Mask of the Betrayer

[Cantousent]

"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."

 

I'll make a bet that there will be a sizeable number of players who find MotB quite hard. There were testers, for crying out loud, who wrote bugs about the difficulty being too high in some areas.

 

What's key for me is that the areas that are easy are quickly traversed. For example, the starting area is pretty small. Even scouring every inch of the place, I was out very quickly.

 

On the other hand, this isn't a combat-monger's brag fest. If your sole desire is a game that tests your mettle in the most severe conditions of computer gaming, this might not be your game. The combat is engaging but not difficult enough to turn away players who don't want to slog through super tough battles every step.

 

It is a shortcoming of the DnD system that it allows character builds that are not viable. If a 10fighter/7cleric can't survive, why allow the player to build one?

 

Once we add in the spirit eater mechanic, I'm not worried about the game being to easy for the majority of players. I'm worried about it being too hard.

 

Here's the disclaimer, just so folks can have a single sentence to characterize my entire post: I value CRPGs mostly for the story and combat as a means of progressing the plot.

[Cantousent]

^ 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

 

With skills being king for a rogue, I'd rather have one with a high intelligence. 10 Dex seems low, though. Sounds like someone was trying to "roleplay."

[Monte Carlo]

It is a shortcoming of the DnD system that it allows character builds that are not viable. If a 10fighter/7cleric can't survive, why allow the player to build one?

 

No, it isn't a shortcoming of D&D per se, it's just an unavoidable consequence of having to shoehorn a tabletop system into a computer game played by thousands of people with totally divergent ideas of what constitutes a cool character. If I were the DM in a game where the guy had created a multi-class Genasai Ftr/Cleric of those levels then the spirit of the tabletop game would almost demand that I create proportionate challenges that don't insult the player nor make life too easy for them. Alternatively, I'd have said "look, in this campaign this isn't really an acceptable character."

 

I actually feel sorry for developers who have to ride the D&D horse over the hurdles of making a computer game. They can't win.

 

The sooner a system bespoked for CRPGs comes to the fore the better. I like D&D on the computer, but I'd happily play something designed specifically for the medium as long as it was challenging, convincing and (above all) fun.

 

Still looking forward to MotB.

 

Cheers

MC

[J.E. Sawyer]

I'll make a bet that there will be a sizeable number of players who find MotB quite hard. There were testers, for crying out loud, who wrote bugs about the difficulty being too high in some areas.

There were areas that were more difficult, and when I wrote up my comments to the designers, I called those areas out as either having good difficulty or too high difficulty. However, at the alpha phase those were punctuating exceptions that bucked the overall trend.

 

With skills being king for a rogue, I'd rather have one with a high intelligence. 10 Dex seems low, though. Sounds like someone was trying to "roleplay."

Harbesh Carver was the dwarf rogue, and he had a decent Int, high Str and Con (I think). The whole party was really built around character concepts instead of actually being powerful characters. That said, I did play through the entirety of IWD2 with that party. Because they start off so... weird, you have to get creative with how you build them and play them over time.

 

EDIT: In Andy Woo's D&D game, I'm currently playing a terrible character. He's a 2nd level cleric with the following stats: 10 Str, 8 Dex, 10 Con, 18 Int, 14 Wis, 14 Cha. He's a bookish priest based loosely off of William of Baskerville from Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. He's really not good at anything, but he's still fun to play in a tabletop setting. D&D (and an understanding DM) allow this, but the game's structure doesn't really support it as a truly viable build in the overall "power spectrum". He'd be flat out terrible in the IE or NWN games.

[Zoma]

You know... Obsidian could implement hard-core mode that players can access upon completing the game?

 

Most games uses such system nowadays that increases the level of replayability and satisfy the masochists.

[Cantousent]

I see Alexander Brandon in this thread. I think, and beg forgiveness if I'm mistaken, that he's the sound guy. I really should have said something about the music. In many areas, it is simply superb.

 

As for the difficulty, I agree with Monte. It's probably a no-win situation. Some folks, like Sawyer, can number crunch on the fly and will do well even with an inferior build. Other folks, especially "casual" players, will have a harder time. I'm probably in the middle somewhere, as I don't relish combat in CRPG for its own sake. On the other hand, there were some "difficulty" bug reports with which I completely disagreed. One, in particular, struck me as ridiculous.

[Starwars]

I also think it's probably quite hard to balance difficulty in a D&D game. And perhaps even more so in todays market? The gaming business have gotten larger, and I suppose that games are more expensive to develop nowadays if they want to be part of "the industry" so to speak. I guess they have to try and catch as big part of the audience as they can.

 

But I still think it could be pushed way more than NWN2 OC was. I mean, when I first played Baldurs Gate I had zero experience of D&D. And I very much enjoyed it and the sequel. A little bit of reading manuals and spelldescriptions goes a long way...

That said, I certainly don't believe the BG games are perfect, but I must say I think they hit the mark on difficulty. It's easily the most fun "realtime w pause" combat experience I've had (though I've not played the Icewind Dales).

 

And Cantousent, what was the music like (without giving away details)? Rob McGinnis released the main theme on his blog a while back, and I really liked it. Felt quite "tribal" and a bit unusual.

[kirottu]

Meh. I never finished BG 1.

 

I had to clean caves full of kobolds on level 2 or 3 and those pesky bastards had fire arrows, which pretty much meant insta death to my mage. Futhermore, killing one kobold gave 7exp and in party of 6 one gets 1exp per opponent. I decided it wasn

[Cantousent]

My favorite was the music in the city. For some reason, in a belated response to pop, I don't mind the city there as much as Neverwinter. I guess I've just grown to hate the city of Neverwinter over the years.

 

As for the main theme, I don't know why, but it reminds me of PST. The city music has a certain haunting feel to it. I'm not particularly conversant in the language of music, so I can only say that I liked it, really.

[Monte Carlo]

That said, I certainly don't believe the BG games are perfect, but I must say I think they hit the mark on difficulty. It's easily the most fun "realtime w pause" combat experience I've had (though I've not played the Icewind Dales).

 

Then do yourself a favour and play them, they are consistently underrated, and although they are dungeon crawls (which, for me, is a Good Thing in of itself) the stories and NPCs are obviously much-loved by the writers and shine through anyway.

 

OK, HoW isn't the best expansion pack ever, but combine it with TotL and you have a really solid 2E AD&D adventure. As for IWD2, I though it was more fun than a sack of kittens, couldn't understand people who didn't like it. A solid 8.5 / 10 for me. Give them a go, they are classics.

 

Personally, I am heartened to see devs referencing the Infinity Engine / BG games in their comparisons with this NWN2 XP. This can only be positive, I am currently playing BG2 in an insanely-modded high-level game and loving the tactics.

 

Cheers

MC

[Pop]

Meh. I never finished BG 1.

 

I had to clean caves full of kobolds on level 2 or 3 and those pesky bastards had fire arrows, which pretty much meant insta death to my mage. Futhermore, killing one kobold gave 7exp and in party of 6 one gets 1exp per opponent. I decided it wasn

Edited September 9, 2007 by Pop

[Starwars]

As for the main theme, I don't know why, but it reminds me of PST.

 

You're right. Both tracks start off kind of haunting and mellow (both even have soft choir sounds in the background), and then goes into a rythmic, tribal thing. I do like the Planescape music more though (the main themes obviously since I haven't heard all of MotB), I just find that title melody so gorgeous. The MotB theme isn't as catchy, but still really nice. I especially like the beginning and end.

 

I'd have to say Mark Morgan (composer of most the PS:T and Fallout soundtracks) is really underrated, or forgotten when it comes to game soundtracks. They may not have the fullblown orchestra epic sounds, but they're unmatched when it comes to providing the atmosphere for the games. Just listen to Annah's theme from PS:T, or the Brotherhood of Steel music from Fallout 1. It's amazing stuff.

Edited September 9, 2007 by Starwars

[GreasyDogMeat]

"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."

 

What I'd like to see is more detailed tutorials that explain as much as possible about what makes a good and bad character. I started D&D games with Baldur's Gate and I remained a noob nub newblet for a long time because the game just sets you down with little to no explanation out of the manual about stats, saving throws and all that jazz. One of the few things I liked about Temple of Elemental Evil is that it contained an in-game dictionary of all the D&D rules within the game. If you didn't know what wisdom influenced, you could click on wisdom on your stats page and an entry would pop up explaining the effects and importance of the stat. Something like this would have been a HUGE help in my infinity engine days. Hell, even today with NwN 2 it would be handy to have an in-game encyclopedia instead of having to search through a fat rulebook or instruction manual.

 

I deffinitly agree with Josh though as far as difficulty was concerned. I loved Icewind Dale 1, the music, setting, atmosphere and story were all top notch, but Icewind Dale 2 really improved on the combat. I felt a real sense of accomplishment beating IWD 2, even if I did have to skip the optional dragon battle and the graveyard of heroes.

[Cantousent]

I think the approach you've described is a good idea, GDM.

Edited September 10, 2007 by Cantousent

[taks]

I though it was more fun than a sack of kittens

a sack of kittens possessed by demons...

 

couldn't understand people who didn't like it.

plenty of good points, but the bad points were pretty bad. repetitive loot (monty haul, but always the same shtuff), over-powered (nay, cheating) enemies, the fell wood - needs no other comments - and a few other reasons i cannot recall. i'd go with a 7/10, however, as IWD1 was much better.

 

taks

[Tigranes]

I just used Area Codes to teleport around with the fell wood. It wasn't immersive, it did'nt ahve story, it didn't have fun combat and there was no point in it whatsoever. At least the Cube Dimension was filled with 4th wall jokes. I can't understand why any designer would actually think that's a good or even acceptable idea, though? I'd love to see the reasoning, really.

[Qwerty the Sir]

I just used Area Codes to teleport around with the fell wood. It wasn't immersive, it did'nt ahve story, it didn't have fun combat and there was no point in it whatsoever. At least the Cube Dimension was filled with 4th wall jokes. I can't understand why any designer would actually think that's a good or even acceptable idea, though? I'd love to see the reasoning, really.

 

I remember reading here that one of the devs was really disappointed at the way the Fell Wood turned out as it was not at all how it was conceptualized. I didn't mind it too much myself (though I had a walkthrough and a character with max stats in wilderness lore) but I can certainly see why it was a sorer point of the game.

[Gorth]

I liked Fell Wood. And the wandering village too. It was one of the more atypical areas in the game, as was the time loop thing, in Dragons Eye. It was a nice break from the hack and slash that preceeded it, although those *&^%$ little teleporting, invisible lightning bugs were a pain at the end.

[Tigranes]

Dragon's Eye time loop was fantastic, it was fun. I liked the Wandering Village too. Fell Wood was just stupid, since it wasn't atypical, it was just abnormally bad.

[samm]

heh, either i was very lucky in my playthroughs, or i'm just better at it but fell wood never struck me as too difficult (except for the fights with these high-ac lights). just use wilderness lore, the info you could gather, and the map annotations, and you got through in quite a timely fashion. plus, the areas did look pretty, as well as the wandering village before.

sorry for the ot, but people complaining about this section of iwd2 must not be the only voice here...

Edited September 10, 2007 by samm

[taks]

never played a character with wilderness lore, mostly because rangers and druids kinda suck IMO. fell wood is a pain without it.

 

taks

[Adam Brennecke]

I want to add that even though the game is difficult, the combat is very fun and rewarding. Once I win a battle (after several party wipes) I feel accomplished. As Josh pointed out, my character sucks pretty hard, and on top of that, I'm not doing any of the side quests, so I'm making it more difficult than it needs to be.

 

-Brennecke

[kirottu]

Meh. I never finished BG 1.

 

I had to clean caves full of kobolds on level 2 or 3 and those pesky bastards had fire arrows, which pretty much meant insta death to my mage. Futhermore, killing one kobold gave 7exp and in party of 6 one gets 1exp per opponent. I decided it wasn

[Atreides]

I'd like to see combat difficulty sliders adjust enemy area specific strategies and stuff. Difficulty's not whether enemies have a % hp or criticals, but how they use what they have. What strategies, items, area benefits etc they use to their advantage. It stays within the rules better too.

 

The tough part would probably be loading the AI scripts for areas, but if the technology's there it can be done.

[MrBrown]

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.

 

 

I'd really rather have BG:DA type combat, really. Beats NWN and the IE game's combat, IMO.

Edited September 10, 2007 by MrBrown