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This is a good beginning to labeling points on a continuum. However, you'll note that "Hints and Guidance" covers the entire area between the other two. It looks like you want "hints and guidance" that I would consider tantamount to "providing the outright solution" -- whereas the "hints and guidance" I want, you would consider tantamount to "saying absolutely nothing." I think it's fair to provide content for preferences all along that continuum, and I would not denigrate the part of it you like by saying it's bad game design, even though it's not to my taste. I know there are people who prefer it. As you've described it, I can understand the frustration here. However, at the same time, it is a basic precept of this type of game that you find relevant things just by looking all over the map. You don't need a quest marker for everything. (Or maybe you do these days? Well, I don't want one for everything.) From what Kel has commented so far, I do want to give him a chance to say whether or not there in fact were hints or information about this that you skipped past, because that seems to be happening a lot. This is a really good point. Except that it also seems super easy to deal with on your end: can't you just go through and cut out parts where you silently analyze for a minute? I understand not wanting to do that every 30 seconds, but surely if you do it just for really big battles, that wouldn't be much extra work?

Absolutely true. However, there is a big difference between saying you don't like a game, and saying a game is bad, or that its design is a bad idea. Or, I don't know, maybe to a lot of people there's not a big difference between those things, and I'm actually the one who's using language in a non-standard way by wanting to use words carefully. Yikes. I'm going to go crawl under the covers now. Note to aspiring BoA designers: if you ever want to communicate horror successfully to Slarty, make a scenario that applies descriptivist principles to the player. *shivers*

I think this is fair except for one thing: you weren't "suddenly thrown into" Dark Souls. In this analogy, you chose to play Dark Souls. (You also chose to broadcast your feelings about it to an audience, which is a step beyond just raging.) I think we (at least) have different definitions of "clever." I don't see what's clever about having a puzzle solution thrust in your face. It's not much of a puzzle then. I am also baffled by the fact that you consider it a "punishment" if you don't succeed at a puzzle the first time you attempt it. And having to reload is an "intense and immediate punishment"? That's not a punishment, it's a chance to try something different and see how it goes! What really confuses me though is your reaction to first-turn-kills, given your preference for story and theme. Those can be a way of using mechanics to express and line up with story and theme. They can be a way of showing the player: "Wow, this enemy is really as strong as people say. I'm truly going to have to be clever to figure out a way to stop them. And when I do, I really am going to feel like a hero, who's beaten impossible odds!"

Heh! I'm guessing you had a lot of appreciation for Ultima IV, then? As enduring a landmark as the CRPG world will ever have, I suppose...

This is definitely one theory of game design, but it isn't the only one. This kind of goes along with the question of character management (stats, skills, items, etc.). Some people think it's fun to try and manage those strategically, to optimize what their characters can do, and then to have combat that pushes them to think strategically or even creatively. Other people would prefer to have those things "on the side" in limited portions, or perhaps not at all. To me, this is close to a genre-level difference. I know that if I were to play any FPS from the last 15 years, I would be pretty turned off by that particular depiction of violence. But it would be silly for me to complain about it, because that's an intended part of that kind of game. It's part and parcel of what it does. I would conclude "this isn't really my thing" rather than "this way of doing things is a bad idea."

Presumably the same way they undertake alchemy, or craft equipment, or build buildings, or do anything else that requires skill: they practice and/or study and they learn how to do it.

I'm aware of the XP penalties. What I mean is that in the Second Trilogy, there was already a fairly steep inherent XP curve, such that the actual impact of XP penalties is greatly reduced -- the more levels behind a character is, the more they'll start to catch up, because the XP reduction for being at a high level for a given enemy, will eventually overreach the XP reduction for race/traits. In practice, these reach a sort of equilibrium. I don't ever remember it being more than a 4-6 level difference, but assuming my memory isn't rusty, that again is likely a side effect of having 3 party members instead of 4.

BoA in particular has been described that way, due to having both low initial sales and an exceptionally long development time. IIRC, this situation really became clear when Jeff was already working on G3, which led to its development being compressed and to a speedy release for A4 as well.

It's a 20 year old game. He wouldn't be making money from it regardless. That's why he released the code in the first place. I think most of the frustration you discuss (including frustration related to the community) has a lot more to do with BoA than BoE. And while Jeff has often discussed his frustration with BoA, I don't think he has ever discussed BoE in the same light. He has talked about the task of processing user-submitted scenarios being a drain, but he clearly feels good about the way BoE was received for many years. If he is fed up with questions about licensing, well, I think that's a completely different issue, that probably has more to do with the ratio of questions asked to finished products released.

This is interesting, because we don't usually get "this is too easy" complaints about Torment. We get "this is too boring" and "why do the monsters all have mountains of HP"; and we sure get a lot of "this is too hard" from people who don't want to optimize their stat allocation, but also refuse to switch to a lower difficulty. (We get that frequently about "Normal" and once in a blue moon about "Casual," too.) But this is new. I dunno. From the table you attached, it looks like your stat allocation is generally pretty good. So, again, it makes sense that the game will get easier towards the end. (You must be pretty close to that given your levels.) I *am* surprised to see such a big level difference between the Slith and the Mage. Maybe I am misremembering something about how the Second Trilogy handles XP, though. Or maybe more likely, playing with 3 PCs instead of 4 actually does change the XP mechanics in some unexpected way. Who knows, you may have discovered a neat trick here.

If you have a more nuanced test that you prefer, I'm all for taking that one instead; "severe lack of nuance" might as well be the subtitle of the original political compass as far as I'm concerned. But let's be fair: "internet test" and "nuance" are generally in two different ant colonies.

I don't think A6 is any easier than other SW games. It is definitely one of the best-balanced Spiderweb games, meaning that the most optimal builds don't completely shut out other options. Dual wielding might be stronger than pole weapons, but it's not head-and-shoulders better (the way it is in A:EFTP, for example). It's also true in most SW games -- as in most RPGs! -- that if you make sensible investments in skill points and equipment, complete all sidequests, and have good play tactics, that the game is going to get easier as it goes on. The game has to be balanced for people who don't do all of those things. At level 1 the power gap between these two ways of playing will be small, so the game might be hard for everyone. But as you progress, the power gap increases. Since the game doesn't want to shut anyone out, that means it will get much easier for some people. This is as true for generally sound play as it is for rigorous min-maxing. If it feels easier than previous games, one thing to consider is that, in the course of playing the others, you might have picked up on some tactics (and character development choices) that are helpful in SW games.

I got: You are a: Communist Interventionist Bleeding-Heart Progressive Collectivism score: 83%Authoritarianism score: 0%Internationalism score: 33%Tribalism score: -100%Liberalism score: 50% I found this interesting and mostly accurate. The -100% on Tribalism is definitely accurate. The 0% on Authoritarianism also fits pretty well, I think. I am less anti-government than anti-power. That means I support government power when it serves to counterbalance some other brutish power, and oppose it in most other cases.

In the grand Spiderweb tradition, but with some new twists. This one's much shorter, so give it a whirl and post your results! While it isn't perfect, I think the existence of five different axes addresses some of the discussion we've had in the past about the compacted nature of the traditional Political Compass (and its tendency to ask questions about a complex situation but that seemed to be judging a single conic slice of the whole). http://www.patheos.com/blogs/billykangas/2014/11/5-dimensional.html Explanation key: Collectivism refers to economic intervention, whether the society or state should intervene in the economy to redistribute wealth from the more to the less successful. The negative percentages indicate opposition to such intervention. Authoritarianism refers to state power to control the actions of individuals to prevent them from harming others or themselves, and also to establish the will of the majority over society. Negative percentages indicate opposition to state power. Internationalism refers to political involvement in other nations or global affairs, either via war, treaty or international organizations. Negative percentages indicate isolationist beliefs, and the belief in national sovereignty. Tribalism refers to identity or nationalism, favoring your own nation over foreigners. Negative percentages indicate opposition to national or ethnic identity and oriented towards pan-humanism. Liberalism refers to acceptance of historically illegal or immoral social practices or customs. Negative percentages indicate opposition to such acceptance.

Alhoon, just because the word "novice" is used doesn't mean it is a distinct formal rank. It might just be another word that is used for apprentices, or maybe it is used loosely to refer to any number of a range of early-career Shapers and Shaper trainees. That goes for ALL OF THESE WORDS. Unless it is clear that it is being used in a specific, discriminating way, which is true of few if any of these.

I agree with Dinti and am glad to see this clarification, Kel. That makes more sense.

Respectfully, this topic is already full of spoilers. I have no intention of spoiling anything for you, alhoon, but I am also not going to spoiler tag things just for your unique position in a game that is 15 years old. That's just not realistic. Triumph: it's the one that is the most unusual.

Outside of Lord and Councilor, which are very context-specific (and, of course, generic Full Shaper) is it really clear that these are actually formal ranks? We know that Shaper training involves a number of different stages but I don't think we've heard specific names for them, have we? Maybe I'm forgetting something... Lord is certainly below Councilor, though -- Lord Rahul is clearly subordinate to the Shaper Council, for example.

You do get ending modifications if you use a lot of canisters, but I don't know what the cutoff is in G2. Numbers between 6 and 10 have been speculated in the past, 6 most frequently. That said, the ending modifications are relatively minor outside of the leave-without-winning "ending." This isn't a knowledge-of-future-games thing either -- your character is presumably eminently aware of that, as a Shaper apprentice. And actually, I think there is another option in the Valley with better odds of successfully standing up to the Shapers in the long run...

Just for that, Dinti, I'm going to flap all the d's and t's in your name.

This is a really striking difference to me. As a kid I think "ch" /k/ must have been one of the last phonograms I picked up, because I still tend to pronounce "ch" /k/ as "ch" /ch/ in some of the first "ch" words I learned. "Archangel" was one of those (thanks to X-Factor). I definitely remember confusing other people by talking about "CHArisma" in D&D, but that and other words appear to have self-modified for me in a way that "archangel" has not. I think internally I'm treating "arch" differently when it presents as a prefix, which indeed the OED seems to think is a more consistent thing. So /k/ "archmage" feels doubly weird to me. Looking through the list, I note that there are no examples of "arch" /k/ followed immediately by a consonant. That, obviously, is per the OED and may not reflect speech universally, but I wonder if that is a piece of this. Chessrook (or anyone else who has the /k/ pronunciation for "archmage"), I'd be curious to hear how you would pronounce made-up words like "archpum", "archbaint" and "archfafe" -- in each case with the /k/ or the /ch/.

I think your English may be getting in the way here. "Enthusiasm" is not the same thing as "expertise" and there isn't necessarily any relation between them. You are definitely more enthusiastic about Geneforge lore than we are.

Wikipedia: "Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short,[1][2] is a literary device in which established facts in a fictional work are adjusted, ignored or contradicted by a subsequently published work otherwise intended to maintain continuity with the former.[3]" The key words here are "subsequently published work." If you haven't consumed the formerly published work, then obviously you have no basis for judging which facts have been adjusted, ignored or contradicted. If you want to say "X is a retcon" because you see it portrayed differently in G2 and G3, say, that I think we can understand. But declaring that something "is not" a retcon when you haven't consumed the first work in which it is discussed... is a little weirder.

This. And this isn't an assumption, you keep stating things from the later games and saying they are established game lore. Which is not to say you're wrong about that, at least not most of the time; but you are not in any position to judge what is and is not a retcon.