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Reflections on Metagaming in BG in Light of PoE

BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
edited March 2015 in Off-Topic
Hi, let me first say that I have not played PoE yet, because of real life money and budget issues. I want to play it, but I have to wait.

Second, I have started a new run of BG where I'm trying really hard to roleplay naturally and avoid metagaming.

I have been reading comments about the difficulty of combat and difficulty spikes in PoE.

I want to share reflections on my very sincere attempt to play BG as though I had not played before.

Here's the list in no particular order:

I am listening to Jaheira's urging that we should head towards Nashkel *at once.*. I assume this is the game's way of telling me that I need to go there, and that that place is for first level characters.

I am trying to talk to a lot of commoners and explore every house. I have been discouraged by the game from doing so, at least three times so far in Beregost. They accuse me of breaking and entering, even when the door was not locked. While that part is realistic, it strikes me as phony that there is apparently no such thing as knocking on doors to politely request an audience with a homeowner. The way it is would make me roleplay never entering any unmarked houses, and thus missing a huge amount of game content, and in fact that is what happened during my first few times to play, years ago.

I cheated a bit to get the scroll case from Firebead Elvenhair, just because I knew that, for some unfathomable reason, there is no other scroll case to be had in all of BG:EE. Otherwise, I would never have found Firebead, because I had already been discouraged by the game from going into unmarked houses.

I told Garrick, appropriately to my roleplaying about Jaheira's urgency, that we did not have time to hire ourselves out as bodyguards. Thus, I would never know that Garrick is a recruitable character, and I will never fight Silke. I don't see myself as ever having changed this behavior with good characters if I had not read somewhere about Garrick and Silke.

I had to kill Marl, because I politely offered to buy him a drink. Apparently he hates people who try to be nice to him. I did this for years of playing BG. I would have never known that he can be talked down without having read about it years later on the internet, because the "right" answers to do so are very counterintuitive to my roleplay style.

I will not be able to do the Perdue's shortsword quest, because I roleplayed naturally and gave him the "wrong" answer that I had not, in fact, seen any gnolls. Even though, that was the truth.

I deliberately walked into the Karlat ambush in the Red Sheaf Inn, because I know that in a new game, I would go into all inns to try to get information about quests. Only my years worth of skill with the game enabled me to survive, by using health potions, and at one point, running with my Charname outside because I was badly wounded by a single hit. I then had to get Jaheira, Khalid, and Imoen outside as well, and do some skillful kiting. If I were a BG noob, I'd probably reload a bunch of times and get slaughtered by Karlat. I'd likely be crying "Unfair! Bad game design!"

I did get a payoff by talking to everybody upstairs and down in the inns. I found the quest to go see Mirianne "on the east side of town." I've also found out about the Ulcaster Ruins and Firewine Bridge, and given Jaheira's insistence to go to Nashkel, I'd likely know better than to look for either of those places without leveling up first, and instead head for the "obvious" dungeon for first level characters. (*chuckle*, I'll post later about how that turns out. Kobold commandos and Mulahey for first level characters. Hmm.)

The insight I'm starting to get by being ruthlessly honest about Baldur's Gate, is that the game seems to be built from the ground up to kill you, even when you're doing everything "right". That means lots of reloads.

I'm thinking our current minimal and no reload culture surrounding BG must have arisen as a way to restore challenge to the game after having played enough to know everything that is going to happen in advance, and that SCS is the grandchild of that.

Meanwhile, based on what I'm reading about PoE, it is very similar in its desire to kill new players. I bet in a few years, people will be wanting to design an SCS equivalent in an attempt to make it challenging, because it's way too easy.

I also think that most people are fooling themselves if they think they're not using metaknowledge to make a game easy, after the very first time they've played. There is only *one* first run. Even a good RPG is going to be hopelessly easy after that.

I've put this thread in off-topic because of the possible PoE connection, but I may post more later about my attempts to play BG with self-forced avoidance of metagaming. I expect to start dying more and more the further I get.
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Comments

  • SilverstarSilverstar Member Posts: 2,207
    ... I still don't get people's aversion to reloading or love of "Iron Man Mode". *shrug*

    But yes. Baldur's Gate is mean. It wants you to die. Or so it would seem from today's perspective. Maybe it isn't actually so much that Baldur's Gate is mean or hard. I think it's more that games these days are easy. There's checkpoints/autosaves all over the place, regenerating health, crafted gear, downloadable content gear, tutorials for everything, no friendly fire... Basically modern games coddles the player on top of not being particularily challenging in the first place.

    I wouldn't say PoE is hard, but it's definitely very similar to Baldur's Gate. Early on you're squishy. If you rush into battles without any sort of strategy you're likely to die. If you don't pay attention to what your enemies are doing, you die. If you don't learn and understand the mechanics you'll have a much harder time. It's still a lot easier to get into than Baldur's Gate though since you have a useful glossary for the rules and can check tooltips on most stats, but it still punishes you if you try to play it like some hack and slash arcade game.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    With respect, I think that a lot of what you state as "The right" thing to do is highly subjective.

    Going into houses uninvited is one thing. You only get discouraged if you start rooting around in someone's chests and drawers and taking stuff. Otherwise, in what way are you discouraged from entering (unless the door is locked in the first place) any more brusquely than if you were a door to door salesperson?

    Regarding the Marl situation, You may play a character who is painstakingly nice regardless of the situation and therefore think that the only solution is to buy everyone a round of drinks. You can still be "Nice" and give the guy a dose of reality. He is after all a drunk who accosts you for no other reason than you happen to be adventurers. Clearly he didn't know his son at all and could do with someone setting the record straight such that he doesn't have another kid and treat them accordingly.

    Garrick is a different situation entirely. You can balance the "Urgency" of Jaheira saying that you need to head south right way, with the fact that without coin, you won't get very far. The nature and presentation of Garrick is that of someone who needs guards "For an afternoon", not for weeks. Picking up a few extra coins so long as it doesn't seriously derail you from your path is perfectly legit in my book.
  • iKrivetkoiKrivetko Member Posts: 934
    edited March 2015
    Silverstar said:

    It's still a lot easier to get into than Baldur's Gate though since you have a useful glossary for the rules and can check tooltips on most stats

    I would disagree. ADnD mechanics are much more straightforward and simple than those of PoE. If you read through the manual, you are good to go. PoE fails to explain a lot about how things work. Can hits converted from grazes be in turn converted to crits? What are the numerical values for attack speed on weapons? How do Faith and Conviction's bonuses change based on the behaviour? Where can I find a thorough list of talents, and at what level are they available? What does "low endurance" mean for death's usher and bloody massacre? Do graze-to-hit and similar bonuses stack multiplicatively or additively?

    And I haven't even done any research on spellcasters yet, but I can already bet that it will be messy as well.
    Post edited by iKrivetko on
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Aside from my first 5 or 6 hours, I didn't find the first Baldur's Gate to be nearly as hard as it was made out to be (BG2 and IWD are a different matter). The challenge in Baldur's Gate the first time you pick it up is simply learning how the AD&D rules were applied and just what the hell was going on with combat and inventory management. Once you get that down, and learn to utilize Sleep spells and Cleric buffs, things don't seem nearly as intimidating.

    Pillars is essentially closer to IWD2 and NWN2 in it's stat system, but it is original, and the tooltips are necessary because it IS tougher to pick up than even THACO (and my first introduction to that system was BG).
  • iKrivetkoiKrivetko Member Posts: 934
    The stat system in PoE is as different from 3e as it is from 2e. The only thing that it has in common with 3e is that the bonuses are linear.
  • HeindrichHeindrich Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
    jjstraka34 said:

    Aside from my first 5 or 6 hours, I didn't find the first Baldur's Gate to be nearly as hard as it was made out to be (BG2 and IWD are a different matter). The challenge in Baldur's Gate the first time you pick it up is simply learning how the AD&D rules were applied and just what the hell was going on with combat and inventory management. Once you get that down, and learn to utilize Sleep spells and Cleric buffs, things don't seem nearly as intimidating.

    Pillars is essentially closer to IWD2 and NWN2 in it's stat system, but it is original, and the tooltips are necessary because it IS tougher to pick up than even THACO (and my first introduction to that system was BG).

    @jjstraka34 As often is the case, it depends on how you play. In my opinion, BG2 is much more complicated than BG1, but much easier overall. I define difficulty by how many reloads it takes me to complete the game, and BG1 gives you such little room for error that many cases of mistakes or misfortune ends in a reload. It's amazing the number of times things went horribly wrong due to a single Ghast Holding Charname!
  • woowoovoodoowoowoovoodoo Member Posts: 150
    bengoshi said:

    I hear you, @BelgarathMTH .

    Right now, playing on a hard difficulty, it's absolutely impossible to go through the game without reloads.

    Agree, I wanted to have a no-reload Hard playthough, but was urged to reconsider that decision and am playing just on Hard now. It is maybe possible with a few additional tanky hirelings made specially for that purpose, but it does not quite fit my notion of fun.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    edited March 2015
    Heindrich said:

    jjstraka34 said:

    Aside from my first 5 or 6 hours, I didn't find the first Baldur's Gate to be nearly as hard as it was made out to be (BG2 and IWD are a different matter). The challenge in Baldur's Gate the first time you pick it up is simply learning how the AD&D rules were applied and just what the hell was going on with combat and inventory management. Once you get that down, and learn to utilize Sleep spells and Cleric buffs, things don't seem nearly as intimidating.

    Pillars is essentially closer to IWD2 and NWN2 in it's stat system, but it is original, and the tooltips are necessary because it IS tougher to pick up than even THACO (and my first introduction to that system was BG).

    @jjstraka34 As often is the case, it depends on how you play. In my opinion, BG2 is much more complicated than BG1, but much easier overall. I define difficulty by how many reloads it takes me to complete the game, and BG1 gives you such little room for error that many cases of mistakes or misfortune ends in a reload. It's amazing the number of times things went horribly wrong due to a single Ghast Holding Charname!
    Just to throw in my two cents here. I think a big part of this is that, having played through BG1, you are already over SIGNIFICANT hurdles in the learning curve. You know quite a bit about the combat and how it plays out. You've probably figured out strategies that work with the lower level spells. The only thing you need to learn going into BG2 is how to deal with the mid/high level spells and more effective resource management. Ok, not ALL of it, but a fair amount.

    Obviously, keeping Charname alive with (potentially) so few hit points that a single arrow will kill him/her is the other piece. Once you are in BG2, there are very few creatures that can 1-hit-kill your characters. You still have to learn to manage life expectancy, but you are unlikely to die based on a single errant arrow. Death spell? That's something different, but even that is defensible.
  • SquireSquire Member Posts: 511
    Silverstar said:

    ... I still don't get people's aversion to reloading or love of "Iron Man Mode". *shrug*

    Neither do I! Apparently reloading is now considered a bad thing, and referred to as "savescumming".
    But yes. Baldur's Gate is mean. It wants you to die. Or so it would seem from today's perspective. Maybe it isn't actually so much that Baldur's Gate is mean or hard. I think it's more that games these days are easy.
    True, but have you ever played an old game? We're talking long before 3d graphics, when hard disk drives were measured in megabytes, and surely nobody will ever need more than 100MB of disk space...ever played games from that era? Early FPS games, strategy games, shooting games, etc...they were very unforgiving. They would literally throw everything they had at you, and say "there you go, there's the situation. Deal with it or die! Oh, that guy hit you? Tough luck, game over. Back to the start you go!". Modern games hold your hand a lot. :D
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,724
    Squire said:

    Apparently reloading is now considered a bad thing, and referred to as "savescumming".

    No, not at all. In fact, it's quite the opposite - the only thing that is considered normal is that everyone should play the game exactly the way he or she wants. If you like Ironman runs, go for it. If not, it's absolutely fine.

    No-reload and min-reload playthroughs can (but of course, not always) come as a way to enhance your interest in the game that you've beaten several times.
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  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    bengoshi said:

    Squire said:

    Apparently reloading is now considered a bad thing, and referred to as "savescumming".

    No, not at all. In fact, it's quite the opposite - the only thing that is considered normal is that everyone should play the game exactly the way he or she wants. If you like Ironman runs, go for it. If not, it's absolutely fine.

    No-reload and min-reload playthroughs can (but of course, not always) come as a way to enhance your interest in the game that you've beaten several times.
    Actually i've seen a number of comments about "Powerword Reload" that have been more than a little bit derogatory. "Some players" (not all) take an elitist attitude that if you can't beat a given situation without reloading several times you are not a good player. It's a whole thing.

    For me personally, I acknowledge that I am a fairly poor player. I play the game on normal or easy and if I need to reload to get a desired response? i do. If people think less of me for that? That's their loss. But yes, people do make an issue of it.
  • Son_of_ImoenSon_of_Imoen Member Posts: 1,806
    Me I'm far too much of a perfectionist to do a no reload run. One of my gripes about real-life is that it's a no reload run. I don't want my games to lack the ability to fix mistakes or mishaps as well.

    As for PoE, it's my chance to make good what I did wrong with BG vanilla. My first BG run was with walkthrough in hand for fear of the game being so unforgiving I'd ragequit what could be a wonderful game. Thus I alas spoilered myself for the first playthrough. Want to avoid that for PoE, so I should be careful not to read too much about the game.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    The randomizer mod actually fixes nearly ALL meta-gaming issues that make the game too familiar (assuming you don't read the text files that give you the detailed info). Personally, I just found it to make too little sense in most situations. You could end up with some godly piece of gear before hitting level 3, or you could struggle the whole game. Icewind Dale shook things up just enough. I'm not sure much (if at all) random Pillars is.
  • KilivitzKilivitz Member Posts: 1,459
    Shandyr said:

    If you go to a place because you think that's what the game wants you to do because that's the place for level 1 characters then it's some kind of metagaming. You make assumptions of the game design and how the game developers would want players to play the game and you base some of your ingame decisions upon this.

    Quoted for truth.

    I have a somewhat cynical point of view in this. I believe in the name of fun it's easier to just embrace metagaming instead of shunning it. BG, being a 17-year old game, has many limitations on how "hardcore" you can roleplay it.

    I read a lot of people complaining about certain aspects of the game "breaking immersion" and while I don't judge anyone for it, it's something I simply can't feel. I approach the game as a game, and I make decisions for my character walking a fine line between what feels in character and what makes my gaming experience more fun - there's a lot of satisfaction to be had in watching those XP points go up and your THAC0 and Armor Class going down - it speaks to a primal part of our brain not too differently from games like Candy Crush. And I'm fine with it.
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,724
    Well, all I can do is to declare that I, being a no-reloader, not even close to thinking that those who reload do something wrong:)
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    @bengoshi - that's very good to know. And as @Squire indicated, it doesn't seem to be "That" prevalent here, although there is some of that. Between "Of course you saved Melicamp. You reloaded a bunch of times" to "you are abusing the rest mechanic" to "X- spell or item is OP and should be banned from the game", there's a lot of people telling how other people can and should play the game.

    I really think that the meta-gaming that takes place (to go back on topic) primarily happens with those of us who know the game so well that we know what we are missing out on. Personally, if I could somehow hit the reset button on my brain such that I could play BG 1 and 2 as if I had never played them before, I'd be in heaven. If I could go to a place where I wouldn't know exactly what I would find in Beregost and I could see the game from that perspective again? I'd love to play it. And I wouldn't for one second "Miss" whatever content that I didn't know existed.

    And I think that is where this is coming from. Why settle for mundane weapons when you know that you CAN start out with a +1 dagger? why play inventory tetris with scrolls when you know there is a scroll case? Why stumble into the mines at level 2 when you know there's enough XP out there to make sure that you are at least level 4?

    I don't for a minute believe that BG was unwinnable without meta-gaming. I know that isn't the case because we (most of us) have won it without meta-gaming. We just know how tough it is and can be because we know all of the tricks. Oh for that marvelous reset button.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited April 2015
    Squire said:

    the_spyder said:


    Actually i've seen a number of comments about "Powerword Reload" that have been more than a little bit derogatory. "Some players" (not all) take an elitist attitude that if you can't beat a given situation without reloading several times you are not a good player. It's a whole thing.

    This elitism is a disease that's been affecting gamers for a long time. The other one they like to use is "carebear", which is a derogatory term for people who have no desire to participate in PVP combat.
    Exactly....this idea that if you can't (or aren't interested) in downing the hardest difficulty the game has to offer out of the box, or aren't willing to go one on one in PVP (even though you have less than zero interest in ANY type of player vs. player content) that you are some type of casual freak who might as well be playing Candy Crush.

    It's why I don't own a console, and wouldn't play a modern first person shooter to save my life. I have played alot of Blizzard games in the past, though the only one I stick with at this point in Diablo 3, because I appreciate the fact that they have allowed ONE of their games to remain a leisurely way to kill a few hordes of demons without having to think too hard, or worry about the skill or attitude of the person on the other end of the machine.

    I'm playing through Pillars of Eternity on Normal right now, and to be honest I'm finding it to be basically a breeze thus far, but the 2nd play through is going to be on Hard for certain. Any future plays of BG1 will includes SCS, though I haven't made that leap yet with BG2. One day it would be cool to have a "Ten Towns Tactics" mod for Icewind Dale, though it can be said that IWD has some pretty hefty difficulty options already built in.

  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    jjstraka34 said:

    or aren't willing to go one on one in PVP (even though you have less than zero interest in ANY type of player vs. player content) that you are some type of casual freak who might as well be playing Candy Crush.

    This at least is, I suspect, down to the maturity level of some gamers. I've encountered a fair amount of juvenile attitudes while playing Dark Souls 2 that turned out to be teen and pre-teen kids who didn't know any better and used the game as an outlet for their frustrations. I even had to drop out of a Facebook forum dedicated to one game because it was full of adolescent children bragging about how successfully they bullied other players (and these were not PvP, but actual Bullying).

    I "Hope" that type of anti-social behavior (not the PvP, but the rampant bullying and griefing of other players) is something that they will eventually grow out of. But then again I also believed in Santa Claus once in my life so...

    I'm not promoting consoles in any degree (although I love my PS4), but don't think that is the ONLY thing that you get from one. I've spent many an hour playing solo or cooperative games on my PS4 (and my PS3 before it) without ever encountering an issue. But yes, stay away from the FPS games that are mainly designed around multi-player. That genre of games more than most is rife with children (of all ages) who simply haven't learned how to play well with others.

  • SquireSquire Member Posts: 511
    edited April 2015
    Indeed. While I love playing multiplayer co-op, I don't want to compete against people on the internet because they are, quite simply, too damn good! People spend every waking hour playing one game alone, so that they can get really good at it. I just don't have the time, nor the desire, to commit that level of training to one game.

    That's not to say I haven't done PVP. I have. I played Unreal Tournament and Jedi Knight 2 a lot, and I've played a decent amount of Mount and Blade multiplayer as well (I was quite good at them, but never good enough to be a master and to compete at a professional level).

    But unless it's a game dedicated to multiplayer combat, and with no long term consequences for dying, I'm not interested in PVP. I don't want it in Elite, and I don't want it in Star Citizen. Apparently that makes me a "care bear", according to the gaming community, who seem to think they can make up their own rules and expect everybody to abide by them.

    Anyway, I think I've derailed this thread enough. ;) I think I've said what I want to, now back to the topic... I think a certain amount of metagaming is impossible to avoid. Some encounters, you just don't know are there until you're right in the middle of them, so how can you prepare? If it was the same map, you could scout out the area and spot it, but some of them (namely that one in the beholder caves when you emerge right in the middle of a massive group of beholders)...there is no way you can prepare for that without pre-empting it, because you simply can't know that it's coming.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited April 2015
    Please don't worry about "being off topic" in my thread. I haven't seen a single post that I consider off my topic intention, and I am absolutely fascinated by the high quality of discussion about exactly the topic I had in mind when I made this thread.

    I got into a philosophical mood about D&D inspired crpg's, because of several posts I had read about the high difficulty and need for constant reloading and restarting in PoE, and that in turn got me to thinking about the whole "no-metagaming, no-reloading, powergame-or-else, play-with-SCS-with-both-hands-tied-and-a-blindfold, you-do-it-our-way-or-you're-an-awful-player-and-you-should-be-ashamed-to-post-here" kind of culture that I almost always see elsewhere, and sometimes see here in our own forum.

    The people here are unusually nice about it all, but the attitude is still there sometimes. And, just once in a while, I wonder if our community only stay nice about it because niceness is enforced here. Which is a kind of niceness-policing that I find to be *unbelievably* refreshing on the internet.

    If I haven't said it recently, thank you *so* much, @Dee and all the moderators here for creating what we have.

    Meanwhile, please, please, continue on with the kind of high-quality and thoughtful discussion I have seen in this thread so far, regarding reloading and the need for metagaming in both BG and PoE. No one ever needs to fear "being off-topic" in one my threads unless they are deliberately trying to disrupt the natural flow and evolution of the discussion inspired by my OP.
  • iKrivetkoiKrivetko Member Posts: 934
    Squire said:

    Indeed. While I love playing multiplayer co-op, I don't want to compete against people on the internet because they are, quite simply, too damn good! People spend every waking hour playing one game alone, so that they can get really good at it.

    As a seasoned dota player, I would say that the problem is generally quite the opposite. The amount of unskilled imbeciles is staggering.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    iKrivetko said:

    Squire said:

    Indeed. While I love playing multiplayer co-op, I don't want to compete against people on the internet because they are, quite simply, too damn good! People spend every waking hour playing one game alone, so that they can get really good at it.

    As a seasoned dota player, I would say that the problem is generally quite the opposite. The amount of unskilled imbeciles is staggering.
    I kind of get where @Squire was going with this though. In playing Dark Souls 2 as I have done recently, I am constantly being invaded by players who are superior to the game than myself. And this is actually due because quite a lot of players have actually built 'Grief' characters based on their knowledge of the game that are specifically designed to exploit weaknesses for otherwise good PvE characters.

    In the end, those that invade usually only are going to do so if they believe that they have a better than fair chance of defeating the 'Home' player. Sure, there are some that aren't very good. But I want to say that "Most" of the ones (at least in DkS2) who partake of PvP in its' more aggressive form ARE ringers.

    Or maybe I am just one of the a fore mentioned 'unskilled imbeciles'.
  • TuthTuth Member Posts: 233
    In terms of playing with people online, I have mixed opinion and experiences. On the one hand I enjoy playing with other people, especially co-op, or PvP in FPS games, but mostly older ones, from the Quake-Unreal series era. I'm not an expert in these type of games, but was quite good in my teenage years. Since I noticed that I'm not that good anymore, I try to focus on having fun, hence the co-op being my favourite right now. Even in the past, my focus was always to have fun.

    The bad experiences have come mainly from playing MMO and MOBA games. The former discouraged me to try no more of these type of games and when I decide to play some, I focus on playing solo. MOBA is a genre in which I came across the worst type of players' community, so many angry and rude people. Either you're getting yelled at, or you're face-palming while watching someone lose on purpose.

    Some people are very competetive, that's where the rage is coming from. I play to have a fun experience, exciting game, which means I'm ok with losing some games. Since the release of PoE, I quit playing MOBA games and probably won't make a comeback, maybe play some with friends.

    Now, in terms of metagaming in singleplayer games I learned to embrace it and play in some different ways. What I mostly did in the past, was to reload in order to see different options in dialogues, especially in Fallout and Planescape: Torment. It's really hard to force myself not to do it in Pillars of Eternity, but I'm successful so far. What I do with the games that I know however, is to play with some restrictions that are fun, introduce randomness and don't abuse reloading.

    The latter being the most important, if I misjudge, or mess something up I go with it and continue playing. That way there are consequences to the choices, just like it would be without the knowledge of the whole game. I try to play in a more immersive way, e.g. resting only when fatigued, no min-maxed PC, no prebuffing. In fact I never liked prebuffing, it feels so cheap in my opinion.

    I like randomness and I like rolling with dices to see the outcome. This can give some creative ways to change the game. From rolling the character, choice of party members, weapons and spells to the direction the party should go in the wilderness (I have a special compass dice for that). I imagine that if I did a playthrough (video, or written) of BG, people would be yelling at me for not choosing the obvious, best solutions, but I like that way of playing.

    Sadly there is no way to restore the first experience with the game, that's why I enjoy my playthrough of PoE without any spoilers, or meta knowledge. Though I like revisiting my favourite games many times, as BG and PS:T proves, even when I know the game.
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