More like BG2 please

[Gromnir]

ps:t, totsc, bg1, iwd, and bg2. 5

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps we didn't put in order... hope that don't confuse

Edited August 24, 2014 by Gromnir

[Mrakvampire]

 

Basically it means that you can have Pathfinder RPG rules in cRPG and can't use WOTC trademarks like beholders and mind flayers.

Nor call it Pathfinder (unless you have the license, as Obsidian does now), nor d20, nor -- unless you want to risk a lawsuit -- point out that your ruleset is, in fact, a clone.

 

But yes, other than that, you could. Which is what I've been saying all along.

 

 

I hope that after PoE we will see Pathfinder cRPG from Obsidian

[Cabamacadaf]

ps:t, totsc, bg1, iwd, and bg2. 5

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps we didn't put in order... hope that don't confuse

Tales of the sword coast is an expansion, it doesn't count as a full game.

 

Not that it matters in any way.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Cabamacadaf

[Shevek]

Cabamacadaf:

I think he's counting it since they were able to further refine the system (enemies, spells, etc) prior to BG2's development.

[Gromnir]

 

ps:t, totsc, bg1, iwd, and bg2. 5

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps we didn't put in order... hope that don't confuse

Tales of the sword coast is an expansion, it doesn't count as a full game.

 

Not that it matters in any way.

 

we didn't count as a "full" game, but if you were around for bg2 development, you would realize just how misguided it were to undervalue totsc. ignore the new monster models and spells for a moment and simple recognize that durlag's tower were incredible influential. you wanna know why all the wilderness maps from bg1 disappeared? is 'cause folks on bg2 boards said, "get rid of the mindless mowing of bg1 wilderness maps and give us more areas such as durlag's tower."   the expansion were at least as significant as bg1 when speaking o' improving future ie games.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Ineth]

So you think:

 

- offscreen web, offscreen cloud kill, offscreen fireball fireball fireball

- enter room of a deadly mage, leave room, wait out his spells, kill him

- getting tons of movement speed / actions by stacking haste spells 

- getting 25 charisma with rod of terror + ring of charisma

- abusing double regen effect while hasted

- using the guard button to shot through doors

- blocking doors with eye of the wizard

 

was fun?

 

 

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:

1. 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?

    

2. 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.

 

[Mayama]

 

So you think:

 

- offscreen web, offscreen cloud kill, offscreen fireball fireball fireball

- enter room of a deadly mage, leave room, wait out his spells, kill him

- getting tons of movement speed / actions by stacking haste spells 

- getting 25 charisma with rod of terror + ring of charisma

- abusing double regen effect while hasted

- using the guard button to shot through doors

- blocking doors with eye of the wizard

 

was fun?

 

 

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:

1. 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?

    

2. 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.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Mayama

[AdaMusic]

So I started to play through BG2 again. And honestly, there is just no way any modern RPG or game will be able to match BG2 in art, immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue. BG2 just has such incredible amount of quality and quantity in gameplay and artwork. Comparing any game, including PoE, to BG2 will just end with huge disappointment. Maybe we should just accept reality and move on? Instead we could focus what PoE could be able to do; engine-wise and story-wise. Currently PoE has a pretty good engine - with a few setbacks: AI and pathfinding. PoE could try to work on the sense of "travel" and immersion by making the engine and combat feel fluid, so that it instead of trying to look like BG2 it will have a few "pros".

[Seari]

So I started to play through BG2 again. And honestly, there is just no way any modern RPG or game will be able to match BG2 in art, immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue. BG2 just has such incredible amount of quality and quantity in gameplay and artwork. Comparing any game, including PoE, to BG2 will just end with huge disappointment. Maybe we should just accept reality and move on? Instead we could focus what PoE could be able to do; engine-wise and story-wise. Currently PoE has a pretty good engine - with a few setbacks: AI and pathfinding. PoE could try to work on the sense of "travel" and immersion by making the engine and combat feel fluid, so that it instead of trying to look like BG2 it will have a few "pros".

I agree, I have my doubts that it will ever be as good as BG2. Maybe if they rethink some the things for the sequel, but it will be hard with Sawyer's balance obsession sucking all the fun out though. Hopefully the game will at least be enjoyable.

[Mayama]

I agree, I have my doubts that it will ever be as good as BG2. Maybe if they rethink some the things for the sequel, but it will be hard with Sawyer's balance obsession sucking all the fun out though. Hopefully the game will at least be enjoyable.

 

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.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Mayama

[Leferd]

So I started to play through BG2 again. And honestly, there is just no way any modern RPG or game will be able to match BG2 in art, immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue. BG2 just has such incredible amount of quality and quantity in gameplay and artwork. Comparing any game, including PoE, to BG2 will just end with huge disappointment. Maybe we should just accept reality and move on? Instead we could focus what PoE could be able to do; engine-wise and story-wise. Currently PoE has a pretty good engine - with a few setbacks: AI and pathfinding. PoE could try to work on the sense of "travel" and immersion by making the engine and combat feel fluid, so that it instead of trying to look like BG2 it will have a few "pros".

"...match...immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue"?

 

Pretty much agree with you accept the excerpt above. BG2 was significantly lacking especially to many of the modern games in depth of gameplay and dialogue. Quest design was fairly linear and Choice and Consequence was very low. Dialogue didn't give the player much opportunity to role play and primarily serves to advance the plot -whose end result is ultimately a FedEx quest or hunt the bad guy. When speaking with said bad guy, dialogue is essentially content that'll lead to combat with rare exceptions of a diplomatic solution.

[Seari]

 

So I started to play through BG2 again. And honestly, there is just no way any modern RPG or game will be able to match BG2 in art, immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue. BG2 just has such incredible amount of quality and quantity in gameplay and artwork. Comparing any game, including PoE, to BG2 will just end with huge disappointment. Maybe we should just accept reality and move on? Instead we could focus what PoE could be able to do; engine-wise and story-wise. Currently PoE has a pretty good engine - with a few setbacks: AI and pathfinding. PoE could try to work on the sense of "travel" and immersion by making the engine and combat feel fluid, so that it instead of trying to look like BG2 it will have a few "pros".

"...match...immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue"?

 

Pretty much agree with you accept the excerpt above. BG2 was significantly lacking especially to many of the modern games in depth of gameplay and dialogue. Quest design was fairly linear and Choice and Consequence was very low. Dialogue didn't give the player much opportunity to role play and primarily serves to advance the plot -whose end result is ultimately a FedEx quest or hunt the bad guy. When speaking with said bad guy, dialogue is essentially content that'll lead to combat with rare exceptions of a diplomatic solution.

 

[Shevek]

I think alot of folks are wearing a pair of these when thinking back to BG2...

 

[bonarbill]

So I started to play through BG2 again. And honestly, there is just no way any modern RPG or game will be able to match BG2 in art, immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue. 

 

And comments like this is the reason why I think BG2 has to be one of the most overrated RPGs of all time.

[Seari]

I think alot of folks are wearing a pair of these when thinking back to BG2...

 

Funny, because I'm playing it right now.

 

edit: It may have many flaws, but it's still miles better than any rpg made today.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Seari

[Leferd]

Games with Interplay roots that had more role play depth than BG2:

 

Fallout

Fallout 2

FO:NV

PS:T

Alpha Protocol

MotB

KotOR2

NWN: Witch's Wake

Arcanum

VtM:B

[Sammael]

-- the last thing we want is d&d attributes. am thinking we mentioned elsewhere, multiple times, that ad&d made character development choices beyond first level largely inconsequential. once abilities, class, and *groan* kit were chosen, it were largely game-over for character development.  each class had a prime attribute or two, and drop rest attributes to 3 were making perfect sense... <snip> d&d with only meaningful choices at level 1 were stoopid. thac0 and dual-class/multi-class, and the fact that by 12th level it didn't matter what stats you had anyways 'cause magic items determined your efficacy were all freaking stoopid.  ok, so we discussed more than attributes, with this point, but d&d attributes were stoopid.

 

-- thankfully, rolling for stats is an anachronism. obsidian developers state that they want to create a balanced system, and some yutz wants rolled stats? you don't see the problem?

 

While I agree with you on principle (AD&D placed too much importance on starting stats, character progression past level one was not meaningful enough) I have to point out the following:

 

1. Mechanical stat benefits do not have to be great, but they should matter. If I create a Might 18 Intellect 5 Wizard, I want him to feel (in play) different from a Might 5 Intellect 18 Wizard. As it stands, I don't think there is enough differentiation.

 

2. Not everyone is a special snowflake. Mathematically speaking, it is exactly the same to have a lower baseline for damage and then grant a bonus from Might 3 to Might 18 as having a higher baseline and have Might < 10 carry a penalty and Might > 10 carry a bonus. But when it comes to immersion, option 1 screams "there are no losers! we're not keeping score! everyone wins just by participating!" whereas option 2 says, "you made sacrifices, now suck it up."

 

3. A much larger beta playtest (D&D 5th edition) conducted among a very similar demographic (PnP players, many of whom are also CRPG players) has shown that people want attributes to matter more than they did in 3rd and 4th edition. 5th edition has almost reverted back to 2nd edition when it comes to attribute importance with respect to both combat and the skill system. I may not like this (I prefer skill-based systems) and you may not like this but it's what the majority of people from that demographic want.

 

4. I've experimented a lot with different point-buy systems, both weighed and non-weighed. In the beginning, I had the same opinion as Josh - if the benefit granted by attribute increase/decrease is linear, then there is no reason for weighed point buy. In the end, I changed my mind. Weighed point buy is very important for what is now commonly referred as "bound accuracy" - the range of expected abilities used to balance the game. This particularly impacts the low levels, when attributes should still have a greater impact (IMO) than any skill- or talent- based bonuses. This is the reason why D&D 3.x and Pathfinder had weighed point buy and linear attribute progression afterwards - from 5th level on, it didn't matter as much.

 

5. While I also agree with both you and Josh that the D&D attribute system is bad, I don't think the current abstract, gamist system of PoE is much better. However, I fully believe that both D&D attributes and PoE attributes can be made better. I just can't offer meaningful feedback without a lot more testing, and I'm not going to do any testing until the major gamebreaking bugs (disappearing items and quests) aren't fixed...

[Gromnir]

 

-- the last thing we want is d&d attributes. am thinking we mentioned elsewhere, multiple times, that ad&d made character development choices beyond first level largely inconsequential. once abilities, class, and *groan* kit were chosen, it were largely game-over for character development.  each class had a prime attribute or two, and drop rest attributes to 3 were making perfect sense... <snip> d&d with only meaningful choices at level 1 were stoopid. thac0 and dual-class/multi-class, and the fact that by 12th level it didn't matter what stats you had anyways 'cause magic items determined your efficacy were all freaking stoopid.  ok, so we discussed more than attributes, with this point, but d&d attributes were stoopid.

 

-- thankfully, rolling for stats is an anachronism. obsidian developers state that they want to create a balanced system, and some yutz wants rolled stats? you don't see the problem?

 

(samm reply... am not gonna full quote or it gets far too cluttered)

 

1) there is a difference 'tween a high might v. high intellect wizard in PoE, just not as great as there were for ability disparities in bg2. what Gromnir wants to know is why does you want ability disparities to be so significant? the PoE disparities is significant, just not as much as you wish. Gromnir would prefer choices made post level one to be relative more significant than in any ie or aurora incarnation o' d&d. this should be obvious, but apparently it needs repeating: the more value you give to abilities, the harder it is to make talents valuable w/o being over-powering.

 

2) "immersion"  we stopped listening at that point.  sorry. "immersion" doesn't mean anything to us. and again, without availability o' PoE's post level one character development choices in the game at this time, we cannot tell how different one level 5 mage will play compared to another. if abilities provide a small change and each talent provides a small change, then by level five or six or eight we could have rather significant overall changes. is bassakwards to us that you become a special freaking snowflake at level one rather than at later levels.

 

3) a very large beta playtest led to 4th edition.  so much for the value o' wotc playtests, eh? haven't seen numbers you is using as proof regardless. 

 

4) "In the end, I changed my mind."  that is nice. dunno, we has been building and refining pnp rpg systems since the late 70s. your personal experience is unlikely to trump our own without something more concrete as a basis for judging superiority. we can see no valid reason why any one point allocated in any one ability should have greater or lesser weight simply because it exceeded some subjective threshold. our experience has revealed that people prefer a rational system whereby any one point o' dex or might or intellect is having equal value. 

 

5) am agreeing that PoE is so busted at the moment that it is difficult to tell what is working and what is not. that being said, relative devalued abilities is a good thing in our estimation, as is the possibility o' making post level one character development choices more valuable is real.  the value o' level one ability distributions is not  currently insurmountable in terms o' importance. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited August 24, 2014 by Gromnir

[Sammael]

The talent system describes character growth, no? So, for there to be character growth, there has to be a decent baseline which differentiates characters to begin with. Note: I am not advocating the doubling of attribute bonuses as some people are. If anything, I may be asking for a slightly non-linear progression, as well as the penalty system I mentioned which you dismissed. 

 

BTW, 4th edition had a very small, closed beta test, coupled with a RPGA playtest which was laughable. It never had anything even approaching the scope of the 5e beta test, which (1) lasted much, much longer (2) had major rule changes and updates to test the feasibility thereof and (3) was open to all who registered on the WotC website. The reception of 4E and 5E is much different as well. I'm waiting on my 5E PHB to arrive, but from the excerpts I've seen I'm far less likely to throw it away in disgust like it did with the 4E version.

[Caerdon]

 

So I started to play through BG2 again. And honestly, there is just no way any modern RPG or game will be able to match BG2 in art, immersive depth of gameplay or dialogue. 

 

And comments like this is the reason why I think BG2 has to be one of the most overrated RPGs of all time.

 

I agree - which is weird as I love BG2. But I guess it's only a small portion of its fans that think it was nearly perfect in all aspects. It was great because it was great as a whole, not because every individual component was stellar.

[Gromnir]

"The talent system describes character growth, no? So, for there to be character growth, there has to be a decent baseline which differentiates characters to begin with. "

 

anybody wanna help samm identify the logic fallacy (fallacies) he is making?

 

there is differentiation in current PoE builds using might v. intellect or whatever. samm got a subjective feeling that there ain't enough differentiation. to be fair, is a subjective feeling many boardies share. Gromnir, on the other hand, sees no great need for differentiation to be extreme at level one. we would rather the differentiation become more pronounced at later levels as 'posed to being centered around level one choices. where differentiation centers on level 1 choices, it is near inevitable that we will see more uniformity o' builds. furthermore, the act o' leveling is far less meaningful if level 1 choices is disproportionate valued.

 

as for 4e playtest, it were also a "years" kinda thing, but am admitting that we do not have hard numbers o' 4e play testers. we recall articles using vague identifiers such as "extensive" and similar. as you noted, rpga were also involved in 4e testing. 5e, on the other hand, is laughable in its own rights as it would appear that their actual playtest were observing pathfinder success. gosh, doesn't take a genius to see that wotc largely rolled d&d back to 3.5 for their starting point for 5.0. that is not a playtest so much as a capitulation and an admission o' fail.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

edit: samm's quote disappeared from our posting. strange. we were forced to re-submit.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Gromnir

[Sammael]

5e is a lot more like one of the OSR retroclones than 3.x 

 

But it does share one thing with Pathfinder - it has no connection whatsoever to 4e. And that's A Good Thing.

 

FWIW, I think Pathfinder is a bloated monstrosity which did nothing to fix 3.x problems, whereas 5e is slightly too "lite" for my taste. But it's a lot easier to add stuff to a "lite" system than it is to remove bloat from a bloated one.

[Gromnir]

5e is a lot more like one of the OSR retroclones than 3.x 

 

But it does share one thing with Pathfinder - it has no connection whatsoever to 4e. And that's A Good Thing.

 

FWIW, I think Pathfinder is a bloated monstrosity which did nothing to fix 3.x problems, whereas 5e is slightly too "lite" for my taste. But it's a lot easier to add stuff to a "lite" system than it is to remove bloat from a bloated one.

am disagreeing completely here... particular with pathfinder.

 

much as d20 were a monumental improvement over ad&d, pathfinder were at least a minor improvement over 3.5.  the thing is that just as d20 couldn't survive its own weight as each new splat book made the game increasingly less balanced and internal incoherent, pathfinder has followed a similar path. is a bit like attempting to improve chess. you can't improve chess by simply adding new pieces or adding dimensions to the board.  'course once you sell a chess board and pieces to a person, you can't make additional money off o' those purchasers. wotc and paizo is in the business o' selling games. once they sold folks on core books and released errata, what were they to do? 

 

as for d&d 5th or next or whatever it is now, we played through the dragonspear castle stuff and even the murder in baldur's gate release and anybody familiar with d20 is gonna have a very shallow learning curve. let's not pretend 5th edition is a reinventing o' the wheel rather than a retool o' d20. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Stun]

as for d&d 5th or next or whatever it is now, we played through the dragonspear castle stuff and even the murder in baldur's gate release and anybody familiar with d20 is gonna have a very shallow learning curve. let's not pretend 5th edition is a reinventing o' the wheel rather than a retool o' d20. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Thank God.

[Ineth]

I dont get you guys, was it really so much fun to have stuff like wild mages [...]

 

Yes. Playing a Wild Mage in BG2 is much fun.

 

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.

 

Wut, no. Chaos Shield just lowers the probability of getting a wild surge instead of (or in addition to) the intended spell effect when casting with Reckless Dweomer, it doesn't negate it. And its effectiveness depends on the caster's level - at lower levels, you will miscast a lot even with chaos shield active.

 

I got wild surges like "all enemies in sight healed back to 100% health", "all enemies in sight hasted", "fireball on own party", "intended spell accidentally cast at wrong target", etc. all the time.

Even vaporized some of my precious gold once or twice; and turned a party member into stone once, I think.

 

Whether that "balances" the ability to, with some luck, cast an arbitrary known spell of any level while using up only a first-level spell slot (plus a level 2 one for previously cast Chaos Shield) is difficult to measure objectively; but it sure was fun, all in all.

 

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

 

First of all, I'm not sure if that really works or is just theorizing, and even if it technically works, if it is viable as a go-to tactic in practice. I for one never did that. Wasn't there a risk involved in casting (Limited) Wish that prevented us from using it too casually?

 

Secondly, in order to be able to cast a spell with Reckless Dweomer, the wild mage has to know it first. And unless I'm mistaken, Time Stop scrolls are only found pretty late in SoA - not that long before a Mage can cast in normally. So at best, a Wild Mage would allow you to start using your (hypothetical?) cheese tactic a little earlier...