The 'Sidian Tyranny thread

[Keyrock]

I looted a corpse in Lethian's Crossing and I could go on with the story! Crisis averted.

Clearly, Obsidian Entertainment adhere strictly to the age old RPG tradition of defiling the dead.  They merely put up a roadblock to your progress until you did your sworn duty and followed the proper cRPG code of conduct.  Truly champions of the esteemed and honorable ways of our cRPG forefathers are Obsidian Entertainment. 

 

In my game Eb suggested to me that I make the people bow to me instead of Kyros.  While I wholeheartedly agree with her sentiment, I would never voice such treasonous thoughts out loud myself.  I will be the most loyal of loyal bloodhounds, at least until I am completely sure that an opportunity to usurp power has presented itself.

[Vaeliorin]

Am I missing a "speed up combat" option somewhere?  I've hardly gotten anywhere in the game, but my character taking 5 seconds to swing his sword (yes, shield and armor make you slower, I get it, but it's a bit ridiculous) and having to recast a 45 second buff in a fight against 3 generic mooks which was only the second fight of the game is...less than exciting.  I know rounds in D&D were 6 seconds, but I've honestly sat there wondering if I'd told my character to attack because he was standing there so long doing nothing.

 

Also, being able to get Verse up to 4 loyalty within 30 minutes of starting the game is...weird.

[Pop]

I finished the game, and for all of the little details of the setting that were interesting, it was easily the weaker of its siblings. The promised variance ala Alpha Protocol failed to materialized, in part due to the structure of the story (it's easier to spread your wings when all your content is distributed in discrete mission-sized packets), but more because of some very questionable quest design.

 

To wit, all of the meat of the game is in the first act. Your most significant choice is the one made at the end of it - that it's impossible to recover your faction reputation with the groups you spurn at that point is telling. The paths that branch from that point are extremely rigid, which in itself is not that shocking, but most games do a decent job of masking when you're railroaded. I went independent in my first run, and when I came to the Blade Grave I came upon this:

 

There is only one way out of this dialogue - option 4. All other options loop the dialogue until you decide to attack. I honestly don't know if that's extremely shoddy design or a Matt McLean in-joke. At the '09 PAX East panel for AP I attended, he opened the talk with a reference to Dragon Warrior's infamous looping but thou must dialogue prompt, as an example of bad design. Hard to believe it's a coincidence.

 

But then, later on in that area, you keep running into Unbroken soldiers who lay into you for butchering their countrymen and it's like I was literally not given a choice. And this is the thing: Most developers, Bioware or CDProjekt or Bethesda or whatever, put you in this situation all the time. Obsidian puts you in it countless times. But in all those other cases, it's someone else forcing you into combat, refusing to talk things out.

 

It's pretty rare to see an RPG in which the only option you have is to be aggressive. I'm told this is how almost the entirety of the Disfavored Act 2 plays out as well. Even accounting for it's a game set in a warzone waffling, it's just... inconsistent with Obsidian's standard of work. It's like they couldn't actually account for players deviating from their Act 1 choice, so they just aligned all scenarios from that point forward with it, preventing you from breaking the game. That's not great.

 

My first game was also beset by some weird quest gating, and while the patch notes seem to indicate that some gating is definitely intentional, it's worth pointing out, because this seems like a pretty nasty quest bug - if you hit the Stone Sea in Act 2 of an independent playthrough, do not go straight back to the questgiver once you retrieve the artifact. Doing so will block off the entire portion of the game devoted to the Stone Sea edict. Instead, go back to the Beastwoman Prima after you've got the artifact but before you turn in the quest. I only got one edict knocked out in my game and I'm pretty sure at least one of the ones that was denied me was due to this sort of quest breaking.

[Pop]

If Matt McLean lurks these boards, let him appear so that I might strike him down for his insolence.

[theBalthazar]

I don't see Sirin's lower lore as being because she missed out on opportunities to train; I see it as being because Lantry is a ridiculous loremaster and she is not.

 

 

I disagree. She has some spell. Work with phrases. Ok. (Its not crazy either...)

 

But Lantry has other added values. Others trees.

 

Ball in the center. When you invest in lore, except the bonus of Lantry obviously (+30), it remains after that a large difference between Lantry, and Eb/Sirin.

 

It's a fact. Just play the game. The lore is essential for spells. I agree That Sirin and Eb may have less... a little. If it considered that it has better powers. (Chants + Phrases)

 

But 30 of difference... Its a big problem.

 

When you think about it, you understand that it comes just from the difference in training (Skill trainers).

Edited November 19, 2016 by theBalthazar

[prodigydancer]

Summarizing the combat in Tyranny in one pic:

 

 

Graze=miss (the ability doesn't have damage component), so it's 90% chance to miss vs. trash mobs.

 

It's worse than DA:I (and DA:I was so bad I thought it was impossible to beat). So, great job, guys: you're the creators of the worst RTwP combat system to date. I hope you'll get an award for that because you deserve one.

Edited November 19, 2016 by prodigydancer

[Fenixp]

/\ That's how you can tell a person who's never played Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. (which is a real shame by the way, it's probably the first game which really tried to improve interface for RTwP games and ... Failed.)

[Fenixp]

It's more about Pillars implementing system where hit would guarantee an effect, graze would guarantee a weakened version of the effect and only miss would be ... Well, miss.

[prodigydancer]

interface

 

Oh, I have something to say about the UI too. Why no action queue? Why no screen-length quickbar like in DA:O? It's not even a console game, so seriously: why not? As soon as you have more than 10 active abilities looking for them becomes super annoying, particularly when the icons look similar (e.g. Will of Command and Refuse Pain). Why do I have to choose between regular chat, combat chat and minimap? Hello? It's not 1996. It's the age of 30' displays.

 

The UI is lazy incompetent **** but video game UIs turn out bad way too often. Tyranny simply doesn't quite stand out.

 

There was a reason, however, why I chose that particular shot to summarize the combat. It's pretty obvious nobody even tried to playtest the game. Obsidian's A-team is busy with PoE2 and Tyranny was the red-haired stepchild nobody cared about. And the end result is a game where nothing quite works because nobody cared to check if it worked. The problem with Clash of Iron could be resolved by adjusting literaly 1 (one) value - the accuracy bonus. It's not a charm, it's not a hard CC. So just give it +50 Acc and make a useless ability somewhat useful. It'd take 5 minutes to fix. But nobody cared.

[Fenixp]

I mean if they wanted to go with the quick-bar, at least they could have done it properly and offer multiple toggleable 'rows'. But nah. What I really don't get tho is why on Earth did they remove the incredibly intuitive quick key system from Pillars which both constructed a quick bar and allowed you to assign just about any button to any ability.

 

Why do most RTwP games seem to refuse to provide such revolutionary information as order queue, time to complete actions etc. is beyond me - if UFO games by Atari could do it about 10 years ago, other developers can do it too.

[prodigydancer]

OK, grazes are misses (although enemy grazes can very well do 30+ damage - at least they don't apply status effects on graze too).  But what about crits? Like you probably have guessed crits are misses too:

 

 

2H melee crit vs 0 armor = 0.0 damage.

[Nonek]

-Snip-

 

Surprising considering Mr Cain worked on this game, after all Arcanum offered great (perhaps unmatched?) levels of real choice and consequence, rather than the false choices that this games advertising refutes emphatically. Indeed personally I consider siding with Kerghan, going with Larry to the Mariposa military base, persuading the Master to face his folly, commiting genocide in Stillwater, attacking Nasrudin, gaining the favour of Randver Thunderstone and numerous others to be signs of the best design i've ever seen. Then again there's the BMC.

[sorophx]

considering mr Cain is a programmer, I wouldn't expect too much from him in terms of game direction

[Nonek]

Ian Dury and the Blockheads said everything that needs to be said about that back in the late 70's.

[sorophx]

I'm not that old 

[Fenixp]

Ian Dury and the Blockheads said everything that needs to be said about that back in the late 70's.

Could be. Then again, sometimes, even a tester can have huge influence over end product - and Tyranny is actually rather reactive. It still has tiny locations and reactivity sometimes has a tendency of railroading you into certain paths, but ... Oh well, what a waste.

[Chairchucker]

I disagree. She has some spell. Work with phrases. Ok. (Its not crazy either...)

 

But Lantry has other added values. Others trees.

 

Ball in the center. When you invest in lore, except the bonus of Lantry obviously (+30), it remains after that a large difference between Lantry, and Eb/Sirin.

 

It's a fact. Just play the game. The lore is essential for spells. I agree That Sirin and Eb may have less... a little. If it considered that it has better powers. (Chants + Phrases)

 

But 30 of difference... Its a big problem.

 

When you think about it, you understand that it comes just from the difference in training (Skill trainers).

There are a few factors that can govern how high a skill is. How many points you put into it at the start, for example. How often you use it. Governing statistics.

 

I think how often you use a skill is probably a bigger contributing factor TBH. Especially if you're like me and keep forgetting to visit the skill trainers every level.

[ManifestedISO]

47 hours to finish, one dollar per hour, totally worth it. Now I'm going for a 'No Allies' run.

 

The [Glare Silently] in the end-credits scroll was pretty funny. Also I want to listen more closely to hear Katrina's violin solo.

[Labadal]

Posted this almost everywhere. I might as well post it here. My end game stats for the game.

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?attachments/upload_2016-11-20_23-30-58-png.7563/

 

I'm posting it as a link because the boards don't accept images from rpgcodex.

[sorophx]

so, of 38 hours total you only spent 2 hours in combat. that's only 5% :\ wonder what the majority of that time was spent on: reading or running from A to B

[Labadal]

so, of 38 hours total you only spent 2 hours in combat. that's only 5% :\ wonder what the majority of that time was spent on: reading or running from A to B

Reading (I read slower than most people, I think, because of my eyesight), running from a to b, playing with spell creation, organizing my inventory and kept the game running while doing other things 1-2 hours). 30-60 minutes of loading screens, probably.

[Orogun01]

I was bored following the Scarlet Chorus, the game felt trite and predictable. But then I found the anarchy path, i'm having fun now.

[Oner]

[Madscientist]

I finished the game on normal in 50h. Lots of reading, some time spend in the forums to report bugs and at the beginning I sneaked around every map to find hidden things. It is normal that I need twice as much time as other people, its like this for almost every game.

 

The game is more linear than PoE, but also more focussed. In Pillars I got bored later because of fighting tons fights agains trash mops, those bounties or the endless path which was also fighting on rather small maps without much of a story. Tyranny felt a bit like a JRPG (i like those) but it kept me engaged until the end. I admit that the end of Tyranny feels very rushed.

 

I like about tyranny that your main char is really a part of the game world and that the world feels more "realistic" than evil. You are a random person who becomes destenied to save the world from an ancient evil, this story has been told a million times and that can be very dumb unless it is done very good (Lord of the Rings movies) or it does not take itself too serious (Anachronox as an extreme example). Baldurs gate 1+2 and PoE were very good games, but the stories were not very impressive. Having several factions who are not good but also not completely insane sounds more realistic to me. (This reminds me to play the witcher again.)

 

Regarding the stat system, class balance and character building, PoE is one of the best games ever and some changes done for tyranny are not so good. Some things became too simplified (flanking, friendly fire, things that make every "class" feel special somehow), but I like the skill based system (I don´t want it for every future RPG) and I like that combat has more action. In PoE most of the time I used auto attacks because I did not want to waste per rest attacks. With tons of trash mops in PoE, I used the same few per encounter attacks for this char and the rest was auto attacks. In Tyranny, once you have gained some skills there is always something you can do and you can spam fireballs, lightning bolts and whirlwind attacks.

 

One more thing. In PoE I had to stop my first playthrough because i got by the infinite stat stacking bug and some others. I could finish Tyranny without facing game breacking bugs, Though I did report several bugs as well.

 

I think Tyranny is a good game now and it can become a very good game after some patches.

[prodigydancer]

Thanks for the fake choice. To me, this is the low tide moment of the game thus far. No Diplomat (or any other background) option. No Lore check to cite the law. No Subterfuge check to turn around and leave (or at least pretend to). The illusion of a CRPG is shattered and what remains is an isometric interactive movie. Press 1 for outcome A. Press 2 for outcome B.