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Decision system, battle system


Bladel

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Previous Spiderweb games were pretty much straightforward in decision making. You had to do some decisions in quests (who to help, to do or not to do sidequest), but there was a flaw common for all CRPGs: all sidequests were nust-to-do if you want your characters to stay in shape for mainquests. So no real decision here, except for some cases when you had to do sidequest much later after you get it - there you should see if you are able for the task, but it was mostly problem of save/load. So I really take some path only when I ally someone. It feels... Not enough.

 

Gameplay. Similar system: you decide who's in your party and after that you levelup them on the same scheme of development, no surprises, no second thoughts, all the choice is like "will I rise Endurance now and Melee later or vica versa?" And you'll get either +3% HP or +5% to-hit, you don't feel like you've changed something. Take Wizardry. It had similar party system but then BANG you could change character class and transform him into something completely different. I don't want to say this mechanic is so great but it offers a choice, gives me a chance to think. Avadon will have skills - now that's something.

 

But all above is just talk cause story and levelup system is already there. I wanted to asks (betatesters, are you there?) about battle system. Is it challenging? Does it makes your brain browsing through possibilities? Would we have something beside standard scheme "tanks tanking, mages and shooters give hell from the back"? Can it be tuned so that enemies have some special skills making us to seek new tactics for every battle? Hope so. Avernum is great game, but a bit monotonous. Hope Avadon will give good changes we've been promised.

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Originally Posted By: Bladel
Does it makes your brain browsing through possibilities? Would we have something beside standard scheme "tanks tanking, mages and shooters give hell from the back"? Can it be tuned so that enemies have some special skills making us to seek new tactics for every battle?


Somebody needs to play The Bard's Tale. (the 1986 version)

Or, most likely, needs to, instead of waiting for his enemies to force him to be creative, take creative license without cause and forces his enemies to be creative as well.
(This preemptive innovation strategy works out best in G2, BoA, and G4)

P.S. THIS POST IS NOT SPAM!!!
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I've tried BoA demo and have seen that level up system is pretty much the same. Combat has more variety but moctly because of less AP and punish hits for walking pass enemies. That's good indeed, but there was a strange balancing - AFAIR most enemies died from a hit or two and most of my characters too. Hm. Dunno why Jeff completely abandoned this system in favor of big running on the map castles. But thanks for fixing godless interface.

 

And I don't quite understand why he abandoned exploring world on a big map.

 

The Bard's Tale? Too old. Not that I needed fancy graphics, but those crappy UIs... Takes all the fun from the game. I can play 80's adventures cause UI hasn't changed in the genre much, but strategies and RPGs evolved much. You'd better recommend Wizardry 8 which looks like a deadly sin but has a perfect UI.

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Originally Posted By: Bladel
But all above is just talk cause story and levelup system is already there. I wanted to asks (betatesters, are you there?) about battle system. Is it challenging? Does it makes your brain browsing through possibilities? Would we have something beside standard scheme "tanks tanking, mages and shooters give hell from the back"? Can it be tuned so that enemies have some special skills making us to seek new tactics for every battle? Hope so. Avernum is great game, but a bit monotonous. Hope Avadon will give good changes we've been promised.

The battle system is challenging. You get a choice on how you want to die. Get killed by sword or spell. smile
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Originally Posted By: Randomizer

The battle system is challenging. You get a choice on how you want to die. Get killed by sword or spell. smile


Err... Ahem... Ummm...

So, there are swords and spells in game!

Maybe you can make an example of the treacherous tactics you use against some special foes?
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Originally Posted By: Bladel
Take Wizardry. It had similar party system but then BANG you could change character class and transform him into something completely different. I don't want to say this mechanic is so great but it offers a choice, gives me a chance to think. Avadon will have skills - now that's something.

I agree that many of the stats in SW games are "boring" to increase. Level ups are not always exciting. And I guess they _were_ much more exciting in Wizardry, since they meant increased stats AND increased skills AND new spells, OR the option to change class... however, class changing in general was a pretty wretched mechanic. Instead of inspiring variety it inspired a sprawling swamp of purely logistical considerations: players spent hours re-rolling characters to ensure their stats would be high enough for a whole chain of class changes, did way too much math to make sure this would be possible, reset level-ups when needed, and half the point of class change was to repeat the lower levels over and over with fast-advancing classes like the Valkyrie. A dismal system that unbalanced the game significantly.

Originally Posted By: lordofdc
Mmm, how about a classic like Baldurs gate?

That's a classic now? Sheesh.
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Indeed, 2nd edition.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that Baldur's Gate looks and plays pretty similarly to most contemporary games, even if the graphics quality or game mechanics are different. On a scale that goes from text-based mainframe games, to Rogue, to Akalabeth and Ultima, to Dragon Quest, to Dungeon Master, to Bane of the Cosmic Forge and the Shadow of Yserbius, to Final Fantasy 7, to Baldur's Gate and Diablo, to KOTR, to Oblivion, and a host of others... on that scale, it just isn't old.

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
I guess what I'm saying is that Baldur's Gate looks and plays pretty similarly to most contemporary games, even if the graphics quality or game mechanics are different.


what

what was the last non-indie rpg you actually played slarty
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Originally Posted By: Dintiradan
Yeah -- modern CRPGs are dating sims now.

(Actually, must admit I haven't played Baldur's Gate, so for all I know 'romance' options were a major component to that game.)


ahahahaha

Baldur's Gate was developed by BioWare, they're the company that's infamous for putting like half a million romantic subplots in every RPG they make in the first place
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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Dintiradan
Yeah -- modern CRPGs are dating sims now.

(Actually, must admit I haven't played Baldur's Gate, so for all I know 'romance' options were a major component to that game.)


ahahahaha

Baldur's Gate was developed by BioWare, they're the company that's infamous for putting like half a million romantic subplots in every RPG they make in the first place

Nothing makes an RPG better than flirting with Jennifer Hale's voice.
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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Dintiradan
Yeah -- modern CRPGs are dating sims now.

(Actually, must admit I haven't played Baldur's Gate, so for all I know 'romance' options were a major component to that game.)


ahahahaha

Baldur's Gate was developed by BioWare, they're the company that's infamous for putting like half a million romantic subplots in every RPG they make in the first place
I'm a computing science student in the Edmonton area. Of course I know who BioWare is.

Put it this way: does Baldur's Gate have the (in)famous make-out cutscenes of Mass Effect or Dragon Age? Obviously not cutscenes back then, but described in sufficient detail to fall under the 'dating sim' label? Wouldn't be overly surprised if that were the case, but I've heard several people say that the extra focus on 'romance' in the latest games is new.
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Phantasy Star III (1990, "Generations of Doom") and Dragon Quest V (1992, "Hand of the Heavenly Bride") both had significant focuses on romance. Each involved courtship and weddings, and followed 3 generations of one or more families -- and which children you get depend on who you marry.

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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
I guess what I'm saying is that Baldur's Gate looks and plays pretty similarly to most contemporary games, even if the graphics quality or game mechanics are different.


what

what was the last non-indie rpg you actually played slarty

Graphics quality? Very different. Game mechanics? Well, every game is different, but I suppose D&D 2E is out and cooldown is in. But the style is really quite similar. Compare the ideas of Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate and you'll see that the concepts haven't advanced all that much. Then compare Baldur's Gate to, say, Zork or Rogue. Big difference.

—Alorael, who considers one of the large changes to be from Baldur's Gate romances, which involved a few character that you might not have, might not pull off correctly, and might not involve sex, to the current idea that games should pretty much funnel players into sleeping with party members, NPCs, or, occasionally, everyone. It's not a bad thing, but it's a change. In that sense, Baldur's Gate II might be closest to a dating sim. There's no sim, just success, in modern games.
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Phantasy Star III (1990, "Generations of Doom") and Dragon Quest V (1992, "Hand of the Heavenly Bride") both had significant focuses on romance. Each involved courtship and weddings, and followed 3 generations of one or more families -- and which children you get depend on who you marry.


too bad that phantasy star iii was such an awful game

Originally Posted By: Erasmus
In the witcher they turned it into a card collecting game, for each NPC you sleep with you get a card memorabilia.


btw this is pretty much one of the funniest jokes at the player's expense in the history of video games

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Wait, this is complete news to me (because Lilith is correct that I rarely play contemporary non-indie non-Japanese RPGs for more than 5 minutes). In current games, sleeping with PCs and/or NPCs is typically a major part of the game?


well i wouldn't say a major part in terms of the amount of play time you spend attempting to do so, but yeah most western rpgs and a few japanese ones let you mack on various party members or other characters (and the japanese ones that don't will usually just set the protagonist up with a specific character instead)

it's got to the point where lgbt groups get up in arms when a game doesn't include at least one gay option for both male and female PCs (seriously, some people got very angry when they found out that the option for a male PC to date Kaidan was cut out of Mass Effect late in development)
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I'd say it's in large part a post-Baldur's Gate II development. That was a game that let you pursue romances with party members. It was also probably the most sprawling RPG ever made. Its successors have tended to be more tightly focused, and they also generally want you to see more of the content. The result is that rather than being able to have romances, you're often able to stumble into romances by accident. But the real successors to Baldur's Gate? Also BioWare games.

 

An unrelated phenomenon is the proliferation of sex in video games. Well, proliferation of sex in media. It's more acceptable now. At any rate, since games can have sex and do have romance, they throw them together. And since the romance is now inevitable unless you deliberately avoid it, you get sex with it.

 

Romance isn't actually widespread, but that's possibly a consequence of how RPGs also aren't actually all that common. BioWare is the company most known for romances; other games may throw in some sex or seduction, like Fallout or The Witcher (to an extreme degree!), but the actual games with romances are really BioWare's work. Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age are the ones I know. (Neverwinter Knights and Jade Empire too? Maybe.)

 

—Alorael, who looked up the list of RPGs from the last decade on Wikipedia. He determined that action-RPGs apparently count and that Spiderweb is a surprisingly large share. He'd bet that there are many other indie offerings that didn't make the notability cut.

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Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor
One cannot remember the great games of the past without talking. Unless the game is Robot Odyssey.
Oh man... THAT was a terrific game.

I looked at the same list, Alorael. Action-RPGs have to count because they have overwhelmed the RPG market, really. I remember back when Pathways Into Darkness was being categorized as an RPG, and I was confused; but actually that was just the harbinger of categorizations to come.

Oh, Wolfenstein 3D, what has your legion of offspring wrought? Or maybe the blame should really go on MUDs for broaching the real-time barrier and giving birth to MMORPGs.
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It's not the lack of turns that's the issue, really. Let's not forget how overly fond I am of Dungeon Master, and Eye of the Beholder, and Chrono Trigger for crying out loud. The issue is replacing deeper tactical and strategic considerations with fast-paced thinking and manual skill. That is a change that cuts to the heart of what a RPGs were about: role- or roll-, you had to think about what to do. There's still thinking now, but it's shrunken and subordinate.

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Again, take a look at BioWare, Slarty. Its D&D-based games have some very tactical, or at least strategic, thinking. Mass Effect may be a first-person shooter in RPG clothing, but Dragon Age proudly carries the tactical banner. So does Fallout 3 despite its shooter trappings, I hear, although I haven't played it myself.

 

Actually, Wolfenstein and Gold Box have some very odd hybrid children. Mass Effect and Deus Ex might be the two similar opposites: the former looks like a shooter with an RPG engine, but the actual shooting skill required is virtually nil. (Again, Fallout 3 might go even farther here.) Deus Ex plays like a shooter with skill points, except when you make the choice not to shoot and do something else instead.

 

—Alorael, who rejects the notion that real-time is mutually exclusive with tactics. Notably, many games are real-time but let you pause at will.

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While RPGs have changed over the years, SRPGs have remained fairly static. The first Tactics game, circa 1995, has been remade with Yasumi Matsuno in lead, and is coming to the US in February.

 

The distinction, I think, is that the term "RPG" hasn't pertained to a specific genre since the player roles in other genres started expanding. Games have advanced to the point where I think players will no longer take goomba stomping for granted. While most modern video games probably couldn't hold the 'RPG' mantle, they are, at their core, role-playing games.

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That's at least part of the issue: RPG was an apt label for distinguishing PNP RPGs from other non-digital games: war games, board games, card games, sports, etc. On computers and consoles, role-playing is not what distinguishes actual RPGs from other games, nor has it ever been what they most have in common with PNP RPGs.

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Quote:
—Alorael, who rejects the notion that real-time is mutually exclusive with tactics. Notably, many games are real-time but let you pause at will.
The unfortunate side effect is that when I play such games, I press pause every six seconds.

Originally Posted By: Slartucker
That's at least part of the issue: RPG was an apt label for distinguishing PNP RPGs from other non-digital games: war games, board games, card games, sports, etc. On computers and consoles, role-playing is not what distinguishes actual RPGs from other games, nor has it ever been what they most have in common with PNP RPGs.
'Arneson-style games'? Games where you control one (or several) characters who advance in abilities throughout the course of the game?
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...but that's not it. Really the issue is that RPGs have floated, over several decades, from wargames on the one hand to first-person shooters and Japanese puff-puff-bots on the other. In between these two horns you have a whole realm of stuff that takes fantasy and imagination as a jumping off point rather than the two most base and real concerns of death and sex. You have imaginative game systems and imaginative worlds, pulling from literature and history and everything else, you get D&D and Rogue and Ultima 4 and Nethergate, it goes on... but the landscape became overpopulated, the creative act harder to consummate in a meaningful way, and so we regress. All this technology, now, the capability to make games that deliver the same kind of shining experience as the best films -- and we get Grand Theft Auto.

 

The slaughtering of fantasy, 6:21 through 14:14 here:

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