Is there anyone else who hasn't bought it yet?
ghostowl
Member Posts: 171
This forum is obviously full of people who would most likely buy it, but are there anyone who didn't buy it yet? I didn't buy it yet, and I want to see the reasonings of other people who didn't as well.
Aside from the NPC / New Areas, I don't really have a big incentive to drop $25 (some other people might consider this amount 'little'. As for me, I have a ton of student debt, and I don't need to drop $20, $40 which add up QUICK)
I love how the new UI looks, don't give a damn about Black Pits, really glad they added quality NPCs, but what else is there?
Looking at complaints and other websites (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/258273-baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn/67844725 btw, I didn't post in that thread, there also seems to be game-breaking bugs at the moment: re-load = disappeared enemies)
The originals with patches were incredibly incredibly stable, but 2EE should be forgiven because it just came out.
The one huge thing I had hopes were for, were the developers fixing the kit problems "shapeshifter bugs, grandmastery bugs" or new kits, or HLAs, or at least higher level support for the kits they made in 1EE like Dragon Disciple and Sun Soul Monk
Obviously I'm a HUGE fan of the BG series but what incentives are there for veterans like me to purchase it? To those of you who HAVE bought it, what do you think the game did that really set itself apart from the originals?
Aside from the NPC / New Areas, I don't really have a big incentive to drop $25 (some other people might consider this amount 'little'. As for me, I have a ton of student debt, and I don't need to drop $20, $40 which add up QUICK)
I love how the new UI looks, don't give a damn about Black Pits, really glad they added quality NPCs, but what else is there?
Looking at complaints and other websites (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/258273-baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn/67844725 btw, I didn't post in that thread, there also seems to be game-breaking bugs at the moment: re-load = disappeared enemies)
The originals with patches were incredibly incredibly stable, but 2EE should be forgiven because it just came out.
The one huge thing I had hopes were for, were the developers fixing the kit problems "shapeshifter bugs, grandmastery bugs" or new kits, or HLAs, or at least higher level support for the kits they made in 1EE like Dragon Disciple and Sun Soul Monk
Obviously I'm a HUGE fan of the BG series but what incentives are there for veterans like me to purchase it? To those of you who HAVE bought it, what do you think the game did that really set itself apart from the originals?
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That's something I wouldn't do (though I'm sure AC4 is great), but as BG is my favourite game series of all time, I don't think twice about my $25 in this case.
Havent acquired bg2:ee yet. Bought bg1ee just few days ago when i was finaly sure it and its mods were as bug free as possible.
Im most definitely going to buy it. Just finishing bg1ee before i do and giving them time to patch any, if there are such, serious bugs.
Lack of adequate multi-platform support.
Bugs.
Mod support.
In the meantime, not being very much driven to finish my old Tutu campaigns, my attention has moved to all the other games I have. Rediscovered the fun of FPS-games and discovered I can deal with linearity after all ( plus story-driven FPS's take much less time to finish than an RPG, which is nice with a huge backlog).
I'm sure I'll return to BG one day and try out BG2EE, but I have the patience to wait for the time it will surely be on a sale. I've never spent more than €19,- on a game and don't intend do. I don't see added value in buying a game when it's fresh. Fresh means bugged and fresh means less online help and walkthroughs available if you get stuck and for games like BG, fresh means less mods available.
But meanwhile, I'm kept busy by Dragon Age:Origins and Awakenings, Fallout 3, Battlefield 3, some Medal of Honor games, Titan Quest, Classic Adventures for BG2 (vanilla), Imperium Romanum. Lots of other games to keep me busy till BG2EE is more bugfree, on sale and there's more mods compatible with it.
@ghostowl: Thank you VERY much for your polite way of approaching this. There are a lot of people who have put a LOT of time and effort into producing this game (MANY of them in a volunteer capacity) and posts like @Sliceofhell's above belittles that time and effort. You have my kudos for approaching this in a much more well mannered way than many of the forum denizens out there.
To answer your question, I did not hold off, but on the other hand, i'm one of those Volunteers and I believe in the work that was put into these games, so yea, I bought.
That said, gaming these days seems to be focused around the late 20 early 30 somethings out there...those middle income folks with jobs for whom dropping $25 really isn't a concern. A lot of time I think developers do forget about the college kids...the ones with very little disposable income.
Kudos again to you for budgeting properly and knowing when to hold off and when to spend.
To address your original question, the largest reason to buy the EE version of the game is the lack of need to go to most of the mod packs. BG / BG2 was only a good engine (as opposed to a good game) with a metric boatload of mods installed to fix all of the major issues the game had...BG more so than BG2. One of the things you get with the purchase of the EE version is less hassle.
Following on that, there is yet another boatload of bugs and minor problems in BG/BG2...dialog issues, text issues, zone issues, etc...many of which have been fixed in the EE version.
When the devs say they've fixed over 400 or 700 or whatever bugs, they're not talking about bugs only in the EE code...most of those fixes happened in the original game engine and original game content. Which of these are fixed by the various major modpacks out there? I have no idea...
Personally I've filed a lot of bug reports, even the most insignificant are on doors that appear closed when opened and opened when closed. I've filed a boatload of bug reports on journal entries that don't appear in the journal or invalid/unreadable text entries that really needed to have some proper English applied to them. A team of a few people going through just the chapter 2 major quest testing filed something like 20 - 30 bug reports on the content on those quests. This is ALL problems from the original game, not bugs with the renderer or other stuff OverHaul has added.
Are these game breaking bugs? Some, but not many. Content Mods, like TUTU and others, fixed the vast majority of what NEEDED to be fixed for the game to be playable. However, I would almost be willing to bet money however that 90% of the 20 - 30 bugs found in just the chapter 2 major quest testing are all still there when all your mods are installed on the base game.
Just like your money example...a single drop of $25 may not be a big deal, but over time all those $25 drops add up to a really significant sum...so to do the bugfixes in the Enhanced Edition add up to something better than the sum of the various parts.
Many in the community here tend to expect perfection so they can find something to bitch about when anything goes wrong. They ignore all of the little things that individually don't add up to much, but taken together as a whole tend to add up to something pretty massive. People will throw out that the EE version isn't any different than this mod and that mod and this other mod applied to the base BG game in this way...and there's not a whole lot of a way to argue that...
After all, I can't very well link every one of the THOUSANDS of bug reports that have been filed against the regular games to refute it.
My argument of "Yea, well I appreciate that TUTU brought BG into BG2's engine and fixed a bunch of bugs, but in the EE version in quest A TUTU's missing a journal entry when you do this and we've fixed that so there!" doesn't hold a whole lot of water. For the last 15 years the BG series has been "roll your own". A collection of hacks and mods and other stuff that all put together created something playable. Everyone was kinda on their own for the quality of their own game...the vast majority of the players relegated to what really was a pretty buggy implementation what was a really really good game.
The challenge in answering your question of "why should I spend my $25" is that I can't throw out an updated feature in EE that is worth $25...I can't throw out 2 or even 3 updated features that is worth your $25. After all, in 15 years, the BG community has already created mods for pretty much any major feature you could add to the game. And, I'd suspect from your comment, you already know about all of them and have put a VERY large amount of your time and effort into picking the good mods from the crap (and there is A LOT of pure crap out there). Had someone decided to charge you $25 15 years ago for Tutu to bring BG into BG2's engine you'd have paid it in a heartbeat. You won't pay it now, however, because it's already there...at least for those of you who are technical enough and knowledgeable enough to know to go out and get this mod and that mod and this other mod and to suffer through the installation processes and hack these files and...
The truth is, for the non technical players of BG who don't want to go through this hassle, it's worth the cost. For those who are technical enough but aren't interested in suffering through the process: It's worth the cost.
For everyone else who the above doesn't catch, I believe the new content added to the game and the shear number of fixes make it worth the cost also...but that's a harder sell. After all in all aspects of life there is always a tradeoff between doing it yourself and paying to have someone else do it for you. If you enjoy tracking down, hunting down, and installing all of the various mods you need to get your GoG copy of BG to the point where it comes close to EE (close, not exact...I firmly believe you will NOT get as good a quality out of your hacked copy as you will EE but that's a debate for another time), so be it. Save the money and deal without the new features...nothing wrong with that.
If, on the other hand, you want a copy of what BG / BGII always should have been, without having to download 10s of mods from random websites around the world and figure out how and in what order to apply them, maybe there's something here for your money...and if not? There's always journal entries, door fixes and dialog issues...
And, did I mention all the new content?
I bought BG:EE as soon as it was on Steam, and I bought it on iPad 1 (it's unplayable on iPad 1, but we were warned that might be the case). Then I bought a decent Android tablet, it was after all a couple years since the iPad 1 had come out, and it was showing it's age (lots of apps wouldn't even allow installation on iPad 1). Hey, Android was Coming Soon!.
Now we're a year later, and still no Android BG:EE.
I'm not buying BG2:EE until Android BG:EE and BG2:EE are available. Then I'll get those, and BG2:EE on PC to further support the devs efforts. But I am really disappointed it has taken so long to get an Android version out, and this is really the only way I can express that disappointment adequately without resorting to spewing bile on the forums (which doesn't really help anyone). Allowing for the stop-work due to legal issues, even 6 months is really pushing the bounds of acceptability.
So, hurry up Overhaul, $75+ sitting here in my bank account waiting for you!
I don't regret buying it, in fact it's awesome, looks good and more content to burn the extra time.
But my only request is don't stop the support in fixing some nagging issues and constant patches importantly update the game with more features, tweaks and changes expressed by fans on regular basis.
For example:
Enemies still do not use doors to follow the party and just stick around till the line of sight takes them before the door blocks it and thats it!..They should access every pathway possible without tracking back or stick around for easy cheese tactics.
It's just stupid and my only reason to buy BG2:EE is to see some major improvements over such annoying details. Once you shut the door enemies dont even try to open and keep the watch as long as the Party is within the hearing distance.
I don't understand why is this still not implemented?
This is just one of many things that I have noticed in the gameworld not given any change considering so much time has passed out since original release.
Whenever I think about buying a new game, I tend to think about the experiences I've had in the past—assuming, of course, it's not the first game in a series, in which case I would look at other games made by that developer. My experience with the original games made getting the Enhanced Editions an easy buy. My experience with the developers behind it, disregarding their nametag (Beamdog), also made it an easy sale; some worked on the original.
There are bugs, absolutely. However, I would be quick to point out just about any modern game when the word 'bug' crops up. I can't even count the number of games, even on consoles (The Last of Us, for example), that have no bugs whatsoever; I cannot think of a single one in the last five years that has been flawless and bug-free. Where console games were once tested, re-tested, and tested again by a team of around 20-50 paid individuals, those games turned out almost flawless. Playstation and Nintendo64 games, for example. These days, however, games are more complex, but aside from that there is also easier access to them. Where people can download games, patches, DLC, there's no real rule that says everything has to be perfect for launch. On old consoles, everything had to be perfect, there was no patching process. If you found a bug and it affected a large enough group of people and the developer said they would fix it, it usually meant going out and ordering a new copy of the game with the most up-to-date box code. An example of this is that most people at the time didn't even realise that the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was patched twice and re-released.
In my experience with the public release of BG2:EE, I have yet to experience any crashes—even running it all day and putting my laptop into standby during the night. I have yet to actually play it past the starting cinematic, though, but my character is complaining about standing around. I left it there to test out the memory leak that was talked about in another thread, and so far haven't been able to detect anything untoward. I'm also running Intel, and I am delighted that the Intel rendering issue has been fixed. There is one glaring issue for me, and no one else seems to have reported it, with leaves me a little unsettled; but it is already being looked at.
In comparison, during the last two weeks I kept going back to the original game. Every time I started it up to check something, I would cringe. I cannot stand the low resolution anymore, I'm spoiled on the Enhanced Edition; part of the reason is the pixellation at low resolution, the other part is if the resolution is set too high the text is too small to read (my eyesight is not as good as it used to be). In the original, you could turn up the resolution, but that just made everything smaller and created a padded border around the menus. BG[2]:EE actually increases the resolution, the size of the text and icons, etc., to match. To me, that alone is worth it.
The Enhanced Editions, for me at least, are a huge improvement over the originals. Even with the bugs they currently have left to iron out.
Am quite happy. Hating on people for pointing out $25 is reasonable....I know about money being tight. I've been there. It's a question of what matters to you. If you want the game, you'll buy it.
I plan on playing through the whole game in a few days only for my first playthrough, so it will mean a few days without studying, which i probably won't be abble to do before christmass.
Financially I'm in the same boat as @ghostowl too, $25 here and there adds up and I still have games I've purchased that I haven't played. So I'm trying to exercise some self-control with regards to money.
I will probably get BG1: EE for myself this Christmas. The possibility of having two wild mages on a team excites and frightens me.
In fact after almost a year I find myself still enjoying much more BG1Tutu because it has less bugs and more mods.
Besides, BG1tutu, with the right mods, look nice on the native resolution of my laptop (1600x900) and I can read the text just fine. See for yourself:
About BG2EE, I'm appalled that the bug causing the disappearance of spawns on reload is still present. It clearly shows that BG2EE was released too early, so I will wait at least a dozen patches in the next few years before even considering a purchase.
Anyway, I paid to be a beta tester for all the last year for BG:EE, I will not do the same for BG2:EE..
I did not pre-order BG:EE and waited almost a year except now with the game BG2:EE release.
The fact that Developers have involved many Modders part of their bug fix team convinced me that this time the situation is not like BG:EE. Unfortunately bugs are there and what's really annoying about BG2:EE is that the old bugs are showing up which were already fixed by the modders in BG2 Fixpacks.
I was like shocked that despite the involvement of an effective Team the game still presents age old bugs here and there.
Although these bugs are not big number as previous BG:EE release but still they should have used the time to give a significant bug free release.
Anyways, the enhancements are worth the praise but the early these issues get resolved the better for us.
I am really missing my original modded bug free GOG BG2 game that runs equally better, if not as enhanced as BG2:EE.
Hopefully we don't have to wait too long!
and there's ALWAYS day one issues with ANY game. Just be patient and wait it out.