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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: Mech#4 on September 01, 2017, 02:50:56 am

Title: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Mech#4 on September 01, 2017, 02:50:56 am
This is a game that was first mentioned around the time all the other W40k/Fantasy games were being announced, leading to me only glancing at most of them. Some time has passed and it has now been released in Early Access on Steam.

"Warhammer  40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr" is an ARPG with randomly generated levels and missions, destructable environments, locational damage on enemies, finishing moves, crafting, as well as a planned system for "Seasons" where a themed mission system is released and community actions will determine the outcome. (http://store.steampowered.com/app/527430/Warhammer_40000_Inquisitor__Martyr/)

Generaly opinion of it so far seems to be pretty positive. People seem to be happy with the gameplay and mechanics, with complaints being a few performance hiccups and repetitiveness, though since the game is in early access it's probably to be expected.

Spoiler: Blurb from Steam Page (click to show/hide)

At the moment it seems like there's 3 playable character classes. Crusador Inquisitor, Primaris Psyker and Death Cult Assassin I would assume focus on heavy melee, ranged and fast melee respectively. I do like a good ARPG and I don't really need them to do anything hugely ground breaking. Fun abilities, class and enemy variety and lots of loot are the main things I look for and this seems to have that.

They also seem to have ideas for PvP things with invadable player fortresses, cabals which I imagine function like guilds. Multiplayer content isn't really my forte so someone more knowledgable can maybe cover that.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2017, 09:26:18 am
I'm definitely interested in the game, been watching it in its development prior to Steam.

Some feels though:

Combat has always looked a little meh. A much slower version of Diablo with guns. I like all the RPGness going on but combat seems to consist of walking through some corridors to shoot down one pack of guys at a time. Swap a few tilesets and enemy models around and you've got the game.

It feels like another one of those 40k games where the flavor is spot on but the game side of it looks a little bland/basic. Sort of like Mordheim, down to the UI and menus.

Neocore is also a company that has simultaneously impressed me and let me down by turns. King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame was great, but it was also a buggy, crashy, poorly optimized piece of shit they never fixed.

Probably won't get it in EA, I think this is one of those games where it needs to be feature complete so nothing can be left to second guess or chance.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: umiman on September 01, 2017, 12:45:47 pm
Quote from: nenjin on September 01, 2017, 09:26:18 am
Neocore is also a company that has simultaneously impressed me and let me down by turns. King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame was great, but it was also buggy, crashy, poorly optimized piece of shit they never fixed.
This is my opinion as well. I really want to love King Arthur but holy shit is it unplayable.

I don't trust these devs enough to get this in EA, even if I like the premise.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2017, 12:51:59 pm
Wasn't unplayable for me but it got to the point where, midgame, when you were pausing frequently to cast spells with accuracy, reorganize charges and other things, the game would just up and derp on you and crash.

Which wouldn't be a deal breaker except high level gameplay pretty much demands that action out of the player to be successful. And it kept happening in the same all-important battle in the same place. So eventually I just gave up.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: umiman on September 01, 2017, 12:57:10 pm
Quote from: nenjin on September 01, 2017, 12:51:59 pm
Wasn't unplayable for me but it got to the point where, midgame, when you were pausing frequently to cast spells with accuracy, reorganize charges and other things, the game would just up and derp on you and crash.

Which wouldn't be a deal breaker except high level gameplay pretty much demands that action out of the player to be successful. And it kept happening in the same all-important battle in the same place. So eventually I just gave up.
For me the FPS was like... 10. Was pretty much unplayable. This was back in the day when it was released though.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Mech#4 on September 02, 2017, 03:05:14 am
I remember looking at King Arthur a few times but I always held off on buying it due to some of the issues I read about.


I like the GIF of a horde of Nurglings swarming the player backed up by possibly a Chaos Spawn. The ability to shoot off the arms of enemies like the Obliterators, removing their weapons, is also a neat addition but whether it'll be feasable to do in a busy combat or just easier to chomp throught their HP will likely determine how often it's used.

I think variation in combat has quite a bit of potential if/when they start expanding the game that way. Bloodletters for melee, Horrors for ranged (it would be neat if the pink horrors split into blue horrors on death), Chaos Spawn could have random effects and stats like champions in Diablo 2 (Regeneration, lightning enchanted, etc). A lot of variation could also come from traitor guardsmen, toting las-guns, mortars, auto-gun emplacements with cultists supplying buffs based on the Chaos Gods.
Further on, other races would help also. Orks, Necrons, Tyranids and Eldar. I think one of the videos mentioned a Dark Eldar raid which would be fun to deal with. I think there was also a Knight in one of the videos. (https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/600x620/99120108003_ImperialKnightPaladin360.jpg)
ARPG combat does tend to be rather mindless but adding things like priority targets (like the Shamens were for Dark Ones in Diablo 2) makes things much more interesting as you have to pay attention.

Items seem to be divided into weapons, full body suit of armour and various medallions and implants. A bit light on the loot variation with no seperation of things like belts, pauldrons, torso and leg armour but visually it would help keep things more consistant. Though, I think dyeing armour is an option going from one screenshot. (https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/858354911717683668/7713ACCBA3695A0C57A4A96F9D40A4BF1A681116/)
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on April 29, 2018, 05:57:44 pm
So I finally caved and got this. It's in Early Access still but it's supposed to release pretty soon so I figured why not.

And I confess....it's totally drawing me in. I've had some reservations about it but now that I'm looking at the game in front of me they're somewhat fading. It's still very clearly a WIP (which is annoyingly, liberally stamped in many places including on some cutscenes) and it shows in some places, but overall it looks fairly quality.

I'll write up a bigger thing later but for the moment...

-So. Dense. There's simple text tutorials to start to explain stuff but there a lot to get through, many sub-systems and different bits bolted on everywhere. I knew somewhat about some of these systems in staying informed with the game, but for someone new....phew. Be prepared do some screen hunting and tutorial reading.

-So 40k. It's trying hard and IMO, doing well so far. The voice acting, the visuals, the music, and especially the UI and presentation, all very well done. The text logs you find in game are written with all the flavorful header gibberish you'd expect of 40k communications.

-Looks way better in person than the videos I've seen so far. I'm spending a lot of time enjoying the scenery atm, with all the detail they've put in to it.

-Won't say much about combat atm, other than that Martyr isn't a straight Diablo game in how it handles. More like a blend of Diablo style point and click and a top down action game where you steer your character with keys and manage the camera with the mouse. It makes for a weird little hybrid of a game that I'm still getting used to.

-Crazy stuff you don't expect to see in a Diablo-looking game, like manning turrets and going in over the shoulder mode, or vehicle gameplay. This game is trying all sorts of unconventional gimmicks.

-It's clear from the first hour that it intends to be a long-term, grindy sort of game. There's 3 main classes with 3 subclasses each for a total of 9 playable classes. There's a character level, and then an overall account level, with a sprawling set of upgrade trees that, atm, I honestly can't tell if they're character specific or account-wide and affect all your characters. There's so much shit to unlock over hover over, so many boxes to click in to, to discover yet more stuff to spend points on doing stuff...that I can already feel my time being sucked in to this game.

-The story is, so far, convoluted and fast moving. The voice acting and cutscenes are pretty spot on, but some of the grammar of the written stuff is a little a spotty. It's so far of decent production quality, and only slightly cringe inducing. Which is a pretty good sign. In terms of tone it seems a little less straight laced than like, BFG. There's a sense of fun in some of the writing and dialog.

I've been hesitant to get this because there's just so much to it, it tended to look repetitive in some videos, it's Neocore Games and it's been in development forever. So I was kind of primed to be filled with regrets after dropping $50 on it. But I'm charmed, frankly, despite how obviously quirky of a game it is, with how 40k it is and how it's weaving all this different stuff together. It is not a boiler plate action game. About the only thing I can tell will get old fast is the map design.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Ozyton on April 29, 2018, 06:17:00 pm
I've been wanting to look into this game but every time I try to find videos I find stuff that's pretty outdated or the quality of the video is just... not good. Do you have any specific videos or channels that give an impression of how the game plays these days? The steam reviews typically say that it's a decent game right now but a bit overpriced.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on April 29, 2018, 07:18:00 pm
I sort of had the same problem which was influencing my choice to buy. I'll look around some. Not saying the game is the greatest thing since sliced cheese atm, but it's surpassed my initial expectations.

The price tag does seem somewhat high, almost AAA price tag. But to me, if they've taken the time to faithfully model all the different 40k weaponry, put good sound effects on it, just because it's 40k and it's what fans want and expect....that's a price I'm happy to pay. I mean they just dropped a video of alpha gameplay of a pilotable Knight. There are even Leman Russ down there. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6Ac039tN54) That's a lot of development effort. So the price tag doesn't surprise me, because Neocore has not gone small or simple with the game. The loop may get a little repetitive, but there's a lot of detail in it so far.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: sambojin on April 29, 2018, 07:30:22 pm
Watched a fair bit of this on twitch at one point. It looks pretty good, and I'll probably buy a copy when I update my rig. It was a bit stop/starty on the action when I saw it, and some of it looked a little grindy or "pick them off from a distance" style gameplay (except for the arena bits and boss battles, where it was a matter of hoping you do enough damage before you get flamered it death), but this was a couple of months ago now. Hopefully they'll improve pacing a bit.

It looked like there were enough levelling options and character variety to be worth playing around with anyway, and it was quite pretty in a grimdark sense.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: milo christiansen on April 29, 2018, 07:47:15 pm
Quote from: The sidebar on Steam
Requires 3rd-Party Account: Neocore Account and the game requires constant online connection
Interest killed.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Man of Paper on April 29, 2018, 07:51:24 pm
I mean, unfortunately that's only getting more common. Eventually with that mindset you'll be that weird old dude down the street who only plays retro games and smells like mothballs.

Joking, mostly, to each their own, and as someone who's loved with no internet I can understand reasons why.

I hate hearing that this game is acceptable, because my ass shells out for the mediocre 40k games, and this is only going to tempt me until I get it.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on April 29, 2018, 09:02:03 pm
It uses your Steam account to verify. You punch in an account name and that's all the registration you have to do after starting the game. (Previously the game was played and distributed solely through their own portal.)

Now, what happens when you've got Steam in offline mode? No idea. The game automatically puts you in global chat, but that's the extent of forced socialization. This seems like a game that should easily be playable offline....but may not be.

There are a few social features, like coop, pvp and cabals, which are like guilds with gameplay benefits to partly justify the online connection.

So it is one of those always online games, by all appearances. I can see what happens if I go offline to play it. But I can get why that's a deal breaker for some.

Anyways, one thing I will note about the crunchiness of the game....it feels like there are a lot of random, arbitrary bonuses to everything. If you're the OCD kind of person that's like "Oooh yeah I'm gonna get suppression damage on every piece of gear and have it at like 300%" then it's a wet dream. But it's a lot of RNG, fiddling and crafting and so far it's been a bit of white noise in that department. After a little more time with it I may have a different opinion.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on April 30, 2018, 01:11:50 am
On the one hand I'm really looking forward to this game because there's been so few full sci-fi Diabloesque ARPGs, let alone good ones.  Plus it seems to do a pretty good job of capturing the 40k feel. 

On the other hand I gather they've gone through multiple revamps of the game during early access, including one that's they're not putting live until release day?  Maybe I've misunderstood that - a youtuber (forget who) was talking about it in those terms - but if so that leaves me very wary. 

Also I'm not sure I like the active abilities being purely tied to gear.  I like unlocking new skills and abilities and modifiers for how those skills and abilities work in these types of games (and picking and choosing to make my own build) far more so than unlocking e.g. lots of +2% fire damage upgrades, but what I've seen this looks to be more of the latter than the former.  Seems like you'd be choosing which weapon(s) to use fairly early on and that's your skills for the rest of the game.  I dunno, maybe there's more build stuff that I've missed/not seen.

On the online-only thing, I don't think offline play is going to be possible - they recently (temporarily) took down sales in Russia due to a wide ranging IP ban, because they didn't want people buying it that couldn't play.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on April 30, 2018, 10:31:26 am
Well after a good 8 hours I can say that map design is a flawed point in the game. Everything is either a grid based level in a star ship, or a slightly less grid-based level on a floating sea platform, a glacier, or something else. There's no verticality to maps at all. You can even clearly see how the tiles are assembled in the mission preview windows.

What saves this from being a total disaster is that the game can be tough, and you can essentially choose how tough you want it to be by the challenge rating of the mission you pick. So this is less like Diablo where you roll in and melt the faces of 120 guys in a pack swarm all at once. You have to tread carefully because they start throwing packs with 2 to 3 elites in them at you, and between them shooting you and pounding on you, the damage and suppression (basically a bar that goes down as you take damage and when it gets too low you start getting stunned, knocked down or slowed) from the lesser swarm enemies starts to pile up very fast. And because your health and gear items are on a cooldown, often you have to retreat or at least seek some cover to buy yourself a little time.

So maps kind of suck but the combat difficulty and finesse seem to be there. You have to play slightly tactically to disassemble these hordes in good order, and that often intersects with both your class and your gear choices. Nothing will ever be "unbeatable" based on the things you've chosen, but it can definitely be harder.

Best moment so far: went in to a mission to exterminate some guardsmen who had been slated to get mind-wiped after their mission but the purge had some how missed them. I'm running around gunning them down, all is great.....when I find the last group of enemies in the level is supported by a FUCKING TANK. And here I am with a Chainsword and Shield, an Autogun and a Personal Void Shield. It took a lot of running circles around the tank carving it up with my chain sword. Of course you'd never kill a tank with a man-sized chainsword or an autogun but game needs must I suppose. For this reason I switched my loadout to a Power Sword and Shield and a Plasma Gun to deal with armored opponents. I'm not a fan of how the plasma gun shoots or sounds but it gets the job done.

So yeah. Combat's difficulty and how it starts getting technical with gameplay as soon as the tutorial levels are over kind of save it from its own design. If you had to worry less about enemies, you'd have more time to grouse about the level design. But fights can be challenging enough that levels, eventually, do an adequate job. I just wish they were more fun to explore, the only things they offer you outside of the mission objectives are consumable resupply boxes and the occasional chest with random loot, which you honestly don't need because the game SHOWERS you in loot after every mission, 90% of which you won't use. There is also the occasional set of traps (explosives, alarms that spawn enemies, locked doors and poison gas) that break up the repetitiveness of hunting down enemies. It's just not enough to make these levels feel alive though. There need to be patrols of enemies. Tile set rooms need to have SOMETHING going on for them other than a group of enemies, some cover, and maybe a resupply chest or two. If levels were great, I'd call the game great. Right now I can only call it good though, because of this single element.

But yeah, combat does require a little bit of brain power. Everything needs to die but the order in which they die determines how hard it's going to be. Do you:
-Shoot or explode all the weaker guys? They don't do much damage or suppression, but as a whole they both can tip a fight in the enemies favor if you leave them alone. Guys with flamethrowers especially will shred your suppression quickly and leave you very vulnerable.
-Kill the elites? Big guys with big guns and tons of HP take a while to kill, but their damage and suppression cannot be ignored for long. A single one of them isn't a match for a player, but an elite backed up by plenty of lesser units is.
-Kill the leader? Leaders may not hit as hard as elites, but they have tons of HP and buff all the enemies around them. While you'd usually want to kill them first, the buffs they add to all the enemies around them make their damage much, much more dangerous, to the point you don't have the luxury of wailing on the leader while their entire troop shoots you in the back. Or they'll drop in or summon support units.
-Destroy their support vehicles and turrets? Leaders regularly drop tarantula support turrets in to the fight, which can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. While they aren't super damaging or super tough, they're armored and that firepower can sometimes be just enough to push you over the edge.

So for me, despite really hating the plasma gun, it's an effective weapon at singling out guys to shoot from range. Where it'd be suicide to charge in to melee, the plasma gun can help you whittle down a pack to managable levels.

On top of all this, enemies often regenerate health very fast. It's not clear if this is just elites and leaders, daemons or most units, but you don't have the luxury of sniping down guys' health and running away, they will regen that lost health after a few seconds. So you have to keep the pressure on in combat when it comes to tougher targets, and that can occasionally feel too hard, especially when you've already blown through all your healing and supply pickups.

Quote
Also I'm not sure I like the active abilities being purely tied to gear.  I like unlocking new skills and abilities and modifiers for how those skills and abilities work in these types of games (and picking and choosing to make my own build) far more so than unlocking e.g. lots of +2% fire damage upgrades, but what I've seen this looks to be more of the latter than the former.  Seems like you'd be choosing which weapon(s) to use fairly early on and that's your skills for the rest of the game.  I dunno, maybe there's more build stuff that I've missed/not seen.

I'm not 100% clear on which it is yet either. I think in a way, weapons stand in for skills. You unlock more and more of the 40k armory as you level up, so every couple of games you're like "Oh sweet, that weapon is in. I gotta try that!"

For example, I got a plasma pistol and was like "I gotta try doing a chainsword in one hand and a plasma pistol in the other." Turns out that most but not all weapons have 4 abilities. If you dual wield two weapons that each has 4 abilities, you get the first two from each. So I ended up with a build that had a "channeled" melee attack (which is what chainswords do, it's called eviscerate, it's awesome), a crowd cleaving strike, a single shot from the plasma pistol or a slightly harder hitting single shot. I ended up scraping that combo because the plasma pistol just can't compare in usefulness to the suppression shield, but it's fun to mix and match stuff like you're building your own table top hero unit.

So far the most satisfying weapon I've used in game is the humble Autogun. While it's probably the least appreciated or iconic weapon in 40k, in this it sounds GREAT, does really good damage and has multiple firing modes, all of which are situationally useful. Unfortunately the gun lacks any real armor piercing damage, which in 40k is basically a must.

Lastly, I think this is a decent channel for gameplay vids, the video quality seems good. The dude looks like he has played a ton of it. I make no claims as to his quality as a youtuber though, never heard of him before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVu0i8GXSTU&list=PLy5KHwY-7WyZ_mBF569Wyn_tzAYj7cdSO
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Retropunch on April 30, 2018, 05:04:22 pm
Urgh, online only kills this for me. Diablo 3 managed it through sheer force of Blizzard marketing, but I won't be encouraging other companies with it.

Their reasons for it are pretty rubbish as well (https://steamcommunity.com/app/527430/discussions/0/1473095965291684995/) - whilst none of the reasons given make even remotely compelling arguments, the most annoying thing is that they won't admit it's mostly just DRM.

It's probably something I'll get 3-4 years from now when it's on a big sale, but I would have been an early purchaser without online only. 
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Folly on May 02, 2018, 02:31:33 pm
I really wanted to like this game, simply because it's been so long since I played a decent ARPG.

But browsing through the Steam forums, I'm seeing a lot of complaints about situations where the developers seem to have prioritized their 'vision' over what is practical, and what is fun. This impression is reinforced by the fact that they have completely rebooted multiple core systems many times over during their long development process; it's like they have no idea what will make an effective and satisfying gameplay experience, so they are just trying things that sound interesting, realizing those things don't work still without understanding why, and then moving on to whatever idea jumps into their heads next. I've seen far too many promising games go down this path, and it never ends well.

I'm going to wait until after launch to read some reviews of the finished product, but this is very likely to be a pass for me.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 02, 2018, 05:00:39 pm
I AM a little concerned, now that I've put a good 10+ hours in to game, about the state of some things.

When half your crafting menus aren't accessible, but you're demoing what is essentially a big complicated story campaign mission one-off thing, that's troubling.

When half your cutscenes are still in raw format, and you're doing this other stuff, that's concerning.

When your campaign is only half finished, and all the work seems to have been done on the first half with nothing hooked up to the second half, that's concerning.

Still, I am enjoying myself enough to want to come home and play it asap. Combat continues to get more and more challenging, even as the gap between my power level and the missions I'm undertaking shrinks. The first hour of the game you just steam roll pretty much everything, taking little to no damage. Now, at level 10, there are single packs of, say, 4 Chaos Warriors, 8 Chaos Spawn, two sorcerers and a commander that can take me two to three minutes to safely take apart.

It's not an unfun level of difficulty, yet. But it's making me wonder if the difficulty continues to ramp up like this, because it could totally get to the point where it's no longer fun.

That said, it has a lot to do with the weapons you attack any given foe with. The difference between armored and unarmored, and which weapons are specifically good against both types, makes a huge difference.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 02, 2018, 07:11:43 pm
Double post but based on the comments here I decided to do some skimming in the Steam forum.

The release is now June 5th.

There is a fresh beta build coming May 21st. Apparently this build is fairly old and hasn't been updated in a while.

Characters will be wiped at release. Gar. Wish I'd known that. Still, I'm ok getting ahead of the game in learning the ins and outs of it; there's a lot to learn.

So yeah, now is probably not the time to buy unless you have a burning, unquenchable desire to purge heretic scum in His name.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 22, 2018, 07:13:06 pm
The update to the beta client has dropped.....the evening before I have to leave town for the rest of the week. ><

I'll post some thoughts after I've had some time with it.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 29, 2018, 04:25:23 pm
So I've had my time with the beta client.

The game releases on PC in about a week. (They just announced another month's delay for consoles.)

You can probably guess what that means. TLDR: The game is going to have a variety of issues at release, and possibly have unfinished content. The PC release needs more time to cook and it's not going to get it, so expect a game that is getting fixed and completed post-launch.

All in all, I do like the game. It's an aRPG trying to do its own thing, trying stuff that's a little off the beaten path for aRPGs. It's slower paced, a little more tactical, and has uncommon elements like a cover system, and the game mechanics are fairly elaborate. Stylistically it's very nerdy in a way only a 40k game can be.

But it's not going to be pretty at release. Not at all.

There is so much to the game that as of the build they just gave us that either isn't finished or has bugs, that I don't see how they can address all of it in a week. Not unless they have some super magical, complete build they didn't deign to share.

Where to start.....

-We've got like 3/5ths of the campaign now. And of the new parts that weren't finished in the last build, we have the basics of the mission, a lot of written but unvoiced content and some bugs in the voice overs we did get. Some of the animations in previous campaign content actually managed to look worse. If this stuff wasn't done in the build they gave us, I can't see how it's going to suddenly be done in a week. As of this build, there are still cutscenes and animatics marked "WIP" or are clearly works in progress. I suspect they will simply pull the WIP tag from some of these cutscenes rather than improve on them further.

-Performance is great until it's not. The gameplay is smoother than the previous build overall, but now the jarring slowdown you experience between being in combat and not in combat is even more noticeable. I've got everything dialed up to 11 on my system, so maybe it'd play a little better with stuff turned down a bit. But right now there is still a noticeable drop in performance when you start exploding a whole room full of enemies.

-New graphical bugs were introduced in this beta build, that was delayed because "they got shaders and improvements that were worth waiting for." So right now some levels strobe, some doors display incorrectly, and my personal favorite, which I'm not sure is a bug or feature....some attacks in some levels literally blast the texture away to nothing. It's kind of disconcerting on the air or sea levels to completely destroy the visuals of the walk ways or islands and be running around on open air or sea. A lot of these problems seem to vary with people's graphic cards and drivers.

-Typos and poor grammar in much of the written word. This hurts me especially because this stuff should be incredibly easy to catch. Neocore isn't an English studio so I forgive some of the grammar. But it feels like two different people are writing this stuff sometimes, for the difference in quality and execution. When you see 85% of it written correctly and competently, it makes the other hastily written 15% that much more galling to read.

-So many game systems not quite finished. The crafting system has a lot of elements to it, from making gear, to optimizing the making of gear, to reforging items, to changing their appearance, to buffing up legendary items you've earned. Only about half of that appears to be working right now in the beta build. You craft gear and optimize the crafting process, and upgrade your legendaries. The rest I don't think is done, and if it is done by the PC release, probably is going to have issues.

-The Morality system (being a radical or puritan inquisitor) went in this build. And it's essentially two additional, small skill trees on top of the 14 they already have. But the tab for exploring the morality system remains locked, there are no icons for the perks you buy, no way to earn the points for it and I have seen no where in missions where you make choices that dictate your morality. 

-So much locked game out there. The game map is designed like a 40k star map. There's planets where the missions take place. These planets are part of a system, which roughly organizes the challenge level of missions. Systems exist in subsectors, which further organize challenge levels. Multiple subsectors exist in a sector, which is the Caligari Sector in Martyr. So far, all of the content has been in one subsector of the game, the Tenebra subsector. It covers Challenge Levels from 1 to 1500, which is the cap that everyone has come up against. It ha 6 like systems with about 5 planets each. But that's like...1/10th of the proposed content. You can zoom the game map out to the sector level and see there are...8? more subsectors on the map. If each has 5 systems, and each system has 5 planets....that's a shit load of content that I can't even begin to believe is done. Or if it is done, is literally just copy/pasted gameplay from the previous areas.

-There are plenty of weird, wonky, broken things in the character system and with specific classes. For example, earning achievements unlocks perks for you to equip to your character, access to new skill trees to spend skill points on, attribute points to spend, and so on. It's a cool system I think, but there's many bugs right now where there are duplicate perks that are unlocked in various ways, some unlocks don't display as unlocked, a few seem to ignore their level restrictions....it can lead to a lot of confusion to see this nice big reward window saying you got something, and then being unable to find it or equip it.

-Many tooltips on abilities and such do not update correctly. And I'm talking, literally abilities and stuff on the same menu, where one ability will display its correctly modified cooldown time, for example, while the one next to it will not. In some instances, you can confirm that the thing is actually correctly modified when it game. But people have found many instances where they're not working, or correctly modified. Because there are SO MANY THINGS that might change abilities or cooldowns or damage output.....as a player you start looking askance at everything and wondering how much of it doesn't actually work.

-The way you equip usable abilities on your character is through the weapons you equip. Psykers are even more special in that they can either equip abilities flowing from weapons or their psychic powers. How many psychic powers you can equip vs. what abilities you get from items is based on a few different things, and the end result is kind of confusion where certain combinations leave you with fewer abilities or ability slots than you should get. For example, if I use the thing that turns my armor power in to a slot for a spell, and the equippable item that turns my utility slot in to another spell slot, and I choose to use a warp rod and a force sword in either hand.....I get one fewer spell slot than if I dual wielded two warp rods. Confusing? Yes. And more than likely buggy.

-Many balance points between weapon traits, or stuff purchased from your skill trees, remain. For example, there's two traits for armor penetration. The skill trait "Armor Penetration" ignores 100% of armor on an enemy. "Armor Breaking" ignores 50%. And on one of the Psyker skill trees, you can buy these traits and attach them directly to your pskyer powers. The first one you can buy is....armor pen. Followed immediately by armor breaking. That's just one obvious example of logical inconsistencies in progression/effectiveness.

-New crashes were introduced in the beta build that have made some mission types completely unplayable. "Fate" missions are randomly generated missions you have to spend in game currency to play. They tend to have better rewards and loot. And in this build, about half of people just crash as soon as they enter them or load them, losing them the currency and one of the more effective ways to level and get gear.

I'm sure there's more I've missed. While there was new, improved, touched up stuff in the beta build...this close to release it didn't do nearly enough to distract from how much is left to finish. This felt like the kind of build you'd get a couple months before release. Not a week or two.

Martyr is NOT a bad game in my opinion. It's just a game that has done too much, too fast and wracked up sizable technical debt because of it. Everything in the game that is more or less finished still needs that 10% polish. If that were the only thing Neocore had to do they'd be fine. But there are large swathes of unfinished WIP content. I really want to believe that content is just being held back from beta but then I see the caliber of what was released to us and don't have much hope. If it's done already it's probably buggy. If it's not done it's going to be rushed to completion and will be bare bones, and probably buggy. I don't doubt that with time Martyr will patch itself to where it needs to be. But for a game that sold itself strictly through its own website for several years, before making its way to Steam Early Access, and now apparently is going to limp to release.....that sucks. That's a lot of time and money invested to not really have a fully finished product ostensibly when you should. And it kind of makes me wonder if there isn't some element of 'the devs lost the hunger because they were already being paid' in this as well, as can happen when you start selling your game in its earliest stages.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on May 30, 2018, 12:46:41 am
Thanks for the detailed write-up, nenjin, much appreciated.  This confirms a lot of what I was afraid of from their whole weeks/months out of date beta policy for early access players (but don't worry, the version we're working on internally fixes it all!), along with the rumblings on the Steam forums. 

For myself, I'm definitely still interested in the game, but I'll be giving it a day or five after release before I even consider giving in to the small hyped part of my brain that just wants to play it already, and it sounds like a month or five would be safer especially at the comparatively high asking price.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on May 30, 2018, 09:59:46 am
ptw
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 03, 2018, 06:59:02 pm
So.

Martyr has had an.....interesting weekend.

They did an event to coincide with the big 40k game sale that happened. Collect 50 skulls from Black Legion Chaos Space Marines, and come release day you'll have a fancy skull helmet to wear. So what happened after the event had been going for about a day? Their servers went offline for 12 hours right as tons of new people bought the game. :\

That said they were in the steam forums pretty much all night talking to people about it so they clearly cared. There was some issue between their servers, steam and Gamespark where the actual game is hosted from. Apparently it took a while to fix.

So there have been a lot of little patches to the game since the big beta patch that dropped last week. And they've incrementally been fixing some of the bigger and more obvious I've been complaining about. While they're doing this they're also showing off teasers for the Armor appearance customization, which while I've haven't looked at it yet, sounds like it's going to be more than just "pick from one of three color palettes per armor." While I doubt a lot of stuff will be perfect or good by release, I'm a little less fearful that it will be a total shit show come release day.

And to be honest, I'm actually excited to finally be able to, after 80+ hours with the game, start my real characters and start playing for the long haul. Neocore may be doing too much with too little too soon, but at least it's obvious they're working their asses off, they love 40k, and Martyr is playable and fun and interesting, even if the action is a little bland and repetitive at times.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 04, 2018, 02:19:51 am
After watching some more youtube videos, I caved and bought it with the usual justifications to myself of "I'd end up buying it sooner or later anyway" and "if launch is too rocky I can just shelf it for a little while".  I'm sure the negligible 10% discount did its job there.

Me from 5 days ago would be so disappointed in me today.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 04, 2018, 02:00:38 pm
It is better to die for the Emperor than live for yourself.

Release is tomorrow. I expect a fairly massive patch to update the beta, and pray to the Emperor that their servers are prepared this time around.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 07, 2018, 04:14:43 pm
caved and bought this after watching some streamers.

it can be shortly described as a diablo II: the warhammer reskin.

I'm liking it in principle, there has been enough variation so far in missions and enemies to shake things up and keep it fresh. level visuals are quite detailed and it's immersive enough. the tidbit of lore are interesting, but the character interaction quite cheesy.

the attack interface is needlessly clunky. I hate not being able to remap abilities to mouse, I hate the unskippable auto reload, I hate the clunkiness of changing weapon in combat, for an action rpg where the action moves fast, the interface and controls are in your way more often than not.

also, but this is of the utmost subjectivity, I don't like any classes other than the crusader. at least you can change specialization by changing armor so you have options without restarting the whole game.

tiered equipment is also weird, seems like the lists are quite small per level, i.e. at level 4 everything the trader has is "thule rare this" and "thule rare that", probably because the list of modifier available for that level is just too small and everything gets generated of this flavor, which highlights that there aren't armor sets to be completed, as in, no explicit bonuses for completing the thule outfit.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 07, 2018, 04:25:29 pm
Not gonna lie, release has been kind of a shit show. Apparently character data files were stored on the local drive and people realized they could bump their stats in the config files for an in-game advantage. Neocore patched them out so the serverside values take precedence but some damage was already done. I understand they had to do a character wipe like the day of or the day right after release.

Quote
but the character interaction quite cheesy.

I actually kind of like this bit! After sooooo many 40k games where characters are just wooden, I kind of like they there's a little interplay between the Inquisitor and the Rogue Trader. There's some warmth and humanity to their interactions. Caius' voice acting is a train wreck sure but....I dunno. To be honest the slight cheesiness actually endeared me to the story and characters.

Quote
the attack interface is needlessly clunky. I hate not being able to remap abilities to mouse, I hate the unskippable auto reload, I hate the clunkiness of changing weapon in combat, for an action rpg where the action moves fast, the interface and controls are in your way more often than not.

No real disagreements here, other than with 80+ hours with the game since beta, I've found the flow and the UI no longer pisses me off. But not being able to remap ability keys is annoying. It's even more annoying for psyker vs. crusader. Crusader's ability line up doesn't change that often, but with Psykers you get new powers fairly often and arranging them on the ability bar is like working a jigsaw puzzle.

Quote
also, but this is of the utmost subjectivity, I don't like any classes other than the crusader. at least you can change specialization by changing armor so you have options without restarting the whole game.

I prefer Psyker over Crusader. (Haven't tried Assassin, the directional dodge seems like a pain in the ass to figure out on a M+KB setup.) Psyker has a granularity and customization to abilities that the other classes do not. There's talk of adding a "rune" system to other classes at some point in the future.

Quote
tiered equipment is also weird, seems like the lists are quite small per level, i.e. at level 4 everything the trader has is "thule rare this" and "thule rare that", probably because the list of modifier available for that level is just too small and everything gets generated of this flavor, which highlights that there aren't armor sets to be completed, as in, no explicit bonuses for completing the thule outfit.

The issue is two fold:

Weapon variety is limited by level. At lower levels you only get a small selection of the possible weapons you can use. So a lot of items of the same rarity get generated by the vendor at lower levels because the pool is too small. That, and there are no set pieces that I'm aware. Thule vs. Korschei vs. whatever is really about the visual variants, less about the power specifics of an item.

I haven't even restarted my character for release but I'm planning to get around to it this weekend. Too many fucking games to play.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 07, 2018, 04:33:01 pm
we should have a bay 12 cabal
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 07, 2018, 04:49:10 pm
I've been quite enjoying this, though I'm still a bit concerned about long term replayability due to somewhat limited character progression/customisation. 

So far I've just played Psyker, since it seems to have the most depth to building your character what with the runes and being able to select your skill loadout individually.  I think I'm level 11 or something like that, at the start of chapter 3 of the campaign (which I think means I've unlocked all the game systems like crafting, tarot, etc?).  At the moment I've mostly gone with buffs (warp speed, and whatever the dodge-ranged and +kinetic damage buffs are called) on the basis I'll maybe dip my toes in the co-op random matchmaking and who won't want buffs, but it's working pretty well for solo too.

One thing from the previous posts, I'm maybe misunderstanding but I was able to remap ability keys just fine?  I have 4 mouse buttons for the 4 weapon-derived skills (or psyker powers, in this case), then number key 1 for innoculator, and 2-4 for belt/armour/'world' skills.  It does get a bit clunky if I switch up my weapons from 2h staff to dual wielding (especially since you can't move the weapon attacks to other slots), especially if I do both, one in each set.

Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 07, 2018, 07:12:20 pm
I think the only system you haven't unlocked are Warzones. No idea what they are other than they require a really high Inquisitor level to access.

Quote
It does get a bit clunky if I switch up my weapons from 2h staff to dual wielding (especially since you can't move the weapon attacks to other slots), especially if I do both, one in each set.

It's the moving weapon attacks to the other slots that's a PITA. For example, I have Mouse 1 and 2, and then Insert, End and Left arrow on the keypad for my other abilities. (I'm an arrow key gamer, fuck off.)

So if I put a Force Rod in one hand and a Force sword in the other, my one Force Sword attack, the slash, ends up bound to my Left Arrow key when I really want it on my right click. And I can remap keys to make this happen, only it will jack with my setup if I switch to my alt gear set with a 2 handed staff.

It's just odd. There should be a drag and drop system for assigning abilities to buttons.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Ozyton on June 07, 2018, 09:51:47 pm
So how's the co-op play like? Has anyone tried it? I was thinking of getting the game but I'm wary of the somewhat mixed reviews it's been getting.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 07, 2018, 10:53:10 pm
I haven't played coop since beta. But I enjoyed it. It doesn't do much to change the formula. But guys scale up, there's a lot of them, enough for a good scrap. There's no fighting over loot or inoculator charges or supply refills: each player gets their own drops. Some posts on the Steam forum indicate poor performance in coop, but some have reported the opposite. I can't stand by Martyr's performance. In beta I was getting decent overall FPS but obvious slow down in enemy animation FPS. But this was at max settings. Maybe it's improved by release. The general coop player finder interface is pretty sloppy from what people have said, but playing with a specific person is fairly easy. You just form a party and go do a mission.

I will get around to making a Cabal when I can put some time in. Any thoughts on names? The Microcline Order, perhaps?
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 08, 2018, 01:52:01 am
Just learned that the Symbiosis rune for the Psyker, which is supposed to extend the effect of buffs it's slotted in to allies, currently causes the buff to *only* affect allies - the caster no longer gets the benefit.  So that puts a crimp in my plan to bring an array of buffs to the co-op table, at least until they fix it.  (I mean it'd probably still be worth it in a full party, but makes it less fun for me :p)


The Microcline Order -> Ordo Microclinus?  I dunno.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 08, 2018, 02:53:43 am
Quote from: Biowraith on June 08, 2018, 01:52:01 am
The Microcline Order -> Ordo Microclinus?  I dunno.

yeah was thinking the same, more in line with the setting etc.

does coop handles well players of different power levels? I've just started and I'll be out for the weekend so I'll be quite weak in comparison if I can ever find time at a common slot with u guys.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 08, 2018, 03:50:09 am
From what I've heard for coop and different power levels, it only looks at the mission host (not sure if that's party leader or what) for the power level when determining the mission modifiers to damage dealt/taken.

The example I saw was a power level 534 character taking a power level 655 mission - this gives a modifier of -30% damage dealt and +48% damage taken.  If that character is in a party when they take the mission, all party members get that same modifier regardless of their actual power level.

Of course, you'll still have the difference in how much stuff you've unlocked and presumably the magnitude of stat bonuses your gear is giving, but you won't have to worry about the kind of penalty your power level 60 character would incur if they took that power level 655 mission solo.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: deoloth on June 08, 2018, 04:14:10 am
COOP is being done through their servers and, for me and my buddies at least, is really on/off again laggy. They are hoping to evaluate this by 'increasing server capacity', but at this time I recommend waiting till they iron it out for multiplayer.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 08, 2018, 10:11:14 am
In the meantime I'll get the cabal going, I got my Psyker out of the tutorial missions last night. Ordo Microclinus it will be, in His name.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Ozyton on June 08, 2018, 05:18:28 pm
I just learned that you can't play the campaign/story missions in Co-op which is a bummer. SkullUp did a video on the game and I was considering picking up up again. Maybe I will soon...

Is there a place for you to 'warhammerify' names that way, like a generator or something? Or are you just good at doing it naturally? =p
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 08, 2018, 05:31:53 pm
it seems the investigations supports coop

I wonder how they generate those.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 08, 2018, 11:28:53 pm
Quote from: Ozyton on June 08, 2018, 05:18:28 pm
I just learned that you can't play the campaign/story missions in Co-op which is a bummer. SkullUp did a video on the game and I was considering picking up up again. Maybe I will soon...

Is there a place for you to 'warhammerify' names that way, like a generator or something? Or are you just good at doing it naturally? =p

Story missions make up a small fraction of the game. Most everything else in game is coop. The reasoning is canon to me, at least. Inquisitors rarely work side by side.

And yes, after spending enough time with 40k, you too will learn the power of Fake Latin.

I will have the Cabal up soon, but I lack the Fate to do it atm.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 09, 2018, 04:25:29 am
The Cabal is ready to accept members. I've left its recruiting closed for the moment. Post your account names and I'll get invites out.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 09, 2018, 04:34:00 am
I'd like an invite - account name Biowraith

edit: is there a reason for the underscore in the cabal name?  I see others with spaces in theirs.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 09, 2018, 04:50:09 am
I can't figure out how they're doing it, it's not space and it's not an underscore. If we can figure it out I can change the name at any time.

Hrm. Can't find you by your account name. But I can find myself by mine.

I've opened recruiting up on the Cabal, so you can find it in the Cabal list and make a request to join that way.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 09, 2018, 04:56:27 am
I think it's maybe a region thing - I see the cabal is set to NA region, while I'm apparently "Alpha", whatever that means.

I've applied in any case.

edit: apparently you can get a space in the name by copy-pasting instead of typing it direct.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 09, 2018, 05:04:20 am
Ok we know the application system works...mostly. But make sure to post here as well in case you're going by a diff account name than your forum name here, so I know who is Bay12 and who is a rando.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Ozyton on June 09, 2018, 07:16:53 am
Might play for a bit today and try to join the thingymajig. Account name should be Ozyton.

E: As an aside do you typically play using keyboard for movement or the mouse? I don't really play these types of games often at all but is there any benefit to using the mouse for movement over the keyboard?

Also, is there a way to reassign skill points once you've used them?
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 09, 2018, 07:56:58 am
Accepted you into the Cabal (though it may take a while for the server to figure that out and let you e.g. use Cabal chat).

There's consumable items ("Mind Reset") that will allow you to reset the points spent in 1 skill tree.  They can show up as random drops/rewards, or sometimes the vendor sells them for 100k a pop.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 09, 2018, 02:16:20 pm
Got the name changed. Apparently you have to paste it in to the name entry window because spaces were being filtered out by that field when typing. The devs commented so apparently they will fix it later.

I'll promote B12 people up to Lord when they populate in the member list. The servers seem really slow to deliver or update Cabal info.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 10, 2018, 11:39:36 am
applied as LoSboccacc. apparently I cannot change my character name.

are we doing a color scheme thing, or shall I keep my angry marine all yellow?


also, I'm up for some coop until canada gp starts sorryirl issues
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 10, 2018, 11:40:16 am
So I've been pretty much bingeing this since release and finished the main campaign today around level 30 (though I still have Chaos Undivided to finish after it).

All in all I've been enjoying it, but good god is it buggy.  Nothing show-stopping so far (I've crashed twice in 40ish hours, plus one major graphics corruption thing during a single mission), but so many little things not working as they should, from the wrong audio playing during a cut scene to missing info in tooltips (variable names instead of the value) to abilities that say they have a DoT component yet apply no DoT to a skill node that says it adds 1% damage to area attacks for each enemy the attack hits, but in practice is adding more like 50% per enemy (Optimal Dispersion, should you want to abuse it before it's fixed - one shot almost any spawn, including the smaller bosses).  But still, fun.

They're gonna need some more content for 30+ though because as it stands it's a massive grind with nothing much new to unlock.  The missions are very samey given how many you need to do, and while campaign missions are decent xp the random missions and co-op matchmaking missions are not.  I'm looking at 10-20 of them per level just now (xp per level is increasing, xp per mission not so much) and they're pretty much exactly the same as all the missions I did for levels 1 through 30.  Which I suppose is true of all ARPGs to one extent or another, but usually you have something to grind towards besides level cap alone (both loot and skill points are primarily boring 1% increment type upgrades, rather than doing anything new or interesting).  I'm in two minds as to whether to tough it out to 50 for when the supposed endgame is introduced, or just play alts instead for a bit more variation in gameplay (or, I suppose, just play something else until they add more stuff).

In the meantime if anyone wants to co-op outside of the underwhelming random matchmaking, give me a shout (GMT evenings mostly) - I've not had any real problems with lag and such in the co-op games I did play and it'll maybe be more fun than doing random missions solo (though if you want to advance, the solo-only campaign is better xp... or throwing fate points at Impossible tarot missions with an xp booster consumable).


Quote from: LoSboccacc on June 10, 2018, 11:39:36 am

are we doing a color scheme thing, or shall I keep my angry marine all yellow?

There's only 4 of us so far (including you) but if we do a color scheme it'll get costly since you have to (pay to) recolour your armour each time you get a new one.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 10, 2018, 01:08:29 pm
> you have to (pay to) recolour your armour each time
ah didn't know that
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 10, 2018, 01:18:23 pm
The cost's actually pretty cheap if you stick with the basic design (about 3-4k).  But it gets pricey for the third tier design (75k).
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 10, 2018, 04:21:25 pm
ok I'm up for coop if someone's there. can't talk tho.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 10, 2018, 07:10:42 pm
Cheers for the games both of you (I was too slow in saying it in-game :p).
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 10, 2018, 07:37:11 pm
Was fun. Hopefully they will get their servers sorted so the rubber banding isn't so bad. But all in all....I was surprised by my overall performance. When there wasn't lag I wasn't having serious slow down most of the time, even with the whole screen exploding.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 11, 2018, 04:01:41 am
coop is definitely fun!

can't wait to have some time to put in a coop short campaign (the investigations thingamabob) to see how it goes in practice.

that said, the game presentation is quite confusing at time. with all the explosions and effects becomes super difficult to understand whether the flashes are from enemy of friendly and whether you're taking damage or not.

also, enemies with a dps weapon are annoying as hell and have no counter except just kiting them which is annoying. inoculator should at the very least cut the status effects timer or reduce damage.


oh and psyker op plz nerf XD
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 11, 2018, 10:06:19 am
Quote from: LoSboccacc on June 11, 2018, 04:01:41 am
inoculator should at the very least cut the status effects timer or reduce damage.
It looks like there are innoculator effects that reduce damage, but they're not unlocked until very high level.  There's also ones to replenish Suppression Resistance; not sure if that'll affect an existing status effect though.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on June 11, 2018, 10:26:00 am
saw jocan playing around too, we should send him an invite or smth.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 11, 2018, 12:15:51 pm
Quote
can't wait to have some time to put in a coop short campaign (the investigations thingamabob) to see how it goes in practice.

They're pretty standard. A couple "choose what you're going to do" options then a string of missions. Unlike regular missions on the map you can set the difficulty modifier so it will produce harder missions if that's your bag.

Quote
oh and psyker op plz nerf XD

Are you saying we should nerf the Emperor? Cause that'd be heresy. Also the end of mankind.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 16, 2019, 06:29:32 pm
Skulls For The Skull Throne 3 Steam event is on.

Martyr's contribution is that, if you log in before the event ends, you get a skull-faced Cherub pet.

Wew lads.

(Also I'm now like a 1900+ pskyer that can solo red difficulty missions in about 6 minutes. All the endless events that yield loot chests with Relics? Yeah, I can walk out of those events with 7 chests at a time. Damn psykers are broken.)
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on May 17, 2019, 12:23:19 am
I figured I'd revisit when they do that 2.0 redesign (which I think is due at the end of the month).  Not that I expect they have a clue what they're doing with it :p
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on May 17, 2019, 04:29:00 am
lol kinda completely forgot about this game
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 17, 2019, 10:52:26 am
Can't blame you. Their updates have been pretty tepid.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on May 17, 2019, 11:17:32 am
it's more like the game had me doing the same thing on repeat for hours with tiiiiiiiiiiny bit of story interspersed here and there, and ain't got time for that.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on May 17, 2019, 11:39:59 am
Still pretty much the same. I've been grinding out the fate to unlock all the fate-locked content, and by and large it's the same thing each time. A bit of story, the same combat. I did this season and while they did add like 4 or 5 new Khorne-type enemies, not much else was improved. There's more Knight gameplay but that's not terribly exciting either.

W/e though, I suppose I play it because it's a 40k game and less because it's great. But I won't deny that vaporizing entire packs of enemies at a time with my Psyker IS pretty satisfying.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Biowraith on June 26, 2019, 12:59:23 pm
Took a bit of time to try out 2.0 and it was kinda fun, though I'm not sure all that much has really changed. 

They say they've speeded up the gameplay a bit but it felt the same to me (though it's been a while since I last played). 

I did like the changes to Tarot where you don't need to spend fate to do special Tarot missions, you just get to apply 1-3 Tarot cards to the regular random missions instead. 

Crafting/gear has some new stuff to modify your items with, but it seems slow & expensive to accumulate compared to how quickly my gear becomes obsolete so I've not made use of it yet.  I did get a blueprint for making Relic eye implants though, so end-game crafting may at least be worthwhile (for the most part that might be the only time it's worthwhile, from what I can tell).

Level cap has been raised to 100, but the vast majority of it is dead levels where you're just getting another skill point for those passive 1.5% bonuses.

Void Campaign is another option for a set of random missions, but this time with ramping difficulty and a limited number of losses - further through you get the more keys you get to open the loot chests at the very end.

Psyker still seems to be far more powerful than the rest.

I gather they adjusted the Warzone thing, but I haven't tried it yet.

And they're still as bad as ever about dealing with bugs - I had two missions I was unable to complete because of bugs, one where the npcs I was to rescue didn't register that they'd been registered and refused to follow me to the exit, and one because a bit of scenery was just slightly in the way preventing me from interacting with the objective.  Both of which were bugs a year or more ago.

No idea if multiplayer is any better than it was - it was telling me it was unavailable when I tried queuing for coop with randoms, and I saw on the forums people complaining that a bug is eating their loot in coop, so yeah...


All in all about what I expected.  It was fun to run through and smite some heretics again and I'll probably spend a bit more time in it here and there, but outside of the 40k feel there's several better ARPGs to be playing.


Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on June 26, 2019, 04:12:19 pm
Yeah, Martyr is never going to be Path of Exile or even Diablo 3. Smiting heretics is the entire reason to play it.

Looking back on thing I think they really messed up on is that you can't move and shoot at the same time with the exception of one or two weapon abilities that do specifically that. I think that's part of the reason the gameplay has never really felt like it flowed. You're either moving or shooting but almost never doing both. Which is why Psyker's "Click to Vape" abilities and power makes them the most broken class. They don't have to stand there and wail on guys, or shoot slow RoF weapons at single targets. They just drop AoE nukes all day and that is enough for 80% of the enemies in game. I have a side Crusader I've been working on and the gameplay experience is night and day between them. Having to actually mouse over single targets to shoot them versus clicking in their general area, without even targeting a specific mob, makes playing my Crusader so much more tedious than my Psyker.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on January 07, 2020, 05:19:51 pm
So I popped back in to this on a whim. I felt the need to purge. It must have been a long time since I played because I guess 2.0 was out in June.

Highlights:

-They scrapped the concept of a "gear score." Now, you just have your inquisitor level. Gear also has a level, and you can only use gear that meets your level. Big fan of this. Previously you'd get gear that was numerically inferior to what you were wearing but because it had a higher gear score, you had to use it, so your gear score would rise, so you could do harder missions, so you could get better gear with a higher gear score. It's simplified it.

-Itemization changes. Before it was common, uncommon, rare and relic levels of gear. Relics were the top end. Now, on top of Relic, they've added Ancient Relics and Archeotech Relics.

-Socketing. Previously the end game was "fuse older relics into better relics, level up their power until they unlock 1 or 2 new traits that only relic weapons can have." That system has been replaced by the idea of gear sockets, archeotech shards and psalms. Archeotech shards and psalms add in the extra abilities above and beyond what rolls on the gear. Archeotech shards tend to add more generic abilities, while Psalms can add more interesting unique abilities. Shards can be fused together to enhance their power, and Psalms can be bundled together, mixed or matched to produce new even more unique traits. Gear above Level 50 can roll sockets, and it can roll between 1 and 4 of them. Which isn't all that ideal when you think about it as it's basically double RNG. Not only are you looking for a high level piece of gear to drop, you're looking for it roll max sockets. So in order to smooth this over they....

-Crafting Overhaul. They completely changed the Forge upgrade trees and refunded everything you spent on it. Now, you're pretty much only unlocking the ability to use the new parts of the crafting system. First off though, they reduced the kinds of crafting materials to just the three basic types, Ancient Mechanism, Divine Sparks and one max tier special crafting materials. So now you only have the blue crafting mats, the purple crafting mats, the orange and the red. The greens are gone. I haven't tried to craft any new gear, but I'm guessing that the whole "put different mats in different orders during crafting to tweak what stats you get and how strong they are" is gone. However, you still retain the ability to re-roll the stats on gear. You have the ability to reroll the actual values these stats roll. Now, instead of just an ever escalating credit cost where you can seriously bankrupt yourself just rerolling one piece of gear to perfection, each item gets a limited number of crafting rerolls. Whether you're re-rolling what stats an item has or what the stat values are, the cost is always the same. It costs a chunk of credits and a few high-end crafting components to do these rerolls, but nothing unreasonable. Items dropping for me currently get like 14 or 15 rerolls and I assume that goes up slightly as gear level increases. Once you're out of crafting re-rolls, you still have one option left. You can now directly increase an items item level by 5, one level at a time. The cost of doing this is VERY expensive in terms of credits but if you've got a great piece of gear you simply can't conscious replacing, now, you can at least keep it current for a little while. Lastly, you can add sockets to items even if they have zero to begin with. However doing this requires one of the max tier crafting resources, which basically means if you want to add sockets to shit, you have to be breaking down Archeotech gear, which is really really rare. All in all, I like it, it's much more streamlined and reliable than the old system. A little sad their original crafting system didn't pan out because it was a cool idea, but it made almost no sense when you could spend all these resources and time to craft a new item only to have a new drop completely invalidate it. Sockets and what not I'm still not totally sold on, but I have very little exposure to it yet.

-Missions. Before, you had to operate on a sector by sector basis using the star map to decide where to spend your time. While I love the star map, it was pretty tedious constantly zooming in and out of sectors bouncing around trying to find missions at the right challenge level. The star map is still there, you can browse that way if you want, but now there's just a browser window that displays all the missions near to your level, and it lists the enemies you'll face, the map, the mission type and the sector its in and how much influence you currently have there. There's a section for all the special kinds of missions to, and the special locations, so all your mission planning and execution can be done in one spot. Very nice, even though you basically have no reason to look at the star map ever again.

-Challenge system is gone. Previously, on any mission you could say what difficulty level you wanted it at, and it'd inflate the power level of the enemies and the rewards. I never liked it, personally. I always seemed to be picking stuff like "Impossible difficulty" or "Insane difficulty" just so I was actually challenged. All that shit is gone now. The level of the mission is the level of the mission. If it's 4 higher than your currently level, it's a hard mission and you're dealing like -75% damage and taking +185% damage.

-Tarot missions are now integrated into regular missions. Previously you had to queue up a Tarot mission which cost you fate. By choosing the tarot cards you'd dictate what the enemies were, what kind of mission it was, what additional challenges would be added to the tarot mission (limited time, limited deaths, etc....) and what kind of loot you'd expect to see. Now, you can add Tarot cards to any mission you're doing (except priority assignments.) Tarot cards sorta still function the same but with some differences. Each Tarot card you use just gives you a flat bonus to loot. But then each one will increase the chances of what you might get. (So one card increases the chances of Archeotech Shards dropping, etc and so forth.) No longer do Tarot cards dictate what enemies you'll face, that's determined by the mission you apply them to. And THEN the "malus" part of cards has been randomized. Cards will generically say "Will apply a penalty to your character's defenses" or "Enhance enemy attack" and this can be anything from all enemies are now Heavily Armored, to Time Limits, to Death Limits, to Can't Use Your Inoculator" and more. You only know what malus has been applied once you've chosen a Tarot card for the mission and once chosen it can't be changed until the mission is beaten or failed. They also added a rare set of "Tarot Emblems" that, like the old system, make very specific the loot that will drop. So one might be "Get more glory for the mission" or "Get more credits" or "Have belt items drop". So now you can really tailor mission difficulty and reward to exactly what you want and what you can tolerate but there's still a slightly random element to it. FWIW I was doing red difficulty missions with my Psyker with No Inoculator healing and double Heavily Armored for enemies and still managing to squeak by, although often by the skin of my teeth. Lastly, there's drops you can earn when using Tarot cards in missions that upgrade said tarot cards so the bonuses (and penalties) get stronger.

-Warzone is no longer the end game. Everything you've done in the warzone up until now was converted into a flat Credit and Fate reward and everyone's warzone progress was zeroed out. You can still play the warzone missions but there's no longer the warzone gear or modifiers except what comes with the mission itself.

-The new endgame is "Void Crusades." I haven't had any real exposure to them, but they basically remind me of the sequential missions of Warzones. There's two kinds (two paths) to the Crusades. In order to get in to them and progress them, you need to get Void Shards as part of mission rewards. Get enough and you can start a Void Crusade, and then you'll need to unlock each part of it. There's the "White Crusade" and the "Black Crusade" variety of Void Shards. No idea what the difference is between them.

-Ragna now sells a lot more stuff. This is more crafting related, but there's relic, ancient relic and archeotech relic crafting recipes now, all of which she sells. Seems like her recipes start at Artificer and only go up from there, no more green recipes, although maybe that's based on your character level. (It sure as hell isn't based on our cabal unlocks :P) She also just sells straight up loot crates for all rarity levels, which cost a hefty (500+) chunk of Fate. All the consumable buffs are still for sale as well.

I saved this for last but it's arguably the most important:

-Massive improvements to performance. I don't know what they did. Did they clean up levels, or remove a bunch of extra shit that was just clogging things up? I dunno but the game plays a hell of a lot smoother now. I suspect its some kind of culling because I see guys occasionally disappear then reappear, but man. Before the game would dip below 30 FPS on the reg, sometimes when there's combat, but sometimes when you're just running around too. Now it plays way smoother, my character feels faster and more responsive, my attacks seem faster.....it was an immediate thing I noticed. I'm sure some stuff still runs like shit (Warzones) but general mission gameplay actually feels good to play now throughout. Big ups for this one.

They've added more grind overall with these changes but it's come with a ton of QoL upgrades that make it less tedious to play. Crafting feels like it may be worth the time to invest in now. There's more kinds of rewards to look for and more ways to control difficulty and what you're getting out of it. I'm still not sure if it's balanced. I remember the last time I played there's a repeatable special mission that's still in game where I'd walk out of it with 5 or 6 Relics because my Psyker is just that broken. Begged the question why I would spend my time doing anything else for gear. No idea if that stuff has been rebalanced or not but I plan to check it out.

Martyr feels like it's at the point I could recommend it to friends who have been waiting to get in to it. If you're already a Martyr player, might be worth your time to pop back in and check it out as well.

I know I'm just rehashing what Biowrath posted months ago but I guess I felt the need to write.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: Folly on January 07, 2020, 07:09:13 pm
Nice writeup Nenjin. I now regret not grabbing this last time it had a good sale.
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on January 07, 2020, 10:33:07 pm
Well they probably likely rebalanced the City Of Suffering mission. I only got three relics out of it instead of 12 like last time.

Scored 3300ish though so *blows immaterium off fingernails* still got it.

And 4k Maelstrom of Carnage!
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: LoSboccacc on January 08, 2020, 05:02:37 am
more items and crafting mechanics are nice and all, but is the combat loop better or is it still the same countdown masher simulator?
Title: Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
Post by: nenjin on January 08, 2020, 10:42:51 am
If by that you mean "hit your shit as soon as it's off cooldown" then yeah, it's still the same game. But that's pretty standard for most aRPGs.