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Bryce

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Burgeoning Battle Gamma

Burgeoning Battle Gamma (7/17)

  1. AP draining monsters are the single biggest problem I had beating the game with a singleton... The ones that only slightly drain can be managed simply by only letting one or two hit you and staying hasted, but the big nasty stunners (generally, those insectoid girrafe-looking species and a few others) are real pains. You basically have three options - delay them with summons, which is MP intensive since they tend to need buffing and healing to survive, which also occupy turns you could have used to damage the monster and hence drag out the process, slowing/terrorizing the monster (good when it works, bad for a group of monsters or any resistant ones), or, against monsters with no ranged attack, finding some vantage point where you can hurt them without the monster(s) attacking you back. (A "solution" to the battle.) Those fungi that have a ranged stun attack are real pains. You usually have to use an AOE spell to take them out from outside their range one at a time. Takes a lot of energy.
  2. Quote: Originally written by kkarski: they don't understand magic itself too well, they are just using certain ready-to-use procedures they were taught. This train of reasoning is faulty. Bolt of venom is no more general or customized than spray acid. The enemies use the same style of cookie cutter magic as your party does, except they read up "Teach yourself Magic in 21 Days" instead of "Magic for Dummies" so it's superficially different. Further, the analogy is not correct in another way. Those entry-level computer programming books are not that different from the textbooks we use in introductory computer science courses, honestly. A computer science class (or a good O'Reilly book) is better, but both will teach you real programming and how to use the language constructs, not just how to hack together something from other people's code. You're right that it would take work to unify the magic systems, of course. The argument is that it would save work in the long run while making the game better now and in the future.
  3. Quote: Originally written by Khoth: Balance is easier the more knobs you have.[/QB] Aye, but it's easy enough to add some sort of "casting level" parameter to change the effect quantity without effecting the quality. This is in fact far superior to a method where you have two similar spells to choose from, because with such a tweaking knob you can adjust the difficultly nearly-linearly and directly. Probably this already exists in some form. If monsters were handled exactly like PCs, you could give them levels of spellcraft or magery to make them harder if you wanted.
  4. In reply to Unhasty: Basically, yes, there isn't enough overlap. That's a slightly simplistic way of looking at it, though, perhaps a better way of phrasing it would be that there are too many instances where it fails to overlap for no apparent reason. For instance, that spell that Gladwell, Shafrir and Ruth have that shoots a little pink gear-looking thing of much magical damage at their enemies - I'm not complaining that they have this. We expect a high-level wizard with his own tower and everything to be able to do things our party can't. Ditto for mages outside the tradition of the party (e.g. savage sliths), to some extent. But when we see a human mage or priest NPC, we expect him or her to be on roughly the same footing as our mages and priests, and it's confusing when they aren't. I don't expect 100% overlap, or even want it. My complaint is that there seems to be a lot of near-overlap that is pointless, and rather usually detracts from the game. This near-overlap appears to be an artifact of some historical/technical considerations, which I think you are alluding to when you mention Geneforge. So although we don't apparently see eye to eye on the significance of this issue, at least we agree to some extent about its origin.
  5. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: In latter-day Spiderweb games, the magic systems are identical. PCs and NPCs have access to different sets of spells, which frequently (though not always) overlap. Identical, really? Well, I'll take your word on it since you apparently have some special knowledge. If they're the same, though, why don't NPCs have even one single spell that works like Icy Rain, Fireblast or Arcane Blow in that it appears in a circle and damages everything in the circle? Is it just a remarkable omission? Why don't the players have any 'aura' type attacks that damage every enemy in a radius around the caster, whereas these are common on monsters? (Perhaps divine retribution is one, but if so it's a really large circle...) Anyway, the two 'mostly overlapping' systems are pretty pointless. It detracts from, rather than adds to, the game, at the expensive of increased balancing difficulty and inconsistency. Spray Acid is great in the early game, yet no NPC mage uses it. Instead, slightly more sophisticated mages later on use this "summons a powerful bolt of venom" thing that works similarly but is apparently somewhat more powerful and poisons the target rather than covering it with acid. And we're talking about human mages here too, it's not like this is just the traditional goblin way of doing things or somesuch, which would add something to the game, sort of. I would much rather see one extra minor sidequest than two slightly different acid spells... Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: But I think there are very few games (if any) where every PC spell is used by some monster, and every spell a monster uses can be learned by a PC. Having a unified system does not imply that, although it will tend towards that by default. It doesn't mean that there are no monsters with special abilities unavlaible to the players by any means. If you want a specific example of a game that has unified NPC and player magic systems, look at Cythera or its antecedents. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: What I really meant, though, was that the effects are handled exactly the same way for PC and enemy casters. What do you mean by effects? The consequences on characters or the visual effects?
  6. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: Nearly all RPGs treat the PCs differently from other characters when it comes to combat mechanics. This may not be ideal, but it's certainly standard! Um, no. Most RPGs treat the PCs similarly, although in the case of pencil and paper RPGs, the PCs have many stats that monsters don't have, because usually we don't care if the Fierce Rat is charismatic or not. But in most RPGs I know of, both the PCs and NPCs/monsters have many things that are mechanically the same, like HP, rolling for to-hit, and so forth. In the case of computer RPGs, it is more of a mixed bag, although I disagree that it's the current standard. Older games, e.g. Nethack (which also has seperate monster spells), tend to be more likely to have mechanically different players and monsters, so you might make an argument that it was standard at the time Exile was written. But it isn't really standard now... for good reason. Making them "the same thing" under the covers saves a bundle of programmer effort and makes it easier to be consistent simply because being inconsistent requires deliberate effort, rather than the consistency taking effort as with a system that treats them differently. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: the magic systems are identical. Uh... how do you figure? Summoning aside, when was the last time you saw an NPC use Fireblast or prismatic shield? Ever seen an NPC priest Repel Spirit on your summoned shade? No. At very least, they have a different selection of magic, and there seems to be underlying mechanical differences as well. Compare to Battle disciplines, a recent addition to the engine, which seem to be symmetric between PCs and monsters: they have the same selection of them and they work in the same way.
  7. Quote: Originally written by Khoth: Be careful what you wish for. If you get group haste and unlimited summons from the bad guys, it's only fair that they get the ability to reload when they die. "Fine, goblins. Let's go best two out of three." While very clever, this isn't actually valid. Saving/Reloading is external to the mechanics of the game. At any rate, while the current two-parallel-systems of magic has its defenders, you will note that games with unified systems don't have people complaining on their forums "I wish the monsters had some spells we could never get," or "it's not fair that monsters can open doors too." (The latter, for one, is absurd because it contradicts our deep notions of how reality works, directly undermining suspension of disbelief. Might Wizard Gladwell - no match for a guy with a sword hiding in a closet, because it has a door.) Note, too, that unifying things mechanically would not preclude them having special things that the players don't have. But it would eliminate the current silly situation where there are two parallel systems with many very similar effects with very similar names but that are different mechanically. If the players are asking "where are our more than two summons," the NPCs should equally well be asking "where's our arcane blow?" or for that matter "why can't we open doors?" Indeed, the monster area attack implementation is also pointlessly different from the player's and doesn't even have nice pretty effects. So, unifying the two systems would not have a negative effect on the balance of future games, it would on the contrary make it easier and reduce the amount of work to be done in making and balancing spell effects, costs, and so forth. What I'm about to say may strike some as a bit blunt and maybe controversial. Just to be clear, Spiderweb games are generally fun and worth playing. I have little hope for the resolution of this situation... all the Spiderweb games I've ever seen seem to think that the player characters are, mechanically speaking, not simply some creatures like any others in the game world but controlled by a human instead of some scripts. Look at the Exile source... pc_record_type is not a class inheriting from monster_record_type, it's something else altogether. (I assume this got rectified in Avernum but I can't say.) I think there is a legacy of "party exceptionalism" dating back to the beginning. I don't mean to criticize Jeff here. Exile was his first or second Mac program, ever. Now, most first programs are much, much worse, and the fact that he managed to carry it through to completion is very impressive to me. I really can't emphasize that enough. In intially approaching the problem "create an RPG on the computer," it seems quite natural to have different structures for PCs and monsters because that's how they are in a tabletop game. (I certainly didn't have character sheets for every monster in any game I've GM'd.) But the thing here is that a key generalization was missed. A software engineer, especially using an OOP model of design, looks for things that have properties and behaviors in common and unifies them, to save on programming effort while elmiminating opportunities for bugs and inconsistencies. And, well, unifying monsters and players was a whopper of an opportunity that seems to have slipped past the first time. Unifying NPC and PC magic systems seems to have been missed in Avernum, and here we are. Still, don't overestimate the consequences. They're fine games in spite of their inconsistencies and mechanical oddness. And I hold out hope that Jeff's next big game, after A6, will break with the past and be more mechanically modern, resolving these various issues.
  8. Send the giants to attack muck. Inform Highground and the Vahnatai. Kill the giant queen. Inform muck. (For optimal rewards.)
  9. Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: [QB]That seems a fair enough take on the summons limit. ... Jeff is not writing games for eternity, but for the six months until his next game. ... there is a limit to how much polishing pays off for him. /QB] That's quite true, and fair enough, there is a point where he should be able to say that it is done. However, I'm hoping the issue will be resolved in a more satisfactory way in A6. It will be a significant factor in my purchasing decision.
  10. You're not the only one to find it confusing. I think it's a naive reactionary solution, a quick hack to prevent a worse bug (the summon spamming) rather than dealing with the underlying causes that make unrestricted summoning exploitable (monsters can't swap positions, many boss monsters lack ranged attacks, poor monster target selection and AI stupidity in general, summons are too cheep in terms of energy, etc etc etc.) There are many possible solutions, some of them quite simple, even without treating the underlying causes, but this one was picked. It's not an open source game so you and I don't have any say in the matter however. It's not like Avernum 5 was horrible because of this one issue, though, it's just a wart.
  11. Quote: Originally written by RiotGearEpsilon: I am going to propose removing Haste, or at least dramatically lessening it's power. The difference in combat between a party of all-hasted and a party of not hasted is, well... It's like the difference between Lysstak the Singular and Lysstak the Trinity. He's a heretic! Burn him! Even newbies can see the obvious value of haste. A better solution would be to make sure they know about using it by mentioning it during the tutorial or something.
  12. "Torment, Hard, Normal, Beginner, Braindead Goblin"
  13. The people who are claiming it is too hard are very different from your beta testers. As has probably occured to you, your beta-testers are partially self-selected, not a random sampling of your users. I would venture a guess that more skilled Avernum players tend to apply to be beta testers. I think the game's difficulty was spot on, neither too easy nor too hard. It was very hard as a singleton so with a party of 4 it should have been just right. Actually, I did play up to the Anama lands with a full party and found it somewhat easy. I was using a fairly optimized but conventional fighter+archer+mage+priest party. If you want to make it a little bit easier though, I would suggest getting rid of that 2 summoned creature limit
  14. If you do kill the drake without talking to the Harkin's landing mayor, you can get the key by talking to the Exodus mayor. However, always make a beeline for the towns in a new chapter before you do any combat that isn't just a "random" monster on the road or whatnot.
  15. By reloading after we get killed by goblins. Then poisoning them and running away many times.
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