Also disappointed with the difficulty / size of mobs and such. How it is now.. my dual wielder main (barely min/maxed) is stampeding through everything that isn't a boss mob. Nevermind the rest of my party. Most mages and such don't even stand a chance. The nymph/neireed mobs for example were a joke.. 3 mobs of 3 and only 1 of them even managed to cast the spell that makes your party members hostile. Just put the difficulty on Insane though and am getting some heavy incoming damage so that makes it slightly more.. adventurous.
At any rate, please increase mob density to reflect BG1 more.
After playing 3/4 of the game I have never been poisoned. It never have happens in the original game. Some areas, as Firewine or the Cloackwood are now so easy they have lost all their flavour Also vyvern seems more easy to fight...:S
Yes, please. The only encounters that are similar to the original are the scripted ones, and those are fun. The rest is awful, there's either no monsters or a single specimen where there used to be mixed groups.
The first area after you watch Gorion die is no longer the terrifying death (bear)trap that it used to be, and whilst I am openly glad about this, a secret little bit of me wishes that it weren't so. I miss the fear and apprehension of exploring the map without being properly attentive to what I might stumble upon.
We played Multiplayer yesterday with my wife. We went to the Temple Area (close to Beregost). We had encountered 2 freezes (because of the missing videos sunset and nightfall), we couldn't get back our HPs and Spells, because every time we were disturbed by monsters (normally we sleep in the Inns, but this is not working now bec. of the missing movie), we couldn't read the Journal about what Neera said to us (because of the missing possibility to scroll the text down to reach the top), and
and after all of this pain there comes a Vampiryc Wolf what we couldn't kill because of having the 1/3 of the XP we should have had reaching this point. This was the moment my wife said: "This game is not fun anymore" and went to sleep.
Hum, are you sure you guys arent just... really good at the game? I have mostly played BG2, and I did BG vanilla only once. And so far I have died several times, and I have been poisoned many times. And the enemies in the wilderness has been plentiful so far... The Bandit camp was swarming with enemies!
Not only in BG. The world of Forgotten Realms is created as a Points-of-Light system. So if you choose the Core difficulty, you are excepting that. And you are excepting this works as PnP AD&D, and like the vanilla edition. That's why I don't understand why this penalties to damage and to monster group sizes. Please create a new default difficulty for the casual players (or use the easy mode as default for them), but don't destroy the normal and core settings. Thanks.
This really is a gamechanger for me - I noticed this as well, but i only saw it as odd, i didnt think it was an actual difficulty change.
Some set encounters stay the same it seems, like when you get waylaid by enemies, I have still been surrounded by 8-10 bandits all armed with bows. Which is good! There's also the room on the third floor in Nashkel mines, with the 8-10 kobolds, and other, similar encounters that "always" were there.
On the other hand.. I fought maybe 10 gnolls in the Gnoll Stronghold, but I thought I had been quite efficient clearing it, so it didnt seem as odd at the time. Still, I remember times when I had to fight hordes of Gnoll Slashers and Gnoll Veterans, this time I think I only fought one of each.
Kobolds in general in the Nashkel mines were far and few between, but again, my clearing of the mines were quite efficient, so I it didnt strike me as odd until I read this,
The Xvart village was one which really made me see how few enemies there actually were. I remember being swarmed by these guys, every time you went to fight one, there would be 2 new popping up on your screen.
And then there's the random wilderness encounters. In the High Hedge area, where there used to be 5-10 skeletons when they spawned, there is now 1-2. I dont really get that feeling of dread when I see _A_ hobgoblin coming for me, or _A_ gibberling, _A_ Xvart or _A_ wolf. There used to be more, and once I realized this is an actual problem, I keep finding myself being annoyed over it.
To be honest I fail to see the logic behind reducing the mobs, reducing the difficulty. Sure, I struggled the first time I played the game, but back then I didnt really understand english well either..
Whether this was an intentional change or a bug, I truly hope this is something which gets adjusted back to the way it used to be.
This really is a gamechanger for me - I noticed this as well, but i only saw it as odd, i didnt think it was an actual difficulty change.
Just scroll to the 1st page. You will see that they changed it intentionally. I already wrote a mail to Mr. Trent and Nathan. Hoping for a wished answer.
@Aristillius I don't think that is the problem. There are objectively way fewer spawns everywhere, compared to the original game. Preference for different difficulties is a different (albeit worthy) discussion, but the subject here is that BG's original mechanics have been massively changed.
I've been enjoying BGEE so far, but I have to agree that this is incredibly annoying and a terribly stupid design choice.. The Nashkel mines were a joke, with merely a couple kobold commandos showing up. It was easy with a first level party with barely any equipment. I stormed through Cloakwood + the mines with a second/third level party and did not have any trouble at all clearing everything. The only plus is that I could take Skie in my party for the first time, since I was only level 4 (!) when I reached Baldur's Gate. The whole Firewine Bridge area is almost empty, the Xvart village is ridiculous, and the Gnoll Fortress feels more like an inn than like a mighty bastion. Right now, the sensation of being lost in a hostile wilderness is completely gone. What's the point of having so many areas if they all feel like a walk in the park?
I don't like the idea of modding. I like BG:EE because I don't need any other 3rd party software to use. So don't say such things, "fight" (with reasoning) and hope for a bugfix. Thanks.
Of course, I think they should 'fix' this problem. On the other hand, BGEE is supposed to be modder friendly and there are some great BG modders out there.
We decided to wait with my wife. We are waiting for: -old movies added back (she can't watch the new ones, it is very laggy at her computer; and it's causing freezing in Multiplayer), -characters do what we told to them (they tend to not follow the orders), -difficulty and monster spawning is set correctly. This are the main 3 problems for us right now.
I am playing on core currently, my worry is that the response is just going to be 'choose a higher difficulty'.
I would like to categorically state that wanting larger enemy mobs (like in vanilla BG1) is not because I am craving a more difficult game (the scripted battles are plenty difficult for me currently, I'm not an expert player). Facing larger groups of enemies is just more satisfying and epic, it's the traditional Baldur's gate experience.
I would also like to say if it was an intentional move to make the game easier, why for example do you encounter a dire wolf in the first map after you leave candlekeep (seriously, that would never happen in vanilla bg1) or other weird things like when I rested in the cloakwood mine I was interupted by at least 15 guards, there was so many I literally had no room to maneuver my characters.
These sort of things just feel of to me and I'm pretty sure they're not all design features.
[...], it's the traditional Baldur's gate experience.
This. Of course, people who haven't played before maybe won't notice, but the way this is handled at the moment is simply not true to the spirit of the original game. I'm fine with changes, I like additions, but I believe everything should follow that spirit. The monster spawn rates are the only thing that doesn't (at least the only thing I can think of at the moment).
I don't want to conjure up drama, but this is the one thing that breaks the EE experience for me. I can overlook bugs and half-finished features, I can live with some strange NPC weapon proficencies, I'll even try to ignore the BG2 animations and the mirroring problem, but I cannot accept changes to the feeling of the game.
I would really appreciate it if a Beamdog member could comment on this.
Not only in BG. The world of Forgotten Realms is created as a Points-of-Light system. So if you choose the Core difficulty, you are excepting that. And you are excepting this works as PnP AD&D, and like the vanilla edition. That's why I don't understand why this penalties to damage and to monster group sizes. Please create a new default difficulty for the casual players (or use the easy mode as default for them), but don't destroy the normal and core settings. Thanks.
Casual players! Sorry but this is not a casual player game. The old BG was Hardcore that is what games of today should have been. You play this game straight to the end. Not a quick jump in slap slap and your done. (Note hates casual gamers with a passion)
I'd say that the longer this goes without dev comment, the worse the odds of it getting returned to the way it is in vanilla BG1. If you can't give people good news, it's usually better to give no news at all.
The only reasonable explanation I can see for this change is that they really wanted to ease it up for new players. I just don't see why, then, you couldn't have left these new weak spawns as part of the "normal" difficulty and left the "core" difficulty untouched. Satisfy new players while alienating the old ones.. sad panda.
Currently BG:EE just isn't the BG I grew up with... though I'm still holding out hope that this gets a stealth fix in the patch that's incoming. All the arguments for why this should be redone have already been spelled out in this thread, so there's really little left to do but hope.
Not only in BG. The world of Forgotten Realms is created as a Points-of-Light system. So if you choose the Core difficulty, you are excepting that. And you are excepting this works as PnP AD&D, and like the vanilla edition. That's why I don't understand why this penalties to damage and to monster group sizes. Please create a new default difficulty for the casual players (or use the easy mode as default for them), but don't destroy the normal and core settings. Thanks.
Casual players! Sorry but this is not a casual player game. The old BG was Hardcore that is what games of today should have been. You play this game straight to the end. Not a quick jump in slap slap and your done. (Note hates casual gamers with a passion)
In the original BG, it was really dangerous wandering around in the wilderness!
Yep and that is how the BG:EE should be.
I say what you say, I just mentioned IF the casual gamers were the reason for changing the Core difficulty, then the devs. should create a new difficulty for them, but do not change the core. Was my comment badly phrased? I wrote a mail about this to Mr. Trent and Mr. Nathan, I hope they will answer this soon.
I was really looking forward to play BG:EE, and now I'm considering not playing anymore until this can be fixed. Yes, fixed. I payed money to play this game with all nice features and not having to install mods and unofficial patches. And then they broke the game with this?!
It's not D&D (any edition) as it's meant to be, it's not Forgotten Realms, it's not challenging. It's just boring and and most of all, it doesn't make sense to meet single monsters when they were designed in D&D to come in larger numbers, even if your characters were low level. My players would stand up and leave if I threw in one gnoll for them to kill in an encounter when playing D&D (any edition)!
Comments
Just put the difficulty on Insane though and am getting some heavy incoming damage so that makes it slightly more.. adventurous.
At any rate, please increase mob density to reflect BG1 more.
Some areas, as Firewine or the Cloackwood are now so easy they have lost all their flavour
Also vyvern seems more easy to fight...:S
Some set encounters stay the same it seems, like when you get waylaid by enemies, I have still been surrounded by 8-10 bandits all armed with bows. Which is good! There's also the room on the third floor in Nashkel mines, with the 8-10 kobolds, and other, similar encounters that "always" were there.
On the other hand..
I fought maybe 10 gnolls in the Gnoll Stronghold, but I thought I had been quite efficient clearing it, so it didnt seem as odd at the time. Still, I remember times when I had to fight hordes of Gnoll Slashers and Gnoll Veterans, this time I think I only fought one of each.
Kobolds in general in the Nashkel mines were far and few between, but again, my clearing of the mines were quite efficient, so I it didnt strike me as odd until I read this,
The Xvart village was one which really made me see how few enemies there actually were. I remember being swarmed by these guys, every time you went to fight one, there would be 2 new popping up on your screen.
And then there's the random wilderness encounters. In the High Hedge area, where there used to be 5-10 skeletons when they spawned, there is now 1-2.
I dont really get that feeling of dread when I see _A_ hobgoblin coming for me, or _A_ gibberling, _A_ Xvart or _A_ wolf. There used to be more, and once I realized this is an actual problem, I keep finding myself being annoyed over it.
To be honest I fail to see the logic behind reducing the mobs, reducing the difficulty. Sure, I struggled the first time I played the game, but back then I didnt really understand english well either..
Whether this was an intentional change or a bug, I truly hope this is something which gets adjusted back to the way it used to be.
The Nashkel mines were a joke, with merely a couple kobold commandos showing up. It was easy with a first level party with barely any equipment. I stormed through Cloakwood + the mines with a second/third level party and did not have any trouble at all clearing everything. The only plus is that I could take Skie in my party for the first time, since I was only level 4 (!) when I reached Baldur's Gate.
The whole Firewine Bridge area is almost empty, the Xvart village is ridiculous, and the Gnoll Fortress feels more like an inn than like a mighty bastion. Right now, the sensation of being lost in a hostile wilderness is completely gone. What's the point of having so many areas if they all feel like a walk in the park?
This issue really needs to be addressed.
I would like to categorically state that wanting larger enemy mobs (like in vanilla BG1) is not because I am craving a more difficult game (the scripted battles are plenty difficult for me currently, I'm not an expert player). Facing larger groups of enemies is just more satisfying and epic, it's the traditional Baldur's gate experience.
I would also like to say if it was an intentional move to make the game easier, why for example do you encounter a dire wolf in the first map after you leave candlekeep (seriously, that would never happen in vanilla bg1) or other weird things like when I rested in the cloakwood mine I was interupted by at least 15 guards, there was so many I literally had no room to maneuver my characters.
These sort of things just feel of to me and I'm pretty sure they're not all design features.
Ahhhh rant over! now to go make a cup of tea.
I don't want to conjure up drama, but this is the one thing that breaks the EE experience for me. I can overlook bugs and half-finished features, I can live with some strange NPC weapon proficencies, I'll even try to ignore the BG2 animations and the mirroring problem, but I cannot accept changes to the feeling of the game.
I would really appreciate it if a Beamdog member could comment on this.
The only reasonable explanation I can see for this change is that they really wanted to ease it up for new players. I just don't see why, then, you couldn't have left these new weak spawns as part of the "normal" difficulty and left the "core" difficulty untouched. Satisfy new players while alienating the old ones.. sad panda.
Currently BG:EE just isn't the BG I grew up with... though I'm still holding out hope that this gets a stealth fix in the patch that's incoming. All the arguments for why this should be redone have already been spelled out in this thread, so there's really little left to do but hope.
Just roll a few pages back, you will find I am reasoning for the same cause.
It's not D&D (any edition) as it's meant to be, it's not Forgotten Realms, it's not challenging. It's just boring and and most of all, it doesn't make sense to meet single monsters when they were designed in D&D to come in larger numbers, even if your characters were low level. My players would stand up and leave if I threw in one gnoll for them to kill in an encounter when playing D&D (any edition)!