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On September 25 2011 05:02 True_Spike wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 02:05 Newbistic wrote:On September 23 2011 21:52 dementrio wrote:
I'm not sure I conveyed what I mean.
An example: IIRC when you first get in Akhtala you find yourself near to an inn, and on the first floor there is a party of adventurers you can get in a fight with. They are not hostile at first so I have all the scouting I want but that doesn't help me. I need to go through the fight multiple times to learn who is more dangerous, what kind of spells they are using and in which order, when and what kind of potions they use, etcetera. I can't try once and say whoah, too tough for me; i need at least 5-6 runs to decide that. And when I come back later they may be too weak with worthless loot. Yeah, that's the main game design flaw of BG2, it's a legacy that's carried on into Dragon Age: Origins. If it's the first time you're playing the game every major battle (plus quite a few random encounters) is trial and error until you get it right. You can't really do much about it until you learn to exploit either the magic system or the game itself. The difficulty curve of this game basically looks like this: ___ / \____ / \__ / \____________________ I personally play a super cheesy style involving a lot of trap baiting/off screen AoE spells. You should distract enemy fighters with a fighter or two of your own and always, ALWAYS target enemy mages first with your own mages. And always carry a stick of cloudkill with you, don't sell those (unless you're short on charges and need to sell/buy back to recharge). Those do unresisted damage to almost every enemy in the game. Every single game is abusable like that. If a game actually makes you think and use your experience to win it's good. Nowadays most games just handle you the victory outright. Kids don't like to lose these days. Ever. Playing games is like special olympics. I *yearn* for a good RPG title to emerge. Ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out there was nothing but utter disappointment - and it gets worse every year.
True words. The thing is, few games these days are truly about the story anymore. That's what made BG2 or Planescape so amazing. Sure, you had powerful items, sure, you had very cool fights. But you didn't keep playing for that. You kept playing for the story, for the character development, for the atmosphere.
In a traditional role playing enviroment (read: pen & paper) the dungeon master would carefully guide you away from fights you couldn't win if he did his job right (or he'd let you die if you deserve it). In a computer RPG, some trial and error has to be done unless you want a boring game on rails which grants rewards on every corner.
Analyzing BG2 with terms like "difficulty curve" or "worthless loot" means people got the point of the game wrong.
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Morrowind is the one with the biggest "immersion factor" imo. You can often tell how much you should be shitting yourself just by looking around, and town portals, charme spells etc let you be a pacifist and have a good time regardless, which is not really possible in BG2.
Which is a good thing because Morrowind has the worst combat system ever.
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On September 25 2011 18:38 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 05:02 True_Spike wrote:On September 25 2011 02:05 Newbistic wrote:On September 23 2011 21:52 dementrio wrote:
I'm not sure I conveyed what I mean.
An example: IIRC when you first get in Akhtala you find yourself near to an inn, and on the first floor there is a party of adventurers you can get in a fight with. They are not hostile at first so I have all the scouting I want but that doesn't help me. I need to go through the fight multiple times to learn who is more dangerous, what kind of spells they are using and in which order, when and what kind of potions they use, etcetera. I can't try once and say whoah, too tough for me; i need at least 5-6 runs to decide that. And when I come back later they may be too weak with worthless loot. Yeah, that's the main game design flaw of BG2, it's a legacy that's carried on into Dragon Age: Origins. If it's the first time you're playing the game every major battle (plus quite a few random encounters) is trial and error until you get it right. You can't really do much about it until you learn to exploit either the magic system or the game itself. The difficulty curve of this game basically looks like this: ___ / \____ / \__ / \____________________ I personally play a super cheesy style involving a lot of trap baiting/off screen AoE spells. You should distract enemy fighters with a fighter or two of your own and always, ALWAYS target enemy mages first with your own mages. And always carry a stick of cloudkill with you, don't sell those (unless you're short on charges and need to sell/buy back to recharge). Those do unresisted damage to almost every enemy in the game. Every single game is abusable like that. If a game actually makes you think and use your experience to win it's good. Nowadays most games just handle you the victory outright. Kids don't like to lose these days. Ever. Playing games is like special olympics. I *yearn* for a good RPG title to emerge. Ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out there was nothing but utter disappointment - and it gets worse every year. That's what made BG2 so amazing... very cool fights... But you didn't keep playing for that.
Why not? If I wanted it for the story I'd have lowered the difficulty to easiest on my first play through, instead I was returning to as bunch of half finished quests that were not quite within my ability to finish earlier and power gaming. BGII didn't really hook me, I guess it was something to do with the generic story with the anime-like main villains with the cliche lines and motivation. Irenicus was the one thing that I found to be memorable, and that was mainly just because he had a great voice actor and that he was apparently quite competent as far as villains go. And because he was so competent and so successful, there was a real sense of tension and confronting him always felt daunting. And because of how scary Irenicus was, he very much encouraged a power gaming approach which I believe made for a very slow paced plot progression with a lot of long gaps between important story quests and eventually it just gets to a stage where you barely even remember a lot of the finer points of the main story.
Or maybe I'm just an idiot.
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On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb.
well, it's a pretty hardcore dnd game, character planning goes a long way. yes, learning the spell system is a tough job, but once you do it's very satisfyling when you can just leave your party out of the way and let your mages solo trough some fights.
you made a typical mistake of not specializing in a blunt weapon and not learning minute meteors on all of your mages. a simple quarterstaff or a sling on any of your fighters can let you kill those golems without taking a scratch. that's why i stressed it in an earlier post - every fighter needs a main slashing/piercing weapon and a blunt weapon. blunt weapons are the weakest damage-wise but they can hit 99% of the monsters. you can buy a +4 quarterstaff in the first shop you find and it can hit every single monster in soa.
you still don't get punished emough imo. you can get flail of ages part without fighting them and you can pic up the long bow on your way out with a cleric and when golems come alive you can just sanctuary and gtfo. a real dungeon master would wipe your party out right away for not coming prepared.
you sould have seen how the game was supposed to look. youget a glimpse of it if you install scsii which is a mod made by some of the original developers and undoes most last minute changes that dumbed down the game difficulty. for example, did you know that mae'var, the ridiculously easy would-be usurper of akhatla's thieves guild is actually a 13/14 mage/thief? well, someone in bioware decided he is too hard to beat so they put a leather armor on him to disable his spells. scsii puts a robe on him meaning he can just mislead and rip you to shreads with backstabs before you can run trough his minions and dispel the illusion. also, did you notice how yuan-ti mages alway open up with true sight even though you don't have a single illusion cast? it's to give you an extra round to reach them and interrupt their spells. or how most mages never use attacks and meteors in between casting spells like you do? they just cast magic missle and then stand still while you pound them. also, fire giants have ***** in hammers but their weapons are changed to spears in which they don't even have proficiency. yea, the game is much easier than it was designed to be.
the game is hard to learn but very satisfying when you do learn. people supposedly play it for the storyline and atmosphere. they are great, i agree, but you can just set the game to easy and finish it. i replay it about twice per year with difficulty mods simply because the fights are amazingly tactical and there are millions of strategies and party combinations you can use.
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On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb.
You made the exact same mistake I did the first time I played. I went to deArnise hold early before I built up any levels. Just a rule of thumb, the quests outside the main city tend to be a bit higher level. You should start out with the slaver's quest in the copper coronet as a good intro quest.
But the truth is, that it does take a lot of time and dedication to learn and playthrough the game. It's worth it because it's such an amazing game. But a lot of people just don't have that kind of time.
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You made the exact same mistake I did the first time I played. I went to deArnise hold early before I built up any levels. Just a rule of thumb, the quests outside the main city tend to be a bit higher level. You should start out with the slaver's quest in the copper coronet as a good intro quest.
There are several good beginner quests when you first enter Atkalha ,i recommend the Circus quest in waukeens promenade first , (gets you the charisma ring). After that i usually do "Ma'evar and the Thief guild" pretty easy quest (be careful when they order you to kill the mage) gets you 10.000 gold and the opportunity to recruit edwin if you want.
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How the hell did you guys defeat Demogorgon in a legit manner?
Of course, I powered the shit out of my sorcerer by using the geomantic sorcerer mod and even "created" new spells like dragon summoning and tripled the length of time stop but.....when I try to play fair, I can't even touch him
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On September 25 2011 17:56 Rampoon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb. I don't really understand this line of thinking and I see it a lot. In the "real" world you might well run through a dungeon with no problems only to run into a monster that you cannot just beat by standing toe to toe with it and smacking it in the face. Surely it adds to the immersion that you have to do different things to beat a room/dungeon/mob. Maybe running or hiding or just looting the area without disturbing the mobs would be the better choice sometimes. You don't have to kill everything you see. If it really bothers you, beat the dungeon then go back when your pimp and then stand in front of the particular mob/room you are having trouble with and batter them down.
Because it's a fantasy game man... The NPCs come to you and say "Go save X!! Bring me Y". It makes no sense, even from a RP perspective, to go to a place (let's use de'Arnise as an example), start the questing, clearing out the dungeon of mobs that dont respawn as you go, and then get to a certain point and then go "Oops! I can't go any further because all of a sudden these mobs are like 50 levels higher and I can't kill them with what the game has presented me with to date unless I already know the game inside out or cheese/glitch the fight"...
So then I go off and spend weeks of in game time doing other quests to level and gear up... Only to return to find everything exactly the same as I left it. If you want to push the real life aspect, if I ran off in the middle of the drama at de'Arnise keep, the family members would all be killed and I would arrive to find nothing but more trolls, umber hulks and golems.
If nothing is going to be affected by the lapse of time during which I go and do other shit, then there is really no point in sending me off to other areas to get stronger, you may as well make them with a certain progression in mind.
Don't get me wrong, I dislike the "monster level depends on your level" style too. I just prefer consistency: if I can do a dungeon, I personally want to be able to do the WHOLE dungeon so that I can move on. Otherwise, the first few mobs in the place should kick my ass so that I know not to go in there.
That's all rather moot of course, because as I soon found out, I dont have to kill those golems to continue. For some reason I thought the flail was going to be a necessary part of the progression in the dungeon.
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On September 25 2011 19:44 Billy_ wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 18:38 Shockk wrote:On September 25 2011 05:02 True_Spike wrote:On September 25 2011 02:05 Newbistic wrote:On September 23 2011 21:52 dementrio wrote:
I'm not sure I conveyed what I mean.
An example: IIRC when you first get in Akhtala you find yourself near to an inn, and on the first floor there is a party of adventurers you can get in a fight with. They are not hostile at first so I have all the scouting I want but that doesn't help me. I need to go through the fight multiple times to learn who is more dangerous, what kind of spells they are using and in which order, when and what kind of potions they use, etcetera. I can't try once and say whoah, too tough for me; i need at least 5-6 runs to decide that. And when I come back later they may be too weak with worthless loot. Yeah, that's the main game design flaw of BG2, it's a legacy that's carried on into Dragon Age: Origins. If it's the first time you're playing the game every major battle (plus quite a few random encounters) is trial and error until you get it right. You can't really do much about it until you learn to exploit either the magic system or the game itself. The difficulty curve of this game basically looks like this: ___ / \____ / \__ / \____________________ I personally play a super cheesy style involving a lot of trap baiting/off screen AoE spells. You should distract enemy fighters with a fighter or two of your own and always, ALWAYS target enemy mages first with your own mages. And always carry a stick of cloudkill with you, don't sell those (unless you're short on charges and need to sell/buy back to recharge). Those do unresisted damage to almost every enemy in the game. Every single game is abusable like that. If a game actually makes you think and use your experience to win it's good. Nowadays most games just handle you the victory outright. Kids don't like to lose these days. Ever. Playing games is like special olympics. I *yearn* for a good RPG title to emerge. Ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out there was nothing but utter disappointment - and it gets worse every year. That's what made BG2 so amazing... very cool fights... But you didn't keep playing for that. Why not? If I wanted it for the story I'd have lowered the difficulty to easiest on my first play through, instead I was returning to as bunch of half finished quests that were not quite within my ability to finish earlier and power gaming. BGII didn't really hook me, I guess it was something to do with the generic story with the anime-like main villains with the cliche lines and motivation.
Why would you play BG2 specifically for the fights? There certainly are some challenging encounters and the fighting blends in perfectly with the rest of the game - but as with all RPGs, combat is just a small part of the whole package. It's nothing without the rest.
If you describe it as a "generic story" with "anime-like cliche villains" then I'd really like to know what you're using as reference. There is a handful of games that can compete - Planescape, Fallout, maybe Daggerfall and the likes - but that's it. There's a reason BG2 is considered the genre's pinnacle.
Irenicus was the one thing that I found to be memorable, and that was mainly just because he had a great voice actor and that he was apparently quite competent as far as villains go. And because he was so competent and so successful, there was a real sense of tension and confronting him always felt daunting. And because of how scary Irenicus was, he very much encouraged a power gaming approach which I believe made for a very slow paced plot progression with a lot of long gaps between important story quests and eventually it just gets to a stage where you barely even remember a lot of the finer points of the main story.
Or maybe I'm just an idiot.
Slow placed plot progression is the whole point of the game. This is one of the very few games which could easily take 100-200 hours to complete (with the expansion pack). If you actually begin to forget parts of the story while progressing through the game then maybe the genre isn't for you (no offense); also, there's always the journal to read up on things and quests.
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On September 25 2011 19:46 GeneralCash wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb. well, it's a pretty hardcore dnd game, character planning goes a long way. yes, learning the spell system is a tough job, but once you do it's very satisfyling when you can just leave your party out of the way and let your mages solo trough some fights. you made a typical mistake of not specializing in a blunt weapon and not learning minute meteors on all of your mages. a simple quarterstaff or a sling on any of your fighters can let you kill those golems without taking a scratch. that's why i stressed it in an earlier post - every fighter needs a main slashing/piercing weapon and a blunt weapon. blunt weapons are the weakest damage-wise but they can hit 99% of the monsters. you can buy a +4 quarterstaff in the first shop you find and it can hit every single monster in soa. you still don't get punished emough imo. you can get flail of ages part without fighting them and you can pic up the long bow on your way out with a cleric and when golems come alive you can just sanctuary and gtfo. a real dungeon master would wipe your party out right away for not coming prepared. you sould have seen how the game was supposed to look. youget a glimpse of it if you install scsii which is a mod made by some of the original developers and undoes most last minute changes that dumbed down the game difficulty. for example, did you know that mae'var, the ridiculously easy would-be usurper of akhatla's thieves guild is actually a 13/14 mage/thief? well, someone in bioware decided he is too hard to beat so they put a leather armor on him to disable his spells. scsii puts a robe on him meaning he can just mislead and rip you to shreads with backstabs before you can run trough his minions and dispel the illusion. also, did you notice how yuan-ti mages alway open up with true sight even though you don't have a single illusion cast? it's to give you an extra round to reach them and interrupt their spells. or how most mages never use attacks and meteors in between casting spells like you do? they just cast magic missle and then stand still while you pound them. also, fire giants have ***** in hammers but their weapons are changed to spears in which they don't even have proficiency. yea, the game is much easier than it was designed to be. the game is hard to learn but very satisfying when you do learn. people supposedly play it for the storyline and atmosphere. they are great, i agree, but you can just set the game to easy and finish it. i replay it about twice per year with difficulty mods simply because the fights are amazingly tactical and there are millions of strategies and party combinations you can use.
lol... That's all well and good for people who've played the game through a number of times... But no, I haven't noticed about any of that stuff you just described because this is my first play through and I'm not a D&D nerd to start with, so the majority of this shit goes over my head  . It's more than possible to make an accessible game and ramp up difficulty, or leave the difficulty to higher levels and mods.
I wouldn't expect the second mission of the Starcraft campaign to make me face off against Flash, presuming I am aware of all the intricacies of the game!
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How the hell did you guys defeat Demogorgon in a legit manner?
Of course, I powered the shit out of my sorcerer by using the geomantic sorcerer mod and even "created" new spells like dragon summoning and tripled the length of time stop but.....when I try to play fair, I can't even touch him
Demogorgon is far from the hardest bosses in the game, sever fights in watchers keep you had to go trough were definatly harder. you can lay a ton of high level traps before you even summon him (thats the lame way)
a good fighter with enhanced whirlwind wont have any trouble with taking demogorgon down either.
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On September 25 2011 20:49 GhostOwl wrote:
How the hell did you guys defeat Demogorgon in a legit manner?
Of course, I powered the shit out of my sorcerer by using the geomantic sorcerer mod and even "created" new spells like dragon summoning and tripled the length of time stop but.....when I try to play fair, I can't even touch him
protection from fire/cold (can't remember which shield he uses) on fighters. wands of breach you collected trough the keep on everyone. keep everyone except the main tank on the stairs, send the tank where the demo spawns. if you don't have a good tank (you will have troubles in tob), just use rat form from cloak of the sewers on the most useless char. once demo spawns and all his summons focus your tank, run down and breach the shit out of him while the mage does his standard 3x lower resist sequencer. if you survive his first time stop, you should be able to drop him in 2 rounds of greater whirlwind focus and some chain contigencies with 3x horrid wiltings on enemy spotted. ignore summons, he makes new ones without wasting a round.
i never found demo very hard, even with difficulty mods. haer'dalis with defensive spin, improved bard song, human flesh and carsomir can tank demo and his summons forever while your party owns him with thrown axes and long weapons.
or you can cheese with traps i guess.
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i'm not really sure what's wrong with me, but when i hyped myself up to try this game for the first time, i was suddenly disappointed by how the movement, controls, and fights went/felt. i've played practically every classic PC game ever since i was a kid, except baldur's gate.
mind, i tend to stop playing a game before finishing the very last dungeon, as i've played games like xenogears or ff8 on the PSX 8 times each, just to beat them once.
there's just something about the immersion which in part needs to be self inflicted, especially with how the game is now considered classic and dated. i feel better about spending my time randomly laddering on starcraft and such.
rofl, i'm just pretty disappointed in myself for being a gamer who's pulled towards linear, or 'gameplay'-focused titles. sad panda :'(
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misclick. how do i delete post?
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Can anyone tell me what is a good level to go to Durlag's tower in BG1 with full party (6)? I can't remember from before :D
And where do I need to go to get that extra content from the TotSC for BG1?
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On September 25 2011 21:24 nanaoei wrote:
i'm not really sure what's wrong with me, but when i hyped myself up to try this game for the first time, i was suddenly disappointed by how the movement, controls, and fights went/felt. i've played practically every classic PC game ever since i was a kid, except baldur's gate.
mind, i tend to stop playing a game before finishing the very last dungeon, as i've played games like xenogears or ff8 on the PSX 8 times each, just to beat them once.
there's just something about the immersion which in part needs to be self inflicted, especially with how the game is now considered classic and dated. i feel better about spending my time randomly laddering on starcraft and such.
rofl, i'm just pretty disappointed in myself for being a gamer who's pulled towards linear, or 'gameplay'-focused titles. sad panda :'(
I think this is natural. BG2 may be an excellent game, but it's still just a game and as such subject to taste. Also, although the graphics and mechanics still are ok, they have aged since then and it shows.
So if you're approaching the game after having been hyped up by raving fans like myself and expect the best gaming experience ever, chances are you may be disappointed.
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Anyone looking to replay these great games, google "baldur's gate tutu;" it's a heavily modded consolidation tool that combines and improves both games.
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On September 25 2011 05:02 True_Spike wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 02:05 Newbistic wrote:On September 23 2011 21:52 dementrio wrote:
I'm not sure I conveyed what I mean.
An example: IIRC when you first get in Akhtala you find yourself near to an inn, and on the first floor there is a party of adventurers you can get in a fight with. They are not hostile at first so I have all the scouting I want but that doesn't help me. I need to go through the fight multiple times to learn who is more dangerous, what kind of spells they are using and in which order, when and what kind of potions they use, etcetera. I can't try once and say whoah, too tough for me; i need at least 5-6 runs to decide that. And when I come back later they may be too weak with worthless loot. Yeah, that's the main game design flaw of BG2, it's a legacy that's carried on into Dragon Age: Origins. If it's the first time you're playing the game every major battle (plus quite a few random encounters) is trial and error until you get it right. You can't really do much about it until you learn to exploit either the magic system or the game itself. The difficulty curve of this game basically looks like this: ___ / \____ / \__ / \____________________ I personally play a super cheesy style involving a lot of trap baiting/off screen AoE spells. You should distract enemy fighters with a fighter or two of your own and always, ALWAYS target enemy mages first with your own mages. And always carry a stick of cloudkill with you, don't sell those (unless you're short on charges and need to sell/buy back to recharge). Those do unresisted damage to almost every enemy in the game. Every single game is abusable like that. If a game actually makes you think and use your experience to win it's good. Nowadays most games just handle you the victory outright. Kids don't like to lose these days. Ever. Playing games is like special olympics. I *yearn* for a good RPG title to emerge. Ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out there was nothing but utter disappointment - and it gets worse every year.
What? Not every single game is abusable like that. Some games actually have a nice gradual learning curve that doesn't go all over the place and surprise you with nasty battles out of nowhere. IMO BG1 is even more brutal than BG2 for newbies, because you start out at level 1 with only a single hit die worth of hp and not enough THAC0 to take on a gibberling for most classes.
Ideally a game should have a super mario-like progression where it starts off easy to show you the ropes and then ramps up difficulty so you use what you've learned, not force you to learn everything from the get go and suddenly when you're level 15 the rest of the game is a cake walk.
On September 25 2011 20:53 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 17:56 Rampoon wrote:On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb. I don't really understand this line of thinking and I see it a lot. In the "real" world you might well run through a dungeon with no problems only to run into a monster that you cannot just beat by standing toe to toe with it and smacking it in the face. Surely it adds to the immersion that you have to do different things to beat a room/dungeon/mob. Maybe running or hiding or just looting the area without disturbing the mobs would be the better choice sometimes. You don't have to kill everything you see. If it really bothers you, beat the dungeon then go back when your pimp and then stand in front of the particular mob/room you are having trouble with and batter them down. Because it's a fantasy game man... The NPCs come to you and say "Go save X!! Bring me Y". It makes no sense, even from a RP perspective, to go to a place (let's use de'Arnise as an example), start the questing, clearing out the dungeon of mobs that dont respawn as you go, and then get to a certain point and then go "Oops! I can't go any further because all of a sudden these mobs are like 50 levels higher and I can't kill them with what the game has presented me with to date unless I already know the game inside out or cheese/glitch the fight"... So then I go off and spend weeks of in game time doing other quests to level and gear up... Only to return to find everything exactly the same as I left it. If you want to push the real life aspect, if I ran off in the middle of the drama at de'Arnise keep, the family members would all be killed and I would arrive to find nothing but more trolls, umber hulks and golems. If nothing is going to be affected by the lapse of time during which I go and do other shit, then there is really no point in sending me off to other areas to get stronger, you may as well make them with a certain progression in mind. Don't get me wrong, I dislike the "monster level depends on your level" style too. I just prefer consistency: if I can do a dungeon, I personally want to be able to do the WHOLE dungeon so that I can move on. Otherwise, the first few mobs in the place should kick my ass so that I know not to go in there. That's all rather moot of course, because as I soon found out, I dont have to kill those golems to continue. For some reason I thought the flail was going to be a necessary part of the progression in the dungeon.
BTW the golem fight in the De'Arnise hold is doable at any level, even early on. Get a Cloudkill stick (not the spell, the wand) and a potion of invisibility. Pop the potion on one of your beefier characters, block the door with him/her, then fire off the cloudkill so that the edge is just out of range of your invisible character. 2-3 uses of the wand should do the trick.
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On September 26 2011 00:45 Newbistic wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 05:02 True_Spike wrote:On September 25 2011 02:05 Newbistic wrote:On September 23 2011 21:52 dementrio wrote:
I'm not sure I conveyed what I mean.
An example: IIRC when you first get in Akhtala you find yourself near to an inn, and on the first floor there is a party of adventurers you can get in a fight with. They are not hostile at first so I have all the scouting I want but that doesn't help me. I need to go through the fight multiple times to learn who is more dangerous, what kind of spells they are using and in which order, when and what kind of potions they use, etcetera. I can't try once and say whoah, too tough for me; i need at least 5-6 runs to decide that. And when I come back later they may be too weak with worthless loot. Yeah, that's the main game design flaw of BG2, it's a legacy that's carried on into Dragon Age: Origins. If it's the first time you're playing the game every major battle (plus quite a few random encounters) is trial and error until you get it right. You can't really do much about it until you learn to exploit either the magic system or the game itself. The difficulty curve of this game basically looks like this: ___ / \____ / \__ / \____________________ I personally play a super cheesy style involving a lot of trap baiting/off screen AoE spells. You should distract enemy fighters with a fighter or two of your own and always, ALWAYS target enemy mages first with your own mages. And always carry a stick of cloudkill with you, don't sell those (unless you're short on charges and need to sell/buy back to recharge). Those do unresisted damage to almost every enemy in the game. Every single game is abusable like that. If a game actually makes you think and use your experience to win it's good. Nowadays most games just handle you the victory outright. Kids don't like to lose these days. Ever. Playing games is like special olympics. I *yearn* for a good RPG title to emerge. Ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out there was nothing but utter disappointment - and it gets worse every year. What? Not every single game is abusable like that. Some games actually have a nice gradual learning curve that doesn't go all over the place and surprise you with nasty battles out of nowhere. IMO BG1 is even more brutal than BG2 for newbies, because you start out at level 1 with only a single hit die worth of hp and not enough THAC0 to take on a gibberling for most classes. Ideally a game should have a super mario-like progression where it starts off easy to show you the ropes and then ramps up difficulty so you use what you've learned, not force you to learn everything from the get go and suddenly when you're level 15 the rest of the game is a cake walk. Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 20:53 Brett wrote:On September 25 2011 17:56 Rampoon wrote:On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb. I don't really understand this line of thinking and I see it a lot. In the "real" world you might well run through a dungeon with no problems only to run into a monster that you cannot just beat by standing toe to toe with it and smacking it in the face. Surely it adds to the immersion that you have to do different things to beat a room/dungeon/mob. Maybe running or hiding or just looting the area without disturbing the mobs would be the better choice sometimes. You don't have to kill everything you see. If it really bothers you, beat the dungeon then go back when your pimp and then stand in front of the particular mob/room you are having trouble with and batter them down. Because it's a fantasy game man... The NPCs come to you and say "Go save X!! Bring me Y". It makes no sense, even from a RP perspective, to go to a place (let's use de'Arnise as an example), start the questing, clearing out the dungeon of mobs that dont respawn as you go, and then get to a certain point and then go "Oops! I can't go any further because all of a sudden these mobs are like 50 levels higher and I can't kill them with what the game has presented me with to date unless I already know the game inside out or cheese/glitch the fight"... So then I go off and spend weeks of in game time doing other quests to level and gear up... Only to return to find everything exactly the same as I left it. If you want to push the real life aspect, if I ran off in the middle of the drama at de'Arnise keep, the family members would all be killed and I would arrive to find nothing but more trolls, umber hulks and golems. If nothing is going to be affected by the lapse of time during which I go and do other shit, then there is really no point in sending me off to other areas to get stronger, you may as well make them with a certain progression in mind. Don't get me wrong, I dislike the "monster level depends on your level" style too. I just prefer consistency: if I can do a dungeon, I personally want to be able to do the WHOLE dungeon so that I can move on. Otherwise, the first few mobs in the place should kick my ass so that I know not to go in there. That's all rather moot of course, because as I soon found out, I dont have to kill those golems to continue. For some reason I thought the flail was going to be a necessary part of the progression in the dungeon. BTW the golem fight in the De'Arnise hold is doable at any level, even early on. Get a Cloudkill stick (not the spell, the wand) and a potion of invisibility. Pop the potion on one of your beefier characters, block the door with him/her, then fire off the cloudkill so that the edge is just out of range of your invisible character. 2-3 uses of the wand should do the trick.
Well this is the new way games are made and me and many of older players don't agree with it. The game needs to be hard from the get go and it needs to reward players that spend more time learning the ropes. BG1 and BG2 are not that hard if you just follow the main quests (and read the tooltips/manual) if you are a newbie. Once you go to explore every little part of the gameworld is when you need to learn the more advanced stuff. And by that I don't mean exploits like the one you mentioned here with invisible characters. That kind of exploits are just bad.
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EPT
