Baldur's Gate 3?

[cokane]

On 6/17/2019 at 10:46 AM, 213374U said:

I think there's a lot of romanticizing going on around here. Yes, getting your first +1 dagger was a mind-blowing milestone, but I don't see how being a 6hp mage with 1 Magic Missile per day or being restricted to autoattack as a fighter type was fun or engaging in any way.

I'm all for feeling underpowered in a world where danger lurks behind every shadow, but most of BG1 felt like playing chess with pawns only. No tactical depth to speak of.

Bar's pretty low set for Larian, if it's BG1 gameplay people want to compare to.

I've become really against this criticism of fighter classes as "autoattack" in older RPG's. In a six-player party, there's absolutely nothing wrong with essentially have a blocker character or two. This sentiment is what has pushed a lot of modern RPG's to essentially make every class a fighter-mage, by adding all kinds of actives to the frontline fighters and then of course we now have balance the wizards because we buffed the fighters.

It's killed actual strategy like positioning, and turned combat in these games into use every single active skill on all your characters over and over again. It's essentially what happened in Deadfire, imo. And it hasn't made combat better. I'd much prefer to have a pair of auto-attack characters than fighters who I have to click the same two or three active skills on every fight. It's essentially the same thing, except the former involves less tedium.

Fighter classes also involved serious strategic thinking about leveling. Go all in for tankiness with sword and shield style? All-in on two-handed damage or two weapon? Or a mix of ranged and melee? It's actually one of the few classes (the other is thief) with some serious decision making and planning required on level up.

Lastly, if you were never using active consumables on fighters in the later stages of BG1 or BG2 -- games with super strong fighter potions, necklace of missiles, you weren't playing the game at a high level.

Edited July 20, 2019 by cokane

[213374U]

How exactly does having feats on a fighter kill the need to position them properly? If anything, something like Whirlwind Attack and Great Cleave make positioning more important, not less. A lot of the things present in 3.5 are either passives or toggles that you don't need to fiddle with every round (Power Attack). Not in BG though -- there's only autoattack.

And it's been a long time since I agonized between putting a star in two-handed vs sword and board, because two-weapon style was so crazy that the only justification for not using it was a paladin focused on Carsomyr -- and that was only in BG2. And then, a bit later in ToB, a two-weapon paladin could possibly outstrip a two-hander in terms of raw damage, if not utility. Two-handed was really weak because there was no 1.5x str bonus and you lost a slot for little gain.

I don't know about Deadfire or PoE, but I've played BG2 with just about every class and kit, which is why I find pure fighters so dull. Chug a few potions before jumping in, cast (improved) haste, pop rage if applicable. Bombard casters with arrows in BG1 and Breach in BG2 and let the Fighter autoattack them to pieces. Boring.

Then again, I much prefer turn-based, and I used to play BG with auto-pause at round end and spell cast. So I can understand how microing a 6-man party where all characters have special abilities in real time can get a bit crazy. That's a problem more with interfaces and RTwP than fighter abilities per se, I think. Spellforce managed to pull it, so it's certainly possible.

Edited July 20, 2019 by 213374U
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[daven]

Compare BG to Neverwinter the MMO what has fighters with 2H swords jumping around swinging it with ease and never getting knackered. What is wrong with liking the old fashioned games with the slower paced gameplay and taking its time? Does that make it inherently worse?

[ShadySands]

He said he prefers turned based so I don't think slowness or not being flashy enough is the issue but more that they don't have a lot to do.

I tend to agree as my first BG character was a fighter and I hated it being such a passive experience. I ended up switching to casters because even though low level casting is pretty weak it gave me a sense of participation.

I believe it was one of the things Josh Sawyer talked about in the first Pillars Kickstarter and why Pillars fighters have more to do right from the jump.

Edited July 20, 2019 by ShadySands

[cokane]

23 hours ago, 213374U said:

How exactly does having feats on a fighter kill the need to position them properly? If anything, something like Whirlwind Attack and Great Cleave make positioning more important, not less. A lot of the things present in 3.5 are either passives or toggles that you don't need to fiddle with every round (Power Attack). Not in BG though -- there's only autoattack.

And it's been a long time since I agonized between putting a star in two-handed vs sword and board, because two-weapon style was so crazy that the only justification for not using it was a paladin focused on Carsomyr -- and that was only in BG2. And then, a bit later in ToB, a two-weapon paladin could possibly outstrip a two-hander in terms of raw damage, if not utility. Two-handed was really weak because there was no 1.5x str bonus and you lost a slot for little gain.

I don't know about Deadfire or PoE, but I've played BG2 with just about every class and kit, which is why I find pure fighters so dull. Chug a few potions before jumping in, cast (improved) haste, pop rage if applicable. Bombard casters with arrows in BG1 and Breach in BG2 and let the Fighter autoattack them to pieces. Boring.

Then again, I much prefer turn-based, and I used to play BG with auto-pause at round end and spell cast. So I can understand how microing a 6-man party where all characters have special abilities in real time can get a bit crazy. That's a problem more with interfaces and RTwP than fighter abilities per se, I think. Spellforce managed to pull it, so it's certainly possible.

Positioning is less key in RPG's that have turned every class into essentially fighter-mages, because there is less contrast between tanks and glass cannons. This is an inevitable result of giving fighters mage-like active abilities and then in turn buffing mages because you buffed fighters.

I don't understand the problem of having 1/6 or 2/6 of your party be relatively passive characters. I also never understood the obsession some folks have with BG runs and having to have the main character be a caster. I've never felt a run using Edwin or some such was less fun than a run where Gorion's ward is a mage.

But importantly, adding a bunch of actives to fighters (especially per encounter ones) doesn't add strategic depth to the combat system. As I've already said homogenizing the classes, makes positioning and combat roles less important. Secondly, adding skills that I'm expected to use every battle in order to win on the highest difficulty isn't strategy. It's a chore. All these games have done is add rote routines to these characters... while making the serious sacrifice of homogenizing the class system.

[213374U]

Yes, you've said all that before, but you've failed to properly substantiate why it is so.

Adding abilities to fighters does not make them "essentially fighter-mages" by itself, nor does it "homogeinize classes" or make combat roles less important. Hell, a Fighter does not become less effective at chopping stuff up because he uses Combat Expertise against another Fighter in one encounter and takes advantage of Power Attack against a bear in the next. Nor does he become more adept at stripping magical protections or able to heal others. Knowing how to disarm or trip someone does not make you a wizard. It does mean however that you have to know the class you're playing and do something with it beyond drinking a potion and charging.

You may not like that you have to micromanage your party to succeed in the highest difficulty level (?), and that's fine. But now you're arguing that fighter abilities blur the lines between casters, tanks and damage dealers. I doubt anyone who has played any class-based game released after 2005 or so will buy that.

Again, NWN2 and Spellforce are two rather different games where activated fighter abilities make controlling their positioning at all times a mandatory task for the player in order to make the most of the character. In neither of those games fighter types become comparable to casters in either stats, role, or playstyle. You seem to be hung up on your experience with PoE/Deadfire. That suggests that the "problem" is with those games rather than the concept of fighter abilities.

[IndiraLightfoot]

From the Gamespot interview with Swen Vincke June 9:

"SV: The previous Baldur's Gate games were based on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. We're now Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition. "

Why...? I never...!

Edited July 22, 2019 by IndiraLightfoot

[213374U]

So he played Icewind Gate 2, and has blocked any and all memories of either the vanilla version or the EEs?

[the_dog_days]

I wish I could block out all memory of second edition.

[majestic]

Oh, I wish too. Then systems like PoE's wouldn't bother me so much.

Oh, wait, did you mean that the other way around?

[Sarex]

4 hours ago, 213374U said:

So he played Icewind Gate 2, and has blocked any and all memories of either the vanilla version or the EEs?

What?!? This exists, maybe it's time for a playthrough.

[ShadySands]

Isn't it 3E and not 3.5? I thought 3.5 came out the year after IWD2 was released

[majestic]

12 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Isn't it 3E and not 3.5? I thought 3.5 came out the year after IWD2 was released

'Tis true. But confusing 3E with 3.5E is... less problematic than confusing AD&D 2E with 3E D&D. 3.5E was just a revised version of the 3E rules where they baked a bunch of corrections and addenda into the core rules to, well, grab a bit of extra cash from the player base.

[MrBrown]

55 minutes ago, Sarex said:

What?!? This exists, maybe it's time for a playthrough.

It's very unfinished and buggy.

[ShadySands]

16 minutes ago, majestic said:

'Tis true. But confusing 3E with 3.5E is... less problematic than confusing AD&D 2E with 3E D&D. 3.5E was just a revised version of the 3E rules where they baked a bunch of corrections and addenda into the core rules to, well, grab a bit of extra cash from the player base.

I meant it as another knock on Sven's knowledge of the series and I acknowledge that was low of me

[MrBrown]

I kinda agree with cokane, in the sense that I always build parties, not individual characters in these types of games, and tend to separate them to more passive auto-attack guys who do nothing else, and active ability-using characters who do that more than attacks. And I usually fill my parties with the passive types, with as little active types as possible.

I don't see a problem with games like PoE2 though, since you can pretty much let the AI do most of the talent usage, or just pick mostly passive talents. So I think these games cater easily to this type of playing, provided you're willing to learn and configure the AI.

[213374U]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

What?!? This exists, maybe it's time for a playthrough.

 

27 minutes ago, MrBrown said:

It's very unfinished and buggy.

It wouldn't even install for me.

RE: AI. Good point. I got pretty dependent on custom AI scripts for BG2 to manage thieves, for instance. But again, it was more an interface and design problem than the fact that thieves had abilities.

[cokane]

18 hours ago, 213374U said:

Yes, you've said all that before, but you've failed to properly substantiate why it is so.

Adding abilities to fighters does not make them "essentially fighter-mages" by itself, nor does it "homogeinize classes" or make combat roles less important. Hell, a Fighter does not become less effective at chopping stuff up because he uses Combat Expertise against another Fighter in one encounter and takes advantage of Power Attack against a bear in the next. Nor does he become more adept at stripping magical protections or able to heal others. Knowing how to disarm or trip someone does not make you a wizard. It does mean however that you have to know the class you're playing and do something with it beyond drinking a potion and charging.

You may not like that you have to micromanage your party to succeed in the highest difficulty level (?), and that's fine. But now you're arguing that fighter abilities blur the lines between casters, tanks and damage dealers. I doubt anyone who has played any class-based game released after 2005 or so will buy that.

Again, NWN2 and Spellforce are two rather different games where activated fighter abilities make controlling their positioning at all times a mandatory task for the player in order to make the most of the character. In neither of those games fighter types become comparable to casters in either stats, role, or playstyle. You seem to be hung up on your experience with PoE/Deadfire. That suggests that the "problem" is with those games rather than the concept of fighter abilities.

If you need more substance than the simple and obvious example of Wizards in PoE vs Wizards in BG, you can't be convinced. It's inarguable that Wizards play less glass cannony in PoE than in BG.

[213374U]

Yeah, I won't argue with that because I have about three hours logged in PoE.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that whatever the failings of Pillars, they cannot be used as a general rule for "X doesn't work" when X has been in fact shown to work in other games that aren't PoE, and when talking in the context of a game that isn't PoE.

But sure, make fighter classes great again play exactly like 2E summoned skeletons.

[bringingyouthefuture]

I think this talk about how fighters play etc is all an over generalization of POE/POE2, and more an attack on the fact that Obsidian introduced per-encounter spells and abilities, which in my mind didn't hurt the games at all, and made combat more diverse and really fun.  Not that I like per encounter over per rest, personally I think I like per rest, but its not a game breaker for me.   Also in regards to fighter skills wasn't it BG2 that introduced the HLA skills? 

My last comment is - of course wizards can be sturdier in POE then in D&D games - they aren't restricted to the armor they can use and still cast spell, so its not so much a mechanic of abilities but a mechanic in regards to itemization in my mind.  The gold ole days of thieves with short swords, wizards with knives, and the holy grail of the holy avenger ....

Edited July 24, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture
Badly needed spelling erros and clarification

[cokane]

3 hours ago, bringingyouthefuture said:

I think this talk about how fighters play etc is all an over generalization of POE/POE2, and more an attack on the fact that Obsidian introduced per-encounter spells and abilities, which in my mind didn't hurt the games at all, and made combat more diverse and really fun.  Not that I like per encounter over per rest, personally I think I like per rest, but its not a game breaker for me.   Also in regards to fighter skills wasn't it BG2 that introduced the HLA skills? 

My last comment is of course wizards can be sturdier in POE then in D&D games - they aren't restricted to the armor they can use and still cast spell, so its not so much a mechanic of abilities but a mechanic in regards to itemization in my mind.  The gold ole days of thieves with short swords, wizards with knives, and the hold grail of the holy avenger ....

HLA's are different because the combat became so complicated that it made sense to add a few extra perks for fighters and even thieves, because they weren't getting things like high level spells. And by that point they weren't gaining much from more weapon proficiency pips either. It's one thing to toss on a couple of per rest abilities on a level 20 fighter. It's another thing to add a growing proliferation of mage-like skills to a fighter from level one on.

And yeah, armor and item restriction is another aspect where modern RPG's, not just PoE, have made classes more homogeneous. Hell, I think PoE almost copped to this error when they introduced serious restrictions on soul-bound items. If you're going to have a class-based, large-party RPG, I think it benefits from having the classes be extremely distinct. This is what gave the BG series such immense replay value. I mean there really isn't much alternative in the story or questing. But what there is that's different is radically different party compositions, with radically different combat tactics. That doesn't happen without the severe restrictions on the classes.

Edited July 22, 2019 by cokane

[213374U]

Yeah, remember when mages were the best frontliners because mirror image protected you from your own fireball spam? Ah... good times.

[cokane]

On 7/22/2019 at 11:08 PM, 213374U said:

Yeah, remember when mages were the best frontliners because mirror image protected you from your own fireball spam? Ah... good times.

So, this actually isn't that good of a counter argument. Yes, protection spells helped a mage become more sturdy in combat. But they came at the cost of offensive spellpower. This forced you to make tough decisions with the character.

Mages that already have hit point pools closer to fighters and the ability to wear comparable defensive gear aren't forcing the player to make the same tough decisions.

Secondly just from an immersive perspective, at least using spells to be tanky makes the world feel better than, again, mages that already start with base stats closer to fighters. Though this point is understandably more subjective.

[213374U]

Not really, because you couldn't fit fireballs in your level 2 spell slots, and the only worthwhile level 2 spell outside of Mirror Image was Web, which did no damage. Same with Stoneskin, as the only offensive level 5 spell you ever needed was Cloudkill, the effects of which were blocked by Mirror Image too. I'm not seeing any sacrifices here.

And that's low-ish level mages. Once you started raking in the XP, you could do really stupidly broken **** like Project Image+Wizard Eye, 3xSunfire/Skull Trap in a Spell Sequencer, 3xHorrid Wilting in a Chain Contingency, Shapechange Mind Flayer+Timestop, and of course my favorite, Mislead and SI: Divination on a Mage/Thief for unlimited backstabs. And all of that was effectively per encounter because there was nothing to stop you from abusing the rest function. Fighters were completely obsolete by that point, and Hit Point totals were irrelevant because as a mage you didn't get hit at all if you knew what you were doing.

The whole "tough decisions" thing in Baldur's Gate regarding character sheet development is the perfect example of the romanticizing I was referring to. I mean, the super-broken magic system was half the fun, but let's not get carried away.

[cokane]

5 hours ago, 213374U said:

Not really, because you couldn't fit fireballs in your level 2 spell slots, and the only worthwhile level 2 spell outside of Mirror Image was Web, which did no damage. Same with Stoneskin, as the only offensive level 5 spell you ever needed was Cloudkill, the effects of which were blocked by Mirror Image too. I'm not seeing any sacrifices here.

And that's low-ish level mages. Once you started raking in the XP, you could do really stupidly broken **** like Project Image+Wizard Eye, 3xSunfire/Skull Trap in a Spell Sequencer, 3xHorrid Wilting in a Chain Contingency, Shapechange Mind Flayer+Timestop, and of course my favorite, Mislead and SI: Divination on a Mage/Thief for unlimited backstabs. And all of that was effectively per encounter because there was nothing to stop you from abusing the rest function. Fighters were completely obsolete by that point, and Hit Point totals were irrelevant because as a mage you didn't get hit at all if you knew what you were doing.

The whole "tough decisions" thing in Baldur's Gate regarding character sheet development is the perfect example of the romanticizing I was referring to. I mean, the super-broken magic system was half the fun, but let's not get carried away.

Hyperbole isn't a serious argument. Try to refrain from over-doing it. Saying web was the only good second level spell just isn't true.

Again, choosing to use your limited resources as a wizard on defensive abilities is radically different game design than gifting players large hit point pools and the ability to wear fighter-equivalent armor and other gear.