AoD November Update is out

[Jaesun]

In before Drog's new shitty alt... ooops.

 

[Haba]

It is almost sad you can count on your fingers the amount of replies this thread had compared to a certain Michael Bay grade blockbuster crap that doesn't deserve the level of attention it is getting.

16,387+ posts about AoD are not enough for ya?

 

[Humanity has risen!]

As if quest design and avoiding clichés was enough to support a game on its own. An RPG is also very much about exploration, messing around, looting, having trivial two-lines conversations with NPCs, and doing superficial tasks. At some point it's not possible to re-invent the wheel.

No matter what at the end of the day, it's the quality and variety of content and the exploration that makes an RPG, it's never the quest design. Quest design just adds a few more gameplay options every now and then while navigating through all the content, which is 95% of what you do.

 

[Wunderpurps]

All these fucking quests get in the way of my RPGing

 

[Oriebam]

Games that are being made for too long usually turn out to be shit.

examples of the ones that aren't shit, pls

 

[sea]

Age of Decadence is going to be the best RPG ever.

 

[kaizoku]

Age of Decadence is going to be the best RPG ever.

But can it change the nature of a man?

 

[curry]

Age of Decadence is going to be the best RPG ever.

But can it change the nature of a man?

It can change the nature of vapourware

 

[GarfunkeL]

And you will believe that a baby can fly!

 

[Black]

Age of Decadence is going to be the best RPG ever.

But can it change the nature of a man?

No, because it doesn't have dragons.
Probably.

 

[Wunderpurps]

^^^

I think what you're saying is there needs to be an organic unevenness of sorts to the design, variance of circumstances that breaks up the framework of what would be a smooth manufactured iRPG experience. Extra vignette pieces with variation in quest urgency, theme, magnitude, relation to gameworld events, etc. It would be absurd to think that everything and everyone in a town should link together in one big stunning explosion of c&c like they were all actors in a specific play. What's wrong with giving some little stories their own space here and there? Let them be welcome distractions in their own ways without the need to link them all together.

"Are you related to the thing everyone h-, oh of course you are. This is one big setpiece."

I think a good way to describe it would be a rather messy wizard's room compared to his student's which is perfectly tidy with everything in its proper place, where nothing is unusable or spent and everything is labelled. The latter is a lot more presentable and easier to work with and efficient but the former is a heck of a lot more interesting.

Also, good writing which avoids god damned overly wordiness.

EDIT: That last bit is meant tongue in cheek, apparently I have to spell it out for some folks to avoid rage.

 

[shihonage]

Sounds pretty sweet, looks like they're catching up, and for once I won't whine about the release date. My fear with AoD in the last months (years?) was exactly that it would feel like being a variable in a script. This game will work on the principle of "if > x then". From a design standpoint, the if > x then can be pretty exciting, but I wasn't sure how it would hold up in actual gameplay. If you think about it, VD puts a lot of efforts on the form of the quests, but it seems as if the content takes a backrow. It might sound fun to just travel along the branching questliunes, and it's hard not to like the idea of seeing all that C&C in action, but will we actually care about what's happening in front of us? In theory AoD sounds like a blast, it always had - but that's in theory. As a game design doc, it's fucking fantastic. But then what?

So just by following the game I knew this problem was going to come up. The game needs fluff, to be blunt. It needs something so that you don't feel like your character is just a bunch of stats, and that you're pitting your stats agaisnt other stats, which open up different scenarios which are about different stats which bring outcomes which change stats, etc. You get my point. This shit will not hold up as an excel sheet, it can't work as a purely tactical experience. It's a quest-based RPG. So you need good characters and a good setting and good player motivation - because that's what the quests are based on. And you can really doubt if VD approached this game with the writing in mind first and foremost. On one hand, maybe this is a good thing, because we won't get another shitty output for some bad writer, but with no creativity beyond what's injected in the quest design, it won't hold up either.

^^^

I think what you're saying is there needs to be an organic unevenness of sorts to the design, variance of circumstances that breaks up the framework of what would be a smooth manufactured iRPG experience. Extra vignette pieces with variation in quest urgency, theme, magnitude, relation to gameworld events, etc. It would be absurd to think that everything and everyone in a town should link together in one big stunning explosion of c&c like they were all actors in a specific play. What's wrong with giving some little stories their own space here and there? Let them be welcome distractions in their own ways without the need to link them all together.

"Are you related to the thing everyone h-, oh of course you are. This is one big setpiece."

I think a good way to describe it would be a rather messy wizard's room compared to his student's which is perfectly tidy with everything in its proper place, where nothing is unusable or spent and everything is labelled. The latter is a lot more presentable and easier to work with and efficient but the former is a heck of a lot more interesting.

 

[Achilles]

Age of Decadence excites me and scares me in equal measure. On one hand it sounds absolutely amazing, just the sort of game I would enjoy. On the other hand, what if it does get released and it only sells like 2-3k copies? I will be devastated.