Please NO AutoHealing ! -too easy.

[hiittmmann]

sorry for my bad english.

 

please make a game option for NO autohealing.

in geneforge 5 was no autohealing; only in friendly towns was autohealing.

 

after every battle, in avadon 2 is autohealing; way toooo easy!

what hardcore mode is that, if after every battle,your companions ressurect themself?

 

please don't transform this game in themepark walk.

 

1. NO autohealing as an option for hardcore players.

2. healing and ressurecting companions only in friendly towns.

 

 

thanks.

[Lilith]

Your opinion is probably in the minority on this one. Having to run back to town through areas you've already cleared just so you can heal up isn't challenging, it's just tedious. Also, without health regeneration, even recovering HP between fights would be annoying given how healing skills work in Avadon (it's quite possible to end up with a party where some characters can't be healed in battle without items). In fact, some people have actually said they'd prefer if vitality was easier to recover, too: I don't think it should auto-regenerate like health does, but I could see an argument for it healing up to full automatically when changing map areas.

 

I say all this, by the way, as someone who's beaten pretty much every recent Spiderweb game on Torment difficulty. It's not that I don't want a challenge, it's that I don't want to have to waste time in between real challenges to deal with artificial ones that don't require thought or planning, just time.

[Copernicus]

Hmm. I think the mere existence of auto-healing doesn't mean the game is too easy. So long as the game is balanced for it, how healing takes place (or whether it takes place at all) is kind of immaterial. I haven't tried Avadon 2 in "torment" mode yet, but battles in Avadon 1 could get plenty tough. (And there is the "vitality" statistic that does not regenerate until you at least return to a portal.)

 

It's not like there's a question of realism here. People in the real world don't normally recover quickly from the kind of cut or burn damage depicted in modern RPGs, and death is pretty darn final! If you're going to allow magical healing in a game, I kind of figure the Avadon approach lets you more easily continue the flow of the game's narrative, if you do successfully manage to get past a given fight.

[Student of Trinity]

Autohealing is important because it makes it okay for combat to have big hits, which makes it more exciting. In Avernum or Geneforge you really only worry when you're going into a battle with low health; Avadon is trying to make every battle like that. It doesn't entirely succeed, of course, because you get used to ending each fight with everyone at death's door, but I think it contributes to the brisker feeling of Avadon combat. But then to make the game playable with everyone coming out of battle badly hurt, you need some kind of healing. Autohealing isn't any easier to succeed at doing than managing a ton of potions or trekking back to town, but it's a lot less tedious.

 

Within the game you can excuse it by some combination of (a) most of your injuries were really fatigue that goes away when you catch your breath, and ( Hands of Avadon have magic power to heal.

 

When I was first getting back to Avadon combat two days ago, I complained about how Vitality is so hard to replenish; but I might be taking that back, after playing all day yesterday (holiday where I live). The whole point of Avadon combat is that your special powers are really quite impressive, and Vitality cost is an important limitation on them. If a Tinkermage fires up two top turrets in each battle, it's easy to steamroll, and that gets dull. Just to avoid the tedium of trekking back to Avadon too often, I've started making fewer turrets, and using the cheaper ones more, letting minor battles last longer, and losing more health (since it comes back after). I've also been trying to get more than one battle out of a turret whenever I could, by luring enemies back to leftover turrets. This has actually turned out to be more fun.

 

Still, challenge enforced by tedium isn't ideal, in my view. Maybe it would be better to let Vitality come back in any safe zone, but lower max Vitality a bit, so that you worry about it running out during a single dungeon.

[*i]

I like the new system. I always do a "rechargeme" cheat when I'm getting low on energy and I'm certain I can get back to the pylon without any trouble whatsoever. It saves me time, and does not fundamentally alter the balance of the game.

[mouton]

Autohealing is MUCH better than trudging back to town all the time.

 

It allows for balancing the game on a per-battle basis. I am all for it.

[hiittmmann]

example: you have a tough battle against 3 enemies.

 

kill first enemy,run, auto-healing.

 

start new battle, kill second one, run, auto-healing; start last battle,kill the last enemy.

 

done in 1 min in tourment mode.

 

if resurecting and autohealing was nos so easy,available everywhere, a tough battle was a matter of 20 minutes.

 

for me,this is themepark; practic is instant kill of enemies.

[mouton]

example: you have a tough battle against 3 enemies.

 

kill first enemy,run, auto-healing.

 

start new battle, kill second one, run, auto-healing; start last battle,kill the last enemy.

 

done in 1 min in tourment mode.

 

if resurecting and autohealing was nos so easy,available everywhere, a tough battle was a matter of 20 minutes.

 

for me,this is themepark; practic is instant kill of enemies.

Don't do that then?

[Enkidu]

The problem is that when there's no attrition, a majority of battles become meaningless tedium. When you're balancing on a per-battle basis, every encounter should then be potentially lethal.

 

In a game where every battle drains your hp and/or mana, even an easy encounter does something to drain your reserves. But when you auto-regen after every battle, a battle where you didn't have to strain your resources and use consumables (or vitality, though there seems to be more than enough to go around regardless) is only free xp basically. Of course if you can make a round trip to town without losing anything but some of your own time, it does give you a kind of an get out of jail free-card - which does defeat the purpose of the attrition somewhat, but not entirely, since there is still penalty for the player to go recharge (time), even if it's not really a penalty in the gameworld.

 

But when the game has gone the way of ease in this matter, I think the right solution would be to cut the trash mob fights a lot as well, and focus on tough battles where you risk dying unless you give it your all. After all, the amount of them is a very common complaint against Spidweb games.

[mouton]

The problem is that when there's no attrition, a majority of battles become meaningless tedium. When you're balancing on a per-battle basis, every encounter should then be potentially lethal.

 

In a game where every battle drains your hp and/or mana, even an easy encounter does something to drain your reserves. But when you auto-regen after every battle, a battle where you didn't have to strain your resources and use consumables (or vitality, though there seems to be more than enough to go around regardless) is only free xp basically. Of course if you can make a round trip to town without losing anything but some of your own time, it does give you a kind of an get out of jail free-card - which does defeat the purpose of the attrition somewhat, but not entirely, since there is still penalty for the player to go recharge (time), even if it's not really a penalty in the gameworld.

 

But when the game has gone the way of ease in this matter, I think the right solution would be to cut the trash mob fights a lot as well, and focus on tough battles where you risk dying unless you give it your all. After all, the amount of them is a very common complaint against Spidweb games.

Attrition used to be "solved" by doing a trip to town. End effect was roughly the same, it was just much more tedious.

 

I agree the individual fights should be tougher, though. At my early point of the game I don't even have to drop turrets to crush everyone (torment ofc). Geneforge and Avernum:EftP were much more brutal even when fighting "trash" mobs. I suppose it's just that wretches and wolves are less interesting and they don't stun, deploy acid, poison etc.

 

That's the problem, not autohealing.

[Lilith]

But when the game has gone the way of ease in this matter, I think the right solution would be to cut the trash mob fights a lot as well, and focus on tough battles where you risk dying unless you give it your all. After all, the amount of them is a very common complaint against Spidweb games.

 

The purpose of the little trash fights is threefold: to make an area feel occupied, to make the player feel powerful and competent, and also to give players a way to test out new abilities against foes that won't kill them while they're trying to set up to use them. Even on Torment, not every fight is designed to be a challenge: it's important to the plot that some fights should be easy.

 

I 100% guarantee you that if the trash fights were cut out, people would start complaining about areas feeling empty instead.

[...]

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Edited June 27, 2023 by ...

[Lilith]

Honestly, I'm enjoying Avadon 2 a lot more than the first one now that I'm several hours in, and I think the game could even be a rival for some true old-school classics... but, the depth just isn't there.

 

On the other hand, it sold more copies in its first day than some Spiderweb games have in their entire lifetime, so apparently the new design strategy is working for a lot of people.

[...]

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Edited June 27, 2023 by ...

[*i]

sea: There's no reason to be condescending. Different people have different tastes. Neither are correct, just different. While on these forums, please be respectful of the opinions of others, even if you strongly disagree.

[...]

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Edited June 27, 2023 by ...

[Alorael at Large]

The purpose of the little trash fights is threefold: to make an area feel occupied, to make the player feel powerful and competent, and also to give players a way to test out new abilities against foes that won't kill them while they're trying to set up to use them.

That second one is really important. If you're representing the might of Avadon it really would be wrong to have no chances to crush inconsequential foes beneath your heals. You can make a game with no easy fights, but often you shouldn't or it's a very different kind of game.

 

Resource management by attrition is a system, but it's actually not a system that has a lot of complexity to it unless you build the game around it, and if you do that you probably want the plot of the game to incorporate it as well. Resource management on a per-battle rather than per-area basis is just as complex, really, but different. Just adjust to the fact that Vitality isn't really a limiting resource. Cooldowns and potions are much more important to use well.

 

—Alorael, who will also note that depth requires balancing depth, and more interactions between systems means more potentially unforeseen disasters, either for or against the player. And usually the former. Spiderweb is a basically one-man outfit; Jeff doesn't have the resources of Activision, so he makes simpler fun games. And since they're still fun on par with the best top-tier games even if the graphics don't stack up. You may not enjoy it as much, but you are not everyone. You aren't even the majority of gamers of the old school

[Lilith]

Make dumbed-down games aimed at mass audiences with short attention spans and who get frustrated if they have to learn anything or use their brains to play a game, and you sell more copies? So it really is that easy! Man, Spiderweb should do contract work for Activision on Call of Duty, do you even know how much money that would make?!

 

For the record, lead developer Jeff Vogel has said outright that he'd be happy to do exactly this if he had the right skillset and personality for it. But he works best alone and his skills are in RPG development, so developing indie RPGs is what he does. Make no mistake: Spiderweb is a business and Jeff Vogel's #1 priority is making enough money to put his kids through college. He will generally do what he thinks will sell (within the boundaries of what he's capable of and what he can motivate himself to do), and appealing to what you think his idea of artistic integrity should be will fall on deaf ears. That's not a criticism of him (after all, doing what will sell does mean you're appealing to people enough that they'll give you money); it's just a summary of the position he himself has consistently taken. If you don't like it, don't blame the messenger. And if you want Jeff to do things differently, convince him there's more money in doing it your way.

 

The use of hyperbole does not imply lack of respect for others. Or must I preface every statement I make with "no offense to anyone who believes the contrary"? My point was simply that arguing for X design choice on the basis of popularity is fallacious, especially when there are compelling arguments to be made regarding actual game mechanics and design against said choice. An easier analogy: The Eagles' Greatest Hits is one of the top-selling albums of all-time, therefore The Eagles' Greatest Hits is the best album ever released.

 

The only fallacy here is yours: you're falsely assuming that Jeff is, or should be, primarily interested in making games that fit your personal idea of "good games". It's not fallacious to argue for a design choice on the basis of popularity if the primary design goal is making popular games. I mean, you're talking about a game designer who openly envies Zynga's business model and wishes he was the kind of person who could use it himself.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

There's nothing stopping the mechanic being replaced with injury kits to revive downed party members, potions, and even food to heal up (which is currently useless because it heals so little and there is no need to do so outside combat).

 

I presume you're not playing on Torment, then. While food is pointless in the latter stretches of the game, for the first third or so it's actually pretty important. I can say with no exaggeration that there have been at least two fights in which my life was saved by the timely deployment of beef jerky; there were others in which I likely would not have won if I hadn't used several food items over the course of the fight, but those are harder to tally. The ability to heal a small but non-trivial amount of health and still have AP left to attack or cast has pretty obvious strategic utility. I actually think this makes for a pretty interesting strategic wrinkle in combat. The main forms of healing in Avadon are limited by price/availability (potions) and cooldown/vitality (spells). Food and bandages are essentially only limited by AP: they don't cost money (I mean, you can buy them, but why would you when there're so many just lying around?) or impact cooldowns, but it does reduce the user's mobility that turn, and possibly prevent them from getting in range to attack or take other actions. It's an interesting tradeoff that increases tactical complexity and rewards players who have the forethought to position their characters in such a way as to be able to eat and attack in the same turn. The problem is that food doesn't scale up as the game goes on: recovering 9-21 health is somewhat helpful for a character with 75 max health, considerably less so for one with 250. I think we should encourage Jeff to include badass late game food in subsequent games.

 

example: you have a tough battle against 3 enemies.

 

kill first enemy,run, auto-healing.

 

start new battle, kill second one, run, auto-healing; start last battle,kill the last enemy.

 

done in 1 min in tourment mode.

 

if resurecting and autohealing was nos so easy,available everywhere, a tough battle was a matter of 20 minutes.

 

for me,this is themepark; practic is instant kill of enemies.

 

That's not really the fault of auto-healing, though. It's actually been a balance problem (or clever strategy, depending on whom you ask) in Jeff's games for a very long time. The first Geneforge was legendary for its many exploits along these lines. It's true that reviving characters automatically after battle makes this strategy easier to execute, but trust me when I say that this has been a viable maneuver since the original Exile. As people have said already in this thread, it's a difference between convenience and tedium, not ease and difficulty: 'go into battle, pick off an enemy or two, run away, auto-heal, repeat' and 'go into battle, pick off an enemy or two, run away, cast some cheap healing spells, go back to town and rest up if necessary, repeat' are identical in terms of actual battle difficulty, it's just that the latter requires more down time.

[Lilith]

 

 

I presume you're not playing on Torment, then. While food is pointless in the latter stretches of the game, for the first third or so it's actually pretty important. I can say with no exaggeration that there have been at least two fights in which my life was saved by the timely deployment of beef jerky; there were others in which I likely would not have won if I hadn't used several food items over the course of the fight, but those are harder to tally. The ability to heal a small but non-trivial amount of health and still have AP left to attack or cast has pretty obvious strategic utility. I actually think this makes for a pretty interesting strategic wrinkle in combat. The main forms of healing in Avadon are limited by price/availability (potions) and cooldown/vitality (spells). Food and bandages are essentially only limited by AP: they don't cost money (I mean, you can buy them, but why would you when there're so many just lying around?) or impact cooldowns, but it does reduce the user's mobility that turn, and possibly prevent them from getting in range to attack or take other actions. It's an interesting tradeoff that increases tactical complexity and rewards players who have the forethought to position their characters in such a way as to be able to eat and attack in the same turn. The problem is that food doesn't scale up as the game goes on: recovering 9-21 health is somewhat helpful for a character with 75 max health, considerably less so for one with 250. I think we should encourage Jeff to include badass late game food in subsequent games.

 

By the endgame, regular healing potions pretty much are "badass late-game food". They don't sell for much, so you might as well use the ones you find, even if you don't buy any. They're less common than regular food, of course, but that's why you save using them every turn like food for the late game.

 

This conversation has got me thinking. I wonder if it might be an interesting design choice to make all consumable items unsellable, just to encourage players to experiment more with actually using them rather than throwing niche-use items into the junk bag by default.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

By the endgame, regular healing potions pretty much are "badass late-game food". They don't sell for much, so you might as well use the ones you find, even if you don't buy any. They're less common than regular food, of course, but that's why you save using them every turn like food for the late game.

 

This conversation has got me thinking. I wonder if it might be an interesting design choice to make all consumable items unsellable, just to encourage players to experiment more with actually using them rather than throwing niche-use items into the junk bag by default.

 

That's true to an extent, but as you say, they're a lot rarer than food. They're available in substantial quantities in stores, but they're seriously overpriced for their actual late game utility. I'm not crazy about the idea of making standard healing potions unsellable, but I like the idea of some sort of unsellable item that restores a small but non-trivial amount of health by a late game character's standards, whether or not that item is food.

[Lilith]

I suppose another option would be to have some healing items restore health as a percentage of the target's maximum health rather than a flat number. If food restored 15-20% of your max health, it'd stay about equally useful throughout the whole game and you wouldn't have to mess around with adding in a bunch of different late-game food types.

[hiittmmann]

"As people have said already in this thread, it's a difference between convenience and tedium, not ease and difficulty: 'go into battle, pick off an enemy or two, run away, auto-heal, repeat' and 'go into battle, pick off an enemy or two, run away, cast some cheap healing spells, go back to town and rest up if necessary, repeat' are identical in terms of actual battle difficulty, it's just that the latter requires more down time."

 

i agree,BUT: if you know that the resurection of your partners will cost you 20 minutes, the strategy you put into the battle and the tension will increase ; and when you are finally done with a tough battle ( after healing/resurecting only in friendly towns) you have the feeling to won a great battle.

in actual stadium, the battle is a clickfest : die,resurrect,die,resurrect, win th battle in 2 minutes ; i recall,in geneforge 5 have some tough battles for 1 hrs !

[mouton]

i agree,BUT: if you know that the resurection of your partners will cost you 20 minutes, the strategy you put into the battle and the tension will increase ; and when you are finally done with a tough battle ( after healing/resurecting only in friendly towns) you have the feeling to won a great battle.

in actual stadium, the battle is a clickfest : die,resurrect,die,resurrect, win th battle in 2 minutes ; i recall,in geneforge 5 have some tough battles for 1 hrs !

I agree that reviving characters shouldn't be so easy. Then again, I don't use the "run, revive, get back" tactic, so it is not an issue for me.

[Aran]

I like the convenient healing, but I can see that a mode labeled "hard-core" could be more so. I play too casually to enjoy going all out on difficulty, but if I did, I think I'd prefer having the option to really, really be forced into decision-making and resource management. Some of the most enjoyable and least tedious parts of Avadon were those dungeon crawls that cut off the escape route.

 

But (and I'm basing this on Avadon, since I haven't picked up the sequel yet), the thing about the pylons is that if you can reach them to get healed, you could also go back to the castle and heal up anyway. So stripping pylon-healing wouldn't add difficulty, just inconvenience. A better answer might be to attach a cost to returning to safety, like respawning enemies or losing some progress.

[*i]

I hate to say it, but I kind of like the auto-revive, despite the needed suspension of disbelief. I know in the Exile days, when one of my PCs died, I just simply reloaded the game because it was too inconvenient to revive an ally. In Avadon, that's no longer a concern. In the end, I think this means more enjoyment for me per unit time played. So yeah, I think that's a good thing.

[Lilith]

It's not like Exile didn't have its own cheap ways to get out of death, anyway: taking advantage of that 0-HP threshold by just barely healing enough to have some health left was often a viable strategy, especially in combination with some investment in Luck.

[Stony Ibis]

I found the hit-and-run strategy hardly an exploit, actually: it's not easy to retreat where a swarm of enemies are advancing toward the characters in combat, and no autohealing outside combat when enemies are nearby. And there are tons of enemies love to ensnare/slow/daze the entire party.

[Catoblepas]

Personally not a fan of the regenerating health/auto cure/auto revive paradigm the Avadon games have been using. It seems to lend itself to an 'all or nothing' style of gameplay that doesn't seem to care how you win or what shape your party is in afterwards, only that you do win. Thus, it doesn't really feel like there is much incentive to 'play smart' outside of the boss battles where you are in immediate danger of a party wipe. Because of these mechanics and the high price of scrolls, potions, etc-you are also discouraged from using items in battle, outside of the mushrooms and dried meat etc you find lying about because they are costly to replace in a game that repairs all damage anyways seconds after combat ends and provides limited funds for buying anything other than the bare necessitates. The timer cooldown on abilities, (including shared timers on many abilities) can mean that battles can lack for variety after a while since the game discourages use of items and somewhat pidgeonholes you into a handful of core abilities-particularly early game. Combined with the oppressive frequency of battles and it can feel a bit tedious IMO-which battles should feel anything but. Personally the battle systems of Geneforge 3-4 were probably my favorite in the series, striking a good balance between tactics and resource management. That being said, I think Avadon 2 is a lot better than Avadon 1 in this department- I haven't found any situations like in the first game where a big chunk of my party is useless because of the icy lance cooldown and fire immune enemies.

[Enkidu]

The simulationist things earlier Spidweb games had - need to carry food, resting, limit on weight of backpack, training with a trainer, looking for secret passages, healing, etc. - did serve a good purpose (also, why was the day counter removed, even in Avernum:EftP!). They gave a sense of adventure into the game, a context for the fighting. I don't say all of that change was bad, but when it's all stripped away like now, a combat encounter is a much more boring affair when there's practically zero risk of any loss of any kind. A trash combat is a very rote action too, similar to the resting, healing you used to do in between them was actually something that provided you with variety. Now all you do is click through fights, pick up items, rinse and repeat. Outside of boss fights and conversations with real choices, there's very little thinking to be done no matter how simplistic.

 

 

Fights instanced like this don't make me feel powerful, since there's no challenge. Clearing a dungeon in a single go, when it wasn't a given, that made me feel good. Carefully using your abilities and items to make them last as long as you can, not rocket science but fun regardless. Even if all you have at stake is how often you have to return to town - nobody wants to return to town after each rat. So you are encouraged to put in effort and work efficiently. And when you're running low on resources, you always want to search one more corner and beat another fight, before returning to town, until you inevitably must make that trip, which also allows you to sell your loot and buy spells and such.

 

Now you don't have that, it doesn't matter what you do in a single fight so you just left click on the rebels or rats until they die, or use an ability, it doesn't matter if you do. Not that you'd have much opportunity to vary from that early on, either, since you don't have nearly the variety of spells available compared to earlygame Exile/Avernum or Nethergate, or number of party members.

 

 

TL;DR: fighting trash mobs, without the pacing and meaning the hp/mp management gives it, is not interesting. When you remove all rote actions but one, the one activity left (fighting) becomes much more tedious than before. The game doesn't feel like leading an adventuring party anymore as much, but more of a rat killing and loot collecting simulator.

[Lilith]

What difficulty are you two playing on, and how far into the game are you? On Torment, even trash fights with three or four enemies can get tactically challenging if you're trying to get through them without burning up any vitality. (And yes, even when you're not using abilities with vitality costs, there's still plenty of tactics involved in how you position your party, and what no-fatigue-cost scarab abilities you use and when you use them.)

 

And that's with a well-built party -- keep in mind that a bunch of people who don't read these forums are going to be doing things like putting points in Intelligence on a tinkermage because mages are supposed to be smart, or investing equally in Strength and Dexterity on a shadowwalker because they think throwing razordisks around is cool but don't want those melee bonuses to go to waste either. Those people are likely to have the same troubles even on lower difficulties that an optimiser will have on Torment. If Spiderweb games are easy for you lately, one thing to consider is that just by the fact that we read these forums at all, we're not a representative sample of the player base. And even then, I've seen people here who found the combat too difficult even on Normal, and even with all the advice these forums could give. Not everyone is as strategically minded or knowledgeable about the game's inner workings as you, and Jeff still wants their money.

 

Also, don't knock rat-killing and loot-collecting simulators. Diablo has always been pretty much exactly that, and it's always sold like hotcakes. Jeff has spoken highly of sometimes having fights in RPGs that let you turn your higher brain functions off and enjoy watching numbers go up:

 

When I fight fifty basically identical combats against darkspawn in Dragon Age or spend five hours finally getting my level 13 druid in World of Warcraft to level 14 or piled a hundred bricks on top of other bricks in Minecraft, I’ve done more than waste my time. I’ve given by brain rest that, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, it craved.

 

In short, the trash fights are there because a lot of people actively want them there and enjoy them there, and Jeff Vogel is one of those people. If it's not for you, that's understandable, but there are people whom it really, truly is for.

[stars2heaven]

In regards to auto healing: I don't mind the auto revive; whenever a character died in Baldur's gate I just reloaded. However, I don't see how auto healing improves on the game in any way. I would prefer if there were more opportunities to rest and heal in the wild, coupled with natural abilities that aid in healing the group. Using devices such as alchemy for making potions, making potions more available in general, providing abilities such as first aid to help with self/group healing after fights, food, magic, and/or occasional resting locations in the wild would improve the game in multiple ways over the simple, free auto heal.

[Alorael at Large]

This conversation has got me thinking. I wonder if it might be an interesting design choice to make all consumable items unsellable, just to encourage players to experiment more with actually using them rather than throwing niche-use items into the junk bag by default.

The problem for me, and a number of other players, isn't selling. It's hoarding. I keep all those lovely consumables in piles for a really tough fight, but when the tough fights roll around I either haven't retrieved potions from the piles or keep saving them for a tougher fight. I'm often finding myself just

 

i agree,BUT: if you know that the resurection of your partners will cost you 20 minutes, the strategy you put into the battle and the tension will increase ; and when you are finally done with a tough battle ( after healing/resurecting only in friendly towns) you have the feeling to won a great battle.

Frustration-based gameplay always strikes me as a terribly inelegant design even when it works. I resent the designer's having inflicted loss of enjoyment on me in exchange for optimal play. And then, if I can, I cheat. A toggle to make some kind of Hardcore Healing mode available would be fine, but I suspect many people would turn it on because they like challenges and then be annoyed be the process anyway.

 

—Alorael, who certainly doesn't think respawning on leaving is a good solution. If those extra monsters give XP and loot then you have to optimize by leaving a lot, which is frustrating. And if they don't they're just extra trash fights, which is more wasted time.

[Catoblepas]

*snip*

I think you misunderstand me here, difficulty is not something I'm complaining about here, I'm just a little bit disappointed by the manner and extent by which the game restricts you from exploring various options. The result is a combat engine that might have a lot of depth on paper, but seems a bit shallow in practice because of the way you are disincentivized towards exploring such options. There seems to be even less of an incentive in the Avadon games to use the shops to purchase consumables than in the other Spiderweb games I have played. (both in their limited utility and extreme price) which means they tend to get hoarded for the big fights in my experience. Likewise the way abilities are handled seems to push the game towards a limited number of maneuvers or tactics. It seems geared a bit too much towards a simplistic playstyle for my tastes, is what I'm saying.

The problem for me, and a number of other players, isn't selling. It's hoarding. I keep all those lovely consumables in piles for a really tough fight, but when the tough fights roll around I either haven't retrieved potions from the piles or keep saving them for a tougher fight. I'm often finding myself just

That's a problem I have as well. I think the high prices for potions etc and the 'all or nothing' mentality of Avadon fights is another barrier. No real incentive to keep your party members alive as long as you win the fight, so using potions etc outside of any situation short of what would otherwise be a total party wipe is disincentivized.

[Lilith]

I think you misunderstand me here, difficulty is not something I'm complaining about here, I'm just a little bit disappointed by the manner and extent by which the game restricts you from exploring various options.

 

OK, I can get on board with this so far. A wider skill tree could be interesting, although there's a balancing act, because the more options you provide the greater the risk that one of them will be so good that it makes all the others irrelevant.

 

Here's a thought to mull over: might it actually provide more viable strategic options while not increasing difficulty for newbies if each class had fixed stat growths and you just invested skill points instead of letting the player determine stats as well? If your Str and Dex growths are fixed based on your class instead of something you have to invest a limited resource in, suddenly mixing melee and missile skills is no longer a waste of skill points that you avoid when possible, but instead becomes a viable way to play.

[Edgwyn]

OK, I can get on board with this so far. A wider skill tree could be interesting, although there's a balancing act, because the more options you provide the greater the risk that one of them will be so good that it makes all the others irrelevant.

 

Here's a thought to mull over: might it actually provide more viable strategic options while not increasing difficulty for newbies if each class had fixed stat growths and you just invested skill points instead of letting the player determine stats as well? If your Str and Dex growths are fixed based on your class instead of something you have to invest a limited resource in, suddenly mixing melee and missile skills is no longer a waste of skill points that you avoid when possible, but instead becomes a viable way to play.

 

The old RPGs and CRPGs were setup this way where you had very little ability to change your characters stats as you leveled up, and for that matter, only a very limited set of skills as well. Now, everybody would be upset if you took away their ability to customize their character. The more choices that you have, the more sub-optimal builds there are going to be (imagine putting all of your points in luck in A:EftP). People should enjoy their suboptimal builds, because they are playing the game the way they want to play it. I used a melee Shadowwalker in Avadon 1. That is suboptimal, I enjoyed it, and I play the game on a level of difficulty where I can enjoy it.

[Lilith]

I think there are ways to implement fixed stat growth without compromising customisability. Look at the Etrian Odyssey series for an example of a modern turn-based RPG franchise that does it right: each class has fixed stat growths, and each class's skill tree (which is more complex than the Avadon class skill trees) can then be balanced around the strengths and weaknesses of that class to keep each option viable, rather than having to be further balanced around every possible stat allocation for every possible class. There are still options that are better or worse than others, but what this model does is give greater scope to experiment with different skill combinations.

 

It's not like "put points in Dexterity if you're using missile weapons" is a particularly interesting form of customisation to begin with, especially when you've already indicated that you want your character to use missile weapons by raising the missile weapon skill: it's more of a trap for those who don't do it.

[Alorael at Large]

I'm all for that change. Stat allocation isn't actually interesting. It's a matter of either picking a build and then shoving points into it or, if you're optimizing, deciding what the best balance is and then doing that. It doesn't actually have any real effect on what you do, just how effective what you do is, and in the least interesting way.

 

 

Actually, in the Avadon system I don't think stats need to exist at all. Have things scale with skill points or directly with level, slap a multiplier based on class onto the formula when appropriate, and leave stats out of it. There's no need to even have them discretely enumerated.

 

—Alorael, who thinks that's a good recipe for fixing balance problems without removing interesting build path decisions. So this is all a lot of words to say that Lilith is spot-on.

[Sudanna]

I have never cared for fixed stat growth. Why bother having stats exist if I can't touch them, interact with them, change them, really understand what they're doing, or sometimes even see them. It's a pointless "Oh, you levelled, now your numbers go up."

 

Stats also provide a lot of room for role-playing customization, not just mechanical. Is my character smart, or strong? Fast and cunning or careful and straightforward? Are they really tough or do they try to avoid taking a beating at all? I often make decisions on how to build a character in this way, and having several viable builds for each class, each centered around a different stat spread, is sort of essential to that. A statless system might be more streamlined mechanically, but I like stats. And if it's clear what they all do, I really think you'd be losing something with their removal. I like having multiple aspects to a character that I can change with level and that intereact in different ways. Reducing it to ability points is, well, reducing what I can do. It makes levels less special and more boring.

[Lilith]

Stats also provide a lot of room for role-playing customization, not just mechanical. Is my character smart, or strong? Fast and cunning or careful and straightforward? Are they really tough or do they try to avoid taking a beating at all? I often make decisions on how to build a character in this way, and having several viable builds for each class, each centered around a different stat spread, is sort of essential to that. A statless system might be more streamlined mechanically, but I like stats. And if it's clear what they all do, I really think you'd be losing something with their removal. I like having multiple aspects to a character that I can change with level and that intereact in different ways. Reducing it to ability points is, well, reducing what I can do. It makes levels less special and more boring.

 

I kind of see things from the opposite perspective: the less the system tells me about exactly what my character is and isn't capable of, the more I can fill in the blanks in my own head. It's why I usually prefer a fairly high degree of abstraction.

[Copernicus]

Stats also provide a lot of room for role-playing customization, not just mechanical. Is my character smart, or strong? Fast and cunning or careful and straightforward? Are they really tough or do they try to avoid taking a beating at all?

 

Seconded! There's only so much you can do to create your own storyline in any CRPG; you're generally going to have to face the same quests and experience the same events no matter what you do. Your character's stats provide pretty much the only way to modify how your character will interact with the world of Avadon.

[mouton]

Stats also provide a lot of room for role-playing customization, not just mechanical.

Welll, I agree with general principle, but I am afraid spiderweb games, brilliant though they are, are very far from this aspect. Of course, your mileage may vary.