Bartimaeus

Hah. Yeah, don't ever even consider moving to Minnesota if a few weeks of ~10 degrees is enough to make you want to leave forever.

I note that you say "typical winter": I presume because this winter has been unusually mild? Honestly, while I prefer the cold, I don't really like the bone-chilling cold like it can get in MN. If I could just live somewhere that was like...always somewhere in the 35-50(F), even 60 degrees year round, that would be so great. Stupid changing seasons and weather and stuff... Average high in MN is generally around 25 degrees in January, so that doesn't seem *that* great of a distance. I'm guessing the lows are probably a lot lower here, though.

I'm actually already a Minnesotan...but a more central one. The only other place I've resided for any decent amount of time is southern California. Generally speaking, I prefer the cold. I guess that depends...how cold does it get in Connecticut?

I'm moving pretty close to the Canadian border...right on that northeastern tip of Minnesota by Lake Superior in a few months. Not too terribly away from Duluth at the very least, but it's still pretty darned rural as far as things go... Should be fun.

I know in the early days, some modders definitely worked with and helped them - as I said in one of my previous posts. But I think saying "a great many" of them are currently employed or even occasional (paid) consultants for Beamdog is stretching it pretty far...

Indeed? It is my understanding that Beamdog is actually a quite small operation (and understandably so) - I would not think they would be employing a "great many" of IE modders. I know some modders definitely have "consulted"/worked with them at least some, but actively employing a "great many"? Let's see evidence of that.

People are going to start associating "murder-hobo" with "Amentep" pretty soon here...in fact, I already do. P.S. I did not realize "Simone" was (predominantly) a woman's name, which it apparently is. How about that?

From what I recall, I think different releases, over the years, had different protections. You're right, though, in that the original releases' copy protections were very lightweight...but I don't think the same was true for re-issues in the mid-2000s. (e): I also recall those later re-issues having improperly pre-applied patches that caused other problems...

Whereas I will literally rewrite parts of IE mods (and then save the newly edited installation files for subsequent installs) for the purpose of taking out little bits and pieces that I don't personally care for, tweaking with my own tweaks on top of the tweaks the original mods were supposed to be doing, adding new related tweaks/changes to certain mods that I want whatever that is to be a part of so I don't have to repeat the work in the future, etc. Tinkering is in my blood.

Everyone's different. Using your example of Super Mario, I personally love the 2D Marios, and can play them pretty much any time...which is weird, because I actually played SM64 at about the same time as I played the SNES ones (not that unusual, given my relatively young age, I guess...and then I later played Sunshine and enjoyed it, too), and then found by the time that Galaxy rolled around, I really quite disliked all of the 3D Mario platformers...but still liked the 2D ones. Conversely, I really like the 3D Zeldas (...with the exception of Skyward Sword), but really don't much care for the 2D ones.

I would...uh, just like to note for the future...that even though that particular one is called "Infinity Cracker", they're actually just referred to as "cracks", not "crackers". I only make a note of it because the way you used "crackers" there was hilarious to me and made me laugh out loud, which probably wasn't your desired effect. Yeah, I have no such qualms. But that comes with being the type of person that likes to memory edit (generally known more collouquilly as "hack"), hex edit, mod, tinker, et cetera...to get whatever they want done...so long as it doesn't personally and negatively affect anyone else, of course. They actually did do some cool engine tweaks that opened up the doors for modding certain things or for just making modding certain things easier (you'll note that I did give props to some of the tech guys in one of my earlier posts, ). However, as far as I've been aware, it hasn't really mattered much at all for actual mods, so it ends up not being a very important point to me, . @Keyrock: Personally, I still really quite like the Infinity Engine, in all its antiquatedness. You can say that it's nostalgia or whatever, but I don't really think it is, given the amount of time I've put into the IE games...but rather, being so used to it, being so familiar with it, and appreciating the strengths it has even today vs other engines used for games of a similar vein, such as the NWN series and the Dragon Age series...while also conveniently being very used to its weaknesses, as well as being used to working around them. Ah, it was a simpler time...

Hey, you're welcome to join in, too, if you want! At this point, it's really more of a discussion than an argument, however...

Psh, it's just his boots. The rest of the party probably doesn't even have any boots by the time you meet him, anyways! Of course, he's a monk and can't equip much else...but that's not the rest of the party's fault. Yeah, you can do that, too. After doing that, you could also use the "Infinity Cracker" program which you could just run once in the base game directory and it would crack any IE game to not need the mandatory play disk inserted/mounted, which is what I usually did because I'm so lazy I don't even want to remount my ISOs every time after rebooting...lol Yes...yes it did. Another game I tried very hard to like but which just made me end up disliking it the more I played it... Yeah, no: Valen had a neat little part in being the one to contact you for Bodhi to invite you to the graveyard after you'd gathered 15k gold in the vanilla game, and that's the part she'll keep when I play the game. And anyways, there's already too many party members anyhow... We'll have to differ a little on that last note, though: moddability has always been one of the things that seems to make or break a good or even great game's community (especially in regards to longevity), particularly for singleplayer games. It's not likely I (and many others) put a few thousand hours into the IE games throughout our youth plus additional time through adulthood without great moddability: it can (and ideally will) therefore manifest as much more than merely "a nice bonus", then.

But as I've already pointed out multiple times now, the way you obtain those items doesn't necessarily involve murdering them or getting them killed at all. As a long-time player, you could easily be thinking, "Hey, I'm going to have a party that includes all the new characters!". As a Lawful Good party, you super easily think, "I wonder what these items are worth..." and actually check and think, "Whoa, the +2 AC is NOT worth the bajillion gold this could give us - we can outfit our entire party right now with that!". Et cetera. You keep repeating the whole "murder-hobo" stuff, but regardless of what kind of party you're playing, you could easily see that it's whack regardless of how you obtain the items...and there *are* multiple reasons/ways for obtaining them. Well, sure! But as I already said a few times, it was a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things anyways, (e): Plus, if it was really that huge of a problem (and I didn't have other problems that make me not want to play the EEs), I would just edit their values myself. Yeah, exactly. An ISO is...among other things...an archive of files (sort of like a 7z or rar or zip) that you can "mount" via software to act as a CD or DVD. I created a sort of "super" one that contains all of the disks so I don't ever have to swap out disks or the like. As we're discovering here, that's incredibly difficult to quantify and therefore does not appear to be that great of a measure, however. ...Valen? Seriously? Valen? Ugh. Funny that you mention party member mods, as those are a type of mod that I personally have an extreme dislike for...no doubt part of my annoyance and disappointment in the EEs. ;p Now, there are mods I personally use that I wouldn't ever play BG(2) ever again without (mainly AI and item and spell revising mods)...but to insist they're necessary/appropriate for every player? Hmph. Away with you, beggar!

Your image doesn't load for me. I expanded all questions and alternative stances, though I did not answer questions I felt I had little to no understanding of, including most notably some about immigration and education.

Yes, thank you: my posts got way, way too inflected with my own (admittedly unpleasant) personal feelings about the matter, but this was more or less the original idea I was going for.

I have to be honest, I don't quite understand why you keep saying this: as I said before, it doesn't matter what kind of party you're playing or roleplaying, the problem still applies. Whether you're being a murder-hobo or lawful good paladin, it was still a potentially huge flub if you ever saw what the items were worth: you see those prices, and go, "Holy crap: we're going to sell these items because the money/the good it'll do our quest/whatever else outweighs the minor benefits these items give." My entire point was that playstyle really didn't matter... The original question that we're replying to was, "Are they worth buying?". What I've said has everything to do with whether they're worth buying in my opinion (content that isn't worth the extra money, no way to buy it without the extra content that most older players probably won't want, terrible dev practices that should make you not want to buy the game at all, losing out on the moddability of the originals, etc.), particularly if you still have the originals. Note that my original post didn't say, "No, absolutely never buy them,": it explained under what circumstances I think you should, and under what circumstances I think you shouldn't. I think I have answered the original question more than sufficiently fairly, given my actual overwhelmingly negative impressions of the game and its development. There's nothing wrong with any of that: as I said, the original question was, "Are they (these specific "enhanced editions" of the BG series) worth buying?", and my answers were formulated based on the very specific cases of these particular EEs. If games get updated and they get BETTER (and they have an appropriate purchase value), then I'm happy to sing an enhanced game's praises. Since I do not believe that to be the case here, and in fact, I think the games were actively made WORSE compared to their original releases (plus there was some other crappy stuff I understandably associate with their release), well...well, I'm not going to sugarcoat it: they're not really worth bothering with unless you a few specific wants that make them worth buying, as I originally said. And as you said, your mileage may vary. I created super-ISOs for each IE game for easy installation (and not having to bother with actual disks) many years ago, so I'm not particularly bothered by the whole install thing. However, that's obviously not something people normally do, so again, your mileage may vary.

And THOSE are a mere $400! Yes, I did worry about that in my Yu2s when I bought them...buuut I did get them for less than half their normal price, so I'm not too torn up about it.

I'm kinda talking out of my butt here, but if I were Obama, I wouldn't bother going moderate (assuming Obama actually does ideally want a more liberal candidate). The GOP looks on the verge of self-destruction (e: in regards to the election), and I am honestly having trouble believing that they have even a moderate chance of winning the White House. Why negotiate when you don't really have to - when you know that the most likely occurrence is that Clinton will win, and the next most likely scenario is probably Sanders winning? Unless he doesn't want either of those to appoint anybody, in which case, O.K., sure. I would probably start off *extremely* liberal, and then work down to only moderately liberal, particularly if it looks like Democrats will win the White House as we get closer and closer to election day. I would personally prefer a moderate, myself, but...that just doesn't seem all that likely to me. Again, talking completely out of my butt here - the race between Republicans and Democrats could actually be a lot closer than it seems to me, particularly given the weirdness of the current political landscape...but that's just me.

A mere $500 on Amazon. Think I'll stick to my Kanto Yu2s for now...

Wasn't that my point exactly? No, see, the idea is for the developers to use just a LICK of common sense and make the items actually appropriately priced, in line with items of similar power throughout the rest of the game at very least, instead of...you know, literally being some of the best items to sell in the game. There's also the BG2 approach in making the items work only for that specific character (or rather, that specific race-class combination, to be more precise), as well worthless to merchants. However, I've always seen this as a bit too extreme, and would prefer something less anti...anti-power gamer, I guess? Where did all of these characters get all of these highly enchanted items that work for only them, anyways? This is an RPG, with the operating word being "roleplaying" - give the player a little respect for these things. (edit): Yes, I imagine the prices were changed patches later after I played, since they were clearly insane prices. As I said, this thing was really only a small gripe in the grand scheme of things. These are old, old games. I've had and played them on and off for a very long time, and as a consequence, I've gotten to that point where I want everything to be just so. So when a group of people that had little connection to the original games come out of the blue and say, "Hey, we're making Enhanced Editions of your favorite games - give us money!", and it turns out one of the main selling points is terrible new content that I don't want that sticks out like a sore thumb, and that they're charging more money for the game on my platform than on another for something I don't want even the slightest part of, yer not gonna get happy feelings from me. The entire thing feels more like they were trying to get relevant experience in working in the Infinity Engine for their midquel (while also making a quick buck) than making actual genuine Enhanced Editions. The only people involved in the project that I have any respect for are the incredibly gracious modders who helped add a lot of the new art assets (the author of 1PP, Erephine, as the biggest example I know of) and the modders who helped with some of the technical stuff that the devs were clearly struggling with in the beginning (and also some of those tech people who made some rather neat miscellaneous changes to the engine). Funnily enough, with the fiasco and the community split that was the result of the EEs being released, modding actually died off even more after the EEs were released (beyond some modders doing cursory compatibility updates), rather than had any sort of revival. So all in all, no, I really don't have very many positive feelings to associate with the EEs.

...But as I said, it's completely irrelevant that I murdered him (or the girl). If I had merely accepted him (or her) into my party immediately (which I could've done so with literally the same amount of effort, and almost zero roleplaying consequences), it's literally the same exact problem. The only thing that actually fixes the problem is just pretending the characters don't exist (or...uh, I guess willfully ignoring that selling their items is much, MUCH more of a benefit than having them). So the whole murder-hobo thing doesn't really matter by my estimation. (Also, honestly, this entire issue regarding lack of balance is actually really only a minor issue to me: see below.) Know what I think an even better solution than doing any that is? Don't play or purchase an "enhanced edition" that was at least partially hijacked by completely random writers for the sake of inserting their own fanfic* party members into the game. You don't usually need bloody writers for enhanced editions...and if you're going to have them, at least make the new or rewritten content fit in at least halfway with the original content, please...or at least make it optional like you did for your iPad version of the game. I wanted some of the other things present in these EEs, but clearly, it's not really worth the bother. (edit): Oops, I forgot to explain the asterisk. *: not that there's anything wrong for people to do this for their own games...but I sure as heck don't want them, and this was actually the deciding factor for me not bothering to purchase BGII:EE.

I actually only murdered him because I knew he was a new party member and I really didn't like that he was there. I don't normally play that way. And now that I think of it, I think the other new party member, the wild mage girl, had a staff that was worth the same amount, and you could find her even *earlier* than him (she was in Beregost, if I recall correctly, and he was in...Nashkel near Minsc? Real creative, putting them in places where you can already recruit other party members, guys...), and also, I am pretty sure you can get both of them to join your party immediately (I know you can at least the girl) so that part about being a murder-hobo-psycho is kinda irrelevant, . In my opinion, party members that you can recruit immediately at the beginning of the game simply shouldn't generally have items that are worth a ridiculous amount of gold.

Yep. Don't think I've ever been on a forum where you could. Yes...and I love opening up a person whom I've put on my ignore list's post, skimming it for a couple of seconds, and thinking, "Yep, that's why I did this." I just wish I wouldn't view their posts so often to reaffirm that I'm correct in expecting what I'm now getting by viewing their posts.

You did? Where? I must have missed it. All I see is this... ...which actually rather says the opposite, as it says you know you annoy certain people...which I would think would imply you know what certain people you annoy...