This game has become a real grind

[Ghaldring]

Good god, what was Jeff thinking when he made this game? It's unbelievably difficult and tedious. I've managed to drag my carcass to Melanchion's Lands, and am now facing monsters which have in the area of four thousand hit points, on normal difficulty. How long am I going to spend bashing away at them? I guess the better question here is: Why would I bother?

 

And I just keep dying, non stop. Especially my mages and priests, who keep getting hit by aura attacks.

 

This is unbelievable, I've been able to handle each Spiderweb game on Torment except for this one. It just seems impossible.

[Lilith]

I found it less tedious than Avernum 4, honestly. If you're dying a lot, you probably need to put more points in Endurance: you can't get away with ignoring it like in earlier games.

[Nioca]

It's taken you till near the end of the game? I lost interest at Tranquility. I found it more tedious than A4, simply because it's full of filler and grinding against a constant barrage of what are effectively sub-bosses. No offense to Jeff meant here. But I do hope he doesn't persist with the all-unique enemies theme and super-linear style in A6.

 

In A4, most enemies didn't shoot rays or other such oddities at you. They died within a reasonable time span. Plus, the A4 plot, whilst not the best, still had more momentum than the A5 one. It actually went somewhere; when you did things, things happened in response. With A5, when you did things, almost nothing happened in response.

 

In short, my opinion is that A4 > A5, and that I agree with Ghaldring on this.

[Acky]

Well that's a first.

 

 

Personaly, I think your all wacko. I think this is got to be one of the best games jeff has ever made. I think I'll go one step farther and say its got to be one of the best video games I've ever played. I got so wraped up in the storyline that I don't have the literary skills to describe it. I felt I was actually hunting Dorikas, not just doing a certin set of quests.

[Feo Takahari]

Now that you mention it, I suppose this game is a grind. I hadn't noticed because I'm used to games that are even worse in that respect. (On a side note, if you ever consider playing the early FF games, don't.) As for comparing this game to A4, I think it's far less of a grind in the sense that there's actual strategy involved in the combat. In A4 all I had to do was keep hacking and healing and everything went down if given enough time. I actually felt relieved when I decided I didn't have to finish it just because I'd spent money on it.

[Ghaldring]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

It's taken you till near the end of the game? I lost interest at Tranquility. I found it more tedious than A4, simply because it's full of filler and grinding against a constant barrage of what are effectively sub-bosses.

Pretty much.

What I also find real awful is the huge leap in difficulty between each 'chapter'. There is no gradual increase in difficult. One moment you're fighting brigands, the next you're fighting Sentinels which can wipe you out with one ranged attack. The jump between Azure and Dark River is also very pronounced.

I just can't tolerate this game any more. I really did give it a good second chance, I even tried role playing, but no. It's no longer fun. I doubt the ending is worth it, either. Probably something along the lines of "Dorikas/Redmark become Emperor, you're made a Dervish and then posted in the Underworld so that you aren't a threat."

Now I understand why Slarty spends more time studying the mechanics of the game, instead of actually playing it.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

I just can't tolerate this game any more. I really did give it a good second chance, I even tried role playing, but no. It's no longer fun. I doubt the ending is worth it, either. Probably something along the lines of "Dorikas/Redmark become Emperor, you're made a Dervish and then posted in the Underworld so that you aren't a threat."

Click to reveal..

This is in fact exactly what the ending is.

[Acky]

Originally Posted By: Thuryl

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

I just can't tolerate this game any more. I really did give it a good second chance, I even tried role playing, but no. It's no longer fun. I doubt the ending is worth it, either. Probably something along the lines of "Dorikas/Redmark become Emperor, you're made a Dervish and then posted in the Underworld so that you aren't a threat."

Click to reveal..

This is in fact exactly what the ending is.

Click to reveal..

Save the Dervish part

[Ghaldring]

Is there any significant difference between the two endings?

[Lilith]

Well, in one of them Redmark becomes Emperor and in the other Dorikas becomes Emperor. I won't tell you which is which, though.

[Ghaldring]

So there is no real difference in the outcome (ie. the ending doesn't make mention of whether Dorikas is more tyrannical/less progressive than Redmark)? Why wouldn't I side with the Darkside Loyalists, then?

[Acky]

Then you'd be evil

 

Theoraticly, Dorikas beguns to make the Empire less tolerent than it was under Prazacc and more like Hawthornes rule, save the exterminations of Nephil and Sliths. Redmark countinues on the way Prazacc was going. While there is no clear cut ending evidence to support this, the closest thing that we were given was

Click to reveal..

the Underworld Joint Trade Company outcome. If your a darkside loyalist, the company crumbles because the relationship between Avernum and the Empire worsens. If your an Imperial, the company prosperes with the open relationship between the two nations. Note the only way to get this message at the end of the game is to buy that share of the company from its represntitive in Harkins Landing.

[Ghaldring]

Why, if Dorikas' rule is no less tyrannical than Redmark's? In fact, throughout the game I got the impression that even the more progressive citizens of the Empire still wanted to subjugate Avernum. Dorikas was just more honest about it. And he has no problem with non-human races, either.

 

Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't. Redmark never struck me as an upfront and decent guy.

[Acky]

He never struck me as a "bad" guy. He was trying to be ethical on how to approuch the Avernites mind you. And you should remember that your a grunt, not a happy-go-lucky-fix-all-your-problems-for-a-sword that we were in the past games. And since you didn't get both endings like I did, you didn't get both of the complete stories.

 

Also, please note that the confused sign was supposed to show "Tecnicly" (though I guess I picked a bad sign for that

[Feo Takahari]

Myself, I don't side with the Darkside Loyalists because they keep trying to kill me . . .

[Randomizer]

Jeff made a deliberate decision to eliminate the glass cannon player characters. No more spewing out massive amounts of damage, but shattering from a single powerful blow. He went the same way in Geneforge 5.

 

You now have to put some points towards endurance and not artificially increase health with augmentation and essence armor. You need to wear some armor and there is plenty that won't hurt mages without natural mage trait. You just need a little strength to wear it.

 

Jeff tried to get away from the minor pest monsters so no more 200+ chitrachs to clear out of an area. This means more sub-boss monsters that require some thought other than blast away with the same spell or weapon.

 

It does get tedious just waiting for a monster to drop especially on torment. As I find that Melanchion has over 14000 health. But it beats the grind of blasting pylons in A4 or some other nuisance monster that is equally tedious to deal with for little experience.

[Ghaldring]

So instead of having you fight ten 200 hp chitraches, he has you fight one 2000 hp sub-boss. Yeah, that's an improvement...

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Jeff tried to get away from the minor pest monsters so no more 200+ chitrachs to clear out of an area. This means more sub-boss monsters that require some thought other than blasting away with the same spell or weapon.

FYT. This is nice in theory, but when it was applied in this rendition, it really just boiled down to trying to flatten the guy as quickly as possible before he got any shots off. Buffing first, of course. And in the instance of more than one enemy, it became a game of flatten the most powerful one before he could get a shot off, and let the others be until then. And I was good at it too; most of the "unique" sub-bosses wound up just being annoying chunks of HP.

In other words, I again agree with Ghaldring. With the chitrachs and the pylons (you heard me), you at least had an indicator that you were making some kind of lasting progress.

[Ghaldring]

Originally Posted By: Ackrovan

He never struck me as a "bad" guy. He was trying to be ethical on how to approuch the Avernites mind you. And you should remember that your a grunt, not a happy-go-lucky-fix-all-your-problems-for-a-sword that we were in the past games. And since you didn't get both endings like I did, you didn't get both of the complete stories.

It's not that I think Redmark is a 'bad' guy, I just don't think that he's genuine. He lies to the PCs about wishing to be emperor, even though it's blatantly obvious that he's preening himself for the position. From memory, it's suggested several times in the game that an Empire soldier wouldn't assist the Avernites in expanding, and would actually act against them if they weren't at risk of political lashback, so it's not just the Darkside Loyalist extremists who want to subjugate Avernum.

I've also been told that in the Imperialist ending, Redmark keeps Dorikas' fortress as a base of operations in Avernum.

From my limited knowledge, it appears to me that Redmark isn't diplomatic with the Avernites out of altruism, but for his own (and the Empire's) gain. I think that Redmark would stay sweet with Avernum, until he had positioned himself so that he could launch an overwhelming assault on Avernum at just the right time.

Dorikas is less patient. If he had waited, Avernum would have inevitably fell into civil war, and/or war with the Vahnatai, over limited living space, and that would have been a fantastic time for the Empire to consolidate their hold on Avernum.

This is all conjecture though.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

From my limited knowledge, it appears to me that Redmark isn't diplomatic with the Avernites out of altruism, but for his own (and the Empire's) gain. I think that Redmark would stay sweet with Avernum, until he had positioned himself so that he could launch an overwhelming assault on Avernum at just the right time.

You're a libertarian. Since when does self-interest bother you?

It's not clear how Redmark could stand to benefit from actual war with Avernum, though.

[Slawbug]

The Nine-Headed Cave Cow frowns upon the supporters of chitrachs and pylons.

[madrigan]

I love A4, and I love A5, and I've played all the way through both multiple times. A4 was more of an epic, and A5 was more of an action movie. I love epics and action movies. There are things I like better in A4 (can move after casting) and there are things I like better in A5 (battle disciplines). People like different kinds of stuff, so I don't know what we're arguing about here. As for difficulty, I did find it harder than A4, but not dramatically so.

 

Redmark is a politician, an opportunist, and loyal to the legitimate government of his country. Dorikas is a thug and a traitor. It's clear from the dialogue in the Darkside Fortress, at least if you're playing a loyalist, that he is not comfortable with full equality for non-humans, and you can bet that as emperor he would magnify that bias into policy.

 

That's just in A5. He was also a sleazebag in A4, stealing from and terrorizing the general population of Avernum in order to maintain his treachery on the surface. This is really one of the best indicators of his character -- his agenda mainly involves surface politics, but he uses Avernum and its people as disposable resources and pawns. Redmark, though his decision to hold onto the Darkside Fortress is suspicious at best, never encourages the PCs to break Avernite law or to mistreat the Avernite people.

[Student of Trinity]

Just what would make people happy, who don't like A5? All enemies are easy? All encounters are brainteaser minigames? All encounters are easy once you select the right one out of a huge palette of options, and it's a different option for each encounter in the game?

 

I'm not being snarky. I see the complaint. I'm just not clear whether it's a complaint about A5 for what it happens to be, or a complaint about CRPGs for what they are supposed to be.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Thuryl

It's not clear how Redmark could stand to benefit from actual war with Avernum, though.

Redmark seems to have the partial motivation of wiping out the family stain of Erika Redmark. Being emperor allows him to get rid of part of it, but taking over Avernum eventually would fully wipe it out.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Originally Posted By: Thuryl

It's not clear how Redmark could stand to benefit from actual war with Avernum, though.

Redmark seems to have the partial motivation of wiping out the family stain of Erika Redmark. Being emperor allows him to get rid of part of it, but taking over Avernum eventually would fully wipe it out.

I don't know about his motivation, but getting beat by Avernum again would end his reign. I think that if faced with another imperial invasion, the Vahnatai would have to prefer struggling with Avernum for space in the caves to struggling with the Empire for space in the caves.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I'm not being snarky. I see the complaint. I'm just not clear whether it's a complaint about A5 for what it happens to be, or a complaint about CRPGs for what they are supposed to be.

Let me put it this way: almost everyone can agree that boss critters (generally speaking) are fun. They're a spike in challenge, and they're unique. However, they also can be frustrating at times, and it can take quite a while to bring one of them down.

Now, the constant supply of unique creatures in A5 is comparable to a stream of sub-bosses. However, because there's so many of them, the challenge spike and the uniqueness of the battle are lost, leaving only a frustrating and drawn-out battle that you have to repeat over and over again. Then, when you hit the boss creatures, there's nothing special about them anymore. They're just another "unique" creature with a lot more HP that'll require even more time to hack through.

The "needing unique tactics" really just boils down to using a different sword/bow/spell to kill it with. Furthermore, there's nothing even all that "unique" about the creatures in the first place. For the most part, they just do a different kind of damage in a different way. Or they summon something or they use some kind of status attack. Big deal. You hack at them enough, they still go down.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Just what would make people happy, who don't like A5?

The straw that broke my camel's back was the random encounter wolf in the vahnatai lands with 4000 health. I can't come up with a good reason there should be a wolf with that much health after I spent the beginning of the game beating up wolves with 50 health. So I guess I would like to see a reduction of HP inflation to start with.

The second thing would be to make sure there is a really good reason why monsters are as strong or as weak as they are. Giants are a lot tougher than goblins because there's a huge size difference between the two. A group of brigands that has a lot of experience and good equipment is obviously tougher than a group of bandits that is just starting out with stone weapons. But there's no reason random wolves would show such a huge variation.

Dikiyoba has not played A4 and so can draw no comparisons there.

[Student of Trinity]

Right, I get that that's how you feel. But all CRPGs are inevitably like this — in some sense or other, to some extent or other. To distinguish your complaint about A5 from a general fatigue with CRPGs, I'd like to know what would make you happy in a CRPG.

 

Fewer sub-boss-like unique creatures, and more generic goblins in between them? Fewer sub-bosses and more big bosses? Both of the above?

 

Lots of sub-bosses, but lots of different ways to take them out, any of which could work at any time, so you get to take your pick as the mood strikes? Lots of sub-bosses, and each one requires one particular oddball tactic, out of a huge range of options, to defeat?

 

One gigantic boss, who can only be beaten by drenching your keyboard in arterial blood and reformating your hard drive?

 

@Dikiyoba: It's bad if I get the feeling Jeff picked a random chapter 3 critter, pumped its health through the roof, and stuck it in chapter 6 as cheap filler. But I find I don't feel that way much, unless I've been playing too many CRPGs at a stretch, or unless the game really does nothing at all to make the creatures seem more significantly different. A 'glowing drayk' effect on the sprite can be enough to distract me, for instance. And so probably I'm just easy to please, but I think those Vahnatai wolves are one of the very few instances of the cheap filler monster in A5. I sympathize more with the complaint that I think maybe Nioca is making — that Jeff went overboard and made so many 'unique' monsters, that uniqueness itself became a grind.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I'm not being snarky. I see the complaint. I'm just not clear whether it's a complaint about A5 for what it happens to be, or a complaint about CRPGs for what they are supposed to be.

Let me put it this way: almost everyone can agree that boss critters (generally speaking) are fun. They're a spike in challenge, and they're unique. However, they also can be frustrating at times, and it can take quite a while to bring one of them down.

Now, the constant supply of unique creatures in A5 is comparable to a stream of sub-bosses. However, because there's so many of them, the challenge spike and the uniqueness of the battle are lost, leaving only a frustrating and drawn-out battle that you have to repeat over and over again. Then, when you hit the boss creatures, there's nothing special about them anymore. They're just another "unique" creature with a lot more HP that'll require even more time to hack through.

The "needing unique tactics" really just boils down to using a different sword/bow/spell to kill it with. Furthermore, there's nothing even all that "unique" about the creatures in the first place. For the most part, they just do a different kind of damage in a different way. Or they summon something or they use some kind of status attack. Big deal. You hack at them enough, they still go down.

I don't entirely understand these criticisms. Do you want more generic creatures? I suppose that's perfectly valid, but one of the criticisms of A4 was that there were like 10000000 identical chitrachs in a row and then there were like 100 almost identical pylons in a row. I like the unique creatures because it transmits the idea that I am interacting with actual beings or creatures instead of with game pieces. I'm playing A3 now, and there seem to be a lot of wandering monsters, and I understand that concept but there's something underwhelming about "uh-oh! bats!" and then "uh-oh! lizards! and so on.

I don't know what Jeff could do about this damage thing. In nearly all RPGs, damage is generic because hit/health points are used to summarize your physical well-being. If you want fire damage to work differently than cold or weapon or "energy" damage, it's going to make the game way, way more complicated. As for tactics, I suppose it would be cool if it made more difference where you positioned your characters in battle, or if you could, say, drop from the ceiling onto someone, or snipe them, but that would also complicate things a great deal and probably would require a 3D engine.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Right, I get that that's how you feel. But all CRPGs are inevitably like this — in some sense or other, to some extent or other. To distinguish your complaint about A5 from a general fatigue with CRPGs, I'd like to know what would make you happy in a CRPG.

I think what people want, even if they're not articulating it, might just be less combat overall, and a higher ratio of dialogue and non-combat challenges to combat. The core complaint, after all, is that the player is spending too much time fighting.

It's also possible that people want shorter but more intense combat. Many battles, once the player has figured out a trick to them, can go on for quite a long time with the party in no real danger. If the average fight lasted half as long, but players had to mix up their tactics to react to events more often during that time, the game would be improved. Fights that are short and easy, long and difficult, or short and difficult are all OK in moderation; fights that are long and easy are bad.

[Earth]

if sub-bosses/bosses are too difficult then skillpoints have been spent on wrong things. all enemies except that mad sentinel require smashing via swords, bows, poles or spears with help of spells again and again etc. i agree that most enemies at melanchion's area were difficult but buffing up before fights and healing when needed and not going on hand to hand combat when enemy was capable to freeze character and keep priest(s) close enough to release charmed/terrorized/etc characters back to fighting. i fought against black horror few times until i found strategy to beat it.

[Slawbug]

I strongly agree with Dikiyoba. One of the most important things, to me, is internal consistency. In the game world, does it make sense that these things exist/are happening? The games that I always cite as my favourites get this right even if they get other things wrong.

 

Originally Posted By: Nioca

The "needing unique tactics" really just boils down to using a different sword/bow/spell to kill it with. Furthermore, there's nothing even all that "unique" about the creatures in the first place. For the most part, they just do a different kind of damage in a different way. Or they summon something or they use some kind of status attack. Big deal. You hack at them enough, they still go down.

I also agree with Nioca, and I think this was very well put. I would like to add, to address SoT's point, that there are games that do this successfully -- mainly because the game mechanics are broader and more robustly interesting. Two games that do this much better are Exile 2 and Exile 3. The game mechanics were a bit less organized and certainly less balanced, but they were more varied and vibrant. Encounters could be new and different even at high levels, and players had a slew of strategies at their disposal. Paper Mario and Final Fantasy Tactics also come to mind as big successes in this regard.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I sympathize more with the complaint that I think maybe Nioca is making — that Jeff went overboard and made so many 'unique' monsters, that uniqueness itself became a grind.

That is, in fact, exactly my complaint. I actually consider it to be a worse form of grinding than the grinding Jeff was trying to avoid, simply because with the original form, the boss monsters and unique monsters stood out from the rest. They really had a sparkle that the others did not; they actually felt unique. With A5, though, the overload of "unique" monsters made the monsters that should be unique just another encounter. No high point of the dungeon, no excitement, nothing; just another monster to kill so as to advance the plot (or the filler passed off as such).

Originally Posted By: Thuryl

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Right, I get that that's how you feel. But all CRPGs are inevitably like this — in some sense or other, to some extent or other. To distinguish your complaint about A5 from a general fatigue with CRPGs, I'd like to know what would make you happy in a CRPG.

I think what people want, even if they're not articulating it, might just be less combat overall, and a higher ratio of dialogue and non-combat challenges to combat. The core complaint, after all, is that the player is spending too much time fighting.

It's also possible that people want shorter but more intense combat. Many battles, once the player has figured out a trick to them, can go on for quite a long time with the party in no real danger. If the average fight lasted half as long, but players had to mix up their tactics to react to events more often during that time, the game would be improved. Fights that are short and easy, long and difficult, or short and difficult are all OK in moderation; fights that are long and easy are bad.

I feel it's the latter. I'm all for combat; just read my CSR reviews on BoA and see how highly I rank combat as a priority (Twilight Valley got severely docked by me for not having any combat).

Also, I think that it's a bit of not having one long fight right after another. It's one thing to duke it out with tons of monsters one after the other, but when those monsters are packing so many hitpoints or so much armor that each and every encounter is a tedious five minute hackfest, it gets old really fast. Say what you want about the Eastern Gallery Chitrachs; at least they went down fairly quickly.

And 4000 hitpoints?!? Only the last few bosses of A4 had that much health! No wonder people are burning out at A5's endgame, if that's the amount the typical enemy is packing. And I don't care how high a difficulty or how close to the end it is, unless it's a BoA scenario for a god party, NO creature should have 14,000 HP in an Avernum game. That's just way, way too much.

[Slawbug]

227 monsters on -- how many maps was that? 227 nearly identical monsters spread over at least 20 maps of nearly identical looking caves is not a good game.

 

I mean, at least in Tomb of the Taskmaker they had different freakin' icons.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

227 monsters on -- how many maps was that? 227 nearly identical monsters spread over at least 20 maps of nearly identical looking caves is not a good game.

I never said it was. I just said that I felt it was better than how A5 was treating monsters.

I suppose, for clarity's sake, I'll just list exactly what my complaints with A5 were. Listed in order of importance.

1) The over-abundance of so-called tougher "unique" monsters. The monsters in Avernum 5 had a considerable increase in Hitpoints, and an abundance of monsters that had some kind of "unique" ability. Usually, the ability consisted of some way to cause damage or throw a status out, and the hitpoints made the monsters harder to take down. This effectively resulted in each and every encounter becoming some sort of warped miniature boss-fight. Furthermore, it caused the monsters that should have been unique, such as the actual bosses, to become just another monster.

2) The plot consisting almost entirely of filler. It's one thing when a game or a scenario has filler to extend the plot. But A5 consisted entirely of one filler quest after another. Want to proceed? First you have to take care of a scuttler problem. Then you need to fight some bandits. Then you need to fix the sentinels. They have an extremely loose connection to the plot at best, and none whatsoever at worst. And you can't proceed until you finish these little side quests.

3) The linearity. It's one thing to have a linear plot. But I swear that the world map was shaped like a chain of sausages. No real exploration, very limited freedom to do what you want, small sections of map... It just generally felt claustrophobic at times.

4) The atmosphere. I understand the "everyone hates you" was intentional, but it still got old fast. It didn't even matter if you were an angel and helped Avernum during your time; everyone still hated you. At that point, it felt more like, "Why shouldn't I just gat everyone that gets in my way to get the Dorikas?" Not that that was an option.

5) It just wasn't Avernum. The Avernum series has been a game of Good vs. Evil. A5 departed from that, making both sides crappy. Furthermore, the purse was tighter, there wasn't exploration (as addresed by 3) and a few other niggling things.

All combined, it just made me lose interest. A4 had it's issues, but it didn't suffer from any of these. And in my opinion, these are pretty big issues.

[Randomizer]

Dikiyoba -

 

I think I know the wolf you are referring to and it was the Wolf Mother that could summon more wolves. That made it the boss wolf of all the terror wolves. Still Jeff really cranked the health of monsters up and brought many boss monsters that could heal massive amounts of damage.

 

Some of them were like Gashlah the Lich, I know that I'll kill him eventually, but what do I do while I'm waiting. I set up a portable DVD player next to my computer so I could watch something until my turn came up again.

[nikki.]

I'll like to explain why I didn't finish A5, and it's not all about the combat, but I'll start there, since that has been by far the most common complaint.

 

It wasn't that there was too much of it, at all. It was the nature of it. One encounter I remember, really early on in the game, was this spider that did super-crazy poison damage whilst his pals attacked you from all sides. I loved it. Then a couple screens later, some other, seemingly random wolf did a crapton of poison damage too. Then, two screens on, some rats did it.

 

Now, if that spider was the end of it, at least for a while, I'd have been fine. The wolf could have just have easily been a "tough-hide" wolf or however you wish to say "physical resistant" in the game, and you'd still have two great encounters that are different. I think Jeff got a bit too friendly with the "inflicts poison" ability.

 

That said, I have no issues with boss fights, or fights like the Cheeseball one. It was just when practically every enemy was doing the same thing, it became tedious. Example: the first time you go on an elevator and are attacked. Great idea, and a great fight. The second time it happens, it's still fun, but, you know what's coming. By the third time, you're going through the motions.

 

Next, the world just didn't seem to change around me. Neither did it in A4, but it was more obvious here, I felt. As a BoA designer, a trick I use for not having to code every town in the game for future events is to force them on, and prevent them from going back there. Jeff tries to keep the momentum going throughout A5, driving you on, but, as far as I could see, he never lets you talk to people about things further into "the Frontier" (I did only get to Highground though, so maybe I miss it later on).

 

That's not a terrible crime - from a RP point-of-view, you could argue that the people nearer the start of the game have their own problems to deal with, and don't care about struggles for land (even though you've already resolved their problems). It's just that the game (d'oh) also falls down because the momentum isn't strong enough. Aside from the Howling Depths, I never once felt as if I were being hunted, or were hunting, a would-be assassin. It was just more towns needing a pest dealing with, and then onto another settled part of the "untamed" caves.

 

And I think that's what killed it for me. A lot of people have praised A5's plot, but, I think a lot of that is because A4 was so torrid. I was never caught up in the story the way I was A2, and I never felt lost in the world, as I did in A1, and so, I just never felt the compulsion to carry on.

[Student of Trinity]

This is an important point here for Spiderweb, because Jeff is supposedly on a crusade to end grinding. And the combats of A5 are his first major attempt at doing that. We can all agree that ending grinding is a good thing — if we agree that 'grinding' just means 'boring, repetitive stuff'.

 

What we may be seeing here is that it's harder to end grinding than you'd think. You can get bored doing the same one thing ten times in a row, sure. But you can also get bored doing ten different things, if you have to pick randomly from that same set of ten things a hundred times. Even worse: at some point, and it's probably a lot less than a hundred repetitions, the familiar set of ten things becomes one big familiar thing. And then you're really grinding again — maybe even a lot worse than if you did each of the ten things ten times in a row.

 

I think this is the cause of Nioca's complaint. The A5 engine only has a finite number of things it can do. Jeff was creative in exploiting them in A5. But he was creative so often, that by half-way through the game or so, the players have seen enough of the engine's game that they can extrapolate to a good idea of all it can do. And from then on, every new fight seems like a rather dull reshuffling of the same known elements. Even if that particular combination hasn't come up exactly before, the novelty has worn thin.

 

Now, I myself wasn't as put off by this second-order monotony in A5 as Nioca apparently was. But now that we mention the phenomenon, I guess I can say I see it too. It's surprising, though. Jeff worked hard to make every fight as interesting and different as he could, and he thought he was doing a great thing. In fact, maybe he should have held off a bit, and let more of the game's battles be plainer vanilla, in order to make the excitement of his various tricks last the whole game.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I think this is the cause of Nioca's complaint. The A5 engine only has a finite number of things it can do. Jeff was creative in exploiting them in A5. But he was creative so often, that by half-way through the game or so, the players have seen enough of the engine's game that they can extrapolate to a good idea of all it can do. And from then on, every new fight seems like a rather dull reshuffling of the same known elements. Even if that particular combination hasn't come up exactly before, the novelty has worn thin.

Now, I myself wasn't as put off by this second-order monotony in A5 as Nioca apparently was. But now that we mention the phenomenon, I guess I can say I see it too. It's surprising, though. Jeff worked hard to make every fight as interesting and different as he could, and he thought he was doing a great thing. In fact, maybe he should have held off a bit, and let more of the game's battles be plainer vanilla, in order to make the excitement of his various tricks last the whole game.

That's part of it. Vanilla fights have been in the game since A1, and they've done great. Avernum 2 is regarded as one of the greatest games in the series, but note that most of it's fights were not unique encounters, but rather plain enemies. The other part, though, is that the fights need to be shorter. As Kelandon found out in Exodus, high HP doesn't make an enemy more difficult, but instead more annoying. Rather than boosting HP, why not massively cut HP down and heavily boost damage levels. This would result in short, intense free-for-alls that would push the player to keep his characters alive, and also make it somewhat more realistic, since it'd take far less to kill either PC or monster, but a lot more to keep them alive. Add the occasional long, unique fight or boss fight, but don't have them every few steps you take. That, I'd think, would make the game a lot better.

[Feo Takahari]

One thing worth mentioning: Torment is not the difficulty to play on if you want to maintain your sanity, as Jeff has to keep happy those people who want the game to be virtually impossible. Fighting at Normal difficulty, I found the game to be pretty much fine. (Indeed, I can't even see how the game is beatable on Torment. The capability of "improving" your playing is absent by definition from RPGs, since whether or not an attack hits is not based on whether or not you can aim.)

[Slawbug]

Because massively boosted damage will make people who build really bad characters have trouble even on lower difficulty settings. Jeff wants even the least intelligent players to be able to finish the game, if not the optional stuff.

 

However, I agree with you in spirit.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

2) The plot consisting almost entirely of filler. It's one thing when a game or a scenario has filler to extend the plot. But A5 consisted entirely of one filler quest after another. Want to proceed? First you have to take care of a scuttler problem. Then you need to fight some bandits. Then you need to fix the sentinels. They have an extremely loose connection to the plot at best, and none whatsoever at worst. And you can't proceed until you finish these little side quests.

And you know, it IS possible to have "filler" work well in a game -- if the backstory has enough wrinkles and depth to allow random stuff you do to relate, in some way, to the story. A great example of this is Breath of Fire 2. The entire first third of the game consists of filler quest after filler quest as you attempt to chase down a woman (sound like A5 much?). But all of the quests tie in to the main storyline. A few provide more information, little by little, that eventually puts you on the game's main quest, introducing you to St. Eva and its demons. Others set up events much later in the game.

Avernum 2 had this interconnectedness to its story. A4 and A5 don't. "Get past obstacles to find and kill/join Dorikas" and "Get past obstacles to find and kill Rentar as many times as necessary" do not allow for much depth, or many wrinkles.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

Because massively boosted damage will make people who build really bad characters have trouble even on lower difficulty settings. Jeff wants even the least intelligent players to be able to finish the game, if not the optional stuff.

However, I agree with you in spirit.

Jeff repeatedly complains that the players he uses for beta testing aren't normal. They can easily get through difficult situations that would destroy a beginner that hasn't played any of his previous games. Trying to adjust the game for them is his major problem.

Torment isn't that much harder except the fights take longer. You can't one shot foes like on normal. One time I accidently forgot to set the difficulty to torment and couldn't believe how much better my new party was doing. As I one shotted my way through an encounter I thought I finally had customized the party correctly.

In Geneforge 5 I restarted the game three times until I could create an agent that would one shot all but boss type characters and specials on torment. On normal this character could roll through the game without breaking a sweat. But the average player wouldn't think to bias a character's abilities to do this.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Jeff repeatedly complains that the players he uses for beta testing aren't normal. They can easily get through difficult situations that would destroy a beginner that hasn't played any of his previous games. Trying to adjust the game for them is his major problem.

Torment isn't that much harder except the fights take longer. You can't one shot foes like on normal. One time I accidently forgot to set the difficulty to torment and couldn't believe how much better my new party was doing. As I one shotted my way through an encounter I thought I finally had customized the party correctly.

In Geneforge 5 I restarted the game three times until I could create an agent that would one shot all but boss type characters and specials on torment. On normal this character could roll through the game without breaking a sweat. But the average player wouldn't think to bias a character's abilities to do this.

Then, and I take nothing away from the jobs you guys do, or the work you put into it, but Jeff needs to find beta-testers that are much more typical of the majority of his gamers.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Nikki.

Then, and I take nothing away from the jobs you guys do, or the work you put into it, but Jeff needs to find beta-testers that are much more typical of the majority of his gamers.

The problem is that typical gamers are lazy and can't be relied upon to finish the game if they're not enjoying it, let alone give detailed reports.

[Randomizer]

Basilisk Games reported that only 50% of its beta testers made it through Eschalon: Book 1. They are considering offering $50 US to those that finish testing Book 2 in order to get more people to finish.

 

It gets boring playing through the same fight a dozen times to see what the latest game changes do to the fight or to get a new party through the demo to try something else.

[Evnissyen]

Not to mention that Eschalon really does get boring after a while, just as a player (I never got past level 10, myself; though I think I'll pick it up again eventually). I truly hope BW makes some significant improvements in the narrative in Book 2, but I suspect he won't.

 

Diablo 2 I stopped playing at the end of Act 2 because the boss character was just about impossible to defeat. It ruined my ability to enjoy the game. (Not to mention I find real-time games that don't give you save-slots highly annoying and stressful. (Hey: Aren't games supposed to reduce stress?)) This is really, maybe, the extreme end of RPG's with nearly impossible bosses. (Strategy isn't always an option since the character you've chosen isn't always adequately equipped to take down said boss, nor would any of the available mercenaries, I don't think; I'll have to check again to see if there are any other than archers available, I don't think there are.)

 

With G5 & A6, I don't think I'd want to beta test, because I really do want to enjoy the game. And when I have other projects/responsibilities that are pressing me for my attention -- specifically my writing and the GLE Project (both of which I've been horribly neglectful of), I doubt I'd make a very good beta tester.

 

...Plus I'd undoubtedly end up constantly complaining about the writing/narrative... thus annoying the developer no end.

 

[Ghaldring]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Dikiyoba -

I think I know the wolf you are referring to and it was the Wolf Mother that could summon more wolves.

Oh god. Fie on those 2000 hp monsters which could summon 400 hp generic monsters. What the hell was Jeff thinking?

Quote:

And 4000 hitpoints?!? Only the last few bosses of A4 had that much health!

What's worse is that a number of these 'mini-bosses' aren't optional, you HAVE to fight them. And there are other instances where in order to get a point in a spell you're after, you're going to have to suffer a case of carpal tunnel sydrome.

I mean, 4,000 bloody hitpoints. Do you think that was enough, Jeff? I re-iterate, what the hell were you thinking?

Earth:

Quote:

if sub-bosses/bosses are too difficult then skillpoints have been spent on wrong things.

This is a load of BS. Prior to playing A5 I read numerous threads on how to optimise my characters, I even took Slarty's advice to heart and employed archery as my primary method of attack, I selected Elite Warrior as my second trait for spellcasters, I didn't blow skill points on frivilous skills. I didn't min-max, but I sure as hell didn't splash my skill points around like a faeces chucking ape.

But let's say that I didn't optimise my skill point allocation. Does that mean that despite getting as far as Melawhatever's Keep, I can't progress any further in the game? I'll have to start again? What a tease, allowing players to get four fifths of the game and then throwing enemies at them which have 4,000 hp and uber attacks, keeping them from viewing the (disappointing and predictable) ending.

Quote:

i fought against black horror few times until i found strategy to beat it.

Did that involve buffing, hitting, healing, rinse and repeat? Don't bother answering, the question is rhetorical.

Jeff must have made this game with 8 year old Korean boys in mind. It's ridiculously hard, while treating the player like a petulant retard.

Just one example from my own experiences. I wanted to gain an audience with the Giant Queen, and was told it would be almost impossible to storm the front gate. So I decided to take the back entrance, and got stuck with those ridiculous and incredibly contrived trials. The first trial involves you being forced to stand next to the 'Pole of Punishment', which is far less kinky than it sounds, while four giant slingers throw rocks at your more frail party members.

Think you can run to get a better tactical position? Well, you're wrong. If you try that, you fail the test.

And while you're trying to deal with the four hundred hp giants, out comes a god damned 2,000 hp drake (on normal difficulty). Not only does it receive two attacks of frost breath, it emanates an ice aura, which hits for about 60hp. Damn, I'll have to move my mages out of the way, but oops, I forgot, I can't move them away from the Pole of Punishment. I just have to let them sit there.

Now, here's where it gets even better. You don't pass the trial based on how much damage you endure (or how many turns you spend in there), you pass it when you kill all of your enemies. Which sort of conflicts with what the intention of the trial is, that is, TO TAKE PUNISHMENT.

So after my four hundreth try, I screamed "F this!" and decided to take the front route. I picked away at the giant slingers, and made it to the hidden wall. I went to click on the brick, and...

I didn't have enough tool use?

God damn!

Luckily I had a few spare skill points, so I just managed to pump tool use up to the required level. Go through the secret wall to find the gate wheel, and...

I don't have enough strength?!

God damn you, A5!!!

[Randomizer]

The Giant Castle was a test of intelligence. The Pole of Punishment test ends when you kill the drake. But there are tricks to make it easier besides the brutal kill the slingers (which do less damage than in earlier beta testing). Control foe is always your friend by making them fight amongst themselves. Daze is another way to reduce damage.

 

Still Jeff made the monster health higher than most of us expected. I used up energy potions like water to recharge during major battles in the last few areas. Try fighting your way through the Darkside Loyalist lands because you missed letting one of them live. It was hours of grinding and retreating to recharge to preserve potions for the last battle.

 

Players hated A4's fights so Jeff went to another exteme.

[Ghaldring]

Randomizer:

Quote:

Control foe is always your friend by making them fight amongst themselves. Daze is another way to reduce damage.

 

What, you think I didn't try that?