Alorael at Large

Be fair. He's explicit in not thinking that and putting sciences in the useless bin. I agree that the "appreciation" label is belittling. And I'm not sure how physics is an exception, except in having a better match of number of students taught vs. number of students for whom there are positions in the field. But I'd argue that that's a terrible metric for undergrad education; most people don't stay in their major. Maybe that's not the case for highly technical/professional degrees, but for liberal arts—and that includes sciences—it is. It's okay to give out too many English degrees; most English majors will go into business, or journalism, or education, or work for a some policy NGO, or whatever else that isn't academia. To be fair, I think SoT's point does have merit. It's not clear why we teach people English when most won't really directly or obviously benefit from having studied it. The only real argument, I think, is that we don't really know how to structure college instead that would be better. It clearly works, somehow, for something, and produces measurably better incomes. It wouldn't be more useful to have more people study physics, would it? We don't need more physicists; grant money's already tight. Granting that physics may be a more difficult and rigorous discipline than some others, how is that necessarily a good thing or useful for anything later in life if you're not going into physics? —Alorael, who can come up with a counter to the blood money argument: if you don't want postgraduate education, and don't want to go into a technical field, it probably doesn't matter much whether you study physics or Renaissance drama. All you need is the paper at the end that says you're a college grad. (Yes, there are differences by degree, both in income and employment rates. It's worth pointing those out. But that's still complicated by other factors, like likelihood of postgraduate education.

If you want to be an engineer there is, practically speaking, no substitute for an engineering degree in the appropriate field. If you wan to be a scientist then you need a graduate degree in your field, and to get that you need an undergraduate degree in that field or a closely related one. If you want to be a doctor there is literally no substitute for getting any undergraduate degree followed by an MD. If you want to be a plumber the best path is getting plumbing training; college really doesn't enter the picture. And if you want to be a professor you need a doctorate in the field you want to teach (or, again, a closely related one, particularly if the field you want to teach in is somewhat interdisciplinary). If you want to do countless other jobs there's no clear need for a particular degree. Lots of jobs tend to hire from particular related fields (at least for hires just out of college) but don't do so exclusively. Others have no degrees that really apply at all and just hire whoever seems like a good fit. And these are lots of jobs that are almost certainly as productive, if not more so, than all the scientists churning out papers no one even in the field really wants to read. —Alorael, who thinks there may well be something wrong with asking people to study art history in order to work in an office, but he's not sure how to fix it. Because he's pretty sure that completing college does provide information about potential hires. Not directly or optimally, maybe, but companies don't care about that. They just want the info.

You want lots of analysis? Georgetown University has you covered. Although some majors are more valuable than others, all of them boost income. Unless you go for a very, very expensive education in the least paying field you'll get your money's worth. And while you do need money, other research has found that the cap on correlation between income and happiness is quite low. You don't actually need to be rich to be happy, and you could well derive more pleasure from being middle class with more time for hobbies, or middle class and doing work you find fulfilling rather than soul-crushing and mind-numbing. —Alorael, who has not much to get out of continuing now, but maybe someone wants to see the relative advantages of different degrees. Oh, and get a graduate degree. Those things also pay well, and the best of them will pay you to get them!

In the US, at least, obsession over the exploding cost of college education has produced vast amounts of inspection of the value of college. In monetary terms, mostly; as Sylae points out, that's not the only metric. But although I haven't sought out the data, I'm pretty sure the college-educated have a greater tendency to work nine to five and not grotesque hours. (Having post-graduate degrees also increases your rate of being overworked!) Anyway, a good rundown is in this article, which will send you to lots of research showing that you get your money's worth. Ultimately it looks like you had a bad experience with your undergrad degree but managed to better with further study. I'm happy for you, but your anecdote does not make data. And you're not a counterexample; you do have that undergrad credential. An undergrad degree is certainly no guaranteed pass to a comfortable life, and it's much less certain now than it was just a decade ago, but having a degree, any degree, still soundly trounces not having the education. —Alorael, who isn't going to take up the long back and forth over class and finances. Because it's ultimately being dragged down by a false assertion. Perhaps in Australia it's different, but in the USA there are vast numbers of white-collar jobs that will not, for whatever reason, consider applicants without an undergrad degree. Right or wrong, rational or ludicrous, the B.A. is a gatekeeping tool for employers. You will have trouble working in a cubicle without one. And no matter how much everyone hates the cubicle, it's several steps above what many people out of high school end up doing. If you're not going to be one of the much-touted genius dropouts who start a mutli-biliion dollar business you probably want the qualifications to work for one of those geniuses.

It's true that most undergraduate degrees give you no solid qualifications for any particular jobs. Trade school is a fine alternative if you know you are fine pursuing that trade and the market for it is good and going to remain so. But having an undergraduate degree vastly expands your lifetime earnings over not going to college; in part this is because a B.A. has become a default qualification for lots of jobs that need some basic competence and have no other good filter, and in part because a good B.A. does teach those all-important but vague skills of close reading, clear writing, and critical thinking. Colleges don't do a good job of filtering students into reasonable education for careers. Some try, but it's not the purpose of schools; there's argument about whether it should be, but it isn't yet. And the departments all thrive on having students, not how the students do later. —Alorael, who recalls seeing the objective findings on salaries after various undergraduate degrees. Philosophy wasn't the top, but it was the best after the crunchiest STEM degrees and definitely the most lucrative of the humanities. The world doesn't need anyone with most undergrad degrees, but it needs people to fill lots of jobs that aren't directly fed into by any degree. It doesn't seem unreasonable that philosophy majors would do better in that arena than English or History or X Studies majors.

As I've said many times, Spiderweb games quite often have little in the way of plot. Nethergate and Geneforge 1 are the stand-out exceptions, and the games have gotten generally more plotted, but there's still not much exciting going on. A nitpick, though: the Rentar again complaints came out with A4. A3 is the first time Rentar goes villainous, and the big problems are that the mystery is trivial, that the answer is eventually fed to you, and that it doesn't matter at all if you get the answer right. —Alorael, who was blaming Rentar-Ihrno all the way back in A1. Yes, it's obvious the vahnatai are helping the Empire maintain control of Avernum. Wake up, lizardeople!

Sliths may require less food than vahnatai; they've got lower metabolisms if their cold intolerance is taken to mean they are more weakly endothermic than the other races. They may eat broader diets that are less likely to exhaust resources, or rely on food that is more renewable than the vahnatai diet. Their populations may stay low enough to avoid the problem, or their homeland in Bahssikava may be far more fertile than other areas. Perhaps their magic is able to sustain the ecosystems they rely on or supplement their diets. As Lilith says, the sliths in the caves that the humans are exiled to may eventually exhaust resources, but the exhaustion cycle seems to take a very long time for the vahnatai. It may not be a problem for many generations. The magical mushroom failure is a separate issue; in fact, the sliths seemed just fine before the humans came with their enhanced fungi. —Alorael, who wonders if the vahnatai problems are actually due to the fact that the chitrachs they seem to treat as an endemic problem destroy everything else. They could be an invasive species that the vahnatai are inadvertently spreading. They certainly were unknown in human caves before the first vahnatai encounter, yet by A4 they've become an unholy terror in the Eastern Gallery.

It's kind of ridiculous, though. You can take mostly difficult, quantitative classes, work hard, and manage to come out with a 3.1 GPA. Or you can cherry pick the classes for easiness rather than content, leavened with a few of the softer sciences for non-majors, and coast to a 4.0. Which students has shown the the kind of determination that bodes well for employment? Which one has probably learned more useful skills? The studies have shown that different departments normalize GPA to different levels. If you're taking physics or neuroscience you're likely to have an average grade a full point below the average in humanities classes. —Alorael, who thinks the only mercy is that most people going into STEM fields need all those stem classes. A 4.0 without any STEM classes won't open the doors.

What you want to do doesn't need to be your life's passion, either, but it should be something you like, or are interested in. Of course, the farther down the wage and prestige totem pole you go the less expectation there is that you want this job and the more it's understood that you just need a job. No one's looking for a burger-flipper who sees it as his life's work. On the other hand, even for unskilled, minimum wage employment managers will be more likely to hire someone with enthusiasm than someone who just doesn't care. —Alorael, who considers being able to put a chipper and enthusiastic face on top of bleak soullessness to be a critical business skill.

I feel some sympathy for the 3.0 GPA.t That's really not ideal, but it's also completely college-dependent. Different places normalize grades to different numbers, and you can't fix that. Of course, if 3.0 is below average for your institution, by all means work on improving. (And if it isn't, still work on improving!) But that can be when it's helpful to state class rank or give some other indication that it's better than it looks. And *i, the arbitrary grade cutoff thing drives me nuts. It's contributing to the grade inflation treadmill. The other thing you want to do is look for research technician jobs. Check postings at universities, at academic centers, and at a lot of academic hospitals where many people have labs as well. Check Craiglist and Monster and all the other places people post jobs. Apply to a ton of positions. Research techs aren't expected to have tons of experience, though it helps; nowadays it's often a position taken for a few years by someone fresh out of undergrad for a few years interested in getting some of that all-important work experience before applying for further education. If that's your plan, be honest about that; if it's not, say so. Of course it all depends on what you want to do and where you are. Are you looking for a job to do while in college, a summer job, or a job for after you graduate? Is this hypothetical future job-hunting or something that needs to happen very soon? Do you hope to stay in biochemistry, or are you hoping to get into something else, or do you not care as long as you can afford food and shelter? [Edit: Also it was suggested to me that, especially if you're not in need of paying work right now, what you should do is reach out and see if you can volunteer in a lab, especially one on campus. Even if you're just shadowing or cleaning glassware it's that all-important work experience on your resume and a chance to network with the people in the lab and the people they know and... well, building up a network. Plus some PI's, if they're not broke, will be willing to give some pay and may be more favorably inclined towards you if you come in just asking for experience. But money's tight right now. But be aware that taking on an undergrad is actually a lot of work for a scientist; again, saying so will show some awareness and may help. And don't be disappointed if you get fobbed off on a grad student or even a more senior undergrad; that's standard practice.] —Alorael, who thinks this is exactly the right place. Spiderweb is, for reasons unclear, brimming with scientists, many of whom were necessarily at one point in a position not too different from yours. Although for some of them it was a very long time ago!

I disagree. That's a very pretty game, and a very resource-hungry game. Thief is newer, so even hungrier, but The Witcher 2 is just three years old. Trying to play it without a graphics card is asking a lot of a computer, and I'm not surprised that a non-gaming laptop is struggling. Others are the optimization experts, not me; I don't optimize agressively and don't use Windows much anyway. But I think the best you can get from that laptop may be better but still not very good for what you want to play. —Alorael, who thinks Sylae is really giving the right suggestion. If you can get someone to spring for expensive fancy hardware you might as well try to agitate for a powerful desktop. Maybe you can plead for it as a going-to-college present? If you feel up to building your own desktop, and it's not terribly hard nowadays, you can build a sleek gaming machine at a reasonable price. And if you intend to take any classes with graphic design, very crunchy computation, or film editing, it's even a useful tool!

If the alien civilization is the Culture, yes, without a moment's hesitation. If it's like the Culture, but the main inhabitants are totally nonhuman, yes, with only a slight hesitation. If the most advanced aliens in existence are just a couple hundred years ahead of modern humanity, probably not. For one thing, I'd be at risk of dying of diseases easily treatable by us but practically inconceivable to aliens with no common biology whatsoever. —Alorael, who would miss some people if he went. Just not enough to give up a chance on the cultural experience of a lifetime.

A short, helpful answer: no. There's been no information released about Avernum 2. As far as screenshots go, it's probably going to look pretty much like Avernum 1, but with some more weird giant fungus and crystals. —Alorael, who suggests looking at screenshots of the original Avernum 2, then imagining them looking a lot better. That's probably about right.

It was, but to a lesser extent. Nethergate was the peak of cascading skill effects. —Alorael, who enjoyed it. He actually really likes Nethergate's non-leveling system even if it is very abusable.

The point of Diablo is, not to put too fine a point on it, grinding. I don't begrudge it that; I enjoy Diablo thoroughly. But that's what it is. It's fine to get trash drops because you're going to keep repeating random fights to get more random loot, and it will randomly be better next time or the time after that. This is the model of a lot of Rogue-likes, and a big difference is whether you can grind patiently forever (Angband) or whether you've only got so much room to grind (NetHack, and a little farther out from the traditional FTL and XCOM). That's not how Spiderweb games are. Or most recent non-action RPGs. You don't repeat battles. You play through once, or maybe a few times for different plot paths. But you get the loot largely on schedule and there's little randomness. In exchange, the game that is there has a lot of tactical depth in set pieces, at least ideally. There's a tradeoff between carefully tuning and designing a game and having a lot of fun randomness, and for the most part they live in separate worlds. Both are fun, but both are very different. I don't want random Spiderweb any more than I want nonrandom Angband or Diablo. —Alorael, who notes that the games that can really go random or fixed are tabletop games. And while he has enjoyed a good roll on the random encounter table followed by a roll on the loot table, he also very much loves a strong authorial hand. And that hand need not be just the GM's; players can and should have a lot of story input. But it takes a human mind to really run with the full range of possible outcomes. CRPGs are necessarily restricted.

Unfortunately, Jeff Vogel has said that this was definitely a mistake. He does not want the full version of Nethergate distributed and looks upon it as piracy. So no giving out copies and no more discussion of it here unless he changes his mind. —Alorael, who is sorry to be the rain on this parade. But no more Nethergate handouts without a clear, official, and public okay from Spiderweb.

The turtles aren't deific. I think of them more as forum substrate. —Alorael, who doesn't think the Cult of Richard White has gone anywhere, except maybe to yesterday. But when the cults are quiet is when you need to worry most.

I agree that story isn't a great term, but their isn't a much better, brief word for what SoT is trying to express and I don't think this is a confusion of meaning problem. He's talking games, which are interactive media that can (but don't necessarily) tell stories, versus comics, novels, films, even probably ballads and epic poems. Anything that conveys a story to an observer who is a non-participant. The big difference here is interaction. —Alorael, who is otherwise completely unsold by the data compression analogy and even more dubious about the strategy to plot comparison. Because although SoT may have confused himself, games and other media both have plots, and the plot of a game may be Jack leaving Jill just as easily as the plot of a non-game. In fact, you can convey the same plot via very different mechanics; there's no obvious barrier to making a war story an RPG, a strategy game, a first-person shooter, or an arcade-style scrolling shooter. You could also tell that story in novel, film, or poem. But even though the plot is the same the way it's taken in will be influenced by media. Films come across differently from book; games are different from both, and different types of game work differently there too.

Spawned, sure, but they are all, to my limited knowledge, stories set in the same world, using and expanding on the filler background story, not stories that are literal retelling of the levels. —Alorael, who thinks that's exactly the same solution, to a lesser extent, that would have to be applied to most RPGs. You'd need to cut down the parts that are fun to play but boring to retell (often combat, methodical exploration) and focus on parts that do make for good novels (characters and inter-character drama, the findings of exploration).

This is well-trodden ground, but I'll trot it all out again. Movies and novels are quite different as media, but games are far from both of them. Games can be carried hugely by the interactive component, the gameplay, all those elements that aren't just the story and its delivery. Consequently, most games wouldn't work as stories at all. Some games could, kind of, with adaptation. But Spiderweb games? No. You could use them as inspiration, but they have fatal flaws. Silent, generic protagonists. Lots of combat based exploration where the combat is game-oriented rather than story-oriented. Exploration downtime. You could take the overall plot of Spiderweb's games and make novels, but the novels would be rather loose adaptations. Necessarily so; try stringing together the dialogue from game scripts and you get incoherence. —Alorael, who also thinks Spiderweb's games suffer from generic world. Yes, he's world-building geek, and not everyone shares his biases, but the settings really all hinge on one cool idea with the usual generic fantasy bolted on. Avernum has its underground world. Geneforge has shaping. Avadon has, well, Avadon and the Pact. But a book might need a little bit more detail than the games provide, and it's best if the detail is novel (pun noted) and interesting.

I wouldn't really call it rage for muses to sing of. More grand irritation. —Alorael, who believes, without data, that those who say they'll be back in a while are more likely to disappear successfully than those who make serious final farewells.

Goodbye. See you around next game release, probably around when you see this message! —Alorael, who also welcomes Salmon back. Temporarily?

As long as you're patient and do slightly more damage than they regenerate you can very slowly plink them all down. If that's too frustrating, it's probably not much better to have to run off and recharge every time your tank is low on health and your healers have run dry. Go with sneaky. —Alorael, who doesn't think the route was that hard to find. Just note that there are a few parts you have to run through in combat mode.

No, it's not going to be the next month or two. Six months is probably much closer to the mark. —Alorael, who doesn't want you to set up unreasonable expectations. Hope for an early Christmas present, not something to play over the summer.

I haven't had a desktop in years and years. I occasionally borrow someone else's, and I recognize that you can build for yourself a desktop with specs that will smoke any laptop for a fraction of the price, but I value mobility and, honestly, Mac too much. —Alorael, who actually has two laptops. One of them is a strong argument for the superior quality of the trackpad on his Macbook. He didn't realize how bad trackpads could get until he found himself using the nub instead most of the time out of frustration.