So, Baldurs Gate

[DraQ]

Draq, BG1 defense squad is looking at Baldur's Gate through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia and/or complete incompetence at exploration. If there's anything I learned from that piece of shit Wheel of Time forum, it's that you can't talk sense into a die-hard fanboy, because they'll keep frpthing at the mouth to try and deny those parts of objective criticism that they can deny, and flat-out ignore those parts that they can't deny.


Anyway, to sum up the "BG1 has no real exploration" discussion:

1. Isometric perspective restricts player's interaction and perception with the game world, requiring a greater use of textual descriptions, lore, and dialogue (what a 3D game can demonstrate through its game engine, an isometric game must describe through words);
2. BG1 has well-drawn 2D visuals, but its game world severely lacks in uniqueness, storytelling, and roleplaying options;
3. The vast majority of locations in BG1 are completely generic and can be cut with little to no loss in roleplaying value;
4. The vast majority of encounters in BG1 are completely unconnected to their locations and are interchangeable with each other;
5. There are a few well-designed outdoor locations which require active involvement from the player (among them Gnoll Stronghold, Durlag's Tower interior) but most are perfectly flat maps which can be traversed practically with your eyes closed;
6. There are a few well-designed indoor locations/dungeons which are interesting to navigate (among them Durlag's Tower dungeon, Ice Maze), but most are horribly narrow and repetitive corridors where your party can easily get stuck and can't properly fight enemies;
7. Quantity over quality is BG1's defining feature.

Case closed, thanks for watching.

Even with existing content BG could be easily massively improved:

1. Almost every map (some of the exceptions would include Gnoll Fortress) could be vastly cut down (I conservatively estimate to 25% of original exterior area) without actually removing anything of interest using some combination of following methods

• finding a bounding box of all encounters and distinctive landmarks, throwing out everything outside of it
• moving encounters or terrain features a bit to squeeze them tighter
• "squeezing" the whole map tighter while preserving its overall structure
  
• splitting or merging maps

Yes, it would forever rob the players of opportunity to admire such breathtaking and distinctive locales as this:

this:

or even this:

No, I don't care.

A handy collection of BG1 maps is featured here, selecting and applying aforementioned operations is left as an exercise to the reader.

2. Sight distance could be increased. It would limit the overall derp and help against BVR fireball/cloud artillery exploit.

3. Black shroud could be kept off, at least in all the exterior locations.
It doesn't add anything to the game and makes no sense in exteriors:

I totally couldn't see it looming in the distance!

Amusingly enough it might add some slight modicum of exploration: by not keeping track of what *exactly* player has seen it would force player to actually direct their attention around based on the overal layout of surrounding area, possibly not visiting some spots on the map.

4. Random derpcounters/rest ambushes could be kept down to minimum and/or changed to present actual threat.
No, fighting seven waves of tasloi before you get nod off isn't actual threat to even very weary band of adventurers, and after seeing the exploded gibs of the first wave the remaining six waves should reconsider and go seek more luck somewhere else.

 

[octavius]

Draq, BG1 defense squad is looking at Baldur's Gate through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia and/or complete incompetence at exploration.

Not true in my case. I thought vanilla BG1 was only an okay game, and BG2 was defintely incline. It was only after playing it with Easy TuTu, BG1 NPC Project and Sword Coast Strategems that I grew to really love it.

Regarding wilderness exploration, the relatively empty wilderness areas in BG1 never bothered me, 'cause wilderness tends to be rather empty, and I accept that the content to area ratio is lower than in cities and dungeons.
One of my pet peeves however is large, mostly empty cities (and to a lesser degree dungeons). Cities should have much more content to area ratio than wilderness. Athlaka in BG2 was perfect in that regard, and Baldur's Gate in BG1 too was good. But I rage quit games like Disciples of Steel and Magic Candle 2 (as well as some FRUA modules) due to those huge, empty cities. Any city in a CRPG can never (not with current tech and will at least) be anything but an abstraction of the "real" thing, so if there are nothing to explore in the city, make it a fucking menu town instead.

 

[DraQ]

Regarding wilderness exploration, the relatively empty wilderness areas in BG1 never bothered me, 'cause wilderness tends to be rather empty

Removing black from the map was still a tedious nongameplay so this still applies.

If you can't stuff something full of interesting stuff, then either make the act of exploring it engaging, or abstract away/allow bypassing the boring parts.

Case in point - see something like FO1 V15 surface. There is a reason why it's just a small shack with a hatch in the floor rather than small shack with a hatch in the floor surrounded by several screens worth of sand, dried vegetation and a rock or two.

Any city in a CRPG can never (not with current tech and will at least) be anything but an abstraction of the "real" thing

Procedural generation?

 

[TedNugent]

One of my pet peeves however is large, mostly empty cities (and to a lesser degree dungeons). Cities should have much more content to area ratio than wilderness. Athlaka in BG2 was perfect in that regard, and Baldur's Gate in BG1 too was good. But I rage quit games like Disciples of Steel and Magic Candle 2 (as well as some FRUA modules) due to those huge, empty cities. Any city in a CRPG can never (not with current tech and will at least) be anything but an abstraction of the "real" thing, so if there are nothing to explore in the city, make it a fucking menu town instead.

By that criteria, a lot of the smaller towns and villages in BG1 were not very good.

Beregost was just a bunch of lootable house interiors strung loosely together. Friendly Arm Inn was basically an inn and a chapel, and Candlekeep was just a bunch of Fedex quests if you ignore the dungeon. In fact, Ulgoth's Beard had far more interesting quests than Beregost did and it was just a village, so the amount of meaningful content per unit of real estate was comparatively way higher.

 

[octavius]

One of my pet peeves however is large, mostly empty cities (and to a lesser degree dungeons). Cities should have much more content to area ratio than wilderness. Athlaka in BG2 was perfect in that regard, and Baldur's Gate in BG1 too was good. But I rage quit games like Disciples of Steel and Magic Candle 2 (as well as some FRUA modules) due to those huge, empty cities. Any city in a CRPG can never (not with current tech and will at least) be anything but an abstraction of the "real" thing, so if there are nothing to explore in the city, make it a fucking menu town instead.

By that criteria, a lot of the smaller towns and villages in BG1 were not very good.

Beregost was just a bunch of lootable house interiors strung loosely together. Friendly Arm Inn was basically an inn and a chapel, and Candlekeep was just a bunch of Fedex quests if you ignore the dungeon. In fact, Ulgoth's Beard had far more interesting quests than Beregost did and it was just a village, so the amount of meaningful content per unit of real estate was comparatively way higher.

Yes, Beregost was probably my least favourite area in BG1, after the first map of Werewolf Island. The rest of the towns/villages were so small that the content to area ratio didn't really matter. It still had a fair share of content, though, even if there were too many empty houses.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

By that criteria, a lot of the smaller towns and villages in BG1 were not very good.

Beregost was just a bunch of lootable house interiors strung loosely together. Friendly Arm Inn was basically an inn and a chapel, and Candlekeep was just a bunch of Fedex quests if you ignore the dungeon. In fact, Ulgoth's Beard had far more interesting quests than Beregost did and it was just a village, so the amount of meaningful content per unit of real estate was comparatively way higher.

A bunch of lootable house interiors?

From http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Beregost

"
Subquests

• Landrin's Spiders
• Mirianne's Letter
• Firebead's Book
• Marl the Drunk
• Gurke's Cloak
• Bjornin's Half-Ogres
• Silke Dilema
• Zhurlong's Boots
• Retrieving Perdue's Sword

"

Not too shabby for a relatively small single zone town.

 

[Excidium]

10/10 quest design, would fetch again

 

[Grunker]

inb4 excidium declares gold box games shit because of quest design

 

[Excidium]

10/10 quest design, would fetch again

inb4 excidium declares gold box games shit because of quest design

Not shit as much as primitive

 

[DraQ]

10/10 quest design, would fetch again

Well, Marl was p. ok, the letter was fetch&find which is inherently more interesting than just being given a quest to fetch stuff, while silke, while pretty durpy and transparent, wasn't really formulaic.

Other than that, yeah.

 

[Infinitron]

I didn't mind Beregost. It was a nice HQ from which to launch expeditions when travelling the surrounding countryside. You'd go back and sell stuff and slowly earn enough money to buy the best stuff from the blacksmith. Great memories.

Also, having four inns in one town is definitely something you don't see these days.

 

[DraQ]

I didn't mind Beregost. It was a nice HQ from which to launch expeditions when travelling the surrounding countryside.

Beregost was sort of ok.

Nashkel, OTOH...

 

[Infinitron]

Nashkel was too small, but the fair next to it was pretty cool (although they probably could have done more with it)

 

[Gragt]

Also, having four inns in one town is definitely something you don't see these days.

Four inns and not one single brothel …

 

[DraQ]

Nashkel was too small, but the fair next to it was pretty cool (although they probably could have done more with it)

Not padding the map with about 3x as much generic copypasta wilderness as it had actual content would be a good start.

(Sorry about shitty quality, but MSPain(t) cannot into gifs and doing this sort of scribble is much faster with it than with GIMP.)

 

[GarfunkeL]

Also, having four inns in one town is definitely something you don't see these days.

Four inns and not one single brothel …

After darkness fell, there were prostitutes ("courtesans") in front of Feldepost.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Nashkel was too small, but the fair next to it was pretty cool (although they probably could have done more with it)

Not padding the map with about 3x as much generic copypasta wilderness as it had actual content would be a good start.

(Sorry about shitty quality, but MSPain(t) cannot into gifs and doing this sort of scribble is much faster with it than with GIMP.)

Agreed.

That image leaves out a lot of content though. It's missing the ogre, the poet, the pickpocket, the clown, gambling, the witch held hostage, bros getting high in a tent, the guy who sells special potions, and a couple of mundane merchants.

 

[DraQ]

That image leaves out a lot of content though. It's missing the ogre, the poet, the pickpocket, the clown, gambling, the witch held hostage, bros getting high in a tent, the guy who sells special potions, and a couple of mundane merchants.

That content is still in the outlined area, though.

And it's one of the less 'compressible' maps.

 

[Glyphwright]

There wouldn't be much problem with the 'empty wilderness" area if it didn't trick you into thinking it might not be empty. Infinity engine games really don't need that fog of war bullshit, at least not in outdoor areas.

 

[Gragt]

Also, having four inns in one town is definitely something you don't see these days.

Four inns and not one single brothel …

After darkness fell, there were prostitutes ("courtesans") in front of Feldepost.

True, but they wouldn't accept my money.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

p sure you could cut down the size of The Elder Turds: Moronwind by 90% without actually losing any content

 

[Surf Solar]

All this thread and the stupid people trying to argue with DraQ over BG did was making me reinstall the game and marvel at the gameplay. Thanks, I guess?

 

[TedNugent]

p sure you could cut down the size of The Elder Turds: Moronwind by 90% without actually losing any content

Or if you cut out goblin den #1-100 from Oblivion.

Elder Scrolls is ass.

 

[Excidium]

All this thread and the stupid people trying to argue with DraQ over BG did was making me reinstall the game and marvel at the gameplay. Thanks, I guess?

Inb4 abandoned at Beregost

 

[Abelian]

It wasn't hard. But is there any RPG that is?

I've never played it, but I did hear horror stories about Wizardry IV, where even escaping from the first room requires in-depth knowledge of the game mechanics and some luck.