I'm going to re-open it then--I feel very bad about ending the thread with a long post from me and no chance for a reply from others. Whether we change this or not, it's very important to make sure we keep open lines of communication for feedback (yes, even 'you suck CamDawg'), and it's an interesting topic to boot.
Ah. Well. Now i myself got the EE, so i can confirm it works! Everyone who wants to keep their hard earned items, rejoice! My former suggestion, which always worked in the originals, works here, too! I will repeat that, so no one will loose on it! Here goes...
1) Start a multiplayer session with a random character, just so he can bypass the loss of items. This character is of no importance, he/she is going to be deleted/replaced mere seconds later. 2) Save the game: In 1, when you find yourself outside Winthrop's; in 2, when you are free outside your cell. Quicksave works well. 3) Load game. 4) Create your serious character(s), import your "item stash" ones (i came up with this term). And load. 5) Allocate items as you wish. Export each and every character. 6) Repeat steps 1-3, import the characters with which you intend to play through the game, and you are good to go.
Troubleshooting: You might notice that upon the end of step 6, when you finally start game as you see fit and open inventories, that some items are missing. At least, i encountered this problem in BG1EE. Worry not, you can solve it. Just remember what your character carried and should have carried upon import, and keep spamming the sequence of load game-import character, until said character is finally imported with all items correctly, exactly as you had him/her prepared, before! And all of these, in multiplayer, not single!
I usually agree with @CamDawg a lot. Too much actually. But this time I think he is wrong. I believe that harmless exploits are not bugs and should not be treated as such.
I never used that exploit myself, but if there is even one person that likes it, it should IMO remain in the game because it doesn't hurt anyone. Actually it is easier to just ignore it than take advantage of it.
Edit: to clarify I base the above on the fact that the chance to get the exploit by accident is practically null. People interested in it have to intentionally take certain actions to exploit it.
Accidental exploits are bugs--anything that is clearly not working by design is a bug. Letting the player pause the game and see that they have a dozen items in their inventory, then unpause and see those items disappear, is a bug.
Changing the script from the opening cutscene to not remove your items is a mod--and a simple one, at that--that allows you to play the game the way you want to play, without requiring a game bug to do it. The mod does it better than the bug, because it doesn't require a set of steps after the game starts.
When a bug causes an exploit, the question isn't "Do people like this exploit"--if it were, we wouldn't have fixed the INTMOD.2da functionality--it's "Does this bug prevent the game from being perfect". We may not get to all of those bugs immediately, but if we identify one and we can fix it, to not fix it would be silly. (And since it's already been fixed, at this point, to unfix it would be intensely irresponsible at best.)
In this case, there's already a mod to let the people who liked the exploit achieve their desired behavior.
As someone who has coded up the import02 restoration and gotten it through QA: no, piss-easy is not an accurate description, and that was for a list of twelve items. More to the point, your solution breaks immersion pretty badly, which is a more important consideration.
The fact is... that the actual restoration isn't in the game. My Fighter/Mage had both Varascona and the Burning Earth, but I got the Sword of Chaos. Was is really implemented in the game, or not yet? I don't have anything to say about the pause n' drop exploit being removed, but it would be great if I could get Varascona (or much better, the Burning Earth) at the start of the game. But this could create serious duplicates (maybe not for Varascona, since it's treated as a regular Long Sword +2 and carried by several Elven soldiers in Sundalessenar (however that name is spelt), but the Burning Earth is carried by a Druid in the Grove, if I am not mistaken, and it remains unique thorough the game).
Except this exploit in particular is everything but accidental. The user must actively seek it.
Also by removing this exploit you are taking away a user's freedom of choice without providing any benefit in exchange, and this is never good.
Finally, I find odd that with so many level A and level B bugs still plaguing the game, the developers are wasting time chasing and fixing harmless exploits.
I really think that to make the game better Beamdog/Overhaul should start prioritising and focusing on what it's really important, instead of chasing an unrealistic ideal of perfection. No wonder the patches are always late and the game is still full of bugs.
Accidental was meant to mean "not by design". There are plenty of exploits that are borne out of a knowledge of the game's inner workings, utilizing synergies between mechanics to achieve a powerful result. This case goes beyond that knowledge and takes advantage of a bug to eliminate the dungeon's primary challenge: the loss of your equipment.
I won't address the implicit accusation in the rest of your post because it's not strictly relevant here; this exploit was closed at release, so it has no bearing on any other work we're doing now.
That being said, although @CamDawg has expressed an interest in continuing the discussion, I do have to put my foot down when it comes to personal attacks like the one on the previous page. If that sort of behavior comes up again I will close this thread.
I won't address the implicit accusation in the rest of your post because it's not strictly relevant here; this exploit was closed at release, so it has no bearing on any other work we're doing now.
Just to clarify why I think it's relevant. I know that the exploit was closed at release, so it had bearing on the testing that was supposed to be performed around release and on the number of important bugs that haven't been found and/or addressed before release.
Edit: Also mine wasn't meant to be an accusation, but constructive criticism.
@elminster Good job countering my argument with logic and reason. Well done.
@Erg "I never used that exploit myself, but if there is even one person that likes it, it should IMO remain in the game because it doesn't hurt anyone. Actually it is easier to just ignore it than take advantage of it."
This, x1000. This is what it's all about.
@CamDawg I understand why you're against introducing the exploit back into the game (even in a modified fashion like scattering the equipment around Chateau Irenicus), and you're right. You are. From a purely logical standpoint, one should always strive to purge the game of anything unintended. This was never the point of contention. But the gist of it is that there's a *bunch* of people who enjoy that particular bug (threads like this one pop up semi-frequently). And ignoring these players when you could so very easily please them (with a bare minimum of work) only shows you (not you personally, but *all* of you, as a dev team) value your own decisions (no matter how trivial) over the wants/needs of a moderate segment of your player base.
This is what killed Diablo 3. It's bad practice, all around. I'm sorry, but it just is. 'Fighting' your customers over trivial, inconsequential concessions which could be re-implemented without affecting the game at large only means you'll be that much more stubborn in the future when something of note and importance comes down the pipeline. Both Blizzard and Bioware are guilty of this. As indies, you can't afford it. You lack both the fanbase and accumulated clout to enforce your own personal quirks on the wider gaming population, especially since only a tiny sliver of said population is the main thing keeping your company financially solvent. Thus, you should make every effort to please your customers, as long as their wishes don't grossly distort your vision of the game or horribly skew its balance in an unintended direction (neither of which this exploit does).
That's what it boils down to.
In all honesty, if you're so adamant about enforcing your particular 'balance errything!!' views, then treat this exploit as an added feature; amend the starting area's script and have it take into account the difficulty setting - if set to Novice, scatter the equipment (either seeding it throughout Chateau Irenicus, or distributing it randomly across merchant inventories), if not, then just nuke it into oblivion. Problem solved. 'Hardcore' players get their challenging starting dungeon, and 'casuals' get to keep their hard-earned gear and cruise through the game without much trouble (because, hey, you can't defend and extoll the virtues of balance on a setting where the player sets his/her difficulty slider to the lowest possible option, hence demonstrating a need for a casual experience void of challenge - and what better way to help them along their way than granting them their BG1 stuff?). Win-win, everyone's happy. There is literally no sound argument against implementing this, except "...it grossly violates our ethics and snowflake-special subjective vision of the game!!".
Don't be like that, Beamdog. Don't. It killed Blizzard, and it's killing Bioware.
I want you guys to become very successful, and bring us many original IPs!
And one of the keys to success is knowing when to make concessions.
To recap:
- many people love the exploit - said exploit doesn't wreck the game - said exploit only skews game balance (albeit barely) - BG2EE is a single player game (balance = exploitable) - like Diablo 2, BG2 is about enjoying being a demigod - those who want to cheat can, and will, regardless...
Yes, it's an emotional appeal, but the customer is always right.
Always.
DISCLAIMER: As mentioned in my previous post, I don't have a bone in this fight.
I'm just playing devil's advocate! 3:)
P.S. To anyone who wants their BG1 gear to pop up in Chateau Irenicus:
You're forgetting an important piece, which is that the exploit now exists as a mod, which lets you do exactly what you want.
This isn't about making concessions, it's about keeping the game true to its design. Adding this exploit back into the game would be a gross violation of that design. If you want to keep your gear (a cheat by any standard), then use the mod that lets you keep it.
You're forgetting an important piece, which is that the exploit now exists as a mod, which lets you do exactly what you want.
This isn't about making concessions, it's about keeping the game true to its design. Adding this exploit back into the game would be a gross violation of that design. If you want to keep your gear (a cheat by any standard), then use the mod that lets you keep it.
@Dee isn't it one of the selling points of the Enhanced Editions that you don't have to use all those mods like for the original games?
What about people with modphobia? And trust me they seem to be a lot around these parts.
Why to stand so tightly on this point when there's already a mod allowing you to have what you want back? Game developers point to a goal, have objectives and they want to go toward a product which is as consistent as possible, avoiding everything that might be gamebreaking, that could break the game atmosphere or its challenge (which this is the case). They can do a fine tuning as much as they can but they will never be able to satisfy everyone (that *bunch* of gamers, F.I.). If a developer team might ever be able to develop a game that could satisfy everyone, then all gamers in the world would play that game, but this will likely never happen, because everyone of us is different, even amongst rpg players, even amongst BG fans. All of us here like this game, but each one of us likes it in a different way, and each one of us prefers certains features over the others and, being BG a really complex game with lots of elements, you'll understand that to please everyone is sadly almost impossible. Here is where modder starts: to implement features that devs can't or won't officially implement.
@Erg: yeah, you're right, but you know that they will never implement mods that would break game rules, atmosphere, settings, challenge and over all the contract they have. On the other hand they're working to allow this game to be as modder friendly as possible.
@elminster Good job countering my argument with logic and reason. Well done.
Looking at it internally this was confirmed fixed on May 16, 2013. About 6 months before the game was even released. Given the state of BG2EE at the moment I think it would be a waste of time for the developers to go back and implement this. If you want it play the original games or mod your game.
It looks like I'm failing to make my point understandable. So I'll try to simplify things as much as possible:
How it was before:
1) people that didn't like the exploit, could just ignore it. They were happy. 2) people that did like the exploit could use it. They were happy too. 3) everyone was happy
How it is now:
1) people that don't like the exploit are still happy. 2) people that like the exploit can't use it anymore. They aren't happy anymore. 3) Not everyone is happy, also because not everyone uses mods
The purpose of a game is not being perfect, but it is to entertain as many players as possible.
@elminster Good job countering my argument with logic and reason. Well done.
Looking at it internally this was confirmed fixed on May 16, 2013. About 6 months before the game was even released. Given the state of BG2EE at the moment I think it would be a waste of time for the developers to go back and implement this. If you want it play the original games or mod your game.
Finally the first good argument in this thread for those that want to keep the exploit fixed. Still this doesn't change the fact that IMO it has been a huge mistake to remove it in the first place.
@Erg in your point of view "everyone is happy" includes customers, but not developers, and from a developer point of view, not removing a bug/exploit or re-implementing it is out of every logic, so the only way to allow everyone to be happy is to let developers do their work and rely on mods to re-add exploits. If one doesn't like to use a mod to add not considered, expected, provided, nor wanted features to the game, he unfortunately can't do anything but to accept the game as is.
@Erg in your point of view "everyone is happy" includes customers, but not developers, and from a developer point of view, not removing a bug/exploit or re-implementing it is out of every logic, so the only way to allow everyone to be happy is to let developers do their work and rely on mods to re-add exploits. If one doesn't like to use a mod to add not considered, expected, provided, nor wanted features to the game, he unfortunately can't do anything but to accept the game as is.
Developers should be happy because they are making their customers (as many of them as possible) happy, not because they have become narcissistically enamored of their own code.
@Erg Ok, I understand you, but I believe that this is not the case. Irenicus' Dungeon was developed almost 15 years ago with the specific intention to challenge you. The challenge was to take you away all your equipment (you grew powerful as you beaten Sarevok and you rely much on your gear, but you were ambushed and trapped! Your possessions sold!) and to make your way out only with your ability and with makeshift gears so really, what's the point in officially re-implementing that exploit? (Not counting that they're not allowed to modify the game experience by contract)
Ok, I understand you, but I believe that this is not the case. Irenicus' Dungeon was developed almost 15 years ago with the specific intention to challenge you. The challenge was to take you away all your equipment (you grew powerful as you beaten Sarevok and you rely much on your gear, but you were ambushed and trapped! Your possessions sold!) and to make your way out only with your ability and with makeshift gears so really, what's the point in officially re-implementing that exploit? (Not counting that they're not allowed to modify the game experience by contract)
Yes, I would never use the exploit myself as I like a good challenge, but there are people with different tastes. Why should we ruin the game for them, just because we don't like what they like?
they're not allowed to modify the game experience by contract
Modifying the game experience it's exactly what they did by removing the exploit, considering that it is still present in the original game and that IMO it isn't a bug and by contract AFAIK they aren't allowed to change something unless it is a bug.
At the end it all boils down on whether you consider this a bug or not. I hope I made clear why IMO it isn't a bug.
Except this exploit in particular is everything but accidental. The user must actively seek it.
Err, no. I stumbled across this exploit in one of my first playthroughs of the game. I certainly wasn't looking for it, hadn't heard of it, and more or less stumbled into it. Presumably whoever started telling other players also discovered it the same way, because it's not obvious from the scripts that the exploit is there.
Which is what I was trying to touch upon in my last post--while feedback is important, immersion and gameplay are equally, if not more, important to a good game for all players. Discovering that I could bypass a major plot element pulled me entirely out of the game and story, which is a decidedly poor outcome.
@Erg in your point of view "everyone is happy" includes customers, but not developers, and from a developer point of view, not removing a bug/exploit or re-implementing it is out of every logic, so the only way to allow everyone to be happy is to let developers do their work and rely on mods to re-add exploits.
Err, no. If there's one thing @TvrtkoSvrdlar has nailed, it's that player happiness is important. My personal happiness is important insofar as it stems from pride in a fun game that people enjoy. The inclusion or exclusion of this is really not going to weigh on that too much.
But the gist of it is that there's a *bunch* of people who enjoy that particular bug (threads like this one pop up semi-frequently). And ignoring these players when you could so very easily please them (with a bare minimum of work) only shows you (not you personally, but *all* of you, as a dev team) value your own decisions (no matter how trivial) over the wants/needs of a moderate segment of your player base.
Again--this is inconsistent with the feedback we receive from players. The majority of feedback we receive wants us to stamp out exploits, not just the inconvenient ones. If you're truly concerned about Beamdog listening to customers (and not just, say, a vocal minority) then you'd be arguing the other side of this.
In all honesty, if you're so adamant about enforcing your particular 'balance errything!!' views
Frankly, I'm not terribly concerned about balance--as you say, it's a single player game and, even in MP games, it's cooperative regardless. The Cloak was omitted from the original game for, likely, balance reasons. That it's not being added has more to do to the lack of a compelling reason for inclusion. Yeah, we could include it and rely on player self-regulation--but every instance we create where players need to self-regulate introduces another point in the game where we're pulling players out of the game, breaking immersion and the story narrative.
@Erg: The exploit was not an intended feature, so it was not included in the intended game experience. Not all exploits are bugs, but this one in particular is a bug, because to pause the game and so to access the inventory before Imoen's first dialogue wasn't an intended game behavior and that shouldn't happen. It happened because the way the code was written prevented the game to flow as intended, so technically is a bug.
Err, no. If there's one thing @TvrtkoSvrdlar has nailed, it's that player happiness is important. My personal happiness is important insofar as it stems from pride in a fun game that people enjoy. The inclusion or exclusion of this is really not going to weigh on that too much.
Yeah, I know that customers happiness is important, and my point was not that devs should not have the duty to satisfy the widest slice of their customers, but it was more focused on this particular feature request and the decisions a developers team must take to preserve their product while satisfying customers. In this particular case that exploit was a bug and, as you said, the majority of BG players preferred to have a more consistent game, even if that meant to remove convenient exploits so, as the decision is taken, the player who doesn't like that decision and doesn't want to use mods to re-add the removed exploit can't do anything but accept the situation as is.
Edited because the last post came before mine while I was still writing. In one word: "ninjed".
Except this exploit in particular is everything but accidental. The user must actively seek it.
Err, no. I stumbled across this exploit in one of my first playthroughs of the game. I certainly wasn't looking for it, hadn't heard of it, and more or less stumbled into it. Presumably whoever started telling other players also discovered it the same way, because it's not obvious from the scripts that the exploit is there.
Which is what I was trying to touch upon in my last post--while feedback is important, immersion and gameplay are equally, if not more, important to a good game for all players. Discovering that I could bypass a major plot element pulled me entirely out of the game and story, which is a decidedly poor outcome.
I don't know, this particular exploit still looks completely harmless to me and easier to ignore than to exploit.
As someone who has coded up the import02 restoration and gotten it through QA: no, piss-easy is not an accurate description, and that was for a list of twelve items. More to the point, your solution breaks immersion pretty badly, which is a more important consideration.
The fact is... that the actual restoration isn't in the game. My Fighter/Mage had both Varascona and the Burning Earth, but I got the Sword of Chaos. Was is really implemented in the game, or not yet? I don't have anything to say about the pause n' drop exploit being removed, but it would be great if I could get Varascona (or much better, the Burning Earth) at the start of the game. But this could create serious duplicates (maybe not for Varascona, since it's treated as a regular Long Sword +2 and carried by several Elven soldiers in Sundalessenar (however that name is spelt), but the Burning Earth is carried by a Druid in the Grove, if I am not mistaken, and it remains unique thorough the game).
Also, I wonder if anyone caught the spoiler in @CamDawg's earlier post...
@Dee: Which of Cam's posts are you saying? (I am seriously asking this question).
And sorry, forgot to respond to this. Yes, import02 is the easter egg I dropped in there--it's currently on the roadmap for inclusion in the next BGIIEE patch.
As someone who has coded up the import02 restoration and gotten it through QA: no, piss-easy is not an accurate description, and that was for a list of twelve items. More to the point, your solution breaks immersion pretty badly, which is a more important consideration.
The fact is... that the actual restoration isn't in the game. My Fighter/Mage had both Varascona and the Burning Earth, but I got the Sword of Chaos. Was is really implemented in the game, or not yet? I don't have anything to say about the pause n' drop exploit being removed, but it would be great if I could get Varascona (or much better, the Burning Earth) at the start of the game. But this could create serious duplicates (maybe not for Varascona, since it's treated as a regular Long Sword +2 and carried by several Elven soldiers in Sundalessenar (however that name is spelt), but the Burning Earth is carried by a Druid in the Grove, if I am not mistaken, and it remains unique thorough the game).
Also, I wonder if anyone caught the spoiler in @CamDawg's earlier post...
@Dee: Which of Cam's posts are you saying? (I am seriously asking this question).
And sorry, forgot to respond to this. Yes, import02 is the easter egg I dropped in there--it's currently on the roadmap for inclusion in the next BGIIEE patch.
@elminster Bro, it's not about what I want. *I* don't care, because *I* mod my own games.
What the entire issue *is* about is the fact that something was taken out, when it shouldn't have been.
The decision was entirely arbitrary, and stems from the fact that the devs though it was necessary.
It wasn't. I know it's their call, but hubris often leads to bigger problems down the line.
Especially when it manifests in infinitesimally small decisions like this bug fix.
Furthermore, @Erg already spelled it out for you: - exploit working: purists don't use it (they're happy); cheaters do (they are, likewise, happy) - exploit removed: purists can't use it (they're happy); cheaters want to, but can't (unhappy)
Do you understand? It literally solves nothing, and needlessly pisses off a bunch of people.
Even if it were to tick off just a single person -- just one! -- then that's 1 person too many!
I'm of the firm belief that concessions ought to be made to please consumers/customers.
Doubly so when said concessions don't in any way impact the quality of the product.
The devs obviously disagree(d). Fine, it's their call.
But please, stop trying to convince me it's about balance or game vision. It isn't. 'Balance' in BG2 is laughable, exploitable, and a non-factor. And anyone playing on anything easier than Core doesn't give a rat's ass about balance, as demonstrated by the fact they're actively gutting the game's difficulty and its challenge via moving the damn slider to the left (protip: a considerable portion of the BG2 fanbase consists of children and/or 'causuals' -- many among them older D&D-playing adults! -- who've never heard of mods like scsii, don't have a clue about general metagaming, won't ever think up and chain downright gamebreaking spell combos, and wouldn't know how to abuse an exploit if it smacked them right in the face).
The entire issue boils down to bias. Dev bias vs. ours (ie., those in opposition).
And that's ok; it's Beamdog's game to tweak, and their decision(s) to make.
But let's not get sidetracked by petty semantics and obfuscating rhetoric.
A spade is still a spade, even if you mislabel it out of ignorance.
P.S. Here's what happens when devs fixate on 'balancing' single-player games to the point of pedantry: (keep in mind the fun of D2 -- and BG2! -- is rooted firmly in its blithe favoritism towards its Protag)
Uhm. Items importing to the next game are NOT a bug. It's completely intentional. There's two ways to prove this: 1. Ever wondered what those Bronze, Silver, and Gold Pantaloons are for? You take them to a engineer in ToB that turns them into a suit of Armor that has a -10 AC and makes you look like a golem. He also gives you a crossbow and special bullets for it. 2. There's three options when importing characters in Multiplayer games. A. They just keep their stats/race/class. B. They keep stats/race/class, and experience. OR C. They keep stats/race/class, experience, AND ITEMS!
If devs really think item importing was a "bug" then please, resign from your "job" now. Not trying to be rude but that's just calling something a bug because you don't want to fix the bug in YOUR game that isn't allowing it.
EDIT: Just because someone took the time to fix your messup in mod form doesn't mean you leave the problem alone. A mod could easily be made that adds all of your few pieces of new content but you'd sue them for copyright infringement. It's not the players job to fix bugs on a game that they paid money on, it's the jobs of the people being paid to make/update the game.
Comments
1) Start a multiplayer session with a random character, just so he can bypass the loss of items. This character is of no importance, he/she is going to be deleted/replaced mere seconds later.
2) Save the game: In 1, when you find yourself outside Winthrop's; in 2, when you are free outside your cell. Quicksave works well.
3) Load game.
4) Create your serious character(s), import your "item stash" ones (i came up with this term). And load.
5) Allocate items as you wish. Export each and every character.
6) Repeat steps 1-3, import the characters with which you intend to play through the game, and you are good to go.
Troubleshooting: You might notice that upon the end of step 6, when you finally start game as you see fit and open inventories, that some items are missing. At least, i encountered this problem in BG1EE. Worry not, you can solve it. Just remember what your character carried and should have carried upon import, and keep spamming the sequence of load game-import character, until said character is finally imported with all items correctly, exactly as you had him/her prepared, before! And all of these, in multiplayer, not single!
Have fun! No way i was going to miss my items!
I never used that exploit myself, but if there is even one person that likes it, it should IMO remain in the game because it doesn't hurt anyone. Actually it is easier to just ignore it than take advantage of it.
Edit: to clarify I base the above on the fact that the chance to get the exploit by accident is practically null. People interested in it have to intentionally take certain actions to exploit it.
Changing the script from the opening cutscene to not remove your items is a mod--and a simple one, at that--that allows you to play the game the way you want to play, without requiring a game bug to do it. The mod does it better than the bug, because it doesn't require a set of steps after the game starts.
When a bug causes an exploit, the question isn't "Do people like this exploit"--if it were, we wouldn't have fixed the INTMOD.2da functionality--it's "Does this bug prevent the game from being perfect". We may not get to all of those bugs immediately, but if we identify one and we can fix it, to not fix it would be silly. (And since it's already been fixed, at this point, to unfix it would be intensely irresponsible at best.)
In this case, there's already a mod to let the people who liked the exploit achieve their desired behavior.
Also by removing this exploit you are taking away a user's freedom of choice without providing any benefit in exchange, and this is never good.
Finally, I find odd that with so many level A and level B bugs still plaguing the game, the developers are wasting time chasing and fixing harmless exploits.
I really think that to make the game better Beamdog/Overhaul should start prioritising and focusing on what it's really important, instead of chasing an unrealistic ideal of perfection. No wonder the patches are always late and the game is still full of bugs.
I won't address the implicit accusation in the rest of your post because it's not strictly relevant here; this exploit was closed at release, so it has no bearing on any other work we're doing now.
That being said, although @CamDawg has expressed an interest in continuing the discussion, I do have to put my foot down when it comes to personal attacks like the one on the previous page. If that sort of behavior comes up again I will close this thread.
Edit: Also mine wasn't meant to be an accusation, but constructive criticism.
Good job countering my argument with logic and reason. Well done.
@Erg
"I never used that exploit myself, but if there is even one person that likes it, it should IMO remain in the game because it doesn't hurt anyone. Actually it is easier to just ignore it than take advantage of it."
This, x1000. This is what it's all about.
@CamDawg
I understand why you're against introducing the exploit back into the game (even in a modified fashion like scattering the equipment around Chateau Irenicus), and you're right. You are. From a purely logical standpoint, one should always strive to purge the game of anything unintended. This was never the point of contention. But the gist of it is that there's a *bunch* of people who enjoy that particular bug (threads like this one pop up semi-frequently). And ignoring these players when you could so very easily please them (with a bare minimum of work) only shows you (not you personally, but *all* of you, as a dev team) value your own decisions (no matter how trivial) over the wants/needs of a moderate segment of your player base.
This is what killed Diablo 3. It's bad practice, all around. I'm sorry, but it just is. 'Fighting' your customers over trivial, inconsequential concessions which could be re-implemented without affecting the game at large only means you'll be that much more stubborn in the future when something of note and importance comes down the pipeline. Both Blizzard and Bioware are guilty of this. As indies, you can't afford it. You lack both the fanbase and accumulated clout to enforce your own personal quirks on the wider gaming population, especially since only a tiny sliver of said population is the main thing keeping your company financially solvent. Thus, you should make every effort to please your customers, as long as their wishes don't grossly distort your vision of the game or horribly skew its balance in an unintended direction (neither of which this exploit does).
That's what it boils down to.
In all honesty, if you're so adamant about enforcing your particular 'balance errything!!' views, then treat this exploit as an added feature; amend the starting area's script and have it take into account the difficulty setting - if set to Novice, scatter the equipment (either seeding it throughout Chateau Irenicus, or distributing it randomly across merchant inventories), if not, then just nuke it into oblivion. Problem solved. 'Hardcore' players get their challenging starting dungeon, and 'casuals' get to keep their hard-earned gear and cruise through the game without much trouble (because, hey, you can't defend and extoll the virtues of balance on a setting where the player sets his/her difficulty slider to the lowest possible option, hence demonstrating a need for a casual experience void of challenge - and what better way to help them along their way than granting them their BG1 stuff?). Win-win, everyone's happy. There is literally no sound argument against implementing this, except "...it grossly violates our ethics and snowflake-special subjective vision of the game!!".
Don't be like that, Beamdog. Don't. It killed Blizzard, and it's killing Bioware.
I want you guys to become very successful, and bring us many original IPs!
And one of the keys to success is knowing when to make concessions.
To recap:
- many people love the exploit
- said exploit doesn't wreck the game
- said exploit only skews game balance (albeit barely)
- BG2EE is a single player game (balance = exploitable)
- like Diablo 2, BG2 is about enjoying being a demigod
- those who want to cheat can, and will, regardless...
Yes, it's an emotional appeal, but the customer is always right.
Always.
DISCLAIMER:
As mentioned in my previous post, I don't have a bone in this fight.
I'm just playing devil's advocate! 3:)
P.S.
To anyone who wants their BG1 gear to pop up in Chateau Irenicus:
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/18688-bg2soa-items-mod/
This isn't about making concessions, it's about keeping the game true to its design. Adding this exploit back into the game would be a gross violation of that design. If you want to keep your gear (a cheat by any standard), then use the mod that lets you keep it.
What about people with modphobia? And trust me they seem to be a lot around these parts.
Now, I'm confused -p
I know about the mod, which is why I included it in my post for people who haven't come across it.
As far as concessions/exploits/design, let's just agree to disagree, alright?
I know I'm not gonna change anyone's mind with a couple of posts.
Game developers point to a goal, have objectives and they want to go toward a product which is as consistent as possible, avoiding everything that might be gamebreaking, that could break the game atmosphere or its challenge (which this is the case).
They can do a fine tuning as much as they can but they will never be able to satisfy everyone (that *bunch* of gamers, F.I.). If a developer team might ever be able to develop a game that could satisfy everyone, then all gamers in the world would play that game, but this will likely never happen, because everyone of us is different, even amongst rpg players, even amongst BG fans.
All of us here like this game, but each one of us likes it in a different way, and each one of us prefers certains features over the others and, being BG a really complex game with lots of elements, you'll understand that to please everyone is sadly almost impossible.
Here is where modder starts: to implement features that devs can't or won't officially implement.
@Erg: yeah, you're right, but you know that they will never implement mods that would break game rules, atmosphere, settings, challenge and over all the contract they have.
On the other hand they're working to allow this game to be as modder friendly as possible.
How it was before:
1) people that didn't like the exploit, could just ignore it. They were happy.
2) people that did like the exploit could use it. They were happy too.
3) everyone was happy
How it is now:
1) people that don't like the exploit are still happy.
2) people that like the exploit can't use it anymore. They aren't happy anymore.
3) Not everyone is happy, also because not everyone uses mods
The purpose of a game is not being perfect, but it is to entertain as many players as possible.
If one doesn't like to use a mod to add not considered, expected, provided, nor wanted features to the game, he unfortunately can't do anything but to accept the game as is.
At the end it all boils down on whether you consider this a bug or not. I hope I made clear why IMO it isn't a bug.
Which is what I was trying to touch upon in my last post--while feedback is important, immersion and gameplay are equally, if not more, important to a good game for all players. Discovering that I could bypass a major plot element pulled me entirely out of the game and story, which is a decidedly poor outcome. Err, no. If there's one thing @TvrtkoSvrdlar has nailed, it's that player happiness is important. My personal happiness is important insofar as it stems from pride in a fun game that people enjoy. The inclusion or exclusion of this is really not going to weigh on that too much. Again--this is inconsistent with the feedback we receive from players. The majority of feedback we receive wants us to stamp out exploits, not just the inconvenient ones. If you're truly concerned about Beamdog listening to customers (and not just, say, a vocal minority) then you'd be arguing the other side of this. Frankly, I'm not terribly concerned about balance--as you say, it's a single player game and, even in MP games, it's cooperative regardless. The Cloak was omitted from the original game for, likely, balance reasons. That it's not being added has more to do to the lack of a compelling reason for inclusion. Yeah, we could include it and rely on player self-regulation--but every instance we create where players need to self-regulate introduces another point in the game where we're pulling players out of the game, breaking immersion and the story narrative.
It happened because the way the code was written prevented the game to flow as intended, so technically is a bug.
@CamDawg: Yeah, I know that customers happiness is important, and my point was not that devs should not have the duty to satisfy the widest slice of their customers, but it was more focused on this particular feature request and the decisions a developers team must take to preserve their product while satisfying customers.
In this particular case that exploit was a bug and, as you said, the majority of BG players preferred to have a more consistent game, even if that meant to remove convenient exploits so, as the decision is taken, the player who doesn't like that decision and doesn't want to use mods to re-add the removed exploit can't do anything but accept the situation as is.
Edited because the last post came before mine while I was still writing. In one word: "ninjed".
Bro, it's not about what I want. *I* don't care, because *I* mod my own games.
What the entire issue *is* about is the fact that something was taken out, when it shouldn't have been.
The decision was entirely arbitrary, and stems from the fact that the devs though it was necessary.
It wasn't. I know it's their call, but hubris often leads to bigger problems down the line.
Especially when it manifests in infinitesimally small decisions like this bug fix.
Furthermore, @Erg already spelled it out for you:
- exploit working: purists don't use it (they're happy); cheaters do (they are, likewise, happy)
- exploit removed: purists can't use it (they're happy); cheaters want to, but can't (unhappy)
Do you understand? It literally solves nothing, and needlessly pisses off a bunch of people.
Even if it were to tick off just a single person -- just one! -- then that's 1 person too many!
I'm of the firm belief that concessions ought to be made to please consumers/customers.
Doubly so when said concessions don't in any way impact the quality of the product.
The devs obviously disagree(d). Fine, it's their call.
But please, stop trying to convince me it's about balance or game vision. It isn't. 'Balance' in BG2 is laughable, exploitable, and a non-factor. And anyone playing on anything easier than Core doesn't give a rat's ass about balance, as demonstrated by the fact they're actively gutting the game's difficulty and its challenge via moving the damn slider to the left (protip: a considerable portion of the BG2 fanbase consists of children and/or 'causuals' -- many among them older D&D-playing adults! -- who've never heard of mods like scsii, don't have a clue about general metagaming, won't ever think up and chain downright gamebreaking spell combos, and wouldn't know how to abuse an exploit if it smacked them right in the face).
The entire issue boils down to bias. Dev bias vs. ours (ie., those in opposition).
And that's ok; it's Beamdog's game to tweak, and their decision(s) to make.
But let's not get sidetracked by petty semantics and obfuscating rhetoric.
A spade is still a spade, even if you mislabel it out of ignorance.
P.S.
Here's what happens when devs fixate on 'balancing' single-player games to the point of pedantry:
(keep in mind the fun of D2 -- and BG2! -- is rooted firmly in its blithe favoritism towards its Protag)
1. Ever wondered what those Bronze, Silver, and Gold Pantaloons are for? You take them to a engineer in ToB that turns them into a suit of Armor that has a -10 AC and makes you look like a golem. He also gives you a crossbow and special bullets for it.
2. There's three options when importing characters in Multiplayer games. A. They just keep their stats/race/class. B. They keep stats/race/class, and experience. OR C. They keep stats/race/class, experience, AND ITEMS!
If devs really think item importing was a "bug" then please, resign from your "job" now. Not trying to be rude but that's just calling something a bug because you don't want to fix the bug in YOUR game that isn't allowing it.
EDIT: Just because someone took the time to fix your messup in mod form doesn't mean you leave the problem alone. A mod could easily be made that adds all of your few pieces of new content but you'd sue them for copyright infringement. It's not the players job to fix bugs on a game that they paid money on, it's the jobs of the people being paid to make/update the game.