|
Imprisonment is an instant game over if it hits your main character, but anyone else can be freed with the level 9 wizard spell "freedom".
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 15:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 16:45 |
|
|
I remember the iron crisis affecting me pretty dramatically my first play through. I was desperately trying to rescue Dynaheir before Minsc got huffy. On the way to the gnoll fortress, several key weapons broke, including Minsc's two-hander. I had no time to go back to town, so I was left using garbage backups without proficiency slots. Of course, an experienced player would have known that everyone should always be using ranged attacks. But for newer players, who don't know where to find the best magical weapons and so on, I think the iron crisis can feel like a real problem.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 15:21
|
|
|
Armor was supposed to be able to break too, but I don't think the coding worked right.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 15:36
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Armor was supposed to be able to break too, but I don't think the coding worked right. I thought that it did? Similarly to Smiling Knight's sword breaking, I seem to recall having a suit of plate mail, early in the game when it was the most valuable thing I owned apart from That Ring, break deep in a dungeon and my main tank being very vulnerable.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 15:51
|
|
|
Metal armor didn't break in BG1. It's an optional component of the tweak pack.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 15:53
|
|
|
Suspicious posted:Metal armor didn't break in BG1. It's an optional component of the tweak pack. I believe you. Could be bad memory (this was decades ago) or maybe I did have something else installed.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 16:02
|
|
|
I think the unfortunate thing in BG1 is that they hadn't figured out how to design dungeons until they made Durlags Tower. I love the game (probably more than BG2) but all the dungeons play as if they were designed for a first person game like Eye of the Beholder with weird mazes and caves that both look boring but are also difficult to navigate with a party of six
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 17:06
|
|
|
I definitely teleport my party through the mines every time because I can't be bothered with that poo poo
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 18:33
|
|
|
The Iron crisis doesn't affect the player but the player is an adventurer and adventurers get rich easily. The average peasant is going to be screwed when their poo poo breaks because they don't have gold flowing out of their rear end to fix it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 19:59
|
|
|
Smiling Knight posted:I remember the iron crisis affecting me pretty dramatically my first play through. I was desperately trying to rescue Dynaheir before Minsc got huffy. On the way to the gnoll fortress, several key weapons broke, including Minsc's two-hander. I had no time to go back to town, so I was left using garbage backups without proficiency slots. This is the exact story I was going to tell of how the weapons breaking does affect the player. You don't really want to carry around multiple 2H swords, theyre heavy a.f. Of course by mid-late game you have magical weapons or bows on everyone, but still. There are also all the bandit attacks and NPC encounters that are a result of the iron shortage. They affect the player too. I don't really know why y'all think it doesn't change anything.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2016 23:50
|
|
|
I've been really impressed with the plot of BG1 over the course of that podcast thing I've been doing. I mean, the big revelation does happen via a very skimmable scroll, so that's strange but overall I've been pleased that the narrative was so distributed across so many sources, people, and locations.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 00:55
|
|
|
Kunzelman posted:I've been really impressed with the plot of BG1 over the course of that podcast thing I've been doing. I mean, the big revelation does happen via a very skimmable scroll, so that's strange but overall I've been pleased that the narrative was so distributed across so many sources, people, and locations. I wonder: if you're playing for the first time and you miss that plot point in the spoiler, the ending can't possibly make any sense, right? I've never really thought about it before.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 02:03
|
|
|
fong posted:There are also all the bandit attacks and NPC encounters that are a result of the iron shortage. They affect the player too. I don't really know why y'all think it doesn't change anything. Right, but bandits are just standard fantasy fare. You travel the countryside, you get attacked by raiders. Whether they want your money or your iron is ultimately of little consequence. RPGs, and that goes doubly for open-world ones, often have trouble getting the player emotionally invested in the story, partly because you're so far removed from the events and partly because most of your time is spent chasing random creatures in the wilderness with little narrative justification. Baldur's Gate is better than most games in the sense that it translates the plot into actual gameplay elements. Unfortunately, it can't go too far with this because then it would end up detracting from the combat/exploration that lies at the heart of the game's design. A good comparison is Mask of the Betrayer; its spirit meter mechanic was a very elegant way of merging gameplay and story, but a lot of players hated it because it didn't mesh with the way they wanted to play the game. That said, this is a bit of a moot discussion either way because Baldur's Gate's largest flaws aren't in its narrative. Samuel Clemens fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Sep 12, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 02:10
|
|
|
Draile posted:I wonder: if you're playing for the first time and you miss that plot point in the spoiler, the ending can't possibly make any sense, right? I've never really thought about it before. There are quite a few hints along the way, and I wonder if there is some self-selection involved. If you've made it that far into the game, you're probably the kind of person who reads the scrolls.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 03:34
|
|
|
Samuel Clemens posted:Baldur's Gate's largest flaws aren't in its narrative. Agreed. I think that BG's biggest flaw isn't even its flaw, which is the inherently lovely nature of low-level 2nd edition combat. Mind you, some other editions weren't much better and I never understood why they didn't do something sensible like give level 1 characters hit points equal to one hit die plus Constitution or something; my 2nd edition group did that for years and it was great. 4th edition was about the only edition that made you Not Useless at level 1, and I say that as someone who had very mixed feelings about that edition. I also enjoy turn-based tactical games and am very sad that one based on that edition was never made.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 03:37
|
|
|
I was ten when Baldur's Gate came out. I knew I wanted the game after watching a video trailer on a PC Gamer demo CD. It looked amazing. I lucked out at got it after a family friend offered to buy me a gift when he came to visit. I was so excited. I tried to read the CM-thick manual but of course I didn't understand it. I can't remember my first character, or probably any of my first dozen, but they were probably STR 15 CON 13 Paladins and the like. I died from the gibberlings, or that wolf, but mainly at the hands of Tarnesh. My computer couldn't really run the game at the time so I reluctantly moved on after never really getting to grips with the game, and it wasn't until I came back to it three years later that I started doing better. I still made dreadful characters and I didn't know what THAC0 was, but it started to click at the point and the feeling of triumph was immense. Now I understand that it wasn't (just) that I was a noobie kid, but that this part of the game is hideously rough. The satisfaction I get from the game is in creating characters to exploit the weirdness of the rules and in romping through the first three chapters in a couple of hours as opposed to a couple of months like when I was 13. Squibsy fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Sep 12, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 09:14
|
|
|
ineptmule posted:I was ten when Baldur's Gate came out. I knew I wanted the game after watching a video trailer on a PC Gamer demo CD. It looked amazing. I lucked out at got it after a family friend offered to buy me a gift when he came to visit. Dude I beat BG1 when I was 11 and I barely understood any of the dialog or what I was doing. I'm still not sure how I managed to do it. I remember I made a mage with 13 intelligence and I beat Sarevok by charming Tazok and sending him into the fog of war because in unpatched BG1 enemies didn't respond to being attacked outside the party vision. Of course I didn't know this was a bug back then, I just thought Tazok was strong as gently caress
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 10:30
|
|
|
 Good going. I'd like to say I was held back more by my incapable computer but of course that's bullshit. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I finally actually understood the game and played through it completely.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 10:56
|
|
|
Thac0 and proficiencies are really what got me when I was younger, after a few years and when that clicked everything sort of fell in to place
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 11:10
|
|
|
I think proficiencies are bullshit. At the very least there should be no penalty for using weapons without a pip, and the profs should be all bonus. For a new player there's simply no way to know what is a good and what is a bad choice. Maybe all warrior classes should have an ability that says they don't get the penalty for lacking proficiency or something. Or go back to the V1.0 style of having much broader categories.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 11:32
|
|
|
Yeah I was like 9 or 10 when I first played and usually quit when I got to baldur's gate because I would lose track of the story. I did beat the game a few times by cheating the poo poo out if it, and I didn't find out about the bhaal spawn thing until I played BG2.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 11:42
|
|
|
Samuel Clemens posted:Right, but bandits are just standard fantasy fare. You travel the countryside, you get attacked by raiders. Whether they want your money or your iron is ultimately of little consequence. I've always been surprised at how much people bitch about the spirit meter mechanic. If you're playing a goody two shoes - and most are - it's absolutely trivial to lower your craving to next to nothing and then your meter drains very, very, slowly and keeping it maxed out by using the resist button next to spirits is relatively trivial. Evil is more challenging of course but how many players even play that way?
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 15:47
|
|
|
You're right, the spirit meter's impact on actual gameplay is fairly trivial. But the thing is, it doesn't feel trivial. The game tells you it's important, so you better watch out, and suddenly you're fretting about single-digit drops. It stresses out players and makes them feel constrained in their choices even though its limits are mostly imaginary. You can easily extrapolate this to RPG mechanics in general. For example, a lot of players complained about Wizards in Pillars of Eternity upon release, calling the class weak and pointless. Until people started looking at the numbers and finding multiple spells that were almost game-breaking in their own right. Game balance is as much about perception as it is about mathematics, which is part of the reason so many developers struggle with it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 19:13
|
|
|
ineptmule posted:I think proficiencies are bullshit. At the very least there should be no penalty for using weapons without a pip, and the profs should be all bonus. For a new player there's simply no way to know what is a good and what is a bad choice. Maybe all warrior classes should have an ability that says they don't get the penalty for lacking proficiency or something. Or go back to the V1.0 style of having much broader categories. BG1 proficiencies included several weapon types though, and the game didn't let you put more than 2 pips in one at character creation so your level 1 characters started well spread out already. So yeah, it sucked that there were no magical clubs at all in the game, but the blunt weapon proficiency also let you use warhammers, maces and quarterstaves.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 22:01
|
|
|
This is the one thing the BG1 EE hosed up, using the BG2 proficiency system. They added some weapons but it's not really enough, and the BG1 proficiency system is better anyway. Tweak Pack can fix this, though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 22:45
|
|
|
Wizard Styles posted:This is the one thing the BG1 EE hosed up, using the BG2 proficiency system. It's me, I'm the one poor sod who put proficiency points in Bastard Swords in BG1.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2016 22:57
|
|
|
People complained about the spirit meter because in NWN2 Core you could literally rest anywhere, at any time, and it took seconds, so people got used to that. Those same people couldn't handle restrictions being put on resting - even if it largely boiled down to very little. Gotta rest after every fight!
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 00:06
|
|
|
TARDISman posted:It's me, I'm the one poor sod who put proficiency points in Bastard Swords in BG1. I was the poor sod who didn't know what 2d4, 1d6, 3d10 etc meant. Fortunately this prevented me using bastard swords because I couldn't understand why people would chose a 1h sword that did 2-4 damage over one that did 1-8 damage (as I interpreted 1d8 and 2d4 to mean). In my defense I read the game manuals cover to cover as well, iirc it's never actually explained what that means.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 01:29
|
|
|
TARDISman posted:It's me, I'm the one poor sod who put proficiency points in Bastard Swords in BG1. same.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 01:34
|
|
|
Roobanguy posted:same. I remember that my first character for BG1, ever, was a bard. A wolf ate her on the first map after leaving Candlekeep.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 01:35
|
|
|
i always made a bastard sword paladin when i was younger. never got past the mines til like 10 years later.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 01:41
|
|
|
Bastard swords and long swords were both in the large sword proficiency so I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. Also the sword with a bonus vs shapeshifters is a bastard sword.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 01:54
|
|
|
Unless it was fixed in BG:EE, that sword actually had no special bonuses vs. shapeshiters. The code didn't support that type of bonus until IWD.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 02:21
|
|
|
That's good to know, they're just regular bastard swords +1 then? At least they still hurt greater wolfweres and loups garou.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 02:40
|
|
|
It has been fixed and is +3 against Lycanthropes and Doppelgangers specifically. I think that has been done by mods before the EEs came out, but it definitely works as advertised in the EE.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 11:25
|
|
|
that mod for bgt/tutu for the iron crisis was great, Hard Times i think it was called, poo poo was expensive and magic swords really loving rare. made the early game really challenging with scs too. to this day i still think that combo was the main reason my hair started to fall out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 12:06
|
|
|
Vikar Jerome posted:that mod for bgt/tutu for the iron crisis was great, Hard Times i think it was called, poo poo was expensive and magic swords really loving rare. made the early game really challenging with scs too. *rolls a sorcerer, gives no fucks about items*
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 16:00
|
|
|
sebzilla posted:*rolls a sorcerer, gives no fucks about items* You'll get married to the monster summoning wand just like the rest of us.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2016 16:05
|
|
|
I whacked the soldiers harassing the elves in Saradush and they've disappeared. Do they go anywhere or did they despawn? Also I love Bioware making GBS threads on the novelizations in Jaheira's dialogue with Volo. 
Kavak fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Sep 16, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2016 05:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 16:45 |
|
|
I SURVIVED THE PURGE OF SARADUSH AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT BORN TO DIE TO RESURRECT MY DICK DAD TORIL IS A gently caress BG Kill Em All 1998-2001 I am trash mob 410,757,864,530 DEAD FIRE GIANTS  Rasaad "Remember that order of exiles I took over to try and straighten out? Yeah I hosed up and got them all killed."Also Aerie's post-Gorionwraith dialogue triggered half a day later after resting in Yaga-Shura's stronghold, making it somehow even dumber.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2016 09:49
|
|