Finished game; mild spoilers

[BenS]

Just finished this tonight. This is a rambling post b/c I'm exhausted, so pardon the formatting...

 

First SW game I've ever played on Hard. Mainly b/c I was worried from Jeff's blog that he was going to make the game easier than previous games. The difficulty definitely ramped up nicely before long!

 

Lots to like/love in this game, w/ some minor criticisms/suggestions.

 

Pros:

Lively new game world to play in.

Liked the PCs/NPCs.

Plot twists galore.

Rarely a sense of the right/wrong or good/evil dichotomy found in more simplistic RPGs.

Love the skill tree concept in general; had a hard time distinguishing between what skills to take in earlier games.

Nice variety of locales visited.

Better inventory management!

Liked the auto-heal function after all.

Medals are fun (good luck w/ Steam Jeff!).

Boss fights are a ton of fun, even if you get stomped the 1st time or two. Already dying for the sequel.

Runestone enchantments.

New & improved art.

Scarabs!

 

Cons:

Not much to say here beyond some minor nitpicks.

 

Would have liked a few more skill points if stuck w/ a hard level cap. Is it even possible to max out a 4th tier ability?

The cleave function was wonky. Foes that would miss me b/c of my high defenses in a 1-on-1 fight would almost invariably hit that same character w/ a cleave. Also, I found it weird that a character 2 spaces away would be subject to a cleave, instead of just 1 space.

Random items. If a character cannot use it (armor/weapon) or sell it (quest or otherwise), don't bother making it collectible (e.g., bags of meal, bars of iron) in the 1st place.

Quests: would like dead quests to drop off (e.g., gave a certain totem to A instead of B...but quest remained).

Zhethron's quest reward chests: I did everything he asked and he only opened 2 of 4 (3 of 5??) for me; even when his helper said he'd open another.

Reusing the same sprites over and over. Only really bothered me when Redbeard's sprite was used for other bosses.

Didn't like entering a map at only 1 location, regardless of where I left the map.

Enchanted items should be worth more when you sell them.

 

A few questions unresolved:

Does playing on Hard difficulty result in any in-game benefits beyond modest bragging rights and a Medal post-game?

Do the flaming sword and corrupted/acid halberd inflict fire & acid damage or just protect against those elements?

Is B- the toughest fight in the game? I fought everything except B-, Z- (frosty), and Redbeard. I tried B- at 23rd level and quickly realized he was way beyond me. W/ only 30 levels, and playing on Hard (got to get that medal!), I'm afraid of what it would take to beat him.

 

Ok, time for some badly needed sleep. Thanks to Jeff for another great game.

 

Edited: few things I forgot about.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: BenS

Cons:

Would have liked a few more skill points if stuck w/ a hard level cap. Is it even possible to max out a 4th tier ability?

You can get to level 6 for a 4th tier ability.

Quote:

Quests: would like dead quests to drop off (e.g., gave a certain totem to A instead of B...but quest remained).

You can see the other person for that quest and get yelled at for not giving them the totem.

Quote:

Zhethron's quest reward chests: I did everything he asked and he only opened 2 of 4 (3 of 5??) for me; even when his helper said he'd open another.

I think more quest were intended, but were dropped because of the level cap and players were leveling up faster than Jeff intended. You can always go back and loot the last two chests.

Quote:

Do the flaming sword and corrupted/acid halberd inflict fire & acid damage or just protect against those elements?

You just get the damage protection and not inflicting damage.

Quote:

Is B- the toughest fight in the game? I fought everything except B-, Z- (frosty), and Redbeard. I tried B- at 23rd level and quickly realized he was way beyond me. W/ only 30 levels, and playing on Hard (got to get that medal!), I'm afraid of what it would take to beat him.

Click to reveal..

From playing a torment singleton, Beloch the Scourge is easier than Zephyrine and Redbeard. They are meant to be done at higher levels, but you can do Beloch when you first encounter him. Zephyrine is supposed to be the second hardest fight after Redbeard for the final boss fight.

I recommend coming back when you are level 30 just so you have all the best equipment for these fights. These are all resource intensive fights.

[Alorael at Large]

I agree with Randomizer. B- is tough, but not the toughest. At level 30 it was tough on normal, but it became quite manageable if I was willing to burn through a lot of consumables. Z- remained hard no matter what I did. I'm not positive that it was easier than the final fight, but I also think I thought much harder about parties to take into the end.

 

—Alorael, who actually learned from B- how not to keep using the same party constantly. His attempts to do that fight shaman-free were disastrous. Add one shaman and suddenly everyone wasn't dead. Amazing!

[VCH]

I pissed off Sevelin and Shima so they refused to help me with Redbeard.

[Synergy]

Bet you're sorry you weren't more of a buddy now, huh?

 

-S-

 

P.S. Ben said, "The cleave function was wonky. Foes that would miss me b/c of my high defenses in a 1-on-1 fight would almost invariably hit that same character w/ a cleave."

 

You know, I noticed and told Jeff about this late in testing, when I was finding cleaving more of a problem from foes than primary attacks. I'm beginning to think this is a bug, that cleave attacks aren't being properly filtered through.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: VCH

I pissed off Sevelin and Shima so they refused to help me with Redbeard.

Got greedy with those bribes?

[BenS]

I had posted a thanks and other comments earlier, but the boards ate my post.

 

Shorter version. Thanks for the comments/answers. If I play through again, I'll make sure to attempt those optional boss fights.

 

Randomizer: 1 of those 2 remaining "quest" chests would take about 15 keys w/ lockpick maxed out at 5. No way I'm wasting that many keys on one chest. I think Jeff should remove it from the game since he decided not to use it in a quest.

 

Glad I wasn't the only one who thought the cleave function was off.

[VCH]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Originally Posted By: VCH

I pissed off Sevelin and Shima so they refused to help me with Redbeard.

Got greedy with those bribes?

Redbeard pardoned the Honored-forge clan and Chail. So I let them live for the good of the pact

[Ceiling Durkheim]

For better or worse, in so doing you supported Redbeard against your companions, which is not the best idea if you want your companions to support you against Redbeard.

 

I found those to be tough choices as well, but it does make good sense that those choices would affect the story as they did.

[Fael]

Finished (version 1.0; your mileage may vary with 1.0.1) Tuesday night. I can't say this is Jeff's best game ever -- because I haven't played every game Spiderweb's ever come out with. It's certainly the best of the ones I've played.

 

Pros

 

Over the years, Jeff has been slowly stripping away all the annoying conventions that infected the retro-RPG genre back in in the '80s, when it was just the RPG genre, and stuck to it like antibiotic resistant TB. Long gone are the days of "camping" to recover HP, only to have your rest interrupted more often than not by a random encounter that ended up costing you more HP than you recovered. A5 removed encumbrance for non-wielded items in inventory. But I think Jeff has really perfected the mechanics in Avadon.

 

The Junk Bag removes the last vestiges of irritating inventory management, finishing the job Jeff started with removing encumbrance for non-wielded items in A5 -- finally, you can carry as much stuff as you want, rather than having to finagle loot distribution to manage weight or inventory slots. Selling everything with a single click is nice, too.

 

In retro RPGs, your characters always have all these cool abilities -- but in Avadon, for the first time, you can actually use them! Rapid HP post-combat HP recovery means that your shaman can spend vitality on something other than healing. Huge amounts of vitality, low VP costs for spells, and an over-abundance of vitality potions (I used one in the entire game prior to the Redbeard battle) means that you can cast spells in insignificant combats, without having to hoard them for the major fights. Go ahead and fireball those trash monsters. Blade whirlwind that swarm of bats or pack of wretches. No more tedious trips back to town to restore your abilities. Adventure all you want, use your powers all you want, and only go back to town when the plot requires it. You can actually just enjoy playing the game, without fighting with the mechanics all the time. I can not emphasize enough how great this is. (The only worrisome thing is that there's some indication that Jeff considers the abundance of VP a mistake and plans to "correct" it in Av2. This would be a giant step backwards.)

 

This stuff isn't new -- roguelikes have had rapid HP and VP recovery since the '80s (and if Jeff is indeed worried about large numbers of VP unbalancing the game, he should play Angband or TOME for a while; they've had well-balanced spell point recovery systems for 20 years). But it somehow never managed to penetrate the professional RPG market. So, in some ways, Jeff has created the best game of 1985. But, in the genre he works in, it really is revolutionary. And, really, after playing Avadon, other games in the genre -- whether it's older Spiderweb games, or competitors like Eschalon -- are just unplayably tedious. I'm trying to think of some irritating mechanic that remains, but it's really not coming to mind. Congratulations, Jeff -- a quarter century after Ultima I, you've finally cured the genre of its flaws!

 

Second, the story. I love the world and am looking forward to seeing more of it in the sequels. I love the party members' personalities, and the cross-talk on missions (not new to the genre, but new to Spiderweb; and I'm happy to see it).

 

On his blog, Jeff has talked about liking games that make you feel something, and I think he really hit the mark here. I love the suffocating sense of doom that creeps over you as the game progresses, the sense that every thing you do just makes it worse, that every choice you have is flawed and pushing you closer to the abyss. Yeah, you could see several of the major plot points coming a mile away... but, somehow, that just added to the sense of doom. You knew you were about to get screwed, and you did everything you could to avoid it, and it all just ended up making things worse.

 

Cons

 

The skill tree. I know it's what all the cool kids are doing these days. I realize Jeff is trying to keep casual players from investing their skill points unwisely, creating unplayable characters, and swearing off Spiderweb games forever in a huff. But I don't think this is the right way to do that. First of all, by being in the retro RPG genre, Jeff has a self-selected customer base of people who love tinkering with their characters and customizing them just so. By limiting choices to one of three or so skills per level, Jeff is taking that away, and I think that's a huge part of what people get out of his games in the first place.

 

Ironically, right now on Jeff's blog, you can read a recent post where he notes, "Everquest is particularly cunning in the way it rewards the player. It has the character’s skills constantly creep upward, a tiny bit at a time, providing a constant stream of tiny rewards." In Avadon, though, you're usually picking the same skill over and over for four consecutive levels (or, even worse, the same two skills over eight levels, or worst of all, the same three over twelve -- over a third of the game!) -- not much of a reward there. That Jeff Vogel guy, he's got some pretty insightful ideas on why people play RPGs. Someone at Spiderweb should go read them.

 

Likewise, the level cap is too low. I hit that well before heading off to Castle Vebeaux for the final quest; meaning for the whole final section, my characters weren't advancing at all. See previous paragraph for why this is bad.

 

Single-gender character avatars. Jeff has commented that he created one avatar per class rather than two to save resources for adding cool features to the game. Since I could really care less about the gender of my character, I think this is great -- whatever he added instead is sure to have contributed to my enjoyment of the game more than a second set of avatars would have. The problem is, I'm wrong; and so is he. See my earlier comment on customization and multiply it by a thousand times. I'm not one of them, but many players identify very strongly with their characters and are very insistent about being able to play the gender they want. Indeed, many games, of all genres, allow only a single customization on character creation -- male or female. Not all players care about this, but the ones that do care hugely. Some players will pick up the demo, realize they can't choose their character's gender, and drop it like a hot potato. It may have been a good game design decision (and, indeed, I applaud it for my personal enjoyment of the game), but it was an uncharacteristically poor business decision. Of all the things Jeff could have cheaped-out on, it's hard to imagine something worse he could have picked.

 

As has been mentioned elsewhere, high Dexterity is too good. Fortunately, this should be a relatively easy fix in Av2, simply involving some adjustments to the to-hit formula. Maybe, after Dex 20, additional points add only 1/2 value to defense; after Dex 25, only 1/4 value; etc. Of course, getting the actual balance of what the numbers and ratios should be will be a trick. Then again, it's not like it's well balanced now, so it's unlikely he'll make things worse. (Jeff has also suggested, rather than tweaking the to-hit formula, maybe having all stat gains be automatic, rather than player-chosen. That, by contrast, would be a terrible idea -- see previous paragraphs on customization.)

 

It's too easy to miss stuff. As has been noted in other threads, there's no warning when starting the final quest that you won't have a chance to go back and finish any other outstanding quests once you start the last one. Several people have complained on the forums about missing the chance to complete quests because of this. I avoided that, but missed out on three of the four biggest combats in the game -- Incarnus, Beloch, and Zhethryne -- because I was waiting for explicit quests to fight them that never came (Beloch, particularly, when you first meet him comes with a warning that he's probably too tough for you to fight right now -- and, after A6, when Jeff gives me a warning like that, I believe him). By the time I realized I'd missed them, I was through the last quest and would have had to lose 3 hours or so of game play to revert to a save where I still had the opportunity to fight them -- not worth the effort.

 

I wanted to see more of the world. Jeff's created a cool world, and I'd like to see more of it. Then again, that just leaves us wanting the sequel all the more. :-)

 

Three character parties. I understand why Jeff did this -- to force hard choices about party composition. The problem is, it doesn't work. The idea is that you'll have to choose a party to suit the mission. But, on the first play-through, that's impossible, because you never know enough about what you'll be encountering to know who to take. That still leaves later play-throughs -- and theoretically, this makes the game more replayable, since you'll be able to try out class combinations you missed the first time. In practice, though, what happens is that you find a single party composition that suits your play style and use that exclusively. For me, it's a Blademaster, a Shadowwalker, and a Shaman. For the first half of the game, I thought this was a great system and that I'd be able to enjoy an entirely new experience re-playing the game later with a different party combo that included the Sorceress. But, after finishing, I realized that the thought of fighting the more difficult encounters with only one fighter or with no healing no longer seemed like it would be much fun. When I play again, it'll be with a Blademaster, a Shadowwalker, and a Shaman. The Sorceress has very cool powers and I'd love to try them out... but not enough to forego one of the others. This gets back to what I was saying earlier about how, if you're going to give your players cool powers, let them use them. If you're going to put four character classes with completely different abilities into the game, give your players a chance to experience all four. As it is, I only used the Sorceress in her loyalty quest and fighting Redbeard. And, no matter how many times I replay Avadon, I only ever will.

 

The biggest flaw, though, is that while the mechanics are simply brilliant, the ergonomics are simply dreadful. Avadon is a ton of fun to play, but it comes with side effects of headaches, back pain, and vomiting. That may be okay in an antibiotic, but it's not ideal in a game.

 

As documented elsewhere on the forum, the lack of keyboard movement annoys many people. Jeff has explained why it's not really possible to do keyboard movement with the engine he's created. I don't like it, but I do understand it, and it's probably worth it for the improved rendering, so I'll give him a pass (C-, but still a pass) on that one.

 

Maybe there's an equally good reason the camera doesn't automatically track the party like in previous Spiderweb games but, if so, I haven't heard that one yet. True, the huge areas do mean that maybe 5% of the time, it's useful to be able to easily scroll the camera away from the party. But the other 95% of the time, the fact that you have to manually re-position the camera is really annoying. Even worse, for the first few hours of play, until I got the hang of moving the camera in time to how my character was moving, the lack of synch between the two made me nauseous. No, I didn't actually vomit, but it really did make me feel quite ill. A demo that makes your players want to vomit strikes me as another one of those things that's not ideal from a marketing perspective.

 

Furthermore, I'm left handed, so, once I finally got the hang of synchronizing the timing, it was very natural for me to be able to move the party with my left hand and use the arrow keys to scroll the camera with my right. I really can't imagine how right-handed people play this game. It seems that you would have to contort your body into very uncomfortable positions to keep up with party movement and camera scrolling. Since 90% of people are right-handed, designing a UI that only works for lefties -- while, I personally applaud it -- seems like not the best business decision.

 

If possible, the best of both worlds would be to have camera tracking a customizable option, perhaps toggleable directly from the keyboard. By default, the camera tracks the party, like in previous Spiderweb games, but you could press a button to decouple the camera from the party and scroll it around manually like in Avadon. Like another set of avatars, this would undoubtedly take a few resources away from plot and encounter development. But "it made me want to vomit" is just not something you want to read in a review of your game.

 

And then there are the switches. I've always hated switches. I'm about the same age as Jeff and any players who've been around since the early Exile days are going to be of similar age. I don't know about you guys, but my eyes aren't want they were when I was 20. Squinting at the screen, trying to see a brown switch against a brown wall, has never been something I enjoyed; now, it ranges from headache-inducing to impossible. But in previous games, you could at least work around this by pressing the 'u' key obsessively to get any switches highlighted. In Avadon that's no longer possible -- now, it's eye strain and headaches or nothing. I didn't find a single switch in Avadon unless there was some clue (either in the text or as an obvious hole in the map) that it was supposed to be there. I'm sure I missed areas because I couldn't see the switch. As mentioned in another thread, the final battle with Redbeard turned into a three-hour death march for me because I only found one of two tiny dark switches against a dark wall. My very last experience with the game was profoundly, profoundly negative solely because for some reason Jeff believes Squinting At Your Screen = Fun.

 

So, in what was in every reasonable sense Jeff's best game, my very first experience was nausea and my very last experience was boredom and frustration, not because the game plot or mechanics are poorly designed, but because it has a crap UI.

 

And, finally, that ending. Yes, my experience here was colored by that stupid UI issue. Perhaps I'd have liked it better if I'd found the second switch; there's no way to know for sure. And, of course, the previous game I played was A6, which was Jeff's best ending ever, so there's a high bar of comparison. But I'm trying to be fair, and I think (though I'm not certain) that, even taking that into account, this is the worst ending Jeff's ever written. Basically, you have two choices -- fight Redbeard or don't (or do what I did -- save your game right before you go in to talk to him and try it both ways). Well, maybe you have two choices. If you didn't get at least three (if you're a very skilled player) or all four (if you're not) of your companions to fight with you because of actions you took much earlier in the game, you really don't have the option of fighting Redbeard.

 

If you don't fight Redbeard, then there is no climactic final battle. Your toughest encounter might have been Baloch or Zhethryne (unless you were like me and missed those fights entirely), but that was ages ago by the time you reach the ending. Your final fights will be solo against a bunch of trash monsters on Avadon's main level. Hugely anti-climactic. If you do it that way, your final sense of the game is, "that's it???" There's no sense of accomplishment, no sense of having accomplished some difficult task. Just a big let down.

 

As for the battle against Redbeard, I hated it. It is, of course, impossible to know how much of that is just because the first time I tried it, I did it wrong and fought Redbeard to a stalemate over three grueling, boring, tedious hours where neither of us could significantly harm the other (and all because I only saw one of the two #*^&$ switches). I will suggest, however, that the fact that this was even possible is a sign that the encounter was deeply flawed. If you do it wrong, you should die. Thoroughly. Painfully. And quickly. No encounter should ever last three hours, no matter how badly the player screws it up. But, even if you do find both switches, this is the kind of encounter I really hate -- you spend all your time trying to damage the sentinels in the right sequence to allow you to get a brief attack on the main enemy, and then, when you do finally get it right, instead of fighting him, half the time you waste all your actions unfearing, undazing, and uncharming your party. I know that Jeff knows how to design an encounter that's brutally hard, but still fun. We've seen it plenty of times -- the Slith Horror, Kavarus the Lich, the final battle in A6 (that wasn't nearly as hard as the others, but it was a great climax and lots of fun to fight). But the fight against Redbeard manages to be both hard and boring. I'll play Avadon again. But, from now on, I'll take the loyalist ending every time.

 

So, which ever way you do it, your very last impression of Avadon is negative one. I loved the game a lot while I was playing it, but I'll never love it quite as much in retrospect, because I can't quite get the bad taste left by the ending out of my mouth. (Or maybe that's just the vomit from back when I was playing the demo.)

[Synergy]

Great in-depth review, Fael.

 

The main skill points and level cap should be improved in the next Avadon game. The way skill points works is what remains after the triage Jeff committed to not enable the creation of ridiculously overpowered PCs. It wasn't really intended to work that way, and for most of the beta-testing, the system let you freely assign the skill points. Still, with only a small handful of choices what to assign, it feels lacking compared to the Avernum method.

 

Level caps will likely be remedied in the next game. I think implementing it was wrong to begin with, but like the skill point hamstringing, it was a quick fix to keep game play balanced with what Jeff wanted.

 

The junk bag is the solution to something I (and hopefully other testers) have been railing for bitterly for several games now, regarding the inventory/sell system. Jeff's solution was even better than I dared hoped for. Elegant, easy, efficient, and effective. Ahhh.

 

The hidden switches light up when you mouse over them, so you don't have to actually "see" the switch per se, to find it, but bumping into every inch of wall has been replaced with mousing over every tile of switch-colored brick wall. That is the one game texture which is identically colored (and sized) to hide the switches. Downright devious, and not a little bit cruel are those darn brick walls. A lot of the other switches aren't too hard to see, depending on your monitor size and quality. They're all pretty much an extra for completists, since any necessary ones are all but handed to you on a plate by the text and dialogue.

 

I'm kind of on the fence about the tracking thing. It is nice to be able to look around the map while waiting for your PCs to trudge up somewhere, but it is disorienting and unintuitive trying to get back to them again.

 

-S-

 

 

[VCH]

I would like to be able to click the tab key to bring up the mini-map, and then click on some area of it to bring the camera there. Instead we have to scroll the entire distance.

[Soul of Wit]

Just click on one of the party member's avatars. The camera jumps to them.

 

I see no need to move with the mouse and simultaneously track the camera with the arrow keys.

 

To move long distances:

• Swing the mouse to the edge of the screen to scroll
• Stop when the always-visible map shows your destination
• Click on your destination in the always-visible map
• Click on the ground (the camera is showing your destination)
• Wait for your party (get snack, take care of bodily functions, etc.)

[Slarzahl]

I agree with VCH -- the zones are now large enough that it would be a real time-saver to be able to click-to-set-destination on the (very nice) tab-map.

[Fael]

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit

Just click on one of the party member's avatars. The camera jumps to them.

I see no need to move with the mouse and simultaneously track the camera with the arrow keys.

To move long distances:

• Swing the mouse to the edge of the screen to scroll

That works for long distances (except that I found mouse screen scrolling to be much slower and less responsive than keyboard scrolling), but for moving around unexplored areas, it really helps to keep the camera always centered on the party. As you say, you can do that by clicking on the avatar, but I find clicking on moving targets in this game pretty difficult.

(That's another ergonomic problem I forgot to complain about -- I kept trying to talk to NPCs and missing, because they moved rapidly away when I tried to click on them. The creature keeper in Zethron's lair was particularly annoying for this.)

[echoes]

I'm with Fael on the switches being too hard to see. I don't play games so I can think more about how my vision is deteriorating as I grow old.

 

One suggestion would be: make switches a little easier to see as lockpicking skill goes up. Or, make switches a little easier to see.

 

I don't get Fael's complaint about moving the camera, though. I am not a big gamer but you scroll the window by hitting the edge of the display with your mouse in every full-screen commercial game I can think of.

 

I do have one suggestion about navigating with the area map. I know you can jump the window to a new location by clicking in the mini-map, but I often found myself trying to click in the area map while I had the tab key down. Let me do that!

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: echoes

I do have one suggestion about navigating with the area map. I know you can jump the window to a new location by clicking in the mini-map, but I often found myself trying to click in the area map while I had the tab key down. Let me do that!

Seconded...er, fourthed?

@VCH: You don't have to scroll the whole distance. You can find just about anything within 3 or 4 clicks on the mini-map. Just keep clicking the edge in the general direction you want to go.

Originally Posted By: Fael

As you say, you can do that by clicking on the avatar, but I find clicking on moving targets in this game pretty difficult.

(That's another ergonomic problem I forgot to complain about -- I kept trying to talk to NPCs and missing, because they moved rapidly away when I tried to click on them. The creature keeper in Zethron's lair was particularly annoying for this.)

Agreed about trying to catch NPCs; relatively minor but annoying. But to center the view on your party you don't have to click on the sprites; rather on the character portrait in the upper left.

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

Originally Posted By: echoes

I do have one suggestion about navigating with the area map. I know you can jump the window to a new location by clicking in the mini-map, but I often found myself trying to click in the area map while I had the tab key down. Let me do that!

Seconded...er, fourthed?

@VCH: You don't have to scroll the whole distance. You can find just about anything within 3 or 4 clicks on the mini-map. Just keep clicking the edge in the general direction you want to go.

Originally Posted By: Fael

As you say, you can do that by clicking on the avatar, but I find clicking on moving targets in this game pretty difficult.

(That's another ergonomic problem I forgot to complain about -- I kept trying to talk to NPCs and missing, because they moved rapidly away when I tried to click on them. The creature keeper in Zethron's lair was particularly annoying for this.)

Agreed about trying to catch NPCs; relatively minor but annoying. But to center the view on your party you don't have to click on the sprites; rather on the character portrait in the upper left.

Thanks. This is much clearer than my post. Clicking at the edge of the mini-map several times is a fast way to scroll. I was talking about the roster pictures when I said avatar. I always forget the in-game terminology.

The key to "catching" the NPCs is to not chase them. Stand still and wait for them to pause their wandering. Some of them are obviously addicted to powerful stimulants. Longer pauses would be a fine suggestion for future Avadons (or 1.0.2).

[VCH]

Agreed on the wandering NPCs. This is reason enough to bring back some keyboard functions such as look (i), and talk (t).

[Fael]

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

But to center the view on your party you don't have to click on the sprites; rather on the character portrait in the upper left.

Right, but to me that's the most annoying method of all, since that means moving your mouse away from the place you're trying to move to, clicking on the character portrait, moving back to the map to move, moving back to the portrait, etc. Blech.

Although, in reading this discussion, I have realized that a right-handed person can use the mouse to move the characters around with their right and and center the screen on their main character by hitting the 1 key with their left. So, that's not as annoying as I was originally thinking.

I still don't see why we can't just have the camera follow the party like in all 20 previous Spiderweb games, though.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Agreed. This would be an excellent addition.

[Slarzahl]

The camera did not strictly follow the party in recent Avernums, and in Geneforges it was very close to how it works in Avadon. The lefthand-arrowkeys righthand-mouse method of moving has been necessary for a looooong time.

[jlsgaladriel]

Fael, I'm glad I made it back to your post. I agree with your review in almost every point, pro and con. (Except that like you, my first runthrough was blademaster, shadowwalker, shaman main, and this time with a shadowwalker main I'm using the sorceress, whom I thought I didn't like, but whom I've discovered I love. Try it, building her up from the start, and you might find you like her too.)

 

My fortysomething eyes also resent the squinting. Not only can one not hit a key to highlight them, but also one's characters must be within range for them to highlight on mouseover. Move characters, sweep mouse over walls, move characters, sweep mouse over walls.... not fun.

 

I'm enjoying my second playthrough a bit more than the first -- I've marked where those darned switches are, when I've found them; I'm not banging my head against who can wield what weapon; I've written out on a sheet of paper what areas are part of Khemeria and which are part of Kellemderiel or the Kva lands (I seriously considered doing a mass search-and-replace of the files to rename Khemeria Dhemeria to go with Dhorl and Dhorla); and I'm not asking quest givers every five minutes if they'll please give me the next quest in the series, because I have a better idea of what the quest prereqs are.

 

But if I weren't an ancient fan of spiderweb games -- I started playing Exile on my LC3 -- I'm not sure I would have gotten past the demo.