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FirstAidKite posted:Since I haven't played them, can you tell me how these changes that were made were for the worse? Test of the Mind in Exile 2 is a puzzle dungeon. There's a number of riddles, word games, number sequence puzzles (e.g. what comes next after 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, ...), and button/lever puzzles where you have to find the right combination that will remove all the barriers on the path. Test of the Mind in Avernum 2 was renamed to Test of Patience, and is a block-pushing dungeon. Not even a good one. Golem Factory (sorry, Tower of Shifting Floors) in Exile 3 is a mad hell of constantly-spawning golems and conveyor belts. It's the kind of place you can't really methodically explore because you're constantly in combat mode and trying to find a path to the upper levels (which are a bit more sedate). Avernum 2 replaced it with a fairly traditional dungeon (i.e. amenable to methodically clearing your way through), with a laser-and-mirror puzzle mechanic. To some extent this is Vogel making his games more accessible. I can understand not wanting to have a section where you have to know English well enough to understand moderately subtle wordplay, for example. And the Golem Factory was unusually hard and, unlike the explicitly optional bonus dungeons, not realistically not something that most players would consider skipping. But the fact is that the replacements Vogel created for these dungeons just weren't anywhere near as much fun.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:23
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| # ? May 20, 2024 16:12 |
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Good article from Jeff. http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2017/10/avernum-3-remasters-and-joy-of-owning.html
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Oct 11, 2017 20:28
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Thanks for all the input regarding Exile 1 & Avernum 1 (2000). Going to roll with Exile 1 until I can't stand it, I have no problems with the geneforge engine/graphics of Avernum 1 (2000). Both games have built-in save-game editors for when you really hosed up, and even the official game FAQs state "use the save-game editors" so..... TooMuchAbstraction posted:It's been years since I played them. There's two things I remember. First, all attack spells are either single-target, or work like the "Arrows" spells in the Exile series, i.e. they hit a set number of individually-chosen targets. There's no AoE effects. Second, there are hidden skills that you can find that are substantially better than the skills you can normally train in. Like, there's a melee skill that gives you a substantial boost to all damage against humanoid targets, a magic skill that just makes all your spells vastly better, etc. IIRC, once you gain one rank in these skills from finding them, you can train them normally, so there's an incentive to hoard skillpoints. Or, if you didn't know about the secret skills thing and you care about optimized builds, you'll be pissed that you "wasted" skillpoints.. the above quoted post is both really helpful & hilarious at the same time. BTW Avernum 1: Escape from the Pit appears to have ditched the save-game editor.
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Oct 11, 2017 20:42
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:BTW Avernum 1: Escape from the Pit appears to have ditched the save-game editor. There's a builtin trainer, but there's a multi-step process to enable it. I forget exactly how it works, but it's absolutely possible to just jack your characters up to god-tier from the start of the game, if you want.
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Oct 11, 2017 21:05
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I'm deep into Exile 1 right now, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'm honestly not bothered by the archaic interface, but there are some "design decisions", for lack of a better term, that I don't care for. My biggest bitch is how characters don't level up at the same speed, and I have had to go to some bother to keep my guys close to each other because, were I to do everything normally, my two tanks would be far ahead of everyone else. I've never had any problem with any of the remakes apart from what I consider the Big Bad Sin: reducing the party size. I think that it was much more fun with six. Had he reduced the party size from six to five that would have been less jarring, but going down to four really restricts one's ability to make interesting character builds.
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Oct 11, 2017 22:38
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Remind me, in Exile 1, could you actually like...see your gear stats? For some reason I remember not being able to know what my armor and weapons and poo poo actually DID without going into the character editor. Also my biggest memories of Exile 1 aren't even any of the like, big end set pieces. They're the Honeycomb and the Spiral Cave. Especially the Spiral Cave.
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Oct 12, 2017 10:16
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ProfessorCirno posted:Remind me, in Exile 1, could you actually like...see your gear stats? For some reason I remember not being able to know what my armor and weapons and poo poo actually DID without going into the character editor. I'm pretty sure you're right and Exile 1 never actually had player-visible numbers on gear anywhere, even once it was identified. You could generally guess within a weapon type (Greatswords hit harder than Broadswords which hit harder than Rapiers which hit harder than Knives), but if you wanted to know how a broadsword compared to a flail or whether a steel rapier was an upgrade over a bronze broadsword, that information was nowhere to be found until later games.
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Oct 12, 2017 10:32
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You might try checking your characters' stat sheets. I know in 2 and 3 they show weapon damage, total armor, and encumbrance. It's possible they do in 1 as well, in which case you can infer the most basic stats of items by comparing before/after.
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Oct 12, 2017 14:12
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You can see some of it if you go to the sheet of a character that possesses a certain item and click on "More Info". It will at least tell you the damage and bonus and so on. For example, my rogue-like guy has a Steel Sabre that is 9 damage with a 3 bonus.
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Oct 12, 2017 16:08
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JustJeff88 posted:I'm deep into Exile 1 right now, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'm honestly not bothered by the archaic interface, but there are some "design decisions", for lack of a better term, that I don't care for. My biggest bitch is how characters don't level up at the same speed, and I have had to go to some bother to keep my guys close to each other because, were I to do everything normally, my two tanks would be far ahead of everyone else. The drop to 4 characters still bugs me as I usually try to make characters with a wider skillset and in the Avernum games it seems like you really need to have characters specialize or else they never get to their really solid skills.
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Oct 14, 2017 01:22
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Parts Kit posted:Yeah the level difference is pretty normal from my experience. Usually I found by mid game the first fighter was about 10 levels ahead of the other two and the and pure mage was significantly ahead of the other two casters (with any pure priests lagging badly in levels until I get firestrike). That happens because the character that scores the kill gets the lion-share of XP from it and everyone else gets a little. All of my characters are currently exactly level 30, but I've gone out of my way to keep everyone paced with each other. Exile does a good job at making a lot of builds useful, but at the same time any character that isn't a killing machine will end up lagging behind, which is why support characters and buffers/healers have problems. Going down to four characters, sadly, basically gets rid of creative builds because you MUST have a tank and you MUST have a wizard and you MUST have a priest, with your only real flexibility being your 4th character. To be fair, I do have a few hybrid-type characters that are doing well. I have a blade tank and a polearm tank that are straight melee builds, a level 7 wizard with no weapon skills and a level 7/7 wizard/priest (spell level, not character level), but I made a traditional D&D priest with medium Int and mid-level fighting skills who uses Smite the Giant-Slaying hammer, and she does well. I also made a rogueish type with Archery, but archery is so piss weak and annoying in Exile 1 that I moved him towards dual-wielding swords, so he now just has 9 levels in Archery that are doing nothing for him.
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Oct 14, 2017 03:08
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In the Exile games archery never gets all that hot so I wouldn't worry about it in the future. Those points can be better served making another person who can toss a Fireball or Heal/Cure All type spell when needed, or for warrior types being dumped into Polearms with a nice halberd. The skill seems a good bit better in the Avernum games though.
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Oct 14, 2017 03:58
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Archery is finally kind of sort of fixed in Blades of Exile, where you can find slingshots that don't use ammo. So your characters can have a free (resourceless) ranged attack to use when they have nothing better to do.
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Oct 14, 2017 04:10
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Archery was nuts in Exile 3. Crossbows were basically handcannons and later on when demons and undead became more frequent blessed bolts would rip them a new rear end in a top hat from a safe distance. If you went after the Fury Crossbow you were the terminator. If you learned capture soul & simulacrum there's a friendly Empire Archer in the slime pits for you to copy, and summoning that guy will help you trivialize all the content up to the troglodytes and hill giants.
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Oct 14, 2017 05:41
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Parts Kit posted:In the Exile games archery never gets all that hot so I wouldn't worry about it in the future. Those points can be better served making another person who can toss a Fireball or Heal/Cure All type spell when needed, or for warrior types being dumped into Polearms with a nice halberd. Archery still doesn't do quite as much damage *per attack* as a polearm or sword, but the overall damage ends up being similar or better.
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Oct 14, 2017 15:19
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For my LP of Avernum: Escape from the Pit I built one of the characters as an archer, and invested heavily in DEX and the Gymnastics skill. As an unexpected benefit, he was able to dodge drat near anything (notable exception: elemental melee attacks, like the cold touch from Banshees), so he made a superior tank to the planned tank character, who did a more traditional sword+board build with maxed-out Hardiness. When the rest of the party died in an assault on a slith fortress, he was able to just walk out past over a dozen attacking sliths, including spellcasters, taking nearly no damage in the process. I expected him to eventually start getting hit more often, but it never really ended up happening; even in the late game he was dodging basically everything. When he did get hit though, he took a lot of damage. His per-hit damage was maybe half that of the swordsman, but between not having to move, being nearly impossible to hurt, and getting the first turn in every fight, he was a credit to the party. He also served as statistical proof that the game stacks the deck regarding the "chance to use half the normal AP" abilities. Either I got ridiculously, implausibly unlucky, or between them, Haste and Sniper can kick in at most once per turn. Which means, functionally, that it's impossible to get more than 2 attacks per turn without using Adrenaline Rush or speed potions.
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Oct 14, 2017 17:17
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And Tyler Too! posted:Archery was nuts in Exile 3. Crossbows were basically handcannons and later on when demons and undead became more frequent blessed bolts would rip them a new rear end in a top hat from a safe distance. If you went after the Fury Crossbow you were the terminator. If you learned capture soul & simulacrum there's a friendly Empire Archer in the slime pits for you to copy, and summoning that guy will help you trivialize all the content up to the troglodytes and hill giants. Since Capture Soul isn't a hostile action you can save scum and get a copy of Sloan the Empire Archer in Krizan, and later you can do the same with the Dervish in Lorelei for extra poo poo stomping.
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Oct 17, 2017 02:26
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And Tyler Too! posted:Archery was nuts in Exile 3. Crossbows were basically handcannons and later on when demons and undead became more frequent blessed bolts would rip them a new rear end in a top hat from a safe distance. If you went after the Fury Crossbow you were the terminator. If you learned capture soul & simulacrum there's a friendly Empire Archer in the slime pits for you to copy, and summoning that guy will help you trivialize all the content up to the troglodytes and hill giants. Yeah this used to be my pro strat
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Oct 17, 2017 03:23
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I'm playing through geneforge 2 at the moment. I'm at the point where I can end the game whenever I want since I've met with both Zakary and Barzahl. Is there a specific point where it'll become really obvious that I've hit an end point and should go return to the council, like I'll get some message more or less telling me "yeah you know what you can probably go back to the council now." Also, which geneforge game is considered the bad one? Why's that?
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Oct 17, 2017 04:09
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3. Only two factions, and it's a lot more linear in terms of where you can explore. I actually really liked it, especially since it focuses a bit more on characterization than the previous games, but it's definitely a letdown if you're expecting something like 2 or 1.
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Oct 17, 2017 04:26
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The aforementioned reasons and there's a really annoying kinda overmap deal where it's a bunch of islands with boat travel but it's implemented so between boat trips you have to waste a lot of time going into a sector and walking from one side to the other to get from dock to dock. It's also the last one on the same generation of engine as 1 and 2 so 4 and 5 seem like huge steps up in comparison, in addition to restoring the more complex factional politics. Definitely just power through if you want to finish the series cause it'll be a like a decade before the remakes get done, just be forewarned.
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Oct 17, 2017 04:30
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I wasn't aware he was even going to remake the series. Huh. No matter. Gonna gently caress some poo poo up though for these anti-shaper people though. Fuckin Takers and Barzites fuckin it up for everybody.
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Oct 17, 2017 04:42
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FirstAidKite posted:I wasn't aware he was even going to remake the series. Huh. Vogel is all about milking his IP for every last dollar. If his games were remotely console-friendly, you can bet he'd've released them on everything from the XBox (or whichever was the first console to have a digital distribution system) onwards, just to eke out that little bit of extra market. Plus the remakes are how he buys the time needed to build the new IP; they're comparatively easier to make. Write an importer from your old scenario data, punch up the writing a bit, add a new zone or two, and tweak the player stats / combat engine and you're basically there.
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Oct 17, 2017 05:12
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Vogel is all about milking his IP for every last dollar. Do you blame him? :P
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Oct 17, 2017 05:16
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FirstAidKite posted:I'm playing through geneforge 2 at the moment. I'm at the point where I can end the game whenever I want since I've met with both Zakary and Barzahl. Is there a specific point where it'll become really obvious that I've hit an end point and should go return to the council, like I'll get some message more or less telling me "yeah you know what you can probably go back to the council now." If you join a faction and complete their questline, eventually they'll straight-up tell you to go to the Shaper Council, yeah. There are also some unaligned ending variations, in which case you'll have to use your own judgement on when you've done everything you can and should hoof it outta there.
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Oct 17, 2017 06:43
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Also: BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH. That fuckin noise over and over again goddamn
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Oct 17, 2017 06:48
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Thuryl posted:If you join a faction and complete their questline, eventually they'll straight-up tell you to go to the Shaper Council, yeah. There are also some unaligned ending variations, in which case you'll have to use your own judgement on when you've done everything you can and should hoof it outta there. Or you can just ask Shaper McNulty in the Loyalist Encampment, he suggests a win condition, too.
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Oct 17, 2017 07:35
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FirstAidKite posted:Do you blame him? :P
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Oct 17, 2017 11:17
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FirstAidKite posted:Do you blame him? :P I think he's a genius from the business standpoint. Also, younger people get to experience fun things from my childhood in an accessible manner. Everyone wins!
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Oct 17, 2017 17:57
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Why did he named it Spiderweb Software, anyway?
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Oct 17, 2017 18:02
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Why did he named it Spiderweb Software, anyway? IIRC he has (or had) a pet tarantula. Why do you think the GIFTS exist?
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Oct 17, 2017 18:06
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:IIRC he has (or had) a pet tarantula. Why do you think the GIFTS exist? 
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Oct 17, 2017 18:13
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I'm glad there aren't GIFTS in Geneforge.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:35
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:I'm glad there aren't GIFTS in Geneforge. Granted that the 'F' is a bit variable, but how many limbs did you think serviles have?
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Oct 17, 2017 18:43
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Granted that the 'F' is a bit variable, but how many limbs did you think serviles have? Don't plant these horrible ideas in my head. 
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Oct 17, 2017 18:47
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I'm secretly a terror vlish in a human-shaped skin sac.
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Oct 17, 2017 19:05
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 Nooooo! Vlish really do rule the world!
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Oct 17, 2017 19:06
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I hope he puts the GIFTS in the Geneforge remakes as a new faction
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Oct 17, 2017 19:38
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GodFish posted:I hope he puts the GIFTS in the Geneforge remakes as a new faction They'll be the first to burn.
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Oct 17, 2017 19:39
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| # ? May 20, 2024 16:12 |
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:They'll be the first to burn. No spoilers, but go read the final update of berryjon's Exile 3 LP in the archives.
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Oct 17, 2017 20:28
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