https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1459003
TL;DR: Road to Beta, and Item Design with Thomas
Hello Exiles, Brian Fargo here.
Here we are in 2016, 17 years after the original Planescape Torment hit the scene and became a cult classic. This is finally the year for the spiritual successor to become a reality. I’m proud to tell you that Torment: Tides of Numenera Beta will be coming to all eligible backers during the week of January 17th and to Steam Early Access on the 26th of January. The team is incredibly passionate about this game and it shows in every aspect of their work. Having the opportunity to create a wholly original experience and intricate world is exactly why we got in the games business to begin with.
The beta will start you right in the beginning of the game and is quite lengthy for an early beta. It covers the game's introductory sequence (some of which you may have already seen a portion of in the alpha) as well as most of the first major location of the game, Sagus Cliffs. Sagus is a very old city that was built on top of ancient structures that predate the return of humanity to the Ninth World. It's split into five main districts: Circus Minor, Cliff's Edge, Caravanserai, Government Square and the Underbelly. As you might expect from a city location, it is rich in lore to discover, characters to talk with and obviously quests to complete!
Of course, we'll be looking to gather your feedback and use it to improve the game. During the alpha, we had a direct feedback form in the game and we'll likely provide that again, as it turned out to be an excellent way for us to gather feedback in a way that was easy for us to parse and implement. Indeed, many points from alpha feedback informed our design decisions during beta production, iteration is after all key to making our games. I look forward to gathering more unique insights from this release.
>>322886081
In a future update we'll talk more about the details of the beta release, but during the lead-up to the beta we will be providing you with new information on what it contains such as profiles of individual locations and discussion of characters and game mechanics. Keep an eye out in coming weeks for updates, starting with today's setting and design details.
Brian Fargo
Your leader inXile
The Unusual Items of the Ninth World
Thomas here.
Numenera is a setting known for its incredibly strange, quirky, and interesting items, which are a perfect fit for Torment. So when I was offered the chance to take ownership of item design, I jumped to it. For most items, I come up with the concept, determine what exactly it should do gameplay-wise, implement them into the game, write descriptions, work with scripters on any custom events that might be required, and coordinate with our art team on the icon, animation, visual, and finally work to layer in any sound effect needs. While a number of items come from level designers or the suggestions of writers, some were directly from backers, and many others I designed from scratch.
For inspiration, I turn primarily to the Numenera Corebook and Technology Compendium, but most importantly I take time out weekly to play Planescape: Torment and pore over that game's item lists. Even to this day, PS:T stands out to me as a game with great itemization due to how memorable even the most mundane of items was, and this is something we hope to recreate in Torment: Tides of Numenera. Of course, I'm also constantly jotting down ideas as I consume science fiction or fantasy novels and films. The Numenera setting has the flexibility to allow for many different types of items, from the organic, to the "magical", to the impossibly high tech, a latitude we are fully exploring in the game.
>>322886081
This game looks like shit, and will be a massive disappointment to so many people.
>>322886191
As a quick refresher: items are split into ordinary items – swords, armor, and things people can craft with a medieval level of technology; and Numenera – remnants of the prior civilizations, technology so advanced as to seem like magic. These numenera are further split into Oddities, Artifacts, or Cyphers.
Oddities have no apparent practical use, but their uniqueness and rarity make them valuable. Examples: A goblet that appears empty even when it has a liquid in it; a synth flower that blooms only in total darkness; a squirming fishlike creature that gibbers constantly in an indecipherable foreign tongue. From a gameplay perspective, most of these exist to be sold to merchants as a source of income, but the Numenera setting allows for us to give them a much more unique and interesting flavor. And some of them can be useful in the right situation.
Artifacts, on the other hand, are numenera objects that do have an use and can typically be held onto permanently. These uses can range from minor boons to major powers. Examples: A cloak made of golden feathers that stiffens to offer protection when struck; a ring that acts as a transdimensional conduit to strike enemies with various damage types; a device that compresses some of an opponent's blood into a projectile which is then sucked out of the target and into the device. These are very rare and valuable, and from a gameplay perspective serve as the equivalent of magic equipment in a more typical fantasy setting.
>>322886260
Cyphers, however, are one of the most unique elements of the item system in Torment. These have no real equivalent in other games, and offer the most interesting design opportunities and challenges. Put simply, Cyphers are one-time-use numenera, somewhat similar to consumable potions, charms and so on in other games. However, Cyphers are also very powerful, and tend to be somewhat unstable as a result, especially when large numbers of them are carried together. Carry a Cypher around by itself and you'll be fine, but if you start taking too many with you, you will run into side-effects that provide negative Fettles (or status effects) on your characters.
As a result, Cyphers are best used quickly, and because they are relatively abundant, you will always be finding new ones throughout the game. By their very nature, Cyphers counter the hoarding instincts that cRPGs have built up over the years. This requires us to communicate the positives and negatives of Cyphers to players, to make sure that that they are interesting enough for players to want to use, and that the density and distribution of Cyphers throughout the game makes players feel like they're getting them at just the right rate. We don't want Cypher limits to feel like an annoyance, but rather to provide a natural flow for the player to experiment with and use them, and keep the progression of items interesting throughout the game.
Cyphers are extremely varied and interesting. A few examples: a detonation device that increases gravity in a confined area, pinning your enemies down; a sentient spike that burrows deeper into any target it hits; a thick red grub that when consumed will greatly enhance your ability to perform certain tasks while inhibiting others; a foam that makes your enemy's armor brittle as glass; a statuette that when pried open releases an entity that is unseen yet provides a tangible presence, healing injuries and alleviating fatigue before phasing into another reality.
>>322886307
As you can probably tell, there is not a lot limiting the nature of Cyphers. They can be consumed to give a passive bonus to a number of skills or stats, such as Might/Speed/Intellect Pools, attack damage, speech skills, armor values versus a variety of damage types, etc. They can be projectiles thrown at enemies or allies for various effects. They can have instant one-time effects or last until the player next rests. They can even be set to trigger themselves when certain conditions are met. They can target one or many characters, or have an area of effect. Their usefulness isn't limited to combat either: though some can only be used in combat, others can be used during exploration and dialog, and some can even be used in both.
From a design perspective, the challenge of crafting numenera is one all too common: it's not hard to have plenty of crazy ideas, but the real work happens in determining what ideas work for this setting and this game. It is important to give each item enough character to stand out while not making them so unique that you create a crowded field of The One True Item. The templates set up by our programmers allow for a very wide variety of interesting items, and our excellent combat designers Jeremy Kopman and Evan Hill can help me with any custom scripting needed.
But the most important step of all happens once the items exist in the game – testing, polish and endless iteration to get them perfect for our backers. The Beta Test won't feature every last item in Sagus Cliffs – we're still working on the game after all – but it will contain a great cross-section of mundane items, Oddities, Artifacts and Cyphers for you to use and experiment with. We look forward to seeing your feedback once you get a chance to try them out.
The rest of the update is shoutouts, so I will not post it.
Thoughts?
>>322886197
How it looks is the last of my expectations with the game.
If it manages to be good where it matters, it could look like a Colecovision game for all I care.
>>322886441
Oh, also from a previous update:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1448081
>We were quite happy with the release of the Alpha Systems Test, in that it allowed us to collect useful feedback on even the smallest elements of the game. We want the Beta Test to be a continuation of that level of collaboration with our community, while also being a great first hands-on impression for Torment. And this is going to be a legitimate hands-on. While the Alpha Systems Tests could be finished in around 20 minutes, the upcoming Beta release will contain over 10 hours of gameplay on a normal playthrough.
Seriously though, without even going into the shifting definition of what Alpha and Beta are supposed to be, who wants to play an incomplete version of a game that is heavily dependent on its story for play ?
>>322886495
Looks as in it looks like it's gonna be crap.
Numenera setting is generic shit, and InXile devs can't write.
This won't even come close to the original Torment.
>>322886884
>Numenera setting is generic shit
I don't like it myself, but I don't know about generic. Or shit for that matter.
Certainly mediocre would be more honest.
>and InXile devs can't write.
On what do you base that opnion?
Wasteland 2? Cause the writing team of This game is fairly different and composed of people with a documented history of very good writing.
Hell, I would say W2's issue wasn't even so much the writing itself for the most part, but the absence of a central editor to maintain cohesion between the various parts of the game - whether from a writing or a gameplay standpoint really.
>>322887239
You know what the the problem with all of these kickstarter nostalgia-driven rpgs is?
They are bot passion projects. They are not driven by the desire of a single man, or a bunch of dudes to create something really original and new. They lack that spark of life.
Planescape Torment 1 was pretty much the vision of a single dude.
Nowadays, these games are made by guys who are washed up or burnt out ant trying to return to their glory days.
