Torment Alpha has started *possible spoilers*

[teknoman2]

when the game comes out, the character i will make will be a jack that NEVER uses effort for anything.

[Cantousent]

The only feedback I gave about the alpha was that the VO work was good and sometimes excellent, but that the background noise was sometime too loud. Overall, I'm impressed their sound guy did it so well. Forget high priced VO talent, use the people who already work for you. I wonder if he'll be paid separately on top of his sound work.

[Lexx]

Well, I gave up and got me the alpha access as well. So... now I actually wish I hadn't. :>

 

The alpha is... not really what I would imagine of an alpha. It's the very start of the game, like the first 10 minutes and that's it. What exactly do you want to give feedback on here? Only things you can talk about is the intro text and how you feel about the initial character creation. Well, maybe the dialogue ui too, but that's it pretty much. There is nothing else. Oh, I could go on about how wonky the character movement feels, but then again, I clicked around only 4 or 5 times until the playable part had ended already.

 

They really could have done something like a combat room after that, just for alpha purpose. Then at least you had something real to spend time on.

[Agiel]

I caved as well. Performance was okay but not great on my Geforce 550 (I know it's an Alpha, but I should think the only 3D elements being the character shouldn't be _that_ taxing). I actually dig the fluid animations, which were quite refreshing on the tail end of PoE.

 

Is that opening narrator the same from Mask of the Betrayer?

Edited August 20, 2015 by Agiel

[teknoman2]

Well, I gave up and got me the alpha access as well. So... now I actually wish I hadn't. :>

 

The alpha is... not really what I would imagine of an alpha. It's the very start of the game, like the first 10 minutes and that's it. What exactly do you want to give feedback on here? Only things you can talk about is the intro text and how you feel about the initial character creation. Well, maybe the dialogue ui too, but that's it pretty much. There is nothing else. Oh, I could go on about how wonky the character movement feels, but then again, I clicked around only 4 or 5 times until the playable part had ended already.

 

They really could have done something like a combat room after that, just for alpha purpose. Then at least you had something real to spend time on.

what, you were expecting the whole game? in a public alpha/beta they usually test small individual parts of the game to see if the mechanics and UI work as intended. play testing the entire game is done internally to avoid spoilers

[Cantousent]

I hope that no one went out and purchased the alpha based on my account. I already had it available. Moreover, I don't know what they tell folks who purchased the key later, but they were completely up front with the info I received, which is literally it's just the first ten to fifteen minutes of the game.

 

However, I disagree about the controls. The very beginning the player avatar responds more sluggishly. After that, the controls seemed to work fine with the exception of waiting for areas to open. Maybe I'm just too forgiving, but I don't think the controls are bad. Pretty standard for these kinds of games.

 

In terms of how the beginning unfolds, I stand by what I've said previously. Maybe because I wasn't paying that much attention to development, but I'm more excited *after* playing the alpha than I was before, but I suppose these things are objective. For me, it actually feels more like PS:T than PoE. It even sounds more like PS:T than PoE. That's not a slight to PoE. It was never meant to be 'more like Planescape.' However, for a title that I backed solely on the basis that it was trying to recapture some of PS:T, I'm pretty happy.

[majestic]

 

Well, I gave up and got me the alpha access as well. So... now I actually wish I hadn't. :>

 

The alpha is... not really what I would imagine of an alpha. It's the very start of the game, like the first 10 minutes and that's it. What exactly do you want to give feedback on here? Only things you can talk about is the intro text and how you feel about the initial character creation. Well, maybe the dialogue ui too, but that's it pretty much. There is nothing else. Oh, I could go on about how wonky the character movement feels, but then again, I clicked around only 4 or 5 times until the playable part had ended already.

 

They really could have done something like a combat room after that, just for alpha purpose. Then at least you had something real to spend time on.

what, you were expecting the whole game? in a public alpha/beta they usually test small individual parts of the game to see if the mechanics and UI work as intended. play testing the entire game is done internally to avoid spoilers

 

 

There will be a second alpha dubbed "B0" soon which will include combat and some more options and gameplay elements, like saving your game and tasks where failing actually has some real consequences. I mean, something else than affecting the colour of the light in the room. Which was kind of awesome though.

[samm]

This is an alpha systems test. What I expected they'd test: Does the installation work on all hardware? Does the game start on all hardware? Are there fundamental glitches in the dialogue, sound or graphics engine?

 

So I got more than I expected, as we already could give feedback on: What is the reaction to the text, to the GUI and to the animation style, all of which is already more than I'd see in other alpha tests. And I must say, I really liked it

 

Niggles:

* do the animated blue blobs on the GUI have a function later on? If not, animate them less.

* movement feels way too indirect because of elaborate animations and speed based on clicking distance

* horrible aliasing / too low res on shadows, reflections, in-game-items such as the bowl, and the inspect-icon

* rendering speed is much too low, while the GUI feels okay-ish regarding its reaction time, though even that is slowed down due to fade-animations for dialogue-choices

[Lexx]

I did not expect the full game, never did. Wasteland 2 was just the Arizona part as well (in the beta), so there is no reason to expect more in Torment. But just the intro dialogue feels a little too rough to me.

 

What I noticed was, that sometimes my character wasn't responding to clicks on the ground and on the orbs. In one occasion I had to move away a bit to trigger the next orb-dialogue.

 

The voice actor was pretty good. He could do the whole game, imo. That's my thoughts so far.

[Labadal]

They will include combat later on. This isn't the only thing we are going to try out in the alpha systems test.

[Agiel]

Second Alpha test portion is out now, relating to exploration. Submitted two bug reports relating to the conversation UI and the game being unresponsive if you tab out and click back into the game again.

 

[Agiel]

Actually, this part might have been more apropos to illustrate my contribution:

 

https://youtu.be/faFuaYA-daw?t=50s

[Luridis]

I'll have to let it download and try it later... CPU is too busy compiling software to even try to run it now. i.e. make -j7... So yes, I want it done today.

[samm]

Submitted one bug report - I advise against changing resolution currently I also commented on the busy-ness (business?) of the portion of the outdoor area: There is too many disparate things going on imho. That also makes me wonder whether they can actually get much content done, because of the apparent effort put in that area. Lastly I still find the characters reacting far too slowly to movement orders because of the initial animations.

 

I'm really looking forward to playing more of the game. Didn't expect an alpha to actually interest me for more than just seeing whether it runs on my system.

Edited August 29, 2015 by samm

[Luridis]

Submitted one bug report - I advise against changing resolution currently I also commented on the busy-ness (business?) of the portion of the outdoor area: There is too many disparate things going on imho. That also makes me wonder whether they can actually get much content done, because of the apparent effort put in that area. Lastly I still find the characters reacting far too slowly to movement orders because of the initial animations.

 

I'm really looking forward to playing more of the game. Didn't expect an alpha to actually interest me for more than just seeing whether it runs on my system.

 

As far as the movement goes... This being alpha, the nav meshes will likely be in a hurried state, as well as pathing algorithms. So, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If games are made like most other software, you get the basic functions in first and then tweak the code for bells and whistles later.

[Agiel]

I do hope they somehow manage to retain the fluid animations (of course while still making it very responsive). I think little touches in animations really do their part in bringing a game to life, especially with a top-down game,

[majestic]

I do hope that walking/running animation is only a placeholder. Whenever a character is doing a 180° turn they end up kind of skating backwards for a spell before actually moving in the other direction. It is... irritating, to say the least.

[Agiel]

I'm curious as to whether the Effort Checks will be seeded in the final game so as to curb save scumming. If it was, then would probably raise less of a hoopla if they added a difficulty modifier that removed that (and if you did that, it precluded you from getting an achievement or something or other).

Edited August 30, 2015 by Agiel

[Cantousent]

I don't even have time to try it. I've been able to play about fifteen minutes of Shadowrun returns over the past week and I *started* a new game of PoE to check out the White March.

 

Still, I'm stoked about Tides, so I think I'll ink in some time to try the new alpha after Tuesday when I should have a little time. I'm really looking forward to this one.

[majestic]

I'm curious as to whether the Effort Checks will be seeded in the final game so as to curb save scumming. If it was, then would probably raise less of a hoopla if they added a difficulty modifier that removed that (and if you did that, it precluded you from getting an achievement or something or other).

 

Well, I hope not, because I hate that. No, let me rephrase that, I loathe it.

 

If you want to stop save-scumming then do it by fiddling with the save system or some other gameplay mechanic and not with a supposedly random dice roll. Especially since plenty of games have god-awful RNGs that cluster results like there's no tomorrow, and judging from my experience with B0 Torment is going to have the same problem. I went one playthrough without failing a single effort roll and the next without ever winning one, even if it was simple.

 

I think the devs talked about the issue and they are actually implementing different paths for failures instead of "forcing" players to reload. One of the might checks in B0 gives you a permanent might pool increase if you fail it while it yields a makeshift weapon if you succeed.

Edited August 30, 2015 by majestic

[Agiel]

I don't particularly care for seeded rolls either, since I tend to skew towards letting players play the game how they want to play it (you can bet your ass I abused the hell out of alchemy and enchanting in the Elder Scrolls games). I guess Inxile would be better off just letting the save system be abuseable in the normal mode and just put in the Iron Man mode for the try-hards.