Bring coherence to items/quests events

kamuizin

Many items and quests in the game are knew by metagaming, with absolute NO reference to them outside the pre knowledge of the player about the stuff. Some examples for BG EE at the very start are the diamond in the tree on the first are outside of Candlekeep, the ring of protection on the south area of friendly arm inn and the ring of wizardry on the tree on friendly arm in outside area.

BG2 also have his share of metagaming only issues, as te vahalla's horn in the brige district, the twisted runes area on the brige district, staff of healing on the cemetery area among lots of other stuffs like this.


Can some banter's or common NPCs be introducted to the game to simply give a roleplay sense to the chance of getting these items instead of just go straight to them in reason of metagaming? Could they be not on their places until the proper NPC/quest start event is triggered off? After all to find a diamond inside a tree, you have to search the entire tree, at least this for example, should be seen as a hidden spot (purple) instead of openly to search.

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Dee

There's a reason people call these "easter egg" items. They're supposed to be hard to find.

Brude

In the area just outside Candlekeep, there's a nobleman near the cliffs. I'm almost positive that he will mention losing a gem if prompted the right way. I always assumed the diamond in the tree was his.

There was a mod awhile back that randomized the location of Easter egg items, which was great when you tired of metagaming.

kamuizin

Dee said:

There's a reason people call these "easter egg" items. They're supposed to be hard to find.

They are hard to find in the frist time you play the game @Dee, after that, they're the easiest to find. Random items are a cool tool but still the causal link is missed for many of these items.

meagloth

Sorry, wat?

What I'm getting is that you want the Easter egg items to be randomized, and for the NPC's to drop hints as to where they are ap you don't feel metagamy picking them up? I don't think you know what an Easter egg is. These are items hidden in the game so that they are very hard to find, and kept secret by the devs. Easter eggs are usually put in by devs just to have a little fun with the players. Your not technically supposed to find them. In vanilla bg, we didn't have a hint button, and tab didn't do anything, so you had to have the exact mouse coordinates to find these items, and it was a long and painstaking process. If you think it's cheesy then don't pick them up.

elminster

Brude said:

In the area just outside Candlekeep, there's a nobleman near the cliffs. I'm almost positive that he will mention losing a gem if prompted the right way. I always assumed the diamond in the tree was his.

Maybe in a mod but not in vanilla.

I don't think these items are that problematic from a roleplaying standpoint. I mean you don't know the full history of why various items you find in the game are located where they are, including items you find in chests or on people. Maybe roleplay it as though someone left them there as part of some kind of drop (maybe thieves looking to ditch the goods somewhere with the understanding that someone in their organization will pick them up later). Others, like the Ring of Wizardry or the scroll of Cloudkill, can probably be attributed to clumsiness. Though I'm not sure how one misplaces Ankheg mail.

kamuizin

meagloth said:

Sorry, wat?

What I'm getting is that you want the Easter egg items to be randomized, and for the NPC's to drop hints as to where they are ap you don't feel metagamy picking them up? I don't think you know what an Easter egg is. These are items hidden in the game so that they are very hard to find, and kept secret by the devs. Easter eggs are usually put in by devs just to have a little fun with the players. Your not technically supposed to find them. In vanilla bg, we didn't have a hint button, and tab didn't do anything, so you had to have the exact mouse coordinates to find these items, and it was a long and painstaking process. If you think it's cheesy then don't pick them up.

While the easter egg term was used, i doubt that most of the items i'm making reference are easter egg items. I believe that easter Egg items have to be based on fun contexts or put in the game in reference to other works.

What i raised here, is that some items in the game, most of them named, important or powerful, are in the game with absolutely no reference to their existance.

To name some of them:

The ring of protection +1 in the south of Friendly Arms Inn. The Wizard ring in the outside area of Friendly Arms Inn, The cloudkill scroll in the cloud peak area (or near) among others.

I don't point here items dropped as loot from someone you killed or inside a dungeon, these have at least minimal reason to be on those places.

From another side, isn't so hard to make the coherence that i ask. In the Friendly Arms Inn for example, the guy inside the Inn that state be a nephew of Ragefast (or the other mage), he could say that his uncle lost an important magical item the last time he was in Friendly Arms Inn. This is just an example of what i asked.

I hope to clarify enough with these explanations @Megaloth, to avoid any misunderstand that would lead my request to a wrong point of view. The don't like don't do justify, i ask you, humbly, to avoid call them in BG forums, nothing personal, but these statements tend to start serious flames everywhere they're used (saw this happen here MANY TIMES). From my side, i will just say that i disagree, i don't like AND i want to change, thus, i made an thread in feature request.

meagloth

Ok, I see. I so beleive, however, that all the items you name are called Easter eggs.

Dee

They're easter eggs specifically because they're hidden. There doesn't have to be any reference, any rhyme or reason for their being there; they're there because fifteen years ago the developers wanted to give players something to hunt for that they didn't want everyone to find.

Adding rumors or lines of dialogue pointing to them would defeat the purpose of having them there in the first place.

AstroBryGuy

Dee said:

They're easter eggs specifically because they're hidden. There doesn't have to be any reference, any rhyme or reason for their being there; they're there because fifteen years ago the developers wanted to give players something to hunt for that they didn't want everyone to find.

Adding rumors or lines of dialogue pointing to them would defeat the purpose of having them there in the first place.

Well, the auto-object highlighter pretty much does that anyway.

meagloth

AstroBryGuy said:

Dee said:

They're easter eggs specifically because they're hidden. There doesn't have to be any reference, any rhyme or reason for their being there; they're there because fifteen years ago the developers wanted to give players something to hunt for that they didn't want everyone to find.

Adding rumors or lines of dialogue pointing to them would defeat the purpose of having them there in the first place.

Well, the auto-object highlighter pretty much does that anyway.

And the larger buttons on the iPad. I accidentally found the cloudkill spell south of nashkel by tapping on it, with no prior knowledge of it even existing.

Asthner

kamuizin said:

(…) Can some banter's or common NPCs be introducted to the game to simply give a roleplay sense to the chance of getting these items instead of just go straight to them in reason of metagaming? (…)

What Dee said, but also: at least the Ring of Wizardry IS hinted at. And in no less than two places, if my memory serves me right.

kamuizin

Asthner said:

kamuizin said:

(…) Can some banter's or common NPCs be introducted to the game to simply give a roleplay sense to the chance of getting these items instead of just go straight to them in reason of metagaming? (…)

What Dee said, but also: at least the Ring of Wizardry IS hinted at. And in no less than two places, if my memory serves me right.

That i didn't knew. Would like to know, to add to my game rules (of get only items refered of at least).

Anyway @Dee, the thread got an conclusion, the items are then easter eggs from a major viewpoint and no change will come. Unless there are other topics anyone else want to discuss, i have no qualms in close this thread.

Asthner

I’m writing this for the third time, and the page keeps randomly refreshing on me. Enough, this time I’ll keep this short.

@kamuizin‌ I haven’t played for QUITE some time, so give me some slack here. But, from my memory, here’s where you can look for the references about the Ring of Wizardry:

1. Some rumor (can’t remember whether it was drinking-related, or heard from a commoner) mentioned that Bentley had built his fortune with the help of a magical ring – one he had seemed to misplace recently.

2. The manual mentions something similar about Bentley too afair.

I like such subtle references. No pointers “look there and there, and you’ll find that”. Just treasure hunting to check an unconfirmed rumor… And a nice feeling if you actually hit a jackpot.

As for the other items though, they’re just plain old easter eggs.

kamuizin

Some have nice references and quest related that doesn't need the item to be found, as the ring of fire resistance, stolen by a flaming fist recruit that we help (or give away for the reward). The Balduran's helm and shield were very nice quest related items, could get both from metagaming, but an entire quest was related to them, what was very nice.

Obs: from what i read for a while in internet, the cloak of balduran was supposed to be impoted to baldur's gate 2 if we exported an character in BG with it, no? I'm asking cos this never happen.