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Eric the Mauve posted:This game looks like it would be a lot of fun to play if you could cheat like a bastard to get through combat situations Unlike just about every other RPG, you don't have to fight anyone if you don't want to.
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Aug 29, 2017 01:00
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I was really hoping to get to an optional combat encounter in this update, but it was dragging out too long. Next update will show how to do one of the optional, hard fights in the game as a completely noncombat character. Part 4 - Delar Time 
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Aug 29, 2017 02:47
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hahaha "unfortunate accidents are in high demand these days"
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Aug 29, 2017 03:15
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For game creators who were constantly smelling their own farts about a lot of things, they sure dropped the ball making iron a superior weapon material to bronze.
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Aug 29, 2017 03:48
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The 40 Thieves are probably more bloodthirsty because nobody pays them to kill or not kill, so they can do as they please. But when you're an assassin and you kill off the clock, it's like, well, maybe I can just get a free murder by setting up these guys right?
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Aug 29, 2017 04:33
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wiegieman posted:For game creators who were constantly smelling their own farts about a lot of things, they sure dropped the ball making iron a superior weapon material to bronze. It sort of is. I mean "iron" is actually "steel", and steel is a lot nicer then bronze. And a lot more common.
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Aug 29, 2017 04:49
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Coolguye posted:hahaha "unfortunate accidents are in high demand these days" I'm reminded of the Mitchell and Webb sketch where a Bond villain's henchman complained about needlessly ambiguous terms. They spent nine months just hoping Professor Ritson would have an accident before it was clear it was an accident they were supposed to cause.
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Aug 29, 2017 04:50
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You are making this look easy, that mine quest is as far as I got on my attempts at this in the demo (expect for the assassin who kept getting killed by the first mark's guard) - didn't have high enough sneak or the disguise, so ended up having to fight like 4-5 dudes and predictably died.  It does demonstrate the different design phylosophy in play here, most modern RPG's would still let you brute force or fumble your way through it, and then just have you miss out on some loot or not pay a bonus reward for doing it the sneaky/talky way. Avalerion fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Aug 29, 2017 |
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Aug 29, 2017 07:30
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Avalerion posted:You are making this look easy, that mine quest is as far as I got on my attempts at this in the demo (expect for the assassin who kept getting killed by the first mark's guard) - didn't have high enough sneak or the disguise, so ended up having to fight like 4-5 dudes and predictably died. It would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, to play a thief this way for most of AoD's lifespan. The thief skills required a lot of investment and, other than lockpicking, just weren't very useful outside of the 40 Thieves storyline. When I played a 40 Thieves character it was easier to just invest in talking and combat skills, which is a positive for how flexible character building was that a thief didn't need to know how to steal but a knock on how useless thieving was. Since then they: - Added many, many more thieving opportunities - Tuned down the amount of thief skill levels needed for a lot of thief skill checks - Most importantly added the free SP for using thief skills which effectively gives you a partial rebate you can use to invest in other social skills People call the devs haughty but from playing the very first public demo (which i though was terrible and gave them poo poo for on their official forums) to early in early access to now I can see how they listened to feedback to make AoD much better. Although to be fair I also know the general thresholds for skills from playing the game a lot. Janissary Hop fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Aug 29, 2017 |
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Aug 29, 2017 11:18
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Janissary Hop posted:Part 4 - Delar Time
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Aug 29, 2017 12:07
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Is the setting in this some kind of our world but alt-history rome, or just inspired?
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Aug 29, 2017 12:51
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Xander77 posted:The Roman empire did collapse due to the Muslims (the Ottoman Turks, to be specific). Matter of historical record. Oh, you're one of those people who obsess over the Byzantines as acutal Italian Romans.
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Aug 29, 2017 13:00
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Xander77 posted:The Roman empire did collapse due to the Muslims (the Ottoman Turks, to be specific). Matter of historical record. If you think about it, calling the ERE the "Roman Empire" is a lot like calling Mystery Science Theater 3000 "Mystery Science Theater 3000" after Joel left (this is just a joke please don't get mad ERE and MST3K fans)
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Aug 29, 2017 13:15
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Velisarius posted:Oh, you're one of those people who obsess over the Byzantines as acutal Italian Romans. Best name/post combo.
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Aug 29, 2017 13:17
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Avalerion posted:Is the setting in this some kind of our world but alt-history rome, or just inspired? Our world but alt-history Rome. There are other national/cultural analogs. Scythians are mysteriously directly referenced by name for some reason though, probably an oversight in a weapon description.
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Aug 29, 2017 13:17
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Velisarius posted:Oh, you're one of those people who obsess over the Byzantines as acutal Italian Romans.
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Aug 29, 2017 13:17
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Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans; we refer to them as Byzantines to save the confusion. I mean, was the Holy Roman Empire Roman as well?
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Aug 29, 2017 14:25
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Sure, to the extent it was holy and an empire 
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Aug 29, 2017 14:41
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The Pope just hated the fact the Empress was a woman, so crowned a successful Frankish warlord to spite her.
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Aug 29, 2017 14:48
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I played through the Teran opening as a Merc and as a Merchant before. Really enjoying seeing the thiefs point of view. Combat being so disgustingly difficult I'm curious if you can just avoid all of it forever as a thief.
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Aug 29, 2017 15:04
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krisslanza posted:It sort of is. I mean "iron" is actually "steel", and steel is a lot nicer then bronze. And a lot more common. Steel is, but iron took over because of disruption in the tin trade (and because it's literally dirt cheap.) But okay, there were enough steel producers back then for it to be feasible that there's still enough around in the ruins of alt-Rome. Just keep in mind that wrought iron was typically the rule.
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Aug 29, 2017 17:28
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All those failed CHA checks make me wonder: Is it interesting for a talky loremaster or talky hybrid (wo)man to have crazy high CHA stat (8-9) ? Or is it as disappointing as Fallout 2?
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Aug 29, 2017 21:14
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letgomyAgo posted:I played through the Teran opening as a Merc and as a Merchant before. Really enjoying seeing the thiefs point of view. Merchants and praetors can avoid all potential fights in their story lines. I believe thieves have one fight that is completely unavoidable, but you have allies for it. Assassins and Imperial Guardsmen get locked into quite a few completely unavoidable fights. OutofSight posted:All those failed CHA checks make me wonder: Is it interesting for a talky loremaster or talky hybrid (wo)man to have crazy high CHA stat (8-9) ? In terms of story you get a lot of lore and background on the characters to understand why they're all such assholes. Mechanically you get a lot of free skill training and charisma itself is checked in some skill checks / unlocks hidden dialogue options. It's definitely something you can build around.
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Aug 29, 2017 22:23
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Part 5 - Bomber Man
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Aug 30, 2017 00:20
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Man, once we find that guy again, its totally gonna be big! Certainly not going to get hosed over again, that's for sure!
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Aug 30, 2017 00:50
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okay, THAT was funny as hell.
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Aug 30, 2017 01:00
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wiegieman posted:Steel is, but iron took over because of disruption in the tin trade (and because it's literally dirt cheap.) But okay, there were enough steel producers back then for it to be feasible that there's still enough around in the ruins of alt-Rome. Just keep in mind that wrought iron was typically the rule. I actually got into a similar discussion with a friend, due to the prevalence of games having both "iron" and "steel" as materials. The way he explained it is, while wrought iron is a thing, you could never make a feasible weapon or armor out of the thing, its just too shoddy. Any actual iron of usable quality would actually be steel, albeit probably some pretty low quality steel, but steel nonetheless. Presumably the 'divide' in many games is probably to blame from D&D? Since that had iron and steel as separate things. Who knows! Janissary Hop posted:Part 5 - Bomber Man Oh my god that face. It's great.
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Aug 30, 2017 01:53
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it all has to do with the amount of effort you're willing or able to put in. a sharpened hunk of iron requires a smelter and a lot of hammering, and produces one product. steel requires more specific crucibles, extra steps, and an entire intermediate material (pig iron). there's plenty of peoples in the rise and fall of civilizations that have totally known how to make high quality steel, but they can't spare the people and the money to build the extra tools, maintain the tools, gather all the extra supplies, train and maintain the specialists, etc etc etc. technology isn't just a matter of figuring things out, is basically what i'm driving at here. it's reasonable to only find high quality steel in big cities just because little towns can't spare the man-hours from the farms, wells, and walls to maintain the process. especially in the setting given by AoD, i would not be surprised even a little bit if there were multiple smiths that had all the knowledge they needed to produce king-quality steel, but they lost everything in the war and now they can't afford the tools to do anything but hammer out raw smelted iron ore - so you could legitimately have a master-class smith who can only make crap tools part time because he has to go farm for most of the day to feed himself.
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Aug 30, 2017 02:34
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...I'm surprised we didn't get any kind of reputation out of that whole scenario. Well, body count, I guess.
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Aug 30, 2017 03:48
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Janissary Hop posted:Part 5 - Bomber Man J... Jorgi? 
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Aug 30, 2017 07:08
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holy poo poo
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Aug 30, 2017 07:19
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Also remember that nobody really started melting down iron until relatively recently, because that dramatically reduces the carbon content. That's why pig iron is needed for steel: it has too much carbon, so it is decarburized in a finery forge or puddling furnace (if you have refractory bricks for the furnace, because this will have molten pig iron in it) to make mild steel (although typically puddling is used to make wrought iron.) There were other ways: a bloomery with a lot of carbon would put out iron with a high enough carbon content and with a lot of slag that was difficult to work without over-decarburizing, crucible steel seals off the whole mix for good ingredient control but can only be done in small batches and produces a product that is inferior in a number of ways (for example, crucible steel wears quickly.) Metallurgy is really involved and kinda takes forever is what I'm getting at. That said, there's so much iron around that with enough manpower anything is possible. Pig iron has been reliably produced since the time of ancient Egypt. And then there's case hardening, which another matter entirely. wiegieman fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Aug 30, 2017 |
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Aug 30, 2017 07:30
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Do you have to let Miltiades go at the end, or could you then just shank him after that last convo anyway? I wonder how this would have ended up if they just went all in on the CYOA thing and let even combat encounters be resolved by making choices and skill checks in dialogue...
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Aug 30, 2017 08:00
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Janissary Hop posted:The combat is hard but by no means impossible or something players need to carefully tip toe around. There is a learning curve, just like with most things that are hard but ultimately rewarding. I assume people who make complaints like these about AoD combat are not brain dead and have appropriately statted their character since they have probably played RPGs other than AoD, but I still wonder: Just starting to read the LP now, but this description helps me decide about the game (I no longer have the time for massive consumables and crafts in my gaming). I have to say, the initiating dialogue for the first thief quest could be more encouraging: Cado: "This merchant will be assassinated at midnight. Go rob him before midnight. You: Option A, "I will do what you say." Wait until midnight instead of going now as asked. Option B, argue. I assume there's scads of text in this game and some mistakes just slipped through? Because that sort of thing would drive me crazy in play.
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Aug 30, 2017 15:05
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Glazius posted:...I'm surprised we didn't get any kind of reputation out of that whole scenario. Sadly there is no reputation for "got scammed twice in a row." Maybe negative prestige. Avalerion posted:Do you have to let Miltiades go at the end, or could you then just shank him after that last convo anyway? You can just kill him whenever, or not even go with him to begin with. Whole thing is totally optional. Narsham posted:I assume there's scads of text in this game and some mistakes just slipped through? Because that sort of thing would drive me crazy in play. Combo of more text than the bible and no one on the dev team being what could be called a "writer."
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Aug 30, 2017 23:59
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Yeah the text is trying a little too transparently to be CRPGish and never saw any meaningful editing for sure. Still probably going to pick this up whenever it goes on sale, looks like a fun way to kill some time and mildly exercise the brain
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Aug 31, 2017 01:32
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Part 6 - Highway Robbery
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Aug 31, 2017 02:48
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So there's little to no interaction between the factions, or is it just the 40 thieves that are so insular?
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Aug 31, 2017 12:50
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Deceitful Penguin posted:So there's little to no interaction between the factions, or is it just the 40 thieves that are so insular? Hey, got to steal something from the Imperial Guard that was then used to get away with stealing from the Merchants and Antidas. There will be more direct interaction coming up.
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Aug 31, 2017 15:16
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Janissary Hop posted:Hey, got to steal something from the Imperial Guard that was then used to get away with stealing from the Merchants and Antidas. There will be more direct interaction coming up. I guess I'm just kinda more used to being able to join in orgs more. I suppose we could have gotten in better with the nobles?
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Aug 31, 2017 21:20
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