Avadon: The Black Fortress

Avadon: The Black Fortress, Jeff Vogel’s latest unironically retro RPG, was just released. Mac only for now, Windows and iPad(!) coming at some later date.

Since I have a horrible sickness of the brain that forces me to play games in series order, even if it means that I’m still on ultra-low-resolution Avernum 2 instead of marginally-more-modern Avernum 6, a new series is great news to me. I think I know what I’m doing this weekend!

Man, I played the Avernum games like… ages ago. Probably #1 or #2, I’ve long since forgotten. Anyway, I’d be interested in picking this one up as soon as it hits the Windows OS.

Thanks for the heads up, Damien!

hum,tempting, had not realised it was out already
quite like the simple but clean graphics and the OCD element :)

This is relevant to my interests, but do we have any idea when the Windows version comes out?

This one has been dumbed down a lot: regenerating health and MP, auto-revival after fights, no stats or skills unlocking special dialogue options, quests markers, less classes, less difficult (Vogel stating that no one should die on normal difficulty)…

Jeff has decided to ignore the hardcore fans who made him successful in order to reach a more mainstream audience.

From his blog:

iPad port? That piques my interest…

About Jeff’s blog post (which says April). It has generally taken a few weeks minimum from the Mac release to the initial “closed” beta to start (that is, he sends out invites to a smaller group before making a call for a wider beta at the spiderweb site/on the forums). Also, I’ve never seen it take less than 2 months to go from the windows beta start to release. I say this as someone who has participated in some fashion in every windows beta - starting at that closed point - since Avernum 1. Not saying it will apply here; who knows? Just saying it would buck tradition (such as it is).

T
here are usually difficulty levels in games for a reason (and increasing the difficulty in every Spiderweb game that has had difficulty levels has always increased the challenge). That the challenge of the baseline choice may or may not have changed is irrelevant. That particular point of yours is too stupid to insult properly.

That’s certainly an interesting interpretation of what is going on over at Spiderweb’s forums. I see a number of Jeff’s core Mac crowd - people who have been big Spiderweb fans since the usenet days, some of whom participated in Beta - saying great things about the game and talking about the interesting encounters you run into as the game goes on (encounter design has been a big thing for Jeff Avernum 4 onward, especially in the avernums). They seem to be indicating the game has plenty of challenge to throw at the player. They all also probably played on Normal + 1 (some of them surely tried torment; I’m assuming the difficulty names haven’t changed and there are still 5 difficulties but that might be wrong).

Thirdly, the fact that you start each new encounter “full” (which you don’t apparently; there are people saying there is a resource called “stamina” that does not refresh immediately like health does) doesn’t meant the game is dumbed down. Guild Wars did the same thing and it wasn’t dumbed down in the least. Or consider Helherron. Barring an error on the player’s part - rest was safe anywhere unless there was a visible monster on the main map, and that was easy to avoid - every single helherron encounter can be tackled “fresh”. And yet Helherron has encounters you will reload 20* times before you beat them. It doesn’t have 5 such encounters. It’s more like 50*.

  • numbers exaggerated far, far less than you might initially think.

Relatedly: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/02/three-rules-for-difficulty-in-rpgs.html

The reason that games have become less “hardcore” and punishing as a trend is because experienced gamers can find the menu option to make the game harder while noobs can’t. Choosing the difficulty appropriate to your skill level is, itself, a skill that newbies don’t have. It makes way more sense for the default difficulty to be easy, and to the extent that the game becomes difficult in higher levels, that the difficulty not come from decisions you made significantly before your last saved game (since then it wouldn’t be effective to turn the difficulty DOWN if you get stuck partway through).

Also, on behalf of Macintosh-owning gamers everywhere, I would like to say that NEENER NEENER NEENER THBPPPT!

Yes, except that the features cut because they were deemed to put casual users off remain cut, no matter the difficulty level selected.

I’m not saying I’m not interested in the game anymore (which I’ll play and judge for myself), but this is a disappointing turn of events.

I guess I would be interested in unbiased impressions on the matter, ones that don’t come from Mac gaming sites, casuals, or Spiderweb fans.

Oh thank god he got new character portraits.

I’ve been a beta-tester since Geneforge but I still find some of the encounters in, say, AV6 pretty punishing. I’ll have to wait for the Windows testing to know but I seriously doubt Jeff has thrown all his fans out the window; I also can’t see what’s wrong with making labelling “hard” as “hard” - pick it if that’s what you want. Given the party healed/resurrected on returning to town for the past several games - which is just busy work in the end - I applaud the decision to remove that crap and just focus on making individual encounters interesting. Time will tell if he succeeded.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for getting that right. You don’t know how much that makes me like you for no reason other than not making my head explode.

Grammar nerd aside, I greet with excitement the release of another Spiderweb game. I also regret that I suffer the same bizarre “must play from the start” compulsion, and I’ve yet to finish Geneforge 1, so it may be YEARS before I play this…

Or maybe I’ll get in on the ground floor!

Do any of those games really attract casual players? I’ve only played a demo for one and that was years ago so I can’t speak to quality or difficulty but they look like hardcore games to me. How many casual people have even heard of them? How many would be turned off by the graphics? Most, I would say. I think it was the interface that killed it for me but its been a long time. I just have to wonder at the logic of trying to attract people who are never going to play your game at the expense of fans who already love it.

I am not sure why he doesn’t sell some sort of combo pack with the oder games in it. His website is pretty damn bad.

This is ridiuclous. None of the “features” that were “cut” make games hardcore/not hard core.

To wit. . .

regenerating health and MP

He’s had this in every game since Avernum 4 (where First Aid was greatly imbalanced actually; Avernums 5 and 6 were more better). It just wasn’t “all”. There may be an additional resource that isn’t goverened in this way.

I have already given examples as to why this is, by itself, is not a change in hardcoreness.

, auto-revival after fights

In every Spiderweb game since Avernum. Except that you had to traipse back to town to get it.

, no stats or skills unlocking special dialogue options

Leadership in Geneforge did this (but the Geneforges are not talky games) There were no stats in Avernum that did this. Have you played any spiderweb games before?

, quests markers

Ridiculous.

, less classes

Avernum didn’t feature classes. The “premade classes” were just beginning skill allocations. It was a skill based system. Geneforge featured 3 and later 6 classes, but the additional classes were close cousins to the others (just a matter of what each of the skill groups cost to level up). Geneforge classes weren’t really that different; every class could do everything except that skill improvement costs meant that you couldn’t make a Guardian the ultimate spell caster. But they could still be effective spell casters.

OTOH, Avadon is going to feature actual distinct classes.

He does sell combo packs.

Right Here.

I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark here and guess that “unbiased” means “agrees with my blind raging”.

Edit: That’s snarkier than I intended. Apologies.

It’s not that. Now things work like in Dragon Age, meaning that characters recover all MP and HP immediately after the fight is over. It was a much slower process before, and if I recall correctly a stat could improve rate of recovery in some of the earlier games, at least.

In every Spiderweb game since Avernum. Except that you had to traipse back to town to get it.

That is, if you can. You can be low on ressources and hit points, and trying to find your way back to town, on a map that you haven’t cleared out yet, risking to stumble upon an enemy patrol.

Scarcity of ressources adds more tension.

Leadership in Geneforge did this (but the Geneforges are not talky games) There were no stats in Avernum that did this. Have you played any spiderweb games before?

I played Geneforge games mostly. Maybe this isn’t as essential, but still it’s a nice feature to have, else the game becomes strictly combat-focused. I find it superior roleplay when it’s possible to use your mind instead.

Ridiculous.

If there are quest markers it can be a very bad thing for the people who love to explore without being pointed out where they need to go, leaving them the task of figuring it out.

Avernum didn’t feature classes. The “premade classes” were just beginning skill allocations. It was a skill based system. Geneforge featured 3 and later 6 classes, but the additional classes were close cousins to the others (just a matter of what each of the skill groups cost to level up). Geneforge classes weren’t really that different; every class could do everything except that skill improvement costs meant that you couldn’t make a Guardian the ultimate spell caster. But they could still be effective spell casters.

OTOH, Avadon is going to feature actual distinct classes.

Except that it was then a classless system governed by skill allocation. In a class-based system with this few classes (and a somewhat simplistic skill tree from the looks of things), there is far less freedom in how you can choose to improve and differentiate your character.

So skepticism and concern can be considered blind raging?

It’s not like I don’t like his games, I will buy Avadon and judge for myself. But they were always marketed as hardcore RPGs.

I want as little hand-holding as possible, I want danger, I want freedom of character development, roleplay, and freedom of exploration. That’s what I play his games for first and foremost. And I’m sure that I’m not the only one.