Planescape: Torment - Spiritual successor

Godmachine said:
Pretty simple , first I would remember its Kickstarter. I've paid for the option of A) Helping fund the game to a point where it actually gets green lighted B) Some bonuses that might I might want depending on my donation size.

It was voted on , the sponsors of the project have spoken. Its as simple as that. What should they do? Ignore the voting process and please the second most voted for option?

Far as I'm concerned it will still be a great game.

Now if they took an RPG during development and turned it into an FPS , then you would have something to bitch about.
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Look at it this way, if they announced it was RTwP would ANYONE have been upset? No, because that's what PST was and what most people naturally would expect the "spiritual successor" to be.

Now that they have went TB which PST wasn't you have people that are upset because it's not what they expected/wanted.

On one hand you wouldn't have pissed people off/made some want refunds, on the other hand you now have people that are upset and want such things.
 
If they had announced this major deviation from the original before the kickstarter "withdraw" deadline, then no, smudboy and everyone else would not have any room to complain about this issue. But that's the problem. The big issue is not that they went with TB - it's the fact they advertised this game as a "spiritual successor" and have now begun making major changes that run contrary to that advertisement AFTER the deadline for people to withdraw from the kickstarter.

And yes, I do believe smudboy focused way too much on the TB vs RTwP debate (in which he did have some legitimate points). The bigger issue is that they did not announce this while they were collecting donations. And if they did not claim this was a spiritual successor and in effect indicated the major gameplay components would remain but just significantly improve, then they would not have even had an obligation to let people know, as it would have been people's own choice to donate without knowing if it was TB or RTwP.
 
What people forget, is that PS:T was never really about the combat. The combat-based game was Icewind Dale. PS:T was all about the story and the way in which your intelligence, wisdom & charisma open up different dialogue choices or different ways of solving puzzles.

If the new Torment manages to capture that element, then I say they will accomplish their objective.

If the devs feel that using TB combat, they can make a better game, then they should go that route. Ultimately, it is the overall package that determines how good a game is and not any individual aspect of it. There are several turn-based games that were great, and several RTwP games that I regret spending money on.

Also, I wasn't backing the game so that the devs could implement my vision of what it should be, I was backing so that they could implement their vision without any financial constraints. I can only hope that the final product lives up to my expectations, but that is the risk everyone takes when backing a Kickstarter project.
 
When you are dealing with large groups of people no matter what you do someone will not be happy. You can't please everyone. I don't think this is a big issue myself. Some people will be unhappy but I think most don't really care. Whenever people have talked about Planescape it has been the story. So spiritual successor for me meant story not the combat system. Not the combat. If anything the combat was nothing special in comparison to other games in the genre. My opinion of course but always felt that was the general attitude as well.
 
The method and mechanics of combat have nothing to do with why the game is a spiritual successor. Torment is all about roleplaying and philosophical themes.

At no point did they every even imply that it would be RTwP, I believe both Colin McComb and Kevin Saunders had said they preferred turn based, but would put it to a vote. There was no false advertising in the least. Turn based also fits their ruleset perfectly.

I think once the initial reaction dies down, people are going to have a lot of fun with this game.
 
There was a KS updater a few weeks ago. They said they've pulled people from the Torment team to finish Wasteland 2.

Didn't this get called when they started a second game before the first one even took off? People called them out and they said it wouldn't be an issue. Isn't this guy known for having budgetary problems?

For a while now, some of you have been asking when we’d be transitioning from preproduction to production. With Wasteland 2’s recent early beta release, you may be aware that the inXile team will be spending more time on that game to get it done right—one of the fundamental benefits of Kickstarter is that we have the direction from our backers to emphasize quality over punctuality. This decision impacts Torment because most of the production team (e.g., programmers, artists, animators, etc.) will be moving onto Torment later than originally expected, which means we’ll be in preproduction for a longer period of time.
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You have to have 1 game in production and 1 game in preproduction as an independent studio of that size. Moving devs back and forth between projects while one is being wrapped up is normal, it's just more transparent now. This has very little to do with budget.
 
Exactly, if you only have one game and that's it you will end up with a lot of team left doing jack diddly (writers, concept artists, etc) which will finish before a game is even close to being done and you either move them to another project (which is good for a small studio) or you end up either paying them to do nothing (bad) or firing them (worse).

Having two games in different stages is the best thing to have for a studio like them but there are times you might need to pull people from one team to the other or vice versa, even after a game is out (bug issues, etc).
 
LeninGHOLA said:
You have to have 1 game in production and 1 game in preproduction as an independent studio of that size. Moving devs back and forth between projects while one is being wrapped up is normal, it's just more transparent now. This has very little to do with budget.
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I think that is the one danger of KS is that it does let people see into the sausage factory who may not be prepared for that ... the upside is that once people get over the shock of how games are actually made then we should see the full potential of KS development where both users and developers get maximum benefit from the symbiotic relationship :cool:
 
LeninGHOLA said:
You have to have 1 game in production and 1 game in preproduction as an independent studio of that size. Moving devs back and forth between projects while one is being wrapped up is normal, it's just more transparent now. This has very little to do with budget.
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I completely understand that. However, if it was normal operating procedure you wouldn't be writing a KS update saying "We'll let you know if there's a delay".
 
bigdogchris said:
I completely understand that. However, if it was normal operating procedure you wouldn't be writing a KS update saying "We'll let you know if there's a delay".
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I think developers are still adjusting to the KS communication model ... they aren't used to the constant communication that KS users demand and some of them are still determining the right balance

The other aspect is that software projects get delayed all the time and that isn't necessarily a bad thing ... if the delays are due to project complexity or final quality tweaking and such then they are a good thing and will give the users a better final product at the full release ... hopefully the KS donators learn to understand that aspect of development as well so developers don't need to be overly creative in explaining delays ... the Grim Dawn users seem to be supportive of this so hopefully the other bigger projects will also be so :)
 
It`s better that they finish up one of the projects first and start pulling in some more money with it and then can concentrate on the other. Wasteland 2 is shaping up nicely anyhow, so I wouldn`t worry too much this stage.
 
Zorlag said:
It`s better that they finish up one of the projects first and start pulling in some more money with it and then can concentrate on the other. Wasteland 2 is shaping up nicely anyhow, so I wouldn`t worry too much this stage.
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As stated before , it's in fact not better, because you have people that overlap and finish their jobs before the game is completely done, then you're left either paying them for doing nothing or (in many cases) having to let them go so you don't bleed money.

Having a project to put them on while the other one is finishing up is the best and most competent way to run a studio and it is what almost any major studio does.
 
If all of this is completely expected, planned, normal, etc... then why was Torment given the release date it was and is now being delayed due to this "normal" process?
 
GearChoices said:
If all of this is completely expected, planned, normal, etc... then why was Torment given the release date it was and is now being delayed due to this "normal" process?
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Because a hiccup happened and dates had to be changed.
 
I am a bit sad that it's been pushed back, but I've been waiting on my danged Castle Story kickstarter for so long that a couple months seem like nothing lol
 
I'm calling it now, this game will not be released in 2015.

Wasteland 2 and Eternity are both in the 2-2.5 year range for development. Torment is still in the pre-development stage and is supposed to have even deeper gameplay than those titles. inXile just recently announced officially licensing the tech behind the game. There's no reason this game should of taken 1 year to pre-develop, unless they were completely starting from scratch.

Also, notice the lack of information about Torment. Sure, they've had philosophical discussions in the updates about their plans, but when you compare that to the actual information that was released about Eternity in their updates, it's kinda lacking.

I'm really looking forward to this game but I'm starting to think their Kickstarter was just riding on the coattail of Eternities popularity. I feel like they got the money and they have been sitting on it until they finish up their other products. In general I don't have a problem with that, but I don't think that was in the Kickstarter description.
 
There's also the initial bit of time doing tech R&D for Wasteland 2 that will largely not have to be done again. What they learned from making W2 will carry over to Torment so that should shave some time off of Torment's development. I can still see a late 2015 release for Torment, tho 2016 does seem more likely. I'm perfectly fine with that.
 
bigdogchris said:
I'm calling it now, this game will not be released in 2015.

Wasteland 2 and Eternity are both in the 2-2.5 year range for development. Torment is still in the pre-development stage and is supposed to have even deeper gameplay than those titles. inXile just recently announced officially licensing the tech behind the game. There's no reason this game should of taken 1 year to pre-develop, unless they were completely starting from scratch.

Also, notice the lack of information about Torment. Sure, they've had philosophical discussions in the updates about their plans, but when you compare that to the actual information that was released about Eternity in their updates, it's kinda lacking.

I'm really looking forward to this game but I'm starting to think their Kickstarter was just riding on the coattail of Eternities popularity. I feel like they got the money and they have been sitting on it until they finish up their other products. In general I don't have a problem with that, but I don't think that was in the Kickstarter description.
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They are being done by separate companies, Eternity updates have nothing to do with the other two. The people who are doing Wasteland 2 are doing Torment. They were up front about having the main dev team on Wasteland 2 until it is finished and a pre dev team working on Torment. If Wasteland gets any delays of course it will effect Torment. They did it that way so they would not have to fire developers and keep the team together.

I'm looking forward to Torment more than Wasteland 2 but I'm not surprised there hasn't been as much progress on it...but damn it I wish they would hurry up :)
 
Wasteland 2 is a big job, bigger than they really committed to initially. Not surprising it is taking time.

Also I think they are getting a little screwed by Unity. It's a neat engine, but it seems to have issues. I've played a number of Unity games, and all seem to have some flakiness (in the sound in particular). So in addition to fighting normal development bugs, they may be fighting with their engine too.
 
I like what the guys at Beamdog did with BG:EE but if there's ever going to be a BG3, I think Obsidian should be the ones to do it. They could drop 5th Edition rules right into this engine and it would look great!
 
bigdogchris said:
I like what the guys at Beamdog did with BG:EE but if there's ever going to be a BG3, I think Obsidian should be the ones to do it. They could drop 5th Edition rules right into this engine and it would look great!
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Have you tinkered with 5E yet?
 
I keep mixing up Pillars of Eternity (which is a VERY 'torment' title IMO) and Tides of Numenera. Whatever.
 
Wasteland 2, PoE, Witcher 3, Torment, and Galactic Civilizations 3 were/are the games I most looked forward to in 2014/2015. I actually cannot think of any others that i have been "waiting for." So far Torment is the only one that has not been released, and all the others have not turned out as "spectacular" (though in some cases still excellent relative to everything else being released) as I and many others hoped, even though I have not actually been able to play any of them yet (bad computer at the moment). Let's hope the new Torment can be that "one." It's been years since there was a "one."
 
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