A:EftP - So i'm trying to understand this remake thing.

[Dominance]

I've been playing this and love it so far.

 

And out of curiosity I did a search. And can anyone confirm what I am thinking.

 

So there was Exile originally, and Avernum was a remake of that.. and now this is another more recent remake of both?

 

It's one of these things that i'm just curious about.

 

I wanted to go back and look at Exile, but it won't work on windows 7

 

-Ben

[Dominance]

Wow cool, here is a comparison. These games have come a long way and are still just as awesome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dikiyoba]

Quote:

So there was Exile originally, and Avernum was a remake of that.. and now this is another more recent remake of both?

Yes. It's the same story, but with a completely different engine each time. The reasoning behind that is that it gets harder and harder to keep Exile (and now Avernum) running on newer computers and operating systems, as well as to attract a new audience who expect a different, more modern sort of gameplay.

Dikiyoba.

[Marak]

Plus he's steamlined things a lot, and for the better in nearly all cases.

 

I can't speak for Exile, having never played it, but going back and trying to play Avernum 1 - especially after playing any of the Second Trilogy (read: Avernums 4-6), is painful.

 

The interface is cumbersome, the quest log is lacking, and so on, and so on. While I've always wanted to see how Avernum "starts", I could never stomach the game engine enough to break down and pay $20 for it, not when I could play the much more refined games that I'd already bought, if that makes sense.

 

Even Avernum 2, using the same engine, has been tweaked enough to be playable.

 

But going from Avernum 1 (or even 2 or 3) to what we have now, it lets you experience the same story, but with all the annoying crap chopped out of it.

 

Imagine all your characters being encumbered not by what they have equipped, but by how much they are carrying. Say good-bye to thousands and thousands of coins worth of armor you couldn't pick up sell because you'd spend the entire dungeon with 2 AP/round. Hope you don't want your low-strength Mages to carry ANYTHING but the Robes on their backs and a couple of scrolls and wands.

 

Imagine that random battles that took place outside, on the world map, being self-contained "maps" that disappeared once you clicked the "end combat" button - so any loot you couldn't carry (see obsolete encumbrance gripe above) would vanish into the Aether, never to be seen again. And for god's sake, don't drop anything important in a random battle - you could lose it forever if you forgot to pick it back up before clicking "end combat".

 

Imagine that, instead of hitting hard-to-see wall switches to find hidden paths, you literally had to hump every single wall in the entire game with the Number Pad. I'm serius - EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. So we're talking thousands and THOUSANDS of key presses to find the odd extra body to search or that one invisible shortcut that you need to find in order to beat a dungeon.

 

Imagine being able to customize your characters fully. Sounds great right? Well, it is great - until you realize that your "no Strength, high Dex, high Sharpshooter, pump First Aid (the Avernum 1-3 version!) and Cave Lore" build means that your Level 25 character that you spent 40 hours playing with is now so terrible that you cannot beat the game with her (and her equally terribly built comrades). Hope you like a forced replay of the whole game.

 

Jeff has learned a lot of lessons over the past 15-ish years, and you're seeing the results here: all the Epic Story Goodness of Avernum (and let's be honest, that's one of the biggest draws for the series is its unique, non-cookie-cutter setting) without all the Obsolete Gold Box CRPG [censored] to deal with.

 

Sounds like a win-win to me. Can't wait to play the Windows version Soon™.

[yarrmateys]

Quote:

Imagine that random battles that took place outside, on the world map, being self-contained "maps" that disappeared once you clicked the "end combat" button - so any loot you couldn't carry (see obsolete encumbrance gripe above) would vanish into the Aether, never to be seen again. And for god's sake, don't drop anything important in a random battle - you could lose it forever if you forgot to pick it back up before clicking "end combat".

this still happens in a1r, except the no encumbrance and junk bag things which help you carry it all out of the battle.

[Randomizer]

You forgot to mention that in Exile 1 there were only 8 inventory slots not used for equipping your character. You had to decide whether you should enter a new area with stuff you might need in combat and/or to recharge your character or leave the slots empty to get some loot.

 

Also items weren't always identified so that valuable inventory slot might be filled with a cursed item.

 

Each remake of the game has more content to play and with the addition of a new town in this remake history is getting changed slightly. So the next Avernum game might have a different story than Avernum/Exile 2 with a new faction forming.

[Dominance]

Thanks for the replies

 

hahahah humping the walls. I don't know if that's what they had in mind

 

Yes it's definately an improvement. I love the progression.

 

Does anyone know if it's planned to remake the other ones now then?

 

-Ben

[Randomizer]

Avernum 2 and 3 are scheduled to be remade alternating with Avadon 1 and 2. All the other games will get remade eventually, but there is no timeline for when that happens.

[Enraged Slith]

Must have Geneforge 1/2 remakes.

[Jothki]

On the other hand, imagine a single spell blessing, shielding, and tripling the actions of your entire party. That's something I kind of miss.

[dave s]

I really miss the fact that gain a level in a spell was a remarkable event. That level 3 of a spell meant more than just an extra 2% damage.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Dave S: it's back that way in AEftP. There are only three levels of each spell, and each level makes a pretty significant difference (+~15% damage/healing, various added status effects, and so on). They're more like the rank 3 and 6 bonuses for abilities in Avadon, or the rank 3 creations in Geneforge, than the spell bonuses in A4-6 or the Geneforge series.

[Lilith]

That's true for the vast majority of spells, anyway. A small handful of spells, like Return Life, don't seem to gain any benefit at all from higher levels.

[Bloody Hypocrite]

Oh man, I forgot how many assets Exile shared with Realmz. I wish someone would give Realmz the remake treatment, as it was one of my favorite games, along side Spiderweb and Ambrosia games. Still, very excited about this. Downloading Avernum as I type.

[Lilith]

Unfortunately, Fantasoft has kind of imploded, which means it's not likely anything further is going to happen with Realmz.

[Sprinkles29]

From what you guys are saying I would prefer the older version gameplay wise. As long as the loot was balanced in such a way that it all made sense. In other words, stronger potions, stronger scrolls, stronger armor etc. Since you can't be expected to carry 5 different leather jerkins just for the heck of it in that old school scenario.

 

I always thought it was weird how the characters in Avadon weren't encumbered by their unequipped inventory. I kind of thought they should have been.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Sprinkles29

From what you guys are saying I would prefer the older version gameplay wise. As long as the loot was balanced in such a way that it all made sense. In other words, stronger potions, stronger scrolls, stronger armor etc. Since you can't be expected to carry 5 different leather jerkins just for the heck of it in that old school scenario.

I always thought it was weird how the characters in Avadon weren't encumbered by their unequipped inventory. I kind of thought they should have been.

The thing is that building the game around how things "should" work instead of what's fun to actually play makes the game into more of an accounting simulator and less of, well, a game. If it makes you feel any better, imagine that the party carries their unequipped inventory around in little handcarts that they roll behind them so they're not encumbered by the weight.

[nikki.]

I imagine it more as they have huge backpacks which they drop as soon as somebody scary and mean looking comes along. That way they fight unencumbered, and get to pick up the bags after.

 

(also, 'grats on 16k, lilith)

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

I always thought it was weird how the characters in Avadon weren't encumbered by their unequipped inventory. I kind of thought they should have been.

Jeff sums up my thoughts on the subject pretty well on his blog: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-two-gaming-pet-peeves-for-day.html

Now, I'm a fan of realism. I admire games with realistic physics, even if they tend to be more action-oriented than the games I really like playing. I'm a huge stickler for internal consistency. I find gameplay and story segregation irritating on a pretty fundamental level. But we have to realize that realism is often a tradeoff.

Notice how books, movies, games, and so on never spend much time on their protagonists' trips to the bathroom? That's tremendously unrealistic. Excretion is one of the most basic functions of human life, substantially more so than rearranging one's backpack. Ditto eating and drinking in most cases, and that doesn't even have "it's gross/obscene" as an excuse. This is because these basic functions contribute nothing to story drama outside of certain stories where the focus is very strongly on survival and meeting basic needs. If anything, they detract from drama by adding in filler material that draws attention away from the major plot and character arcs. They're also not any fun in games. Micromanaging party inventory is the same way: it adds a moderate amount of realism at the cost of a large amount of fun and drama.

[blib]

Inventory management seriously depends on the game. 90% of the time it makes a game worse, like Bethesda games(or even old Bauldur's Gate and the other DnD games. How many GMs have you played with that enforced encumbered rules or how much gold you can carry out of the dragon's lair?). Occasionally it makes a game better, like Fallout(or trade based games). Think how broken the original Fallout would have been if you could have carried the entire games resources in your back pocket.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: blib

Think how broken the original Fallout would have been if you could have carried the entire games resources in your back pocket.

Would it have been? Fallout 2 gave you a car that you could use as a mobile container with an effectively unlimited capacity, and it didn't have notably worse balance than Fallout 1 overall.

[Randomizer]

Some friends and I liked a GM that enforced encumbrance on his players. We loaded down the least trustworthy player with the heaviest loot so he couldn't run off on us during encounters. When someone moves slower than the slowest monster he has to stay and fight.

[exilechamp]

Does anyone know if Avernum 2 and 3 are getting remakes as well, or if it is on to new ground for Jeff? I loved the series back when I played it as Exile, and Exile 2 was always my favorite.

[Randomizer]

Avadon 2 is next followed by Avernum 2 remake, Avadon 3, and Avernum 3 remake.

[Mike Echo]

Originally Posted By: Marak

But going from Avernum 1 (or even 2 or 3) to what we have now, it lets you experience the same story, but with all the annoying crap chopped out of it.

It's funny, but to me most of the changes in your list aren't improvements.

>Imagine all your characters being encumbered not by what they have equipped, but by how much they are carrying.

Breaks realism. If I wear steel armor it's heavy, but I can carry a dozen sets in my backpack with no downside?

>Hope you don't want your low-strength Mages to carry ANYTHING but the Robes on their backs and a couple of scrolls and wands.

You've made the decision to have a weak character to put more points into their magical ability - that's the trade-off.

>Imagine that, instead of hitting hard-to-see wall switches to find hidden paths, you literally had to hump every single wall in the entire game with the Number Pad. I'm serius - EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. So we're talking thousands and THOUSANDS of key presses to find the odd extra body to search or that one invisible shortcut that you need to find in order to beat a dungeon.

"Magic Map" was your friend.

The hidden path trick stopped working because we're now in pseudo-3D, which gets us the "You're trapped on a rising platform being attacked by archers" mechanic that has been truly played out by now.

>Imagine being able to customize your characters fully. Sounds great right? Well, it is great - until you realize that your "no Strength, high Dex, high Sharpshooter, pump First Aid (the Avernum 1-3 version!) and Cave Lore" build means that your Level 25 character that you spent 40 hours playing with is now so terrible that you cannot beat the game with her (and her equally terribly built comrades). Hope you like a forced replay of the whole game.

This is my biggest disappointment. I hate how the levelling system has been dumbed down. It feels less like I get to customize a character to my playstyle, and more like I'm stuck on a rail where choices are removed.

Avadon's "hey, I'll let you undo all your bad choices for free with no downside" mechanic was cheap imo.

If you're playing on "Normal", randomly dump points without thinking carefully where they should go, and end up with an unplayable build, change the difficulty to "casual". Because let's be honest, that's who casual mode is for.

I say that as a wimp who used to abuse the character editor in exile and currently plays with Casual difficulty.

[Lilith]

Well, I mean, your preferences are what they are and you don't have to apologise for having them. But judging by Avadon's extraordinary sales compared to previous titles, you're apparently in the minority.

[Kinsume]

@Mike Echo are you complaining that they made the remake easier as a casual level player? Isn't that kind of hypocritical?

 

Don't get me wrong, I agree with several of the points you make however I also believe those features should be limited to the higher difficulty levels, or even Torment only.

[Marak]

I'll still say that Avernum 2 is my favorite Spiderweb game - although that's mostly because it was the first Spiderweb game I ever played, and it scratched that "old school RPG that they just don't make anymore" itch so hard I played it every waking-and-not-working hour for about 3 weeks. So I'm sure nostalgia plays a role.

 

But in any case, realism doesn't make these games any more fun. Having to make (literally) 15 trips into the Goblin Lair in order to pick up and sell everything that's of value may be realistic - but it's tedious and the actual coinage you net is minimal.

 

Being able to "character build yourself into a corner" because the game asks you to put points into skills and spells (and traits) before you have any idea which skill, spells, and traits are "best" and which are "best for you," resulting in characters that end up too weak because the stats didn't do what you expected them to. Is that fun? I'm pretty sure that falls into the category of "the game just flipped you off, now start over", which is about as far from fun as you can get.

 

Also, low-strength character were penalized even more heavily in A1-3 than they are now. There was the old Dungeons and Dragons "can't cast in anything that actually provided more than +1% armor" system in place, and on top of that you couldn't have them carry anything at all, because you had a maximum weight you could carry. So if you had a party with a couple of spellcasters, YOU'D MAKE LESS MONEY BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T PHYSICALLY PICK UP HALF THE LOOT AFTER ANY RANDOM BATTLE WITH ARMORED FOES. Again, realistic, but not particularly fun - or fair, for that matter. In a game where you buy power - by upgrading Skills and Spells for coins - penalizing certain party types to have less coins to spend was a pretty big slap in the face.

 

Humping walls was sort of fun for about the first third of the first game; after 3 entire games' worth of it - even with the Magic Eye spell or whatever it was called - it got real, real, real old real, real fast. Again, it turned into a mini-game of "tedium for bits of extra loot". Related: the PLEASE PUSH ME I TAKE UP HALF THE WALL TILE buttons in this version make me roll my eyes, although I'm sure that was done to appease the people on portable devices.

 

While I do agree that the pseudo-skill-tree system of Avernum: EftP feels "dumbed down" AT FIRST (especially after having replayed A6 recently), the Traits really open things up and restore a lot of the "lost" customization to the game - at least to me. I prefer to make my characters better at certain things as the game goes on, rather than make them overpowered right from the get go, with the "drawback" (reduced XP) actually making your characters MORE powerful because they'd get more Skill Points of free Perk Skills than they lost from the levels they lost by the end of the game - see Divinely Touched, Elite Warrior, Natural Mage, Pure Spirit. When there's literally no reason NOT to take the Perk because the downside the game gives you is no hinderance at all, it's time to change the system.

 

"Traits as you go" is great because it allows you to slowly attain what you would have gotten from an uber-perk in the older Avernum games (the list above) - only you get it in nice, bite-sized chunks, and you know which chunks you want and when you want them - because you're going to find out what stats and spells you prefer to use while you're playing, and then you can boost them every few levels when you're picking Traits.

 

Also, going back to "Spells are level 1, 2, or 3 and those Levels MATTER" was a huge plus in my eyes; after playing A6 and having my Level 8 Firebolt doing an extra +5-15 damage vs. a Level 3 Firebolt, this is a welcome reversion.

 

TL;DR version: I'm as old-school as the next guy, but what Jeff has done is take most of the "realistic but incredibly tedious" mechanics of his old games and streamlined them into a system where you can get back to what's actually fun - exploring, chatting, questing, and looting.

[Alorael at Large]

As has been pointed out, realism isn't necessarily fun or good for games. Some players prize realism and enjoy games more when they emphasize it, but they're actually a minority.

 

—Alorael, who will also suggest that if you want a game to let you make terribly weak character builds, the game must give you full information on how the mechanics work. Making the right build decisions can be part of the skill of playing. But if the effects of your choices are largely obfuscated, letting you make mistakes isn't fun, it's unnecessarily harsh.

[Kreador]

Originally Posted By: Unoxidized Complexity

As has been pointed out, realism isn't necessarily fun or good for games. Some players prize realism and enjoy games more when they emphasize it, but they're actually a minority.

Said another way, most people don't come to a fantasy game to experience reality.

[Sullust]

Originally Posted By: Mike Echo

It's funny, but to me most of the changes in your list aren't improvements.

>Imagine all your characters being encumbered not by what they have equipped, but by how much they are carrying.

Breaks realism. If I wear steel armor it's heavy, but I can carry a dozen sets in my backpack with no downside?

Wouldn't the characters take off said backpacks before engaging in combat? So it's not like they are carrying all that extra junk while fighting.

[Kreador]

From a pure perspective of logic, clearly you can't put a dozen sets of plate armor in a backpack, so we have to leap to the conclusion that they have some other means of carrying all the stuff they pick up. Or we just ignore it because the reality is a lot more boring, and we play fantasy games to avoid dealing with all those pesky elements of reality like the inability to fireball that guy who cuts you off in traffic.

[Kinsume]

I don't think people think about it in terms of realism, as per say in terms of gameplay. With things like backpack encumbrance, the not being able to spell cast in armor, ect. These things do seem annoying to some players because it means they won't be able to play the way they want. What it does it forces people to think carefully about what they pick up and compare the value of said items with their weight to see if its worth it.

 

It forces people be very specific with the stats/traits they take because its no longer just the options of "Do I want to invest in Int on my mage of End this level?". With encumbrance included a player legitimately has to consider working Str points into their mages build for more carrying capacity at the cost of damage/survivability/utility. Sure it does seem annoying to be forced to get more Str on a make, but the point is that it adds more depth to the game. It immerses the player into the game more rather than just putting them along for the ride in most cases.

 

At the same time, imagine the depth that would be added for fighters if you say took melee's hit modifier off of Str and placed it on Dex. Now a fighter can't gain more damage as well as accuracy by boosting the same stat. Now they are forces to decide "Do I want more damage/carrying capacity with Str this level, more accuracy/dodge with Dex this level, or more survivability/health with End this level?"

 

There are literally hundreds of little things like those that further increase the depth of a roleplaying game.

 

The game that comes to mind is Neverwinter Nights 2, probably my favorite game of all time. Storyline aside, graphics aside, ect; the depth of the character creation and the sheer amount of paths available for you to take in your build in that game was truly amazing. I can't think of another game I've played where I sat at the character creation screen for hours just working out numbers with various builds to find the best one for the way I wanted to play.

 

That is the kind of depth I feel like games these days are straying away from, and it's disappointing. Playing a good RPG is like reading a good book, once you get to the end you're sad its over and it leaves you wanting more. While you can always read a book again or do another playthough, it'll never be the same as the first one.

[Kreador]

Yes, but there's a balance in gameplay between elements that increase immersion depth and elements that increase general annoyance factor. Basilisk Games (Eschalon Book I and Book II), I think, does a good job balancing encumbrance with fun, so there are times you have to decide what to carry and what to leave behind, and where you want to spend points on your character, because if your fighter is too stupid, he can't tell the difference between a rock and a potato.

 

That said, I think Jeff is gaining more players for his games simplifying many of the mechanics than he's losing by loss of depth. I think he's right around the sweet spot in terms of what the turn-based isometric RPG buying crowd wants in a combination of depth of adventure and simplicity of starting up and playing.

[Slawbug]

I just want to point out that "simplified mechanics" does not automatically mean "loss of depth" -- in fact, it can mean the opposite.

 

I would argue that Avadon offers the greatest strategic and tactical depth of ANY spiderweb game, even though its mechanics have been "simplified" in some ways compared to Geneforge or the 2nd Avernum Trilogy.

[Kinsume]

I started the Geneforce series with number 4 and went to 5. Couldn't get into the first 3 too far, which is why I'm interested in seeing a remake of them. I liked the whole creature creation system, eventhough there weren't too many viable options it is still a fun feature to mess with.

 

And I don't know, when it comes to RPGs I don't believe simpler is better. If I wanted to play a fun/casual RPG I would go load up Skyrim or Fallout 3 or any of those newer ones. I come to indie games because these games were made back before all the pretty graphics and cinematic spell effects were ever conceived. Indie games generally focus solely on gameplay and storyline, something I feel alot of the new age RPGs slack off on.

[Marak]

It's not so much that they slack off on gameplay and storyline so much that the overly-pretty graphics eat up 99.999999999% of the devolopment time and money, leaving far too little left for the actual game part of the game.

 

Yet another reason why I'll buy Avernums over and over and laugh at fluff like Skyrim. I want an RPG, not an FPS with persistent elements, melee weapons, and magic bolts in place of bullets.

 

I mean really, how is Skyrim different from CoD, aside from having NPCs standing around in towns telling you where to go instead of standing around on the current map telling you where to go? You level up in both games, you shoot things in both games, you're in a constant first-person view in both games - there's more similarities than differences at this point, and it's just getting silly. RPGs are becoming more like FPS and FPS are adding RPG elements, to the point that the two genres - at least in their current "AAA" form - are nearly the same damn games, just with different arsenals to kill things with.

 

On topic: I've been enjoying A:EftP immensely thus far (only Level 4 but I'm trying to pace myself) and once you get used to the Avadon-esque Skill Tree, it plays as well as any other Spiderweb title. Hard is actually Hard, slow and steady wins the race, quests are still varied and fun to complete, sidequests galore, and the standard snarky writing - it's more of what I want, really.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

—Alorael, who will also suggest that if you want a game to let you make terribly weak character builds, the game must give you full information on how the mechanics work. Making the right build decisions can be part of the skill of playing. But if the effects of your choices are largely obfuscated, letting you make mistakes isn't fun, it's unnecessarily harsh.

The problem is that the "full information" necessary to make an informed decision is far more than any game can reasonably give players at the start. Even if a game goes really whole hog explaining the mechanics of its stats and abilities, those stats and abilities don't exist in a vacuum. Even if the game tells me everything I want to know about the relative damage, range, area of effect, ancillary benefits, and cost of Fireball, Ice Bolt, and Big Nasty Spiky Axe Cleave, that still doesn't tell me how well enemies tend to defend against fire, ice, and physical damage. Or whether it's wiser to prioritize range and movement debuffs because enemies tend to murder you in melee, or blast radius because there are many large groups of weak enemies that will swarm you to death if you don't hit them with strong AoE's. Point is, to really understand whether an ability is good or not, you need to understand not just the ability itself but the game's enemies and environment as well, and there's no good way to do this from the start without including massive spoilers.

That's why I think some sort of respec mechanic should be pretty much de rigueur in any longer RPG. I think there should be some cost associated with them (as in WoW or the Mass Effect series), to maintain an element of challenge in build optimization, but I don't think players should suffer serious penalties in hour 40 for build decisions they made in hour 2. That's not fun, nor does it promote intelligent and strategic play. What it promotes is walkthrough and FAQ-viewing.

[Kinsume]

The issue with respec options is that people can easily abuse it and do a very specific build early on to make the early stages of the game easier, then dump those skills later on when they respec.

[Randomizer]

Players always can abuse respec or write editors to allow them whatever powers they want and most want to maximize their character from level 1. It's there mostly so if you make a mistake in building your character you don't have to start over from the beginning.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Kinsume: That's why I think there should be a cost associated with it. Take Mass Effect 3 as an example: the player can reset their characters' skills for free the first time (so if you really screw up on your build you have an easy out), but after that it starts to cost money, and increase in cost each time you respec. Some players I've talked to swear by respecing for each major block of missions so as to always have the optimal abilities for a given set of enemies and environmnets. Others, like me, would rather spend those credits on equipment and upgrades, which gives a more lasting benefit. Both are viable strategies, and they increase the strategic diversity and fun of the game without creating one clearly dominant strategy or removing much in the way of challenge. Plus they create a safety net for those who don't know how to optimize their skills and would rather not just restart or play through the rest of the game with a crappy build, which let's face it are most players their first time around.

[Lauren CW]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: blib

Think how broken the original Fallout would have been if you could have carried the entire games resources in your back pocket.

Would it have been? Fallout 2 gave you a car that you could use as a mobile container with an effectively unlimited capacity, and it didn't have notably worse balance than Fallout 1 overall.

Technically, in Fallout 1 there is a bug involving carrying a bookshelf (Yes, you actually pick up the bookshelf), and stuffing the bookshelf full of stuff.

Fallout 2 has the trunk.

Neither one really makes a whole lot of difference, because with barely any effort at all you can afford literally anything you want in either game as soon as you come across them. By the time I'm level 5 in either game I stop picking anything up that I am not intending on using, unless I needed to make a quick 20k, in which case you just hang out around San Fran for 1 or 2 fights, and in fallout 1 you don't even need to fight, you just have a couple spare items and you barter them over, then balance your overpriced item against their lesser priced item and fill up the rest with whatever you want.

(I played, and still do play, a LOT of fallout. It takes me about 12 hours to beat either 1 or 2.)

[Kinsume]

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture

@Kinsume: That's why I think there should be a cost associated with it. Take Mass Effect 3 as an example: the player can reset their characters' skills for free the first time (so if you really screw up on your build you have an easy out), but after that it starts to cost money, and increase in cost each time you respec. Some players I've talked to swear by respecing for each major block of missions so as to always have the optimal abilities for a given set of enemies and environmnets. Others, like me, would rather spend those credits on equipment and upgrades, which gives a more lasting benefit. Both are viable strategies, and they increase the strategic diversity and fun of the game without creating one clearly dominant strategy or removing much in the way of challenge. Plus they create a safety net for those who don't know how to optimize their skills and would rather not just restart or play through the rest of the game with a crappy build, which let's face it are most players their first time around.

You can't use ME3 as an example, even that game's hardest difficulty was a complete joke. Nothing at all like ME1's highest. I understand what you're saying, but that again plays into making things easier for the players and essentially removing yet another unforgiving part of the game. As it stands people can just use the editor provided with the game to respec that way, so I don't really see a point in implementing it directly into the game.

If new content were going to be added, honestly I'd like to see parties of 6 again like the original Exile. 4 just seems so standard now and days with RPGs. Essentially no matter how you look at it you will have a tank, a damage dealer (albeit melee or ranged), a mage and a priest. On the lower difficulty settings you probably could get away with different lineups.

[Alorael at Large]

Or you can cheerfully design a game with the assumption that characters will respec early and often. Make the hard modes require optimal or nearly optimal builds, and this is a good design decision. Or don't, and let players tailor difficulty to taste by how much they're willing to readjust parties.

 

If you want players to be able to fix mistakes early on, a cost makes sense. If you want them to respec often, a cost doesn't, unless you want to make players have to weigh how much they can afford to spend now to get through and how much they need to save for later. Neither is a superior design decision; it all depends on design intent.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't see "unforgiving" as the same as "difficult" and is much more tolerant of the latter than the former. Punishing long-term mistakes is often cruel.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

You can't use ME3 as an example, even that game's hardest difficulty was a complete joke.

I fail to see the relevance of this statement. Assuming for the sake of argument that ME3 really was that easy (I can't comment on 1's difficulty, but 3 was definitely harder than 2), that still doesn't invalidate its use as an example of anything other than a challenging game. Let's consider this as a dialogue for a moment:

Person 1: "Mass Effect 3 has a very smooth control scheme."
Person 2: "You can't use gameplay from ME3 as an example. It was way too easy."

Does the latter statement strike you as kind of silly? My previous comment had nothing to do with overall difficulty, and everything to do with allowing more strategic options and the chance to expunge really bad build decisions. I think that's good design in pretty much any RPG, whether it's a cakewalk or the type of game that makes Dark Souls look like one.

Anyway, a lot of what you say here and in the above posts seems to boil down to you expecting everyone to play the same way you want to. If you don't want to respec, don't respec; you have my blessing. That other people have the option ought not subtract anything from your gaming experience. The fact remains that Avadon's respec option got overwhelmingly positive feedback.

[Kinsume]

I fail to see where you get your information from, thus far you're the only one I've seen even mention a respec option on here.

 

As for my ME3 comment, I simply misinterpreted what you were saying in your previous post. As you just write walls of text I tend to just skim over them. So my mistake.

 

As for the respec option itself, why would I care if it was put into the game? My argument was that there is already a character editor available, why would Jeff take the time to implement a whole respec system when there is already a feature that allows you to? If new content were to get added into the games it'd make more sense for it to be something not currently assessable.

[Slawbug]

Avadon has a respec option. There is a trainer who will do it for free. You can also achieve the same effect with the "retrain" shift-D code.

 

AEFTP does not have a respec trainer or "retrain" code. However, the "editor" code has been fixed to allow you to decrease as well as increase everything, so you can use it as a (somewhat more convenient) respec option.

[Kinsume]

Ah I see, so that is probably where he is getting the respec idea from. I have Avadon : The Black Fortress but haven't actually put much time into it as of yet. Honestly I was kind of turned off by the fact you start with a single character and choose people to bring with you on missions. Seemed kind of weird.

[Lilith]

Jeff had been on a bit of a Mass Effect kick on his blog at the time Avadon was in development, so the similarities are probably more than coincidental.

[Kinsume]

@Illegal Furniture I see. As for the difference between ME 2 and 3, there really isn't one concerning the gameplay. ME 1 was more rpg oriented with building your character up and such and combat was completely different. They made ME 2 and 3 to be more fps-like. I highly suggest you try out ME 1 if you haven't.