Ceiling Durkheim

@Off/on: Hmm. Good point, and one that my own experience reflects. I got back into SW games with A5 after a long hiatus, but I only lurked around the forums looking for strategy tips from summer 2008 to fall 2010.

 

@Aran: Yes. If memory serves, BoE came out in 1997, Nethergate in 1998, and A1 in 1999 or 2000.

20 posts doesn't seem like so much. I'm pretty sure I've seen it happen in less.

@Kinsume: Regarding the aforementioned two statements, no they're not. I'm sorry if you don't grasp this, but many, probably most people would see these statements as substantively different. I'm not sure if this is because of your poor or idiosyncratic grasp of English idioms, or if you're just very stuck on a certain perspective. The word "easy" isn't particularly weighted. It can connote either a pleasant mellowness, or a lazy good for nothing character. "Babying" someone, in this context, is almost exclusively negative, suggesting laziness, immaturity, and lack of intellectual and moral strength. You're suggesting that anyone who doesn't want to face the same obstacles you do in this game (which, as various have pointed out, is supposed to be fun) are weak and unworthy. I don't see how you can expect people to take that as a simple, unfreighted statement of fact.

@Ackrovan: Khoth is in the area north of the Abyss, in the very northwest of the overall map. You need either the Orb of Thralni or the giants' boat to get there.

@Aran: Next thing coming is almost certainly an Avadon sequel. Jeff has said somewhere that he plans to remake all of the first Avernum trilogy, since one of the chief reasons he decided to go the remake route is that the current A1-3 instantiations don't work on many modern computers, but vague recollections suggest to me that he will alternate them (i.e. Av2-A:CS-Av3-A:RW). I may find a quotation for that when it's not 2:30 AM my time, but for now this may have to be a fiat-type operation. Believe or do not, as suits your preference.

Hmm. 54% started on the Exile series. Got a lot of oldbies taking this poll.

Impressively comprehensive and thoughtful, as usual. Only one question: "Golden girls grind?"

@Kinsume: Let's examine two phrases:

 

1. Designers of modern games are making games easier.

 

2. Designers of modern games are trying to baby players.

 

Do you notice any difference of tone and emphasis in these two statements? Because I do. Both of these statements are observations, as you say, and they can be true or false, but only one is insulting. You have repeatedly used insulting and condescending language to describe those with whom you disagree. I think this is the "attitude" Lilith mentioned.

Since it doesn't seem to be clear: I didn't "suggest" permadeath in earnest so much as offer it as a sarcastic reductio ad absurdum of the notion that torment difficulty should be made as inconvenient and 'hardcore' as possible. I'll skip the nuance and get straight to the meat of my point: I think that idea is dumb. I think making it that way on hard and torment is an even dumber idea.

Personally, I like to play challenging combat encounters, but I don't like huge negative consequences for losing. I don't like losing an hour of gameplay, or having to trudge back to town and shell out a bunch of gold every time some fireball or sword hit does 34 damage instead of 32. I usually play SW games on hard the first time, and torment from then on. If Jeff implemented the idea as you suggest it, I would write him to complain. I doubt I would be the only one to do so. It wouldn't ruin the game for me, but I'd consider it a substantial negative.

I have nothing against adding in 'old school' death mechanics, but I have a strong objection to coupling them to monster stats. I wouldn't mind them as an extra difficulty option, like the one in Grimrock that turns off the automap. I would probably never turn them on, but I recognize that I am not every player.

I agree that Jeff has refined his writing style, and not all of that refinement comes across in remakes. I don't think it's a huge difference, but it is a difference.

 

On the other hand: character development? When has Jeff ever done character development? Across two decades of games, there are maybe a dozen characters that get the sort of development that most any major character in a good novel, movie, or RPG by the likes of BioWare or Squaresoft undergoes. Even then, a significant number of those only get that much development because they recur over the course of multiple games (Litalia, Solberg, Greta). Complaining about poor character development in Jeff's games at this point just reminds me of that Penny Arcade comic involving a game reviewer complaining about the ways in which a dog is not a cat.

I don't, in fact. I think it pretty exactly meets my definition of "minor." When I think of major problems in games, I think of bugs that crash the game or corrupt save files, cause music or graphics to not function, serious play balance inequities, or clunky and unpleasant control schemes. The thing we're discussing is a deviation from the ideal, but not a serious one compared to the set of potential and actual problems found in games. Moreover, if the fact that longbows give a small bonus to melee accuracy is the sort of issue that downgrades your prospects of purchase from a definitely to a probably in and of itself, I can't imagine there are many games that meet your standards.

I started on E1 and 2 around the time BoE came out, but at this point it's Geneforge that owns the largest plot of my heart-land.

The whole 'not everyone makes it' thing is pretty common among professional academics, as well. There just aren't that many jobs in the social sciences and humanities (since science, engineering, and sometimes business departments tend to get the big bucks). It's apparently easier to get some sort of professorship in the natural sciences and math, but even there the competition for tenure is cutthroat. It has to be pretty nasty to be in one's mid-thirties to forties, no longer a rising star, denied tenure, shuttling from school to school just hoping to keep some kind of employment, maybe with a family to take care of by this point...

 

It's still not working two minimum wage jobs just to make rent and put food on the table, but man that does not sound like any kind of way to live.

@Kinsume: if we really want to maximize the difficulty on torment, how about we go for the realistic option and make character death permanent? None of this sissy "resurrection" crap. Then winning would really be an achievement.

 

Hey, Angband did it. It must be a good idea.

Ditto an undergraduate degree on the way to practicing law or medicine. Last I checked, a typical doctor or lawyer could expect to make somewhere on the order of $300,000 to $500,000 a year. Granted, that's after even more expensive education. The ones who really seem to suffer from this are professional academics: a tenured professor only makes somewhere in the area of $100,000 to $150,000. This isn't exactly below the poverty line, but that's after roughly a decade of costly post-secondary education, at least a few years at a lower salary, and that's if you get tenure and a full professorship at all.

@Master1: Yeah, and a lot of that need-based aid comes in the form of loans, not a full-on free ride.

Jeff sums up my thoughts on the subject pretty well on his blog: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-two-gaming-pet-peeves-for-day.html

Now, I'm a fan of realism. I admire games with realistic physics, even if they tend to be more action-oriented than the games I really like playing. I'm a huge stickler for internal consistency. I find gameplay and story segregation irritating on a pretty fundamental level. But we have to realize that realism is often a tradeoff.

Notice how books, movies, games, and so on never spend much time on their protagonists' trips to the bathroom? That's tremendously unrealistic. Excretion is one of the most basic functions of human life, substantially more so than rearranging one's backpack. Ditto eating and drinking in most cases, and that doesn't even have "it's gross/obscene" as an excuse. This is because these basic functions contribute nothing to story drama outside of certain stories where the focus is very strongly on survival and meeting basic needs. If anything, they detract from drama by adding in filler material that draws attention away from the major plot and character arcs. They're also not any fun in games. Micromanaging party inventory is the same way: it adds a moderate amount of realism at the cost of a large amount of fun and drama.

What Slarty said. They're playable even on torment, and I'm sure at some point some lunatic with too much time and skill on their hands will beat the game on torment with a singleton dedicated archer (if this hasn't happened already). They stack up pretty well against pole and sword & shield fighters (especially since an archer has no reason not to use a shield), but they fall significantly behind casters and dual wielders. The higher the difficulty, the more this matters.

Hybrid characters are pretty much necessary in singleton games, but outside of that they tend to underperform compared to more focused characters. The only hybrids that don't face the dreaded Multiple Stat Dependency are priest/mages. Even these spread their skill points pretty thin (don't expect them to contribute to the party's tool use/first aid/lore skills and still get high level spells), and don't gain all that much in actual power, but they are extremely versatile. They're especially useful in parties with fewer than four characters.

@Radaga: Yeah, I usually presume stun abilities guilty until proven innocent as well. Occasionally they're amazing, though, like in KotOR, where they work pretty consistently on everything but the final boss.

For that matter, daze/charm/mass madness are all but required to win on torment in many of the Geneforge games.

 

Regarding rating SW titles the same as big name commercial games: I don't think that's all that unreasonable. I was never a big fan of the D&D-based BioWare games; I don't think pen and paper systems translate well into computer/console games at all, and I have yet to play a D&D/D20 system computer game whose gameplay I actually liked. Ditto on the FF series. I tend to prefer their stories to those of Jeff's games, because while Jeff has written some really compelling settings (if not as bursting with details as Elder Scrolls or Kingdoms of Amalur), he very rarely writes engaging characters, and doesn't seem interested in doing so. Their gameplay, on the other hand, didn't get good until around 10. For all that the earlier games, especially 6 and 7, were true classics of the genre, they were also some of the least strategic RPGs of all time, and God knows they didn't make up for that in action. Battles were pretty much decided by build optimization and certain overpowered tricks, and as such tended to be about as engaging as Progress Quest.

 

Anyway, azure deer: I don't think Jeff's games can compete with the big names in terms of graphics, sound, or character interaction. On the other hand, in terms of gameplay and vivid settings, they're certainly in the same league, and even beat out a fair number of games that cost three times as much and get a hundred times as much press.

Sword and board isn't as good as dual wielding, but it's actually better than pole weapons. Pole weapons just suck in AEftP. Their damage isn't that much better than swords, and while they have a chance to hit a second target nearby, it's too low to make a difference. Especially since some swords have a (granted, slightly lower) cleave chance as well. At least sword and shield gives you a decent defense boost. Plus, in the late game, weapons and shields start giving some nice passive bonuses, and two weapons/weapon & shield means twice as many of these.

 

Archers aren't as bad in this game as they were in Avernum 5-6. They're still a lot less good than dual wielders, but they compare favorably to pole fighters. They do less damage, but being able to attack at range is a significant advantage, and they have a few other perks.

@Dave S: it's back that way in AEftP. There are only three levels of each spell, and each level makes a pretty significant difference (+~15% damage/healing, various added status effects, and so on). They're more like the rank 3 and 6 bonuses for abilities in Avadon, or the rank 3 creations in Geneforge, than the spell bonuses in A4-6 or the Geneforge series.

@Randomizer: ...Spell energy?

 

I think you may be thinking of a different game. That, or deliberately trying to expedite the new recruit's sanity-shedding.

Whereas I live in an apartment that has apparently housed exclusively people who don't know how to update their mailing addresses. I get mail for my former flatmate, and one friend who crashed here over last summer, but at least I know where they live. The other five or six people whose mail shows up here...not so much.

I know these people. They are the people on my Facebook feed about whom I most consistently think, "Are you as dumb as you appear, or just a really skillful and entertaining troll?"