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Space Insect

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Considering how much praise the combat seems to have gotten, I half wish that they would just start adapting classic D&D modules completely straight like Troika planned to do. Of course, there is the chance they could change the story or dialogue some and screw it up.
 

hoverdog

dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
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'cause the ToEE module was such a unparalleled greatness that everyone and their dog agrees that the only good thing about that game was its system implementation. I, for one, remain skeptical about the quality and feasibility of official campaigns.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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You always post the game's walls of text but I don't remember BG2 having that much dialogue.

Jan Jansen? I read somewhere that BG2:EE added 350,000 words of "content" to the (already-schlock-filled) base game. Not sure how accurate that is but it wouldn't surprise me.
 

Lhynn

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Jan Jansen? I read somewhere that BG2:EE added 350,000 words of "content" to the (already-schlock-filled) base game. Not sure how accurate that is but it wouldn't surprise me.
Its accurate. Most of it wasnt shoved down your throat or right in front of you waiting to ambush you. Most of SoA writing had to be actively sought after. Also a lot of those words can probably be found on the ingame books.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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In this respect Shadows of Amn is not all that different from Siege... In many cases you also can't cut to the chase. A typical example: you need to click through several lines just to be presented with a response; only then can you look for the quick way out. The writing is better than Siege (it's Gaider & Luke K. versus Scott & Foley, afterall), but there is still lots of schlock to sift through and the convos are long and tiresome in many cases. You're looking at one dozen clicks each to recruit the first four party members in the Chateau, f.e; you're looking at hundreds of clicks in the Chateau to get through the interjections and quest dialogues. The dialogue is TORRENTIAL and only PS:T has the right to inflict that on players. Plus the threads can't be skipped through as quickly as in Siege and the cutscenes are not skippable (as they are 95% of the time in Siege).
 

ArchAngel

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In this respect Shadows of Amn is not all that different from Siege... In many cases you also can't cut to the chase. A typical example: you need to click through several lines just to be presented with a response; only then can you look for the quick way out. The writing is better than Siege (it's Gaider & Luke K. versus Scott & Foley, afterall), but there is still lots of schlock to sift through and the convos are long and tiresome in many cases. You're looking at one dozen clicks each to recruit the first four party members in the Chateau, f.e; you're looking at hundreds of clicks in the Chateau to get through the interjections and quest dialogues. The dialogue is TORRENTIAL and only PS:T has the right to inflict that on players. Plus the threads can't be skipped through as quickly as in Siege and the cutscenes are not skippable (as they are 95% of the time in Siege).
I don't remember ever having problems with SoA dialogues. But I did notice how SoD goes overboard a bit. Especially since it is a BG1 expansion and it is totally not anything like BG1
 

Delterius

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DnD is all about containers, walls, desks, floorboards, privies, panflets, chicken wings, signs, beholder plushies, the princess you were sent to rescue, real life mimics and the cupboard turning into flesh eating and or rust afflicting monsters on a whim.
 

ArchAngel

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Most of the old DnD campaigns feel like Dark Souls, with tons of "Gotcha" enemies that have no practical value but to fuck with the players.
More like darksouls feels like old DnD campaigns, because back then people understood what was fun.
The comparison is stupid. Dark Souls is about dexterity of the player, DnD is about character stats and player smarts. I bet best Dark Souls player playing their first DnD in some old school dungeon would die within 30 minutes.
 

Lhynn

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The comparison is stupid. Dark Souls is about dexterity of the player, DnD is about character stats and player smarts. I bet best Dark Souls player playing their first DnD in some old school dungeon would die within 30 minutes.
What does this have to do with the discussion at hand? i cant think of any way you could possibly miss the point of what we are talking about more.
 

ArchAngel

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The comparison is stupid. Dark Souls is about dexterity of the player, DnD is about character stats and player smarts. I bet best Dark Souls player playing their first DnD in some old school dungeon would die within 30 minutes.
What does this have to do with the discussion at hand? i cant think of any way you could possibly miss the point of what we are talking about more.
It just triggers me :P
 

Delterius

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Most of the old DnD campaigns feel like Dark Souls, with tons of "Gotcha" enemies that have no practical value but to fuck with the players.
More like darksouls feels like old DnD campaigns, because back then people understood what was fun.
The comparison is stupid. Dark Souls is about dexterity of the player, DnD is about character stats and player smarts. I bet best Dark Souls player playing their first DnD in some old school dungeon would die within 30 minutes.
And he would feel right at home.
 
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'cause the ToEE module was such a unparalleled greatness that everyone and their dog agrees that the only good thing about that game was its system implementation. I, for one, remain skeptical about the quality and feasibility of official campaigns.

Most of the old DnD campaigns feel like Dark Souls, with tons of "Gotcha" enemies that have no practical value but to fuck with the players. There's an enemy that looks like a sleeping beholder and if you hit it, it explodes and you breathe in deadly poison gas and die. Clap clap clap
It's not only AD&D tabletop campaigns, or AD&D PC games. In both late 80s and early-to-mid 90s games were brutal. Go and try to dock manually in the original Elite. Or try any King's Quest, or Space Quest, or even Police Quest, and many other pre-VGA Sierra adventures - you will die, and die again. Quite often you'll die stupidly, with the same "gotcha!" trollface feeling from the game's creators. Most genres back then were quite hard and and even sadistic by modern standard. But they weren't only sadistic, quite often they were good or even great in both complexity, game-play and content. And as strange as it may sound (although I hope not as strange here, on 'dex), earlier games' brutality was one of the key elements of making them great.

Of course now I'm corrupted by modern conveniences, and although I still enjoy challenge, I won't enjoy punishing difficulty as much as I was back then. But still I think that the pandering to lowest common denominator (as cliched as this sounds) was one of the worst things that could have happened to any game genre. But most of all, to RPGs. Just look at the Bioware. BG series were already easier than most SSI AD&D games. But combat could still be fun, fighting on the hard difficulty required at least some use of brain, you had tactics, hard counters and so on. More so with SCS. And look at the fucking Bioware now, with its romances and awesome buttons and SJW pandering. They managed to get much wider audience, true. But the same audience plays the fucking game for fapping to virtual hijabi alien, or tattooed Final Fantasy reject, or whatever. Holding the Awesome Button with one hand, and furiously beating it off with another, while the game plays itself. No, I think I'll take punishing difficulty and even RNG fun over such degeneracy, thank you very much.
 

Rahdulan

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'cause the ToEE module was such a unparalleled greatness that everyone and their dog agrees that the only good thing about that game was its system implementation. I, for one, remain skeptical about the quality and feasibility of official campaigns.

Most of the old DnD campaigns feel like Dark Souls, with tons of "Gotcha" enemies that have no practical value but to fuck with the players. There's an enemy that looks like a sleeping beholder and if you hit it, it explodes and you breathe in deadly poison gas and die. Clap clap clap
It's not only AD&D tabletop campaigns, or AD&D PC games. In both late 80s and early-to-mid 90s games were brutal. Go and try to dock manually in the original Elite. Or try any King's Quest, or Space Quest, or even Police Quest, and many other pre-VGA Sierra adventures - you will die, and die again. Quite often you'll die stupidly, with the same "gotcha!" trollface feeling from the game's creators. Most genres back then were quite hard and and even sadistic by modern standard. But they weren't only sadistic, quite often they were good or even great in both complexity, game-play and content. And as strange as it may sound (although I hope not as strange here, on 'dex), earlier games' brutality was one of the key elements of making them great.

Yeah, I don't think it was even that as much as the entire mindset behind tabletop game design of '80s and early '90s was very much "players vs the GM" and I can't help but think that, in designer's mind, if your GM wasn't cackling viciously at your plight behind his cardboard GM screen he wasn't doing it right. Even some games unrelated to D&D and meatgrinder modules, like the Ghostbusters game for example, had that mentality going on.
 

Theldaran

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Oct 10, 2015
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1,772
Games are easier today, because we need to be more inclusive, chant mantras and smoke marijuana.

Looking back at my prowess as a kid, I cringe at the fact that I'm unable to advance in Etrian Odyssey IV. Aye, there were games I couldn't beat as a kid (such as Alissia Dragoon), but those were a minority and I still enjoyed them. I've become... a wimp. The modern world has made me dumber.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear CE, iOS, and Android Release Status

As someone who pre-ordered the Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Collector's Edition several months ago and still waiting patiently for its arrival, I've been checking on the release status over on the Beamdog forums on occasion to reassure myself that it's still coming. Thankfully, there have been a number of updates this month that let us know where its creation currently stands, as well as a few hints as to when we can expect the Android and iOS versions of the expansion pack.

To start off, Beamdog's Trent Oster has been publishing various pictures of the Collector's Edition samples they've recently received on Twitter, including the manual interior, the manual cover, the field report book interior, and the field report book cover. Furthermore, employee "Dee" has posted a few comments on the forums (here, here, and here) in relation to all three releases:

The pictures should demonstrate that we're still moving forward. It took a while to get samples, but we're confident that the wait will be worthwhile.

(I can't wait for my copy, personally. Not being at the office in Edmonton, I have to wait just like everybody else before I'll get to hold the box in my hands.)

...

To be honest, I can't say. Obviously we want to release both as soon as possible, but like most things it depends on testing and QA. The Collector's Edition also depends on manufacturing, which is something that we can only influence in a limited way. Waiting is hard, I know--I'm waiting too ;)--but pictures are a good sign, both for our Collector's Edition and for the Kickstarter projects you've supported. Any time you see pictures that you haven't seen before, that means the developer is making progress toward completion.

...

The Siege of Dragonspear expansion depends on the v2.0 code; there's no way to play it with the v1.3 code. The v1.3 beta option is there solely to provide a way to play the game for people whose hardware will not support the v2.0 engine.

If there are specific things that need to be improved or addressed in the UI (and there are issues, which have been posted here and elsewhere), it's totally fine to point them out. Discussions about the UI are most helpful to our dev team when they go into detail about not only what you don't like but also why you don't like them; we might identify a root cause of an underlying issue that allows us to come up with a solution that's even better than what you imagined.

The UI in v2.0 definitely needed more time in the oven, so to speak; at the moment our energy is being spent fixing bugs and getting the expansion ready for iOS and Android, but we haven't ruled out the possibility of revisiting the UI design at a later point.
 

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