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Posts posted by Punctuation rains from the heavens
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I think both ways are quite common, both for resistances and for armor. First off, almost any game that doesn't have a dedicated resistance stat is going to handle it multiplicatively -- resistance is simply going to be implemented as an individual check for each thing that could provide it.
There are also games that don't handle resistance percentages directly at all. Diablo II had sort of a hybrid system, where resistance "points" were added together, and then converted to a single percentage with diminishing returns. In practice, this ends up working a lot like Spiderweb's.
And of course, there are games where resistance simply doesn't stack at all, such as D&D these days, and most games based on its systems. This is common, too.
1 minute ago, Randomizer said:In the oldest Spiderweb games, resistances were shown as additive. In original Nethergate for example it was possible to stack so you couldn't get hit.
Starting with Avernum 4 this was explicitly changed to multiplicative calculation for resistance. Also resistances got capped so you couldn't avoid any damage since some items gave total immunity to a damage type.
Actually, in the oldest games -- the Exiles -- resistance percentage effects were so rare that they weren't displayed, but if you managed to get multiple sets equipped (from rings typically), the impact was indeed multiplicative.
Nethergate and A1-3 did things differently. However, the shift back to multiplicative calculation actually happened prior to A4 -- but the display wasn't updated until A4. In particular, G1-3 showed additive numbers on the character sheet but operated via multiplication when applied.
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3 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:
If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying that all resistances are applied in an additive way.
No. You are not understanding me even remotely correctly. Please point to where I said anything remotely resembling that. I used narrowing qualifiers, and you chose to replace them with the word "all." Ess... seriously... I love you, but you're in wacko-land here.
What I said is: "Reductions from a single instance of an effect are added together and applied as one. Thus if a passive skill grants +4% resistance per level, and you have 5 levels in it, you do not multiply by 0.96 five times -- you multiply by 0.8 once."
If you have 5 levels in a skill that gives 4%/level fire resistance, and are wearing a shield that gives 10% fire resistance, your final damage taken will be 80% * 90% = 72%. Not 96% * 96% * 96% * 96% * 96% * 90% = 73.4%
You are attempting to extrapolate a contradictory conclusion by starting with the already-rounded game output, which includes already-stacked reduction from a particular skill, then looking at what the new rounded output is after investing an additional point in that skill. Given the small percentages being dealt with, the rounding kind of removes the possibility of concluding anything at all from that.
3 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:Let me just make a brief aside about those probabilities. I think the issue here has arisen because I wasn’t very clear on my terminology. When I was referring to probabilities 'stacking', I wasn’t referring to a combination of two individual events, each with distinct probabilities. I was referring to a probability of a single event, where the probability of a given outcome was being modified by an additional factor.
OK, you used "probabilities" plural to refer to one probability plus an additional factor which has no probability attached to it at all. The issue isn't that you were being unclear, you just literally said something different from what you meant.
3 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:If the probability of an outcome is modified in this way, then it makes sense for it to be done in a multiplicative way. That’s what I was thinking of. Now, I’ll certainly grant that’s not often done in games, and I suspect it's not how probabilities are combined in Avadon – so I’ll scratch that part about games tending to combine probabilities in a multiplicative way!
Um, this is done all the time in games? You make one roll. Then you make another roll. Voila, the two probabilities have effectively been combined by multiplication.
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Don't want to beat this to death, but Ess, the mathematics isn't the same. Running two percentile factors in sequence results in a single outcome. Running two probabilities in sequence results in multiple outcomes. Depending on what the probabilities are measuring, there may be a mean outcome that is equivalent to multiplying two percentile factors together -- or there may not be.
I think you're also not quite right about greater than 100% damage reduction. PC damage reduction is capped at 90%, but Spiderweb games, like many RPGs, store this internally a percentile modifier to damage taken, and use a negative number (the equivalent of over 100%, as you're discussing it) when an entity is healed rather than damaged by a particular type of attack.
Additionally, reading through your longer explanation more fully, you're flatly incorrect about how the game handles these reductions. Reductions from a single instance of an effect are added together and applied as one. Thus if a passive skill grants +4% resistance per level, and you have 5 levels in it, you do not multiply by 0.96 five times -- you multiply by 0.8 once.
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Those aren't actually probabilities, those are reduction percentages.
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I suppose this is like how a Ring of Skill, back in Exile, improved your accuracy in combat, and not anything else.
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Ah, gotcha. I guess I'm a little confused as to what you are classifying as skill-based versus not skill-based. You include both "twitch" (real-time action?) games and turn-based games in skill-based... but exclude games from that category if they involve statistics and probability?
I don't understand why having stats or including random elements excludes a game from being skill-based. Lots of games without those things involve minimal skill, and lots of games with those things can be remarkably complex.
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Now I'm really confused. What do you mean by "twitch"? Waving Hands is 100% turn-based...
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Well, it was originally partly reproducible -- there was a strong correlation between using "backtostart" and having that happen in A4. I think Jeff fixed that particular bug sometime, though, and the empty thing persisted, albeit less commonly.
The early Geneforge engine had very little in common with the Nethergate/First Trilogy engine, and the similarity that exists between later Geneforge and the Second Trilogy appears to mostly be G3's engine being used as starting material for A4's.
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8 hours ago, Thaeris said:
Rather, what I had in mind was a skill-based input by which the player has more involvement than simply letting a probability routine determine what happens next based on a set of stats in a table... Depending on the game, control over your position may offer certain tactical advantages - in fact, most games are probably designed with this in mind. Beyond that, however, I think most games offer the option of simply doing an action, and not necessarily any input on how that action is performed. The latter might make a real difference!
As an example of this idea, one thing that has crossed my mind in passing would be some sort of RPG - it could be on the computer or on the table - where you might have your standard stats, but you might very well execute combat with, say, a deck of cards. You can therefore apply skill beyond position in the environment, and not be totally reliant on stats and probability.
If I'm hearing you right, having a rich enough set of possible actions would also accomplish this -- in particular, this presumably means not just having a generic attack command, but having a variety of situationally relevant attack commands, that interact not just with enemy stats but with enemy actions, affecting how well different options will work (and vice versa, with enemy actions affecting your own).
This immediately makes me think of Richard Bartle's abstract, simultaneous-submission game, Waving Hands -- it's not an RPG at all, but has this same sort of dynamic that we see in complex martial arts. Here's an example of play from one incarnation, and a thing I wrote about its dynamics long ago.
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Which is more problematic now that they sell them as "a service" rather than a product -- so the user no longer even has the control to keep using a specific version of the software, if they want to.
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Actually, the empty containers bug does not affect the original Avernum 1-3. The first game that appeared in, I believe, was A4. So Lucidus probably doesn't need to worry about that.
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Interesting note in the manual there. I have no idea if that was truly implemented or not, but if it was, probably all it would do is prioritize the literal trash items (trash, rocks, sticks, etc) for deletion first -- it might not even flag "household" items (pen and ink, etc.) for that, and I'd be surprised if it sorted actual equipment on the basis of cost (or whatever).
Definitely know what you mean about all the piles of stuff in the ziggurat. However, the ziggurat also has very little in the way of NATIVE items lying around, whereas the ToM has TONS of them. So unless you actually counted multiple hundreds of pieces of equipment dropped in the ziggurat, that may fit just fine with this rule.
One other thought -- if you already had loot piles in the ToM, and then dropped knowledge pots there, and then the disappearances happened, starting with the knowledge pots, is it possible the items simply got eaten as you dropped them, because there was no "room" in the zone?
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I could be wrong, but wouldn't the item limit also include the mundane items that are native to the zone? It wouldn't shock me if there are, say, 92 of those in the ToM, so that it cut off items you left beyond 255 items...
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Yeah, ADoS is right. "Grinding" has a much more specific meaning in RPGs than simply something being a grind. The purpose for doing it is a necessary criteria.
I guess I'm also a little confused by the premise here:
"many, many hours going back and forth between towns and dungeons to sell loot"
In both of the games at issue (A2 and A4), enemies either don't respawn or respawn at incredibly slow rates, and it's very rare to have a dungeon located so far from a town that it takes more than, I don't know, 15 to 30 seconds of real life time to walk between the dungeon and the town, if there are no combats. OK, OK, maybe a minute if you don't pound the numpad as much as I do
But it really confuses me how this travel time could amount to "many, many hours." There aren't many dungeons in those games that are all that large, even. (I guess if you constantly rest outdoors in A2, that could lead to more wandering monster fights, but it's not necessarily to do that.)
Anyway, to tackle the original assertion -- and I'll just treat it as addressing gameplay that is a grind generally --
1 - G3 and A4 were definitely the height of this in SW games. They both had an encumbrance system that was applied to the PC's backpack; A4 did have a lot of 1gp value trinkets, and in G3 item management was made worse by those awful boats.
2 - A1-3 had fewer random items to sell, and Exile fewer yet. So I have a hard time locating this problem with "older" Spiderweb games. (Or, as I said above, with older games in general.)
3 - If we focus specifically on this "having to walk back and forth repeatedly" issue, Avadon really had more of this than anything else, with its profusion of tiny sidequests that required backtracking -- often watching your PCs walk slowly through multiple zones to get to the right portals, etc., that were required. At that point we're clearly in modern SW game territory.
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A4 is definitely not one of "the old Spiderweb games."
And while those things are, no doubt about it, a slog -- even a grind -- they aren't grinding. That has a more specific meaning.
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1 hour ago, Thaeris said:
The old Spiderweb games were full of grinding
This is where you lose me. What games exactly are you thinking of? Most Spiderweb games have such a sharp reduction in experience gain as your level rises that there's not even much point to grinding -- and this actually includes Exile! It certainly wasn't encouraged or incentivized.
The only real exception I can think of is original Nethergate (not Nethergate: Resurrection), and even then it's not something that was necessary or encouraged.
If you just mean "hacking and slashing through the cannon fodder monsters that populate a given dungeon, the first time you explore it" that's... just not what grinding is.
EDIT: I'd also add that I don't think you can tie grinding to old school RPGs so easily. No question that it was expected in some, especially the JRPGs, but nowhere near the degree to which MMOs and sandbox games and related RPGs have built around it.
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In Exile and Avernum that is the only conversation node that references it. Exile:
There is a portly man with short gray hair sitting behind the counter. When you enter, he is writing haphazard notes on a sheet
of vellum."I'm Bernie. Welcome to my shop. Would you like to hear The Chart?"
"I have all manner of potions and the like, which you may purchase. You can also sell me your excess magic. And, if you would like, you can hear The Chart. It's about the meaning of life."
He pulls out a sheet of paper, and start talking and writing. He describes and draws his life above, how he was thrown into Exile, and what he has learned since he arrived, throwing in on the side many opinions on life in general.
It is very interesting. It also makes practically no sense whatsoever.
Avernum has some trivial rewordings and adds/replaces:
"Ahh, just doing some inventory. I have all manner of potions and the like, which you may purchase. I can identify unusual items, if needed. And, if you would like, you can hear The Chart. It's about the meaning of life."
Bernie takes all natural ingredients and, with love and care, turns them into powerful and useful magical brews, useful during long, violent dungeon expeditions.
Bernie looks over your unidentified items. "Ah, yes. I can help. I will explain what each unusual item is for a mere 10 coins."
I guess A:EFTP could have added something, but that would be unusual.
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This is a really interesting discussion. Trauma and mental health are important and personal topics for a lot of people here. Thinking about some past threads where they have come up, the discussions can be really valuable, and they can also sometimes lead to hurt feelings. So just a pre-emptive little mod hat reminder here -- please respect everyone else and their experiences 😊 Also, remember that google likes these forums -- anything posted here is very, very public 🙃
On the topic itself... I'm not sure the game really says that about Bernie. I can see how one might interpret it that way, but all the game says is:
"He pulls out a sheet of paper, and start talking and writing. He describes and draws his life above, how he was thrown into Exile, and what he has learned since he arrived, throwing in on the side many opinions on life in general.
It is very interesting. It also makes practically no sense whatsoever."
Personally, I don't see any reference to mental health here -- just someone who is clearly full of ideas and communicates them in a bit of a jumble, and perhaps goes in for cabalistic theories of some sort. Given the origin of other character names in E1, I'd put money that Bernie was based on a specific person Jeff knew, either IRL or on talk.bizarre, who was like that, and was also invested in some kind of grand Chart of everything.
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Sure, but that thread (that Kel linked) was a poll comparing only the Avernum games, not Exile -- Alorael is clearly talking about A2 being the favourite over A3. It's not really a place you'd expect Exile vs Avernum comparisons -- though it eventually makes it into the thread and Alorael eventually distinguishes between the two games himself!
The feelings about A2 vs A3 were clear in the big 2012 poll:

You can see forumgoers (as a group) having a more positive reaction to E3 than A3 there as well -- and the difference between the two is more pronounced than that of E2/A2 or E1/A1.

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My memory of the earliest days is much vaguer -- I only lurked a little then -- but there was a lot of discussion along those lines in the criticism-heavy G3/A4 era.
That distinction was an old chestnut of Drakey's, e.g., and I remember other people bringing it up even later in discussions about the Blades CSR, etc.
Back then, before the Second Avernum Trilogy really took off, there seemed to be a much bigger difference in opinion between those who preferred Exile and those who preferred Avernum than we have today. I would definitely believe that this view was mostly a thing amongst Exile fanciers, and therefore was not spread equally around all the forums.
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My own memory is overwhelmingly of Exile 3 getting heaps of praise from forum members -- which makes sense given how BoE-centric the forum crowd was in the earlier days -- despite the vocalized dislike of its plot. Avernum 3 got dumped on a lot more.
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You're mistaken. Nethergate came the year after BoE.


Geneforge 1 kickstarter?
in Geneforge 1 - Mutagen
Posted
That's a fairly safe bet, yeah.