Game News Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition announced, to be released within a month

[Waterd]

Yeah, and it´s sad because the production level is quite good.

 

[NotAGolfer]

I still don't get what that Waterd dude means by "hard".
If I fight a hostile adventurer party or boss or whatever in BG2 it isn't actually hard, but I can't just put the cursor over them and click "kill, kill, kill, make them go away!".
It's the good kind of not hard but also not boring to tears easy, where you can make live easier for you if you plan your moves and kill the most dangerous enemy first (usually the mage).
Enemies have resistances and weaknesses you can't possibly know if you didn't fight them before or look them up in a wiki. There are no "show resistances" spells or abilities.
There are optimal prebuffs for all party configurations and enemies if you don't want to resurrect party members after the fight.
And there are very few cases of unfair insta deaths (mostly in scripted encounters you couldn't prepare for), most of the time you can send your thief ahead and let him scope out the next area.

If I wanted real challenge so I can brag about it (hint: I don't) I would play competetive multiplayer (since when are you a "gamer" if you play poker btw? Isn't the term "player"?) or something with simple rules but emerging complexity like you mentioned it, chess.
Single player CRPGs are not really about challenge, there has to be some so winning the game still feels rewarding, but the main appeal is more like something between immersing oneself in a story, trying to savour the small traces of PnP RPG awesomeness (char-building, teh phat loot, C&C etc) and stroking one's OCD by powergaming the heck out of it.

An RPG that plays like a puzzle game (only one correct approach to every challenge) isn't an RPG at all, it's a puzzle game in disguise.
tl;dr
Why don't you keep telling us what artificial constraints you used in every game thread you frequent instead, that at least was the entertaining kind of trolling.
... Can't someone give him this avatar?

Would be very appropiate.

 

[Waterd]

With hard, i mean that, the actions I make in the game are supported by a decision that required at least minimal analysis.

An example of a common easy decision in BG that requires almost no analysys and thus is easy. I have a Character wtih 18/19 hp, What is the cost of healing that hp? Zero, Should I then rest? if the cost of resting is Zero, and What i gain is 1 hp the answer is obviusly yes. that is an easy decision, brainless.
Another. Should I check traps with thief? What is the cost of checking trap? Zero, benefit? spotting a damaging trap. Should I do the action? Answer is an easy yes.

Hard games or at least with some difficulty, actions are backed up by decisions that are not obvius to make, specially because there is a cost and a benefit, and valuing if the benefit is worth the cost needs at least a basic analasys.

In my experience in BG, MANY encounters, can be solved by just clicking the enemy and waiting them to day, i would say most encounters.
When that is not true, generally bombarding with damage spells, and running away from anything melee is good enough.

I don´t want challenge so i can brag about, i want challenges because that´s what enganging in games. Thats why people play challenging games, people that claim is to brag out, probably is because the miss the thrill and engagement of challenging games. We play games because it´s engaging and enjoyable to find solutions to problems. People that try to become better at chess does not do so so he can brag about how good he is at chess, he does it because is engaging fulfilling experience to think and improve in chess. I fear people that can´t comprehend this, just don´t get enjoyment from challenge. But if that is your case, im here to tell you that challenge is enjoyable to many humans.

(btw, poker is a game)

I also played A LOT of competitive games. MTG and poker are the main games because they are also my sources if income , but I also play chess, (used ot play battle of wesnoth when it had more active population) league of legends, Starcraft 2, Street fighter, Summoner wars, Yomi, puzzle strike and many other games that sadly lack a serious strong competitive scene (like Kemet, Puerto rico, small world, TEG).

However I also like to watch movies. I like stories and other kind of experiences.

But I also enjoy something that is inbetween, that is games that simluations or strong themed game. Just last night I spent it playing Theme hospital, a game that is very thematic, and is actually hard, I think it´s very well designed.
I look also for a different experience that is highly thematic games. That Is what I look for in RPG. However, as with theme hospital, I want them to provide challenge, that is because challenge is enganging, enjoyable and makes the story more compelling. Interactive stories are to me exciting because there is this tension where things can actually go wrong. In theme hospital, ive failed and got fired. In master of orion my empire has been decimated (i love master of orion, despite I have to slightly house rule it to play it) I like that tension where things can go wrong and i have to try to things for go right, and that is what interactive stories have of advantage over just movies.

It´s not a dichotomy. Play truly challenging games (competitive games at the highest games) or watch a movie (no challenge at all). I do both already. But I also enjoy that different mid experience where there is a story with a challenge.

An RPG that plays like a puzzle game (only one correct approach to every challenge) isn't an RPG at all, it's a puzzle game in disguise.

RPG are kind of a puzzle, here is an article about game design that talks about it that i like if you want http://keithburgun.net/game-systems-as-engines/
Creating a GAME, that is that can be replayed a lot because the solution is never the same + a story is nearly impossible with current technology. (unless you consider something like Master of orion a game+story wich is exactly A topic im discussing about in another forum of game design)

Im ok with RPG being a puzzle.
Phoenix wright series is something akin to that which I enjoy (Sadly everything action you have to make outside trial sucks).

As we currently stand, CRPG need to be puzzles and they are, Im ok with that.

 

[Waterd]

To note I enjoy the board RPG Mansion of madness. one thing it has is that every action is a decision. Exploring takes time, fighting takes time, even inventory managment takes, time ,and time passing is bad for you, because worse things happens with time. at the same time the game is very thematic, with a strong story, characters, stats, simulation ever. That is a very good game imo (or puzzle if you want to call it so)

 

[whitepony]

Its Battle FOR Wesnoth. So, a hard and thus satisfying game should provide a mental challenge.. How do you like to be mentally challenged btw? Is it hard and satisfying? Can you think of anything else that is both hard and satisfying?

 

[GarfunkeL]

My dick.

I did look for a trap, as i do with every chest, it wasn´t any detected. I use the girl you get early on as a thief.

Then you either had not increased her traps skill or you weren't waiting sufficiently. BG is really sensible about traps - it's very rare that there's just a random trap in the middle of nowhere. Traps are usually at chests or other containers, at chokepoints like bridges or tunnel intersections, or on some special features on the ground that's immediately noticeable. Infinity Engine requires you to wait for four-five seconds to let the trap-finding script to run. So yes, your thief scouts ahead with "Find Traps" toggled on and you move her ahead every five seconds. You do NOT need to do this on EVERYWHERE in each map, as stated, 90% of traps are in logical places. And again, as you said, you got unlucky that the lightning bolt from the trap hit your MC who failed their resist. You could have been wearing Boots of Grounding, you know? It's not an instant death trap and it's not bad design or "bad" difficulty.

As for Silke, you can absolutely kill her - and very easily in vanilla - on level 2. Heck, you can kill her at level 1 if you know what you're doing. Because damage taken interrupts spellcasting, as it has always done in D&D. By the time you get to her, you should have a full party (MC+3 from first zone, 2 from the Inn, plus there's two guys you can pickup in Beregost before talking to Garrick). Pellet her with arrows and bolts and stones and she usually dies without casting a single spell. Heck, Imoen has Wand of Magic Missiles, using it is faster than any spell Silke might cast. You know you're now fighting an enemy spellcaster, so using it would be totally justified and logical.

 

[Waterd]

Logical place? based on what logic?
Again, if its on all logical places, what is the point of traps existing? just to make you lose your time? if there is no decision involved, because you ALWAYS should search for trap, i dont get the design decision.

The fight lasted a full second, then i was dead. I had a full party, but it was pointless because once your main dies you could as well have a full army behind and it doesnt matter.

Also how would i know im fighting a spellcaster, before she cast a spell?

 

[pippin]

To be fair, BG2 had less traps, and I'd say IWD also had very few "critical" traps. Having a somewhat decent thief was necessary only on BG1, in the other games you just multi classed your thief.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You can go through BG1 without a thief - I've done it - but it's pretty painful.

Logical place? based on what logic?
Again, if its on all logical places, what is the point of traps existing?

I feel like there is a massive language-barrier between us. I said that most traps are in logical places. There is no traps on the middle of the road between Nashkel and Beregost, for example. But there is a trap on the bridge below Nashkel mines that goes over the chasm. That's a logical place for a trap, especially as you have kobold archers on the other side, ready to turn your thief into a pincushion. And I did not say that they ALL logical places have traps on them - I said that most traps are on logical places. Can you see the difference? Not every tunnel is trapped but the tunnel leading into Davaeorn's private chamber is trapped. It's also entirely logical to have chests locked and trapped - but not all of them are. So yes, you DO have to make decisions. Will you spend the extra time using your thief to scout or not? If you don't, you have to accept the HP loss and occasional deaths.

The fight lasted a full second, then i was dead.

Again you're either lying or misremembering. Or did you play without auto-pause or by pausing at all? In that case, the game is not "stupid hard in a wrong way", you're just a poor player. That would be like using the Quick Combat function in Gold Box games for every encounter. You should always have the "pause on sight of hostile"-option turned on in IE games. So, when Silke turns hostile, the game pauses, at which point you:

#1: Analyse the situation - a hostile spellcaster - because her character sprite is the same as every other female spellcaster, which you should know
#2: Her spells can be interrupted by damage
#3: Use Imoen to put a Magic Missile on her to cancel her first spell
#4: Order everyone to whack her
#5: She's dead, most likely without getting any spells off

SCS at least gives her few extra levels and let's her to insta-cast few protective spells as soon as combat starts, which actually makes the battle a decently challenging one at that point.

Summa summarum: my point is that your criticism of BG comes from poor understanding of game mechanics. It's by no means the best RPG out there, or the RPG with best combat or encounters either, but it's a solid good game that gives you sufficient challenge that neither require save-load-spam or puzzle-game like analysis of a situation. Nor does it utilize BS "enemies spawn from empty air without warning"-tricks, like so many games use.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

#1: Analyse the situation - a hostile spellcaster - because her character sprite is the same as every other female spellcaster, which you should know
#2: Her spells can be interrupted by damage
#3: Use Imoen to put a Magic Missile on her to cancel her first spell
#4: Order everyone to whack her
#5: She's dead, most likely without getting any spells off

Imoen is a thief in BG1. One thing I dislike in BG1 is that there are no aggressive attack options for dealing with spellcasters. AD&D assumes that there's a fight with lots of stuff going on and characters doing feints, defending themselves, etc.
But with spells there's just a passive opponent focused on casting a spell, not an enemy swordsman.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Imoen has a Wand of Magic Missiles that she, as a thief, can use at game start. It's extremely unlikely that you used all 30 charges before meeting Silke unless you took serious side-journeys.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Imoen has a Wand of Magic Missiles that she, as a thief, can use at game start. It's extremely unlikely that you used all 30 charges before meeting Silke unless you took serious side-journeys.

30 charges? Are you sure it's not some mod thing? Also, using a wand has a delay, IIRC.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Wand of Magic Missiles has pretty much instant cast speed, which is why it's useful throughout the game and even in BG2 - use it for interrupts. And I'm pretty sure it had 30 charges in vanilla BG as well. It's the more powerful wands that have only few charges.

Checked both Mike's RPG Center and Gamebanshee and neither one says anything about the number of charges.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Wand of Magic Missiles has pretty much instant cast speed, which is why it's useful throughout the game and even in BG2 - use it for interrupts.

IIRC there were delays for individual round of initiative for wands which were often longer than two segments needed to cast Mirror Image.

And I'm pretty sure it had 30 charges in vanilla BG as well. It's the more powerful wands that have only few charges.

Hmm... I don't remember having it for such a long time.

 

[Waterd]

Will you spend the extra time

Since time is an infinite resource in baldurs gate, the answer is always yes, so what´s the decision.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Will you spend the extra time

Since time is an infinite resource in baldurs gate, the answer is always yes, so what´s the decision.

But it isn't for you, you know, the player, in front of the screen.
Also, instead of letting your thief detect traps you could as well buff your tank and let him waltz through the danger zone. That would work just as well and takes less time. Only reason to use the thief is because he gets XP for disarming traps.

AND the decision you want, it isn't if you use the fucking tools at your disposal at the right time, it's which tools you want to take with you. Do I really need a thief in my party? How high must I raise that trap disarming stat to make it trough the next dangerous dungeon? Because a thief could be trained to do other useful things too. The choices you make are about party composition and developing your chars. And the story of course, if you want to be real nasty and evil or goody two shoes. And how to approach fights and generally make good use of your toolset of course.

...
That whole "if it is obvious, why implement it?" reasoning very much reminds me of Vault Dweller btw.
Walking around between plot points?: Useless waste of time, no decisions because the game has a pretty linear story anyway.
Barrels to smash, chests to loot?: Where's the decision? Of course you do it, so it doesn't add anything.
Adding a skill use button that only works on few locations/objects in the game? Useless waste of UI space, could as well CYOA the situation.
And so on, in the end nothing is left except a CYOA.

So, maybe you should look up Age of Decadence if you haven't, the reasoning you use here makes me think you would like it very much.

p.s.:

I don´t want challenge so i can brag about, i want challenges because that´s what enganging in games.

Sure, for some games that's right. But you can't have that much challenge in a single player CRPG without either turning it into a pure dungeon crawler or making it overally linear or restrictive in other ways (like so unforgiving and with only one right approach to everything that it becomes a puzzle game). The player needs leeway to screw around with the game systems and creating the char(s) he likes, else it wouldn't be much of a RPG. Most CRPGs are still trying to recreate the PnP RPG feel after all. And PnP RPGs are not really about challenge, they are social games.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Will you spend the extra time

Since time is an infinite resource in baldurs gate, the answer is always yes, so what´s the decision.

You have to choose between stealth and trap detection in IE games.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Will you spend the extra time

Since time is an infinite resource in baldurs gate, the answer is always yes, so what´s the decision.

You have to choose between stealth and trap detection in IE games.

Don't you automatically "leave the shadows" if you're hit or am I imagining things?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Will you spend the extra time

Since time is an infinite resource in baldurs gate, the answer is always yes, so what´s the decision.

You have to choose between stealth and trap detection in IE games.

Don't you atomatically "leave the shadows" if you're hit or am I imagining things?

I don't remember such a thing happening.

 

[Waterd]

Nice, so now my game time is an ingame resource, and maybe a failure can happen just because i dont have enough time to deidcate to the game. The idea that a designer consider real life time of a player, available to dedicate to the game as a resource the player should manage, is terrible design , so bad that im sure designers do not approach it that way.

Again, you are telling me either, by using my tank im wasting experience, hurting my tank and doing nothing relevant to the game. So you are either declaring i should make a bad decision or just claim the existence of traps creates no interesting decision, so it´s basically a time waster.

If there is no decision on how or if i use the tools at my disposal, why the game ask me to insert those inputs? as you claim i should just create my party, create stats, and send group and a mission and get a result sheet, that could be an interesting game, yet the game ask me to insert hundreds of input of no relevance, according to you. If its not a decision what tools and how to use the tools, why i have to input When i want to use the tools and how i want ot use them?

That whole "if it is obvious, why implement it?" reasoning very much reminds me of Vault Dweller btw.
Walking around between plot points?: Useless waste of time, no decisions because the game has a pretty linear story anyway.
Barrels to smash, chests to loot?: Where's the decision? Of course you do it, so it doesn't add anything.
Adding a skill use button that only works on few locations/objects in the game? Useless waste of UI space.
And so on, in the end nothing is left except a CYOA.

Wow it seems someone is asking the right questions and giving the right answers! What should be left is a game. Again you can check board games like Descent, mice and mystics and Mansion of madness, that while have some flawed, remove all that crap and gave the essential, its clearly considerd RPG as you will find it named in most RPG sites and most people call them RPG. Characters, story, combat, C&C. Looting is even a decision in those games, since it takes time and in those games, time passing is bad for your charcters. So it´s not impossible to implement, is just that, as in almost every other genere out there, board game design is way more advance than video game design, there are a lot of articles about that and why that happens, but RPG is another genere, I have an article about that in a design forum about all it. But the point is, it can be done, it has be done.
Those questions are right questions, why have brainless actions that are no decisions in a game? I may as well at this point buy some good miniatures and create my own stories without rules.

Also interesting you said ¨it would be just a dungeon crawling¨ Isn´t that what IW2 is about?

Im keeping track of age of decadence btw. I find the combat quite shallow though in the beta, maybe they will improve it.

Ok, I agree about your comment on PNP RPG, I have no interest in PNP RPG, though even in PNP RPG GM ensure that people is making interesting decisions if the GM desires so, and thats how it was the few times i tried. It´s ok if you call on that.

If the argument is ¨all this game lack challenge because its not intended, these games just want to emulate PNP RPG experience¨ All I can say is, ok and just express my wish more RPG don´t try that, and there isn´t much else for me to say.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Yep, I can live with that conclusion.
But:

The idea that a designer consider real life time of a player, available to dedicate to the game as a resource the player should manage, is terrible design

Of course they consider it that, duh! Pointlessly wasting people's time with tedious crap would aggravate most players, so a designer who doesn't care about that "resource" is a bankrupt designer. ^^

Also interesting you said ¨it would be just a dungeon crawling¨ Isn´t that what IW2 is about?

IWD2? I thought more of those very oldschool and very unforgiving dungeon crawlers Crooked Bee, mondblut and co. like to play. I never played a single one of them but they seem to be kinda puzzle like and pretty hard.
I guess they were designed with a different mindset than the late 90s IE games or most other RPGs I played.

Awor Szurkrarz
I think you're right.

 

[GarfunkeL]

IIRC there were delays for individual round of initiative for wands which were often longer than two segments needed to cast Mirror Image.

There's still initiative in play in IE games and obviously you need to get the order there first before the AI script (if using them) wastes the first round. Getting MM to hit before Mirror Image is really tricky - but the point here was Silke casting Lightning Bolt and instantly killing the Main Character as Waterd claims and that's not going to happen before you get MM hitting her. In fact, I've noticed that sometime my MM hits the enemy caster before they have started the casting animation meaning I don't get the interrupt and in essence wasted that spell/charge and round.

You can only sneak or search for traps, not both at the same time. But you can go stealth first, then move ahead and look for traps while still remaining stealthed for 10-15 seconds. But that's really cumbersome to do aside from the very few locations where you know from experience that a strong enemy is guarding a trap.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

IIRC there were delays for individual round of initiative for wands which were often longer than two segments needed to cast Mirror Image.

There's still initiative in play in IE games and obviously you need to get the order there first before the AI script (if using them) wastes the first round. Getting MM to hit before Mirror Image is really tricky - but the point here was Silke casting Lightning Bolt and instantly killing the Main Character as Waterd claims and that's not going to happen before you get MM hitting her.

Oh, I know what Silke did D: . It was Invisibility + lightning bolts D: .

You can only sneak or search for traps, not both at the same time. But you can go stealth first, then move ahead and look for traps while still remaining stealthed for 10-15 seconds. But that's really cumbersome to do aside from the very few locations where you know from experience that a strong enemy is guarding a trap.

Sneaking is really fucked up in IE games, by the way.