Torment: Tides of Numenera - Third Alpha Systems Test Released, Crisis Gameplay

Another update on Torment: Tides of Numenera from InXile.

Crisis System Rules

When things get tense (and, more importantly, time-sensitive) in TTON, we enter a turn-based mode. Each individual character, as well as some elements of the environment, take one turn at a time. The order in which characters act is based on an initiative roll at the start of combat. Items, skill training, and abilities can provide an edge on this roll.

In a Crisis, you control the Last Castoff and any companions you may have. When it's a character's turn, they can take one Anoetic Action, one Occultic Action, set up one Defensive Maneuver (disabled for C0), as well as move (with the movement distance available determined by items, skills, and abilities).

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For example, Aligern's Dazzle esotery showers a target in pyrotechnic sparks that leaves them with the Distracted Fettle for 1 round. This reduces the difficulty of hitting the target by 3. Keep in mind that the enemies will try to employ the same techniques to make your party members easier to hit, as well. When a PC is attacked, that PC makes a defense roll to evade the strike. If a party member gains a Fettle like Distracted, the difficulty of evading incoming attacks is *increased* by 3. Effort allows you to expend resources to compensate for or take extra advantage of the Assets provided by these tactical choices.

The top row of UI is the Effort Type selection. You can pick between "Accuracy" (which represents likelihood to succeed at a task) or "Damage" (which increases the amount of damage done with an attack *if* successful). Each level of Effort applied to Accuracy reduces the difficulty of the task by 3. Each level applied to Damage increases the total damage by 3, but if used while the chance of success is low, could be a riskier choice. On the other hand, if smart tactics have given you a good chance to hit, pumping up Damage can turn the tide of a fight.

Crisis Combat Alpha Video






More information.

I don't really like the UI and the colors seems off but otherwise it looks
weird in really good tormenty way.
Looks Like beta isn't far off based on the vid assuming they made enough content.

The graphics are looking cool and imaginative, and yet make some sort of internal sense that fits the world. I especially liked the levitating cube, kind of reminded me of the cube in the Hellraiser movies.

One aspect I didn't like is the transparent combat log. I can't stand transparent interface overlays, honestly. I hope they have an option that we can tweak the user interface elements, and I could have the combat log set on a solid background. As well as resize it, and move it around, that would be nice too.

Looking very good indeed

The characters and environments look better than I expected. I had somewhat low expectations due to them using the Unity engine, but I like what I'm seeing here.

The setting also appears more sci-fi than I thought it was going to be, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Am I the only one who misses action points in turn-based combat, which is so often replaced these days by this two-action simplofication I suppose we can thank Firaxis and the new Xcom game for?

By definition, an anoetic action is unthinkable. Heh.

defensive maneuvers sound good in that they are tied to role, though I don't really know if those pre-set behaviors/ AI decisions will be worthwhile.

UI is pretty terrible, but combat looks interesting.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
UI is pretty terrible, but combat looks interesting.

There are some tricky concepts to capture there from a ui perspective. What would you change and why?

Originally Posted by Silver
There are some tricky concepts to capture there from a ui perspective. What would you change and why?

I would start by not taking up 40-50% of the entire screen by using transparent panels, with adjustable opacity for people who don't mind

I think the panels should auto-hide until a conversation or ui element is required. That way you get to admire the backgrounds without the ui getting in the way. Its difficult to get right the size of the ui because if you adjust the size of the ui according to the amount of text displayed maybe that would be more distracting for the player then keeping it one size.

Allowing players to lock or unlock ui elements into hide/no hide would be cool as well as the ability to move them around. I'm biased toward skeuomorphic ui so I like that it looks part of the world design but it should also be as hassle free as possible. I'm glad I don't have to design it.

Originally Posted by Silver
I think the panels should auto-hide until a conversation or ui element is required. That way you get to admire the backgrounds without the ui getting in the way. Its difficult to get right the size of the ui because if you adjust the size of the ui according to the amount of text displayed maybe that would be more distracting for the player then keeping it one size.

Allowing players to lock or unlock ui elements into hide/no hide would be cool as well as the ability to move them around. I'm biased toward skeuomorphic ui so I like that it looks part of the world design but it should also be as hassle free as possible. I'm glad I don't have to design it.

My problem is that the panels completely block half the screen, which is ludicrously bad UI design in my opinion.

There are several ways to solve this, including speech appearing above the head of the speaker and what not.

But the BARE minimum would be to have the ability to make the panels transparent. I'd go with a proper scaling option for the font/UI overall, as well.

I simply don't get how this could pass for a proper UI anywhere.

I didn't really notice it until now, but yeah…that dialogue box is massive. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume there's going to be an option to adjust the size of that thing.

Scaling and transparency is relatively trivial to implement, so it's possible. But I don't understand why they keep demonstrating the game like this as if it wasn't an issue.

Maybe I'm the only one who prefers to look at the world instead of huge text panels for half the game

I was thinking they had it set to the largest size to make sure everyone could read the text options during the gameplay demo.

If not, they seriously need to make some adjustments.

Well, game looks interesting aside from that, so I hope you're right.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
Am I the only one who misses action points in turn-based combat, which is so often replaced these days by this two-action simplofication I suppose we can thank Firaxis and the new Xcom game for?

D&D had it for 30 years. It has nothing to do with Xcom

The new X-Com made it popular, which is the point. D&D never had a "two-actions" system.

I happen to agree it's a weak system.

The Numenera setting is complete pretentious, insufferable garbage filled with incomprehensible mumbo jumbo to make it look "edgy". None of the people I know who play the PnP game are any interested in it anymore after having briefly tried it and abandoned it very quickly.

I don't see what is so special about these "crisis" events, other tactical games have had them before. It's not like you're going to get the flexibility of a PnP system because every special event is going to be scripted and predefined.