madrigan

Hello all. I can't close doors in A2:CS. Is that supposed to happen? Bug, intentional, doesn't matter? This is on the Mac version purchased from the Spiderweb site. Are First Aid and the Lore skills combined across the party, as they were in A4-6? Thanks all.

I understand this decision and have no problem continuing to support your company. Will Crystal Souls be available on Steam only, then? Sorry if I'm being dense, Spiderweb games are the only ones I play and I have no idea how other distribution channels work.

Thank you.

Which tiles represent the uneven ground? I can see the rough ground-monsters come out locations, but I can't figure out exactly which ground causes ensnarement. There are maybe three or four ground tiles aside from the ones that are obviously stone/floor.

Whole world same size. The outdoors-indoors transition completely de-immerses me as the scale of the universe mysteriously changes upon entering or exiting a town. Avernum seems huge without the separate outdoors anyway.

I would also recommend lowering the difficulty level. I suck at games and make no effort to min-max. I just imagine a character and distribute points based on that. I always play on the easiest level and have had little difficulty finishing Avernums IV-VI or Avadon. The Geneforges are hard, I couldn't finish the last one even when I cheated. EFTP is pretty hard too. But the games have difficulty levels so that they can be challenging to hardcore optimizers and fun for people like me who just want to go through the story and defeat evil.

A:EFtP does.

Will there be accessibility options? To make game text larger, for example?

I want you to know, I upgraded my Mac to 10.6 just so I could play this game. It only cost $20 and about two hours, but still.

Spiderweb games have given me a lot of enjoyment over the last six years, and the new game looks great. But I won't buy a new computer just to play it.

I've played Avadon from beginning to end three times. Maybe four. I am more impressed with it each time. The politics are about as real as it gets in a game of this kind. You don't have to follow along with all the cultural and territorial conflicts, but it is much more fun if you do. I think the key to understanding the overall narrative is accepting that your character is not the hero of the story. This is just the first chapter, anyway. I suspect that Avadons 2 and 3 will be progressively more sophisticated intellectually, based on what I've seen in Avernum and Geneforge. As for the supporting characters, Nathalie is a wackjob and I can't travel with her at all. Shima needs to decide what his priorities really are. Sevilin has PTSD so I don't blame him for his more irritating traits. The only one I actually like is Jenell. She has a legitimate gripe and is not a psychopath.

Originally Posted By: MissSea On that same point, I also miss going into ruined cottages and invading unsuspecting individuals' privacy. Especially when the comments as you move about the place say things like, "Go away" and "Get out!" I miss this too. In A4 there was a quest that required you to deliver a message to a person who, it turned out, was on the second floor of a house near Formello. If you didn't invade all the houses, you would never have any idea where she was.

I still like the A4-6 visuals better. I don't like the outdoor-indoor transition, it is jarring and feels completely unnatural. When I am driving down a highway and come to a town, everything stays at the same scale. I don't suddenly grow larger. I find the entrance to a new town in A4-6 much more emotionally satisfying, probably because I can hear the town noise start up and actually see myself entering the town instead of suddenly changing scale and being on a different map. If the game tells me I have traveled a thousand miles, or walked for days, that's fine. I don't need to spend a lot of time moving the characters around. I like to get where I am going in the game, anyway. I'm not interested in getting lost and mapping. I really don't like the zones from Avadon or Geneforge much either, though. I like the contiguous map and the pylons.

Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman The old unbalanced trait system didn't bother me. I knew that certain traits and trait combinations were usually optimal, but if I had in mind a character with Pure Spirit and Fast On Feet, I could do that and the game was still playable. That system made sense in terms of creating characters, which is what I play an RPG for. There's a guy, he is really good with machines, so he has Nimble Fingers. There'a a lizard guy, he appears to be a brute (Good Constitution) but he's actually a magic prodigy (Natural Mage). All of these qualities were available from the start, which is logical from the perspective of character creation. The character has certain talents or background, which affects their acquisition of certain skills. My main problem with the old traits system were 1) I could only choose two per character and 2) there weren't enough of them. A4-6 could really have used a "Shrewd" trait that worked like Negotiator does in the new game. I think the basic issue is that I am far less interested in game balance than I am in being able to create characters that match my conception in as detailed a manner as possible. I would like to be able to choose many more details at the start, and then be able to get any character through the game even if the build is not optimal. That was what I loved so much about A4-6 -- the game was finishable with any set of characters as long as I didn't get all macho about the difficulty level. I never enjoyed Geneforge nearly as much, because optimization was required if I wanted to actually finish the game without cheating. In my opinion, in the new game too much of the role-playing aspect has been sacrificed to gain balance.

Originally Posted By: Matchstk Let me see if I have this right. You dislike the skill system because your character had the option to learn Tool Use, and it doesn't make sense to you that a fighter could learn to be handy. Of course, you don't have to take a point in that. If you want your fighter to learn riposte, parry, increase their health, it's all up to you. Not sure what the complaint is. The complaint is that in RL a trait is an inherent talent and a skill is acquired over time. It makes sense that my fighter could learn tool use. It does not make sense that my fighter could acquire an inherent talent for tool use in the middle of adulthood. Originally Posted By: Matchstk And if you had bothered to play the game straight, you would have discovered that as you level up, class-specific skills do emerge in the Traits. Mages and Priests can focus on increasing spell energy or summoning strength, increased magical damage or armor bearing abilities. Fighters can focus on riposte, backstab, increased Endurance. Archers can become wicked snipers. It's all up to you. When you use the editor as I did, you can see all the traits, so I am already aware of the class-specific skills.

After playing several hours with the usual four character party, I realized I was getting bored. The changes in skill and ability development as compared to previous Avernums made the game much less interesting to me. I created a single cheat character and played through the entire game. I think the story and dialogue are really great. The game is humongous and the major quests are very detailed, requiring several sub-quests in order to complete them. The game is also very funny, my personal favorites being the discussion of the proper term for a group of worms, various warning signs (e.g. "Level 4 Ogre Warning"), the really tough gremlin subspecies called the GREMLIN, and the disgruntled workers in Grah-Hoth's fortress. However, as I said,I don't like the new trait/skill/ability system at all. I like it better than the Avadon system, but Avadon is a different game and was not preceded in time by several related games with a system I liked better. When I read Jeff's explanation of the new system, I thought it made sense. But when I actually had to use it, I felt it didn't make sense at all. When I create a character for an RPG, I want the character to start as the character I have in mind. In Avernum 6, just for example, the traits had to do with inherent abilities of the character or with what they had done before the beginning of the game. This character has a special talent for magic; this one was an elite trooper; this one is unusually tough. Special techniques, like mighty blow, are gained as specific skills increase, and the skills increase as levels are gained. In the new game, traits are gained as levels are gained. This makes no sense for many of the traits. It does not make sense that a character suddenly gained the ability to learn more quickly, or suddenly became mechanically inclined, when they happened to reach a new level. Some of the "traits" -- like mighty blows -- are not really traits but techniques or skills. I personally find that the characters start out too similar and that their progression is less believable than in the previous few Avernum games. The skill trees are less restrictive than those in Avadon, but many of the skills have upper limits, which seems arbitrary, and means that a singleton can't accomplish certain tasks or receive certain rewards because they can't get a particular skill past 11 or whatever. I usually play Avernum games straight the first time, with a normal party and no cheating, and then play again with a jacked-up party just to see all the fights and areas and have fun slaughtering all the villains. As I said earlier, I quickly lost interest with my normal party because the skill/trait system made character design so dull. Even the automatic ability stat increases, which I understand the reasons for, prevent me from having a really physically or mentally weak character. Too much has been taken out of my control. In short, A:EFTP is a great story -- well-written, dramatic, funny, and moving. But I'm not sure it's a great game. As an RPG, for me, it failed considerably because I could not create coherent characters from the start.

Thanks. I ended up looking at a walkthru for the first (second?) version of the game which said that you had to use the portals to get to the right place. So I bumbled around until I lucked into the right combination.

I am on the third level of the Crypt. Is there a way to reach Drath -- or whoever the boss is -- without having Remove Barrier at level 3? I have it at level 2 and I can't seem to reach the goal of this map. The only tunnel I haven't explored is the one with the barrier I can't remove.

The game is still a lot of fun with an unkillable cheat-singleton. Just sayin'.

I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but have you tried the Casual setting? That is the only setting I play on. The game has not been very hard on Casual.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S It also means that investing in Strength (NOT Dexterity -- the tooltip is wrong AGAIN) for melee fighters is important. Wait. Do you mean that to-hit in melee is based on strength and not on dexterity? If so I have wasted a bunch of skill points already.

I like the new game. It certainly is more open in terms of where you can go when. That is my problem. I have been to Silvar and Fort Duvno, and Fort Draco, and Cotra. I have completed most of the quests for the first two, and then I noticed I could just row down to the great cave and go to Almaria and the Castle. My characters are level 9, and the king wants me to kill Sss-Thsss (sp?). This seems like a bad idea. Should I complete all the quests from Silvar/Cotra/Duvno/Draco/Mertis/TofM/Almaria and then go to the castle? Edit: I have also done quests in Formello.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Originally Posted By: madrigan I'd like it if the game would warn me when I try to use a Battle Discipline not suitable for the weapon I'm holding. It uses the default weapon for the battle discipline which is really irritating when it's an archer suddenly moved into melee. Exactly. I couldn't figure out why my archer kept running towards the enemy. I was composing an email to support -- because the forum was down -- when I suddenly realized what the problem was.

I'd like it if the game would warn me when I try to use a Battle Discipline not suitable for the weapon I'm holding.

My first thoughts are that the Nephilim have pet cats, which is funny and also quite odd, and also that the dialogue in Formello about the proper name for a group of worms is very, very funny.