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Double Fine - Kickstarter - MASSIVE CHALICE

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Yep, I've had a support ticket for a bug in the Humble Android app since August, and a ticket with the developer and Humble since September about a game that got a massive content update in the Google Play store, but not the Humble Store.

 

I think Double Fine learned their lesson from the weirdness of when they released Broken Age Part 1 early to backers and the press, but were not allowing the press to talk about it, and all the confusion that caused. So now they are just keeping things much more open.

 

Anyway, I'm super annoyed that I didn't get my key, and so now I have to deal with Humble Bundle Support, which in my experience is extremely unhelpful, and painfully slow. I love Humble, but their support is terrible.

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I don't want to start a big argument about Kickstarter entitlement, but I'm pretty indignant right now that one could have backed Massive Chalice last year for $20 and still not be able to play it, while someone else could, as of today, purchase the game on Early Access on Steam for $22.50. I backed at the $35 tier (which gets me two copies and a "backer relic," but I think I mostly just wanted to support the game above the minimum tier), but I could have just bought it now, for less, and played it sooner.

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Check the most recent update on the Massive Chalice kickstarter.

Hey MASSIVE CHALICE backers!

Today we have a huge surprise for you! We’ve been getting a ton of requests from our $20+ backers (that aren’t part of the beta) to play the game. So we’re sending out codes for MASSIVE CHALICE to EVERYONE who backed it! And we’re sending them out TODAY! :D!

If you backed the game at $20 or more you’ll be receiving an email from Humble Bundle with everything you need to get your Steam key for MASSIVE CHALICE. If you’re a $20+ backer and you don’t see an email from Humble today feel free to contact them here! https://support.humblebundle.com

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Part of me really wants to play it right now, but playing it with all the polish in Spring 2015 sounds pretty good too.

 

Who am I kidding, I won't be able to hold of for 4 more months.

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To those of you who've played it, what is the framerate like? I know several of Double Fines games have been capped at 30 FPS (Trenched, The Cave).  The launch trailer on YouTube is 60fps, but I wanted to confirm that.  

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I have a 60Hz monitor and it seems like it's capped at 60FPS for me. I don't see a V-Sync option in the menu, but that might be what's limiting me there. It's a turn-based game, so I didn't notice it until I just fired up FRAPS to check the framerate for you, but even with a GTX-970 and 16GB of RAM I do see framerate drops down into the low 40's at times with all the settings maxed-out when I scroll around the map.

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It's worth noting that there's quite a lot of optimization yet to go. It looked like it was running at 60 for me, minus a few of the chain explosions. I left all the settings by default and am running last gen's graphics hardware.

 

I played in 100 years and man it was touch and go a couple of times there. I had a bad event kill my two best alchemists, a mis-thrown flask kill my best hunter, but I'm still chugging along. My advice would be to make sure not to over-use the sagewright's guild, and don't be afraid to use the ability where the Chalice recruits five more heroes.  

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Yeah, it's early access and not in any way frame-rate-dependent. I was running the beta on a budget GPU and didn't have any issues.

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Release day is today! 1.0 has been pushed out on Steam and the final team stream starts shortly!

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Whoo! I was a little wary when playing in Early Access but wound up putting way more time in than expected. This should definitely destroy a few weekends in the near future!

 

SEXCOM HO!

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Okay, it looks like I posted here a while back (forgot that I did) and the game finally came to Xbox One as a 'Games with Gold' deal. It is the best offering since Chariot (which has been delightfully frustrating).

 

Here is a story that happened to me last night:

 

After fighting back the Cadence I earned a Male Hunter called Irvun Septent, which was rad because I had stupidly made my two regents Alchemists so all their kids were coming out as variants of that type. Then a random event occurred where I was offered the chance to send Irvun away for 10 years on a hot air balloon. My new regent compound was due to be completed in ten years so I figured I would take the gamble.

 

Irvun returned from his quest with two new traits – veteran and jaded (I think). He had seen some shit but I immediately installed him in the recently built compound (consigning him to a non-combatant role) and married him to a woman that was 49. That produced 2 kids before I got attacked by the cadence.

 

I had to make a strategic decision on which land to protect; I settled for the one that unlocked a female Hunter called Yantyu.

 

5 years later, out of nowhere, Irvun’s wife died so I married him to Yantyu to get a pure breed of Hunter in my ranks (sorry Eugenics haters). At the same time a number of my Sages died so I ended up replacing some of my elite vanguard into that guild. 8 years later the cadence enemies attacked the regent compound that Irvun and Yantyu were in so I sent 5 members to help them out.

 

Because my team were all young I wanted them to level up a bit so I held Irvun and Yantyu back. However it was clear that these guys were out-classing the rest of the group and I had to use them to scrape through (being able to hear enemies is a valuable skill)

 

6 years later, Irvun died having sired 2 kids with Yantyu, in a panic to keep my hero numbers up I married Yantyu to one her step sons (with her now at the age of 48 but still fertile), which was a bit icky but I figured ‘fuck it’.

 

My regents, guild masters, and sages were dropping like flies as they reached their 60s and 70s, so my hero base was light with me trying to replace them (regents for making new heroes, guild masters for XP boosts, and sages for improving research). Then Yantyu and her husband’s regent compound got attacked again. At this point Yantyu was 68 years old and a total badass. She spent most of the combat protecting her woefully under levelled husband and showing the kids on the team sent to rescue her how it is done.

 

Before and after that she still managed to have two more kids (also seem to be badass) before dying at the ripe old age of 91. I had to stop the game for a bit when her death was reported and go walk around my apartment.

 

Also, I had no eligible females for one of my regents so he got married to a man and the two of them adopted 4 kids and raised them to be awesome alchemists.

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It really was. As someone who has been fascinated by the Crusader Kings stories but unwilling to play a PC game, let alone one that will require a lot of time investment, this game scratches that itch for emergent story telling.

 

There are so many cool little stories to be told like how I got my first relic and the first person to wield it died tragically in their first battle (I only had two soldiers on the field but managed to carve my way through one encounter only to lose her at the very bitter end) and then pass it down to a 10 year old that I had to wait 5 years before I could use them... The fun comes more from your own internal history - you could totally write a piece of fanfiction about this game and fill in the blanks yourself.

 

I would love to see an update that included more flavour quests so that it became unlikely to see repeats (I've seen a list of 40 and that seems like too few).

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It makes me impossibly sad that "regent," a person or group of people empowered for a finite (or indefinite but not infinite) time with the entirety of the power normally held by a king or queen, is the term in this game for someone in charge or a single keep in the kingdom, rather than "seneschal/bailiff/sheriff" (a servant of the king or queen empowered indefinitely with a portion of their power, pertaining to a specific estate and its attached persons, and subject to direct royal oversight) or "castellan/constable" (a servant of the king or queen empowered indefinitely with a portion of their power, pertaining to a specific estate and its attached persons, and subject to indirect royal oversight). It makes me feel like no one with any abiding interest in medieval or neo-medieval matters was involved in or consulted on this game...

 

I know, I care too much.

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Well, they might be the King/Queen of their country as each area seems to be divided up like that?

 

At the moment I've been treating the guys in the East as a tribe of their own who are Spartan tough because their 'Keep' is constantly attacked, while the regents in the North are a bunch of wusses that don't called upon to do much of anything as they are the newest group and only produce variants of the melee class.

 

Which comes to my one complaint, you could easily just make variants of the Hunter and ignore the other two classes as you tend to fight every enemy at range. They have infinite ammo (unlike the Alchemists) and it actually benefits them to run away from the AOE chargers.

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While regent isn't probably the best word to use, those others seem like they'd be fairly clunky. In the end, they needed a word that was gender neutral so that limited their options.

 

I prefer that since your character is unable to leave the throne room, you are basically considered incapable of ruling these kingdoms, and others have been appointed in your place. Not 100% accurate to the meaning of the word, but it's something at least.

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While regent isn't probably the best word to use, those others seem like they'd be fairly clunky. In the end, they needed a word that was gender neutral so that limited their options.

 

I prefer that since your character is unable to leave the throne room, you are basically considered incapable of ruling these kingdoms, and others have been appointed in your place. Not 100% accurate to the meaning of the word, but it's something at least.

 

Heh, I know there's probably practical reasons, but it's still jarring to anyone with even a little knowledge. It's like playing a game based on US politics and selecting someone to be "vice president of Tejas."

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So I finally got around to playing this. I kickstarted it back in the day for a ton of money because I a. Like Brad Muir, b. It sounded rad. I played a bit of the beta/alpha/something but it was before controller support (or a functioning controller support) so I didn't get too deep into it... like maybe the tutorial.

 

I'm glad to say that the game turned out just fine, it's a game, it plays, it has a lot of interesting things going on in it and I've encountered only one bug with the controller that is fixed by just using a mouse and keyboard for that particular battle.  I believe my biggest gripe with the entire game is what I immediately had when they were fleshing out the concept and that's the art style; it's well executed, but lacks charm or soul, which is a considerable issue in this particular game type when I need to care about the people and houses. It has had a lot of color added to it since the beta, but I find that the characters are void of anything interesting and perhaps the lack of voice acting makes it less meaningful to lose a hero.

 

I haven't gotten the knack of the combat like I did in Xcom, so by the time of writing, I am losing quite a bit. It feels very Xcomy, but the options/classes/whatever are different enough that I can't just apply what I learned in that game to this. So, I can't tell if the combat just isn't as deep or simply that I haven't gotten the hang of it. You get to progress your heros much like xcom with items, armor, and skills, but the time between incidences seems so far apart that I'll be lucky if I get to use one hero for 1 or 2 fights before they die of old age... I don't believe this is an issue with design as it seems pretty obvious, this must be an issue with how I am playing... like I need more upgrades to get higher level heros early, or something to extend life times or the incidences start to happen more frequently... I'm not sure. I have played 6 hours, within those are two different games and I've only made it up to Year 50-60+ before being totally screwed... so I need to get better.

 

One thing I didn't realize it had was FTL style events, basically a choose your own adventure thing with flavor text. However, I feel the tuning on it is on the purposefully sadistic side where as I don't even want to participate in them anymore. Much like FTL, it just seems like no matter when they come around, you're getting screwed, but unlike FTL, not participating in it also screws you. It's an odd game overall as in that it tries to be this serious XCOM style game, but at the same time, has enough flavor to be fun and goofy... I'd much rather the Flotilla style of adventure choosing; where good things could actually happen and are fun. This whole thing reminds me of a Civ 3 or 4 discussion at GDC where they had to tune their systems not to be perfectly random because players felt like they were being cheated... this feature just feels like I always being cheated and not sure if it fits 100% with the tone of the overall product.

 

The thing that helped my general malaise over the lack of charm in the House personalities is choosing Houses that reference something to me that matters. I think the Houses are neat, but it's hard to really care about the random houses, so much so it makes you wonder (aside from the obvious Kickstarter benefits business) why the make your own house feature wasn't built into the game. Like in FTL or Oregon Trail, I'd name the faceless characters after friends. Also, for the record, I have a house from kickstarter... I should have thought it out better as it's dumb and I don't even use it. However, after listening to the GB East podcast, I started to use one of the houses from the caster, then looked around to find House Muir (Brad Muir), House Davis (Ryan Davis), and House Remo (I assume Chris as Chris Remo is the founder)... this made it way more important and funny to me, especially within a generation, House Muir sent what was left of their clan to help defend the keep the Remos held... sadly the Remos were on their last legs with a child regent at the time. A few years later when the child came to age they were married to a Muir. So basically I have this huge interweaving story of Game Personality families in a weird fantasy universe... it's just getting all sorts of strange of a meta and hilarious to me to see what happens next.

 

Over all, I guess I was ready for this type of game again and it's doing enough unique things and similar things to the genre that I enjoy. There is a lot of inspiration to go off of for an expansion or a sequel, so I hope they really hope they get the chance to do that as I'd love another iteration. Going to keep playing and see if I can understand the combat any better to conquer it and understand if there is any depth here or if it's just what it is on the surface, a hard ass tactical sim.

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Hmm, I feel like I care about the houses just enough, but I'm also the person who doesn't understand why so many of these space trading games want to throw in player avatars and walking on stations, I'd rather just be the ship. Did you care about any of the people in XCOM? Because I find the houses in this mean a lot more to me than XCOM soldiers did. Not necessarily disagreeing with you, just trying to figure out how we see things differently.

 

 

I haven't gotten the knack of the combat like I did in Xcom, so by the time of writing, I am losing quite a bit. It feels very Xcomy, but the options/classes/whatever are different enough that I can't just apply what I learned in that game to this. So, I can't tell if the combat just isn't as deep or simply that I haven't gotten the hang of it. You get to progress your heros much like xcom with items, armor, and skills, but the time between incidences seems so far apart that I'll be lucky if I get to use one hero for 1 or 2 fights before they die of old age... I don't believe this is an issue with design as it seems pretty obvious, this must be an issue with how I am playing... like I need more upgrades to get higher level heros early, or something to extend life times or the incidences start to happen more frequently... I'm not sure. I have played 6 hours, within those are two different games and I've only made it up to Year 50-60+ before being totally screwed... so I need to get better.

 

My two tips for combat are to position yourself where you will get the first hit (which requires experience and a little bit of guessing for enemy movement distance) and knockbacks are extremely powerful. Optimally, you want very few (or no) enemies to be able to damage you each turn, even if it means giving up DPS to use a lot of stunning or blinding attacks.

 

I'm not a big fan of most of the items, I generally only grab healing potions, steadyhanders, and the later game items that give you back HP when you damage an enemy. Armor upgrades are definitely important. Remember that while the first one is expensive, it makes the next one cheaper, and the last one super cheap.

 

Finally, if you're only getting to use heroes for one or two fights, you're bringing in your heroes when they're already too old. If you can start someone in the battlefield at age 20, you should get 5 fights out of them which gives you a better chance of getting a relic when they pass. There is both tech to make heroes you search for higher level, extended life, higher birth rate, and higher XP gain, but I think those are all post 100 year upgrades.

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So I picked this up during the Steam summer sale, booted it up today and WHOA! I've just passed 5 hours playing this thing.

 

While I have a few hours in X-Com, I got a grip on this one way faster and fee like my first run is going extremely well. Granted, I'm playing on Normal. I think part of it is that I feel like there's a specific base/resource build that you have to go for in X-Com that I don't think you do here. (I always got stuck in that level where the aliens turn humans into zombies.)

 

I love the houses aspect and I think it works better than X-Com because even if you know nothing about an individual troop, you can gain a lot of information about them from their crest and quick glance at their family history. There's this transference of importance because they're placed in connection with houses you as a player have a relationship with already. That relationship comes from having picked out the beginning houses, picking regents, and picking spouses.

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