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Yeah! I Understood that after trying 2-3 times. It felt impossible! So I rolled back, and went elsewhere :)
I got the message when half my people were dead and 6 more bad guys showed up LOL Well played!
Hopefully where we've settled on now, which makes it optional and also should be *very* clear that you can't win, is the best option.
I'm sorry the end of the origin stories upset you this much - sincerely. It sucks that you wish the team "experience such sadistic humiliation over and over again in real life". It's really quite harsh that you wish ill upon human beings because of a bad experience you had in a videogame.
The game launched without allowing players to enter the combat here at all, and some in the community wanted this to be possible. So, we made it that they can, while also attempting to clearly telegraph that the fight was not going to be winnable through dialogue that the NPCs shout to the player character before and during the battle.
This is quite a damning post about one moment in the opening hours of the game, added in because players wanted it. Sorry we didn't satisfy you.
I'm also sorry to see you say "I will never buy a game from these developers again." because of this moment. I am guessing we've lost you?
By the way, I am writing this in good faith, even if you don't believe that.
I'll see if we can. The scenario has been set up in such a way that we'd have to pull it right out ans make major changes to a lot of the game for this to be possible.
It's a moment we're struggling to make work and probably should have done different from the outset (especially given the post from the player after you) as players didn't like that they could enter the fight, and now don't like that they can but can't win it, even with us making that explicit.
There are bigger issues deeper in the game (companion development, fleshing out some of the quests, adding deeper conversations that use the Moral Compass, quest logic bugs that are still popping up for some users) that we need to address first.
Holy carp BA, I'm so sorry you had to be subjected to that abusive rhetoric, there is no base for that kind of emotionally unregulated vomit. Looks like the comment was modded out of here, good riddance. I'm all for free speech but come on, you guys have obviously poured your heart and soul into this project and it shows. AND you're out here listening to your consumers and not only reacting but taking the notes and actually making game changes based on the feedback. Keep calm and carry on good sirs and ladies
While I'm here I'll say I'm duly impressed with what you've accomplished in the title. I feel it's very well rounded so far, I'm just into Merridan and involved in some political intrigue ATM. I will say that on the topic of the Brookton massacre, the storyline choices were very bold, but necessary, as you said, in order to set the tone of pretty much the whole game. It was a devastating moment, but it sucked me into the plot even deeper, as I was invested in the characters by then. BTW, the voice acting is just great, would love to see some more of the dialogue fleshed out from these unsung heroes of the entertainment industry. Keep up the good work guys and don't lose heart because a couple of entitled haters get loud.
Thanks a lot - certainly not losing hope and feeling very encouraged by the spate of positive reviews we've been getting. They all help offset the terrible launch reactions.
According to the message history, this poster deleted the post themselves.
Really appreciate the encouragement. The team is down to 4 people now and doing all we can. I am very excited to get to all of the narrative and quest design changes we've got lined up. Time to get all of George Ziets and Olga Moskvina's feedback in, as well as - like you say - the ways that the community have also provided suggestions and feedback.
(If you missed it, this is the post where we spoke about George and Olga coming on board
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1403440/view/4220517501553584333?l=english )
I'll be frank - it's always a majorly stupid design decision to have unfairly unwinnable/scripted to lose fights in a computer game, and especially in an RPG game.
The only thing it shows is utter creative ineptitude and inability to work properly within the medium, which by definition presupposes player agency.
A computer game is not a book, it's a form of storytelling where the player character gets to act and affect the world in a meaningful way. Taking away the ability to act - including the ability to act meaningfully - destroys this form and only leads to disappointment and frustration.
Now I see the developer offers a false dilemma: that there is only a choice between not fighting, and fighting but losing (and dying); that winning is not an option. The very falsity of this dilemma becomes apparent when you give it a bit of actual thought.
Yes, narratively the town has to fall (because the game isn't deep enough to incorporate alternative outcomes for major events).
Yes, the player must be shown the overwhelming odds against the town.
However, neither of that means the player character has to personally lose the fight and die.
There can be plenty of alternative solutions. Here's one off the top of my head:
- Give the player the option to fight, against unfair but not impossible odds;
- Should the player succeed, reward him with xp and loot;
- THEN demonstrate that despite this local success, the town still fell, because the fight was much larger than one particular shoot-out involving the player. Show a cutscene with bandits overwhelming defenders and executing them. Have Gut Wound run up and say "Good job here, but unfortunately they've overwhelmed us on other fronts, so we must retreat to survive".
This simple solution satisfies all the needs:
- the player gets to experience first-hand the difficulty of fighting against superior odds;
- the player nevertheless gets a chance to succeed, if he fights well, and reap some benefit;
- the player is shown that his allies weren't so successful, and while his local firefight went down well, the enemy's superiority led to an overall defeat for the defenders.
So the player gets a very memorable battle (which may even be the toughest battle in the entire game), and the narrative goal is still achieved.
As of right now, what I am seeing is that in guides for this game, it's simply told "Guys, do NOT fight that battle, just skip it", so a lot of players simply skip that content, and others fight it once, realise it's unwinnable, and never do it again. So instead of a challenging and memorable encounter, you get either nothing (if the player skips it), or frustration and disappointment (if the player fights it, and realises he is being forced to lose).
All in all, a bad design decision.
It was also another bad design decision to forcefully split the player's party right before the critical battle. It's always bad to forcefully take away party members in a party-based RPG, because these companions are always a big part of the player's resources and strategy. It may be acceptable on very rare occasions (such as when Yoshimo betrays the protagonist in BG2), but in this case, there wasn't any reason at all - both companions simply decided to split from the party because one wanted to have a drink, and the other didn't. I mean, what the hell?
So in the very first big event of the game, the player is stripped both of his agency, and of the party. Both for no good reason. Bravo!
Let's be frank, your game isn't really great. It's important to look facts in the face. In many ways it's more limited than even ancient classics like the original Fallouts. Which is why, if you want to continue making games, it's important to learn lessons. And that means not belittling player feedback.
This is not just "one" insignificant moment. This kind of thing is extremely symbolic of the developers' overall approach to a game. If a developer has unwinnable encounters where the player character is pre-scripted to fail, it speaks volumes about that developer's a) lack of respect for player agency, b) bloated self-importance that puts their (very often stilted and trite) narrative over player freedom and choice; c) inability to think outside the box and combine narrative needs with preserving the player's capacity to act meaningfully.
I don't belittle player feedback and I'll stand by that forever because I know my intentions when I reply and engage on these forums. There are a lot of problems with Broken Roads and the direction taken with some of the decisions which I'm still working to undo and change.
Belittling players and their feedback is not something I do.
Kudos for such a fast reply. It's always good to see developers react on game forums.
Not so much kudos for saying the same thing three different ways but not responding to anything in my post on the substance.
While you're here, let me add one other problem with your handling of the Brooktown battle:
Apart from making the fight unwinnable for the player (I emphasize: unwinnable for the player, which does not equate to unwinnable narratively), and forcing the splitting of the party, you have committed another big no-no for party-based RPGs. You have forcefully taken away all items that were carried by the members of the party who were forcefully split off and forcefully killed. Specifically Dreamer.
In my game I bought some expensive items from the town vendors and equipped my companions with them. Dreamer carried some of those expensive items. Now, not only was she forcefully taken away from my party; not only was she forcefully killed by "plot power" without any possibility of saving her; but even her items were not to be found on her corpse. So in addition to robbing the player of a companion temporarily, then killing off that companion permanently, you've also destroyed the items that companion was carrying. Which represented significant investment of early-game resources.
If any of you were actual CRPG players, you'd realise how deeply flawed a design decision that is. But apparently you aren't, and you didn't. Well, I'm telling it to you now.
(And if you think my tone is somewhat harsh - you know, I'm borrowing it from your own NPCs, most of whom consistently treat the player character like trash, constantly belittling and berating him for no good reason).
Most of the criticism, possibly all of it, is valid.
I'm not ok with being told I belittle player feedback when I put so much effort into giving everyone a good faith and reasonable response.
Please consider that I'm now working solo on Broken Roads to make it the game I envisioned when I started this studio six years ago. There's a lot that is being fixed.
After the terrible state of the narrative at launch I brought on George Ziets and Olga Moskvina for three months to consult on turning that aspect of the game around. They provided hundreds of pages which takes months to implement.
You're absolutely right about how awful some of the characters and companions are to the player and I can't really express my own disappointment in the state and quality of the game at launch.
I am reworking the majority of the narrative, quests and especially companions in the game.
Again, Drop Bear Bytes has one person (me, the Game Director) working on fixing this game and it will take time, so while there's a lot to do and a lot to respond to, I have to draw the line on things that seem more like direct attacks on how I'm engaging with the community than valid feedback about the flawed content of the game.
I sent you a DM the other day - did you get it?