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Stun

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Everything posted by Stun

  1. Stun
    Just one? Ok.....The Kangaxx fight. You either had to guess correctly, or else you had to come online/use the strategy guide to get the step-by-step How-to. if you didn't, you lost one party member per round, until there was no one left and it was Game Over. ...I ne'er lost one party member anytime I's e'er fought Kangaxx...Spell Immunity - Abjuration (Imprisonment be neutralized) was an automatic against Liches, so no worries (imagined, prepared ahead o' time wit'out cheatin')...me mage cast it on theysselves an' stood closest ta 'im, so he'd keep castin' Imprisonment on them an' fail...no guessin' involved... ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!... <sigh> Sure, man. The first time you discovered Kangaxx, you (of course) had not known about the encounter before via message board or strategy-guid how-to's but you still miraculously managed to forsee: 1) that it would be a double battle where you were required to prepare Spell immunity twice (since the automatic-dispell magic kicked in immediately upon his transformation from Lich to Demi-lich 2) That the rest of your party would be in danger of Imprisonment, and therefore you instinctively had them wait by the door while your mage took him on alone 3) That you'd need a +4 weapon or equivalent to actually kill him (you just coincidently got the staff of the magi before taking him on. Good Guessing!) Yeah. Honesty.... who needs it, baby!
  2. Stun
    Or you learn that's acceptable behavior and just keep doing it since it's easy. The problem is there is no challenge here, so anyone can do it, it's JUST a waste of time. reward players for being good, they will strive to be better to get those rewards. "Punishing" bad players with tedium will just waste their time, they'll still be bad players. Ok, lets pause for a moment to make a couple of things clear. First, A consequence does not have to be "hard" to successfully deter the player and make him re-think his strategies. It mearly has to be unpleasant enough to make the player not wish to do it anymore. (which is what back tracking in a dungeon does. I hated, absolutely HATED having to walk back to the surface for any reason, when I was in level 2 or 3 in Dragon's eye in IWD. Therefore, I learned, real qucik, to do whatever it takes so I wouldn't have to trek back) Second, what is with you guys and your erroneous belief that Old-school = Hard? The IE games weren't hard. They were easy. But what made them so great was that they still maintained their complexity, despite being easy. Are not hard compared to what? Firkraag isn't hard? Even with SCS or improved anvil installed? Kangaxx isn't hard? Compared to Witcher 2. compared to Demon Souls, And yes, compared to Dragon age Origins. In Baldur's gate 1, the game was essentially Over once you learned Haste. In TOEE the game was essentially Over, once you learned Fireball. And Baldur's gate 2? Don't get me started on BG2. If you Solo'd a Kensai-Thief in BG2, All game challenge ceased by chapter 4, when you could use any item; when your traps killed every opponent; when you could stealth/invisible your way past every encounter. When the Shield of Balduran made you IMMUNE to Beholders, and the Amulet of power made you immune to Vampires, and Protection from magic scrolls made you immune to mages. When even Kangaxx was harmless if you simply ran to the nearest shop and bought a protection from Undead scroll and a +5 weapon.
  3. Stun
    Or you learn that's acceptable behavior and just keep doing it since it's easy. The problem is there is no challenge here, so anyone can do it, it's JUST a waste of time. reward players for being good, they will strive to be better to get those rewards. "Punishing" bad players with tedium will just waste their time, they'll still be bad players. Ok, lets pause for a moment to make a couple of things clear. First, A consequence does not have to be "hard" to successfully deter the player and make him re-think his strategies. It mearly has to be unpleasant enough to make the player not wish to do it anymore. (which is what back tracking in a dungeon does. I hated, absolutely HATED having to walk back to the surface for any reason, when I was in level 2 or 3 in Dragon's eye in IWD. Therefore, I learned, real quick, to do whatever it takes to not have to) Second, what is with you guys and your erroneous belief that Old-school = Challenging? The IE games weren't "hard". They were easy. But what made them so great was that they still maintained their tactical depth and rules-system complexity, despite being easy.
  4. Stun
    except this time its easier because part of the cave is already cleared. its not really a punishment. its just a waste of time. Learning experiences (what Jaesun is specifically describing) are never a waste of time. the walk back to town has nothing to do with the learning experience though. Sure it does. The learning is in the action -> consequence. Used up your arsenal too fast? Then you're going to have to take some time and walk back to camp. What is learned: Be more economical with your arsenal next time, or else you'll need to walk back...again. Nonsense. Insta-heals are not a consequence of using up your spells too fast. They are the Opposite. They're a reward. Thus the player doesn't learn to change his tactics.
  5. Stun
    Fast Travel is in every single one of the Infinity engine games.
  6. Stun
    except this time its easier because part of the cave is already cleared. its not really a punishment. its just a waste of time. Learning experiences (what Jaesun is specifically describing) are never a waste of time. As for J.E. Sawyer's question. There's nothing "good" about walking back (well, unless the scenery of the carnage the player left behind is pleasing to the eyes, in which case, Yes, the Good is the eye candy) Then again, does it have to be good?
  7. Stun
    A smart player would not find himself in that position. Why should we make the game easier so that unskilled players will not find themselves in that position. Meanwhile I have to say thank you for hardcore mode. How about the unskilled players say thank you for the easy mode and I get to play a game that actually punishes you for being bad at it. I don't agree with this premise. It's not about "smart" and "un-smart" when your archer has run out of arrows (for example), and is thus faced with the dilema of "do we walk back to town and restock, or do I just press on and use my sword, which I don't have the proper skills for, because I'm not a swordsman, I'm an archer?" Ditto with Running out of spells. You're literally asking mages to not use their arsenal in some fights, so that they will have some left over for later, for that unspecified battle, that their ESP has told them is coming up in a half hour or so. Or.... if your inventory is full, and you don't feel like doing something retarded, like discarding loot you fought hard to acquire in order to make more room. I'm in favor of the option to spend some time walking back. it is, after all, the price one pays for the opportunity to replenish.
  8. Stun
    Surrounding Kangaxx with Summoned Gnolls/Ogres did not prevent him from imprisoning your party members, one by one. assuming of course, your summons even managed to survive his uninterruptable Wail of the Banshee opener.
  9. Stun
    Just one? Ok.....The Kangaxx fight. You either had to guess correctly, or else you had to come online/use the strategy guide to get the step-by-step How-to. if you didn't, you lost one party member per round, until there was no one left and it was Game Over.
  10. Stun
    Bah, they would have fit in just fine. The only thing I remember from the BIS boards were the pitifully inconsequential, Rules-lawyer dramas that sprouted up every day. Stuff like: OMG! a +6 Spear!? That's against the D&D laws! TSR should sue! And of course, Karzak's holy crusade for the proper implementation of Dual-wielding rogues, and un-nerfed Grandmastery for warriors. But the stuff being debated here, on this forum, seems to be much more....encompassing. There are genre-philosophies being argued about. IMO that's far more serious than the petty stuff that ruffled our feathers at Black Isle.
  11. Stun
    The same people as before: EA
  12. Stun
    And they will. The old "but that's not Culturally perfect!" argument has been spouted on gaming message boards, since, like...forever. I remember people complaining about Serevok's armor, in 1999, after playing BG1. But here we are today, several awesome games later, and Fantasy RPGs aren't any more "history-book realistic" than they were a decade ago. Thank God.
  13. Stun
    Hell, for NWN2 we saw the exact opposite gripe. People were complaining that even if you removed a character's armor, they were still fully clothed
  14. Stun
    Fantasy can, and often does, employ very hefty doses of symbolism in its art design - which can often completely discard these so-called historical influences in favor of enhancing a game's story or mood. But this only ever becomes a problem when it's grossly overdone. (which is hardly what we're dealing with on this thread) Example of this symbolism Black steel plate. What it symbolizes: Evil. Grossly overdone? No. Super Spikey black steel plate with glowing runes. What it symbolizes: Very powerful Evil. Grossly Overdone? Yeah. Sure. Evil looking wavy daggers. What it symbolizes: This blade will poison what it hits. Grossly overdone? No. Evil looking wavy daggers that glow green and drip venom endlessly while you're walking. What it symbolizes: Same thing. Grossly overdone? yeah, I suppose. Boob Plate. What it symbolizes: female warriors. Grossly overdone? No. Bikini Plate. What it symbolizes: Sexiness. Grossly overdone. Yes.
  15. Stun
    Sure. I think we all get the "It's not practical!" argument (since we've been beaten over the heads with it repeatedly in the past 2 threads about this topic.) But personally, I don't see the point of demanding aesthetic practicality. Nor do I expect my RPG makers go back to school and get their PHDs in European History before daring to make an RPG that contains armor, or whatever. (if the armor bestows decent in-game protection, does it really matter that much that it isn't 100% historically accurate in its appearance?) Because that all seems like pointless nit-picking to me. Not much different than those annoying scenery pedants, who bitch that their game doesn't accurately portray water physics, or that trees don't look "realistic enough"
  16. Stun
    Well, except for the fact that none of these portraits are from Baldurs Gate. But on a serious note, I thought the whole discussion about "maturity" and "realism" would have ceased shortly after we were shown the Planescape Torment pics. Which, by themselves, manage to prove two things: 1) That you can have Revealing/Boob armor in a game, and that game can still maintain all of its maturity. 2) That Realism becomes quite the red herring in a game who's setting is so deliberately non-realistic in the first place. Personally, I see this issue as much ado about nothing. We're not dealing with Bioware. We're not talking about a company who's got a history of trying to use sex appeal to sell their games to hormonally charged teenage boys. We're dealing with Obsidian, a company that has always done their games in good taste. People here are grossly over-reacting.
  17. Stun
    Sounds exactly like IWD 1's system. Ie. some loot is absolutely set (the Elven warrior commander chick in the severed hand Always drops the Boots of Speed that she wears for your fight with her; The Frost Giant leader always drops his spear that he uses against you in your fight with him, etc.) In the meantime, there are loot tables for the non-set drops and you get something at random from those tables.
  18. Stun
    In the old IE games rogues weren't DPS kings. You had to be invisible to backstab, and once you got off a single backstab, that was it. You became visible and your subsequent hits were normal weapon damage, and far less than what a standard Fighter could do per round. If you wanted to backstab again, you had to re-stealth, which was nearly impossible to do without magical assistance, and literally impossible to do in the same round as your previous backstab.
  19. Stun
    ALL classes in all games benefit enormously from metagame knowledge. But I can't think of a single vancian system-using crpg I've ever played where metagaming is actually needed for effectiveness. (and isn't that what we're discussing?) After 10 minutes of brainstorming, I can only come up with one single example in one single game: The Kangaxx fight in Bg2 - which is not only optional, but chances are you'll miss it on your first playthrough It really doesn't. There's no difference in actual gameplay. In low-level campaigns, you won't ever encounter enemies who are so tough and specialized that you find yourself in a situation where your mage "mis-prepared" his spellbook (or whatever you guys are paranoid about), and in high level campaigns, your mage's list of memorized spells is so massive that it's virtually impossible to NOT be prepared for just about everything the game could ever throw at you. Unless you really *really* suck at choosing spells (ie. you decided to memorize infravision 8 times, instead of, you know, instinctively diversifying with some offensive spells) You know, that sounds great. But was that approach used for most or all of the tough encounters? No. Just about every other fight in IWD2 was straight forward. That is to say, the enemies/encounters could be dealt with using the player's standard encounter approach. (spamming fireballs is just as effective against the Orc chief and his minions in chapter 1, as it is against a group of Yuanti cultists and their leader in chapter 5.)
  20. Stun
    Icewind Dale also has a skip combat button.
  21. Stun
    I think the point is to not make it specific. A good DM makes it just vague enough so that it doesn't feel like you're being spoon-fed instructions on how to win. (although there's nothing wrong with flat out spoon-feeding instructions every once in a while, especially early on) But generally, a good DM will want to keep it Just vague enough so that a keen, alert player can connect the dots, while a dumb player is S.O.L. for not paying attention. And I've seen Developers do a fine job in that avenue. More to the point: I've seen the very developers who are working on Project Eternity do it well. Icewind Dale 2. The Holy Avenger party battle. Each one of the Enemies for that fight had their own specific set of immunities, vunerabilities, and attack modes. A player who didn't bother to read the storied item description/Journal they found in Dragon's Eye, ended up in big, big trouble in that fight. On the other hand, someone who took their time, read the lore, read the journals, ended up getting enough information to formulate a winning game plan --- and relevantly, they got that information well ahead of time, so that they could prepare the right spells, weapons and items for the battle.
  22. Stun
    In the end, I too will be happy with any system they use ....UNLESS they settle for an action/DPS system that makes mages feel like nothing more than archers with colorful arrows. because nothing can be more dull and unimaginitive than that.
  23. Stun
    Even in the most well done of non-vancian systems, you will almost always still see people settling on a few spells, and then using them over and over, while ignoring the rest. What you're describing isn't the "pitfalls" of a vancian system. it's the nature of gamers. We're creatures of habit.
  24. Stun
    You mean the right tools? No, if Magic is not an essential tool for the situation, then we'd end up getting the full gamut of diverse strategies. Some people will report being able to win encounter X without using magic, while others will report being able to win that same encounter by using Spell x, then Spell y. In the meantime, whether or not the spell system was vancian has suddenly become irrelevant.
  25. Stun
    I was saying just this earlier. Sure the game could tell you what to expect later, but really that cannot be true in all circumstances otherwise the game itself is just giving away what's going to be happening. Having your full spell library available to you at all times really is the best choice. Didn't we already cover this? Magic should never be so vital in a campaign that failure to bring a mage, with the precise set of spells for an encounter, leads to catostrophic failure. The whole point in 'strategy' is to be able to find a way to win, with the tools you have, when presented with a problem. If the game makes victory impossible without the use of a specific set of spells, then the flaw is with the game itself, not the magic system it's using. And in the context of that, it doesn't make a lick of difference if its magic system is vancian or if it's your system of "everyone knows every spell!".
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