ThirdParty

I vaguely recall there being a fun battle in the basement if you visit it enough times, but I don't remember if anything special dropped from it. Maybe a relatively-powerful item enchantment?

Asking your friend out on a first date? Giving an important presentation in class? You need speech insurance. Here's how it works. Before your speech, you submit a planned script and pay a premium of $1.25 per planned minute. Then record your speech. If you flub your lines, forget to make eye contact, accidentally speak in a monotone, fall off the stage, or suffer other calamities during your speech, simply submit the recording for review by claims adjusters. They will compare what you actually said to what you had intended to say, and then pay you compensation of 80% of the estimated cost incurred by each error. Then you can buy a box of chocolates for your friend, slip a quiet bribe to your teacher, or at least feel like the day wasn't a total loss. For a modest additional fee, dependent upon the quality of your script, you can also buy insurance against unexpected audience reactions, such as if they fail to laugh at your jokes or if they do laugh at what was meant to be a serious proposal. If you make a mistake while cooking breakfast and accidentally burn down your house, you'll receive compensation from your fire insurance. If you make a mistake while driving to school and accidentally crash your car, you'll receive compensation from your auto insurance. But the most important part of your day isn't your breakfast or your commute; it's your interactions with other people. If you make a mistake during the important part of the day, and lose a friend or fail a class, won't you want to be compensated for that loss too? Buy speech insurance and enjoy peace of mind. (As a bonus, being insured against possible mistakes will make you more relaxed and less likely to make those mistakes in the first place. It's win-win!)

Shima on tactics: "A thousand lessons on how best to study a target. Living the dream of the perfect, quick, quiet, stealthy assassination. ... And here we are, blundering through the front entrance as usual." Redbeard on oaths: "I guess now you have no chance of being a spy or assassin. Not if you swore an oath!"

This particular decision probably isn't all that significant one way or the other (on the one hand, the Wayfarer isn't offering all that much reward for this particular favor, but on the other hand, if Ryozo is innocent then Avadon will probably figure that out before executing him). However, this type of decision is inevitably going to keep coming up. The Pact's interests will not always coincide with what best strengthens your personal position. And if taking out Redbeard is even possible, you'll need to be very strong in order to do it. If you think you're going to get everything you want without making any compromises whatsoever (has that ever happened in a Spiderweb game?), you're being unrealistic.

Originally Posted By: waterplant Did you save all the Knowledge Brews? Well, admittedly, I used some of the knowledge brews. Permanent stat boosts are more enticing than temporary battle advantages. But I did end up with a fair number of them. At one point I decided to do something that was going to anger the alchemist who made knowledge brews, so I went ahead and converted much of my ingredient stash. But that led to such an embarrassment of riches that I didn't know what to do with all the brews, so I just saved them. I think I ended the game with thirty-something knowledge brews. I also saved ten each of wisdom crystals and knowledge elixirs. I was afraid there might be a fetch quest at some point. You know, "I can make you a Sword of Awesomeness, but I need ten Wisdom Crystals to do it." or "I can teach you the Spell of Doom, but I need ten Knowledge Elixirs to bolster my memory."

Quote: —Alorael, who can see the reasons for it. He just doesn't like the idea very much. He also knows he'd end the game with entirely vacant scarab slots. Well, yes, so would I. Sort of like how I ended A6 with every potion in the game--even the weak ones that are practically useless late game--in my inventory, not having used any of them but having saved all of them for a rainy day.

Here's a random new idea. Scarabs could be stat boosters like other equipment, but unlike other equipment they're permanent: once equipped, they can't be unequipped. So the player would have to decide whether to equip weak scarabs early in the game or save space for stronger scarabs that will only be available later.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Originally Posted By: Dantius I do have to suspend disbelief that "I can pay this guy 200 pieces of eight and he'll suddenly improve my skill at shooting a bow instantaneously". I always figure these guys are giving quick but very helpful tips. After all, I'm only gaining one skill point. I always figured it wasn't instantaneous, and the game just wasn't bothering to show the boring weeks you spent practicing with the guy.

Originally Posted By: Micawber Maybe if all the best items weren't available by searching pots/killing monsters... Wouldn't have to be the best items. Just have to be items that aren't substitutable by random loot. If there were a particular category of item--e.g. armbands--that enemies never dropped and that was never given as a mission reward, stores could sell items in that category and they'd be worth buying. Even if the items in question were fairly weak, overall.

I've gotten permission from Jeff to pass on this email exchange I had with him during the Avernum 6 beta: Originally Posted By: Jeff Vogel Originally Posted By: ThirdParty I find it annoying that unexplored space on the automap looks the same as ground--it makes it harder to tell where I've been and where I haven't. It is annoying, but drawing something for every spot gives an FPS hit. It's a lot of little draws. Right now I don't have a solution.

Well, okay, if not a zoom out, maybe a button that will make unexplored areas of the minimap flash briefly?

Jeff didn't make the current minimap the way he did out of laziness. Instead, I believe he had a number of desiderata in mind: 1. The current minimap looks professional and elegant, and avoids potentially-clashing graphics juxtapositions. 2. The current minimap stays out of the way. (Thanks to consuming minimal screen real estate, and being partially transparent.) 3. The current minimap presents the information the party needs for navigation in a minimally-confusing way. (For navigation, you need to know about obstacles and potential destinations. Anything else is noise.) 4. The current minimap avoids straining the graphics processors of older computers. (Given Jeff's engine, stacking a bunch of tiny partially-transparent graphics on top of a large, potentially-animated terrain graphic is not a good idea. So the fewer things the minimap shows, the better.) ----- My suggestion: keep the current minimap as it is, but add a new "zoom out" button that temporarily shows a bird's eye view of the zone. It could facilitate exploring by distinguishing floors from unexplored areas. It could be large and show lots of detail, so be very pretty. It could be full-screen and non-transparent, so avoid issues of clashing graphics and cpu strain.

Assuming the beetle-looking things at the top of the inventory window are the scarabs themselves, I note that they appear to be non-usable (which rules out the possibility that they cast spells) and non-stackable (which rules out the possibility that they are spell components consumed by player spells). As I understand Jeff's game design philosophy, he doesn't want the player to be able to make horrible mistakes, so I doubt that the scarabs are plot-related or increase character growth or anything like that (since losing such items would be a horrible mistake). So ... I'm guessing they're another kind of equipment, notwithstanding the placement. Maybe they'll differ from standard equipment in some way: e.g. by affecting skills instead of attributes, or by not contributing to encumbrance.

Hmm. I agree that it's bad to unexpectedly burden the player's memory or unexpectedly kill the party, but I'm not sure that linearity is the right solution. Originally Posted By: Jeff's blog People have enough to worry about in their lives as it is without remembering where they left behind some giant they need to go back and kill. The "Current Quests" list has largely eliminated this problem. All that's necessary is to make it a little bit more complete. Maybe have some quests auto-generate without being offered by NPCs: e.g. "You discovered a demon trapped under Patrick's Tower. Nobody's offered you anything for killing it, but you doubt that anyone would complain if you did." Originally Posted By: Jeff's blog I swear, I put in "OMG this room ahead is megahard guys srsly!!!" warnings all the time, and nobody ever listens to them. Nor should they. Characters in games tell them how lethal the territory ahead is all the time, and then they enter it and prevail. No reason to think things should be different here. One possible solution to this is to go ahead and offer explicit recommended levels: e.g. instead of "A reward has been offered for killing the Crypt Wight in the Memorial Grounds; caution, Crypt Wights are extremely dangerous." go ahead and say "A reward has been offered for killing the Crypt Wight in the Memorial Grounds; caution, Crypt Wights are extremely dangerous (recommended level: 20)."

Quote: Originally written by Dragonlorddrakon: tecnicly, the only way for the Geneforge series to really end is if there is only one ending, that the player gets from any sect. of counse, that would only to happen if jeff gets REALLY creative. It could happen. We saw in GF2 that there's a reform faction within the Shapers, who want to end many of the abuses. And we saw in GF3 that the humans in the Rebellion take a much more moderate stance than the drakons. So it's possible that the player's job from either side would be to try to forge a compromise, fight extremists on both sides, and end the mahem. Of course, knowing Jeff, there are bound to be other endings as well. Heck, remember how it was possible in GF1 to simply leave the island with everything unresolved? (Which, by the way, is what I thought happened in the official plot--not an Obeyer victory. But I haven't played GF2 recently, so I'm not sure--can someone confirm?) I bet there'll be a bunch of unpleasant endings where one side crushes the other with a "you'll always wonder whether you could have done better" hint, and a (relatively) happy compromise ending hidden somewhere.

Quote: Originally written by Savage Ed Walcott: I don't agree that the creations should be given absolute freedom or regarded as independent beings. Once that happens, the entire point of making the creation is lost. ... Normal human beings shoulnd't have to live in fear of the Shapers or be treated like second class citizens, but the serviles were created in part to alleviate this. They perform many of the mundane, trivial, or hazardous tasks that most humans would refuse to. ... No matter how intelligent, or clever, or independent a creation is, it's still only a creation and was created for some specific purpose. The clawbug is a modification of the desert scorpion; what do you suppose the servile is a modification of? Human, right? So we know that humans can be "created" in your sense of the word. (I don't whether serviles can be Shaped; most people breed them instead. But if they can, then humans presumably can too.) So one could "create" a human just like you or me, with the intention of using it to do nasty work in awful conditions for no pay (you would undoubtedly refuse to do "trivial, mundane, or hazardous" tasks at first, but I imagine you'd change your mind after some time in one of those tiny cages or on one of those whipping posts, that always seem to be found near any servile-holding community). If this was the purpose the human was created for, does that make it right to treat it that way? How would you like to be told that because you were created for some purpose, that was what you had to do with your life? On the other hand, slaves are not the only thing one might want to create: just because Shapers have chosen to use their ability for this evil purpose doesn't mean that it's the only thing that Shaping is good for. (However, If slavery were the "whole point" of Shaping as you suggest, that would be an argument against Shaping, not an argument in favor of slavery.) Especially in underpopulated areas, one might want to create people to be friends, allies, citizens. Hey, people decide to have babies, right? Shaping is just an alternative, less messy, way of making new people. And it gives more options: for example, if one wants the new citizens, one's children as it were, to be stronger and braver, smarter and more creative and more magically apt, more noble and more honest and more trustworthy, and better looking and better able to fly than average people are, one can do that. (Drayks make excellent citizens, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. The incidents have all been because drayks make poor slaves.) There'd be no danger of overly-"independent" creations eating their masters if you stopped trying to set masters over them.

Quote: If you were give the position of dictator in the Shaper regime, how would you act to change the 'mad experiment'? What laws would you pass? What mechanisms would you put in place? What you change the method of research? How would you screen for megalomaniac individuals? That's the key question, isn't it? If there's a better way that the Council could be behaving, then it's failure to behave in that way signals that it is interested in something other than the good of its subjects. So:Stop sealing and barring things when an experiment goes bad: clean it up instead. A hyperactive golem with demon's blood in its veins can last a very, very long time in an airtight laboratory; eventually, the seal will be breached, and people will get hurt. But the Council is more interested in avoiding accountability and hiding their mistakes than in the safety of the people. Don't just close off avenues of research. Just as any sealed lab will eventually be breached, any fact will eventually become common knowledge. The right way to deal with something like the discovery of the miniature scrolls is to continue doing research, to make any technology better and less buggy, and to figure out how society can be adapted to live with the new powers which people will have. But the Council is more interested in delaying social change and keeping themselves at the top of the heap than in the long-term well-being of the people. Rule by respect rather than fear. No matter how overextended the Shapers are, they could do better if they treated outsiders as allies rather than as an occupied people. Shapers don't need unlimited authority, don't need to be above all law; they could give reasons for their commands and convince people to do what's in their own interests (presuming, of course, that it is--they could also listen to people's input if there is disagreement), instead of by demanding unthinking obedience. But the Council is more interested in exercising its power than in producing good results. When measuring the suitability of candidates for training, base it not on their loyalty to current policies but rather on their loyalty to the people. By all means eject someone who might abuse power, but don't reject him for having alternate political views. But the Council is more interested in maintaining a corrupt regime than in ensuring the best possible succession. Bring back the Drayks. Genocide of an intelligent people cannot be justified by "they're too independent to make useful slaves", "when they live, they consume resources that could instead be consumed by our people", nor "they're sub-humans, more like reptiles than like us." But the Council is more interested in what's good for themselves than in what's morally right.

As it stands, rogue creations and such are a problem because power is in the hands of so few; the majority of people are not able to defend themselves. If more people were allowed to shape, then there would be more accidents, but they'd each be quickly contained. (Having an evil drakon or two wandering about wouldn't be a problem if every town had ten mages in it--some human, some drayk--capable of shaping, not fully trusting each other but obeying the laws because each is outnumbered.)

Greta's existence is interesting. When they decided she didn't have the right mindset to be a Shaper, they simply dumped her back into the human population. Assuming that this isn't terribly unusual, any racial difference between Shapers and humans would probably have disappeared over the eons.

Yes, what exactly is wrong with the mild Shaper path? I gave consistently pro-servile answers, and so couldn't buy the highest-level creations, but I accept that morality comes with a cost (I did use canisters, trying to avoid situations that would set off my uncontrollable anger). I consistently killed rogues who were threatening innocents, but never touched serviles. At the end I got an ending I liked: the Shapers strongly disapproved of my views, but took me in anyway; the war was visibly killing off the extremists, and several other moderates were also rising in power. Things weren't perfect, but they looked to be improving.

I was a beta-tester, so may not have faced this battle in its final form, but I do remember beating it with a Shaper unaccompanied by Alwan or Greta. For me, it was the hardest battle in the game--it took several tries to find a strategy that worked. If I recall, I ended up using two thahds and two fyoras. The thahds kept the worms off my back, the fyoras provided backup in case the thahds missed (or needed time to reposition) and otherwise very slowly damaged the Creator, and the shaper did whatever seemed most important at the time (healing things, blessing things, throwing extra firebolts at the Creator, etc). I may have consumed an Essence Pod, but I didn't consume any other items. The key to the battle is making sure you don't fight all the worms at once; you want to face a slow trickle of worms, not occasional swarms. Keep your creations near each other (and surrounding the Shaper), as far from the worm-spawning pads as possible. Get in a rhythm such that, at any given time, at least half of the worms are out of striking range due to being stunned or newly spawned; kill any worm that comes within range, but don't kill it until it does so. Do this right and each worm will die the turn before it would take its first attack, you'll be outside of the Creator's range (as I recall it could kill any member of my party in one melee hit, which was nasty), and so you'll be taking no damage at all and can whittle down the Creator's health in a very long fight. Of course, the best strategy depends on your character. My shaper was focused on battle shaping and blessing magic; if he had been equipped with magic shaping and mental magic instead, a completely different approach would have been appropriate.

Quote: Micawber wrote: At the moment there are too many special artifacts that you equip for making creations and then remove immediately. This feels a bit artificial. The player's investment of skill points in shaping skills should be worth more. I agree. I think it ought to work like this: All Fire Creations in the party should get one bonus level for each Fire Shaping skill the Shaper has, not to exceed the Fire Shaping skill the Shaper had when he created it. (And also for Battle and Magic creations and shaping skills, mutatis mutandis.) This would be just like the current system except that if you use an artifact to shape a higher-level creation and then remove the artifact, your creation loses the bonus until you put the artifact back on or otherwise gain in the shaping skill. The current dilemma between keeping an experienced creation or making a new one with your better skills would not be affected, and there would still be reason to set up a private "shaping laboratory" somewhere with artifacts (you might put on an artifact before shaping, even though you didn't intend to use the artifact later, if you anticipated eventually training in that skill and wanted the creation to be able to grow when you did so), but there would also be a reason to wear bonus-to-shaping artifacts into battle. Quote: Nick Ringer wrote: I'd love an agent that's good at shaping, or a guardian with magic skills. It would be nice if all six logical combinations of strengths and weaknesses were available, instead of just three. (I too wish for the combinations you mention. The magic user with shaping skills would especially play differently from any of the current classes.) Or at least, since Jeff is replacing the Agent-Guardian-Shaper choice with Servile-(Battle Creature?)-Human anyway, he'd might as well at least switch to the three combinations of strengths and weaknesses that we haven't seen yet; it would be a nice touch, and an easy-to-implement tweak that would leave GF4 with slightly different gameplay from the previous GF's. Quote: Wonko The Sane wrote: Can we please have the Awakened back in G4? I don't really like G3's moral choices, Rebel or Loyalist, because: Rebels 1. Every shaper on the Rebel side is a completely power-crazed maniac. 2. The poor townspeople on Terrestia and regular soldiers never did anything wrong. Loyalists 1. The Shapers support a clearly flawed system. 2. You have to be an absolute jerk to every non-shaper you meet. I realize that there shouldn't be an easy option, but maybe the Awakened path could be much harder but more morally fufilling. I disagree completely. There's already a "harder but more fulfilling" option for those who want to take the harder but morally better path: not using canisters. I like being forced to take sides in the moral dilemma. Should we share power with all, knowing that many will misuse it and cause others to suffer? Or shall we try to control the power, knowing that the chosen few will lord over everyone else? Freedom versus Safety; Capitalism versus Communism; Democracy versus Stability. It's a major issue facing real-world political communities, and the game is richer for exploring it. To make a miracle solution that the virtuous can pick misses the point, even if it's harder than the uncomfortable answers--in the real world, honest, well-intentioned people can disagree, there being pros and cons on both sides; nobody has a moral high ground. I don't trust my government, but I trust even less the gun-toting anarchist types that share my distrust of the government. If I wanted to get away from such problems into a fictional world where good and evil are obvious, I'd play Avernum. When I play Geneforge, it's for the sake of thinking about them from a different perspective.

In terms of Shaping, I've always wanted to be able to make turrets. Think of the strategy implications of a stationary creation: the player would have to place the turret well, and lure the monsters into its range. I also wouldn't mind the ability to create support creatures: a vlish variant that heals nearby allies or removes bad effects, an ornk that can be eaten for energy, maybe even something that blesses allies (it would give Guardians a way to eventually take advantage of some spell effects without getting spells...). The high-level battle creations are pretty redundant. I'd like to see a golem, with more defense than a battle alpha but not as strong an attack. (Ah, here's an idea: reagents that can be used during Shaping to improve creations. Kind of like augmentation of weapons: give a creation a poisoned stinger, or extra speed, or a tougher carapace, by Shaping it with the proper ingredient...)

Magic: I several spells could be added to increase interestingness: (M) Stealth (decrease monster sight range to make sneaking easier) (M) Detect Life (another sneaking tool) (M) Disarm (for those times when a trap or mine is causing serious trouble; perhaps sometimes it will fail and just detonate nearby traps and mines) (B or M) Move Mountains (B or L) Force Cage (call it "Essence Cage", of course) (B or L) some sort of stun/slow/paralyze spell (L) Martyr's Shield (H) a recover-health-over-time spell (H) a convert-essence-into-energy spell Redundant spells, like the three Heals, the two Essence Shields, the two Dazes, etc. should be eliminated; let ability level determine effectiveness. ----- Shaping: Rather than third-tier creations, I'd like to see an additional creation type in each category. After all, there is little difference between a Brutal Thahd and an Alpha, or between an Ur-Drayk (if there were such a thing) and a Drakon. The new creations should be geared toward making on-the-fly creation a more interesting option. For example: Battle: push everything up a notch and insert Ornk as the lowest level battle creation. It can attack somewhat (although it's slow: -1 to its AP), but its most valuable ability would be the power to transfer health and energy from itself to an ally. Create them in advance and have them tag along the party, acting as a meat shield (no pun intended) and being consumed if a battle turns ugly. Fire: insert between Roamer and Drayk the Turret. It's immobile, which means that you'll pretty much have to reabsorb it after a battle, but it makes up for it by its powerful ranged physical attack (it's nice to be able to fire ranged attacks against things that resist magic). Magic: Maybe over in the Battle section the Thahd Shade could be replaced by a Charged Thahd (it could be essentially a Thahd with +2AP, which makes it significantly different tactically from Alphas), thus making room for inserting Essence Shade in between Artila and Vlish. Essence Shade could be designed for reabsorbtion: intsead of recovering only 50% of essence on absorb, the player could recover 75% or so, which (along with the hard-to-hit trait of the shade) would make create-reabsorb-recreate at least a remotely viable battle strategy. In addition to the Ornk's ability, I'd give some friendly spells to other creations as well: Ur-Drakons should have Battle Roar, Clawbugs should have Move Mountains, some type of Vlish could maybe have Heal, etc. As other people have mentioned, let the environment react a bit to your party composition. For example, a particular rogue might slink off rather than attacking if it sees a Vlish in your party; if you have a Battle Alpha in your party a Shaper might start up a conversation about how to improve such things; Drayks might be pleased to see you creating more of their number; etc. Furthermore, some important figures might insist that you chain your creations up outside their camps rather than letting them enter; and some rebels might look askance at you for having creations at all. (Perhaps an option could be added alongside Absorb called "Release" that does the same thing but doesn't give the 50% essence recovery. The game could take note of whether or not you've ever absorbed a creation that had been with you long enough to gain a level, and of whether or not you'd ever released such a creation. These flags could change how willing people are to trust you. ('"The Eyes see all! You deceive the eared creatures, claiming you want creations free, but the Eyes cannot be fooled. The Eyes see many creations of your essence dying, none ever freed! Look into the Eyes and receive your judgment!" The conversation ends.') ----- Equipment: More interesting items; some equipment, for example, could improve a particular ability rather than a general trait. More anvil recipes, the best ones to be pieced together by analogy from others rather than from instructions (make the player really start to figure out which reagents will bind energy, which have energy to be bound, and so on). Discourage trial-and-error: perhaps you'd need to consume a Magic Solvent to get your reagents back after a failed experiment (or to unbind an enhancement from an item so a more powerful enhancement can be used in its place). At the same time, encourage some experimentation: let the player find recipes that don't quite work, but fail in ways which suggest fixes. (Imagine this: you find a recipe for a powerful belt; but when you create it, you find that although it gives the bonuses you wanted, it weighs 50 pounds and is horribly encumbering--the recipe had an error in it. Luckily, you've learned that items can be made lighter by infusing them with a Vlish Air Sac; you apply some Magic Solvent, add Air Sac to the mix, and voila--the belt is finally a success.) ----- Plot: I want to see factions and subfactions, a chance to pick not just which side you want to be on but which individual actor you want to support (imagine Khyryk and Rahul fighting side-by-side; you'd nominally be working for both, but you'd have an eye for which one you wanted to see have the most success).

Both sides are corrupt. But I favor the Loyalists, for now. Consider: Of the Loyalists we meet in GF3, their reasonableness seems approximately proportional to their power. For the most part, the leaders aze intelligent, compassionate, and merciful. Some of them openly acknowledge that the system must be changed, that the Shaper Empire is unjust; most of the evils are caused by bureaucrats blindly following the rules or by researchers foolishly ignoring them. It seems likely that when reasonable people like those we meet ascend to the top of the Shaper hierarchy, reform will happen; thus, good can come from being patient a little longer. It's also worth noting that even students are hearing rumors that what they've been told about serviles is not entirely true. Can change not come? The Rebels are possibly hypocrites. They preach anger that Shaper accidents kill innocents, but they themselves fail to discriminate shapers from civilians in mounting their attacks. They preach that creations should be free, but they make use of serviles just as the Shapers do. They call for knowledge to be shared, but most jealously horde their own power without even sharing it with their fellows in arms. In short, it's not at all obvious that a Rebel-run world would be an improvement, and it would certainly be bloodier. In fact, it might well be less just: notice that the Rebels, in trying to get people to join their cause, tend to mention power first and justice second; whereas the Loyalists tend to focus on good reasons for helping them. The Shapers appear to have been proven right about the importance of limiting Shaping power to those who can safely wield it. Reform may be needed in their schools so that honest, stable mages can be allowed to study the arts, but the principle is sound: when a technology can kill thosuands if misused, its use has to be restricted. Global fascism may not be a very palatable response to the threat of high-tech terrorism, but I have yet to hear a better one. The Shapers appear to have been proven right about the safety of using canisters and other experimental shortcuts to actual training. In general, the Rebels are less cautious than the Shapers, which implies a greater potential for catastrophic accident. (Reflect: most Shaper mistakes we see in the game are locked up, due to safety measures having been in place; most Rebel mistakes we see in the game are wandering around causing trouble.) If our first concern is the safety of civilians, then the Loyalists' slow, cautious approach is probably better than the Rebels' hasty, risky one. At the time the story begins, the player has already sworn to uphold Shaper ways. She is a Shaper herself. And the Loyalists are definitely friendlier and less prone to randomly attacking her than the Rebels are. Meanwhile, the Rebels have killed people she loves. All else equal, shouldn't one be loyal to one's promises, one's nation, and one's friends?