Hiro Protagonist II

I've decided to put this on the back burner for now regardless if new beta updates come out. I won't be playing it anymore until around Feb and I've already put in over 50 hours. The beta is getting old and stale for me. My views haven't changed that much and if anything, Josh's two posts confirms a lot with the ongoing development. I'll still read the updates and follow the forums now and then. Obsidian are probably a good 6 months away and there's just too many bugs to report. Having too much fun with Wasteland 2 and this will tie me up for the next few months.

^ That's been the design decision from the start, especially with the class updates. It's similar with 4E with the roles for your characters and it really helps to have all four roles in your party in my experience with 4E pnp.

If we take the BG:EE map with PoE overlapped on it, since the characters, doors, buildings, barrels outside are the same size, there's a definite scale issue there. Remember, characters are the same size with BG:EE and PoE. Therefore the BG:EE with PoE overlapped on it shows how small the PoE map is in scale. So we have two issues here. Scale with BG:EE / PoE and PoE is smaller in scale. And viewport which makes PoE even smaller when compared to BG1.

And yet, we've gone from a couple of encounters in BG1 wilderness maps from 18 years ago to Dyrford crossing with only ONE good encounter with the enemy adventurers at the Dragon Egg. Everything else is trash. And even worse with the Gorge map with no good encounters at all, as ALL the enemies are trash mobs. I don't get your distortion of scale thing. Again, I have no idea what you're on about or how that even makes sense to being cartoony.

Is that the best you can come up with? I've already shown the characters, buildings, barrels outside of buildings are the same size in relation to each other in a previous post. Also, I've shown with PoE and BGEE that when zoomed out is the same in relation to each other on the same monitor. And then when you go to the area map, you can see how much you are seeing compared to the rest of the map. Are you disputing that the areas in PoE are not smaller than BG1/BG:EE in scale? If you are, then back up your claims. I already have with mine.

Who's talking about cartooney? I have no idea what you mean. Yeah, the maps are big in BG1 and quite often empty in a lot of places, but they also have some unique encounters as well. Also I think it's great to be able to go from one encounter to the next without tripping over trash mobs every 5 seconds like you do in PoE. Why is it a problem to have some space between encounters? Why shouldn't you be able to go around encounters if you want to? So you want everything in 2 seconds of each other? Walk from the inn to a shop in 2 seconds? Walk to another shop in another 2 seconds? Why the rush? You need to catch a train and need to get this area finished in 20 seconds? Why can't you have a second inn down the bottom of the Nashkel map?

There's always one isn't there? Someone who doesn't read. You didn't read my post did you? I'm talking about what you see on the screen. I'm talking about scale. What you currently see on the screen compared to the rest of the area map. In my post from the previous page of this thread. I showed that what you see on the screen with PoE compared to BG is that the characters, the doors, buildings, barrels outside are the same size when PoE is zoomed in. Note: The same with the doors, buildings, barrels outside is the same size. And then when you zoom out, PoE is similar to BG:EE with similar sizes with the characters. Okay let that sink in for a moment. If it hasn't sunk in yet, I'll say it again. The characters are the same size on your screen with BG and PoE zoomed in. I measured the characters with the screen shots when I put the screen shots at the same height. The characters are also similar size when PoE and BGEE is zoomed out. Now given the characters are the same size, then lets look at what else you can see on the screen shall we? Looking at the map, we can see how much screen takes up in the area map when zoomed in and zoomed out with PoE, BG:EE and BG even though you can't zoom out with BG but it's still relevant. Because it's about screen to area. What you see on the screen compared to the entire area map. And with BG/BGEE the wilderness maps are all the same size as the one I used. And Beregost is also the same size. And Nashkel is also the same size. Nashkel is also 10 x 10 screens in the Original Baldurs Gate. The whole area is 100 screens with what you see on your screen. That's called scale. Below is a screen shot from a 22" 1680 x 1050 widescreen monitor. So instead of jumping in, frothing at the mouth and saying it's crap. How about you do some research, measure the maps, and compare the scale of all three games. It's not about pixels, it's about scale.

Been taking it nice and easy doing every quest I can find in AZ. Higgin's two dogs Zeus and Apollo are still alive and sticking to his side. Although there's been some very close calls with the dogs. One encounter had one dog on 1 hp by the end of it. Massacre at the Prison Valley. Coming out of the underground cavern. Massacre at the Farm near the Prison. Darwin Village. Those Zombies were a great fight at the start. Higgins put the finishing blow to the last one and the dogs ran back to him.

Just realised I have the maps in the 'zoomed in' and 'zoomed out' back to front. Should be: 1. Zoomed out. 2. Zoomed in. 3. Zoomed out. 4. Zoomed in. But the maps are correct. I also find it small when crossing the side of the map. When zoomed in, it takes five screens. In BGEE it takes 8 to 9 screens. And when zoomed out, it takes 3 1/3 screens in PoE and takes a little over 4 screens with BGEE. I feel it even more when playing the original game (which I do all the time) with taking 10 screens to get to the other side of the map. I had a quick look at WL2 and it has bigger maps in relation to scale. Wasteland 2 Rail Nomads camp. The box doesn't come up on the map so I had to approximate with the surrounding buildings.

To give this a new spin and keep it in line with the thread topic, I wanted to see the area size that you see on screen and the map comparing PoE with BG1 and BG:EE. Basically the 'scale' of the areas which I think is important. We all know PoE's maps are smaller just by the general ~feel~ of playing the beta. But how much smaller? The answers are surprising. To keep this in the same size as BG1, I shrunk the PoE's and BG:EE maps to the same size. 1. Zoomed in. Dyrford Township compared to BG:EE and BG1. 2. Zoomed out. Dyrford Township compared to BG:EE and BG1. 3. Zoomed in. Dyrford Township, Dyrford Crossing, BG:EE and BG1. I decided to see how 'small' Dyrford crossing is to the actual town of Dyrford. Surprisingly (at least for me), they're the same size in scale. 4. Zoomed out. Dyrford Township, Dyrford Crossing, BG:EE and BG1. 5. To scale the PoE map down to the size of BG1 and BG:EE and what you see on the screen, this is what it looks like. Overall. the 'scale' of the outside and wilderness maps are very small compared to Baldur's Gate. Even BG:EE does it better with having more screen maps and makes the game world bigger which is why there's a feeling of exploration in the Baldur's Gate game. The PoE maps make it feel very much like IWD, small and bumping into enemies.

The lower camera angle does indeed make it worse. I'd prefer a more top down view like the IE games. It's even worse in combat when you can't see behind characters.

Not confirming anything as I haven't seen them myself. They seem to be a good size in the dungeons like the Dyrford Ruins. But if we find out the exterior maps are small in the final game, well... Also, I decided to see what PoE would be like if it was similar resolution to BG1. So I shrunk the PoE screenshot down to BG1 height to be similar size. Baldur's Gate Zoomed in. Characters, doors and barrels outside seem to be the same. There's definitely more area to see. But there's a lot of what I consider wasted space on the sides. I'd like to see a L or |_| shaped U.I. where the left (and right) side is being used and make the play area with your characters more square. I also think there's a bit of an optical illusion going on with the PoE screenshot, appearing to stretch and making your characters smaller with the widescreen, but they are the same height as the BG1 characters. Zoomed out. It's wider of course but at the same height, everything is smaller. Characters, doors, and even the barrels outside are smaller. Again, there's a lot of wasted space on the side imo. I think this may give it an illusion of things being smaller to a degree in the game world, if you're zoomed out all the time which is how I play most of the time, then everything will feel smaller. BGEE did the opposite with the default was zoomed about halfway in/out when you load a game and then you can zoom in and out. The default for PoE when starting the game is the opposite with being zoomed all the way in and then you can zoom out. I then decided to see what this is like compared to BG:EE. The results are surprising. To keep this in the same ratio as the original Baldurs Gate, I used the same height. Baldurs Gate: Enhanced Edition Zoomed in. Everything is bigger with BG:EE. Characters, doors, barrels. And no wasted space on the sides. And it shows when you have a |_| shaped U.I. design, there's still a bit of area to see. Note: This is zoomed all the way in for BG:EE and it's not how it is when the game starts. Zoomed out. Everything is surprising similar but the big thing for me is the sides are not wasted like they are in the PoE screenshot. The |_| U.I. looks better in BG:EE. The play area is also similar size. You have the dialogue box right in front of you instead of to the side. Overall, I have to hand it to BG:EE as it looks better and more functional imo. You can zoom in more than PoE and when zoomed out, the wasted space on the side are being used. And the zoom is a lot better in BG:EE.

This topic has been brought up before and it's good to see it brought up again. And in those other threads, several reasons were given with people's concerns. One is the maps are in widescreen and not square which makes the maps narrow like a corridor. The maps in BG1 were square and you could travel up, down, left and right and explore the map. The maps in PoE are widescreen which means the distance from top to bottom are quite short and the distance between left and right are long and as I said, feel like corridors. Too late to redesign the maps as they've already been done, but from what I spoken to Sensuki it doesn't look encouraging for the rest of the maps. And with the maps designed as they are as being long thin corridors, there's not much room to manoeuvre without bumping into something. I'd like every wilderness map to have an option where you can sneak past nearly every encounter. You should be able to sneak past all the beetles and/or wolves in Dyrford Crossing on your way to the Ogre cave. But because the map is so small and the beetles are so big, it's impossible. You could go around a lot of enemies in the BG1 wilderness maps, I'd like to see that in PoE

Yep, there is a lot of stuff that doesn't have a proper graphic to them. You even have figurines like the Spider Figurine from BG2 and it's inventory graphic is also a bag. And yeah, you have to mouse over every one to find out what it is. A lot of loot are also 'bags' and you have to mouse over to find out what that loot is. It'd be good to see some updated artwork over the next few updates.

The bags are a placeholder. They haven't updated the artwork for a lot of the items in the beta. So capes, hoods, helmets, traps, food, etc will have a bag graphic for them.

You're just a young'un. You missed all the great games of the 70s and 80s. Unless you go back and play them. What a great experience back then. I still have my Atari 2600, 130XE, C64 and Amiga.

I have my pm's blocked from the trolls. So asking me to take this to pm's with the trolls is not going to happen. Also, I didn't realise there was a limit to who you can debate with. And I note that I'm responding to people who have either quoted me or directed their comments to me. So if 5 people quote me, I'll respond to those 5 people. And as PrimeJunta did with me, you can always put me on ignore. Also, I wasn't the one who admitted trolling this thread. Go talk to Uomoz about that.

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Late March or April. Will have to see how the beta updates go over the next couple of months.

Hahaha. An admitted troll calling me a very little person filled with hatred. You're describing yourself as you're the one who's easily irritable and jumps in to throw angry posts at me. Yep, you do jump to those incorrect conclusions about me. Good to see everyone on this forum can see you being the troll that you are.

Yep, I know you're a troll. Good to see you admit it. And you still haven't proved anything with me being pro-buff. But that's okay, I know you can't because I've never said I was pro-buff. But keep jumping to those incorrect conclusions. Also, it's not nerve wracking to me. Must be nerve wracking to you though for you to get so heated over this. Sounds like it's you that needs the vacation.

Ah the weakling troll blows over and crumples like the wet bag that he is. I called you out and you couldn't back up your claims. Maybe you should go on a vacation from your trolling because that's all you seem to contribute in these threads. Or maybe you should have asked your parents to buy that Beta key so you can contribute some feedback to the bug forum and make yourself useful. And blacklisted me? LOL. So one person putting me on ignore is being blacklisted now. I don't care about PrimeJunta because he makes a lot of stuff up (eg. PoE Fighter) and I'd welcome the trolls like yourself to put me on ignore. But it seems you can't hit that ignore button. Must be something wrong with you and not me if you can't put me on ignore. That's quite telling.

You're the one who's retarded. As I said, I was never in one or the other camp. Point to a post in this thread where I am pro-buff. You can't. Because I have never said I am pro-buff. What I have said is I've never argued against pre-buffs over the last two years of this game's development and I was calling out those who did and have since flip-flopped over the issues like PrimeJunta since the beta has been released. And PrimeJunta is still flip-flopping over it, dependant on the duration of the spells. If it's short, it's okay. If it's long, he's against it. So yes, you're the one who's retarded. You're the one who incorrectly infers from my posts what my position is. It's what I expect from an idiot troll like yourself who can't grasp simple things like reading and comprehension.

What are you on about? I was never in one or the other camp. I know that something so simple can be so hard for you to understand. Perhaps when you leave school in a few years you might have some grasp with reading and comprehension and join the rest of us adults with contributing something worthwhile to the discussion.

As I said, best to go off specifics from the beta than conjecture. I made up the 10 second buff and 20 second encounter because I wasn't accessing the beta when I posted at the time. Now that I've looked at the beta and went over the spells, the duration times seem okay to me. And it's better to go off the beta to give feedback to Obsidian than conjecture.