Game News Avernum 6 is Here

[Vault Dweller]

a) I encounter an enemy which I am too low level to fight. He insta gibs my party, I reload, note it's location in a text file and move on. Note that in Avernum 6 these guys will often be placed in lower level areas, although you can avoid them easily once you know about them (after a reload).

Most of the time there are text descriptions indicating that whatever you're looking at is a powerful creature and you should think twice before charging it.

"You see a big fucking demon. This thing is huge and looks angry. The demon is busy skullfucking some poor bastard, so you better get the fuck outta here while you can."

As for running away, you can and I've often done it. Sometimes it's fairly easy, sometimes not. Casting Slow on enemies helps a lot.

Ultimately Avernum 6 rarely provides a satisfying fight...

Bullshit.

There are a lot of interesting, well designed, and challenging fights.

Edit:

No, it's fine most of the time, however certain fights are designed to be above the difficulty curve for the area...

And it's a problem because...? Would it be better if the difficulty curve was the same for the entire area? i.e. this area is for lvl10-12 characters instead of this area has some lvl4-6 content, plenty of lvl10-12 content, and several lvl20+ fights.

... for example the memorial grounds has two fights you're better off doing much later.

And?

Many areas have a fight of this nature, such as the cackling demon.

You get a very clear warning when you get close to him and are given a chance ("he didn't notice you yet, but if you get closer he will") to retreat.

 

[dragonfk]

a) I encounter an enemy which I am too low level to fight. He insta gibs my party, I reload, note it's location in a text file and move on. Note that in Avernum 6 these guys will often be placed in lower level areas, although you can avoid them easily once you know about them (after a reload).

Most of the time there are text descriptions indicating that whatever you're looking at is a powerful creature and you should think twice before charging it.

"You see a big fucking demon. This thing is huge and looks angry. The demon is busy skullfucking some poor bastard, so you better get the fuck outta here while you can."

As for running away, you can and I've often done it. Sometimes it's fairly easy, sometimes not. Casting Slow on enemies helps a lot.

Ultimately Avernum 6 rarely provides a satisfying fight...

Bullshit.

There are a lot of interesting, well designed, and challenging fights.

Edit:

No, it's fine most of the time, however certain fights are designed to be above the difficulty curve for the area...

And it's a problem because...? Would it be better if the difficulty curve was the same for the entire area? i.e. this area is for lvl10-12 characters instead of this area has some lvl4-6 content, plenty of lvl10-12 content, and several lvl20+ fights.

... for example the memorial grounds has two fights you're better off doing much later.

And?

Many areas have a fight of this nature, such as the cackling demon.

You get a very clear warning when you get close to him and are given a chance ("he didn't notice you yet, but if you get closer he will") to retreat.

What he said.

Where's your hardcore attitude RPG elitists? Crying because you can't win a fight?

 

[Trash]

I'm wondering why people rate this one higher than avernum 5. 4 was a bit of a dull grind, but 5 so far has been pretty neat. So what exactly is better about 6?

 

[Monocause]

I'm wondering why people rate this one higher than avernum 5. 4 was a bit of a dull grind, but 5 so far has been pretty neat. So what exactly is better about 6?

The fights are less tedious, graphics are improved, game is less linear and quests are more interesting. I liked the exploration aspect of A5, it was a decent game - but the formula got old quick and I never managed to finish it. Too many enemies had the "9000HP" syndrome.

 

[PorkaMorka]

a) I encounter an enemy which I am too low level to fight. He insta gibs my party, I reload, note it's location in a text file and move on. Note that in Avernum 6 these guys will often be placed in lower level areas, although you can avoid them easily once you know about them (after a reload).

Most of the time there are text descriptions indicating that whatever you're looking at is a powerful creature and you should think twice before charging it.

That's true, at least for the guys who are like 10+ levels too high for the zone they're in.

"You see a big fucking demon. This thing is huge and looks angry. The demon is busy skullfucking some poor bastard, so you better get the fuck outta here while you can."

On the other hand, and I'm afraid I can't remember specifics, I recall incidents where I got flavor text about how somebody was a bad ass, and then I flattened him in about two seconds, despite him having plenty of HP. Probably it was some of the plot/semi plot bosses. So you pretty much always have to test (and reload).

As for running away, you can and I've often done it. Sometimes it's fairly easy, sometimes not. Casting Slow on enemies helps a lot.

It's pretty easy to run away unless you're right next to stairs that you need to get out of combat to go up. However once you've ascertained you're 10 levels too low to beat a guy it's probably better to just reload the quicksave, so you don't mess up the scripting of the encounter. Especially since the only consequence of losing party members is having to run back to town for an auto rez.

Bullshit.

There are a lot of interesting, well designed, and challenging fights.

Close.

There are a lot of interesting and well designed fights, but their challenge is entirely dependent on when you get around to them, thus their challenge is inevitably less well tuned than it would be in a more linear game, or a game with scaling of some sort.

Often this results in wasted encounters where you only get around to them when you're too powerful for them and the neat gimmick Vogel put in is wasted.

Ultimately fights are far more satisfying when they're properly tuned to your power, like in the AOD combat demo for example. Vogel has a lot of interesting gimmick fights, but the AOD demo was much more satisfying, on the hard fights, because the fights were tuned so that many builds could juuuust barely eke out of a win by playing right, instead of just outleveling the fight and trivializing it (or being 10 levels too low for it).

And it's a problem because...? Would it be better if the difficulty curve was the same for the entire area? i.e. this area is for lvl10-12 characters instead of this area has some lvl4-6 content, plenty of lvl10-12 content, and several lvl20+ fights.

It's not a huge problem with the super high level fights in low level zones, but it's a bit weird to gain access to a fight at level 3 that you have no chance of beating for 10+ levels, so you end up checking every few levels and reloading when it still insta gibs you.

And it's kind of irritating compared to more linear games as you're constantly backtracking to check on stuff in your text file that you've saved for later.

And it's sort of immersion breaking (heh) when you figure out that you're not missing the best strategy, you just need to go gain some levels and brute force will work fine.

I'm just used to a more linear progression of challenges, either due to linearity or scaling, so I could struggle to beat tougher encounters instead of having to come back later.

I wouldn't call it the super high level encounters a huge problem, but it's a downside of the non linear nature of the game.

Outleveling encounters and ruining them is a pretty significant problem though, once you outlevel a dungeon the odds of getting a satisfying fight are nil.

 

[Thrasher]

If you want linearity it sounds like this game is not for you.

 

[PorkaMorka]

If you want linearity it sounds like this game is not for you.

JA2 and Darklands had free roaming as well, yet did not suffer from the problems I list above.

I just want good fights I don't care if a game is 100% linear or largely non linear.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

If you want linearity it sounds like this game is not for you.

JA2 and Darklands had free roaming as well, yet did not suffer from the problems I list above.

I just want good fights I don't care if a game is 100% linear or largely non linear.

So you want a consistently challenging combat-tactics game, not a realistic exploration game (tigers and beetles live in the same jungle). So perhaps the game is not for you.

It's always important, in criticism, to understand what the game was aiming to be. Knowing Vogel, he probably wasn't trying to create a combat-tactics game (read his interviews), even if he put a bit more effort in designing combat encounters in A6 than previously as a result of popular whining.

I'm with Vogel on this subject. I'm not even interested in a consistently challenging combat game. That's mainly why I aborted my ironman playthrough of Wizardry 8, even though it was my first playthrough attempt of any kind of Wiz8. No matter how good the usual RPG-combat-system, it's just not the main appeal of the genre, and those RPGs which try to make it the main appeal will inevitably end up with a game where I wish I could solve those interesting puzzles and immerse myself in the atmosphere of mystery without being constantly interrupted by non-trivial combat-encounters. Tough simplistic multi-minute RPG battles are fun maybe once per two hours. Like everything else so formally and essentially repetitive, they're not fun when you have to deal with them all the time.

The main points of appeal in a dungeon-crawler of this type are atmosphere, exploration, and long-term sense of achievement (such as returning to beat a monster that was previously too tough for you).

 

[Thrasher]

If you want linearity it sounds like this game is not for you.

JA2 and Darklands had free roaming as well, yet did not suffer from the problems I list above.

I just want good fights I don't care if a game is 100% linear or largely non linear.

Then it appears you are forced to have level scaled enemies (which make character leveling pointless) or no charcter advancement at all. Neither of which I like...

 

[Mangoose]

Reserving judgment for some more experience, but playing ~1 hr of the demo (just learned how to portal) and it's kinda boring.

 

[phanboy_iv]

I wasn't expecting much from this game. I'd never played any Avernum for more than 10 minutes, sadly I suspect because of the graphics. A6 was just polished enough to hook me, and now I find myself at the end of the demo, wanting more. So give it some time.

 

[Mangoose]

Yeah I'm giving it more time. The character builds just don't seem that varied.

 

[Martin]

Geneforge 5 was the first Spiderweb game I finished since Exile 1 and Avernum 1, thats saying alot, those who were turned off by other offers should give geneforge 5 a go, definitely. And those who are somehow turned off by this Avernum should still give Geneforge 5 a go regardless of well...anything.

Its solid, it looks pretty decent, its immersive, it has animation and a well done one at that, it has a reasonable amount of true CnC and it allows different approaches. Most importantly of all every aspect of the game feels very polished, I almost never got the sense I was grinding or doing something tedious to achieve a goal and the levelling rate and number and quality of the loot kept things rewarding.


I dont have time for gaming right now but I certainly will give Avernum 6 a go eventually, I tried 5 for a few hours but then lost interest, the battle disciplines were a great concept though. Options in melee combat was something that was sorely missing from most of his games, geneforge also could use deeper melee combat, although battle disciplines are also necessary for mage types.

 

[Annonchinil]

Currently, I am rescuing the lizard man's son, does the game get harder from here or should I change the difficulty?

 

[Jim Cojones]

I don't recall the quest and don't know how far are you but the game gets more difficult later on. In fact, main plot sent me to areas full of enemies so powerful that stealth was the only reasonable option. It is not really a great tactical game though, as most of the tougher encounters can be resolved using the same spells and abilities, strongly relying on pre-buffing and spamming healing spells. Beside that there are some puzzle-like boss encounters that require you to find a specific way to deal with enemies; these ones were quite fun.