Would you choose the 4 SoD NPCs or 4 BGEE NPCs to travel with in SoD?

billbisco

Some or all of the following NPCs will likely be non-joinable as a party member or won't last long as a party member:

Neglected BGEE NPCs: Imoen, Ajantis, Kivan, Coran, Yeslick, Alora, Garrick, Branwen, Xan, Faldorn, Quayle, Skie, Xzar, Montaron, Kagain, Shar-Teel, Eldoth, Tiax, Rasaad

If you were allowed a choice and had to choose between the two, would you travel SoD with the 4 SoD NPCs or 4 neglected BGEE NPCs?

billbisco

gangler said:

How are you choosing which of the BGEE NPC's are neglected?

Based off of the default NPC parties in SoD and the existing screenshots and trailer and Beamdog's secrecy of the voice actors.

billbisco

Xan isn't in the Neutral party, Neera is. Xan is not mentioned in the trailer nor is there any screenshot of him so far.

Faydark

I think you are confusing "default party if you don't import from BG:EE" with "the party you continue the game with from BG:EE".

My take on it is that if you import from BG:EE to SoD, you'll have the same party both games.

Gallowglass

FFS, @billbisco, all these polls and "petitions" are getting ridiculous. And annoying.

If you really must flood the forum with multiple polls per day, then can't you at least even try to construct a balanced poll with fair preamble, unbiased questions, and a full range of possible answers?

When a poll is biased in its preamble, biased in its question wordings, and omits options which a large part of the audience might reasonably have chosen as their answer, then it's a junk poll which is utterly worthless as a measure of opinion, so you might as well not bother.

If you don't know how to construct a vaguely-sensible poll, then you should spare everyone else from all this junk polling by not doing it.

If you simply hate this game or its developers so much that you're wilfully flooding the forum with junk polls on purpose, then that'd make you a troll.

Dee

I agree that it's long past getting excessive, and in this case you're apparently creating this poll in order to fuel the discussion in another poll. A number of polls isn't against the rules, but a number of polls about the same thing is spam.

miker60

For SoD I'd rather have them design some new NPC's to fill out the new area you will be visiting.

But in the approach to designing BGEE if you had asked me "Would you rather have Beamdog design 4 new NPC's or would you rather have them expand the content and personalities of underserved BGEE characters?" I'd most likely chose the later if I could only have 1. We've been with characters BG characters for over 15 years. They have personalities bubbling under the surface that seem ripe to be expanded and given the 'BG2 NPC' treatment.

I understand why NEW NPCS!!! is a better selling point than "Expanded Dialogues and Romantic possibilities for 15 year old characters" But Dorn, Rasaad, Neera could have been expanded versions of Shar-Teel, Kivan, and Xan (to pick some characters of comparable class and alignment ) and I'd have been just as happy.

BTW Fan modders have done a great job expanding the personalities and dialogue options for these characters so its not like there is NO way to get more content for them.

billbisco

@Faydark Yes Phil Daigle did say that you could import your BGEE party, but that will likely be limited to the NPCs among the Canon game start list. I strongly suspect the neglected NPCs will either actually not transfer over or will quickly leave the party in some fashion. Apparently from a screenshot there is a Skie's plan quest. Skie has likely downgraded into being a quest giver.

@Gallowglass Would you please stop with the offtopic ad hominems. If you think there's a better poll option, please tell me. Remember, how I re-created a poll to add an option you wanted?

@Dee This poll is about people's preferences of current vs new NPCs. Please impute good motive.

deltago

We do not know enough about the new NPCs to answer correctly.

My first playthrough I'm BG2:EE, I wanted to try out Hexxat and ended up killing her as soon as I met her. So it is impossible to answer.

And once again, if a NPC is written out in a believable way for SoD, I am ok with them not being in the game till the end.

Anything before we know more aboit these characters is pure speculation.

Gallowglass

billbisco said:

I strongly suspect the neglected NPCs will either actually not transfer over or will quickly leave the party in some fashion.

I think it's clearly stated that all will transfer. But yes, it seems likely that several will promptly retire. However, we don't yet know for sure.

billbisco said:

Would you please stop with the offtopic ad hominems.

Would you please stop the junk polling?

billbisco said:

If you think there's a better poll option, please tell me. Remember, how I re-created a poll to add an option you wanted?

No, it's waste of my time and everyone else's. One time, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, pointing out an extra option, on the supposition that in a burst of enthusiasm you had over-looked that some people might have a different view. Since then, you've launched loads more junk polls, all of which are absurdly flawed nonsense, not properly-constructed polls, so it's obvious that you've no clue how to make a poll and should be discouraged from doing it.

Look, if you've got an opinion, just contribute to a discussion thread, or start a new thread if it's a new topic. (ONE thread per topic, please!) You're irritating the heck out of me (and several others are also sounding pretty annoyed) by flooding us with junk polls. You are not the only user here, and this forum isn't your private play-pen, it's a shared resource for all of us, which you are abusing.

billbisco said:

@Dee This poll is about people's preferences of current vs new NPCs. Please impute good motive.

Classic troll excuse!

shawne

You are using these polls as a way of expressing what you think the devs should do (make Voghiln a dwarf! Boost BG1 NPCs! Add a Noober!), because you seem to think that if three or four people agree with you it will magically happen. The creative decisions have already been made. You have no power here. Begone before someone drops a house on you.

O_Bruce

Question! Since SoD isn't out yet....

How should I know?

Permidion_Stark

On the first playthrough I will almost certainly travel with NPCs from the original game (assuming that is possible) because the main reason I want the expansion is so I can spend more time with those guys.

Erstarrung

billbisco said:

@Dee This poll is about people's preferences of current vs new NPCs.

No, it's not. It's an addendum to your "Petition to Allow Game Completion with NPCs of Choice". To actually have a preference, one would have to compare the two choices, which no one (other than the developers, that is) can at the moment as we simply don't know enough to actually compare. The question you actually ask is - in an unbiased choice of words -: "Without having any idea at all how the new NPCs will be implemented (mechanically-wise, story-wise, and personality-wise), and without having the faintest idea if and how the 'old' BG1 NPCs will be implemented (mechanically-wise, story-wise, and personality-wise), and without the slightest idea how the 'old' BG1 NPCs, if implemented as (potential) party-members, would turn out (mechanically-wise, story-wise, and personality-wise), and if you were only allowed a single playthrough where you could only take either 4 'old' BG1 NPCs or the 4 new NPCs, but without mixing them, could you then still guess if you would prefer the 4 'old' BG1 NPCs or the 4 new NPCs?"
This is (in my opinion) a pretty silly question, but this is what you ask nonetheless.

And, by the way, just because a NPC has his/her own agenda and has perhaps something better to do than follow CHARNAME in his/her wind shadow doesn't make this NPC 'neglected', but mayhap adds to the credibility to the game world (as the world doesn't solely revolve around CHARNAME) and thus furthens immersion.

So, summarised, you start a poll (and a new thread) for a question nobody can earnestly answer, with a biased choice of words ('neglected', the way the question is feigning candour), leave out obvious poll options ('I will make more than one playthrough and try both', 'I will mix both new and old NPCs', 'I can't choose, because I don't know enough about how the new NPCs wil turn out (and how the old ones will)'), and all that because you hope it may furthen your petition you made in another thread. Go to that thread, make your(!) arguments why you(!) believe letting you finish Siege of Dragonspear with any NPC you want is the only way to go, and if you're coming up with sensible requests and / or valid and convincing reasons, I'm sure that a) a lot of people will choose the appropiate petition option and b) Beamdog will try their best to implement it (as it is in their own best interest to build a game as excellent as possible), but, for Christ's sake, please stop spamming the forums with numerous threads with basically the same content ('I want to play the game with any NPC appearing in BG1')! (And, coming to think of it, that may well be what @Gallowglass tried to tell you, too.)