mikeprichard

There definitely have been strong reactions as expected with any major design changes, but I wouldn't consider myself on either extreme just yet. I've pointed out some concerns/flaws here and elsewhere, which of course any game will have, and I completely understand the motivations between each of the seven major changes laid out by Jeff in his blog post (https://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/09/queens-wish-is-out-heres-why-its-so.html). My biggest disappointment I've read about so far is the fact that a completionist playthrough will have you maxing out stats as early as 75% of the way through the game, which is not great design for several reasons - it was a problem with Avadon 1 that was later largely remedied in Avadon 2 and 3, but it's reappeared here. Otherwise, I'm not a big fan of the implementation of the dungeons being "infinite henchmen respawn machines" - i.e. after you go in and kill those two wolves, then return a day or even a minute later, those same two wolves have apparently been cloned back into the same spot, and will continue to be ad infinitum, until you defeat the head honcho and all the henchmen immediately disappear for good. There's probably not a seamless/immersive alternative way to achieve Jeff's goal of forcing players to "strategically" beat each dungeon in one run, but I feel there has to be a better approach than this.

OK, maybe Randomizer or someone else with knowledge of the mechanics can please clarify whether a +3 effective level in any skill that shows only a +2 max in the skill tree is actually a thing.

Sorry, I'm still not clear as to the answer to the original question - if you already have the max +2 in a particular skill for a character, and equip that same character with something that gives +1 to the skill, will the character's effective skill become "+3" (not shown in the skill tree, but with the attendant benefits)? Or is +2 still always the hard cap for the skill's benefits?

Awesome, Randomizer - appreciate the confirmation. As a completionist, I'll probably eventually whip 'em all just to clear the map, though I assume some will be too difficult the first time I encounter them.

Yeah, TriRodent... just waiting to check this all out myself after 1.0.1 comes out. Fingers crossed the same mobs don't keep magically cropping up just to get in the way. If past Spidweb titles are any indication, they probably won't, but QW is its own thing.

TriRodent - thanks for this and your other helpful responses! I'm really hoping that's the case here. Would get pretty tedious (not to mention unimmersive) to end up wasting time on the same group of punk enemies whenever I wanted to get around the map, despite my having defeated them earlier - fast-traveling aside. Slarty - to close the topic, I agree, as you also admit, that it's not a great system. More exceptions/customization (player accuracy skills, enemy evade rates, terrain effects, etc. - which need not be "infinite" variables as you seem to think) are always better than a flat arbitrary cap.

Not sure where you're coming up with this bizarre notion of "100% hits repeatedly flying around in the middle of a melee", unless you're just trolling again to put words in my mouth to fuel some other debate. As I've already explained, I'm pointing out the silliness of an arbitrary hit chance cap that applies in every situation regardless of the conditions. In any event, I'm referring to the case of not being able to hit some chump enemy when all 4 of my guys were surrounding it and it was the only enemy left, just because the code says "nope, you hit your 90% cap". Happened all the time. Moving on to a separate topic within the topic - do random outdoor enemy encounters always respawn, or is each one unique and non-repeatable? I get the gist of Jeff's focus on not "grinding" XP (although that was already largely addressed in prior games by having enemy kills reward diminishing XP returns at higher character levels, so I don't see how it was a big problem to begin with). However, it will be fairly annoying to have to always avoid the same respawning encounters which will give no loot or XP rewards on the map - would completely kill the sense of reward/progression by having to invest time in repeating the same tedious encounters for essentially no point. As long as I can permanently "clear" each such encounter - even with no immediate rewards - so I don't have to run around it every time I'm on the map again later, I could handle this. But can anyone please explain how this works?

Right, they haven't as far as I'm aware either.

It's actually something that happened A LOT in previous Spidweb titles. Again, the point is not that 100% hits should be the norm - it's that the system should be more nuanced and realistic to allow for the obvious fact that e.g. 90% max hit shouldn't also be the norm. That said, maybe this problem doesn't apply as much in QW if hit chance focuses more on individualized enemy evade stats rather than constantly hitting some arbitrary across-the-board cap - I'll see how it goes.

With the caveats that a) graphics obviously aren't the main reason I've played every Spidweb game for decades since Exile 2, all of which have neither advertised nor featured AAA visuals, and b) I've already read Jeff's entire blog post at https://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/08/why-all-of-our-games-look-like-crap.html, I don't understand why Jeff apparently hasn't (?) considered polling his significant loyal fanbase for artists who could work in his desired style for free (in return for being credited in the game of course) and/or very low rates. I would be very surprised if he couldn't find at least a handful of talented people this way who would be happy to contribute, if for no other reason than to work on a Spidweb game and buff their CVs. It's kind of disheartening to see Jeff threw a bunch of extra cash at QW's graphics to come up with (in my opinion) something that looks no better and maybe a bit worse overall than his earlier titles, when volunteer fan help possibly could've been a thing. Again, the writing, themes, and gameplay will always remain the biggest draws for me and probably any other fan of Jeff's games, but it would be a very nice bonus if they could be a bit less... painful on the eyes.

Right. Although it's a bit of a tangent to the earlier posts, I'm simply pointing out that "always" (as is the case in Spidweb games and the DnD tropes) assigning an arbitrary max hit chance cap never makes sense, as your post also shows above. Such a system results in the entirely possible and real case where our dude is just standing around next to the zombie, with all other enemies gone, and still has a significant flatly assigned chance of not hitting it. It's just nonsense. I do understand the reasoning - it makes coding hit chances a lot simpler to make them one-size-fits-all - but while it's a practical solution, it's not a realistic one.

This, as well as the ability to freely respec (reassign skills) for your characters whenever in your fort, are the most welcome improvements to previous Spidweb titles for me as well. Back in the old Geneforge/Avernum days, I couldn't help but spam the "g" key to scour every square inch of ground for any piece of junk I could hock at a merchant, made even worse in games that didn't yet have a junk bag, and even worse(r) in games where each merchant had limited gold for barter. Ay yi yi, that was tedious. Great to see this kind of "streamlining"!

Yikes - hopefully this will be addressed as appropriate in the upcoming patch.

Some info here - http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/24983-scooping-items/

Interesting - I wonder if this is an intentional choice on Jeff's part, or if he's planning to nerf this to ensure no two augments of the same type (regardless of magnitude) can be applied to the same item with the next patch. I have no problem with it staying as is, assuming the situation here is unchanged from the beta; allowing two augments of the same type on one item is an example of broader customization options, which are always a plus (now that he's stolen our pants).

I agree the to-hit RNG (and most RNGs) implemented with an artificial cap (be it 90%, 95%, or whatever%) is a somewhat nonsense holdover trope/game mechanics crutch from the decades-old DnD 20-sided dice roll routine. A highly skilled warrior standing next to a slow-moving zombie (to take an admittedly more extreme example that nevertheless tests the case) shouldn't "always" have a 5%, 10%, or whatever% chance to miss the zombie. Such a situation quite obviously doesn't make sense, even in the context of a fantasy setting. I've always found this a tough gameplay choice to accept. Ideally, there should be even up to a 100% chance to hit in some situations, while on the other extreme depending on the e.g. battlefield conditions/player skill and equipment/enemy skill and equipment, a significantly lower hit chance "cap" may even make sense. It's just simpler on the developer to code in a flat hit chance cap to apply across the board, but defending that cap as somehow realistic in every situation is - to put it mildly - always going to be a stretch.

Oh, so in the manual's example, you'd actually take 11 damage total - i.e. 8 damage (which the 60% chest armor reduction - i.e. 12 points out of 20 total - doesn't apply to at all), plus 3 damage (3 out of those 12)? As I often do, I feel I'm making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

OK, thanks for the input, folks. Seems like some questions remain. At least that paragraph on page 24 of the manual could probably stand to be rewritten, I think? In that example, the chest piece alone is somehow reducing 20 incoming total damage down to only 3 ("you will take 3 points of damage"), with no reference to separate calculations for a helm or shield being factored in. I doubt that's a priority for Jeff, however.

If someone who understands the new Queen's Wish armor mechanics could please clearly explain the below three points, or send me to a forum post that already does so, I'd be obliged. Cheers! 1) The manual notes on page 24: "For example, iron chainmail blocks 60% of damage. It can block up to 9 points of physical damage and 4 points of magical damage. If you take 20 points of physical damage, 60% of that is 12 points, so the armor will block 9 of that, you will take 3 points of damage." This is a bit confusing to me, as it seems in this example - where the piece is said to "block" 60% of the 20 points - it should actually reduce the 20 by 12 to 8, of which all 8 (given the 9 max remaining damage absorption capacity) should be nullified. Instead, the manual's example above suggests that in fact only 40% of the 20 incoming total is being blocked, leaving 12 points of the 20 to be further reduced by 9 to 3. I know I'm missing something blindingly obvious here, but I just don't get it. 2) Does the percentage value (60% above) always refer to reducing both physical and magical damage, regardless of whether the equipment is an armor/robe, helm/cowl, or shield/orb? I understand the other values (9 and 4 for iron chainmail) separately refer to physical and magical damage respectively, but the percentage seems to be universal. 3) Finally, how exactly do the corresponding percentage/flat damage reductions related to chest (armor/robe), head (helmet/cowl) and shield (shield/orb) defensive pieces interact with each other to produce the character's overall damage reduction?

I just received my requested GOG game and hint book keys as a Kickstarter backer via email from Spiderweb, and as I also mentioned in my email reply, I wanted to thank Jeff & co. for being so quick in providing these keys to their loyal supporters. I'm really looking forward to starting my (DRM-free and GOG-approved) adventure in this new series!

Wow, Ess-Eschas, 1,000 points for thorough research! Almost all of those categories of uses are actually captured in the Chicago Manual of Style table I linked earlier, but I can see how "ever-threaten" could possibly be seen as a (admittedly unusual and unique) creative extension of the more generally accepted compound adjective "ever-threatening", which itself however is of a type already covered by the above as well. "Over-prepare" may also equate, but only if changed to active verb form. "Ever-threaten" is therefore still quite odd and unprecedented, but as I also explained to Slarty over a later chat, it's naturally Jeff's option. My primary original concern was that what I assumed was clearly a "typo" (as it has no known equivalent usage elsewhere) at the very beginning of the game would be indicative of many more errors later in the text, but I can see you're not one to miss a detail, and if you've been contributing to the proofreading so far, I'm satisfied the polish of the writing will be up to its usual Spiderweb standard. Thanks again to all for indulging this little discussion!

Hm, that does sound like a pretty major problem.

Thanks, Randomizer. I can only imagine there are tons of things to be worked out whenever a new engine is crafted, but I haven't noticed any obvious pathing problems in the initial let's play videos of the first hour or so, so was curious what this might be referring to. It does seem from reading the forums here that other aspects of the UI (different ways to open doors(?) depending on context, how to use crafting/building menus to delete/replace structures) may need some refinement in later QW1 versions and/or QW2, but that's probably to be expected as well.

Does anyone who's actually been playing the game find any merit/sense in the first GOG review: https://www.gog.com/game/queens_wish_the_conqueror? Specifically, quoting from the review: "The collision detection on the basic movement is a bit lacking, the fact that if you click on interactable objects and the movement towards there seems inconsistent doesn't help."

I guess this was inevitable. I'm still stubborn enough to refuse to give up Windows 7 for a Windows 10 "upgrade", but at least my Win 7 is 64-bit. I hope you can manage to move to a 64-bit system and enjoy more Spidweb goodness.