Post Your Icewind Dale 2: EE Wish list
Ancalagon44
Member Posts: 252
in Off-Topic
Hi guys,
I know IWD2:EE has not been confirmed (neither has PST:EE), but the following are my thoughts on what the devs should change and/or improve in the EE.
The first thing is that although some have asked for it, I would not switch to 2E rules. I consider the 3E rules to be the best part of the game.
Obviously they would need to port it to the new engine and redo the UI in the new standard. This would be quite a lot of work on its own of course. Just have the game able to run fullscreen in Windows 10 and look good would be great, for instance.
Next, I'd implement a few more high level spells. High level spell choices, especially for druids and clerics, are extremely lacking. So I'd implement a few more level 8 and 9 spells. They don't necessarily need to be from Baldurs Gate 2 - for instance, I'm not sure whether I'd implement Timestop.
I'd also unify cleric spells and cleric domain spells. Clerics currently have two separate pools of spells - Domain and Cleric. Cleric spells are the regular spells that all clerics get, Domain spells are specific to an order or domain (such as Oghma, Lathander etc). However, the problem with Domain spells is that you only get one slot. This is different to how NWN for example works. So I'd make it so that instead of two separate pools of spells, Clerics have a single pool, but still differentiated between orders. For instance, only Oghma could learn Identify as a level 1 spell, but now they would have more than one copy.
I'd revamp the following underused classes - Fighter, Ranger and Barbarian. Fighter unfortunately is the most vanilla class and nobody bothers taking more than 4 levels of fighters. I'd implement additional feats to make it worth your while to take more levels of fighter. Maybe feats that increase melee damage?
For ranger, I'd implement more two weapon fighting feats.
A lot of people don't have problems with the barbarian class, so my only change would be to remove the damage resistance (which is so low as to be useless anyway) and replace it with adding your constitution modifier to your AC if you are unarmored (but allowing a shield). This is ripped from 5th edition. I think it would be really cool because it allows for unarmored barbarians that don't totally suck. This would mean that the AC penalty of rage would become null and void though. Not sure how to balance that, an option would be to remove the AC penalty and then change the saving throw bonus to a saving throw penalty.
I'd change the difficulty balance of the first part of the game up until the end of the Horde Fortress. Its too hard and tedious. I'd probably remove those war drums, or else, make it so that the war drums only work once. In other words, beating on the drum only summons two Worg riders and thats it. No endless supply. I'd remove Trugnuk's ability to cast call lightning too. As for the battle of the Shaengarne, I'd just remove one or two of those boars and maybe replace them with Orcs. The boars and the Malarite priests together are a little too difficult for low level parties.
I'd change Battle Square to be more like the Black Pits. Instead of one on one combat, it should have progressively tougher group battles. The golem could teleport you to an arena where you battle a group of enemies. Only one group battle needed to win the rank, so ten battles in total.
I'd investigate increasing the difficulty of some areas later in the game. By the time you get access to high level spells, some of the later areas can be a cakewalk.
And the last thing I'd do is revamp that Challenge Rating system that everybody hates. I don't know exactly what I'd replace it with, but I'd want to remove the incentive to level squat. Purely psychologically, when you get one level and your experience from killing an Ice Golem Champion drops from 5400 to 3600, you kinda think Huh? You feel shortchanged. I don't know what the answer is, I just think they can do better than the CR system.
What do you guys think? What would be in your wish list?
I know IWD2:EE has not been confirmed (neither has PST:EE), but the following are my thoughts on what the devs should change and/or improve in the EE.
The first thing is that although some have asked for it, I would not switch to 2E rules. I consider the 3E rules to be the best part of the game.
Obviously they would need to port it to the new engine and redo the UI in the new standard. This would be quite a lot of work on its own of course. Just have the game able to run fullscreen in Windows 10 and look good would be great, for instance.
Next, I'd implement a few more high level spells. High level spell choices, especially for druids and clerics, are extremely lacking. So I'd implement a few more level 8 and 9 spells. They don't necessarily need to be from Baldurs Gate 2 - for instance, I'm not sure whether I'd implement Timestop.
I'd also unify cleric spells and cleric domain spells. Clerics currently have two separate pools of spells - Domain and Cleric. Cleric spells are the regular spells that all clerics get, Domain spells are specific to an order or domain (such as Oghma, Lathander etc). However, the problem with Domain spells is that you only get one slot. This is different to how NWN for example works. So I'd make it so that instead of two separate pools of spells, Clerics have a single pool, but still differentiated between orders. For instance, only Oghma could learn Identify as a level 1 spell, but now they would have more than one copy.
I'd revamp the following underused classes - Fighter, Ranger and Barbarian. Fighter unfortunately is the most vanilla class and nobody bothers taking more than 4 levels of fighters. I'd implement additional feats to make it worth your while to take more levels of fighter. Maybe feats that increase melee damage?
For ranger, I'd implement more two weapon fighting feats.
A lot of people don't have problems with the barbarian class, so my only change would be to remove the damage resistance (which is so low as to be useless anyway) and replace it with adding your constitution modifier to your AC if you are unarmored (but allowing a shield). This is ripped from 5th edition. I think it would be really cool because it allows for unarmored barbarians that don't totally suck. This would mean that the AC penalty of rage would become null and void though. Not sure how to balance that, an option would be to remove the AC penalty and then change the saving throw bonus to a saving throw penalty.
I'd change the difficulty balance of the first part of the game up until the end of the Horde Fortress. Its too hard and tedious. I'd probably remove those war drums, or else, make it so that the war drums only work once. In other words, beating on the drum only summons two Worg riders and thats it. No endless supply. I'd remove Trugnuk's ability to cast call lightning too. As for the battle of the Shaengarne, I'd just remove one or two of those boars and maybe replace them with Orcs. The boars and the Malarite priests together are a little too difficult for low level parties.
I'd change Battle Square to be more like the Black Pits. Instead of one on one combat, it should have progressively tougher group battles. The golem could teleport you to an arena where you battle a group of enemies. Only one group battle needed to win the rank, so ten battles in total.
I'd investigate increasing the difficulty of some areas later in the game. By the time you get access to high level spells, some of the later areas can be a cakewalk.
And the last thing I'd do is revamp that Challenge Rating system that everybody hates. I don't know exactly what I'd replace it with, but I'd want to remove the incentive to level squat. Purely psychologically, when you get one level and your experience from killing an Ice Golem Champion drops from 5400 to 3600, you kinda think Huh? You feel shortchanged. I don't know what the answer is, I just think they can do better than the CR system.
What do you guys think? What would be in your wish list?
2
Comments
"There are manifold places where your farther progress depends upon finding a secret door of some kind.
There is a puzzle in almost every dungeon, the solving of which depends upon several clues, that you may or not find, and possibly many hours of play before you need them, and those clues do *not* appear in your journal.
The labyrinthine nature of all the dungeons means that there is usually some door somewhere, to the blacked out part of the dungeon, that you will never find unless you find that door, even if it is not a "secret" one. Of course, it is not marked on your map.
I have already come up against two places where I had to lose my immersion in the game, shut it down, and go out to the internet and find a marked map in a walkthrough. I've had to sort through walkthroughs that don't help at all, because they don't tell you how to find the parts of the dungeon map that you can't access, spending precious leisure time searching multiple times until I could find an annotated map that would show *exactly* where the missing door could be found. "
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/346384/#Comment_346384
I think its not that people don't like puzzles, its that we don't like... poorly written puzzles. In the Ice Temple you mentioned, the part involving the dias that you have to turn left or right doesn't work that well. They could maybe replace it with a dialog. For instance, suppose you read the note that explains how to lift the anti magic field - you could then get the option to input that directly. Either that, or get a list of directions to make it face (in dialog mode).
I don't remember struggling to find missing doors, but there are some puzzles that I hate. I enjoy most of the ice temple except for the bit where you have to defeat the caged demon. The whole process is irritating.
I've thought a bit more about fighters - what they need to do is implement fighter specific feats such as epic weapon focus, epic weapon specialization, improved two weapon fighting and greater two weapon fighting. Plus Armor Skin. The feats should require a certain number of fighter levels before they become available.
If they were to change stuff, it could be to implement some of the 3.5e balance changes, where appropriate. Like, making Power Attack inflict more damage with a 2-handed weapon, and less with one or two Light weapons.
My peeve list:
- Make XP allocate evenly. Do this either by rounding XP up (or down) to the number of characters in the party, or by randomly assigning any remainder XP, or by round-robin assignment, or something. There are tons of fair ways to allocate XP while keeping the amortized total roughly even.
- NPC AI improvement, especially enemy spellcasters.
- More random drops. Random weapon enhancements -- either built on the fly, or allocated in fixed quantities throughout the game. Like, maybe there's 50 drops through the game which are rolled randomly, from basic +1 with one special ability, up through +5 with 5 special abilities at the end of the game. You don't know if you'll get a Flaming Goblin Bane Flail or a Holy Short Sword.
- Ranger improvement - give them 3 skill points per level (half of the 6 that 3.5e does), and put some special spells on their list (again like 3.5e does).
- Bards could use 3 skill points per level, too, but honestly their songs & spells are spiffy enough that I don't worry much about them.
- Prestige Classes which interact with spellcasting, like Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, and Mystic Theurge.
- Fix the Bard's songs so they don't stack with each other (or themselves). Maybe just make the current Bard's song an aura so you can cast or fight without micro-managing song re-application, and that also removes the micro bonus stacking since it's not a discrete on/off effect. It's always on, and you always get exactly one bonus per Bard.
- Let feats, kits, and domains grant access to class skills. Trickery Clerics of Mask ought to get more than just +1 to a few skills. They ought to be able to Bluff or Hide. Similarly, Bane's Clerics should have access to Intimidate at least.
- Some kind of buffs for Half-Elf, Half-Orc, and Tiefling.
Some feat ideas...
- Steal some PHB-2 Fighter feats like Melee Weapon Mastery.
- Power Attack could deal 2x the attack penalty for 2-handed weapons, and half the attack penalty for Light weapons.
- Improved Trip could give you a 10% chance per attack to initiate a Trip attempt in addition to your normal attack. Tripping would just knock the enemy prone, interrupting its casting or attack animation. Maybe it only works on humanoids (if bigger monsters don't have a prone animation) -- it'd still be great.
- Improved Disarm could remove an enemy's weapon and drop it on the ground. Since NPCs are very stupid, this would need to be limited in some way. PCs are not quite as stupid and maybe one or two NPCs who could Improved Disarm the PCs would be a fun challenge -- if they were rare.
- Draconic feats for Sorcerers (& Bards maybe):
• Draconic Breath - basically the BG2 Dragon Disciple breath weapon, except it costs a spell-slot and the slot-level you use determines the breath weapon's damage.
• Draconic Skin - Natural armor +1.
• Draconic Lore - Bonus to Arcana and Alchemy equal to the number of Draconic feats you have.
• Draconic Resistance - Resistance to your breath weapon damage type 3x the number of Draconic feats you have.
• Draconic Vigor - When you cast a Sorcerer spell, you heal HP equal to 2x the slot level.
- Initiate feats for those who want to get even closer to their gods. Each feat adds a few spells to the Cleric's list, and grants another small benefit.
- Multiclass support feats, like Ascetic Mage (for Monk / Sorcerer combo), or Devoted Tracker (for Paladin / Ranger combo).
- technically, going over the code will be huge pain
- 3rd edition rules are potentially much more complicated -> implementing/enhancing them could take a long time
- after that, designing the cut content of IW2 and adding new, again, could take a long time overall
In that spent time, Beamdog could develop skills for new upcoming projects and make their own new game in modern engine. They will have freedom to create their game.I think this would be much better and future-wise decission for Beamdog.
I agree with you brus, as much as I would love for them to remake IWD2, I don't know if it makes good business sense.
I suppose NWN was 3.5 whereas IWD2 is 3 - that might explain it.
How about this - even if they must remain as separate pools, unify them in the UI. I should be able to see a list of ALL spells that I can cast, no matter whether they come from the Cleric or Domain pools. That would make the domains much more useful, especially in cases where Domain spells include a spell available as part of regular cleric spells. For instance, Heal is both a Domain spell and a Cleric spell, depending on the Cleric order. For such orders, it makes sense to see the total number of Heals that you can cast.
NWN just changed the rules, plain and simple. The way NWN did it is not a bad idea, but it's not necessarily better either.
Secondly, I get that they are trying to differentiate the cleric orders by allowing them access to different domain spells, but I think they would be even more differentiated if they unified the pools, which would allow clerics to memorize more copies of their domain spells.
At the very least, they should unify the two pools in the UI, even if you still have to memorize them separately. It would be a massive usability improvement.
would be nice with:
- Ruleset update from D&D 3.0 to 3.5
- Some new feats as well as spells and items.
- More races and classes (let's say would be nice to reach the amount present in NWN2+both expansions installed)
- Expand the avarine decanter functions
- Complete epic level support
- Would be really nice to make a whole expansion to the game as big as heart of winter.
I know, i know, i should stop daydreaming
On the face of it, 3E is fine for the game and it worked as designed. Certainly an EE version of the game would seem to want to move the game forward and that would be keeping 3E (or potentially pushing towards 3.5E). However....
Given all of the enhancements already done for IWD engine that would have to be redone for IWD2, it might almost be less work to merely port the maps and story into the already IWD:EE engined version and go that way.
I have no personal stake either way and would be happy with either. Just saying it might be easier all around to 'redeploy' in the already upgraded engine than to reinvent the wheel for 3E and have to recover all of that ground. On the other hand, it might be easier to nudge the IWD2 engine, having already gone through the learning curve with IWD.
Just a thought on my mind.