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Quote: What's kind of comical is that it was the non-linear world that got Jeff the small following from the beginning, and he's built up that following by starting to make non-linear games because he knows his original fans wont leave him. Comical, not in the least. The gaming community has changed quite a bit since 1994. Arguably, not for the better, but the basic law applies: you adapt or go out of business. That said, the remakes will likely be the same open-ended types that we saw in the previous renditions.

Quote: Alorael, who sees water conservation, water treatment, and water use reduction as the winning strategies. But that's Jared Diamond's point: societies are likely to reject difficult, unpleasant, and costly measures to save themselves and keep on going as they have been until they collapse completely. Worse, even if the measures are taken and succeed, there is no way to prove that they were necessary in the first place. It's a frustrating dilemma societies face.

From a min-maxing point a view, it always makes sense to intimidate. From a roleplaying point a view, that depends on how you want to play the game. EDIT: Beware, however, there are a few places where raiding a merchant's personal rooms will lead to them refusing to deal with you. While you may get some nice treasure, you might miss out on some items you might want later.

Quote: What if the japanese or russians help us out by sending some ships with pure water to the south east? I'm not sure how you send enough fresh water via ships to satisfy the needs of millions of people. Besides, that implies either are able or willing to assist, which is a big "if" in such a world where that was necessary.

The Rocky's extend from Canada to central New Mexico. You also have the Sierra Nevada's that are a large portion of California. There are also other mountains too that are not part of large systems. While this does make transportation more difficult, these actually help the ecology by providing water from snowmelt. The problem is the climate at the low-lying areas where humans live is quite arid.

Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile. But the south west us borders the pacific! how can they not have much water? To clarify, the southwestern US includes southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Yes, you have the ocean, but you can't drink that. Desalination is a possibility, but that is very energy intensive and requires large-scale industrial capacity -- you have to import fuel to run the power plants. Visit New Mexico sometime and you will see precisely what I mean. Agriculture is a very marginal exercise and full out farms are few and far in between. Irrigation is tricky because the soil is very prone to erosion because the rain mostly occurs in strong downpours of monsoons. Ranches are widespread since they only require grass to sustain cattle, but require huge tracts of land to be cost effective. Even then, ranchers have to be careful not to let cattle overgraze or else irreversible erosion will set in.

I agree with you. Living within a few hours drive to Chaco, I'm aware he does get some things wrong. His main point, however, that the southwestern US is a very fragile environment is very true, even if he misses many details. I doubt the modern living in that region would be possible without the interdependencies of trade. If such trade broke down as it did with the collapse of the Roman Empire, I suspect that region of the US would be one of the first to fail.

To avoid TL;DR and miss my main point. Certainly, these examples are historical and the most spectacular given that human history is quite long indeed. Nonetheless, many trajectories in modern times are very similar to those we believe taken by those doomed civilizations. Now you can say, in the modern world we are more knowledgable, have more resources available, and that "it will be different this time." That's exactly my point! We cannot know for sure until it is too late, and actions taken will never be vindicated because the dire predictions would not come and pass. The fact is, while it is true we have more knowledge, we are not necessarily wiser than our ancestors at managing complex and dynamic ecologies. While we have more understanding, it is largely superficial with limited explanatory power and hardly any predictive power over how actions impact environments.

Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile. Examples? you mean like the Middle-ages? Let me dig out my copy of Collapse by Jared Diamond. Here are the historical examples: Viking colony of Greenland. Driven by many complicated factors. Non-sustainable farming practices (disruption of thin layer of fertile soils that are very slow to replenish) and failure to adapt to natural climate changes as the Inuit did were major contributing factors. The Anasazi of Chaco Canyon. Largely caused by rapid deforestation and overtaxing the land with agriculture, leading to overpopulation during wet spans. Agricultural practices lead to erosion and arroyo formation, making land lest fertile over time. Dry span hits, factions fight and consume more resources, society becomes unsustainable, and survivors abandon. Now a historical ruins. The Maya Civilization. Similar problems as the Anasazi. Various islands in Polynesia. Easter Island is the prime example. Archaeological evidence attests to diverse forests, flora, and fauna. The island is now desolate and can support a small fraction of what it once could. Successes include Japan and, more dramatically, Iceland, the most ecologically damaged portion of Europe. Modern failure includes Rwanda, which largely stems from poor land management and exploding populations.

There are indeed other manmade disasters that are more complex with more costly preventative measures. These are the ones dealing with unsustainable environmental practices that damages the environment so much that it can no longer support the civilization that depended upon it. We have indeed seen this again and again throughout human history. I bring up Y2K as a means to illustrate a fundamental conundrum with addressing such problems. If your methods are successful, there will always be people who claim the investment was unnecessary, since there is no way to view the alternate history*. Conversely, a failure to adequately address the problems is a disaster that often leads to the end of a civilization. I n other words, the cost of failure is what most would consider unacceptably high, but the costs of preventing the disaster are also quite high as well. The dilemma for society is how to assess and address these types of manmade problems. * You can always look at similar examples throughout history, but individual situations are so complicated and unique, that it is always possible to argue that it would not have been an issue in this cause because of...

Y2K is an interesting thing in that the actions taken either seem unjustified because they worked spectacularly, or were wasted efforts since it was not a problem to begin with. Unfortunately, there is no way to go back and run the experiment to see what the magnitude of the problem would have been had no action been taken. What we can safely assert is that there would have been more serious consequences, how serious, we will never truly know.

My vote is for Anaximander from E3. Rumor has it he has an interesting disrobe ability.

Go right ahead. The blue ore is found in the mines of the Jereth Deeps zone. Search those curvy cave columns wherever your find them in that zone.

Nathalie does the most damage, until she doesn't. I always snag the Wizard's Bow and boost her dexterity a bit so that she doesn't just spend rounds sitting there doing nothing once you come up across things immune to fire.

Difference with Avadon from Avernum is that your party members now have their own personality. Nonetheless, the main character remains "you" in the role-playing sense. I suspect game mechanics is one of those things where a good skill system cannot hurt a game, but a bad one can seriously damage it. Avadon has removed many of the bad builds that will make it impossible to proceed. I doubt you can so horribly mess up your characters prior to reaching the Beraza Woods that you cannot fix the problem and have to quit or use the "retrain" cheat. Note that I almost did exactly that while beta testing G4. My skill allocation was so suboptimal (too invested in leadership/mechanics) that Jeff had a hard time figuring out how I could win against the Salasar(sp?) fight. Thankfully, I had a few uninvested skill points, and he did (I suspect made the battle easier too), but it would definitely be frustrating way to end the game for a player.

Quote: It's less a question of mechanics and more a question of art and presentation. Even if a sword and axe of the same value is 100% operationally equivalent, people will still have a preference over one vs. the other. Asking for another "knob" to balance... well, sorry, but I don't have any sympathies for that argument. Any base mechanic will add a dose of balancing demands, but it's not a revolutionary idea to have more than two melee weapon types in a game, nor is it anything Spiderweb hasn't done in the past/wouldn't be capable of. I think we have a fundamental disagreement here. I see much beauty in simplicity. I dislike redundant features that add complexity solely for the purpose of being different. I would not be opposed to lumping maces and such into the melee group to give the appearance of variety. As separate build options that are identical, not so much. If you make bashing weapons different, they must be balanced. Balancing takes time and costs money, and that's a limited commodity in these games if Jeff wants to stay in business. Not the answer we like to hear, but it is reality. Quote: Yeah, you CAN buy Alchemical products, and even hire an alchemist to do the work FOR you later on, but that's both comparably expensive and inconvenient. If I find I need more Elixirs of ... whatever, and I'm miles away from civilization, peering over the pits of Hades, trudging back to civilization is annoying as all get out. Plus, I like the idea that your characters can do more than just hit/blast things. I see it as less convenient to make the potions for separate ingredients. I guess we just have to agree to disagree on this. If we bring back alchemy, I would rather it do something different than we can find in stores, and be something different than our standard magical effects. Quote: As for the field spells requiring more work, well... again, yeah. Adding a feature requires work. What of it? Yes, and work that will detract from other aspects of the game because of limited time available to produce the game. In this case, I'm not sure how you make a smart pathfinding algorithm that can appropriately handle fields. Should it always avoid fields? If not, what conditions should exist for entering a field? I don't think there are correct answers. I can see loads of complaints here about the pathfinding doing something that the player did not intend.

Different damage types is indeed a classic way to differentiate between them, and what I was generally referring to above. It definitely adds more variety and complexity, but whether or not it is actually better is a matter of debate. I have mixed feelings on whether or not that system is fun. Past a certain point, more is actually less. The difficulty is actually identifying the location of that point.

Quote: The weapons, armor, and general item robustness has been sliding down hill since Avernum. Axes, maces, clubs, crossbows, two handed swords... Now it's a grossly simplified system of "Sword goes in one hand, Spear goes in two." Items are lucky to even have a description half the time. The options of bashing weapons and crossbows were really just different versions of the edged/pole and bows respectively. We would need to make a more complex system to differentiate between them. This is an option, but anytime you add complexity and options, that is one other knob to balance. Quote: Alchemy became increasingly simplified until it was completely thrown out as a skill. Weapon Poison has been missing since A1. Alchemy was really just another way to make the same potions you could just buy from a merchant, which is generally a lot easier anyway with the prolific amount of money available. I see this as an added complexity without a real added capability. Weapon poison was an interesting ability, but I'm not sure how often it really got used past the early game where monsters were low enough HP for it to matter. This could be brought back, and has somewhat with the Shadowwalker in Avadaon. Quote: The spell systems have lost everything from utility spells to field spells to others in the name of "streamlining". I'm not sure what "utility" spells you are referring to. If you mean unlock doors, then I think it's good that is gone. Before, the spell was simply easier than tool use and made rogue-like builds suboptimal. Field spells would require a bit of work with the new pathing algorithms.

I wholly agree with Slarty here. Furthermore, one thing I liked about the Avadon system was how abilities were handed out. Unlike previous games, you never really ran out of new abilities to unlock, even late in the game. In previous installments, late game skill increases led to marginal improvements in party strength/capability at best. I personally like the system where my choices matter throughout the entire game and not just the first two-thirds. Granted, I still have some issues. The specializations were particularly bad in that the center column was almost exclusively the best choice. I'd like to see those dumped, or the abilities/mechanics modified such that it actually makes sense to invest in either side column. The new method of getting traits seems to hold promise here.

Quote: It's more than just "adding races for the heck of it." At this point, I'm paying $25+ for a game I've played twice before. It'll still be fun and all nostolgic, but you hope for as creative of changes as possible. Jeff always uses the analogy of Monopoly. While there are many variants, fundamentally, the game has not changed all that much and still sells. Agree or disagree with that model, it seems to work well enough in that it attracts a new generations of fans, and is less work than writing a game from scratch. That said, there needs to be enough new content to make it worthwhile for longtime fans to stick with the franchise. Personally, I would like to see a bit more than simply a new settlement, and more in line with a more dynamic plot to make the key points more epic.

There is a distribution of skill levels. I think we agree that we want a dumbed down AI for casual and even normal players. Right now, I'm talking about hard and torment difficulties, and how to make those challenging without giving the AI extra power. EDIT: One assumption I'm working off of is that we make the opponents have about the same capabilities as the PCs. Certainly, there are exceptions such as going toe-to-claw with a dragon.

My information may be a bit outdated. Point taken about how it can be very not fun if the AI is too good. Much of my knowledge comes from the field of optimization, and I suppose that you don't need optima to have a decent AI. I do see a lot of issues in this particular genre because it does turn into a combinatorics problem when large numbers of entities are involved along with the constraints of limited movement and pathfinding. Examples of common questions in a game like Avadon: * Should a monster attack a less damaging PC closer, or take an extra turn trying to finish off a weaker, more damaging PC that is further away? * If a mage-type monster is dying, should it buff its friends so that they can inflict more damage after it dies, or should it attempt to save itself with a healing spell in the hopes it can cast the buff later and maybe inflict more damage? * What about positioning of monster party members for abilities such as backstab versus spreading them out to minimize damage from cone-effect spells? I think the answer to all of these questions is it depends on the situation, and it seems easy to me to write a well-intentioned AI that often makes worse choices than had it behaved randomly. Now there are probably a few tricks Jeff could pull at the higher difficulties, such as focusing damage on one PC. Specifically targeting spell casters and those low on HP, are other switches that could be turned at higher difficulty levels.

Quote: Simply over buffing an enemy and leaving them with the AI of a 2X4 rolling down a hill is just the most direct way of providing challenge, it's not the best. While you can devote an entire career around AI and not get to a Deep Blue RPG equivalent that could challenge any player, I can't buy the idea that there aren't better ways of creating difficulty than making monsters that are consistently the player +2 in terms of the tools at their disposal. I agree it's not the best, and I hate doing this, but: Name these better ways. You either make the AI smarter or you make it stronger, in the sense you give it better options (more HP, better stats, stronger attacks, buffing abilities, etc.). The latter is easy. The former is incredibly difficult and requires massive CPU resources (think, large clusters) to run the necessary calculations. The number of possible actions in a game like Avadon (or any RPG) are so innumerable that you would need to perform some kind of heuristics to filter out bad actions, and even then, it's a gargantuan calculation. The worst part about heuristics is they may yield worse performance in many situations because so much about tactics is purely situational. Again, if this were easy, the major gaming companies would surely be doing it. They're not, to my knowledge. The Civilization franchise is a prime example from a different genre that has similar issues. The AI cheats like mad, especially at higher difficulties. Nobody likes it, but also no one really has been able to completely mod a good enough AI to remove the need for some cheating. Quote: But, really this particular subject is fairly on my teeth grinding memories of early Avernum as I trudged through the early game constantly wearing a slow debuff in the face of mass haste happy mooks who didn't know their place in the game and insisted on being difficult about laying down and dying properly. They weren't going to be a challenge anyways, so why make them so fricking annoying? That's a different complaint. I agree, henches are not supposed to be challenging. Jeff even agrees these days, and generally leaves all the powerful buffs for "boss" fights.

Strange. Seems like a bug to me. Never a bad idea to report it to Jeff.

Quote: However, bad soundtracks can destroy a game, and Jeff doesn't have the money to fund a composer like Inon Zur or Hitoshi Sakimoto. Bad music is not forgivable in the same vein as outdated graphics. This. No music is often better than poor music. Even if you can turn it off, players will not forgive. Additionally, Jeff has a limited budget to spend on these games. Getting good music is probably out of the price range. Even if it were achievable, core elements would necessarily suffer.