Bay 12 Games Forum

This is a good read, keep it up. Makes me want to dig out JA2 again myself, I played it back in the day but never finished it.

I played a lot of ADoM "back in the day" and I've always fully understood TB's decision not to make it open source, especially in the light of entitled jerks who acted like they had a right to it. But this -- nah. I honestly don't see the point. IMO it would be better if he just stayed focused on the sequel instead of getting bogged down by trying to "resurrect" a decade-old game at the same time. Does ADoM really "need" an overhaul, anyway? It has some bugs, yes, but it's stable, perfectly playable, all endings work.

The first goblin ambush has come to Windchants. Nasty combo, too: lashers and crossbows. I'm not nearly ready to take these blighters on, but I can't sit it out either since the human caravan is still in my fort and they'll likely go berserk long before the goblins might get bored. Gotta redesign my temporary entrance so I can hopefully lure some of the goblins into cage traps without exposing the depot.

On a related note: having to actually worry about wagon access now is driving me crazy. This is a tropical forest so trees pop up everywhere. One moment the path is clear, the next moment a sneaky tree blocks it and the wagons pass me by with the caravans' best stuff. Once the goblin ambush is dealt with, I'm gonna build a temporary road to my temporary entrance. As long as there is a clear path, will the caravan spawn so it can use it?

First fort in 34.11 after several months away from the game. I forgot that dwarves will rob a caravan when you create a hospital and they're missing some of the desired supplies. Actually, I DO have cloth, but some moronic hauler kept grabbing the cloth bin and running to the farmer's workshop where the processing of more pig tail was underway, so the other haulers thought we had none. They stampeded the elven caravan instead and grabbed absolutely every piece of cloth they could get their grubby little hands on and crammed magnitudes more cloth into the hospital than I had allotted for it. 

I never rob caravans, so I feel guilty now. Gotta remember to give 'em a bit profit next year to make up for this. Also, I do wish dwarves would stop overstacking the hospital so much.

Beside that, I really need to kickstart my militia and tighten the defenses of the temporary surface entrance, as goblins will likely show up Soon(TM). So much to do! I rather like the hectic early game, except for having to wade through huge migrant waves.

Love the burst story and the mushroom explosion!

(And one reason why I enjoy this game and this forum is that unlike in many other places on the 'net, failures and screwups don't get you insulted but are considered entertainment worth sharing.)

I never played the first game and am not really into the genre as a whole, though I did play D2 back in the day. Some friends are interested in maybe going co-op with it, so I signed up at the Runic site just to see if I'd get a beta key. Yep. It was a pretty good experience, for a non-fan of the genre. The art style is very cartoonish but still bearable (and I prefer some color to "look at how grimmedarque I am!" anyway). The story is paper-thin at best and basically assumes you know the first game because there's next to no explanation for anything. Characterization is non-existent as well. Yes, I know it's just a hack'n'slash but D2 did manage to put some story/characterization over its hackfest gameplay.

The bread and butter of TL2, the combat, was fun. On Normal, I felt pretty powerful but not so much that I didn't have to be careful. TL2 has some nice touches like a shared stash and sending the pet to sell junk and bring back consumables that I really like. Less time wasted on trucking back to town, more time making stuff explode into chunks and goo. The fact that each class has a "charge bar" that gives them a strong unique buff for a short while after filling up (the Berserker always crits, the Embermage can cast spells without using mana) is good, too.

What I didn't like was the skill system, there's just very little return for investing more than one point into most (active) skills because the improvements are barely noticeable and don't keep pace with the increased cost. Also, I wasn't keen on the bossfights. Almost every boss spams adds like it's going out of style. That is boring and uncreative, and as a Berserker it was tedious because between having to constantly run away from the boss' killer moves and dealing with the adds, there was little time to actually get some hits in. Meanwhile, the mage can just plonk some ranged AoE down and cackle maniacally. As a melee-lover, I'm always a bit peeved when melee classes have a noticeably harder time or need to adopt a different playstyle on a bossfight while ranged can carry on as usual. When I pick a melee class, I want to melee, not kite and hit-and-run like a squishy staff-twirler. Gonna try an Engineer next and see if I can make her buff enough to actually take a beating from a boss.

I'll likely buy this when it ships, anyway. Hopefully they can still tweak some rough edges till then.

I tried the demo on account of the "kind of like MoM" rumor, but wasn't impressed. There was nothing that really reminded me of MoM, which is a shame. I'd love a real, proper successor with all the features (and maybe better AI) and I don't know why, in the light of how many people appear to feel the same, it just isn't being attempted.

What's this about "hiding" a button? I cancelled my subscription a short while ago without any trouble.

But, yeah, that "most valuable players" line leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. In a way, it exemplifies one of my problems with WoW-style MMOs: if you ain't max level and doing "endgame", you ain't worth shit. Of course, since they always said this wouldn't be a sandbox game or another SWG (which I never played) so hoping for something different from grind-loot-grind-loot-ad-nauseam was entirely my own fault.