I must say im glad to see a "stable" version of tome out with the latest beta, im having absolutely no problems playing it. In one of the earlier betas my game would hang every time I tried to load a save. A lot of fun, alchemists are overpowered imo since they get to use 2 powerful early artifact weapons (Well them and their golem) but im glad to see a fresh approach to the class instead of the essences to make potions and enchant weapons used in most *bands that use alchemist.
I have to ask about the design choice of a lot of the aspect of this game though. Most of it is taken directly from dragon age origins. Armor/defense, spellpower, the stats, most of the talents, stamina system, armor penetration, sustained cost of abilities, the concept to unlock the more advanced classes, seriously pretty much everything. Why was that choice made? It seems like a cheap way to get away from doing any serious creative design. You took the tolkein universe, put in dragon ages mechanics, and made a few changes for flavor. I mean you could have at least renamed the talents so it isnt that obvious.
A question on design choice
Moderator: Moderator
Re: A question on design choice
Armor/defense/penetration is surely not a DAO invention, if you go this route then WoW had it well before and many other games before it.
Stamina system is just a way to give a ressource to non magical classes which is again a pretty common thing.
Spellpower is a concept common to most spell casting games in a form or an other.
Unlocking options/classes/... is again a very generic concept. In diablo 2 IIRC you had to finish a difficulty level to unlock the next one, .. Anyway I did it because it allows to have tons of classes without presenting too many unobvious choices to the beginner.
Sustains yes I took it because it's the first time I see buffs handled in a sane way. It just makes sense.
The stats too because this is one of the rare stat systems where I could see a use for each stat for every classes.
As for the talents, the general organisation of having 4 of them in line is more of an accident actually I had planned something different but this was easier to do at first to test things out and it turned out to work very very well, since it forces each class to have an interresting amouont of talents. And yes I stole some physical talent names becauase they were good, you'll notice they dont always work the same too. The spells are more inspired by tome2 than DAO and all the other talents are wildly unknown to DAO (the wild gifts, the divine, many of the new cunning/techniques).
There are currently over 300 different talents, most of which are learnable by the player in a way or an other.
There are 15 playable and different classes.
There are over 30 different zones to explore with each their own peculiarities and level generators spread over two continents.
There are over 175 monsters, over 100 base objects with additional ego & artifacts.
There are over 15 quests tying all those together.
In just over 8 months of free-time coding (and this includes the creation from scratch of a completly new engine that allows such games to be made and is already being used to produce other games).
So yes I just took DAO and renamed a few things.
Stamina system is just a way to give a ressource to non magical classes which is again a pretty common thing.
Spellpower is a concept common to most spell casting games in a form or an other.
Unlocking options/classes/... is again a very generic concept. In diablo 2 IIRC you had to finish a difficulty level to unlock the next one, .. Anyway I did it because it allows to have tons of classes without presenting too many unobvious choices to the beginner.
Sustains yes I took it because it's the first time I see buffs handled in a sane way. It just makes sense.
The stats too because this is one of the rare stat systems where I could see a use for each stat for every classes.
As for the talents, the general organisation of having 4 of them in line is more of an accident actually I had planned something different but this was easier to do at first to test things out and it turned out to work very very well, since it forces each class to have an interresting amouont of talents. And yes I stole some physical talent names becauase they were good, you'll notice they dont always work the same too. The spells are more inspired by tome2 than DAO and all the other talents are wildly unknown to DAO (the wild gifts, the divine, many of the new cunning/techniques).
There are currently over 300 different talents, most of which are learnable by the player in a way or an other.
There are 15 playable and different classes.
There are over 30 different zones to explore with each their own peculiarities and level generators spread over two continents.
There are over 175 monsters, over 100 base objects with additional ego & artifacts.
There are over 15 quests tying all those together.
In just over 8 months of free-time coding (and this includes the creation from scratch of a completly new engine that allows such games to be made and is already being used to produce other games).
So yes I just took DAO and renamed a few things.
[tome] joylove: You can't just release an expansion like one would release a Kraken XD
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[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning
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[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning
Re: A question on design choice
I did not mean to sound angry, but really saying it's just a copy paste is pushing it a bit ...
[tome] joylove: You can't just release an expansion like one would release a Kraken XD
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[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning
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[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning
Re: A question on design choice
It's great you are playing the game, and seem to like it!
I was one of the people assisting DG in the alpha stages and a lot of ideas were flowing about! IIRC it was my idea to have schools (with Mastery) and talents but by now I can't quite remember... so no doubt someone will correct me! By the way I have not played Dragon Age - I don't have Windows or a game station!
Saying that we used ideas from Dragon age is not too surprising, but you could have used just about any other game out there (in the RPG genre) since there are only so many ways you can slice & dice this sort of game.
I believe, and the feedback present in this forum, seems to confirm that we have a good game!
If you have some issues with the game (like names of things, or how things work, or whatever) could you help us? One of the best things about a game like this is having the opportunity to change things by posting in the ideas forum. We really appreciate the feedback and the ideas so why not contribute?
I was one of the people assisting DG in the alpha stages and a lot of ideas were flowing about! IIRC it was my idea to have schools (with Mastery) and talents but by now I can't quite remember... so no doubt someone will correct me! By the way I have not played Dragon Age - I don't have Windows or a game station!
Saying that we used ideas from Dragon age is not too surprising, but you could have used just about any other game out there (in the RPG genre) since there are only so many ways you can slice & dice this sort of game.
I believe, and the feedback present in this forum, seems to confirm that we have a good game!
If you have some issues with the game (like names of things, or how things work, or whatever) could you help us? One of the best things about a game like this is having the opportunity to change things by posting in the ideas forum. We really appreciate the feedback and the ideas so why not contribute?
Regards
Jon.
Jon.
-
Mushroomhermit
- Thalore
- Posts: 159
- Joined: Wed Jul 07, 2010 4:11 pm
- Location: The Intardnet
Re: A question on design choice
Sustains were in Titan Quest and that predated DAO by a few years IIRC.
darkgod wrote:dixed
Re: A question on design choice
As someone with a lot of gaming experience...
DAO is a good game, it's not all that original though. (It would have been a better game I imagine if I'd played the pc version, the ps3 port was clumsy).
Anyway...
A progressive talent system it borrowed from WoW and I'm sure WoW probably borrowed it from someone else. Granted DOA put it's own spin on it via how it's organized but hardly original.
It's attribute system goes way way back to D and D. The only original modification DOA made was Cunning (unless this showed up someplace else and I missed it) and frankly, for computer gaming, it's a really good modification and works well. So, like every other rpg since D and D has done DG and crew borrowed it.
Mana goes clear back to a short story written in 1969 and has been used extensively by to many games to count. Stamina is just an extension of that. Again not original.
Many many many of DAOs talent come directly from other games, rather computer or table-top. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some of them came from Angband or even Tome 2.xx
Armor/Defense is nothing new. Armor goes way back and was used extensively in Tome 2 and other games long before DAO was even thought of. Defense is just D and D's AC system under a different name (again, not original).
Some of DAO may have provided ground work for Tome 4 just like many other games provided ground work for DOA but to say that makes Tome 4 unoriginal is well... it's ignorant. Every RPG made since D and D has borrowed from something, and even D and D stole much of it's material from guess who? J.R.R Tolkien.
tl;dr
Yes Tome borrows from other games but every game has for a long long time and DAO is no more original or unoriginal then Tome 4.
DAO is a good game, it's not all that original though. (It would have been a better game I imagine if I'd played the pc version, the ps3 port was clumsy).
Anyway...
A progressive talent system it borrowed from WoW and I'm sure WoW probably borrowed it from someone else. Granted DOA put it's own spin on it via how it's organized but hardly original.
It's attribute system goes way way back to D and D. The only original modification DOA made was Cunning (unless this showed up someplace else and I missed it) and frankly, for computer gaming, it's a really good modification and works well. So, like every other rpg since D and D has done DG and crew borrowed it.
Mana goes clear back to a short story written in 1969 and has been used extensively by to many games to count. Stamina is just an extension of that. Again not original.
Many many many of DAOs talent come directly from other games, rather computer or table-top. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some of them came from Angband or even Tome 2.xx
Armor/Defense is nothing new. Armor goes way back and was used extensively in Tome 2 and other games long before DAO was even thought of. Defense is just D and D's AC system under a different name (again, not original).
Some of DAO may have provided ground work for Tome 4 just like many other games provided ground work for DOA but to say that makes Tome 4 unoriginal is well... it's ignorant. Every RPG made since D and D has borrowed from something, and even D and D stole much of it's material from guess who? J.R.R Tolkien.
tl;dr
Yes Tome borrows from other games but every game has for a long long time and DAO is no more original or unoriginal then Tome 4.