Avadon 2 Wishlist

[Slawbug]

That would be kind of a cool feature, actually. I never knew anyone who imported a party from Wizardry 1 all the way through the series, but the fact that it was possible always seemed really cool to me as a kid.

 

(Or could you not important into Bane of the Cosmic Forge when they redid all the mechanics? I forget, but you could at least import from 1-5 and 6-8.)

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

That would be kind of a cool feature, actually. I never knew anyone who imported a party from Wizardry 1 all the way through the series, but the fact that it was possible always seemed really cool to me as a kid.

(Or could you not important into Bane of the Cosmic Forge when they redid all the mechanics? I forget, but you could at least import from 1-5 and 6-8.)

yeah, you couldn't import into 6

actually, I thought you couldn't import into 4 or 5 either, on account of in 4 you were playing as Werdna

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

By contrast, Avadon's endings are similar enough that it's possible to build a sequel while leaving it ambiguous which ending of the first game is canonical. Heck, Jeff could plausibly have let you import a save file from Avadon 1 and have the Avadon 1 PC's choices reflected in minor differences throughout Avadon 2. He won't, but he could.

Look, we all know Jeff's ultimate goal is to be indie-Bioware (aka regular Bioware pre-EA), there's really no need to beat around the bush about it.

[Slawbug]

Hmm, you may be right Lilith. Well, you're definitely right about 4. Could 5 import from 3, though? I played 5 on the SNES (gasp) so I'm not sure.

[Death Knight]

All i ask for next games, (as i stopped playing this one at moritzkri), is to allow the player different ways to beat boss battles. Its extremely annoying to know that everyone of these major battles have to be done a certain way. With the older games, it has a more open way about defeating bosses and enemies. You can do anything, which is freedom that the avadon series lacks. Other than that, it seemed ok.

[Slawbug]

Huh? There are definitely multiple ways to beat all of the boss battles, even Redbeard. You might have read people here posting that "this is the best way to do it" or "you have to do it this way," but those are just posts on a message board, not the divine truth.

[Death Knight]

Its not that, its just that there is a more set way to go about it. In geneforge i came up with my own way to defeat the boss. In avadon, the bosses have set ways to be destroyed and if you dont follow that way, you will lose. Its not even just that, some of the battles take ridiculous amounts of time (2 hrs). And if i screw up, who in their right mind would be able to start over. With geneforge i get hit twice in melee and im dead. I hit the enemy 5 times and he is dead. Its pretty fair, at least for me. Much much less loading time. When you spend two hours on fighting a boss and then lose, you know there is something wrong.

[Lilith]

If you're taking 2 hours on a single attempt to fight any boss except maybe Zephyrine, chances are there's room for improvement in either your character build or your strategy. Even Redbeard shouldn't take that long.

[Dikiyoba]

Yeah, but no single combat should take 2 hours with a suboptimal build either (unless you're specifically doing some sort of weird challenge), especially on lower difficulties. (Which wasn't the original complaint, but hey. Dikiyoba will wish for it regardless.)

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

If you're taking 2 hours on a single attempt to fight any boss, chances are there's room for improvement in either your character build or your strategy. Even Redbeard shouldn't take that long.

FYT
No fight even on torment should take more than an hour. Even as a singleton without the extra Hands if the fight is possible than you should do it in less than an hour.

If you are taking that long then seriously consider retraining your party.

[Old MikeS]

Actually, with wiz5, you could import from any of the first three - the M)ove character option. You didn't get to keep anything equipment-wise or money, and reset back to level 1, but could get a Lord or Ninja at the start which you couldn't get otherwise.

[Gerry Quinn]

You could import from Dungeon Master to Chaos Strikes

Back. And I think in the Bard's Tale Games you could import also.

 

Never did in any of them though.

 

I don't think Might and Magic ever had it, but they tended to change their classes and number of party members every game anyway.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Gerry Quinn

I don't think Might and Magic ever had it, but they tended to change their classes and number of party members every game anyway.

You could import your party from M&M1 into M&M2 (which made sense, since the ending of M&M1 involved the party finding a portal to another world.) There were some limitations, though, to prevent you from trivialising the entire game: your levels were capped at 7 and your initial stats were capped at 20, which was high enough to make the first town a breeze but meant that exploring any further afield would still be dangerous. All of your items and most of your money were taken away, too.

And then, of course, there was World of Xeen. Not only could you travel freely back and forth between the worlds of M&M4 and M&M5 if you owned both games, but it was actually necessary to do so in order to complete certain quests.

[Gerry Quinn]

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega

The whole idea of "unconsciousness" seems to be a major shift in convenience for players in recent games (Dragon Age). Some old timey RPG purists (which I can honestly qualify for in a lot of cases) might find it disturbing, but I really like the idea.

It's not actually new at all - many of the earliest games had it. I think it applied to Bards Tale, early Might and Magic, and perhaps Eye of the Beholder. If you went to 0 HP you didn't die but went unconscious. Only if you then got knocked down to -10 HP were you dead.

Back in those days game designers still had an idea that players would play ironman, so they tried to make it at least theoretically possible.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Gerry Quinn

It's not actually new at all - many of the earliest games had it. I think it applied to Bards Tale, early Might and Magic, and perhaps Eye of the Beholder. If you went to 0 HP you didn't die but went unconscious. Only if you then got knocked down to -10 HP were you dead.

Back in those days game designers still had an idea that players would play ironman, so they tried to make it at least theoretically possible.

oh look an excuse for me to talk even more about Might & Magic

gonna spoiler-tag this because it's long and a little off-topic (except insofar as it touches on general principles of game design) so any dudes who want to ignore it can do so

Click to reveal..

The M&M series was actually pretty forgiving about unconsciousness and death. Maybe not quite as forgiving as Ultima 4, in which you'd just respawn in front of Lord British with most of your gold gone, but way more so than Wizardry, Bard's Tale (in which 0 HP did mean you were dead, at least in the first game) or pretty much any of the other early Western RPGs. Getting taken down to 0 HP in the first two M&M games meant you were unconscious: you could never be killed in one hit by damage alone, only by spells or enemies that had the special ability to inflict death. Unconscious characters wouldn't be targeted in melee, but would be killed if they took any damage at all from other sources like missile weapons or breath attacks.

The practical effect of this was that early on, when most enemies just attacked you in melee, you could hopefully keep reviving your party members in battle as fast as they were taken down, or if you were unlucky enough to lose your Cleric you could still fight on and hope to rest up after the battle if you won. After you'd gained a couple of levels and enemies with special attacks became more common, you'd have to make sure to revive all unconscious PCs immediately or risk ending up with a dead party member, whose revival required a trip back to the temple and a significant amount of money. Later in the game, you pretty much just wanted to avoid falling unconscious in the first place because it was pretty likely to be a death sentence -- but on the bright side, if that happened you probably knew Raise Dead by that point in the game, and could bring them back in exchange for a minor, reversible penalty to your character's age.

Might and Magic 3-5 changed the system around a bit: you had a buffer equal to your max HP between unconsciousness and death, so if your max HP was 25 then you'd fall unconscious at 0 and die at -25. This meant that one strong hit could take you from conscious to dead -- but on the bright side, it also meant that unconscious characters could take some damage from area attacks without instantly dying. M&M 6 and later had a similar buffer system, but the size of the buffer was based on your Endurance instead of your max HP, generally giving you a smaller buffer to work with.

For what it's worth, when I was a kid I never played "ironman-style" in the sense of deleting my saved game when my party died, but I did try to limp back to town instead of just reloading if half my party ended up dead. The first two M&M games encouraged this, since you could only save at inns, so a party wipe potentially meant losing a lot of progress.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Old MikeS

Actually, with wiz5, you could import from any of the first three - the M)ove character option. You didn't get to keep anything equipment-wise or money, and reset back to level 1, but could get a Lord or Ninja at the start which you couldn't get otherwise.

You could get a Lord or Ninja at the start if you were lucky enough with your bonus ability point roll.

[radiojonty]

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet

Dragging items has to go. Just make it so that key + mouse click moves the item to right location at once. Also, auto-arranging inventory! Moving those little icons around manually is just so clumsy.

Key + click is no good for disabled players. I've no practical motor control of my left wrist and fingers, this means I can either use the k/b or the mouse but not simultaneously. Alternatives should be provided like mappable mouse buttons, double clicking, etc.

Auto arrange button would be cool.

Adjustable pathfinding nodes a la Icewind Dale.

Adjustable HUD transparency.

Battle anims on/off performance tweak.

Environment anims on/off or complexity performance tweak.

[Anskier]

Please make it so I can toggle windows

 

If I hit a button or press a key and it opens a window let me hit it again and close the window

 

I know it seems small but always having to hit esc to close windows is to me the single most irritating thing about spiderwebs games

 

Anskier

[A less presumptuous name.]

In my opinion, if the lack of toggling keys is the single most irritating thing about spiderweb games, I think Jeff is doing a damn good job. That said, I do understand people's desire for toggling keys. With the sheer number of people coming here just for that, it wouldn't surprise me if he adds it in to all future games.

[Damien]

Something I find consistently damaging to the immersion is the lack of animations.

When I'm being told by the text that this man is in the stocks, but the only thing I'm seeing is a man standing in front of the stocks (same for the supposedly trainees beating up dummies), it does ruin it for me.

Also, more detailed character models would be nice. And more accurate ones, too. More than once I read descriptions of burly men proudly displaying large breasts and slender shoulders.

[Randomizer]

It takes time to make graphics and this is the first Spiderweb game with walking animations. Avadon 2 is going to have more animation choices for the player characters.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

this is the first Spiderweb game with walking animations.

Uh, except for the entire Geneforge series, which started in what, 2002?

[radiojonty]

Originally Posted By: Anskier

Please make it so I can toggle windows

If I hit a button or press a key and it opens a window let me hit it again and close the window

I know it seems small but always having to hit esc to close windows is to me the single most irritating thing about spiderwebs games

Anskier

Seconded, window toggles seem almost a standard in RPGs, so why not SW games?

It's intuitive to click outside a window to close it too - having to click on a relatively small green circle with a tick in it gets pretty old, particularly when your mouse isn't the highest DPI.