Ceiling Durkheim

That'll show him.

@Actaeon: Dare I ask what happened to the last one?

@Enraged Slith: That video has some creeeepy music. Cute seal pup, though.

@Slarty: Hmmm. Interesting. If the formula exists as is, low level mages should miss frequently with haste, and I didn't notice that. Consider pretty typical stats for an early game caster of haste: level 5, 7 mage skill, 1 point in haste. That should mean haste misses more than a third of the time, and I haven't noticed that in any of my plays (I would also imagine that we'd get a lot more 'haste-oddity' threads on here if dedicated casters failed at it frequently). As such, I wouldn't be surprised if intelligence does contribute to the chance, though obviously I couldn't say for sure without seeing the data.

@Slarty: that's why I specified Vancian magic, as in based on the novels of Jack Vance, best known in the RPG world from the spell systems of the first three editions of D&D. The "anime" system has a fairly wide precedent in modern fantasy as well (Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Star Wars if you want to count that), while many foundational works of fantasy (Tolkien, Lovecraft) don't really bother to specify the exact mechanics of magic. And, as Lilith said, magic use as described in most forms of world mythology doesn't really correspond to either of the systems of magic we seem to favor. We're both talking about forms of magic that are in some meaningful sense intrinsic to the caster, whereas most 'magical' rituals throughout history have been largely at the whim of some outside agency. Whether we're talking about the Goetia and the various Solomonic demon texts, the form of witchcraft described in Malleus Maleficarum, Formicarius, and their various successors, the late Greco-Roman concept of theurgy, aristeia as demonstrated in the works of Homer, or the various mystical powers exhibited by Jewish prophets and Christian saints and apostles, those are all the action of some god/God, demon, or spirit working through an individual. There are also many works, like medieval lapidaries or various Taoist alchemical texts, that attribute magical power to objects. The notion of magic as inherent to the human that casts it doesn't come up in many places in religion/mythology, if anything it's kind of aberrant: the most direct analog would be the Pacific Islander concept of mana, and the story of Sundiata from Mali goes more the modern wizard route; if you really wanted to stretch I suppose the Taoist notion of wu wei could possibly qualify as well, but I think that's about it. Magic as ritual invocation of another being operates on fundamentally different sets of rules from both 'magic as formula' and 'magic as ki.' The point is, when you say: Quote: One of those things corresponds very closely to the way humans who have purported to have magical powers have done things throughout history. And one of those things corresponds very closely to anime. ...that's patently false, and phrased pretty disdainfully as well (my favorite combination!). Neither of our concepts of magic correspond well to the idea of it held by pre-modern humans. Both of them correspond pretty well to two opposing ideas of magic established in fiction from around 1950 onward.

@Danny: How are you defining sci-fi here? Because the phrase "with some words that sound familiar from science but are used to describe magic" already sounds like more than a lot of ostensibly science fiction settings bother with. By even including genetics in some hazy sense as a plot element, Geneforge is already dabbling more in real science than many space operas do (Star Wars is the most famous offender, but far from the only one). It's fine if you don't define space opera as science fiction, in fact I'm pretty sympathetic to that point of view (I favor the term 'sci-fantasy' for stories that are basically fantasy with laser guns), but the fact remains that many people do classify space operas as sci fi. Regarding the remakes: as a few people on this thread have said, I've been playing SW games for a while now. I appreciate the shiny new interface, and like I said I had fun playing it, but the fact that AEftP's plot is almost identical to A1's, which is almost identical to E1's, makes it lose some of its luster for me. I was genuinely surprised by some of the plot twists in Avadon and the later Avernum and Geneforge games, but that can't really happen to me with AEftP unless I acquire some form of retrograde amnesia. And while I like Jeff's games a lot, I don't like them quite enough to risk dangerous cerebral trauma in order to play them 'fresh.'

Quote: The only trouble is that most science programs these days are really pressed for time. Students only have so much time, and they're expected to cover so much stuff. This was definitely true at my school. Physics and biochem majors, in particular, have units or more (out of 30 required to graduate) taken up by classes in their department/division, and many of the rest are filled by group requirements (core classes across various divisions: humanities, HSS/psychology, natural sciences, and math/languages/linguistics). The latter offer a bit more leeway, but students in these disciplines only get the opportunity to take around two to six semesters' worth of true electives. Many of these will be additional classes in their majors, because those are the most clearly applicable to the student's course of study and future career path. So the thesis is definitely a trade-off, but one that I think in sum is worth it. Even in the social sciences and humanities, which have give students much more opportunity to write papers, I think students are well served by the requirement to write something that at least approximates a genuine academic monograph. This is only amplified in the natural sciences, where so much of the work takes the form of exams and problem sets.

@SoT: That's a very interesting perspective on the subject. I never got further than introductory undergraduate science and math, so most of my knowledge of didactic methods in these disciplines is secondhand. My experience of introductory classes was that students were pretty much expected to take the facts of the discipline on fiat; there was some proof by experimentation, but even then we were generally spoon-fed the experimental design. This doesn't seem unreasonable for a 100-level class, but I expected that things got more involved for upperclassmen in those divisions. I think your statement also provides a strong defense of the practice of requiring undergraduates to write senior theses (as my school did). I can't say for certain that the thesis process promoted a more critical engagement with the subject matter as a whole among science majors, but it definitely required them to think more about the context of their work, and to engage critically with the literature in their field. My flatmate was a physics major who wrote his thesis on fracture mechanics, and he certainly had a lot to say about the foundational work in the field by the end of that year. Much of it not very good. This seems to have been typical of thesis students in general. I don't have the knowledge base necessary to say whether his opinions on the subject had real merit, but the fact that he had begun to form his own opinions for and against the leading lights of the field strikes me as preferable to the type of pure rote learning you describe, especially in the more theoretical arms of the sciences.

Quote: You're just posting cute pictures without arguing for a specific animal but... I don't even care. Can you really say you're surprised that the thread has degenerated into this?

The idea of using different power levels of spells at will was also an interesting and fun one, as well as fairly realistic (unless you're thinking in terms of a really, really Vancian system of magic, a wizard who can cast a twenty foot radius fireball can probably also cast a ten foot radius fireball). Not always well implemented, but I would still list it as a positive.

Quote: Realmz had heart, and some good ideas. It was also hugely buggy, had no combat balance to speak of, had terrible writing and editing, and usually lacked more than an excuse plot. I played it, I registered it, and I enjoyed it, but a great game it was not. This. In all respects, this. Oh man, I remember the first version of Realmz I played: there were several scenarios in which you couldn't equip weapons, only unequip them. In most cases, this was just annoying and unbalancing, but it actually made the scenario 'Destroy the Necronomicon' unplayable, because there was a boss fight late in the scenario that required you to use a set of magic scimitars to do damage. They fixed it a few months down the line, but this was pretty typical of the amount of testing that went into Realmz.

@Slarty: The changes you've suggested all sound sensible. A few other suggestions: Shields also probably deserve a buff if you're thinking of buffing other combat options relative to dual wielding. Could be a straight armor bonus, a better evasion bonus, better passives on magic shields, or some/all of the above. If you're planning major revamps to existing spells, I'd recommend going over the spell list from your Slartanalysis and improving the spells you didn't recommend buying. Since your lack of enthusiasm (which I found mostly corresponded with my own opinion of the spells' relative merits) indicates that these spells either aren't very worthwhile at all, or don't gain meaningfully from upgrades, it seems like improvements to them would make the game more balanced overall. I could probably think of other suggestions, but they'd have less basis outside of anecdote, and I also don't know just how far you want to go with this mod.

Going to address subsequent comments more than the original post, since I think the latter has been pretty thoroughly exploded: I too would like to see Jeff focus on creating more original content and less on rewriting old games. That said, I still eagerly anticipated AEftP, and enjoyed playing it. I would've preferred an earlier release date for Avadon 2 (and given what a cow with golden udders the first Avadon has become, I can't think it would've been that bad a business decision), but I liked AEftP and I strongly suspect I'll like ACS and ARW as well. Also, while making Geneforge a fantasy game may have gone against Jeff's starting vision, I think what he came to was actually more original and interesting. It's not as if sci fi games full of genetic tinkering are terribly rare (Resident Evil, FEAR, Deus Ex, Xenosaga, and so on ad nauseum), there just aren't many RPGs with that premise. The weird sci-fantasy hybrid that Geneforge ended up as, on the other hand, is actually pretty rare and distinctive. Not 100% original, but definitely less played out than either traditional science fiction or fantasy.

@Dantius: On the critical thinking skills, I agree with you. Acquiring those is more a matter of studying hard in college than of choosing any particular academic program. On writing skills, I'll have to differ. While a scientific education teaches skills in certain specialized writing forms, and I don't doubt that the average bio major writes a better lab report than the average English major, the fact remains that said education leaves out a lot of the basic tutelage in academic writing that people in more verbose majors receive. I say this on the basis of proofreading papers by various science major friends of mine, and reading various bits from more serious science journals (as opposed to popular science periodicals, which are generally the province of science writers rather than scientists): there is a lot of really bad writing in the natural sciences. I don't just mean blunt and unembellished writing, which is unfashionable but actually fine. I mean writing featuring various typos and stylistic errors that make it genuinely hard to follow. Obviously, this is not to say that there are no scientists and science students with writing skills; rather, that their scientific education had little or nothing to with their acquisition of said skills.

@The Ratt: I agree that math and science majors would be the easiest sell (and this is already evident from the fact that they get the lion's share of funding in most universities), and HSS probably wouldn't do too badly, but even the 'softer' disciplines in the humanities have clear societal benefits. For instance, English feeds heavily into journalism, especially at institutions that don't have a specific journalism major. I think we can pretty much all agree that a robust media with high professional standards is an important component of a healthy democracy. The hardest programs to sell would probably be creative departments like music, creative writing, and fine art. This is both because there are far more brilliant artists with little or no formal training than, say, brilliant scientists or historians with a similar dearth of credentials, and because it's easy to see these disciplines as primarily creating entertainment rather than the various ostensibly more necessary forms of social utility that other departments produce.

Red pandas all the way. Behold: Kittens and leverets deserve an honorable mention, as do seal pups and some types of puppies (Corgis and Scottish/West Highland White Terriers come immediately to mind).

@Dikiyoba: Yeah, I too find the Garfield/Chipmunks style of CG pretty grotesque. Grotty, if you feel like bringing the Beatles into this.

@Nikki: Ah, didn't realize that was you. I think the shift in PDN and image, coupled with the lack of signature, threw me off. Devious.

Quote: You can't use ME3 as an example, even that game's hardest difficulty was a complete joke. I fail to see the relevance of this statement. Assuming for the sake of argument that ME3 really was that easy (I can't comment on 1's difficulty, but 3 was definitely harder than 2), that still doesn't invalidate its use as an example of anything other than a challenging game. Let's consider this as a dialogue for a moment: Person 1: "Mass Effect 3 has a very smooth control scheme." Person 2: "You can't use gameplay from ME3 as an example. It was way too easy." Does the latter statement strike you as kind of silly? My previous comment had nothing to do with overall difficulty, and everything to do with allowing more strategic options and the chance to expunge really bad build decisions. I think that's good design in pretty much any RPG, whether it's a cakewalk or the type of game that makes Dark Souls look like one. Anyway, a lot of what you say here and in the above posts seems to boil down to you expecting everyone to play the same way you want to. If you don't want to respec, don't respec; you have my blessing. That other people have the option ought not subtract anything from your gaming experience. The fact remains that Avadon's respec option got overwhelmingly positive feedback.

@Kinsume: Exile didn't have as much variety in weapons as, say, D&D or the computer games based on it, but it had a bit more than recent Avernum/Geneforge/Avadon games. Maces, crossbows, a few others. I think Jeff's reasoning for taking them out was that the differences between them were mostly cosmetic, and thus not worth the extra programming time and effort. I kind of agree with that, all told; if weapons consumed different numbers of AP, or had different ranges (beyond the basic close/far distinction) it would make sense to make more weapons, but as it stands the only non-cosmetic differences between weapons of the same type are weight and damage, and the former doesn't even remotely balance the latter.

I would describe his/her facial expression as 'nonplussed,' personally.

@Kinsume: That's why I think there should be a cost associated with it. Take Mass Effect 3 as an example: the player can reset their characters' skills for free the first time (so if you really screw up on your build you have an easy out), but after that it starts to cost money, and increase in cost each time you respec. Some players I've talked to swear by respecing for each major block of missions so as to always have the optimal abilities for a given set of enemies and environmnets. Others, like me, would rather spend those credits on equipment and upgrades, which gives a more lasting benefit. Both are viable strategies, and they increase the strategic diversity and fun of the game without creating one clearly dominant strategy or removing much in the way of challenge. Plus they create a safety net for those who don't know how to optimize their skills and would rather not just restart or play through the rest of the game with a crappy build, which let's face it are most players their first time around.

Quote: —Alorael, who will also suggest that if you want a game to let you make terribly weak character builds, the game must give you full information on how the mechanics work. Making the right build decisions can be part of the skill of playing. But if the effects of your choices are largely obfuscated, letting you make mistakes isn't fun, it's unnecessarily harsh. The problem is that the "full information" necessary to make an informed decision is far more than any game can reasonably give players at the start. Even if a game goes really whole hog explaining the mechanics of its stats and abilities, those stats and abilities don't exist in a vacuum. Even if the game tells me everything I want to know about the relative damage, range, area of effect, ancillary benefits, and cost of Fireball, Ice Bolt, and Big Nasty Spiky Axe Cleave, that still doesn't tell me how well enemies tend to defend against fire, ice, and physical damage. Or whether it's wiser to prioritize range and movement debuffs because enemies tend to murder you in melee, or blast radius because there are many large groups of weak enemies that will swarm you to death if you don't hit them with strong AoE's. Point is, to really understand whether an ability is good or not, you need to understand not just the ability itself but the game's enemies and environment as well, and there's no good way to do this from the start without including massive spoilers. That's why I think some sort of respec mechanic should be pretty much de rigueur in any longer RPG. I think there should be some cost associated with them (as in WoW or the Mass Effect series), to maintain an element of challenge in build optimization, but I don't think players should suffer serious penalties in hour 40 for build decisions they made in hour 2. That's not fun, nor does it promote intelligent and strategic play. What it promotes is walkthrough and FAQ-viewing.

Quote: The fact of the matter is dual wielding is meant to outshine a 2h weapon in terms of damage per second. Why? From the standpoint of game balance they ought to be roughly equal, since they have basically the same advantages and disadvantages (higher damage, but lower defense). Ideally they should be equally good but in different ways. I think Jeff tried to do this with the cleave mechanic on pole weapons, but the cleave chances just aren't high enough to make a real difference. Quote: Also, ^ that sounds like some serious pseudo-history. Seconding this. I'm not an expert on the history of weapons and war, but I've done some reading on the subject, and as far as I can tell there just isn't that much historical precedent for dual wielding, period. It crops up in some fencing styles, like rapier and dagger, but weapon/shield and single weapon (whether single or double handed) seem overwhelmingly more common. Realistically, learning to use two weapons well in tandem requires so much more skill than using one weapon (or even a weapon and shield) that only highly skilled practitioners of the martial arts would ever find it advantageous.

@SoT: Well said. If there's one thing that fills me with rage about American-style capitalism (and the economic libertarianism that informs it/is informed by it), it's that it seems predicated on a complete lack of understanding of the concept of a public good. And, by extension, the notion that one might want to promote or not despoil said public goods.