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A:EftP - Innovative Gameplay


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As the topic I want to open for discussion here is very broad and mushy, I will keep my intro short and crispy. At the core of things - what would you like to see as the central gameplay in possible, imaginary, whatever Spidweb games?

 

I have supported Spidweb since I was a kid, and have given both gaming in general and Jeff's and his associates' situation specifically considerable thought. One thing that we can read about continually in their struggle for success is the balancing act of finding a market niche to satisfying mainstream needs; which, I think, is reflected in the transition of paradigms in the published games of recent and somewhat less recent. Of course, this is all incredibly hard to maneuver - after all, one bad concept could ruin Spidweb's existence. But from the warm (maybe slightly less warm now that my heating is broken) coziness of my chair, I see all this as an opportunity. I believe that gaming, esports, virtual roleplaying, call it what you wish, is still in its infancy. And talented, independent people have always brought innovation.

 

Just look a Magicka. Ever listened to its creators' interviews? Just a bunch of guys having fun, thinking - why mana? Why skill points? Screw everything. We have this core idea, and we will build from there whatever comes out. It's gonna be awesome if we trust our own creativity. And boom.

 

For a few moments, forget everything you know and expect of regular games. Give way to your imagination, what could be the new children in the Spidweb family? What completely new, core mechanics, what idea could be the center of a unique, sparkly invention to be, how would it be constructed, how would it unfold? Bear in mind the things that distinguish Spidweb's games - ingenious story and atmosphere, addictiveness, and humor.

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Maybe I should myself a little clearer: I know how risky these things are, and I'm not trying to TROLOLOLOL anyone into abandoning ship. I simply asked to tap everyone's head for some interesting ideas, to think outside the box. Just for the lulz, if you will.

How is "[...]has never been (the) strategy" a reason against that? I implied this in my introductory statement.

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Avadon isn't innovative. New to Spiderweb games, yes, but it follows on the heels of the recent trends in RPGs in general.

 

What I'd like to see? A game that just admits that magic is awesome, makes all your skills variations on magic, and lets you go. A game in which rather than energy and cooldowns, certain actions permit or forbid certain subsequent actions so that the emphasis is on chaining together successful strings. A game in which each "level up" causes you to have to lose abilities, so the game is about carefully pruning your abilities into the necessary core.

 

—Alorael, who just thinks these ideas are a dime a dozen. Implementing them, and implementing them well, is the hard part. And doing so while relying on them to feed you? There's a reason so many groundbreaking darling games are indies.

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What you describe, Alorael, sounds very appealing to me. It reminds heavily of Magicka, but I don't think that's the only way to do it. Avernum, after all, is such an adventurous place partly because magic is still wild and free (or again). It would be very fitting to have to actually experiment, carefully specialize or blow yourself up. I also very much like the idea that elements are actually important, not only to singular resistances and graphics, but to the logic of the whole thing you're doing.

Cooldowns and mana are rather crude.

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I do love Warlocks, but no, that's not what I mean, exactly. The inspiration actually came from an aborted effort to design a fencer class for a game (cinematic fencing, not realistic!) based on stances and maneuvers that changed stances. Even if there's no aspect of disruption and you're free to build your sequence of actions as you like, it would be a different way to put together the flow of combat. It also might work best in a medium with better graphics so the aesthetics could be emphasized. Actually, it might end up being something like a turn-based fighting game, where instead of having to memorize combos and sequences of inputs you just have to decide which sequences are right for the current situation.

 

But yes, I like Warlocks-like emphasis on disruption. It makes AI difficult, but it also makes for interesting gameplay.

 

—Alorael, who actually doesn't really like games in which you experimentally assemble spells, particularly out of elemental components (Dungeon Master, possibly Oblivion). He's sick of elemental spells, really. Instead, he wants the outcome of spells to be determined by stats. If you want to cast spells that last a really long time, you build your character for that. If you want to go with brief, punchy spells, you build for that. If you want to cast many things at once, that's yet another build. In a totally hypothetical way, that gives many very different, very interesting build and gameplay options.

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Originally Posted By: Epiphany Without Borders
Instead, he wants the outcome of spells to be determined by stats. If you want to cast spells that last a really long time, you build your character for that. If you want to go with brief, punchy spells, you build for that. If you want to cast many things at once, that's yet another build. In a totally hypothetical way, that gives many very different, very interesting build and gameplay options.

A great idea that always sucks in practice, because the balance is never quite right, and you end up with all roads leading to a single optimized build.
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I think that's actually because the idea is implemented in games that rely on a single kind of combat and relatively little need for the spells outside it. If maintaining shields were a real concern, if maintaining anything really conflicted with other abilities, and above all if killing enemies weren't the be-all and end-all of spells, it could be different.

 

And that's another bold move I'd love to see: a game in which direct combat really isn't the concern. A political RPG in which you play the politico and combat is argument behind closed doors, public oratory, and well-greased hands and well-dispatched hands with daggers in the knight would be very different.

 

—Alorael, who has also toyed with the idea of a game in which your character is a captain and all combat is group versus group. That's actually not far from a lot of tactical RPGs, but he'd happily see the actual squad, platoon, or army abstracted out until you're pitting your stats against someone else's, as long as those stats include your morale, size, training, and equipment. Logistics: the RPG!

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Originally Posted By: Epiphany Without Borders


—Alorael, who has also toyed with the idea of a game in which your character is a captain and all combat is group versus group. That's actually not far from a lot of tactical RPGs, but he'd happily see the actual squad, platoon, or army abstracted out until you're pitting your stats against someone else's, as long as those stats include your morale, size, training, and equipment. Logistics: the RPG!


Didn't Saga Frontier 2 do just that?
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Originally Posted By: Rent-an-Ihrno
Exile: Total War?

-Thinks about the tactical implications of battlemages and healers, alongside of infantry, archers, and the occasional cavalry unit. Wolfrider cavalry. Vahnatai specialists. Golems as heavy infantry. Play as any number of factions, from the Anama, to the Darkside Loyalists, to the Empire, to the Slith Rebels. Conquer and manage both the caves and the surface as you lead your people to glory in an era of total war-
-drools-


One aspect of Jeff's traditional skill system that stands out to me, particularly as it evolved from BoA forward, is the ability to unlock new skills with the right amount of points invested in other skills. Gymnastics, sharpshooter, riposte, and so on.
Add on to that, battle disciplines, which also (if I remember correctly) require certain skill levels to acquire.
Why not create specialized combos/disciplines/whatever to reward multiclassing?
Sufficient mage skill combined with sharpshooter would lead to unlocking the Flaming Arrows discipline, in which you spend some MP to make your projectiles do flame damage. Likewise, instead of archery, a sufficiently skilled mage/swordsman could add an effect to their melee weapon at the cost of a few MP drained every turn, until cancelled or the next spell is cast.
Priests with high defense can enchant their shield to curse anyone who hits.
Training high enough in melee combat allows successful parries or ripostes to deal damage not only to the attacker, but diverts the enemy's weapon into an enemy next to them, causing them damage as well/instead.
Melee/archery/defense at sufficient levels allows melee attacks or parries with the bow.
The combinations are endless, and would take a good bit of work to balance, but they would greatly, greatly open up the diversity of gameplay.

_________________________
The Silent Assassin prepares Deadly Stab. His next hit will be an insta-kill.
Sucks to be you.
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Ive always liked jeff's geneforge games and thought they were very innovative. However, the rest of his games (to me) were lesser versions of the geneforge games. The only problem lies in the fact that between each of all of his games, lies the truth that nothing truly changes between what you can do. What changes is the story line and a few small things. Aside from that, he doesnt make too many changes between games.

 

Avernum 1-3 were virtually the same game with different storylines. Avernum 4-6 were same aside from the fact that 4 didnt have battle disciplines. Geneforge 1-3 were the same with 4 and 5 having new classes.

 

So i guess you could say that jeff doesnt like to branch out too much as he feels his true fans will find him going too off the beaten path, which is a good thing. However, the only thing i find a problem with all this is that jeff will likely never try a new angle or something different in his games.

 

I always thought that with jeff's games he could make any game and make it awesome so long as its an rpg. One of the game ideas i always wanted jeff to try would be to make an arcanum/technology/magic rpg. The problem is i doubt he would ever try something that is so out of the box.

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Originally Posted By: Death Knight

I always thought that with jeff's games he could make any game and make it awesome so long as its an rpg. One of the game ideas i always wanted jeff to try would be to make an arcanum/technology/magic rpg. The problem is i doubt he would ever try something that is so out of the box.


Jeff's blogged about the reason why he won't do this: RPGs in other settings don't sell as well as fantasy RPGs. Geneforge was originally planned as a pure sci-fi RPG, but Jeff's market research showed that if he didn't include fantasy elements like magic, nobody would buy it.
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What about,... You can cast any spell you have gotten access to be able to read or be taught. The higher your level, the better chance you have of getting it right. Failure could go from comic (Your hands turn a lovely shade of blue, but the monster is not frozen!) to catastrophic, with a catastrophic fail being deadly to you and maybe even your entire party (Level one mage casts Nuclear Fireball and fails. Your entire party is destroyed, and this portion of Avernum is uninhabitable for 100 years with the notable exception of giant cockroaches.)

 

No cooldowns or energy pool, but you must have the necessary ingredients to cast any spell. Like you might need a vial of chameleon blood for invisibility. Ingredients can be bought (but you have to be able to trust the seller), stolen (risky), or found/harvested in the wild. Rarity of ingredients could allow for the game to contain a couple of single use spells, or a situation where you have to choose whether to cast Rain of Anvils or Teleport to Safety, as you only have one left dewclaw from a red drake.

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Originally Posted By: Death Knight
That makes sense I guess. He might run out of ideas though when avadon trilogy is complete.

Jeff's got idea, but he's very risk adverse. When your salary is based on the next game selling well you don't have a lot of room for failure. His comments on how Blades of Avernum almost destroyed his company pretty much show why Jeff worried with the release of Avadon.

It's why you are seeing a remake of Avernum instead of another new game. Why break something that sells.
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Star Wars is space fantasy. The Force is magic and Jedi are mages, or maybe clerics.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't think Jeff would rule out a science-fantasy. Geneforge strayed a bit from the standard fantasy mold, after all. But even if swords get traded in for vibroswords and bows batons change into guns, he could still have a fantasy setting. On top of that, Arcanum's steampunk fantasy still has standard fantasy in it. You still get elves with swords throwing fireballs.

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Lilith said it already:

Originally Posted By: Lilith
Geneforge was originally planned as a pure sci-fi RPG, but Jeff's market research showed that if he didn't include fantasy elements like magic, nobody would buy it.

I remember Jeff saying more about his level of comfort with making a sci-fi game versus the more familiar fantasy as well.

 

—Alorael, who can also swallow junk genetics in fantasy better than he can as science. Magic can work however you want it to. Actual genetics aren't going to let you whip up glaahks in vats.

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Fallout is the standout sci-fi RPG. It can be done, and it can be done well and lucratively. It's just that Jeff, as always, is averse to gambling with his income when he knows that he's not playing the odds.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't recall getting DNA as a plot element in Geneforge. They're more of a background in G4 and G5, at least. The mechanics of the Geneforge, canisters, and shaping all are generally left vague.

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G1, Clois:

 

"Do you know anything about these secrets?"

"I know that the Shapers have rejected them. I know that they found that all life is a scroll. The secrets of all life are written, on the tiniest of scrolls, and copied a multitude of times within you."

"The Shapers here used magic to look deep within a living being and see these scrolls, and they learned how to rewrite them. And they learned that this power brought great danger to them."

 

"What do you know about the canisters?"

"The canisters contain the ability to rewrite the scrolls within you, remaking you, on the tiniest scale, a million, million times. They change you, in the way the canister chooses."

 

"Tiny scrolls? That is a very strange thing to say."

"That is my interpretation, of course. The Shapers had a different name for them. They called them 'Genes.'"

 

G1, Corata's shade:

 

"Gene-editing? What is a gene?"

"That knowledge is beyond me. My master, Corata, described it as a tiny, tiny scroll, inside all living things, which describes the purest form of their essence. I did not understand"

"But he did tell me that the Shapers here learned how to read that scroll, and to rewrite it in a way pleasing to them."

 

G1, Vershinin:

 

"The spirals?"

"The genes. Yes?" He shakes his head. "So little knowledge of the secrets of your people. They are the scrolls. The tiny scrolls which contain infinite knowledge. The instructions which make you."

 

G3, Litalia:

 

"Can you train or teach me?"

"There is no more teaching. There is only Shaping. You will be refined, purified, re-Shaped. The genes, the tiny scrolls within you that tell the story of your being, our magic will rewrite them."

 

G3, Litalia's journal:

 

"The more recent entries are stranger. Her penmanship becomes almost unreadable, and she writes a lot about "Decoding and rewriting the tiny scrolls inside all of us.""

 

G3, Tigh Eye:

 

"What are the scrolls?"

"You looked in the machine. You saw. We all contain multitudes of tiny scrolls, too small for even the Eyes to see. Each says, in a language greater than comprehension, everything we will be."

"That is our secret, the power of the Geneforge. That is the secret the Shapers found and threw away. Now it is ours."

 

 

EDIT:

Forget all that. Here's the killer passage from G1:

 

"You look through the eyepiece and see a blur. You fiddle with the knobs and buttons. When you do, something astonishing happens."

"Your view zooms in on the servile's hand. Then it moves closer, so that you can see tiny details of the skin. Then, using some sort of unfamiliar, optical magic, it zooms in much farther."

"You watch, stunned, as the tiniest, most imperceptible details become clear to you. And then you see it. It looks like a pair of scrolls, amazingly long, spiraling into darkness."

"The scrolls are twisted around each other. But instead of writing on paper, the scrolls are the message themselves, a long message in an unfamiliar language, in an alphabet of only four letters."

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Yes, that's what I recall seeing posted here. Still not a major plot element, just a throwaway. And, notably, the "tiny scrolls" are mostly used in a non-technical way, except perhaps in Litalia's journal. They're either your uneducated interpretation or the metaphor used to help you through your ignorance.

 

—Alorael, who still finds it odd how attached Jeff apparently is to these tiny scrolls. No minute scrolls? No minuscule manuscripts? No exceptionally small strips of paper?

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Um, you look through a microscope and see a double helix of four-letter code that contains the instructions that make you. That's pretty technical. And the shapers of Sucia Island called them "genes." That's quite a coincidence.

 

The scrolls themselves may not be a major plot element, but they are the ultimate explanation given for THE plot element of the series (shaping).

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You see DNA. You call it scrolls. But between DNA/genes and critters there's plenty of room for hand-waving. At least there's not the usual "we mutated a frog and now it's fifty feet tall and shoots lightning from its tongue!"

 

—Alorael, who also still doesn't think genes drive the plot. Shaping drives the plot. Genes get cameos as the underpinnings of shaping, but you could simply remove all the references to genes and replace them with nothing and the games would be entirely unchanged, except maybe for needing a bit of renaming.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
Originally Posted By: Death Knight
That makes sense I guess. He might run out of ideas though when avadon trilogy is complete.

Jeff's got idea, but he's very risk adverse. When your salary is based on the next game selling well you don't have a lot of room for failure. His comments on how Blades of Avernum almost destroyed his company pretty much show why Jeff worried with the release of Avadon.

It's why you are seeing a remake of Avernum instead of another new game. Why break something that sells.


I disagree with all that. What is the point of remaking something that has been done 50 times over. Avernum 1-3 are all the same just as even my fav series geneforge are all essentially the same. Lets compare a similar party series. Icewind dale 1 is a fairly simple yet fun game, though still unique it gets old unless you are partyfan. However Icewind dale 2 unlike avernum1-3 has MAJOR changes compared to the original making the series unique because an actual risk is taken.

Now ive played geneforge 1 and beaten it because it was unique. However after playing g2,3,4 and 5 are essentially the same game. Just as avernum 4-6 are clones of geneforge games as the system is the same for alot of things.

The only other game i came close to beating was avadon. Most might think that is crazy but i dont because everything is almost completely different. Taking risks is the only way jeff will ever make another unique game. Avadon might be linear but its still unique which is not something i can say for others.
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Originally Posted By: Death Knight
The only other game i came close to beating was avadon. Most might think that is crazy but i dont because everything is almost completely different. Taking risks is the only way jeff will ever make another unique game. Avadon might be linear but its still unique which is not something i can say for others.


jeff has straight-up said "innovation is for companies like EA that can afford to make a game that doesn't sell". if jeff makes a game that doesn't sell, he goes out of business -- and he is more interested in feeding his family than in making unique games. continuing to do more of the same has so far ensured that his sales figures remain stable, so that's what he's mostly gonna do. if you don't like it, well, vote with your wallet.
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There are other major differences. More than two years separated the releases of Icewind Dale and its sequel, and Black Isle isn't a one-man operation. The number of man-hours that went into development was more than ten times larger between games. Jeff can't innovate that much because he's just one guy who doesn't have time to develop a new engine with each game even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. Big companies can innovate. Jeff sticks with making fun games.

 

—Alorael, who also thinks Jeff deserves credit for his own limited daring. The Geneforge series is one of only a tiny handful of RPGs that give you different endings reached through different areas and different final foes depending on your choices. Nethergate takes a very rare approach seen more often in strategy games and lets you play the same story from different sides. Jeff does his part in being unusual.

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I understand your viewpoint about jeff having his priorities set but lets look at the facts. While there are set differences between games, avernum series seem too much like the same game just as geneforge seems like the same path you choose. To explain myself look at this-

 

In avernum 1-3 and 4-6 you are given a chance to create a party. You said player start from avernum 1 just so you are going in chronological order. You make a swordsman who uses swords, a polearm user, a priest that also does bows and a mage that specializes in mage spells and a bit in priest. Thats your party in said game. Now you beat avernum 1 and are going to try avernum 2. You will basically be playing the same game aside from minor things like races which affect gameplay very slightly. The same goes for avernum 3. Instead of exile where you at least had blunt weapons as a 3rd weapon choice, you have really very little choices for your party and no character is unique. You instead are playing the game with just remade chars from the previous game. There are 2 melee skills which function the same, 2 ranged skills which function the same.

 

Now, as for not taking chances, jeff does take chances-he did with avadon as he did even more so with geneforge. And they both worked. If jeff wants to really grab the next game concept that might work, he will have to think a bit outside the box like he did with the previous.

 

You cannot give me the he cant take chances thing because steven peeler from soldak entertainment is an even smaller indie roleplaying game company than spiderweb (also run by 1 man) and has taken many more chances than jeff. If he can take chances with kivi's underworld, din's curse, and even more so with a new space action rpg soon to be released-Jeff can too. Steven didnt do well with kivi, everyone scoffed when he made even mention of dins (as it was too similar-he was laughed at). And a space game is completely new as every previous game was fantasy. Jeff has alot of good ideas and im hoping that avernum escape from the pit will be more than just the previous problems. I liked avadon for its unique skill system compared to the previous. I would say this perk thing will make or break avernum in terms of replaying.

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Originally Posted By: Death Knight
Now, as for not taking chances, jeff does take chances-he did with avadon as he did even more so with geneforge. And they both worked. If jeff wants to really grab the next game concept that might work, he will have to think a bit outside the box like he did with the previous.


According to Jeff, the Geneforge series has consistently sold quite a bit worse than the Avernum series, so "worked" is something of a relative term. He's going to keep remaking Avernum games for as long as they keep making him money, which they are.

Originally Posted By: Death Knight
You cannot give me the he cant take chances thing because steven peeler from soldak entertainment is an even smaller indie roleplaying game company than spiderweb (also run by 1 man) and has taken many more chances than jeff. If he can take chances with kivi's underworld, din's curse, and even more so with a new space action rpg soon to be released-Jeff can too. Steven didnt do well with kivi, everyone scoffed when he made even mention of dins (as it was too similar-he was laughed at).


How many kids does Steven have?
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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Death Knight
Now, as for not taking chances, jeff does take chances-he did with avadon as he did even more so with geneforge. And they both worked. If jeff wants to really grab the next game concept that might work, he will have to think a bit outside the box like he did with the previous.


According to Jeff, the Geneforge series has consistently sold quite a bit worse than the Avernum series, so "worked" is something of a relative term. He's going to keep remaking Avernum games for as long as they keep making him money, which they are.

Originally Posted By: Death Knight
You cannot give me the he cant take chances thing because steven peeler from soldak entertainment is an even smaller indie roleplaying game company than spiderweb (also run by 1 man) and has taken many more chances than jeff. If he can take chances with kivi's underworld, din's curse, and even more so with a new space action rpg soon to be released-Jeff can too. Steven didnt do well with kivi, everyone scoffed when he made even mention of dins (as it was too similar-he was laughed at).


How many kids does Steven have?


3. What does that have to do with anything?
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(Side rant: what's with the pervasive idea that parents must pay for their child's college education? Students are adults by that point; can't they pay for it themselves? What's next, parents paying for their child's first house?)

 

(After a minute of second thought, I realized that I'm going to get a lot of flak for this statement. Don't want to derail the topic; something for General, perhaps?)

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