SCS for IWDEE is worth paying for; we should support DavidW
Ygramul
Member Posts: 1,060
@DavidW
In full seriousness: I am willing to pay for IWDEE/SCS, as I'm sure many others. $20-30 sounds like a reasonable suggested donation price to me, if you accept donations. Perhaps, if 1000 supporters do this, it will make it worth your while (and you can still keep it free for everyone else).
Here is why SCS is worth the support for anyone who may be reading this thread:
I played BG/BG2 for upwards of 1000+ hours over the last several years. It is inconceivable for me to do so without SCS. SCS represents the best tactical AI of any RPG anywhere. Period. This includes the likes of Dragon Age, NWN, Witcher etc. For a game of such enormous complexity it is to be regarded as a work of art. It is clearly a labor of love.
In terms of shear gameplay value, SCS granted me hundreds of hours of fine gaming. This is worth the price of a DLC, at least. More than most full price AA games in terms of play time for me, in fact.
In contrast, IWDEE has been a disappointment for me: I purchased it on day one, but never finished it. It is too easy. Artificially making it difficult (insane etc.) is useless and is not as satisfying as an AI upgrade such as SCS.
IWDEE without SCS is like playing chess on a shinier board, but with your idiot neighbor instead of your well-matched nemesis opponent.
So, please tell us how we can support you and make this all worth your while. Infinity engine games are rarities. They will not be replaced anytime soon. (Pillars of Eternity, for example, is a dud as a tactical RPG: interesting story maybe, but lousy AI/gameplay compared to BG/BG2/IWD.)
Help us help you.
In full seriousness: I am willing to pay for IWDEE/SCS, as I'm sure many others. $20-30 sounds like a reasonable suggested donation price to me, if you accept donations. Perhaps, if 1000 supporters do this, it will make it worth your while (and you can still keep it free for everyone else).
Here is why SCS is worth the support for anyone who may be reading this thread:
I played BG/BG2 for upwards of 1000+ hours over the last several years. It is inconceivable for me to do so without SCS. SCS represents the best tactical AI of any RPG anywhere. Period. This includes the likes of Dragon Age, NWN, Witcher etc. For a game of such enormous complexity it is to be regarded as a work of art. It is clearly a labor of love.
In terms of shear gameplay value, SCS granted me hundreds of hours of fine gaming. This is worth the price of a DLC, at least. More than most full price AA games in terms of play time for me, in fact.
In contrast, IWDEE has been a disappointment for me: I purchased it on day one, but never finished it. It is too easy. Artificially making it difficult (insane etc.) is useless and is not as satisfying as an AI upgrade such as SCS.
IWDEE without SCS is like playing chess on a shinier board, but with your idiot neighbor instead of your well-matched nemesis opponent.
So, please tell us how we can support you and make this all worth your while. Infinity engine games are rarities. They will not be replaced anytime soon. (Pillars of Eternity, for example, is a dud as a tactical RPG: interesting story maybe, but lousy AI/gameplay compared to BG/BG2/IWD.)
Help us help you.
4
Comments
1. It is voluntary contribution; *you* don't have to
2. I have hundreds of hours of gaming out of SCS [without SCS I would not play BG/BG2; to prove the point, I can't bring myself to play and finish IWD even once now, because of the pisspoor AI of the vanilla].
So, paying $20-30 for the best AI a tactical RPG ever received is essentially pennies-on-the-hour for my entertainment time. It's a bargain.
That's even worse. According to you the game balance was altered and I tend to agree with you.
Not only you paid 20$ to buy a game downgraded to some extent but you would like to pay anyone (or someone mentioned in the credits list) for the restoration of decent difficulty settings?
Moreover, paying for a mod supposedly means an available support and no modder provides a professional, long lasting support level.
BG/BG2 without SCS: total ~200 hours of gaming
BG/BG2 with SCS: 1000+ hours of gaming
For my money, SCS at any price is a bargain. I'm not saying it should be *sold*, I'm saying a volunteer contribution to encourage its further development and especially its expansion to IWDEE is a good investment if we can make it worth the while for the developer.
You can continue enjoying it for $0. That seems like a fair price for your time.
But, perhaps, our collective acknowledgment of the effort (and maybe combined with a little monetary incentive) may encourage continued development. Or even others contributing to further development.
That being said, I am not certain I would pay quite as much as $30. I'm worried about things like precedent etc. and also proportionality; while the ideological "worth" might be high, I am reluctant to transfer this 1:1 to monetary values.
Anyway, if there should arise a scenario where a reasonable monetary contribution could help a TTT come to fruition, I would absolutely be very interested.
After having seen dozens of CRPGs over the years that failed to exceed the satisfying complexity of BG series (including all peripheral efforts such as EE and SCS), one has to appreciate the efforts to preserve and extend what is being done.
Kudos again to all of you. I hope that IWDEE can also be similarly 'rescued' from the vanilla AI.
After all, the work put in does matter in some way. I would not want to "cheapen" the Beamdog team's efforts put into the EEs by paying more for a single mod made by a single person than for the entire game; of course, conversely I also do not want to diminish the importance of SCS, which cannot be overstated.
Tricky situation, which I suppose is what the whole mods-for-money debate is about.
I also respect that SCS has been his baby all this time.
If there is a tangible and productive way to facilitate community effort and other coders' contributions toward extending SCS for IWD, this would be most welcome for many people, I imagine.
Perhaps, @DavidW can tell us if he would be comfortable with such efforts or help the community chart a course toward them.
Infinity Engine games are classics. The chances are, in a decade we will still be playing them. One day they will be lauded in digital museums, I'd wager. I think it is unacceptable for today's gaming developers (I'm looking at you Pillars of Eternity!) to fail to significantly exceed what has been the baseline of AI coding for a decade already.
This would be effort well spent.