Core rules

Cvijeta

Does Aerie permanently die on core rules? Could you please explain how to raise her in that case.

Lord_Tansheron

Not sure what's so special about Aerie, but sure, on Core no character should die permanently. As long as they're still in your party, a raise spell from a party member or a temple can bring them back to life.

Note of course that this only applies to deaths in COMBAT, not to deaths that happen as a result of story events. Those are usually permanent (or at least supposed to be, not sure if there's still that bug where they're not).

Nuin

Everyone can permanently die on core rules. When they do, their portrait disappears and they're gone forever.
People can't die permanently on normal setting.

Or maybe he means that elves are supposed to be immune to Raise Dead in AD&D? It's a story balance thing. The gist of it is that elves can already defeat you by simply outliving you, so there had to be other restrictions on the race.
They can still be resurrected though, which costs more.

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Lord_Tansheron

I honestly thought Core was, like the lower setting. Guess I was mistaken, my bad.

I don't think the elf thing was ever implemented in BG, not that I can remember (maybe BG1 only?). It was (is?) in IWD, though.

Nuin

Core rules has always been harsher, being more faithful to D&D, but normal has become synonymous with core rules these days especially around the time of the NWN series. People want the challenge but not the tedium, I suppose.

Or maybe the bar for what counts as "normal" difficulty has just decreased thanks to the relatively recent massive influx of casual gamers.

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SomeSort

subtledoctor said:

Nuin said:

Or maybe the bar for what counts as "normal" difficulty has just decreased thanks to the relatively recent massive influx of casual gamers.

It's an interesting question why the easy difficulty is called "Normal." It's not this, I don't think, because these are the terms Bioware used back in 1998.

Considering how many people Bioware was introducing to 2E D&D and how steep the learning curve was, even "normal" difficulty was quite hard back in 1998.

The problem with naming difficulties is that there's a stigma attached to "easy". Many players won't play anything other than "normal". I've seen several different developer forums swamped with complaints that a game was too hard, but when they asked if the person had tried lowering the difficulty the reaction was that that simply wasn't done.

If Bioware had named "Core" as "normal", then first-time players would have played that instead, and the game would have been harder and more frustrating and many of them would have blamed the game. I think it was perfectly sensible for Bioware to guide new players to the easier mode to start, and I think naming the other difficulty "core" instead of "hard" was a smart signal to people who were used to 2E D&D that "this is the ruleset you are familiar with, so go ahead and play this level without worrying it will be too difficult".

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WatchForWolves

Humans are definitely "dumb", but for some "Normal" simply means "The way the game is meant to be played".

Especially considering how rare it is for higher difficulty levels to actually have a meaningful effect. Usually they just increase enemy stats and call it a day.

Nuin

If only the "the way the game is meant to be played" factor was so easy to quantify. Fact is once a game gets released even devs have to adjust how they see the their game is meant to be played based on player stats and feedback, and this is especially true for games that gain a significant following.

That's pretty much the history of a large chunk of like WoW, for example.

In a perfect world higher difficulties would mean not only tougher but smarter enemies, but creating a good AI system is hard work. If Dragon Age: Inquisition was any indication, crafting a game with good RP elements + decent gameplay + non-trash level AI is extremely difficult these days. BG2 is just one those game that (given its age and the relative current state of many games) almost miraculously got pretty close to getting it right.

Lord_Tansheron

Nuin said:

BG2 is just one those game that (given its age and the relative current state of many games) almost miraculously got pretty close to getting it right.

Nothing miraculous about SCS, it's just a lot of very painstaking, thorough scripting Naturally it's an effort only really feasible as a mod, i.e. a community-driven labor of love. It would almost certainly never be financially viable for a company to put that much effort into a single aspect.

The vanilla AI is not particularly great, and the game is more full of cheese than a cheese is full of holes.

Nuin

It's the AI system more than the particular AI. BG2 makes it possible for you to just send your people off into combat while you figure out what to do next from the sidelines. Companions have just enough smarts to attack whatever's nearest and just keep doing that while you manage party resources like spells, items abilities, etc.
It also makes it possible for people to come up with SCS in the first place, or even more ambitious projects like Tactics where the AI uses cheese as well.

Compare to something like DA:I, where the AI system makes it so your companions have a VERY big chance of doing something extremely stupid, assuming it doesn't bug out completely and your companions end up just standing there stuck or something - and there's really nothing you can do about it short of going all-out micro.
Its ridiculous how the AI system is so ambitious and yet you can't even decide who gets to stick to party formation and who gets to do whatever they want as long as they use the skills you've enabled.