MINOR Additions for GREATER Realism
ryu1
Member Posts: 76
Firstly, these ideas may have already been mentioned so apologies for anyone reading these more than once. Please include links to the original posts. I believe that these ideas do not affect the game significantly (excluding one suggestion), they are merely little additions which I personally feel would make BG more realistic and more...well...satisfying and pleasing. I also know that it may be a little too late to include any of these in BG1:EE but perhaps in BG2:EE...?
1. When we find ourselves in Waukeen's Promenade, the first thing I noticed was the amount of stalls and shops selling all manners of goods: the usual armour, weapons, items etc but wait! What's this? Huge baskets of delicious-looking food and you can't even buy a single apple! I would like it if you could buy food which, ofcourse, would act as a consumable just like potions. Perhaps eating foods can heal the consumer a certain amount of HP: an apple - 5HP; loaf of bread - 10 HP; big chunk of roasted salted meat (mmmmmmmh!) - 20 HP. Or something along those lines. This relates to the very charming and fun Priest Spell - Goodberries, where a single goodberry provides 1HP (cute spell but lets be honest...almost completely useless!).
2. Adding food to the game can also provide opportunities to include new quests such as purchasing various types of food for a poor family or beggar where you can gain exp, info or positive repuation. Although these quests won't be hugely challenging, I think it just adds a bit more variety from the constant exploring and fighting. Also I think giving beggars money should also provide something such as each gold coin provides 1xp, or they can give info on current or new quests.
3. Again concerning food (as you can tell, I like my food...mmmmmh pizza!), perhaps when we buy some flour and an apple - stacking them together can produce an apple pie which can give double the HP than they would when consumed individually! Or combine cabbage and beef to produce a stew...
4. Stepping away from food, I want to discuss the knowledge and lore of Wizards when identifying items. Instead of wisdom and intelligence being the deciding factors, perhaps a person's lore can be increased by opening and reading books. So many books in BG and how often are they used? Maybe introduce a basic points system where the more books read, the more chance they can identify items - since knowledge is power!
5. The Steal option for thieves when shopping should definitely be updated. If a thief has a reasonable steaing points, is enchanted with Luck and drinks both the master thievery and perception potions, they can pretty much steal anything. In terms of realism, if a merchant only sells 15 items and a thief steals half his stock then surely the merchant must get a little suspicious. Maybe if a thief successfully steals something, then there's a -20% chance to succeed in stealing the next item. If another item is stolen then there's another -20% chance, making an overall -40% to succeed and so on until -99% chance.
6. Coming back to food for the last time, perhaps introduce a travel-food pack for when your party travels to far away areas. Purchasing one allows your party to travel to a far area without succumbing to hunger (and potentially cannibalism!). If a party travels without one, they can lose HP depending on how long they travel for. This would be more useful in BG1:EE I would think...and I suppose this would affect the main gameplay but just a thought.
Anyway, that's my rant over. Please feel free to share your thoughts, especially if my ideas are too retarded for words!
1. When we find ourselves in Waukeen's Promenade, the first thing I noticed was the amount of stalls and shops selling all manners of goods: the usual armour, weapons, items etc but wait! What's this? Huge baskets of delicious-looking food and you can't even buy a single apple! I would like it if you could buy food which, ofcourse, would act as a consumable just like potions. Perhaps eating foods can heal the consumer a certain amount of HP: an apple - 5HP; loaf of bread - 10 HP; big chunk of roasted salted meat (mmmmmmmh!) - 20 HP. Or something along those lines. This relates to the very charming and fun Priest Spell - Goodberries, where a single goodberry provides 1HP (cute spell but lets be honest...almost completely useless!).
2. Adding food to the game can also provide opportunities to include new quests such as purchasing various types of food for a poor family or beggar where you can gain exp, info or positive repuation. Although these quests won't be hugely challenging, I think it just adds a bit more variety from the constant exploring and fighting. Also I think giving beggars money should also provide something such as each gold coin provides 1xp, or they can give info on current or new quests.
3. Again concerning food (as you can tell, I like my food...mmmmmh pizza!), perhaps when we buy some flour and an apple - stacking them together can produce an apple pie which can give double the HP than they would when consumed individually! Or combine cabbage and beef to produce a stew...
4. Stepping away from food, I want to discuss the knowledge and lore of Wizards when identifying items. Instead of wisdom and intelligence being the deciding factors, perhaps a person's lore can be increased by opening and reading books. So many books in BG and how often are they used? Maybe introduce a basic points system where the more books read, the more chance they can identify items - since knowledge is power!
5. The Steal option for thieves when shopping should definitely be updated. If a thief has a reasonable steaing points, is enchanted with Luck and drinks both the master thievery and perception potions, they can pretty much steal anything. In terms of realism, if a merchant only sells 15 items and a thief steals half his stock then surely the merchant must get a little suspicious. Maybe if a thief successfully steals something, then there's a -20% chance to succeed in stealing the next item. If another item is stolen then there's another -20% chance, making an overall -40% to succeed and so on until -99% chance.
6. Coming back to food for the last time, perhaps introduce a travel-food pack for when your party travels to far away areas. Purchasing one allows your party to travel to a far area without succumbing to hunger (and potentially cannibalism!). If a party travels without one, they can lose HP depending on how long they travel for. This would be more useful in BG1:EE I would think...and I suppose this would affect the main gameplay but just a thought.
Anyway, that's my rant over. Please feel free to share your thoughts, especially if my ideas are too retarded for words!
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Comments
I also wouldn't worry about your post being "too retarded for words". There is already stiff competition on these boards for that title.
@ryu1 The idea has merit, but as others have said (or will probably say again), I don't think that there's a need for it in the game. Parts of it make me think of Oregon Trail, and other parts of it make me think of Skyrim.
What I do like is the idea of food being a potential source of hit points. Maybe eating a piece of food (any kind of food, it shouldn't matter in my opinion) grants the user a certain number of temporary hit points that last for an hour?
I would say that this idea would be an even better idea if it could be merged with the "improve taverns" concept that's occasionally tossed about.
Berries heal 5-8hp each and if your at full health 2-3hp added each berry consumed. or it just scales with level, they should also be instantaneous.
I also like the idea about the stealing from stores, I dont know how it works ive never done it.
but the food ideas you have I find too much for the game, it sounds like filler which would mess up the game, now I would much prefer a quality meal with the best ingredients, rather than a below average all you can eat buffet
That reminds me of my Uncle Scratchy, when he worked on his turnip farm all day long, he never took time to eat a single turnip. I always told him 'Scratchy, you should always eat some turnips every day you work the fields, otherwise the turnips will think that you don't like them'. But he would always laugh and say it was nothing. Then a few weeks later he turned into a turnip, the biggest you've ever seen in your life, and I would know! We were going to have a wizard take a look at him, but the bi-annual county fair was coming up and there was a prize for the best turnip and my Auntie had always wanted to win but Uncle Scratchy would never enter the contest (there was a hefty entry fee you know) so they had never been able to compete before even though Uncle Scratchy had some of the best turnips around...
That's the story of how my Auntie got the blue ribbon that she keeps over the chair my Uncle Scratchy always used to use.
But Hey there was a brothel idea once:) Thats also realistic, maybe we can do something about that huh??
However, keeping track of supplies CAN be included in such a way that actually improves the experience if done correctly. By correctly, I mean that the hunger system serves the gaming experience directly instead of simply being included.
A great example would be if you made a mod that sent the players out into the desert where the name of the game, the challenge, the plot, the obstacle, is survival. You can set up all sorts of encounters with other cultures and creatures but the first challenge is to secure food and water (and probably deal with others trying to do the same).
In that case, the hunger system becomes part of the flavor of the adventure rather than simply another resource to manage. Of course, once the characters return to more lush and bountiful areas (the normal game areas), you'd want to ditch the hunger system so that it doesn't become an unnecessary burden.
It is an idea which could perhaps be drawn a little bit further and work best in a game like Fallout 3 where survival and scavenging in a forsaken wasteland is top priority. In such a game I would like the idea of our character(s) being in need of food every now and again while the main story runs its course, simply to make it seem more real, so long as it is not overdone. Suffering from slowly and gradually fading strength without food, or finding new strength when eating something would help to make it seem more real. But it's a fine line - it cud easily be overdone. And besides, we were talking about BG:EE weren't we ? I just trailed off a little...
2. As stated many times before by others and me: No crafting! (Baking/cooking/whatev
I don't think we need a mechanic for baking pies, though.
Party: *struggles to pull up pants and grab weapons*
(btw, loving the "TJ Hooker" username!)
And I suppose adding food to BG would somehow make it more like Skyrim. If there's no food then they just have one or two things in common...weapons, armour, spells, quests, enemies, enchantments, items, exploration, towns/cities, scavenging...
Perhaps an alternative would be to have an extra option in taverns to include a good meal in the service wich would mean you would get back your HPs faster. Not that it makes a difference, but hey, we have the peasant - merchant - noble -royal thing already...
For quests, food is fine. There is an issue with people selling food in every town being a waste of lines of code, but dialogue based interactions for food still exist in games that otherwise ignore food. If the starving man is only a screen away from the food merchant, a simple dialogue option and a quest item would solve it - without the need for food merchants everywhere in the game.
As usable items, I am still entertained by the idea of hearty pot-roasts restoring a vampire hunters health (like in Castlevania). However, food granting any level of healing 5 points or over begins to eclipse magical potions, which doesn't make sense. Also, given the atmosphere of the world, we're used to the idea that only time and magic can heal someone (maybe alchemy too). At present, a sensible dinner cannot fix the grievous sword wounds an orc gave you. I think it should stay that way (barring Jan Janson's invention of magically infused turnips and other snacks).
On Wisdom and Intelligence as the deciding factors of lore, it might be nice to see world exploration (reading of books while playing the game) control lore more, but there are two problems. Firstly, people who know you get more lore for reading books will click on the book and close it right away to get the bonus. If they don't want the lore, they won't read the lore. Secondly, a character's Wisdom and Intelligence are supposed to tell you how smart they are, and might already measure how many books they've read in the past. Though I'm not opposed to any game giving you additional 'lore' bonuses for reading books, it seems that the deciding factor in 2e and BG is Wisdom and Intelligence. Of course, a bard has 'know-it-all' stitched into its class without the need for Wisdom, but even they come with an int requirement.
In conclusion, your ideas aren't too retarded for words, we're just dealing with a well-known game and system being re-released. It doesn't seem the place to make these tweaks unless they're strictly an improvement. These changes are a flavor issue (pardon the pun). Some other game, like the Fallout mods that count food in carbs, fat, and protein, as well as body temperature and radiation sickness, could fit these ideas, but not this game. We know and love the flavor of this game already.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/40141/#Comment_40141
I miss the Arrows of Detonation from BG1, expensive as shit but hilarious when you're in a busy area of a town/city, enchanted with haste and boots of speed, let your arrows fly in all directions and watch the entire screen be engulfed in a searing inferno.....sometimes I like to do stupid stuff!
And yes, ddubious, they most definitely are a flavour issue! I suppose I can always try and create a food mod for BG, all I need now is to get the 'Writing Software for Dummies book'...