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Game News Age of Decadence June Update

Infinitron

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Tags: Age of Decadence; Iron Tower Studios; Vault Dweller

This main part of month's Age of Decadence update is a bit light on content:

Another month is gone. Fortunately, we've hit our goals and even though I barely remember June, I see a truckload of different files and find the progress on all fronts extremely pleasing.

The town and the castle look great and the questlines are well thought through and have a good number of options and an even greater amount of double-crossing and backstabbing. If you want to play an opportunist who is betraying out of habit now, you won’t be disappointed.

As you know each town has a theme and a certain main event. Teron is a frontier town, lawless and dangerous. Very Deadwood-like. The event is a military takeover attempt. Maadoran is more “civilized”, Byzantine and more sophisticated. The event is a power struggle. Ganezzar is a religious town. You saw some preachers here and there, saw Meru’s creed slowly spreading, and now you’ll see where it all comes from and why. The event is the siege.

If you’re playing as an Imperial Guard, you’ll participate in the events that trigger the siege. All the other characters will arrive to Ganezzar (to the Aurelian camp outside the walls) when the siege is already in progress. While your faction may have certain preconceived notions about which side you should be on, you won’t have to do what you’re told.

Anyway, we’re very excited about it and it feels great to see the town becoming more and more "real" and all the questlines falling into place and forming a coherent story, which changes based on the angle you’re looking at it from. We still have a month of work ahead of us before we can star testing the 'base', but it’s definitely going well.
But it makes up for that with a dialogue screenshots section which is among the coolest I've seen yet. I'll make an exception from my usual routine and quote it too:

As for screens of the month, I mentioned Faelan in one of the earlier updates. He’s Meru’s pet “magus” and if you feel like killing him, you’ll have to fight him with your eyes closed, text-adventure style. Mazin, our artist extraordinaire, and I worked on it together which resulted in a 6,300-word document. So, the battle is truly epic, filled with excitement, adventure, and many death screens.

It’s hard to present this fight in a few screens, but I’ll try. There are several reasons to want him dead, from practical to personal. Here is one of them – Glabrio, the guildmaster of the local branch of the thieves guild, sends you to kill him.

The magus isn’t really a magus. He’s a powerful hypnotist, which has the same awe-inspired effect on the locals. He’s very loyal to Meru and overall, if you get to know him, he is a fairly decent guy. Weird as fuck but decent, which is more than can be said about many people.



The rules of this fight are simple: 3 strikes and you're out. A critical strike counts for two. This way if the magus manages to stab you once, the game isn't over yet and you can still fight him and vice versa. A single successful attack won't take the magus out of commission and he might still cut your throat from ear to ear.​

That's right, it's a literal blind fight - because he's a hypnotist, see? Very clever.
 

AngryKobold

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As for screens of the month, I mentioned Faelan in one of the earlier updates. He’s Meru’s pet “magus” and if you feel like killing him, you’ll have to fight him with your eyes closed, text-adventure style.




:lol: :lol: :lol:

Fucking brilliant! Genius!

:lol: :lol: :lol:

AoD has truly reached the peak of its vision. Now let's replace all other combat with it. Finally some consistency between presentation and actual gameplay. Probably also the ideal of cRPG in VD's mind. Why to delude anyone with false "Fallout" look and feel. Someone may ask for refund...
 

likaq

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butthurt.png



AoD thread without shitposter, so rare these days...
 
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AngryKobold

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There's certain auto- ironic vibe around that screenshot. Could've been a great easter egg.
 

AbounI

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Can't wait to "meet & greet" Faelan, to fight with only strengh of the spirit.
It will be an awesome moment
 

Abelian

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No "guess the verb" puzzle? :decline:

I'm just kidding, it sounds like a very creative puzzle/fight.
 

Applypoison

Numantian Games
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3. [Drifter] Fuck this, next location

... at least it would add a bit of gameplay to the class. Kinda :P
 

MicoSelva

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There is this strange dissonance between AoD's Fallout-inspired open-ended character system and the class-based gameplay that pretty much expects you to have certain stats and skills or you will suck at being who you are supposed to be (and die).

This is my main problem with the game, or at least was, when I played the last freely-available demo.

Other than that, looking forward to it with interest, but without excitement (which evaporated years ago), as it will be a very unique game without any doubt.
 

Vault Dweller

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There is this strange dissonance between AoD's Fallout-inspired open-ended character system and the class-based gameplay that pretty much expects you to have certain stats and skills or you will suck at being who you are supposed to be (and die).
Fallout did 3 things well: setting, atmosphere, dialogues. I think it was the first game where talking to people was more interesting than killing things.

Gameplay, however, was flawed and it affected many other aspects which could have been great otherwise. For example, SPECIAL is a great system but gameplay didn't support half the skills making them useless. Combat was easy which affected both the character system (no reason to go above 100 points in weapons) and the combat system. If you have 80+ % chance to hit the eyes why aim anywhere else. Thus, since everything was easy and half the skills were useless, you could easily make a master of all key trades characters, which wasn't a good thing. Similarly you could wipe off entire cities killing the setting and atmosphere in the process.

Now, I'm not saying that AoD is a better game or that it doesn't have flaws. It isn't and it does. I'm merely explaining why designed the game in a different way.

For the record though, the gameplay isn't class-based and you aren't expected to have certain stats and skills. More like certain optional activities require certain stats and skills, which does make sense. For example, if you want to infiltrate Antidas' compound, you'd better be a fucking ninja, which makes sense. If you aren't, you will die unless you're a smooth talker, which too makes sense.

In the scenario above, you need either:

- good perception to know exactly where the magus is
- good dexterity and/or dodge/block to react fast when attacked
- high INT/CHA to counter his power

If your character has neither (strong, slow, deaf, and dumb), then he doesn't have a chance, in which case the magus will take him over, use him to kill the other two for entertainment (you'll do the actual fighting), then take him to lord Meru who will give him a choice.
 

Kem0sabe

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I think much of the criticism AoD gets is based on lack of a thorough understanding of the development goals in making the game and how much reactivity was actually put into them.

As VD explained above, for many of the checks the players encounters in AoD there are equally satisfying "fail states" that present gameplay opportunities that you would otherwise not see if you succeed in the skill check.

Even tho AoD has a somewhat linear overall structure to it, the various gameplay setups you encounter through your adventure are often non-linear in how they are resolved. This is something that really appeals to me.
 
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MicoSelva

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Thanks for the verbose explanation, VD.

For the record though, the gameplay isn't class-based and you aren't expected to have certain stats and skills.

I was under the impression that each of the backgrounds has its own storyline (and specific checks on the way), but maybe that is not the case. As I said, I only played the free demo back in the day, and not for very long.
 

Pope Amole II

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Fallout did 3 things well

At first, I read this as a "Fallout 3 did 3 things well" and I was kinda baffled at how anyone (more so you) could state that it did atmosphere, dialogues and setting well. Had to reread this couple of times in disbelievement until I understoon that my sight played a cruel trick on me.
 

StaticSpine

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Fallout did 3 things well

At first, I read this as a "Fallout 3 did 3 things well" and I was kinda baffled at how anyone (more so you) could state that it did atmosphere, dialogues and setting well. Had to reread this couple of times in disbelievement until I understoon that my sight played a cruel trick on me.
Heh, I also thought VD was talking about Fallout 3...

so my previous post doesn't make sense now...
 

Abelian

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Fallout did 3 things well

At first, I read this as a "Fallout 3 did 3 things well" and I was kinda baffled at how anyone (more so you) could state that it did atmosphere, dialogues and setting well. Had to reread this couple of times in disbelievement until I understoon that my sight played a cruel trick on me.
Heh, I also thought VD was talking about Fallout 3...

so my previous post doesn't make sense now...
I also misread as talking about Fallout 3, did a double-take. It just goes to show how readers parse sentences by looking at words in groups, not individually.

gameplay that pretty much expects you to have certain stats and skills or you will suck at being who you are supposed to be (and die).
AoD does not scale to your level, just like real life. Chalk one up for simulationists. :smug:
 

MicoSelva

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gameplay that pretty much expects you to have certain stats and skills or you will suck at being who you are supposed to be (and die).
AoD does not scale to your level, just like real life. Chalk one up for simulationists. :smug:
I don't mind that (I actually love this aspect), but it conflicts with the open character system, which becomes a bit of an overkill as the only real decision you make is 'how much of my class prowess do I want to sacrifice for combat'.
 

tuluse

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I don't mind that (I actually love this aspect), but it conflicts with the open character system, which becomes a bit of an overkill as the only real decision you make is 'how much of my class prowess do I want to sacrifice for combat'.
There are various skill checks for all quests in the game.

You do need to have the skill you want to use high enough, and might need a related skill, but no situations I've encountered required "class skills".
 
Unwanted

Kalin

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Is the 0.8.8.0255 version from BMT the latest build? Reason I ask is that I can't leave Caer Tor except by using the map, even though a recent update said it was fixed. Also, if I do leave Caer Tor by using the map, there is no way to carry out the mission from the Dux and end the demo. Amusingly, returning to the location also places my character outside of the walls, suspended mid-air in a mighty funky and game-breaking fashion.

Not sure if anyone reported it, but on a related note, if you take the persuasion option with Strabos as an Imperial Guard (cheers for adding that by the way, it turned out great and was a godsend for my high INT/CHA spear-dude!) and then convince the Legatus to protect him for the word of honour boost, the next time you visit Strabos the whole sequence will start over from the beginning.

(Reason I still soldier on with BMT is that Steam is a satanic vortex of ultimate corruption. Also don't want Gaben to delete my porn.)
 

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