What are you playing?

Talk about the life consuming, celibacy inducing hobby that is all the rage these days.
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rabidtictac
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by rabidtictac » Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:37 pm

I'm at the final boss of Baldur's Gate. Basically done with the game once I figure out how to scam this final encounter.

Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I guess. But not for the reasons I enjoy a bioware game normally. The story in BG1 is pretty worthless. Durlag's Tower was the standout, with a complex bit of lore for why the place is haunted, which you are required to learn and recite in order to get past certain riddles. Finally understanding the history of this optional superdungeon opens access to a Big Dick SuperDemon. Killing him gives you a knife you can take to a certain town to unlock an EvenBiggerDick SuperDemon (tm) boss fight. Winning that gives you... Basically nothing. Your accomplishment was in not dying. Neat! The game doesn't lavish you with praise or loot. You did a thing but nobody cares because you're a low-level scrub. :lol:

The ghost at the end of Durlag's tower says, "hey thanks but we're still dead and the tower is still haunted by us. I guess the demon won't do anything bad in our tower though... So... Yeah."

That's the best quest in Baldur's Gate. Because it's optional and the dungeon is really cool. It's full of dickish traps that require 100 trap disarm to even detect. Traps that can pingpong across your entire party and kill them all. Traps that reset. It has in-depth puzzles and several gauntlets of minibosses. Resting is almost always punished with ambush spawns. Leaving is punished with respawning monsters, more ambush spawns and wasting your time. But you'll always find a way to win if you can just keep going and keep everyone alive.

Most of the other quests are proto-Bioware bullshit. "Help my cat is dead" *find cat* "thanks I'm gonna go rez it now" *dispenses tiny quest reward*

Or it'll be some shit like:
NPC A: Hey go kill that guy, he's a dick.

NPC B: Don't kill me, that first guy is the real dick. He's lying to you. His middle name is legally Dick and he's evil.

NPC A: dialogue choice 1: I'm not evil at all, go back and kill that guy
dialogue choice 2: MWAHAHAHAHA I'M TOTALLY EVIL, I'M GONNA RAPE YOUR CORPSES *initiate ambush combat encounter*

NPC B: dialogue choice 1: I'm telling you he's evil go kill him
dialogue choice 2: YOU FOOL! I'M EVIL BUT ALSO A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE! *initiate ambush combat encounter*
SpoilerShow
The best/worst thing about baldur's gate 1 is you are never safe. Low on health? Don't go into a town. Town's aren't safe. Don't go into an inn. Inns aren't safe. Why? Because the game fucking loves ambushes. Walk into any town the first time and you will get attacked by assassins. Go into any inn the first time and you will probably run into gankers. The safest way to recover health is camp wherever you are and pray that you don't get endless ambush spawns that prevent you from resting. It's kinda cool but also a huge pain in the ass, because the town guards don't do shit to protect you from random assassins walking up to murder you.
The game is really bad about communicating what happens during combat. You'll see "weapon ineffective" and no idea what that means or why it's not working. The game never tells you "hey dipshit, this boss can only be damaged by magical weapons." Some things are easy to infer, like that you can't use web spells on spiders. But the bosses coming with laundry lists of immunities and special skills... You will never know this stuff without looking it up and you will not beat them without knowing unless you are insanely lucky. I couldn't find any in-game resource to show me bestiary information. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I couldn't find it in the menus.

Best advice I can give for smoothly progressing without looking shit up is to equip magical weapons all the time so you can ignore the bullshit immunities that randomly pop up.
SpoilerShow
Also I didn't know for the longest time that the spiders do not actually cast web spell at you. The game puts the spider spawns near spider TRAPS that you can disarm if your thief finds them.
So much of the game's difficulty comes from being obtuse and not explaining anything.

That said, you can mash through the dialogue and go kill things with impunity. The game has a large cast, so you can find a team you like. With less of an emphasis on story, there's no reason to stick with the story team. The combat is shit but you can still have a fun time. I'm probably going to end up hating Baldur's Gate 2 compared to this one. I bet icewind dale is the best of the lot.
RAPEMAN wrote:
Mon Aug 03, 2020 9:42 pm
>liberal: ban x
>trump: yeah ban x
>liberal: no bro x is awesome

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VoiceOfReasonPast
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:52 pm

rabidtictac wrote:
Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:37 pm
The story in BG1 is pretty worthless.
I think I died a little when your first proper dungeon, the ominous and much-hyped mine, was just infested with Kobolds.
Sure, I wasn't exactly expecting a Balrog Balor this early in the game, but gimme something. How a bout a ghost or something whose disposal is more of a puzzle.

(Though I suppose this beats getting your ass kicked by regular spiders in your first Pathfinder: Kingmaker dungeon because for some reason they decided to throw swarms at you early in the game, when you have neither an idea how swarms work, nor the proper tools to handle them, outside of hitting them with torches and shitty not-molotov cocktails.)
The game is really bad about communicating what happens during combat. You'll see "weapon ineffective" and no idea what that means or why it's not working.
I wonder who communicated this better? Oh, I do know: turn-based CRPGs released years before.
You can tell the engine is fucked up when the large portion of the screen is almost useless and all the relevant information is hidden in a chat window.
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Le Redditeur
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Le Redditeur » Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:17 pm

That's old AD&D mechanics for you. You don't get damage reduction x/magic, you are COMPLETELY IMPERVIOUS to any non-magical attacks. Now, equip a goddamn -1 cursed dagger and you can hit the same enemy just fine, 1d4-1 damage a time.

Nevermind the marvelous saving throw system which gives you different values and immunities based on the origin of the attack, not its form. Saving against or checking immunity to lightning? Well, it depends if the source is a lightning orb trap, a wand of lightning, a blue dragon breath, or a Lightning Bolt/Call Lightning spell. It's all very annoying and confusing.

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VoiceOfReasonPast
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:36 pm

That's why 3.x chose a more sensible Reflex/Toughness/Willpower model. The retroclone Swords & Wizardry goes even further and gives you a single Saving Throw, with maybe a fixed class bonus (like Fighters getting a bonus against breath weapons because they traditionally got the best breath weapon save).

And I'm not sure if the magic weapon thing was the fault of the game (putting annoying enemies in too early to punish non-spellcasters) or rather a n00b blunder (visiting certain places too early / not making sure that ever frontline fighter gets a magic weapon ASAP because JFC is there a lot of shit you can't hurt with normie weapons in the Monster Manual).
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rabidtictac
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by rabidtictac » Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:24 pm

Yeah, if you didn't find a magical weapon for your weapon specialization, enjoy having to equip a piece of shit with garbage accuracy and damage so you can hurt enemies at all. I love selecting longsword spec and then using hammer at endgame. :roll:

Moving on to the third edition games will feel amazing when it happens. I already kind of know how the third edition rpg video games are because of kotor using modified third edition. But I figured I should play the infinity engine stuff, since oldbeards always gab on about how the pure unsullied classics are real games for real men. I don't remember which edition Dungeons and Dragons Tactics for psp used. Probably third.
SpoilerShow
Something else I forgot to mention is how awful the AI is on your party members. Goes without saying, I guess. Best case scenario, the healer MIGHT heal someone who is almost dead without you telling them. Worst case, you get shit like the chess puzzle, which is literally broken in Enhanced Edition. Your party are placed on a chess board and told they can only move to specific tiles. Moving to the wrong tile trips a shock trap. Problem is, the party moves without your input. So it's just chaos. Once combat starts, they go fucking EVERYWHERE. They trip every fucking trap. Setting them all to ranged weapons does nothing because they still follow enemies they lock on to.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... urn+off+ai

Another horrible thing that can happen is your mage wasting powerful spells on trash mobs.

Turns out you can turn party AI off but the game never tells you (unless I missed it) and it's not intuitive.

Of course, turning off party AI entirely means you have to set autopause to go off constantly and micromanage everything, which takes forever.

Dragon Age Origins fixed this issue by allowing you to set scripts and priorities so the companions would do what you wanted under specific circumstances. You can set your buffer to always buff whenever the party is not buffed, your healer to heal anyone below x health percent, your tank to taunt whenever the healer is attacked, etc.
RAPEMAN wrote:
Mon Aug 03, 2020 9:42 pm
>liberal: ban x
>trump: yeah ban x
>liberal: no bro x is awesome

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VoiceOfReasonPast
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:43 pm

I don't think I've ever played with the AI on.
And true D&D grognard should know that magic swords and by far the most common type of magic weapon :roll:
Plus actually, the (I think) final Infinity Engine title Icewind Dale 2 does use 3rd edition (as good as the engine allowed, at least).

(Just be aware of Rangers. Their Racism class ability can be pretty useless if you've done zero research on the creature types that actually show up in the game.)
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Le Redditeur
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Le Redditeur » Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:23 pm

Rangers are garbage without the Alternative Class Feature that replaces their awful spell list with arcane spells, and even so, they end up being very mediocre (compare with Paladins who can take the Southern Magician feat to get arcane spells IN ADDITION to their divine ones AND can cast them as a swift action with another feat). Whatever you want to be an archer or TWF, just go with fighter, you'll end up with more bonus feats anyway.

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VoiceOfReasonPast
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:48 pm

Rangers can pull off the silly gimmick of getting the Two-Weapon Fighting chain without actually fulfilling the requirements (aka having stupidly high DEX), which let's them put more points into STR (adding your DEX bonus instead of the STR one to hit rolls costs and extra Feat and limits you to shitty weapons; adding your DEX bonus to damage rolls is outside the realm of the core book).
Buut they can only make use of this gimmick if they wear light armor, where you want high DEX to compete with the heavier armor.
Some classes are a bit schizophrenic.
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rabidtictac
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by rabidtictac » Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:08 pm

Finished baldur's gate 1. Final boss was easy once I realized you win as soon as he dies. No need to kill the annoying mage who spams fireballs.

I already hate baldur's gate 2. First fucking quest. FIRST quest. That I choose to do of my own free will. Kill a vampire lord. The game doesn't tell you he's a fucking vampire lord. The game doesn't tell you he is immune to all damage from +1 and normal weapons. The game doesn't tell you why your weapons won't work or how to stop him from dire charming your party.

Keep in mind this is a TIMED QUEST obtained from the FIRST INN IN THE GAME.

So I fight all the way down to the boss. And nothing I have can even hurt him. Nice. Keep in mind the only reason I hurried to do this quest was the fucking bitch in my party wouldn't shut the fuck up about it and made it clear she was going to leave. I have one +2 dagger and a few spells.

Oh and the game is already shit outside of that. Constant interruptions in gameplay for long spergewalls of text from Imoen, the gay antagonist or some other shit. I can barely walk 2 feet in the town without some asshole walking up to me vomiting a wall of text, demanding I go with him RIGHT NOW to do his shitty fetch quest and then warping my fucking party to some other zone. For the first five or so minutes after leaving the tutorial zone, I had no frame of reference for where I was or what was happening, because the game was constantly zoning me into new areas! Fuck you Bioware! This isn't how you design quests. Quests should never teleport you anywhere upon acceptance. Let alone into combat. At least not without warning you combat is coming.

I can't even fucking REST to recover my health and reset spells without Imoen or some other gay piece of shit vomiting a wall of text in my dreams. Or waking up and hearing that stupid bitch whine about her timed quest to kill the boss I can't even damage.

I'm sure I'll think the game is better after I play it more. But my initial, knee-jerk reaction is a big DSPism. I had fun with baldur's gate because it got out of your way and let you go quest. Pick a direction, walk in it, stumble over stuff, decide what you want to do. Everything is low level and none of the starting enemies are immune to shit. So you can grab your starting gear and just set out.

I'm at the beginning of this fucking game in BG2, freshly stripped of all my enchanted weapons and armor from BG1. My big pile of gold, gone. Companions and spells, gone. I don't even have a way to get the weapons to deal damage to these enemies at this point.

This isn't the first time BG2 did this. I forgot I did one other quest before this one, to get the whiny elf companion. That quest ALSO had illusory enemies who couldn't be harmed by normal means. That quest is about 40 feet from the post-tutorial spawn point.
RAPEMAN wrote:
Mon Aug 03, 2020 9:42 pm
>liberal: ban x
>trump: yeah ban x
>liberal: no bro x is awesome

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Re: What are you playing?

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Wed Dec 01, 2021 4:40 pm

a) If you get triggered by your well-written nakama's hilarious banter and dialogue, you are obviosuly not part of Bioware's target audience
b) This is why I prefer games where you create the entire party yourself

And I suppose the teleporting happens because this is a high-level campaign in the Forgotten Realms. It's hard to get more autistic in D&D.
Autism attracts more autism. Sooner or later, an internet nobody will attract the exact kind of fans - and detractors - he deserves.
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