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Is BG2:EE Accessible to New Players?

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  • Apologies for the tone of my previous post. I agree that more in-game ways to explain mechanics would be helpful; on the other hand, there are a number of people who find it annoying when you have to go through a lot of tutorial etc before getting to the game itself.

    A thought for more in-depth explanations of combat and so forth - I remember a Final Fantasy (one of the early ones, I forget which) that had a classroom area where you could talk to various students and they'd tell you something about to fight certain monsters, deal with certain status effects etc. Maybe there could be an in-game library to serve this purpose? Imagine rows of shelves with ? marks to click on, each telling you a similar kind of fact (having it be actual books to read might be a bit discouraging cause you'd have to pick them all up to read them). Just an idea.
  • MungriMungri Member Posts: 1,645
    edited November 2013
    Ayiekie said:

    Cyteen said:

    Infinity Engine games are not accessible to new players, because new players are bad at games.

    No they aren't.


    If they aren't then they don't need any tutorials, in game help or assistance. They can simply install and play the game and learn everything as they play through it. If they aren't bad players then this method of playing would also be the most enjoyable to them, as they are discovering the entire game, and learning how to beat it entirely on their own.

    If a new player needs lots of outside help like tips, tutorials, any kind of knowledge on how to beat something, by definition they are a bad player because they cant figure out how to win on their own.

    As for the tutorial videos, those don't bother me because they are optional. They are also already available in game through the 'how to play' section on the main menu, which describes everything you need to know to play the game, so what additional help exactly is required?

    You start BG2 as a captive in a dungeon. Its a brutal start and you are expected to be fighting for your life as you escape. It would be terrible if there were tutorial NPCs all over the place in this dungeon.

    Balsurs Gate 1 however had a good enough tutorial, and all those green robed guides that tell you what you need to know, plus an optional combat tutorial. There's already plenty of help provided there, the best thing for new players to do is to play BGEE before BG2EE.
  • MungriMungri Member Posts: 1,645
    Purudaya said:

    I guess we should have followed the old internet adage, "Don't feed the trolls." Never too late to start :)


    Yet you based this entire thread off a troll review.
  • AyiekieAyiekie Member Posts: 975
    You already killed this thread, Mungri. It's not necessary to keep teabagging the corpse.
    Mortianna
  • ErgErg Member Posts: 1,756
    I'm personally neutral about most of these proposed changes, especially if they are kept optional or, at very least, unobtrusive.

    As a veteran (having kept playing the original games almost from release) I already have the necessary knowledge, so, for example, an "in game bestiary" would be neither useful nor harmful to me. Besides there is no better bestiary than Near Infinity :)

    However, I believe that my first playthrough (almost 13-14 years ago) would not have been so satisfying if I had more knowledge to my disposal. Part of the fun, for me at least, was to learn things the hard way :)

    So if this were to be implemented by the devs, I would still recommend new players to play without any additional aid, or at very least to try to :)
  • FerluciFerluci Member Posts: 26
    I actually purchased BG1 first when I was around 11 years old. The added difficulty was that it turned out to be the French version of the game. Being born in Belgium meant that I could speak a little french, but you can imagine the difficulty for an 11 year old to get through the conversations ingame. I had to look up a lot of words and actually played with a french dictionary next to my computer (Google Translate, why where you invented so late...) Anyway I think I have to thank the difficulty of the game for how good my French is right now! :)

    Long story short part of the charm of the game to me is the difficulty and challenge it puts on your brain. Every fight is different and you always have to improvise.
  • PurudayaPurudaya Member Posts: 816
    edited November 2013
    Ferluci said:

    I actually purchased BG1 first when I was around 11 years old. The added difficulty was that it turned out to be the French version of the game. Being born in Belgium meant that I could speak a little french, but you can imagine the difficulty for an 11 year old to get through the conversations ingame. I had to look up a lot of words and actually played with a french dictionary next to my computer (Google Translate, why where you invented so late...) Anyway I think I have to thank the difficulty of the game for how good my French is right now! :)

    Long story short part of the charm of the game to me is the difficulty and challenge it puts on your brain. Every fight is different and you always have to improvise.

    @Ferluci I got the game as a gift when I was 12 (remains the best gift I've ever gotten; might not have known about it otherwise) and had a similar experience, so I definitely know where you and @Erg are coming from. I remember pouring over the manual even when I wasn't playing, thinking up new builds and clarifying things that I didn't understand.

    I definitely don't want make things any easier, but I've noticed a lot of players on these forums (and who knows how many there are who never bother to check online?) who have questions that a simple read through the manual would solve. I think part of the problem for new players is that the manual is no longer an integral part of the gaming experience like it was when we were kids. For people who have never even heard of BG before and are buying it via the Appstore, I'm sure there are some of them who don't even know that it exists.

    So I think what most people are proposing isn't to give players *more* information so much as to make the information that we all got when the game came out more accessible to them. At the absolute very least, access to the manual from within the "how to play" section (even if it's just a download link) would be a huge step in that direction. I've played a LOT of BG2, and even I wouldn't mind being able to pull up the manual to check a stat progression here and there - just like I could when I had the spiral-bound version back in the day.

    Nothing that we didn't get the first time around in terms of information - just the goods, bare and plain :)

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