Rya.Reisender

But you see, the problem is not getting the wrong suggestions because the requirements weren't clear enough, but rather that the people just don't know the hidden gems. If I'm more specific, the replies will eventually stop. That's the whole problem. If you like a specific niche and only few games are released, you will hear about every single game, but there's nothing you actually want to play. If there are too many games released, there are games you'd like to play, but you'll never hear about them unless you are lucky. I've been through both phases now. 2010-2013 being the "no good games anymore" phase and 2013-2015 being the "too many games released so you can never find the one you're looking for" phase.

For me the main differences are: - Shining Force is mostly a game of exploration with SRPG battles in between, you can walk around between battles and it features many secret characters you can find only by doing specific actions in towns and there are tons of secret passages and well hidden treasure chests, finding all those secrets is at least half the game (in Fire Emblem, towns are simply a camp menu) - Shining Force is for the quick challenge, you don't have to worry about long-term challenges like your items breaking or your characters dying and Shining Force allows you to grind by escaping a battle and trying it again while keeping all the Exp and Gold earned, in Fire Emblem you can actually get stuck in the game and have to restart from scratch because half your party is dead and you don't have enough money to buy the good equip you need - The gameplay in Shining Force is generally a lot more fluent, your characters get selected automatically when it's their turn, you just need to move them and input commands which works in a really quick menu, it also feels more balanced because it's not one side getting to act all at once and you don't need to think too much about your possibilities, in Fire Emblem you often have to think for minutes which character to even move first and plan ahead a lot So yeah, basically all aspects I like about Shining Force are not even partially present in Fire Emblem. On topic: Another thing I want to point out is that I've quite opposed to Steam, I refuse to even register there. But I find it also really hard to find DRM-free games. Well, everything put on GoG obviously (I probably have bought half the games available on GoG by now), but GoG doesn't really get many titles, so it's still quite limited. Humble Store used to have a lot of DRM-free stuff, but this year at least 95% of the games released there are Steam-only. Several developers use Humble Widget to sell their game on their own website, the problem is that I never hear about their games that way, since it'll never on up on any release list. So yeah, even though probably several more games exist that I'd love to play, I will never hear about them and that's really a shame. Which brings me your last question: Well let's rephrase this to "How do you try to find games you like?". As of right now, my main source is GoG. I know if I game is released on GoG it's DRM-free and almost all games released on GoG are really good. I guess they get quite carefully handpicked by GoG. But that also means that many games do not get on GoG, even though I'd probably like at least every 20th game of these. So how do I find those? The second step I do is check new DRM-free releases on Humble Store as well as bundles, but that doesn't yield much anymore (the good DRM-free games on HB are almost always also released on GoG these days, and that's still only 2 per week). So then, my third source is the website IndieRPGs.com. That website is really good and I think it's actually something Jeff wished for in that article. A lot of unknown hidden indie gems are presented there, not too frequently, but thanks to him I found out about some games I really loved that I'd never have found otherwise. I think that website right now gets closest to a website that carefully handpicks hidden gems nobody knows about and presents them. My final source are developer websites, at least as long as I can remember them. For example after liking Reus really a lot, I started frequenting the abbeygames forums every month, so now I for example know they are about to release their new game Renowned Explorers. The problem is that this is a rarity. If the developer lets his forums die off by never posting any news for months, then I will simply stop visiting the forums and eventually completely forget about it. It's just too hard to keep all the different websites in your head that you want to visit every month. Heck, I only remembered about these forums here because I saw people discussing Avernum on GoG! These forums are actually a good example. I got to know Avernum by a Humble Bundle. Because I liked it so much, I registered on these forums to not forgot to check upcoming projects. But y'know, when a long time nothing interesting happens, I stop frequenting them. Now imagine that Crystal Souls wouldn't have shown up on GoG or websites, how would I have ever remember to check in again? If you only have one favorite developer, you won't really forget about him. But if you have 200 indie developers that could potentially release something interesting for you, you just can't anymore.

Back on topic: My comment on this topic is that... yes it's really hard to find games for me these days in general. There are many titles, but that's not the problem from gamer-perspective by itself. If there are more titles I can simply increase my demands by limiting myself to games I actually really enjoy instead of having to buy random games because I'm bored. The problem for me is that when I want to limit myself on games I really enjoy, I simply have no means to find these games, even though they exist! Say if I search for an SRPG that plays as much like Shining Force as possible. I can't do that. What can I even search for? If I search via google I only find the titles I already knew about. If I ask on forums, people will just tell me the popular games but never the hidden gems (guys, Fire Emblem is not even remotely like Shining Force!), because they don't know them themselves or can't think of them. Heck, I can't even find a game that I know exists anymore, when I don't know its exact title and even if I know the title, if it's a too common combination of words, it's still not coming up on google or iOS store (well that's a topic on its own, it doesn't even allow to filter for genre or available languages)! Ugh. So while I'm happy that now even very specific games I like are released, it kind of doesn't help me when I can't find them. Why world? ;-;

It's pretty easy to differentiate between nerd and geek because geeks wear their shirts above their pants while nerds put them inside their pants.

I have physical issues (permanent pain for months over a large part of my body and nobody really knows what it is) that cause mental issues (feeling exhausted all the day, unable to move, wondering if it makes sense to even carry on with all the pain and if it'll ever go away, unable to concentrate, etc.), but I'm pretty much immune to mental issues themselves as I have a quite strong psyche.

I also didn't really like Avadon. The worst part about it is that you only have 3 characters, though. It makes combat really boring. 4 is the minimum I can still live with. Would prefer 6. Couldn't really get into GeneForge, summoning was never really my thing. I enjoyed Nethergate a lot, but Avernum Remakes are still my favorites.

I think the new engine will mostly be for interface improvements since he sounded very convinced that his graphics style is already perfect fit for what he wants his games to be.

Randomness has disadvantages and advantages. The main disadvantage is that a single miss can change the flow of the combat and there will always be a small chance that you will die even though you didn't do any mistakes. It does not actually reduce the tactical component, it just changes it. Instead of just thinking which move is best, with randomness involved, you also need to calculate all possible outcomes in your head, it makes things actually a lot more complex. Not everybody's cup of tea. Also I wouldn't calculate the influence on hit rate based on average damage. 95% hit means on average every 20th hit will miss. 90% hit means that on average every 10th hit will miss. That it double the chance to have a miss scenario and that means double as often you need to react on that failure. It can have a huge impact butterfly-effect-like. Usually I don't really like randomness very much myself. It just makes games too complex for me and I'm having trouble keeping all the possible outcomes in my head. It made games like Battle for Wesnoth incredibly hard for me to win. I just wasn't able to position my leader so that no matter how bad the result he can't die. But sometimes randomness seems interesting, especially when I play a Pen & Paper(-like) game, because it really seems to dictate where the game is going and makes it more unpredictable and interesting.

I also suggest to just ignore the old Avernum games and dive straight into the remakes Escape From The Pit and then Crystal Souls.

It's available on GoG now. :-)

Update! Escape From The Pit is now available on GoG. http://www.gog.com/news/release_bavernum_escape_from_the_pitb

On Steam you don't even buy any games, you only buy a license to play the game. You have to agree that Steam can remove your license to play the game at any time without any reason or prior notice. Also Steam does NO refunds at all. Even if the whole game is not working at all, their support will completely ignore you and just send the standard "we don't do refunds" reply. That's why games on Steam are usually cheapest, but in terms of service and freedom it's probably the worst option. Buying games directly from Spiderweb is the opposite. Highest possible freedom and service you will ever find for digital games, but most expensive. And Humble Bundle / GoG are a middle-way.

My point was more that they won't release remakes if they can have the original. The Witcher 3 and Divinity: Original Sin are not remakes of a previous game but a brand new game. Yes, GoG does release new games as well. It seems that their requirement for new games is that they are somewhat between the RPG and Point & Click Adventure genres (for example Freedom Planet is not on there as a pure platformer, platformers with RPG elements are however). Though the real irony here is that Avernum 1-6 are also remakes.

It's normal GoG policy to only offer originals of games and never remakes. The 'o' in GoG stands for "old" after all. (That's why for example they also don't have Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition. Apart from the fact that nobody wants it anyway.) Of course for Avernum it's kind of strange because it is quite a bit more than a remake. I guess Jeff didn't communicate it like that to them, though. You can always open a GoG petition on the wishlist for the game. If there are enough people that want it, there is a chance that they reconsider.

The options in the poll are really not so good, it would probably be better to have no poll at all and just let people reply. =p So I will do just that: 1. Singleplayer mostly. Sometimes when a game is very very simple so even my father can understand it, I enjoy playing it together with him. Would require a local multiplayer or LAN support, though. I don't really like multiplayer when I'm playing with people I don't know. Only exception are MMORPGs because there my goal is to actually make friends. 2. Generally I'd claim that people DO care for all aspects, just how demanding they are in each aspect is variable. For me it's: Graphics - I prefer 2D graphics. I'm usually fine with everything that's 8-bit or 16-bit-looking. I also prefer top-down square-grid-based over isometric (that's pretty much 2.5D already). However, sprites should be displayed as slighlty from the side (so you can see the body) instead of fully top-down (just seeing the head and shoulders). Another style I really like is 2D sprites or photorealistic backgrounds. What I don't like so much with graphics is when a game has a rotatable camera. That often ruins it for me. That's why I generally try to stay away from 3D games. However, there are a few exception. I see the appeal in some first person games as first person perspective is interesting for immersion (Shining in the Darkness, Legend of Grimrock, Mirror's Edge, Portal 1&2, Might&Magic). I prefer square grid movement in first person games more than free movement. So yeah there are quite a few styles that I like and I wouldn't consider myself as a person who thinks graphics are important. But it can be that graphics completely turn me away from a game. Graphics were also the reason why I never bought any Spiderweb games until they appeared on Humble Bundle. But now after playing several, I must say I enjoyed them despite the graphic style. Music - It's not even in your list but for me, music is the most important aspect of a game. It's not even conscious, but I noticed that all my favorite games have also my favorite OSTs, so music actually seems to be the main influence on how much I like a game. Again the actual taste is quite relevant here. I prefer two style of game music. One is the melody-driven music... as in all melodies are memorable and you totally want to whistle along them and remember the melodies even years later. The other style I like is trance-electro style (think of Valkyrie Profile). I'm more into electro music than classic so anything electric is a big plus. What I don't like is most of the modern music in big titles that is just "epic noise". It sounds important and strong, but it's just missing anything notable. After playing the game I already forgot about it again usually. In Spiderweb games the lack of music was probably the biggest turn off for me while playing, I do have to say that the music that plays on the start screen is actually pretty good in all the titles I played. Spiderweb games are a bit different, they don't have notable melodies, but they do have "music" in the sense of town noises and cave noises and so on. I wouldn't neglect that because it certainly helps building the mood. In fact, I tried playing Spiderweb games while running my favorite electro music in the background and it actually proved to be a mood killer. So the decision to not have music actually isn't such a bad move after all for this type of game. However, it's not what I REALLY love. Still better than epic noise in AAA titles, though. Gameplay stuff - You put combat as a separate think but I think that belong in here. There are two things that are important for me regarding the gameplay: Combat (including character growth, stats, monster stats, everything that belongs to part of the strategic combat decisions as well as the actual combat gameplay) and exploration. If the game has good combat that is both fun and requires me to think a little without being overly complicated (I call it: "Simple, but hard") and a great sense of exploration, it has good chances being a game I really love. This has almost the same imporance as music does. Story - That's quite a difficult topic as well. From my thread "I hate towns" you are probably aware that I'm not the fan of reading dialogues AT ALL. The best games for me are games where the whole story is maybe 20-50 lines of dialogue and not more. Does that mean story is completely irrelevant to me? Close, but not quite! The real challenge is to have only 20-50 lines of dialogue and still have a great story. I want to feel important, I want to feel that what I'm doing is what I actually want to do. I also want to feel immersed, that I'm that hero. There have been so many RPGs lately that had such a generic plot and setting that I just wasn't interested in playing them at all. Though I guess the major factor is still the exploration. As long as there is strong sense of exploration, I don't really need any story. I go into a mountain area and see a hole in the stone wall leading to a huge underground cave? I go inside just to explore it! I don't even need a story. There doesn't need to be a lost child who went into the cave that I have to save. My motivation is there anyway. Exploring caverns that haven't been made by humans but most likely washed out by water. Going in there... it's exciting! Who needs story or quest for that? Pah. Honestly I'm always suprised how many people say they think story is important for games, because for me it's as unimportant as graphics are. These days I'm missing the good old games where you just pressed the start button and started playing. No text at all! If you wanted to know why you are jumping from platform to platform and shoot robots you actually had to read the story section in the manual. Story is totally inflated... every single genre has it. I can't even play a shoot 'em up anymore without the guys in my spaceship constantly talking, da hell. 3. What type of game I prefer most? As in genre? There are a few, and they are very different. I even surprised myself by liking genres I didn't expect to like, heh. So here are the types I like: A) Strategy RPGs (US term is TRPG)! Not just any, but pretty much exactly what Shining Force is. Simple to play, simple rules, very quick menu navigation and yet still hard. There are a few others I like like for example Vandal Hearts. But I don't like those that focus on item management, have permadeath or have "no-name characters" that you just randomly generate. So I don't really like FFT and most Nippon Ichi games too much. Fire Emblem... is close but the permadeath and item management ruins it for me. JRPGs - but just a few of them. Most just have too boring gameplay and lack of exploration for me to enjoy. Most JRPGs I enjoyed can be easily summarized by developer: Sonic Team, Camelot, tri-Ace, tri-Crescendo, Akitoshi Kawazu. If the game is not by any of those 5, it's very likely I didn't like the game. I did like FFVI and FFVII, though, but not the other FF games, maybe it can also be narrowed down to one developer, but I never really followed the staff member movements within Squaresoft. C) WRPGs - Even less here that I actually like. The problem I have with WRPGs is mostly: Too much text; they aren't really RPG but feel more like shooters; too complex to learn how to play (or the controls just suck). Why I still like the genre is that the sense of exploration and immersion is often better in them than in JRPGs. D) Horror games - That one surprised me. As child I played a few but they were hard, unforgiving and scary. I hated them. I completely stayed away from them. Until a friend talked to me which went like "You should play Silent Hill 2" "I don't like horror games." "Trust me, just play Silent Hill 2" and then I rented it at a game rental store and man I loved that game so much that I had a phase over 1 year in which I only played all the horror games there are. I must say horror games are pretty hit or miss for me, I either love them or I hate them. I understand why that is... I hate horror games that are hard and about combat, but I do like horror games that are easy (at least have a difficulty setting!) and focus more on being scary without really utilizing the threat of death too much. Also: Puzzles I guess I have to correct what I said in 2. actually. The main reason why I like horror games so much is because the way the story is told is SOOOO much better than in any RPG I've ever played. Only horror games ever actually got me to care what is written in a book I find on a shelf. So the reason why I don't care for story in RPGs is rather because they all just suck. Horror point & click adventures also belong in here. E) Speed platformers - As in all platformers that focus on you rushing through the stages. Mostly Sonic games, but there are a few others. F) Shoot 'em ups - I prefer horizontal ones, mostly Thunder Force II-IV I guess, but there are more. The only vertical shooters I ever really liked were Touhou (whole series) and Ikaruga. G) Unique puzzle/arcade games - Basicaly they are all their own genre so it's hard to describe other than mentioning them by name... here are few examples: Portal 1&2, Super Hexagon, Savant: Ascent, Bleed, Reus, Super Puzzle Platformer. And that's all. Never really liked games of other genres. 4. What types of game mechanics I like most? Well I think I've covered most above already. Summarized: - difficulty should be "simple, but hard" - a good but simple combat system (or other "challenge system", not all games have combat after all) - large scale SRPG-like battle scenarios (want to emphasize this because it actually might be my favorite type of all) - great sense of exploration - quick play (aka "I come home from work and just want to play something for 5 minutes to relax")