Age of Decadence - Forum Tidbits

Dhruin

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Vince D. Weller has responded to a question about the length of The Age of Decadence on the official forums. Nothing we didn't broadly know already but it provides additional insight into the non-linear nature of the game:
114 quests at the moment, including the main quest. As was stated before you won't get more than 60% in the course of one game. Most likely you'll get about 30-50 quests per game.
Let's use Teron as an example.

You have 4 main story quests.

3 quests per faction (House Daratan (different from the main quest), assassins, merchants, thieves, imperial guards) = 15 quests.

5 side quests, including solutions to the previously mentioned quests. For example, IF you're working for the Thieves Guild and IF you decide to handle one of the quests in a certain way, then the price for securing an NPC's support is doing a quest for him.

So, overall we have 24 quests plus 7 vignette quests, so that's 31 quests right there. However, when you are playing the game you'll get 1 vignette quest, 4 main quests, up to 3 faction quests, and up to 3 side quests, so that's only 5-11 quests.
More information.
 
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It appears that this game will be very short. It doesn't look like it has any timesinks to take up a player's time. How long can 30-50 quests really take without lots of walking and combat? 2-3 hours?
 
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It's hard to decide which quality of Vince D. Dweller defines him best, his devotion to the hobby he loves or his immense stubbornness. He seems determined to make the kind of CRPG that "the masses" he rejects insists can't be done or can't succeed commercially.

The Age of Decadence is reminding me more and more of the story of Rudy, the kid who always wanted to play for Notre Dame but couldn't, because he was just too small. He tried anyway, and refused to give up, and achieved in the end a symbolic victory that's still celebrated by college football fans today.

Vince may someday become the one to finally take our genre beyond the limitations of individual games with individual versions. Instead of packing quests and storyline into a single game, he might someday create an RPG universe where versions exist in a variety of overlapping iterations. Instead of selling it as a complete project, he might grant players access in logical amounts that could be determined arithmetically and in coorespondence with their role-playing choices.

There's lots of money to be made with subscription pricing. Vince could be the one who does it first. We'll see.
 
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It appears that this game will be very short. It doesn't look like it has any timesinks to take up a player's time. How long can 30-50 quests really take without lots of walking and combat? 2-3 hours?

What sort of game have you been playing where quests are 6 minutes long? (3 hours / 30). The number of quests means nothing in term of hour as a single quest can take up to several hours to finish. Not to mention that cities and countryside will certainly need to be explored(and that may take a lot of time) .
 
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It appears that this game will be very short. It doesn't look like it has any timesinks to take up a player's time. How long can 30-50 quests really take without lots of walking and combat? 2-3 hours?

hm, 180 minutes for 50 quests would be 3.6 min per quest ;-) I know some people who played BG without reading any dialogue, and rushing about madly. I guess if one does that, it might indeed be a very short game. Your assessment does however ignore exploration: if the world is rich and varied, and the quests require it, you need to speak to many people, travel to interesting places (with not-so-random encounters on the way) etc. And 'exploration' in this sense is not simply walking from A to B (which does get tedious). From all that I've read and seen this game holds tremednous promise and I for one am looking foward to it.
 
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It appears that this game will be very short. It doesn't look like it has any timesinks to take up a player's time. How long can 30-50 quests really take without lots of walking and combat? 2-3 hours?
So, basically, an average game is 2-3 hours of gameplay plus 20-30 hours of random combat and walking? Sweet. Anyway, AoD is not a "very short" game and if you think that your gameplay would consist of clicking on the best dialogue line 30 times, you're mistaken.
 
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It's hard to decide which quality of Vince D. Dweller defines him best, his devotion to the hobby he loves or his immense stubbornness. He seems determined to make the kind of CRPG that "the masses" he rejects insists can't be done or can't succeed commercially.
I'm determined to make the kind of CRPG that I like and want to play myself. If it sells, I'll make more. If it doesn't sell, I'll know that I tried and accept the facts.
 
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So, basically, an average game is 2-3 hours of gameplay plus 20-30 hours of random combat and walking?

2-3 hours might be an exaggeration, but I don't think it is that far off from the truth. You could certainly complete all of the quests in Fallout in that length of time if you took out all of the combat and map travel.

VDweller said:
Anyway, AoD is not a "very short" game and if you think that your gameplay would consist of clicking on the best dialogue line 30 times, you're mistaken.

If I play as a diplomatic character in AOD, what else could it consist of? I'm still going to be going from point A to point B, selecting the best dialogue option to solve the quest and then returning to point A to collect my reward. I might even have to go to point C or I might get to choose from several different point Bs, but it is still not going to take more than 5-10 minutes either way.
 
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I would imagine pure diplomacy as a bad gaming angle if given 100% trait from the game start, it obviously must be built up as the game progresses. Other combat type trait/skills would be needed as default...surely? ...even the most diplomatic king has a poisoned dagger tucked in his robe!
 
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Could just be me, but it seems like a very reasonable amount of quest based from past experiences...And unless Im mistaken the way its set up it leaves the door open to replayability as well, if you wish to play the game from a different angle.

It sounds good to me anyway =).
 
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Sounds good to me, especially given that different builds will have a significant number of alternate paths through the game.
 
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Will it ever be released would be my concern. Will Vince become Cleve and never release his game because it never fully satisfies him. It seems like AoD has been talked about for a LONG time. I'm not a big fan of non-magic worlds so it doesn't matter that much to me, but I hope he releases it before he loses credibility. Hinterlands looks like it might beat AoD to the door and we've hardly discussed it at all.
 
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Will it ever be released would be my concern. Will Vince become Cleve and never release his game because it never fully satisfies him. It seems like AoD has been talked about for a LONG time. I'm not a big fan of non-magic worlds so it doesn't matter that much to me, but I hope he releases it before he loses credibility.
"ever be released", "it never fully satisfies him", "before he loses credibility"...

You're looking at it the wrong way. How long should a game like AoD be in development? I'd say 3 years full time, 8-12 experienced people. Well, we have 5 people working in their free time. I'm not making excuses, but pointing out that 4 part time years isn't a whole lot of time and all that talk about losing credibility is a bit overly dramatic.

Diablo 3 spent 5 years in pre-production. Should we raise the alarms and call it vaporware? Who knows how long SC2 was in development? Dragon Age was shown at E3 2004. Etc.

Hinterlands looks like it might beat AoD to the door and we've hardly discussed it at all.
So?
 
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I'd assume that taking the diplomat route would mean more dialogue, possibly more subquests (to fulfill demands made by NPC's). And assuming you actually read the text and replies before you click, that will take time. Other builds would have less of that, but more combat that will take time (being TB and all). And of course both will have map exploration, reading lore info (if so inclined) character management etc. So I don't really see why the diplomat path would be much shorter than others.

@crpgnut: Thats always a worrywith indy games, but at least the IT forums give a clear sense that the game is constantly progressing and that the level of motivation is still high. But my bet is no longer on it coming out in 2008.
 
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I'd assume that taking the diplomat route would mean more dialogue, possibly more subquests...
Correct. We'll present the merchants guild (read as non-combat) questline soon, explaining the first quest, their angle, and all possible options in details.

So I don't really see why the diplomat path would be much shorter than others.
The diplomatic path is actually longer. Fighting your way through the game is the shortest path, actually.
 
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