My personal issues with this new EE client.
Arshalo
Member Posts: 1
I'm sorry, but this post is going to be quite negative. 
Alright, I've played through BG1 and BG2 more times than I could remember, I would guess I've completed both games perhaps 20 times or so and no idea how many playthroughs I've aborted sometime in the middle. Last time I played was probably in the spring sometime.
I was happy with the first EE client (especially for BG1 because playing on the original BG1-client was pretty annoying and I always had problems with bugs when I used the mod to play the game through the BG2 engine).
So now I just started this year's winter playthrough, and I notice alot has changed in the engine.
One issue I have is regarding the text-box at the bottom of the screen. I can't find a way to quickly and easily expand it. I mean, I use to expand that thing to read through what's going on all the time. It's especially important in big fights if you want to have a clue of what's going on, but also for just checking up on an old conversation or whatever. Why would you not allow people to expand it? Or is this a UI thing, is the possibility there but I'm just not seeing it? Because all that happens when I try to expand it is that I'm skipping a single line backwards, which is going to be quite unreadable when you're looking for a single spell save in the middle of four fireballs and a couple of high level flame arrows going off, or just a conversation from twenty minutes ago.
Another issue about the text-box is during conversation. It's again really difficult to read up on previous things said, the way you expand the previous text at the top is counter-intuitive and generally confusing, and does also not expand enough to provide enough space to read and scroll through. Also, the space at the bottom for the different options for your answers does not change depending on how much text those options have, so you very often need to scroll through those answers as well, in a tiny space, which is annoying to put it mildly. The whole "solution" feels very wrong and difficult to use when there honestly was nothing wrong with the old design that could be navigated by nothing but the mouse wheel.
Next issue is regarding the AI. It automatically shoots spells? How is that supposed to work? An AI can't correctly select the best spell for a situation. Baldur's Gate isn't Diablo, you can't just shoot any random spell in any encounter. You might want to save those spells for later, or just use another one. Instead you skip a whole round plus waste a spell because your spellcaster started casting a spell without you noticing, and you tell him to cast another spell. Yes I can turn off party AI, but it still shouldn't shoot spells.
Quick saves - There's like 5 different quick saves in my load list already, and I'm not even in Beregost yet (I skipped Friendly Arms and everything in Candlekeep). The thing about quick save is that it's supposed to be just that - a quick save. You need a button to press quickly and do that every ten seconds or so if you're new (and at least every minute or so even for experienced players, unless you're doing some sort of hardcore run). If you need to load from further back you can always use your auto-saves. Most of my playthroughs never have another save than those two in them.
Together these changes make the game unplayable to me. Feels like an attempt at modernizing the game, but all it does is make it more confusing and tedious to manage and navigate. I am also not a fan of the character outlining which in my opinion breaks the graphic beauty of the game, nor the scrolling out of bounds. I know these can be deselected in the options, but I just don't think they should be default.
On a separate note, I'm wondering, is there a way to play BG2:EE without ToB attached to it? I mean, without the ToB spells, abilities, and with lvl 20 max level? I find most of the ToB stuff just to be game breaking and quite ridiculous. Before EE you had the option of just not installing ToB, but that's not possible when it's all in the same package. So, any mod or something out there?
Perhaps this is not even the right place to post this. If that's the case, I'm sorry.
Alright, I've played through BG1 and BG2 more times than I could remember, I would guess I've completed both games perhaps 20 times or so and no idea how many playthroughs I've aborted sometime in the middle. Last time I played was probably in the spring sometime.
I was happy with the first EE client (especially for BG1 because playing on the original BG1-client was pretty annoying and I always had problems with bugs when I used the mod to play the game through the BG2 engine).
So now I just started this year's winter playthrough, and I notice alot has changed in the engine.
One issue I have is regarding the text-box at the bottom of the screen. I can't find a way to quickly and easily expand it. I mean, I use to expand that thing to read through what's going on all the time. It's especially important in big fights if you want to have a clue of what's going on, but also for just checking up on an old conversation or whatever. Why would you not allow people to expand it? Or is this a UI thing, is the possibility there but I'm just not seeing it? Because all that happens when I try to expand it is that I'm skipping a single line backwards, which is going to be quite unreadable when you're looking for a single spell save in the middle of four fireballs and a couple of high level flame arrows going off, or just a conversation from twenty minutes ago.
Another issue about the text-box is during conversation. It's again really difficult to read up on previous things said, the way you expand the previous text at the top is counter-intuitive and generally confusing, and does also not expand enough to provide enough space to read and scroll through. Also, the space at the bottom for the different options for your answers does not change depending on how much text those options have, so you very often need to scroll through those answers as well, in a tiny space, which is annoying to put it mildly. The whole "solution" feels very wrong and difficult to use when there honestly was nothing wrong with the old design that could be navigated by nothing but the mouse wheel.
Next issue is regarding the AI. It automatically shoots spells? How is that supposed to work? An AI can't correctly select the best spell for a situation. Baldur's Gate isn't Diablo, you can't just shoot any random spell in any encounter. You might want to save those spells for later, or just use another one. Instead you skip a whole round plus waste a spell because your spellcaster started casting a spell without you noticing, and you tell him to cast another spell. Yes I can turn off party AI, but it still shouldn't shoot spells.
Quick saves - There's like 5 different quick saves in my load list already, and I'm not even in Beregost yet (I skipped Friendly Arms and everything in Candlekeep). The thing about quick save is that it's supposed to be just that - a quick save. You need a button to press quickly and do that every ten seconds or so if you're new (and at least every minute or so even for experienced players, unless you're doing some sort of hardcore run). If you need to load from further back you can always use your auto-saves. Most of my playthroughs never have another save than those two in them.
Together these changes make the game unplayable to me. Feels like an attempt at modernizing the game, but all it does is make it more confusing and tedious to manage and navigate. I am also not a fan of the character outlining which in my opinion breaks the graphic beauty of the game, nor the scrolling out of bounds. I know these can be deselected in the options, but I just don't think they should be default.
On a separate note, I'm wondering, is there a way to play BG2:EE without ToB attached to it? I mean, without the ToB spells, abilities, and with lvl 20 max level? I find most of the ToB stuff just to be game breaking and quite ridiculous. Before EE you had the option of just not installing ToB, but that's not possible when it's all in the same package. So, any mod or something out there?
Perhaps this is not even the right place to post this. If that's the case, I'm sorry.
0
Comments
Reading textbox during conversation: Click the double-^ button to view past text. Again, as above, click and drag anywhere along the top of the box to resize it.
Quick saves: The game rotates through a fixed number of quick saves, rather than just one. If you really don't like more than one, there's a mod to revert the behavior: http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1141-quick-save-slots-tweaks/
Installing SoA without ToB disappeared many years ago, unless you had an old CD copy. Well before the EEs came along, GOG only sold BG2 with ToB included. You couldn't buy SoA without ToB from GOG (the same for BG1 and TotSC).
The number of quick saves can be changed by messing with savename.2da, but I don't think there's a mod that does it for you.