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

[archangel979]

Attributes are just for show in the end and were only focus because people didn't realise there were bigger systematic problems.

System could be easily balanced with having different stats for martial or magic, it does not need to D&D.

 

But it is one of those things that would be in current situation looked at last.

 

And what does Karma have to do with anything? Lol. I wish I could live in your world, it sounds simple and nice.

Edited January 15, 2015 by archangel979

[Gromnir]

 

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.

 

am not certain we would call a low wisdom and low int play of ps:t to be garbage. our first run at ps:t were pretty much vanilla fighter, though we did test the other classes. weren't til late in the game that we started spending points in wisdom or intelligence. we enjoyed the game immensely. 

 

however, it were clear to us that some unpleasant developer were trying to have a joke at ps:t gamer expense. you couldn't play as a priest/cleric, and there were no magical defense adjustment in ps:t for high wisdom. so, for anybody who played bg, the first ie game, what possible reason would a rational player have for boosting wisdom above and beyond all other stats? for the xp bonus? sure, and that is why we put a few points into wisdom, but we sure as heck had no reason to think that wisdom would trump all other stats.  we also didn't know at the start o' ps:t that combat would be so freaking terrible, so having a combat focused character were joke-on-us, right? 

 

the other end o' the ps:t spectrum is that once you play the game with high wisdom, intelligence and charisma, is there any freaking reason to play the game a different way? 

 

ps:t is our favorite crpg.  even so, when some folks argue that torment is a steaming pile o' pretentious philosophy-for-dummies crap, served up with the worst ie combat and frequently tedious dialogues, we cannot argue 'gainst such folks with much force.

 

...

 

'course that is an argument in favor o' better balance, isn't it?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[RushAndAPush]

Sensuki is so dramatic about everything in this game along with everybody on the Codex. I still cant understand why they have such an obsession with prebuffs. How did they enhance the gameplay? What good did they bring? I have not heard a good reason for keeping them in. This is all emotional and not logical.

[archangel979]

Sensuki is so dramatic about everything in this game along with everybody on the Codex. I still cant understand why they have such an obsession with prebuffs. How did they enhance the gameplay? What good did they bring? I have not heard a good reason for keeping them in. This is all emotional and not logical.

Prebuffs are just another gameplay mechanic. The problem is that like many things they were cut out completely instead of toned down and balanced. Even latest D&D has reduced their importance but didn't cut them out completely.

[archangel979]

What is happening here is same thing that happened with D&D 4e. Designers were sure their current audience didn't want more of same but better and decided to go in another direction while still keeping D&D name.

Result?

4e was shortest living D&D edition and within year of release Pathfinder bacame biggest selling system. D&D shot them selves in the foot.

 

OE is doing the same by moving away too much from IE while still using it to market themselves.

Edited January 15, 2015 by archangel979

[Stun]

Sensuki is so dramatic about everything in this game along with everybody on the Codex. I still cant understand why they have such an obsession with prebuffs. How did they enhance the gameplay? What good did they bring? I have not heard a good reason for keeping them in. This is all emotional and not logical.

How does the element of planning enhance the tactical and strategic feel of a combat focused game? How does giving the player a bunch of tools and then giving him the choice of which ones to use and when to use them enhance gameplay?

 

Nada. It brings nothing to the big picture. Much better if games just take the Pavlovian, Dragon Age 2 route: React please! Combat preparation goes counter to the awesome button, fools! Don't bore yourself by thinking ahead!

 

PS: bite your tongue. Sensuki is doing God's work. When a game's beta is messing something up, there *should* be people around to expose those mess-ups.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Stun

[Gromnir]

 

Sensuki is so dramatic about everything in this game along with everybody on the Codex. I still cant understand why they have such an obsession with prebuffs. How did they enhance the gameplay? What good did they bring? I have not heard a good reason for keeping them in. This is all emotional and not logical.

Prebuffs are just another gameplay mechanic. The problem is that like many things they were cut out completely instead of toned down and balanced. Even latest D&D has reduced their importance but didn't cut them out completely.

 

calling something a mechanic doesn't make it good or bad. what about the prebuffs made them worth saving? perhaps some folks enjoy the ocd aspect o' prebuffs?  before each major battle/encounter, one must go through largely the same exact ritual of prebuffs. 

 

 

does anybody believe that prebuffs is more tactically stimulating or engaging?  that could be worth considering, but am not seeing how a ritual behavior performed dozens or hundreds o' times could evidence greater tactical sophistication than pretty much any alternative.

 

am at a loss.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps we forgot to mention the obvious, "because that is how it was done in bg2," non-argument, but was that necessary? the simple fact that something was done in the ie games does not mean it was a positive, right? that is obvious, correct?

Edited January 15, 2015 by Gromnir

[Luckmann]

Strategic prepwork. That's really all there is to it and it's well worth it by itself. You are spending spells in order to strategically prepare yourself for an encounter, which is something no other mechanic can really offer in the same way.

[Stun]

And it's absurd to claim that you had to go through the same prebuffing ritual before every major battle. You most certainly did NOT. I used vastly different buffs before Beholder fights than I did before Lich battles (for example). Ditto with Dragons as opposed to Vampires. And Golems as opposed to Mind flayers, etc.

 

Then there's the whole evolution thing, which people always forget in discussions like these. Your party levels increase and that means you get more tools, which means different buffs and that means the entire process changes drastically....and constantly.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Stun

[Sensuki]

Especially with spells being per day. Why the hell does it matter if you can pre-buff for an encounter? That spell slot is gone for the rest of the day. Doesn't matter when you used it. Spells have a duration and casting round based spells before combat makes you lose some of that buff time, at the cost of having it at the start of combat.

[Gromnir]

Strategic prepwork. That's really all there is to it and it's well worth it by itself. You are spending spells in order to strategically prepare yourself for an encounter, which is something no other mechanic can really offer in the same way.

strategic prepwork?  that would be more along the lines o' deciding how to approach the game as a whole, yes?  in any event if the pre-battle prepwork is repeated over and over and over, then all you got is a time sink ritual.

 

And it's absurd to claim that you had to go through the same prebuffing ritual before every major battle. You most certainly did NOT. I used vastly different buffs before Beholder fights than I did before Lich battles (for example)

oh, we doubt that. most o' the spell layering will be the same. will you change some spells? sure, but a large number o' the pre-battle buffing is simple, mindless ritual.  dragons and mindflayers and beholders and whatnot all posed different tactical challenges, but many o' the pre-buffs were absolutely identical.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Sensuki]

Hardly any of the encounters *require* pre-buffing and for Dragon fights you definitely don't need a single one.

[RushAndAPush]

 

Sensuki is so dramatic about everything in this game along with everybody on the Codex. I still cant understand why they have such an obsession with prebuffs. How did they enhance the gameplay? What good did they bring? I have not heard a good reason for keeping them in. This is all emotional and not logical.

How does the element of planning enhance the tactical and strategic feel of a combat focused game? How does giving the player a bunch of tools and then giving him the choice of which ones to use and when to use them enhance gameplay?

 

Nada. It brings nothing to the big picture. Much better if games just take the Pavlovian, Dragon Age 2 route: React please! Combat preparation goes counter to the awesome button, fools! Don't bore yourself by thinking ahead!

 

PS: bite your tongue. Sensuki is doing God's work. When a game's beta is messing something up, there *should* be people around to expose those mess-ups.

 

You and Sensuki say that they're messing up. Still haven't heard a good argument from either of you for keeping pre-buffs. Giving yourself every prebuff in the game before you go into battle doesnt seem like a good way to enhance the game. In fact it seems a little scummy. I just want say that doesnt make me want a Dragon Age 2 type of game.

 

P.S: I'll keep talking about how this isn't a "mess up".

Edited January 15, 2015 by RushAndAPush

[Luckmann]

And it's absurd to claim that you had to go through the same prebuffing ritual before every major battle. You most certainly did NOT. I used vastly different buffs before Beholder fights than I did before Lich battles (for example)

 

I think a lot of people did, due to the way resting worked in (most of) the IE games, so they threw on everything they could, every battle. Haste, Prayer, Death Protection, the works. And then they just rested and repeated.

 

The sad thing is that with the resting system in PoE, such behaviour would automatically be curtailed to a degree, and getting rid of "blanket" buffs (like Bless) or toning others down (like Haste) would solve this issue completely.

 

Instead of sticking to what made sense in context, they decided to introduce mechanics to curtail the autobot-buffing-behaviour and then take out the pre-buffing completely, for some reason. Which is a baby-out-with-the-bathwater situation if I ever saw it.

 

Pre-buffing should be a matter of strategic prepwork, and the cost of doing it should be the spells of the buffer, nevermind the fact that everyone in PoE practically operates under a form of Sorcerer spellcasting, meaning that if you prepare buffing spells, you'd have to sacrifice something else (as opposed to how it largely worked in the IE games).

 

PoE has some mechanics that would make prebuffing work really, really well. It just doesn't have prebuffing for some goddamn reason.

 

Edit: Dang, ninja'd by Sensuki, more or less.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Luckmann

[Sensuki]

Those people also probably downloaded the Rest Anywhere mod to do it though.

[Gromnir]

Hardly any of the encounters *require* pre-buffing and for Dragon fights you definitely don't need a single one.

then what is the argument?  you say no pre-buffing were needed, so why care if such is removed?

 

*shrug*

 

pre-buffs were a largely time consuming ritual, and given that poe will be more akin to bg levels than bg2, the issue is even less worthy o' comparisons 'tween beatsies such as beholders and dragons. kobolds v. gnolls v. spiders?

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited January 15, 2015 by Gromnir

[RushAndAPush]

Hardly any of the encounters *require* pre-buffing and for Dragon fights you definitely don't need a single one.

Yeah you can just keep casting Feeblemind and reload until you can win.

[Sensuki]

It's your own fault if you actually played like that, as that mustn't have been very fun. I have a full Let's Play of IWD that shows how I played that game, and you'll see that for most of the big fights I don't use a single prebuff. Sometimes I use maybe one.

 

As I said on the previous page, casting a spell uses up a per-day spell slot. Most of the spells have a round based duration and it takes a round to cast most of the spells. If you cast more than one, you're wasting various rounds worth of the spell's buff that will probably run out in combat. I think it's fair that you're able to cast before combat and not get the full benefit of the duration, or you can cast mid combat so that it lasts the full duration for combat (or you end combat before the spell runs out).

Edited January 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[Stun]

does anybody believe that prebuffs is more tactically stimulating or engaging?

You're trying to set this up as an "either/or" when it's NOT. It's Part of the complete combat experience. (pre-battle, battle, post battle), Removing prebuffing is just as idiotic and lazy as removing the post-battle recovery phase. (which many Modern RPGs have begun doing with their stupid instant health/ability recovery mechanics) Edited January 15, 2015 by Stun

[Sensuki]

The removal of counterspelling is a bigger loss than pre-buffing though.

[Gromnir]

 

You're trying to set this up as an "either/or" when it's NOT. It's Part of the complete combat experience. (pre-battle, battle, post battle), Removing prebuffing is just as idiotic and lazy as removing the post-battle recovery phase. (which many Modern RPGs have begun doing with their stupid instant health recovery)

 

it is not a matter of removing it. the question is whether to bother adding pre-buffing. the rules is new. there weren't no pre-buffing to remove. if pre-buffing didn't add genuine tactical value that outweighed it lugubriousness, then why add it?

 

It's your own fault if you actually played like that, as that mustn't have been very fun. I have a full Let's Play of IWD that shows how I played that game, and you'll see that for most of the big fights I don't use a single prebuff. Sometimes I use maybe one.

 

 

we played through iwd with an all gnome party. if you bothered to play the game any other way it must not have been much fun.

 

...

 

wait. that is preposterous and just plain stoopid, isn't it? glad we caught that before making such a silly claim.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Stun]

You and Sensuki say that they're messing up.

I can show you an entire backer beta forum with hundreds of threads that prove that it's not just "me and sensuki". So maybe we can dispense with the silly argumentum ad populum attempts already?

 

 

Still haven't heard a good argument from either of you for keeping pre-buffs.

Most people who plug their ears and scream "I can't hear you! I can't hear you":, typically won't hear any good arguments. Thankfully, Josh Sawyer isn't as deaf as you are. Even HE has seen a few of our arguments and made some adjustments to the beta. Why do you think the Inventory has 2 rows now instead of 1? Why do you think stat bonuses go into the negatives now? Why do you think you get Bestiary XP now?

 

That's right. Because WE complained that the Original design for these things was crap. So it was all eventually changed.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Stun

[RushAndAPush]

 

You're trying to set this up as an "either/or" when it's NOT. It's Part of the complete combat experience. (pre-battle, battle, post battle), Removing prebuffing is just as idiotic and lazy as removing the post-battle recovery phase. (which many Modern RPGs have begun doing with their stupid instant health recovery)

 

It doesnt matter if it's the way of things if it was executed poorly and everybody exploited it then why have it. Sure you may have enjoyed it but the game wasnt made solely for you.

Edited January 15, 2015 by RushAndAPush

[Sensuki]

we played through iwd with an all gnome party. if you bothered to play the game any other way it must not have been much fun.

 

...

 

wait. that is preposterous and just plain stoopid, isn't it? glad we caught that before making such a silly claim.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Here we go again (just like the other thread). Did you enjoy playing an all gnome party? I guess so? I don't have a problem with that.

 

He was implying that he cheesed feeblemind and save scummed to get through encounters and was also implying that he found it not fun. If so, that's his own fault tbh as there are a plethora of other ways to beat encounters that are far more enjoyable and satisfying than that.

 

everybody exploited it

 

I'm sorry but I don't think everyone uses exploits (well usually it's multiple exploits together in the case of BG2) to get through the IE games when the combat system is actually really fun to play. None of my friends did when we were younger. There does seem to be a portion of people that have a cbf attitude though and just cheese/cheat their way through stuff - which they probably read online in a guide somewhere in the first place, without actually taking the effort to have fun learning the game.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[RushAndAPush]

 
 

Edited January 15, 2015 by RushAndAPush