Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Pre-Release Thread [EARLY ACCESS RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Lacrymas]

Symmetrical balance kills variety, not balance. Balance has nothing to do with accessibility.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Ahhh that is my point lol,balance is the killer of fun. It is thing that lets old people and journos to finish the first level. If i see a fucking dragon,i want to be able to go and get my ass handled 100 times and kill the bastard on my 101 time! Stop boggling us down with your lack of skills mate.

When people talk about balance what they mean can be either one of two things:

1. The noble attempt to ensure that combat and resource management will remain challenging throughout the whole game [grognard mentality];
2. The welfarist belief that no builds should be left behind because of players' whims and illiteracy [modern developer mentality, e.g., Sawyer].

Saying that we should abolish balance because of Sawyer is like saying that we should abolish freedom because of libertarians. You are reducing your own vocabulary and endorsing beliefs you never accepted because you are confused.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

HE is right; balance kills immersion, freedom, variety and fun.

What ruins the immersion is allowing the player to do whatever he likes and act like a God. It makes the setting and the game world infantile and childish. What is worse, but not surprisingly, is that all this freedom is usually accompanied by terrible combat systems and a lack of challenge. What is fun for this breed of mongoloid irrationalist player is poison to me.

 

[Cryomancer]

What ruins the immersion is allowing the player to do whatever he likes and act like a God. It makes the setting and game world look infantile and childish. Not surprisingly, all this freedom is usually accompanied by terrible combat systems and lack of challenge. What is fun for this breed of mongoloid irrationalist player is poison to me.

NAme one old school RPG where it happens. Just one. If the player can become god without great effort and a good reason and good challenges after if, like other gods not liking the new god, then the game fails as a story driven experience and as a game.

And RPG's aren't only about combat and challenge. See Planescape torment. Has a amazing story. Look to D&D 4e, the most balanced thing ever and most boring thing ever.;

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

NAme one old school RPG where it happens. Just one.

Depends what you mean by oldschool. Would you say that Bloodlines is oldschool? I don't think it is. I know that the combat sucks and that you can breeze throughout the game with terrible builds because the character system is fluffy. People usually talk about the first FOs as if they were this massive open game where you can do whatever you like. This is irrationalist revisionism, of course. There is no such thing. There is plenty of gated content and soul-crushing mistakes.

 

[Lacrymas]

What usually happens in RPGs to cause the power creep is the constant growth of the player's toolbox with more and more ludicrous powers because the designers run out of ideas. That's why I started advocating staggered spell circle acquisition in D&D. NPCs become more and more limited the more ridiculous spells and abilities we have, including in terms of AI. Numbers, like damage values and health pools, are easy to tweak, but actual effects are harder.

 

[Cryomancer]

Depends what you mean by oldschool. Would you say that Bloodlines is oldschool? I don't think it is. I know that the combat sucks and that you can breeze throughout the game with terrible builds because the character system is fluffy. People usually talk about the first FOs as if they were this massive open game where you can do whatever you like. This is irrationalist revisionism, of course. There is no such thing. There is plenty of gated content and soul-crushing mistakes.

VtMB is more like a social game than a action challenging game.

That said, the problem on VtMB difficulty can be solved in a way that makes sense. Eg

• Give incendiary .410 judge revolvers to vampire hunters
• Make enemies use disciplines on you with far greater frequency
• Make you unable to carry an arsenal on your backpack, so you need to walk with a long weapon(shotgun/rifle) and 2 short weapons at max
• Make Bruno Giovanni use advanced necromancy disciplines
• Make money harder to obtain
• Make certain disciplines like Thaumaturgy requires that you talk with Maximillian Strauss and do quests for him, instead of just learning from the menu
• Gives Apex to some enemies
• Reduce the healing rate for aggravated damage even more
• Improve enemy AI

What usually happens in RPGs to cause the power creep is the constant growth of the player's toolbox with more and more ludicrous powers because the designers run out of ideas. That's why I started advocating staggered spell circle acquisition in D&D. NPCs become more and more limited the more ridiculous spells and abilities we have, including in terms of AI. Numbers, like damage values and health pools, are easy to tweak, but actual effects are harder.

Any spell/weapon/feat/etc that a PC can take, a NPC can take.

 

[Lacrymas]

VtMB is more like a social game than a action challenging game.

That said, the problem on VtMB difficulty can be solved in a way that makes sense. Eg

• Give incendiary .410 judge revolvers to vampire hunters
• Make enemies use disciplines on you with far greater frequency
• Make you unable to carry an arsenal on your backpack, so you need to walk with a long weapon(shotgun/rifle) and 2 short weapons at max
• Make Bruno Giovanni use advanced necromancy disciplines
• Make money harder to obtain
• Make certain disciplines like Thaumaturgy requires that you talk with Maximillian Strauss and do quests for him, instead of just learning from the menu
• Gives Apex to some enemies
• Reduce the healing rate for aggravated damage even more
• Improve enemy AI

That's called *gasp* balance. Sometimes it works by buffing enemies, but sometimes the culprits are the player abilities.

Any spell/weapon/feat/etc that a PC can take, a NPC can take.

Not all of them at once and, like I said, sometimes the abilties themselves are a problem and need to go.

 

[Black]

Considering lv cap = 10, you will not fight much dragons...

How does that work in 5e? With ToEE's max level of 10, 3.5, you could still fight a Balor. Or Iuz.

 

[Desiderius]

An argument for turn based - The Magnificent Seven argument
Saint_Proverbius
Oct 30, 2002
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...urn-based-the-magnificent-seven-argument.192/

Well, at least it's an argument, if a specious one, which is an improvement over the usual inane ipse dixit.

Of course he chooses an example which leaves out:

(a) the most important* part of the turn

(b) the most salient difference between RTwP and TB

which is of course the Move.

* - it didn't hurt that Genghis had the gun while his adversaries did not, but so did the English and Genghis made more progress in a season than St. George's boys made in a century.

 

[Cryomancer]

How does that work in 5e? With ToEE's max level of 10, 3.5, you could still fight a Balor. Or Iuz.

You don't fight Iuz. You try to survive for few rounds

That's called *gasp* balance. Sometimes it works by buffing enemies, but sometimes the culprits are the player abilities.

Depends the way that you call """balance""" but uter removing nosferatu because "it is too hard" and removing thaumaturgy because "it is too good" or nerfing thaumaturgy would be silly. Would kill variety, immersion, fun and etc.

 

[Foamhead]

I'm enjoying this thread because when I first joined in 2005 everyone called Baldur's Gate dog shit. Now everyone is ragging on BG3 because it won't be as good as 1 and 2. I can't wait until 2030 when BG4 comes out and everyone thinks it'll suck and not be as good at part 1,2 and 3.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

VtMB is more like a social game than a action challenging game.

No shit.

Bloodbuff is a Discipline that all the vampires have, no matter the clan.
It gives the vampire a temporary boost to their physical abilities, so they may overcome obstacles such as picking locks or melee fighting.

Read "Your stat/skill choices don't matter. This game will allow you to use your health bar to surpass any skill check or encounter". Ain't it grand? Now I don't have to worry about menial tasks such as character building anymore. Much better because it adds immersum to muh freedom!

 

[Desiderius]

With RTwP, and given a functional AI (but not a competent one), the game input needed from the player is: watch the overall proceedings of the battle and periodically adjust the decisions of the AI to more competent ones. That makes the critical moments of the battle - the moments that decide whether or not you will succeed - first and foremost based on whether you twitched at the right time.

You got us. RTwP is basically Track & Field Coin-op.

Get back to us when you learn how RTwP works (there's a whole list of Autopause options for a reason).

Until then all you're doing is beclowning yourselves by demonstrating to the world how much you suck at RTwP and how big a sucker you are to think strawmen and logical fallacies are going to convince anyone.

You're among Testosterone-addled autists here, not Estrogen-clouded eunuchs.

 

[DraQ]

TB has always been because of technical limitations

It's the same as to say painting only existed because of technical limitations, and now as we have photos we don't need it.
It''s totally wrong.

Next time quote the entire fucking post.

Also, yeah, painting exists because of technical limitations. For example the main limitations of fotography are its inability of capturing stuff that exists only in artist's head and narrow range of supported art styles.

Problem?

 

[Cryomancer]

Reads "Your stat/skill choices don't matter. This game will allow you to use your health bar to surpass any skill check or encounter". Ain't it grand? Now I don't have to worry about menial tasks such as character building anymore. Much better because it adds immersum to muh freedom!

Wrong. You have physical stats and skills. Bloodbuff can give more DEX but not lockpicking skill. Takes a lot of blood, can't be used everywhere and points to upgrade it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Depends the way that you call """balance""" but uter removing nosferatu because "it is too hard" and removing thaumaturgy because "it is too good" or nerfing thaumaturgy would be silly. Would kill variety, immersion, fun and etc.

You are living in an imaginary world nobody is advocating for.

How does that work in 5e? With ToEE's max level of 10, 3.5, you could still fight a Balor. Or Iuz.

All challenge ratings have been lowered to accommodate the lowered max lvl of 20.

 

[Desiderius]

It may be instructive to consider how it was that TB itself arose/why it is that some prefer PnP to fighting with wood/foam swords and popguns. The same logic can be applied to making use of the available technology to allow moves to unfold simultaneously rather than sequentially, as they do perforce in PnP due to, yes, technical limitations.

 

[Desiderius]

In fact, planning for the enemy's turn is what makes TB so interesting.

Indeed, this is the heart of TB play. Imagine how much more interesting it would be if one had to account for the enemy jumping into the middle of your OODA-loop instead of mommy riding in on her helicopter and casting Time Stop for you.

 

[Cryomancer]

n fact, planning for the enemy's turn is what makes TB so interesting.

What if i already know what i would do? And already failed on the encounter before? Should i keep watching the same animation for the 666ºth time? Imagine a pathfinder necromancer who raised 6 Thanadaemons, 18 soul eaters, 6 graveknight, and 36 animated skeletons, watching each one of his minion taking his turn...

 

[GarfunkeL]

Are people really defending RTwP over TB? I love BG1+2 as much as the next guy and I've sunk a lot of hours in them but never have I been thinking that TB would've made them worse.

 

[vortex]

Are people really defending RTwP over TB? I love BG1+2 as much as the next guy and I've sunk a lot of hours in them but never have I been thinking that TB would've made them worse.

Yes. Yes it would.

 

[Cryomancer]

Yes. Yes it would.

Imagine animate dead on original(non enhanced edition) + turn based. Hours long encounters...

 

[Lacrymas]

All summons could act at the same time in a turn, like marquee selection that shit and right click. If there's a will, there's a way.

 

[Elex]

How does that work in 5e? With ToEE's max level of 10, 3.5, you could still fight a Balor. Or Iuz.

a party of 4 lvl 10 in 5e can face an adult green dragon, deadly ecounter (Doable in 5e a decent fight is generally ranked Deadly by the CR calculation in particular a boss fight).

With proper gear and some "extra power from plot reason" even a red adult is doable.

So only the ancient tier of dragons is out of the league for a party of lvl 10.

Sidenote: an adult green dragon is an easy ecounter for a party of 6 lvl 10 character, yes the difference between a party of 4 and a party of 6 is insane in 5e.

A party of 6 lvl 10 need to fight an ancient green dragon for a deadly fight.