Avadon 2 Wishlist

[Goldengirl]

Knowing that Jeff may not ever read this, I still feel like having the discussion on potential improvements and things that were irksome can be a constructive one for the community to have.

 

That said, I have not yet finished the game, being a Windows player. I've gotten far enough into it, though, that I'd say there are a few things that I'd like to comment on.

 

First of all, congratulations are in store. I like how death was handled; the first time I had a party member on the verge of dying, I was afraid I'd have to resurrect him, like the old Avernums, or take him back to Avadon, like the newer Avernums, or something similar. Given the nature of the game, though, I feel that having party members revive after the combat is over is effective and fitting with the tone of the game.

 

Likewise, the junk bag was an innovation that I didn't realize I needed until I had. The skill tree and vastly simplified points system (especially compared to Avernum) was refreshing, and I think it's important that all series have their own unique features like that. In a mix-and-match party system, it's especially effective to have.

 

However, I do have two things I find irksome, both having to do with the mapping system. When I am in a town, like Goldcrag, I would prefer it to be able to enter a building without having to go into a different zone. This helps with exploration purposes in a very needed way, and it just seems faster to do than to have to load a new mini-zone, though I know it's seconds either way.

 

Also, when I'm trying to get from one end of a large zone to the other, I think it would be useful to have the map, which you can access with the Tab button, be clickable. That way, I don't have to pull my cursor to the edge of the screen and wait, or click the minimap a variety of times. I can just click and go.

 

As I continue the game, I'm sure I'll have more to add.

[Necris Omega]

The whole idea of "unconsciousness" seems to be a major shift in convenience for players in recent games (Dragon Age). Some old timey RPG purists (which I can honestly qualify for in a lot of cases) might find it disturbing, but I really like the idea.

 

The infinite Junk Bag is... possibly my favorite concept from Avadon as a whole. In any other game, this would be considered, not a convenience, but a damn, dirty cheat. Yet... how much do you REALLY gain from having to make umteen trips between whatever looty Dungeon you're marauding through and the pawn shop? Does having to "take inventory" like a supermarket stock boy really make the adventure that much more adventurous?

 

Some attempts at simplifying an inventory system have failed in the past (Dragon Age 2), but this? Honestly, I think deep down developers all knew this would be something that would make our gaming lives easier, but were afraid to stand up and do anything because that's "now how things are done".

 

Me? I'd just like a more auto-organized and clean inventory interface (again, invoking Dragon Ag-- no, actually, I'll invoke Oblivion here because I've used Dragon Age enough) that puts things into neat little sorted categories and what not. The Grid idea is fine if you're working with a more Diablo/NwN-ish inventory where items take up varying amounts of space, but once everything is standardized, there's no real reason to keep the sprawling grid UI.

[The Amaster]

Combat system is ace, as is the regen health and the automatic revival. Really the only thing I would ask for in a sequel is ditching the "new zones come from quests" model, because restricting where we can explore to what mission we've been given really makes me feel like a lackey.

[Alorael at Large]

With the lack of inventory-based encumbrance and now the junk bag taking away any limit to inventory space, inventory just needs to become infinite. And organized! Having some kind of auto-sort would be nice, but I'm okay with having a do-it-yourself scheme. Still, having several tabs with more space would be nice, and having tabs that just show all weapons, or all armor, or all potions would help too.

 

—Alorael, who thinks this is doable, obvious, and probably not terribly hard to code. It's the sort of little feasible thing that probably could easily make it into Avadon 2.

[Txgangsta]

I dislike the stats. They are so over-simplified. However, as this is supposed to be also an iPad game, it must be over simplified. Frankly, after playing the demo for a little, the only thing that interested me about this game was the story line. I like the complex stats, the min/maxing, and the multitude of combinations your characters could have like in Avernum (and if you do it right, Geneforge). Avadon disappointed me. From my expirence with the demo and reading about the rest of the game from posters on here, I have no inclination to buy it.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

I like how death was handled; the first time I had a party member on the verge of dying, I was afraid I'd have to resurrect him...

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

However, I do have two things I find irksome, both having to do with the mapping system. When I am in a town, like Goldcrag, I would prefer it to be able to enter a building without having to go into a different zone. This helps with exploration purposes in a very needed way, and it just seems faster to do than to have to load a new mini-zone, though I know it's seconds either way.

Also, when I'm trying to get from one end of a large zone to the other, I think it would be useful to have the map, which you can access with the Tab button, be clickable. That way, I don't have to pull my cursor to the edge of the screen and wait, or click the minimap a variety of times. I can just click and go.

The nice thing about the separate buildings is that a large building doesn't have to be large in the surrounding zone. You can shift the scale inside of the building to provide more overall space in a given location.

The clickable minimap, well, I'm with you there.

[Frozen Feet]

Dragging items has to go. Just make it so that key + mouse click moves the item to right location at once. Also, auto-arranging inventory! Moving those little icons around manually is just so clumsy.

[BJ Back From the Beyond]

I'd like to be able to move items on the ground straight into my junk bag without having to put them in my inventory first. It seems to me this could be easily done with a right-click.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: B.J.Earles

I'd like to be able to move items on the ground straight into my junk bag without having to put them in my inventory first. It seems to me this could be easily done with a right-click.

It's control+click. Works on items in your inventory and on the ground.

Dikiyoba.

[Vent]

Originally Posted By: Master1

The nice thing about the separate buildings is that a large building doesn't have to be large in the surrounding zone. You can shift the scale inside of the building to provide more overall space in a given location.

It's exactly for this reason I like much more this approach used in Avadon.

It allows a bit more abstraction, not too small buildings once in, nor too big when wandering in a town. For me it's a two scale approach, outdoor and town vs buildings and dungeons. The main negative point is to not allowing well merging of views from in and out, like see outside through a window. Avadon solve the problem by implementing some building mixing building elements and outdoor elements, for example the two big castles.


My favorite multi scale approach would be 4 scales:

• Wide outdoor with a very far scale, that scale allows setup and symbolize well very vast region and even continent. Often you could use horses to travel those area.
• Large undergrounds with a scale a bit closer than outdoor. This one allows setup very large underground without to make feel it's same gigantic size than wide outdoor area.
• Outdoor zoom in scale used for zooming on a special outdoor area or for a town, or even for an underground area large enough to includes buildings.
• Close up scale, from inside buildings and detailed dungeons.

Clearly the 3rd and 4th scales could use the same graphic scales, zone change is enough to manage the scale change.

Alas the wide outdoor area requires a lot of additional design, from graphics to design details. That's probably one of the reason of its gradual disappearing. But for modern games it's also a too abstract scale, it disable using highly detailed graphics to impress players.

For the intermediate large underground scale if I remember well Avernum using this scale just used the story background of very large caverns, so even large outdoor area are also large underground caverns, this merging the first and second scales.

A concurrent game quite many years ago did used the 4 scales approach with a 5th scale for the fights. This 5th scale for the fights was used for encounters in wide outdoor, but also in buildings or undergrounds. That was a necessity to allow party of 6 and more, no limit, some scenario would lead you into party of more than 10. This approach is certainly a bit abstract but it has also many positive points and big party is a good point. It's certainly the only system used in RPG where I had some real war battles with like up to 100 units in a fight, lol.

[Goldengirl]

My main complaint with the map scale issue for buildings is that when I'm exploring a town or region, I can't use the minimap to tell if I've explored everywhere. The actual issue of the different zone for each building could be overcome by just dealing with it, but I'd really like to have some sort of marker on the main map for the region tell me if I've explored there or not.

[Marak]

Wishlist eh? I'm game.

 

* Clickable Mini-map. Already suggested, but I have to second it. Having to click across the current game screen to start your characters walking, and then having the scroll the screen all the way to the exit (or lair or whatever) with the arrow keys or multiple clicks or what have you, when you have this ginormous overlay... every time I hold down Tab I try to click on the overlay to set my camera there. It's intuitive, it's the first thing you think of when that big old overlay pops up in the middle of your screen, AND YOU CAN'T DO IT. /rage

 

* Slightly larger Demo. I know, I know, bad for business and all, but to be perfectly honest the Demo didn't do much for me. Yes, I was enjoying the story but the game as a whole hadn't grabbed me and instilled me with that "oh [censored] it's 4 AM but JUST ONE MORE QUEST" feeling that Spiderweb games usually hit me with right off. I think if there had been a few more areas to explore and a few more (side) quests to do I would have been hooked instead of buying the game on the assumption that it would get better (it does) and because putting money in Jeff's wallet = more games in the future.

 

* Better Wands and Scrolls. Make them a bit rarer perhaps, or have the same number lootable but with fewer charges each, and up their damage and/or effectiveness. I've had this issue with every Spiderweb game ever. My characters end up swimming in Wands (and Scrolls) because honestly, why use 2 Wand/Scroll charges in a turn in order to do the same damage as your single character-based, mana-using Spell? Yes, there are some Wands that offer weaker versions of spells you can't get yet and yes, those are nice, and YES, you can use them while Out of Mana, but relying on wands because you're overextending yourself or not managing your Mana Potions is your own fault. At one point I think I had 13 Wands of Ice split between my Party Members, who only remembered that they had them when fighting a Named foe or Boss - and then they subsequently remembered why they never use wands, when they hit for 33% of a regular attacks' damage... yeah. Rarer, more effective offensive consumables would be awesome.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

+1 on auto-sort options for the inventory.

 

Regarding item potency: I still think A6 is the gold standard for items. I actually don't think Avadon is that far off the mark, especially compared to A4-5 and G4-5. Healing items restore an appropriate amount of life, buff items are mostly stronger than buff abilities and sometimes allow access to positive statuses that the party otherwise wouldn't have, and the summoning items bring in more helpful meat shields for hard fights. It's only the damaging items that really fall short, and even then not by a huge amount. I found wands of corruption and circle of fire scrolls useful through the endgame, though not all the others fared so well. I think boosting the strength of attack items by ~25% would work well.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Marak

[...] because honestly, why use 2 Wand/Scroll charges in a turn in order to do the same damage as your single character-based, mana-using Spell? Yes, there are some Wands that offer weaker versions of spells you can't get yet and yes, those are nice, and YES, you can use them while Out of Mana, but relying on wands because you're overextending yourself or not managing your Mana Potions is your own fault. At one point I think I had 13 Wands of Ice split between my Party Members, who only remembered that they had them when fighting a Named foe or Boss - and then they subsequently remembered why they never use wands, when they hit for 33% of a regular attacks' damage... yeah. Rarer, more effective offensive consumables would be awesome.

The way I used wands (and again, it was pretty rarely, but I did do it) was to fire off a blast from my wand, and then follow up with my characters spell. Sure, wands might do 33% of the damage of your spell (and that seems a really low figure, but lets roll with it), but that 33% on top of the regular amount of damage EACH ROUND made tough bosses fall that much quicker.

[Jackalope]

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega

The infinite Junk Bag...

Junk Bag is not infinite. It has somethink like 14-18 pages (not sure on the exact number, could be 24-28), but it's not infinite. I was somewhere in Castle Vebeaux when it suddenly became full, and I had to vendor stuff to empty it a bit so I could pillage/loot everything I had not yet taken for granted.
(unless it changed since 1.0.2)

There, it had to be said.

[also, first post from a french player.]

[Marak]

re: Impudent Strumpet

 

That's something I hadn't really thought of... get yourself Battle Blessed and Hasted so you start with extra AP and might "proc" an extra attack, then use Wands or Scrolls until you're down to 3 AP or less, and THEN unleash your standard attack.

 

I still think Wands should do more damage but have fewer charges. Something along the lines of 25 or 33% more damage but only 1-4 charges - would help them better fulfill their obvious "crap, I need to kill a couple more of these things because I can't survive another round of attacks like that" role.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Jackalope

[also, first post from a french player.]

Nope, Vent is french as well.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

or could be just "hi. I'm from france this is my first post"

[Skwish-E]

Am I the only one who misses seeing stairs/trapdoors on the mini-map? I hate getting somewhere and then thinking, "great, now where did I mislay that set of stairs to get back down to that locked door?"

[MrClick]

The ability to make custom notes on the map would be a *huge* benefit. There are quite a few sidequest givers and memorizing them all and/or repeatedly scouring each area for named NPCs can be tiresome.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: MrClick

The ability to make custom notes on the map would be a *huge* benefit. There are quite a few sidequest givers and memorizing them all and/or repeatedly scouring each area for named NPCs can be tiresome.

I've actually had that same idea, since I'm too lazy to keep a pad of paper and a pen(cil) with me at all times.

[Oneiros]

Originally Posted By: MrClick

The ability to make custom notes on the map would be a *huge* benefit. There are quite a few sidequest givers and memorizing them all and/or repeatedly scouring each area for named NPCs can be tiresome.

Torment did that, and it was incredibly useful.

[Superba]

There's a couple of features that might be better distributed, I think, all strikes with regard to Lightning powers, scripts or wands, are poorly effective when casted by the warriors. Perhaps in Avadon II they could be reserved to the ladies as class items. Then I would love to find real maps inside the Inventory when it's told you got them. And I would like to see the shape of some special items even if you can't use them, as the Hunter blade.

One thing I dislike is when you are on battle mode but your enemies are out of range and will not move, if you try to deselect combat mode it says you can't, then you have to complete the three characters turn to get free movements. That is boring.

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: Superba

One thing I dislike is when you are on battle mode but your enemies are out of range and will not move, if you try to deselect combat mode it says you can't, then you have to complete the three characters turn to get free movements. That is boring.

This just means hitting the spacebar a couple of times. How boring can it be?

[Randomizer]

At least with the arrows you can now tell where the enemies are so you can leave combat mode. Before Jeff added the arrows you had to move around to locate them.

[Superba]

I feel it like a non spontaneous action, I mean they are far away and wouldn't move at all when you don't attack, so you should be allowed to return in a free status doing nothing at all. And it is annoying, wrong term "boring", because takes your attention away from what you were going to do. Maybe there's a way to avoid this with an automated command that disengage the party when foes are out of reach?

 

A common situation/example is when you are in combat mode but foes don't attack, so you try to exit to gain squares while you approach, until you re-enter in combat mode with a better range for your strikes. This situation occurs many times during a long fight with many foes (fire lizards and spiders as an example).

[Marak]

More things that spring to mind now that I've beaten it finally:

 

* Most of the Classes Uber abilities are flawed in a number of ways:

 

1) In order to get them to Level 6 and get the upgraded version, you need to be Level 26 (or was it 27?). So you only get to play with your moste uber ability for about 10% of the game. This ties in with...

 

2) Why do your uber abilities not benefit from your Mastery selections? Right now it's pretty much "put all 3 Masteries in the middle tree or you're gimping your character" since the passives scale so much better than the active abilities and are basically required to be pumped as high as possible to survive on Hard and Torment. A change that would give the Uber Ability +1 Level if you put a Mastery in each of the two trees that powers it would be a nice boon without being game-breaking, and it would allow you to get your Level 6 Uber a couple levels earlier so you could enjoy it for a bit longer.

 

3) They are all Active abilites that, in general, do not scale well considering that it takes about 8 points to increase it by one level, or are just generally underwhelming. Both of the Shadowwalker's Ubers and the Shaman's Earthquake? Not really worth the points considering that they aren't significantly better than the active abilities much lower in the "hurt things" trees, but still require a huge Skill Point investment. And again, the fact that no Uber ability benefits from Masteries is a huge strike against them.

 

* Moar Scarabs! I didn't have enough, even at the end of the game, to give 4 to every character. Now granted, I MIGHT have gotten a couple if I had done the optional bosses at the end of the game, or maybe I missed a Scarab Shop somewhere, but it just seemed like that were just a little bit too rare - you never had quite enough to fill up the slots that opened up as you level.

 

Heh, this post reads like I hated the game or something, but honestly I had a blast and feel that Jeff is getting better and better at keeping things properly balanced. I think at this point I'm just nit-picking, but hey, what else do I do while waiting for Avadon 2 (besides roll a new party and go the "screw you Redbeard!" route)?

[adrenas]

i hope jeff can make fighting strong enemies less frustrating (eg RED BREAD).

[Callie]

I think Redbeard should be an extremely difficult fight, considering how he's supposedly the most powerful man in Avadon. If he could be killed in a matter of ten turns he wouldn't be so intimidating.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Fair enough. My opinion (and forum consensus, near as I can tell) is that it's not so much a problem that he's difficult, as that he's difficult in the wrong ways. I'd rather he be able to completely wipe the floor with the party if you don't fight him for keeps, instead of being essentially invincible with not-too-impressive offense. Especially since some of his strongest abilities (terror and charm) hamper your offense more than they aid his.

[Randomizer]

Jeff wanted certain optional fights to be really difficult especially on the hardest difficulty settings. So Helma at the top of Moritz'Kri's Tower, Beloch the Scourge, Duke Gryfyn, Zephyrine, and Redbeard are much harder than anything else in the game but you can take a peaceful option to finish the game no matter how morally unsatisfying it may be.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

And I enjoyed most of those fights. Redbeard is the only one I disliked, once again, because I thought he was hard in the wrong way.

[Lokiron]

I didn't bother reading this entire thread, but one thing I think is really annoying (so much I plan to e-mail SW), is that I am unable to see the stats while equipping my characters. Flipping between the panels to find the optimal equipment is troublesome.

 

One more thing. Encumbrance is unclear in the inventory screen. Carrying 74 lbs out of 74 lbs is sometimes overencumbered (truly 74,1/74) or not (truly 73,9/74). I'd like to know without having to trigger combat.

[Dark.Fenix]

put an "untrainer" trainer in avadon, its quite anoying all the travel when u want to change 1 or 2 points.

 

with all the auto travel that has to be done i find myself tempted to check spells and quests during it so it wasnt so boring but it pauses the game. even when playing on windowmode and traveling if i check anything on my pc the game pauses. i know this could cause problems wandering into monsters but u dont just auto walk where u havent explored yet.

 

being able to see trapdoors and laders in fog of war would be nice.

 

with the space under the spell and tool bars it would be nice to put another 4 slot bar under it.

in avernum u usualy had those few spells u would be using almost always every turn.

in avadon managing the spells available is good as u cant use the same spell over and over and having multiple choices will help burst or be more versatil vs monsters resistences but sometimes (with scarab abilities) i find myself forgeting i have more spells than i actualy do.

 

 

[Micawber]

Originally Posted By: Dark.Fenix

put an "untrainer" trainer in avadon, its quite anoying all the travel when u want to change 1 or 2 points.

Yes, Avadon has a touch of the Geneforge 3 about it.

[Clocknova]

I hope that the next game will give us a world map that is fully explorable right from the start. The notion that I cannot explore an area until someone gives me a quest to go there drives me nuts.

[Sub zero]

I'd like if you can select 1 personage for example shift clicking him to proper position them before combat.

I also like to see health of enemies, for example if you press ctrl.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Sub zero

I'd like if you can select 1 personage for example shift clicking him to proper position them before combat.
I also like to see health of enemies, for example if you press ctrl.

Both of these things are things that I agree with. Specifically, I want to be able to move people around in my party, so that my relatively frail Sorceress PC is not always at the front, and my tank characters are.

Furthermore, I agree with being able to see health. Knowing the exact details, and not just guesstimating based off of a bar, alter my tactics. As for arguments about realism and immersion - really? You want to give this annoyance to your fellow gamers in the name of immersion? That seems counter-intuitive to what the marketability of Avadon was all about.

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

Specifically, I want to be able to move people around in my party, so that my relatively frail Sorceress PC is not always at the front, and my tank characters are.

You know you can change the party order, right? Whichever character you put in the lead position will usually end up out front.

The downside is that the lead character is the one who by default searches objects and initiates dialogue, and for aesthetic as well as practical reasons I prefer that to be my PC.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

Specifically, I want to be able to move people around in my party, so that my relatively frail Sorceress PC is not always at the front, and my tank characters are.

You know you can change the party order, right? Whichever character you put in the lead position will usually end up out front.

The downside is that the lead character is the one who by default searches objects and initiates dialogue, and for aesthetic as well as practical reasons I prefer that to be my PC.

I should clarify; I meant that I would prefer to have something similar to the formations from Geneforge; in a triangle, everyone is on the front, where as with some of the Geneforge formations like the line, you can get some tactical variation.

Not a big deal, though.

[Marak]

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

As for arguments about realism and immersion - really? You want to give this annoyance to your fellow gamers in the name of immersion? That seems counter-intuitive to what the marketability of Avadon was all about.

Fair enough. If the immersion argument doesn't work for you, then I say it was done to increase the difficulty of most encounters. Since this game (especially compared to the Avernum games) is about killing smaller groups of foes that are designed to slowly whittle you (and your fatigue bars) down, it makes sense that Jeff wanted you to occasionally use up too much fatigue on too big of a spell/ability because you're not sure if that Really Dangerous Bad Guy Over There has 10 Health or 30 Health left.

[Shadowplay]

There are a few things I'd like:

1. Increased party size, e.g. +1 companion every 10 levels (2 at level 10, 3 at level 20, 4 at level 30)

2. Unlimited levelling, or at least a higher limit compared to what you can do in-game. I figure my characters could have made level 35 if there was a level 35.

3. There were a few bonuses that were +1% or +2%, which effectively make no difference (e.g. the Shaman's Protection Reward).

4. Personally I was rather surprised that Iron could not be sold because it appeared to be in demand, at least the Khemerian merchant said iron was hard to get.

[Death Knight]

I find that the biggest problem would be 2 things.

 

1-As was mentioned before, the specializations only help the middle column a good deal, whereas the left and right dont gain as much.

 

2-I find that the mage characters (at least in my opinion) weren't as useful as the shadowwalker and warrior. I only had sevelin, natalie and me (sw) and keeping natalie alive was tough, whereas me and sevelin rarely die. I find this like that because a lot of the enemies were immune to fire, thus making her attack useless.

 

I cant say that both the wizard type classes were like that though as i never used the shaman. They just seemed a little underpowered.

[Randomizer]

I found the sorceress class to be extremely tough if you increase focus mastery and use abilities to increase armor/resistances at the start of fights.

[Death Knight]

Its mostly just me. When it comes to making characters, i can make the stealth and fighting classes great, but when it comes to wizards and such, no go. Been that way since baldurs gate.

[kornork]

Originally Posted By: Clocknova

I hope that the next game will give us a world map that is fully explorable right from the start. The notion that I cannot explore an area until someone gives me a quest to go there drives me nuts.

I don't agree with this one. Having a fully explorable map ramps up the difficulty a lot. I think it's nice knowing there must be something I didn't figure out yet before I go rushing off to the next area. However, as an iPad user, I'm probably a much more casual gamer than most of Jeff's target users.

[Willy]

I would like Avadon 2 to be much longer. Just as I was really getting into Avadon it ended.

[Goldengirl]

First of all, spoiler alert!

 

As someone coming primarily from the Geneforge school of Spiderweb games, I adored this game up until the very end, at which point things soured for me.

 

The first reason was the ridiculously difficult Redbeard fight, to which I resorted to cheating just so I could finish the game in a timely fashion. But, that has been covered ad nauseum.

 

The second reason is the minute amount of differences my actions seem to have. Whether or not I kill Redbeard, spare Miranda, spare the Duke, all of that barely affects the fate of Lynaeus and Avadon. Now, I understand that I cannot squash the Pact or the Tawon Empire in one fell swoop. However, as someone coming from the Geneforge tradition, I'm used to being able to have a pretty major impact on the world in which I'm playing.

 

Gameplay, I have no doubt, will improve over time; Jeff makes good improvements all the time and rarely implements negative fixes (G3 boats, I'm looking at you). The structuring of the plot, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. In a situation where the plot isn't a good-bad dichotomy a la Avernum, but a more grey-scale system more like Geneforge, the PC should be influential.

[Slawbug]

Hmm. I found that PC's lack of influence to be refreshing. The immense power and influence of the PC was very well explained in G1, and it was at least semi-credible in G2. But by G3, the degree to which a wimpy, unskilled student could affect the world through brute force, in a matter of weeks, really became too great for my suspension of disbelief to handle. G4 and G5 were no better, and neither were A5 or A6, really.

 

In a way, Avadon's you-can-speak-your-mind-but-the-world-goes-on-regardless setup hearkens back to Jeff's original pick-a-side game, one which clearly had immense influence on all future Spiderweb releases: I speak, of course, not of Geneforge or Nethergate but of A Small Rebellion. You get a nice, bittersweet casting-off whether you side with Stalker or Jael.

[Lilith]

Also, keep in mind that the Geneforge series was only able to become a series by declaring that most or all of the possible endings for each game didn't happen. Even if you picked, say, the Awakened ending in Geneforge 2, it's not like Geneforge 3 acknowledged your impact on the game world in any way.

 

By contrast, Avadon's endings are similar enough that it's possible to build a sequel while leaving it ambiguous which ending of the first game is canonical. Heck, Jeff could plausibly have let you import a save file from Avadon 1 and have the Avadon 1 PC's choices reflected in minor differences throughout Avadon 2. He won't, but he could.