Hopes for Future Projects

[Death Knight]

I dont know what to say really. I have a sort of curse that I can only get addicted to Geneforge series. I tried avadon and tried to complete it, only to lose interest once i got to moritz-kri. I found that game to be more like avernum but d2 style skills and action (only turnbased). Speaking of avernum, i found that game to have a far inferior storyline, plot and class system to geneforge series. Maybe the rewrite will change that, I doubt it. I even tried nethergate-resurrection but same reaction that avernum had.

 

I find that the geneforge sole wanderer aspect of the series is a big part of it along with the dialog system. But other than that, the general plot of the series is almost a 12 out of 10.

 

The thing that really gets me thinking is since avadon is a sort of hybrid of avernum, will Jeff ever consider doing another game like Geneforge series. I hope he does as i find that its hard playing your other games. I dont know whether that is bad or not.

[Triumph]

Did you try the later Avernum games (4-6)? They are much closer to the Geneforge games in engine and style than A1-3(though certainly still different).

 

Also, I felt Avadon was spiritually closer to Geneforge than Avernum.

[Death Knight]

Im not sure i agree with that. Geneforge allows you to find multiple ways around any fight, leadership and charisma ability to persuade your opponent, and is essentially more story based than avadon. Avadon is in my opinion, Diablo 2-pure action turnbased with poor party members that have almost no effect on the game.

 

If avadon was to improve anything without changing the current idea, it would allow the party members to actually affect things in the game. Im talking baldurs gate 2 style with them not only not agreeing with you on certain things, but them fighting against you if you go a certain path, different outcomes happening, alliances, you changing the outcome with your choices, their comments made in battle leading somewhere-redemption, friendship, battle ally. I dont know, maybe its just my writing side, but i feel if you are going to introduce a character, you should at least flesh out each character so the audience knows-"Ok, this guy is like this because of when he did that, and because of.." Jeff is an extremely talented story writer and game creator that has alot of successes to his credit. He could greatly improve the npc system in avadon.

[Alorael at Large]

Yes, it would be nice to have more ambitious plots for the NPCs. That doesn't seem impossible, or even especially unlikely, for Avadon's sequels. But Avadon is like D2? Only in that they both have skill trees. The mechanics of the games are entirely different, the spirits are entirely different, and the plot of Diablo 2 is an excuse to go places and kill more things, while Avadon's plot has a story with some choices and a character that you actually roleplay, at least a little, as you go places and kill more things.

 

Avernum plots are deliberately different from Geneforge's, especially in the first three. They're not about the shades of gray and difficult choices of Geneforge; you're the heroes, you kill bad guys and save the good guys. It's different, and it's less complicated. It's a matter of taste, really; I can understand disliking Avernum's plots, but I find them enjoyable in a different way.

 

—Alorael, who thinks you may have missed that there are no classes in Avernum. You get to allocate your skill points freely, and only get some set allocations for starting characters as an aid for new players. (And, interestingly, by G5 Geneforge also gives you free choice of combinations of skill strengths and weaknesses, which amounts to something very similar. Even if all skills were equally weighted, you don't get enough to make a fighter/shaper/mage. Despite the façade of classes, Geneforge also eventually stopped making class anything more than an up-front decision of playstyle.)

[Death Knight]

Well i havent played any of the other geneforge games other than 1 which i beat and 2 which i am playing now. Just rumors about others. Ive overheard a few people say that geneforge 3 is the worst game of the series, and 4 and 5 you play as serviles or rebels. I find its better when i dont read ahead. Spoils the whole experience, almost like a book.

[Alorael at Large]

G3 has a bad reputation, mostly for not bringing in new ideas and for a terrible boat-based transportation system. G4 and G5 introduce new classes, and the servile is one of them. (Yes, you get some dialogue that indicates that people notice that you're not human.) You start G4 as a rebel, but you are of course free to pick your side as always. In G5 you get the most tabula rasa beginning of the series.

 

—Alorael, who hopes that his further spoilers have improved your spoiler experience.

[Student of Trinity]

G3 introduced some quite cool things, like item enhancements, trapdoors, and NPCs that follow you around and meet you in different places, or even fight alongside you throughout the whole game, and carry on occasional conversations. With the multiple islands you get some radically different terrain types. It also has some interesting challenge zones.

 

What people mostly dislike about G3, I think, is that there are only two factions, and you're frequently compelled to take sides. Often you're forced to choose between two evils, when it seems as though logically you might have been able to negotiate something better, if the game weren't simply railroading you. I just decided not to let this bother me, and accept that push had come to shove in the Geneforge world, and both sides had gotten too intransigent for compromise.

[ex post slarto]

I don't think people would have hated the forced-choice thing if it was done in a more creative way. G4, for example, eventually presents an obscure and easy-to-miss third option, but for most of the game it's pick the shaper or rebel way to do something. However, G4 gives you some ability to play double agent and the choices you have to make are much more original. The problem with G3 was that it was literally the exact same conversation options (and for the most part, the same plot) we'd seen for two games already, but with less room for the player to breathe. And as we know, the plot in G4 received high praise, while G3's has become the local whipping boy, second only to A4 in that regard.

 

Thus, I assert that the forced-choice two-factions thing was much less of a problem for people than the lack of originality felt not just in the story but also in individual zones. "I've done this before" makes things tedious. This also explains why EVERYONE comments on the boats: they are horrible, but if they were in, say, Avadon (and they very nearly are), they wouldn't have shown up in every review, because the game does not already inspire the same sense of tedium.

[Dintiradan]

(By the way, could someone explain to this non-Geneforge player what the boat system actually was? I assume it's something other than boats as they were in A1-3, or the zones that I've seen in G1 and Avadon.)

[Student of Trinity]

I dunno, Slarty. Clearly people somehow didn't like G3, and did like G4, at least around here. But I'm not sure I understand why, exactly. Sure, you started out as a naive young Shaper apprentice, for the third time round; but I found the setting of the school that had just been attacked was a lot more immediately involving than the comparatively slow starts of G1 and G2, and picking up Alwan and Greta was quite new. A lot of the boss fights had new elements, not previously seen. The boats were tedious, but the idea of islands was nice. And so on. Everything I've heard people complain about, something similar was done in one of the other games, and people liked it or at least didn't mind it. And a lot of the things that people like in G4 or G5 began in G3, but G3 doesn't seem to get credit for them.

 

I'm not saying everyone is wrong. I'm saying that what makes the difference between thumbs up and down with G3 doesn't really seem to have been clearly identified.

 

Here's one guess, for instance. Are the zones in G3 perhaps bigger than in previous games? I think perhaps they are, maybe to compensate for each island having fewer of them. But the number of distinct things in each zone is still about the same as in other games — or so I kind of vaguely recall, now. So what I'm remembering is a lot of zones that seemed to have a lot of filler — many little packs of the same monster, for instance.

 

Could that be it? That the good bits of G3 were as good as ever, but they were surrounded by larger amounts of monotonous filler, and so everything felt watered down. I'm not sure, and I don't have G3 installed on anything any more (the kids accidentally deleted all our old games a while ago), so I can't check. But this hypothesis rings a bell in my memory. I remember a lot of long hallways with rotghroths, winding paths with roamers, clumps of trees with vlish.

[ex post slarto]

G3 used the zone system. In other Geneforge games you could travel to any zone on the map once you'd cleared it. G3 took place on 5 discrete islands, however, and you could only travel WITHIN an island. To go from island to island, you had to use boats. This is somewhat like using the portal in Avadon. The big difference was that the boats only went to the adjacent island. So if I wanted to go from island 1 to island 3, I had to leave my zone, go to the boat zone, walk all the way to the boat (usually quite far), take the boat to island 2, leave the zone, go to the other boat zone, walk to THAT boat, take it to island 3, and leave the zone. The boats were also very ugly, but that just added insult to injury.

[ex post slarto]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Sure, you started out as a naive young Shaper apprentice, for the third time round; but I found the setting of the school that had just been attacked was a lot more immediately involving than the comparatively slow starts of G1 and G2, and picking up Alwan and Greta was quite new.

Alwan and Greta were new. A lot of people liked them. I found them to be kind of annoying cardboard in G3, although they both picked up some actual character by G4.

G1 and G2 did have slow starts. But G1 had this huge sense of anticipation, and it also had a great opening narrative with tons of info about the new world for you to mull over. And it kept dropping more: that essence pool in the first zone, which got a lot of description, really was a wow factor. G2 had Shanti, one of the most popular characters in the entire series: it started you out in the game with a personal relationship to an actual person than endured beyond the demo zone. I don't think any other SW game has done that.

But I dunno. When I played through that school the first time, the only thing I could think was: "Oh geez. Here we go again. I am a Shaper apprentice starting in a tiny corner of the world, as far as possible from anything that's actually going on. And here's a tutorial section and long empty hallways with rubble icons and the same basic items to pick up and oh look a fyora and a thahd. I bet the next zone will have artilas." Compare to G4: "Cool, I'm a servile! And okay, I'm in a corner again and WHAT'S THAT IT'S SHOOTING LIGHTNING WHOA EVERYBODY'S DYING RUN RUN RUN!!!"

The "your building gets attacked" thing could have been a good way to start. But beyond that premise nothing else was different. The premise is not the point, what fills it is the point.

Quote:

A lot of the boss fights had new elements, not previously seen.

True enough. I think that, contrary to what the Tormented playtesters seem to tell Jeff, tough boss fights do not make anyone like games. For example, while I thought that first Zhossa Mindtaker fight was creative and sort of cool, it was incredibly annoying to play through, and based on board posts, a lot of new players have gotten stuck there.

The new fights are also counterbalanced by the fact that some of the boss fights had old elements that presented themselves as if they were new. I mean, it was kind of insulting to the player to be presented with a simple spawner and say that its existence is shocking. No it isn't! How many of those have we fought before?

Quote:

Everything I've heard people complain about, something similar was done in one of the other games, and people liked it or at least didn't mind it.

This is one of the reasons I identify tedium and repetition as the main factor. People complain about the things they already played through 2 games of.

Quote:

And a lot of the things that people like in G4 or G5 began in G3, but G3 doesn't seem to get credit for them.

Like what? Item enhancements were a pretty minor invention. (And particularly that the way they are implemented, lots of players just hold on to most of their enhancements through most of the game without using them.) There were some nice interface improvements like the inventory window, although IIRC, the important encumbrance fix didn't come until G4, which was a problem since if you dumped items in one place, you had to use boats to go back to them. There were no new creations or spells. What am I missing?

Quote:

I'm saying that what makes the difference between thumbs up and down with G3 doesn't really seem to have been clearly identified.

Tedium, repetition of old elements from whole cloth, lack of originality, especially in story. The exact same things that plagued A4. Both games were big commercial successes, but didn't play as well with longtime SW fans. Not a coincidence.

Quote:

So what I'm remembering is a lot of zones that seemed to have a lot of filler — many little packs of the same monster, for instance... the good bits of G3 were as good as ever, but they were surrounded by larger amounts of monotonous filler, and so everything felt watered down... I remember a lot of long hallways with rotghroths, winding paths with roamers, clumps of trees with vlish.

Yes, this is mainly it. I would also argue that the "good bits" of G3 were significantly fewer and farther apart than in other games.

[Student of Trinity]

I dunno about Shantih. If she hadn't been killed I don't think I'd have missed her. She didn't actually do anything. G3 introduced NPCs who moved around, the item enhancements, and trapdoors, plus a bunch of new artifacts. Some of those artifacts were kind of duds, and I grant the item enhancements have never amounted to much in any of the games, because their effects are just too small. It's scarcely worth the trouble of carrying them around or trekking to a forge.

 

Trapdoors, too, may have been a mixed blessing. On the one hand they added an element of surprise. A zone might be a lot bigger than it seemed. But they didn't offer the element of anticipation that you had in the other game maps, where you could see where different zones might be long before you entered them, and wonder what was there. By the time you knew to be curious what was under a trapdoor, you were just a few steps away from finding out.

 

I found it very interesting to encounter a more fully developed Shaper society, rather than the fringes and ruins of G2 and G1, and also to meet a more articulate bunch of Takers. But I guess I was disappointed that the Awakened had simply died out without comment. It had been nice to feel that there was some sane middle ground somewhere, even if that wasn't entirely correct. I can accept that the Awakened faction was doomed, but I would have liked to see its doom, and had a chance to stave it off, rather than just having to accept that it had happened, offstage, in G2.5.

 

Actually that might be where Jeff could squeeze one more good game out of the Geneforge series: a game set between G2 and G3, that followed up what might have happened with the Awakened.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Quote:

A lot of the boss fights had new elements, not previously seen.

True enough. I think that, contrary to what the Tormented playtesters seem to tell Jeff, tough boss fights do not make anyone like games. For example, while I thought that first Zhossa Mindtaker fight was creative and sort of cool, it was incredibly annoying to play through, and based on board posts, a lot of new players have gotten stuck there.

That fight got revised to make it more clear how Jeff wanted to do it. The earlier version had me going why won't they die as I kept whittling the same puppet down to a sliver of health and watch him get healed before I could get in my next attack on normal difficulty.

I don't mind tough fights that have more than just one way to do them. Geneforge was liked because most fights had more than one method to win them and usually an option that didn't involve you having to fight.

[ex post slarto]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I dunno about Shantih. If she hadn't been killed I don't think I'd have missed her. She didn't actually do anything.

Shanti didn't do much, it's true. But she was explicitly your ally, in a more personal sense than we've seen elsewhere. I'd reverse your statement: If we didn't care about her, we wouldn't have noted her death in the same way. Other characters have died in SW games. Did you care when the drayks in G2 died? Heck, they'd even been in 2 games, some of them. Would you have cared if Captain Vidican died, or Captain Nathan, or Captain Matos, or your commanding officer at the Food Depot? Do you even remember who all of those people were? What about Commander Houghton? He'd been in four games spanning a full decade, had actual (if bipolar) character development, and was killed all but in front of you -- and nobody cries over him.

[Student of Trinity]

You know, you're right. Shanti was a lot more memorable than those, and it's probably for the reason you've found: she's the one person on your side, and she's presumably competent (though she never does anything).

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

Alwan and Greta were new. A lot of people liked them. I found them to be kind of annoying cardboard in G3, although they both picked up some actual character by G4.

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Far too often, Greta and Alwan's dialogue was simply 'woman with rebel-leaning ideas' and 'man with loyalist-leaning ideas.' Every once in a great while, they would mention some element of their background, but they didn't have nearly the depth of the Avadon party members, or of G4/5 Greta and Alwan.

I'm with Slarty on not seeing that many ways in which G3 improved on previous games. The inventory window was nice, but the new encumbrance system was a bigger deal for me. The major changes to the creation and spell lineup came in G2 and G4. The only change to the class system came in G4 (well, and kind of in 5, by letting one choose either Shaper or rebel classes, but that was mostly cosmetic). I liked the sense of focus and purpose in G3, compared to the aimlessness of the early stretches of G1 and 2, but G4 did the same thing better, with less of a feeling that the game had the player on rails. Really, I think the takeaway point here is that I think G4 is a fantastic game, probably Jeff's best.

And call me odd, but I actually enjoyed the Zhossa Mindtaker fight. The imp-throwing demon before him...not so much.

[nikki.]

I didn't really hate G3 - and I actually really liked being limited to two factions. The latter three Avernum games were far worse in my opinion (though I did enjoy what little I played of A6, so maybe just A4/5).

[Death Knight]

Another question, does Avernum 4-6 have any npc interactions and general interactive character experience?

[Alorael at Large]

Not intra-party. Obviously there are many interactions with non-player characters.

 

—Alorael, who thinks there's something wrong with the use of PC and NPC in games now; the terms have become blurred. There used to be a strong distinction between the utterly generic wholly player-controlled party and everyone else. Now you often get one (or a few) characters completely under your control, whose personalities are a matter of what you decide, and characters who are mechanically controlled by you but independent in terms of personality, goals, and interactions. Only Avadon introduces the latter type of hybrid character to Spiderweb games.

[Student of Trinity]

Now I'm thinking of a new kind of game. A game called "Mooks". It should be kind of like Sims meets Tower Defense. You get a party of characters whose personalities and motivations you get to decide, but you don't control any of them.

 

They're the grunt-level goons of some kind of evil overlord — the mooks. You send them out each turn into some sort of tower defense scenario, or maybe an attack routine, but it's all automatic. You just watch it unfold. Then the survivors get back to the barracks afterwards, and you get to upgrade them, or maybe recruit new ones to the team, or build relationships among them, or whatever. Then the next day they go out again, and you see what happens to your people.

 

There could even be a plot.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

sounds complicated

[ex post slarto]

On the one hand, that game sounds totally superior to both the Sims and Tower Defense games.

 

On the other hand, it sounds kind of like RTS with a domestic theme.

 

That reminds me. I still haven't seen my favourite hypothetical computer game genre spring into existence: the second-person shooter.

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

RTS with a domestic theme.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I imagine it. I'm not saying it'd be a good game, just different. It could probably be a very good game if it were made well, but there that's true even for pretty weak game concepts.

Second person shooter sounds kind of bad, but what about second person surgery? You control the doctor that's operating on you. The motivation level would be pretty high. But you're going to need some freakin' amazing interface design.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

That reminds me. I still haven't seen my favourite hypothetical computer game genre spring into existence: the second-person shooter.

You could play as a medic in Enemy Territory, never firing your ammo and only healing people. That way you get to play a shooter game from a second person perspective(being around but never shooting), but you turn the game into a first person healer
Unless you mean controlling your character while watching him fight through the eyes of another combatant, but then who would control your view point character?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Unless you mean controlling your character while watching him fight through the eyes of another combatant, but then who would control your view point character?

Horribly buggy AI, coded by Jeff, while drunk, at 2:00 in the morning.

Fun!

[Death Knight]

Well even if there isnt a lot of npc dialog, are there any type of npcs that constantly go against you through the game (cat and mouse style) with fights or even groups? I noticed that in the 1st avernum, there were races that were against you naturally, but i would have found it really cool if say there were assassins sent after your party or something of the like. Im really too much of a baldur's gate fan.

[Erebus the Black]

A5 is all about assassins (well, not "all about", but pretty close)

Click to reveal..

sent by Dorikas to kill you time after time, and even consists of a scene where your entire goal is to outrun an army of assassins sent after you. And there's also an Aver. agent which keeps giving you missions and progressing with you (even keeping one step ahead of you) if you complete his missions.

 

b.t.w. has anyone checked to see if Ruth remains in Exodus (if untriggered) if you kill her at the dark waters?

[The Ratt]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Now I'm thinking of a new kind of game. A game called "Mooks". It should be kind of like Sims meets Tower Defense. You get a party of characters whose personalities and motivations you get to decide, but you don't control any of them.

They're the grunt-level goons of some kind of evil overlord — the mooks. You send them out each turn into some sort of tower defense scenario, or maybe an attack routine, but it's all automatic. You just watch it unfold. Then the survivors get back to the barracks afterwards, and you get to upgrade them, or maybe recruit new ones to the team, or build relationships among them, or whatever. Then the next day they go out again, and you see what happens to your people.

There could even be a plot.

Have you heard of Gratuitous Space Battles? In the game you design the ships, place them before battle, and give them tactics, but you don't get to control them during the battle. It's reasonably entertaining until you figure out a few things that make the battles a joke. You idea reminded me of that.

Discussing your game, what if you had one character, let's say an officer, and could control him during the scenario? That way it's a little more engaging, while still keeping the same concept of coordinating independent entities.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Second Culture Warrior

—Alorael, who thinks there's something wrong with the use of PC and NPC in games now; the terms have become blurred. There used to be a strong distinction between the utterly generic wholly player-controlled party and everyone else. Now you often get one (or a few) characters completely under your control, whose personalities are a matter of what you decide, and characters who are mechanically controlled by you but independent in terms of personality, goals, and interactions. Only Avadon introduces the latter type of hybrid character to Spiderweb games.

if there ever used to be such a distinction, it was well and truly gone by the mid-90s at the latest

i mean "characters who are mechanically controlled by you but independent in terms of personality, goals, and interactions" describes pretty much every JRPG since final fantasy 4 and a few before then too

[ex post slarto]

Also, there was a lot of ambiguity in how to use the term "NPC". Sometimes it referred to temporary party members; sometimes to friendly characters you meet and talk to; and sometimes it referred to all non-PC characters including monsters faced in combat.

[Alorael at Large]

Yes. The terms are legacies of the earliest games, in which there were the characters you created and controlled and everyone else. They came to electronic games from the pencil and paper world, where the distinction is very sharp: the PCs are the players' purview, and the NPCs the gamemaster's.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the sanest use is PC for anyone controlled by the player in the mechanical parts of the game and NPC for everyone else. There are NPCs who join and become PCs, and there may be PCs who leave and become NPCs. For games that give you complete control over one main protagonist, the term protagonist or "the PC" can specify. Creating terminology on the internet usually clarifies everything!

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Second Culture Warrior

Yes. The terms are legacies of the earliest games, in which there were the characters you created and controlled and everyone else. They came to electronic games from the pencil and paper world, where the distinction is very sharp: the PCs are the players' purview, and the NPCs the gamemaster's.

Well, even then there's a certain degree of overlap and collaboration. After all, even making a character typically involves making statements about the kind of society that character comes from, and then there are games like Polaris where there's no specific player who fills the "GM" role and there isn't a strict one-to-one ratio of player ownership/authority over characters.