*Spoiler-ish* exploit in ToB.
Sciobtha
Member Posts: 54
so in my first stop in Saradush, I noticed that the militia are constantly fighting fire giants. I suspect for the environment's sake of a siege. Near where Errard is standing, there is a fire giant constantly spawning behind a tower. He never seems to move, just shoots arrows at militia.
If you have enough returning items (firetooth +4, The Brick, returning dart, etc) you can position your party along that wall top. The giant triggers the enemy sighted effect and just pick ranged attacker script. The characters will attack the giant, he doesn't attack back and I have yet to get hit by a catapult round there. Each kill grabs 8k exp for nothing. I am still testing it, and made a save file just in case, but I left it running and went to work. I will see how much xp I have gotten when I get home. It is pretty hacky and sort of dripping with cheese, but meh...
If you have enough returning items (firetooth +4, The Brick, returning dart, etc) you can position your party along that wall top. The giant triggers the enemy sighted effect and just pick ranged attacker script. The characters will attack the giant, he doesn't attack back and I have yet to get hit by a catapult round there. Each kill grabs 8k exp for nothing. I am still testing it, and made a save file just in case, but I left it running and went to work. I will see how much xp I have gotten when I get home. It is pretty hacky and sort of dripping with cheese, but meh...
2
Comments
-make them perma invisible, even after attacking, with immunity to divination
-grant them %100 missile resistance (they take cover)
-or make them give reduced or zero xp upon kill:there is no danger involved, it is more like a shooting practise.
Yes, I definitely think it was just an oversight or a "we'll trust the community not to exploit" sort of thing as to why they let him be targetable via ranged weapons with an AI script.
Though maybe it was meant to be found and, if thought of from an RP standpoint, a character defending the walltop from a seemingly endless horde of enemies falls right in line with just about every fantasy story of a siege (helm's deep, Minas Tirith to name a couple from LOTR). XP works as they are actively attacking and getting better with their weapons, as well as with weapons they are not proficient in.
At least this way feels a bit more legit than hacking in xp, it is justifiable from an RP standpoint without saying that Torm decided to bestow 12 kajillion billion xp to your party out of nowhere lol
It should also be noted that the giants are not invisible, they do show up after killing them and the little bloodburst animation shows (at least for me), and they are targetable. They were just positioned behind the pillar, thus out of "click" reach with the mouse. The cheese bit is that they never seem to attack the party, just the militia if the 2 are in position.
That being said, such things remain always and forever a PERSONAL CHOICE. No judgement involved at all. You feel better abusing AI than using EEKeeper? You want to do it, do it. You don't, don't do it. It's not for me or anyone else to tell you it's "right" or "wrong". So there is no need for moral justification, either.
I would be curious as to where you source your point of referency for "legitimacy?"
lol maybe that would not be "effort" effort. How long would that take? a couple mouse clicks and a tidge of typing? Unless you are so computer illiterate that c:// blows your mind, then that would be serious effort, but in that case you shouldn't be downloading autowin.exe anyway right? lol
If you are having fun with it though then that's all that counts.
And continue to be fixed, in single-player or multiplayer. BG1 and BG2 counting, as well as every other game. Whether or not it's moral doesn't matter.
When it comes to exploits or bugs, it's obviously what the designers didn't intend to include therefore they are and should be fixed.
There's nothing more to really discuss.
Bugs + Exploits = Unintended = Need fixing.
Mods and the EEKeeper are irrelevant because the former are external modifications and the latter is a tool to edit the game, as well as using the console which is a Debug Tool.
Those are not parts of the original game.
Can we really assume they just didn't "feel" like fixing it? In a game so immaculately detailed that it has swarms of zealous followers over a decade after its creation?? Come on now, let's think just a bit.
The BGEEs fixed even more bugs and continue to do so.
Just because the game is old and a classic doesn't mean that it's perfect and absolutely bug/exploit-free.
Yeah, that seems reasonable.
I would suspect the designers thought if a player wanted to max lv so bad in the first area, then more power to them for running the game constantly for weeks on end.
That is assuming that you can do it without dying, not so easy a proposition, I assure you...
They often say something to the effect that it is ok if you do so in your own game, but only if you admit that you are indeed cheating. Perhaps wear a big red letter C on your chest… Then it’s ok, you know your shame, you have admitted it. Go forth and have fun.
Despite what the cheater police think, it is entirely possible for people to adjust their games in ways that make it more fun for themselves without being cheaters. Any adjustments made to the original game are not original content. Not “intended”. This includes such things as mods that make combat much more challenging.
Often I’ve noticed that those who are compelled to chastise others for making combat less challenging, find nothing wrong with making the combat in their own games more of a challenge. How is this any different? You are adjusting game play to a level that you personally enjoy. Strictly speaking, these adjustments are also “not intended”.
Just once I’d like to see someone post a thread about some little thing they found in the game that they are having fun with, without the cheater police swooping down to pass out the big letter Cs or the nerfing hammer.
I was really enjoying reading Sciobtha’s tale of what he had discovered in the game. The fun he was having with it really came through. Not for a minute did it make me think that he intended to make it a part of his normal game play. I’d be willing to bet that many people who read this will have fun smacking this monster around for a bit in their own games.
The original developers put a lot of work into these games, but they had fun too. Take Noobler, or Larry, Darryl and Darryl, for example. It’s not the least bit hard for me to believe that they might have left an exploit or two in the game just for people to have fun with.
Finding an RP justification for an exploit is a hallmark of the BG series; people have been doing it for over a decade, and I don't see anything wrong with it. I doubt @Sciobtha actually thinks this exploit is a part of the written Bhaalspawn story, but coming up with an explanation that gels with the game's existing narrative isn't just acceptable, it's expected.
Certainly it's a bug. You've got an invisible creature in the game that doesn't attack the player and can be defeated using the AI scripts with no risk to the player's party. That's obviously not "intended".
The question I would ask in this case is, has anyone ever encountered this bug when they weren't actively looking for it? If so, then it should be fixed one way or another. If not, then I would say it falls into the category of "acceptable loss".
However, the discussion has gone beyond that now. We're talking about things like developer intent now, and I think that is something you CAN have a discussion about. Whatever it is you're doing doesn't matter, but you can still talk about what you think is within intended use of game mechanics, and what isn't. Judgment-free, of course.
Also, illustrating the issue can help other people make a decision based on their own preference. Many people are unsure about such matters, and reading other people's opinions can help them decide. That is, after all, the whole reason why we're talking about this in the first place. If you take 30 seconds to kill a giant, you'll be at 8m XP earned in a bit over 8 hours, i.e. more like a good night's sleep or a day's work than "a month to maybe get close". And that's not accounting for XP you had when you came into ToB. Full party will take longer, but still nowhere near what you said. Also that is if you really do take 30 seconds to kill it, which you probably don't.
I'd be interested in hearing what amount of XP you think would be "reasonable" to gain from this, and why that amount instead of any other.
For example:
“Bethesda's Todd Howard says that the studio doesn't fix every bug that it finds. If a bug is entertaining and fixing it would make the game less fun, Bethesda will sometimes leave it in.”
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.310615-Bethesda-Sometimes-Doesnt-Fix-Entertaining-Bugs
Sometimes I think that it is a shame that some of these “bugs” that people have enjoyed in their own game for all these years get squashed. If the bug does not break a quest or some such thing, and requires the player to actively make choices to take advantage of it, who does it hurt?
Also, that is assuming that this issue at hand was, in fact, left in by the developers intentionally, and not, say, skipped in fixing because it was a low priority and ToB was extremely rushed to begin with (which we know for a fact it was, based on dev/ex-dev statements).
I think it would be fair to assume bugs being unintentional as the default position. I don't doubt that sometimes hilarious bugs can be left unfixed, but that would be a TINY minority, and for good reason.
This should probably be removed even though I like it. Yaga Shura's army is not infinite.
Knowing that the xp needed for the level up increases every time, we can stay positive and say we can get 2 more nights of a level per night per party member x6. After that it might take 2 nights for a level up, then 3 so we are already at 8 nights to get 5 levels (this is very optimistic). The rate only increases from there so yea, you might hit the level cap in a few weeks of this, assuming no druids in the party or multiclass.
@Ravenslight Thank you so much for stopping in, you eloquently expressed exactly what I was trying and failing to get across in every post.
So to summarize... it's fun, it is not game changing without weeks worth of overnight time investments, it doesn't prevent a quest... I fail to see the reason why so many have invested so much, emotionally to making sure I admit that I am the "cheating scum of the earth" ;P
Also it doesn't matter AT ALL even if XP did increase, because there is a total XP cap of 8m in ToB. As per-kill XP is also static, it is a completely linear function of time. No one is saying that. What you do is your business. However, you choosing to go this route does not mean it is an intended use of game mechanics. It also doesn't say anything about whether it wouldn't be easier and just as defensible to simply edit the XP in, skipping the hours of automated grinding where you're not actually playing anyway. This is not about morality, that is a pointless debate in a completely self-contained game that has no influence on anyone else.