I thought that the patch was about bugfixing and multiplayer. Why do you keep adding these arbitrary changes? The players base is very conservative and a lot of them won't like the change. The same thing happens with the Oil of speed tweak.
If you really want to make these tweaks, at least put them being option, or even better use the modding capabilities of the game and publish them as a mod.
Let me just say, if the new outfit colors were an optional feature, I'd actually find it neat. It would be similar to the sprite outlines for me—something that I'd want to use every now and then to shake up the experience, and see the game world and the characters how the designers of this feature wanted me to see them. But I wouldn't use it for every playthrough. As it stands, in the long term I still prefer my own imagination and head-canon over what this feature tries to do.
Beamdog could even turn this into a larger feature if they rolled into it more cosmetic changes they made over the years, and made it all toggleable (maybe even separately). Like the helmet appearances that were similarly changed in BG:EE, and the helmets, shields, and staves that were changed in BG2:EE. I'd love to see the Watchers of Candlekeep wear their iconic horned helmets once again. Maybe it could even restore the original paperdolls for each game. All of it being optional to use.
I thought it was changes on an idividual basis. Not making every npc remotely related to another whear the same two colors with little variation. Great idea, poor implementation.
I just met Nimbul, who is now wearing an Iron Throne uniform, I'm guessing? In fact, a lot of the assassins and bounty hunters you meet seem to be in some sort of cartoony black uniform now, which to me seems to defeat the purpose of sending an undercover assassin in the first place. Not to mention that some of those bounty hunters, I think, are supposed to be free agents, not Iron Throne lackeys. That has always been my interpretation, anyway.
Here's all the members of the edgelord brigade I've come across so far:
Edit: I forgot about these ones. Our old friends Shank and Carbos joined up too.
How handy! Now Paladins don't even have to cast Detect Evil anymore: they simply need to dualclass as Fashion Police and smite everyone on the streets who wear black and red! Yaaaaay~ ...
Have I ever mentioned that I abhor the 'black/red = evil' trope? It's been done to death.
So much effort going into things that change the iconic art and feel of Baldur’s Gate. Also, into solutions for multi-player. Beamdog’s efforts to fix multi-player bugs for the people who use that feature are appreciated. But I’d be willing to bet that 90% of players never, or very rarely, touch it. The heart, the “meat and potatoes” of Baldur’s Gate is the single player experience. The heroic, personal journey of a single protagonist.
I’m left wondering whether there are any plans to address the concerns and suggestions discussed in the “making it work” UI threads. Seeing the results of this current patch, I’d have to conclude, not as far as the artwork is concerned. Development seems to move steadily in the opposite direction.
We were told in those threads that the developers were listening, and liked what we were doing there. Has that changed?
It would be really neat to get some word on whether or not there are any plans to at least open up the hard coded areas of the UI. Such blocks really tie the hands of our talented UI modders.
Agreed. There are many, many parts of the UI that have been severely impaired or outright broken since the 2.0 patch (which was released over two years ago), and I think those issues deserved to be prioritized over arbitrary stylistic alterations to the game world.
Luckily, there have been some light indications that suggest that the devs might have started working on the UI recently, like some of the "making it work" UI feature requests entering submitted status on Redmine. Hopefully something will happen on that front soon.
This change is more suiteable for a sport game. Now I see edgelord brigade like people from Real Madrid with their secondary team shirt. Please, do it optional
@Ravenslight The 2.5 series of patches was intended simply to bring every version up to parity across all platforms and fix multiplayer bugs. They just kept finding MORE bugs that the scope is widened a bit. Beamdog has stated in the last livestream that 2.5 is not the final patch cycle for the games. My guess would be that the UI's are addressed in the next cycle. FWIW IWD's UI is different from BG and BG2. Looks like the team took some of the complaints to heart when crafting the 2.5 IWD UI.
*EDIT* Oh, and there a bunch of people that play multiplayer. Multiplayer wonkiness is probably the most consistent complaint I see brought up.
In my opinion Baldur's Gate deserves to be as pristine as possible in all areas, which absolutely inlcudes things like MP. I know people who play it exclusively in coop for example. However, like others, I do wonder how things are prioritised. The UI issues to me seem pretty major and there are other things in the interface that are still very unpolished like the limitations in hotkey mapping for example. Therefore, I'm very suprised that they find time for something like tinkering with the appearance of assassins in BGEE (where I would say if it ain't broke don't fix it). This does make me worry a bit about the effectiveness of their project management. There might be another patch on the horizon after this but we can't expect them to curate the game forever.
Yes, I am aware of what the stated focus has been. Which is one of the reasons that I am confused by their changes to NPC appearances in this patch. As I said in my previous post, it is great that the developers are addressing the multi-player issues. Though the percentage of complaints concerning it, compared with other things that I have noticed, might differ from yours. Still, the multi-players certainly deserve a bug free experience.
I haven’t tried IWD since the patch. That is encouraging news concerning the UI, @THACOBell Thank you.
I totally agree with Adul concerning the change in uniforms. Please make it optionnal, it ruins the feel of diversity and individuality of characters met in BG world
Personally, I like red, black and evil. The majority of cases of uniforms it works
But maybe we should not have the hired help (assassins) being given uniforms...
In the same vain... When I am in Bandit camp and I get my leather armour from the hobgoblin... I want my character put in the same red, black and evil uniform... Anything else would leave me disappointed...
Hasn't MP practically been unplayable for almost 5-6 years since BGEE first came out? So I guess it's about long overdue that got fixed, not that it's something I plan on using anytime soon.
Can't believe it's been 2 years since SoD was released...Things go by so quickly.
Someone else has probably raised this issue. I'm new to forums and unsure wheres to put this. The dialogue area toward the bottom of the screen is too narrow to see much info during play and scrolling to precisely what you want to see is difficult. A simple fix, it would seem, would be a button like you have on the dialogue area in conversations that you can click to expand. I played through all the games when they first came out and played many mods, including the enjoyable Darkest Day. I was skeptical this old classic could be improved but when the new beta came out I decided to give it a try. Overall I am very impressed and quite enjoying your product.
Thanks for all the feedback. It's been passed to the team.
There're several things I want to clarify here.
The 2.5 patch series is focused on stability, including multiplayer stability. Please, have a look at the patch notes for IWD:EE 2.5 - there're a lot of stability-related fixes there. Or have a look at 200+ fixes seen in the new build for BGII:EE.
For BG:EE and BGII:EE - it will be even more so (as there's no transferring of 2.x features to IWD if we speak about BG). By stability the team mean less crashes, less broken quests (including quests as shown in the journal), less lags, - this type of thing.
Another aspect of 2.5 patches is additional localizations.
All issues are classified into several categories, with "A" and "B" being serious and severe bugs/features, where "C" - minor issues. The focus of the team during this whole 2.5 patch process is "A" and "B" issues. Don't worry that "C" issues are "stealing" time and effort of the team. They are not. Every feature and bug the team address is going through long triage with discussions.
As for UI - as stated several times already, the team hear you loud and clear, and indeed UI tickets are submitted to the internal tracker. And your tickets, based on long forum discussions, are very detailed and insightful. But UI has never been a focus of 2.5 patch. And of course 2.5 UI for IWD:EE took into account the forum feedback.
Multiplayer - I personally played MP in 1.3, 2.3 and 2.5. And as you probably know, I'm one of those who consider MP the most enjoyable way of playing these games nowadays, after dozens (or hundreds) of playthroughs. So while these games are designed for Singleplayer more, there're people who enjoy them in MP.
It WAS fun and completely possible to play BG in 1.3 and 2.3. But there were issues (different, depending on the game version), of course, which needed workarounds or certain rules MP players had to follow, to make it fluent experience. More of them, if we consider mobile platforms. 2.5 is designed to address all the conserns MP players have been sharing these years.
And the beta test is ... for testing. This is why it's so important to hear all of you sharing opinions and concerns.
Hasn't MP practically been unplayable for almost 5-6 years since BGEE first came out? So I guess it's about long overdue that got fixed, not that it's something I plan on using anytime soon.
I've played lots of MP with a friend, and it's been fun even if a little unstable. We've had some issues coming up every now and then, and we sometimes needed to use the console to get around them as we went along. Though certain parts of the game, most notably Black Pits II for us, have been almost unplayable with lots of game-breaking issues.
Someone else has probably raised this issue. I'm new to forums and unsure wheres to put this. The dialogue area toward the bottom of the screen is too narrow to see much info during play and scrolling to precisely what you want to see is difficult. A simple fix, it would seem, would be a button like you have on the dialogue area in conversations that you can click to expand. I played through all the games when they first came out and played many mods, including the enjoyable Darkest Day. I was skeptical this old classic could be improved but when the new beta came out I decided to give it a try. Overall I am very impressed and quite enjoying your product.
They've changed how you resize the dialog box in an earlier patch, but you can still do it. Now you need to grab the top edge of the dialog box with the mouse and drag it.
They've changed how you resize the dialog box in an earlier patch, but you can still do it. Now you need to grab the top edge of the dialog box with the mouse and drag it.
Going from a button that interacts with the mouse to only a fiddly mouse interaction on a frame edge? That sounds like a classic step backwards in usability, back to the 90s, appropriately enough. I'm lucky enough to not be a user with limited motor skills, but even so, such moves are often tricky for track-pad users compared to the mouse magic crew. Why would you remove a perfectly good back-up UI for the same effect, that better advertises itself to the user?
As for UI - as stated several times already, the team hear you loud and clear, and indeed UI tickets are submitted to the internal tracker.
I'm aware of this, and I'm always excited to hear it too, and get some confirmation that it is being looked at. But I also want to state that I think many of us feel that it has already taken Beamdog too long to addess the UI issues. The 2.0 patch has been out for over two years, and the UI has been in a diminished state since then. When I play the game, it's hard not to get frustrated with the usability problems that all make the game a little more difficult to enjoy.
And let me be clear, now that it is being looked at, I don't want to hurry the devs. I want them to do the best job possible and to take the time necessary to develop an interface that's as good and polished as the original was. But it's still disappointing that after so much time still barely any of the UI issues have been addressed. I wish Beamdog dedicated more resources to fixing the UI, earlier. Not just for my sake, but for their own too, so that possible customers don't walk away thinking they're unable to provide the necessary support for their products.
Comments
If you really want to make these tweaks, at least put them being option, or even better use the modding capabilities of the game and publish them as a mod.
Beamdog could even turn this into a larger feature if they rolled into it more cosmetic changes they made over the years, and made it all toggleable (maybe even separately). Like the helmet appearances that were similarly changed in BG:EE, and the helmets, shields, and staves that were changed in BG2:EE. I'd love to see the Watchers of Candlekeep wear their iconic horned helmets once again. Maybe it could even restore the original paperdolls for each game. All of it being optional to use.
Now that's a feature I could get behind.
Edit: feature request
Edit: I forgot about these ones. Our old friends Shank and Carbos joined up too.
Have I ever mentioned that I abhor the 'black/red = evil' trope? It's been done to death.
I’m left wondering whether there are any plans to address the concerns and suggestions discussed in the “making it work” UI threads. Seeing the results of this current patch, I’d have to conclude, not as far as the artwork is concerned. Development seems to move steadily in the opposite direction.
We were told in those threads that the developers were listening, and liked what we were doing there. Has that changed?
It would be really neat to get some word on whether or not there are any plans to at least open up the hard coded areas of the UI. Such blocks really tie the hands of our talented UI modders.
Luckily, there have been some light indications that suggest that the devs might have started working on the UI recently, like some of the "making it work" UI feature requests entering submitted status on Redmine. Hopefully something will happen on that front soon.
Please, do it optional
*EDIT* Oh, and there a bunch of people that play multiplayer. Multiplayer wonkiness is probably the most consistent complaint I see brought up.
I haven’t tried IWD since the patch. That is encouraging news concerning the UI, @THACOBell Thank you.
Please make it optionnal, it ruins the feel of diversity and individuality of characters met in BG world
But maybe we should not have the hired help (assassins) being given uniforms...
In the same vain... When I am in Bandit camp and I get my leather armour from the hobgoblin... I want my character put in the same red, black and evil uniform... Anything else would leave me disappointed...
Can't believe it's been 2 years since SoD was released...Things go by so quickly.
I played through all the games when they first came out and played many mods, including the enjoyable Darkest Day. I was skeptical this old classic could be improved but when the new beta came out I decided to give it a try. Overall I am very impressed and quite enjoying your product.
There're several things I want to clarify here.
The 2.5 patch series is focused on stability, including multiplayer stability. Please, have a look at the patch notes for IWD:EE 2.5 - there're a lot of stability-related fixes there. Or have a look at 200+ fixes seen in the new build for BGII:EE.
For BG:EE and BGII:EE - it will be even more so (as there's no transferring of 2.x features to IWD if we speak about BG). By stability the team mean less crashes, less broken quests (including quests as shown in the journal), less lags, - this type of thing.
Another aspect of 2.5 patches is additional localizations.
All issues are classified into several categories, with "A" and "B" being serious and severe bugs/features, where "C" - minor issues. The focus of the team during this whole 2.5 patch process is "A" and "B" issues. Don't worry that "C" issues are "stealing" time and effort of the team. They are not. Every feature and bug the team address is going through long triage with discussions.
As for UI - as stated several times already, the team hear you loud and clear, and indeed UI tickets are submitted to the internal tracker. And your tickets, based on long forum discussions, are very detailed and insightful. But UI has never been a focus of 2.5 patch. And of course 2.5 UI for IWD:EE took into account the forum feedback.
Multiplayer - I personally played MP in 1.3, 2.3 and 2.5. And as you probably know, I'm one of those who consider MP the most enjoyable way of playing these games nowadays, after dozens (or hundreds) of playthroughs. So while these games are designed for Singleplayer more, there're people who enjoy them in MP.
It WAS fun and completely possible to play BG in 1.3 and 2.3. But there were issues (different, depending on the game version), of course, which needed workarounds or certain rules MP players had to follow, to make it fluent experience. More of them, if we consider mobile platforms. 2.5 is designed to address all the conserns MP players have been sharing these years.
And the beta test is ... for testing. This is why it's so important to hear all of you sharing opinions and concerns.
And let me be clear, now that it is being looked at, I don't want to hurry the devs. I want them to do the best job possible and to take the time necessary to develop an interface that's as good and polished as the original was. But it's still disappointing that after so much time still barely any of the UI issues have been addressed. I wish Beamdog dedicated more resources to fixing the UI, earlier. Not just for my sake, but for their own too, so that possible customers don't walk away thinking they're unable to provide the necessary support for their products.
For you maybe. I personally really like the current UI. I'm actually nervous about how much might be changed just to accomodate nostalgia.