Avadon out (on Mac)

[sgc_meltdown]

Unlike you elitist pricks I will refrain from passing judgment until I torrent the full version of the game.

 

[Faustian Covenant]

Unlike you elitist pricks I will refrain from passing judgment until I torrent the full version of the game.

I'm sure you're joking but if someone is throwing in features they don't understand then there's just no point to play their game. The whole point of achievements is to pimp OnLive and plenty of people complain about them especially when they make no sense for a game. I forget sometimes, aside from consolization downdumbing there's also plenty of incompetence in the game design world.

 

[Antihero]

I haven't really had time to play much of the demo yet at all, but the skill trees look somewhat bland so far. At least they have a little more depth to them since pumping a particular skill to a high enough level can give you another ability in addition to the ability the skill first gave you.

Each character you can choose from seems to have only two real paths to take from the left or right skill column, besides two floating skills, and two final skills at the top.

The centre column is mostly for bonuses, misc passive abilities (e.g., some kind of spell absorption or damage feedback), and prerequisite skills it seems. Probably pretty useful to pump those since no cooldowns or "vitality" (mana) requirements, and you'll need some for higher skills anyway.

Take the sorceress. She can choose from an elementalist skill column, or a buffer/nerfer/crowd control column, as well as use disarm/unlock charms. Not sure how boring it would be to just bless/curse/daze all the time if it leaves me without enough skill points to invest high enough in attack spells except for a basic attack. Not much variety at first glance, but I've barely played the game yet, so hopefully it gets better. Nothing groundbreaking there so far anyway.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Gender locked classes makes me rage. I do not play as a woman.

Agreed. EXTREME-BRO-Patrol does not accept anyone without a Y-chromosome.

And a penis.


More seriously, I find it kind of disturbing that Vogel seems to be leaving the niche he carved out. I don't know if it will work out for him too well. Maybe increased competition over the years from other indie titles like Eschalon, Knights of the Chalice, and such has pushed him towards this move, whether out of necessity, or speeding up a process that was already in motion; maybe he thought he could do better with a wider audience? There are a lot of possibilities. We'll see what happens, but if this is moderately successful, I don't expect we'll see Vogel going back to his previous niche, especially given the views he espouses in his columns.

 

[Faustian Covenant]

Gender locked classes makes me rage. I do not play as a woman.

Agreed. EXTREME-BRO-Patrol does not accept anyone without a Y-chromosome.

And a penis.


More seriously, I find it kind of disturbing that Vogel seems to be leaving the niche he carved out. I don't know if it will work out for him too well. Maybe increased competition over the years from other indie titles like Eschalon, Knights of the Chalice, and such has pushed him towards this move, whether out of necessity, or speeding up a process that was already in motion; maybe he thought he could do better with a wider audience? There are a lot of possibilities. We'll see what happens, but if this is moderately successful, I don't expect we'll see Vogel going back to his previous niche, especially given the views he espouses in his columns.

I think it's either a sign he wants to move to unity engine and making cell phone games and maybe xbox, or that he is just a fucking idiot. Probably a combination of the two.

 

[Antihero]

Gender locked classes makes me rage. I do not play as a woman.

Agreed. EXTREME-BRO-Patrol does not accept anyone without a Y-chromosome.

And a penis.

Just pretend it's Diablo. Only worse.

 

[Lightknight]

Vogel has made a biiiiggg mistake. I thought he understood niche/segmented marketing better than to try to pull Bioware fans and new-to-the-genre types.

You think THAT's bad ? Space Rangers people are making MMO now. Thats like taking the majority of your previous target audience and faithful followers and throwing it right in the trash.

 

[Sceptic]

I find it kind of disturbing that Vogel seems to be leaving the niche he carved out. I don't know if it will work out for him too well. Maybe increased competition over the years from other indie titles like Eschalon, Knights of the Chalice, and such has pushed him towards this move

Maybe, but moving out of the niche that you have carved over 15 years and in which upstarts are trying to compete with you, and instead moving into a market where you are the upstart and that is exclusively dominated by multi-million budget titles seems much less sensible to me. He should be trying to refine his formula to make sure he still offers something that Eschalon and KotC don't have, not suddenly think he can compete with Bioware on their own turf that they have been grooming for 10 years now.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Gender locked classes makes me rage. I do not play as a woman.

Agreed. EXTREME-BRO-Patrol does not accept anyone without a Y-chromosome.

And a penis.

Fo' rizzle, though. Wasn't Vogel's reason for going with gender locked classes because of the new portraits? What, couldn't he afford to pay for 4 more portraits, for the different sex? It's not like one portrait is as valuable as the Mona Lisa.

 

[zeitgeist]

More seriously, I find it kind of disturbing that Vogel seems to be leaving the niche he carved out.

How would you describe that niche? Weren't his games always something like "cRPGs for Bejeweled fans" or at least dangerously close to it? This recent development seems like a perfectly logical continuation of his previous efforts to me, not like crossing of some us vs them line, since his games were never quite made for us in the first place.

Of course, maybe my arbitrary line was just placed differently right from the start, but it was pretty obvious that he'll never cross over into making actual complex cRPG specifically made for fans of the classics. The only thing that could've happened is him going the other way (and crossing someone else's line in the process).

 

[flushfire]

trying too hard

 

[Sisay]

Having played some more, the one thing that actually does annoy me a fair bit is the linearity. The story is very linear and you can't find new areas on your own before the story progresses. The areas themselves are larger than before but there are fewer optional ones. This takes away from the exploration aspect of the game. You get sent back on new missions to provinces you have been to before and then a new area or two (along with new sidequests) becomes available. At one point it gets a bit silly as you're first asked to clear a province of very weak monsters, then sent back there again (twice) because bigger monsters have replaced the old ones.

As for Vogel's games in general, Geneforge has way more C&C than Fallout.

 

[latexmonkeys]

How would you describe that niche? Weren't his games always something like "cRPGs for Bejeweled fans" or at least dangerously close to it? This recent development seems like a perfectly logical continuation of his previous efforts to me, not like crossing of some us vs them line, since his games were never quite made for us in the first place.

Of course, maybe my arbitrary line was just placed differently right from the start, but it was pretty obvious that he'll never cross over into making actual complex cRPG specifically made for fans of the classics. The only thing that could've happened is him going the other way (and crossing someone else's line in the process).

Are you serious? This imaginary ideal rpg you have in your head has never been made and will never be made. So you've lurked on the codex for a couple of months, sized up the mood of the place, and decided to take the plunge and join secure in your newly acquired knowledge and expertise on the genre. Come on! "cRPGs for Bejeweled fans" Trying to hard indeed.

You continually persist in vaguely comparing Vogel's games (pre-Avadon) unfavorably to the so-called classics, but always fail to mention the specifics of their inferiority or even what classic games you have in mind.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Vogels older games compare quite well with many of the old RPG's. It doesn't do some aspects as well, such as combat...which is a shame, even if it is 'acceptable'...but they generally hold their own except when directly competing with classics like Wasteland, Ultima V and so on (in which they still are not rubbish).

I will try the demo for this new game, but I am not liking what I am reading so far. Very disappointing if another series/developer goes down the toilet for me, it isn't like I have a huge amount of new release CRPG's I find playable these days.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I liked his Exile II the best. From description, that Avadon sounds like a popamole biowhore decline shit.

 

[Johannes]

Vogels old games I would consider really good if they had better combat systems. There's some interesting fights and segments, but most of the battles are very basic affairs of thrashing mobs with repetitive tactics. Now add that there's several games with pretty much same system, it does kinda turn to a chore for me.
In other aspects they're solid games, even if nothing's really outstanding and there are other small flaws too (like in any game). But kinda wasted opportunities in my mind, if only they weren't so boring to fight through...


And comparing Avadon to Avernum 6, I don't see that much decline in the end (though I've only played the demo of latter, I'll admit) - there was already quest compass on some quests, mobs drained next to none of my resources because of the passive first aid skill.
So the decline was already there in his latest game(s?), I don't really see how this is such a turning point based on what I've read at least. It might have more tactically demanding combat, which is enough to get me interested - even if I was more hopeful of this some months back.

 

[Luzur]

well, Demiath posted a gameplay vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJWl35VJFo

looks...just like Avernum/Eschalon.

 

[Faustian Covenant]

You continually persist in vaguely comparing Vogel's games (pre-Avadon) unfavorably to the so-called classics, but always fail to mention the specifics of their inferiority or even what classic games you have in mind.

If anything I think I gave vogel too much benefit of the doubt before, and bowed too much to the irrational love a few people give to Vogel just because he's indie. Now that the popamole is out of the bag completely I'm willing to say there's really nothing that good about the games I've played. Which admittedly is not all of them but I'd say geneforge I is probably the best of geneforge and the other series I didn't even finish.

There's choice and consequence but they are mostly very shallow choices I didn't care about. I have to think only an aspy can get worked up about choosing which of three maps to follow to get to the exact same place or having their leadership skill get a big fighter for them occasionally.

The writing is good for an indie but on reflection no it simply doesn't hold up to any ultima from 4 on, and isn't even 1/4 as good. Plus you don't get the feeling of a real world like in ultima. You don't get that feeling of exploration like in wizardries or the thrill that you managed to do something difficult when you beat a tough fight or figure out a tough puzzle.

Combat seems to be crap in every game series he's made.

So what's left? The abysmal artwork? The GUI that never fixes the problem's he's had since game one? The annoying blog posts where he makes makes fanboi posts about mass effect and dragon age? It's not so much it fails to be better than all previous games in all ways, but that it fails to be better or as good as any of them in any way.

Fuck him.

 

[Gondolin]

I dislike games that tell me "You have spent all your life training for...". If I spent my whole life training, why the fuck am I a level 1 character?

 

[shihonage]

Well, from the video, it looks like his most polished game yet, and certainly deeper than most of the crap sold these days.

Random observation: during dialogue, he still uses crossfading text which is harder on the eyes and harder to code than a quick fadeout-fadein I use.

 

[Johannes]

well, Demiath posted a gameplay vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJWl35VJFo

looks...just like Avernum/Eschalon.

So you start off by fighting giant rats, how intriguing.

 

[Faustian Covenant]

I dislike games that tell me "You have spent all your life training for...". If I spent my whole life training, why the fuck am I a level 1 character?

And then have level 2 be more than twice as powerful as level one.

Many of Vogel's complaints about how omg amazingly hard it is to balance games (and therefore I want to use level scaling) could be fixed by making your characters tougher at level one. If you will eventually get to 200 hitpoints and 200 manapoints, just fucking start off at 100 and 100 and make that initial ridiculous progression rate that destroys so much suspension of disbelief go away completely. People don't give a shit about leveling up if all it means is getting more hitpoints anyway, something it surprises me so few gamemakers understand.

 

[WarHamster]

Vogel, you motherfucker, you went full derp on us. OK, your me-likes-teh-Bioway blog sort of prepared me for this, but still... Whyyy?! For shame!!

 

[OuterSpace]

well, Demiath posted a gameplay vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJWl35VJFo

looks...just like Avernum/Eschalon.

Animation for PC recieving damage should be a lot shorter.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I dislike games that tell me "You have spent all your life training for...". If I spent my whole life training, why the fuck am I a level 1 character?

Well, AD&D does it but AD&D has 0 lever characters for non-elites.