End Game Balance Concern

Linkamus

With the addition of BG2 kits, extra content, and a higher level cap (has the higher level cap been confirmed?) won't the final fight in BG be a complete joke? It's already not hard enough imo.

Has this been addressed?

ShapiroKeatsDarkMage

Meh. I'm okay with that.

ajwz

Just playing BG1 on the BG2 engine using mods without any kits or class changes makes it noticably easier.
However, I can't view this as too much of a problem - most of us veterans have played it so many times that it wont be a challenge unless we hamstring ourselves anyway
For people playing for the first time: Well kids these day wouldn't know what a hard game looked like if it hit the in the face with a petrification ray, so it'll still be a challenge for them.

Cheesebelly

The final battle is not necessarily hard. A thief can one hit-kill Sarevok with the Staff of Striking for example. (or 5 average-to-good backstabs, which is as easy as using 5 invisibility potions). But then again, arrows of detonation spamming can sort things out fast anyway.

I do believe that the raised experience cap might be for the new expansion only (which MIGHT take place after Sarevok's defeat for all we know!)

Tanthalas

Honestly, I'm more concerned about the increased level cap making early BG2 too easy.

Cheesebelly

Honestly, I'm more concerned about the increased level cap making early BG2 too easy.

Agreed, although it would make sense. I mean, hardly any player will roleplay the first dungeon into accomplishing it without sleeping (because it makes sense not to. You're running for your life, certainly you won't stop to rest for 8 hours?), so giving a bit more of an edge would definitely help players kill off Irenicus' crib in one go and with ease.

Besides, Baldur's Gate 2 gets slightly tougher just when you reach the Slaver Compound in the slums I suppose. Everything before that is noob friendly

elminster

The addition of the monster cap makes the final boss in bg1 more difficult in anything. The level cap probably won't make a difference. Groups with 6 people in them probably won't be getting much higher than the old 161,000 cap to begin with. They may get to be one level higher I suppose if they are multi-class NPC's. I suppose it will also depend on how the implement trap and spell experience.

ElectricMonk

This is a bit worrying, as is the thought of BG2 starting out too easy. Then again, if you actually end up with a party that's a couple of levels higher, I'm sure the dev team will do something to account for that. Keep in mind that it will take a considerable amount of experience to unbalance the end of BG1 and that the gap between how much XP you should have (according to game balance - as intended) and how much you do have, diminish as you play the game, as each level requires so much more XP than the last to attain.

AndreaColombo

Well, if all else fails, there are some excellent mods out there that improve the AI dramatically, thus making the game significantly more challenging. Sword Coast Strategems comes to mind, and aTWEAKS is a close second.

DejwoSWK

Well,maybe they will manage(if it is even possible) to script enemies leveling up with you to keep difficulty(but they will be little behind so leveling will still have some meaning) or spawning stronger enemies when you enter map for a first time,which is probably impossible,but it could work.But personally,I would like first option more.

ajwz

Im certain some of the later game enemies are constrained by this xp cap too, and therefore will benifit from its removal as well. Not to mention the expanded spell books (Spells like stoneskin really help enemy mages)

Linkamus

No auto-scaling of monsters please... Oh god... That mechanic has single handedly ruined almost every single player rpg to be released in the last 12 years. It's such a lazy mechanic that sucks all grittiness from the game.

DejwoSWK

No auto-scaling of monsters please... Oh god... That mechanic has single handedly ruined almost every single player rpg to be released in the last 12 years. It's such a lazy mechanic that sucks all grittiness from the game.

I did not say i would really like to see it in game,to be more precise,i would most likely not,but it was just idea that I wanted to share,how it could be done,and it was better one of those two that came to my mind(imho)

BelgarathMTH

I think the final battle's pretty darn hard, what with Semaj firing spells including an opening instant-cast petrification spell, and Angelo firing arrows of detonation over and over, and Tazok, and two battle horrors. Sarevok is hasted and can only be hit with a roll of 19 or 20 - his AC is about minus 12.

I've been doing that battle for years, and I still get nervous when I'm about to do it. And yes, I know a lot of the tricks to get through it. But I kind of wonder if there wasn't some update somewhere along the way that made it tougher than it was on release, such that we're not all playing the same final battle?

I know that the GoG.com version of the vanilla game has the up-to-date final battle with all the bells and whistles.

paulsifer42

To be honest, I don't mind the end of the game being easy. I put in a lot of hours to become that badass, why shouldn't I be able to feel like on? I do have issues with it making BG2 too in easy in the beginning though.

Aranneas

The variety of tactics mods available for BGII and ToB is pretty good right now. You should already be able to find something that addresses any concerns of the BGII beginning being too easy. Once we have BG1:Mod Friendly Edition, I'm sure there will be people who devote themselves to the task of creating bosses that will make you bleed from your eyeballs MegaTen style.

beerflavour

The one thing I liked the most with BG1 was the low level cap. Especially the early levels where even a random encounter could bring death. This is just the little spice that made things more exciting.

Despite that the final battler was a joke. Collect all summoning wands on the way. Animate dead until your cleric's hands bleed. Nuke the bad guys from far. Cloudkill + Skeletons on Sarevok and range him. In BG2 it didn't get better.

i didn't try all those mods so can't tell if the balance/AI was improved. But it surely won't get easier to balance things with a higher level cap.

Lions_fan

Making the end boss do more damage, take less, etc is not that hard to change- especially with patches and a syncing client. Same with changing the level cap, etc.

Be careful what you wish for lol.

Rapscallion

Some of the tactics in this thread just straight-up cheese the fight. If you avoid cheese tactics then you shouldn't find anything 'too easy' hopefully.

Aranneas

The point can be made that considering something cheese is an artificial restriction. If you're leading a team of adventurers fighting for your lives against overwhelming forces, and you find a tactic that makes your lives easier through experimentation, and most enemies you meet seem to have difficulty countering your tactic, why would you ever put it aside?

Personally I try to avoid cheese because I do already find most parts of the game too easy (having played through far too many times and experimented with various options). But I shouldn't have to do this just to get a decent challenge out of it. (That's why I added more difficulty through mods, much of which includes providing resistance to cheese tactics. )

Communard

Aranneas said:

The point can be made that considering something cheese is an artificial restriction. If you're leading a team of adventurers fighting for your lives against overwhelming forces, and you find a tactic that makes your lives easier through experimentation, and most enemies you meet seem to have difficulty countering your tactic, why would you ever put it aside?

If you're the mastermind behind a criminal conspiracy that has successfully manipulated geopolitical forces to its benefit why would you not know how to leave a cloud of clearly deadly poisionous gas? Cheese is bad because it exploits advantages given by the game engine that were not intended and would not make sense with non-AI opponents.

Aranneas

Communard said:

Aranneas said:

The point can be made that considering something cheese is an artificial restriction. If you're leading a team of adventurers fighting for your lives against overwhelming forces, and you find a tactic that makes your lives easier through experimentation, and most enemies you meet seem to have difficulty countering your tactic, why would you ever put it aside?

If you're the mastermind behind a criminal conspiracy that has successfully manipulated geopolitical forces to its benefit why would you not know how to leave a cloud of clearly deadly poisionous gas? Cheese is bad because it exploits advantages given by the game engine that were not intended and would not make sense with non-AI opponents.

I'm not the mastermind. I'm the adventurer. I shouldn't have to limit my tactics to 'play fair'. Tactics should be accounted for and balanced by the scenario, so that everything is on the table and some options will work better or worse depending on the situation. There's no limitation to writing enemy AI that says you can't have them move out of poisonous gas - people writing the scenario simply didn't consider this angle of player action.

Which makes sense - you can't think of everything, players will always come up with creative combinations of actions that have more synergy than expected. But third parties have already created additions to the game that make it function the way I want it to in the vast majority of cases. Any cheese remaining in a tactically modded game is quite residual.

shout27

beerflavour said:

The one thing I liked the most with BG1 was the low level cap. Especially the early levels where even a random encounter could bring death. This is just the little spice that made things more exciting.

Despite that the final battler was a joke. Collect all summoning wands on the way. Animate dead until your cleric's hands bleed. Nuke the bad guys from far. Cloudkill + Skeletons on Sarevok and range him. In BG2 it didn't get better.

i didn't try all those mods so can't tell if the balance/AI was improved. But it surely won't get easier to balance things with a higher level cap.

. . . I hate the low level cap. Why the hell should the designers be allowed to force me to stop gaining levels? That sort of thing should be left to the amount of experience you gain from monsters and how much you're willing to grind. I can't count the number of times I died trying to beat Sarevok, because I didn't know about the cheese methods and hate using wands.

Also, it's irritating to have those undisarmible traps in the center of the room as well, they should either make them disarmable or just something that you walk over to get hit rather than tempt you with frustration IMO.

Aranneas

shout27 said:

beerflavour said:

The one thing I liked the most with BG1 was the low level cap. Especially the early levels where even a random encounter could bring death. This is just the little spice that made things more exciting.

Despite that the final battler was a joke. Collect all summoning wands on the way. Animate dead until your cleric's hands bleed. Nuke the bad guys from far. Cloudkill + Skeletons on Sarevok and range him. In BG2 it didn't get better.

i didn't try all those mods so can't tell if the balance/AI was improved. But it surely won't get easier to balance things with a higher level cap.

. . . I hate the low level cap. Why the hell should the designers be allowed to force me to stop gaining levels? That sort of thing should be left to the amount of experience you gain from monsters and how much you're willing to grind. I can't count the number of times I died trying to beat Sarevok, because I didn't know about the cheese methods and hate using wands.

Also, it's irritating to have those undisarmible traps in the center of the room as well, they should either make them disarmable or just something that you walk over to get hit rather than tempt you with frustration IMO.

Honestly, 'instant mid-combat disarm' is an enormous departure both from the feel of the rest of the game and from the p&p ruleset to begin with. In D&D you take hefty penalties for trying to perform complex, skill-intensive actions in high-pressure situations. I always just assumed that those traps were too complex for even the intrepid master thief to figure out at such a rapid pace while being stared down by an eight foot hulk of steel and his buddies.

beerflavour

shout27 said:

... . . . I hate the low level cap. Why the hell should the designers be allowed to force me to stop gaining levels? That sort of thing should be left to the amount of experience you gain from monsters and how much you're willing to grind. I can't count the number of times I died trying to beat Sarevok, because I didn't know about the cheese methods and hate using wands. ...

The xp cap in plain BG1 was 89,000 and with TOSC it was raised to 161,000 xp. I never did bother to get to the xp cap in that game. So the encounter with Sarevok was always with a party close to the max levels (maybe a level lower than that). The point is that with high level adventurers the casters get significantly more powerful -> the party has more options to nuke opponents from far away with loads of magic.

If you want to look at how "to balance" computer games based on D&D just have a look at DDO. D&D 3.5 rules offer a lot more build options than 2nd ed. rules. Instead of improving the AI of computer opponents the easier way for devs was/is to introduce blanket immunities + beefed up stats for computer opponents or plainly nerf magic (e.g reduce duration of CC spells).

Jean_Luc

I'm not that concerned about balance but I wouldn't mind seeing something official that states that it's being taken into account. And not just late game but also the potential balance issues brought on by BG2 classes/kits.