Being a Hero/Murderhobo/Lord of War/Etc. (You can be this, it's just harder than normal)

[gallaghan2000]

So, I enjoy the game despite my OCD when it comes to games like this. I even get the concept behind why most of the fights in the game are so hard (especially for certain builds). So take any recommendations with a grain of salt. Addtionally, I think the greater rewards for certain not quite successes is amazing.

Bugs? (not sure if they've been fixed): Trading success on the Bandit Camp dude seems to fail if you go for the Manipulator ending. 1,000 to be given to the guy whether you told about the deal you made or not seems kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t. I could see a trading success needed to keep 'your share' but a flat decision feels wrong. (maybe that skill isn't high enough on my end)

Infiltration allowing you to keep iron armor even after being taken to the torturers in teron seems kinda cheesy. What real life individual would let you keep something like that in a bronze standard without a streetwise success (and who wouldn't mention that their armor was stolen). IMO this is a bug, no matter how much my conversation character relied on it to fight the guys that would have otherwise crushed him in teron.

INITIATIVE! INITIATIVE!! INITIATIVE!!! I don't care who goes first as that should be a check, but once someone goes first I need my turn not a double action by the enemy that can and will kill my character before he even has a chance to turn the tide or prepare alternate weapons. There's difficult and then there's time wasting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t.



Skills that are lackluster -
Traps - ...It's not a waste of time, but traps are not pervasive enough in the game to justify a seperate skill for them, IMO. Still, I like the skill and would rather see it changed into more of a danger sense type skill that adds to one's final initiative value and potentially grant the PC or NPC that extra attack which pisses me off so much. Personally, I would add the skill level to perception checks to notice traps and give the XP for success regarding that while a combination of crafting and this skill is what lets you disarm them for another XP. Knowing the trap is there should reduce the damage you take to tolerable levels if you decide to tank it (somewhat like how a failed critical strike roll starts the character off in battle as wounded) and allow armor+shield to soak up what it can (or a functional respirator to negate a poisoning, because screw wasting a power tube on that thing for only an in-game event no matter how cool; The lore success on the naming should also make finding 'that' spot easier IMO if it doesn't already). Frankly, it's surprise that kills regardless and that's what Critical strike relies on anyways. If you tank it with armor+shield it should automatically damage one or both of them.

I mean, 6 Con will let you tank the damage from the chests and get to a healer in Teron and a 7 Con will let you do so for both the return and the second city. Which is enough to get you some pretty sweet loot for half the skill points it would take you to be able to disarm the traps normally while still being able to open half of those chests.

Impersonate + Etiquette - This should fall under the same skill IMO. Quite frankly this feels like an excuse to spend extra SP on less regularly used skills that are in some ways almost the same. I mean, if you were trying to play the part of a Noble, you would need Etiquette to impersonate him... which defeats the purpose as an actual Noble with Etiquette would simply need streetwise to do almost everything Impersonate would let him do. I recommend turning Etiquette into a trait that most characters can get trained in for money and a handful of backgrounds (Praetor, Grifter, Merchant, and Loremaster) start the game with.

Trading -
Trading in general comes from knowing the value of goods and being able to convince the buyer that it is worth what you want to sell it for and is in many ways a sum of multiple skills already available in addition to the public perception of your character. For this reason, Trading should be a numerical value that is not a skill but is instead based upon: 1 + (Persuasion+Crafting+Lore)/3 - Streetwise (Streetwise is subtracted because over time and use you are known for exaggerating or outright lying about stuff). I would then add Word of Honor to this value up to the current maximum rank of ten.



Things I would like to see:
Assassination on the second loremaster quest should give you a training point if you succeed on the persuasion check to drive him out of town (which the creator notes will still fail. Besides, his guard is completely down at that point).

Any public stealing checks (at merchant stalls) below a certain level should lead to the character being strongarmed into the thieves guild or turned over to the arena like the first challenge after a certain point (or start a fight). Frankly, there should be more backroom dealing+scheming allowed to you in the Commercium in general. Like how you can get access to the Healing Machine by helping what's her face in undermining your boss. You don't think that you'll be anything more than an Agent unless you make it happen, do you?

Stealing+Sneak: I get that most of the larceny opportunities are created by preexisting blind spots in the somewhat static world. Why can't I use stealing to steal a key and then sneak in the door at higher levels? (mostly irritated that the beginning crafting schematics+XP is behind a permanent dex check. Can't even try to buy all of the blacksmith's schematics and offer money to see the table...) Otherwise, I can't really seem to take advantage of opportunities I purchased... like the bribed guards in the Commercium Test. Seriously, Can't even try to ship some goods for more money in the next city when everyone in a crux spot wants to bleed you dry of cash.

Alchemy Weapons: No matter how much I like having a 100% hit weapon when all of my combat skills are at 1, and no matter how much it makes me capable of killing things that should destroy me (especially when combined with crit strike; hell crits with acid to the face should cause a lot more issues) there needs to be a miss radius that is reduced by throwing skill, where the miss ends up with the weapon landing in another square and potentially hitting an alternate enemy (particularly with bombs, but stronger bombs should also have a bigger radius).

40-45 should not be the health standard of enemies. there would be a lot more NPCs that want to fight you with 30-35 health at their disposal. There should also be more enemies that might have more health, but a 4 dex among the beggars. If I don't get to start off as a god, neither should the bottom dregs of enemies.

More metal. WTF? I can buy maybe 5 lbs of iron? I understand supply and demand, but this is utterly ridiculous.

Some Streetwise checks should come back to bite you in the ♥♥♥. Like the merchant in front of the INN in Teron that you can swindle should lock you out of some Commercium training unless you can sweet talk your way out of trouble (persuasion probably). But I can still see you having to split the cut at that pooint.

Feng and the 250/500 GP loremaster's training. WTF. I can see Feng teaching impersonate. It is literally his character and he's more of the type that knows a little about lore and a LOT about how to use Streetwise in it's various applications. The expensive Loremaster's training, however, is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t. Why the ♥♥♥♥ isn't he teaching Lore/Crafting when Lore and Crafting go hand and hand. Even Alchemy would use principles of Lore in its creation processes. But he does Impersonate? Is every teaching NPC Loremaster supposed to be a smooth talking swindler like Feng?

An expansion where you can do some prequel stuff to change the history of the world and continue into the main game where things have changed and other people may want to see you succeed or die.


Personal note: Strength is not as amazing as the creator makes it sound. High strength with high dex? yes, but Strength itself seems underutilized alongside Intelligence.

[Vince]

I agree with most of your points. AoD was our first game so naturally we made quite a few design mistakes there. Some of these mistakes bother me a lot but we can't fix them without either overhauling the game completely or adding a year's worth of content.

Hopefully, we'll do better in the future.

[Erhog]

Not every loremaster is real scientist. Some of them just know some info that others don't and using this in their favor like Feng or tricky loremaster from Maadoran.

[gallaghan2000]

... Erhog, there's a damn limit to how much I am willing to put up with regarding guys that won't teach lore as their primary capability. I mean, I can understand Feng. Especially with the whole backstory set-up. But! There is an entire world worth of Loremasters that can teach the character and I just so happen to only have the capability to learn from two that look at lore as a secondary skill to streetwise and impersonate unless I am willing to not take out Cassius (For Feng whose continued good graces literally required it as his apprentice). That or myself have put Lore on the backburner to a heavy degree.

I have a bridge in Egypt that I'd like you to buy.

Anyways, what happened to the Eye for those of us who wanted to start as lore masters and still get that object? Just not possible?

Been playing Dungeon Rats recently. Gave me a better idea of how the combat system works and clarified some stuff for me, so thanks.

[Sunfire]

gallaghan2000 původně napsal:

Bugs? (not sure if they've been fixed): Trading success on the Bandit Camp dude seems to fail if you go for the Manipulator ending. 1,000 to be given to the guy whether you told about the deal you made or not seems kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t. I could see a trading success needed to keep 'your share' but a flat decision feels wrong. (maybe that skill isn't high enough on my end)

You traded for return the hostage, not attacked the Mining Outpost, so these are different sums.

gallaghan2000 původně napsal:

Infiltration allowing you to keep iron armor even after being taken to the torturers in teron seems kinda cheesy. What real life individual would let you keep something like that in a bronze standard without a streetwise success (and who wouldn't mention that their armor was stolen). IMO this is a bug, no matter how much my conversation character relied on it to fight the guys that would have otherwise crushed him in teron.

Fixed here:
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7451.msg152899.html#msg152899