Jump to content

Quiconque

Global Moderator
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    15,961

  • Joined

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Quiconque

  1. Quiconque
    (Also, for the record, they were less than an hour apart -- probably just a few minutes -- as it was showing 3 hours on all of those when I posted above.) EDIT: And this time you *definitely* edited after I replied
  2. Quiconque
    The other possibility, I guess, is that I opened the thread and started writing my reply; you then edited your post; I then made my post. But I will point out that there were already several posts after yours, by the time I made my post. No one expects posts that far up the thread to have their content completely changed. It might have been different if it were the most recent post. But seriously, you edited that "90%" line to be something completely different from what it was originally. You know that! In which case you might say, when you saw my reply, "Oh, Slarty, I edited that post -- you must not have seen the edit." Not "that's not what I said." It is what you said. You just changed it later.
  3. Quiconque
    Dude. Now I call foul. Alhoon, your "90% confident" line was NOT about anything about the author's intention. You just edited your previous post to make it look like that! Let the record show everything that came after "90% positive that" was completely different until after I wrote my post. (I mean, there is no record, but everyone CAN see the record of you editing that post after I replied to it.) I am not going to engage with someone who deliberately edits their comments after they have been replied to, then claims the people replying were wrong about what you said.
  4. Quiconque
    These two statements would seem to be conflicting. You haven't seen all there is to see about her in-game. You don't claim to be an expert. Yet, you feel comfortable saying you are 90% positive in what you say about her despite having an elementary gap in knowledge? (And this isn't a not-first-language thing. 90% is a number )
  5. Quiconque
    http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/22188-geneforge-2-ending-chart/
  6. Quiconque
    If you still haven't finished G3 either... then you don't even have all the info on Litalia! Dude.
  7. Quiconque
    This is not actually the case, unfortunately.
  8. Quiconque
    It also shows that Litalia is an unreliable source -- her level of canister use makes this point as well -- as I think alhoon agreed earlier in the conversation. I don't think it makes sense to assume that anything an unreliable source says is true unless there is outside evidence for it.
  9. Quiconque
    It's really weird that nothing happens when you open it, especially if this really is an OS version compatibility issue. Like... literally nothing? Do you get a zoom rectangle, bouncing dock icon, or whatever stuff normally accompanies double-clicking on an app on your system?
  10. Quiconque
    "I guess" != "definitely"
  11. Quiconque
    That was the whole point of the nerf. Expert players were getting dramatically more value out of OP skills and spells than casual players were, because they zeroed in on them and made them centerpieces of their builds & combat tactics. Not having OP abilities means that the size of the gap between expert players and casual players actually shrinks. This is obviously different if all you need to do to use the OP skill is "press A." But when you have to build towards it or unlock it and it's expensive or might take multiple casts or etc... that puts up a wall that keeps casual players out. The good news is, expert players are OK with this, because they will be perfectly happy doing the same amount of analysis and work to get to a skill that is only slightly better. It's just as fun for them, but much easier* for the designer to balance the game in a way that works for everyone. *Still hard, just not quite as hard.
  12. Quiconque
    Yay for testing! Alhoon, are you reporting total damage (including the amount blocked by armor), or just penetrating damage?
  13. Quiconque
    "Misleading" just means that it is likely to mislead someone. It doesn't mean there is an intent to mislead. You could specify that by saying "intentionally misleading" or "unintentionally misleading" for example. I do think it was fair to call your original description of the mod misleading. It would have been easy for a newcomer to read that and think it was a small but nonetheless deliberately designed modification, when it fact the modification was plucked out of thin air by someone who, by your own statement, has never used a melee character in any of these games. (Also there was the 50% thing, which was misleading for a very different reason: you didn't even understand what you'd done )
  14. Quiconque
    Edited for accuracy.
  15. Quiconque
    You did not call it a "mod" in quotes in the topic you made for it. I think your presentation is misleading at best. I don't understand why in the world you want to advertise this thing to other people. As I noted in the other thread, if those are the changes you made, you did not increase damage by 50%. You increased it by 40% (for former d4's) and 33% (for former d5's). (I don't think any d6 melee attacks are used by the PC, but it's possible I'm forgetting something from a later game.)
  16. Quiconque
    Warning: this was created haphazardly by someone who has never played a melee-based character, and who has not thoroughly tested the changes. (Also, according Alhoon's explanation of what he changed in the other thread, the increase is actually 33-40%, not 50%.) I guess this is, technically, a mod. But only technically.
  17. Quiconque
    Respectfully, there's a difference between a thoughtful balance mod and randomly changing a few numbers (on classes you've never played!!) without even checking to see what effect they'll have. Melee attack dice come from more than 5 entries, btw. Some are more obscure than others -- not all are labelled in the // comments. No, I'm not going to make a list for you. I'm not actually clear at all on whether or not Dexterity increases missile damage (for the PC only) in G1-2. It obviously doesn't for creations. But I'm finding lots of contradictory statements; one person known for disassembly stated it does, while lots of people who say it doesn't seem to be just repeating the conventional wisdom. This may be a case where the CW arose out of an inaccurate tooltip and is just wrong.
  18. Quiconque
    I agree with Lilith. G1 "reach it and it dies" was fun. Melee got slowly nerfed: G2 nerfed it somewhat for the PC only (removing Anatomy), and then G3 nerfed it a lot for ALL characters, reducing melee dice from d8's to d4's and d5's. Actually most damage dice shrank slightly between G1 and G3, so that's not quite as bad as it sounds -- but it's still pretty bad. OTOH, the new AP system in G4 did benefit melee. I do think that a rebalancing mod would need to address melee in general and not just the melee classes. Even in G5, which successfully made Battle Shaping viable, half of the Battle Shaping creations still suck. There's still zero incentive to forego ranged attacks for melee, when the ranged attacks are just as strong. If melee damage dice were higher, then you have a reason to consider Battle Creations; you also have a reason to consider melee PCs, who will outdamage both creations and magic PCs due to Quick Action. Does this compare well to Daze and to creation armies? Still no -- but it's a good start.
  19. Quiconque
    G5 speed is still a great buff, it's not 'stupidly bad.' G1-4 speed is a stupidly overpowered effect, though. Even though the Speed spell is ST, you get the MT effects from spells like Mass Energize and Battle Roar. This change from "haste doubles your AP" to "haste gives you a chance of getting enough bonus AP for a second action" was a global chance across Spiderweb games; it fell in the middle of the Second Avernum Trilogy, too. Old haste/speed was an OP spell with no drawbacks and almost no interactions with anything else in the game. That's not interesting. IIRC, one of the main reasons Jeff axed it was this: the more super-powered abilities you have, the harder it is to balance the game so that it will be fun both for players who seek out and exploit the strongest abilities, and for players who have a more casual approach and may happen to not enjoy a particular OP ability.
  20. Quiconque
    Yeah, the Barzahl Guardian/Shaper thing I think is just a continuity error. Though it might also be plausible that Barzahl was a Guardian, but gave up his warrior ways and focused on shaping as he augmented himself more and more.
  21. Quiconque
    That's not quite true. The spell Daze didn't become AoE until G3, but G2 introduced Strong Daze, and Strong Daze has always been AoE. Yes, that meant Agents had more of a challenge in early G2, but by the end of it they were stunning screenfuls in Inner Gazak-Uss. I also disagree that fighter classes get dumped on for ST attacks. The Servile class has never been dumped on -- while opinions varied as to which was slightly better, everyone agreed the Servile and Infiltrator were neck-and-neck in G4. What actually happens is that the weak-magic classes get dumped on for, well, lack of magic.
  22. Quiconque
    I suggest you look at WHY people say those things about Warriors and Guardians. It actually has nothing to do with a few points of Max HP; it's much more inherent to the class than that: 1) For any one PC, whether they have creations or not, magic and melee offer somewhat similar damage-causing capabilities. Melee provides defense through Parry, while magic provides some extremely strong support magic (buffs and dazes). In G2, Parry is brokenly strong, which is why it's often called the Guardian's game. In G3-5, the support magic ends up being a lot better at keeping your character alive than Parry is. 2) If you're playing with creations, you'd almost certainly rather have magic -- it helps out your entire team. 3) If you're playing as a singleton, you'd also rather have magic -- while Parry (and higher HP mults) are nice, they are nowhere near as nice as effect daze spells. That's why the Guardian/Warrior and Shock Trooper get dumped on. If you're playing with creations, you're better off with a Shaping/Magic pairing -- period. And if you're not playing with creations, you're obviously better off with a pairing that doesn't include shaping. In theory, you could try and play with a "moderate shaping" route, but people rarely seem to follow through with that even when they begin with that intention. Shaping is very strong, so there's no reason not to go full throttle on it unless you are going after the benefits of being completely alone, that is, stealth, use of precision-demanding tactics like hit-and-run, and reduced management time for your party. tl;dr -- the Guardian/Warrior is totally playable, other classes just have markedly better combinations of skills. (Ditto for the Shock Trooper.) Define "pretty good." Compared to a Shaper (probably the relevant comparison since we are talking about someone using creations), it costs the Shock Trooper two skill points more per point of each regular magic skill she learns, including Spellcraft! That's a huge difference. It's a particularly big difference for daze spells. You have to keep your Mental Magic pretty topped up in order to keep hitting enemies with them reliably. I'm not sure the Shock Trooper's even capable of doing that with said magic boosting artifacts.
  23. Quiconque
    This has been an interesting thread to follow. By now it should be evident to everyone that there is a mismatch between what Chessrook wants (and, I think, expects) from a game, and what Kel's scenarios (and, to a lesser extent, BoA in general) are intended to deliver. Chessrook wants a game where progress is straightforward, where you only have to look in one place to find a secret passage; only have to look at one number to determine how good a weapon is; only have to try one strategy to get past a tricky encounter. But he's playing a game where progress requires integrating a complex of multiple paths: multiple possible locations for secret passages, multiple relevant numbers for weapon strength (that sometimes require crunching to find the best fit for a given PC), and multiple strategies that need to be combined to get through encounters. I say this without any judgment to either party. It's a mismatch. It doesn't mean either side is broken. It just means it's not going to be an easy fit. I will admit, Chessrook, this makes me a little put off when you experience a moment of this "tough fit" and then express it as the game being poorly designed or needing to do something differently.
  24. Quiconque
    Yeah. For canon, that or the Loyalist ending, which has the same relevant bits.
  25. Quiconque
    Interesting question about Astoria. I don't think there's any indication that their views propagated successfully. Even in G3 their disappearance is barely mentioned at all. Although, if there is enough memory of the villages on Sucia to name towns after them in G5, presumably that includes memory of the Awakened as well. (Not a spoiler, I think, since Pinner and company talk about it.) I think I disagree. The situation at the end is a little reminiscent of another ending from later in the series, actually. (Not spoiling which.) There is a more satisfying (and better-sounding) ending, though you may not be aware it's an option. Come to think of it, though, the Awakened ending may be the single best piece of evidence to support one of those contentions Alhoon is always making
×
×
  • Create New...