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A:EftP - Things I'd love to see a return.


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1. The necessity to consume food along your journey and a common food pool to use like Gold is. Just like the system Exile 1~3 used. Any food bought or picked up would immediately go into your party's food pool.

 

2. I'd love to see the occasional monster horde again. Back in Exile you had some encounters which just gave you the feeling like you were fighting against a army. Encounters I can recall off hand were the Troglodytes and I recall one was a Dragon Defense both in Exile 3.

 

It's been so long though that I can't remember the ones in Exile 1/2 though I remember there were some.

 

3. I know this isn't Jeff's favorite but I'd really love to see the Spell Library from Exile 1 ~3 brought back in. Yes, it had the occasional spell which was was seldom used but it give you a lot of immersion as a Mage. You were a adventurer but if you had a mage in your party you were just like the other exiled mages banished for their experiments, along with your own quirky spells and sometimes very dangerous spells. AKA Fireball and other goodies.

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Originally Posted By: Drakemoore

1. The necessity to consume food along your journey and a common food pool to use like Gold is. Just like the system Exile 1~3 used. Any food bought or picked up would immediately go into your party's food pool.


why

Quote:
2. I'd love to see the occasional monster horde again. Back in Exile you had some encounters which just gave you the feeling like you were fighting against a army. Encounters I can recall off hand were the Troglodytes and I recall one was a Dragon Defense both in Exile 3.

It's been so long though that I can't remember the ones in Exile 1/2 though I remember there were some.


This could be cool if handled well. There are technical and gameplay barriers that would have to be solved to make it feasible, though. (For example, monster pathfinding algorithms are more sophisticated and far more computationally expensive than they were in Exile, so massive hordes have the potential to slow the game down.)

Quote:
3. I know this isn't Jeff's favorite but I'd really love to see the Spell Library from Exile 1 ~3 brought back in. Yes, it had the occasional spell which was was seldom used but it give you a lot of immersion as a Mage. You were a adventurer but if you had a mage in your party you were just like the other exiled mages banished for their experiments, along with your own quirky spells and sometimes very dangerous spells. AKA Fireball and other goodies.


Eh. I wouldn't mind seeing the return of some of the actually useful spells like fields, but I'm pretty okay with the disappearance of spells that nobody ever cast anyway.
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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Drakemoore

1. The necessity to consume food along your journey and a common food pool to use like Gold is. Just like the system Exile 1~3 used. Any food bought or picked up would immediately go into your party's food pool.


why


Why not? It adds a sense of immersion and danger to the adventure since you could run out of food supplies, though you can always buy more from a merchant. Though, at least in Exile 3 you ended up with so much money along the trip that you never really could run out of food. tongue
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I have to admit, food did give Avernum 6 more a sense of realism in some ways, though again, food was also one of the primary plot points.

 

I do really miss the epic battles of Exile, though again, you did have 50% more party to work with. Also, unlimited summons.

 

As for the Spell System... sadly, I think it's likely to have already been solidified if some reports on the Mac beta being mere weeks away are true. Me? I'd rather see the vast encyclopedia of spells Exile offered than the cut and dry system of Avernum, especially if we end up with more colossal pitched battles of the days of old.

 

Even when it wasn't the most practical solution, I -liked- stacking Walls of Fire, Shock, Cold, and Blades and mooning my enemies as they dared to charge through it. I've missed the capacity to Dispel things, or identify things on my own. Scrying spells, more robust summoning spells, the simple elegance of the spell "Kill"... Monster Map tracking, direct application of poison, web spells, anti-magic field spells...

 

While some of the spells of Exile may not be idea, they are fun, and a great many of them are far more than that.

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I agree with all of the above. I would particularly like to have more mob control spells, like barriers.

Also, the necessity of food is something i completely adore. I'd even go so far as to bring in drink and rest as something that causes you problems if you neglect it in really long, volcanic dungeons with no towns around. Partly because it adds realism and such, but mainly because it would give you a great many possibilities for the meta game. Cave adventurers should have to plan at least a little bit.

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I was honestly kinda bummed out about when the food thing dropped in avernum.

I very much like the idea that your characters could starve to death, as it made it feel like that much more of an adventure. In E2, when you're going down the dark river, and you go down that waterfall that takes all your food, you had to explore and find more sources of sustainence or die trying. It was downright interesting going around and finding hydra meat, or safe mushrooms to eat.

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Originally Posted By: Beer and Motor Oil
I was honestly kinda bummed out about when the food thing dropped in avernum.
I very much like the idea that your characters could starve to death, as it made it feel like that much more of an adventure. In E2, when you're going down the dark river, and you go down that waterfall that takes all your food, you had to explore and find more sources of sustainence or die trying. It was downright interesting going around and finding hydra meat, or safe mushrooms to eat.


Man, I for one do NOT want food and starvation to come back. The damage sound that played when my party ran out of food used to frighten me something awful.
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I think the "survival" aspect is something I have to support as well. How awful the food is in Avernum is one of the big "why I want out of this hole" points of the series, yet, for most of it, you can easily ignore that part as part of the plot "dressing". Plus, it gives meaning to all the lizard shanks and shrooms laying around, and I like to see functionally meaningless items kept to a minimum.

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A2's Dark Waters suffers from the loss of food, but the whole dynamic changes with the absence of Minor Manna and Manna. It could be salvaged for that chapter, but in general, food was never actually a problem after the very beginning of the Exile games.

 

—Alorael, who thinks that goes under the heading of removing headaches and barriers to entry. The removal of food is pretty much all to the good.

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I still think it adds something, at least to start out.

 

Then again, by the end of A6 I had well over 100 units of food saved up.

 

Maybe if there was some kind of Spoiling mechanic to keep from building up a Nuclear Survival shelter's worth of food, or something else to make it more dynamic.

 

Still, I see your point.

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Given that Jeff's games from A4 on have all had limited economies where there is a finite amount of gold and treasure in the game world, requiring food purchases on the level that Exile did would be painful. A6's food requirement was basically a joke that read "hold onto a bunch of stuff you'll never use in one PC's inventory for the whole game."

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True, but if the remakes are more akin to A1-3, the gold/treasure limitation wouldn't really come into play.

 

Then again, the only time in A6 that Food became a problem for me was when somehow, someway, everyone minus my priest died, and it was a far enough walk to the nearest city gates to actually see the "starvation" message come up.

 

I'unno, there are definite potential problems with such a system, pointlessness being a big one.

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I'm not big on the food thing. When I spend time in Avernum, I want the thrill of exploring a mysterious, exotic world and discovering secrets (part of why I'm cool with "headbanging" secret passages), meeting interesting figures and solving problems. I have to keep track of how much food I have and make sure to eat regularly in real life. Realism can be good in a game, but not all realism is necessarily fun. I didn't mind the food mechanic in A6, and maybe that's what's needed - a token mechanic that might satisfy those for whom it adds verisimilitude, without creating a real burden for those who enough time budgeting for food in real life. smile

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Originally Posted By: Drakemoore
1. The necessity to consume food along your journey and a common food pool to use like Gold is. Just like the system Exile 1~3 used. Any food bought or picked up would immediately go into your party's food pool.
You kind of don't need a "food pool". If food is simply used the same way as A6, it really doesn't matter who carries it, as long as you have one piece of food in your inventory at all times.

Originally Posted By: Drakemoore
2. I'd love to see the occasional monster horde again. Back in Exile you had some encounters which just gave you the feeling like you were fighting against a army. Encounters I can recall off hand were the Troglodytes and I recall one was a Dragon Defense both in Exile 3.

It's been so long though that I can't remember the ones in Exile 1/2 though I remember there were some.
I thought there were monster hordes already...

Originally Posted By: Drakemoore
3. I know this isn't Jeff's favorite but I'd really love to see the Spell Library from Exile 1 ~3 brought back in. Yes, it had the occasional spell which was was seldom used but it give you a lot of immersion as a Mage. You were a adventurer but if you had a mage in your party you were just like the other exiled mages banished for their experiments, along with your own quirky spells and sometimes very dangerous spells. AKA Fireball and other goodies.
Actually, you really don't need this. It's now part of the character info page (A1-3 and BoA) or the "spells/traits" page (A4-6).
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The monster groups in Avernum aren't really as large as the ones in Exile. I think in Exile you had a few encounters which had 30-40ish.

 

 

I meant, the vast variety of spells which you could choose from. It was quite fun and immerse as you had all sorts of spells from the useless, quirky and comical to the grand spells.

 

In the avernum series lots of things were cut away and merged into a much more simple practical spell list which, really you'd use most of the spells throughout the game but it had no real variety and the selection was pretty limited compared to Exile.

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I found myself using the same spells over and over in every fight in avernum.

 

In exile I could usually find a use for alot of the spells that got cut from the game like barriers to shape the battlefield, mindduel to steal energy when low, poison if the fight was going to last a while, strategically placed antimagic clouds, etc. Cutting all those spells killed alot of strategy and didn't result in any real benefits.

 

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Quote:
Cutting all those spells killed alot of strategy and didn't result in any real benefits.


I found most of the Exile spell list pretty useless (though getting field spells back would be nice), but I don't really feel like debating the point further. Others have already said what I would say. My main issue here is your second point: a reduced spell list in fact brings with it a really obvious benefit in terms of time spent programming, debugging, and balancing the game. This may not be a direct benefit for the player, but the additional time that Jeff can spend working on graphics, game balance, new areas, and so on, certainly is. I for one would rather see Jeff spend time on a bug-free game with cool new dungeons than waste it making sure that none of a few dozen new rarely-used contingency spells are game-breaking.
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Originally Posted By: Necris Omega
. Also, unlimited summons.


This is something I would like to see again. Or at least. . . .the ability to summon more than one critter. Especially at high levels, there should be SOME WAY to get around that 1 summon per pc cap.

Originally Posted By: goblindolf
Cutting all those spells killed alot of strategy and didn't result in any real benefits.


I agree!!!
I want shockwave, wound, and the useless spells back. I don't care that they are useless. They were fun and as other posters have mentioned they allowed for whups/comic relief moments as a mage and oh so many options!
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Avadon has a spell that is pretty much Shockwave, so Shockwave could well make it back.

 

I'm not sure I buy the point about programming time. Since Jeff reuses game engines, programming a new spell type once allows you to use variations on that spell type in all your new games. Adding field spells (for example) to all upcoming releases sounds like a much better use of time than adding a new dungeon to a single game.

 

Additionally, graphics are obviously the hard part about spell variety for Jeff, not programming. Dealing with the logic code for any of the spells in Exile is not difficult at all. Graphics are harder. That's why N/A1-3 had no AoE spells: multi-individual target spells could look OK by basically drawing some straight lines. A decent looking AoE graphic would take more work.

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I found the graphic style that was used in the exile series was fine for AoEs myself. Where if you cast Fireball it simply displayed a animated fireball image over each mob that was hit, instead of one massive explosion.

 

Obviously there is work involved in creating those graphically though considering the amount of re-use of materials in SW's games I doubt it would be fruitless.

 

Coding wise as stated before shouldn't be a issue.

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I agree on the subject of fields, and have said as much. I'm not against a somewhat expanded spell list, and I don't think increasing the number of spells by 25-50% would take a tremendous amount of time and effort. But many people on here are talking about a spell list of similar size to that of the original Exile series, which is A) highly unlikely, given Jeff's discussion of his design philosophy; and B) given that many spells, would take a considerable amount of time to balance, and probably be a huge headache in beta testing.

 

I think in part I just find it odd that people would rather a designer spend time on spells they call "useless" than on improving the game in other ways, or even just releasing it earlier.

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I don't view any of the spells I mentioned as being useless. Ok, they were not spells you simply spammed every round of the fight, but they certainly contributed to the experience and had their uses.

 

exile:

If you expect the fight to last a while use poison as it pays off in longer fights

If you are low on energy use mind duel

If your fighters are getting surrounded create barriers.

If there are lots of weak monsters use field spells.

 

avernum: Use the exact same spell every round and watch things die.

 

As it is now I just use the same spells in every fight in avernum, I mean using the logic presented to keep the avernum spell list, you may as well just have one spell called "spell", which you click every fight and stuff dies when you do.

 

That way jeff can free up his time for other things! The spell list definately needs more variety as spamming the same thing over and over to victory every fight is boring. And as others have mentioned spells jeff adds now will be there in future games as he reuses things.

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No, what people are talking about is that level of variety, not having 150 spells.

 

Also, I fail to see what would be difficult to balance unless we're talking about really unusual effects.

 

Finally, it's possible for useless abilities to add quite a bit to a game. If they are useless and that's the end of the story, no. But if they are fun, or if they are unnecessary -- maybe suboptimal -- but let you do things in unusual and cool ways, people enjoy them and remember them. No question that Fireball was more useful than Conflagration, or Mindduel, or Spray Fields. But those spells were fun!

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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
No question that Fireball was more useful than Conflagration, or Mindduel, or Spray Fields.


Conflagration was actually way more useful than Fireball at low levels. With a low-Int character, Fireball did maybe 10-15 damage, while Conf did 5-10 damage in a larger area, every round for several rounds, regardless of your Intelligence, for a lower SP cost, and low-level monsters would often refuse to walk through it, allowing you to trap them inside a killzone where they couldn't reach your party. It also had a few slightly abusive applications, like preventing Doomguards from splitting.
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You whup that straw man. Whup him good.

 

...seriously? One spell? Clearly this is intended to be at least partially facetious, but it's still wrong. Damage =/= Healing =/= Buffs =/= Debuffs =/= Utility magic =/= Movement abilities (a la Avadon).

 

I would also note that the spells you mentioned still make up only a part of the Exile spell list. On a related note: contra Slarty, there are people who have suggested bringing back most or all of the Exile spell list. Drakemoore (the OP) says:

Quote:
3. I know this isn't Jeff's favorite but I'd really love to see the Spell Library from Exile 1 ~3 brought back in.

 

Quoth Necris Omega:

Quote:
Me? I'd rather see the vast encyclopedia of spells Exile offered than the cut and dry system of Avernum, especially if we end up with more colossal pitched battles of the days of old.

 

And there are a couple other posts that can plausibly read as advocating the return of the whole gargantuan spell book.

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The spell book for mages & priests changed quite dramatically each Exile episode, as I recall. It was strange that powerful ones suddenly got forgotten as time passed. One would have thought they'd have been retained in "real life."

 

I recall one dungeon where you had to set off some device that started a raging fire that consumed the whole joint. You had to run and get out before getting crisped. I somehow recall you had to fight your way out, to boot.

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The spell list changed substantially from E1 to E2 and then remained mostly the same for E3.

 

—Alorael, who imagines the remake of A2 will have quickfire. It's hard to get the dramatic escape from Garzahd on the roof without it. There are other ways to do it, but they're not as exciting.

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Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie
on the subject of monster hordes....i remember once i think in e2 reaching the vahanati and stumbling on some sort of tomb where i got hit with about 40 ghosts, shades, ghasts, and probably others

There's a valley far southeast of where you reach the Vahnatai lands filled with a horde of undead in one big fight.
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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Now that you mention it, I'm really curious to see how the re-remakes handle the quickfire areas from previous games.


The path of the quickfire will just have to be scripted more directly. If Jeff could threaten us with drowning while fighting ogres in Avadon, he can do something similar with quickfire while fighting roaches and whatnot.
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