Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[Murk]

All arguments are subjective but employ some level of objective evidence to support them, unless you're engaging in purely top-down deduction.

I am not a fan of Wiz 8 and the combat system is part of the reason why (the other being because I tend to dislike blobbers.) Your comparison of trash mobs is not lost on me at all, but Given the counter argument to Wizardry trash-mobs was "yeah but the combat is fun because I enjoyed it"... ya know.

You get what I mean. You two were just going back and forth over whether you liked something or not. I'm in the "BG 1 is worth playing because it's fun for reasons x, y, and z" camp along with you, but if someone's rebuttal to why something is fun is seriously just "no" -- then why bother arguing?

Anyway, I'm done. Do what you feel must be done mein freund.

 

[Grunker]

I am not a fan of Wiz 8 and the combat system is part of the reason why (the other being because I tend to dislike blobbers.) Your comparison of trash mobs is not lost on me at all, but Given the counter argument to Wizardry trash-mobs was "yeah but the combat is fun because I enjoyed it"... ya know.

I feel happy for DraQ that he was able to enjoy Wizardry 8's combat to such an extent that he was able to sit through that many encounters taking so much time to complete. However, that's just like, his opinion, man. What is undeniable is the ease with which BG is able to speed you through such encounters without compromising its combat system, compared to Wiz8. This was what I refered to. I reply to you because you spoke to both me and DraQ when you argued that "we were oh so subjective," which implied you had apparantly read my posts wrong.

See, whether me or DraQ enjoy the combat system enough to sit through the lengthy "trash" fights isn't the question. Whether there is even an issue that we need to like it "enough" is. This is not an issue in BG, which leaves Wiz8 with a relative weakness in this concern.

Remember that the core dispute here was that DraQ specifically stated that he couldn't remember a single game that did trash encounters worse that BG. This should raise some eye-brows either concerning DraQ's general level of intelligence or in wonder of how many RPGs DraQ has played. Surely he's fought some Cliffracers in his time?

Anyway, I'm done.

If you don't want to partake in inane discussion, don't post on the Codex reply to inane discussions.

 

[Jaesun]

I once cooked an entire dinner while waiting for Wiz 8's combat to resolve.

True story.

 

[Murk]

I reply to you because spoke to both me and DraQ when you argued that "we were oh so subjective," which implied you had apparantly read my posts wrong.

No, I understood them just fine -- my point was... well, never mind, especially in consideration to:

If you don't want to partake in inane discussion, don't post on the Codex reply to inane discussions.

Fair enough. Carry on.

 

[Lilura]

Edwin is the second most powerful character in the game. The first is Irenicus.

If you choose a Sorceror, you are #3.

I dunno, Fighter/mage can get 10 critical strike attacks per round and cast spells. They have the luxury of constantly assessing whether to melee or drop a tactical nuke, and can take more advantage of the downtime inbetween spellcastings than a single-class mage like Edwin, who can't really melee all that well even with Tenser's (which also disables his spellcasting) and Black Blade.
Fighter/mages are also more efficient killers than Sorcerers, and pretty much any other class.

Powergaming and considerations of it suck anyway, it takes your attention away from the game itself and you end up not enjoying it anymore. I wish now I didn't pull the BG series apart and analyse it to death, but maybe I'm just in a weird mood. Too much wine last night.

 

[Sodafish]

:loltimestopgww:

 

[Sunsetspawn]

I know that elementals can turn on me, and I know how to use the ring: you click the little backpack icon on the bar next to the spell icon and click the "charm elemental" spell, after which I assume you click the little spell pointer on the elemental. But after I did that to the raging elemental stoopid Nalia ran up to him and started taking melee swings. She never entered the spell animation; never cast the spell. So was I supposed to use that charm elemental ring before I summoned the elemental?]

Animation for this ring is nonexistent and it is melee range. Saving throw negates it so it's probably what happened in this case. You couldn't really know that it's melee before trying and it kinda sucks about some items like this.

Because of how long it takes for mage to summon and control the elementals you should probably not use it during battles and instead have mage continue firing sling bullets when he has nothing else to do. The spell works pretty long though and you can use it before anticipated battle. If you have a druid in party then having him use elemental summoning will work better.

Thank you sir. I am learning from experience. Summon elementals BEFORE the battle, unless you do it with a druid (cleric too I assume), which, by the way, came in handy for that "druid duel" in which the fire elemental was pivotal.

HEALTH REGENERATION MAKES TRASH MOBS POINTLESS MASTURBATION

At least masturbation makes you feel good.

My analogy still stands.


After all, I'm also playing Drakensang: The Dark Eye and liking it. I am kind of a sucker for all the stats and points to distribute. It's like I get little treats after every thing I do, including battles.

IWD was great (arguably the best landscapes of all infinity engine games), IWD2... not so much.

PS:T > BG2 > IWD > BG1 > IWD2

Planescape is on my list...

Should Icewind Dale be as well?

Is shit.
RTWP clusterfuck with party AI doing its best to kill itself using suicidal pathfinding, necessitating constant nursing on part of the player. I haven't abused my LMB in Diablo as much as I did my poor poor spacebar in BG.

In theory I really like the idea of RTWP. It's supposed to simulate combat more betterer. While paused you need to anticipate a few seconds ahead before you throw spells and othersuchshit.


But, you're right about the pathfinding. My mages cast spells and assholes (I'm lookin at Minsc) run into it like my webs are giving out blowjobs. Back the fuck off, dickhead! Do I really need to manually steer you away from that shit?

 

[Rake]

I know that elementals can turn on me, and I know how to use the ring: you click the little backpack icon on the bar next to the spell icon and click the "charm elemental" spell, after which I assume you click the little spell pointer on the elemental. But after I did that to the raging elemental stoopid Nalia ran up to him and started taking melee swings. She never entered the spell animation; never cast the spell. So was I supposed to use that charm elemental ring before I summoned the elemental?]

Animation for this ring is nonexistent and it is melee range. Saving throw negates it so it's probably what happened in this case. You couldn't really know that it's melee before trying and it kinda sucks about some items like this.

Because of how long it takes for mage to summon and control the elementals you should probably not use it during battles and instead have mage continue firing sling bullets when he has nothing else to do. The spell works pretty long though and you can use it before anticipated battle. If you have a druid in party then having him use elemental summoning will work better.

Thank you sir. I am learning from experience. Summon elementals BEFORE the battle, unless you do it with a druid (cleric too I assume), which, by the way, came in handy for that "druid duel" in which the fire elemental was pivotal.

HEALTH REGENERATION MAKES TRASH MOBS POINTLESS MASTURBATION

At least masturbation makes you feel good.

My analogy still stands.


After all, I'm also playing Drakensang: The Dark Eye and liking it. I am kind of a sucker for all the stats and points to distribute. It's like I get little treats after every thing I do, including battles.

IWD was great (arguably the best landscapes of all infinity engine games), IWD2... not so much.

PS:T > BG2 > IWD > BG1 > IWD2

Planescape is on my list...

Should Icewind Dale be as well?

Is shit.
RTWP clusterfuck with party AI doing its best to kill itself using suicidal pathfinding, necessitating constant nursing on part of the player. I haven't abused my LMB in Diablo as much as I did my poor poor spacebar in BG.

In theory I really like the idea of RTWP. It's supposed to simulate combat more betterer. While paused you need to anticipate a few seconds ahead before you throw spells and othersuchshit.


But, you're right about the pathfinding. My mages cast spells and assholes (I'm lookin at Minsc) run into it like my webs are giving out blowjobs. Back the fuck off, dickhead! Do I really need to manually steer you away from that shit?

P:T is a must if you are interested in story more than combat.
IWD 1+2 is for you if you like BG2 combat. It's more linear with less focus on exploration and more focus on combat and dungeon crawling.
Both are worth playing

 

[Murk]

IWD is all about beautiful art and combat, though I rather like the neat touches of interactivity sprinkled throughout as well. I think it's the most fun I've had with actual party based combat in an IE game (IWD 1). I usually tend to only make 1-3 characters and not really a fully formed party.

My personal ranking of the games goes something like this:

IWD 1 > BG 2 > IWD 2 > BG 1

With PT just being separated because the gameplay is just way different to me than those games, but if I was forced to rank it in there, it'd be the first/best.

Having said that, I've probably replayed IWD 2 the most due to its use of 3.0 rules instead of 2.0 -- I like tinkering with stupid builds.

 

[Lilura]

The Icewind Dale series is also notable for unforgettable musical scores.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I've said it many times, but I can repeat it once more, why not - the "30 minutes I took a dog for a walk" trash combat encounters in Wiz8 are a myth, perpetuated mostly by people who only tired the game for a while or didn't like it or suck at it or all of these. If you build your team well you resolve most encounters quickly and random encounters that include huge numbers of hp sponges only appear regularly near the end of the game (yes, the Rapax) - I'd wager most of whiners didn't even reach these :passive-aggressive assumption:. Other encounters that can take a long time, like Pagoda Armory or the Mountain Monastery, are hardly boring trash fights. And even then there are many ways (skills, spells, items) to speed these up considerably. Finding these ways, cracking the system and building a team that waltzes through combat is, be prepared for a shocking revelation, fun.

Also, if we go outside the vanilla discussion, there are external ways to speed the combat up. A lot.

And to be completely honest - I find comparing Wiz8 combat to BG1 combat a pretty absurd affront to the former, but just my opinion man.

 

[Grunker]

I completed Wiz8, and fights are legion and last very long compared to other games. This seems to be a pretty commonly accepted fact. As a matter of fact, you and DraQ are the only people I've ever heard of who defend the ridicoulous amounts of enemies and their movement/animation speed in Wiz8. Even with Wiz8Fast combat takes a considerable amount of time to get through. This is generally accepted even by the people I know who love the game, including myself.

So yes, I'm going to hard-pressed to become convinced that Wiz8's biggest problem isn't the fact that it handles "trash" mobs worse than most other games out there.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

You could just say that you don't know any people who like dungeon crawling blob crpgs. All of them feature "absurd" amount of random "trash" encounters than can take considerable time and drain you of your resources quickly. It starts to resemble myriad complains about DM-inspired game being real time.

And "30 minute trash fights" in Wiz8 are still as much bs as they were 10 minutes ago.

 

[Grunker]

You could just say that you don't know any people who like dungeon crawling blob crpgs. All of them feature "absurd" amount of random "trash" encounters than can take considerable time and drain you of your resources quickly.

No. The Magic & Magic VI - VIII games are perfect examples that trash combat in blobbers does not need to be as ball-wreckingly horribly executed as they were. Here, trash combat is fluid and fast.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Quick, someone get that old-as-the-internet chopper versus tricycle comparison picture.

 

[Grunker]

Quick, someone get that old-as-the-internet chopper versus tricycle comparison picture.

Oh, fuck this, you guys are incapable of discussing one topic at a time. We're discussing handling of trash combat, not whether Wizardry 8 has superiority in complexity of mechanics and gameplay (which any sane person would argue, as I did when I pointed out my love for the game). I'm outta here.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Quick, someone get that old-as-the-internet chopper versus tricycle comparison picture.

Oh, fuck this, you guys are incapable of discussing one topic at a time. We're discussing handling of trash combat, not whether Wizardry 8 has superiority in complexity of mechanics and gameplay (which any sane person would argue, as I did when I pointed out my love for the game). I'm outta here.

But that's basically the thing, Wiz8 has superior, mechanically way more complex, tb combat system and is a blobber. Of course the encounters will take more time due to the former and of course there will be many of them due to the latter. Still, if you learn the system you can resolve them at a pace that makes 30-minutes claims silly. The simplistic rt encounters in BG1 take less time, colour me surprised. And before you get some cheese (like fireball wand) they still take way too long for my taste.

 

[Grunker]

Of course the encounters will take more time

Slow movement speed, slow animations, wonky interface and too many enemies are not a function of the game's complexity.¨

Temple of Elemental Evil has fairly quick combat resolution, even for a turn-based game which rivals Wiz8 complexity. And that game even has a few lengthy animations in it.

Even if the length of encounters were a function of the game's complexity, the amount of encounters are not. Many complex Turn-Based games with very deep levels of complexity just have fewer "trash" mobs. Again, what I'm pointing out is that Wiz8 has a problem either with speed of combat or amount of trash mobs. This amuses me:

The simplistic rt encounters in BG1 take less time, colour me surprised.

Whether you find BG1 a bad game or not isn't relevant. Again I must draw attention to the fact that this discussion started because DraQ said he didn't know of any game that handled trash mobs worse than BG1. If we can agree that Wiz8 - despite all its glory in other places - is not to be lauded for its handling of trash mobs, and that BG1 handles trash combat pretty efficiently - despite what one may think about its RTwP or simpler AD&D mechanics - then I don't think we disagree.

 

[Krivol]

The worst thing in Wiz8 wasn't long fights, but that feeling after a very long battle, when you saw another enemy group just behind next hill. And another, and another...

EDIT: Nothing compared to Xvart Village in BG1.

 

[DraQ]

The relative duration of fights in BG and Wizardry are not exactly a matter of subjective sensation

The relative duration is not all that determines tediousness of trash mobs.

Wizardry 8 is an FPP game with sight range much longer than combat range, with trash mobs randomly spawning and patrolling areas.
BG1 is an overhead game with fog of war, sight range corresponding to combat range and mostly set trash mobs that respawn instantly, unlimited number of times and with unlimited frequency when not in sight.

This means:

• in BG if you see it you fight it (and if you lose sight of it, you figth it again when you see it again), in Wiz8 if you see it, you may just as well run from or around it if you prefer to, which is good way to bypass those truly tedious encounters (like those fucking modai and molochs)
• Wiz8 combat encounters are more diverse and yield more randomized loot
• Wiz8 combat encounters don't repeat in the exact same composition and place over and over again just because you decided to peek behind a rock (fuck you skeletons in front of Thalantyr's place and fuck you Firewine kobolds, oh and fuck you very much xvart village)

Then, there are mechanical differences:

• In Wiz8 random mobs are generally harder making them more meaningful to the gameplay and resource management game, if there is a true trash fight, you can generally get done with it at least as fast as in BG especially given that Wiz8 doesn't have Vancian casting so you are not penalized for fireballing a bunch of nuissance monsters away and aren't forced to kill them the hard way.
• Wiz8 has more severe penalties for getting surprised while resting, in BG1 it's not uncommon to efortlessly slaughter exact same group of tasloi or kobolds 3 or four times while trying to get some fucking sleep, in Wiz8 you either find a good place to camp or risk gangrape.

 

[SCO]

But, you're right about the pathfinding. My mages cast spells and assholes (I'm lookin at Minsc) run into it like my webs are giving out blowjobs. Back the fuck off, dickhead! Do I really need to manually steer you away from that shit?

That's just the 'AI' scripts not taking webs into account. They're not taking into account BTW, because BGscript sucks ass. Yeah, that could have been taken into account in the real pathfinding, but the thing is: sometimes you want to wade into a cloud (for instance, you're immune). It's game specific.

 

[Lilura]

BG1 is an overhead game with fog of war, sight range corresponding to combat range and mostly set trash mobs that respawn instantly, unlimited number of times and with unlimited frequency when not in sight.

in BG if you see it you fight it (and if you lose sight of it, you figth it again when you see it again),

This is quite rare, and only happens in set areas like in Durlag's Tower or Firewine ruins. 98% of the time when a trashmob is cleared out, it won't respawn from LoS loss.

EDIT: Nothing compared to Xvart Village in BG1.

Try casting Sleep.

 

[octavius]

Sounds like DraQ has only played the vanilla version of BG1, where instant respawns was indeed a problem, but IIRC they only respawned if you reloaded. "Everyone" now plays, or has more memories of, the TuTu and BGT versions.
Anyway it usually only took a few seconds to click on that AI light icon to the trash mob was dead, if you had give your party members a decent combat script. I don't see how it could have been resolved much faster without making the whole combat abstract.

 

[Jaesun]

Oh gawd the fucking retarded spawns of TuTu and BGT.

 

[curry]

BG1 is best enjoyed with the widescreen mod and nothing else. OP said he's a storyfag so he should definitely start with BG1.