Malekith

When you've finished BG2+ToB. Seven times.

It simply shouldn't be taken seriously. Codex hates Bioware, they still have flashbacks and cold sweats about voting DAO as their game of the year. If DAI were a masterpiece reflecting the best bits of Codex approved RPG classics like PST, Fallout, Arcanum, VtMB, Gone Home, JA2 and BG2 it still wouldn't get voted highly, if it were objectively crap it wouldn't get voted highly. Your own words disprove your opinion though. If Codex hates Bioware so much (and it has plenty of reason to, their games were from mediocre to crap for the last decade) why would they vote DAO GOTY 2009? It didn't even touch PST, Fallout, Arcanum, VtMB, Gone Home, JA2 and BG2, yet Codex kinda liked it. Even the ones that didn't they admited it was better than anything Bioware has done since ToB. And Codex's disaproval of Bioware begins with NWN. So if they gave DAO GOTY prize, it means they are more objective than you give them credit for.

If you try to get by with the spells you have memorised already, you will succed most often than not. Reloading to rearrange the spellbook and rest should be the last solution, not the First thing you do. As Stun said, when you try to solo BG2 on insane, you will be forced to master the system and the spell combinations. **** cloudkill. Web+ Spider Spawn(a lower level spell than cloudkill) is equaly effective. Since spiders are immune to Web, they can devastate the opposition.I have brought down liches and opposing adventuring parties with this tactic. And as usual, Josh is talking out of his ass. I don't dispute the fact that he knows his systems, but what he says makes me wonder if he played BG2 more than 1 time 10 years ago. Wizards weren't nessesary to beat the game, BG2 has been soloed on Insane with all classes without exception. In fact the easiest way to play the game is with a Fighter, not a wizard as the main character. Nothing in the game forces you to "rearange the party", and if someone hit a wall and cannot progress is because he is an idiot and he didn't even try, i bet i (and half the people in the forum) can take the game from when he left it and progress just fine with the tools he already has in his disposal and he is just too braindead to use. I have read Josh quotes about how some people in New Vegas did truly moronic things(that's Bethesda's audience for you) and could not progress so became frustrated. Does he actualy believe this is somehow the game's/designer's fault?

Later on more powerfull mages will just cast Death Spell (kills all summoned creatures instantly) if you summon anything.

Word of advice: Cut it out with worrying about timed quests. 80% of the time it doesn't matter, and the other 20% gives you absurd time allowance. Your "too much content" problem would disappear if you relax and accept them as they come, doing at any time what quest you feel like it, leaving the others for when the mood strikes you.

Yeah, this is pretty much what I meant too. BG2 isn't all about player choice. Well, idealy the player would be able to have their choice expressed, and have it recognised even if it gets ignored. Having Junta's paladin be able to tell Rayic about the Shadow Thieves, and Rayic saying he will see to them after he kills the player would be optimal, and would require a single line of dialog. And i believe PrimJunta would be less agravated. As it would be a cool touch in AoD to allow the Player to beg/try to convince the muggers and have them laugh at his face. Or my personal favorite, allow BruceV to hit on every companion he wants, only to have them refuse, laugh at his face, cheat on him. Half the BSN would commit suicide

Players choice isn't everything. I agree that BG2 is limited in that aspect, but i dislike the philoshophy that Player choice trumps anything. What your paladin wanted doesn't matter. What matters is what Rayic Gethras wants, and that's you dead as soon as you stepped to his House. I always believed that the NPCs wants should overide the player's wants as far as they are concerned. As an aside, have you played Age of Decadense? There is a Quest that illustrates exactly what i'm talking about. At some point (early game, when the game has made clear that your character is nothing special), a shady person asks you to follow him in a dark alley as he wants to offer you a job/sell you something/whatever. But if you do, he and a couple of other muggers ambush you and try kill you. And unless you character was built as a combat monster, it was guaranteed death/game over. There was much bitching that you couldn't talk your way out of it with a diplomat character, and it forced a game over in 90% of the players without warning that they walked into a dead end, or that the fight was unwinnable. And the devs answer (which i agree 100% with) was that: There is no reason for them to bargain. Everything they want from you they can take it, and they don't care about anything you have to say.This "every situation must have a solution for every built" even when it makes no sense is gamey, unrealistic and comes as forced. If your character isn't good at violence/can't protect himself, he has no job following strangers in dark alleys. The situation was a fairly obvious setup, so your character died because you,the Player, is an idiot. Next time you should think before taking quests.

@PrimeJunta Just play a sorcerer. It's one of the most fun classes to play, you can compair the magic system of PoE with BG2, and removes the option of changing spellbooks every other fight, forcing you to make with what you have. So your dislike for metagame knowlege will be mitigated somewhat

Stop giving Junta trouble for his opinion. It's entirely valid, and he said his reasons just fine. They are the same reasons why i like the game, and consider IWD's combat meh. And PoE's combat terrible. And two-five hours playtime are more than enough to realise if you like the gameplay or not.

Yes. It will be better in combat, it will be worse in writing and propably quest design. The jury is out for the rest.

True that as far reactivity and quest design goes, Fallouts were better than any IE game (with the possible exception of PST). But don't forget that Fallout 1 was a tiny game compaired to BG2, more of a sandbox, and with more systemic approach to quest solutions. So it's a bit like apples and oranges. A more appropriate comparison (and relevant to PoE) would be PST vs BG2. I actually agree with you that the more subtle way PST and Fallout presented their content was better than Bioware did, but the solution isn't to have less content, just hide it better and make the Player to actualy search for it.

That is true, and everyone that claims otherwise is lying. And no, if you decide to keep the devise, the game doesn't let you. You die in a scripted event when you leave the sewers

Well, that makes it clear that Prime Junta and me have diferent tastes in games . The things he dislikes are actualy what i liked in BG2, and the gameplay style he prefers is what i find boring. IWDs combat stands in the middle between BG2 "anything goes, trial and error and puzzle like unfairness" and PoE's "controlled player experience". And i found IWDs combat unremarkable as well (not to the level of PoE's boringness but still). While i adore BG2 Lich/ Beholder/ Illithid/ dragon fights. Even more so with SCS which turns the hard counters to eleven,makes wizards absolute gods compaired to other classes (much more than vanila game), and turns BG2 combat to my favorite combat from any game to date. Also i liked that i had quests piling atop one another every corner, and i was bored out of my mind from BG1 "pacing", which makes BG1 my least favorite among the IE games. Which trully hammers the point that Obsidian cannot hope to please everyone with their IE successor, since there is no such thing as "IE successor". The IE games were completely diferent from each other, and even if someone liked all of them, they valued very different aspects more than the others.

I'm curious, would you seriously use vertical portraits and not care about the distance between portraits and action bars? Yes, it feels prety natural to me.

Ring of the Ram bypasses all protections. Even if it fails to do damage due to magic shields, it interupts the spell they cast, and since they usualy start with a big one, it's a huge bonus. Plus it gives your mage the time to cast his dispelling spells.

With the new version of Unity isn't it posible for Bester to creat the UI he wants from scratch? So you could create aBG2 style UI or something?

Is it possible to alter spell effects and more general system rules? Altering how armor class works, use of integers instead of percentages, altering spell effects to be more hard counterish all or nothing move vs countermove etc. Mind you, i'm not asking you two to do this although it would be much appreciated, i'm just asking if it's possible to be done if someone has the commitment, or it is coded in such a way as to make this impossible?

yes and no. While i accept the explaination, not only on spell list but in many other issues of the game, the fault still lies with the devs. Josh should had focused more in the magic system and design it in a completely different way (more close to BG2) from the start. Same thing with engagment and other things. When some of us didn't like many of Sawyer's ideas from the start, he replied that while many people react negative to some ideas on paper, actualy playing the game will change their opinion. Ok, i accept that. After the start of the beta, while many didn't like these ideas even after playing them, the solution was to try and fix them through tweaking and balancing. Ok, logical move. Now, three months after the start of the beta, while the problems still exist for many people, the line is that at this point the game is too far away in production to radicaly change things. Understandable, but that doesn't excuse anything. If you imply that the only reason you don't change something is that you have no more money and time to change it, is as if you admit that it is faulty. And then it's your fault for not realizing your design was wrong until it was too late to change it. So, budget doesn't excuse anything design wise. Sawyer could have followed BG2 design to the letter, and it would actualy saved them money to just copy AD&D as close as he was legaly capable, thing that would have silenced all his recent detractors. The downside to that would be that he would aslo had copied the things that he and some others didn't liked in the IE games, so there would still be complains about his copying the past. He chose to "improve" the IE gameplay instead of copy it (good along with bad), so he must roll with it. Either he will succeed on making good gameplay or he won't. But i won't accept "we couldn't make good gameplay because we hadn't the time to change the ****ty parts" when they put the ****ty parts there in the first place.

Logic is subjective; it depends on the knowledge of the individual to arrive at probable conclusions. Aether and the humour theory of disease were both perfectly logical conclusions based on the knowledge at the time; both were wildly incorrect. There is no "most logical" way to play; there is only the specific play style that is most natural and fun for you. Read my above examples. Engaging combat with one character while the rest are a mile away, having a character running in circles while the rest storm of arrows the opposition, resting after every fight,cloudkill and fireballing the fog of war so no enemy sees you and fight back etc. were clear loopholes. Maybe logical wasn't a good word choice, but you get my meaning. All of the above were clearly ways the developers didn't intent to be played. So using them was clear abuse of the system. For the record, i don't think this is nessesarily bad. Some players want to beat the game using the game's system, while others want to break te system and find that one loophole, OP built/strategy/whatever. That it trivalizes the game's content isn't a problem for them, the fact that they found a way to break the system is enough satisfaction. So...let them. Players who want to play the game as it meant to be played should have fun with the system devs created. People who enjoy breaking the game and mess around with the devs plan more often than not they create their own fun. The people who soloed BG2 on insane with Ascension and SCS2 instaled had plenty of fun, even using every cheesy tactic and loophole imaginable

Who says you can't? So far Sensuki has proven you can kite just fine, and i don't expect Josh to be able to prevent it. Engagement only works if the opponent manages to come right beside you. Nothink stops you from having the character the AI is targeting running in circles, while the rest of the team shower them with arrows,summoning creatures and casting spells. Same deal with the "no pre-buffing" rule. Having buffs only in combat is irrelevant. Nothing stops me from engaging combat with my rogue while the rest of the party is far away, and once combat starts i have the rogue run away while the rest of the party buffs itself. How is that different from pre buffing? I could go on and on. Long story short, Obsidian should design the game so the most logical way to play it is fun, without care about those who will try to abuse the system because you know what? You can't do **** to stop them.

PoE a big success for Obsidian = More games like PoE from Obsidian = I care. i would like a situation were Obsidian was financialy stable, have moved away from publiser funded games, kickstarting new IPs twice a year while having the money to pay for sequels and expansions to said IPs from their own pocket. In short, i want them to develop 3-4 games like PoE at the same time, all the time and be able to afford it. No you dont. You want to play 3-4 games like poe, not want obsidian to develop them. Given that Obsidian is the only company i TRUST to develop them (with inXile as a waybe, depends on TTON's quality), you are wrong. I don't consider any other company good enough to give me what i want.

PoE a big success for Obsidian = More games like PoE from Obsidian = I care. i would like a situation were Obsidian was financialy stable, have moved away from publiser funded games, kickstarting new IPs twice a year while having the money to pay for sequels and expansions to said IPs from their own pocket. In short, i want them to develop 3-4 games like PoE at the same time, all the time and be able to afford it.

They introduse new exploitable mechanics, while making the whole game worse?

Modern Bioware villains are outright bad so saying Sarevok is better than them doesn't say much. No one disagrees with that. And Nimbul dialogue is an example for good writing to you? What exactly was good in that? If BG1 plot and characters appeared in a novel, everyone and their cat would bash them as one dimentional and carricatures. I don't apply different standards to games as far as story and characters go. Dialogue and presentation need to be different in games, but good writing is good writing. Most games have **** writing. Some of them choose to don't focus on story and writing, so their **** writing doesn't get in your face. Some others do so. BG1 characters were character sheets with one liners. To say that it was intentional because "people don't open up, they do the job they were assigned to do" (that's bullsh*t btw, my job involves meeting new people on a daily basis and most people can't shut up, i know more things about my clients daddy issues and lives than i would care, and talking to your average teenage girl feels very closely to flirting with your Bioware waifu. When people are forced to spent time together, they talk to each other. It doesn't matter if what they tell isn't their life story or even lies, but they talk) makes your characters bland intentionaly because writing wasn't something you chose to focus on. What it doesn't make it is good writing.