Stun

I, too, like to take shots in the dark and level criticisms which I'm not sure are valid, upon games. Makes my posts look really smart!

What? What a load of baloney. Would you like to see some screenshots that illustrate how wrong you are? Or do you just need someone to walk you though those oh-so-complicated adjustable Feedback options in the game's main menu that you couldn't figure out? Here's a shot of 2 enemy spell casters casting a defensive spell on themselves. And here's a shot of a demon casting a summoning spell: God damn. What a tragic collection of totally hopeless modern gamers bitching about how the IE games don't hand-hold you tight enough. I am glad I missed that thread. And so is my stomach.

Enough with this ridiculousness. Spells look the same? I'll ask again, did you try reading their descriptions? By the way, if you're merely referring to their graphic animations then I'd very very concerned about PoE, as you will likely have the same gripe with its magic. There is no way Obsidian has the funding to make every spell animation be super distinctly different from the others. And if they're not, then we will get people like you complaining that Arcane Veil looks too similar to Minor Arcane reflection, and the whine will be: Well, how am I supposed to know what defense that enemy mage has put up!? <waah>

Wait a minute. Wait one stinkin' minute. I remember engaging you a while back in a rather laborious, detailed, technical discussion about D&D, complete with the typical badge-of-honor claims by both of us that we've got the old manuals, and have been playing since we were babies. How can someone with a vast D&D background not know every detail about anything that's being thrown at him in Baldurs Gate 2? The gripe you're making is a common one for other people, but it shouldn't even remotely apply to people like you.

Yes, I imagine bad eye sight, or the unwillingness to read a combat log window as it scrolls during combat can indeed be seen as a "problem" for someone. But for those people, BG2 has customizable auto-pause settings.

You're right Junta. Maybe instead of trying to spoonfeed you ways in which even a pop-a-moler may enjoy BG2's combat, I should just get out my little violin and play it for you as we cry together about the unfair harshness of life in general.

My citation of the Mega-dungeon was to counter your specific false claim that Level scaling is needed into put a party's power progression to good use.

Boy, someone is awfully cranky. Is it nap time?

^yep. Also Ok, here you are operating under the false assumption that only by Level scaling encounters can a developer deal with a power progressing party getting to level 12. And even more noteworthy is that you make this assumption even after seeing with your own eyes how the Mega Dungeon will handle difficulty progression (ie. without level scaling) I rest my case. You don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.

I can think of another example too. Weapon and armor degradation. That one is a quite a glaring example since it's actually a mechanic that they put in, then announced it in an update, then removed it after feedback.

Or just hurt you a few times first before even an idiot begins noticing he's getting hit with magic. You do realize that flesh to stone and disintegrate are not the only beholder rays, don't you? (in fact, if I'm not mistaken, Beholder AI in an unmodded Bg2 sees beholders casting Cause Serious Wounds, Fear, and Anti-magic Ray as their opening attacks. And even later when they cast Disintigrate and Flesh to stone you can.... you know... Save against them a few times before you get killed. But I understand. Our arguments sound so much better when we exaggerate.

I don't know. The Kickstarter video game development model is still in relative infancy. There's already an overly cautious element at play. If we suddenly begin seeing broken promises (or even zero broken promises but simply bad, cheap-feeling games) from the Bigger game developers on top of that, then I doubt there's going to be too many understanding contributors remaining after the first big failure, despite how well those developers spin their excuses. Make no mistake about this, it is very much in every gamer's extreme best interest that Obsidian and inXile fantastically succeed here with their projects.

:::looks again at the thread title::: Thank goodness this game isn't DA:O2.

I would hardly call a bajillion different ways to win any fight "specific". I only gave 1 way (the instinctive, pop-a-mole route) for the enemies cited. I can give many, many more, and so can just about anybody else who's played Bg2. But I was not asked to do such a thing. It's exactly the same thing. Spell Turning will protect you from a mage's Disintigrate as well as a Beholder's disintegrate. And again, you'll discover this the very first time you face a beholder. A mage's Dispel Magic will remove your buffs just as effectively as a Beholder's anti-magic ray etc. The difference of course is that BG2 gives you specific Beholder-countering items that anyone can equip.

What about them? Mages also toss insta-death spells at you. If you haven't learned from the mage fights you already had, then there's always the Shield of Balduran. If the Shield of Balduran (which you can buy in the FIRST city district you come across in the game) isn't enough, then you use your head. And if your friggin head is defective, then you memorize raise dead, then you rest then you resurrect the poor sods who died due to your stupidity. If you have no cleric, then you use the Rod of resurrection that you Bought in the same shop that has the shield of Balduran.... or found in the same sewers where you face your first beholder. (funny how that goes, eh. It's almost as if the Devs planned it that way!) If you're not a shopper....and not a looter, and not a cleric, and not a mage killer, and not an intelligent gamer then by all means.... Feel free to reload. Although I'm not quite how reloading is going to help you here. That beholder will just do the same thing to you again. Ironic though that you'd cite beholders. Beholders are just about the ONLY encounters in this game that Pre-buffing is pointless against. Their very first attack is a super-powerful mass dispel that removes all Buffs.

No, that is neither what I said, nor how it happens, unless, again, you're a sh*tty gamer who's attention is somewhere other than on the action. I *remember* the first time I faced a golem in my first Bg2 playthough. It was in the D'arnise Keep. It was a clay Golem. MY party attacked it. I noticed, within about 10 seconds, that the only one doing damage to it was Anomen. So I put 2+2 together: Anomen was the only one using a blunt weapon. So...I took his weapon away from him and gave it to Korgan, who was my Best fighter. he then proceeded to utterly destroy that Golem, and all the other golems in the room, by himself. After that, Golems never gave my party any trouble again.

You find out via discovery. You fight them the same way you fought every mage you faced prior to meeting your first beholder. And you will LEARN this in your first beholder fight. You will notice that spells are being thrown at you. your buffs are being dispelled etc. So you instinctively dog-pile that beholder with everyone in your party. Golems are a no brainer. Again. it's instinct. You hit them till they're dead. And if your weapon isn't damaging them, then... you switch to a different weapon. (but hey, never overestimate the intelligence of crappy gamers. Say.... would you also like me to explain to a first time gamer how he's supposed to learn how to access his inventory?) Dragons are legendary beasts and the game specifically warns you ahead of time not to mess with them unless you're prepared, and willing to die. That is why every single dragon in BG2 is both optional and non hostile.... except for the 1 you fight about an hour before the end of the game... and THAT one you get warnings about. (and hell, if you can't utterly destroy a dragon at the point even without buffing and warnings, then you suck at the game and it's completely your fault that you do, not the game's. ^ see, this is what this discussion is REALLY about: Plain-Jane difficulty. You folks don't really give a **** about "meta-gaming" or "pre-buffing" or whatever pseudo argument you've been spouting here as a front. You just hate it when combat is hard and takes you by surprize. You want to be able to enter and win every fight the first time out. And that's fine. But at least be honest and ADMIT that instead of trying to make it look like your arguments have some sort of distinguished gamer "taste" to them.

Aah, the 4th grader's debatingmindset: My opponent admits that you may need meta-gaming in maybe 2 fights.... out of the several hundreds that that the game throws at you. This means that BG2 was all about meta gaming! Derp. BG2 did this. otherwise, you wouldn't be seeing a billion 'lets plays' on you tube, whole threads, whole forums, whole strategy guides devoted to the bajillion different ways to SOLO the game with a monk. Or a fighter. Or a rogue (you can't do much pre-buffing with those classes...can you! But you sure can utterly dominate everyone in the game with them)

And of course, a game is a failure if it is designed to shine and show its tactical depth in replays. Got it. Edit: and here, have a smilie: I imagine they're there for the same reason any strategic option ever is....to give players a choice.

A dishonest loaded question. What you call "rote repetitive application of pre-buffs", a non-lazy, non-HATER of the IE games would call "using your friggin class skills to prepare for battle." Again, nonsense. Lets take the Big Daddy of the IE games. BG2. BG2 had hundreds and hundreds of fights. Of them, there are only maybe 2 fights in the entire game where meta-gaming might be necessary. And those 2 fights are hidden easter eggs. You won't even encounter them in the first place without meta knowledge. (Kangaxx, Twisted Rune) All other fights can be won by buffing during battle, or not even buffing at all.

FO:NV is superb by any standard. MotB is the least flawed NWN series game. South Park: The Stick of Truth is brilliant at what it attempts. That's three they hit out of the park, which is better than you can say for most studios as far as I'm concerned. seeing as how nwn2 and storm of zehir were obsidian games, your compliment of motb is a back-handed one at best. additionally, we got a substantial list o' serious criticisms of motb that we could share in a more appropriate fora. Amen. But this is as good a forum as any. MoTB had a great storyline and very well written companions. And that's all it had going for it. Everything else about it was crap. It most definitely was NOT the least flawed of the NWN series (that distinction goes to NWN: SoU, which succeeded in everything BUT its story, so consequently people dismiss it) MoTB.... It was about as unbalanced as Skyrim's late game play. You can create a +8 weapon that does 18d6 damage. And it will stack with all your strength modifiers and combat skills causing you to do about 250 damage per hit. And of course you eventually get 6 attacks per round. The result: encounters become pathetically trivial affairs that last about 5 seconds. It was MoTB that Broke NWN2's camera. People consistently (conveniently?) forget this. The Spirit eater meter - while Obsidian should get some kudos for putting an addiction mechanic into a game (a very rare thing), they should not be praised for the uninspired, boring, uninteresting way they did it. Epic level Gnolls lol The Skein <gag> In fact, there are no good dungeons in the game at all Even the story has its glaring flaws. There's a big Deus ex machina at the end. A grandiose one where you think you may actually have a meaningful choice (to tear down the wall).... until a GOD (literally, a God) comes down and says: NOPE. You cannot do this. You may only save your own soul. As hinted at (above), the game's crafting system completely overpowers, and renders meaningless, the world's loot system. Contrary to whatever misguided belief or fanfoi hype you may have or heard, Obsidian did NOT succeed in making Epic Level 3e D&D gameplay interesting. They failed just as badly as NWN: HoTU did. The Influence system was terrible. You could mine an NPC's dialogue options every early on, get them to "devoted", and....that's it. You were pretty much done with it after that. But back to something more interesting... BULL You didn't have to pre-buff at all... in any of the IE games... unless you were a sh*tty N00b who didn't know your party's skills, didn't know how to play, and didn't bother to read the descriptions of the spells and items you decided to use. And who's fault is THAT? Not that it matters. The IE games were designed to be <gasp> challenging games, not pleasant movie simulators. So yes, pre-buffing in some fights might be important. Get over it, you lazy f*cks. "Surprise" and "difficulty" are not game flaws.

I don't recall electing PrimeJunta as the Minister of Fun-Defining for the world. Therefore, It's not up to him to decide what anyone else sees as fun.

Sure... in the style, which is vague enough to allow for almost any kind of game ALMOST being the key word here. It's safe to say that if you promise an RPG in the style of the IE games, and then deliver a game in the style of one of todays popular MMOs, for example, you have not delivered on your promise.

The example I gave (finding a way to spell-pre-buff in PoE despite the no-spell-prebuffing rule) is what we were discussing here and what Inkblot was responding to. It obviously will never happen "unintentionally". It will always happen only when the player deliberately makes it happen. My point, is that this is No different than spamming pre-buffs in the IE games in order to make that next battle easy. In Both cases 1) the player is intentionally gaming the system ie. exploiting; 2) In both cases, there may be huge quantities of meta-gaming knowledge behind the player's every move. Yet we don't really mind the first case. We're OK with it! It's the second case that, on this forum, has damned those IE games as terrible, unfun, untactical pieces of garbage that they are!

Kinda hard to do that when all enemies everywhere progress/develop along with your character so as to make that character feel like he's standing still, instead of progressing. In fact, even objectively, that is the #1 gripe people have with level scaling - that it makes the player feel like he's "staying afloat" the entire game, instead of what leveling is SUPPOSED to feel like: "Getting more powerful". Why? What kind of sorry ass open world philosophy dictates that the more work you put in (exploring those optional areas first), the more it WILL NOT MATTER, since Sir Attacks-A-lot will level scale with you in order to fulfill the developers decree that he be a tough opponent for the party no-matter-what. BG1. Tarnesh (the mage at the entrance to the Friendly Arm inn), is a fantastic example here of how to do things RIGHT. He is not level scaled. He is static. He is designed to challenge a small party of 1st-2nd level characters who decided to tunnel vision their way there from Candlekeep. But do you know what the TRUE beauty of BG1's open world is? Freedom. The party can decide to go adventuring instead, and head south. Taking their lumps, paying their dues, then heading to the Friendly Arm Inn when they're 3rd or 4th level and then crushing Tarnesh like a bug. This is as it should be. And it's consistant with a believable world (there's no reason why a lazy bounty hunter who decided to wait in one place for his bounty to come to HIM, should be allowed to gain levels like a party of adventurers who went out and earned their power.)