecilian woods if you go after him early for example? That there is a good fight.

 

[Infinitron]

Maybe what the game really needed was a few months of Early Access with a bunch of Sensukis playing it, rather than just Swedish Paradox playtesters.

 

[Excidium II]

Maybe what the game really needed was a few months of Early Access with a bunch of Sensukis playing it, rather than just Swedish Paradox playtesters.

Yes but imagine the vengeful wrath of a bunch of Sensukis when their feedback is ignored.

 

[Excidium II]

I also find it funny that they made a classless system that still pigeonholes characters into typical class roles, and generally rewards focused builds.

 

[DeepOcean]

Maybe what the game really needed was a few months of Early Access with a bunch of Sensukis playing it, rather than just Swedish Paradox playtesters.

Never seen a case o developers taking feedback from Early Acess seriously. They would probably do "We are serious game developers, we are professionals, who are those peasants to say we are wrong?"

 

[Prime Junta]

I also find it funny that they made a classless system that still pigeonholes characters into typical class roles, and generally rewards focused builds.

Not to mention, gives each character their very own skill trees. What kind of classless system is that?

 

[Prime Junta]

Never seen a case o developers taking feedback from Early Acess seriously. They would probably do "We are serious game developers, we are professionals, who are those peasants to say we are wrong?"

The Pillars devs did. They adopted many of Sensuki's recommendations, just not all of them. (One or two of mine too, and of many others there.)

 

[Excidium II]

AoD too.

 

[Togukawa]

It's indeed focused on choice and consequence, singular, namely which faction you align with at the end of chapter 1.
Secret rebel sympathizer? You're forced to openly say that you are organizing a rebellion.
Undermine alliance? You're forced to kill everyone you meet if youre allied with one of the Kyros factions, regardless of any previous choices made.
From a roleplaying perspective, this has been the most frustrating game I have played to date.

Still a better ending than ME3 though.

 

[Excidium II]

I also find it funny that they made a classless system that still pigeonholes characters into typical class roles, and generally rewards focused builds.

Not to mention, gives each character their very own skill trees. What kind of classless system is that?

Oh yeah. Extra funny in that each companion's skill progression is very class-flavoured.

Plus splitting might into two different stats as if it disencourage hybrids further.

 

[Bohrain]

I wonder what they were aiming at with the combat. To me the greatest weakness of Pillars's combat was the encounter design that was for the most part nonexistant.
Encounter design was even moren neglected in Tyranny, instead we got... what exactly? Were their ideas of major improvements the spell customization and combo moves?

 

[Excidium II]

Who knows. It was supposed to be less micro intensive due to no friendly-fire + less characters but then they give everyone around 12 buttons to use and an AI that you absolutely cannot rely on.

 

[Infinitron]

If the game does get a console release, expect to see the AI improved by then.