Elyssaen

Am I remembering right that the G1 Awakened wanted you to use the Geneforge? That's a decent enough plan – if the PC was canonically as successful as Trajkov post-Geneforge, and stayed loyal to the Awakened... okay, not a trivial ask... that could've won everything for them. Arguably, trying to cultivate a benevolent 'ascendant' in G1 is sadly the best plan the servile rights faction has in any Geneforge game. I admit my memory's a bit fuzzy but many of the later plans for the servile rights factions are wrapped up in drakons and people who are already mad, not just who might become so.

Torment Agent demo done! Ended up with 4839 XP, 18 more than the Guardian, but with a catch: I didn't end in any Iron Bars... damn you Randomizer for putting that in my head. If I do that I'd be at 5079 XP. Highlights: 1. Never made a creation at all. Not really a big deal for an Agent though there were a few times it would've been useful. 2. Luring Grubbhins back to the essence pool where I could finally spam Airshock. I could've lured him to a pylon but dammit I didn't want to. (I did do that with the level ~15 Thahd in the upper area though.) 3. Killing the Baffled Glaahk by hitting him with one Searer and then playing hide and seek with him, and repeating until he died of acid. I want to re-run the Shaper demo at Torment to see how he, err, shapes up. Agents and Guardians felt pretty balanced with one another, even more so had the Agent shape in the few occasions it would've made sense to. It's nice that Guardians can get that sword, and Agents can get Airshock early. I wish the demo was a bit longer... I think the original G2 demo had the full valley?

The reason I had to learn to stop overthinking it is because my automatic way of playing an RPG is to avoid level-appropriate content and chase the hardest thing I can reach... and that's the situation that generates both challenge and a noticeable XP shortfall. If you play more normally I don't think it's ever really a problem! What are you all planning to play for your (first?) playthrough of Infestation? I definitely think this is the time for Guardians. I'm hoping I can focus a fair bit in Battle Shaping and take advantage of how the new mechancis allow you to specialise and throw away creations. I'm excited to try out the new creation as well!

How's everyone found the demo? What do you think of the new Weapon Shaping system, and have you decided what type of character you'll play? Also, I'm really curious how much XP you had at the end of the demo. My Shaper on Veteran ended up at level 5 with 4951 XP, and my Guardian on Torment just scraped level 5 with 4821 XP. Not sure if I've missed something with the Guardian or just did things in a less optimal order for XP. I try not to think too much about XP gain order because if I remember rightly, Geneforge has never been had 'XP commutativity' and overthinking that is a dark path[*]. It's early days to say how I feel about Weapon Shaping. It's definitely a big improvement, but at the moment I'm not sure about the decisions of what to use when and it's still very noticeable that Guardians can't deal with groups (yet). My Shaper definitely still had a lot more options, but that's Shapers for you. Guarded Lunge does get very powerful though – seems you can get it to Level 4 just in the demo, for 155% damage. I haven't quite settled on the right way to use which abilities as a Guardian: Lunge is cheap and powerful, War Infusion is kind of a round 1 buff, and Guardian Push alternating with Thahd stuns got me through a few more difficult encounters. I never got War Blessing for my Guardian but think I really should. Lastly, being able to get a particularly powerful weapon in the demo was pretty critical to feeling competitive with Shapers... think you're stuck with a Bronze Sword otherwise? And was that weapon available so early in the original G2? It's been a while since I played. [*] How much XP you get from an event depends on your level. If you had two events, one giving 50 XP and one giving 100 XP, and whichever you get first will level you up, then getting them in a different order might give you a different XP total. If you overthink this you'll totally ruin the game for yourself...

I really like this. I've thought it'd be fun if there were different playstyles with creations, including a way to focus on disposability more. Being able to shape an Unstable Thahd or similar mid-fight could be a useful option, especially for Guardians. As you say as well, absorbing your own creations tactically would be a new dimension to the choices you make. Something else would be if a way to absorb some essence from your creations on death (maybe via an artifact level item), which could synergise well with being able to shape in combat to open up new playstyles. I'm not too sure about this one. On the one hand, if creations can do more and more magic, then magic loses value and shaping becomes too strong. On the other hand, conversely, support creations could sometimes be more of a buff to Guardians and Agents rather than Shapers, depending on how they're designed. Being able to heal surrounding allied creations is going to specifically buff Shapers though, I'd rather see a support creation that can sit back and buff one target – a Guardian would love that. I'd be on board with some stuff like that. Mutagen seems to have a lot of long range attacks and huge AOEs that mean positioning often doesn't feel that important. Environmental hazards like you describe could make positioning much more important and make for even more interesting gameplay sometimes. I think that might be a bit too much complexity! I think instead my #1 wishlist item for Geneforge 2 (*) is for more diversification of existing creation roles, esp. the upgraded versions. The Battle Beta is an excellent example. The optional active/passive abilities mean that the Beta could be a very different beast than the Alpha – maybe the Alpha's a shock troop and the Beta's a tank/support? I wouldn't want to see Alphas, Betas and Gammas but them not be meaningfully different. Whereas if we have 1) more differentiation between upgraded versions than Mutagen, 3) rebalance of any stragglers that don't get used much (Pyroroamer?), 3) the Tier 4 creations G2 already has and 4) one more original creation like the Cockatrice, there's honestly going to be an enormous amount of choice. (*) Except for the stuff Jeff has already said is coming, around more options for martial combat.

I've just started playing this last week, reminded about the release by a Spiderweb email about the next one's Kickstarter. I fought the Cockatrice very early, and the only way I could find to beat it was to open with Searer and then have Unstable Thahds pounce on it, killing it in one turn and then having my Shaper run for his life from the Battle Alphas. That got me thinking that unstable creations could be useful for excessively powerful enemies, and since I then decided to bee-line straight for the endgame area at level 10–12 for the Cockatrice Research, I figured I'd need that trick a lot and that Pyroroamers would be an upgraded way to do it. So I did use them quite a bit, though I'm doubting they were worth using over Unstable Thahds. I haven't compared the damage output, but the Thahd's ability to leap is really valuable for getting that damage safely onto the enemies and not onto my Shaper. Pyroroamers got me killed a lot, unfortunately. [EDIT: how did I miss that Pyroroamers have a leap too?!] I also liked the idea of Belchblast as an especially powerful cone attack, but the low level and volatile fragility of Pyroroamers means it rarely felt worth using them for anything but immediate suicide. In the end, a brief detour to steal a Glaahk canister from Diarazad gave me a better way of handling things. If stealth failed I'd take enemies one by one and stun lock them with two Ur-Glaahks. If this is the crypt entrance in Diarazad, I just fought that a few minutes ago! I wish I'd thought of going back to unstable creations for it, that would've made my life a lot easier. : )

I used to love Warcraft 2. After a school day spent with crude-minded, shallow children, I'd come home and immerse myself in an epic with a masterful, charismatic score by Glenn Stafford. I liked Warcraft 3. I didn't love it. Something of the charisma of Warcraft was sapped out of it as it became glossier and lost a grasp of the simple things. Then World of Warcraft came out. And the crude-minded, shallow children had followed me home. The epic stories were gone forever, replaced with shallow quest-grinding and a stark disrespect for my time. The simple things had disappeared without a trace. Twelve years passed. Of course there was no Warcraft 4. Of course it got no better. Now I read things like "The Warcraft series started as a real-time strategy game. Hard to believe, I know". And a part of me dies inside all over again. Don't. Make. Multiplayer. Spiderweb. Games. Jeff Vogel is one of the few game developers whose head is still in the golden era of gaming. Don't take that away.

Ah, we're just talking about a misunderstanding of a sentence then. We agree: I was saying shades and ghosts aren't the same, which is true. But when you said "can" and "never souls of the dead", I misinterpreted you as meaning there were no actual souls of the dead. So yep, we're on the same page. The resource intensive theory is interesting. I definitely picked up on a lack of quick-Shaping serviles in any scene. We know very inexperienced Litalia made a whole bunch but not if it took vats. But is it getting to into the metagame to ask why ur-drakons can be quick-Shaped but not serviles?

I think you might need a very palatable vlish. No, more... tasty. More than tasty. What's the word I'm after...

I'd do it if I was a immoral Shaper in Geneforge 5's full-blown war. Quick-Shape a few adult humans: apparently they'll have the innate ability to walk right away, as we never needed to teach our fyoras to walk. Select ones with Shaping potential, absorb the others. Train skilled indoctrinated Shapers very quickly, who you can re-absorb if needed. Throw a control tool in if you're Rawal.

Hyena, I've recently binged on 2-5 and I think it's clarified somewhere that shades aren't the same as the ghosts of the dead. It's also explicitly said by one NPC that only human ghosts are encountered – not serviles or thahds. A good example of ghosts are the victims at Dead Pass in Geneforge 2. They're not the same sort of creature as the shades at the Shade Patrol in the same game: they don't even look the same. Ghosts have a translucent version of their appearance in life, whereas shades are more featureless. I think the answer is that creations must lack a 'soul', but I always saw it as implied that soul and essence were related, and we know serviles can have at least some essence. I think it's possible that serviles and drakons (which definitely have essence, as well as presumably their drank predecessors) can becom ghosts, but it just hasn't happened yet. If serviles can't become ghosts it makes the theory that serviles were Shaped from humans originally (a G1 NPC's theory, I read) slightly suspect. Then again, I find that odd anyway: if serviles are Shaped from humans, and if they can be quick-Shaped on the fly like the PC's creations, why has no-one quick-Shaped humans from scratch?

Which Geneforge is this? (Also, have you noticed that some alternative user name suggestions – including Gmail I think – like to suggest [WhatYouWanted]_taco? Maybe you can explain the Taco obsession to me.)

I was looking for any formulae behind this. I decided to replay G5 with a servile and am having fun and games with Talis-Eye's submission turrets. (Aside: also just with Talis-Eye in general.) I've been obsessively trying to save/load and beat a single one for ages now. Only it can hit me, all I need is to resist stunlock for one turn to win. 52% stun resist. I'm not saying I think that's a high stun resist, or that it should work most of the time... but it hasn't worked once. Not once. In a ridiculous number of tries, I've destroyed two submission turrets. The first time, base level Parry kicked in. The second time? Submission Turret takes 107 points of cold damage. Bal is stunned. Bal takes 51 points of physical damage. (73 blocked.) Bal is stunned. Submission Turret is covered with acid. Submission Turret takes 93 points of physical damage. (20 blocked.) Wait, what? I didn't attack with acid. That had to be your own Burning Turret turning on you. It is literally more likely for the enemy to take pity on me and randomly start killing each other than it is for stun resist to do anything ever. Does anyone know what the formulae are for calculating whether or not you get stunned? I need to decide either whether to try to pump it up because it's too low, or just ignore it because it has no effect.

But my point is, there are always going to be bad eggs. Is Rawal, say, a bad egg because he's a Shaper? I don't think he is. I think if you removed the Shaper Council, the technology would still have been discovered and there'd still be just as many bad eggs. The counter-argument, that perhaps the Shaper Council inspire Barzahlic behaviours, would be interesting and might have merit though – I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate and slipping into the first interesting stance I saw to take. I can't speak about Gnorrel. I much preferred Greta's Rebellion to the ur-drakons, but I'm not sure what her vision for society was. I decided to replay G5 instead of rush to G1 (I'm considering stalling G1 until a remake, but probably won't manage), so will interrogate G5's Greta a bit soon. It's perfectly reasonable if she was focused on just winning the war – I think they're morally justified to revolt even without a clear plan for a better society. But in terms of ultimate vision for dealing with the problem of a world where Shaping is possible, the servile enslavement issue is a blip. It's a huge, tragic blip, but most Shapers didn't know it was slavery of a free-minded species and the Shaper vision can and must evolve past the blip, free the serviles and stop creating anything with free will. The safeguarding of Shaping is bigger – it's a philosophically murky, eternal problem. And I think the Shaper Council is, as Blxz said, basically right. The Trakovite world would be worse, and a triumphant Awakened/human Rebellion would need to construct something Shaper Council-like to re-establish that safeguarding. (Aside: I'm really tempted to post a thread inviting people to rank all the game's little-s shapers on a few measures of power/skill. I'm dying to have conversations about Alwan vs. Rahul on power, Rawal vs. Barzahl on ingenuity, etc. Has it been done to death here already?)

I'm not saying they weren't Shapers. I'm saying, if the Shaper Council didn't exist, wouldn't the likes of Barzahl, Agatha and Monarch have Shaped anyway? This is a setting where an individual can gain incredible personal power, and in a short time – look at Shaila, and none of us even think she was all that gifted in the grand scheme of things. In that kind of setting, Barzahlic behaviour is always going to happen. Overall, does the existence of the Council make abominations of Shaping more or less likely? You can't blame the Shapers for having bad eggs: only for a] having a bad philosophy, or b] for making bad eggs more likely than they already were.