Grimm

42 minutes ago, Randomizer said:

From the Kickstarter I got the Steam code and the alternative of downloading a DRM code free version.

True! I had that option as well. I would normally take the DRM free option, but this soon after release I was expecting a flurry of small updates and didn't want to have to keep on top of bug fixes myself. I had that issue with Queen's Wish.

1 hour ago, alhoon said:

I have the same issue. I would await for a fix although I am sure it's a false positive. 

I am enjoying the remake enough that I'm willing to take the risk rather than wait, personally, but caution is always warranted.

19 minutes ago, Fyora et Labora said:

This happens so frequently on Steam.  Which I kinda get, except that it frequently seems to afflict the Steam version of a game, and not the non-Steam version.  This is so unfortunate.

I do tend to prefer GOG for anything that doesn't rely on the mod workshops, but a steam code is what I got from the kickstarter.

For completeness, my error code was slightly different:

Trojan:Win32/Woreflint.A!cl

Which seems to be a common false positive with steam games. Allowing it in the anti-virus fixes the problem.

I assume this is an error of some sort but I have a similar problem. The game suddenly crashed while I was playing, and on trying to restart it I was informed that the executable was a virus, and my system automatically quarantined the executable. Re-downloading doesn't seem to help. 

I'm kinda surprised Jeff is putting professional sound design before the android port stretch goal. I feel like it makes more sense to do the other way around. These games never really sold on their production value, so putting production over availability is surprising.

Then again I think Jeff just kinda hates having to support yet another platform.

On 2/16/2020 at 6:04 AM, googoogjoob said:

It actually still hasn't even hit $50k yet. I'm pretty confident it'll hit both stretch goals, but so far it's (surprisingly) slightly underperformed compared to the Queen's Wish Kickstarter.

 

I strongly suspect the remake will only feature the original game's nine basic creations, plus the new one. It'd take more work to integrate the three later-series creations into the game- balancing them, distributing several canisters raising the player's level in each creation's skill through the game world and balancing out that, retconning their existence into earlier in the series. Not a catastrophic amount of work, but something that isn't really necessary.

I'm hoping the new game only involves the original 9+1, but the new creation might replace another one. The only creations with any real story importance are drayks, so one of the others might get swapped out to maintain the consistency of 3 tiers for the 3 creation types. Though maybe the new creation will replace the ornk canister. I don't think tiers 4 and 5 will make it in, given the timeline over which they were developed in the narrative (some through rogue shaping after Sucia Island, some through deliberate development by shapers to aid in the war effort). It muddies the story, and loses some of the "oh crap" feeling you get going into G2 or G4 and stumbling across the newer creations.

I'm less optimistic it'll hit the 75k stretch goal. It seems to have stalled out a fair bit. I would definitely bump my pledge up if we get near the end and we're close to the threshhold, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get there. 

7 hours ago, stubbieoz said:

 

Sorry but I believe you all missed the point I am trying to raise. You are unable to see an enemies health status at times in the iOS version.

The Steam version has #3 feature. The iOS version does not. At least in the Steam version if the enemies health bar is hidden you can still see its health by right clicking.

I wanted to warn the OP about the differences between the two versions, in case it happened to matter to them.

 

When an enemies health bar is hidden by objects and you have no feedback at all on whether a sticky stab with a dagger or a spine crushing with a lightning spell is called for, you break the tactical side of the combat. Especially in a game where mana is not replenished by potions or similar. In fact one of the “features” of this new engine as detailed in the advertising descriptions, is that you should only use spells when really necessary, as it is part of the new way combat works.

Not knowing an enemies health status is critical information. I originally tried playing on Veteran difficulty and it was nil impossible to win battles when the enemies hp bar was hidden, on iOS. This disability is not present in the Steam version.

 

You can tell me asking for a refund is a “bit much” if you wish. Of coarse I will disagree as I genuinely feel the iOS version is lacking a critical element of the game, and when I do get the refund I will consider if I want to buy the Steam version instead. The reason why I hesitate is because I don’t play games much on pc anymore.

 

Perhaps I am too hostile about this omission from the iOS version. Could be coming from the fact that the detailed email and screenshot about this concern of mine I sent to Jeff has not resulted in at the very least an acknowledgement of my email.

 

Or perhaps it’s just because I am sick to the back teeth of mobile games being dumbed down or having features removed for a more “casual” gamer.

 

Whatever the reason, I believe the iOS version should have the same gameplay/interface feedback, that the Steam version has. Just asking that things be fair is all.

 

I think you're expecting a bit too much if you want a quick, personalized response. We're getting into the holiday season, and hes been working hard on bugfixes for a while now. It's a mom and pop company, they dont have secretaries to do intake for them. 

Also, I dont think the iOS version is lacking features because its dumbed down: its because with a purely touchscreen based interaction, you have less to work with, and programming all the types of interactions you can do with a mouse and keyboard into a touch screen is genuinely difficult. Imagine trying to program a street fighter game for a controller with only one button. 

If the game is miserable for you and you dont enjoy playing, get a refund. But I do think your expectations are a bit off kilter and what you consider game breaking isnt going to generalize for most people.

Seriously, I'm really confused about why you think tactics is broken. Some games straight up don't give you the information you think is critical, even health. It's annoying sometimes, sure, and I'd rather play on PC, but I'm not seeing how it's broken.

On 12/13/2019 at 6:53 PM, stubbieoz said:

3. The third is the fact that in the pc version you can right click an enemy and get details about it such as health/resistances/crit rating/etc. There is no such feedback in the mobile version. Basically this means that all tactical decisions you can make when attacking in the pc version is not available in the mobile version.

This breaks combat completely imho. 

ehhhh, I got through most of the game before I even realized I could do that, and even when I did figure it out I rarely used it. It doesn't break combat so much as make it somewhat harder, and really is a feature lacking in most games. Getting exact precise stats on a weird creature never before seen by man the moment you run into it is unusual, even in games based around tactical combat. The tactical decisions still exist, you just don't have the tools to calculate exact percentages on how likely they are to succeed. Monster rarely have resistances high enough to completely negate a given tactic anyway. 

Your first point is a much bigger issue, imo.

49 minutes ago, quasius said:

What does it cost currently?  You made me think it currently cost 4, but I just checked and it consumed all 5 of my AP.

 

On that note, I had no idea some abilities cost 4 until I read this thread.  Could AP consumption of abilities be noted somewhere in their descriptions?

It currently costs 6AP. In v1.00 it only cost 4, and as such was kinda overpowered in a few situations. In particular, you could pull an enemy toward you and wail on them in the same turn, or teleport a party member either out of harms way or into the fray from a distance while still attacking. You could also use it as basically super speed: since you could teleport yourself and one other person in the same turn, two people with teleport in your party basically obviates any ability for the enemy to slow you down should you decide to flee (this was immensely useful after the first fight with the Nisse lands dragon; didn't have to worry about her remaining 9 broodlings, just teleported out of there). 

Although honestly I find fleeing a fight basically impossible without sacrificing 2 or 3 people, so I kinda wish that still worked

3 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:

This was one thing I was thinking about when musing on the ideas above. I completely concede that Jeff is listing Avernum Zero as separate from Queen's Wish here. However, I think it's an interesting point to note that he is also saying that Avernum Zero *would use a similar engine* to Queen's Wish. At least in my book, this still leaves open the possibility of merging the two trains of thought.

I had a similar thought. I think it's still technically possible for QW to be prequel to Avernum in the "Long, long ago" sense, but Avernum 0 as in "you participate in the founding of Avernum of a nation and the taming of its caves" would have to be separate from the QW series proper. 

Funnily enough, my first thought was that QW might be a sequel rather than a prequel. IIRC, the taming of the cave lizards, the development of the light generating plants, the mushroom trees, etc were things that happened after the arrival of the first expedition. In Queen's wish, they're already all there.

Then again, these all might be red herrings a la "Vahnatai can create monsters, Avernum is a Geneforge prequel/sequel/whatever".

Alright, yeah, I figured something along those lines was happening.

So /is/ it a bug then? Am I supposed to be able to switch e.g. my helmet in combat? Or is this just a somewhat confusing way of telling me I can't switch equipment in combat no matter what?

Huh. That's another issue then, because I've never had more than 5AP at any point in the game. 

When I try to switch equipment in combat, I get a notification saying I don't have enough AP.  Fair enough, except I have 5 AP, which, unless there's an item somewhere I somehow missed, is the maximum: what do you mean I don't have enough, I couldn't possibly have more!

I'm thinking either this is a bug, or you're just not supposed to be able to switch equipment in combat, but either way that particular notification doesn't make sense.

You need to tell the constructs whether they sound like the surface worlders they're supposed to emulate. Theres one that does and one that doesnt in each group e.g. with the Ukat constructs, one says "I'm angry at how you treat us." Tell that one they sound like a true Ukat. 

Unfortunately, during an AMA on reddit, Jeff mentioned the possibility of an Avernum prequel as distinct from the Queen's wish series. 

One thing I'd like is the ability to see what you've built where. I build things as I need them or as I can afford them, and towards the end have no idea which of my 7 forts is the one missing the smithy. 

10 hours ago, Owenmoz said:

Essentially the whole underground powerfully magical people is very vahnathai to me(even doe it seems clear that the objective was more on the lines of evil fairies, but like aslo he knew the parallel would be drawn) .

Jeff seems to be really big on reusing good ideas. He's explicit about this when it comes to game engine and other game development resources, so it's not exactly surprising he does with narrative and world building as well.

They're only Vahnathai in the broadest strokes, though. It's really just the general aesthetic (tall, magically powerful, lives underground, unknown to the surface world at large). They are very different in practice, and provide a very different narrative function. The Vahnathai are largely isolationist, and only really lash out when invaded. They change their behaviour somewhat when it becomes clear that Avernum is here to stay, but over all they prefer to be left alone to their own devices. 

The Nisse are very much the opposite: they act more as a foil to slash fun-house mirror reflection of Haven. They're basically imperialists without the imperialism, laying claim to Sacramentum, and only really acting when that claim is threatened. They talk about protecting the people on the surface from Haven, but it's pretty starkly clear, to me anyways, that they're acting for their own interests more than anything, whatever rationalizations they might give. 

10 hours ago, Owenmoz said:

However in this case they seem to lack the depth the vahnathai had in that theres no real internal factions and their cultural identity isnt as 3 dimensional. And yet im not sure if i like that or dont. Having them as like categorically if incomprehensibly evil. Puts me as a player and as a reader. In a situation where i have to accept that there is middle ground that can be reached making them immediately inaccessible.

Honestly, I'm giving Jeff a lot of slack when it comes to world building here, because he's done a lot in a lot of different directions. There's four nations, each (besides Haven) with two mechanical factions, and each of which are themselves fractionalized into one or more groups with competing interests, plus the interactions between them all, and on top of that a secret underground nation screwing with everybody. It does sometimes feel like variety over depth, but it's the first game in a series, and variety is also valuable, so I don't really feel justified in being too critical.

If you prefer depth over variety, well, I don't think it's fair to say there's no depth here. The Ukat, for example, do a hell of a lot with the whole "external hatred internalized" theme they have going on. But if your preference is really that strong, I can see why you wouldn't like it as much. 

11 hours ago, Owenmoz said:

Finally we have a really complicated setting where much like the dragon cared about Ukat. The nisse do seem to care about the people? Which goes in direct contradiction to everything else. Is it just a god complex and the conflict is more on the fact that they dont want to share their playthings. Or is it a real care for their cultural identity and evolution. Cause one of the deals was literally dont interfere with them and let them grow independently. Which is honestly a fair and kind request since colonialism is ultimately entirely harmful to native communities. So....

So, here's my take: abusive parents often love their children. They often honestly believe they're acting in their children's best interests. They believe the abuse is justified, or not actually abuse. It's a horrible form of love, often one that places the child's needs below the parent's whims (often with some rationalization about why the child doesn't really need e.g. privacy, affection, to not be hit for being home after curfew), one that objectifies their children as objects or extensions of the parent, but it's usually sincere. You can debate all you want about whether that really counts as love, but that is the sort of "love" they mean when they say they love their kids. 

The Nisse care about the surface world. They don't really extract material value from them (besides the elixir from the Ahriel), and seem sincere in wanting to protect the continent from Haven. But it's the sort of caring that leads them to torturing people who go against their (to them, perfectly reasonable) whims. It's the sort of caring that implicitly values the well being of the Nisse over any concern the surface might have. Remember, a lot of groups on Sacramentum want Haven there, because they genuinely benefit from it. Haven is very good at benefiting its vassals and providing stability. But the Nisse don't want that, at least not long term.

Why, precisely? Who knows, they're a secretive underground race and this game already spend 30 hours exploring the surface, so I'm not begrudging the underworld being somewhat under developed. But, if I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with it being harder to maintain control over a stable and industrious continent. When you're a small group, and your power is threatened by a direct assault by 4 (admitting powerful) people, you don't want your plaything to have the stability and resources (and the military training Haven provides!) to start thinking that maaaaybe it's time to get rid of those underground manipulators who keep threatening to torture people for all eternity for what amounts to gossip. 

One path the player can take is to drive off the Ukat dragon, who has laid claim over the Ukat and consider them his vassal. The dragon, foolishly and arrogantly, does nothing to prevent this obvious eventuality. I think the Nisse are smart enough to want to avoid this. 

2 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Which is why it's available only on computers right now...

I seem to remember Jeff specifically saying one of the reasons he chose to use the top down perspective was because that was better for iPhones. It's not solely designed for mobile, but it does feel like it was designed with a mobile release in mind. 

On 9/14/2019 at 10:46 PM, Queen's Vlish said:

 

I emphatically do not admit that.  It's not a perfect system, but I don't think the system you want is achievable.  I think this one is perfectly good.

On this topic, I'm surprised no one (at least that I can think of) has used a sigmoid type increase in accuracy. A flat cap has the obvious flaw of a season warrior missing a training dummy right in front of them  way more often than is realistic, but a sigmoid with even just two input variables (e.g. your accuracy modifier and the target's dodge modifier) could give a better feel for the "level 30 warrior vs lvl 1 mook" case without guaranteeing a hit.  

Probably trickier to balance than is really worth it. 

On 9/14/2019 at 9:56 AM, Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas said:

Bah! Humbug! What if I like collecting unsellable trowels?

This, but unironically. I never collected a lot of junk, except in early game where those 3gp papers helped fund my broke ass adventuring team, but seeing the junk pop up alongside the good stuff did make the game feel more realistic. Seeing a bunch of junk on the ground that I can't interact with at all makes the game feel flat at times. 

21 hours ago, madrigan said:

The only thing I really don't like here is the unlimited retraining. I like role-playing. If I can just change things around whenever I want, then the characters aren't characters, they're, I don't know, mechs. This is easily overcome though, by just not retraining and playing on casual. And as Jeff noted I will be happier with the release of more games with character classes and ability scores. 

I feel like the unlimited retraining is obviated by the ability to build and recruit infinite new characters to your team. I think this game could have been well served by the team building system in Dragon's Dogma: You get your character and one other character you can build and loosely retrain, and the other two you can recruit from a group of semi randomly generated characters of the appropriate level. You can't retrain the latter, so you if you want someone with a new/different skill set, you need to recruit someone new and hope you find someone appropriate.

One thing not mentioned that I really like is the potion system. QW moved to a Darksouls type system where you had a set number of potions (which could be increased through exploration + building apothecaries) that refilled whenever you went back to a fort. Except QW takes it one step further and lets you improve and modify the potions to have stronger or different effects.

Do we get experience for fight encounters in the over world? I like the new experience system on net, but not getting experience from killing enemies makes over world fights feel purely punishing to me as the player. It's not even a resource tax in the way that non boss enemies in a dungeon are, since you can immediately run back to a fort and heal up. I mostly just save scum like mad and whenever I have an overworld encounter I reload and do my best to avoid it the 2nd time. 

3 hours ago, TriRodent said:

 

It's been a loooong time but wasn't there another surface tunnel attempt in A2 (can't remember if it was included in A2CS), east of Motrax & north of the stuck Empire Patrol (early red pass) in the area north of Formello?

 

****

 

Obviously physics are different in the Avernum universe but that's one thing that's bugged me over the years, why they couldn't just eventually tunnel out onto the surface.  The Honeycomb attempt went up for "miles & miles" ... just how far underground are they?  Apparently the Avernum crust is a lot bigger than earth's otherwise they'd be living in magma.

 

Then of course there's the really big question from A5, where does all the water go?  Our intrepid heroes are following a river 'deep' down, down, down, into the lower caves (& then pick up another river later on).  Ok... so where does all the water go eventually?  All that water is going deep underground (& it's a 'lot' of water given the scale of the rivers), it has to go somewhere otherwise the caves should become submerged rather quickly. 

 

Sorry, didn't mean to give people brain cramps, but how it all works has had me scratching my head for years...

The one east of Motrax's cave was the one I was talking about in northern avernum.

And if we're gonna start speculating on geology and hydrology my guess is: a) a mile is considerably smaller in avernum (you'll find sign posts saying something like "castle 30 miles east" and the castle is a short walk away, we could probably get a decent estimate of a mile from A3 since it actually tracks time), and b) the water is brought back up through geysers and the like, creating a water cycle. 

15 hours ago, Necris Omega said:

While a solar energy source would be neat, without the rest of the materials to fuel a "surface" ecosystem (namely fertile soil) it would really only be step one in a very long process. Still, it'd be great start (assuming it doesn't go catastrophically wrong, like most major magical undertakings in Avernum have a tendency to).

 

That said, a direct "land" route into Avernum would be the more practical approach for improving things (another Averum 6 undertaking IIRC). "Dig a tunnel" is a much simpler process than "recreate stellar fusion". In fact, here it technically isn't even "dig a tunnel" but "clear a collapsed tunnel" which is another (minor) plus for the endeavors chances.

The lack of a direct land route is kinda confusing for me, since there were at least 3 land routes back to the surface that I remember. One the PCs find in A1, one in the honeycomb, and one is northern avernum, the latter two of which the empire collapsed. You'd think at some point in the intervening years one of those would have been dug out and turned into a trade route.

In A6 the plan was to use portal magic to teleport the sun's light directly into the caves. No need for fusion.

Any advice in playing the A1 remake while running a duo party? I figure one melee and one magic character would be best, but beyond that I'm not sure how to approach it. 

3 hours ago, Fate's Bulwark Against Fate said:

Your character building strategy honestly sounds reasonably solid.  You might not be fussy about the details but your setup is pretty classic.  I wonder if your laissez-faire approach happened to go in less classic directions, in other games?  That seems like the most obvious explanation.

 

I'm also not sure which other SW games you mean -- there are a lot, and they vary in what makes them challenging -- but I guess one thing that does potentially make A6 (and A4 and A5) easier is that the character traits are extremely powerful if set up properly.  There's no equivalent to those in Geneforge, Avadon, or the Remakes of A1-A3.

I don't think my approaches were unclassic in the past, just poorly optimized. I usually do melee, ranged, priest, mage, and focus on that throughout the game, but I never really put any effort into planning out a build properly so I always hit endgame with very few of the specialty skills unlocked. This mostly effects my warrior characters since they end up with low parry, riposte, lethal strike, etc, so they end up squishy and struggle to keep up with the enemy NPCs. 

By other SW games I mostly mean Geneforge and Avernum. I always found those games to have fairly challenging end games in the past, and often challenging midgames as well. The character traits and race traits do seem to be what was doing it for me: getting free skills in pole weapons, blademaster, sharpshooter, tool use, first aid, etc meant that my characters essentially leveled themselves up: it was pretty much impossible to build a bad character unless I decided to use my slith as a bow wielding mage all of a sudden. But I didn't find A6 nearly as challenging as A5, for example. I definitely could not have gotten as far into A5 as I did by ignoring 20 levels.

I finally finished A6 as a way to tide me over until the new game comes out. Did anyone else find it weirdly easy compared to the rest of the SWS games? I always play the games on normal, but despite that I've never actually finished an Avernum game before now: the end game always turns into a grind where my laissez-fair approach to character building comes back to bite me.

But with A6 I almost didn't have to put any effort into character building. They were all custom characters to start: I ran a pole focused sith with elite warrior, a bow focused nephilim with dead eye and nimble fingers, a human priest with pure spirit and a human mage with natural mage. I ran up a skill point surplus in early game and just kept putting off allocating them until I took the time to figure out exactly how I wanted to build my characters until I accidentally finished the game around level 40 with ~100 unused skillpoints in each character. I would throw in some skill points when I needed to access new spells or find new nature caches or unlock new locks every now and then, I pumped strength on my slith just so he could open all the heavy gates, but besides that I pretty much ignored about 25 of my levels. 

I haven't finished everything: Malanchion still has some quests for me (I'm sure killing him will be a major pain), and my journal atm is still pretty steep. But I stumbled into the final fight by accident, not really sure if it was the final fight 'cause I was still waiting for the game to get hard like the others did.

In recent developments, Astoria might turn out to be a little more awful than I thought. I kinda regret betraying Alwan now.

But: we're back to no clear good guys. Just where I like it.

Almost every time I play through a Geneforge game, unless I'm playing for a certain faction from the outset, I'll do what feels right in a given moment. Usually that sort of thing skews rebel; nuance like "biological weapons should be carefully controlled but you need to treat creatures in your care well" isn't something that exists in this world, at least not among the most powerful, so any talk of treating creations well, or letting apparently harmless creations be free, get shoved under "rebel."

Thing is I virtually always hate the rebels, at least as a political power. Shapers aren't better by much, but they don't terrorize civilians quite as often.

So because of my peculiar (in this world at least) moral bent, I end up rejected, or at least severely mistrusted, by the side whose practices I most prefer because they believe I'm too ideologically close to the side whose practices I most detest. This is utterly frustrating but it feels very real to me. It's a quality of these games I really like.

I actually don't like that in G1 and G5 you're given decent faction options: what's the fun in evaluating the political climate if there are some obvious good guys? Admittedly I haven't yet finished G5 (tried a few times, usually got stuck as I was entering Dera reaches) so maybe Astoria is secretly much worse than I think.

Im sure fighting a big floating eyeball that's also crazy and also can shoot killing energy and kill you with a thought is scarier. The glaahks are also scary but highly impractical they'd have to be lightning fast at stinging you otherwise you could doge and trip the thing

I mean yeah, they were pretty worrying too. They never felt as alien though, probably because they're very reminiscent of beholders from D&D. I got a fair amount of exposure to them through various Baldur's Gate games. Vlish also show up much earlier when I'd feel much weaker.