Dragonboy

It is incorrect to say that the whole thing hinged on merely the Avernum's knowledge of the cave system, while an important factor, it is abundantly clear from the entirety of A2 that the Empire did have a big problem teleporting troops down. That's what they were trying to fix with massive teleporter. And the Empire did give up. I'm pretty sure it says so at the beginning of A3 and pretty much indicates so at the end of A2 in that you don't end the war as much as severely inconvenience the Empire. I mean, come on, the Empire could've killed one of avernumite for ten of themselves and still easily come out on top. In fact, they already decimated nearly half of Avernum in A2. It was just a matter of the top brass saying, "Yeah, this isn't worth our blood and time," for the fight to really end. That's what killing Garzad did. Prazac took over she said enough is enough. And yeah, it isn't a perfect comparison but comparison are fun. And I don't mean to delegitimize Avernum's victory in any way. Unlike strategy games have taught us, real wars do not necessarily end with one side conquering the other. In fact, most wars don't. Avernum most certainly won the war, no question. It just that its objective in the war, to keep the Empire out of their land, was different than the Empire's, which was to conquer it. Avernum achieved its objective with flying colors. Bit if you flipped their two objectives with Avernum trying to conquer the Empire's land, its completely obvious who would've won that war.

Let's be honest here. The only reason why the Avernumites 'won' the war with the Empire was the exact same reason the United States 'won' against the British. The British could have steamrolled the Americas if they wanted too. They had the numbers and the training. The reason they 'lost' was because the war was too much of pain to fight a thousand miles across the sea for years on end. Basically the only thing America had to do was put enough of fight that the British said, "Forget it, you can have it." It's the same with avernum and the Empire. All Avernum did was put up enough of a fight that the Empire finally said, "Forget it, keep your dingy caves. We didn't want them anyway." Now that I think about it, there's a lot of parrels between the two. The United States are the Avernumites, originally belonging to the Empire but developed their own identity. Britain is of course the oppressive Empire, with king George as Hawthorne himself. They fight a long war over a thousand miles away over seas rather than a thousand miles down. America 'wins' by being a pain in the rear and the Empires leaves in a huff. In the end, years later, they become good friends. Guess that makes the French the vahnhati.

I agree with your first point but I disagree with the second. Khyrrk and especially Agatha prove my point rather than disprove it. As long as we see that it's possible to teleport there's no reason we can't assume that the Empire is simply more advanced in that area. And Slarty? It seems implied from E/A2 that the Empire can't build an Mass Teleporter without it being extremely unstable and potentially dooming the universe in a case of complete failure. I'm not the Empire wants to go make another one of those again especially without a onyx scepter in hand. Could be a MAD (mutually assured destruction) option I guess.

I don't think they're on the same world. Obviously they are not. But for the purpose of our discussion we have to know the logistics. An overseas war is the most easy way to imagine a clash between the two. A somewhat more realistic option would be a portal between both worlds but then the portal itself becomes a huge variable. How big is it? Does it need a cooldown period? Is it random or can it be set to certain places? Everything could hinge on how the portal works and less on the respective countries. Shaping has to do with person not the world. I can't see why it wouldn't work in the empire, unless your saying that they would change pysicaly on a different world. And Maybe both of them can do the same magic but their methods of learning magic are different so they have different spells. That's why the Empire has teleportation and the Shapers have shaping. Nowhere does it say they can't teleport. Maybe they simply don't know how.

I don't use them for healing, but I guess I could see some people using them. Regardless, health recovers automatically in Avadon rapidly out of combat and in combat 7 health points can only get you so far. It suddenly occurred to me that health regeneration could be a function of difficulty. On easier modes health could regenerate faster and on Torment it wouldn't regenerate at all.

Speaking of food, could it be less pointless this time around? The only game where food made any real difference was Avernum 6 and even then it was extremely negligible since Jeff provided a lot more than was need to finish everything in the game. I dunno what you could do with them (maybe a long-winded cooking sidequest?) but they seem to be only there for appearance sake and I think it would be great if something so essential for our lives played a more interesting part in-game. I'm not suggesting to force the characters to eat every six hours, that would be boring and pointless. Maybe set the game in a famine setting have the characters collect the limited amount of in-game food for the Pact or other villages which your choices having a drastic effect in the plot or just the shape of the game as a whole with villages without food dying out, sort of A3ish with the plagues. You could even make it recurring, that the characters have to provide enough food each week or month or people start dying slowly (Very slowly and with forewarning, I don't like to feel rushed in-game. I'd just like to have decisions mean something.)

I think you have to take in mind the size of these conglomerates. The Empire, if from what I recall, was spread over four continents (I"m not sure if that was verified in game or not) and you only see HALF of Valorium which was supposedly the least settled of the continents (Again, I'm not sure I'm mixing fan lore and game lore or not so feel free to correct me). The Shapers have one continent (in game, somewhere in the saga, it mentions there are two continents but Jeff retconned it out of existence in some thread). The Pact is also only one continent as far as I know, and only most of it, not all. That gives the Empire a huge advantage in manpower. As far as Rentar's shaping vs the Shaper's shaping I don't think you give the Shapers enough credit. They COULD'VE made plagues like Rentar did, but they didn't because it would be insane to let dangerous plagues loose in their own land. You see plenty of plague like spawners in the series, like Monarch and the Creator from G3, that could easily match up to Rentar's stuff in done on a larger scale. Rentar had no reason to hold back the viciousness of her plagues because they took place in the Empire's land, not hers. I wonder how you presume these entities will meet. I'm assuming that the Empire discovers the Shapers' continent a hundred miles off the coast of Valorium, but it could also be that the two are thousands of miles apart divided by the sea. That would drastically increase the length of the war (portals are a horrible way to wage war as we've all seen) and give the Shapers a huge leg up because the Shapers are the most adaptable and inventive of anyone and that even with their strict rules governing their powers. We see them invent new creations and spells in a short time to match the threat they face but we haven't seen that with the Empire or the Pact. I personally think the Empire would win, but given a long war, the Shapers could stand a chance. Oh, and Empire VS Shapers crossover game? Jeff make it happen!!! (Sorry Avadon fans.)

Agreed. Items are not inherently bad. On lower difficulties they can be quite effective, especially if your party isn't well balanced. It's only to us nutty min/max players where there's trouble, because it is easy to calculate that items are inferior in damage comapared to maxed out skills. I applaud Jeff for throwing a powerful life line to new players while still keeping the difficulty for Us veterans.

I agree that it might cause more hoarding, but it shouldn't. The problem with wands and scrolls is they don't scale like the actual skills do so their usage by the end game is pretty limited anyway. Why would you keep a scroll of ice bolt when it does 30 damage until endgame? The only really useful items at end game are restoration potions, revive life scrolls, fatigue potions, and those buffing crystals that give you buffs you can't get by yourself. I'd actually like if there was someway to scale their damage, perhaps a separate skill, allowing wands and scrolls to make a more noticeable difference in combat. That being said, I probably wouldn't use them anyway. I virtually never use consumable items unless I have too and I found spiderweb software games are rarely so difficult that it forces you to use them, even on torment. Can't say I'd mind if they did though.

The only problem is sticking mutiple character's screens together, but I think with the advent of the junk bag and the extra inventory I mentioned above we wouldn't need large inventories anymore for each character.

That kind of loses the individuality of the characters. Although I do agree it would be easier, if everyone could grab whatever potion they need from the 'inventory cloud' there would be no need to set up characters with the right potions or scrolls. That would take away from part of the game. Perhaps there should be an in-combat inventory, which allows you only to use things in one's inventory, and a out-of-combat inventory screen which show all the characters inventory's combined with maybe an extra one for random things. That way you could easily set up your stuff out of combat and still require some strategic thinking in regards to set up. That all said, it makes me kind of sad that I enjoy the whole 'items in inventory don't way anything unless equipped.' It avoids all the hassle of back-to-town runs and inventory management, but man does it makes me feel like a gaming wimp.

Ditto. That's why I do side quests in the first place.

Nah, G2 pretty much forced you to go Shaper, Awakened, Bazites, Takers. The only way you could make it to the Barzites was if you had prior knowledge of the areas because you are forced to run through three hostile zones to gath and then another three to the Barzites main town, packed with monsters way beyond your level. I highly doubt anyone got to the Barzites before the awakened on their first try. Also, the Takers were pretty much end game stuff being stuck in the northwest mountains. I won't deny it was better system that the later games though. It felt a lot less like you were forced into specific areas and to do specific things.

I suppose for Role playing purposes, I shouldn't let my slithzerikai wear pants next time I play Avernum or maybe mine are just enlightened to the joy of a truly well-tailored pair of pants. "Fellow Slithzerikai of Gnass! I come to you from a long distance to tell you I have worn pants and they are awesome!"

I'm surprised no one mentioned the big one yet: The Geneforge itself. It was highly disappointing to never get to use the Geneforge again (no the geneforges in 4 and 5 do not count). I would've loved to see as an optional ending in 5 to build your own Geneforge from scratch. You'd have to spend the game stealing information on the creation of the Geneforge from Rebel and Shaper archives alike and gather all the materials yourself. Then you could decide to use it just for yourself, after which you strike down both the Shaper council and Ghaldring, or choose to let everyone use it, giving an sort of worldwide nuclear fallout scenario for an ending. As it was, the geneforge, literally the title of the games, was used far more as just a initial plot device that set all five games in motion than something you actually dealt with in game.

I always thought it weird when area effects and spray attack spells animation would play and would hit everyone besides my characters in the center. I'm glad to see you're taking a different route with Torment this time around, Jeff. I always hated when I was forced to wilt away thousands of points of health for dozens of turns. (Remember the slitherikai from Avernum 6 on Torment? Pure horrors). Anything that makes the game more difficult without making it more tedious is a plus in my book. Anything you do to make the game more realistic is going to up the difficulty. You've started with spells but you can include other things too. For example you could make characters have a penalty to dodging when flanked by two or more enemies. (I don't care how much dexterity you have. If I'm surrounding you on all for sides, I'm going to hit you. 5% chance my foot). Or you could give a penalty to characters with low health to their damage dealt, dodging ability, and mental resistance. Like 100% health would allow you to do full damage but 1% health would mean you only do 50% damage. It is kind of weird that you can do full damage no matter how close you're to death. Also a smarter AI could make things a lot harder. For example, on normal archers and mages hiding in the back would target everyone. On tricky, they'd target spell casters. On Torment, they'd focus fire on the single character with the most spell levels. They could use the terrain more, like blocking off passages while their ranged attackers pelted you instead of a head on charge. Oh, a pet peeve of mine. Could we start off with pants on all our characters? While its high amusing to think my character(s) is strolling around in his underwear, it's also kind of ridiculous to be strolling around for the first two hours of the game looking for a pair of pants. Man, this game has barely been announced and it already sounds awesome. Keep up the good work Jeff! And thanks for taking feedback from your fans!