The Dragon Pit (Siege Pit/Spear Pit)?

RAM021

Our favourite parts of the EEs thus far have been the Black Pits. So if there is a chance there will be more Pit fighting action in Siege of Dragonspear so much the better! After all, no new Pits would be the pits...

Anyone else hoping?

Kamigoroshi

No.

But I want to see The Goblin Armpits.

Fardragon

Nope, would rather see all the effort go into telling one good story.

RAM021

Fardragon said:

Nope, would rather see all the effort go into telling one good story.

We would rather have an exciting dueling arena than a good story. If only there were a way that we could all get what we want...

Ignoring your selfishness, fortunately there is! The Dragon Pit need not detract from the story, just as the Black Pits did not detract from the EEs.

Ammar

RAM021 said:

Fardragon said:

Nope, would rather see all the effort go into telling one good story.

We would rather have an exciting dueling arena than a good story. If only there were a way that we could all get what we want...

Ignoring your selfishness, fortunately there is! The Dragon Pit need not detract from the story, just as the Black Pits did not detract from the EEs.

Untrue. Adding this will either mean less work on the other parts or a later release date and higher dev costs. In the same vein it is not clear if and how much the black pits detracted from the EEs.

billbisco

Yes, Dragon pit would be welcome. Also remake this topic with a poll. It's amazing the party of no we have here.

shawne

RAM021 said:

Ignoring your selfishness, fortunately there is! The Dragon Pit need not detract from the story, just as the Black Pits did not detract from the EEs.

You sure about that? Because if they'd spent less time on the Black Pits and more time on the EEs (like, say, allotting more than a single day to writing Dorn's romance), the BG2:EE content might not have been as uneven as it currently stands.

Schneidend

The arenas have been pretty interesting so far, so I wouldn't mind if they kept it up. Given that SoD is their first 100% homebrewed effort, though, it might be best for them to focus all brain power on that. Normally I'd scoff at the naive "detracts from main game" argument, especially when it is usually applied to AAA developers who have multiple teams working on different aspects of the same game. In Beamddog's case, however, I don't know if they have the human resources for that much delegation.

Unlike some of the rest of these folks, though, I don't have my head up my own ass and make hyperbolic assertions like the duration of work Overhaul spends on developing things with absolute smug certainty. Overhaul could very well have a B Team that nullifies these "detraction" concerns.

shawne

I'd love to know what that supposed B Team was doing when Hexxat's storyline was being put together, or when someone at Beamdog decided that there should be unbeatable bosses in three of the EE characters' questlines...

Schneidend

I haven't played all the way through BG2:EE yet, but Hexxat's character/story seem awesome so far, so I'm honestly not sure what you're on about. She's probably my favorite addition to the EEs as of yet.

Unbeatable bosses? I've evidently not encountered them yet, so I'll stay mum on that point.

spacejaws

billbisco said:

Yes, Dragon pit would be welcome. Also remake this topic with a poll. It's amazing the party of no we have here.

Lol you are too much man!

As to the topic I would love another Black Pits, even a full scale adventure revolving around the gladiators being hunted or touring Faerun tournaments and having stories in each locale.

But...I think we are getting enough content with Siege of Dragonspear to expect something akin to tge Black Pits. It was anice addon for the EE's as it was functional in the sense it allowed you to test different builds quickly with a neat little story.

Keep SoD they way it is. Add it in later if they have time but definetly not a priority.

Gallowglass

Personally, I've little interest in the Black Pits. I've completed BP1 and BP2 once each, to see what they were like, but haven't felt inspired to bother going back to re-play either. I like story and quests and so on, not just combat ... and when I want something more combat-orientated, I've got IWDee.

Nevertheless, each to his own. If Beamdog have established that there's a market for BP-style games, then fine, by all means let them cater to that market, and good luck to both the company and the players.

However, if it comes down to a contest for limited development resources between more development of games I like (i.e. BG!) and more development of other products, then (obviously!) I hope they'll spend their time and effort on what I prefer. SoD looks like being the sort of work I'm delighted to see them doing. ("Shut up and take my money!")

deltago

A second Black Pits add on that tells the story from when you stepped through the portal, to when you were recaptured in the bar.

But only after SoD comes out and given for free

kcwise

Ultimately, Beamdog has to decide where best to put their resources. If they decide to make a new Black Pits style adventure, I'll check it out. If they don't, I'll check out whatever they do offer.

Candramelekh

I don't want arena or "good story", i want lots of BG1like locations to explore!

RAM021

shawne said:

You sure about that? Because if they'd spent less time on the Black Pits and more time on the EEs (like, say, allotting more than a single day to writing Dorn's romance), the BG2:EE content might not have been as uneven as it currently stands.

All we can say is that in their interviews they stated that the Pits did NOT detract from their work on the game. One presumes they were telling the truth.

Ammar said:

Untrue. Adding this will either mean less work on the other parts or a later release date and higher dev costs. In the same vein it is not clear if and how much the black pits detracted from the EEs.

As such, unless they were lying, then yes it is true that The Dragon Pit need not detract from the story, just as the Black Pits did not detract from the EEs.

That said, many of you apparently seem to think Beamdog & Overhaul are incompetent so perhaps you also think they are liars...

Arcanis

@RAM021
I personally fear that this time it *would* detract them (maybe not at this stage though ^^)

This is my PERSONAL idea how it worked:
There work on BG & BG2 consitet of bug-fixes, some improvements and mostly designing & writing.
The Black Pits were a bit designing & writing and mostly balancing and creating enemies.
So the workloads was pretty different. But this time they are creating the game from scratch (not
the engine though, but they are still tinkering with that too) which needs all types of game developers,
so another instance of BP *would* mean that the dev teams would have more work (or that more ppl have
to work on it)
...I may have explained my thoughts a tad convoluted, sorry about that ^^'

Mhm... maybe an official could explain the work proccess, I'm kinda curious after all this ^^

RAM021

Arcanis - yes, that is a possibility; however, modern game design simply does not have everyone working on the same thing: it would be easy enough to have Dragon Pit development occur off-peak hours during debugging, etc. Something else to consider is that the Team is significantly larger than it was years ago when they first started...