I have not played BG2EE yet. (Waiting for Siege of Dragonspear to do a proper run, with NPC Project mod and Ascension.) But I have tinkered with it. Bought them both, just putting them on hold for now. Already finished the originals.
About Hexxat, the biggest sin for me, which is fortunately easily fixable, is not making her a Shadowdancer.
"Let's make a proper Blackguard class. And here's a Half-Orc Blackguard NPC." "Let's make more Monk kits. And here's a Sun Soul Monk. (Who was later edited to be one.)" "Let's make a Shadowdancer kit. And here's a vampire NPC who is a Thief. ...Not a Shadowdancer. A boring thief."
What? Why? Shadowdancer would make her more fun to play and would be extremely fitting to a vampire. They're all about the night and shadows. They're made for each other.
I would also like to see some more options added to Hexxat's dialogues, from what I read, for Charname so he/she can go a different route. Different reactions etc. Adding some more voiceless dialogue and a bit of scripting, doesn't take much time.
The neutral Clara would need new voiced dialogue if she was to become a new NPC. That takes far more work and money.
Yeah, probably. I always pick up on bugs as I run through, I'm pretty good at it, if I say so myself, but let's start with: most of the ghosts in her tombs aren't undead (bug), the journal updates wrong in several of her quests (bug), she survives on 1 HP getting whaled on by an army of enemies constantly (bug), killing any of Spider Lady's pets before she initiates dialogue causes a dialogue loop (bug), killing Gnome spider guy before Neera can walk up (in itself a bug) causes a dialogue loop (bug), having Hexxat unavailable for comment makes an enemy immortal, dialogues to loop weirdly between characters, journal updates to progress wrongly... Most aren't show stoppers, like the ToB copy lich becoming immortal, but they're glitches nonetheless.
Cernd and Valygar paid content? You seem to misunderstand what I mean by the term. I own Baldur's Gate on the original CDs. I paid for that content once already. I agree entirely that they haven't many banters, limited interjections and generally aren't super exciting characters. That's totally fine, I more than got my money's worth from "All of Baldur's Gate II + 2 NPCs that are pretty lame", they're pretty optional and largely inoffensive because silence is boring, not hateful, and if nothing else, they don't cause the other NPCs to suddenly act dumber by their presence or stop me from accessing any content if I just kill them and loot their corpse.
Hexxat, Dorn, Rasaad and Neera are the EE's content. Since they haven't managed to remove hardcoded class restrictions yet, it is by and large the additional content they offer that justifies me buying a thing I already own, and the fact that the NPC's presence is mandatory for at least part of the content - and for Hexxat it's all of them. She is a DLC character, she literally has a price tag attached to her and her content, so when what I'm paying for is "consolidated bug fixes and 4 NPCs with their quests", the fact that she has problems is less forgivable.
You'll also note that I do mention the other EE NPCs, and not in a negative light. They have a few niggles here and there, but none of them have problems to the same extent as the black lesbian vampire Carmen Santiago.
And no class content? Take Neera - She's a mage. You fight a lot of mages out to get her. At one point you actively need a wild surge to progress, and her wild surges and quirky creations are constantly coming up throughout her plot. Dorn? Blackguard. He has a bunch of quests involving slaughter and demon dealing. Seems legit for a Blackguard, his blackguardyness is pretty important to the plot and he gets various ways of dealing out the evil and letting CHARNAME get their ev' on with him. CN Mage/Thief Charname stealthing into a goodly plane and leaving entirely undetected without killing or hurting anyone was outright awesome. Rasaad? His entire plotline is a kung fu epic. It's a little weird that he's actually worse at dealing with Plane of Shadow creatures than anyone else thanks to their fire immunity, but generally his plots involve something to punch or kick and he has kung fu battles with other monks and CHARNAME can go through monk-ly training to see deep inner truths and all that jazz while he trades fiery fists with icy kicks.
Hexxat... Is a thief. In her quests are no locks worth picking. No traps significantly dangerous or disarmable (and note that her spike trap isn't pointy barbs of doom that just exist to stab people, it's holes, implying a projecting mechanism, and her theoretical statue, spider spawner, and djinni traps aren't disarmable either). Nowhere does stealth or cunning really makes a difference outside of quest #2, and she doesn't offer as many chances to be sneaky as Dorn does.
She's a thief. The evil thief, the one class that's all about the mechanics... And it's irrelevant. She could be Hexxat the evil vampire Stalker or Hexxat the Evil Wizard Slayer and it would make no difference except that you can't pick two guys' pockets.... AND SHE'S MANDATORY. Four major dungeons where her presence is largely irrelevant, except for two equally pointless (and arbitrary) spots which hinge on her undeath, not her skills. She doesn't even get use out of any of the actual innates she has as a vampire, like dominating someone to help get the party through an otherwise inaccessible alternative route.
When all three of the non-thief NPCs offer subtle alternative ways to progress, and the thief NPC offers almost straight up hack and slash, you have kind of a problem.
@Archaos, I don't know if to agree. I don't like much kitted NPCs as I think that NPCs are more useful to give a try at a class, not at a kit. I think of original vanilla and a new player. You want to try multi, you have a couple, you want to try dual, you have one already dualed and ready, want a pally, have one kitted but that miss only clerical spells that you can try with other not pally toons. I hope you get the idea. If someone want to play a kit can do it with charname or change an existing NPC, yourself told that is something easily fixable. If a thief has to be the only viable one for evil parties making him a pure class seems to me a good idea, the Shadowdancer loses completely the traps and is somehow nerfed in backstabbing, and gains in other things, but, reading the kit description seem to me something quite different from a normal thief. About the pure class thief being booring, each player has his opinions about it. I personally find it one of the more satisfactory classes to play, not for their power, but for the fun, tactical challenge and management I have to use well backstab and traps. If I would be less PWgamer then I am I would play mostly pure class thieves and mages, the less click and wait classes of the game. Being Hexxat a pure class nobody lose nothing, as is easy to kit her in every kit you want and new players using evil parties can try thief class without using a so specific kit. I assume that most of the newbies are not in the mod or EEkeeper thing, they want to first taste the vanilla experience, but I can be wrong.
I might agree with her being a vanilla thief if Jan wasn't usable in any party above 1 Reknown (and it's trivial to pull off Clever Evil for high reknown), didn't have a bunch of awesome thief gear, and weren't a freaking mage. Hexxat compared to Jan gets... Stats that don't really help her backstab, innates that Jan does better with spells, worse class selection and, for the vast majority of the game, zero advantage. The Gnome even gets better saves and more HLAs.
@Pantalion, her being the only viable thief for evil parties is something I read in this topic, good to know that is not true (at least with not REALLY evil ones with 1 REP). I play mostly good or neutral, and I am very happy with the gnome, that is one of my favorite toons.
@Pantalion Dorn is a blackguard, he deals with demon, legit, though only roleplay. He might as well have been a NE Mage dealing with demons (think of Hellfire Warlock in NWN) and binding them in a staff, it fits just as well roleplay-wise. Hexxat is a thief, she is a tomb pillager, just as legit. I fully understand what you meant by "paid content", you meant additionnal EE content ypu had to pay an extra for. And my point was that you had to pay the original BG2, and you got great things and not-so-great things (in my post, these were Valygar for poor writing, Cernd for the underwhelming NPC, and we had quite a few nasty bugs back then as well). These are "paid content" whether you paid them yesterday or 15years ago and these are not so great, IMHO at least. And her quests are full of traps. You say they are not worth disarming, your call, but I can say that about EVERY single disarmable BG2 trap.
I get that what you mentioned about needing a Wild Surge from Neera to progress in her quest is that moment in her ToB quest. If it is, then I cannot understand your point..The ENTIRE Neera plot is based on her being a Wild Mage, of course at some point this intervene, just the same way Hexxat's undeath is useful at some point. By the way you seem to forget she does use her domination ability. To dominate Clara. That's quite important in her plot, is it not?
By the way you said she has no advantages compared to Jan. She has Hp regen, Immunity to charm, sleep, panic, level drain, hold, poison, poison damage, disease. That's quite nice actually. And she has quite good stats (I mean, totally unmatched) as well when indoors (most of the time for important fights)
@Pantalion Dorn is a blackguard, he deals with demon, legit, though only roleplay. He might as well have been a NE Mage dealing with demons (think of Hellfire Warlock in NWN) and binding them in a staff, it fits just as well roleplay-wise. Hexxat is a thief, she is a tomb pillager, just as legit. I fully understand what you meant by "paid content", you meant additionnal EE content ypu had to pay an extra for. And my point was that you had to pay the original BG2, and you got great things and not-so-great things (in my post, these were Valygar for poor writing, Cernd for the underwhelming NPC, and we had quite a few nasty bugs back then as well). These are "paid content" whether you paid them yesterday or 15years ago and these are not so great, IMHO at least. And her quests are full of traps. You say they are not worth disarming, your call, but I can say that about EVERY single disarmable BG2 trap.
I get that what you mentioned about needing a Wild Surge from Neera to progress in her quest is that moment in her ToB quest. If it is, then I cannot understand your point..The ENTIRE Neera plot is based on her being a Wild Mage, of course at some point this intervene, just the same way Hexxat's undeath is useful at some point. By the way you seem to forget she does use her domination ability. To dominate Clara. That's quite important in her plot, is it not?
Except... You know, changing nothing about Dorn, he's a greatsword wielding badass who binds demons in his sword. His quest fits pretty great. Changing nothing about Rasaad, he gets gloves of kung fu grip and a whole lot of stuff that reaffirms, over and over, that he is a monk. Neera? She's a crazy mage girl whose magic messes up every single cutscene and keeps getting robes and stuff that help her get it under control. That's great. Their quests suit the character.
Changing nothing about Hexxat... What changes? She doesn't really need her thief abilities. There are a tiny number of floor traps in the tombs that can be disabled, most of the tombs contain mediocre loot, and once again, her quests, alone out of every other EE NPC, have almost nothing that allows the player to play in a sneaky, thiefy way.
Can she sneak past Phreya and the Lich? Nope. Door is plot-locked, just like every other on the level. Can she backstab the bone golem? Golem, nope. Sneak through enemy infested areas to let the party in through a side door? Na ah. She gets two sections where the party is arbitrarily prevented from dealing with a problem in any other way, and two opportunities to lift a purse to avoid XP and loot.
I don't care that she killed the braindead, more interesting, NPC with domination and blood drain out of party, I care that Korgan is just as much of a tomb raider as she is, ten times as entertaining a personality, and just as subtle. And her loot is... Well, she gets a decent dagger in her second quest and a Bag of Holding for putting up with her first dungeon. Everything else is largely uninteresting and nothing really emphasises anything about Hexxat. Compare the Soul Blade, Adoy's Belt, the Thayvian Circlet, gloves of fisting... She's got nothing.
And let's look at that value.
BG2 - Massive game. Loads of stuff. Small amount of crud. Value: £7, nowadays? Valygar and Cernd's value out of that? 0.02? It doesn't really matter if you loathe both, since they are a tiny, tiny fraction of the total product.
BG2:EE - Since I already own the game, I am notionally paying for the extras. Cost: $15.99 or so. Hexxat: 20% of the NPCs, ~25% of the new dungeon content, and if your argument is that she's only the third worst NPC of all the official ones then... Great, slightly better than Cernd except she's mandatory for part of the content?
Hexxat is a far, far more significant proportion of EE than Valygar and Cernd combined were of BG2, yet her content is valued at $2.99. If she is $2.99, she's supposedly worth almost 20% of the value, is it unreasonable to expect her to be better? Or at least less invasively bad?
By the way you said she has no advantages compared to Jan. She has Hp regen, Immunity to charm, sleep, panic, level drain, hold, poison, poison damage, disease. That's quite nice actually. And she has quite good stats (I mean, totally unmatched) as well when indoors (most of the time for important fights)
I apologise for being unclear, I was referring to her ability as a thief, not her vampiric abilities, she is of course an amazing tank thanks to having no fear and being unkillable, just a worse overall thief thanks to invisibility and knock existing.
You paid 20 bucks just for the extra, but a new player would pay 20 bucks for the entire game. My point of view about EE has always been that EE in itself is not worth if you already have the game. Indeed paying $3 for a couple of quests and a NPC is quite expensive indeed. With your point of view (paying $20 for the EE content only) in mind then yes I would feel like I have been ripped off, but you must realize buying BG2EE is buying BG2 and buying EE. In your case you just bought twice BG2 and once EE.
Hexxat would deserve an overall update, to fix her bugs, and if possible to rewrite some of her banters and dialogues. On that we certainly agree. She would certainly be better as a shadowdancer because it fits better both the character and the new content. Her quest does need a bunch of interesting items which it does not have now compared to the other EE NPCs.
I believe I have found the words I have been looking for concerning Hexxat. Hexxat is a big pack of good ideas, but those ideas are poorly set in place. The base of her character design is not terrible, her plot isn't either, but the way it was developped is definitely not good.
I think the biggest indication of failure, at least from a storytelling perspective, is:
the fact that if you do Hexxat's questline the "right" way, and you get her to L with her obligations fulfilled, she dies - and there's no emotional weight attached to that. Players going through BG for the first time have shown emotional reactions when Yoshimo dies, or Tiax, or Dynaheir and Khalid, or Xzar and Montaron; even the romance epilogues for Viconia and Dorn have evoked some kind of feeling. But you don't mourn Hexxat, because you don't know her, because the writing never gives you reason or opportunity to care about her. The most you get out of her story is a feeling of irritation at having gone through all those tombs just to be "rewarded" with the permanent loss of a party member. People on this forum express more grief for freaking Clara, the brain-dead puppet girl, than someone who's actually meant to be a companion.
I believe I have found the words I have been looking for concerning Hexxat. Hexxat is a big pack of good ideas, but those ideas are poorly set in place. The base of her character design is not terrible, her plot isn't either, but the way it was developped is definitely not good.
I can certainly stipulate that much - with the sad caveat that just because she can be fixed, doesn't mean she ever will be. As far as I know, the devs have never acknowledged any of Hexxat's many flaws, let alone express any interest in trying to improve her (probably because there's no profit in revising content that's already been sold).
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But I have tinkered with it. Bought them both, just putting them on hold for now. Already finished the originals.
About Hexxat, the biggest sin for me, which is fortunately easily fixable, is not making her a Shadowdancer.
"Let's make a proper Blackguard class. And here's a Half-Orc Blackguard NPC."
"Let's make more Monk kits. And here's a Sun Soul Monk. (Who was later edited to be one.)"
"Let's make a Shadowdancer kit. And here's a vampire NPC who is a Thief. ...Not a Shadowdancer. A boring thief."
What? Why? Shadowdancer would make her more fun to play and would be extremely fitting to a vampire.
They're all about the night and shadows. They're made for each other.
I would also like to see some more options added to Hexxat's dialogues, from what I read, for Charname so he/she can go a different route. Different reactions etc.
Adding some more voiceless dialogue and a bit of scripting, doesn't take much time.
The neutral Clara would need new voiced dialogue if she was to become a new NPC. That takes far more work and money.
Cernd and Valygar paid content? You seem to misunderstand what I mean by the term. I own Baldur's Gate on the original CDs. I paid for that content once already. I agree entirely that they haven't many banters, limited interjections and generally aren't super exciting characters. That's totally fine, I more than got my money's worth from "All of Baldur's Gate II + 2 NPCs that are pretty lame", they're pretty optional and largely inoffensive because silence is boring, not hateful, and if nothing else, they don't cause the other NPCs to suddenly act dumber by their presence or stop me from accessing any content if I just kill them and loot their corpse.
Hexxat, Dorn, Rasaad and Neera are the EE's content. Since they haven't managed to remove hardcoded class restrictions yet, it is by and large the additional content they offer that justifies me buying a thing I already own, and the fact that the NPC's presence is mandatory for at least part of the content - and for Hexxat it's all of them. She is a DLC character, she literally has a price tag attached to her and her content, so when what I'm paying for is "consolidated bug fixes and 4 NPCs with their quests", the fact that she has problems is less forgivable.
You'll also note that I do mention the other EE NPCs, and not in a negative light. They have a few niggles here and there, but none of them have problems to the same extent as the black lesbian vampire Carmen Santiago.
And no class content? Take Neera - She's a mage. You fight a lot of mages out to get her. At one point you actively need a wild surge to progress, and her wild surges and quirky creations are constantly coming up throughout her plot.
Dorn? Blackguard. He has a bunch of quests involving slaughter and demon dealing. Seems legit for a Blackguard, his blackguardyness is pretty important to the plot and he gets various ways of dealing out the evil and letting CHARNAME get their ev' on with him. CN Mage/Thief Charname stealthing into a goodly plane and leaving entirely undetected without killing or hurting anyone was outright awesome.
Rasaad? His entire plotline is a kung fu epic. It's a little weird that he's actually worse at dealing with Plane of Shadow creatures than anyone else thanks to their fire immunity, but generally his plots involve something to punch or kick and he has kung fu battles with other monks and CHARNAME can go through monk-ly training to see deep inner truths and all that jazz while he trades fiery fists with icy kicks.
Hexxat... Is a thief. In her quests are no locks worth picking. No traps significantly dangerous or disarmable (and note that her spike trap isn't pointy barbs of doom that just exist to stab people, it's holes, implying a projecting mechanism, and her theoretical statue, spider spawner, and djinni traps aren't disarmable either). Nowhere does stealth or cunning really makes a difference outside of quest #2, and she doesn't offer as many chances to be sneaky as Dorn does.
She's a thief. The evil thief, the one class that's all about the mechanics... And it's irrelevant. She could be Hexxat the evil vampire Stalker or Hexxat the Evil Wizard Slayer and it would make no difference except that you can't pick two guys' pockets.... AND SHE'S MANDATORY. Four major dungeons where her presence is largely irrelevant, except for two equally pointless (and arbitrary) spots which hinge on her undeath, not her skills. She doesn't even get use out of any of the actual innates she has as a vampire, like dominating someone to help get the party through an otherwise inaccessible alternative route.
When all three of the non-thief NPCs offer subtle alternative ways to progress, and the thief NPC offers almost straight up hack and slash, you have kind of a problem.
I don't like much kitted NPCs as I think that NPCs are more useful to give a try at a class, not at a kit.
I think of original vanilla and a new player. You want to try multi, you have a couple, you want to try dual, you have one already dualed and ready, want a pally, have one kitted but that miss only clerical spells that you can try with other not pally toons. I hope you get the idea.
If someone want to play a kit can do it with charname or change an existing NPC, yourself told that is something easily fixable.
If a thief has to be the only viable one for evil parties making him a pure class seems to me a good idea, the Shadowdancer loses completely the traps and is somehow nerfed in backstabbing, and gains in other things, but, reading the kit description seem to me something quite different from a normal thief.
About the pure class thief being booring, each player has his opinions about it. I personally find it one of the more satisfactory classes to play, not for their power, but for the fun, tactical challenge and management I have to use well backstab and traps. If I would be less PWgamer then I am I would play mostly pure class thieves and mages, the less click and wait classes of the game.
Being Hexxat a pure class nobody lose nothing, as is easy to kit her in every kit you want and new players using evil parties can try thief class without using a so specific kit. I assume that most of the newbies are not in the mod or EEkeeper thing, they want to first taste the vanilla experience, but I can be wrong.
I might agree with her being a vanilla thief if Jan wasn't usable in any party above 1 Reknown (and it's trivial to pull off Clever Evil for high reknown), didn't have a bunch of awesome thief gear, and weren't a freaking mage. Hexxat compared to Jan gets... Stats that don't really help her backstab, innates that Jan does better with spells, worse class selection and, for the vast majority of the game, zero advantage. The Gnome even gets better saves and more HLAs.
I play mostly good or neutral, and I am very happy with the gnome, that is one of my favorite toons.
I fully understand what you meant by "paid content", you meant additionnal EE content ypu had to pay an extra for.
And my point was that you had to pay the original BG2, and you got great things and not-so-great things (in my post, these were Valygar for poor writing, Cernd for the underwhelming NPC, and we had quite a few nasty bugs back then as well). These are "paid content" whether you paid them yesterday or 15years ago and these are not so great, IMHO at least.
And her quests are full of traps. You say they are not worth disarming, your call, but I can say that about EVERY single disarmable BG2 trap.
I get that what you mentioned about needing a Wild Surge from Neera to progress in her quest is that moment in her ToB quest. If it is, then I cannot understand your point..The ENTIRE Neera plot is based on her being a Wild Mage, of course at some point this intervene, just the same way Hexxat's undeath is useful at some point. By the way you seem to forget she does use her domination ability. To dominate Clara. That's quite important in her plot, is it not?
By the way you said she has no advantages compared to Jan. She has Hp regen, Immunity to charm, sleep, panic, level drain, hold, poison, poison damage, disease. That's quite nice actually. And she has quite good stats (I mean, totally unmatched) as well when indoors (most of the time for important fights)
Changing nothing about Hexxat... What changes? She doesn't really need her thief abilities. There are a tiny number of floor traps in the tombs that can be disabled, most of the tombs contain mediocre loot, and once again, her quests, alone out of every other EE NPC, have almost nothing that allows the player to play in a sneaky, thiefy way.
Can she sneak past Phreya and the Lich? Nope. Door is plot-locked, just like every other on the level. Can she backstab the bone golem? Golem, nope. Sneak through enemy infested areas to let the party in through a side door? Na ah. She gets two sections where the party is arbitrarily prevented from dealing with a problem in any other way, and two opportunities to lift a purse to avoid XP and loot.
I don't care that she killed the braindead, more interesting, NPC with domination and blood drain out of party, I care that Korgan is just as much of a tomb raider as she is, ten times as entertaining a personality, and just as subtle. And her loot is... Well, she gets a decent dagger in her second quest and a Bag of Holding for putting up with her first dungeon. Everything else is largely uninteresting and nothing really emphasises anything about Hexxat. Compare the Soul Blade, Adoy's Belt, the Thayvian Circlet, gloves of fisting... She's got nothing.
And let's look at that value.
BG2 - Massive game. Loads of stuff. Small amount of crud. Value: £7, nowadays? Valygar and Cernd's value out of that? 0.02? It doesn't really matter if you loathe both, since they are a tiny, tiny fraction of the total product.
BG2:EE - Since I already own the game, I am notionally paying for the extras. Cost: $15.99 or so. Hexxat: 20% of the NPCs, ~25% of the new dungeon content, and if your argument is that she's only the third worst NPC of all the official ones then... Great, slightly better than Cernd except she's mandatory for part of the content?
Hexxat is a far, far more significant proportion of EE than Valygar and Cernd combined were of BG2, yet her content is valued at $2.99. If she is $2.99, she's supposedly worth almost 20% of the value, is it unreasonable to expect her to be better? Or at least less invasively bad?
I apologise for being unclear, I was referring to her ability as a thief, not her vampiric abilities, she is of course an amazing tank thanks to having no fear and being unkillable, just a worse overall thief thanks to invisibility and knock existing.
With your point of view (paying $20 for the EE content only) in mind then yes I would feel like I have been ripped off, but you must realize buying BG2EE is buying BG2 and buying EE. In your case you just bought twice BG2 and once EE.
Hexxat would deserve an overall update, to fix her bugs, and if possible to rewrite some of her banters and dialogues. On that we certainly agree. She would certainly be better as a shadowdancer because it fits better both the character and the new content. Her quest does need a bunch of interesting items which it does not have now compared to the other EE NPCs.
I believe I have found the words I have been looking for concerning Hexxat. Hexxat is a big pack of good ideas, but those ideas are poorly set in place. The base of her character design is not terrible, her plot isn't either, but the way it was developped is definitely not good.