Petition : Restore Vanilla BG difficulty (monster spawns, random encounters)

Aasimar069

Currently, there are not enough encounters, compared with the original difficulty.
Vanilla BG + TOSC used to have a different monster spawning system on the maps / random encounters during travel.

As a consequence, the game is far more easy than it was once.

The developers shall adjust difficulty so that it would be the same as Vanilla BG.

ajwz

This is a ridiculous poll and should be closed.

The_New_Romance

If anything, you might want to re-word it to more appropriate formulations.

Aasimar069

Basically it was a joke (concerning the current formulation), but it seems that I cannot change the poll options...

Though I agree with the first statement ;-)

elminster

Yea I agree with @ajwz this is a ridiculous poll.

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Buttercheese

Funny, I have a very balanced party right now and some boss fights seem to be A LOT more difficult then in Vanilla.
BTW, the random encounters are still there and monsters still randomly spawn (I just say Firewine bridge -.-)
I am not entirely shure about this, but I do believe that the only change in game difficulty results from the new classes and the familiars.
If you want a higher diffuclty, just don't lvl your characters up or just take weak characters in your party, should be hard enough then. Or go play Dark Souls, for Bhaal's sake.

Can sombody *please* close this thread? Let alone the poll choices make it rediculous.

Fredjo

I think far too many people try to be politically correct, the poll options are funny, it is your poll, no reason to change it if you don't want to.

Aasimar069

Buttercheese said:

If you want a higher diffuclty, just don't lvl your characters up or just take weak characters in your party, should be hard enough then. Or go play Dark Souls, for Bhaal's sake.

Too bad, I have already beaten Dark souls in New Game + ^_^
EDIT : What's funny is, that I was so interested in playing Dark Souls when it was released, because I just told myself "at last a game as difficult, complex and grandiose as Baldur's Gate was - it's been a time."

Concerning the poll choices, I cannot edit them, unfortunately ...

SpaceInvader

@Shandyr the "Lack of monsters" thread is pretty much unequivocal.

Grulo

Bad poll is bad

Bytebrain

I can't remember that far back, so I can't compare the number of spawns between Vanilla and EE, but I would have liked to see the an official response from Beamdog to the actual severity, balance, intention and impact on gameplay all through the game.

If it really is true that it depends on party level, then the impact of it may be very different later in the game, and maybe not such a big issue as the early levels.

If the argument could be made that Beamdog implements what Vanilla BG intended to do in regards to difficulty scaling according to party level, then an argument may be made in favor of the decision.

Making polls and gearing up to war over the matter may not be benefactory, and if people are voting without knowing all the facts the poll will likely be skewed.

EDIT
Just want to be clear, I have no opinion on the matter one way or another, but as this seems very important to the future of the gameplay of BG:EE, I think it would be best if this was discussed in depth with Beamdog before jumping to conclusions.

Sese79

There is already a topic about this with reasoning on 7+ pages. Please use that: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/8555/lack-of-monsters/p1

Space_hamster

I'm sure in a few days some modder will confirm the monster spawn rates are messed up.

bigdogchris

The encounters all seem right to me, as well as random ones. Casters are more challenging.

Also, if you played BGT or Tutu, you get different/more encounters that what was in vanilla BG or BGEE.

BGEE difficult defaults to monsters do 3/4 damage and you always get max HP. That's probably the big part of your problem.

I have core rules on and accept default HP roll. The game is plenty challenging.

The_New_Romance

@bigdogchris It is not. The things you describe are correct, but BG:EE differs a lot from vanilla BG in terms of spawning. Just compare the Gnoll Fortress in both games. Original BG had about 30+ gnolls of different variety there, plus a dozen or two Xvarts in the south of that map. In BG:EE, on Core difficulty, I've encountered about 6 normal gnolls, one gnoll chieftain, and five Xvarts, and I'm far from the only one. Upping the difficulty from standard "Normal" to Core didn't change a thing, and I did that at the beginning of the game.

The setpiece encounters are still the same, by the way (say, Xvarts in a cave at Gnoll Fortress). It's just the random spawn points that are botched.

SpaceInvader

No man, we're also talking about mobs number...

Space_hamster

Difficulty setting never affected numbers of monsters however, it only effected damage done to the NPC. ie. hardest difficulty, double damage.

Kirkor

Other than ridiculous poll choises, I don't recall BG1 having more spawns.
It seemed harder, because:
- Now BG:EE has BG2 engine, allowing kits, classess and abilities, which were not on vanilla BG1
- You know how to play the game, and where are all items/encounters and how to approach them.

I, for example, am annoyed, when monsters respawn all the time in the same corner of the room, where I was just a second ago (Yes, Firewine, I'm talking to you! I hate you!). It's not hard. It's annoying.

You can make more monster spawn. You can make them stronger. But for Bhaal sake, set some spawn timer. Not instant spawn in locked room -.-

Aasimar069

Space_hamster said:

Difficulty setting never affected numbers of monsters however, it only effected damage done to the NPC. ie. hardest difficulty, double damage.

Again, again, again,

There is no difficulty slider in vanilla Baldur's Gate !

Therefore, everybody had to play the same version of the game.

It's a matter of spawn number, too.



One Black Talon Elite is a joke.
A big pack of them is deadly - this no longer occurs in BG:EE.

bigdogchris

The_New_Romance said:

@bigdogchris It is not. The things you describe are correct, but BG:EE differs a lot from vanilla BG in terms of spawning. Just compare the Gnoll Fortress in both games. Original BG had about 30+ gnolls of different variety there, plus a dozen or two Xvarts in the south of that map. In BG:EE, on Core difficulty, I've encountered about 6 normal gnolls, one gnoll chieftain, and five Xvarts, and I'm far from the only one. Upping the difficulty from standard "Normal" to Core didn't change a thing, and I did that at the beginning of the game.

The setpiece encounters are still the same, by the way (say, Xvarts in a cave at Gnoll Fortress). It's just the random spawn points that are botched.

I don't know what to tell you. The only time I remember seeing spawn rates that did not seem right was when I was on BGT and Tutu (they were excessive).

So far in BGEE I'm not feeling that there are lack of encounters. If I don't hit the cap before the end of the game then it would prove there are not as many, but so far it looks right to me.

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ajwz

bigdogchris said:

The_New_Romance said:

@bigdogchris It is not. The things you describe are correct, but BG:EE differs a lot from vanilla BG in terms of spawning. Just compare the Gnoll Fortress in both games. Original BG had about 30+ gnolls of different variety there, plus a dozen or two Xvarts in the south of that map. In BG:EE, on Core difficulty, I've encountered about 6 normal gnolls, one gnoll chieftain, and five Xvarts, and I'm far from the only one. Upping the difficulty from standard "Normal" to Core didn't change a thing, and I did that at the beginning of the game.

The setpiece encounters are still the same, by the way (say, Xvarts in a cave at Gnoll Fortress). It's just the random spawn points that are botched.

I don't know what to tell you. The only time I remember seeing spawn rates that did not seem right was when I was on BGT and Tutu (they were excessive).

So far in BGEE I'm not feeling that there are lack of encounters. If I don't hit the cap before the end of the game then it would prove there are not as many, but so far it looks right to me.

I tried arguing this point in the other thread but some people are just insistant.

Aasimar069

bigdogchris said:

The_New_Romance said:

@bigdogchris It is not. The things you describe are correct, but BG:EE differs a lot from vanilla BG in terms of spawning. Just compare the Gnoll Fortress in both games. Original BG had about 30+ gnolls of different variety there, plus a dozen or two Xvarts in the south of that map. In BG:EE, on Core difficulty, I've encountered about 6 normal gnolls, one gnoll chieftain, and five Xvarts, and I'm far from the only one. Upping the difficulty from standard "Normal" to Core didn't change a thing, and I did that at the beginning of the game.

The setpiece encounters are still the same, by the way (say, Xvarts in a cave at Gnoll Fortress). It's just the random spawn points that are botched.

I don't know what to tell you. The only time I remember seeing spawn rates that did not seem right was when I was on BGT and Tutu (they were excessive).

So far in BGEE I'm not feeling that there are lack of encounters. If I don't hit the cap before the end of the game then it would prove there are not as many, but so far it looks right to me.

It is confirmed by the BG Tutu guys themselves that they messed up the spawn rates/ number from Vanilla BG to improve the challenge.


In this BG:EE this is the exact opposite...

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elminster

Sese79 said:

There is already a topic about this with reasoning on 7+ pages. Please use that: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/8555/lack-of-monsters/p1

It is no longer there.

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Aasimar069

ajwz said:

bigdogchris said:

The_New_Romance said:

@bigdogchris It is not. The things you describe are correct, but BG:EE differs a lot from vanilla BG in terms of spawning. Just compare the Gnoll Fortress in both games. Original BG had about 30+ gnolls of different variety there, plus a dozen or two Xvarts in the south of that map. In BG:EE, on Core difficulty, I've encountered about 6 normal gnolls, one gnoll chieftain, and five Xvarts, and I'm far from the only one. Upping the difficulty from standard "Normal" to Core didn't change a thing, and I did that at the beginning of the game.

The setpiece encounters are still the same, by the way (say, Xvarts in a cave at Gnoll Fortress). It's just the random spawn points that are botched.

I don't know what to tell you. The only time I remember seeing spawn rates that did not seem right was when I was on BGT and Tutu (they were excessive).

So far in BGEE I'm not feeling that there are lack of encounters. If I don't hit the cap before the end of the game then it would prove there are not as many, but so far it looks right to me.

I tried arguing this point in the other thread but some people are just insistant.

Oh god, you Sir, are insistant, for sure.

Of course, if these are low rewarding XP ennemies, you won't see the difference.

killing kobolds that only reward with 7xp will not boost tremendously the levelling.

The fact is, one gnoll, one kobold is no challenge.

On the other side, packs are designed for a game that is meant to be played in a party, and therefore the original game was challenging.

Then, your Kobolds will only grant 1+ xp per character (if you are 6 ;-) ).


Nobody wants to kill 161000 kobolds to reach the level cap.


Strangely, there are no packs of greater bassilisks - oh they give 7000xp ... I guess that's why ;-)


EDIT : when I finished the Nashkell mines last week, I haven't met small pack of kobolds (3-6) as seen in the original game.

Only one or two and the non respawning kobold commandos ...

Aranthys

Rather than fixing the spawns with numbers, I'd rather they made something close to what BG2 did (Higher level = stronger random ennemies).
There's no fun in fighting 15 Kobolds when you're a level 7 party.

toanwrath

I would vote, but my choices are too ridiculous

KrO

I did notice that there seemed to be a little less random encounters and re-spawning but that was only ever a problem mostly when your low level and does not make the game far easier, random packs of Kobolds and Gnoll's are only scary for so long. The point I am at now only greater Bassilisks and greater Wyverns are an issue. Still though it would not hurt to have the same encounter, re-spawning rates as original BG.