Avadon is here for windows (kinda)

[korenzel]

Im curious as well if it gets better after the demo. Im not interested after playing the demo at this point. I despise regenerating health. Game seems too easy.

It appears that even with nice graphics upgrade its a far inferior game from the avernums and geneforge games.

It doesn't get much better.

I play the game on Hard, and while the majority of the fights are very easy (especially if you have a blademaster in your group as they're extremely hard to kill), some encounters were rather challenging and actually made me reload or use some consumable. These fights were exclusively found during side quests or in one case random map exploration, the actual story battles are very manageable even on the first try. Cooldowns now replace the mana bar and I find they limit possible tactics. They're all rather high (usually 10 turns) so you can't keep a designated healer, can't go all out and spam your biggest spells. Not that you'd need to, but it would be nice to have more options without having to burn through a limited supply of potions.

Character customization isn't the game's strong point, as each class has two, maybe three viable paths to take. The middle branch is pretty much mandatory as it contains very useful passive abilities, and is required if you want the high tier spells. That leaves you with either the left branch (direct damage) or the right one (support).

So far the game's structure is disappointing. You can't complete an area and then move on, you need to revisit previously explored locations often. The first quest sends you to the desert, in which you deal with a minor problem and suspect there might be a bigger one, but aren't allowed to investigate further. Second quest sends you in the forest, in which you deal with another minor problem, but again are forbidden from looking into it too much. Third quest sends you back to the desert, in which a new dungeon unlocks, and I have no doubt I'll be back in the forest to deal with unfinished business when the game deems I have to.

Each time you revisit an area as the story demands, new sidequests are unlocked from the same people who gave sidequests before, but who wouldn't give you their next assignment for some dubious reason (be it "we need to gather money" or "you're not experienced enough"). It breaks quest chains completely and prevents you from you attempting some fights at low levels. It also makes revisits tedious as you need to crawl all over previously explored maps to check if the quest givers finally find you worthy. It isn't helped by the character's rather slow walk speed, the price that had to be paid in exchange of some half assed walking animations.

The story so far hasn't been very engaging. Vogel tries very hard at making you feel Avadon is bad but so far has failed completely, as the alternative you're shown is much worse. Your character lacks crucial dialogue choices when handling some apparently plot critical quests. Companions are uninteresting, and they seemingly each have their own sidequest in which you can choose to make them loyal and disobey Avadon, or hold your principles and make them unhappy. Will these choices have consequences ? I have no idea.

Exploration is reduced drastically, most areas contain enough space for the main quest and maybe one or two sidequests, along with some random groups of easy monsters. I have found only one area that isn't yet related to the main plot or loyalty mission. Dungeons are mostly one way corridors in which you fight off monsters and/or scripted events until you reach the boss, with the occasional side room to handle secondary assignments.

 

[Waterd103]

Some of his comments on Voguel's blog are sad and obviously untrue. Like games cant and should be exciting from the start or epic.
Or that they should not be challenging from the start? I just saw Praise from KOTC about being challenging from the start.

There are many comments about this that make me sad. Imo Avernum and Geneforge games are pretty mediocre designs. Im surprised most people here like them. So I wouldnt expect much from this game.

Or comments like "you cant criticize a game if you didnt play it for a long time" Its also terrible wrong. A player should not play for 20 hours a game before having fun, if the player isnt having fun in the first 15 minutes/30 minutes top, there is a problem in the game imo.

 

[Waterd103]

Im playing the game now and The first thing that annoys me to no end, and I dont know why anybody didnt brought up is how you have to be pressing G every few meters to see if there is anything of interest, or worse check the items to make sure they are of no interest. It seems a gigantic uninteresting waste of time.
Im missing some button or command so I dont have to waste my time pressing G and checking every so steps to see if there is anything of interest?

 

[flushfire]

no, that's how it really is. it's always been like that in most recent spiderweb games, less in some more in others. although with the revamped graphics in avadon it got a lot worse.

It also makes revisits tedious as you need to crawl all over previously explored maps to check if the quest givers finally find you worthy.

this is also one of my biggest gripes with the game. avernum's job board could have solved this problem easily, i don't know why it wasn't put in.

there are also some bioware-ish moments where you're presented with seemingly meaningful choices but then something totally out of your control happens that result in the same outcome. extremely annoying, esp since the last game i played is DA2.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

there are also some bioware-ish moments where you're presented with seemingly meaningful choices but then something totally out of your control happens that result in the same outcome. extremely annoying, esp since the last game i played is DA2.

So, he basically got lazy.

 

[SCO]

Yes, i think geneforge 5 broke him.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yes, i think geneforge 5 broke him.

I think it was playing Bioware games which did it. He may have come to conclusion that he doesn't care if the choices are real or fake so he decided to make a game with lots of fake choices.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

He may have come to conclusion that rpg gamers don't care if the choices are real or fake

this is what happens when a man stops making games he would like

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

He may have come to conclusion that rpg gamers don't care if the choices are real or fake

this is what happens when a man starts making games he would like

Fixed.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

this is what happens when a man starts making games he would like

Fixed.

is he declining his games, or are his games declining him

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Devil's advocate mode on:

Perhaps Vogel ran out of time after writing a new engine/new system? He did release it after the same amount of time he usually took with the Geneforge/Avernum games.

Of course, his rant doesn't back this statement up, unless he doesn't want to admit it.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

To be honest I think it's just that he enjoyed Bioware games made with much less work for branching stuff, so he started imitating them.

Bioware always were, are and will be the bringers of .

 

[curry]

Yes, i think geneforge 5 broke him.

I think it was playing Bioware games which did it. He may have come to conclusion that he doesn't care if the choices are real or fake so he decided to make a game with lots of fake choices.

It was the huge success of dumbed down games that made him want to dumb down his own games too.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yes, i think geneforge 5 broke him.

I think it was playing Bioware games which did it. He may have come to conclusion that he doesn't care if the choices are real or fake so he decided to make a game with lots of fake choices.

It was the huge success of dumbed down games that made him want to dumb down his own games too.

Except that the probably also experienced this huge success himself by enjoying playing them and thus came to conclusion that they have great design ideas. Remember that this guy is a consolefag.

He probably wouldn't risk implementing features that he himself doesn't find enjoyable enough.

 

[Gondolin]

Yes, i think geneforge 5 broke him.

I think it was playing Bioware games which did it. He may have come to conclusion that he doesn't care if the choices are real or fake so he decided to make a game with lots of fake choices.

It was the huge success of dumbed down games that made him want to dumb down his own games too.

Except that the probably also experienced this huge success himself by enjoying playing them and thus came to conclusion that they have great design ideas. Remember that this guy is a consolefag.

He probably wouldn't risk implementing features that he himself doesn't find enjoyable enough.

Since EA apparently ruined BioWare and Vogel is now copying BioWare, I think we can conclude that EA is also responsible for Vogel's latest trip to the dumb side. So, there: EA did it.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yes, i think geneforge 5 broke him.

I think it was playing Bioware games which did it. He may have come to conclusion that he doesn't care if the choices are real or fake so he decided to make a game with lots of fake choices.

It was the huge success of dumbed down games that made him want to dumb down his own games too.

Except that the probably also experienced this huge success himself by enjoying playing them and thus came to conclusion that they have great design ideas. Remember that this guy is a consolefag.

He probably wouldn't risk implementing features that he himself doesn't find enjoyable enough.

Since EA apparently ruined BioWare and Vogel is now copying BioWare, I think we can conclude that EA is also responsible for Vogel's latest trip to the dumb side. So, there: EA did it.

Bioware was never ruined by anyone. Bioware were always the ones doing the ruining.

 

[Gondolin]

I know, dude. It was a joke.

 

[7hm]

It was the huge success of dumbed down games that made him want to dumb down his own games too.

I don't just think it's that.

I think Jeff is making the type of games that Jeff enjoys playing. At one time that was games like Exile. It's not anymore. Now it's games like God of War and the RPG equivalent.

Whatever, it's his company and his games. I don't plan to buy from this round of games from him (I thought geneforge was questionable compared to exile so...). Maybe when he remakes Exile for the third time I'll pick it up.

 

[Waterd103]

Here is a review of Avadon demo: i know that my english is bad and I generally do reviews for a forum where they like my reviews despite my bad english, I just decided to post it here, because all the talking about it.

Avadon is an Isometric RPG, where you talk with people, they send you on quests, and after equipping, you go to do the quest which you solve mostly by fighting.

I played the demo, and here is my review, I don't feel like paying to play the whole game, even with guaranteed return money because the game already bored me. I see no reason to spend more hours getting bored, when I could be getting fun, doing something I enjoy or just winning money.
But I think I have enough information to review the game.

If a Game bores you for hours, there is no justification as to "later is fun" I shouldn't get bored for hours, period. There are many great games that are fun the moment I press start, and I expect no less from games. I expected no less from Avadon, and I was disappointed.

Here is my review of things in game.

Interface:
Avadon has one of the worst interfaces I've seen in an RPG of any kind. The worst of all the things is looting.
There is no indication of where is potential loot, much less where is any significant loot. Things are on the floor or anywhere, and sometimes they seem to appear in the map, sometimes if they do appear, they blend with the rest of the graphics in a way that the actual real way to see if there is anything is just to open the inventory.
If there are activable objects, the only way to know is to move the cursor over it.

As a consequence, you spend a great deal of time opening the inventory to see if there is anything on the floor.

To make things worse the button that works as to open the inventory is not the same to close it.
The button to close it cant be keymapped. So you have to be constantly pressing the Inventory button and ENTER, and to make things less painful remap the whole keyboard around enter.

This is not enough of a pain to loot, but 90% of the items you find are just 100% useless, just to annoy you, you cant even sell for 1g. But sometimes you find great items.

Maps are HUGE, and pretty empty, there is no indication on how far your chars can see when you open the inventory so you have to wild guess.

Consequences? you spend a great deal of the time pressing two buttons, to open or close the inventory , often a few times for each room, and looking through your stuff with the hope of finding anything worthwhile, sometimes you will, sometimes you find sticks. I really cant believe this part of the interface is so bad, but this is just the peek of the iceberg.

In combat, while having a very unintuitive combat mechanic, you have Action points. Chars have 9 AP. you need 1 AP to Attack or do other things. The system is that you can go as much as you want in the negative on Action points, so the ideal thing is to spend 8 actions points and with your last action point do the most expensive thing, since you can go like -8ap with no consequences.
If that isn't unintuitve enough, I would approve if it the interface for that system would be good. But its not. You would expect the system to give some help or indication on how much ap you are consuming to reach X. Or more importantly, the system to automatically stop your guy at 8 points consumed, so you can use your last action point to going into the negative. One would hope. But no, be prepared to be counting in the screen all the time up to 8 ap, just to attack with the last, and this isn't a big square grid or just 3 moves. its 9 with tiny grided squares.

If this weren't bad enough, There is no information on the range of Spells or ranged attacks, so good luck writing it down or wild guessing those ranges. Since we are talking about that, lets talk about the information the game provides you , which is nothing. When you have to choose ability or spell, here is the kind of information you get "if you get this ability, you will be able to do Damage to creatures" . What about telling me the cool down, fatigue points , damage, range, radius, etc etc? or any kind of actually useful information about what the ability do?

not in the manual, not ingame , nowhere there is any help of what things do, you just press buttons and go forward. Which btw , in the maximum difficult, at least in the demo, that's all you need to do, but that's food for later.

The whole system math is already unintuive and more complicated than D&D (like if that were possible), for what gain? The only thing this system does better than D&D is having 4 stats over 6, which seems a nice move.

Items aren't any better, some items have some wild vague information, but for the most part, you will just to try it to know what they do. Sometimes, that's not enough.

About equipping your chars. The game uses a system where items have weight, and your char can carry so much weight. I've seen this system on other games, but its rarely limiting. here the amount chars can carry is very limited. The problem? every time you find new item you have to redistribute the weight of the items between chars, as to maximize the weight/efficiency, and it ends as a boring process. But on the good side i would say it seems somewhat interesting. Of course it would be easier if the items would tell you what chars can use it or not or the requirements. The game only tell you about the requirements if the char doesn't cover them, which is is annoying because in order to check every item requirement you have to move it to the char inventory screen and see if it can use it. Making the aforementioned process more tedious.

The HUD on the main screen is clean and nice, and the minimap and map are helpful, I think that's pretty good, the character icon life bars are amazingly unhelpful tough. You don't see how much hp or vitality your chars have, just have a very useless red lifebar and blue vitalitybar.

Maybe I got spoiled from just playing Knights of the chalice, which has an amazingly good interface despite having no resolution.
But this game do not help you to play the game, the interface is your enemy, looting is the horror, fighting and managing inventory is annoying. It has some good features though. You have a bag where you can put everything you want to sell in there and then press a button to sell it.

But overall a game that gives you no information at all, even very basic one or makes for you a pain to find it, and with controls that are complicated, definitely makes the experience very clunky.


Gameplay:

I don't know what would be the gameplay in the full game, but in the demo , even at max difficulties, you basically can solve fights by left clicking on anything that comes at you, that's it. And it isn't a demo that last 20 minutes, it last a couple of hours. And even on max difficulty, just doing left click on things is enough to solve the problems.

So is there any other kind of problem that isn't fight? no. Dialog options seem to have no relevance. Nor there is any puzzle, all there is as a challenge are fights, where you just left click and move forward.

I've seen comments from the game designer that demos are not supposed to be fun or that the start of the game will be always be boring. But all this its only true for Avadon. Shattered lands, icewind dale 2, Knights of the chalice, all games that from the start have you on your knees. I've seen anything but prise about Kotc demo, and Shattered lands and icewind dale 2 first hour was anything but unfun or unchallenging. Yes, those statement are obviously untrue, unless you talk about avadon. The demo is boring, there is no gameplay whatsoever, there is no challenge in any way or form, and you cant even affect the story because dialog seem to have no effect whatsoever.

If there is any kind of gameplay in the full game, I cant say a game is good if to have fun you have to spend hours before it, with no fun. There are many games that will get you entertained the moment you started, Why anyone would play avadon over them, is beyond me.

Atmosphere:
i liked the graphics, The animations are poor. But in general the visual part is ok. The story seems interesting so far, and its probably the strongest point so far, I liked the idea, and the dialogs. Don't misinterpret me, its not amazing in the demo, but its not bad. The only thing that kept me going is that I was somewhat interested in what's next. Despite some fights were RATS.
I don't get, did anyone ever said "fighting rats is amazing?" why any RPG have rats from the start? This is subjective of course. But some RPGs you start with amazing fights, those that you start with rats, are inferior by default IMHO.

Atmosphere: 6/10
Interface: 3/10
Gameplay: 3/10
Overall: 3/10

 

[Crooked Bee]

Avadon has one of the worst interfaces I've seen in an RPG of any kind.

You probably haven't played Whale's Voyage. :/

Overall: 3/10

Agreed.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

 

[korenzel]

I'm not one to defend Avadon, read my previous complains about the game to be sure of that. However, some of your points have no grounds.

There is no indication of where is potential loot, much less where is any significant loot. Things are on the floor or anywhere, and sometimes they seem to appear in the map, sometimes if they do appear, they blend with the rest of the graphics in a way that the actual real way to see if there is anything is just to open the inventory.

I was able to identify items on the ground just fine, but it's probably because I'm used to Vogel games and the graphics are somewhat similar. Still, once you know what each item looks like you don't need to press "I" every single square to check if items are here.

If there are activable objects, the only way to know is to move the cursor over it.

They are all easily identified by their looks. Chests, cabinets, doors, levers, corpses...

This is not enough of a pain to loot, but 90% of the items you find are just 100% useless, just to annoy you, you cant even sell for 1g. But sometimes you find great items.

Good items on the ground are very rare. You only get good loot from (locked) containers and from items bosses drop.

In combat, while having a very unintuitive combat mechanic, you have Action points. Chars have 9 AP. you need 1 AP to Attack or do other things. The system is that you can go as much as you want in the negative on Action points, so the ideal thing is to spend 8 actions points and with your last action point do the most expensive thing, since you can go like -8ap with no consequences.
If that isn't unintuitve enough, I would approve if it the interface for that system would be good. But its not. You would expect the system to give some help or indication on how much ap you are consuming to reach X. Or more importantly, the system to automatically stop your guy at 8 points consumed, so you can use your last action point to going into the negative. One would hope. But no, be prepared to be counting in the screen all the time up to 8 ap, just to attack with the last, and this isn't a big square grid or just 3 moves. its 9 with tiny grided squares.

Just move a couple squares at a time and save yourself some headache calculating. Characters only have 8 AP, and a primary action costs 9. You always go in the negative.

If this weren't bad enough, There is no information on the range of Spells or ranged attacks, so good luck writing it down or wild guessing those ranges. Since we are talking about that, lets talk about the information the game provides you , which is nothing. When you have to choose ability or spell, here is the kind of information you get "if you get this ability, you will be able to do Damage to creatures" . What about telling me the cool down, fatigue points , damage, range, radius, etc etc? or any kind of actually useful information about what the ability do?

Check your cursor when you target someone with a ranged attack. Is it barred ? Then you're out of range. Check your ability menu to see all the details of unlockable abilities, along with damage ranges, fatigue costs, cooldown and detailed spell description.

Items aren't any better, some items have some wild vague information, but for the most part, you will just to try it to know what they do. Sometimes, that's not enough.

Heal for 20-60 or +5% chance to avoid attacks isn't descriptive enough? Few items cast spells or induce specific buff or ailment, just use them once and you'll know what they do.

About equipping your chars. The game uses a system where items have weight, and your char can carry so much weight. I've seen this system on other games, but its rarely limiting. here the amount chars can carry is very limited. The problem? every time you find new item you have to redistribute the weight of the items between chars, as to maximize the weight/efficiency, and it ends as a boring process. But on the good side i would say it seems somewhat interesting. Of course it would be easier if the items would tell you what chars can use it or not or the requirements. The game only tell you about the requirements if the char doesn't cover them, which is is annoying because in order to check every item requirement you have to move it to the char inventory screen and see if it can use it. Making the aforementioned process more tedious.

Requirements are pretty obvious: no plate mail for mage types and no robes for warrior types... Who would have thought ? I haven't been bothered by encumbrance limits at all, and I never raised the strength stat.

The HUD on the main screen is clean and nice, and the minimap and map are helpful, I think that's pretty good, the character icon life bars are amazingly unhelpful tough. You don't see how much hp or vitality your chars have, just have a very useless red lifebar and blue vitalitybar.

Mouse over the bars and you get all the details you need.

I don't know what would be the gameplay in the full game, but in the demo , even at max difficulties, you basically can solve fights by left clicking on anything that comes at you, that's it. And it isn't a demo that last 20 minutes, it last a couple of hours. And even on max difficulty, just doing left click on things is enough to solve the problems.

Some fights get rather difficult on higher difficulties, especially when you start meeting casters as they get free turns and can annihilate mage characters in a single cast.

 

[Waterd103]

I was able to identify items on the ground just fine, but it's probably because I'm used to Vogel games and the graphics are somewhat similar. Still, once you know what each item looks like you don't need to press "I" every single square to check if items are here.

I just opened the game once again, and play over a few sections, and 100% sure that if I show several screenshots at different times with different items on the floor, 90% of the population will be unable to say which items will appear in the inventory once I Open it. Maybe I should take screenshots and post them and see if people guess right, what do you say?

They are all easily identified by their looks. Chests, cabinets, doors, levers, corpses...

you are just giving an incomplete list, and of course there isnt any complete list in the manual. There are many items that are not obvious, and some that I think they should be obvious, but they are not selectable.
I really dont know what you mean with "they are identifiable by their looks" Is there any "look" that is defined as activable? in the manual?
The fact is the only way to know what items are identifiable and which not are only to be learned by moving the mouse over them.
There is no look of "usable items". You just proceed to say they are identifiable that way, and then proceed to give an incomplete list of objects that are not stated in the manual or anywhere. And who knows how long the actual list is.
There is a reason why games like Icewind dale have a button to reveal to the players all activable objects on the screen.
So players dont have to be waving their mouse over objects just to see if they may do something.

Good items on the ground are very rare. You only get good loot from (locked) containers and from items bosses drop.

In the demo i found a lot of potions that were really well worth it, by this procedure that im sure wouldn't be able to find in any other way.
The fact that Good tiems are very rare (which is not my experience) would make things even more terrible, it would mean that you would reward the player almost NEVER for doing something boring, but sitll do SOMETIMES, that is one of the worst things on my list of bad things you can do in a game.

Just move a couple squares at a time and save yourself some headache calculating. Characters only have 8 AP, and a primary action costs 9. You always go in the negative.

I dont understand what you are suggesting here "just move a couple of squares".
I will have to do a wild guess, and i think you mean just move less than optimal so you dont have to make a problem. When you are suggesting, "do not play optimal" to solve a problem, that is not a solution to a problem and acknowledges the problem.
Its like if in street fighter someone complained than Zangief piledriver is too hard to do and one answers "well , do not use piledriver" . Or someone complains its annoying to move 64 Zerlings in starcraft and the answer would be "then dont build zerlings"
When the answer is "do not play optimal, because the interface makes annoying for you to play optimal"
That is unless you say, playing optimal is a waste of time because there is no challenge in first place, which based on the time I played the game, I would agreed.
But then, If you dont want the player to try to play optimal, why make a complex system, just make that creatures die when you left click on them, and remove all the stats.

Check your cursor when you target someone with a ranged attack. Is it barred ? Then you're out of range. Check your ability menu to see all the details of unlockable abilities, along with damage ranges, fatigue costs, cooldown and detailed spell description.

Yes, now i know im out of range, but the question i want to know, and its important there is, then how close i have to be , to be in range?
If you to abilities and see the related ability (which shouldnt be neccesary) you get more data, definitely not the data i wanted, or needed , or all the data. Much less how much those stats improve when you put more points on them

Heal for 20-60 or +5% chance to avoid attacks isn't descriptive enough? Few items cast spells or induce specific buff or ailment, just use them once and you'll know what they do.

Suggesting I should try items to see what they do, AS I already said you can, seems wrong, specially because you can only get partially information unless you test it. I expect a description on the item, not me toying around to learn ranges, damage, and stuff like that.
Potion says"gives X effect" how im supposed to know what that effect is? Yes in case of heal or some items is fine, in most? its not.

Requirements are pretty obvious: no plate mail for mage types and no robes for warrior types... Who would have thought ? I haven't been bothered by encumbrance limits at all, and I never raised the strength stat.

Yes who would have thought , When its possible in D&D the most common, RPG rule set. And its possible in may RPGs.
so its clearly not obvious. And there are many more items that werent obvious to me, like why the warrior cant use the throwing thing?
Or I could assume that shadow walkers cant use shields, but they can!
Those are not obvious things
The strength thing cant be defended by "I didnt even cared about it". You didnt care, its not a defense for it. Because other people will care.

Mouse over the bars and you get all the details you need.

I know, and that was my complain. how to get the useful information you have to hover the mouse over there, instead of being displayed.
It seems the designer realized player players would like to know how much HP they have, so they did put bars, but they are useless.

Fights get rather difficult on higher difficulties, especially when you start meeting casters as they get free turns and can annihilate mage characters in a single cast

Maybe there is some difficulty in the full game, that do not justify to have 3 hours(or more) with no challenge or game play whatsoever. Now its hard for me to believe you really found challenge, as it seemed , based on your previous comments, that playing optimal is not necessary, as one have to move chars "some squares' instead of maximizing movement efficiency.

 

[korenzel]

I just opened the game once again, and play over a few sections, and 100% sure that if I show several screenshots at different times with different items on the floor, 90% of the population will be unable to say which items will appear in the inventory once I Open it. Maybe I should take screenshots and post them and see if people guess right, what do you say?

Sure, go ahead.

I really dont know what you mean with "they are identifiable by their looks" Is there any "look" that is defined as activable? in the manual?
The fact is the only way to know what items are identifiable and which not are only to be learned by moving the mouse over them.

Well, give me an example of an activable item you couldn't identify from the start and I'll be proven wrong.

There is a reason why games like Icewind dale have a button to reveal to the players all activable objects on the screen.
So players dont have to be waving their mouse over objects just to see if they may do something.

Baldur's Gate doesn't have this feature and there hasn't been that much complaining about it.

In the demo i found a lot of potions that were really well worth it, by this procedure that im sure wouldn't be able to find in any other way.
The fact that Good tiems are very rare (which is not my experience) would make things even more terrible, it would mean that you would reward the player almost NEVER for doing something boring, but sitll do SOMETIMES, that is one of the worst things on my list of bad things you can do in a game.

Potions are not rare in the game, far from it. I think they're also one of the easiest items to spot. To clarify my previous statement, I don't think I've found *any* good equipment from the ground apart from looting boss corpses. There's a lot of random iron and steel stuff, but that goes directly in the junk bag.

I dont understand what you are suggesting here "just move a couple of squares".

Just move a couple squares at a time and you'll be sure to have your 1 AP left to perform an ability or attack without having to calculate the cost of an intricate path.

Yes, now i know im out of range, but the question i want to know, and its important there is, then how close i have to be , to be in range?

Move one step toward your target and check again ? Or count the steps, once you're figured out the range after using the ability or attack once. Just don't let the AI get in range on its own as it will usually get too close and expose your squishies to attacks.

If you to abilities and see the related ability (which shouldnt be neccesary) you get more data, definitely not the data i wanted, or needed , or all the data. Much less how much those stats improve when you put more points on them

I agree that the skill menu is imprecise and doesn't explain well what each point does for certain skills. It's also unclear as to what bonus you get. For instance, the "At lvl 7, gain 10% chance to regenerate per point" means you get 10% chance to regenerate for each point above 7 in the skill.

Suggesting I should try items to see what they do, AS I already said you can, seems wrong, specially because you can only get partially information unless you test it. I expect a description on the item, not me toying around to learn ranges, damage, and stuff like that.
Potion says"gives X effect" how im supposed to know what that effect is? Yes in case of heal or some items is fine, in most? its not.

There's maybe 5 or 6 different buffs and the same numbers or ailments. Testing each one once isn't such an ordeal and takes five seconds for each (mouse over the buff icon for a detailed description). I'm used to roguelikes and use-IDing things though, so your frustration is understandable.

The strength thing cant be defended by "I didnt even cared about it". You didnt care, its not a defense for it. Because other people will care.

I'm just surprised that was an issue for you. When exactly did this problem crop up ? My blademaster always had enough strength to equip the best items I got, and as I said I never put any point in the related stat. Mages can't wear the heaviest equipment anyway.

Maybe there is some difficulty in the full game, that do not justify to have 3 hours(or more) with no challenge or game play whatsoever. Now its hard for me to believe you really found challenge, as it seemed , based on your previous comments, that playing optimal is not necessary, as one have to move chars "some squares' instead of maximizing movement efficiency.

I don't consider a game challenging if and only if it has to be played perfectly to achieve success. Avadon's challenge is more in managing cooldown and using the right abilities at the right moment than it is about good placement, once you're in a good position there's hardly any reason to move.

 

[Waterd103]

Well, give me an example of an activable item you couldn't identify from the start and I'll be proven wrong.

There are this mountain of pillows to that I luckily realize that i could search them so after I saw one I just did backtrack to look for any mountain of pillows i may missed, same with piles of straws.

Baldur's Gate doesn't have this feature and there hasn't been that much complaining about it.

I couldnt say way as I couldnt play more than 20 minutes of baldur gate before quitting it.

Potions are not rare in the game, far from it. I think they're also one of the easiest items to spot. To clarify my previous statement, I don't think I've found *any* good equipment from the ground apart from looting boss corpses. There's a lot of random iron and steel stuff, but that goes directly in the junk bag.

Ok, then im confused, because of what you consider good equipment, I consider potions something good, and worth to find, you are saying its not?

Just move a couple squares at a time and you'll be sure to have your 1 AP left to perform an ability or attack without having to calculate the cost of an intricate path.

Moving 2, 2, 2, 1 step, isnt better than moving 7 steps at a time, I really dont understand your point.

Move one step toward your target and check again ? Or count the steps, once you're figured out the range after using the ability or attack once. Just don't let the AI get in range on its own as it will usually get too close and expose your squishies to attacks.

Yes, instead of playing the game I have to spend minutes or even whole combats, as to learn the range of the weapon im carrying and, and then try for different weapons. I dont understand why I have to be doing experimental testing instead of playing the game, when the number should be int the instructions , on the object or somewhere.

Thats like suggestions that weapons in D&D dont say the dice they use, instead we get random hidden numbers and we have to do tests to figure out what dice the role.

There's maybe 5 or 6 different buffs and the same numbers or ailments. Testing each one once isn't such an ordeal and takes five seconds for each (mouse over the buff icon for a detailed description). I'm used to roguelikes and use-IDing things though, so your frustration is understandable.

So I should waste a potion as to see what they do, I agree this may not be a problem since the game is not challenging at all as far as i know, wasting potions is not a problem, maybe i didnt consider that.
yes rougelikes in general have beyond terrible, unhelpful interfaces btw.

I'm just surprised that was an issue for you. When exactly did this problem crop up ? My blademaster always had enough strength to equip the best items I got, and as I said I never put any point in the related stat. Mages can't wear the heaviest equipment anyway.

Even in the demo it was a problem to me, no, my blade master couldnt equip everything I got, nor any other char.