OP, but you are saying that you should be able to turn off every new feature since 1998 and are unwilling, for whatever reason, to make use of any upcoming ui mods that would likely address the majority of your concerns. As for your bug-spotting, you would have been an awesome beta tester and I hope you're able to get some of these posted on Redmine so they can be addressed.
I would really reconsider your stance on mods – they are relatively straightforward to install and might save you some eventual heartache over the direction Beamdog is going. I don't mean to be antagonistic; I know everyone approaches this game with different priorities and I'm sure I would be upset too if things like sprite smoothing were high on my list.
All I can stay is that there are probably a few others who are similarly dissatisfied with the changes. If you're willing to try a few workarounds in the future, I'm sure there will be content available for people in your predicament.
FYI Folks we're actively looking at the difficulty issues (both the LoB issues and the Story mode issues). I think we've got a handle around what might be going on with them.
Obviously there's more testing to do, and builds, and work and such, and of course we don't comment on releases and timeframes, but this one is under active investigation at this moment.
Your map looks different than mine. I'm seeing Durlag's further south.
The cursor position after picking up ammo stacks was reported. Apparently it's intended so the cursor doesn't block the ammo amount.
Phew, I thought I was going insane and started doubting myself, feeling weird about that Durlag's Tower position. Also, the watchtower area is in the wrong location on my map. It seems like certain problems, like the map and some other UI-related issues are different for SoD and non-SoD people. Interesting.
As for the cursor - that's strange, seeing how every other item follows the cursor and appears UNDER its graphic (meaning that the cursor obstructs the item's graphic/sprite, not that the item is below, down from the cursor). Especially considering the fact that whole stacks of potions/arrows follow that rule. The different display specifically occurs when I take a certain amount of those from the stack. Therefore, apparently the intended design idea is to remind me how many arrows/potions I JUST specified to take out, while not in any other situation. This is so silly and inconsistent with all the other items, not to mention it's confusing that the cursor and the item graphic are so separate, yet it's the cursor that still determines where the item goes. This seems to be very poorly thought out.
The previous, vanilla design where the cursor disappeared when an item was picked up, leaving us only with the item sprite/graphic to put where we wanted it, was much superior.
OP, but you are saying that you should be able to turn off every new feature since 1998 and are unwilling, for whatever reason, to make use of any upcoming ui mods that would likely address the majority of your concerns.
I never said I was against mods. In fact, I specifically asked if there were any available or on the horizon, in my opening post. I'm actually an avid mod user, I just uninstalled everything after patch 2.0. arrived so as to not screw with the testing (and because it broke installed mods anyway).
I really do hope for some mods that revert much of what this patch did. But the more I play on 2.0., the more I think it's better to just revert to 1.3. for the time being and wait for future patches. Mods can possibly resolve UI issues, but there's so many more problems with the patch - portrait/import lists, graphics, inventory, bugs. It doesn't seem like mods are going to be able to fix all of that, EVEN IF such mods eventually appear. It's kind of sad...
And you don't have to worry about appearing antagonistic. I really appreaciate yours and everyone else's feedback, advice and comments!
I think the new look is great. And I have no problems with changes. I realize that this is the Enhanced Edition and that if I don't want change I can play Tutu or vanilla (which I do sometimes).
I must have misread a comment of yours! In that case, I'm sure you'll have a lot of options coming up – the UI customization is really easy from the tutorials I've seen.
As for the sprite smoothing, you're not the first person to dislike the changes even when outlines are turned off. If enough people push the issue, hopefully it will become toggleable in an upcoming patch.
I hope that they leave the larger border zones, in the past it was annoying to turn off quickloot everytime I try to exit zone through south. With scaling text boxes it would be worse and making boxes smaller every time would be super annoying.
I generally like the ui changes but esc and enter buttons not working in many scenarios really bugs me. Plus they flipped cancel buttons as if suddenly the game started to cater to left handed people
@Mivsan & @the_sextein You can still have different character record and side bar portraits. The character record used to use M portraits while the sidebar used S; Now the character record uses L portraits and the sidebar uses M. Adjust your files accordingly.
Personally, I find the new look of the UI to be pretty neat. The only real problem I have is that the textbox is uncomfortably small and inflexible. Unless you shrink the font to microscopic size, you end up with boxes like this .
Also, the new journal pop-ups made me realize what a snarky asshole charname is.
Is it just me or does the "No difficulty based damage increase" option bugs? I have it enabled and took 12 damage from a wolf out of candlekeep no crit. It is enabled in my .lua though so I don't know what's up with it.
When I change a portrait to "M" it is no longer seen by the game and I can't use it. My other portrait was an L and it is used automatically for both picture slots. The picture I have that is labled "S" is still seen by the game engine and usable but it also is applied to both picture slots automatically.
Any of my mods that added extra dialogue have stopped working for both BGI and BGII. Also, I have WAY too many custom portraits for clicking through them to be practical. I do really like the new look and the changes to the map though. Very neat and clean.
It would be cool if each character had a customize button that would allow you to choose a portrait for anyone in the party while in the game. That way if you like the way Imoen looks in Baldur's Gate 2 you can just select her BG2 portrait from her stat screen and move on. Just a suggestion based on what I would like to see.
I am really disappointed with this new patch. Why they just not let us decide if we want it. I played Baldour's Gate EE it was perfect. Old classic with small positive changes. I was near the end and was looking forward to buy and play BG 2 EE and then the patch. The new UI with lot of bugs and unnecessary settings, changed voices, some character don't say anything after clicking. Also the difficulty setting. After 3 different game restarts I have 3 different difficulty settings. The last nail to the coffin Elminster animation changed and now he doesn't have a staff.
I'm not going to continue playing. If they can release games with old patch and disabled auto-update that would be perfect.
One positive change - more color options does't change my mind.
@Dareus You can disable auto update yourself on Steam, and it's been written everywhere that this patch was coming, you could have known to make a back up of your saves and installation if you had mods.
You can still play 1.3 on Steam by going in the properties of the game and selecting the 1.3 beta.
More graphics feedback: - Here are my settings - everything turned off. And this is how the game looks - example 1, example 2. You can't tell me you don't see how different the characters look. Not only is there an outline, but they are blurry and the colors/contrast is different. Look at Eltan's armor, for instance.
For me, the game stays in this blurry state whenever I accidentally zoom in and out. Clicking the middle mouse button resets the camera and sharpens everything. Maybe that works for you, too?
@Mivsan & @the_sextein You can still have different character record and side bar portraits. The character record used to use M portraits while the sidebar used S; Now the character record uses L portraits and the sidebar uses M. Adjust your files accordingly.
I figured it out. It automatically uses the "M" picture on the side panel if you choose to use the "L" picture. Thanks for saying something, it caused me to go back and try it again now that I am home and it worked out.
I think some sort of indicator in the gameplay options or even on the game save itself should be present to let you know that LOB mode is enabled. That way when you load a save you know that the save game is from an LOB playthrough and it also allows you to know that it is active. The game says you can't turn it off once you start a LOB game but I have heard that the game is reverting to lower difficulty settings on it's own. I am not sure I can turn LOB mode back on If it turned itself off. The only way would be to start over so I suppose I'll wait until word of a patch comes down the line.
Whats up with saved games? I loaded sod and my saved game was gone¡ perhpas is was because it was a save i transitioned from bg ee because i loaded bg ee looked into saves and there it was¡ but i think that shouldnt happen
I too have been playing BG since 1998 and I love every single change that has been made with 2.0 which is totally awesome. The old UI was stupid and sucked! If people don't want anything to be different from 1998 they shouldn't even be on what is an enhanced edition forum. They should just be playing vanilla BG. Heck, by adding in SoD to one's game, by definition it is no longer "classic" BG.
Note to Beamdog folks: Out of every 100 owners of BGEE, probably only five are unhappy with the changes and insist on posting about their unhappiness. The other 95 who don't insist on posting about how happy they are with the game are the overwhelming majority. Keep catering to them and you'll be just fine.
@Dareus You can disable auto update yourself on Steam, and it's been written everywhere that this patch was coming, you could have known to make a back up of your saves and installation if you had mods.
You can still play 1.3 on Steam by going in the properties of the game and selecting the 1.3 beta.
You can't just disable updates altogether on Steam. If you want to play the game, you have to update it - the only options are for Steam to automatically do it or only do it upon launching the game. You cannot be stuck with an outdated version and play it, unless you maybe always go into offline mode or something like that. I know you're talking more in the sense of delaying the update to make backups, but I just wanted to provide full info about how updates on Steam work for people unfamiliar with it.
You're right of course about the 1.3. beta, which again, I thank Beamdog for. That's the saving grace of this update, though it's not a long-term solution.
I too have been playing BG since 1998 and I love every single change that has been made with 2.0 which is totally awesome. The old UI was stupid and sucked! If people don't want anything to be different from 1998 they shouldn't even be on what is an enhanced edition forum. They should just be playing vanilla BG. Heck, by adding in SoD to one's game, by definition it is no longer "classic" BG.
Note to Beamdog folks: Out of every 100 owners of BGEE, probably only five are unhappy with the changes and insist on posting about their unhappiness. The other 95 who don't insist on posting about how happy they are with the game are the overwhelming majority. Keep catering to them and you'll be just fine.
I'd urge you to read the discussion more carefully. Using the straw man fallacy to falsely twist many people's opinion into "not wanting anything to be different from 1998", only to then talk about "adding SoD to one's game", where I specifically stated I had no interest in it and am presenting the situation from a non-SoD 2.0. patch version, followed by made up stats, is not a great way to contribute to this discussion. I apologize if that sounds harsh, but in no way was your post accurate to what is being discussed here.
As for some other comments with suggestions and workarounds, I'm going to test them later today and post more about BG2:EE 2.0. bugs and changes from my quick test run, I have a lot of things to say already :+). Thank you again for all your input.
@kanisatha Why denigrate me for "insisting" on posting about my unhappiness with the fact that downloading SoD has broken my BGEE installation to the extent that I now cannot play either BGEE or SoD at all. Also, stating that Beamdog should just "keep catering" to their happy customers quite frankly leaves me speechless......
The positives of the new interface massively outweigh the negative so far.
Things I love:
The map zoom The overall aesthetic of interface The sprite circles The pause grey out
Things I don't like:
New font I'm not superkeen on The portrait highlights when you pick up weapons and such (can this be disabled) Healthbars (I just disabled these)
Things I loathe:
Scrolling extending halfway to the edge of the map (this makes it harder to know when you're coming the edge of an area and takes me out of the game with a horrible looking black box).
Just a thought, but maybe you could make the menu for selecting custom portraits similar to how it's done in Neverwinter Nights? It's much easier to find what you're looking for when all the portraits are tiled together.
Comments
I would really reconsider your stance on mods – they are relatively straightforward to install and might save you some eventual heartache over the direction Beamdog is going. I don't mean to be antagonistic; I know everyone approaches this game with different priorities and I'm sure I would be upset too if things like sprite smoothing were high on my list.
All I can stay is that there are probably a few others who are similarly dissatisfied with the changes. If you're willing to try a few workarounds in the future, I'm sure there will be content available for people in your predicament.
Obviously there's more testing to do, and builds, and work and such, and of course we don't comment on releases and timeframes, but this one is under active investigation at this moment.
As for the cursor - that's strange, seeing how every other item follows the cursor and appears UNDER its graphic (meaning that the cursor obstructs the item's graphic/sprite, not that the item is below, down from the cursor). Especially considering the fact that whole stacks of potions/arrows follow that rule. The different display specifically occurs when I take a certain amount of those from the stack. Therefore, apparently the intended design idea is to remind me how many arrows/potions I JUST specified to take out, while not in any other situation. This is so silly and inconsistent with all the other items, not to mention it's confusing that the cursor and the item graphic are so separate, yet it's the cursor that still determines where the item goes. This seems to be very poorly thought out.
The previous, vanilla design where the cursor disappeared when an item was picked up, leaving us only with the item sprite/graphic to put where we wanted it, was much superior. I never said I was against mods. In fact, I specifically asked if there were any available or on the horizon, in my opening post. I'm actually an avid mod user, I just uninstalled everything after patch 2.0. arrived so as to not screw with the testing (and because it broke installed mods anyway).
I really do hope for some mods that revert much of what this patch did. But the more I play on 2.0., the more I think it's better to just revert to 1.3. for the time being and wait for future patches. Mods can possibly resolve UI issues, but there's so many more problems with the patch - portrait/import lists, graphics, inventory, bugs. It doesn't seem like mods are going to be able to fix all of that, EVEN IF such mods eventually appear. It's kind of sad...
And you don't have to worry about appearing antagonistic. I really appreaciate yours and everyone else's feedback, advice and comments!
As for the sprite smoothing, you're not the first person to dislike the changes even when outlines are turned off. If enough people push the issue, hopefully it will become toggleable in an upcoming patch.
I generally like the ui changes but esc and enter buttons not working in many scenarios really bugs me. Plus they flipped cancel buttons as if suddenly the game started to cater to left handed people
You can still have different character record and side bar portraits. The character record used to use M portraits while the sidebar used S; Now the character record uses L portraits and the sidebar uses M. Adjust your files accordingly.
Also, the new journal pop-ups made me realize what a snarky asshole charname is.
The new UI 2.0 is horrible. ¿Where are the extended scrolls?
*Facepalm*
I'm not going to continue playing. If they can release games with old patch and disabled auto-update that would be perfect.
One positive change - more color options does't change my mind.
You can still play 1.3 on Steam by going in the properties of the game and selecting the 1.3 beta.
For me, the game stays in this blurry state whenever I accidentally zoom in and out. Clicking the middle mouse button resets the camera and sharpens everything. Maybe that works for you, too?
unfortunately I was late and already updated my BG1EE version to 2.0.
Wish I've never did it...
holy cow!
Note to Beamdog folks: Out of every 100 owners of BGEE, probably only five are unhappy with the changes and insist on posting about their unhappiness. The other 95 who don't insist on posting about how happy they are with the game are the overwhelming majority. Keep catering to them and you'll be just fine.
I'm very happy with 2.0 even if you might see me ranting sporadically ....
You're right of course about the 1.3. beta, which again, I thank Beamdog for. That's the saving grace of this update, though it's not a long-term solution. I'd urge you to read the discussion more carefully. Using the straw man fallacy to falsely twist many people's opinion into "not wanting anything to be different from 1998", only to then talk about "adding SoD to one's game", where I specifically stated I had no interest in it and am presenting the situation from a non-SoD 2.0. patch version, followed by made up stats, is not a great way to contribute to this discussion. I apologize if that sounds harsh, but in no way was your post accurate to what is being discussed here.
As for some other comments with suggestions and workarounds, I'm going to test them later today and post more about BG2:EE 2.0. bugs and changes from my quick test run, I have a lot of things to say already :+). Thank you again for all your input.
Also, stating that Beamdog should just "keep catering" to their happy customers quite frankly leaves me speechless......
Things I love:
The map zoom
The overall aesthetic of interface
The sprite circles
The pause grey out
Things I don't like:
New font I'm not superkeen on
The portrait highlights when you pick up weapons and such (can this be disabled)
Healthbars (I just disabled these)
Things I loathe:
Scrolling extending halfway to the edge of the map (this makes it harder to know when you're coming the edge of an area and takes me out of the game with a horrible looking black box).