Let's Play Baldur's Gate 2, and reflect on Pillars of Eternity (2)

[MasterPrudent]

I don't think there's any need to do all the hard encounters but you should try Watcher's Keep before you put it away seeing as it's a neat dungeon delving expereince that is quite different to the rest of the game.

[Gromnir]

 

There's meta-gaming galore in Icewind dale. You go straight from Wyrms tooth Glacier (where every enemy is frost based, and thus if you're not using fire based weapons and spells, you're doing things the long and hard way) to Lower Dorn's deep, (where your fire based weapons and spells have to be swapped out ASAP otherwise you're in for a world of hurt.)

Not so. The game told me that I'll be going to Wyrm's Tooth Glacier which was a bit of a giveaway, so I loaded up on fire before going there. The entrance to Lower Dorn's Deep made it clear that there's gonna be more fire deeper in, so I swapped my spells on the first rest. The salamanders and constructs at that point weren't much of a problem. Honest, did not metagame there, just took an extra rest when I saw what the environment looked like.

 

(Edit: also Wyrm's Tooth was really easy, I don't think I even used much magic there, just chewed through everybody with Stabby the Berserker.)

 

I suppose you could do the transition from one to the other naturally and "pretend" that your character wouldn't know that he's about to experience a 180 environment change. But No good player does that. Instead, we all do exactly what you "hate" about BG2. We meta-game. We say: "oh yeah....lower dorn's deep. lets see. Gotta Swap out fireball for Ice knife. Sol's searing orb for Otiluke's freezing sphere etc."

 

Then you enter the Artisan district: Oh sh*t, Just remembered. Umberhulks all over the place. Quick, lets memorize Chaotic commands.

I talked to some people before going into Artisan District, and they told me there's a crazy mage there building an army of Umber Hulks. So I loaded up on Chaotic Commands. Honest to God, this is what I did. I almost never felt that the game was suckerpunching me. It did a little in Dragon's Eye when I was kind of led to expect more Talonians (-> memorize Hold Persons and other cleric-suppression things) but then it turned out they were actually Yuan-ti. And that's about it really. It wasn't super-obvious about it, but if you're paying attention the clues are there.

 

Not at all like "let's go to de'Arnise keep to get Viconia and Korgan some nice weapons."

 

we always had at least one slot devoted to chaotic commands as it were so very useful against an incredible array of mind affecting spells.  actually, most iwd and bg2 encounters were easily addressed by summon undead and have the summons get to furthest range o' sight, then inch forward.  no metagaming. enemy ai would invariably have summons attacked first, giving us time and space to set up appropriate counter-measures. also, chaotic commands had a good duration at 1 turn per level. similarly, potions o' clarity were easily purchased in either game. have scout under influence o' invisibility+ chaotic commands/potion of mental clarity+speed and we could disarm every trap on a map and reveal almost all enemies undetected. we would also be immune to those annoying fear or confusion auras so many enemies utilized.  after scouting, send undead ahead and when we is just getting into range o' the toughs, we cast cloudkill and/or whatever aoe spell we chose.  OR if after scouting we saw that we were complete outfitted inappropriate, we could leave, sleep and return after memorizing the appropriate spells.   might seem like cheese, but not meta.

 

is more than a few encounters that required us to alter tactics in iwd and bg2, but the basics o' scouting and using undead as pmd (old non-pc pnp nomenclature for polish mine detector) were extreme effective for a large % o' encounters.  paying attention to dialogues were also invaluable.  typical the developers gave clues, if one were paying attention for such.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Guest 4ward]

@PrimeJunta, re metagaming/encounter, in most cases you can retreat/pretend that you retreated. So, you’re to open a door that leads you further into the Planar sphere. Suddenly a guy confronts you and it’s clear he wants to murder your char and that he’s that cowled wizard. Don’t go in, leave your other guys in the tunnel where they are and go back and shut the door. Now that you know what you could expect and what awaits you, now do whatever you think you should do for that encounter. Re metagaming/item, true you can’t really completely avoid that but if you play a sorcerer, you don’t need to necessarily do item/weapon hunting for the party (he himself just needs bracers of defense AC3 from Adventurer mart when you can afford it also robe of vecna which is i think also in adventurers mart on upper floor).

Re story (well there’s games with better stories that’s true), it gets better, it’s not just Irenicus it’s a family affair, you learn about what motivates him, you learn about the power he wants to take from you, you learn that it’s not just talk but that you really have a certain power and can even transform into something else.

[PrimeJunta]

@4ward Re the encounters, yeah, a lot of the time you can do that. I was scouting with Madam Evil in the Planar Sphere though; I don't know if retreat and regroup would have been an option in that case. Perhaps it would have. I didn't particularly hate that casterfight actually, maybe because I knew I was taking a risk proceeding with almost all my spells spent.

 

Some of the times you can't though. The last such incident was the confrontation between those two nobles in Trademeet, when it suddenly turns out that both are high-level mages and start lobbing spells at you without warning. I'm sure Stun or Sensuki could've beaten that cold with the party I had, but I couldn't think of a way to stop one of them from casting Chaos after Mislead had fired on a spell trigger, or think of a way to get the hell out of Dodge before the Chaos bit. (Cue sneering from Stun at how much I suck, and from Hiro at how I should read the manual.) So I just buffed Korgan with Chaotic Commands while things were still amicable, and won. It was the most obvious thing to do, but it required metagame knowledge of that which was to come.

 

I have been thinking more about this though, see if I can somehow manage to embrace this whole metagaming thing. Just treat the encounters as challenges to be overcome by any means possible. Will only try to limit reading actual spoilers. We'll see, I'm not about to give up just yet.

[sibakruom]

Question. How much further do I have to play before you guys believe I've given it my honest best?

 

Unless I'm mistaken, you've now played through most of chapters 2-3 side content at least once, leaving only Windspear Hill, the secondary companion quests (which neither of your companions have anyway) and the slew of high level encounters Sensuki mentioned. If you're not hooked on that by now, I doubt you'll feel differently by playing more of it.

However, chapters 4-5 are definite changes of pace, that may or may not be more to your liking. So I'd advise you to do what you had in mind before: drop the side-questing for now, punch through the chapter 3 main quests quickly and start chapter 4.

[Luckmann]

Question. How much further do I have to play before you guys believe I've given it my honest best?

When you've finished BG2+ToB.

[Starwars]

ToB is trash so you surely don't need to play that.

 

I'd say try to give some more of the storyline a go (I don't like it but then again I think I enjoyed the openess of Athkatla and then surrounding areas quite a bit more than you do) if you can't find it in you to enjoy what you're doing in the game right now.

 

If it doesn't grab you, then you don't need to play it. While I don't find BG2 amazing, I found it fun the first time I played it (but I was also pretty young then, not sure what I would think nowadays if I tried it for the first time) but you shouldn't force yourself. Play something you like instead. There shouldn't be a need to find som secret key to liking a game. 

[Sensuki]

ToB was underwhelming but I still enjoyed a lot of the encounters, and at least Watcher's Keep was pretty good and it has the best encounter in the whole game.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

@Starwars Hehe, I know.

 

Thing is, I'm fascinated by the grognard battalion. Folks like Stun are hilariously fanatical about this. There must be reasons for it, and at this point I'm more curious about those reasons than I am about the actual game.

 

I'm also exploring my own motivations and ways of playing these things. If I'm not enjoying it, is it because I'm playing it wrong, or is it because this sort of thing really isn't to my taste? The only way to find out is to try to learn to play it less wrong and see if the balance between frustration/irritation and enjoyment tips sufficiently towards enjoyment.

 

Also, my vanity has been tweaked by Stun's and Hiro's constant sneering. I want to prove to myself at least that the reason I don't like it -- if I can't learn to like it, that is -- is not that teh combat is too hard.

 

And finally, I want to reflect on what it is that I expect or want about P:E. I wasn't really hugely sold on the Kickstarter; I only pledgded enough to get the game and eventually a few add-ons. It seemed more Baldur's Gate-ey than Planescape Torment-y, what with the very generic-looking Western traditional fantasy and all. I only got really interested when stuff about the background lore started to emerge and it was clear that the worldbuilding was going to be way deeper, more coherent, and more original than I had expected, and that the story wasn't going to be your usual goatherd-grows-up-to-be-a-hero-and-saves-the-world-from-an-ancient-evil.

 

Put another way, I'm digging this thread more than the game.

[Sensuki]

Starwars often comments that he wants to see Obsidian upset 'grognards' with their design decisions and changes. He doesn't use that word himself though. I wonder if it's just because he thinks it's funny or whether he's a 'goon' like Roguey regarding gameplay preferences.

[Starwars]

Do I often do that Sensuki? Really?

 

I have certainly joked about it but not particularly because I enjoy seeing a grognard upset. Many (most) times I agree with the "old guard". I really don't like the restrictions on casting outside combat, I don't like that I can't transition from a zone when I'm in combat, I don't like the skill system, I still feel the combat feels hectic and hard to see exactly what's going on, the itemization (at least from what I've seen in the beta) feels disappointing to me, list goes on (though I do like the engagement mechanics). Though it's true that I probably don't feel as passionately about the issues as a lot of folks do (and I'm *glad* there are people who have the passion, don't get me wrong). I was on the barricades about Fallout 3 when it was in the making (I daresay that was rather farther from the goal of being a sequel than PoE being a spiritual successor to the IE games). 

 

But there is a sense of arrogance, downright rudeness, sense of entitlement and crappy attitudes that have permeated these forums since a bit after the beta release that is grating and annoying. I expect it on the Codex, where we all let our true feeling out, not here. That is rather unhelpful. There have been *great* feedback from yourself (probably the greatest source of feedback throughout the entire beta period), yet it's a shame that much of it has been coated with venom and video game zealotry. As always when we're dealing with communication between humans, I suspect that may have gotten some feedback/opinions  to get overlooked and dismissed rather than welcomed. Constructive criticism is *good*, a critical eye is *good* but presentation and basic human relations is key if one wants people to actually take it to heart instead of feeling it is simply complaining.

The tactics are good, but the strategy is lacking.

 

But, this thread is about BG2 and PJ's struggles with it...

 

As such, I guess it's either BG2 just not being to PJs taste or PJ maybe having a bit of a forced perspective on the game and having entered it more as an experiment on why some people hold it in such high esteem. I personally never needed a particular angle or perspective to approach BG2 from it, I had fun with it the first time I started it (having played BG when that came out). There was no secret there for me, even with many, many deaths on my first playthroughs.

I did not enjoy IWD as much personally though I still found that fun as well. Different strokes.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Starwars

[Sensuki]

Yes some of it has gotten rather venomous and I have regretted getting involved in it. I don't believe I started the few instances where some of it got heated though, I got fed up of all the personal attacks. I probably shouldn't have made that video trying to ridicule Shevek for his opinion on the game, but it's done and dusted now and he seems to have gotten over it. 

My skin is fairly thick, but combined with some of the periods of developer silence and periods of dismay in the earlier beta it got a bit much and yep it probably did contribute to some good suggestions being completely ignored.

It is a shame.

 

The tactics are good, but the strategy is lacking.

 

lol

Edited January 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[Starwars]

It's all good and I'm sure we are properly annoying to each other on the forums anyways. This camp gets annoyed by that camp and so and so forth.

 

Let's hope we'll all get some enjoyment from the final game at least.

[Gromnir]

iwd were much more straightforward as far as finding a single set of tactics that could get you though every battle. although the level design were often lacking in places like dragon's eye (too many s-shaped maps with repetitive encounters,) the enemy ai was excellent, particular compared to bg and totsc, the immediate predecessors o' iwd. even so, the same basic iwd approach could be used for fire giants as could be used umber hulks and even for mages... whatever your tactics/approach mighta been.

 

bg2 were more complex than iwd if only because the spell catalog were so much deeper and monster were more varied.  the variety in bg2 monsters tended to lead to immunity and functional immunity to any weapon an unprepared party might be carrying. a wizard could be immune to anything and everything if you didn't know how to bring down his protections. a demi-lich had a silly catalog o' spells and weapons it were immune to. bg2 adamantine golems were pushovers if you could get them trapped in a doorway and you had the dwarven thrower hammer, or one bow, or a truck load of melf's meteors, but if not...p00p. spellcasters, and monsters with advanced spellcasting ability, could prove immune to everything. sure, true sight coupled with a couple ruby rays of reversal will take any mage down a peg, but if you don't know that or aren't prepared for such battles, you is likely to lose party members, or even wipe. etc.  

 

also, in iwd, a very linear dragon-crawl, it were unsurprising that you typical had the weapons you needed for every battle. bg2 were not a game on rails. in bg2, you might very easily be outfitted complete wrong, and if you didn't have a very firm grasp o' your spell caster abilities and pnp knowledge o' the critters you faced, bg2 encounters could prove extreme challenging.  even so, there were still some basic strategies that made the game relative easy even without perfect equipment or meta-knowledge. still, you might need to buy potions frequently til your spell repertoire increased, and you would also needs explore maps very slowly and carefully, which could be v...e..r..y..b..o..r..i..n..g.

 

we had some experience with higher level d&d pnp, so bg2 were not too much o' a shock, but even for d&d pnp vets, how many folks played beyond 10th level?  most o' our pnp experience, and such experience started with the white box edition, were 7th level and below. is only a tiny fraction o' pnp experience that were actual useful to us in bg2, so we can understands some bg2 frustration even for folks who were thinking themselves to be d&d knowledgeable. 

 

go slow. scout ahead. always keep some undead around. don't skimp on potions. buy the highest + weapon you can afford early in the game. and if you got korgan, which seems to be the case, make him a tank and give him some hammer proficiency. dwarven thrower hammer is available early and can hit many seeming uninhabitable critters. korgan with some potions and under influence o' berserk is potential immune to most affects. give him the amulet of power and the cloak of reflection and he almost litteral becomes unstoppable while berserk... and he can single-handed turn demi-liches into little piles o' sand.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Sensuki]

Heh. That's interesting. 7th level is the highest that I've gone in D&D P&P as well, in both 2nd edition (1999 campaign) and 3rd Edition (2003? or something, when that campaign was anyway)

[Stun]

is more than a few encounters that required us to alter tactics in iwd and bg2, but the basics o' scouting and using undead as pmd (old non-pc pnp nomenclature for polish mine detector) were extreme effective for a large % o' encounters.  paying attention to dialogues were also invaluable.  typical the developers gave clues, if one were paying attention for such.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Yeah, Ultimately the so-called "Sucker-Punch" argument is a load of kaka for all the IE games. Also, if you'll notice, BG2 does not even attempt to pull that kind of stuff on you in it's main quest. It's only the Optional stuff that can get a bit 'frustrating' for n00bs, and those encounters yield the game's best loot (Ring of Gaxx, Staff of the Magi etc) so yes, they *should* be a bit different, a bit tougher, and a bit more designed for the 'veterans' (I find it implausible for a first time player to even find the twisted rune encounter). Edited January 15, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

Just so you know, I hate everybody here equally, except IndiraLightfoot who is a trooper. Only way to stay sane and polite here.

[Malekith]

Luckmann, on 15 Jan 2015 - 11:20 AM, said:

 

PrimeJunta, on 14 Jan 2015 - 11:27 PM, said:

Question. How much further do I have to play before you guys believe I've given it my honest best?

When you've finished BG2+ToB.

 

Seven times.

[archangel979]

Do I often do that Sensuki? Really?

 

I have certainly joked about it but not particularly because I enjoy seeing a grognard upset. Many (most) times I agree with the "old guard". I really don't like the restrictions on casting outside combat, I don't like that I can't transition from a zone when I'm in combat, I don't like the skill system, I still feel the combat feels hectic and hard to see exactly what's going on, the itemization (at least from what I've seen in the beta) feels disappointing to me, list goes on (though I do like the engagement mechanics). Though it's true that I probably don't feel as passionately about the issues as a lot of folks do (and I'm *glad* there are people who have the passion, don't get me wrong). I was on the barricades about Fallout 3 when it was in the making (I daresay that was rather farther from the goal of being a sequel than PoE being a spiritual successor to the IE games).

 

But there is a sense of arrogance, downright rudeness, sense of entitlement and crappy attitudes that have permeated these forums since a bit after the beta release that is grating and annoying. I expect it on the Codex, where we all let our true feeling out, not here. That is rather unhelpful. There have been *great* feedback from yourself (probably the greatest source of feedback throughout the entire beta period), yet it's a shame that much of it has been coated with venom and video game zealotry. As always when we're dealing with communication between humans, I suspect that may have gotten some feedback/opinions to get overlooked and dismissed rather than welcomed. Constructive criticism is *good*, a critical eye is *good* but presentation and basic human relations is key if one wants people to actually take it to heart instead of feeling it is simply complaining.

The tactics are good, but the strategy is lacking.

 

But, this thread is about BG2 and PJ's struggles with it...

 

As such, I guess it's either BG2 just not being to PJs taste or PJ maybe having a bit of a forced perspective on the game and having entered it more as an experiment on why some people hold it in such high esteem. I personally never needed a particular angle or perspective to approach BG2 from it, I had fun with it the first time I started it (having played BG when that came out). There was no secret there for me, even with many, many deaths on my first playthroughs.

I did not enjoy IWD as much personally though I still found that fun as well. Different strokes.

only reason why it has gotten so is because OE didn't make any bigger changes that community wanted. Not one. All the base design problems are still here.

 

As a person that spent months on both InXile and OE boards before their releases InXile were miles better at giving their community a bone or communicating why not. And InXile promised less but were still later burned a lot for their game not living up to F1/2 quality.

 

And lets not even mention Larian. OE is a whole world below Larian.

 

only reason why the forums were as they were is because OE are disappointing the fans. And they do not have lots of time to fix it.

 

I was thinking of making lists of problems and descriptions more than once but what is the point. I seen how they listened (not) to others who did so after first month already. Not to mention the speed of improving things was so slow. Characters are still hard to see due to background 6 months after it was first reported. No amount of useful suggestions are going to make that OK. It is too easy to blame community...

Edited January 15, 2015 by archangel979

[PrimeJunta]

"how many folks played beyond 10th level?"

 

I ran one Planescape campaign which wound down when the players were around level 16-17.

 

In all of the others, we wrapped up around 9-10 or thereabouts.

 

The going gets pretty derp in PnP around the time when your lead fighter has more HP than the average rhinoceros. Less bothersome in cRPG's. Also, if you follow the spell rules strictly, collecting all the material components for a wizard's typical spell lists takes a bunch of sessions in and of itself, and put a major crimp in resting in the wilderness.

[PrimeJunta]

only reason why it has gotten so is because OE didn't make any bigger changes that community wanted. Not one. All the base design problems are still here.

Archangel, here's where you're wrong. "The community" did not demand they put in combat XP, make the attribute system more DnD-like and minmaxable, drop engagement, or put back hard counters. A number of individuals did so, all of whom don't even agree on these specifics. If you're wondering about the occasional acrimony here, at least I get a little ticked off when, for example, you make like you're speaking for "the community" and what it demanded.

Edited January 15, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Sensuki]

@archangel979

 

RE: inXile and Larian

 

Could you have a read of this for me and PM an answer?

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/inxile-and-larians-communication-during-the-d-os-and-wl2-betas.96507/

[archangel979]

 

only reason why it has gotten so is because OE didn't make any bigger changes that community wanted. Not one. All the base design problems are still here.

Archangel, here's where you're wrong. "The community" did not demand they put in combat XP, make the attribute system more DnD-like and minmaxable, drop engagement, or put back hard counters. A number of individuals did so, all of whom don't even agree on these specifics. If you're wondering about the occasional acrimony here, at least I get a little ticked off when, for example, you make like you're speaking for "the community" and what it demanded.

You can think so but you are wrong. You will see after release when the community comes in full numbers. I seen what happened to WL2 and they didn't even name drop Fallout in their KS.

 

****storm is coming. OE could have avoided it if they didn't use IE games to get more money but now they deserve all the bad with all the good they already harvested.

Edited January 15, 2015 by archangel979

[PrimeJunta]

We can both speculate on what "the community" wants and what the reaction will be once it's released. You however are stating that "the community demanded," past tense. It did no such thing.

 

Your karma is about 500 for about 1000 posts. Mine is about 4000 for about 3000 posts. I'd say that if one of us wanted to claim that he speaks for "the community," my claim would be a good deal stronger than yours.

 

And I'm not. I recognize that "the community" has a ton of divergent, often entirely incompatible preferences. Even your grognard sub-community differs on a number of points. Sensuki f.ex. doesn't care what the attributes mean, he just wants them to work mechanically, whereas Stun is really annoyed that Might means both magical and physical might. (Sorry if I got this particular point wrong, but you get my drift.)

[Stun]

There shouldn't be a need to find som secret key to liking a game.

I don't know about that. There can be situations where a game is so unusual that you 'misunderstand' how to approach it and you end up missing out on its brilliance until someone enlightens you.

 

Planescape Torment is my example. It came out right after Bg1. The reason why I bought it is because 1) BG1 blew my mind, and 2) I really loved the Trailer....which was on the BG1 play disk.

 

OK, so I bought the game and I proceeded to play it just like I played BG1. I rolled up a high Strength, high Constitution Warrior. Needless to say, my experience was complete Garbage. Because of my Low Wisdom and Intelligence, I got hardly any memories; ended up sacrificing Morte to the pillar of skulls because I didn't know better; had to fight my way past my other Incarnations in the fortress of regrets etc etc. It wasn't until I went online to Bash the friggin game as being a ridiculously Cheap "D&D experience" that people finally confronted me and taught me how the game is supposed to be played. So I went back, started a new game, Rolled up a high Wisdom, high Intelligence character, and then marveled at all the new things I was seeing and doing that weren't available to me before.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Stun