Cheap and cheesy tactics; for or against?
DeathKnight
Member Posts: 93
It is the undeniable truth that both BG1 and BG2, were full of bugs, exploits and ways to get infinite xp, duplicate items, export-import your way to quick rises and easy wins, and so on. While the EE has corrected many of those convenient, useful exploits, still, a lot of people nag for many things, that are neither broken, nor errors. For example:
1) Ranger/Cleric! Too many people bitch about how this wonderful combo gains all druid and cleric spells! And even demand this to change! This happens in Icewind Dale 1 too, but there you cannot learn on it the 7th level, druid only, divine spells. In BG2, you can learn all divine spells (all cleric spells minus 2 unholy ones), all druid spells (minus HLA exclusives and all transformations), and a symbol stun that becomes lost and unusuable, because the priest scroll gets full and it out of screen.
2) Item duplication or export-import goodness. Don't abuse it if you don't like it! Some people like very much skipping time and effort to build a powerhouse character in just about 20 minutes of game time.
3) BG2 abusive tactics, like 5xsimulacrum, lesser restore on them, and cast 5xplanetar, are flamed and demanded to be fixed or corrected, changed, etc. This is but one example, there are many tricks or strategies that are erroneously (or even intended, gamewise) uber. Do not nag, you not use them if you not like; wiping the WK's basement floor with Demogorgon in 20 seconds (or less) is always nice, or surviving effortlessly in final battle, where and when you cannot even rest.
4) Even the "existence" of certain items is considered to be cheating. Are you serious? A ring of Gaxx or Robes of Vecna? Since when wearing one of those is a cheat, and you have to make and obey self-made, delusionary rules, to never wear one of those? Also, if you pickpocket Kangaxx just when he appears, you can get a double ring of Gaxx. Is pickpocketing also cheating? Nerd logic, or not? What is broken here, exactly, and needs to be fixed?
5) Places with errors, where you can get xp loopholes. Why fix them, when we can clearly avoid following the very specific steps, that the exploit requires? It's not like you accidentally hit xp cap, especially if you do not know or do not want to find and utilize the bug itself! Loosing Firebead is enough of a pain.
I am for all those little broken, abusive, overpowered things. But i want to hear other opinions and discuss. Are they okay with you, or not, and why? Have you ever used one or more of the above examples, to have an easier and quicker time leveling/adventuring? Why do some people hate cheese or exploits that much? Especially since they consciously avoid it, and others like it and even consciously utilize it to their needs' content? I strongly believe that whatever is not "broken", it does not need to be fixed. I prefer removing console, editors, hacks and stuff, but i want all glitches, exploits and overpowered stuff to remain just as is, or as was, to be precise. Your turn, now.
1) Ranger/Cleric! Too many people bitch about how this wonderful combo gains all druid and cleric spells! And even demand this to change! This happens in Icewind Dale 1 too, but there you cannot learn on it the 7th level, druid only, divine spells. In BG2, you can learn all divine spells (all cleric spells minus 2 unholy ones), all druid spells (minus HLA exclusives and all transformations), and a symbol stun that becomes lost and unusuable, because the priest scroll gets full and it out of screen.
2) Item duplication or export-import goodness. Don't abuse it if you don't like it! Some people like very much skipping time and effort to build a powerhouse character in just about 20 minutes of game time.
3) BG2 abusive tactics, like 5xsimulacrum, lesser restore on them, and cast 5xplanetar, are flamed and demanded to be fixed or corrected, changed, etc. This is but one example, there are many tricks or strategies that are erroneously (or even intended, gamewise) uber. Do not nag, you not use them if you not like; wiping the WK's basement floor with Demogorgon in 20 seconds (or less) is always nice, or surviving effortlessly in final battle, where and when you cannot even rest.
4) Even the "existence" of certain items is considered to be cheating. Are you serious? A ring of Gaxx or Robes of Vecna? Since when wearing one of those is a cheat, and you have to make and obey self-made, delusionary rules, to never wear one of those? Also, if you pickpocket Kangaxx just when he appears, you can get a double ring of Gaxx. Is pickpocketing also cheating? Nerd logic, or not? What is broken here, exactly, and needs to be fixed?
5) Places with errors, where you can get xp loopholes. Why fix them, when we can clearly avoid following the very specific steps, that the exploit requires? It's not like you accidentally hit xp cap, especially if you do not know or do not want to find and utilize the bug itself! Loosing Firebead is enough of a pain.
I am for all those little broken, abusive, overpowered things. But i want to hear other opinions and discuss. Are they okay with you, or not, and why? Have you ever used one or more of the above examples, to have an easier and quicker time leveling/adventuring? Why do some people hate cheese or exploits that much? Especially since they consciously avoid it, and others like it and even consciously utilize it to their needs' content? I strongly believe that whatever is not "broken", it does not need to be fixed. I prefer removing console, editors, hacks and stuff, but i want all glitches, exploits and overpowered stuff to remain just as is, or as was, to be precise. Your turn, now.
- Cheap and cheesy tactics; for or against?28 votes
- Nerffix everything! Whatever is good, works well or is overpowered/overused!17.86%
- Keep your hands down from useful exploits!10.71%
- Cheese? What is that?21.43%
- Didn't already too many things get fixed?7.14%
- Don't they have a better thing to do, rather than seeking to squeeze the fun out of everything?42.86%
2
Comments
Also... try to make the poll options slightly less biased next time? Otherwise, what's the point?
You write a short essay trying to convince everyone that cheese and exploits are okay, and then offer options that clearly makes 'anti-cheese' seem wrong, by wording it as if we are extremist fundamentalists.
Personally I have no problem with items like Robe of Vecna, or popular tactics. But I regard exploits that clearly work beyond what was intended by the game designers as the same thing as cheating, so I don't understand why people like you don't just cheat in whatever you want with console or shadowkeeper. It's like you are trying to convince yourselves that you are not cheating.
You know, attacking any dragon just after Irenicus' dungeon is rather a bad idea. But killing Firkraag with a 10 lvl party is something that can be done. If you prepare yourself correctly, buff the party and use lot of, what I call, "diversion tactics", I don't see a slightest reason why you shouldn't be able to defeat him.
Besides that, game has plently potions, scrolls, magic items and so on. You have a lot of methods for dealing with a dragon. You just to have to choose one.
Cheaters/cheesers have all the options...the game is not only already broken as is, they can freely mod or use the console/SK to change whatever they like without needing any knowledge of their own. But people making PnP-accurate mods are few and far between, and even then they tend to hedge (RRB does a lot of good work, but still doesn't fix a lot of underlying issues, some of which I'm sure is due to hard-coding, but other stuff that could and should have been hasn't) changed hasn't been or lack access to the necessary files to make all the changes they want.
IF the changes I want to get done are to get done, it's basically the developers who have to do it, or they have to continue opening up the game's coding so that modders will have the tools to make what I desire.
Far too many things to list here.
Killing Firkraag is easy. They give you literally everything you need to kill him in his friggin' dungeon.
A Ranger/Cleric for example is a bug for me. Why? Cos every person that play it must suffer the unlimited divine spells bug. So if someone want to roleplay his character or it's just not happy with the bug they still are forced to play that way.
This is something that harm the play of some gamers and therefore need a fix. Be it an optional update so people whom like the bug keep it or not, i don't know, what i know is that we can't force an exploit in people that doesn't want to use it.
But some other issues aren't a bug by themselfs, they're mostly engine weak spots, why you would ask? Because you only trigger them if you actively force them.
2 rings of Gaax? don't pickpocket it, or let one of the rings there, no one force you to take both. Same with Tolgerias and the rings of the ram and anyother issue where you have to act for the issue happen.
Many "bugs" today are trademarks of baldur's gate, the game woudn't be the same without them, at least i see this way.
But the fact i'm for letting any cheat that don't force itself in all on the game doesn't mean i agree with the OP. People has the right of roleplay this game, it's the source of the replayability of Baldur's Gate in fact, so if someone elect items as forbiddens to his/her gameplays, elect maximum stat points, companions, magical item limits... they're all acting in their rights and you're not entitled to question this right @DeathKnight.
From my part, in Spellhold when you get the hand of Dace and go open the big face on the south, well it give a party XP of 32.000 more or less, i always save before to get this party xp 5x to 10x
I would have preferred that the option had said "This is all personal preference; let everyone have fun with Baldur's Gate however they please."
I think that this issue would mainly have relevance if we were talking about some kind of MMO, where "cheating" or finding "game exploits" would lead to unfair play among living, breathing, human beings.
In a single player game, I can't see any motivation for this kind of thought other than bragging rights to others in forums.
I often see many posts from many individuals in here that make it clear to me that many people have their egos tied up in their gaming. It's kind of like, and please pardon the scatological nature of this expression, a "pissing contest".
The poster wants to say "I'm better than you in every way. You use cheats, exploits, and cheese, and I don't need those cowardly tools. I have honor, and you do not."
Or, as some random peasant in the game says: "I can beat Drizzt with both hands tied behind my back!"
Or, as elementary school children might put it on the playground, "Nyahh, Nyahh, Nyahh!" If I recall correctly, one usually intones that little childhood incantation by placing each of left and right thumbs in the corresponding ear, wiggling the fingers, and sticking out the tongue.
It's funny to me how we adults do many of the same behaviors we used as children, disguised by a veneer of sophistication and subtlety. But it's still the same thing.
As an aside, though it may (and does) certainly apply in some other threads, the whole 'bragging rights' and 'honour == lactose-intolerant' spiel doesn't make much sense here. Surely, people who take such a stance must (at least implicitly) endorse the availability of cheese, since if the cheese is taken away and everyone is forced to be 'honorable', they have nothing (or less, at any rate) to feel superior over.
The game is what it is, and it was released in its pristine state fifteen years ago. That makes BG older than a lot of the kids who are now playing it!
I do intuit that the main motivation of Cameron and Phillip for devoting their contemporary, middle-aged lives to the Enhanced Edition project, is that they believe in that original, perfect creation, and that they want to renew interest in it, and to bring it all back to glorious, sparkling life, by updating the graphics as much as they are able, adding as much content as they are able (given the evil villains of Legalus and Lostasseta opposing their vision at every turn), and not in any way to start majorly changing the gameplay as originally released, other than to undo the occasional unintended exploit.
And look at all they've accomplished towards those ends, at only a year after release! I bow to them as @God -ly individuals, in my mind.
I don't think they should change the game at all, in its raw, natural glory. I agree with every decision they've made so far, in their wonderful, miraculous, "Resurrect" spell that they've gifted us with.
As for the OP's obvious attempt to recruit others to his view of "Cheese, cheese, Hell, Yeah!", I dunno, I kind of feel like "So, what?" to that, other than the fact that the topic hit a nerve with me about people who argue vociferously, often with an ad hominem tone, if not outright ad hominem arguments, either for or against any feature in the game that makes them feel "Yaaargh! I just discovered something in this program that makes the whole game too easy/too hard for me! I demand that you change it!" And "Anybody who disagrees with me and wants the game to be hard-coded to be easier/harder is a poopy-butt!"
It just all seems so silly to me, about a single player animal like BG.
While we have some glitchs and issues that allow cheese with ingame actions, they're not intentional and that's more or less the whole reason for they being so well received, it's like an imperfection that make something unique, if you try to reproduce it, the result will be too artificial, if you make a lot of imperfection on prupose, in the end the imperfections will lost their unique status and they will only harm the game. It's the surprise in the chaotic behavior of a software that bring something new, unique and different with the addition of surprise us, without breaking the integrity of the game that make these imperfectons something so unique, so... Baldur's Gate!
For me, today many of them are so important in game as have minsc or edwin in my party sometimes, what can harm the playability of others, as the cleric/ranger issue, i don't mind to fix, but if all these issues got an fix, the result will not be the baldur's gate that i love so much, nostalgia bring many of us to this forum and these little things are an important part of it!
BG:EE already bring some issues and probally will bring many more, same will happen with BG2:EE, while some issues are enervating (as the melee walk of ranged characters towards new targets when the AI change their targets) others will became fast favorites eventually.
Ps: BUT, if something got a fix, make it proper, i hope the devs don't try to half fix to left a bit of nostalgia cos it's not the same thing, it will infuse the feelings of an artifical work and a lazyness of the devs.
Indeed, I think we mostly agree (though I admit I got somewhat side-tracked with dairy-related punnery). For me personally, fixing (optional) cheese and exploits doesn't matter so much. If I don't like such features/strategies/etc. I just don't use them, and others are free to make their own assessment and play the way they want as well. It's no different from cheats in that regard, they're there for everyone to use or not at their own discretion.
More generally though, having said that, cheese and exploits have more of an 'official endorsement' that cheats don't. By and large, they are intentional features of the game, and as such it does figure into determining the quality of the game. If for example arcane magic users were hopelessly overpowered as (N)PCs, that would be a flaw in the game design. Certainly, the player could still 'rebalance' the game by not playing that class/those NPCs or by avoiding certain spells or whatever. But in my view it is, as much as possible, up to the developer to create a reasonable balance, the player shouldn't have to do so himself. Obviously that can only go so far, especially in games like these that by definition give the player a lot of freedom and choices, but still. By which I don't mean to imply that BG is hopelessly unbalanced by the way, for the most part it is quite well-balanced, but some improvements could still be made.
And @kamuizin's point is of course well-taken, in that with BG/BG2 in particular there is an element of nostalgia and preservation of the existing game and gameplay. They are supposed to be enhanced editions of old games, so it wouldn't do change it too much even if 'objectively' it would be an improvement. For example, they could revamp the AI and implement much better path-finding and such, never the Infinity Engine's strongest suit. As a side-effect this would likely also remove the (in my view) somewhat cheesy tactic of kiting (I think that's what it's called, anyway). But though it would be an improvement and remove a recurring source of annoyance, it still feels like it might be a few steps too far for an EE. At some point, it stops being an enhancement and starts being a remake.
1) Abuse of Web, usually by the player recasting it over and over.
2) Abuse of Confusion/Rigid Thinking, usually by NPCs.
3) Abuse of Web followed by AOEs (the usual suspects, Fireball / Cloudkill etc.)
Discovering and exploiting cheese tactics can be useful when you're just learning the game, but I think after a certain point you should come to a level of knowledge of the spells and abilities that you should be able to diversify your tactics beyond them.
Cheesy tactics, like the said simulacrum, are a reward of sorts, for patiently levelling up a caster. Besides, some classes are meant to be stronger than others at some point of the game. Good items are your reward for your progress. Bugs and exploits, however, let you effortlessly become stronger than you should be at some moment of the game, thus breaking the balance and removing the challenge.
I've heard people cry "cheese" at tactics like scouting out a group of enemies, for example,
When people use the word, it seems to me to have the tone of an accusation; they seem to use to word as an insult to some method that somebody else shared that they used to beat an encounter.
I have trouble understanding what these accusers want from the accused. Is the accused cheeser supposed to bull rush every encounter, reload after all the party wipes, and go back to temples after every encounter to raise all the dead party members? Is it somehow a badge of honor to the cheese police that they struggle through every fight in toe-to-toe frontline combat, never pre-buff, make minimal use of complex spells and sequenced magic, and let the game beat up on them?
Also, as I said before, since this is a single player game, why is it so important how anybody else plays? Why does it bother the cheese police to the point where they hate playstyles and disapproved strategies so much, that they actually petition the developers to change the game to suit their taste only, and to force everybody else to play the same way they do?