@shawne Like I've said, much has already happened, and several members of the community are contributing to what's going on.
Duke Nukem Forever was by many accounts a very poor game at launch and didn't hold much promise - but assume if you will that it had also brought about a fundamental renewal of the way 3D FPS engines worked, so that exciting features that previously wasn't thought possible in the gaming industry suddenly became doable - even if the game itself never got any more development or amounted to anything on its own, the engine renewal itself would be extremely valuable to anyone far-seeing enough to look beyond what was represented on the screen at launch day.
Why the Hate for Enhanced Edition? My take is as others have noted that hate requires caring about something as opposed to indifference where you don't care about something and don't like it. People care about Baldur's Gate and when the EE didn't live up to their sky high hopes they acted like the child who wanted ice cream but got broccoli.
@Shin: Sorry, but that's an absolutely absurd position to take from the consumer's POV - people buy specific games to play those specific games, not because those games may represent potential avenues of improvement for other games at some unspecified point in the future.
Except NWN which was sold based entirely on what you could potentially do with it, with the OC getting no or very little coverage, and was flat out stated to be more of an example for what people could do with the toolkit rather then a true reason to buy the game. Same for the xpacks, they added new content and improved the mechanics of the engine which were then incorporated into the story of each X-pack to show off new features.
@shawne For the average consumer who just wants some multiplayer fun it could well pass unnoticed. For a fan who really loves FPS games and is excited about what's possible to do in them though, it's a significant step forward. Especially if (as is the case here), a lot of adaptations based on the new features can be made by just about anyone who's learned a bit about computers. Hand the DNF engine to such a fan and within a couple of days he's set it up to play in new and exciting ways that used to be impossible.
@ZanathKariashi: The key difference being that NWN gave you the toolkit - if you had the know-how, you could build your own adventures from launch and share them with others. But not everyone who bought NWN did so exclusively for that reason, or "Hordes of the Underdark" wouldn't have been as well-received as it was. (One could make the same argument for NWN2, except that "Mask of the Betrayer" is frequently cited as one of the best RPGs ever made - clearly content does count for something.)
@Shin: You're looking at this from the perspective of a fan who 1) has the technical knowledge to appreciate changes made to a game's engine and 2) is more excited about the implications of those changes than in the actual game being discussed. To be fair, BG's fanbase may lean towards that configuration - it's an old game that has been continually modded and toyed with - but the fact remains that you can't guarantee that these "new and exciting ways" will ever happen. You're holding up a promise no one has actually made about possibilities which might never come to pass, and you expect these things to take precedent over what the game does or does not contain at this very moment?
@shawne Like I've said at least twice now, enough changes have already been made to be said to bring the game foward, even if absolutely nothing more happens.
Here's an analogy for you: say you're a guy who is crazy about construction and skyskrapers. You're offered one of two things:
a) An impressive, ready-made steel skyscraper complete with penthouse, offices and fire extinguishers.
b) A few tons of a new substance and a recipe for how to make more of it. This new substance is about twice as durable and heat resistant as steel while being half the weight and about as abundant and as cheap to make.
Which one do you think you'd be likely to choose? Which one would give you more instant usability, and which one would be worth more in the long run?
@ZanathKariashi: The key difference being that NWN gave you the toolkit - if you had the know-how, you could build your own adventures from launch and share them with others.
You can already do that with BG:EE. All the tools you need are out there on the modding sites. I modded the IE for a decade before coming on board here. We are using those modding tools, they are better than the original tools.
@Shin i don't see why average customer should acknowledge your point. potential does inspire excitement and rightly so, but it means nothing on it's own. potential needs proper realization otherwise it boils down to wishful thinking. i hope good things are to come for bg franchise, but right now there are enough reasons to remain skeptical and wait to be proven wrong.
@trinit As I stated in the other, almost identical debate, I wasn't trying to convince the average customer to do anything, and someone who isn't all that interested may indeed feel better served by watching and waiting.
@Shin fair enough. but to clarify; i consider myself very interested, in enhanced edition as well as continued growth of bg community. i like to think i will have copy of bg installed on every computer i ever own. but realistically, what comes remains to be seen so i won't start celebrating yet.
when i heard there was going to be a diablo 3 i was instantly hyped, diablo 2 is one of my favorite games in my top 5 and diablo is in my top 10 though the butcher gave me nightmares (i was a little kid when i played it, dont know how old but i know i was in single digits) but after watching the trailers and seeing it was WoW style graphics and gameplay by the looks of it (i detest WoW) and then seeing it was Pay to win i felt betrayed but enough about that:
as for enhanced edition im not sure why people expected more from BG:EE when i went to pre order i saw the things about the new NPC, the new platforms it would be on and a small list one of them being the remastered levels and small screen shots of it and....thats what we got. I would say Overhaul games missed out on getting some new fans if they made an "easy" setting which allows CHARNAME to be resurrected but that doesn't matter all the more reason to spend more time playing :P i loved vanilla BG1 and BG2 they are the reason they are in my top 5 and BG1 is in my top 3 the enhanced edition is what i wanted 1+ a bit extra which i enjoy alot so *shrug* overhaul will always have a fan in me because of what they have done with BG:EE and in my opinion they gave out what they said, a few teething problems and with the fact i never heard about them before i was nervous and suspicious but....it all worked out and i can happily say that if they made their own game i'd support them without a doubt
For me the biggest selling point of BG:EE was the ability to click Install then Play. No sorting through mods to get it to display correctly, no two days of work just to get it to run on my modern computer. That is worth $50 to me.
@ZanathKariashi: The key difference being that NWN gave you the toolkit - if you had the know-how, you could build your own adventures from launch and share them with others.
You can already do that with BG:EE. All the tools you need are out there on the modding sites. I modded the IE for a decade before coming on board here. We are using those modding tools, they are better than the original tools.
I disagree. To be a modder it takes computer skills that I lack. I would absolutely love an infinity engine toolset which allows us to create scenarios, combat scripts and ps:T-like dialogues.
Even considering the way gamers tend to behave, I think all the "hate" has got to do with a weird mix of high (or unrealistic) expectations and cynicism from most of BG's fanbase.
"Enhanced" is a term that's wide open to interpretation. When people read that Baldur's Gate was being re-released as an Enhanced Edition I'm sure all kinds of different things went through people's minds. And of course, everything that's popular also tends to polarize opinions. I remember the first wave of disappointment came from folks who thought "EE" meant a remake using a modern engine, right next to the first wave of cynicism mostly coming from regulars at the modding communities who weren't exactly interested in seeing 10+ years of modding losing their thunder to a new version of the game.
I used to be a somewhat frequent poster on the Sorcerer's Place boards, which used to have very busy BG/BG2 message boards. I've also spent the better part of a decade lurking about modding communities, specially the "big 3" (Spellhold Studios, Pocket Plane Group, Gibberlings 3) and I've even tried my hand into modding for a while, though nothing came out of that. You'd figure I'd be somewhat well-known in the community considering how much time I've spent around it, but then again, I've never really interacted or contributed in any way. Not that I didn't feel happy when I saw a bunch of notorious modders having their dedication rewarded by being hired to work on the game.
Anyway, what I'm about to say comes from the perspective of someone who enjoys and is familiar with BG mods.
I don't think the argument of "EE sucks because it does nothing free mods can't do" is valid at all. In fact, I think it comes from a pretty distorted perspective and it's no wonder we haven't seen any people who can be considered an authority in modding as much as agreeing with that, even when such claims could help promoting their hard work.
Mods are great but they're not for everyone. They take a level of either knowledge and/or comfort with tinkering with your computer that most users just don't have, even if gamers tend to lean more to the tech-savvy side of computer users. And you can't really blame people (or dismiss them as lazy) for being turned off by or afraid of messing around with their installed games. Some people just don't have the time or aptitude or patience to learn yet another set of skills. We like things that work right out of the box.
Another thing to consider: mods suffer from the same collateral effect of any form of entertainment that's been snatched out of the hands of mass media by the internet: everyone is a potential media/entertainment outlet, and the options grow at a stunning rate, but for every great piece of art out there there are 10 shitty ones. I'm not saying it should be any different, I'm just saying that before crying out "look at all the mods I can get for free with my GOG version of the game!", keep in mind that at the end of the day, if you go for most mods and if you have high standards, you're gonna spend a lot of time uninstalling stuff or dealing with compatibility issues. In the end, it pays off, because there's some amazing stuff out there. But it comes with a price, that may not be monetary, but of time, whether you're spending it by reading opinions or testing out mods yourself.
By the time the EE was announced, to say I was caught by surprise is an understatement. Those games were over 10 years old (which we can agree nowadays amounts to eons when it comes to gaming and even technology in general), far behind what's considered modern in terms of graphics or playability, and most important, based on a deprecated version of the rules to a board game which has long seen it's heyday.
So when Overhaul/Beamdog comes around and states they're about to re-release the game not only using the best mods have to offer, but also doing what they couldn't do engine-wise, I feel like I've won the lottery. And I sincerely feel like the community as a whole has been rewarded. We're not only getting a version of the game that plays and feels familiar to the original release, but it's got all sorts of improvements and new features, right out of the box. Good for me as a gamer. And good for all the high-profile modders whose work got to be recognized and is now part of an official release.
TL;DR: there is no TL;DR. There's too much scattered thoughts for me to summarize and frankly, it's getting kinda late. Screw you if you think you're too important/busy to read my post, or in case you actually are too important and/or busy, I apologize. Now, this is turning out to be a rather long paragraph. Are you still reading this? If you are, maybe take the time to read out the whole thing? No? Okay then.
I think the enhanced edition is great, and I think how it was done is just perfect, because I look at vanilla and EE like this: pokemon red vs pokemon fire red, when I was younger, pokemon red was a great game, awesome bugs to make yer pokemans awesome, bleh bleh blah, then about 6 years later, they made a game called pokemon fire red which was an EE basically of pokemon red, and they did it PERFECTLY, fire red still feels like the vanilla red, added a couple new things to it, but not too much to make it feel like a different game, and that made it great, now I could never go back to vanilla red since fire red is so much better,
And that's how I feel about EE over vanilla for the bg series, they made it just like that, it still feels like im playing bg, they didn't add too much, and it still has that bg feel, im actually quite glad they didn't add whack loads of mods, because in reality I hate mods, I've played the bg series more times than most people of breathed air ( a sligh exaggeration but in hind sight, probally had a least 1000-2000 playthroughs of bg1, and about 500-1000 playthroughs of bg2 < only beaten ToB maybe a dozen times because usually when I get to the end battle I just stop>) and through all of those play throughs the only mod I ever used in bg 1 was the level cap remover for about a year, then never used it again, and for SoA I use the harder demogorgan battle and the bonus merchants mod, so im glad they didn't contaminate EE with all these whacky mods because it just wouldn't feel the same, and im also kind of glad they didn't add more exclusive areas like the ToSC expansion did because hitting the level cap is already easy, and increasing the level cap just makes a big mess for later game content and such, the only peeve I had about EE when it came out is that it couldn't run at 60 fps, that insanity playing at 30fps is so sluggish especially when I only have a couple hours at best most days to play the game ( 90% of the time I play power gamed fast runs, it only takes me 2 days to do absolutely everything in bg+ToSC and beat the game, so around 15 hours I would say, although I have had a few speed type runs where I beat the game in around 4 hours), but they got that fixed right away, and after that, I was quite satisfied with what I got, even as the game it is now I don't really see why a patch needs to be needed, but hey, patches are always fun I shappose
So all in all, the game came out perfect, its the proverbial pokemon fire red, and now the EE is so crisp and clean and smooth, I cant go back to vanilla because its so slow and sluggish and just painful to play when I have EE where its just so much cleaner
PS: we need some magical throwing daggers please, and please don't make them weigh anything, or make a +1 throwing dagger/ dart of returning at the Sorcerous Sundries and make them even 200 000 gold piece base price if you have to ( that is completely fair for how over powered they are in theory, plus us veterans needs something to spend that gold on)
Duke Nukem Forever was by many accounts a very poor game at launch and didn't hold much promise - but assume if you will that it had also brought about a fundamental renewal of the way 3D FPS engines worked, so that exciting features that previously wasn't thought possible in the gaming industry suddenly became doable
You are going to have to back that up with something.
Duke Nukem Forever was by many accounts a very poor game at launch and didn't hold much promise - but assume if you will that it had also brought about a fundamental renewal of the way 3D FPS engines worked, so that exciting features that previously wasn't thought possible in the gaming industry suddenly became doable
You are going to have to back that up with something.
Part of an older debate I had with shawne, but you can look here for a list of implemented features.
No not computer skills, reading skills mostly. There are a lot of tutorials at all of the community modding sites which will tell you how to make a simple item to crafting dialogs and make completely new areas and get them into the game. Tutorials are your friends. Knowledge is power.
@ZanathKariashi: The key difference being that NWN gave you the toolkit - if you had the know-how, you could build your own adventures from launch and share them with others.
You can already do that with BG:EE. All the tools you need are out there on the modding sites. I modded the IE for a decade before coming on board here. We are using those modding tools, they are better than the original tools.
I disagree. To be a modder it takes computer skills that I lack. I would absolutely love an infinity engine toolset which allows us to create scenarios, combat scripts and ps:T-like dialogues.
I am one of the disappointed original BG fans, too. Some things I expected from an enhancement of the engine: - improved pathfinding : failed - improved functionality of GUI (IWD2 like) : failed - customizable rules in gameplay options (like force unpause during inventory screen, max stacks, etc) : failed - improved AI scripts both for player characters and for enemies : failed
I don't think these were unrealistic expectations. And it's not hate, I just don't think Trent & co. were up for the task, and I feel this was a lost opportunity.
@gunman what do you mean by the things you wanted enhanced? by pathfinding do you mean when you click for the party to move sometimes some try to go around? ive not had that problem until just now actually in ulcaster (which i could swear is a new area as ive not seen it before but i could be wrong) but even then it wasn't really a problem as i caught it early enough and it seems to happen rarely, maybe it will happen later on is there a particular point where this is a problem?
as for the GUI again what do you mean? do you mean the lack of quickspells/ weapons?
i can sort of agree with customizable rules like i mentioned above an "easy setting where CHARNAME could be ressurected" as for the force unpause during inventory screen i dont see why you would want that, i hated it, too many times have i been setting more potions to quick slots then die and have to start the fight over again but *shrug* if its how you want to play more power to you and what do you mean by max stacks? do you mean like 99 cure light wound potions takes one square?
as for improved AI there is nothing that needs clarification on that, it is what it is
the Ulcaster ruins was in the original, plus the AI does have a little bit of an update, I've noticed that baddies like attacking my backline characters more often then they did in the vanilla version
I can't see what's "improved" by the IWD2 GUI, but that's just me.
It's different, I'll give you that much.
1) Multiple weapon loadouts. For example, you could have a bow in one slot, sword and shield in the other, and be dual-wielding in the 3rd, and have a 2-handed weapon in the fourth, and effortlessly swap between them, all on the fly. 2) Customizable. For example, I've heard a number of people complain about the fact that to access cleric/thief's thieving skill, you have to first click on 'additional abilities'. If BG:EE had IWD2's UI, you could easily change this to your liking. In general, it allows you to map whatever actions you use most (abilities, spells, etc.) directly to the 'action bar' (or whatever you want to call it) for easy access.
I can understand if someone doesn't think these things are necessarily a big deal, but I'm a little confused how customizability and increased ease of use could be seen as anything other improvements.
I will argue, however, that even though it's customizable, I remember it being necessary since a lot of different abilities being "buried" under certain buttons, such as domain spells and whatnot. It strikes me as more of a necessity than an improvement.
I also think that as convenient as weapon combos are, they can also be a little cheesy, but that's a matter of opinion, of course.
Comments
Duke Nukem Forever was by many accounts a very poor game at launch and didn't hold much promise - but assume if you will that it had also brought about a fundamental renewal of the way 3D FPS engines worked, so that exciting features that previously wasn't thought possible in the gaming industry suddenly became doable - even if the game itself never got any more development or amounted to anything on its own, the engine renewal itself would be extremely valuable to anyone far-seeing enough to look beyond what was represented on the screen at launch day.
@Shin: You're looking at this from the perspective of a fan who 1) has the technical knowledge to appreciate changes made to a game's engine and 2) is more excited about the implications of those changes than in the actual game being discussed. To be fair, BG's fanbase may lean towards that configuration - it's an old game that has been continually modded and toyed with - but the fact remains that you can't guarantee that these "new and exciting ways" will ever happen. You're holding up a promise no one has actually made about possibilities which might never come to pass, and you expect these things to take precedent over what the game does or does not contain at this very moment?
Here's an analogy for you: say you're a guy who is crazy about construction and skyskrapers. You're offered one of two things:
a) An impressive, ready-made steel skyscraper complete with penthouse, offices and fire extinguishers.
b) A few tons of a new substance and a recipe for how to make more of it. This new substance is about twice as durable and heat resistant as steel while being half the weight and about as abundant and as cheap to make.
Which one do you think you'd be likely to choose? Which one would give you more instant usability, and which one would be worth more in the long run?
potential needs proper realization otherwise it boils down to wishful thinking. i hope good things are to come for bg franchise, but right now there are enough reasons to remain skeptical and wait to be proven wrong.
but realistically, what comes remains to be seen so i won't start celebrating yet.
as for enhanced edition im not sure why people expected more from BG:EE when i went to pre order i saw the things about the new NPC, the new platforms it would be on and a small list one of them being the remastered levels and small screen shots of it and....thats what we got. I would say Overhaul games missed out on getting some new fans if they made an "easy" setting which allows CHARNAME to be resurrected but that doesn't matter all the more reason to spend more time playing :P i loved vanilla BG1 and BG2 they are the reason they are in my top 5 and BG1 is in my top 3 the enhanced edition is what i wanted 1+ a bit extra which i enjoy alot so *shrug* overhaul will always have a fan in me because of what they have done with BG:EE and in my opinion they gave out what they said, a few teething problems and with the fact i never heard about them before i was nervous and suspicious but....it all worked out and i can happily say that if they made their own game i'd support them without a doubt
"Enhanced" is a term that's wide open to interpretation. When people read that Baldur's Gate was being re-released as an Enhanced Edition I'm sure all kinds of different things went through people's minds. And of course, everything that's popular also tends to polarize opinions. I remember the first wave of disappointment came from folks who thought "EE" meant a remake using a modern engine, right next to the first wave of cynicism mostly coming from regulars at the modding communities who weren't exactly interested in seeing 10+ years of modding losing their thunder to a new version of the game.
I used to be a somewhat frequent poster on the Sorcerer's Place boards, which used to have very busy BG/BG2 message boards. I've also spent the better part of a decade lurking about modding communities, specially the "big 3" (Spellhold Studios, Pocket Plane Group, Gibberlings 3) and I've even tried my hand into modding for a while, though nothing came out of that. You'd figure I'd be somewhat well-known in the community considering how much time I've spent around it, but then again, I've never really interacted or contributed in any way. Not that I didn't feel happy when I saw a bunch of notorious modders having their dedication rewarded by being hired to work on the game.
Anyway, what I'm about to say comes from the perspective of someone who enjoys and is familiar with BG mods.
I don't think the argument of "EE sucks because it does nothing free mods can't do" is valid at all. In fact, I think it comes from a pretty distorted perspective and it's no wonder we haven't seen any people who can be considered an authority in modding as much as agreeing with that, even when such claims could help promoting their hard work.
Mods are great but they're not for everyone. They take a level of either knowledge and/or comfort with tinkering with your computer that most users just don't have, even if gamers tend to lean more to the tech-savvy side of computer users. And you can't really blame people (or dismiss them as lazy) for being turned off by or afraid of messing around with their installed games. Some people just don't have the time or aptitude or patience to learn yet another set of skills. We like things that work right out of the box.
Another thing to consider: mods suffer from the same collateral effect of any form of entertainment that's been snatched out of the hands of mass media by the internet: everyone is a potential media/entertainment outlet, and the options grow at a stunning rate, but for every great piece of art out there there are 10 shitty ones. I'm not saying it should be any different, I'm just saying that before crying out "look at all the mods I can get for free with my GOG version of the game!", keep in mind that at the end of the day, if you go for most mods and if you have high standards, you're gonna spend a lot of time uninstalling stuff or dealing with compatibility issues. In the end, it pays off, because there's some amazing stuff out there. But it comes with a price, that may not be monetary, but of time, whether you're spending it by reading opinions or testing out mods yourself.
By the time the EE was announced, to say I was caught by surprise is an understatement. Those games were over 10 years old (which we can agree nowadays amounts to eons when it comes to gaming and even technology in general), far behind what's considered modern in terms of graphics or playability, and most important, based on a deprecated version of the rules to a board game which has long seen it's heyday.
So when Overhaul/Beamdog comes around and states they're about to re-release the game not only using the best mods have to offer, but also doing what they couldn't do engine-wise, I feel like I've won the lottery. And I sincerely feel like the community as a whole has been rewarded. We're not only getting a version of the game that plays and feels familiar to the original release, but it's got all sorts of improvements and new features, right out of the box. Good for me as a gamer. And good for all the high-profile modders whose work got to be recognized and is now part of an official release.
TL;DR: there is no TL;DR. There's too much scattered thoughts for me to summarize and frankly, it's getting kinda late. Screw you if you think you're too important/busy to read my post, or in case you actually are too important and/or busy, I apologize. Now, this is turning out to be a rather long paragraph. Are you still reading this? If you are, maybe take the time to read out the whole thing? No? Okay then.
And that's how I feel about EE over vanilla for the bg series, they made it just like that, it still feels like im playing bg, they didn't add too much, and it still has that bg feel, im actually quite glad they didn't add whack loads of mods, because in reality I hate mods, I've played the bg series more times than most people of breathed air ( a sligh exaggeration but in hind sight, probally had a least 1000-2000 playthroughs of bg1, and about 500-1000 playthroughs of bg2 < only beaten ToB maybe a dozen times because usually when I get to the end battle I just stop>) and through all of those play throughs the only mod I ever used in bg 1 was the level cap remover for about a year, then never used it again, and for SoA I use the harder demogorgan battle and the bonus merchants mod, so im glad they didn't contaminate EE with all these whacky mods because it just wouldn't feel the same, and im also kind of glad they didn't add more exclusive areas like the ToSC expansion did because hitting the level cap is already easy, and increasing the level cap just makes a big mess for later game content and such, the only peeve I had about EE when it came out is that it couldn't run at 60 fps, that insanity playing at 30fps is so sluggish especially when I only have a couple hours at best most days to play the game ( 90% of the time I play power gamed fast runs, it only takes me 2 days to do absolutely everything in bg+ToSC and beat the game, so around 15 hours I would say, although I have had a few speed type runs where I beat the game in around 4 hours), but they got that fixed right away, and after that, I was quite satisfied with what I got, even as the game it is now I don't really see why a patch needs to be needed, but hey, patches are always fun I shappose
So all in all, the game came out perfect, its the proverbial pokemon fire red, and now the EE is so crisp and clean and smooth, I cant go back to vanilla because its so slow and sluggish and just painful to play when I have EE where its just so much cleaner
PS: we need some magical throwing daggers please, and please don't make them weigh anything, or make a +1 throwing dagger/ dart of returning at the Sorcerous Sundries and make them even 200 000 gold piece base price if you have to ( that is completely fair for how over powered they are in theory, plus us veterans needs something to spend that gold on)
PSS: Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition rocks
- improved pathfinding : failed
- improved functionality of GUI (IWD2 like) : failed
- customizable rules in gameplay options (like force unpause during inventory screen, max stacks, etc) : failed
- improved AI scripts both for player characters and for enemies : failed
I don't think these were unrealistic expectations. And it's not hate, I just don't think Trent & co. were up for the task, and I feel this was a lost opportunity.
by pathfinding do you mean when you click for the party to move sometimes some try to go around? ive not had that problem until just now actually in ulcaster (which i could swear is a new area as ive not seen it before but i could be wrong) but even then it wasn't really a problem as i caught it early enough and it seems to happen rarely, maybe it will happen later on is there a particular point where this is a problem?
as for the GUI again what do you mean? do you mean the lack of quickspells/ weapons?
i can sort of agree with customizable rules like i mentioned above an "easy setting where CHARNAME could be ressurected" as for the force unpause during inventory screen i dont see why you would want that, i hated it, too many times have i been setting more potions to quick slots then die and have to start the fight over again but *shrug* if its how you want to play more power to you and what do you mean by max stacks? do you mean like 99 cure light wound potions takes one square?
as for improved AI there is nothing that needs clarification on that, it is what it is
It's different, I'll give you that much.
2) Customizable. For example, I've heard a number of people complain about the fact that to access cleric/thief's thieving skill, you have to first click on 'additional abilities'. If BG:EE had IWD2's UI, you could easily change this to your liking. In general, it allows you to map whatever actions you use most (abilities, spells, etc.) directly to the 'action bar' (or whatever you want to call it) for easy access.
I can understand if someone doesn't think these things are necessarily a big deal, but I'm a little confused how customizability and increased ease of use could be seen as anything other improvements.
I will argue, however, that even though it's customizable, I remember it being necessary since a lot of different abilities being "buried" under certain buttons, such as domain spells and whatnot. It strikes me as more of a necessity than an improvement.
I also think that as convenient as weapon combos are, they can also be a little cheesy, but that's a matter of opinion, of course.