Deadfire isn't going to be a "dumbed down" pillars like tyranny is it?

[Pinsalinj]

 

Who *doesn't* want to pllay a petty bureaucrat with delusions of power?!

You know, you're probably joking but one of the disappointments I had with Tyranny was that you couldn't do the whole petty bureaucrat thing trying to keep order and 'greater good'.  I went into the first act thinking that I could try and keep order, protecting the general people while making necessary sacrifices ("Gotta kill you to keep up appearances but the rest of you can go"), but in the end it all just boiled down to "Pick one of three sides or go at it by yourself".  I think I was expecting something more... 'political' I guess?  Less fighting, more talking.

 

 

Yup, same. I enjoyed Tyranny and loved the premise but think the execution was pretty bad. I'm not gonna spoil things but I chose a side thinking I would be able to make things go in a specific way (and the dialogue let me think I would be able to do that) but in Act II I only had the option to do things very differently from what I wanted. The only dialogue options available to make the story progress were *not* how I envisioned my actions. And I was not the only one to whom this happened. That was extremely frustrating. (And it was not the only frustrating thing)

 

And the combat was very difficult for me, but I completely suck at strategy.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Pinsalinj

[Sedrefilos]

Devs need to understand sometime, imho, that different mechanics work well in single-character action rpgs and in party-based tactical rpgs. Leveling skills by using them and have no classes are good for the 1st category, classes and pick-skills at level up is good for the 2nd category. It is tested and it works. Tyranny mixed those systems and gave birth to boring leveling up character system and an interesting spell-crafting system that it could be good or bad to use depending on character lore. Hope they see this and make something more focused next time; and a larger game - short is not good for rpgs, unfortunately.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Sedrefilos

[MountainTiger]

I vehemently disagree with "short is not good for rpgs". I play long games and I like long games, but not every game needs to be long. Tyranny's pacing at the end was weird, but I don't think it needed to be significantly longer.

[FlintlockJazz]

What Flintlock said. Tyranny had its moments, but was a very disappointing game overall. It devolved from the interesting political intrigue into a juvenile power fantasy way too quickly. And let's be honest here: the combat and the leveling/skill scheme in Tyranny sucked rat droppings. The spell creation system and the sigils were the only interesting thing in it, and they too were spoiled with a cooldown based casting which lead to the "Cast these heals when they come out of cooldown and invest to constitution and quickness and you'll become immortal", which to my dismay worked on PotD. Then there are the ridiculous consequences of the skill system, like making a high constitution HP-healermonster will lead you to getting a ton more XP than making any reasonable character, thus the more unreasonable build you make the stronger it will end up - bull****.

 

Basically, Tyranny copied Skyrim, even to the point of having those "5 ranks per level" training limits, which considering how much that game sucks is never a good idea. Tyranny had two things going for it: the setting, which was awesome, and the sigil system, which was interesting and would've been awesome if it was based around a mana-system instead of cooldowns.

The politics were the biggest let down for me, as you said it went from political intrigue to power fantasy.  I went into the game expecting that I would be playing factions against one another, while trying to cover up my own transgressions, with death from being discovered a possibility.  Realised (and restarted) once I realised that no, what it was all really about was picking a faction and doing its legwork for it.  The cooldowns in a party based game didn't help though, god it reinforced my opinion that they are rubbish.

 

 

 

Who *doesn't* want to pllay a petty bureaucrat with delusions of power?!

You know, you're probably joking but one of the disappointments I had with Tyranny was that you couldn't do the whole petty bureaucrat thing trying to keep order and 'greater good'.  I went into the first act thinking that I could try and keep order, protecting the general people while making necessary sacrifices ("Gotta kill you to keep up appearances but the rest of you can go"), but in the end it all just boiled down to "Pick one of three sides or go at it by yourself".  I think I was expecting something more... 'political' I guess?  Less fighting, more talking.

 

 

Yup, same. I enjoyed Tyranny and loved the premise but think the execution was pretty bad. I'm not gonna spoil things but I chose a side thinking I would be able to make things go in a specific way (and the dialogue let me think I would be able to do that) but in Act II I only had the option to do things very differently from what I wanted. The only dialogue options available to make the story progress were *not* how I envisioned my actions. And I was not the only one to whom this happened. That was extremely frustrating. (And it was not the only frustrating thing)

 

And the combat was very difficult for me, but I completely suck at strategy.

 

 The premise could have been brilliant, and many characters like Tunon would have been awesome in a different type of game (there was a surreal creepiness about him).  The choosing of factions felt forced however, and as you said didn't play out as you think, it felt like a choice of 3 (4 if you include the anarchy playthrough) railroad rides more than an actual ingame choice.

[Sedrefilos]

I vehemently disagree with "short is not good for rpgs". I play long games and I like long games, but not every game needs to be long. Tyranny's pacing at the end was weird, but I don't think it needed to be significantly longer.

I think Tyranny suffered because of shortness. There was no city, just the lord's palace, not much world exploration just go to point X solve the situation, go to point Y solve the problem there and so on. It was mostly a military simulator than an adventure and it couldn't have been one if it was that short. Of course a short rpg could have good mechanics etc but won't have enough time for them to unravel and shine.

[Ninjamestari]

I vehemently disagree with "short is not good for rpgs". I play long games and I like long games, but not every game needs to be long. Tyranny's pacing at the end was weird, but I don't think it needed to be significantly longer.

 

'Weird' is just a polite way of saying bad. I think denying how badly Tyranny handled its final chapter is very dishonest and morally wrong. If people can't even agree on the facts, then no solutions will ever be found, and denying facts in order to preserve someone's feelings is the worst sin you can commit in an intellectual discussion.

[Pinsalinj]

I think we can sum up Tyranny by saying that it was an embryo of potential good game. There were plenty of underdeveloped cool things but it seemed to be lacking/unfinished on a lot of departments. It felt like they had to rush and smash a lot of things together.

 

I really hope there will be a sequel one day with a real team/budget (and a better system for those who care about combat) because it COULD be awesome, and that was the most frustrating thing for me, the wasted potential.

[MountainTiger]

 

I vehemently disagree with "short is not good for rpgs". I play long games and I like long games, but not every game needs to be long. Tyranny's pacing at the end was weird, but I don't think it needed to be significantly longer.

I think Tyranny suffered because of shortness. There was no city, just the lord's palace, not much world exploration just go to point X solve the situation, go to point Y solve the problem there and so on. It was mostly a military simulator than an adventure and it couldn't have been one if it was that short. Of course a short rpg could have good mechanics etc but won't have enough time for them to unravel and shine.

 

I don't see how any of these things would have solved Tyranny's problems. Tyranny had both mechanical problems (combat and character progression were not all that compelling) and narrative problems (I think the first two acts work reasonably well, but Act 3 doesn't do well at showing a major transition in your character's role). Adding another town or more wilderness areas does nothing to address those problems; all it does is stretch them out over more encounters. The mechanical problems are entirely independent of length (frankly, they might even be worse over a longer game, since a short game can retain the novelty of new systems for more of its length); the narrative problems do have solutions that involve lengthening the game but are left unaddressed by just adding a few more areas.