Gerry Quinn

We tend to have a natural but illusory belief that an an item has a fixed objective value. This serves us well most of the time. We know when a merchant is charging above the odds, or giving us a bargain. We are careful with the good china. We are impressed by certain shiny stones and metals. Best of all, we can work out what this value is without the impossibly complicated task of calculating it - all we need to do is look at what others are paying! Which should be more expensive, platinum or silver? Do we go by shininess, conductivity, tarnishability? No, we just check out what others are paying. Some of the more boring newspapers print long tables of such things. Most of the time, we are not confronted with the illusory nature of this belief. Subconsciously, we know that prices are much cheaper in places where the average income is low, and we get to enjoy that when we holiday there - but it doesn't affect our baseline values. When we eat in a fancy restaurant, we let our belief fool us a little - we are not really getting fed ten times better than in a greasy spoon, are we? "Oh yes we are", we say. In fact, the high price makes the food taste better, when it should logically do the opposite! And if we bring somebody for a meal, they may in most cases be more impressed by an expensive meal that indicates our wealth and generosity, rather than a cheap meal that indicates our wisdom and frugality, even if the meal is exactly the same. The problem is that sometimes this illusion comes slap up against market realities, and that can put our noses slightly out of joint. It is more likely to happen with products such as computer software, which have very little cost per extra unit of production (though there is a big upfront cost before anything is produced), and where distribution and advertising costs can be very variable. We can see examples of this where software is sold outside the developed world. Often it is almost unsaleable at a standard cost. What should one do? In many cases the easiest option is to forget about it and let them pirate. To actually sell it, you'd need to charge a quarter of the developed world price, and even then you probably wouldn't sell many. But sometimes it is done. I haven't seen anyone having a go at Blizzard for selling cheaper subscriptions to World of Warcraft in some countries, even though their profit per unit is much less. Suppose Jeff sold Avadon for $5 in countries with a very low per-capita income. Would that bother the folks complaining about the iPad price? If things could in practice be done that way, wouldn't it be a win-win situation for everyone? What if Jeff did that, and people in the US and Europe started boycotting his games until he charged $5 everywhere? Now of course the folks with iPads tend to live in the developed world, and are probably richer than average. Maybe that's what is bothering people most. But in practical terms, the situation is the same. Jeff can only charge what the market will bear. Sometimes there is only one good market, or two with similar price-demand curves. That is the way it has been up to now. But if there are promising future markets, he has to dip his toe into them too, if he wants to keep on feeding his family. Maybe some day the iPad will be a dominant platform. I can only suggest that those who are perturbed by this ask themselves what they would do in the same place!

If you really feel that the price advantage of the iPad is so important... you could always buy an iPad.

I didn't loot her room (never stole in my game), I just explored a bit. I accidentally released her demon, though, and I guess she was pissed about that.

Those early runestones are disposable, especially for a singleton character. I would say use them freely.

It was not particularly hard as a shaper. I never finished any other GF, but dfficulty was not the issue so that is not especially relevant. A nice little army of pets will crush everything, that party haste spell is overpowered. I concentrated on dinos. In the end a bunch of hasted drakes are unstoppable.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Originally Posted By: Gerry Quinn It would have been perfectly fine gameplay-wise to have both health and vitality regenerate. It would make vitality a redundant stat, though. The recharge time already limits ability use in individual battles, and recharging it would negate its function of stressing out players during long encounters. True, it would be redundant. But would that affect gameplay much? Its function is to stress out players during long levels. But that function is really illusionary. We're not talking about real funtions here, we're talking about how things are perceived by the (perhaps unsophisticated) player.

Indeed, it's hard to make it perfect. It would have been perfectly fine gameplay-wise to have both health and vitality regenerate. Lilith nailed it in the first post when she said that the aim was to make players feel a little stressed. Jeff is actually on record as pointing out that the need to conserve vitality is basically an illusion, i.e. there are plenty of vitality potions, sao much so that there is never any real need to return to a pylon for a charge-up. Played through on hard, and this was true, and indeed I didn't use either charge-ups *or* vitality potions often, even though I used abilities almost unrestrainedly. Jenell needed potions much more than Nathalie or my Shadowalker, for some reason. Maybe Nathalie would have got thirstier if I had concentrated on her 'charge-ability' skill - I only got this very late. The shadowalker hardly ever ran out. I guess it depends a bit on builds and how you play.

Indeed, Gryfyn did himself no favours with his convoluted explanations of his actions. Nathalie and Jenell went a bit soppy over him - I can only assume it was down to his youth and good looks. I had no difficulty deciding to kill him, and indeed it pretty much solidified my decision to support Redbeard and try afterwards to change his direction a bit in some areas. [Alas, when I proposed that I be elevated to Heart, Redbeard rather scoffed at the idea... but at least I'm still a Hand in good standing. Perhaps now that he has acknowledged his complacency he will be more open to new ideas, though I suppose it's possible that he will decide to be more ruthless, as Klement might have, had he lived, elected for more spiders...] All in all, great game, only the second Spiderweb game I have actually finished (first was G1, though I have played a lot of several). I don't like games that are too long. I played on Hard throughout with a shadowalker plus Jenell and Nathalie, and I found combat well-balanced and interesting. Levelling was balanced well, I hit 30 just after the endgame started. I tweaked some of my skills early on when I discovered the retrainer, but after that I decided not to do this again for RP reasons. It wasn't really an issue, your characters don't have to be perfect to be up to the job.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola Seems like a lot of work for not that much benefit, and defeats one of the main purposes of having the other party members, i.e. having access to the skill sets of classes one didn't pick for the PC. Still, I think it could be cool to give each NPC a special skill or unique passive bonus to distinguish them a bit more from each other, and from a PC of the same class. I guess the scarabs can work a bit in this direction - obviously you have a choice who gets them, but at least they are something unique. Clearly the game can support such extra abilities (or the scarabs would break it). It does indeed seem like a nice way to personalise things.

Note: I did initially start the demon fight as intended, and after half an hour I had to go out and could not save in combat... next time I tackled things more efficiently.

They have been quite tolerable so far on Hard (I am near the end, Shima's quest has just started). The only two longish ones were both at the Mindtaker drake. The one with the demon would have been long if I'd done it as intended, but I just used missiles on the demon before killing the gatekeepers. The fight with the drake (or rather its puppets) was long but I didn't feel it was too long. I doubt I'll be fighting the Beard, so all in all I think I will be happy with the length of combat. [As for game length, I am sorry to be nearing the end, but most CRPGs are too long IMO, so this is not really a complaint.)

Good idea. One that has occurred to me is the ability to filter or perhaps just colour-code quests. It is of course realistic that Lady Antje's request for a stolen totem should stay in my notebook. Nevertheless, I believe I found that totem and gave it to someone else. Also, erm... let us say that Lady Antje may no longer be deeply interested in the things of this plane. Also on my wishlist is a super-streamlined inventory that I never have to worry about. As a card-carrying pack-rat, I find that even Jeff's latest scheme does not quite suffice. Acceptable would be a fixed inventory of 20-30 items per character that contained everything that can be accessed in combat. (Less than 20 would be more tactical, but better suited to a roguelike than this kind of game.) For example, runestones would just appear on their owm tab, even if there are hundreds (they would auto-sort too). Your combat inventory would have wands, scrolls and potions, and any rings or weapons you might conceivably want to switch, though in truth no such switching is probably necessary. [The now ancient Daggerfall actually went some distance in this direction.]

Yes, I've noticed that even a level 1 salamandar has quite a lot of health compared to a wolf or hellhound. Playing with Shadowwalker + Nathalie + Jenell on Hard, just completed Titan Keep, and the salamander stood up well to the titan attacks. Thus far the game has not been difficult - I have used very few consumables (except maybe 10-20 health potions and 10 speed potions) and almost none of the better ones. Silly, I know, I have barely brought myself to sell off even lightning scrolls! Used a resurrection scroll for the first time here and it almost seemed a cheat - full health restore, apparently full ability restore! It would still be a good scroll if it did a lot less...

It is admirable, in its way. Monitor Pelin is no longer young, and the Kva sun has turned his skin to leather. Right now his small band is surrounded by hostile Titans. Nevertheless, in his red wig and falsies, he still can cut a dash. Not for nothing is he known as the Lion. I agree with Cala that he is wise to avoid a chain mail bikini. That would indeed be de trop.

That is my suspicion, I think he says nothing when he sees you nearby when he leaves a camp, but he decides to do nothing for the next few visits. I had trouble with this, caught him eventually. I don't really know what the trick is.

In that version Zaren will start talking about the difficulties of transition.

I like Jenelle most as a *person*. But I like Nathalie most as a psychopath!

Originally Posted By: madrigan I finished the game yesterday. It was shorter than I expected, but I think that to some extent Jeff was experimenting with this game, and expanding the plot just for its own sake was probably not on his agenda. I was surprised that I didn't get to visit Tawon or the Corruption, though. I suspect Jeff intentionally left areas unvisited - they will no doubt be visited in later games in the series.

My shadowwalker has developed STR and DEX equally - he is more often than not a melee character as he goes around with a Shaman and Sorceress. The battle frenzy is great.

I defeated her with Shadow Walker, Shaman, and Sorceress the other day - she was quite easy and did not require many consumables IIRC. She banished the Shadow Walker first, but he killed the mobs and got back before she banished the Sorceress. Can't remember if the Sorceress died, but I don't think so. It was on hard mode. Maybe I was lucky to have the Shadow Walker banished first.

I thought this was relatively easy... would you actually ever say this to them?