I love BG 1 because of its down-to-earthness!
Akuro
Member Posts: 93
You know, one great aspect why I really love BG 1 is because even the simple things in it meant something.
Back in the days you didn't need to come up with a huge dragon just to entertain and challenge the godlike Bhaalspawn, no, an Ogre Magus or a Tanar-Ri were enough to frighten me horribly.
I remember the Deathknight in Durlags Tower - I thought "OH my..., a Deathknight, what am I gonna do?! ngglll *shudder*" Sadly, in BG 2 I was way to hardened, by that time Deathknights were just annoying Wannabes in my eyes.
The same goes for items and combat, too.
Every Sword +1 in BG1 was a little treasure for me, possessing the power to turn my skin into stone or being able to cast a fireball for the first time made me feel very special. Again, in BG2 a Sword +1 was just another example for all those "aha, okay, more valuable junk to sell at the next shopkeeper, get into my sack" thingies.
Being hit by a flame arrow - ouuch!
I remember how I felt when I recieved my first Full plate Mail...! Melee and archer enemies were more dangerous in BG1 than in BG2, anyway, things felt more balanced - sure, a wizard could cause havoc but so could a warrior with lots of hp!
As I said in the beginning of this post - everything was a little bit more toned down and I really like this!
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to complain about being too powerful in BG2 or some underpowered items / abilities / combat mechanics etc., there are only few things that cannot be undone/changed with modding and things in BG2 are simply a little bit different - that's just the way it is.
I'm just so glad about the revival of all this "rookie stuff" (items, monsters, spells etc.) from BG1 WITH the enhancements of the BG2 features (UI features, bags of bottomless holding etc.)
How about you?
Back in the days you didn't need to come up with a huge dragon just to entertain and challenge the godlike Bhaalspawn, no, an Ogre Magus or a Tanar-Ri were enough to frighten me horribly.
I remember the Deathknight in Durlags Tower - I thought "OH my..., a Deathknight, what am I gonna do?! ngglll *shudder*" Sadly, in BG 2 I was way to hardened, by that time Deathknights were just annoying Wannabes in my eyes.
The same goes for items and combat, too.
Every Sword +1 in BG1 was a little treasure for me, possessing the power to turn my skin into stone or being able to cast a fireball for the first time made me feel very special. Again, in BG2 a Sword +1 was just another example for all those "aha, okay, more valuable junk to sell at the next shopkeeper, get into my sack" thingies.
Being hit by a flame arrow - ouuch!
I remember how I felt when I recieved my first Full plate Mail...! Melee and archer enemies were more dangerous in BG1 than in BG2, anyway, things felt more balanced - sure, a wizard could cause havoc but so could a warrior with lots of hp!
As I said in the beginning of this post - everything was a little bit more toned down and I really like this!
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to complain about being too powerful in BG2 or some underpowered items / abilities / combat mechanics etc., there are only few things that cannot be undone/changed with modding and things in BG2 are simply a little bit different - that's just the way it is.
I'm just so glad about the revival of all this "rookie stuff" (items, monsters, spells etc.) from BG1 WITH the enhancements of the BG2 features (UI features, bags of bottomless holding etc.)
How about you?
32
Comments
Also, a dwarf fighter i had kept breaking his weapons, iron shortage certainly added an interesting mechanic which in turn made any magical +1 or otherwise very valuable.
The "everything is dangerous" feeling (even a pack of wulfes or Hobgoblins) and the "soiled iron" crisis made things very interesting and atmospheric!
*Everybody in the party gets hit by poisoned arrows.*
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- *reloads*
If you want to make bg2 and tob hard, fill the game with mindflayers.
But not just that, by bg2/tob, mages are stocked for everything. HLA's make it even easier. But lol, if only imoen was still a thief at the start of soa, i would get her the hla traps (time stop
but yeah, by tob, it's usually just a matter of if the dragon will get a chain crit and kill you in a matter of seconds. If not, not challenge. just my opinion, but it's why tob is my least favorite.
I've always enjoyed the 4-10 levels range in D&D games. They've always been the most compelling stage because you can typically beat really powerful monsters through strategy and yet even "level relative" battles require you to at least pay attention.
Atari really screwed everyone on this one, wouldn't even let the company who made it put out a patch for it, as it was deemed a failure and not worth the time or money. (Company of course tried anyways, died shortly thereafter)
Could have easily been the best D&D/RPG since BG 1 if the game meet it's full production and came out complete.
This also kind of reminds me of those days where a Raider in Fallout 1 did a 450 damage critical hit with an SMG >.<
Compare that to Skyrim where I'm just interchanging super hero outfits/spells/weapons and clicking on enemies once or twice until they die.
And when you finally beat one, that death groan - "uhhhuhhuhoggh" is about as close as I can onomatopoeiatically spell it. I hear it in my daydreams and in my subconscious mind all the time.
Ah, good times. For those of us in its generation of players, BG is a truly Jungian archetypal creator, projecting from us into the collective consciousness of humanity.
LOL, I do tend to go overboard in my thinking and wording after I've "had a few". It's Saturday night, and all.
I guess your doubts would come true if only the player has access to the new spells, classes, rules etc. - but I really hope that's not the case (and I doubt it).
Anyways I'm really looking forward to mod the game in order to make it much harder.
My plans:
- more believable economy
- deadlier combat
- improved healing (ranged healing, Healing Potions will restore a percentage of the user's health instead of a fixed amount etc.) in order to keep the pace with the deadlier combat
- using upcoming combat scripts from other modders
- balancing melee, archer & mage classes to make them all deadly
- deadlier posion, diseases & bleeding
etc.
Hell, that'll gonna be fun
By the way: Do you guys remember the lonesome fighter in the area of the Firewine Bridge who didn't wear any armor but almost always hit you with his sword in the duel?
When I was playing BG 2 and saw the Kensai class I thought "hey, back in BG 1 that could've been a Kensai"...
not sure why, but i always hated healing potions that heal a % rather then a set range. I don't think a potion should heal 8, but 6-8 or 8~12, what have you.
Not sure why, just seems it cheapens it. I have 175 hp, and this potion heals 18 hp where as when i had 8 hp, it barely healed 1...... maybe more real, but lol, i don't play games for realism
you other ideas sound good, but i'm curious about your 'realistic economy'. I can see that going at least 4 different ways off the top of my head.
I agree with everything you have said. I remember trying to tackle that ogre to get back somebody's belt or something... that was tough. Durlag's Tower challenged me many times. And that Balor in the TOTSC expansion... man just one balor challenged my entire level-capped party. I laugh at Balors in SOA and send them back to the Abyss.
Not to mention spells. Fireball and lightning bolt was devastating.
What bothered me about healing potions was that they became quite useless at some point. What's the point of using a pot that heals you for 15 HP when you have 160 HP if you die within the next seconds anyway?
The same goes for the healing spells. Although they were somewhat scaling with the caster's level, they became more and more weak as the party progressed.
Percentage healing values of spells and potions fix that problem and they even have another positive aspect: they keep the healing mechanisms balanced, because it's always a fixed percentage of your health that gets restored, no matter what level you are.
To cut a long story short:
my idea is to make potions more valuable and harder to come by, but also to make them more powerful but likewise balanced and enhance healing spells.
Concerning the economy:
the idea behind that is, just for the sake of realism, I don't want swords that cost 16,000 coins and I don't want a bunch of adventurers who carry 320,000 Gold with them - that's ridiculous!
My goal is to adapt the values of all BG 1 items to a realistic amount in order to make the game's economy feel more realistic.
A rare diamond as thick as your thumb sells for the same price as some bows made of wood? I don't think so...
Another point is that the amount of gold you loot from monsters is totally irrelevant at some point in the game because looting 20 or 50 gold is nothing in a world where a magic sword or an amulet costs 13,500 gold and I think that's a big flaw, too.
The solution:
1. Decrease the amount you get from merchants when you sell stuff and decrease the amount of gold items cost.
2. Bring the cost of items in balance to the amount of gold you loot from monsters, BUT nevertheless make money hard to come by.
3. Voilà: you have the feeling that monsterslaying and looting their gold actually has become rewarding, because you now can buy yourself a new magical helmet while in town *because* you took the risk of fighting that ogre mage two days ago, instead of just making your money by finding and selling magical items on a daily basis, which gives you an ridiculous huge amount of money.
I think you could look at the lighter potions of healing in different ways, like the potions are more for mages and thieves or when your party cant rest but is not being attacked, it adds the extra bits of health you may need to just escape. but I agree with some of yours points ^^
I find that having to rest too often spoils my immersion and my suspension of disbelief. So Cure Light Wounds and minor healing potions become very useful to me for maintaining realism.
I just installed a mod on my current SoA run that scales the spell "Goodberries" to heal 5 points of damage each at Jaheira's starting SoA level, and will eventually scale higher, I think to about 12 points per berry IIRC. I'm really enjoying Jaheira's having a second level healing spell that I'm actually finding rather useful.
*I have 80 HP*
Me: ... uuuuuuuuuuAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! *immediately uninstalls Fallout II and never plays again*
As far as making potions harder to come by, that will be alot of work. that will take a few days if you know where they all are, and a week if you don't.
As far as the economy, that doesn't sound bad, just would be nice if bronze, silver, gold and plat coins were implemented. That would be required to balance it out, otherwise prices are going to be unbalanced. Right now, a stack of arrows costs 1 gp, where as it should cost 1 bronze, imho. I think that's why you get thousands of gold, because that was teh best way they could keep it balanced. But i still agree with your economy, as it would take recoding alot of the game to implement brozne/silver/plat.
I also think the world of BG2 outclasses BG1. I loved the feel of the adventure and story more than I did with BG1. BG1 feels like a downgrade in so many ways. It's not that I didn't find it enjoyable and I love Sarevok as a villain (just not as much as I love Irenicus), but I enjoyed BG2 a lot more.
Though I should point out that I did pick up BG2 first and went back to BG1, so many things were bound to seem like a downgrade from my point of view.