Gromnir

And this is before I factor in the awesome modding around BG2 which, strangely, still hasn't happened for DA yet. And the IE is probably tougher to mod. Go figure. Cheers MC is a good thing you don't factor in mods... 'cause it ain't relevant when comparing strengths and weakness of bg2 and da. is a bit like when some folks tells of the greatness of bg joinable npcs... as modded by somebody other than bioware. *shrug* regardless, keep in mind we speak o' combat grind. in combat a bg2 thief affords the players what kinda actual options once combat begins... anywhere near da options? chances are the da rogue has 3 or 10 (depending on level) combat related powhaz that he may use at any time... all of which is gonna be useful in some way, and that is in addition to use o' poison or traps... which is actual skills available to any class. compare to combat options for a 12th or 20th level thief in bg2... regardless of kits. choose weapon and try to get backstab position. fighter? bg2 kits give some passive boosts and maybe a handful o' powahz which is typical only useful in some combat encounters. is kinda ironic that once the fighting begins, the bg2 fighter is one o' the least interesting characters to play... click on enemy and let your character hack away until the foe is dead. is fun to watch your kensai carve up enemies, but most of his bonuses is passive... save for kai ability which is usable 4 times per day. Gromnir probable uses flurry 4 times in a given da combat. kensai ain't particular fun 'less you dual-class with mage... so is genuinely the mage part that is actual having the options, not the kensai. once the bg2 fighting begins and the grind starts, the combat characters is point and click... save that thieves has to position selves for a backstab. and mage characters... in da we never run out of magic, is always another spell that can be cast. reduced to use sling? never happens in da. options, once combat starts? is clear in favor o' da. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure if bg2 player options made the game feels less grindy than da. after all, melee combatants in da actually gots a chance to choose useful combat abilities whereas bg2 were mostly point and click. 'course there were a much larger catalog o' spells available to bg2 players... have 3 casters in your party and chances are you got access to more than a hundred or so spells by end o' game. 'course a huge catalog o' spells caused other problems. we will agree that the diversity o' the mobs maybe made bg2 feel less grindy. also, as bg2 were using hand-painted backgrounds the locations felt more differentiated. dunno. HA! Good Fun! edit "Well, contrary to any other game, BG2's battles never felt tedious (to me, at least)." bg2 battles typically didn't feels tedious to Gromnir (with a few exceptions). da battles, save for in the tunnels in dwarf portion o' the game, didn't feel particularly grindy to Gromnir. however, IF you feels that da combats is grindy, then we not see reason to contrast to bg2-- a game that were having a very goodly number o' combat encounters that were just as grindy as da combat encounters.

am having a hard time with the "bg2 has less grind" stuff. we already noted the extreme grind in irenicus dungeon and suldanessallar. how 'bout sahaughin city, or any of the three options for recovering a widget for the matron mother: mindflayer, kuo-toa, or beholder. heck, two o' those even recycled maps and added grind. no grind in escaping ust'natha and getting back to surface? rrrriiiiigghhhht. am sure that each o' those combat encounters you had with small groups o' drow were unique and differentiated... no doubt you can recall the details o' each such encounter all these years later 'cause the battles were sssssoooo unique. etc. boo is particular wacky on this topic... tells us is unfair to pick limited portions o' a 100 hour game, and then wants to limit to critical path... which ain't anywhere near 100 hours. why limit to critical path? the rest ain't part o' game? even so, once we look at critical path we still see grind. let us look at dahlish v. werewolves. you got wolves, bears, werewolves, darkspawn, spiders, undead, arcane horrors, crazy hermits, cultists, mini-dragons and trees being repeated as grind? perhaps. on first forest map you encounter werewolves a couple times and one time you may talk way out of combat. you also got the multi-tree combat encounter near old talking tree and you got that weird shadow encounter. there IS loads o' combat, but that ain't different from bg2... and the combat is differentiated. in the ruins you got multiple strange trap rooms that present some unique combat challenges, and clearly you wouldn't call the final battle grindy. is grindy 'cause you cannot walk down a hallway or into a room w/o being attacked by... something? is that genuine different than bg2? heck, am still wondering why we saw lizardmen shows up outside the asylum to fight us... or why yuan-ti were in unseeing eye and asylum portions of the game... used yuan-ti as if they is simpleminded mook? some joker developer thoughts that we had traveled more than 10' in bg2 w/o a combat encounter and he hadn't yet had a chance to use lizardman or yuan-ti models yet? am sorry folks, but some o' you got the rose-colored specs on with bg2. is a fine game, but try to tell us it ain't grindy? HA! Good Fun!

eh? the CR (challenge ratings) for all d&d (and pathfinder) monsters from 3e to 4e is based on gameplay testing with four member parties... regardless of whether the monsters is goblins, trolls, dragons or demon lords. have played a number of pathfinder modules using their stock four character parties... more than one dragon encounter. cr ratings for dragons typically seems a bit low compared to other monsters, but in any event, the crs is arguably accurate-- 4 can takes on a dragon if cr is appropriate. HA! Good Fun!

why would he? he managed to find a gig for his boys that would get obsidian paid. am doubting he feels much need to clarify, and as obsidian ain't the publisher or even the named developer o' this wot game, is probably not in his best interest to say... anything. HA! Good Fun!

am still not seeing the grind argument. irenicus dungeon at start were grindy and unavoidable mook combats. suldanessellar were even more extreme. if you wanna try and convince us that everything in between were less grindy we will have to agree to disagree, 'cause we not see that way. as for bg2 characters being great because they were fun or campy cliche plug-ins... am gonna disagree. there were more than a few drama queens in bg2... the difference being that you could ignore their quests or complete quickly and never have to endure their complaints again. as much as we likes keldorn, he were clearly a drama queen... and for some reason he needed Gromnir to fix his marriage problems? what? why? aerie, anomen, cernd, yoshimo, valygar, and viconia all had some serious dramas to deal with, but if you never had cernd or aerie in your party then you never had t deal with such stuff. is that how they is superior? am having a hard time seeing bg2 superiority for joinables... save that minsc made a better dog than the dog, and jan were more amusing than ohgren. perhaps the bg2 romances were superior, but as we never explored such stuff we cannot comment. some folks likes six member parties... have seen boo make references to such before. even so, since d20, we has not even seen d&d pnp rules where more than four is the norm. pathfinder? they use four-person parties. standard for d2/3e balance and 4e game testing were four. boo liked six? fine, but fact that da and bio used four is actually more in line with pnp norm for party size... and given the range o' functions and skills, we cannot see no purpose in having more. HA! Good Fun! "As for whether DA is the best Bioware game since BGII: I'm not sure about that. It has stuff done well and stuff done badly. It is superior in many ways to other Bio games, but other titles have their advantages. Jade Empire probably has better writing, ME2 better pacing, KOTOR a better thought out hub structure etc. etc. I say that such as it is, it falls under the same level of quality as everything else Bioware has done post BGII. I'm enjoying it more than others, but that's because I like this gameplay style more than the action RPG stuff and that doesn't make it automatically better." am maybe gonna disagree with... everything quoted direct above. we were not much impressed by je writing. in point of fact, je is one of the two bio games we never completed... the other being hotu (not because hotu were a bad game, but we were sooooo tired of drow and epic.) in any event, the writing in je were not something we could applaud. better pacing for me2? am knowing you ain't joking, but that has been one o' the most common complaints of me2 compared to me1; all the damned loyalty quests makes the main quest seem almost incidental. as for a better thought out hub structure for kotor... again, this were a frequent complaint o' kotor, and it is handled very similar to da in any event. got an entire galaxy to possibly explore, but much like nwn you is expected to go to four different locations to get some special widget or mcguffin... and lord knows that if you got issues with da linearity then kotor is even worse in this regard. *shrug*

dunno. am recalling fights against slaver lords in the temple district, and fights 'gainst dragons and fights 'gainst mages n' such. is using correct spells to deal with enemy games a tactical consideration? if not, why not? positioning in bg2 were as important if not more important than da... grease spell and fireball/cloudkill to set up kill zone any different than using earthquake and blizzard in da? as we noted already, our tactics for dealing with da dragons were very much identical to taking out da revenants... or pretty much any other boss character. we probable had a single tactic for taking out those scatter shot archers in the dwarf tunnels... but this weren't due to any cleverness or learning on our part save that after a playing through entire game we began to understand which spells were actual effective. diversity of our tactics were probable greater in bg2 than da simply ;cause we had more spells available to us, and there were a far greater variety o' foes. am recalling the message boards following release of bg2. were typical spread o' people complaining that bg2 were too hard or too easy. those who complained that bg2 were too hard were often those folks unfamiliar with d&d. da were different. far more people complaining it were too hard. you not think lack o' knowledge o' da rules/mechanics had something to do with that? dunno. am thinking that much o' the seeming need for tactics in da were nothing more than initial unfamiliarity with da mechanics. HA! Good Fun!

da is too grindy compared to bg2. am not seeing that. how many places in bg2 had us face yet another room o' githyanki or drow or trolls that were largely the same as the previous room filled with githyanki, drow or trolls? heck, the druid grove were one o' those backwards s-shaped maps filled with largely repetitive and meaningless grindy combats... throw in the troll mound and raksahsa to break up the monotony a bit? didn't work. grindy... in spades. am suspecting that bg2 felt less grindy simply 'cause there were more variation of foes. understandable, but we recall seeing critters from bg1, totsc, and iwd in bg2 (am not recalling any HoW specific models showing up in bg2)... and Gromnir were disappointed that bio didn't utilize the iwd elemental models as we thought the black isle versions were far better looking. *shrug* point is that we thinks it is a bit unfair to expect the kinda diversity o' foes bg2 offered when da is the initial game of a series as opposed to bg2, a game that had several precursors making use of same rules and engine. da is too linear. bg2 were, indeed, far less linear. biowarians has admitted that we is unlikely to ever see another bg2 in terms o' size and scope. 3d v. 2d makes difference? don't know. regardless, we were informed from day 1 o' da development not to expect bg2 scope. there was a good amount o' pure optional side quests, including random encounters (done far better in da than bg2), chanter's board, blackstone irregulars, interested parties and mages collective quests... not to mention the stuff like unbound and the enigmatic friends o' red jenny. even so, there is no question that bg2 had superior scope. more optional side-quests, the stronghold quests, and a sprawling city like athkatla with dozens o' intriguing side-quests to chose from and complete as desired. bg2 characters are better developed. in general, the da joinable npcs had far more to say than did bg2 npcs and we thinks the da jnpcs were better developed than the bg2 group. is some da jnpcs we were not impressed with... including the dog and oghren, but for the most part we believes that the da companions were more complete and real than bg2 companions. after you finish the bg2 companion quests, you has pretty much exhausted jnpc development... 'save for romances and the very end of game. da jnpcs had something to add throughout the game, regardless of when you completed their quest. party banter were far better in da than bg2. in fact, we found our self making pointless journeys between areas simply to trigger dialogues 'tween sten and morrigan or wynne and shale. cannot speak to romances in bg2 v. da. we loathe crpg romance... trite and banal. in any event, in a game that is story-driven and character centric, the da party characters were superior. however, not all character development in da were good. some da characters produced wtf moments in which they appeared to act contrary to developed character... were disturbing. the aforementioned ohgren were 'posed to be comic relief, but he were not amusing on any level we could see. also, there were no developed villain, save for lohgain. am not certain why bio has moved towards the tolkienesque villain construct, but in a crpg where you almost necessarily must come face-to-face with the UBG (Ultimate Bad Guy) it simply doesn't work to be faceless and undeveloped. the bg2 story is better than the da story. *shrug* tough call. lack o' a genuine UBG hinders da greatly. the archdeamon... sucks. the landsmeet... sucks. everything after the landsmeet and before the epilogue... sucks. the d

boo hoo? eh? is an observation o' fact that none o' the origin flavor actual impacts the critical path in any significant way. is nice to have such stuff pop up in game, but as far as Meaningful Choices is concerned, da origins didn't add to the game. does da offer more of the ultimately pointless flavor changes than bg2? yeah, a couple gnome-centric options for those dealing with jan jansen does not provide adequate reason for playing as a gnome... is no genuine re-playability. is possible that some peoples feels as if the da flavor options is enough to create genuine re-playability, but we don't see it 'cause the origin material doe not result in meaningful changes to critical path. heck, da origins don't even much impact tangential side-quests... and that were genuine surprising. Gromnir really expected that some choices made in origins might open up some origin-specific side-quest material later in game. one small side-quest later in game to makes choices in origins more meaningful? why not? bio missed a simple method to add re-playability and make origins more significant without having to deal with critical path complications. HA! Good Fun! ps our insta-kill option for dragons were typical finger of death rather than disintegrate. disintegrate is level 6 as 'posed to level 7, so am supposing that is reason why some folks relied on it. typically we took down the pre-underdark dragons without the insta-kills... save for an infrequent chromatic orb death.

could kill and is likely to kill is very different. to get bg2 dragon mr down far enough that a disintegrate gonna even function is requiring more than a couple spells... and chances are that the critter makes save, so you gotta doom it to death, or use other saving throw reducing spells... or replay battle 5 times til it works by chance... and even then your 1007 is gone. and 'course the dragon is standing still during all this. 'course it is true that d&d has far too many insta-kill options. da developers were smart enough to rid them selves o' insta kill nonsense... save for 'gainst fodder. arrows o' slaying does sometimes insta-kill... and a frozen enemy that is then hit with a critical may be killed outright, but bosses and elite enemies is made immune to such stuff... which is kinda annoying... feels a bit like a developer cheat. "Not to mention, some choices made in the origin could effect you later on in some way plus you have different ways of approaching the origin as well. An example is as a male dwarf noble you can get a gal pregenant and later on you mette her and she curses at you for damning your child to ever be thrown in the trash. " none of which has genuine impact on game and quest resolutions... adds flavor, but changes nothing essential. HA! Good Fun!

on this forum it is 'cause the codex folks is more tenacious than the casual fan. those peoples who liked da, and there were Many of us, has moved on to other games and other issues. those who felt Violated by da and bioware will not let go so easily, so they dominate continued debate. is just our theory. HA! Good Fun!

there is considerable need for strategy in bg2. one reason many non-d&d fans complained about bg2 were it's complexity-- without a working knowledge of d&d bg2 battles could be very frustrating. fight mind flayers the same way you fight vampires or wizards or dragons or beholders? is very dependent on strategy, but for those of us who know d&d rules we hardly even consider the strategic nuances involved as such stuff often seem obvious. compare da and bg2 dragon... honestly. for all the improvement of da dragons in terms o' their ability to move, a da dragon battle were far more straightforward than a bg2 dragon battle... and da dragons, for all their size and toughness, were still vulnerable to freezing/immobilizing spells and force fields. our tactics for killing dragons in da were no genuine different than our tactics for killing those solo revenants, save that we needed to use more potions when fighting the big dragons. iwd2 made more use of enemy ai and terrain than did bg2, but bg2, particularly for the d&d neophyte, required considerable use o' tactics. consider how much more difficult da were the first time you played compared to second. one reason for initial difficulty was simply 'cause you were a da neophyte who did not know which da spells and powers was genuine effective and you probable didn't know all the vulnerabilities of da monsters. second da play through is much easier... not because you know where and how enemies is gonna attack, but because you is familiar with da rules and mechanics... or because you used respec mod. HA! Good Fun! ps keep in mind that we ain't genuine complaining about lack o' tactics in da. there were considerable tactical considerations, particularly for a game that introduces us to a new rules system. am thinking that da were okie dokie regarding level o' complexity, as were evidenced by fact that so many seasoned crpg fans complained of da difficulty on their first play... but admitted that second or third play were far easier.

Does that mess up any of your romances with other characters? there were at least 1 mission that kinda whisked you away to a locale after talking to the illusive man... no chance to do typical normandy tasks. but Gromnir hasn't read his emails yet? but Gromnir hasn't had a chance to talk to crew: have Garrus to tell us to come back later after his calibrations, and Thane ain't been melancholy yet. but Gromnir hasn't upgraded his gear yet. but Gromnir hasn't fed his fish yet. the one that really hurt were the fish. cost us more than 6000 credits for that fishie from illium. HA! Good Fun!

Tolkien spent 3 pages talking about the colour of the leaves in Elven forests. Jordan spent 300 pages talking about Elayne being pregnant, and the other 500 pages of that particular book were about Rand being lost, some other characters being similarly indisposed and some even more minor characters doing things that won't be explained for another 2 books. in tolkien's lotr books you might have to endure 10 pages without a single line a dialogue and virtual nothing important happening as far as advancing the plot. in jordan's books you might have to endure 10 books of nothing but dialogue and new plot threads without any resolution in sight. for all that we loathe tolkien's prose style, he does eventual get somewhere, and it takes a mere 2.5 books to wrap up all essential questions. after 2 jordan books we were sick of all major WoT characters and ear-boxing in general. HA! Good Fun!

can be... complicated. look to star wars for reference. am doubting jordan and publishers gave up future digital publishing rights to wotc. HA! Good Fun!

perhaps this is why obsidian is involved? what other developer has more experience with d20? HA! Good Fun!

the wot setting is not our favorite. however, wot is big and diverse and mayhap it is possible to go the kotor route and set in an unfamiliar time period to further distance from canon. heck, we loathe the forgotten realms, but we has enjoyed more than one fr game. given the sheer size and scope o' the wot setting, no doubt the obsidians may find some way to make interesting... and if they cannot then they gots nobody but themselves to blame. we didn't bother to read the linky material... am curious about how much freedom the obsidians have in making a rule system for wot. is there not already an Official wot rpg? HA! Good Fun!

that is ridiculous. da is a Game. choose boot over car or battleship not give you an advantage in monopoly. choose mage should not give disproportionate advantage in da neither. 'course, as da is a rp game that allows players to make choices in character development and generation, it is unlikely that the developers would be able to achieve complete balance... is predictable and understandable that as player choices and options increase, the likelihood of achieving balance decreases. even so, there is no excuse for how poorly balanced mages is compared to other da classes... is just plain silly. "it's magic" is Not any kinda gameplay argument. make argument that magic should be powerful? maybe. no doubt some folks will argue in favor of low magic settings and systems, but we can see that some folks might prefer more traditional high power magic stuff. but Overpower? is no valid reason to argue in favor of overpower. inherent in definition of overpower is Excess. HA! Good Fun!

compare d&d to da is a ridiculous way to argue against over-power of da mages. one of the most frequent complaints regarding d&d (pre 4e) is that mages is way too powerful at higher levels. the fact that da has a similar problem is not some kinda wacky validation of bioware's efforts, but rather a criticism that they could not fix one of d&d's flaws... inspite of fact that the biowarians started with their own rules system from scratch. da magic is flawed similar to d&d in that some spells is disproportionate powerful, and high level mages have access to far too many spells with insane array o' utility... can buff and immobilize and damage and heal and... whatever. "Apart from the Deep Roads..." agreed. deep roads had far too much undifferentiated combat... really felt the grind. otherwise we were not bothered by degree and frequency o' combats. HA! Good Fun!

2 points, 'cause some folks hasn't seen in a while. 1) Gromnir never suggested that rogues is worthless. we said the opposite... said that rogues is effective, but unnecessary. could simply have created a warrior class and a mage class and allowed any character to choose rogue skills if they so desired. cobbled-together quasi-warrior that is rogue is unnecessary bloat. 2) vol didn't pay attention to boo follow-up "Edit: you're right, I've noticed just now that everyone ignores Wynne, which keeps my healing steady. Weird. " is not a matter o' Gromnir opinion and am not certain who you thinks we is speaking for in this instance. we passed along information that were provided by bio and confirmed by numerous players, including boo. armour determines targeting priority. ... debating with a chimp. HA! Good Fun!

The first one is only effective if done by two or three people, the second suggestion is the most effective. Even though storm of the century is a gamble to do that way. The way that I find them most effective is to put them right on the edge of bottlenecks and have them clogged by paralysis spells and/or tanks. Edit. The same way with traps. the most effective parties have multiple mages... the aforementioned tactics is just one reason why. stack up glyphs o' paralysis, grease and multi elemental spells. typical we gots 1 combatant, shale and 2 mages in party. shale can does hurl rock (knocks folks back into kill zone) and rock barrage AND be tank while the two mages do their elemental havoc or earthquake or whatever. HA! Good Fun!

You realize that it costs money to make games right? that sounds like a legitimate question... for iron tower... not so much for the consumer. nevertheless, if vinnie can gets consumers to pay shekels to support his game Before it is finished, then more power to him. HA! Good Fun!

Those last tier spells; specially the primal ones, are a waste of points. Aside from a few exceptions, they waste and exuberant amount of mana and do damage for the three seconds it takes enemies to run through them. blizzard frequent freezes enemies so that they may not move out of range. couple the area effect elemental spells with earthquake (groan) or grease (better) and you may also greatly increase the likelihood of doing damage for a longer duration. additionally, and we hesitate to mention as is such a horrible bit o' cheatery, as boo has observed, enemies do not notice you if you is slightly beyond range or around a corner. area effects is large and enemy ai is stoopid. chances are that the no-goodnicks will try to avoid being burned, electrocuted or frozen by running to a corner of room that is currently being blasted by cold, lightning and/or flame. worst-case scenario: you position your melee combatants at the very edge o' the area effect-- any enemies that tries to leave kill zone most fight you before exiting. HA! Good Fun!

optimizing is a cheat, and a very effective one. for those who wish to alter the challenge factor o' the game, using the point-redistribution mod is far more effective than moving the difficulty slider. is a cheat, but we do not blame you for using. if the powhaz were actually balanced properly then it would not matter how points and powhaz were distributed. sadly, da balance considerations is somewhat lacking. even so, point redistribute has a significant impact on game difficulty. HA! Good Fun!

that is indeed possible, but Gromnir never presumes cheats... even if the cheats is perfect reasonable in light o' the idiotic choices the developers made for some o' the jnpc powhaz. HA! Good Fun!