Mask of the Betrayer

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Clearly a programmer and designer disagreement occured again....

[Cantousent]

I'm a bit hamstrung in that I cannot cite specifics. For instance, that "start out" area that Sawyer mentions does not have particularly tough battles, but there are some side areas there that I found interesting. They provide some opportunity for background information. The enemies in those side areas are different from each other and both are different from what the player faces in the rest of the start area. The battles aren't particularly tough, but it's the damned start area. The whole start area gives more important story information, and that information is delivered more frequently, than the orc cave. Finally, if it takes you three hours to get out of the start area, you probably aren't making it through those battle as easily as you did in the orc caves.

 

For what it's worth, I understand your interest, but there's no way to convince you short of letting you play the game. Until then, you can either take my word or not. I won't hold a grudge no matter what you choose.

 

I guess, since we're talking difficulty, I can say that I wrote a few bugs saying that combat was too easy in areas. I can't cite which areas, now, for obvious reasons. There were at least a handful of bug reports claiming that certain areas were too high. In one particlar area, I think the vast, VAST majority of folks would scream bloody murder because, at that time, I don't think the party could win the battle.

[thepixiesrock]

This is all great information and everything, but why don't you just tell us the answer the the real question we all want to know. When is it comming out?

[Llyranor]

Haha, Eldar made the headlines at the Codex.

[thepixiesrock]

This tester is clearly an idiot, and his review is suspect. He says he liked the influence in NWN2 and it was ****. Not enough chances to raise influence with anyone, and the stupid 'HA, I turnz on u!' ending. Interesting idea (that's been had before) but so poorly implemented it might as well not even have been in the game.

 

Man, that RPG codex, it's just all kinds of classy.

[Cantousent]

Any scorn from the Codex is a compliment to my ears.

[Gorth]

Trust Pixie to take a single post out of the context of the other posts...

[GreasyDogMeat]

I'll have to see. If combat is more Icewind Dale than NWN2, that would be a really good start for me.

The expansion does start out pretty mellow in the combat department, but it ramps up quickly after that. We put a good amount of effort into revising the combat scenarios so they felt tactically challenging. We tried to find ways to differentiate enemy types from area to area and within each area. Tactical difficulty is usually more interesting than numeric difficulty, if that makes sense.

 

I think that weathered veterans will at least find the combat engaging. Total nubs (e.g. Adam Brennecke) will probably be wiped out at a few spots. But hey, you're playing an epic-level D&D game, so suck it up and get promoted out of the Nubtorian Guard. I certainly believe that the majority of players moving from NWN2 to MotB will find the latter more interesting and challenging overall.

 

Sounds a bit like Icewind Dale 2. One thing I enjoyed in IwD 2 were a few optional mega-hard battles, like the Dragon and the graveyard of heroes. Both battles kicked my ass and I ended up skipping them to finish the main storyline. Sometime, when I decide to replay the Infinity Engine games I'll make a more powerful party to finish those battles. I remember being excited about the sub-races, a first for an IE game, so I had a party full of Drow, Duergars and Deep Gnomes... made the game more challenging, but a real biotch for the tough battles.

[Adam Brennecke]

The expansion does start out pretty mellow in the combat department, but it ramps up quickly after that. We put a good amount of effort into revising the combat scenarios so they felt tactically challenging. We tried to find ways to differentiate enemy types from area to area and within each area. Tactical difficulty is usually more interesting than numeric difficulty, if that makes sense.

 

I think that weathered veterans will at least find the combat engaging. Total nubs (e.g. Adam Brennecke) will probably be wiped out at a few spots. But hey, you're playing an epic-level D&D game, so suck it up and get promoted out of the Nubtorian Guard. I certainly believe that the majority of players moving from NWN2 to MotB will find the latter more interesting and challenging overall.

 

QQ

 

In MotB I find myself having to play combat much like Baldur's Gate 2, Throne of Bhaal, and Icewind Dale II. I'm not saying that the combat is exactly like the Infinity Engine games but with addition of epic levels, the modified resting and gameplay rules makes the combat portion of MotB much more engaging and interesting than the OC. These additions, including some of the other UI and camera changes, makes MotB play much like the legendary Bioware/BIS games. For the majority of the fights I have to think about what I'm doing or else a party wipe is imminent.

 

I told Josh the game was too hard. He didn't listen - which is probably a good thing for you guys, because I haven't graduated from out of the Nubtorian Guard of Noobsville yet.

 

-Brennecke

[Sammael]

Guys,

 

Make sure to avoid combat disasters like the Hook Horror caves or the final battle in IWD2. Chapter 1 of IWD2 is how it should be done: tough, but doable with good strategy and tactics.

 

And for the love of all that is unholy, avoid monster respawning from thin air and unavoidable ambushes every five minutes.

[Colrom]

The expansion does start out pretty mellow in the combat department, but it ramps up quickly after that. We put a good amount of effort into revising the combat scenarios so they felt tactically challenging. We tried to find ways to differentiate enemy types from area to area and within each area. Tactical difficulty is usually more interesting than numeric difficulty, if that makes sense.

 

I think that weathered veterans will at least find the combat engaging. Total nubs (e.g. Adam Brennecke) will probably be wiped out at a few spots. But hey, you're playing an epic-level D&D game, so suck it up and get promoted out of the Nubtorian Guard. I certainly believe that the majority of players moving from NWN2 to MotB will find the latter more interesting and challenging overall.

 

QQ

 

In MotB I find myself having to play combat much like Baldur's Gate 2, Throne of Bhaal, and Icewind Dale II. I'm not saying that the combat is exactly like the Infinity Engine games but with addition of epic levels, the modified resting and gameplay rules makes the combat portion of MotB much more engaging and interesting than the OC. These additions, including some of the other UI and camera changes, makes MotB play much like the legendary Bioware/BIS games. For the majority of the fights I have to think about what I'm doing or else a party wipe is imminent.

 

I told Josh the game was too hard. He didn't listen - which is probably a good thing for you guys, because I haven't graduated from out of the Nubtorian Guard of Noobsville yet.

 

-Brennecke

 

He should have listened. The number one reason for me not playing (and not buying) certain games is because I find them too difficult at key points and would rather just pass on the frustration.

 

Of course, it may be that you guys have come up with a simple difficulty slider which nerfs the enemies in some reasonable way (a way that does not remove tactical fun). In that case, all that is required is consistency so that noobs don't need to be twirling the dial all the time.

Edited September 9, 2007 by Colrom

[Musopticon?]

Guys,

 

Make sure to avoid combat disasters like the Hook Horror caves

As the caves are one of my favorite combat spots in the game, I have to ask why they were a disaster. I agree that the whole "drop out of ceiling" thing could have been done better, but that battle always messes all my plans and I have to think reactively, not preactively(buff everyone to hell, trap the area) to not die.

[Tigranes]

I can't seem to remember, where's the hook horror caves in?

 

The final battle in IWD2 never really made much sense to me, but then I'm weirdly inept at working out which protections particular creatures have and what they don't. Sherincal's lieutenant deathknight thing similarly frustrated me, but otherwise that game had some nice battles.

 

There was nothing spectacularly wrong with NWN2 battles (except Orc caves/etc, where I just used a Godmode Khelgar on AI and went away for tea), just that any sort of challenge was numerical or brute, rarely tactical. I hope there's more BG2-esque magic buffs and dispelling involved. I wonder if there are any adjustments to the AI - i.e. patrolling around, calling mates, chasing you, fighters in front of mages?

[Musopticon?]

Hook horror caves were just before the river caves, just after the young ice dragons and the barbarian stone puzzle, IIRC.

Edited September 9, 2007 by Musopticon?

[Pope]

God I hated those Hook Horrors. They just kept coming and coming and I didn't get a single XP point for wasting them.

[Llyranor]

Personally, I find that if the devs need to err on one side, I'd rather they go for higher difficulty. Gameplay that's too easy and requires little thought isn't very compelling. Of course, the converse is true if the game is simply too hard, depending on the reason. If the game simply promotes grinding and repetitive gameplay rather than trial of various diverging tactics, then it's not much fun, either.

 

That being said, I do agree on difficulty sliders. The DnD CRPG ones, for some reason or another, are complete crap.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I'd not even touch a difficulty slider even if I was having a tough time of it.

[Atreides]

I think the orc caves would have made sense if the orcs were finite in number, but setting off the alarm would draw them to you. They should move across the map to you I think. In that sense the caves are really tough if they're attacking from the front and back. I had some of my casters at the back where they usually are only to find out they were being hacked by a bunch of grunts.

 

However, if they're teleporting or just respawning that's not cool.

[Cantousent]

I plan on hanging out in the spoilers section in order to help folks. There will be rough spots for some players. It will be fun, but some aspects of the game will be quite difficult.

[J.E. Sawyer]

He should have listened. The number one reason for me not playing (and not buying) certain games is because I find them too difficult at key points and would rather just pass on the frustration.

We did listen to Adam.

 

In this thread (or perhaps another), I threw Adam under the wheels of the difficulty cart because he built a water genasi 10 fighter / 7 cleric as his starting character. Genasi are not a powerhouse race, but more importantly, being able to cast only 4th level cleric spells in an 18th level dungeon is practically like being able to cast no cleric spells at all. Low on feats, high on nothing, the character is just flat out bad.

 

Adam's a smart guy, and he is lightly familiar with D&D. So how should we tune an expansion that's oriented around 20th+ level characters? When I played through the expansion the first time, long stretches were so trivially easy that I became bored. I enjoyed the story and the areas a lot, but the overall low level of difficulty probably would have made me stop playing the game if it hadn't been an Obsidian product.

 

Kevin and Avellone and Ferg were quick to prevent me from requesting IWD2-levels of difficulty because they have more sympathy for nubs than I do. And I should make it clear that I didn't tune the combat personally. I made suggestions that were considered by individual designers and either accepted, rejected, or modified based on their best judgment and the goals Kevin thought were appropriate. I think the game difficulty, as tuned by the designers, is interesting but not difficult for me. And by Adam's experience, some parts are very difficult for someone with his relatively-low familiarity with D&D. D&D is a complicated ruleset and there's a minimum level of understanding required to do anything with it -- especially at 20th+ level. The only real way to get around that is to selectively shave off so much of the complex D&D rules that you're left with something like BG: Dark Alliance or the old Capcom D&D games. If you try to keep all of the core rules but tune the difficulty so you don't really have to know anything, the D&D veterans simply aren't going to find the gameplay compelling at all.

 

For the record, I will also say that the Black Hound will not be tuned in this way. While I am changing a bunch of rules for the campaign, combat babies will have to leave their rattles and bonnets at the door.

[Starwars]

How is The Black Hound coming along btw? Have there been any progress, or have you been to busy with the Alien game?

[J.E. Sawyer]

How is The Black Hound coming along btw? Have there been any progress, or have you been to busy with the Alien game?

It's slowly coming along. Part of the difficulty is that I effectively have to re-design all of the areas due to changes I think are necessary. I also decided to create a few new areas that fit better into the story/setting. I have a team of about four area designers, three of whom are currently laying out areas (the fourth is waiting for me to give him maps to work on). A few Obsidian designers have also volunteered to help me with spell, item, and GUI modifications. It will still probably be a while before I can really show anything.

[Monte Carlo]

I have to agree with Sawyer. It's a bit like playing a Close Combat game and complaining that your all-armour battlegroup is struggling without infantry and is getting it's arse handed to it by twelve guys with panzerfausts. Or playing a Total War game and wondering why your all-infantry army is decimated by archers before it closes in on the enemy ranks.

 

I know people here seem to like high levels of role-playing, but a game dictated primarily by dialogue decisions influenced by the appropriate soft skill choices is as predictable as an all-combat game dictated by min-maxing and optimal power-gaming.

 

NWN2, like NWN before it, allows non-D&D mentats to click on a "suggested build" button to create an optimal character with no worries whatsoever. Furthermore, D&D isn't actually that difficult from a tactical POV..... build a single-class character and you can't really go wrong in 3E, it's quite paper-scissors-stone. TBH, all the prestige-class character builds people love to construct confuses me... but I view it as one of those things you can indulge in if you want and ignore if you don't.

 

Why not just have loads of characters that the developers enjoyed playing through the game with as playable builds you can choose right from the start, like in IWD2 where you could choose a whole party. Make them easy / intermediate / advanced. I played through IWD2 with one of the pre-generated parties, but is has to be said not Sawyers which had a dwarf rogue with a dexterity score of 10 IIRC.

 

As somebody who likes the ruleset I'm getting a bit tired of relentless dumbing down to pander to people who can't actually be arsed to understand what it is they're actually playing.

 

Cheers,

 

MC

[J.E. Sawyer]

Why not just have loads of characters that the developers enjoyed playing through the game with as playable builds you can choose right from the start, like in IWD2 where you could choose a whole party. Make them easy / intermediate / advanced. I played through IWD2 with one of the pre-generated parties, but is has to be said not Sawyers which had a dwarf rogue with a dexterity score of 10 IIRC.

I believe Nathaniel Chapman created high-level starter characters that people can use in MotB if they so desire.

 

Also the Hands of Fury was a great party.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Ah, The Hands of Fury. Yes, it probably was, but you challenged my inner-munchkin with the 10 DEX rogue and my inner-munchkin won