Torment: Tides of Numenera - Sagus Cliffs, Interfaces, Character Generation and Pax

In the 46th update for Torment: Tides of Numenera we learn that there will be a Classic RPGs Forever panel at PAX:

First and foremost, if you happen to be attending PAX Prime in Seattle in a few weeks, be sure to check in on the CLASSIC RPGs FOREVER! Panel on Sunday, August 30th at 11 AM in the Sasquatch Theater. It will feature not only DoubleBear's Annie Mitsoda, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer, Harebrained's Mitch Gitelman, and Larian's Swen Vincke, but also our very own Design Lead Adam Heine! Don't miss it!

The Sgus Clff content:

Beyond being rich in content, Sagus also has a high degree of reactivity. It is a a very work-intensive area to write and implement but is a strong depiction of just how weird and wondrous the Ninth World is. We’re about halfway through its writing, but because of the interconnectedness of much of the content, it can’t yet be played through as one complete area. Over the next several weeks, we looking forward to having enough content complete that we can experience the city of Sagus Cliffs and begin iterating on its design content.

User interface:

As conversations are the core of TTON’s gameplay, the first interface we developed (around a year ago) was the Conversation UI, as seen in the First Glimpse video. We began creating our interfaces using a popular and powerful interface plug-in known as NGUI. Leading up to Unity 5 (late last year), Unity released an improved native user interface layer, UGUI. We assessed it at that time and determined that UGUI would solve several technical obstacles we had encountered, so we decided to switch over. Currently most of our interfaces use UGUI, but our Conversation UI remained with NGUI, while our engineers focused on support for Crises, animation, and various other features required by the team. (In fact, at least the first Alpha Systems Test will be released with this NGUI version of the Conversation UI, but we have plans for an even better one.)

And narrative character creation:

In the first Torment, character generation was unusual for a CRPG at the time, especially one in the Dungeons & Dragons lineage. When you hit New Game, you were given 9 points in each stat plus 21 additional points to distribute as you desired. That was it. You didn't do anything else before jumping into the game – no class, feats, talents, or alignment. Everything else was either predetermined (name, gender, appearance) or determined through gameplay (class, skills, and alignment).

In Tides of Numenera, we are taking that even further, handling as much character generation through gameplay as we reasonably can. The results so far are pretty cool, but it's a challenging for a couple of reasons.

First, TTON has a lot more to teach than PST. This is a challenge because it's hard to teach rules and systems through conversation, especially without breaking the fourth wall (which we are loathe to do). And while many players knew at least the basics of AD&D before playing Planescape: Torment, we have to assume that a larger portion of players won't know Numenera's rules.

Second, TTON has more starting choices to make than PST. Although both Torments have three classes, Tides of Numenera offers many additional choices in the form of your Descriptor and your Focus (more on these later).

More information.

From the description, it almost sounds like they are heading in the direction of many other games these days--dumbing down the character building experience. But at least we'll get the opportunity to change the settings thereafter.

Originally Posted by rjshae
From the description, it almost sounds like they are heading in the direction of many other games these days—dumbing down the character building experience. But at least we'll get the opportunity to change the settings thereafter.

Please explain to me how are the dumbing down anything?
And please tell us how PST had this super complex character creation?

Rather a knee-jerk defensive response.

Your character is built via your response to memories and choices, rather than via allocating points directly. I'd call that close to dumbing down in order that people don't need to look at those 'hard to understand' numbers.

Why're so many people suddenly against stat allocation? Bizarre.

Not every game requires or benefits from number twiddling. It's going to be more story based like the original which certainly didn't suffer from not being a spreadsheet simulator.

Originally Posted by Kobu
Not every game requires or benefits from number twiddling. It's going to be more story based like the original which certainly didn't suffer from not being a spreadsheet simulator.

It actually did suffer from not being a spreadsheet simulator, it's sales were the worst of all the IE games (including IWD 2 if you include all the versions of that that were sold in bundled packages with the first game).

The only saving grace of PS:T was the narrative/companions/setting, none of which are gameplay features and all of which are greatly subjective and difficult to quantify in creating a sequel of comparative quality.

But I get your point. AD&D didn't have player chosen stat increases at all, so I guess it is me that has forgotten this, so thanks for making me think about this again. You still gave your character their stats at the start though.

I still feel its dumbing down. Less thought required.

The Alpha test of Torment was released this night. So anyone that pledged enough to get access should have access. If anyone missed it yet. And I'm impressed with what they're showing in the Alpha. It's not a lot, but very much enough to give a strong idea of how the game will be. And it's very close to Planescape imo, and very much a strong focus on text-adventure style gameplay combined with IE-style gameplay.

Originally Posted by rjshae
Rather a knee-jerk defensive response.

Your character is built via your response to memories and choices, rather than via allocating points directly. I'd call that close to dumbing down in order that people don't need to look at those 'hard to understand' numbers.

Did you read what they said?
Did anyone here?

Let me TLDR it for you all. Questions and choices at start are going to narrow down the list of choices when creating a character but they said you can just ignore that and still create a character from a full list.
So you will get to allocate all the stats in any way you want without any dumbing down if you want that but people that don't will answer a couple of personal questions and then choose a Description from a list of 3 and Focus from a list of 5.

How is this different from starting BG1 and choosing one of the premade characters or creating your own from scratch?

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
The Alpha test of Torment was released this night. So anyone that pledged enough to get access should have access. If anyone missed it yet. And I'm impressed with what they're showing in the Alpha. It's not a lot, but very much enough to give a strong idea of how the game will be. And it's very close to Planescape imo, and very much a strong focus on text-adventure style gameplay combined with IE-style gameplay.

thank you for the update.

I'm not a fan of the fact that I can't choose my class and Focus at the start of the game, but apart from that, I'm pumped.

Yea, I agree that they should have the option to just create the full character including class, stats and so on, at the start of the game. Rather than having to go through a conversation tree, which is made for newbies or people unfamiliar with rpgs.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
Yea, I agree that they should have the option to just create the full character including class, stats and so on, at the start of the game. Rather than having to go through a conversation tree, which is made for newbies or people unfamiliar with rpgs.

Or for fans of PST. Maybe you forget you could not choose a class in PST but always got assigned a fighter and had to find other classes through the game (and that took much more time than what TToN is going to allow).
If you are going into TToN expecting PoE or MMX don't bother playing it at all.

Actually you're just wasting people's time if they know what character they want to play. Which is a bad idea in all cases.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
Actually you're just wasting people's time if they know what character they want to play. Which is a bad idea in all cases.

So PST wasted your time when you wanted to play a wizard?

Originally Posted by Archangel
So PST wasted your time when you wanted to play a wizard?

Yes. Yes it did.

though the latter part is important - when you wanted to play a wizard.

It's cool if you don't give players the option to play as a certain class at all - but if you allow them to do so, why on earth would you make them wait for an hour?

The same thing goes for systems that don't allow you to play a certain build early on - like, allowing for fighter tanks in general, but not on the early levels because you lack the necessary armor and HP. That's just silly. I'm all for giving players choices - that doesn't mean that they must inititally be great at what they choose to do. Just that they can do some of it right away. Like in low level AD&D, where you might want to play a sword fighter right away, but all you do at the start is working as a sandbag for mages and archers.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
Yes. Yes it did.

though the latter part is important - when you wanted to play a wizard.

It's cool if you don't give players the option to play as a certain class at all - but if you allow them to do so, why on earth would you make them wait for an hour?

The same thing goes for systems that don't allow you to play a certain build early on - like, allowing for fighter tanks in general, but not on the early levels because you lack the necessary armor and HP. That's just silly. I'm all for giving players choices - that doesn't mean that they must inititally be great at what they choose to do. Just that they can do some of it right away. Like in low level AD&D, where you might want to play a sword fighter right away, but all you do at the start is working as a sandbag for mages and archers.

I can understand your point of view but I don't mind that for games like these that are about narrative more than mechanics.