ex post slarto

Does the flaming sword actually do bonus flame damage in this game? It didn't in A4 (or G2-4).

I haven't opened the game yet, but I read the readme. And one thing jumped out at me: Divine Retribution has been weakened. Not nerfed, but weakened. It now does only 1-4 per level instead of 1-6, meaning that priests cannot compete with wizards for damage output in the late game (unless something resists both ice and energy). That's as it should be, I think. But I wonder what Ephesos will think.

Sigh. Darn kitties. I look forward to many interesting observations and anal analyses in the coming weeks.

In Geneforge 4, luck doesn't add to item drops, and it adds almost nothing to resistances if I remember correctly.

You know those guns-for-food exchange programs? I'm going to start a cash-cow-for-cave-cow exchange program.

So basically, you are saying you don't want to play an RPG, you want to play a text adventure; albeit one that replaces the typical esoteric puzzles with a lot of repetition of tasks.

One major change in A2 is Garzahd's weakness, to anti-demon weapons instead of Mindduel.

I know Synergy mentioned Spiderweb games in his first post, but he knows as well as you and I do that this discussion isn't really about future Spiderweb games. You're right: Avernum is what it is, and it will change and grow but it won't change this much.

Ahonaria... oh my god. Drakey must be peeing himself.

I've always hated Nethack. I feel like Aran also plays that, though...

Quote: Originally written by Synergy: This seems to be the ongoing trend. Instead of having something truly rare and spectacular, we have things becoming more accessible and more nerfed, common, and averaged. I prefer and keep arguing more for the former, with legendary items, super swords, and a couple of super offense/defense spells or wands. That's not necessarily what we are getting, however. Quoted for truth and agreement.

I do find it interesting that Angband is so popular here. You, me, and Alorael, at any rate, compared to Aran's lonely cries of ADOM.

I would vote to keep it here as well. Although it is perhaps of general interest, the length and style of some of the posts makes me worried it may go the way of Synergy's last debate topic. I would actually argue that hack-and-slash is not all filler. Recently I've had occasion (at work, no less) to play a number of RPGs and pseudo-RPGs made over the last 15 years for Nintendo's handheld systems -- the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. All of these games possess some kind of system that scales the potential field of gameplay to a vastly larger size. The Pokemon and Dragon Warrior Monsters games allow you to build up not three or six PCs, but hundreds of them, if you want to. (Pokemon, I was very surprised to discover, also has a battle system with a superb ratio of depth to complexity.) Mega Man Battle Network has a CCG-like system whereby you can constantly improve your character one element at a time, for an exceedingly large number of elements. There are the actual CCG games like YuGiOh, which work the same way. And then there are the roguelike Mystery Dungeon titles that have been appearing the past few years, which feature infinite dungeon exploration. Other games, like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, incorporate a "mission" setup that allows new content to be speedily generated; either slipped into a template by the developers (FFTA has 300+ pregenerated missions), or on-the-fly much as a roguelike generates a dungeon level. This scalability has made these games much more successful than traditional RPGs for the same systems. A lot of this has to do with the environmental demands of a handheld system -- which people often want to play for small stretches of time, but with which still like experiencing a sense of accomplishment -- and the demographics; Nintendo has the younger end of the market and these games are at least partially targetted at 10-year-olds. But this kind of scalability entails infinite hack-and-slash, and this is infinite hack-and-slash that is being enjoyed. It's not like MMORPGs where it's really the only option for implementation. People choose the hack-and-slash option.

Iffy, there is a very real difference between what you said and what I said. "Less likely" is inaccurate, plain and simple. That may be the end result if you are totally careless about how close you are to an enemy; however, since that IS under your control, likelihood never enters into things at all.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: I agree that it's a very different type of game from traditional RPGs. I don't think a game where you're expected to finish with the same four to six characters that you started with can plausibly coexist with a world where one well-placed hit can be fatal. One easy way to make that work is to only fight monsters, i.e., creatures that don't wield weapons. This has been done at least twice in a quality RPG (Dungeon Master) and it's fairly reasonable for claws et al. to never kill you in one hit if you're wearing at least a little bit of armor.

It doesn't make them less LIKELY to see you. It raises the threshhold of what is required to make them notice you.

Also note that Hero of Old has an absurdly high casting cost compared to casting each effect individually, and it doesn't last any longer either, nor is it stronger in any respect. It might be convenient at times when you have spell points to spare, but it's honestly one of the least useful spells in the game.

When I went back and looked at my earliest posts here for the relevant topic, I was surprised to see how positive I was about G3. There were things I hated, like the boats; but I was very positive about the direction of the story and even the type of forced choice questions involved. The problem, I think, is that the lack of variety in plot, questions, and game paths, makes the interestingness of G3 quickly fall to the ground when you replay it. And because I didn't quite finish the game but instead replayed it several times for strategy, I became annoyed at all of those things. So I must reluctantly agree: G3 is a good game, just don't play it twice.

I was asking a clarifying question. Given that your sentence was malformed to begin with, it wasn't hard to conceive of your only referring to body armor despite saying "anything," which would explain it. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

On ne joue pas avec la liberté Elle ne se divise pas tout comme l'égalité Elle ne peut être achètée, négotiée Ni est changée contre de la pixilité!

Harle... not a reference to Schala and Kid, is it?

Try a new game and see if it works. If it doesn't, reinstall. If it worked before and now it doesn't, and nobody else has ever heard of the problem, then something probably became corrupted.

It was clear, Alo; I was just commenting in response to your sig.

She's not wearing -any- equipment, or just not body armor? And how high is her Armor Use?

I did use the map, and I used it precisely because I had wandered so much in earlier games: because the geography had changed so much.