Kelandon

Originally Posted By: Harehunter It has become standard fare to accuse a fiscal conservatives 'racist', not that race has anything to do with economic policy. Well, if you advocate for policies that will disproportionately disadvantage certain ethnic minorities, you're pretty well opening yourself up for that one. And most "fiscal conservatives" do. Originally Posted By: Harehunter What has been the effect of greater government spending on the credit rating of the U.S.? Pretty much what would happen to an ordinary citizen who racks up more debt than his credit limit allows. Uh, wait, no. You could make the argument — and it might even be sustainable — that deficits were the primary contributor to S&P's downgrading of U.S. debt (while Moody's and Fitch sat there pointing and laughing at S&P). But a deficit isn't the result of spending alone. A deficit is the result of spending exceeding income. That is, you have to consider both whatever spending there has been in the recent past (*cough* two wars, a prescription drug benefit, and a host of other things *cough*) together with whatever the tax plan has been in the recent past (*cough* Bush tax cuts *cough*) in order to come to what the deficit has been in the recent past. And then, from there, you have to be able to argue that S&P's downgrading was the result of deficits, not the result of political dysfunction (*cough* Republican intransigence over closing tax loopholes *cough*), which would have to emphasize certain aspects of their report (namely, the second bullet point) over others (namely, the third and fourth). Oh, and what would happen to a private citizen who racked up more debt than his credit limit allows would be more than one of three ratings agencies downgrading his debt from AAA to AA+. His rating would go in the toilet. That didn't happen here, because (despite a lot of ridiculous statements making such comparisons) U.S. federal government debt is not at all like credit card debt.

Originally Posted By: Skwish-E I'd rather it be 10% of everything for everybody, but That wiould cause a lot of people to scream about unfairly burdening the poor. Actually, that wouldn't be my objection. My objection is that isn't anywhere near enough. The government in the U.S. (and here I mean at all three levels) needs considerably more than that to function (i.e. have Social Security, Medicare, etc.). Now, if you then tried to fix the problem by figuring out how much is actually enough so that we don't run a deficit and then imposing a flat tax to collect that much, that's when I'd start screaming about unfairly burdening the poor. I think we'd be talking about roughly 20%. Now, 10% may or may not be excessive, but 20% certainly is, at least for most people. Right now, if I just did a back of the envelope calculation correctly, married people filing jointly have to make in the neighborhood of $200,000 per year in order to have an average tax rate of 20%. (Jeez, really? I'm running the numbers again and not seeing errors. Check my math. Bear in mind the different between marginal tax rates, or "tax brackets," and average tax rate, the idea being that if you made $200,000, you'd have to pay about $40,000 in taxes, which is about 20%. The graph for 2008 does seem to support this, or at least nearly.) Since taxes are at a historic low in the U.S. right now, I'd go so far as to guess that a 20% tax rate on families making under, say, $50,000 would be devastatingly high. That's why we need tax brackets in the first place. You can't get enough money to pay for necessary government functions that benefit everyone without taxes that are at least moderately high for at least some people. A flat tax would make them unaffordably high for the poor and even much of the middle class but laughably low for the rich. A progressive tax fixes that problem. I say this with minimal background in econ, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer BoA doesn't need the money Blades of Avernum totally needs the money! Wait...

Originally Posted By: Skwish-E What would work well is No Tax on the first $25,000 you make in the year (An adjustment for larger families would not hurt my feelings. Maybe $10,000 per person on the return instead of a flat $25,000.), then 10% of all the rest as a tax. Period. The end. No deductions for interest paid on your mortgage, no deductions for anything. Do your taxes in 10 minutes. The longest part would be writing down the social security numbers of the people on the return. This would raise a lot more money, and would put a fair burden on people who make a lot of money while meeping a low burden on the poor. Well, okay, but why only two tax brackets? (That is, the 0% bracket and the 10% bracket.) Why not make it more progressive, say, by having four or five brackets, so as to put the greater burden on those who can actually afford it? Was "simplicity" your response? But a flat tax without brackets at all is the simplest possible tax, and you're not proposing a flat tax. So on the one hand you're arguing for simplicity, but on the other hand, you're admitting that progressive taxation is a good idea. How do you balance the two to get two brackets, and not, say, four or five? Or fifty? (Not to say that there isn't an answer to this question, just that you'd have to give one in order to argue for what you're arguing.) Eliminating deductions would, likewise, make things simpler, but the objection regarding cost of living in various areas is relevant, along with a whole bunch of other things. The number and types of deductions are impossibly complex right now, and we need to simplify them (and probably eliminate a bunch of them), but eliminating deductions altogether would probably wreak havoc. (Though, admittedly, I don't know enough about the tax code to speak intelligently to this. Ask me again in about two years.)

The lower middle class does okay, I suppose, provided that their financial aid comes in grant form. The rest of the middle class has to take on significant loans that should, in theory, be possible to pay off over the course of a decade or more, provided that nothing goes wrong. That is, there's a strange middle space occupied by people who have enough income not to qualify for grants but not enough cash on hand to pay outright. I think those people are the people we're talking about, the "giant loan" crowd. Many people are daunted by the size of the indebtedness and end up not being able to attend universities to which they were accepted. I know that happened to me when I applied. Of course, if we're talking about universities that don't have massive endowments (i.e. the other 4000 or so, other than those maybe 10 or 20 that do), loans are a given no matter how poor your family is.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity If you're paying $40K a year for college, I can understand wanting to get the pain over with as fast as possible. But in many places it's still possible to put yourself through college with earnings from your summer job. I'm pretty sure you can still do that in Canada, at least if you can get a decent summer job. I wonder whether there aren't American state universities where you can do that, if you're a state resident. I put myself through UC Berkeley with minimal financial assistance from my parents after the first couple of years with a part-time/summer job, as a California resident. I was able to do a fifth year partly because I was able to pay for it entirely by myself. Of course, the fee hikes over the past three years since I graduated have probably made that harder/impossible to do the way that I did it. May as well toss in my own classes: Legislation and Regulation Contracts Torts Civil Procedure Should be fun. Starts tomorrow.

Originally Posted By: Kiexcolo so the review is based on the version that can't skip the cutscene? Probably so, yes. In Bahs (and Lord Putidus), I read the reviews and made a lot of edits to fix things that people complained about. Of course, the reviews never changed, even if the scenario did. In Exodus (and Nobody's Heroes), I mostly didn't bother.

Originally Posted By: Kiexcolo but problem is people who are not interested can't skip it, at least not with BoA's limitation. For this I blame the engine for not supporting a way to skip cut scenes. There is a way of skipping Bahs's cutscenes. I just added it after v1.0.0, which is generally the version on which the reviews are based (if not the beta).

Originally Posted By: *i That said, I'm not willing to let the community be painted so negatively with such a broad brush. As you said, "thin but loud slice", and I'm trying to provide perspective here. My exact words were, "I grew to dread releasing scenarios because of the non-constructive and often unreasonable criticism I got every time I put something out." I guess you could read that as implying that all of the criticism was bad, but a more straightforward reading (and what I meant) was that there was bad criticism, and it was enough to make me stop. Whatever good criticism there was is beside the point. I dreaded the bad stuff, and there was enough of it to make scenario design not fun anymore. And when it wasn't fun, there was no reason for me to do it anymore.

Originally Posted By: Metatron I think the community is different now. Everybody who plays Blades is 1) not TM 2) an oldbie. So they've probably calmed down by now. Or you could write Homeland, and then not release it. You could just make posts telling everyone how awesome it is. But you shouldn't let an unfinished story roll around in your head. I know that I constantly edit my plots of upcoming scenarios, even if I've ever only released one. Am I right in guessing that you still have notes on Homeland, and you still edit them? Because it's so much fun to write a story! And so long as it's unpublished, it can still be edited and made more complex. The writing process only ends for when you release the story/scenario, because it's only then that you can stop editing and writing new content. I agree that the community has calmed way the heck down now. Back in 2006, when I was most active in designing, I grew to dread releasing scenarios because of the non-constructive and often unreasonable criticism I got every time I put something out. I was really, really tentative about Nobody's Heroes because I feared more of the same, but people were a lot nicer about that one. You're right that I still have my notes for Homeland. The outline is still there on my computer, and I have been fiddling with it from time to time for the past five years. The plotline is much, much better now than it was then. I had forgotten half of Bahssikava when I wrote Exodus (Ethass didn't believe in the Goddess when she was a librarian at the Temple? What?), but I've gone back through both of them and know what needs to be resolved and finished in Homeland. I know exactly what needs to be done. But to do it right, the scenario has to be big. Really big. Bigger than Bahssikava, though probably not quite as big as Exodus. That takes a LOT of time.

Glad to hear you liked the story! And I admit that I'm surprised, but I guess pleased, that people are still playing these, so many years after I made them. The plan was always to make a third scenario, Homeland, that finished the story. ("We have repented at Bahssikava. We have made the Exodus. Now, it is time for us to retake the Homeland!") After the poor reception of Exodus by the community at the time, though, I pretty much quit making scenarios for Blades, with the exception of Nobody's Heroes, a short joke scenario that I claimed was released by "Kelandon's friend" for a long time to avoid the crap that was heaped on me every time I released anything. It kind of pains me that I never finished the trilogy, and you get some hints as to what happens in Homeland if you play Nobody's Heroes (notably, the main quest-giver in NH is an older but not really wiser Machrone).

Originally Posted By: Lazarus. Well you could just leave blank states and nodes in between NPCs. So if you finish NPC1's dialog and you're at node 15 state 5, start NPC2 at node 20 state 10 so that you can come back to NPC1 and add nodes without things getting confusing. Yeah, this is what I do/did. I'm usually pretty accurate about how many nodes I'll need, too, as you can see in Nobody's Heroes.

I PMed Thuryl (at the time) a plot description right after I finished Exodus and decided that I wasn't going to make Homeland right away. The plot has evolved over the past few years, though. Some of the main events are different in my head now. I would like to make the final scenario. It's just, well, big. And that takes a lot of time. I mean, a LOT of time. Exodus took an obscene amount of time to make, and I cranked through it at an unreasonable speed, a speed that left some areas underdeveloped and some features undertested. It's still, to this day, buggier than I would like.

You get some (very small) hints of what happens in the third scenario in Nobody's Heroes. But I don't know when, or even if, I'm going to have time to make Homeland.

Originally Posted By: Kiexcolo Back when Blades of Avernum was first released (2004?) There was a scenario competition that went along with it and I thought of a scenario which I thought might be interesting to Avernum fans based on the Slith home land (And I was not the only one, I remembered reading the boards that someone else was also writing a scenario on that) Yes. Yes, there was someone else who had a similar inspiration, who might also have never quite finished what he started (despite releasing two scenarios of it).

Just went and bought the iPad version, considering it a donation to Spidweb. The upside-down screen is sort of clunky, even for me, and I don't use a stand. Second, too, on the need for occasional updates; it's what we expect in this format, more so than in the traditional desktop software format. Haven't gotten very far (and may not finish on the iPad), but it's still a damn good game.

I think we all knew it was just a matter of time before that unsellable trowel came back to mod over us all.

As I was writing the above, I thought of one more reaction that I had to Avadon generally, which came mostly from my first playthrough: this is the game that has brought me back to Spidweb. I think that A4 really lost me. As much as it was commercially successful and sort of fun to play, I guess, I felt that it was such a lackluster performance as compared to the first Avernum Trilogy and the first few GF games (and, frankly, I found GF3 mediocre as well) that I didn't really have a strong desire to continue on with the games. I heard that A5 and A6 were much better, and I heard that GF4 was much better, but after playing the first half of GF4 with a fairly poorly-chosen build, I gave up and skipped the next three Spidweb games. But Avadon was good. It was really good. I've played it twice and kind of want to play it again, which puts it among my favorite Spidweb games. I think I'll go play A5 and A6 now, and if I have time, I'll see if I can finish GF4 and GF5. A4 lost me, but Avadon has brought me back into the fold, and I think I'm going to pay attention to Spidweb's output again, for the first time in several years.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES The only thing that changed was whether or not someone would give you an official quest and a reward for doing it. Or in some cases, different person, different goal, different reward. But the areas and 99% of the game content was always the same. But I have to say, as much as most of the encounters would be the same, the 1% difference had a fairly substantial impact on the feel of the plotline. In GF1, if I had sided with the Takers all the way, I would've felt as though the plot was quite different from how it felt when I stuck more or less loyal the whole way, even if most of the encounters worked out the same way. In Avadon, on the other hand, you don't have a Nethergate/ASR/GF3 thing going on; things are literally the same no matter what. In fact, even the little things you say here and there make almost no difference to anyone ever. Redbeard tests you by asking you bunches of questions about hypotheticals; as far as I know, this matters not at all. The Wayfarer asks you tons of questions, too, but as far as I know, this has no impact on anything. At least in the early GF games, your answers to those questions determined which side you were on and how much certain people trusted you. Likewise, even if A4 was more or less linear in terms of your quests and the plotline and so forth (I honestly don't remember, since I only played it once and never really thought about it again), it felt as though it had more ability at least to choose where you were going to explore and how. Since the areas weren't as forced as in Avadon, I still felt as though I was doing an A1-3 thing with my random wanderings, even if it was guided in actual fact. In Avadon, there's never any doubt where you're going or what's available to you. Not that this is bad, mind you. It's a different feeling than you get in A1 or GF1, but it's not bad. Perhaps the wild unpredictability has something to do with the absolute linearity; your steps are very much laid out for you, but you can't really tell where anything is going, which keeps the element of exploration still present, even if you're not exploring new lands; you're exploring what will happen.

Originally Posted By: Drakemoore I really do dislike the very linear game play and overall lack of choice in a lot of events which seems like quite a step backwards in game design, perhaps you were wanting to appeal to a different consumer base but I think you went the wrong direction. I felt as if I was simply being pushed from spot to spot while being hand held. You know, this is an interesting aspect of Avadon. It was absolutely linear in terms of central plotline, and the quests didn't respond based on your prior actions (that is, you weren't put onto different quest paths based on your actions). In terms of being both linear and non-pathed, I think it might be just about unique among Spidweb games. That is, in most of the Avernums, the game was not linear at all (you could complete quests and visit areas in just about any order you pleased). However, at least in the first trilogy and A4, the game was completely non-pathed (the quests were always the same). On the other hand, in most of the Geneforges, the game was pathed (you could aid the Takers, the Awakened, whatever, and which side you chose affected nearly every aspect of the game). The game was generally linear (it was hard to do things out of order, though sometimes it was possible), though. Nethergate was semi-linear, at most, and pathed (Romans or Celts). Granted, I haven't played GF5 or A5/A6, but outside of those, Avadon railroads you more than any other Spidweb game by being both linear and non-pathed. It felt sort of odd at the time, and I couldn't articulate why, but I think this is it.

You know, I agree that it would've been nice to get a little more first-hand evidence of Avadon's collapse. There are a lot of people talking about how bad it is, but other than at the very beginning and ending (both of which involve attacks on Avadon itself), there's not much feeling of chaos and unraveling. And come to think of it, those were the two most exciting parts of the game! Many of the quests were, for dark fantasy (as Jeff calls it, above), not very dark. There was a little bit of muddy morality in the character quests (I think the majority opinion is that Sevilin and Shima went too far, at least), but that's two out of about fifteen. Most of the other quests were pretty morally defensible, and the main questions were, "Do I let the bad guy go at the end or not?" Or, equivalently, "Do I side with Avadon, no matter what, or not?" It might have been interesting, from a dark fantasy point of view, to see quests go wrong more seriously. Early in the game, we might see Avadon's aim sweep wide and hit innocent people (instead of people who are clearly guilty of violence and marauding); the only time this even might've happened was the last quest into Dhorl Stead. Later in the game, we might face disasters: enter an area with an Avadon flag-bearing group (either at the head of a group of Hands or just a bunch of soldiers) and see most of the rest of them killed or captured. These would give a greater sense that it's not just MIranda orchestrating demonstrations of Avadon's guilt but that there is actually guilt here, and that Avadon's power is in fact being challenged in front of your face and not just somewhere far away from you. The whole thing could've been a bit more vivid, I suppose. But it might've gotten too intense for Jeff's septuagenarian Eskimos, and that might've been the reason not to do it that way. But I do think, in terms of plotline, that I felt the most excitement in the endgame, and it would've been nice to have more like that. Random other thought: I expected, after having 1 companion to clean the dungeons and 2 for the next quest, to have a varying number of companions throughout. This would have been interesting, partly because the Redbeard fight is the only fight in which you get all 4 of your companions together, and it would've been nice to have some practice before having to deal with the big man himself.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer I've always found the best way to do it is to concentrate on eliminating her minions and just keep her occupied with summons or a high health character that is very resistant to cold attacks (90% of her attacks). Yeah, that sounds about right. Final thoughts from the second playthrough. I ended up bailing on killing Zephyrine and Redbeard. I tried the Redbeard fight once, and the thing was, his pieces of himself that he flings out to the hidden rooms have a ton of health. It ended up being an extremely long and precarious but ultimately rather boring combat. This is pretty surprising, since I've never found that to be the case in any final Spidweb fight before. The run through Hawthorne's palace, the long fight against Garzahd, the desperate (and maybe a little confusing) battle with Rentar-Ihrno, not to mention the final boss battles in the GF series... these were all much more fun than trying to take out Redbeard. I'm not entirely sure why that is. I suppose there's an entire topic dedicated to the Redbeard fight, and maybe I'll toss in some thoughts over there, but my initial reaction was that it had something to do with the actions you have to take in the combat. You end up sitting and repeating your actions a whole bunch of times (hit Redbeard as hard as you can, then when he becomes invulnerable, take down his creations, then hit Redbeard again) while struggling to negate what the opponent is doing (heal, cure mental effects, heal, cure mental effects) and working around seemingly pointless immunities (the creations are immune to energy, I think, which negates the shaman). At any rate, the game was more fun the second time, as I expected, though I was a little disappointed at the Zephyrine and Redbeard fights. Both seemed quite hard but also quite dull, and I didn't have the heart to finish either. I had a better time following the plot, though, and I'm looking forward to Avadon 2, whenever it might come out.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola That, and the imp-flinging demon right before him. Though in general I find bosses and sub-bosses differ in strength from trash mobs more in Avadon than they did in most previous SW games. I found the imp-flinger next to impossible on my first play-through and nearly a joke on my second (both on Hard). It was a strange difference. The second time, I had melee blademaster/archery blademaster/direct damage sorceress, everyone with middle columns as maxed out as I could get them at that point and then whatever extra skills I had points left over for. No one could hit my archer, who took down the demon, and my blademaster hacked through the imps without serious problems, with sorceress backup. Zhossa was a little harder (I think this was one reload), but the right choice of skills and stats really seems to make a huge difference. I remember this being absolutely ridiculously hard the first time I tried, but it was not at all the second time.

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee I have played all of Spiderweb's As and Gs from 4 to their respective final sequel – on normal – because when I started that was hard enough for me. But in Avadon I really have the impression that 'normal' plays like 'casual/easy' in the prequels. Might this be a consequence of increased gaming-experience or is it rather to be interpreted as an effect of the market-related adaptions of Avadon to gain a broader audience? I played on Hard, but my impression is that Avadon's difficulty starts very low and gradually builds to very high. The first quest or two are easy even on Torment. By the time you get to the middle of the game, though, the boss fights at least get pretty darn hard if you're on Hard, and I assume that Normal follows suit.

Okay, I'm just short of the endgame and am trying to mop up some quests. Killing Zephyrine seems ridiculously impossible. The only discussion of it that I can find seems to suggest that the way to prevent the minions from healing themselves fully from near death in about two turns is to separate the dragon from the minions. I have to admit, I didn't try this, but even so, the fight seems next-to-impossible. I think I'm going to let this go as "maybe something interesting to come back to someday" and go into the endgame. If this is supposed to be the second-hardest fight, I'm not looking forward to fighting Redbeard. Had no trouble with Beloch, though; I think that I reloaded only once. One thing that I didn't expect is that my uber-Dexterity Sevilin is now my primary damage-dealer. His bow shots are actually stronger than virtually any other form of damage I can deal, and he can do a lot of damage with some scarabs, too. Uber-Intelligence Nathalie is also doing a ridiculous amount of damage. My primary blademaster, though, seems underpowered. I cranked Strength, but maybe I don't have the right weapon equipped or something. Oh well. Call of the Frenzy is as overpowered as I thought, just about. I'm kind of sad that it's mathematically impossible to get it beyond 6, though.