A:EftP - Summoning and Placement...

[Mr.Anomaly]

Is this skill completely useless? Half of my turns, my summons don't move because they can't see the enemy or some ridiculous nonsense. They just freaking stand there behind a wall and skip their own turn OVER AND OVER unless I retreat so the enemy runs out to them. Sometimes they just simply don't move no matter what, or randomly like after I move one of my characters, suddenly it moves (and no, their path was NOT blocked by a character).

 

Secondly, they spawn in random squares around my character, which is blatantly stupid design. These games revolve around PLANNING. Sometimes I want to enter combat mode before the enemy sees me, walk my mage to a corner an enemy is hiding behind, and summon something in front of me so that's the first thing the enemy sees and focuses on. 3 empty squares around me (because I'm next to a wall) and the goddamn summon appears behind me? Why, and how, does this make any logical sense whatsoever? And it happens A LOT. Sometimes they spawn in front. Sometimes on the side. Complete nonsense and something that happened in pretty much none of the Geneforge games, which revolved around summoning...so I find it hard to see how Jeff [censored]ed it up in a remake of a game which makes it newer than the GF games. So far, mechanically, this game seems FAR FAR inferior to a game that is FAR FAR older than it is. .......What?

 

Also, why when combat ends does my party seem to randomly place themselves? Nothing worse than winning a fight with another group of enemies just out of sight, purposely, so you can heal after pulling a few...only to have my team teleport forward 3 spaces after ending the fight for no discernible reason, so that I auto aggro the next group, with no chance to heal. Why?

[Lilith]

Spiderweb games have always had weird glitches to do with placing characters when entering and leaving combat mode and using summoning spells. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not a new thing. Geneforge is a bit of an exception because it lets you move different party members independently outside of combat; that led to a lot of gameplay exploits that Jeff considered undesirable, so other games don't let you do that.

[Mr.Anomaly]

I don't remember the issue being there in Avadon, but I may be wrong. It's been a bit since I played it last. Geneforge is the main saga I am familiar with, and though I do understand how it can be abused (like escaping fights by having enemies chase your tank to one end of the map while you collect stuff and exit the other side), I still don't understand why a change in that system would screw up something during combat phases such as summoning placement, because during combat you do move characters independently.

 

The post-fight placement I suppose I can sort of understand, because he'd have to figure a system that could calculate the area the fight took place in and try to place the team in the center of that area (to the best of its ability), or just putting them where they were when they first entered combat mode (which would be odd). But man...it's a huge detriment to a combat system that could be perfect. I don't have massive coding knowledge but I've been around game development for a big part of my life, including college, and it seems like it shouldn't be that difficult to come up with a bit of simple logic for these things.

 

If there is available space in front of current character (the one summoning) during combat phase, summon appears there. Otherwise, random spot around summoner (current code). Or just let me pick where my summon appears, within like 2 squares of my summoner or something to restrict cheap placement.

 

And then the earlier example of calculating the area a fight took place in (given it's a grid this shouldn't be that difficult) and attempting to place the characters in the center 4 square row of said area.

 

Not sure how that logic would translate into code though, I'm more of an aesthetic artist type (environments and such), so forgive my ignorance.

[Lilith]

Not sure how that logic would translate into code though, I'm more of an aesthetic artist type (environments and such), so forgive my ignorance.

 

So is Jeff, to be honest. He's a self-taught programmer who's written a couple of blog posts about how much he hates writing code and having to keep up with new technology when he'd much rather be writing plot and dialogue. It's likely he's doing the best he can within the limits of his skills and patience.

[Mr.Anomaly]

Didn't know that. At those things, he definitely excels (especially plot and dialogue).

 

Well hopefully he gets this sort of thing sorted...if not in EftP, then at least a future one. I have yet to play Avadon 2. Same sort of thing?

 

FYI, these issues are the only two gripes I have with the game. They're just...pretty big ones, since without strategic placement it just seems summoning is useless. Party placement post-fights ruins pulls, etc. etc.

[Randomizer]

There is a system in Avernum games where a summon appears in relation to the caster. Practice near a town and you will see where they usually appear.

 

The last few Avernum games also have summons catch up with a moving party so they no longer just stand there as a fight moves outside their search radius.

[Lilith]

To be honest even with strategic placement summoning wouldn't be that great in A:EftP. They don't keep up with the HP or damage output of enemies later in the game.

[Jerakeen]

As for Avadon, you get direct control of your pets, so it's not an issue. You will have to pay attention to where you stand when you place turrets, but there's a predictable system for that.