A couple of notes from a new player

[seith]

Hello everyone. I'm a newbie around here, and I just started playing the demo of Avernum 6, which looks really nice so far. I'm only at the very beginning, but I thought I would post a few early remarks. I understand the game is no longer in beta testing and as such those remarks might be readily discarded, but still...

 

1) I clicked on "Quit" by mistake while looking around the menus and was very surprised not to be able to "undo" that action. Something like "Are you sure you want to quit?" would be only normal, I think. "Do you want to save?" is simply not enough; there are cases (like this one) where you don't mean to leave the game but you don't want to save either.

 

2) I understand you click on "g" to get a list of available items laying around your characters. But when you want to close this list, you have to look for another key (like the "ESC" key). Why can't I close the items menu by simply pressing "g" again? I mean my finger's still on it, so it would seem like a logical thing to do.

 

3) It would be nice to be able to just double-click on a saved game to load it, instead of having to first click on the game, and then click again on the validation icon.

 

4) It would be very useful to be able to see the saved games sorted out by chronological order. Right now, to find the most recent save, you have to compare the date and time of each file. This is not practical. At all.

 

5) It is currently impossible to switch between inventory view and character view by clicking on the appropriate icons. An error message says "Finish what you're doing first". This feels artificially restrictive and makes the procedure of equipping armor/weapons and checking their effects on the characters rather aggravating.

 

 

I'll keep on updating this post if I come across situations that seem strange to me from a usability point of view. Again, my goal is only to provide feedback from someone who's old enough to have played all those vintage games when they were released, but who's also kept up with "ergonomic improvements" heralded by new RPG games.

 

I truly respect and appreciate the work and energy spent by the people who worked on Avernum 6, and I hope those remarks will be taken for what they are; constructive criticism. And if they stem from me just being too dumb to figure out the proper shortcuts, please let me know!

[So Much Killing]

I agree with #1 -- there should be a 'cancel' option on that menu. Doing the obvious thing and hitting "ESC" is the absolute wrong thing because you'll quit without saving.

 

#2 is a little more equivocal. The reason you can't hit 'g' again is because the list of items to be picked up is alphabetized. This makes it very easy from the keyboard to pick up the items you want, and there could be an item 'g'. And the items can't be numbered because numbers 1 through 4 (depending on your PC count) select a different character for the focus of whatever action you're doing.

 

#3 makes sense, but it might require implementing a double-click mechanism, since I can't think of anything else in the game that uses double clicks.

[Quiconque]

The entire save/load interface is atrocious, and has been since Geneforge 1. It wasn't before. I don't know why it is now.

 

I find it incredibly irritating that the only way to change the name of the game you are saving (if you want to note something about it -- very useful given that there is NO other way to organize saved games under this system) is to hit delete once for every character in the original filename. You can't even hold down delete... you can't select the text with the cursor and clear it with a keystroke, you can't hit a button to clear it... this is especially stupid since saving in a new slot defaults to the name of the save that was already in that slot, not the name of the save you are working from. *sigh*

[So Much Killing]

I'm guessing that in order to make the game OS agnostic, Jeff has implemented the file interface himself, rather than use standard libraries. Unfortunately, that results in a very primitive interface. Like you, I would very much like to be able to save in a more structured way (so, for instance, I could have access to dozens of saves from key points in the game all nicely labeled and easily accessible so I could go back and try different things). As it is, the interface is such a PITA that I just have things called "New XX" and I increment the XX with each save, and pretty much give up on jumping backwards.

[Quiconque]

The thing that makes this so frustrating is that the games are BUILT to encourage you to try out different paths, and also different character builds.

[seith]

@So Much Killing: Thanks for the explanation. I see what you mean about "g" interfering with the items letters, but then, as you said, numbers should have been used instead. And F1 to F4 should have been reserved for switching between characters.

 

I mean... All those things seem rather basic to me. To see someone go through the lengths of programming a huge game with good writing and an engrossing story, only to fumble those very basic elements, which simply happen to be the first things the potential player is going to interact with... Well, it's a bit sad. Because those little inconsistencies, those tiny illogical choices will very subtly contribute to annoy and deter potential new players. And I don't think it would have cost much to iron those out.

 

I wish they would have been caught by the beta testers...

 

(Oh, and I added points 4 and 5 to my first post)

[Alorael at Large]

I'd buy the save interface being specially designed to be platform independent, except all earlier games used the platforms' standard save interfaces. Given how ubiquitous saving is, generally, I'd imagine that both OS X and Windows make it fairly easy to integrate. As a plus, the earlier save files weren't nearly as obnoxiously bloated as the new files, and they were much easier to find and move around.

 

—Alorael, who thinks part of the beta testing problems are due to Jeff's reliance on long-time Spiderweb players. He tries to get new blood for each beta, but most of the testers are still probably familiar with his games. And, more tellingly, his interface. The people who still notice and want to complain might not get the game in time to register their complaints.

[Quiconque]

I dunno, some of those beta testers complain an awful lot on these forums. I think it's more an issue of Jeff's cost-benefit analysis of the time it would take to make such changes differing from ours.

[So Much Killing]

I agree that #5 is annoying. I imagine it is a matter of keeping bugs out of the game: if you can switch from one pop-up screen to another, there is a chance to end up in some weird state where you can't close a window, or the game crashes. If you force the user to complete each action before doing another, there is no chance of a conflict. Also, if you were to change some stat in the character screen, then hit the inventory, map, or quest/journal button, you'd need an additional pop up to ask if you want to save or cancel the stat change. Those kinds of details can consume a lot of programming time that might be better spent on world, story, characters, puzzles, battles, etc.

 

That said, however, it would be a big improvement if the inventory screen showed the PCs' defensive stats. Then it would be a lot easier to see the effects of various pieces of equipment -- which is pretty important given the non-obvious effects of a lot of the gear. (The clover boots come to mind. If you didn't know that Luck was a very strong defensive skill, you'd never guess how good they were. As it is, the novice is likely to toss them as soon as something with a higher armor percentage comes along.)

[Randomizer]

Jeff used the Blades of Avernum game engine for Nethergate: Resurrection and kept the older save game system where you could set the file name and location. So he could go back to the older method.

 

It was Avernum 4 where he switched to the Geneforge save game system and for that game and Geneforge 4 you had to copy the save folder to new versions to continue a game when he updated it to fix bugs. It wasn't until Avernum 5 that he moved the saved games to a location outside the game folder.