Sep 15, 2016

The Age of Decadence - Vince

While we didn’t post any announcements since March, we’ve been updating the game on a monthly basis (fixes, improvements, balance, tutorial, etc), so we continue supporting the game and paying attention to your feedback.

The final content update will be released in December (most likely). Think of it as a free DLC to thank you for your support and encouragement. It will extend the endgame and introduce a new ending (among other things).

Note for Radeon users: a couple of months ago we updated the engine to the latest version which didn’t go well with Radeon drivers, which caused slowdowns and forced some players to lower Lighting to be able to play the game. We contacted AMD , they managed to reproduce the problem and fix it, so if you have a Radeon card, make sure that you have the latest drivers (Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.9.1)

In other news, we’d like to introduce our new RPG that’s entering the final stages of development.

* * *

Dungeon Rats, named after the 7th Heavy Armored Division of the Imperial Guards, is a turn-based, party-based dungeon crawler set in the same world as Age of Decadence. This is an RPG focused almost exclusively on squad level tactical combat for players who enjoy turn-based games in general, and AoD's combat systems in particular. If fighting your way out of a prison mine - and frequently dying in the attempt - is your idea of a good time, you've come to the right place.

Starting out as a new prisoner at the bottom of the gangs-ruled prison hierarchy, and of the prison itself, you must fight to survive and develop your combat skills, acquiring better weapons and equipment as you go. Recruit allies to your struggle or carry on as a lone wolf, and kill anyone foolish enough to stand in your way.

Notable changes from The Age of Decadence:

Party-based - the most frequently requested feature
Flanking and other strategic bonuses. Positioning matters a lot.
Manual placement of your characters before a fight
Charisma determines the number and quality of your party members
Skill points are split between the party members: more people means fewer skills points per person and slower level ups.
10 possible companions, not all of them human (maximum party size is 4).
New weapons, armor, and creatures
3 difficulty levels: Nice Guy, Tough Bastard, Murderous Psychopath

Some screenshots (work in progress):

Sep 15, 2016

Recent Updates & New RPG

The Age of Decadence - Vince

Party-based - the most frequently requested feature
Flanking and other strategic bonuses. Positioning matters a lot.
Manual placement of your characters before a fight
Charisma determines the number and quality of your party members
Skill points are split between the party members: more people means fewer skills points per person and slower level ups.
10 possible companions, not all of them human (maximum party size is 4).
New weapons, armor, and creatures
3 difficulty levels: Nice Guy, Tough Bastard, Murderous Psychopath

Some screenshots (work in progress):

Mar 26, 2016

What's Next?

The Age of Decadence - Vince

First, we’d like to thank you for your support. When we launched our game on Steam, we didn’t know what to expect. The Age of Decadence is a hardcore RPG that requires the player to forget everything they learned playing mass-market-friendly RPGs and approach it differently, which, in all fairness, is a lot to ask for.

We were prepared for the worst – ready to say “at least we tried” and go back to less exciting ways to make a living – but your support and open-mindedness ensured our survival as a studio and gave us confidence to continue and experiment with game design.

We’re a small studio. Our games will never sell hundreds of thousands of copies, which is fine, because we aren’t in it for the money. We want to make games that nobody else would (precisely because such games would never sell hundreds of thousands of copies) and with and because of your help we can do it.

Thank you. Again.

So what to expect in the near and not so near future?

The Age of Decadence

As our next “full-scale” RPG won’t be ready until 2020, we’ll continue tweaking and improving AoD, ensuring that there’s always something new for the returning players.

The next update will be released in a week or so and will contain:

Huge performance boost in Ganezzar, minor boosts in other locations
Animation speed now goes up to 4x.
Separate animation speed for combat and exploration
If a crossbow is loaded, a new icon shows the number of loaded bolts in the inventory screen.
Pressing "R" reloads the last used bolts in crossbows.
Option to hide skill tags in dialogues.
New camera option: follow the player’s character.
Separate camera modes for combat and exploration. For example, the camera can follow the player while moving in real time and switch to free camera in combat.

The Dungeon Crawler

Our short-term project is a dungeon crawler set in the AoD world. It's a combat-heavy, party-based RPG for people who like our combat system and want to play it in a party-based mode. It will use the existing engine, systems, and assets, although new creatures, animations, weapons and armor are being added as we speak.

We'll introduce it properly in a couple of months.

The Colony Ship RPG

Our long-term project is a colony ship RPG inspired by Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky. We want this game to feel and play differently from AoD. The core design (turn-based, choices & consequences, non-linear, text-heavy) would remain the same.

Character System

Expect the same 6 stats (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Per, Cha) and 18 skills grouped in sets of three:
- Melee (Fist, Bladed, Blunt)
- Firearms (Pistol, Shotgun, SMG)
- Energy Weapons (Pistol, Rifle, Cannon)
- Science (Medical, Mechanical, Computer)
- Speech (Persuasion, Streetwise, Trading)
- Stealth (Lockpick, Pickpocket, Sneak)
Party-Based.

It’s a fundamental change that affects every design aspect, most notably content “gating”. If you have 3-4 party members, most likely you’ll have all skills covered.

Charisma will determine the number and quality of your party members. The party size will range from 2 to 5. Experience points from quests will be split between the human party members (a droid will have its own leveling up mechanics and won't cost you any XP), thus a smaller party will be able to gain levels faster.
Party Dynamics

Typically, RPG party members serve a purely tactical role, giving your more bodies to control in combat and access to different combat abilities. In a sense, you’re role-playing an entire squad as outside of combat there is very little (if any) difference between the character you created and the characters you’ve recruited or created next.

It works great in RPGs that are mostly about combat, but calls for a different approach when it comes to non-combat gameplay. The main problem is that party members offer nothing but combat benefits (occasionally, freaky sex to relieve combat stress and party banter), giving you very few reasons to treat party members any differently than the main character.

In short, the problem is that in most RPGs party members are mindless zombies lacking any free will, agenda, goals, etc – the very qualities that separate an actual “character” from a zombie. Thus, our main design goal is to create proper characters that have a will of their own, as well as agendas, beliefs, goals, and other infuriating qualities.

Unlike the player’s character, the party members will have a complex personality & beliefs system that would determine their reaction. Most likely these stats will remain hidden from the player and you’d have to figure out what you’re dealing with by talking to them and observing how they act/react.

We're planning to go with 10 traits (values ranging from -5 to +5) strictly for the purpose of reacting to different situations and the PC's choices.
- Religion (-5 means raging atheist, +5 means true believer)
- Politics (-5 filthy liberal, +5 glorious conservative)
- Loyalty (-5 treacherous scum, +5 loyal to a fault)
- Volatile (-5 comatose, +5 always ready to fly off the handle)
- Connving (-5 honest abe, +5 Miltiades)
- Opportunist (-5 a man of principles, +5 what are principles?)
- Idealism (-5 cynic, +5 starry-eyed idealist)
- Greed (-5 above money, +5 can quote Gordon Gekko)
- Altruism (-5 selfish bastard, +5 For the Greater Good!)
- Agreeable (-5 doesn't play well with others, +5 gets along with Hitler)
Feats & Character Levels

Your characters will gain levels using experience points from quests. When you level up, you’ll select feats, unlocking or improving your abilities. The feats will be an important aspect of character development (i.e. they won’t give you minor bonuses but help you develop your characters along specific paths: lone wolf vs squad leader, offense vs defense, gunslinger vs sprayer or gadgeteer, melee vs ranged, which will go beyond which skill to develop, etc) and make as much of a difference as the skills levels.

We want the skills to determine your chance of success with certain tasks and the feats to define what you can do and how you can use these skills to maximum advantage. For example, not every guy with points in Pistol is a gunslinger, not every guy who travels alone is a Jeremiah Johnson when it comes to survival, etc. Basically, the feats will define your character much more than your skills.
Skills & Learn by Using

You will not gain XP for killing, talking, sneaking, picking locks, using computers, fixing mechanical things and such. You will not increase your skills manually. Instead your skills will be increased automatically based on their use.

Instead of counting how many times you did something, we’ll assign a certain value (let’s call it learning points) to each activity (attacking, killing, fixing, sneaking, convincing, lying, etc). So killing a tough enemy or repairing a reactor will net you more points than killing a weakling or fixing a toaster. Basically, it will work the same way as XP but go directly toward raising a skill that did all the work.
Gadgets

While melee builds will be viable, most enemies will use guns. Ranged combat will be dull if everyone just stands there, firing their weapons and dodging bullets. It needs cover but we don’t want to place cover everywhere, which means we need gadgets to make your own cover (among other things):
- Depletable energy shield (absorbs x damage)
- Reality distortion field (THC penalty against you)
- Optical illusion a-la Total Recall (chance that enemies will target the illusion)
- Cloaking field aka Stealth Boy
- Stasis field (holds enemy, no damage can be dealt)
- Brainwave Disruptor (don’t leave your home without Psychic Nullifier)
Expect 10-12 gadgets with 3-4 upgrade levels.
Factions

While factions will get a lot of attention and play a large role, you won’t join a faction but will remain an outsider, free to work for and deal with all factions, which fits the setting better as these factions aren’t guilds but different hubs. However, many quests would have conflicting interests and reputation would play a stronger and more immediate role than it did in AoD, so you won’t be able to please everyone for long.

In addition to your reputation, which will play a much bigger role in the game (the main quest is sort of built around it), we’ll add two important stats that will be affected by your actions: faction strength & morale (your actions might increase or lower both or increase one and lower the other). More on that in the future updates.

Here are the first 3 design updates if you wish to read more:

Setting Overview

Party Dynamics

System Changes

Again, thank you for your support and encouragement. If you’re interested in AoD, buy it today while it’s on sale to support the games we're working on. If you aren’t sure whether or not the game is for you, read this overview first:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/aod/announcements/detail/79169731941085705

Mar 26, 2016

What's Next?

The Age of Decadence - Vince

So what to expect in the near and not so near future?

Huge performance boost in Ganezzar, minor boosts in other locations
Animation speed now goes up to 4x.
Separate animation speed for combat and exploration
If a crossbow is loaded, a new icon shows the number of loaded bolts in the inventory screen.
Pressing "R" reloads the last used bolts in crossbows.
Option to hide skill tags in dialogues.
New camera option: follow the player’s character.
Separate camera modes for combat and exploration. For example, the camera can follow the player while moving in real time and switch to free camera in combat.

Character System

Expect the same 6 stats (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Per, Cha) and 18 skills grouped in sets of three:
- Melee (Fist, Bladed, Blunt)
- Firearms (Pistol, Shotgun, SMG)
- Energy Weapons (Pistol, Rifle, Cannon)
- Science (Medical, Mechanical, Computer)
- Speech (Persuasion, Streetwise, Trading)
- Stealth (Lockpick, Pickpocket, Sneak)
Party-Based.

It’s a fundamental change that affects every design aspect, most notably content “gating”. If you have 3-4 party members, most likely you’ll have all skills covered.

Charisma will determine the number and quality of your party members. The party size will range from 2 to 5. Experience points from quests will be split between the human party members (a droid will have its own leveling up mechanics and won't cost you any XP), thus a smaller party will be able to gain levels faster.
Party Dynamics

Typically, RPG party members serve a purely tactical role, giving your more bodies to control in combat and access to different combat abilities. In a sense, you’re role-playing an entire squad as outside of combat there is very little (if any) difference between the character you created and the characters you’ve recruited or created next.

It works great in RPGs that are mostly about combat, but calls for a different approach when it comes to non-combat gameplay. The main problem is that party members offer nothing but combat benefits (occasionally, freaky sex to relieve combat stress and party banter), giving you very few reasons to treat party members any differently than the main character.

In short, the problem is that in most RPGs party members are mindless zombies lacking any free will, agenda, goals, etc – the very qualities that separate an actual “character” from a zombie. Thus, our main design goal is to create proper characters that have a will of their own, as well as agendas, beliefs, goals, and other infuriating qualities.

Unlike the player’s character, the party members will have a complex personality & beliefs system that would determine their reaction. Most likely these stats will remain hidden from the player and you’d have to figure out what you’re dealing with by talking to them and observing how they act/react.

We're planning to go with 10 traits (values ranging from -5 to +5) strictly for the purpose of reacting to different situations and the PC's choices.
- Religion (-5 means raging atheist, +5 means true believer)
- Politics (-5 filthy liberal, +5 glorious conservative)
- Loyalty (-5 treacherous scum, +5 loyal to a fault)
- Volatile (-5 comatose, +5 always ready to fly off the handle)
- Connving (-5 honest abe, +5 Miltiades)
- Opportunist (-5 a man of principles, +5 what are principles?)
- Idealism (-5 cynic, +5 starry-eyed idealist)
- Greed (-5 above money, +5 can quote Gordon Gekko)
- Altruism (-5 selfish bastard, +5 For the Greater Good!)
- Agreeable (-5 doesn't play well with others, +5 gets along with Hitler)
Feats & Character Levels

Your characters will gain levels using experience points from quests. When you level up, you’ll select feats, unlocking or improving your abilities. The feats will be an important aspect of character development (i.e. they won’t give you minor bonuses but help you develop your characters along specific paths: lone wolf vs squad leader, offense vs defense, gunslinger vs sprayer or gadgeteer, melee vs ranged, which will go beyond which skill to develop, etc) and make as much of a difference as the skills levels.

We want the skills to determine your chance of success with certain tasks and the feats to define what you can do and how you can use these skills to maximum advantage. For example, not every guy with points in Pistol is a gunslinger, not every guy who travels alone is a Jeremiah Johnson when it comes to survival, etc. Basically, the feats will define your character much more than your skills.
Skills & Learn by Using

You will not gain XP for killing, talking, sneaking, picking locks, using computers, fixing mechanical things and such. You will not increase your skills manually. Instead your skills will be increased automatically based on their use.

Instead of counting how many times you did something, we’ll assign a certain value (let’s call it learning points) to each activity (attacking, killing, fixing, sneaking, convincing, lying, etc). So killing a tough enemy or repairing a reactor will net you more points than killing a weakling or fixing a toaster. Basically, it will work the same way as XP but go directly toward raising a skill that did all the work.
Gadgets

While melee builds will be viable, most enemies will use guns. Ranged combat will be dull if everyone just stands there, firing their weapons and dodging bullets. It needs cover but we don’t want to place cover everywhere, which means we need gadgets to make your own cover (among other things):
- Depletable energy shield (absorbs x damage)
- Reality distortion field (THC penalty against you)
- Optical illusion a-la Total Recall (chance that enemies will target the illusion)
- Cloaking field aka Stealth Boy
- Stasis field (holds enemy, no damage can be dealt)
- Brainwave Disruptor (don’t leave your home without Psychic Nullifier)
Expect 10-12 gadgets with 3-4 upgrade levels.
Factions

While factions will get a lot of attention and play a large role, you won’t join a faction but will remain an outsider, free to work for and deal with all factions, which fits the setting better as these factions aren’t guilds but different hubs. However, many quests would have conflicting interests and reputation would play a stronger and more immediate role than it did in AoD, so you won’t be able to please everyone for long.

In addition to your reputation, which will play a much bigger role in the game (the main quest is sort of built around it), we’ll add two important stats that will be affected by your actions: faction strength & morale (your actions might increase or lower both or increase one and lower the other). More on that in the future updates.

Feb 1, 2016

Playing an RPG without combat

The Age of Decadence

I'm bored of killing people. Not necessarily bored of having people killed, but certainly of doing my own dirty work. After a couple of years of great RPGs—The Witcher 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pillars of Eternity, Fallout 4, and even South Park: The Stick of Truth—I need a break from fighting. This isn't a hot take: I'm not about to decry RPG combat in its entirety. This is my problem, and it's up to me—not the industry at large—to find a solution.

The solution, it turns out, is Age of Decadence. Officially released last year after a time in early access, it's still a bit rough and unpolished. Nonetheless, it's a wilfully uncompromising RPG. There is combat, and it's extremely difficult, but, depending on the choices that you make, engaging in it can be optional.

In Age of Decadence, you're given a choice of professions, each promising a markedly different experience. A mercenary is going to get hilt deep in some jerks—it's a part of the job description. But other builds promise other ways to play. I chose a merchant, partly because it's a non-combat option, but also because, if this is truly an age of decadence, I assume having a lot of money will help.

It works because the setting favours politics and greed, rather than sword-'n'-board heroism. Because of this, I go for an extremely specific, high-risk build. My combat fatigue manifests in a character with no points in any of the combat skills. Of my dagger ability, the game bluntly states that I should "put it down before you poke an eye out." (Wouldn't poking someone's eye out be an extremely effective use of a dagger? I suppose it depends whose eye.)

I am definitely seconds from death.

Instead, I'm a master at doing words at people—more so than this sentence would imply. My primary stats are trading, persuasion and 'streetwise,' and it's interesting just how much these skills matter. I've played for a few hours, and, so far, Age of Decadence has mitigated its early linearity through contextual events and dialogue. At multiple points I'm given the option for actions that rely on my (appalling) dexterity, or conversation choices that require my (amazing) persuasion. But these options don't magically solve problems.

In one instance, a man tries to lure me into an abandoned house. This feels dodgy, and, thanks to my streetwise skill, I'm informed in-game that something suspicious is afoot. I decide to follow anyway, and am immediately set upon by muggers. This triggers a combat encounter and I die almost instantly. Even in the merchant campaign, combat can happen. As the player, it's my job to recognise dangerous scenarios and avoid them. I'd say it's a lot like life in that regards, but nobody has ever attempted to lure me through a mystical Roman-esque town into a run-down house full of jerks. Not that it couldn't happen. I live in Bath, after all.

I'm not far into Age of Decadence, certainly not enough to make any strong pronouncements of its overall quality. But the resolution to my last mission did fill me with hope. The merchants guild are a political organisation, and a recurring theme has been negotiating tactical murders through the assassin's guild. In the latest instance, our organisation's desired target was deemed too hot to handle, and so it's up to me to find a solution. That means seeing the town's ruling lord, but getting an audience requires solving some problems with two enemy camps outside of town.

One of these camps, filled with bandits, lets me stroll right in. My job is to negotiate the release of a hostage they've kidnapped. I talk them down to half their original price, and, returning to the lord's house, persuade the steward to pay full price. The difference? It goes straight in my pocket. It was a satisfying and profitable solution to a problem with many potential outcomes.

Much like this website.

It's notable that the lack of combat hasn't stopped the tension. There's always the risk that I'll say the wrong thing or make a stupid decision that will get me killed. It's happened to me twice so far, either because I wasn't paying attention, or because I was overconfident in my abilities. It's a dangerous world, and the non-combat option requires to me carefully negotiate a deadly path. That in itself is satisfying—it feels like I'm profiting from this world despite its hostility.

It's something I'd like to see more RPGs tackle, because it feels like roleplaying in a more fundamental sense than we often mean when we invoke the genre. In Age of Decadence the only number that matters is the amount of money I have. Beyond that, it's a game about actually playing a role. My character is so weak that he'd be killed by an inn's basement rats. And yet, despite—perhaps even because of his deficiencies—it's a role that I'm starting to enjoy.