I hate epilogue slides, just give me a animation ending the main story, pretending anymore happened without actually fleshing it out is pointless.
Well with games offering multiple ways you can impact the ending, if you had a unique animation for everyone of those choices..Oh boy that would be an expensive undertaking^^
Personally I enjoy those epilogue slides, even if they don't always look that pretty. A big plus if there's a good voice actor.
There should be no level cap whatsoever. I don't mean that it should be raised to 50 instead of 40 like some people seem to think I mean when I say it should be removed. I mean it should be completely removed so that if I want to put the time into playing until I'm level 50,000 (or more) I theoretically could. My point is that if it is necessary for there to be a cap, it should be so high above what anyone would actually do (or even could do if they had the time) that it effectively wouldn't exist as no one would ever get there even if they played dozens of BG playthroughs with the same character or spent a really long time mining XP.
As it is now, a solo game will result in reaching the level cap before even completing Shadows of Amn, which makes it really dis-interesting to continue to play beyond that without going through the added hassle of re-cycling the character's XP/levels via EE Keeper/Shadowkeeper.
It could be like how in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 the level cap is 99, yet in 16 years of playing that game the absolute highest level that I've ever had in it was 67 and that was in an unusually long game that lasted for several game years.
it would give people the chance to truly explore the classes available and those (like myself) that want to try a harder difficulty but also want to live.
i dont think anyone would become too OP since HP gains are capped at 3 after level 10.
i think the highest i got in BG was a mage around lvl 30ish and it took me a while, several BG/ToB games but it was great
I hate riddles. I never actually try to solve them. I just click on the 1st one in the list and try that. If it didn't work I go to the 2nd choice, then the 3rd and so forth.
They are just so tedious that I want nothing to do with them. Sometimes I would take fire damage for doing that, so I have my PC wear items that give him protection from fire and just completely ignore the downside of literally going down the list, or I just reload the game if necessary and pick the next potential riddle answer that way.
There should be no level cap whatsoever. I don't mean that it should be raised to 50 instead of 40 like some people seem to think I mean when I say it should be removed. I mean it should be completely removed so that if I want to put the time into playing until I'm level 50,000 (or more) I theoretically could. My point is that if it is necessary for there to be a cap, it should be so high above what anyone would actually do (or even could do if they had the time) that it effectively wouldn't exist as no one would ever get there even if they played dozens of BG playthroughs with the same character or spent a really long time mining XP.
As it is now, a solo game will result in reaching the level cap before even completing Shadows of Amn, which makes it really dis-interesting to continue to play beyond that without going through the added hassle of re-cycling the character's XP/levels via EE Keeper/Shadowkeeper.
It could be like how in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 the level cap is 99, yet in 16 years of playing that game the absolute highest level that I've ever had in it was 67 and that was in an unusually long game that lasted for several game years.
I agree, this is why i love f/m/t without cap, reaching 40/40/40 needs multiple playthroughs where i usually change romances and party.
Wow, such amazing exploration with leveled loot, enemies and equipment in dungeons that all look the same. Either caves, or mines or ancient ruins that have the same enemies and slightly different layout.
Bethesda simply took the lazy path and made everything slightly varied and leveled. While removing all the options from Morrowind that made it fun, such as teleportation and flying. I would assume for the sake of balance.
Congratulations Bethesda, you made Oblivion so balanced, that everything feels generic, lazy and boring. Nevermind the huge buttons that were optimized for consoles as well as the handholding, or ugly character creator or boring quests with one of the few exceptions being the Dark Brotherhood questline and a couple of others.
I haven't played Oblivion for a few years now, but I remember that it was substantially more difficult to find my way around inside the Underdark mod. I wanted to have a party in Oblivion like in BG and I wasn't entirely effective when I added the mods, so I ended up with 2 copies of Viconia in my party. I went with it and explored the Underdark, but because the Underdark is so vast in Oblivion I got hopelessly lost and never actually found my way back out again. One of the Viconias got separated from the group somehow, so I just wandered in circles trying to find my way out or locate my missing party member and eventually gave up on both and never played again. So yeah, sometimes it's a good thing if the path to the exit is predictable within reason.
it would give people the chance to truly explore the classes available and those (like myself) that want to try a harder difficulty but also want to live.
i dont think anyone would become too OP since HP gains are capped at 3 after level 10.
i think the highest i got in BG was a mage around lvl 30ish and it took me a while, several BG/ToB games but it was great
You can also add mods, like SCS, in order to make the game more challenging in order to keep it balanced if you ever feel that your characters are becoming too overpowered.
thank you @ARKdeEREH ! i steer clear of mods myself but its an option i can explore in future and i suck at tactics to the point where i am suprised i can finish games sometimes ... its really sad for me haha
@Anduin and @BillyYank thats hilarious! i can see irenicus getting more and more annoyed at us while he ages "i kidnap and am doing bhaal knows what to imoen and this fool is late" and when we arrive "sorry dude, like, those trolls and trademeet took way longer than expected and i kinda got sidetracked doing this and that and idk how many years i was in that planar sphere but whatevs man im here now"
You should have a maximum of x days before the "Imoen loses her soul" cutscene appears (or if you go to brynnlann before, then it happens there). If it takes you more than 30 days to kill Bodhi after that, Imoen dies. If it takes you more than 30 days to recover your soul after you lose it, you die. You should get warnings after each week, and get weaker or getting random trasformations when fighting, etc. It would add urgency to it.
I think you pc should die of natural causes, such as old age, if you spend to long playing and mining xp.
I created a BG1 fighter/mage/thief character in 1999 and played three playthroughs with that character. I never intentionally ended the last playthrough. I stopped short of beating Sarevok and instead went on an essentially never ending crusade against the Flaming Fist with Viconia and Imoen (who periodically dumped me in disgust only to rejoin my party later). I collected Flaming Fist helmets as if they were bandit scalps and kept them in a drawer in Beregost. I'm not sure how many helmets I ended up with total, but it took several real time minutes to scroll through them all. Since it was my 3rd playthrough I had 3 copies of the boots of speed, so each of my party members got a pair. I accumulated over 6 million gold over the course of that last playthrough, so whenever I got to the point where I was almost killed by the Flaming Fist I would just go to a temple and buy back my reputation, heal, and then commence slaughtering Flaming Fist personnel again. I kept doing that until my computer crashed in 2005 and I lost access to that game. I guess that would count as excessive XP mining. I really didn't like the Flaming Fist, since they went relentlessly after me in my very first 1998 BG1 playthrough, which caused me to see them as the villains back before I understood the plot or basic functions of the game (such as why they were after me in the 1st place). I probably would have kept hunting the Flaming Fist indefinitely had it not been for my computer crashing, which caused me to lose access to that game. I didn't play Baldur's Gate again until 2011 because I didn't want to start over from scratch with a new character. I'm still playing with the fighter/mage that I made in BG2 in 2011.
thank you @ARKdeEREH ! i steer clear of mods myself but its an option i can explore in future and i suck at tactics to the point where i am suprised i can finish games sometimes ... its really sad for me haha
@Anduin and @BillyYank thats hilarious! i can see irenicus getting more and more annoyed at us while he ages "i kidnap and am doing bhaal knows what to imoen and this fool is late" and when we arrive "sorry dude, like, those trolls and trademeet took way longer than expected and i kinda got sidetracked doing this and that and idk how many years i was in that planar sphere but whatevs man im here now"
I was thinking it was more like this:
Jon: "Hello little one." Immy: "Oh no... is it time for more experiments?" J: "No, I've done all I can until Charname gets here... It does seem to be taking him a while doesn't it?" I: "Hah! This is nothing. We once spent a month sleeping on a rainy shoreline so we could kill sirens. And when Sarevok was launching his coup and getting ready to plunge the Sword Coast into war, we went and cleared an old dwarf fortress and took a trip to some island to fight a bunch of werewolves. Don't even get me started on the ankheg and basilisk hunting." J: ... ... ... "So... do you play cribbage?"
hahahaha @BillyYank thats awesome!!! who knows, imoen could have even developed stockholm syndrome after being stuck with irenicus for so long and is secretly devastated when we take our soul back haha
You should have a maximum of x days before the "Imoen loses her soul" cutscene appears (or if you go to brynnlann before, then it happens there). If it takes you more than 30 days to kill Bodhi after that, Imoen dies. If it takes you more than 30 days to recover your soul after you lose it, you die. You should get warnings after each week, and get weaker or getting random trasformations when fighting, etc. It would add urgency to it.
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE TIMED QUESTS SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR TIMED QUESTS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR THEM. HATE. HATE.
thank you @ARKdeEREH ! i steer clear of mods myself but its an option i can explore in future and i suck at tactics to the point where i am suprised i can finish games sometimes ... its really sad for me haha
@Anduin and @BillyYank thats hilarious! i can see irenicus getting more and more annoyed at us while he ages "i kidnap and am doing bhaal knows what to imoen and this fool is late" and when we arrive "sorry dude, like, those trolls and trademeet took way longer than expected and i kinda got sidetracked doing this and that and idk how many years i was in that planar sphere but whatevs man im here now"
I was thinking it was more like this:
Jon: "Hello little one." Immy: "Oh no... is it time for more experiments?" J: "No, I've done all I can until Charname gets here... It does seem to be taking him a while doesn't it?" I: "Hah! This is nothing. We once spent a month sleeping on a rainy shoreline so we could kill sirens. And when Sarevok was launching his coup and getting ready to plunge the Sword Coast into war, we went and cleared an old dwarf fortress and took a trip to some island to fight a bunch of werewolves. Don't even get me started on the ankheg and basilisk hunting." J: ... ... ... "So... do you play cribbage?"
It would really be funny if instead of Imoen losing her soul meaning that Irenicus took her soul, it meant that Imoen fell in love with Irenicus because she was left alone with him for so much time while charname was fighting Firkraag, saving the Umar Hills, etc. Imoen and Irenicus would have spent so much time together with only those shadow thieves in jars and crazy spellhold inmates to interact with besides each other. As the only somewhat lucid people there they could gradually develop feelings for each other so that by the time charname arrives to righteously smite Irenicus s/he finds that Imoen no longer wants Irenicus dead. This all a joke of course, I don't think that Imoen should actually do that, but it would be pretty funny nonetheless.
ADnD was revolutionary and truly original back then. It set standards about what RPG systems should look like.
But it aged horribly. It is a terrible roleplaying system. It is unintuitive, the PnP version has even more restrictions/rules that make you facepalm compared to BG, it has some good ideas but people that ask for a new BG with ADnD 2E rules should take the multiple nostalgia glasses off.
I really like the Kit system and the multiclass system, which does its job simply and easily. And it has some strange sense of balance. The rest of the system is pretty much bad.
3E went the opposite direction, giving you way too much freedom, by extension, unbalancing the game greatly. Also the whole prestige classes concept was implemented badly. While in 2E you picked a Kit and that was it, in 3E the multiclassing and Prestige Class cherry-picking was monstrous.
4E forgot what DnD is and ignored Ed Greenwood, so it's pretty much the black sheep. Despite being the most balanced edition of all, probably. Too balanced.
One reason I like Pathfinder and now 5E, it's because the former turned Kits into Archetypes, rebalanced the system and 5E because it also takes influences from the previous editions.
I hate how you go into the most dangerous dungeon of all, disarming traps, fighting hordes of enemies, solving riddles and open doorways that haven't been opened for centuries only to suddenly meet some random, low-level, blue-eyed, hillbilly adventurer at the bottom of dungeon being all like "Heya, it's me, Johnny!". I mean, how the hell did that dude get down there!? Many games does this or similar things, but Durlag's is one of those examples, but also some of the thieves in Irenicus' dungeon for example.
It always made me think of the common gag in cartoons, where a character takes days making an arduous climb up a mountain, only to reach the top where a small child cheerfully informs them the escalator right around the corner would have been much easier.
I feel as though this thread is all too easy for me, seeing as how I generally like what D&D does conceptually while maintaining a dislike for its execution.
- 5e D&D does not include the best aspects of 2e or 3.5e, and is almost as bad as 4e - D&D is foppish and campy, these are not redeeming qualities - Greenwood and Salvatore are not strong writers, thankfully they have the D&D community to support them - BG1 and 2 are more engaging in terms of gameplay than they are in terms of story - Removing "exploits" for the sake of "balance" is a poor excuse for taking away player options in a single player game, and is akin to trying to make someone play the game the way you want them to - Warhammers (everyone's favorite Cleric weapon) are wasted on Clerics--or any class that can't offhand a speed weapon - Putting pips in any two-handed weapon and Two-Handed Weapon Style is almost always a waste, especially for Paladins. The only time you should do this is if you intend to fully abuse weapon attack range and speed factor to never get hit in melee--or really need the THAC0.
Comments
Personally I enjoy those epilogue slides, even if they don't always look that pretty. A big plus if there's a good voice actor.
As it is now, a solo game will result in reaching the level cap before even completing Shadows of Amn, which makes it really dis-interesting to continue to play beyond that without going through the added hassle of re-cycling the character's XP/levels via EE Keeper/Shadowkeeper.
It could be like how in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 the level cap is 99, yet in 16 years of playing that game the absolute highest level that I've ever had in it was 67 and that was in an unusually long game that lasted for several game years.
it would give people the chance to truly explore the classes available and those (like myself) that want to try a harder difficulty but also want to live.
i dont think anyone would become too OP since HP gains are capped at 3 after level 10.
i think the highest i got in BG was a mage around lvl 30ish and it took me a while, several BG/ToB games but it was great
They are just so tedious that I want nothing to do with them. Sometimes I would take fire damage for doing that, so I have my PC wear items that give him protection from fire and just completely ignore the downside of literally going down the list, or I just reload the game if necessary and pick the next potential riddle answer that way.
@Anduin and @BillyYank thats hilarious! i can see irenicus getting more and more annoyed at us while he ages "i kidnap and am doing bhaal knows what to imoen and this fool is late" and when we arrive "sorry dude, like, those trolls and trademeet took way longer than expected and i kinda got sidetracked doing this and that and idk how many years i was in that planar sphere but whatevs man im here now"
Jon: "Hello little one."
Immy: "Oh no... is it time for more experiments?"
J: "No, I've done all I can until Charname gets here... It does seem to be taking him a while doesn't it?"
I: "Hah! This is nothing. We once spent a month sleeping on a rainy shoreline so we could kill sirens. And when Sarevok was launching his coup and getting ready to plunge the Sword Coast into war, we went and cleared an old dwarf fortress and took a trip to some island to fight a bunch of werewolves. Don't even get me started on the ankheg and basilisk hunting."
J: ... ... ... "So... do you play cribbage?"
- 5e D&D does not include the best aspects of 2e or 3.5e, and is almost as bad as 4e
- D&D is foppish and campy, these are not redeeming qualities
- Greenwood and Salvatore are not strong writers, thankfully they have the D&D community to support them
- BG1 and 2 are more engaging in terms of gameplay than they are in terms of story
- Removing "exploits" for the sake of "balance" is a poor excuse for taking away player options in a single player game, and is akin to trying to make someone play the game the way you want them to
- Warhammers (everyone's favorite Cleric weapon) are wasted on Clerics--or any class that can't offhand a speed weapon
- Putting pips in any two-handed weapon and Two-Handed Weapon Style is almost always a waste, especially for Paladins. The only time you should do this is if you intend to fully abuse weapon attack range and speed factor to never get hit in melee--or really need the THAC0.
I could probably go on, but this is a good start.