Josh Sawyer's thoughts on IWD EE
Messi
Member Posts: 738
Thought this might interest a few people:
On Beamdog and Baldur's Gate
JS: That's cool! I thought the Enhanced Editions were really nice updates for the old games. It was really cool they came to tablets. As one of the main designers on Icewind Dale, seeing the BG2 kits in there destroy all the balance kind of made me a little sad. The BG2 kits are really powerful and Icewind Dale was kind of balanced around one thing.
But it was still really cool to see it with all the tech upgrades. Trent Oster obviously has a long background with the Baldur's Gate series, so it's cool they'll make more.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886976/pillars-of-eternity-josh-sawyer-talks-mods-pc-first-focus-big-head-mode-and-more.html?page=2
On Beamdog and Baldur's Gate
JS: That's cool! I thought the Enhanced Editions were really nice updates for the old games. It was really cool they came to tablets. As one of the main designers on Icewind Dale, seeing the BG2 kits in there destroy all the balance kind of made me a little sad. The BG2 kits are really powerful and Icewind Dale was kind of balanced around one thing.
But it was still really cool to see it with all the tech upgrades. Trent Oster obviously has a long background with the Baldur's Gate series, so it's cool they'll make more.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886976/pillars-of-eternity-josh-sawyer-talks-mods-pc-first-focus-big-head-mode-and-more.html?page=2
9
Comments
Also I don't even think the kits do all that much to affect the balance. I'd say the inclusion of the sorcerer along with the inclusion of new spells does way more in that regard.
Perhaps all those kits are not the primary culprits. Nevertheless I agree on the balance issue.
Don't get me wrong, not saying everything was perfect, but IWD was generally more balanced than BG was. Mages got to be good, but not nearly as good as BG2, though Thieves got the shortest end of the stick In IWD.
Bersenker : Unable to specialize in missile weapons is actually a flaw at early chapters , and bersenking ability has a limited duration. IMO it's balanced.
Kensai: Requires a lot of micromanagement , I don't think it's unbalanced if only experienced players can use it well.
Wizard Slayer: There aren't enough powerful spellcasters in the game to make it cheesy.
Archer: It gets pretty powerful, but it's inability to specialize in melee makes it balanced .
Stalker: It was already too powerful back in BG2, unless you were planning on wearing metal armor.
Cleric kits: They come with powerful abilities, but they're usable once per day, so I think it's no better than memorizing powerful spells.
Druid kits : I haven't tested those, in fact , my druid character is kitless, for roleplaying reasons.
Paladin kits: Paladin kits were already powerful back in BG2, they should have been balanced as a whole.
Wizard "kits": Same-o same-o
Sorcerer : They only as useful as the player that commands them. It's a balanced class.
Monk: Start weak, end up strong. Micromanaging.
Bard kits : Bard kits , even blades, are pretty balanced already. They can use weapons, but have weak thac0, can cast spells, but to a lesser extent. Their lore and song already existed back in IWD.
Thief kits: I think they've got the most balanced kits because their special abilities compromise their thieving skills .
But it didn't matter, because balance really doesn't matter, whatever some game designers may think.
Balance does matter.
It's the umbrella term for having fun and being viable with various combinations of classes/races/spells etc while neither destroying the challenge and turning it into a borefest and neither struggling to do the basic things.
That's why balance is important. It means that I won't regret picking this or that thing and being either crap/useless compared to other options or destroying the challenge of the game.
There shouldn't be a better option or choice. There should be a different option based on what you want to do.
If I made a class that had d12 for HP, had THAC0 of a Fighter and knew every spell in the game and cast like a Sorcerer it would be fun for a while.
Then it would destroy any challenge and make all the other classes crap and useless.
This is what balance means.
"Don't use it" is not an argument. If it's inside the game by default, people are going to use it. Especially new ones.
Unless you want your game and challenge to be steamrolled by design, you care about balance.
An unfair game is not fun. An RPG without challenge is not fun either, it's a boring chore.
By the way, the Debug console doesn't count as "intended for casual player use" either.
If it's not possible to make a bad choice, then the choice is meaningless.
The point of balance is to allow player choice. The point of balance is to allow variety without arbitrarily punishing some players and not others. In a balanced system, I can play a fighter or a wizard, and they're *different*, but neither is clearly better than the other. When game designers make everything the same in the name of balance, they're doing something wrong, because variety is the point of balance. But when game designers balance things poorly, they're doing something exactly as wrong, because if the game is balanced around one level of power, and I can unwittingly stumble into some other level of power, they've lowered the quality of my experience.
I think a few of the kits aren't really in keeping with the spirit of the story (A party led by a Barbarian will have some amusing dialogue choices in HoW) and if I were running this as a PNP campaign I would outlaw certain choices. But I don't believe any of them break the game too badly, and for a CRPG I think it's acceptable to say "don't like? Don't use..."
Given that 2nd edition DnD rules where never balanced, it simply isn't possible to make a balanced game and be faithful to those rules.
The myth of balance is why I have completly given up on MMOs. I really don't feel like my choices have any meaning.
It's what plagued 3E edition by putting "trap" choices, as I have heard in interviews. Paraphrasing.
Valid and balanced choices mean that if I want to experiment, I can make something work.
I make choices based on a concept and experimentation, not based on validity and power.
If there's a bad choice, then it shouldn't be there in the first place. Or it should be redesigned to make it valid.
And yes, ADnD wasn't balanced. But, you can make a game around those rules balanced.
When you introduce new stuff, yet you don't adjust the challenge (like in IwD:EE) you end up with spells and class abilities that steamroll the challenges of the game, because it wasn't changed to take them into account.
Here's an example:
Why make a Wizard Slayer and be forced to deal it's Cons when an Inquisitor or Monk is a far better mage slayer?
Both make the Wizard Slayer useless to what it's supposed to be the best at.
Or, why make a Shapeshifter, when the Totemic Druid and it's summons (at least in vanilla BG2) are far better and still enable you to cast spells?
Balanced means that the Wizard Slayer would be best at what it's supposed to be best at, yet it's not.
So you would have to make a choice not on power on what is best or worse, but what you want to play without feeling that you made a worse choice.
It would be like if IRL you had a group of jungle warriors who use spear and blow gun. Maybe they have an elite core of a dozen warriors who have some pretty amazing special attacks from very specialized training with their spears. We could probably classify that as a kit of "spear warriors" or "Chieftan's Guard" or some such. Well if these fearsome and proud warriors are suddenly faced with a group of AR15 equipped mercs hired to clear out their tribal lands this kit might quickly be seen as useless.
A lot of kits might be a lot like this. Or the opposite extreme, a very capable kit might not be available to everyone. In PNP the Cavalier kit was only available to Paladins who had a 15 in Strength, Dexterity AND Constitution. Like the requirements for Paladin weren't already tough enough! Only a very few, very elite characters could even think of having that kit (maybe like the Navy Seal kit!). I know in my own setting Cavalier was also only available to characters who belonged to a certain order of knighthood; that meant they had a very specific regional aspect to them. In that same setting there was also a "Noble Warrior" kit open to warriors with slightly less extreme ability requirements, that led to some lesser bonuses than the Cavalier had.
The point of all of this is just that the kit is ultimately about role playing. A player character will reasonably chose a character that will be useful and fun to play. But I never think that means every kit has to be equally viable, or even available to the player character. If someone wants to create the "God-like entity" kit with d20 hit dice; six weapon proficiencies at 1st level, an additional proficiency at every level thereafter and grand mastery available; magic resistance of 25% per level; and the ability to cast one spell per level of any type... Well I don't care. It's nothing to me. Except maybe as a joke, I have no desire to play such a thing. I'll stick with my Undead Hunter and Skald....
If you change ADnD to make it balanced, you have missed the point. It is a story telling game. Characters in stories are not balanced. Frodo is not as strong as Aragorn is any department. Aragorn is not as strong as Gandalf. In a (grown up) PnP game, for every player who wants to be a mighty warrior or powerful wizard there is someone who wants to be the incompetent thief or the hapless academic. As I have already pointed out, you could always steamroller IWD, or make it difficult, depending on your choices. The EE changed nothing in that department. For the same reason that you don't play on story mode.
And that's how it should be. The experience of playing a character with good scores in all key areas, and specialization in the "right" weapons, and access to the "best" spells will be different from playing a character who is handicapped in one or more areas. That's what makes playing different characters INTERESTING.
I'll copy-paste something else I've written on more or less this subject...
I would love to see an RPG take a risk and give you unbalanced companions and uneven quest difficulty to better reflect a world that isn't set up for you to gradually gain experience against steadily tougher enemies in a linear fashion until you can take on the big bad boss and save the day.
For example in BG you'd expect that Khalid and Jaheira, being experienced adventurers already, ought to be significantly stronger than Imoen or Charname at the start of the game, though the latter might gain experience faster thanks to their divine lineage. In terms of quests, you should get an idea of the difficulty of the quest from information available, and make your own decision on whether your party can handle it. So perhaps there might be a dragon hoarding a great treasure trove in a mountain near your starting town, but common sense would tell you that you should not annoy a dragon with a group of lv5 characters.
I think it should be okay that certain characters are always going to be stronger than others, because an organic and realistic world is not going to be perfectly balanced anyway. If you think about Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, neither the Fellowship of the Ring or the Quest of Erebor have "balanced" members, with Gandalf probably stronger than the rest of the company combined. I wish we could see that in an RPG some time, perhaps with a Gandalf-like super party member only showing up occasionally to help you.
For a BG example, you guys might think this is crazy, but I wish sorcerers could learn spells from scrolls as well as just learn new spells innately, because it makes no sense to me that somebody inherently magically talented is incapable of learning magic through mundane means like ordinary mages and bards. Of course this would make sorcerers no-brainer stronger than mages... but so what? I would still pick a mage if I wanted an learned "academic mage" and pick a sorcerer if I wanted a powerful cocky naturally gifted spellcaster. Similarly I am totally okay with an elf with hundreds of years of combat experience to be simply better than a young man whose martial experience is equivalent to a month in the life of an elf.
It's a very different kind of gaming experience. And it isn't for everyone. Hence why most games simply make a streamlined story or level enemies to you.
And, incidentally, I am a big fan of worlds that don't scale to your level. I don't think a rogue should be weaker than a mage of the same level, but if either one attacks the world's greatest swordsman, they're gonna go splat. Which, you'll note, is a story-based power differential.
The real balance problem with IWD has always been the way the difficulty slider worked. It should be "I'm finding this playthrough too easy, so I will increase the difficulty slider". But that increases the rate at which you earn xp, which can actually make things easier. It would be much better if increasing the difficulty decreased the rate at which xp is earned (and visa versa), without changing anything else.
Carry on!