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TYRANNY |OT| Sometimes, Evil Wins [Tiers For Fears]

Raytow

Member
Finished the game have a few questions:
Can you get Barik out of his armor?
Sirin headdress it is removable?
Kill in shadows magic affinity or whatever can you get her to cast spells?
 

Menome

Member
Oh. Things haven't gone as I was planning. Scarlet Chorus path spoilers ahead for Lethian's Crossing and Stalwart:

On my first mission of Act 2 for Voices Of Nerat, I progressed through all of Lethian's Crossing working happily for the Scarlet Chorus. At the end, I had the option to 'Break Alliance' and kill Zednya so that Nerat wouldn't get the secret to forging Iron. I let Nerat take him though.

Having now discovered that Nerat is prone to absorbing people's minds and sticking their bodies on a spike, I decided enough was enough and that I'd turn against Nerat in order to return Amelia to Ashe. However, no option to break the alliance came up during the conversation with Amelia and I doomed her to impalement and her child to an unknown fate.

Now I feel terrible and I've been forced into a route I wasn't planning on taking.
 

Purkake4

Banned
These are all good examples of how confusing this system often is. Josh Sawyer admirably sought out to solve the "problems" of D&D but in the attempt, ended up with something a good deal more obscure, hard to learn, and less fun to play.
This is classic Obsidian to be honest, rebuild something from scratch without realizing that they are still stuck in the same farrow that caused the problems in the first place.

Tabletop RPGs have moved on. There's no reason (bar nostalgia) to have levels or d20 rolls. Just borrow Storyteller from your buddy Paradox, I'm sure they're happy to share it. Dice pools and non-linear leveling are the ways to go. Also makes difficulty a much more natural curve instead of getting murdered by monsters 2 levels higher than you or whatever.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Alright I checked out a few things over lunch:

It effects ranged as well. See below. Lantry has a -1 penalty to damage due to a low Might score

I've raised his Might to 10 in both playthroughs just so there's no negative. The first point shows a change right away, while the second doesn't in the character screen, but it does change his quill toss damage by a single point. Seems like Might for physical is almost as bad as Finesse is for spells.


Magic accuracy is a combination of the the accuracy of the attack (calculated based on your skill in the disciplilne and your Lore stat) with a bonus accuracy equal to 1/2 of your Magic Staff skill. The Magic Staff skill is where Finesse comes in.

In the example below Lantry's Magic Staff skill is 46 so he gets a bonus of 23 Accuracy to the attack. Given that it takes 2 points of Finesse to increase the Staff score you will only see an accuracy increase in Magic for every 4 points invested in Finesse. Very diminishing returns but it is accurate.

It sounds like it's not even worth raising at all for spells then. Even for a disabler.

Is there an option that I'm missing that delays inspection text from disappearing? I feel like most of the time I have to spead read just to read it all, and even then I often have to click the icon again just to make sure I didn't overlook something.
 
Tabletop RPGs have moved on. There's no reason (bar nostalgia) to have levels or d20 rolls. Just borrow Storyteller from your buddy Paradox, I'm sure they're happy to share it. Dice pools and non-linear leveling are the ways to go. Also makes difficulty a much more natural curve instead of getting murdered by monsters 2 levels higher than you or whatever.

D&D and Pathfinder are still the most popular pen and paper RPGs by several orders of magnitude, so I'm not sure how you can consider PnP games to have "moved on" from d20s and levels. I think those things come down to subjective preferences more than anything else, but your claim that "Dice pools... makes difficulty a much more natural curve instead of getting murdered by monsters 2 levels higher than you or whatever." is just mathematically egregious. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Dice pools (or any system where you're rolling a bunch of dice) have much lower variance than rolling a single die, which means that the results cluster much more tightly around the mean, which has the effect of exaggerating, not diminishing, small differences in character stats.
 

Purkake4

Banned
D&D and Pathfinder are still the most popular pen and paper RPGs by several orders of magnitude, so I'm not sure how you can consider PnP games to have "moved on" from d20s and levels. I think those things come down to subjective preferences more than anything else, but your claim that "Dice pools... makes difficulty a much more natural curve instead of getting murdered by monsters 2 levels higher than you or whatever." is just mathematically egregious. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Dice pools (or any system where you're rolling a bunch of dice) have much lower variance than rolling a single die, which means that the results cluster much more tightly around the mean, which has the effect of exaggerating, not diminishing, small differences in character stats.
Pathfinder and DnD are catering to nostalgia. D20 works well as long as you're using low modifiers. That 20 loses its meaning when you're adding another 20 in modifiers on top of it or when your damage is 1d12+34.

Dice pools allow for better scaling. Say you need 2 hits and your average dice pool is 5, you have a ~50% chance to succeed. Let's say you're doing something tough, you need 4 hits and you've buffed your dice pool up to 10, you now have a ~35% chance to succeed. The system stays together for a longer time, bonuses and penalties don't need to get obscene to matter and the rolling itself rather than the modifier determine the outcome. That guy rolling 1d12+34 doesn't care if he rolls a 1 on the die, he still kicks ass. With that dice pool of 10 you still have a ~3% chance to get no successes.
 

Moff

Member
where do you find the missing charcoal rubbings for the teleporter riddles for the 2 spires in the stone sea? am I supposed to find them right away or later?
 

Anoxida

Member
What a treat this game is. I was so disappointed with Dishonored 2's pc performance that I decided to get this while waiting for a patch and now I couldn't care less about DH2. My GotY so far. What a world they set up with this game. It truly deserves a bigger and more ambitious (bigger budget) entry but I doubt it'll sell enough to even warrant an expansion. I liked PoE a lot but this is a much better effort from Obsidian
 
What a treat this game is. I was so disappointed with Dishonored 2's pc performance that I decided to get this while waiting for a patch and now I couldn't care less about DH2. My GotY so far. What a world they set up with this game. It truly deserves a bigger and more ambitious (bigger budget) entry but I doubt it'll sell enough to even warrant an expansion. I liked PoE a lot but this is a much better effort from Obsidian

65k sales in about 3 days seems pretty good to me for a game of this scope. Word of mouth seems good and I suspect this will end up as a nice success for Paradox and Obsidian.
 

jonjonaug

Member
Finished the game have a few questions:
Can you get Barik out of his armor?
Sirin headdress it is removable?
Kill in shadows magic affinity or whatever can you get her to cast spells?
No, no, dunno. To be fair Barik doesn't want his armor removed and the only people who could remove the helmet have zero reason to tell you.
 

Anoxida

Member
65k sales in about 3 days seems pretty good to me for a game of this scope. Word of mouth seems good and I suspect this will end up as a nice success for Paradox and Obsidian.

I think 200K @ full price is about as well we can expect. It's not bad, I'm sure they don't lose money on the game, but will it bring in enough money to warrant that amount of work to make a sequel? Unless the first game is hugely popular sequels tend to do worse. But now that I think about it some more yeah, an expansion will probably happen especially since I've heard the games ending sets up for a continuation.


Just curious, how buggy have you guys finding the game?

Haven't encountered a single bug in 25 hours. Although I bet there's bugs that's not easily spotted. Game's like these always have stats/skills/talents that are not working.
 

jonjonaug

Member
Just curious, how buggy have you guys finding the game?
Less buggy than expected for an Obsidian game at release. Nothing game breaking, mostly just typos and a couple of badly set flags relating to your character background in text that most players probably won't encounter.
 
I think 200K @ full price is about as well we can expect. It's not bad, I'm sure they don't lose money on the game, but will it bring in enough money to warrant that amount of work to make a sequel? Unless the first game is hugely popular sequels tend to do worse. But now that I think about it some more yeah, an expansion will probably happen especially since I've heard the games ending sets up for a continuation.

This is obviously very premature at this stage but I don't see why full price is that important as long as the game continues to generate revenue. The game clearly wasn't very expensive. It was made using existing tech and systems derived from Pillars, doesn't have lots of FMV or voice acting, a huge marketing budget, and seems to have released on time. I fully expect this to be an evergreen title for Obsidian and Paradox.

Sure the game isn't going to have the kind of success that will prompt them to reignite the original Project North Carolina version of the game and turn it into a major 3D console RPG. But it's a rich world with cool lore and the type of thing that could not only produce expansions and sequels but other genres with the same IP (turn based, CCG, etc).

Less buggy than expected for an Obsidian game at release. Nothing game breaking, mostly just typos and a couple of badly set flags relating to your character background in text that most players probably won't encounter.
Pillars wasn't in notably bad shape either- it was approximately just as buggy as pretty much every other major or minor CRPG released the past couple of years. Between Pillars, Tyranny, and Dungeon Siege 3 it seems pretty clear that Obsidian does really well when working with their own in-house tech.
 
Less buggy than expected for an Obsidian game at release. Nothing game breaking, mostly just typos and a couple of badly set flags relating to your character background in text that most players probably won't encounter.

There's a couple of other ones. I had one time when I killed an enemy Rogue right as he went stealth, and the result was an invisible, unkillable enemy who walked around doing chip damage... had to redo the encounter.
 

MartyStu

Member
There's a couple of other ones. I had one time when I killed an enemy Rogue right as he went stealth, and the result was an invisible, unkillable enemy who walked around doing chip damage... had to redo the encounter.

There are also some annoying sound issues here and there.
 

Anoxida

Member
This is obviously very premature at this stage but I don't see why full price is that important as long as the game continues to generate revenue. The game clearly wasn't very expensive. It was made using existing tech and systems derived from Pillars, doesn't have lots of FMV or voice acting, a huge marketing budget, and seems to have released on time. I fully expect this to be an evergreen title for Obsidian and Paradox.

Sure the game isn't going to have the kind of success that will prompt them to reignite the original Project North Carolina version of the game and turn it into a major 3D console RPG. But it's a rich world with cool lore and the type of thing that could not only produce expansions and sequels but other genres with the same IP (turn based, CCG, etc).

I hope you're right. It's a damn fine game. But I'll play the pessimist (that way I don't get sad)
 

Tacitus_

Member
Without any spoilers, can someone explain what the major reputation locks for loyalty/fear for companions are? Are they special events you have to find, a story milestone, or just accumulating enough loyalty?

Do you mean the [gain major loyalty/fear]. Just gotta do something they reaaaally hate. Dunno if that's required for the bar to move to the breakpoints.

1Cn87z0.png
 

Bebpo

Banned
where do you find the missing charcoal rubbings for the teleporter riddles for the 2 spires in the stone sea? am I supposed to find them right away or later?

One you actually buy from a shop in Heldfast (I think the town name is something like that), the other one I didn't find but the game made a comment that it was symmetrical and I should be able to figure it out from 2 which I was after about 10 minutes of trial & error.

Just curious, how buggy have you guys finding the game?

Mostly minor bugs and glitches (definitely a decent amount of these), and one major issue that is locking some people out of an entire area's optional questline currently.
 

Onemic

Member
Random NPCs are walking encyclopedias. Convo trees go like 5-6 (with ~5+ choices on some) layers deep in some cases.

Guess I'll wait for the Christmas sale then. There's a point where have so much text just feels like a chore. Based on the Torment beta, I feel like that game will be similar as well.
 

Yojimbo99

Neo Member
There is a quest to clear Rust Canyon, then when done go back and talk to Teodor (Think that is his name). Quest says he is in Rust Canyon, but I can't find him and he is not back at the camp. The map does not show him. Anyone have this issue or maybe know where he might have wandered off to?
 

Lorcain

Member
How is the combat vs PoE?
I'm only a few hours in, but so far it's better, and I played a ton of PoE. I've been able to play a "War Mage" type character that actually works well. He switches between spear/shield combat and ice mage on the fly, with talents that build synergy between both trees (like changing the standard spear thrust attack into a magic spear thrust that grants a buff to magic damage). It seems well thought out.

All of the options for combat that I liked from PoE are there:
- I can slow combat speed manually, or set it to slow for all encounters.
- Auto-Pause can be customized a bazillion different ways.
- Companion combat AI can be changed or turned off, and works pretty well

It's like an enhanced PoE combat system.
 
How is the combat vs PoE?

Personally, I prefer POE. Mainly because I like the tactical options of a 6 person party versus 4. I also think the learning curve in POE is gentler, at least on hard. In Tyranny I get my ass handed to me more often mainly because the lack of trash mobs (and lower frequency of combat in general) made it take a little bit of time to get my bearings.
 

Menome

Member
Oh. Things haven't gone as I was planning. Scarlet Chorus path spoilers ahead for Lethian's Crossing and Stalwart:

On my first mission of Act 2 for Voices Of Nerat, I progressed through all of Lethian's Crossing working happily for the Scarlet Chorus. At the end, I had the option to 'Break Alliance' and kill Zednya so that Nerat wouldn't get the secret to forging Iron. I let Nerat take him though.

Having now discovered that Nerat is prone to absorbing people's minds and sticking their bodies on a spike, I decided enough was enough and that I'd turn against Nerat in order to return Amelia to Ashe. However, no option to break the alliance came up during the conversation with Amelia and I doomed her to impalement and her child to an unknown fate.

Now I feel terrible and I've been forced into a route I wasn't planning on taking.

After this turn of events, I have decided to restart the game. I've done evil things in Tyranny, but I can't go on having abandoned
a newborn child
to Voices of Nerat. That's my line (Plus I don't have any saves far back enough to change things for the better).
 

Bebpo

Banned
There is a quest to clear Rust Canyon, then when done go back and talk to Teodor (Think that is his name). Quest says he is in Rust Canyon, but I can't find him and he is not back at the camp. The map does not show him. Anyone have this issue or maybe know where he might have wandered off to?

Glitch/Bug. Dude is gone, can't report or finish the quest. I had the same thing. He disappears after you clear the top left of the map.
 
Pathfinder and DnD are catering to nostalgia. D20 works well as long as you're using low modifiers. That 20 loses its meaning when you're adding another 20 in modifiers on top of it or when your damage is 1d12+34.

Dice pools allow for better scaling. Say you need 2 hits and your average dice pool is 5, you have a ~50% chance to succeed. Let's say you're doing something tough, you need 4 hits and you've buffed your dice pool up to 10, you now have a ~35% chance to succeed. The system stays together for a longer time, bonuses and penalties don't need to get obscene to matter and the rolling itself rather than the modifier determine the outcome. That guy rolling 1d12+34 doesn't care if he rolls a 1 on the die, he still kicks ass. With that dice pool of 10 you still have a ~3% chance to get no successes.

Part of the appeal of D&D and Pathfinder is nostalgia, certainly, but D&D 5th edition has seen the largest influx of new players in decades (much to my chagrin, I think it's a big step down from 4th) so I think claiming it only appeals to nostalgia is selling it short.

To address the issue of scaling, I think what you're missing is in a system with a single die plus a bonus, the absolute value of the bonus doesn't actually matter. What matters is the value of the bonus relative to the target number. So, in the example you've given, if I'm rolling 1d20+34 vs a difficulty of 10, then sure, I don't really care what I roll; I'm guaranteed to succeed. However, if I'm rolling 1d20+34 vs a difficulty of 45, now I have fifty-fifty chance of failure, and my die roll matters a great deal.

Now, some systems that use 1d20 don't take this into account. D&D 3.x is notorious for this, and at high levels the math completely breaks down, leaving almost every check to be an auto success or auto failure. More mathematically sound systems, however, do take this into account, and actually scale very well. D&D 4th and PoE are in this camp, and those systems are designed so that the relative difference between bonuses and difficulties changes only very slowly, so that odds of success and failure are relatively constant as you level up (assuming you're going against enemies of a similar level). D&D 5th doesn't do this quite as well, but it still mostly holds together.

I think die pool systems are actually doomed to scale worse than well designed single-die systems. As you increase the number of dice, you run into two different problems. The first is that it takes longer and longer to first count out the number of dice you need to roll, then roll them, and then figure out the result. Up to ten dice it's not so bad but beyond there, like you might see in Exalted, it starts getting pretty crazy. The other problem is that each die you add doesn't just change the mean value of the roll, but also the distribution. This makes it very difficult for players to have a clear sense of the odds of a roll succeeding (without breaking out a graphing calculator, I have no idea what the odds are of getting five successes on twelve dice is), and it means that as you have more and more dice in the pool, the odds of someone with a smaller pool beating someone with a larger pool gets smaller and smaller, even if the relative difference in the pool size stays the same. Both of these factors put a cap on the maximum practical size of the pool. I can roll 1d20 + 34 and it's not really any different than rolling 1d20 + 3, but believe me when I say that rolling 3d10 is a whole lot easier than rolling 34d10.
 

Almighty

Member
There is a quest to clear Rust Canyon, then when done go back and talk to Teodor (Think that is his name). Quest says he is in Rust Canyon, but I can't find him and he is not back at the camp. The map does not show him. Anyone have this issue or maybe know where he might have wandered off to?

I could be mistaken, but
I am pretty sure he moves next the big tent, the one with the text about how they are using the environment to hold it up or something, in the Unbroken camp when you clear that area
. Though I don't think the map shows his new location. I am almost positive I found him there unless I am thinking of someone else.
 

Onemic

Member
I'm only a few hours in, but so far it's better, and I played a ton of PoE. I've been able to play a "War Mage" type character that actually works well. He switches between spear/shield combat and ice mage on the fly, with talents that build synergy between both trees (like changing the standard spear thrust attack into a magic spear thrust that grants a buff to magic damage). It seems well thought out.

All of the options for combat that I liked from PoE are there:
- I can slow combat speed manually, or set it to slow for all encounters.
- Auto-Pause can be customized a bazillion different ways.
- Companion combat AI can be changed or turned off, and works pretty well

It's like an enhanced PoE combat system.

Been a while since I did POE, but overall more creative but less intuitive in how you affect the battle.

Sweet, I always like making war mage characters, so this is a big plus.
 

mbpm1

Member
Speaking of war mages, with how spell creation works you can basically tailor spells and give them to your party members, which is pretty cool.

With my general party I've been able to give pretty much all characters either a healing or offense spell, made so it fits within their general intelligence requirements.

Even my tank character can start off with a softening (weaker) fireball before closing distance.
 

Purkake4

Banned
I think die pool systems are actually doomed to scale worse than well designed single-die systems. As you increase the number of dice, you run into two different problems. The first is that it takes longer and longer to first count out the number of dice you need to roll, then roll them, and then figure out the result. Up to ten dice it's not so bad but beyond there, like you might see in Exalted, it starts getting pretty crazy. The other problem is that each die you add doesn't just change the mean value of the roll, but also the distribution. This makes it very difficult for players to have a clear sense of the odds of a roll succeeding (without breaking out a graphing calculator, I have no idea what the odds are of getting five successes on twelve dice is), and it means that as you have more and more dice in the pool, the odds of someone with a smaller pool beating someone with a larger pool gets smaller and smaller, even if the relative difference in the pool size stays the same. Both of these factors put a cap on the maximum practical size of the pool. I can roll 1d20 + 34 and it's not really any different than rolling 1d20 + 3, but believe me when I say that rolling 3d10 is a whole lot easier than rolling 34d10.
That is an obvious practical problem, I was talking mechanically in the context of adapting systems for use in crpgs.

Obviously a well designed system is better than a poorly designed one. Which was very much my suggestion to take a true and tested system (honestly, any of them) instead of making one up without the years of playtesting that go into tabletop systems. What we ended up with is a system with a huge amount of modifiers that are hard to keep track of as a player, but change the moment-to-moment gameplay very little. This on top of all the little code bugs that come with implementing that many modifiers.
 

itxaka

Defeatist
I think the game itself just doesn't support cross-save. Just tried with my Mac and my PC savegames aren't available. Same story with Civilization V and probably other games – it's not supported by default.

ahh that sucks. Thanks!
 
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