Beta Testing Testing One Two Three Four

[Alorael at Large]

Tool Use needs to be somewhere around 15 for traps. There are locks that require up to 30, but most don't ever have to be unlocked (keys, ways around, quests, etc.) and by the time you can plausibly have that much Tool Use your spellcasters can probably Unlock better than a thief can pick. You need to put a fair number of points in, but Nimble Fingers will keep boosting Tool Use as you level.

 

I never encountered a barrier that I couldn't Dispel, but I went for extreme magic. A singleton might have a little trouble, but probably not too much.

 

Paralysis would be a problem, though. There were definitely fights where I spent most of my time depending on the one or two characters still able to move. Actually, a singleton might be entirely impossible given the way a certain battle you have to fight to get Dispel Barrier goes.

 

—Alorael, who thinks that fight may have been slightly altered between versions. It involved even more excrutiatingly frozen characters before.

[Synergy]

I have played a game as a singleton human with Divinely Touched and Natural Mage up to the Ft. Draco area at this point. This is a 45% XP penalty combined based on those traits, but since I have one greedy little PC getting four times the XP of a party of four, he should be leveling up at approximately twice the typical rate of a non-advantaged party of four.

 

Well, at first he flew up for a few levels. I have done all possible missions along the way to keep him leveling up as much as possible. I gave him both priest and mage skills and enough tool use for the early part of the game, enough nature lore to expose caches (barely) and enough pole fighting power and a tiny bit of archery to do decent damage without magic when necessary.

 

Now, he is killing undead for 1 XP point each at level ten. Not good. The game appears to consider his experience level of ten well beyond the monster level he is facing, and it is now a severe penalty being a singleton. This is an imbalance and I have asked Jeff if there is anything to be done to fix this, or I belive he will wind up way behind in needed XP to match the game level he will be facing. He is falling behind now in Tool Use and Priest Levels because I'm not getting any decent XP points any more.

 

I had the thought that I'd like the option to assign a sum total of XP to whatever number of PC's I choose. If I choose a singleton, I am behind 3x ~65 XP total for my "party". This is not the challenge I want from being a singleton, being handicapped by being behind in XP, but "ahead" in level according to how the game looks at him. I like the challenge of having one PC find a way to manage through all situations, but on a par total level of ability as a party of four. This means I'd like to have 260 XP to assign to him at the beginning, heh. Or maybe at least double the usually amount for just one PC. I have done this with the character editor in previous Avernums sometimes. It depends what kind of challenge and experience you want from a singleton.

 

Tool use of 8 is perfect to start the game with, and 10 a bit in does well for some time. After that, my magic users opened doors, which often appeared at level 15 or 18-30. By the way, there is a (key-locked?) door just SW of Formello I have never found a way to open. Someone email me if you figured out how to get in there? That was the only known thing in the game I was never able to accomplish.

 

EDIT: I've just been informed that our Beloved Designer intends playing as a singleton to be brutally difficult, unlike previous games, so he was happy to hear of my woes.

[Delicious Vlish]

Quote:

Originally written by $10,000 Man:
Tool Use needs to be somewhere around 15 for traps. There are locks that require up to 30, but most don't ever have to be unlocked (keys, ways around, quests, etc.) and by the time you can plausibly have that much Tool Use your spellcasters can probably Unlock better than a thief can pick. You need to put a fair number of points in, but Nimble Fingers will keep boosting Tool Use as you level.

I never encountered a barrier that I couldn't Dispel, but I went for extreme magic. A singleton might have a little trouble, but probably not too much.

Paralysis would be a problem, though. There were definitely fights where I spent most of my time depending on the one or two characters still able to move. Actually, a singleton might be entirely impossible given the way a certain battle you have to fight to get Dispel Barrier goes.

—Alorael, who thinks that fight may have been slightly altered between versions. It involved even more excrutiatingly frozen characters before.

Yeah, I was thinking of the same fight.

A person with Strong Will has a good chance of resisting that though.

Strong Will is an amazingly good trait I am finding. It gives you a chance of resisting all kinds of things. That, and a few points in luck, allow you to weasel out of all kinds of situations, basilisks included.

It's sort of weird though, because when you have it, you never really notice that you have it. But when you don't have it, you sort of scratch your head and wonder what you are doing wrong.

[Alorael at Large]

Thought 1: Fear on a singleton is a nuisance, but charm isn't so bad. You won't hurt yourself. It just wastes a few turns. Paralysis is the problem.

 

Thought 2: In a party with at least one fighter and at least one priest who is a different character, the fighter is the more likely target of nasty mind spells and the priest can cure them. The experience penalty of Strong WIll is heftier than the loss of energy from Unshackle Mind every now and then.

 

The door southwest of Formello is indeed unlocked with a key. I'll PM you the way to get it to avoid spoilers and NDA violations.

 

—Alorael, who posted this mainly to prevent floods of PMs to Synergy.

[Synergy]

Thanks, Alo...I missed that one, but knew there had to be a way in there. The door I mentioned is actually a bit to the NW of the city, but you meant what I knew. Check your SW email for a reply.

 

As often as my main fighter normally got charmed, terrified, or confused, I think Strong Will might be a decent investment. I'm trying it with my melee man this time around.

 

I gave up on my singleton game. It really doesn't work. Those brave and patient souls who are dead set on playing one through that way will have to endure a real lag in leveling up early on, and it may last quite a while, leaving you increasingly weak in the face of more and more powerful adversaries.

[Delicious Vlish]

Yeah, I found that too last night when I tried a Singleton.

 

The experience is funky now, and in no time at all it was biting her on the butt. She was blowing apart bugs of all kinds and only getting 1 exp for each kill, when usually for any of my parties this is a level gaining bonanza.

 

I tried a slightly unusual route though in my Singleton. It was... Interesting. No nimble fingers, but I had a few points here and there to stick in to tool use. Um, I don't think I can list the traits she had because one of them is a new trait, and I don't think we can talk about it yet, but she was a Mage Priest and had traits that applied. Mostly, she focused on summoning. Blessed, Protected, Hasted Shades. When the experience came to a dead halt and she couldn't gain levels, I gave up deleted the save files.

 

For the same reason that Singletons have issues, I believe at some point, a Duo will run in to the same problem. You would reach a point where the experience would turn in to a trickle if there wasn't a party present to balance it out.

 

I don't think Jeff wanted any single all powerful character. Certain aspects of the game are made in such a way to defeat or stump almost any build and you have to have somebody else with a different skill set step in and clean up. A well made team. What that well made team is made up of will be the subject of much debate in this new forum.

 

I would like to open that debate by saying a party of skilled archers and casters completely OWNS. I finished the game for the third time. Avoiding melee altogether made the endgame a complete walk through the park.

 

And hopefully, I am not going to get in trouble for disclosing this bit if information, but the new Slith character graphic, the BIG one, looks mighty funny with a bow. It's scaled to his size, his bow is colossal, and his quiver looks like it is filled with javelins.

 

One shudders to think of what an 8 or 9 foot longbow would do to somebody when it fired an arrow.

[VCH]

It seems like everyone has already played A4. I want my chance.

[Delicious Vlish]

Been playing a Duo for most of the day.

 

My findings, with out violating the NDA.

 

That annoying problem with Singletons happens to duos as well. It just happens a little later. Like, just when you really need experience the most because suddenly everything gets a whole lot harder, tons of undead, the dreadful fighting in [ithe Colony[/i] and so on and so on. Basically, experience says tootles and deserts you at the most critical point in the game.

 

You could try a trio, but that would be pointless.

[Synergy]

I'm using a party of four with zero to 35% level-up handicaps due to net positive traits. Oddly enough, the level-up lag has hit nearly as bad as with a singleton, but further on than you've hit it with two. Somewhere in the mid-teens level-wise and half-way through the game, they are really dragging at leveling up any further. It seems to be paced so my priests and mages can just keep up with available spells, putting most of their skill points all along into intelligence and magic skills.

 

I didn't remember having this issue in my first full game, but probably did. I'll have to pay attention and see whether they pick up the pace again at some point, or if once you hit it, you're stuck with it. Anyone else noticing this happening?

[*i]

Try not to discuss too much...remember what Jeff said about keeping the testing pool separate. This forum is not for testers to share experiences.

[VCH]

Yes please do.

[m4mitchell]

I know the chance to apply be a beta tester for Macs is long over, but does anyone know if the sign-up period for PCs has happened yet?

[Student of Trinity]

As I remember from my old pen-and-paper dungeon mastering days, it is inherently very difficult to maintain a steady level of challenge as a party rises to high levels. It is almost as difficult to build gradually to a crescendo.

 

The problem is a basic scaling, I believe. It is not just that a party gets better at everything as it advances: it gets better at more and more things. And as its reserves of depletable stats and resources get deeper, its growing range of options includes dumping everything in one tremendous assault, then making a fast pit stop to recharge at a secure base. So the challenge of challenging a party grows very nonlinearly with level.

 

There are of course possible ways of dealing with these problems, but most if not all of these involve constraining the party in ways that the normal rules do not. In games that are basically power-fantasies, taking away capabilities that the party has earned automatically means that your delivery of player satisfaction is starting from a hole of resentment. And many of the extraordinary constraints that a gamemaster might impose would make the game more difficult by making it more tedious, which would also be self-defeating.

 

It can still be done, at least on good days; but, again in my experience, success in sustaining high level challenge requires knowing your players and tailoring the game to them. Puzzles, for instance, can always work because they test players directly; but there is nothing worse than a puzzle that is just too difficult for the players, and it is extremely easy to invent impossibly difficult puzzles. Imagining that such puzzles are tests of intelligence betrays unfamiliarity with intelligence.

 

Long story short: in a popular shareware CRPG I think it is virtually impossible to avoid bumps and bogs in the development path of effective party power. So cut yourself and the designer some slack, and if you want to keep a steady uphill grade, change the difficulty level to smooth things out.