This game is designed ass backward, the skill points you spend beforehand will decide how the game plays out and you have no way to influence events outside of that, so it basically plays itself out. Like you talk with npc and depending on your skill point distribution you get teleported to this area or to this other area. It's like a CYOA basically but you can't even actively influence the branching of the story.
The way I remember the game is that your answers were basically predetermined by your skill point distribution beforehand, so yeah you might have had the illusion of choices where you could choose between 2-3 different answers let's say but only one answer wouldn't lead to failure and that was the answer predetermined by your skills distribution beforehand, that's why I say that the game largely plays itself out, you don't feel you have actual agency at all.
No, he didn't, or else he wouldn't have prefaced it with self-doubting words like "As I recall"...
It seems like nonsense anyway, saying you have no agency and then saying that you have the agency of what skills to pick...
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Putting points into some skills where you have no fricking clue where that will lead you is the opposite of "agency". AOD shoehorns you into predetermined paths based entirely on your skill points distribution beforehand, again the game fricking plays itself and you are just taken for a ride you cannot actively influence via actual gameplay (there's no interactive world to speak of also), it's an absolutely ass backwards way to design a rpg.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
You decide what skills to invest in and then go down the path that suits those skills. This is agency.
>reasons I don't understand
It hits people who expect to be able to do EVERYTHING whenever they want with no sense. Ultimately the game is an actual RPG, rather than a sandbox.
writing has terrible prose and you have very limited choices in dialogue, checks in dialogue are set pretty arbitrarily high so you can still put a lot of points in a skill and still miss a lot of thresholds. pretty not worth it to play it that way.
Its a game that has one good gimmick while having the rest of mediocre or downright bad things floating around, somehow that makes it da best.
I'd rate it 6/10
I tried playing colony ship a few days ago after seeing so many people praise it and AoD, stating it being essentially a successor to the original fallouts, and not only was I surprised to find out that it's nothing like fallout 1 & 2, but it's barely a CRPG given that everything is railroaded super hard.
I already hate games that have skills progress through use since it either promotes grinding or it simplifies player progression by automating growth when doing most things players are going to do anyway, but then a majority of my decisions also do the classic frick up of just having skill related options always solve any issues completely without even thinking. And it's not like the particular dialogue prompts split between different dialogue skills are nuanced or interesting in anyway; when the game gives you a persuasion check and streetwise check in the same prompt they are literally just slightly different flavors of each other that lead to the same outcome.
Setting and world are pretty interesting and could be really cool but it feels like a pretty low budget project that that doesn't really have any strong suit, it's below average in writing, characters, music, graphics and mechanics. And from what I understand AoD is much of the same which is pretty disappointing since it seemed like another interesting setting.
>And it's not like the particular dialogue prompts split between different dialogue skills are nuanced or interesting in anyway
sounds exactly like fallout 1 and 2
well for one fallout 1 & 2 didn't have different dialogue skills, they just had speech. Granted the dialogue options available with speech were also in the same vain of click-to-win, but the games in general did way better of a job having multiple approaches in solving scenarios. The original fallouts also didn't label which options were from your speech stat, although again it wasn't ever too hard to tell since they're usually either way larger than the other options or weren't moronic like "you're talking too much, die!", but there were times where multiple choices seemed potentially plausible and you'd have to actually think about which choice would get you a particular goal as opposed to just clicked the "[Persuasion 5] You REALLY stand to benefit if you just put your weapon down friend and hear me out..." tier option.
Not saying fallout 1 & 2 have the best RPG dialogue system/skill system/combat or anything like that, but colony ship not only didn't innovate on those several decade old games but it somehow managed to take several steps back.
>The original fallouts also didn't label dialogue options
I loved that in FO1. It added to the sense that player has to figure things out themselves, and everything might have consequences.
Now, that was my first playthrough, most of it was my imagination and the game doesn't really live up to it, but it's a feeling that's worth striving for.
Once you label the the winning skill option, you not only hand out the solution, but it makes it feel safe. Skill check implies good results, and only good results.
I remember being conflicted about hiring the water caravan, and I don't think I would've had to think about it if it was labeled with >[barter 50] solve the problem
Labeling them helps make it clear that skills are useful, and gives player a chance to use consumables to hit skill check requirements, but I think there's a downside that harms immersion.
Not an rpg!
Hide thread!
It's an rpg
No its not
are you doing an epic troll on me sir
This game is designed ass backward, the skill points you spend beforehand will decide how the game plays out and you have no way to influence events outside of that, so it basically plays itself out. Like you talk with npc and depending on your skill point distribution you get teleported to this area or to this other area. It's like a CYOA basically but you can't even actively influence the branching of the story.
That sounds pretty stupid
>but you can't even actively influence the branching of the story.
you can literally betray every faction
The way I remember the game is that your answers were basically predetermined by your skill point distribution beforehand, so yeah you might have had the illusion of choices where you could choose between 2-3 different answers let's say but only one answer wouldn't lead to failure and that was the answer predetermined by your skills distribution beforehand, that's why I say that the game largely plays itself out, you don't feel you have actual agency at all.
>The way I remember
Okay, but what's the reality?
He just told you...
No, he didn't, or else he wouldn't have prefaced it with self-doubting words like "As I recall"...
It seems like nonsense anyway, saying you have no agency and then saying that you have the agency of what skills to pick...
Putting points into some skills where you have no fricking clue where that will lead you is the opposite of "agency". AOD shoehorns you into predetermined paths based entirely on your skill points distribution beforehand, again the game fricking plays itself and you are just taken for a ride you cannot actively influence via actual gameplay (there's no interactive world to speak of also), it's an absolutely ass backwards way to design a rpg.
You decide what skills to invest in and then go down the path that suits those skills. This is agency.
I had a lot of fun with it and replayed it several times, but it's been 5 years or so
It savagely butthurts people for reasons I don't understand
>reasons I don't understand
It hits people who expect to be able to do EVERYTHING whenever they want with no sense. Ultimately the game is an actual RPG, rather than a sandbox.
writing has terrible prose and you have very limited choices in dialogue, checks in dialogue are set pretty arbitrarily high so you can still put a lot of points in a skill and still miss a lot of thresholds. pretty not worth it to play it that way.
the combat can be fun if you're a masochist.
It was interesting, but I didn't have fun, and quit playing it.
Its a game that has one good gimmick while having the rest of mediocre or downright bad things floating around, somehow that makes it da best.
I'd rate it 6/10
I tried playing colony ship a few days ago after seeing so many people praise it and AoD, stating it being essentially a successor to the original fallouts, and not only was I surprised to find out that it's nothing like fallout 1 & 2, but it's barely a CRPG given that everything is railroaded super hard.
I already hate games that have skills progress through use since it either promotes grinding or it simplifies player progression by automating growth when doing most things players are going to do anyway, but then a majority of my decisions also do the classic frick up of just having skill related options always solve any issues completely without even thinking. And it's not like the particular dialogue prompts split between different dialogue skills are nuanced or interesting in anyway; when the game gives you a persuasion check and streetwise check in the same prompt they are literally just slightly different flavors of each other that lead to the same outcome.
Setting and world are pretty interesting and could be really cool but it feels like a pretty low budget project that that doesn't really have any strong suit, it's below average in writing, characters, music, graphics and mechanics. And from what I understand AoD is much of the same which is pretty disappointing since it seemed like another interesting setting.
>And it's not like the particular dialogue prompts split between different dialogue skills are nuanced or interesting in anyway
sounds exactly like fallout 1 and 2
well for one fallout 1 & 2 didn't have different dialogue skills, they just had speech. Granted the dialogue options available with speech were also in the same vain of click-to-win, but the games in general did way better of a job having multiple approaches in solving scenarios. The original fallouts also didn't label which options were from your speech stat, although again it wasn't ever too hard to tell since they're usually either way larger than the other options or weren't moronic like "you're talking too much, die!", but there were times where multiple choices seemed potentially plausible and you'd have to actually think about which choice would get you a particular goal as opposed to just clicked the "[Persuasion 5] You REALLY stand to benefit if you just put your weapon down friend and hear me out..." tier option.
Not saying fallout 1 & 2 have the best RPG dialogue system/skill system/combat or anything like that, but colony ship not only didn't innovate on those several decade old games but it somehow managed to take several steps back.
>The original fallouts also didn't label dialogue options
I loved that in FO1. It added to the sense that player has to figure things out themselves, and everything might have consequences.
Now, that was my first playthrough, most of it was my imagination and the game doesn't really live up to it, but it's a feeling that's worth striving for.
Once you label the the winning skill option, you not only hand out the solution, but it makes it feel safe. Skill check implies good results, and only good results.
I remember being conflicted about hiring the water caravan, and I don't think I would've had to think about it if it was labeled with
>[barter 50] solve the problem
Labeling them helps make it clear that skills are useful, and gives player a chance to use consumables to hit skill check requirements, but I think there's a downside that harms immersion.
if you like the style of gameplay of 'roll dice -> if bad number game over else you get to continue' then it's the game for you.
it's not very good, no
OP here. Ok ok I get the idea. I will NOT be playing this. I will be playing Arcanum instead