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Caerdon

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Everything posted by Caerdon

  1. All per-encounter spells would make the game really bland in my opinion (and yes, I think IE games were bland if you rested after every encounter). You'd have all the same spells available for every encounter, so you'd only need to adjust your tactics to fit the enemy, but for the most part, you could easily use basically the same routine for 95% of the encounters. In contrast, right now you need to consider not just the enemy, but also the resources you have available and which resources you want to save for later. This adds tactical depth and make encounters much more varied and interesting. Additionally all combat would have to be rebalanced, because the current weaker mobs would pose absolutely no challenge if you always had your full spell repertoire in use. Right now even the "trash" fights are quite interesting and even challenging in their own way, because you want to get through them without wasting your resources - again: tactical variation. (Sure, you can cheese the current system by visiting an inn after every encounter, but that's tedious and inconvenient and only an idiot would bother, so no need to take that into account when balancing the game.) That said, I wouldn't be against making per-encounter abilities just slightly more common. For example, when getting the fourth slot for a spell level, maybe that could be a per-encounter slot. This way a druid with 4 L1 spells, 4 L2 spells and 2 L3 spells could always cast one L1 and L2 spell "for free". Or something like that.
  2. Same here, noticed this specifically in Copperlane. i7-5820K @ 3.3 GHz, 16 GB, 2 x GTX 970, 2560x1600
  3. Some wimpy but otherwise moderately capable wizards:
  4. How are you taking DT into account? You can't just calculate average damage and subtract DT from that. Grazes and weapons' damage ranges make the calculations pretty ugly...
  5. BG was like this, which was one of its major faults. What I'm saying is that going to the very bottom should mean your character is handicapped in that area. No, it wouldn't. It would just mean that your character is handicapped in that particular area, but is more capable in other areas. Adjust your playstyle to match. The whole point of the "no bad builds" concept is that the other attributes can be useful too, which wasn't the case in the BG series. -- Sorry guys, unfortunately I'm leaving for work now and I can't continue this right now. I'm planning to start a new thread about diminishing returns and other related stuff later, because I've been having the same discussions in several places and frankly I think a lot of people just don't really understand the concept and its repercussions (not referring to you specifically).
  6. Not to my knowledge. Have I stated that? Anyway, I think you might be getting stuck on details and missing the actual point in the process. The real problem is the linearity of the stat progression, this leads almost inevitably to stat dumping and mindless min-maxing. In order to avoid that with linear stat progression you'd have to go for extreme penalties and bonuses, and that would be a nightmare to balance.
  7. I think we're dealing with a psychological effect here at least partly. It just feels "wrong" that dumped stats still give bonuses, even if they're small. I have a feeling that if you set the zero point to 10 and applied the adjustments as negatives below and positives above, a lot of people would be happier even if it ended up in the same place. (I do think the abilities ought to have more impact in absolute terms as well; I don't really feel I'm missing much from my dump stats or gaining much by pumping them. I would like it to sting if I dumped something to 3 so I'd have to adjust my tactics accordingly.) My problem with this is that the Might / Weapon Damage curve is linear, whether or not Might gives a mix of penalties and bonuses or bonuses only. It needs to be changed to a curve that's steep at the beginning and gives diminishing returns, otherwise min-maxing will always remain the king. In other words: every point spent on a stat should always give a slightly smaller bonus than the previous one.
  8. This is the second time today that I've liked something Stun wrote (well, this part of it)... Something weird is definitely going on. But yeah, this is something I absolutely agree with, and it's something I've been saying for some time. The problem is that attributes give bonuses/penalties in a very linear manner when the penalty for lowering a stat from the average range should be increasingly more severe the lower you go. There's nothing really wrong with min-maxing and it should remain possible, but it should carry a price. Dumping a stat should mean that you're handicapping your character in some aspect (beyond just "oh dear, my accuracy is slightly below average") and you need to make significant adjustments in your playstyle to compensate.
  9. There must be a jittering light in the ceiling. We can't see the ceiling, so we'll never know.
  10. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now and can't give you a proper answer, I'll be back later today. Or tomorrow, depending on your timezone. But yeah, I'm probably being a bit too harsh here. 2560x1600 is perfectly playable, it's just that... well, later!
  11. Sorry, no experience, but even with 2560x1600 I feel like the resolution is barely supported at all, which is incredibly shortsighted. Well, it's not quite a matter of short-sighted as much as it is resources, I suspect, and this is the beta. Give 'em time. Sure, they have time to fix things - I'm just surprised that support for large resolutions seems like an afterthought when it's been obvious for years that 4K resolutions are arriving fast.
  12. Sorry, no experience, but even with 2560x1600 I feel like the resolution is barely supported at all, which is incredibly shortsighted.
  13. And comments like this is the reason why I think BG2 has to be one of the most overrated RPGs of all time. I agree - which is weird as I love BG2. But I guess it's only a small portion of its fans that think it was nearly perfect in all aspects. It was great because it was great as a whole, not because every individual component was stellar.
  14. I like what I've heard so far, but the soundtrack is definitely lacking in memorable department. I loved the simple, beautiful melodies in the old IE games - songs like and . The game also needs a powerful main theme. All IE games had great themes (and I loved how BG2's theme changes into peaceful compound meter after the intensive first part and keeps playing while you're creating your character).
  15. For the past couple of weeks I've been occasionally trying to remember the puzzles the BG series had... and frankly, I can't remember a single one that'd make me think "yeah, that was a great puzzle!" That's just not what I loved about those games. The puzzles were there, and I guess they were quite nice at best, but what I loved about the games was the sense of adventure, the plot, the combat, the villains, the companions, the exploration... and so many other unforgettable things I can't remember right now. But not puzzles. That said, puzzles definitely serve a purpose. They're there to slow the pace down in between all the battles, they make you explore your surroundings, they introduce you to new bits of lore and history and they make you use your brain. However, I think they are used too often and too unimaginatively when other things could serve the same purpose better.
  16. I don't like having too many magical items around, it makes them feel cheap, unremarkable and commonplace. SoA had a bit too much in my opinion, BG1 was much better. I like to get attached to the stuff that I have, so instead of ditching the sword I've been using for half of the game for some super sword just before the final battle, I'd rather just upgrade it with some unique artefact or mystical ceremony or whatever. I liked the idea of collecting parts and ingredients and forging them into items, but I think it'd be better if we had to choose between some of them because they share a common ingredient, and I'd like to be able to customize the end result more. For example, maybe Flail of Ages could've been either a one-handed or a two-handed flail depending on our choice (well, no 2-h flails in BG2...), maybe Short Bow of Gesen could've been made into Longbow of Gesen or even Crossbow of Gesen, maybe Crom Faeyr could've been a scimitar or a mace instead or maybe we had to choose between Shadow Dragon Scale and Red Dragon Scale because they shared a unique component? Of course that might suck if the player uses the ingredients to create something inferior before realizing what they can be used for, but that's really a matter of how the system is implemented and designed. Maybe we could even destroy the item later and retrieve some of the ingredients so that they can be used to forge other, greater items. However, this would keep the overall amount of magic items better in check and still let us get the stuff we really want.
  17. Uhh... that's not right. Going from +0% to +30% is a 30% increase (Duh!) but going from -15% to +15% is roughly a 35% increase. The change may be the same in absolute terms, but it makes a bigger difference in the latter case. Can't adjust for that. Can you provide an example calculation? I don't think you're correct: I'm pretty sure the difference between 0.85x and 1.15x will be exactly the same as the difference between 1x and 1.3x. The difference is the same in absolute terms, but relatively it's different, and you can't just compensate for that by adjusting the base stats. Let's assume the base health for a character is 100, 3 CON gives +0% health and 18 CON gives +30% health. Raising CON from 3 to 18 would raise the health from 100 to 130. That's a 30% increase, right? So what if 3 CON meant -15% health and 18 CON +15% instead? At 3 CON the health would be 85 and raising CON to 18 would raise health to 115. That's the same 30 point increase in absolute terms, but it's also relative 35.3% increase ((115 - 85) / 85 = 0.353). Now, we could compensate by upping base health to 118 instead of 100. Then 3 CON (-15%) would give the same 100 starting health as before, but now 18 CON (+15%) would give 136, which is more than 130. So no, going from -15% to +15% is not the same as going from +0% to +30%.
  18. You must gather your party before venturing upstairs.
  19. Interesting discussion, guys. I think I've made some errors as well when calculating the effects of DEX, so I'll have to take another look at things later. Uhh... that's not right. Going from +0% to +30% is a 30% increase (Duh!) but going from -15% to +15% is roughly a 35% increase. The change may be the same in absolute terms, but it makes a bigger difference in the latter case. Can't adjust for that.
  20. Hey, respectful disagreement is totally cool with me Oh, and it's definitely "bonuses". What do you think is the plural of "bus"? I get what you mean. The use of the word "bonus" wasn't the best idea, I was using it because the base value for things like health is already quite high in my opinion, and even if the curve was doubled (and all enemy damage values etc. vere raised to re-balance the game), it would still be quite enough to survive. However, my real point is that multiplying the attribute bonuses wouldn't change the fundamental problem with the current system: that they all just give flat increases. 1 MIG gives you the same amount of damage whether you go from 3 to 4 or 19 to 20 (even if there are minor diminishing returns when you look at the percentual total damage increase). You know better than most that one point in MIG is always better than one point in DEX, assuming we're just looking at plain damage output. And if they were balanced more evenly, it just wouldn't matter which you put your points in. What I'm suggesting is that going from 3 to 4 DEX would be better than going from 16 to 17 MIG, and vice versa. This way it'd be very difficult to come up with the optimal way to distribute X points between those two attributes - and the same goes for every other attributes, meaning that you'd need to put a lot more thought into how you're assigning them. Of course, one problem with coming up with all these ideas and solutions is that we still don't know much about many of the fundamental game mechanics. 12 RES gives you +36% concentration, so presumably you're about 25% better at concentration checks than someone with 3 RES. But what does that actually mean? What, exactly, are the calculations the game makes? We've no idea.
  21. Alt+F4 quits the game just fine, but yeah, there needs to be a way to get back directly to the main menu.
  22. A build is bad when your playstyle doesn't match its strengths and weaknesses. So yeah, by blindly clicking through the chargen you could end up with a "good" build, but it might suck at what you're trying to accomplish with it.
  23. That would be interesting. I think KOTOR did that at character creation. I do still think just doubling the curve is better though. Don't want the system encouraging "jack of all trades" build over others. Compared to what I'm proposing, with the current system it's impossible to create characters that are not jacks of all trades. Right now low attributes just don't impair your character in any meaningful way, every attribute only gives you bonuses on top of the 100% base level. Doubling the "curve" wouldn't change that, even if that would make low attributes relatively weaker. Everyone would still be min-maxing their brains out.
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