Avernum questions

[Mustawd]

Much as I'm loving this game, there's quite a few instances of what can only be described as irritation for irritation's sake

My thoughts exactly.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

OMG, I experienced Mungs yesterday...

So this dumbfounded status effect... wow, what a doozy. Not only does it render spellcasters mute and incapable of casting any spells, it lasts a very long time and steals virtually all of their spell casting points. It appears to have no hard counter either, just ways to cheese round it or relentless potion guzzling of the hardest/expensivist of potions to find. I encountered a batch of 6 of them before I'd googled WTF this new spell was and I'd decided to cheese it by grabbing the quest item then running away (hope this doesn't glitch the game somehow) and, thinking about it, I could have used a recall crystal (if it had let them work in that situation, I'll never know now). But just wow, what a thing to throw at a player.

From googling it suggests I myself get to learn this spell at some point, just as long as my Arcane Lore is good enough I suppose. Which highlights another really quite irritating aspect of the game, that of knowing exactly how much Arcane Lore is required for everything in the game and, worse, coming across all the locations of level 3 spell learning while not having enough Lore so often that in order to backtrack to all those locations would pretty much require restepping virtually every inch of the gigantic map. I wish I'd kept written notes on all these locations but, firstly, as someone new to the game one has no idea what's relevant to write down and, secondly, the amount of 'stuff' in this game which really needs a handwritten companion journal is so vast that you'd spend more time compiling that than even playing the game, which itself is a monumental time consumer well into the 100+ hours, even while steamrolling most combats.

 

[Modron]

Yeah knowing how much you need of something and when you do has been an issue for rpgs with skill systems forever just look at those AoD min/maxer hybrid builds who plan their character progression to the letter. On the first round of remaking exile I thought he only added a quest journal to the second and subsequent games. So look forward to less of a headache there, having the only thing be noteworthy are unexploited skill advancements like you have already mentioned.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Since reaching the final stages of the game I've been buying Arcane Lore to try and read all these random unexploited skill advancement spots but still to no avail in a number of spots. AFAICT having 12 points in something is pretty much a max-out. The Mage and Priest spells excluded, of course, as they both require 18 to max-out (already done that). Cave Lore, for example, seems like its maxed-out at around 20 communal. Arcane Lore, like Cave Lore, is a communal stat, but I'm now well above communal 40 and still getting dead-ends.

With Presit/Mage spells and Potion Making it actually tells you how many points you need. Cave Lore you can judge fairly instantly as you just suddenly stop having to fight all the random encounters, and this happens fairly quickly, especially with that guy selling points in it for 110gp each. Primary Attributes and Weapon Skills etc max-out when they start to cost silly amounts of skill-points per increase. But Arcane Lore appears to be a bottomless pit, a bottomless pit with no intuitive common-sense associated with it, combined with it's random world-placement, hence it sticks out so much as a uniquely irritating feature.

At these end stages I'd like to be spending my excess on things like Gymnastics, Endurance, Luck and Defence/Hardiness, but all these more fun bonuses are suffering because I'm having to spend so much on trying to second-guess the rather mundane and skinnerbox unknown quantity that is Arcane Lore.

 

[Doktor Best]

Well its one of the olden games which are meant to last. You are not expected to get a near perfect playthrough the first time.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I'm not requesting perfect and I had no intention of max'ing, just illustrating the difference between the skills and what stands out to me as observable while playing.

 

[Doktor Best]

Nah dont get me wrong, i appreciate your observations. I just wanted to point out the differences between "old" and "new" design, as it is very visible in Jeff Vogels work. If you want a direct comparison just play Avadon right after finishing Avernum.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Nah, next up is Geneforge 1, then Avadon 1

Yeah, I look forward to all the compare and contrast such a strong line of continuation in games will provide. This is the kind of guy that will get a lifetime achievement award one day as compensation for never going mainstream and so never getting any regular annual awards.

Edit: Nim I'd like to actually hear what you think is dumb about this rather innocuous post rather than just see the shit stain upon the post. Looking at your post history it seems you have opinions on Vogel and are not afraid to share them, so I was expecting to see some kind of post relating to the dumb rating. Alas, I have no idea what's dumb about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Nim]

Edits don't give Alerts, just FYI.

The is for the idea that he didn't go mainstream. He tried/tries his hardest to do just that, even if he hasn't been particularly successful at it. Aping Bioware and degenerating his games even further. And wtf do annual awards say about anything ? As long as they are given out by crooked video game journalists/glorified bloggers they're worthless.

 

[Doktor Best]

Avadon was leaning more towards mainstream, but that doesnt make it a "mainstream game", not by a far shot. It still has more hardcore approach than most rpgs released nowadays and if you play on the highest difficulty there are some really extremely difficult encounters. I even had to lower the difficulty to normal i think for the last fight because its so ridicously hard.

Avadon wasnt worse than his other games because it was too mainstream, it was worse because of several other problems (lacking balance and character development being the biggest offender)

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Edits don't give Alerts, just FYI.

The is for the idea that he didn't go mainstream. He tried/tries his hardest to do just that, even if he hasn't been particularly successful at it. Aping Bioware and degenerating his games even further. And wtf do annual awards say about anything ? As long as they are given out by crooked video game journalists/glorified bloggers they're worthless.

Oh right, you're a bit like Roqua, that explains it. I suspect your interpretation of mainstream relates to some obscure and irrational subject matter rather than going mainstream by actually employing people and expanding via investment and marketing etc. My comment about annual awards was a turn-of-phrase and not meant literally, it's an idiom.

 

[Mustawd]

Yah, I wouldn't call a turn-based game with no music or voice over "mainstream". Personally, I just think the guy's creatively bankrupt, and he has to resort to aping other ideas in order to make a new game.

In terms of balance, I dunno. Avernum wasn't incredibly balanced either. Archers/Rangers are a shit combat class, but I take them just because I want to.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Yeah, from about halfway I converted my Rogue from an archer to a fighter and never looked back. Having the archery as an emergency back-up has proved useful so far once in one of the epic end-battles.

 

[Modron]

I don't know if I would call him creatively bankrupt, Exile/Avernum 3 is undeniably great and has some pretty well implemented ideas like cities getting destroyed the longer you take. I don't know if trying to go mainstream is the issue really more like he's made the choice to not produce anymore novel game settings and has gone the way of least resistance, resigning himself to the assembly line of formulaic sequels. At one point it looked like he was going to produce quite a few different settings when all he had was 4 exile games, nethergate, and the first geneforge then 4 sequels of Geneforge, exile remakes plus 2 more games, and a third remake of the exiles he kind of lost momentum.

Hey but who knows maybe the third Avadon will be a marked improvement on the first 2, it's only 6 weeks away at this point.

 

[Mustawd]

I don't know if I would call him creatively bankrupt, Exile/Avernum 3 is undeniably great and has some pretty well implemented ideas like cities getting destroyed the longer you take.

All those games were made back when he was younger. I'm saying he is plain out of great ideas and has focused on making remakes of his old games. Which, TBH, I'm 100% for. But I think he tried one last time with Avadon and it just showed him that there's nothing left in the tank. He's indicated that himself.

For example, there was a blog post of his (in 2015 iirc), where he basically said something to the effect of, "I used to have a lot of crazy ideas when I first made these games, and I have to be careful to stay true to them even if it's considered bad game design today. In Avernum, there is this one spell that's completely OP. It's basically a win button once you get it. If I were making the game now I'd totally cut it for the sake of balance. But people loved it. It was wacky and over powered and fun. So I left it in"

Can't remember if it was Avernum or Geneforge, but you get the idea.

more like he's made the choice to not produce anymore novel game settings and has gone the way of least resistance, resigning himself to the assembly line of formulaic sequels.

That's what I was trying to say in my earlier post and in the above.