jetcitywoman

I enjoy reading Jeff's blog posts when he discusses things he's learned about designing games, what is fun and what kills the fun, etc. I respect his mature and thoughtful analysis because he admits to making mistakes and learning and it just shows in the Spiderweb games that he knows something about good game design principles. I would love to hear his thoughts about gender roles in games. Not so much about the violent/sexual games that portray all women as objects, that's been written about elsewhere. But about how HE portrays the genders in HIS games; has he made trade-offs or lost business by not objectifying women? Is it a hard decision to know how to dress the character portraits? Can he reveal the male/female demographics of his customer base? When he has artwork of a female in a skimpy dress, does he get complaints? Has he gotten any complaints about the nearly nude male character in the latest Avernum game? (Personally, I loved it!) Is dealing with gender a challenge when doing game design or marketing?

That's about the list I have (going from memory here). It was a very minor peeve, but too often when I wanted to go someplace, I had to step into the tower pylon to get the list and then figure out which location was closest to where I needed to go. For example to go to merits, I guess you could teleport to either formello or ... Stay at magi, and then walk. Fortunately I liked how the outdoor area was scaled down compared to the later avernum games or you'd be hiking more than playing!

Has anybody compiled a list of all the pylons? I know that's not a normal request, but I was never able to find all of them, or if I did, the list looked really weird. I saw the message saying that the were generally built under cities, but I still only found approx one in each cave, not one in each major town.

Originally Posted By: blackwight (Assuming this is about Avernum being too hard:) The new Avernum is too hard. I'm not interested in hearing what an idiot I am... I don't care that I've got it on 'normal' difficulty... I couldn't care less that you all find it WAY WAY WAY too easy... I don't give a crap. It's really too hard. The difficulty of the hardest encounters needs to be turned down. I will not be entertaining arguments to the contrary this time. Thank you and good night. 1. Press escape. 2. Click on Options. 3. Click on Difficulty Level until it's one level easier than what you're currently playing. 4. Click the little green arrow button. 5. Thank you and good night.

I made a similar complaint. Told Jeff I'm going to buy the iPad version so that I can take Avernum with me and take a hit - I mean play - wherever I go.

Ah, but there are secrets and secrets. Have you found the other kind without buttons yet? This game kept me rocking with all the fun stuff going on. Two kinds of secret door, boats, and later, something totally new and col as heck. No hints on that until some people find it on their own, but it's the kind of thing that will make you want to go exploring the whole map again!

Over on the Avadon forum, I noticed sometime back that someone complained about really poor trackpad response. He had to tap multiple times to move his characters around. During the beta test, I upgraded my Mac to Lion and then bought a Magic Trackpad. (The old "paint the walls, then you gotta get new furniture" principle.) I discovered the same thing with the Avernum beta - it was almost unplayable with the trackpad. I reported it to Jeff and finished the game with the mouse. Just before the end of the beta, he came back to this problem and had me test it out for him. I thought for sure it would be a hard one, but our Jeffman had it licked in a couple days. So anybody here who wants to use a trackpad - go for it!!

I was a beta tester for Avernum, my first time beta testing but long time Spiderweb Games fan. I'm also a person who always plays on normal and reading forum comments like "I always play on torment" tend to intimidate me and make me think I'm a wuss. :-) Just setting the stage for my response to this "game is too hard" comment. Anyway, there were a few places early on that I thought were quite difficult, however given the game is open and I know the normal Spiderweb strategy is to go somewhere else and get stronger and then come back, this is how I handled it. I had to get quite a bit stronger before I could beat the nepharim and nephilim, and I wasn't able to clear out the bat cave until about half way through the game. I didn't have a clear complaint to report to Jeff, and what I posted above makes me think I don't have the ability to properly evaluate battle balances. So I didn't comment on this during the beta. The only problem it caused me was that I was perhaps a bit slow and *just* made it through the whole game by the time the beta period ended. But I did get through it all without using cheat codes, and my overall impression of beta testing the game was "Damn, that was fun!" Also, I did feel that about mid-game things got a bit easier. It was just the approximate demo area that was very slow for me because I had to roam and get stronger. The game is open people, go have fun with it!

True. Jeff's are nicely unobtrusive. Not sure I agree about the suspense, though. On really big nasties wondering what it's going to take to knock that last sliver of color off the bar is suspenseful for me. But pounding the keyboard nonstop on a major baddie without a health bar is purely frustrating for me. That's really what I look for in the forum hints: first how do I know I'm doing damage, and secondly how do I know when I'm getting close. They did code in behavior changes on the baddies when you get close to killing them. But sometimes the behavior change is that he gets even meaner and wipes the floor with me. So that's not so much as a clue as pure sadism.

Well, what if you're fighting unique monsters - bosses? Then you really have no idea how much it will take. I'm finding that with this game I'm having to go to their forum and look for hints alot. It's a non-linear game, so I shouldn't have to do that, just go get stronger and come back. But, well, I guess I am kind of wussy because I don't know how much stronger I need to be it's just much easier to go fish for hints.

A couple weeks ago I upgraded my Mac to Lion and bought the Magic Trackpad to replace my mouse. I have the same problem with the trackpad. It works beautifully in all applications except for the Spid game, and there it takes several taps to register a click. I went back to using the mouse for now, but emailed Jeff to volunteer to help him troubleshoot it. He's been busy lately, but hopefully he'll come back to this.

While waiting for Avernum to be released, I've been playing a pretty awesome adventure game on my iPad. One of the things that bugs me about the ipad game is that it doesn't use health meters on the characters. Although I wonder if I'm just spoiled by Spiderweb games, or if I'm a wuss. (I'm a play-on-normal-difficulty player.) But I find it annoying with the other game that I can blast away at the bosses and I really don't know how close I am to killing him. Sure, he flashes red briefly when I do damage, but I still don't know if it's going to take 2 more shots or 200. With the health meters like the ones in Spiderweb games, I can tell really quickly if I'm out-matched and should come back after getting stronger. What do you guys think?

My compulsion is to just pick up the shiny or unusual things and pile them up in little corners of the dungeon. It just seems sad to me, I guess, that none of the NPC's share my admiration for such things. Also stuff like those sparkly iron bars just scream to be used for something. I guess I'm thinking of a mashup between Geneforge and Nethack. (Upon death of the player, you get a neat headstone that states your net worth at death plus a tally of all the baddies you've killed. Plus personal challenges.) I liked the junk bag too, but it sort of worked in reverse of the way I play. I need a large inventory to hold my coveted little widgets. If you put them into the junk bag, it's too easy to accidentally sell them and then if you later discover you needed them for a quest you're out of luck. Maybe we just need a new player class: Hoarder.

Hmm, I wasn't thinking in the competitive sense. Just some reason for hoarding all those shiny little doodads.

I did a quick forum search and didn't find this question, but I'd be really surprised if it's never been asked before. There's something about the SW games that appeal to the little hoarder in my head. One step beyond the joy of getting treasure dropped by monsters and completing quests. I don't know if it's the intriqueing item descriptions or the pretty graphics or what. But it's all I can do NOT to collect all those iron bars laying around, hoard the gemstones, collect cake, etc. I know in the Geneforge series there were some quests where you had to go find items for an NPC, and those were fun. I missed those quests in the other series. But even one step beyond that, wouldn't it be fun if there was a tally of your net worth at the end of the game, or some surprise rewards for collecting "x" number of some specific item?

I've noticed that too, and find it very puzzling. I don't remember the earlier Spiderweb games doing that.

Ah yes, thank you. I think what I did both times was leave the area after Shigaz and I accomplished our primary goal, meaning to come back and explore further, and then forgot. I have it now. :-)

Bandit roads, eh? Hmm, then the hint book is wrong. It says it's located in the drake's nest in under the bandit roads area, where you first find Zsossa mindtaker. I'll explore the roads area some more, though. I haven't found a drake there yet.

I hope this isn't asking for a spoiler, but more a possible bug? Although I admit the bug could very well be in my head. I'm on my second time through the game and can't find the drake egg this time either. I checked the hint book and it's not where it says it's supposed to be. Both times I seem to have killed the drake and then later come back to look for the egg, but it's hard to remember. I don't have the egg in my inventory or in my special items list, and when I talk to the animal trainer I don't have the option to give it to her, indicating that I don't have it. Did I somehow screw up the quest? Did the egg disintegrate from not having a momma drake to keep it warm?

When I tried to teleport using the scarab, it said I could only jump to a location with a direct path. I was trying to jump over a strip of lava, or a stream. Just curious about your opinions on this: what good is a teleporting ability if you can only use it in places you can simply walk to? I can see maybe jumping away from a bad guy, but that's pretty limited. To me a better use is to hop over small streams and such to access places you CAN'T walk to.

I'm always turning off music when I play computer games, so I'm really glad that Jeff doesn't use it on his. Especially since he uses ambient sounds, which I LOVE! As much as it would be cool, we don't have soundtracks for real life, so I think to get proper role playing background music kind of ruins the roleplay. I like the voice suggestion. That could be cool.

I explored the trap door in Dhorl Stead and found inaccessible tunnels. But I can't find any way to get into them from the other side. I can see boxes through the windows, so I assume they are accessible and I just haven't found the secret switch. Hints?

Ah, thanks. I got through it finally but ended up having to reduce the difficulty. I think I had a poor choice of players. What is Magda? (Maybe in a future update, Jeff can make it so that when you mouseover a player's picture it tells you his/her race and class. I always forget!) So I am Magda, and I have the blademaster and the sorceress.

I'm not asking for spoilers, just some help with strategy. I'm up to the demon who throws imps at you. I can get both wheels turned, but I can't manage to kill the demon and all his imps before they cream all my characters.

This is interesting. I just popped the A5 cd back in to take a look. Nope, I definitely ran the file called "install Avernum 5.dmg" which is the Mac installer. There is another folder called "Avernum 5 demo" but I'm sure that's not what I ran. (I'm a programmer and lazy by default so I won't take the extra step of going into another folder when I see the installer right there, and also the file/folder names are a dead giveaway to me as to what I wanted to run.) there is also an RTF file with the name "avernum 5 full license" but I opened it and it's just the eula.