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Oh dang I was supposed to use that annoying old woman in that game?
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Dec 2, 2015 23:36
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frajaq posted:Oh dang I was supposed to use that annoying old woman in that game? No because most of her dialogue was either on the ship or via telepathy. Bringing her is basically a waste of a party slot The best KOTOR 2 party member was actually G0-T0 but apparently no one ever spoke to him.
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Dec 2, 2015 23:42
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poptart_fairy posted:A lot of people seemed to be under the impression that Kreia's teachings were meant to be an impartial judgement of the Force, rather than a very bitter character's viewpoint.
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Dec 3, 2015 00:18
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The Sharmat posted:This is blasphemous? Well, to me it always depends on what sort of experience I want. PoE is the more refined one with more stuff to actually do that isn't all samey, but the sense of exploration that BG1 has is hard to top. And since it has just gotten an enhanced edition and tons of mods over the years, there's always new ways to beat the game. But that's to be expected considering when BG1 came out and how many of us nerds have decided to fiddle with it over the years.
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Dec 3, 2015 00:26
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BG1 has better exploration and a better storyline. PoE has better combat, but I think this is largely because BG1 suffers from being limited to the low levels of 2e, because I think that BG2 had better combat than PoE.
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Dec 3, 2015 01:04
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Basic Chunnel posted:I think a lot of people reacted to Kreia as though she was Avellone's mouthpiece and not an actual discrete character, the same way any Kevin Smith movie character is a mouthpiece for Kevin Smith. Avellone's tendency toward deconstruction is (was?) terribly overstated by both fans and the press in general, but that was never more true than in KOTOR2. They went the way they did because it was an interesting departure from / variation on the first game, and because the informal arc of Star Wars sagas in terms of tone is a parabola. Also they were given completely free reign from LucasArts, a studio notorious for exerting relatively strict creative control, and so they decided to do something challenging and new with the Star Wars IP. LA kept up to date on the progress of the game, never said anything, and then it was "finish the game 4 months earlier in time for Xmas" so they didn't really give a gently caress about the game beyond the big words "STAR WARS" stamped on the box.
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Dec 3, 2015 01:10
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Khizan posted:BG1 has better exploration and a better storyline. BG1 Wilderness Area design destroys PoE, and there are a lot more encounters (combat and non-combat) with 'unique' NPCs/parties. I suppose that plays a big part in exploration being better.
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Dec 3, 2015 01:59
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Khizan posted:BG1 ... and a better storyline. Really?
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Dec 3, 2015 03:04
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Looking at the various character backgrounds you can choose makes me really sad because there are no meat cleavers in this game. How am I supposed to role-play a crazy Orlan cook without the appropriate weapons. 
Samuel Clemens fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Dec 3, 2015 03:14
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The Sharmat posted:Really? I was much more involved in searching for Gorion's killer than I was with "I need to track down that guy who gave me superpowers", but that's a conversation we probably don't need to have yet again. Samuel Clemens posted:Looking at the various character backgrounds you can choose makes me really sad because there are no meat cleavers in this game. How am I supposed to role-play a crazy Orlan cook without the appropriate weapons. Warhammer or Morning Star. It's a meat tenderizer!
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Dec 3, 2015 04:09
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See a post like that makes me think you're not exaggerating for dramatic effect and humor, but actually didn't understand the plot at all for some reason.
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Dec 3, 2015 04:11
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The Sharmat posted:Really? I think I actually agree, yeah. BG1's writing on the sentence and paragraph scale mostly ranges from 'crap' to 'raw', though peppered with occasional flashes of brilliance, while PoE's is persistently strong: that's not a contest. But on the grander storyline scale, BG1 better motivates your character to unravel the (surprisingly layered) plot, while keeping the story more consistently present even if you're off in the wilds stabbing Gnolls (dreams, powers that do things, assassins popping out of the woodwork, bandits everywhere, your nonmagical weapons actually breaking on you.) Sarevok also outdoes Thaos as the main antagonist, it seems to me: he's more clearly threatening, more clearly successful, and more personally involved with the player. OTOH I think BG1's wildernesses versus PoE's is a toss-up. There's definitely more to do on the gross level BG1 and it probably has a slightly better ratio of 'unique' encounters to unintelligent, uninteractive trash mobs than PoE, but it's not that much better, and the sheer volume of emptiness and of trash is incredibly wearying if you're not hardcore about the game.
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Dec 3, 2015 04:18
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Fair enough. I can't really be motivated to care about the overarching plot when the dialogue and characters are crap and the gameplay is bad (AD&D 2.0 is not good for computer games), so you probably see a lot in it that I don't.
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Dec 3, 2015 04:21
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Sleep of Bronze posted:I think I actually agree, yeah. BG1's writing on the sentence and paragraph scale mostly ranges from 'crap' to 'raw', though peppered with occasional flashes of brilliance, while PoE's is persistently strong: that's not a contest. But on the grander storyline scale, BG1 better motivates your character to unravel the (surprisingly layered) plot, while keeping the story more consistently present even if you're off in the wilds stabbing Gnolls (dreams, powers that do things, assassins popping out of the woodwork, bandits everywhere, your nonmagical weapons actually breaking on you.) Sarevok also outdoes Thaos as the main antagonist, it seems to me: he's more clearly threatening, more clearly successful, and more personally involved with the player. This is how I feel about it. PoE had better prose but the story never grabbed me. BG1 had worse prose but the story hooked me. I also think that Sarevok is a more engaging villain than Thaos. Sleep of Bronze posted:OTOH I think BG1's wildernesses versus PoE's is a toss-up. There's definitely more to do on the gross level BG1 and it probably has a slightly better ratio of 'unique' encounters to unintelligent, uninteractive trash mobs than PoE, but it's not that much better, and the sheer volume of emptiness and of trash is incredibly wearying if you're not hardcore about the game. PoE didn't have that much exploration, though. A quest would lead you to an area and then you'd complete the quest and then maybe kill off some trash that was in the area but that was pretty much it and it didn't feel very explorey at all. Priestess tells me to get the thing from the cave, I go there and I get the thing from that cave, the rest of the area is meaningless trash fights. If you go to an area without the quests, you either get the quests then, or it's just meaningless trash fights and you have to go back to the area when you get the quests. I think the only notable thing I found through exploring was the Ring of Wizardry at the Bluffs, and Sagani's quest takes you to a point right next to it. BG1's exploration actually felt like exploration and I wanted to go out into the wilderness and find stuff. I think that part of the reason why I prefer it to PoE is the experience system. In BG1, a map full of trash with nothing else is at least progress towards a level. In PoE, a map full of trash with nothing else was a waste of my goddamn time.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:20
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Khizan posted:I was much more involved in searching for Gorion's killer than I was with "I need to track down that guy who gave me superpowers", but that's a conversation we probably don't need to have yet again. I mean I am not a big supporter of PoE's story but BG1's was just as guilty. Gorion died! Gorion-who? Hey it's Imoen! Off we go tralalala
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Dec 3, 2015 05:48
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Sarevok is a better villain than Thaos imo, yeah. Also, the game actually let's you follow the trail to him instead of just starting to rely on Watcher powers and Lady Webb's bullshit at some point (old women in RPGs that aren't Ravel are all worthless btw, Re: Kreia).Sleep of Bronze posted:OTOH I think BG1's wildernesses versus PoE's is a toss-up. There's definitely more to do on the gross level BG1 and it probably has a slightly better ratio of 'unique' encounters to unintelligent, uninteractive trash mobs than PoE, but it's not that much better, and the sheer volume of emptiness and of trash is incredibly wearying if you're not hardcore about the game. What BG1 does have are a lot of little encounters in the wilderness like meeting an ogre that tells you to wait for a minute while he digests his dinner before fighting. PoE doesn't really do that and it's kind of a shame. On the other hand, exploring and finding these little things is what you do instead of questing in those areas in BG1, though. Not that there aren't sidequests, but they're usually on the scale of the stuff that gets filed under Tasks in PoE. They can be memorable and all, but there's nothing on the level of, say, Blood Legacy. Just in general, I'm not saying that PoE's encounter design is perfect, but holy poo poo some people are on a crazy nostalgia trip here. The BG games are not exactly the genre's gold standard for varied and engaging enemy and encounter design.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:52
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Rascyc posted:Hey it's Imoen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImunFOi-Vbw 
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Dec 3, 2015 05:54
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OTOH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLAatFzWeIg
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Dec 3, 2015 05:58
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Wizard Styles posted:BG1's trash mobs really are trash, though. My own party just got to the point where my Mages can take two stray arrows and survive and my lone melee lady can go toe to toe with an Ogre. I let the AI handle the majority of fights now. PoE has more individually interesting enemies and mixes the composition of enemy groups up more. In BG1 clearing trash packs at least moves my experience bar and so it feels like progression. In PoE I get nothing for them after my Bestiary entry is full and so the only value I get from the trash pack is access to whatever was behind it. If nothing was behind it, well, that's what I get.
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Dec 3, 2015 06:15
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Well, a dozen 7XP Kobolds don't really feel like progress when all my guys are 5k or more away from their next level. But I don't disagree, I don't know why PoE had so many trash mobs and I'm really looking forward to that getting changed.
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Dec 3, 2015 06:26
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Sleep of Bronze posted:I think I actually agree, yeah. BG1's writing on the sentence and paragraph scale mostly ranges from 'crap' to 'raw', though peppered with occasional flashes of brilliance, while PoE's is persistently strong: that's not a contest. But on the grander storyline scale, BG1 better motivates your character to unravel the (surprisingly layered) plot, while keeping the story more consistently present even if you're off in the wilds stabbing Gnolls (dreams, powers that do things, assassins popping out of the woodwork, bandits everywhere, your nonmagical weapons actually breaking on you.) Sarevok also outdoes Thaos as the main antagonist, it seems to me: he's more clearly threatening, more clearly successful, and more personally involved with the player. Definitely agree here. quote:OTOH I think BG1's wildernesses versus PoE's is a toss-up. There's definitely more to do on the gross level BG1 and it probably has a slightly better ratio of 'unique' encounters to unintelligent, uninteractive trash mobs than PoE, but it's not that much better, and the sheer volume of emptiness and of trash is incredibly wearying if you're not hardcore about the game. I don't think it is, but I was referring to the design principles and structure as a whole. I think the BG1 formula is better than the Pillars formula for wilderness areas. I can definitely see why people did not like some of the things about BG1 areas but I think the formula used for content is very good, and i'm kind of perplexed as to how it was overlooked and no one has tried to improve upon what BG1 did. Most of Pillars areas are mostly just full of hostile encounters, and a lot of areas don't really have any unique NPCs or named enemies and they almost never have any dialogue. Not many of the areas have non-combat encounters. Most of the areas are also pretty small. There's no indication here that anyone even remotely looked at the content in BG1 wilderness areas closely at all. Most BG1 wilderness areas contain at least one small self-contained quest, at least one, but often more unique mobs of enemies with at least a named leader, or even an entire named group - all of which have dialogue. Almost all areas have non-combat flavor NPCs with unique dialogue and a fair majority of those NPCs have some plot related information or a hint as to the PC's legacy. Lots of the others are really bizarre/random or pop culture type references. The BG1 quests in those areas are often not very good - simple fetch quests but the formula of each area having such a quest is a good idea. The named/unique encounters are also a good idea, and give flavor to the area, as are the non-combat NPCs. Just imagine if every Pillars wilderness area had a small self-contained quest with an Obsidian or Black Isle design/writing and Obsidian/Black Isle style flavor NPCs? How good would that be? In Pillars some of the areas have a quest but it often seems to come at the expense of area size or other content, unfortunately. I'm not sure what Obsidian's plan is for Pillars 2, if they even intend to have Wilderness areas in the style of BG1 or Pillars 1 or whether they intend to go a more BG2 or IWD style route regarding area type/style - and personally I don't really care either way but IF they do intend to have Wilderness Areas again, I think the structure of BG1 area content deserves a closer look. Wizard Styles posted:Just in general, I'm not saying that PoE's encounter design is perfect, but holy poo poo some people are on a crazy nostalgia trip here. I don't think so, people just need to elaborate. "BG1 did this better than PoE" doesn't mean much unless you explain why. BG1 had trash mobs, lots of them. Those fights were easy/boring. But the random encounter thing was kinda cool in a way because you didn't know what to expect (even if it largely didn't matter - that design could be fleshed out to be more interesting). BG1 also does better with flavor as lots of the encounters have unique/named NPCs with somewhat unique gear and those encounters always had dialogue. That's a nice change from just plowing through 10 mobs of the same type of enemy. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Dec 3, 2015 07:13
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Wizard Styles posted:What BG1 does have are a lot of little encounters in the wilderness like meeting an ogre that tells you to wait for a minute while he digests his dinner before fighting. PoE doesn't really do that and it's kind of a shame. On the other hand, exploring and finding these little things is what you do instead of questing in those areas in BG1, though. Not that there aren't sidequests, but they're usually on the scale of the stuff that gets filed under Tasks in PoE. They can be memorable and all, but there's nothing on the level of, say, Blood Legacy. There's some surprisingly complex and varied quests in Baldur's Gate itself which I think people tend to forget about.
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Dec 3, 2015 10:04
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Wizard Styles posted:PoE has more individually interesting enemies and mixes the composition of enemy groups up more. The most interesting enemies in PoE are human(oid)s - because you need to worry about rogues flanking you, priest buffing their allies or wizards debuffing you. Control of the battlefield becomes so much more important. The problem is that the majority of combat isn't against humanoids but damage sponges with immunities and some annoying abilities. This seems like it was the primary design with the White March expansion. Galvino's workshop was the WORST slog in the game so far, and it made me relive the nightmares I have regarding IWD2. The problem wasn't that groups of constructs were annoying or challenging; it's just that there were so many of them and they were grouped in the most annoying way possible (unstable constructs, what are fun challenge these are). I was really enjoying playing on hard until then. Also it feels like Lagufaeths were designed to be as annoying as possible. The combat is still way better than BG1 or BG2, and despite hating Galvino's workshop, I thought some of the constructs were well designed enemies individually. Still, fights against human enemies are still the best (Cragholdt withstanding...) and most interesting combats. The fight against the druids in stormwell gorge, the death chanter in magran's fork, the "Sly Cyrdel" bounty, etc. Perhaps I'm weird, but I think combat would be a lot more interesting, and would produce more interesting class/ability designs if spellcasting in general was removed. I am really not a fan of the vancian system from D&D that creates classes that "burst". This is especially problematic when Aloth can slicken 4 times per encounter.
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Dec 3, 2015 12:58
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In PoE I kept doing things like leaving Magran's Fork westwards because I just expected there to be another outdoors zone as a matter of course, same in some other parts of the map. But it seemed like the only outdoor zones that weren't explicitly there to string together plot-critical locations were the Searing whatever zone and the Pearl-something bluffs south of Defiance Bay, both of which were tiny. Well I guess the whole Raedric's Hold stuff is technically a sidequest so let's count the wilderness between Gilded Vale and Raedric's too. That area had 1 set of skeletons, 1 set of spiders and 1 set of Wichts  I guess if you have the White March it at least becomes relevant for a sidequest.It seems like BG1 had way more outdoor zones that weren't technically plot critical but had interesting stuff in it, but maybe I'm misremembering. Edit: Just remembered that Angsöm's Compass and the northern bridge to Defiance Bay exist, but now I'm dissapointed at how small those were, too. At least the vendor with the tame xaurip was kind of memorable I guess. Psykmoe fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Dec 3, 2015 13:34
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All I remember from BGEE wilderness areas was walking in zig-zag to clear all the maps. More often than not it was not memorable, at least as I remember it.
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Dec 3, 2015 13:38
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Baldur's Gate's encounters were spread out over fairly large maps, so there were a lot of empty stretches. Some people really enjoy this approach because it reinforces the idea that you're exploring uncharted wilderness areas where you never know what you might find, but to me it always felt like a waste of time. These days, I usually skip a lot of the maps whenever I replay Baldur's Gate because the interesting content is mostly found in the city areas anyway.Khizan posted:Warhammer or Morning Star. It's a meat tenderizer! Now I'm curious to see what your kitchen looks like.
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Dec 3, 2015 14:22
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Sensuki posted:In Pillars some of the areas have a quest but it often seems to come at the expense of area size or other content, unfortunately. I'm not sure what Obsidian's plan is for Pillars 2, if they even intend to have Wilderness areas in the style of BG1 or Pillars 1 or whether they intend to go a more BG2 or IWD style route regarding area type/style - and personally I don't really care either way but IF they do intend to have Wilderness Areas again, I think the structure of BG1 area content deserves a closer look. I do agree that PoE could have used something to give those side areas more content that's completely their own, though, so you don't end up thinking about them mainly as that place you go to do that thing for that quest. The White March already did that by adding more CYOA segments, NPCs and scripted events to dungeon and wilderness areas, so I hope that continues. Ratios and Tendency posted:There's some surprisingly complex and varied quests in Baldur's Gate itself which I think people tend to forget about. Jinx posted:The combat is still way better than BG1 or BG2, and despite hating Galvino's workshop, I thought some of the constructs were well designed enemies individually. Still, fights against human enemies are still the best (Cragholdt withstanding...) and most interesting combats. The fight against the druids in stormwell gorge, the death chanter in magran's fork, the "Sly Cyrdel" bounty, etc. I made my peace with Vancian casting early during the backer beta because, well, this game was marketed as an IE throwback, so it felt almost inevitable. I'd also like to see all caster/active-ability-heavy classes put on resource systems like Monks or Ciphers or just given cooldowns, though.
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Dec 3, 2015 19:38
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Wizard Styles posted:I made my peace with Vancian casting early during the backer beta because, well, this game was marketed as an IE throwback, so it felt almost inevitable. I'd also like to see all caster/active-ability-heavy classes put on resource systems like Monks or Ciphers or just given cooldowns, though. The spellcasting system is a throw back to table top systems, where for the sake is humans, everything is turn-based. PoE is fundamentally real-time, so I wonder if you could balance magic based strictly on resources that are scare in combat: time, positioning and defences. It would probably require some spells be targeted after the casting time is finished. Alternatively spells could have a ramp up stage, where the power and range of the effect increases during the casting time. Ciphers are a great design, although I found my dude a little lacking after the recent patches. I also really like chanters as a class, but I just don't seem to have much luck with one. Also, if you're going to give enemies immunities to multiple damage types, it would be nice to have the ability to manage weapon & shield configurations not using a system designed more than 15 years ago.
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Dec 3, 2015 20:31
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Ciphers do not lack, they Slay.
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Dec 3, 2015 20:51
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Seriously, playing with Ciphers almost feels like cheating
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Dec 3, 2015 21:05
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I suspect if there's one thing that would be vastly improved by more funding, it would be the size/variety of zones and encounter diversity.
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Dec 4, 2015 00:42
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Well one of the drawbacks is performance. The amount of units in an area is a big drain on FPS. Hopefully they re-think the way they make 3d characters a bit so that the CPU time isn't all eaten up by the renderer.
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Dec 4, 2015 01:38
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Is the new version of Unity any better about that? I know very little about this kind of thing.
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Dec 4, 2015 01:51
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The Sharmat posted:Is the new version of Unity any better about that? I know very little about this kind of thing. The Dreamfall devs were claiming truly ludicrous performance gains from updating: quote:“It’s hard to say exactly how much of a performance increase players will see, but in informal, internal tests — along with several reports from beta testers — the frame-rate has increased by a factor of 50–200%, while simultaneously doubling the distance at which shadows are drawn, and allowing more users to enable the ‘awesome’ setting, along with other visual effects.” But that's a full 3D game with serious graphical oomph, I don't know if Pillars compares.
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Dec 4, 2015 02:55
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Beat the Ogres an managed to brute force my way down all the way to level 8 of the Endless Paths. Holy poo poo though, the Searing Falls are awful on PotD. So many drakes. Guess I ought to spend my massive pile of gold on some overpowered weapons and armor. Did finally get a good random item from the stronghold though. Cape with retaliate an bonus to some DR on it.
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Dec 5, 2015 07:19
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The Sharmat posted:Beat the Ogres an managed to brute force my way down all the way to level 8 of the Endless Paths. Yeah this area doesn't gently caress around mostly due to the immunities on the drakes. You can cheese some encounters by single-pulling some of the packs though and that makes things easier.
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Dec 5, 2015 10:08
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I tried again and it was a lot easier when I didn't get a horrible add from that wandering group. Eventually fought my way to Cail the Silent. That is a great fight.
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Dec 5, 2015 10:10
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Autonomous Monster posted:But that's a full 3D game with serious graphical oomph, I don't know if Pillars compares.
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Dec 5, 2015 11:54
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I was just wondering, would gorillas count as beasts or wilder???
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Dec 5, 2015 14:07
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Anime Schoolgirl posted:For reference, most people seem to be playing this game on integrated graphics. Seems probable. I was a little confused to hear that people were having performance issues, with this of all things.
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Dec 5, 2015 14:13
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