wanderon

I am not big on mages generally so I have not paid all that much attention to them in the BB but I have a couple questions about them... First of all some spells seem very weak for their level (assuming the descriptions are correct and/or I am reading them properly) - for instance the spell with the ugly maggot infested face - if I read this right it's effects only last like 2 seconds?? (third level spell) Another question relates to blasts - there is a talent for increasing the damage of them - does this refer to spells that are considered blasts ( I don't recall seeing that word used in relation to a spell description) or does it refer to the use of rods, wands, and scepters? I'm sure there are other questions but I can't seem to recall them at the moment so I guess this will do for now...

Pretty sure at least one of the dialoge options in the BB had two things listed for a dialoge option but it was unclear to me if you needed either or both (Int & Lore IIRC). Thus far it does seem to me that they are including enough options for different skills in different dialoges or special encounters to make having a mix worthwhile but it would be useful to know if we are going to find them so high near the end game that only someone who used a max in a single skill will qualify. It would be cool if the options were split as well like it takes either 16 Int or 10 Lore or a combination of both 12 Int plus 6 lore.

Personally I'd rather have loading times so fast there was no need for a loading bar LOL! As for the sharpness - I like it myself but then I'm a photographer not a painter... (and I agree that sometimes it seems people would complain if you hung them with a new rope! )

I have only made one character so far - (am about to rectify that) - but just from what I saw and what I read here - it occured to me that maybe we could have a mix of both - a limited number of skill points to distribute at character creation (and maybe a few more dribbled out every few levels) and keep the current implementation of skills tied to talents (and background). This way you get to set your character on the path you want at creation and you can make your own choices about which is more important to your character as he/she levels by the talent/skill combo choices you make. Otherwise I do like this current system well enough at the moment to have voted yes I am willing to give it a chance and see where it goes and suspect I may like more as I get used to using it. I do wish we could dismiss some of the BB team and replace them with adventurers so I could create more characters more easily...

Where did you get a fine arbalest in the beta? In fact, we need a list of all prominent items currently in beta, with their locations. IIRC BB fighter has one

No time to play today made a ranger and started the game went to the inn and sent the orlan on her way. Couple of things I noticed: 1) doesn't seem to be an option to create your own formation anymore or at least I could not figure one out. 2) why does a ranger get two auto talents to harden the wizard arcane veil? 3) nice loading screens! 4)like the lists for abilities etc better than the tiny icons you have to mouse over to see - 5) Noticed I did not get any of the extra dialoge options with the new auto skill assigning system (did not pay much attention to what skills I was getting just chose the abilities/talents I wanted without weighing them in. don't like this so far - I want to be able to choose both my combat skills and non combat skills to make the build I am looking to roleplay.

Come on. What is this? Do you deny now that there are traps, and that you can usually go around them? Do you deny that there are often rooms with multiple doors, where some might be locked? I thought not...

These are the situations that happen all the time: 1. There is a corridor full of traps. I don't need to disarm them, there's a way around it. Guess what, I find myself disarming all of them anyway. 2. There is a locked door, but the room is accessible from a different door as well (which is the non-stealthy way so there's a fight). I enter through the opened door, and after the fight I go over to the locked door and unlock it. Even though that door is useless to me now. Really?? All the time?? Can you describe even 5 places in any of the IE games where this ACTUALLY occurs as opposed to generic situations where it might occur if they existed?

I'm only going to say this once more - locks and traps are put in the game either to protect loot or quest items - making it more of a challenge to obtain them - the number of times there was a roleplaying reason to not open the lock and/or disarm the trap in any of the IE games is for the most part minimal with the possible exception of the LG character not wanting to loot from innocents. If you are playing such a character then certainly a handful of experience should not make you change your roleplay stance and if it does by the gods that's on YOU - you do NOT get to blame the developers for putting experience on locks & traps spoiling your gameplay. I make this sound so extreme because that's exactly how it looks to me - just another case of overstating a point in a an effort to "win" an internet argument - now if we at least got some experience for reading this rhetoric maybe it would not bother me so much...

I challenge anyone to point to a post where I said grinding ruined anything - my contributions are simply stating what I have experienced in relation to things others have said because sometimes on the internet people may not paint the entire picture - probably because they ran out of time or just forgot the rest - I'm sure it rarely has anything to do with only saying things that support their argument.....

That's what I'm getting at. Why have mechanics in a roleplaying game that you have to fight against or ignore in order to roleplay? Give me a freaking break - it's locks and traps - they are there for you to open/disarm - they are not there for show or mood or any other reason - if the devs want to give me some experience for spending some skill points so that I can open or disarm them then I am all for it - if you're not thats fine but stop with this ridiculous off the wall reasoning that getting a few points of experience for doing so means you can't freaking roleplay.

So is WL2

It may not be needed to beat the game with a single or multi class PC and single or multi class companions but if you choose to dual class instead especially if you have multiple dual class characters in your party it can be very problematic to simply play through normally vs using something like the pirate cave to "quick level" your new class to get your old skills back ( also depending on a lot of outside factors like size and makeup of group, general alignment of group, companion availability, and what point in the game you are at when it comes time to dual class.) The same thing can occur in BG2 as well altho since you start at level 8ish it is less problematic as you have a much sturdier PC or companion to keep alive while getting their old skills back.

The whole idea behind the game is that you shouldn't ever have to roleplay a character who doesn't get XP. That's the whole reason XP and level-ups abstractly represent improvement in any potential area of your character. You can gain XP purely through talking, until you level up, then improve your longsword proficiency. So, this point makes no sense in this context. What you're getting at would make perfect sense, if the person who didn't go out of their way to kill everything simply missed out on combat prowess advancement, but they don't. They miss out on advancement, period. That's the thing. XP is a universal currency. So, the person who doesn't sit down in the middle of a dungeon and weave 73 baskets shouldn't get "paid less" in this currency just because. The person who doesn't seek to make 20 animal species extinct in the forest doesn't need to become rich for that, while the person who quite-feasibly doesn't do that is poor. Who you decide to roleplay (besides roleplaying against the very narrative itself) shouldn't conflict with the gameplay mechanics. So, if you want to roleplay an OCD trap-disarmer, then go ahead. The benefit of that shouldn't be universal advancement. It should just be the joy of getting to play your character how you'd like to. Disarming 100 traps in a cave gains you nothing when improvement isn't simulated, so it sure as hell shouldn't improve you, while being an actual sane person still gains you nothing. I disagree when it comes to roleplaying the XP is just some back of the scenes mechanic that the game uses to decide when and how much you level up and/or get whatever stuff they plan to give out in return for reaching XP goals - (To me) if you are concerned about how much XP you need to get blah blah blah that's pretty much the definition of ROLL Playing (crunch the numbers figure out the best stuff and how you can get it ASAP )- f(To me) when you ROLE play you take what you get and decide how your character will handle it based on whatever back story/character concept you have decided on and the game is about seeing where it will take you not being concerned about some number crunching mechanic in the back ground. Not to mention (once more) that the whole concept that the piddly rewards they are likely to give out for lock picking/trap disarming has any remote possibilty of upsetting game balance for those who choose not to do so is ridiculous - it's nothing more than more I want what I want when I want it....

So is demanding XP for lockpicking and disarming (and combat XP of course) because your preferred playstyle is to kill everything, pick every lock and disarm all the traps. And then telling other people that they shouldn't care that they get less XP if they don't want to do that. It always works both ways. The difference is that there is a system that works for all sides in a balanced way - an objective based XP system. It's closer to "having your cake and eating it too" for everyone, and I've yet to hear a good argument against it. Can't speak for anyone else but I for one am not DEMANDING anything other than a good game when it's released.

So what you're saying is that ROLE playing is your main focus - playing the character as you think he would respond to any given situation but you can't help yourself from ROLL playing - afraid the sky will fall or the game will fail if you don't hoard every single bit of XP offered even if it means not being true to your characters role? Is this perhaps a bit of having your cake and eat it too?

Capturing the girl alive is part of main quest?! I doubt it, they are not going to implement only one option needing to be chosen so you can continue main quest. Additional quests were probably taken out that were connected with main quest. Like confronting the town about cultists, I could see that somehow connected with main quest. Maybe not just main quest but links to storyline/factions/other stuff they didn't want to spoil - I guess my point is it seems to me that the incompleteness of stuff in the BB seems more likely to me to be because it's the BB rather than they intend to release them in this state in the final build.

Why bother leaving them out?

You can move forward and back in the character creation process are you certain you are on the final screen?

It's not really semantics. You are arguing on a technicality at best. We know what the purpose of grinding is, the argument is does/did the IE games present this mechanic to the players, and from your above argument, it appears grinding was there, but only in certain situations and only if players were willing to exploit the game to achieve it. Was it really an exploit or a feature - someone implemented those flesh golems to respawn any time you rested in the cave - that didn't occur by accident. And the argument is whether or not mechanics that lead to "grinding" are one of the viable reasons to remove kill XP isn't it? I think there's a decent case for it - I don't really care whether they are removed or not but I can support the reasons the devs have chosen to do so.

Perhaps removed due to links to main quest?

And many would likely still say they don't. Your example above of "grinding" in BG, is really grasping at straws. Grinding is a mechanic that is present, and often times known, not a mechanic that can maybe possibly present itself if you "game" the game a certain way. Your Shrine cave example isn't an example where BG presents "grindy" mechanics, it's an example where the player exploits the mechanics to make it that way. Semantics - the "purpose" of grinding whether it be in a RPG or MMO is to level faster than "normal".

Tsk, tsk. I knew it! Non-kill xp proponents are the ones who abuse systems and farm xp systematically. I have played BG dozens of times, even munchkin-ly, and I've never done that kind of thing. Are you subconsciously urging OE to have quest-xp only just because of your lacking self-control? Not really - just "answering" to those who say none of the IE games had "grinding" or degenerative gameplay (if one cares to call it such) - anyone who spent any time on BG forums (I started before ToTSC was released) knows very well that there were areas like this and that it was certainly not an insignificant number of forum goers that utilized them as such - especially among the crowd that was into the No reload challenge type games. I was on both sides of that sort of thing - playing no reload was (and is) a passion (loved the adrenaline rush in every battle) but also played oddball fairly gimped PCs and parties too.

Grinding or not there were certainly areas in BG where you could abuse respawning enemies to level up - if I played a dual class PC and planned to dual class Imoen I would head to the Sirine caves with a good supply of poison arrows and use the flesh golems to raise the two of us enough levels to get our old skills back - then gather our party and continue our journey...

I challenge anyone to name a single IE game where the number of locks/traps that you would NOT normally open/disarm during the course of an average play through could possibly amount to enough experience to even be relevant to anything. The concept that the numbers of locks/traps normally not opened/disarmed as part of a typical game is large enough that lock/trap XP will force people into degenerative gameplay to open/disarm them is ludicrous.