Outstanding issues with Enhanced Editions
WatchForWolves
Member Posts: 183
1. UI. A thread utterly thrashing the UI was already made, but it bears repeating. And no, having a moddable UI is not an excuse to have bad default UI.
2. Pickpocket. A truly baffling change, where pickpocket now has a minimum threshold for working at all, in addition to still being a random success roll. I have absolutely no idea where this came from; pickpocket did not work that way in any of the original games and such behaviour was not even hinted at. Furthermore, this "feature" was apparently introduced in the laziest way possible, with the threshold value being set at 50 for all NPCs. Why was such a blatant ingerention in core game mechanics allowed, without even an option to turn it off?
3. ToB-style NPCs. In Baldur's Gate, NPCs existed in leveled up "versions" and the "version" closest to your level was the one you got when you met them for the first time. In BG2, if I remember correctly, NPCs were not leveled at all - if you left Cernd in his grove until after Underdark, he would be a piddly level Druid when you met him afterwards. In Throne of Bhaal, this was changed again so that while NPCs remain at their base level through the games, their individual level will be increased to the average party level when you recruit them. Then you can redistribute their proficiences, skills, etc. at your leisure. Hovewer, Enhanced Editions extend this behaviour to all NPCs across all the games, which is a problem for two reasons: One, it is seriously immersion-breaking to have (for example) Minsc jump from level 1 to 5 when you meet him. Yes, it's better for the player from the pure gameplay standpoint, because maybe you don't like his default level 5 proficiences and would like to pick something different. But at the same time, in the spirit of a cultivating suspension of disbelief in this role-playing game I'm playing, Minsc is his own character, he does his own "thing" and you shouldn't have full control over him, or any other NPC for that matter(In ToB this hardly mattered because there was almost no roleplaying involved anyway). The second problem the ToB-style NPCs bring to the games is that it's a way to basically generate XP out of thin air and potentially abuseable as hell. For example, you can play the game a bit solo gaining levels quickly, and THEN recruit party members, and they will all be granted "free" XP as the game will be pulling their levels up to match yours. Since the maximum party size is 6, this can more or less sextuple the amount of XP you've gained when playing solo for a while. And because the games are, in many ways, balanced around party sizes(smaller parties should level faster and be better equipped overall, and the opposite for large parties, with the tradeoff of having more characters to work with) this can potentially break the entire progression curve. "ToB-Style NPCs" was an optional component in both TuTu and Baldur's Gate Trilogy, and should absolutely remain an optional component in the Enhanced Edition games.
4. Spawns. In Enhanced Edition, spawns are based on party size, in addition to average level. This is not vanilla behaviour, and at least there should be an option to turn it off.
2. Pickpocket. A truly baffling change, where pickpocket now has a minimum threshold for working at all, in addition to still being a random success roll. I have absolutely no idea where this came from; pickpocket did not work that way in any of the original games and such behaviour was not even hinted at. Furthermore, this "feature" was apparently introduced in the laziest way possible, with the threshold value being set at 50 for all NPCs. Why was such a blatant ingerention in core game mechanics allowed, without even an option to turn it off?
3. ToB-style NPCs. In Baldur's Gate, NPCs existed in leveled up "versions" and the "version" closest to your level was the one you got when you met them for the first time. In BG2, if I remember correctly, NPCs were not leveled at all - if you left Cernd in his grove until after Underdark, he would be a piddly level Druid when you met him afterwards. In Throne of Bhaal, this was changed again so that while NPCs remain at their base level through the games, their individual level will be increased to the average party level when you recruit them. Then you can redistribute their proficiences, skills, etc. at your leisure. Hovewer, Enhanced Editions extend this behaviour to all NPCs across all the games, which is a problem for two reasons: One, it is seriously immersion-breaking to have (for example) Minsc jump from level 1 to 5 when you meet him. Yes, it's better for the player from the pure gameplay standpoint, because maybe you don't like his default level 5 proficiences and would like to pick something different. But at the same time, in the spirit of a cultivating suspension of disbelief in this role-playing game I'm playing, Minsc is his own character, he does his own "thing" and you shouldn't have full control over him, or any other NPC for that matter(In ToB this hardly mattered because there was almost no roleplaying involved anyway). The second problem the ToB-style NPCs bring to the games is that it's a way to basically generate XP out of thin air and potentially abuseable as hell. For example, you can play the game a bit solo gaining levels quickly, and THEN recruit party members, and they will all be granted "free" XP as the game will be pulling their levels up to match yours. Since the maximum party size is 6, this can more or less sextuple the amount of XP you've gained when playing solo for a while. And because the games are, in many ways, balanced around party sizes(smaller parties should level faster and be better equipped overall, and the opposite for large parties, with the tradeoff of having more characters to work with) this can potentially break the entire progression curve. "ToB-Style NPCs" was an optional component in both TuTu and Baldur's Gate Trilogy, and should absolutely remain an optional component in the Enhanced Edition games.
4. Spawns. In Enhanced Edition, spawns are based on party size, in addition to average level. This is not vanilla behaviour, and at least there should be an option to turn it off.
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Comments
3- I got used to that new feature, and the "solo till level x to get npcs at higher level " was already possible in the original version . Also , let's remember that in the original BG1 weapon styles were different, so even if you didn't get to choose minsc's weapon proficiencies his pp in large swords allowed him to wield longswords, 2h swords and bastard swords, which wasn't truly an AD&D thing. What I do to balance the tob style npc's is to give them weapon profs that are as close to their original versions as possible.
4-I agree. Level 1 characters would always meet a band of gibberlings, and not a single one. I think it should have been optional.
Seems extraordinary that you take a product with a proven track record (and such a track record in this age of disposable everything) and decide that it wasn't good enough across so many areas.
Walking speed is nice, have to give them that.
Even pathfinding, well the thing about older games is that they are frustrating, they did take a lot of effort to work with, and so you get addicted. It's not a "mistake" if your NPC wander off God knows where, it's an aspect of the game you have to cope with. A difficulty just like meeting a group of archers.
(Also: bad pathfinding wasn't just about additional "difficulty". It was also about ordering your party to cross a map to travel, then hearing "you must gather your party" and realizing that one dude was way off in who-knows-where and you'd have to wait another 3 minutes for him to walk all the way back so you could travel. That's not fun under any definition of fun.)
I'd also argue that increasing the walking speed had much more impact on gameplay and difficulty than the pathfinding change. Increasing closing speed changes the effectiveness of ranged attacks. (But it's such a massive, massive quality-of-life improvement that I simply don't care. It's not like it rendered archery underpowered or anything.)
I like the pickpocket change. It took something that was irrelevant given a willingness to reload, (putting points into pickpocket), and made it relevant. Making more things relevant is a good thing, (same reason I think adding +str damage to slings is a good change). Maybe an option in the .ini to undo it like they gave with Cleric/Ranger spells would be good, though I don't know how feasible that would be.
I *love* the ToB-style NPCs change. Under the old system, I'd rarely take Alora. By the time I got to BG, she'd accepted too many atrocious HP rolls and sunk all her points into pickpocket, and it was too late to salvage her. Under the new system, she's totally usable whenever I recruit her, no need to rush just on her account. ToB-style NPCs gives me more choices as a player, and more choices is good.
Also, the "exploit" where you play solo and grab already-leveled versions of characters already existed. If I wanted to rush BG1, I'd always go kill Shoal and Basilisks solo, (easily doable with a ranged weapon and the three potions of mirrored eyes in High Hedge), which was enough to get every class to level 6/7. It's just that after I did this, I'd only recruit NPCs who didn't level up in stupid ways. ToB-style NPCs doesn't change the strategy, it just makes more NPCs compatible with it. Which, again, more options is a good thing from my perspective! (And I'd propose the option to disable it because, again, more options is a good thing.)
A lot of these changes that long-time veterans are complaining about, because nostalgia, seem like things that make the game unambiguously more approachable for a new player. Running into a pack of gibberlings within two minutes of leaving Candlekeep as a level 1 mage isn't really fun, especially if you don't yet know to pack sleep. It's not like the change makes the game easy for new players or anything, but it does make it marginally more approachable.
The pickpocket change is much less meaningful than you think. This is because as I've said, the universal threshold for everything is 50. Since pretty much every Thief class no matter the race starts with (at least) 25 in Pick Pockets, all it takes is one Thief level to get to the magical 50 and you're done with it for the series. And in the end - just breaking the threshold doesn't guarantee success, so you're reloading like mad either way. So what exactly is being improved here?
Saying that ToB-style NPCs give you "more choices as a player" is not even entirely honest. You could always take Alora, you just chose not to because she wasn't an all-in-one Thief that you wanted her to be. It's not like that option wasn't there. But if you had another Thief in your party that could cover Open Locks/Find Traps, Alora could very well be worth taking(especially with her Lucky Foot fixed) I mean, you might as well argue that the player should be able to pick classes for all NPCs they meet... after all, that's more choices and therefore a good thing, right?
Personally I never, ever had Alora in my party and I never particularly cared. It's not like every person(NPC) you meet in a world is going to be specifically tailored for your needs, and if it's not, too bad. Setting Supremacy.
Longtime players, aware of how late you could get them causing problems, moved them to more accessible locations.
It also allows you to enjoy them more should you choose to do that.
and then the EE's came out and somehow it has gone backwards a bit, I find this incredibly puzzling, I find the path finding to be worse in the EE's than it was in the vanilla, ( never once did my characters get stuck of NOTHING and just stand there picking their nose instead of moving forward, but this happens relatively frequently in the EEs) although I did notice that the path finding in IWD EE is a little better than it is in the BG EE's, so maybe that newer patch has done something to mess with the path finding a bit?
(No idea why you think the threshold is 50 to steal anything, by the way. The threshold varies based on what you're trying to steal. 50 is enough to get you miscellaneous items like Algernon's cloak, but if you want to steal weapons that's going to take 95, and I think just stealing random gold has no threshold.) Saying ToB-style NPCs gives me more choices is completely and entirely honest.
I could have taken Alora under the old system as a secondary thief. That's one choice. Under the new system, I can still take her as a secondary thief, but I can also take her as a primary thief. That's two choices, which is more than I had before. Under the new system, I can have her dual-wield daggers... or equip Staff of Striking and be a backstabber... or grab Marek's Eagle Bow and be a sniper... or load up on darts of stunning and be a ranged disabler. This is more choices. This makes me more likely to use her in the first place.
If Beamdog introduced a menu that I could activate when starting a new game and assign kits to some of the characters, I think that would be amazing. Kivan should definitely be an archer, Faldorn has Avenger written all over her. If Garrick was a Skald I'd actually bring him with me from time to time. This sounds amazing.
Pickpocketing was just as in so many other games (everything for Fallout to Skyrim) flawed. It made the skill redundant since you could savescum until you succeded. With new feature (and sometimes frustrating and annoying) of a minimum level you at least need to chug a potion before or, which I assume is the intention, should invest some points into the actual skill of pickpocketing to, you know, be able to pickpocket.
There are good things and less good things with this new feature, but there are no bad things with it. It does of course cater to metagaming since you will temporarily increase your skill to be able to pickpocket the certain NPCs you meet that you KNOW have good items, but metagaming is a part of the game and has been for decades. So I don't consider that an issue and it hasn't made anything worse than it was, it has just added a bit of a balance to a skill that was very rarely used.
Then there's that engine issue at the moment, where characters sometime end up getting glued to npcs if they collide. That can cause a number of frustrations sometimes, but I assume that will also be addressed in the next update.
I actually like the design of the SoD UI overall, but BG2EE looks a bit odd after the patch unfortunately..:\
You can indeed save scum hiding, but since you still need move silently to remain hidden you will need to savescum every 6 seconds and get a roll to remain hidden. Same here, during a few decades of playing BG and reading internet forums I have never heard anyone actually do this.
And stating that the increased loading speeds somehow affect this discussion is... well.. I can't even argue against that since it's a moot point.
So, when you are comparing to hiding or fighting I don't see how that is comparable to pickpocketing. I just draw the conclusion that you want to be able to steal from anyone without investing a single point in the skill and you are too lazy to chug a potion of thievery.
Technically this way you only need to save scum the first roll. But still, as Skatan says if you're realoading you might as well do it all the time. The only way to see if something is balanced is putting it into a no-reload situation (which means pickpocketing without having more than 100% is not gonna happen unless you have RR, TobEx and you're doing it with your Familiar).
Mind you, I'll be the first to say that some EE "improvements" are in fact a big step back from the original (journal, UI, character screens etc.) but it's mostly a question of flavour; and, in my case, being used to certain things working the way the did for the last decade.
This makes Hide in Shadows/Move Silently skills in Enhanced Edition basically as "irrelevant" as pre-EE Pickpocket skill level. Well then, why did you exaggerate it to the point of being almost comical? Have you never reloaded a fight after losing a party member, or getting particularly unlucky with crits, or simply when most of your party is feared/confused/held and you know you cannot win anyway?
Mazzy is a great example of this, since she's basically a blank slate; her GM in shortbows gives you something to use while you develop her, and her one proficiency pip in Short Swords (if you rush to get her at level 8) simply lets you wield Kundane in the off-hand without penalty. After that, you can build her however you want.
At one point or another in BG2, I've had Mazzy wielding Staff of the Ram, Ixil's Spike, Ravager, Foebane, Flail of Ages +5, Axe of the Unyielding, Crom Faeyr, Firetooth (crossbow), Fire Tooth (throwing dagger), and in one of my current runs, Club of Detonation (!) as her end-game weapon, (along with Red Dragon Scale and such to make her immune to fire and a pyromaniac mage backing her up). Probably more that I've forgotten.
She's gotten 2-handed weapon style, 2-weapon style, single-weapon style, and I've even given her pips in Sword and Shield style. I rarely give her the same weapon twice, and the desire to complete the whole cycle with her gives me motivation to keep bringing her along.
Some of those choices were decidedly non-optimal. But having the choice makes her much more interesting than if they'd used all of her early pips to give her Grandmastery in Flails or something and you'd just be using those all game with her. Even then there's always the possibility to recruit her at level 8 and have up to 32 more level-ups to train her as you see fit.
Also, none of those choices really broke my immersion with her. In all runs, she was still a LG Halfling Truesword of Avoreen spreading justice through the realms. The shortbow pips certainly give her a unique flavor, but at the end of the day, her weapons don't make her who she is.