Icewind Dale Icewind Dale is a very boring, bad game

[razvedchiki]

I very much liked the icewind dale games as it allowed me to create plenty of character types curing my restartitis.

 

[Micormic]

Remember the kobolds at the end of Spellhold and orcs in Firkgraags dungeon? Laughably rare and unchallenging attempts. In IWD they are everywhere and can seriously kick your butt. I loved it.

If you're having trouble with the masses of skeletons, lizard men and goblins in IWD you clearly just suck at games in general.

 

[Micormic]

Past level 10, I do 60+ damage per round, and most of the enemies at that point do as well. So 3 hitpoints per level is indeed nothing, even accumulated after a bunch of levels. You making faces won't change that.




Well, let's see: I've completed BG1 + Exp, BG2 + Exp, PS:T, NWN1, NWN2 + Mask of the Betrayer, played ToEE, but no, I don't know anything about D&D.

And the half attack is kinda useless at level 13. By that point, I am doing 7/2 attacks per round with a 2-hander, so the half attack just means the next attack will come slightly sooner. Since most enemies don't live past a round with me, the time it takes to click on the next enemy pretty much negates whatever little bit of time you save.



No, you butthurt lil man, by level 10, my THAC0 is already in the negatives (strength bonuses, grandmastery bonuses, weapon bonuses, gear bonuses, etc), so the difference between THAC0 -1 and -10 is pretty minimal. I haven't noticed it, since I am hitting everything in both cases.

D&D is a bad system anyways, don't even bother defending your opinions when speaking to butthurt morons.

 

[rogueknight333]

I include Icewind Dale among my favorite games, but if the thread title had been "Soloing IWD with a fighter is a very boring, bad way to play the game" I would not have disagreed in the slightest (not sure if you ever actually indicated the specific class but it appears to be some sort of warrior at least, which would be the most boring class to solo with, if you insist on soloing).

The main feature of the game is party creation. If you are into powergaming and tactics, you can amuse yourself designing the optimum combination of classes and then using precise tactics to get the most out of their complementary abilities in combat. If you are into storytelling and role-playing, you can imagine a lot of eccentric characters with some interesting reason for ending up in Icewind Dale and write up their backstories in the biographies. Or you can just come up with some oddball theme for a party like a group of holy warriors or all thieves or all druids & rangers etc., or a party made up entirely of gnomes, or a party consisting of Snow White and the Five Dwarves, or thousands of other possibilities. If you are not doing one or more of the above, you are missing out on the main point of the game.

Soloing is not necessarily actually harder (certainly not at every stage of the game) due to factors like increased XP/encounter scaling/being able to concentrate all available potions + best gear with one character/not needing to protect weaker party members, etc. Even during stages where it is harder it will still tend to be slower and more tedious.

 

[Trashos]

I will let Irenicus answer this one.

Cowled Wizard: Even if we fall, our numbers are many. You will be overwhelmed.
Irenicus: You bore me, mageling.

 

[octavius]

Sorry if this is public domain and everybody knows, but... how do you know so much about sawyer? Are you his secretary or something?

His garbage collector.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

My god, almost done with this game, and it just keeps getting worse. I am only trying to finish it for completionist purposes, and so I can shit-post about it with more authority.

The last part basically turns into "collect 6 mcguffins to create the key to see the last in the chain of utterly unremarkable villains". 10 hours and hundreds of trash mobs later, I finally get to the villain, appropriately named like a French clown, and he gives me some speech about how all the events are basically the result of some of his personal bs, which has almost nothign to do with anything. Then, beating him, I am teleported back to the starting town, and the shit-show starts over again.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Also known as "larping" on the codex.

This is what pure autism is like. Imagining things in a game which it does not respond to. If you make a party of Paladins, no one in the game comments on that.

This is what a pure popamole retard is like. RPGs are not really your genre are they? Why keep trying?

 

[FeelTheRads]

If you make a party of Paladins, no one in the game comments on that.

Nobody in the game comments no matter what party you have. Party composition is to try different ways of beating the game.

And "imagining eccentric characters" and writing biographies is really more like a sad mental disorder than LARPing.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Indeed. On the codex, that is what we mean by larping. Which is why it's in the quotes. People imagining all sorts of things which are not in the game.

A bit like when people imagine the game is full of trash mobs, when it's not... They're just larping an on-the-edge shitposter while playing...

 

[FeelTheRads]

Indeed. On the codex, that is what we mean by larping. Which is why it's in the quotes. People imagining all sorts of things which are not in the game.

People on the Codex think that choosing a specific party composition is LARPing?

What party composition would not be considered LARPing then?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

The last part basically turns into "collect 6 mcguffins to create the key to see the last in the chain of utterly unremarkable villains".

And you can collect these McGuffins in any order you want, just like in Bioware games, so the game is no longer linear at this stage... right...

 

[Theldaran]

Exploration like BG1 is the opposite of dungeon crawling. Unless you count dungeon crawling as exploration of some sort.

Obviously IWD is different from BG1, for more BG1 (though also different in some ways) you have BG2.

IWD is slightly playable if you want nice graphics, at least nicer than most old dungeon crawlers. I agree the game becomes bogged down when you arrive at the Severed Hand and especially Caves of Dorn. But with the Heart of Fury mode, it offers quite a good challenge for power gamers. If you aren't one, move on.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I agree the game becomes bogged down when you arrive at the Severed Hand and especially Caves of Dorn.

No it doesn't. Wtf does "bogged down" even mean?

 

[Theldaran]

No it doesn't. Wtf does "bogged down" even mean?

Lots of trash combat with the same foes. Collecting the pieces from Larrel's astrolabe is a chore. Killing ettins, myconids and drow in Dorn is boring.

But hey, that's what the game is about. Still you have some nice fights like Yxunomei and Poquelin.

Trash combat was used the same as in PoE: to expand the game's play hours, and in this case, to net you some more XP for levelling.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Lots of trash combat with the same foes. Collecting the pieces from Larrel's astrolabe is a chore. Killing ettins, myconids and drow in Dorn is boring.

But hey, that's what the game is about. Still you have some nice fights like Yxunomei and Poquelin.

There's like four Ettins in the whole game. The Ettin/Myconid area is long before you reach Dorn's Deep, it's even before the Lich encounter. There are just two locations where you find myconids, one in a cave and one in a palace garden. If you personally find a single Ettin encounter boring or a couple of myconid encounters boring then that's just you, that's nothing to do with the game and nothing to do with any concept of trash mobs of the same foes.

Ah yes, collecting the McGuffins for Larrel, yes, you can do those in any order you want like in Bioware games as well, so at that point the game stops being linear... right...

 

[Theldaran]

Er... I think the ettins respawn, that's what makes them annoying.

Myconids, I guess they also respawn, plus if you get there with insane level, there's hordes of them.

Trash mobs with the same foes, with that I meant mostly those spectres in the Hand. Very annoying, and the Hand has a lot of areas... could be considered a plus, only that it's boring and makes you waste time.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I am not criticizing party compositions. I am criticizing imagining them to have any imaginary character. How do I care what suboptimal composition people use.

Unless you're a labotomised husk you'll be imagining some form of character for your sprites, that's why you pick an avatar, race and class, voice and dialogue options for them at the start of the game. Sure, you can treat them as digital sprites that perform mathematical outcomes upon an input from the player, but that's not the norm for RPGs

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Er... I think the ettins respawn, that's what makes them annoying.

Trash mobs with the same foes, with that I meant mostly those spectres in the Hand. Very annoying, and the Hand has a lot of areas... could be considered a plus, only that it's boring and makes you waste time.

Yes, the Ettins & myconids respawn in the cave where they appear. The extent to which any player needs to keep running back and forth through this cave will be entirely dependent on each individual player. Some will like it as a means to xp farm, some will enjoy killing Ettins, some will find it a drag, some wont even know they respawn. This is the only cave in the entire game which has respawning mobs (the only other respawn being a small pack of shadows at the vale of shadows). If you're using this one cave as a means to say the game is "full of trash mobs" then you're talking horseshit.

I have no idea what you're on about with regards to Spectres at the Severed Hand. What spectres are you even on about?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Collecting the pieces from Larrel's astrolabe is a chore.

Severed hand is one of my favourite parts of the game. Lots of ambushes (some of them quite dangerous if you play the game for the first time), little but really annoying enemies (goblin sharpshooters), undead tanks fronting buffed by ghosts in the back, Elven archers pincushioning your guys, udead fireballers and some nice random loot (that elven chainmail). I don't mind collecting astrolabe pieces.

Sure, there are lots of elves, but t's an elven fortress so I wouldn't call them trash mobs.

 

[Theldaran]

My point is that killing ettins, doesn't matter if it's once or three million times over, is boring, they're just HP bloats. That's for me, of course.

Trash combat traces back as early as the goblins in the prologue, or the skeletons and undead in Shadow Vale. It goes on with lizardmen, yuan-ti, etc. In this kind of game you HAVE to include trash combat, you can't make every encounter memorable.

The spectres are the black shadows (not the goblin, orcs, and ogres spirits). You encounter them halfway through the Hand's lower levels. There's quite a bunch of them.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

My point is that killing ettins, doesn't matter if it's once or three million times over, is boring, they're just HP bloats. That's for me, of course.

Trash combat traces back as early as the goblins in the prologue, or the skeletons and undead in Shadow Vale. It goes on with lizardmen, yuan-ti, etc. In this kind of game you HAVE to include trash combat, you can't make every encounter memorable.

The spectres are the black shadows (not the goblin, orcs, and ogres spirits). You encounter them halfway through the Hand's lower levels. There's quite a bunch of them.

I'm sorry bro, but encountering an enemy you personally find boring is not trash combat. Fighting goblins at level 1/2 is not trash combat. Fighting monsters in the places where you'd expect to fight those monsters is not trash combat.

 

[Trashos]

If it feels like trash combat to the players, then it is trash combat. Your definition is strange. If I design a skeleton habitat and fill it in with low level skeletons, what am I going to call that, awesome gameplay?

But let's change the question a little bit. How many memorable encounters does IWD, a game devoted to combat, have? Note that I can't answer this question myself due to the time passed. But I'd like to hear opinions.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

If it feels like trash combat to the players, then it is trash combat. Your definition is strange. If I design a skeleton habitat and fill it in with low level skeletons, what am I going to call that, awesome gameplay.

You're judging content by your own personal feelings and nothing else and you're suggesting my definition is strange?

 

[Trashos]

Pacing of content and/or boredom has to do with feelings, there is not much I can do about that. It has to *feel* right.