InExile is plotting to ruin Torment by making it turn-based

[Pandamaniac]

 

 

What's wrong with that? Nobody should have been under the illusion that the design of this game is democratic. The vote served a purpose, either there's a high percentage of votes for RTwP, thus InXile goes with the vote because the game is for the backers, or they go with TB because it's easier, better, and cheaper. Did we already know that RTwP wasn't going to get a large majority? No, it's only an educated guess, but in any case the vote serves another purpose, to show those who want RTwP that they're not in the majority.

 

 

These votes can be used to anything, except to say that one system has the preference of another. Just 20% of the backers voted and this is already a very small percentage of who would buy the game on release.

 

 

This is what I was going for. After taking into account the stated will of inXile, Voters must want a RTwP system more than they want inXile to fulfil their vision in order to make the game. Otherwise voters would either vote for Turn-based or not vote. So the results of the poll show, conclusively, backers that chose to vote are almost split on whether having the game be RTwP instead of turn-based is more important that allowing inXile to fulfill their creative vision. 

 

As to the vote being advisory, the threshold was set so high as to make the voting process a pointless exercise in meaningless button pressing in terms of it's potential impact on the game. I would have preferred they stated the game will be turn-based, and then asked for people's concerns about turn-based and incorporated that feedback into the final design.

[Keyrock]

The voting numbers, like any figures, can be spun to fit anyone's version of "reality" and "truth".  Have any of you folks thought about going into politics? Because bending words and numbers to fit one's own vision is essentially the crux of being a politician.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Keyrock

[Orchomene]

This is what I was going for. After taking into account the stated will of inXile, Voters must want a RTwP system more than they want inXile to fulfil their vision in order to make the game. Otherwise voters would either vote for Turn-based or not vote. So the results of the poll show, conclusively, backers that chose to vote are almost split on whether having the game be RTwP instead of turn-based is more important that allowing inXile to fulfill their creative vision. 

 

Do you imply that the those that voted for RTwP are just some blatant egoist that would consider their taste in some non important aspect of the game more important that the creativity of the developers ?

That's a bit harsh, isn't it ?

 

All in all, I like TB games, I like RTwP games and I'm just happy that the result is a game that corresponds to the creative vision of those that develop it. Whatever TB or RTwP.

[Pandamaniac]

The voting numbers, like any figures, can be spun to fit anyone's version of "reality" and "truth".  Have any of you folks thought about going into politics? Because bending words and numbers to fit one's own vision is essentially the crux of being a politician.

I am curious: why does it not mean what I strictly defined it to mean, which was "backers that chose to vote are almost split on whether having the game be RTwP instead of turn-based is more important that allowing inXile to fulfill their creative vision." I cannot think of any other considerations in making the voting choice itself, and narrowly focused the results to only have meaning within the sample of those choosing to vote.

 

EDIT:

 

 

Do you imply that the those that voted for RTwP are just some blatant egoist that would consider their taste in some non important aspect of the game more important that the creativity of the developers ?

No, I actually voted RTwP. The (intended) implication is that voters for RTwP decided that their desire for RTwP outweighed the consideration they gave to inXile's preference on that individual issue. I.E. I personally knew that inXile would prefer to have the game be turn-based, but I still thought the game would be more enjoyable with RTwP. Thus I "voted" RTwP. That said, I fully support their right to the final say, and I am not upset that they decided against RTwP. It is important to keep in mind that combat in Torment isn't fundamental to the game, so disagreeing with their combat choice is not equivalent of asking them to abandon reactivity or asking COD to change from being a FPS to an RTS.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Pandamaniac

[Keyrock]

What the voting numbers mean to me:

 

7267 people prefer turn-based

7052 people prefer real-time with pause

782 people don't care either way

 

Nothing more, nothing less.  Y'all can read some imaginary greater or alternate meaning into the totals all you want, it doesn't change anything.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Keyrock

[Pandamaniac]

What the voting numbers mean to me:

 

7267 people prefer turn-based

7052 people prefer real-time with pause

782 people don't care either way

 

Nothing more, nothing less.  Y'all can read some imaginary greater or alternate meaning into the totals all you want, it doesn't change anything.

I see your point. I would agree that

7267 people prefered Torment be turn-based.

7052 people prefered Torment be real-time with pause

782   people had no stated preference on torment's combat system.

 

My difference is that to the extent ANYONE voted turn-based for any other reason than the merits of the systems in a vacuum [E.X. people voting turn-based because it is inXile's preference] you cannot claim a causal relationship between their system preference and what they voted for in this poll. 

 

In a sense, I am more pessimistic about it's value than you are.

 

EDIT: Thank you for responding, it was helpful in letting me see my bias in assuming that the will of inXile was the only outside factor, when there are more than we can possibly know.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Pandamaniac

[Keyrock]

 

What the voting numbers mean to me:

 

7267 people prefer turn-based

7052 people prefer real-time with pause

782 people don't care either way

 

Nothing more, nothing less.  Y'all can read some imaginary greater or alternate meaning into the totals all you want, it doesn't change anything.

I see your point. I would agree that

7267 people prefered Torment be turn-based.

7052 people prefered Torment be real-time with pause

782   people had no stated preference on torment's combat system.

 

My difference is that to the extent ANYONE voted turn-based for any other reason than the merits of the systems in a vacuum [E.X. people voting turn-based because it is inXile's preference] you cannot claim a causal relationship between their system preference and what they voted for in this poll. 

 

In a sense, I am more pessimistic about it's value than you are.

 

EDIT: Thank you for responding, it was helpful in letting me see my bias in assuming that the will of inXile was the only outside factor, when there are more than we can possibly know.

 

It's possible to speculate that the devs' own preference for TB could have influenced people that voted for TB, or even people that voted for RTwP, in some kind of reverse psychology deal.  The problem is that without being able to read the minds of some 15000 voters, it's impossible to know how many voters were influenced, and how much.  Any assumption as to the motivations and/or thought processes of the voters requires some significant leaps of judgement based on nothing more than hunches and/or some kind of perceived knowledge of the human psyche.  I am no psychologist, hence I choose to make no assumptions at all and just take the numbers at face value.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Keyrock

[vril]

I wonder if there had been a vote for Pillars of Eternity for turn based vs real time with pause what the figures would have been.  I would have most certainly voted for turn based myself.  While I love Infinity engine games, Temple of Elemental Evil has always been the very best D&D game because of it's excellent turn based combat.

 

It was no surprise to me that Torment would be turn based, after all Wasteland 2 and combat in Torment was the worst part of the game.

Edited December 12, 2013 by vril

[Pandamaniac]

I wonder if there had been a vote for Pillars of Eternity for turn based vs real time with pause what the figures would have been.  I would have most certainly voted for turn based myself.  While I love Infinity engine games, Temple of Elemental Evil has always been the very best D&D game because of it's excellent turn based combat.

 

It was no surprise to me that Torment would be turn based, after all Wasteland 2 and combat in Torment was the worst part of the game.

Interesting thought, but that would have been a completely different deal, since RTwP was one of the core promises of PE while it is a sideshow in Torment. Kind of like CoD being a FPS. 

[ilhdr]

It was pretty obvious TB would win a hardcore survey in an already hardcore audience.

Edited December 12, 2013 by ilhdr

[alanschu]

I am curious: why does it not mean what I strictly defined it to mean, which was "backers that chose to vote are almost split on whether having the game be RTwP instead of turn-based is more important that allowing inXile to fulfill their creative vision." I cannot think of any other considerations in making the voting choice itself, and narrowly focused the results to only have meaning within the sample of those choosing to vote.

If you cannot think of any other considerations in making the voting choice, does that not mean there aren't any?

 

I will conclude that people that voted RTwP did so... because they like RTwP. A poll like this doesn't do much to indicate what their motivations for doing so, coupled with their understanding of the potential consequences for such a decision, opportunity costs and so forth. The same goes for the people that voted for turn based or even "don't care."

 

 

In a sense, I am more pessimistic about it's value than you are.

I know this wasn't written to me, but personally I don't consider the poll scientific and feel it doesn't say much about anything aside from "some people would prefer RTwP, others would prefer TB." I'd effectively conclude the poll was valueless. Anything beyond an extreme response in one direction or the other doesn't mean very much.

 

But online polls in general are dubious, since you get people doing things like making this thread to rally votes. So you're going to get some people voting opposite just to troll. I mean, the OP basically says "if you want turn-based, then please don't vote at all" which is kind of mind boggling.

[Wolfenbarg]

You're making the vote sound a lot more scummy than it actually was, Panda. From the outset they wanted to make it turn based, which fundamentally changes a system if this is going to be at spiritual successor to Planescape. Before they really get into developing those systems, they probably (wisely) thought that people might get really pissed off if they just make this turn based without asking what people thought. If the numbers were significantly against them, then they'd know they were making a mistake and could rethink their approach. It was split, so they went with their initial decision. Of course they talked up the merits of the system they wanted to use, because they're trying to convince people that the change they wanted to make was a good one. 

[Pandamaniac]

You're making the vote sound a lot more scummy than it actually was, Panda. From the outset they wanted to make it turn based, which fundamentally changes a system if this is going to be at spiritual successor to Planescape. Before they really get into developing those systems, they probably (wisely) thought that people might get really pissed off if they just make this turn based without asking what people thought. If the numbers were significantly against them, then they'd know they were making a mistake and could rethink their approach. It was split, so they went with their initial decision. Of course they talked up the merits of the system they wanted to use, because they're trying to convince people that the change they wanted to make was a good one. 

Not quite. They originally had no preference, and then later on realized that it would be better turn-based. And the point of my original post on this thread was not that they should have gone RTwP, but that they should have said something like "Look guys, we originally said we would vote on the system, but we found out during the developmental process the game would work better if we went turn-based instead of real time with pause because X, Y, and Z. We do want to know why those of you who preferred RTwP have that preference, so we can improve the turn-based system this game needs and we value your input, but at the end of the day the combat isn't nearly as important as the story and choice mechanics, and turn-based will allow us to better fulfill the pillars of the game we laid out in the Kickstarter." 

 

In other words, to own their decision. If their internal knowledge meant that the game would be significantly better with turn-based, than they should have just made that call. If not, then they should have held a vote. It seems the former is the case here, and holding the vote after the decision had been made is the only thing that upset me in all of this.

[Wolfenbarg]

I don't get it. One of the points of crowdfunding is transparency and getting feedback from the community. Whether or not to go turn based is a big decision, and one that would make people pretty angry if they just decided it by default. It have gone completely the other way, with a majority voting against turn based combat. Do you really think that the decision was set in stone and they would refuse to rethink their systems? I don't think so. They wanted to know what people thought before hitting a point of no return.

[marelooke]

I don't get it. One of the points of crowdfunding is transparency and getting feedback from the community. Whether or not to go turn based is a big decision, and one that would make people pretty angry if they just decided it by default. It have gone completely the other way, with a majority voting against turn based combat. Do you really think that the decision was set in stone and they would refuse to rethink their systems? I don't think so. They wanted to know what people thought before hitting a point of no return.

If they'd announced they were going turn-based on the KS page they wouldn't have received anywhere near the amount of $$$ they did.

 

While what they did was "valid" in respect to what they said (or didn't say) they would do I consider it rather "tasteless".

 

Combat is only mentioned twice on the KS page and there certainly is no mention of either TB or RTwP or any other system. Based on the textual information on the KS page it was perfectly reasonable to expect Numenera to have a similar combat system as PS:T, but with the kinks worked out. Instead it gets a radically different one.

 

Whether it will be an improvement will remain to be seen but I'm very sure they lost quite a lot of fans/future backers with this farce.

[Althernai]

If they'd announced they were going turn-based on the KS page they wouldn't have received anywhere near the amount of $$$ they did.

 

While what they did was "valid" in respect to what they said (or didn't say) they would do I consider it rather "tasteless".

 

Combat is only mentioned twice on the KS page and there certainly is no mention of either TB or RTwP or any other system. Based on the textual information on the KS page it was perfectly reasonable to expect Numenera to have a similar combat system as PS:T, but with the kinks worked out. Instead it gets a radically different one.

 

Whether it will be an improvement will remain to be seen but I'm very sure they lost quite a lot of fans/future backers with this farce.

I don't know about that. I could certainly see that kind of reaction if the game being emulated centered on combat, but this is not the case with Planescape: Torment. The in PS:T is memorable only for the high level spells and even those got tiring after the first couple of castings. The overwhelming majority of all backers (more than 80%) didn't care enough about this to even vote in the poll and another percent voted just to say that they don't care. A little under 10% voted for turn-based and they're presumably not upset since they got what they wanted. It's only the other group of slightly less than 10% who might feel tricked.

 

I agree with you that inXile did pull a bit of a fast one here: at the time of the Kickstarter, they didn't talk much about the combat system so I assumed it would be the same deal as PS:T. However, it's hard to care too much since the combat in PS:T was an afterthought to begin with (that's why I voted "indifferent"). I'll only be upset if the turn based combat more or less takes over the game (i.e. hordes of weak enemies) which they promised won't be the case.

[Keyrock]

But they DID talk about combat during the Kickstarter campaign.  This update came out while the Kickstarter campaign was still running, hence anyone watching and reading it could have chosen to not pledge or even revoke their pledge at that time:

 

Update 14

 

 

In the video Tony Evans talks about combat, states quite clearly that they are still undecided, there will be a vote, and that they will present an outline of how each system would work at the time of the vote.  inXile did exactly what they said they were going to do during the Kickstarter campaign by putting the combat system up to a vote, with the one caveat being that by the time they had the vote, the design team had already started leaning toward turn-based, for reasons that were explained in the update that accompanied the vote.  Hence, the reason why it would (likely) have taken a large majority voting for RTwP for them to go against their own preference, rather than just a narrow win for RTwP (it's a moot point since TB won the vote by a narrow margin anyway).  There is no breach of trust.  inXile did what they said they would do during the campaign.

 

As for the "quite a lot of backers" they supposedly lost, chances are the number is quite small.  The chatter may seem negative about the vote, but that's because those satisfied with the outcome, and this is most likely the vast majority of people (those that voted TB, those that voted indifferent, possibly a significant portion of those that voted RTwP (those only leaning toward RTwP and not passionate about it), and most likely the vast majority of those that didn't even care enough to vote [since Torment isn't a game defined by combat anyway]), are mostly staying quiet about it, or have simply said their piece and moved on.  Like with anything else, you have the loud minority.  Those with sour grapes that yell at the top of their lungs and make the most noise.  Generally speaking, this group of people usually comprises a very small percentage of the whole.  It's highly unlikely that this case is any different.

 

Ultimately, the quality of the finished product will determine how many fans inXile has kept/lost/gained.  How the combat system chosen plays into that remains to be seen.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Keyrock

[AGX-17]

InXile should add a bonus hemorrhoid pillow and one free tube of ointment for RTwP fanatics as a consolation prize.

[Bryy]

The thread title is hilarious, guys.