Jeff's New Game

[Sudanna]

So think faster.

[cfgauss]

Turn based games are nice because they let you think more strategically than real time ones, which often evolve into wildly attacking until everything's dead. I mean, how do you think real-time chess would work out? Not well. (Non-Euclidean chess, on the other hand, is awesome. On the other other hand, Euclidean time chess is oddly confusing...)

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

I mean, how do you think real-time chess would work out?

Generally, it sucks in half a dozen people and ends with the entire board getting wiped out by a massive airstrike.

Dikiyoba.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Turn based games are nice because they let you think more strategically than real time ones, which often evolve into wildly attacking until everything's dead. I mean, how do you think real-time chess would work out? Not well. (Non-Euclidean chess, on the other hand, is awesome. On the other other hand, Euclidean time chess is oddly confusing...)

ALL CHESS VARIANTS MUST DIE!!!!!

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

I mean, how do you think real-time chess would work out?

This is what I play with my nephew. It's quite fun, actually, once you turn your brain off and stop caring about fairness.

[Slawbug]

BattleChess FTW

[Alorael at Large]

As someone with the reflexes of a geriatric slug and the navigational abilities of drunk zooplankton, I'm not offended, but I also think that time has very little to do with immersion. I'm also not entirely clear on why "immersion" is the goal of a game. I want to have fun, I want to enjoy the story and gameplay, and I want to be challenged. Nowhere in there is "immersion" a priority per se.

 

—Alorael, who is pulled in most by a setting that makes sense and has all the necessary details. The graphics don't do nearly as much for him, and the timing is basically irrelevant.

[grasshopper]

Quote:

No, I like to think before I act. I'm not going to throw an insult back about your cognitive ability, but I will suggest that you read the code of conduct before you throw any more tough talk around.

no offense intended, and i hope none taken.

about the immersion, i think it does to some degree have to do with the route finding that 3d 1st persons don't have to deal with.

ufoai, turn based, killing aliens, great game. the player is in control of a team. when they don't go to where directed, i think, idiots, and may remember i'm sat at a computer game. immersion broken for a split second. if they screw it up every move, playing the game is more like accepting that my input methods, be it keyboard or mouse clicks have a limited relevance to the output shown on the screen.

geneforge, turn based. i tell my fyora to go somewhere, he screws it up. amateur.
i tell the thing representing me, the lifecrafter, the servile, or whatever, to go somewhere, and he screws it up i think, i wouldn't have done that, and now he has just died. this computer game character is not me. and immersion is broken, or for want of a better phrase, suspension of disbelief.

frustration, frustration, frustration, as i watch him bite the dust again through no fault of my own.

on the higher difficuties of halo, duck and weave duck and weave is incredibly important, no duck and weave, you die. everytime i died in halo i knew it was because i myself was a geriatric slug, and there was no other reason apart from that.

[Enraged Slith]

Gameplay is a vessel for an experience. I don't think it matters how it plays, provided that it's entertaining.

 

To be honest, I think Jeff's games have been slogs since Geneforge 3. He needs to focus on what's important and rally the rest of the game around that single purpose. It doesn't matter how interesting his ideas are if they fail to resonate with a clear direction.

[Unplayable Playable Character]

 

 

Originally Posted By: Alorael

I'm also not entirely clear on why "immersion" is the goal of a game. I want to have fun, I want to enjoy the story and gameplay, and I want to be challenged. Nowhere in there is "immersion" a priority per se.

 

IMO immersion is an important part of a good game. If Geneforge wasn't immersive you wouldn't care about whether it's ethical to enslave serviles and use canisters because none of it is real. Take for example Chess; Chess is all about gameplay, zero immersion. You don't play chess for the story, you play chess to challenge yourself and prove that you're better than whoever you're playing against. Traditionally, in a role-playing game you tend to play the role of someone, usually someone interesting. Without immersion that role-playing aspect disappears and all you're left with is gameplay. Even in a game like Rogue there is an "I am going through a dungeon" kind of sense of immersion. Rouge or Geneforge without any immersion would consist of "Fight this monster. These are your tactical options. Go." So maybe immersion isn't a goal for all games but it definitely is for an RPG.

 

Originally Posted By: boggle

and immersion is broken, or for want of a better phrase, suspension of belief.

 

 

FYT

[grasshopper]

FYT

 

Fit Young Thing?

Fairy Yells "Troll"

Fairly Yuppy Trousers...

 

what does it mean?

[Nioca]

Fixed Your Typo. Generally used to insert words into other peoples' mouths, though in this case he was actually giving you a better phrase.

 

Although I'll have to try Fairly Yuppie Trousers sometime...

[waterplant]

Originally Posted By: Delicious Salmon

Apples and oranges.

A Geo Metro can never be as good as a Ferrari Testarossa, but they will both get you from Point A to Point B.

If I can expand on your analogy there Delicious Salmon, micro cars vs sports car depends on needs and preference - your use of the word 'good' being the debatable point. What good is a Ferrari going to be to some aged person trying to get to the shops and back? She or he would surely take the Geo Metro every time.
This forum can argue until it is blue in the fingers however, like there exist many types of car, so with games and gamers. If one type of game were really so much better than the others then I'm confident that most would figure it out pretty soon.
Immersion, blastability, considered strategy et al- whatever toasts your buns.

[Swimmin' Salmon]

Regarding the actual question, I hope Jeff's new series uses something other than OpenGL. It put a sizable portion of his non-Apple clientele at a disadvantage.

[Niemand]

Quote:

I hope Jeff's new series uses something other than OpenGL. It put a sizable portion of his non-Apple clientele at a disadvantage.

So he should use some other cross-platform hardware accelerated drawing system? Which doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, exist? The only alternatives I'm aware of are proprietary, single platform libraries like Core Graphics/Core Animation (which just use OpenGL anyway) and Direct 2D/Direct 3D.

Alternatively, are you arguing that he should back off significantly on the complexity of his graphics, such that he doesn't need hardware accelerated drawing? As I understand it, particularly from reading reviews of Jeff's games, he has been being badgered for many years to make his games fancier graphically. In his more recent games he has been taking definite steps in that direction, resulting in some improvement in review results (although I note recent review still whine that his graphics are 'low budget' (example)) and sales. So, I argue that this doesn't seems like a viable solution, particularly given that the hardware requirements for recent games are still rather modest.

I've noticed that recently (the last year, maybe two) more and more topics have cropped up in the Tech Support forums about problems people have had trying to run Spiderweb games on junk 'netbooks' that they've been lured into purchasing, almost solely, I'd guess, on the basis of very low price. I continue to be amazed at what that class of computers fails to be able to do, and frankly it looks to me like a there would be little to gain from working hard to thoroughly support such machines. It would place a lot of stringent constraints on what Jeff could have his games do, which would run counter to his attempts to change the perception of his games from being 'antiquated' looking.

OpenGL should be a perfectly good basis for building a game on essentially any operating system on any reasonably capable hardware manufactured in at least the last 5 years, probably more. I really don't think that depending on it is a fundamentally bad move on Jeff's part, as whatever he chooses will leave someone unable to play his games ("What, you mean G5 won't display properly on my VT100 terminal?!") and he needs to maintain a balance between the time it takes him to prepare a game and the audience to which it will be available.

EDIT: Just tested and found that Jeff already provides a DirectX-based version of at least some of his newer games (G5 being the one I was looking at) and that I can in fact play G5 using the main (assumedly OpenGL) version on my ~8 year old pc running Windows 2000, if not terribly well (which is not surprising, given it has only 25 MB of RAM left over for anything besides the OS).

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Niemand

Alternatively, are you arguing that he should back off significantly on the complexity of his graphics, such that he doesn't need hardware accelerated drawing? As I understand it, particularly from reading reviews of Jeff's games, he has been being badgered for many years to make his games fancier graphically.

One of the problems for me that I've noticed in both G5 and A6 (it starts showing up in earlier games, but not as badly) is that a sizeable chunk of the graphic "improvements" are just sparkle effects being thrown around constantly. They get annoying quickly. Hardware issues would be more justified if the fancier graphics were actually put to good use.

Dikiyoba.

[Locmaar]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

One of the problems for me that I've noticed in both G5 and A6 (it starts showing up in earlier games, but not as badly) is that a sizeable chunk of the graphic "improvements" are just sparkle effects being thrown around constantly. They get annoying quickly. Hardware issues would be more justified if the fancier graphics were actually put to good use.

Dikiyoba.

I actually like the sparkles a lot. They make Jeff's worlds less static. But that's a matter of taste, I guess.

[Dikiyoba]

Really? Dikiyoba hates having to wait for animations to finish before Dikiyoba can move again, or that the targeting circle for icy rain shoots up so many puffs of smoke that it's hard to see whether enemies are in it or not, or that the sheer number of sparkles coming off my shock trooper's crafted and enhanced gear tends to cause lag whenever the inventory screen is up.

[Swimmin' Salmon]

I don't see you countering my statement, just providing (sound) justification for his decision. I had a 1 year old computer that was unable to run G5, and until OpenGL is a default for on-board graphics chipsets, then he will still operate at a disadvantage. So, while your experience seems to have been pleasant, there were numerous experiences which were not. Even experiences with his DirectX version of G5 were not universally positive, so it still seems to me that until hardware on the PC side catches up with this API, he will not sell his product to a portion of the market.

 

Of course, I can only speak for me, and what I observe. His products designed after G4 and A5 will not run on my hardware, which is (again) less than 1 year old. Budget, indie company. Budget minded consumer. The twain seem not to meet. What will my review be?

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Really? Dikiyoba hates having to wait for animations to finish before Dikiyoba can move again, or that the targeting circle for icy rain shoots up so many puffs of smoke that it's hard to see whether enemies are in it or not, or that the sheer number of sparkles coming off my shock trooper's crafted and enhanced gear tends to cause lag whenever the inventory screen is up.

That sounds unfortunate. I remember in the old games you used to be able to turn off certain effects. Water effects, was it? If lots of people are having problems like you describe, Jeff should consider including an option to turn sparkle effects off. Probably shouldn't remove them completely, though, some of us like them.

[Student of Trinity]

(The following delayed nitpick is due to my having mistaken page 6 of this thread for page 7.)

 

Originally Posted By: A Figment Of Your Imagination

Originally Posted By: boggle

and immersion is broken, or for want of a better phrase, suspension of belief.

FYT

 

No, boggle had it right. 'Willing suspension of disbelief' is where you kind of hang up your disbelief, like a coat on a coatrack, and leave it there while you play the game or read the book or whatever. It's a common term to describe how it is that we can entertain ideas that we don't actually believe in, like magic and goblins. Suspension of belief would be like a Christian pretending to be an atheist for a while, to see what it felt like.

 

 

[grasshopper]

Quote:

No, boggle had it right

thanks for that, i thought i probably did.

i played g5 on a 3 year ibm thinkpad last year. it couldn't cope with the graphics. playing on the low graphics option was painful, it was impossible to tell if an creature was a fyora or a cryoa without clicking on it.

the decent netbooks have a 1.6ghz atom processor, which has the same power as a normal 800mhz processor. they are not really that bad, all things considering, especially if they have lots of ram, and don't run windows.

it would be pretty much impossible to play a spiderweb game on them though, because you can't dynamically resize the the interface, leaving a really cramped viewing area.

morrowind got it right, minimal icons, and everything else hidden away

[Locmaar]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Really? Dikiyoba hates having to wait for animations to finish before Dikiyoba can move again, or that the targeting circle for icy rain shoots up so many puffs of smoke that it's hard to see whether enemies are in it or not, or that the sheer number of sparkles coming off my shock trooper's crafted and enhanced gear tends to cause lag whenever the inventory screen is up.

Really. Never experienced any lag, though. That might have something to do with it.

I actually replied to this mainly to celebrate the 500!!! Yee-haaaw...

[Ephesos]

I've experienced minor lag with some of the newer fancier graphic sparkles, but it's not debilitating. Would I prefer the graphic simplicity of BoA's Lightning Spray to the new slow-moving ball of lightning shot in A4-6? Yes. Am I too happy with having a directed spell to really make a spirited complaint? Yes.

 

However, the doubly-fancy graphics for parrying a spell could probably stand to go. As is, they only ever taunt me.

[Unplayable Playable Character]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

No, boggle had it right. 'Willing suspension of disbelief' is where you kind of hang up your disbelief, like a coat on a coatrack, and leave it there while you play the game or read the book or whatever. It's a common term to describe how it is that we can entertain ideas that we don't actually believe in, like magic and goblins. Suspension of belief would be like a Christian pretending to be an atheist for a while, to see what it felt like.

The way I understood it is that he was implying that the phrase "immersion is broken" is synonymous to "my disbelief is suspended" which I thought was a typo. I'm assuming the way you understood it was that he was implying that "immersion" is synonymous to "my disbelief is suspended", which is true. Really, both could work in the context that he used them.

[Student of Trinity]

I guess that makes sense.

[cfgauss]

You know, I was playing through A6, which I unfortunately just bought, hoping it would get better after the demo zone, and man, there are just so many things that makes this game horribly unfun.

 

I wrote down my thoughts going through one small area (some I'd mentioned before, some not):

 

Almost every single enemy attacking with acid or poison. Just seems like terrible lazy game design there.

 

HORRIBLE path finding. I simply can't comprehend how this could have ended up so bad. The game is played on gigantic tiles for god's sake! It isn't that hard!

 

Enemies unrelentingly attacking the person who attacked them last, regardless of it makes any sense. I'm sick of having my mage being killed because he used an area of effect spell and is swarmed by like 10 people the next turn (before my fighters get a turn of course).

 

The complete inability to tell what the effects of spells are against me. Handcuffs? Skull face thing? Great, I get to figure it out by context. I know it's in the help somewhere, but there could at least be a mouseover that tells me what they are.

 

And it's impossible to tell what strength spells cast against me are, apparently. Is it going to slow me down too much? Will this guy have a turn next time? Am I going to die of acid/poison the next turn? It's a mystery!

 

What spells do I have that will counter them? Does bless cancel handcuffs? Haste? There are lots of effects that seem to randomly slow me down. What effects what? How strongly? UNFUN. Figuring out the damned gameplay should not be a puzzle!

 

Haste being useless. I haste, maybe, randomly, some people can go more than once. In instances where I am fighting something hard enough to actually need to haste, I'm slowed, so it doesn't do me any good. I could cast haste again. But, how many times will I need to to get hasted again? Who knows, because I don't know how strong the slow spell cast against me was!

 

Why the hell do enemies almost always get to attack twice, even at low levels, when, even at higher levels, I am lucky to attack twice, even while hasted?

 

Why can enemies use cool spells, like fling huge rings of fire away from themselves that damage almost everyone on the screen significantly, when the best I can do is throw some lightning at some people I don't even get to pick all of?

 

Are there any scrolls to get rid of mind effects? Because every time my priest gets mind controlled or frozen in a fight when I actually need him I'm just screwed. Can I even undo being frozen (cf above)?

 

Why are there so many fights where the enemies all around them are totally trivial to kill, but the boss kills all of my people in like three turns?

 

What the hell do the random dots and sparkles around my character represent? I already know there's a status effect on me! Red dots don't make the skull face any more clear! Seriously, there are 31 status effects. And you can do better than the back-pain and toilet paper icons. Really, though, the real problem is that I don't know how strong the effects are.

 

Oops I was one space too far away to cast group heal on everyone, now someone's dead.

 

Resurrect scrolls don't always work properly. I get a message telling me there wasn't enough room to revive everyone when I'm standing in a large open area with plenty of room. Thanks for wasting a scroll.

 

I finally am lucky enough to get 10ap, but, oops, the enemy moved one space away and now I can only attack once. (of course, this moving was because it had to swarm my spell caster who just attacked it).

 

Why do enemies have to have the same icons as my characters? THIS IS LAZY AND CONFUSING! Yeah, I know they have blue health bars instead of red ones, but still. Would you want your traffic lights to all be green, except for tiny blue or red bars below them? No, you wouldn't. And I don't want to be killed by poor traffic laws or poor UI design!

 

I'd love to summon monsters to help me, but oops! Too far away from the enemies and now they just stand there like morons. And I can't summon more because apparently the "it takes too much concentration" also applies to people who didn't actually summon anyone.

 

Not only do I not know strengths of effects, I don't even know who's slowed enough to have a turn. Can I heal next? Can my fighter move to catch any of the 5 spiders now going for my mage? Who knows! (Answers: No, and no)

 

Why do so many enemies run so far away? I can't do some fights without annoyingly splitting my party in half, separated by like an entire screen because four archers wouldn't let me catch them.

 

Tiny tiny get item radius. Very irritating when I want to pick things up from all the people I just killed in the battle that sprawled across several screens.

 

Why don't some items stack? In principle I can carry 36 non-stackable pieces of paper or 36 non-stackable boats. But god forbid I carry 36 pieces of paper and one boat, that' just out of the question. I realize this is like an RPG staple, but really, it isn't 1986 anymore, we can spare the memory for a few extra counters.

 

And to clarify here, I don't really have a problem with the graphics, except as they are ambiguous, annoying, or otherwise cause gameplay problems. Also, I LIKE the little details, like a random mage found dead in a room with scorch marks, that was occupied by bad guys.

 

Why do wands that have a "base damage" of, eg, "25-100" consistently do <10 damage? It's not fun to find out as a surprise, that the things you've been careful to keep for an emergency are actually almost totally useless. It's like buying a car that has a "base speed" of 100mph, but never finding any place where you can go faster than 10! UNFUN!

 

And what is even the meaning of all the base damages and percents given? They seem to make little sense. It seems like the equations that determine everything are needlessly complex, when I can equip a seemingly better weapon and do worse with it than with what I had before. How am I supposed to know if, eg, the +1 strength or anatomy I get for one weapon is enough to offset the slightly less "base damage" of another weapon? I can try it on one enemy, but the calculations seem to be complex enough that it's not consistent across multiple enemies... Again, making the gameplay a puzzle--NOT FUN!

 

And all of my characters were just killed instantly by a ghost living in someone's basement, so I'm done for now.

 

This stuff is only from one area, and there are certainly more complaints to be had... but these ones are fairly canonical as far as the problems I've been having.

 

Overall I rate this game two broken shields and a bad back. But you won't know exactly how much I dislike the game because I won't actually tell you how strong those effects are.

 

I will probably finish the game, only because I don't want to have wasted the money on it...

[Ephesos]

Um.

 

...

 

You know, you don't have to play it if you don't like it, and you are certainly not obligated to finish it.

 

I am torn over whether to move this to the A6 forum.

[cfgauss]

Yeah, but I want to like it! And A1-3 were so good! And so were several of the geneforges. A6 just seems to have somehow managed to combine all of the bad things of the previous games together with all of the good things... And it's frustrating that it doesn't have to be bad, it's not like these are some kind of fundamental design flaws here, there're really things that should've been caught by good playtesting. It's very close to being good in some metrics, but in others, so far!

[Locmaar]

There are a lot of valid perceptions in what you complain about, but I am not entirely sure how playtesting has anything to do with this.

First, not knowing what it is exactly an enemy does and how they do it is not a flaw but a design decision. You are entitled to dislike it, but it ain't a flaw.

The mouseover help is something that I sometimes would like to see as well, but I don't think there's a lot can be said against RTFM. But still - that's a good point.

Having your mage attacked by fiends he just attempted to kill is something that I find quite understandable. Protect your mage better. That is a tactical element that makes both sense and the game more entertaining.

Having only some items stack is a design decision and is probably to do with game balance. It is annoying, yes.

Plus - don't let the ghost in the basement kill you. That will add to your fun experience.

[Student of Trinity]

To some extent there's a legitimate criticism here. Jeff has been really slack on his in-game documentation, for years. The manuals have been brief and unclear, and in some cases flat wrong. The engine isn't explained anywhere; people have had to figure out how it works experimentally, by conducting long trials. And lines like 'takes on the aspect of a wild beast' are just bizarre; even if the diction doesn't baffle you, it's really unclear what this means, unless your iconic 'wild beast' happens to be a porcupine.

 

Part of this is a cultural historical thing. Spiderweb games still have a lot of heritage from when CRPGs were still diverging from things like NetHack, and it was kind of accepted that the mechanics would be a mystery that you'd have to puzzle out. A more modern attitude would explain a lot more stuff, and do it easily. Mouseovers for status effects, for instance, just make sense these days. Jeff should really put more effort into this part of his games, all right.

 

On the other hand, you know, most people don't expect a game like A6 to be like chess. I bet most of Jeff's customers who don't already understand his games well just bash on, lowering the difficulty if they need to while learning the ropes, and figure it out well enough to get through the game. With experience they get to know what does what, and can raise the difficulty level back up if they want. If you don't like to do that, fine; but total transparency of the game world is hardly an essential requirement for every possible game. I mean, how on earth is a young and inexperienced soldier supposed to know just exactly how strong the slow spells cast by a weird cave demon thing are?

 

If you just can't stand to play without a godlike perspective as a player, then A6 was a waste of money for you. Maybe Jeff will give you a refund. But this sounds mostly like a rather unusual personal preference, not a ghastly flaw in Avernum 6.

[monolith94]

Sounds like you don't like having your party die, gauss. *shrug* I've gotten used to it.

[grasshopper]

Maybe a slow spell that knocked people for six would be better, they don't get up again until they can move, at least then you know how many are able to move, as they are still standing.

 

Quote:

Why can enemies use cool spells, like fling huge rings of fire away from themselves that damage almost everyone on the screen significantly, when the best I can do is throw some lightning at some people I don't even get to pick all of?

 

a talented mage with a spell making ability would be quite cool.

 

have the players characters got weaker relative to the bad guys over the course of the series?

 

i suppose if i am skilled enough to bring a patch of fire down from the sky, i should be able to control how i use fire in some other ways as well

 

and thanks to nioca for answering my fyt question.

[waterplant]

I see most of your points - a boss that can stun, slow, curse, daze, AoE and then run across the room to deliver a huge thump on the head all in one turn seems a bit unfair at first. But I have, so far, always emerged victorious. How is that?

The icons you can just figure out as you play - I imagine that most players have been able to do this. The way this game is structured it is like (using Lightning Spray as an example) a mage learns a spell from a book but the finer points are learnt through use. The spell will hit the target plus the two enemies within two squares nearest the spellcaster (or at least that's what I've observed). These intricacies broaden the game for me and bring in skill as a factor - like driving a manual car where you get to 'know' the car by driving it.

Maybe if you played the game as it was created rather than trying to play this version that you have idealized yourself then you would find it more fun. You may be contributing to your frustration.

[Masked Man of Inscrutability]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

To some extent there's a legitimate criticism here. Jeff has been really slack on his in-game documentation, for years. The manuals have been brief and unclear, and in some cases flat wrong. The engine isn't explained anywhere; people have had to figure out how it works experimentally, by conducting long trials.

This has always been one of the aspects I've really disliked about Spiderweb games. I'm not the kind of player who reads the manual first. I usually just start right up and play, looking things up as I go. I imagine most players only read the manual casually, but that isn't a good reason for how poor the manuals really are. It is frustrating when you have a gameplay question and the manual doesn't even come remotely close to answering it.

The worst offender of all Spiderweb games has to be Blades of Avernum. Yeh gods that is the worst documented editor I've ever seen! And while it is arguably okay to have shoddy documentation for games, there really is no excuse for something like Blades. I especially got frustrated when reading things like "Just look around the files of Valley of the Dying Things and you'll figure it out".

As with all things that suck about Spiderweb, I'm going to lay the blame squarely on Linda Strout.

[Remaining attack on Linda Strout has been censored. It wasn't obscene or anything, just too harsh to pass Point 2 of the C of C.]

[Locmaar]

Ah, finally an insider providing insight on the evil works of Linda Strout. I pray thee, do tell: anything else we need to know about Spiderweb Software?

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

You know, I was playing through A6, which I unfortunately just bought, hoping it would get better after the demo zone, and man, there are just so many things that makes this game horribly unfun.

Whoa, wow... Okay, most of your complaints are simply a case of not having read the manual. Seriously, there's not excuse for not reading it. Even if you don't feel like reading it before you start, you should check it if there is something you don't understand, such as what the status effect symbols mean.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Almost every single enemy attacking with acid or poison. Just seems like terrible lazy game design there.

Without knowing the context, I would suggest that perhaps it is supposed to be a theme of the area you were in?

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

HORRIBLE path finding. I simply can't comprehend how this could have ended up so bad. The game is played on gigantic tiles for god's sake! It isn't that hard!

Okay, I can't argue about this not being a problem. I haven't even played the game yet. (Actually, I haven't even tried A5 yet.) But at least this is something that is easy to get around. Simply don't rely on the pathfinding. Either move your party with the keyboard, as I would, or move shorter distances at a time.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Enemies unrelentingly attacking the person who attacked them last, regardless of it makes any sense. I'm sick of having my mage being killed because he used an area of effect spell and is swarmed by like 10 people the next turn (before my fighters get a turn of course).

Hm, maybe you should cast some Bless spells on your mage and also keep him hiding behind your fighters? I dunno. This does sound like a minor problem, maybe.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

And it's impossible to tell what strength spells cast against me are, apparently. Is it going to slow me down too much? Will this guy have a turn next time? Am I going to die of acid/poison the next turn? It's a mystery!

Some people like mysteries. But anyway... unless the game mechanics were changed such that you can die when receiving damage when you are not at zero health, it's safe to assume acid/poison won't kill you next turn unless you actually are at zero health. However, since you may receive damage more than once before your next turn, you could up that to half or quarter health.

Basically what I mean is that since you don't know, you should err on the side of safety. A similar argument also applies to the haste/slow complaint that followed this one.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why the hell do enemies almost always get to attack twice, even at low levels, when, even at higher levels, I am lucky to attack twice, even while hasted?

Without knowing what enemies and how much the game mechanics have changed from earlier games, I can only guess why. However, my guess would be that the enemies are wielding two "weapons" while your players are only wielding one.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why can enemies use cool spells, like fling huge rings of fire away from themselves that damage almost everyone on the screen significantly, when the best I can do is throw some lightning at some people I don't even get to pick all of?

Your enemies are more powerful than you, I guess? I dunno really.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Are there any scrolls to get rid of mind effects? Because every time my priest gets mind controlled or frozen in a fight when I actually need him I'm just screwed. Can I even undo being frozen (cf above)?

This would be a case of "read the manual".

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why are there so many fights where the enemies all around them are totally trivial to kill, but the boss kills all of my people in like three turns?

Try ignoring the minions and focus on the boss. If the minions are trivial to kill, it won't be hard to pick them off once the boss falls. Of course, if you can attack them and the boss simultaneously, that's even better.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Oops I was one space too far away to cast group heal on everyone, now someone's dead.

I've nothing to say here, really, except that I don't see that this is worth complaining about. It's an error on your part, after all.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Resurrect scrolls don't always work properly. I get a message telling me there wasn't enough room to revive everyone when I'm standing in a large open area with plenty of room. Thanks for wasting a scroll.

This one I can't argue with.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

I finally am lucky enough to get 10ap, but, oops, the enemy moved one space away and now I can only attack once. (of course, this moving was because it had to swarm my spell caster who just attacked it).

On the other hand, next turn you can attack twice, right? Or so I'd assume.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why do enemies have to have the same icons as my characters? THIS IS LAZY AND CONFUSING! Yeah, I know they have blue health bars instead of red ones, but still. Would you want your traffic lights to all be green, except for tiny blue or red bars below them? No, you wouldn't. And I don't want to be killed by poor traffic laws or poor UI design!

I honestly have no idea why they'd have the same icons. You mean the character icons, I presume? It doesn't make any sense to me... if you're fighting lizards, for example, how could they have the same icons as your players?

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

I'd love to summon monsters to help me, but oops! Too far away from the enemies and now they just stand there like morons. And I can't summon more because apparently the "it takes too much concentration" also applies to people who didn't actually summon anyone.

I do agree that failure should not be treated as a success for things like that... and I wish the ability to aim your summons would be brought back from the Exile series.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why do so many enemies run so far away? I can't do some fights without annoyingly splitting my party in half, separated by like an entire screen because four archers wouldn't let me catch them.

Try slowing them or somehow preventing them from moving (paralyze, etc).

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Tiny tiny get item radius. Very irritating when I want to pick things up from all the people I just killed in the battle that sprawled across several screens.

Earlier games would get all visible items unless there was an unfriendly creature in sight. Has this actually changed?

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why don't some items stack? In principle I can carry 36 non-stackable pieces of paper or 36 non-stackable boats. But god forbid I carry 36 pieces of paper and one boat, that' just out of the question. I realize this is like an RPG staple, but really, it isn't 1986 anymore, we can spare the memory for a few extra counters.

Heh, this one I can agree with, though at least paper is not particularly useful so you can just drop a few pages.

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Why do wands that have a "base damage" of, eg, "25-100" consistently do <10 damage? It's not fun to find out as a surprise, that the things you've been careful to keep for an emergency are actually almost totally useless. It's like buying a car that has a "base speed" of 100mph, but never finding any place where you can go faster than 10! UNFUN!

Odd. My guess, though, is that "base damage" is actually the part that is misleading. I would guess it should actually be "spell level". But again, I haven't played the game so I could be way off.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

But anyway... unless the game mechanics were changed such that you can die when receiving damage when you are not at zero health, it's safe to assume acid/poison won't kill you next turn unless you actually are at zero health.

The game mechanics have been changed. You die whenever you hit zero. The engine for the second Avernum trilogy is so different from the original engine that you cannot make assumptions about one based on how the other works.

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...or move shorter distances at a time.

The problem with this advice is that the game botches short distances as much as long ones. And the short distance mistakes are usually the more critical ones. If your party takes a longer route to get through town, that's a slight delay at worst. If a party member decides to suddenly run away from the fight in hopes of finding another way to get to the enemy that's three spaces away, you might have just lost the fight.

In fact, Dikiyoba can't recall too many long distance pathfinding issues. Mostly it's just when in boats.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Oops I was one space too far away to cast group heal on everyone, now someone's dead.

I've nothing to say here, really, except that I don't see that this is worth complaining about. It's an error on your part, after all.

...Except you don't know what the range of that spell is to begin with, and it's always centered on your caster anyway so you have to get them right in the fray of things just to have the spell take effect.

[Øther]

For my group healing spells, I just try to make sure that my characters are only several spaces away when I use it, and it usually gets to all of them.

 

I never had any issues with the return life spell or scrolls.

 

I have been annoyed with the wands. My fighter has several null wands, and their description makes them sound quite useful, as it says they have a highish damage and they stun. So I used one. Low damage, and it only stunned sometimes. Also, I'm considering selling my wands of death. In A5, I remember beating down Dorkias with two wands, each shot doing around 200 damage. I used it once in A6, and even though it has a bit better damage than the null wand, it still sucks. With the exception of disruption wands, the only wands I'm going to keep are probably ones that bless/heal/haste my party.

 

 

Also, for enemies debuffs, I have found that their spells usually seem to be less powerful than yours. If I haste and go into a battle, the enemy will usually have to cast slow two or three times just to take away my haste, and not actually to slow me.

 

For all those monsters with two+ attacks per turn, it is simple. Jeff scripted them to have more than 9 AP. If everyone in your party had two+ attacks from the very beggining, the game would be way too easy. If you want to see, then it is possible to script your characters extra AP at the beggining. I did this in Genefoeg 5 once, and it made the game quite easy.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

But anyway... unless the game mechanics were changed such that you can die when receiving damage when you are not at zero health, it's safe to assume acid/poison won't kill you next turn unless you actually are at zero health.

The game mechanics have been changed. You die whenever you hit zero. The engine for the second Avernum trilogy is so different from the original engine that you cannot make assumptions about one based on how the other works.

Oh well, I tried.

Originally Posted By: Nioca

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

Oops I was one space too far away to cast group heal on everyone, now someone's dead.

I've nothing to say here, really, except that I don't see that this is worth complaining about. It's an error on your part, after all.

...Except you don't know what the range of that spell is to begin with, and it's always centered on your caster anyway so you have to get them right in the fray of things just to have the spell take effect.

Um, what? Doesn't the manual tell you these things?

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: cfgauss

HORRIBLE path finding. I simply can't comprehend how this could have ended up so bad. The game is played on gigantic tiles for god's sake! It isn't that hard!

Agreed. The biggest problem seems to be that even though you can switch positions with other party members, the game doesn't recognize that at all.

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Oops I was one space too far away to cast group heal on everyone, now someone's dead.

Agreed. The area covered by all-party blessing spells is too small.

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Why do enemies have to have the same icons as my characters? THIS IS LAZY AND CONFUSING! Yeah, I know they have blue health bars instead of red ones, but still. Would you want your traffic lights to all be green, except for tiny blue or red bars below them? No, you wouldn't. And I don't want to be killed by poor traffic laws or poor UI design!

Agreed. The bars can be hard when the fight is clustered up and don't help at all when an enemy or PC is at full health.

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Tiny tiny get item radius. Very irritating when I want to pick things up from all the people I just killed in the battle that sprawled across several screens.

Agreed. A related problem is that some items now blend into the background too much and are hard to see and some background terrain looks too much like an item.

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Almost every single enemy attacking with acid or poison. Just seems like terrible lazy game design there.

Honestly, it's far better in A6 than in A5 or G5.

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The complete inability to tell what the effects of spells are against me. Handcuffs? Skull face thing? Great, I get to figure it out by context. I know it's in the help somewhere, but there could at least be a mouseover that tells me what they are.

If you aren't watching the text area, you should be. It tells you what's going on. Some of it is still too weird (such as the wild beast/spines thing that Student of Trinity brought up) and it still takes trial and error to figure everything out, but it makes learning what everything does much faster.

Trying to get everyone up to speed is a difficult problem. Expecting everyone to go to the help file is ridiculous. It's long, boring, incomplete, and pulls you out of the game. Unfortunately, one of Jeff's solutions--longer tutorials that badger you through every simple step--is also rage-inducing. More detailed, clearer, and accurate information in the game itself is certainly part of the answer (roll-over status effect info, better spell descriptions, etc.), but Dikiyoba doesn't know if it's enough.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

Originally Posted By: Nioca

...Except you don't know what the range of that spell is to begin with, and it's always centered on your caster anyway so you have to get them right in the fray of things just to have the spell take effect.

Um, what? Doesn't the manual tell you these things?

No, it doesn't.

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

Okay, I can't argue about this not being a problem. I haven't even played the game yet. (Actually, I haven't even tried A5 yet.)... Without knowing what enemies and how much the game mechanics have changed from earlier games... I can only guess... I guess? I dunno really... I'd assume... My guess... But again, I haven't played the game so I could be way off.

Okay, so let me get this straight. Somebody plays A6, posts a long list of critiques, and you tell him to read the manual. Yet you haven't read the manual or even played the game? Sounds like a bit of a double standard there...

[Nioca]

All-in-all, this is really why I'm hoping for something new and crazy. Take a look at GF1: Fresh game design, with very little of the baggage from previous games. I mean, sure, it wasn't perfect, but it just seemed like everything worked in harmony there. Once we hit the later games, it seemed like there was a bunch of extraneous stuff tacked on to the system, bogging it down. Now look at GF5: It felt very clear that everything was made to be BIGGER and BETTER. Like it was trying too hard. But there's a reason GF1 worked in the first place, and while you obviously can't have carbon copies of the same system, trying to stay true to the original games' roots would probably have served it better in the long haul.

 

Better example: Look at the Avernum original trilogy, and look at the second trilogy. Which one is more popular? Avernums 1-3 focused on open exploration, heroes, and so forth. That's what Avernum was built on. Then we hit the second trilogy, and we got Geneforge stuff injected into it. Moral quandaries, sides, and so forth. Which is all good for Geneforge, but in Avernum, it feels like the game's having an identity crisis more than anything else. What happened to being the clear-cut heroes of Avernum?

[Student of Trinity]

Actually Jeff beefed up wands quite a lot during beta. (I'm sure a lot of testers complained, but the improvement did come right after my reference to the Inferno Wand as being more like a Wand of 40-Watt Bulb.)

 

The rare and expensive wands (Jewelled, Death, Inferno) are well worth having, now, even on Torment. They aren't going to kill a major boss in two shots, no; but they'll kill a lot of things in two shots, and be quite helpful in grinding a boss down. The lesser wands are still pretty poor as damage dealers, but they're valuable as ways to hit and run with, in order to pull one enemy out of a pack.

[Locmaar]

While GF1 did have me charmed in its own, subtle way, I thought interface and some of the gameplay improved tremendously over the course of the series. That is to say, I thought GF got progressively better.

Avernum did, too, gameplay and interface-wise. And it will continue to do so. The next redesign of Exile/Avernum will possibly see my favourite Spiderweb games of all time (the new game set aside for a minute), and they will be called Hades 2 & 3 (or sth like it).

Avernums 1-3 might be more popular around here, but not when it comes to sales figures IIRC. To some (me included) Exile 2 is even more popular - at least I liked it better than Avernum 2. Still, I enjoyed Avernum 5 & 6 a lot. Really. With all the sparkles and stuff.

[Enraged Slith]

Avernum and the latter Geneforges are too combat oriented, but the combat is incredibly dull. I know Jeff has been getting better at making interesting encounters and situations but it doesn't change the fact that the mechanics are unvaried and boring. The only reason I like Blades of Avernum so much is because players are able to fix these problems.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: a bunch of people

good/bad stuff about wands

The only thing I miss with wands is the Recharge spell from E1 & (I think) E2. As long as your mage had enough spell points to cast the spell, a good wand could potentially last forever; and the benefits well outweighed the risk of inadvertently melting the wand.

[Slawbug]

I think the risk was zero if the wand was out of charges, too. That gave them serious utility, although this was somewhat counterbalanced by E1's very limited inventory.

[Øther]

The only problem I have really had with pathfinding so far is with combat and doors. Together, not seperate. Whenever I am in combat and have a need to place one of my characters in a space adjacent to a door (one of the ones that the door would open onto) I always have problems. The game never lets me actually click on the square, but highlights the door instead, even if my mouse isn't over it.