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In G4, Lifecrafters had raw power but lacked flexibility; Serviles had immense flexibility but less power; Infiltrators were a compromise. It's hard to say one flat out beats the others. The Warrior and Shock Trooper sucked by comparison. In G5, Lifecrafters and Sorceresses are an easier sell for top spots as creations were better, again.

Aaaaaaand the Shock Trooper?

Addendum: I understand the whole saving-money-on-graphics thing, but it is TOTALLY RIDICULOUS to have the two physically-oriented classes always be male, while the two magically-oriented classes are always female. Masculine guardians and feminine agents were one thing, but this is a little bit insulting. I also think it's a really bad business decision. There are people who will take one look at those enforced gender roles and be HUGELY turned off. Whether or not you agree with them or even with my reaction, this will happen.

* Not much healing: This is an excellent thing. This has long been one of my major gripes with the entire RPG industry, that the overabundance of healing from both spells and items destroys game balance. I am a little worried that there will be so much healing available from items, though, given how much SW games play into the I-could-use-this-consumable-item-or-I-could-just-reload problem. * Ability cooldowns rather than constant trips to town: This is also an excellent thing, particularly in light of A4-A6. * Difficulty: I'm sure Jeff is aware that Torment is not too hard for those of us who enjoy it. But I think his statement about SW games getting harder -- and most fans disliking that -- is right on the money as recent years are concerned. G4 and G5 were both harder than G3, and A6 was harder than A5, which was harder than A4. I do think the game balance has been improving as well, but making Normal easier is probably a good thing.

More or less agreed, especially about NetHack being infuriating in a bad way. Other games I'd toss on the pile: - Modern Art (essentially a bidding game, but with interesting interactions; even better if you play with the rule that every painting put up for auction must first be named) - Guillotine (slight luck, more emphasis on card valuation, and with hilarious illustrations, especially in light of History of the World Part I) - Blue Moon City (all about card management and adapting to different situations) - Samurai (a very smart tile placement game -- but don't worry, Alorael, the tiles are placed on a pre-existing map and there's nothing to memorize) - Race for the Galaxy (I initially hated this one due to its absurd overreliance on complex iconography over English words, but this is a robust, remarkably well-balanced and replayable game. As a reference point, it is a card game with some similarities to Puerto Rico, because it was made by one of the developers of San Juan (the card game version of Puerto Rico) after some of his ideas were rejected as being too complex.) - Purely for flavor I'll throw in Lunch Money: there aren't a lot of games whose cards feature Blair Witch-style pictures of little girls along with phrases like "Jesus hates you and so do I."

Originally Posted By: VCH Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Originally Posted By: VCH You're joking right? That game is all about getting the best spots on the board early. If you think Settlers is only about getting the best spots on the board early, then you haven't been playing against strong opponents. I would crush you that is a challenge Socratic moment: if you are so certain that you can crush me, then surely the game isn't all about getting the best spots on the board early. Or did you mean "I would crush you... unless the turn order is more advantageous for you"?

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Originally Posted By: Lilith i don't really relish the thought of explaining to a room full of 15-year-olds why Mr. X is now Ms. X I'm sure your school would have solved that problem for you by reassigning far enough away so that no one knew your previous incarnation. Keep in mind that we're talking about high school here. I'm not sure most high schools are large enough for that, unless Lilith is less physically recognizable than I would imagine.

I'm not sure direct data editing would help you anyway since formulas are used to calculate weight capacity. However, use GREP and just change all occurances of the weight variable in the item definitions to set it to zero.

Originally Posted By: VCH Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES a good theory-relevant game like Settlers of Catan You're joking right? That game is all about getting the best spots on the board early. If you think Settlers is only about getting the best spots on the board early, then you haven't been playing against strong opponents.

Honestly, it seems like people can usually cope with waiting 1 or 2 days. But I totally understand the irritation generated when a new game is released the week before Thanksgiving, you buy it on Thanksgiving, and don't get the registration code until four days later. That's a little ridiculous. Similarly, when you buy a game Friday afternoon and don't get the code until Monday, that's not great either. I think it would be a wise investment to spend an hour or two dealing with built-up credit card transactions, at least, one extra day during weekends and vacations.

The idea that a memory may be repressed under the influence of trauma is certainly debatable, definitely not proven, and the case doesn't look great -- but I don't think it falls into the category of pseudoscience; more like a theory that current evidence does not favor. Unless I'm badly misinformed, neither current evidence nor current cognitive or psychological theories make it seem like a totally ridiculous idea; it dovetails just fine with what we do know about, e.g., trauma and psychological processes, it just can't be proven and is therefore worthy of severe skepticism.

Originally Posted By: Lilith there are tradeoffs, too, like between making the most money on each sale and keeping customers happy so they'll shop there more often. plus there's optimisation on a macro level, like what to do with each time slice in your day, which is definitely not just about plugging numbers into formulas Unless what I've seen is unrepresentative, the difference in potential sell values is small enough, percentagewise, that it's got to be less worthwhile than keeping customers happy so they come frequently. You buy from stores at 70% the base value (less than that if someone sells to you) and can easily sell for at least 125% the base value, so that's a pretty high profit margin without needing to push anything. The time slice thing could be interesting, but keep in mind there are really just 3 options: sell stuff for 1 slice, buy stuff for 1 slice, or get loot from adventuring for 2 slices. All three generate profit (counting both cash and items as profit, which is not how the score screen counts it), but depending on different things. For selling, it depends on what you have in the store, your customer relations and merchant skill level and so on, but profit will be somewhere between 0 and 30%+ the value of the stuff you have on display. For buying, it's a flat 30% of what you buy and there is no limit beyond what the merchants have in stock, so you are better off doing as much buying as possible at once -- although I guess buying tons of goods does require you to spend slices selling to actually realize that 30% of profit on them. Then for adventuring, you get stuff for free, and assuming you don't die, the quantity depends mainly on what dungeons you've previously completed, and therefore the best one you currently have access to, I take it? So the time slice thing is really a simple one-variable optimization. There are a few restrictions, like needing to balance time spent buying/adventuring with time spent selling in order to realize profit from both, but that balances almost by itself; and the time-of-day restrictions, and things you might do to advance the storyline, or your merchant skill, or whatever -- those are pretty minor. I suspect that adventuring is the most lucrative and it's really a question of balancing that with selling, and then using slices to buy when it seems most optimal in order to blow cash, fill orders, or do town stuff to advance the story. Originally Posted By: Lilith complaining about a lack of economic realism in an RPG is sort of like complaining about all the water while SCUBA diving But this isn't a regular RPG, it's an economic RPG with strong (but largely optional) Action-RPG elements: Originally Posted By: Slarties Since economics is the major focus of the game, this is a problem. I think the better analogy would be complaining about the LACK of water while scuba diving in an empty swimming pool.

Re: Recettear I downloaded and played through the demo. I have to admit that this is much better than the flurry of open-a-store indie games that have been around the last few years, and I will say that I like it better than Harvest Moon, too. And the haggling is more limited, and therefore much less annoying, than in Angband. That said, I have three issues with the game: 1) The game is all about optimization, obviously; yet the optimization is just a matter of trying to conform as closely as possible to unseen formulae. I'm not talking just about setting prices here, but also about what items to stock, where to put them, and so on. This is much less complex, and therefore less interesting, than what goes on in SimCity, or in a good theory-relevant game like Settlers of Catan, or for that matter in a higher-calibre RPG. 2) The combat portion isn't bad, but it doesn't come anywhere near the 16-bit Zelda comment you made. The worst thing here is the emphasis placed on being exactly the right distance from a monster: too close and you're hit, too far and your own strike misses. The sweet spot is relatively small given the movement controls, and even though it isn't difficult to find, this is a frustrating and not endearing play control issue. 3) For all the unseen formulae, the economic mechanics of the game are blatantly absurd. It's not quite as bad as Taloon's chapter in Dragon Warrior 4, but it's the next worst example I can think of. Since economics is the major focus of the game, this is a problem.

16-bit-zelda-style is a very HIGH bar, sir. I'll try it, but we'll see.

What Arancaytar just said. Remember that DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. If it doesn't attempt to regulate your use of the files AFTER you have registered them, it isn't really DRM. Heck, even computer RPGs from the late 80's that required you to look up "the third word of the fifth paragraph of page 22 of the instruction manual" or whatever are a lot more restrictive than SW registration codes. That said, I agree that the delay in waiting for a code can be annoying. Usually it's extremely short, but on some occasions it does take four or five days, mainly during vacations and holidays... which are precisely the time that many people start new computer games. 15 years ago the delay was painless, but today there are a plethora of online-registration games that give nearly instant access after you make a payment. The delay is what makes SW's system imperfect, not the registration code. Originally Posted By: Lilith at least you have good taste in games, recettear owns and i am super impatient for the full version to come out already is it also way more fun than the recettear web site makes it look like? Really, it looks like they took the least interesting parts of Angband (haggling over prices and inventory management), magnified their importance, and then threw in a lot of generic-looking anime style illustrations. I am willing to be convinced it is cool, but tell me WHY, lilitu.

The Verdant Valley has got to be one of the least interesting, and least-related-to-anything-at-all, "sidequests" ever, if you can even call it one. It's basically a lot of cave floor and cave wall and pit terrain with random monsters thrown on top of it, plus one generic bandit building and one salamander cave. I mean, really. The lairs of the crackpot crystal souls, or the Lava Dome, on the other hand...

Originally Posted By: Sylae Corell 1. What is your name? Will Dueck, plans on changing it. To what, and why?

Yeah, compare to how random vampire fights were handled on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nonetheless, no

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel I doubt you could get more than one episode – maybe two – out of the First Expedition. Granted, you could probably expand it quite a bit, and it may be just possible to expand it enough to get a full season, but it would have a whole lot more filler than any of the other ones. Totally not true. Check out the Encyclopedia Ermariana entry on the First Expedition: The First Expedition NONE of that is filler, and with the sole exception of one word (the name "Korthax") it all comes directly from the games. Surely that's more than enough for "one episode - maybe two." Flesh out it could easily be a season -- more easily than Exile 1, I daresay.

Originally Posted By: Arch-Mage Solberg Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Why the heck is a movie about Prazac, Dorikas, and a group of Empire soldiers titled "Avernum: Northern Expansion"? Probably the same reason why the same plot went into a game called Avernum 4! You mean Avernum 5. My main question is about the subtitle, though. Avernum's ill-fated northern expansion is totally incidental to Prazac, Dorikas, Redmark, and the Empire soldiers. no

Skill: Spamming. Starts at zero, initially costs 4 sp to train. Trainer is available for it. Suppose I buy 10 ranks in Spamming with skill points. I spend 60 skill points. Suppose, instead, that I buy 3 with cash, then 7 with skill points. I spend 47 skill points. Alorael is probably thinking of how to figure out the value of skills gained from traits. So, sticking with Spamming, let's imagine the trait Canned that gives you a bonus of +1 to Spamming at level 1 and again every 4 levels. And let's assassinate the Spamming trainer to simplify things. My vanilla character is at level 36. My Canned character has an experience penalty so he's just at level 32. That means he gets 8 free levels of Spamming. If my vanilla character wants to get to 8 Spamming, he must spend 44 skill points. So, if all I want is 8 Spamming, the Canned trait saved me 44 skill points (minus 20 for the lost levels for a next gain of 24). Let's say I actually want to get to 16 Spamming (so I can cast Arcane Spam). That will cost my Canned character 44 skill points. But it will cost my vanilla character a total of 120 skill points. In this scenario, the Canned trait saved me 76 skill points (minus 20 for the lost levels for a net gain of 56).

Why the heck is a movie about Prazac, Dorikas, and a group of Empire soldiers titled "Avernum: Northern Expansion"? Wait, never mind. no

I never trust the operated-on game versions services like Gamersgate provide. For #4, E-mail Jeff at spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Spiderweb is pretty good about helping with this kind of thing. They actually want people to be able to play their games

11. It's ninja sliths versus pirate nephilim. Who should win? I'm not entirely sure this is the correct match-up, given that we see sliths but not nephilim doing boat stuff, and given that nephils are the ones who are supposed to be agile -- I think there was even a nephil graphic back in Exile that looked like it was holding a throwing star. However, I don't mind, because ninja sliths clearly win on all counts. P.S. Pirates of the Northern Waters starring Anastasia? No, but I suppose it's not any worse than Teenage Mutant Ninja Slithzerikai.

You know, you could also just declare a time for the RP _before_ you accept participants, and say if you can't make it, tough. There have been more people wanting to play, than who actually make it in, so this should work fine. This has the additional advantage that the RP would take place at a consistent and predictable time, which makes it easier for people to plan around... this is how every traditional PNP RPG I've known of has operated, and it's worked fine.