Iron Tower Studio - Taking Care of Business

Interesting read!

Only tried the combatdemo of AoD - never bought the final product. The setting and the aesthetics isn't to my taste.

The new project sounds more in line with my tastes. Will follow that project with interest.

I bought both games at release, and played them several times to the end over the years. But I found them too difficult, too restrictive, nearly more puzzle/problem-solving games than RPGs. On my last play-throughs of AoD, I used a 2x XP mod, and I really enjoyed it far more.

I'm certain to buy The New World. But I would really love a customizable difficulty level : let me choose how I enjoy my games. I don't care if it removes achievements or whatever.

And I think more people would enjoy/buy these games too.

PS : really great work VD, I'll be regularly replaying your games for the next 50 years, like I do with Fallout.

DR490N said:

I bought both games at release, and played them several times to the end over the years. But I found them too difficult, too restrictive, nearly more puzzle/problem-solving games than RPGs. On my last play-throughs of AoD, I used a 2x XP mod, and I really enjoyed it far more.

I'm certain to buy The New World. But I would really love a customizable difficulty level : let me choose how I enjoy my games. I don't care if it removes achievements or whatever.

And I think more people would enjoy/buy these games too.

PS : really great work VD, I'll be regularly replaying your games for the next 50 years, like I do with Fallout.

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Yes, I agree. I argued with Vince on the forums a few times about having difficulty levels in the game as the majority of people would find the game too difficult.

IIRC, Vince said that one of the major elements of the game was for it to be seen from different perspectives so that making it easier on people would in essence reduce that possibility as it would allow almost any build to see things like the Abyss, Zamedi, Darius' Tomb...

I think an easy mode where you simply got a few more starting points would have helped a lot, but it didn't come to pass.

In the end I still played the game for over 100 hours and enjoyed myself thoroughly, but I think having a difficulty mode "Easier" & "Normal" would have made this game much more accessible and profitable too.

I think when I play as a thief (the only path I haven't played to completion), I will edit my character to have some extra skill points to start with to ensure I enjoy the game in a slightly different way. I haven't done that in any of my games of AoD, but I have forgotten too much now to start from scratch again.

Pladio said:

I think many people do not buy games new anymore and wait for sales to reach a certain point before buying.

I just have several more games in my backlog before I start buying new ones and I will likely prioritise heavily discounted games too.

I think the only games I buy full price are for developers I want to specifically support. A few examples of these games include Age of Decadence, ELEX and Banner Saga.

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I pretty much do this. Games that release half-baked, or AAA games with added money grubbing, get sent to sit in my wishlist until sale time. A full price purchase at release is almost always more of a show of support for the good stuff.