Torment:ToN - Interview @ RPGCodex

Saxon1974 said:
Makes me wonder about Kickstarter to be honest. So far I have got a couple of good games out of it but now I don't have much time and with so many games coming out I have a backlog. So why back a game for 50$ when. I won't have time to play for years? Might as well wait if it's going to be made anyway.

I'll play wasteland 3 and Divinity OS 2 eventually but didn't back either. I guess the rewards are just not worth it to me personally.
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For me they seem pretty cheap. $25 for a game I'm probably going to like is a worthwhile gamble; less than the cost of refilling my tank. But I only do it if there's a decent-looking prospect with high likelihood of release.
 
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Well it's pretty obviously not a success from the reviews point-of-view either, I mean Torment Numenera has an 81 on Metacritic while Torment Planescape has a 91, and the gulf between those two scores is, in practice, very large. Disappointing sales and disappointing reviews is a fact, and I think it's acceptable to call a "spiritual sequel" a "non-success" when the two combine…not sure what other "noxious" agenda you think they might have had in mind.
 
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And if they are happy with the product and consider it a success…?

And an 81 is a failure from a review standpoint? Mmk.
 
Fluent said:
And if they are happy with the product and consider it a success…?
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Well, you saw the interview. Brian Fargo already said the sales are disappointing, so it seems unlikely he would call it an unqualified "success".

And an 81 is a failure from a review standpoint? Mmk.
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Yeah, when the predecessor game is known as one of the best of all time, and had a 91, I think cranking out a game with about the same budget and only getting an 81 is not a success. Doesn't mean it isn't a game worth playing, obviously. I plan on playing it myself. But success implies more than just that. In my book anyway. And presumably Infinitron's.
 
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Stingray said:
Well it's pretty obviously not a success from the reviews point-of-view either, I mean Torment Numenera has an 81 on Metacritic while Torment Planescape has a 91, and the gulf between those two scores is, in practice, very large. Disappointing sales and disappointing reviews is a fact, and I think it's acceptable to call a "spiritual sequel" a "non-success" when the two combine…not sure what other "noxious" agenda you think they might have had in mind.
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I don't consider an 81 on Metacritic to be a failure. It beat out Tyranny at any rate, and that was the RPGWatch GotY. Grim Dawn has an 83.

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/all/filtered

No I don't know what other motive might crawl out of that toxic cesspool, but I'm keeping my environmental suit handy... just in case. :p
 
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Success is not just about sales or reviews. Brian and company may feel the game was a great success with what they accomplished in the game artistically.

As for comparing to Planescape, that was a huge mountain to climb to begin with. An unwinnable battle, to put it another way.

But it doesn't matter, success this or failure that. I wish Inxile much success in the future and hope Brian has a relaxing retirement. He's definitely earned it. :)
 
rjshae said:
I don't consider an 81 on Metacritic to be a failure. It beat out Tyranny at any rate, and that was the RPGWatch GotY. Grim Dawn has an 83.

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/all/filtered

No I don't know what other motive might crawl out of that toxic cesspool, but I'm keeping my environmental suit handy… just in case. :p
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Tyranny's sales were probably decent at least - it's sold more copies than Torment, with a fraction of the development budget. No clue about Grim Dawn. I doubt Codex newsposters would call either of them a success either, though ;)
 
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Fluent said:
The other way around? So you think that negative reviews on Metacritic and Steam affect big budget titles more? I don't see how that is so. Big budget titles can counter negative reviews with sheer amounts of money spent in publicity and marketing. Little indies are dead in the water if their game is reviewed poorly as they don't have access to those resources.

I think there are cases of both happening, but even No Man's Sky that got bashed in reviews still sold a ton of copies. Naturally the games with higher recognition are not going to need reviews to sell. IMO, of course. Because they already have recognition and spotlight. One of the hardest things about indie dev is getting people to even talk about the game. That is never a problem for big budget games as they can pump tons into PR and marketing.
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Did you read what I wrote? It's about user reviews. And in this case, it had a positive climate before it's release and a lot more coverage than first DOS ( which practically had no marketing and sold on user impressions).
Definitely it could not compete with first Torment on reception though.

Stingray said:
and had a 91, I think cranking out a game with about the same budget and only getting an 81 is not a success.
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It's waaay harder to reach a score that high with today number of outlets. "Second" Torment has more three times number of reviews than the first.
 
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Bumvelcrow said:
The Codex has gays, jews, muslims, people of many races, and even women (allegedly). And they all enjoy slinging mud at each other in between talking about RPGs. Nobody is forcing them to stay there. If it's so intolerant why has it attracted such a wide spectrum of contributors? Perhaps it's because they're not presumptuous enough to try and be offended on other people's behalf and don't take themselves too seriously.

If you don't like it then there are plenty of sites that will spare your feelings, like this one, but pretending it's unhealthy just because you personally don't like it is exactly the sort of attitude that will get you ridiculed on the Codex, not because you may or may not be gay, jewish, or from the planet Jupiter.
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And that's fine, when they're not simpering pathetically about rebuilding trust with a developer who clearly doesn't feel comfortable with the level of 'free speech' on the site. I fully support free speech, but there's also that golden life rule of 'Don't be a d**k' and the concept of emotional intelligence.

I agree that I should (and do) stick to sites like this now because that's more comfortable for me. But I'd like to point out the total falseness of your statement that I wouldn't be ridiculed (which is a light term for it) for being gay on the codex and also to the implication that I'm 'pretending' it's unhealthy, as if this isn't actually a belief I hold. It's a site for abrasive edgelords who would, from my experience, not dare say the majority of the stuff in person that they do online. That is not impressive to me and what I'm objecting to is not it's existence, but to people making it out to be more grandiose than it is.
 
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So…you registered today on RPGWatch solely just to bash the Codex in a thread that's about a great interview they got?

Also FYI, nobody on an internet forum would even know you're gay unless you told them.
 
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BoboTheMighty said:
Did you read what I wrote? It's about user reviews. And in this case, it had a positive climate before it's release and a lot more coverage than first DOS ( which practically had no marketing and sold on user impressions).
Definitely it could not compete with first Torment on reception though.
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I read what you wrote but I had trouble understanding. Language barrier, perhaps.

When you said every game has trolls, I agree, but to say it has little impact is not correct in this case, IMO. You quoted several games and said they kept their high review ratings, but the games you quoted are massive games with many more reviews total in comparison to Torment or smaller indies. That's why I said for indie games, smaller games, the impact of negative reviews and "bombs" against them are much more impacting. Since the games are smaller stature, negative reviews weigh much heavier on the score since the game doesn't have tons of other reviews to offset it. This in turn leads to a general negative perception of the game as well for potential customers.

It's waaay harder to reach a score that high with today number of outlets. "Second" Torment has more three times number of reviews than the first.
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That's true and a great point. Also, we don't have access (or do we?) to the original Planescape reviews at the time. I have heard a lot of them were mixed when the game first released. Brian and others have confirmed the game sold around 400,000 copies over a longer period of time, which was less than Fallout and about 600,000 less (at least) than Baldur's Gate (which was "the big one".)
 
People don't normally bother to "bomb" indie games, though. I thought that was his point, but I could be wrong. I mean yeah, if an indie game gets bombed, that could be a big problem for them, it's just that it doesn't normally happen except under special circumstances. As an example of special circumstances, I'd assume Siege of Dragonspear triggered a lot of it by inserting SJW into their game. But your average indie doesn't have huge hordes of internet trolls who are out to get them.
 
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Fluent said:
Brian had a very reasonable explanation for it all (his words about publishers and how "the people" are your publisher on Kickstarter are more than reasonable)
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Doesn't sound that reasonable to me. But we can certainly all have our own opinions.

And plenty of people are happy with these new RPG's coming out. Doesn't mean everyone's going to be happy though. The vocal minority doesn't speak for everyone, but they will still speak, and it's easy to just ignore them if you can't stand to listen to anyone who has a different opinion from yourself.

BTW, everyone knows they will be review-bombed, and trashed in certain quarters, if they choose to inject politically-charged stuff such as SJW content into their game. Beamdog consciously chose to do what they did anyway.

edit: interesting, post I replied to got deleted.
 
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Good Interview. Shed some light on certain decisions.
Wasteland 3 can be so much better than 2. Especially the combat. SR.DF had better battles than wasteland 2 imo.
Good luck to Brian and crew, and remember to have fun..
 
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codexcat said:
Wasteland 3 can be so much better than 2. Especially the combat. SR.DF had better battles than wasteland 2 imo.
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Yes, SR.DF had some great battles. Especially the last fight was one of the best I ever played in RPGs.

SR:HK was a step back in that regard sadly. Although, it had great atmosphere, too.
 
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Good interview.
 
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Stingray said:
And plenty of people are happy with these new RPG's coming out. Doesn't mean everyone's going to be happy though. The vocal minority doesn't speak for everyone, but they will still speak, and it's easy to just ignore them if you can't stand to listen to anyone who has a different opinion from yourself.

BTW, everyone knows they will be review-bombed, and trashed in certain quarters, if they choose to inject politically-charged stuff such as SJW content into their game. Beamdog consciously chose to do what they did anyway.
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The vocal minority who speaks and also tries to destroy people, reputations and fuck up people's pockets. I'm just curious to watch and see when things like this are taken more seriously in the future. I'm also curious if this sort of thing at its most extreme can be viewed as cyber terrorism.
 
Stingray said:
As an example of special circumstances, I'd assume Siege of Dragonspear triggered a lot of it by inserting SJW into their game.
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I don't like seeing any kind of SJW crap in the games I play, but people grossly overreacted to what was in Siege of Dragonspear. I mean, seriously, it was a single insignificant character with a couple of lines of dialogue. In that particular case, I feel like people were just looking for something to bitch about.
 
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