Mayama

Is it playable or is everything to small?

Does anyone else use the middle part of the Ui? It would be a neat place to put a bigger version of the ability icons and menus. The downside would be that you maybee could not reach it fast enough when you select your hero by clicking on his portriat.

I agree way to powerfull especially the interaction between summons and buffing everyone.

In the long run I guess theirs no difference between finding swords +1 or +2 everywhere in BG and crafting "low stat" magic items yourself. For everything else I would prefer unique items. I think you dont need to make them really powerfull but give them some intersting modifiers and history of course. It would be also nice to have role playing magic items, like things that only help in NPC interaction like giving you the high INT responses even if you dont have enough INT. Its a money dump. Which means you could accidently waste all your money on it. Thats actually kinda interesting, they dont want us to grind for stuff which means that we most likley dont need any money to win the game. ^^

Wrong about what exactly? I know what you're trying to do, it's just that it's so easy to make you bang your head against some wall that I find it very amusing, so I wasn't stopping you. I said that BG2 provided players with a variety of powerful weapons for everyone. It never was my goal to argue how balanced it was or if game was well protected against exploits, but you yourself proved that itemization was rich and items were very diverse, and end-tier weapons actually were all valid and good depending on situation. Its NOT exploiting if I equip a staff and automaticaly win ANY mage boss fight, which means almost all bossfights. Its not exploiting if I equip another stuff and automaticaly win all bossfights I couldnt win with the first one. Its not exploiting if you equip a rope and a ring to be completly immune to magic, which is the only real thread in this game. Its complelty not balanced and beyond broken. Those items are "I win buttons" use them and you can uninstall the game because you already won it anyway. No you explicitly told me that such things dont exist in baldurs gate. Go reread what you typed, its a good thing that a forum does not forget a thing. The only thing you do now is trying to sneak out of the argument because you cant admit that you were wrong. No it didn't. You're not going anywhere with this, you know. Those items make you immortal, its game breaking. This is really childish.

It is not easy to pinpoint most powerful weapon in BG2 though, that was it's strength. That has nothing to do with your previous statement or my reply to it. If game gives you a powerful weapon against vampires, and then only throws at you vampires who hit you in melee, it doesn't mean that the item is poorly designed. No it didn't. You're not going anywhere with this, you know. Why can't you just admit that you were wrong?

No it didn't. You're not going anywhere with this, you know. I start to think that some people really dont have a clue about BG2 or they just dont want to admit that not everything was golden back than. You are propably think that beastmasters, kensais and the infamous wild mages were balanced too. Staff of the magi: Invisibility, immune to charm, protection from evil on equip, strikes as a weapon +5 and DISPELS magic on hit. Usable by mage. This weapons makes any encounter with powerfull mages a joke, multilevel any close combat fighter with a thief to get the "you can use any item" ability and go mage hunting. ( multi with a mage im not sure if it worked with weapons) cloak of mirroring: deflect ALL spell damage, this item + ring of free action = completly immune to magic Celestial fury: Katana that stuns if you fail a save, combine it with a spell that lowers save throws and you can stun lock almost any boss in the game Staff of the ram: 10% to know back enemies, no saving throw. Haste the guy that uses it and you perma know back enemies. That are normal items, no exploiting.

That has nothing to do with your previous statement or my reply to it. If game gives you a powerful weapon against vampires, and then only throws at you vampires who hit you in melee, it doesn't mean that the item is poorly designed. No i meant that it had item / class combinations that allowed you to walk through the game complelty immortal.

I dont get you guys, was it really so much fun to have stuff like wild mages and kensais? You make it sound like BG2 had minor balance issues. BG2 was completly unblanced. For example: You could cast chaos shields on wild mages to completly negate any downside. That means you could use his special abilities to cast spells without memorization. So you could spam time stops in which you would cast greater wishes to rest the whole party while beeing in combat and constantly use limited wishes to rememorize your spells (if you ever needed that anyway) the wishes are only a quality of life thing because it gets tedious casting every single spell with reckless dwoemer. Thats only the class without any magic item.... ...and that is only the tip of the iceberg.

UH afaik they read the rulebook, gathered all external sources they could find and made stuff like a hand to hand fighter, that multiclassed into some kind of monk to get extremly powerfull martial art skills into some weird wizard that could grow claws and stuff to one hit giants. Also everyone had one level of rogue for the sneak attacks.

Uhm BG2 had items and item combinations that trivialized most content, especially if you combined them with specific multiclassed characters.

Did you accidently hit the double speed key?

I think its more a psychological thing. For example: In some random rpg the most powerfull weapon is a hammer, most players would feel gimped if they did not choose hat weapon category for their fighter. The feel forced to always use hammers because else their character would be inferior.

Only load games from the start screen or it will wipe out quests.

Huh? I finished BG2:SoA three times, and I've never even heard of half of those exploits. Maybe because I've always played the game with the latest official patches + Gibberlings fixpack* installed? As for the other half, I'm pretty sure they're no longer possible either, when you play with the "smarter AI" components of the Stratagems mod**. Two things to take away from that: Those kinds of exploits are not consequences of BG2's class or attribute system or of the game designer's approach to balance; they are consequences of bugs (which can be fixed by patches) and stupid AI (which can be fixed by smarter AI scripts). So why bring them up in a discussion about the attribute/class system and balancing? They did not define the Infinity Engine experience for most of us. If they did for you, that's unfortunate, but please don't generalize. Do try to separate those aspects which ruined your enjoyment, from unrelated game mechanics. ----- *) Whose authors pretty much picked up the bugfixing work after Bioware stopped releasing patches, and should imo be considered canonical. **) Which is how I played my last BG2 playthrough, although I didn't specifically test each of those exploits. I did notice though that throwing spells at offscreen enemies caused them to run towards my party fast, and that they would even follow my party through doors. Most of that stuff works no matter which patches you use, it only shows that they didnt really playtest that much OR didnt care. I posted this stuff because alot of people seem to forget how buggy and messy the BG combat actually was. A good example are script breaking spells, if you cast stuff like chaos on a boss mage it will break his script. That means he will not cast special script spells like time stop (or whatever it was called) making the encounter extremly easy. Thats not exploiting thats stuff you encounter on normal playthroughs. About stuff like offscreen fireballs, I dont know anyone that didnt use it. Its not something you really need to search for or spend time to find out. Their is tons of buggy stuff in those games, stuff that screams "the devs didnt really care". For example did you know that created images, that mage spell that lets you make a copy of yourself, could cast that spell again. Means you could create an army of mages? Thats not an exploit thats just ****ty coding or carelessness. Ever tried to wish for resting? You could create immortality loops with it, I cant believe no one ever thought about it when they implemented it. Same as with stacking different resistance spells (those balance patches only removed that you can stack the same spell) giving you over 100% resistance. Their is much more and most of it happens while playing the game normaly and not searching for exploits. People praise BG2's combat and all that stuff you could do but they forget that most of it worked cause the game was buggy or they exploited. Edit: Forgot one of the best ones, modifiers on attacks work on ranged spells. That means if you cast melf's minute meteors and shot somebody it adds the extra effect of the weapon you have in your offhand to the spell. Edit2: Their are some encounters in BG2 that you can only win if you a) exploited b) you played the game bevor and knew what was comming, stacking those immunity scrolls/potions for those encounters or c) you won by sheer luck cause you survived all save roles.

Ever watched something like chinese ghost story? Thats how it works.

I personaly never liked crafting much in computer rpgs's I dont play a carpenter or chef, I play a dude that kills bad dudes.

Those individual rounds are pretty long. You can easily test it, let your party members attack each other and count the seconds between attacks.

What are you talking about my BB Wiizard and BB Priest pauses around 6 seconds between spells on normal speed. Its not possible to cast faster. I actually jumped into the game right now to test it because I was sure that your statement is wrong. Their are also rounds, individual rounds for each character. So if 6 seconds of pause between casts is to long you could always use the slow motion mode and have 12 seconds of time to select another spell. No offense but please TEST stuff bevor you complain about it, half the complains on this forum would not exist if people would actually try stuff bevor they post.

Never had that problem

Play a bit with the beta, after some familiarization it feels a lot slower. You will notice that your characters actually hit VERY slow.

Just wanted to throw that into the conversation. Loot is basicaly XP, at least good loot, because its either a powerfull item or money that can be turned into a powerfull item. Items in RPG's are basicaly stat boosters, means its basicaly equal to a percentage of a level. That also means it is equal to xp.

yeah of course

I would have preferred this as I preferred combat in Temple of Elemental Evil to Infinity engine games but I think that ship has sailed a long time ago. ToEE combat is the best turn based rpg combat ever

I just realized that ToEE had animated trees Oo