Why was BG2. . . subpar?

[Voss]

Role-player, thank you.


Spazmo, dungeons are a core component, yes.
But its been 20+ years since it was *just* crazy-ass, implausible dungeons (in which one crawled) don't you think we've kind of grown out of that phase? Aren't we up to walking, running, and possibly thinking, as well? :D

 

[Rabby]

Oh, another thing thats poorly done in BG2 (and all the IE games for that matter, as well as NWN.)

The sense of scale-

its completely non-existant. Furniture seems built for giants, and areas get wacky quick. Interiors of buildings particularly. Its odd when you consider that Irenicus's dungeon/torture pit is larger than Waukeen's Promenade. Yes its something that can be ignored, but sometimes it just leaps out at me and is really jarring.

The other side of the coin would probably be the Daggerfall cities. While it was very immersive, I found it tedious to spend minutes real-time to travel to the building where I have to kill the rat, and then travel back. I even found walking between the BG2 promenade exits and the Adventurer's Mart to be tedious -- I guess that reflects poorly on my patience. :wink: To be honest, I've never noticed the indoor/outdoor below-ground/above-ground discrepancies that's being brought up here. Some degree of abstraction is probably needed -- for example, none of the CRPG settlements seem to have enough people present, (with the possible exception of Daggerfall, where the identical townsfolks make you lose count. Judging from how low-cut those dresses are, they probably had fabric shortages too.) yet that lack of realism never seemed to ruin the immersion.

 

[roguefrog]

You see, I was only arguing the fact that it doesn't have to fit within the markets space above ground. Nothing more. The origins/creation of such a secret dungeon with existing structures above is anyones guess. But worrying about such details in a fantasy game... For all we know it could have been there before the city itself, or not. The BG story never even took place as for as Forgotten Realms canon.

 

[Voss]

I spent my early PnP days and early CRPG days mapping things (anyone else remember the first Might and Magic, with the blank map tablet?) I don't do it much anymore, but it did color my thinking a bit- and sometimes I just notice theses things and say- this just doesn't fit here.

The wizard's place in the sewers with captive bard- under the temple district and yet the stairs came up on a balcony on the docks was another good example. It wouldn't bother me so much if there was a reason for it, but generally it just looks like sloppy design.

The lack of people doesn't bother me so much- crowded streets would make the pathfinding even worse, as would several hundred more people with the same generic lines of non-usefulness.

Impatience with map exits doesn't reflect that poorly on you, considering how *many* damn times you have to trudge back and forth over those maps. While teleport options get a bit silly, being able to enter a travel map to get to major landmarks (the marked buildings for example) from any point (assuming not in a conversation or combat, and already explored area- the walking never bothers me the first time through an area) would be a major bonus for this type of game. Or NWN style for that matter.

 

[Voss]

You see, I was only arguing the fact that it doesn't have to fit within the markets space above ground. Nothing more. The origins/creation of such a secret dungeon with existing structures above is anyones guess. But worrying about such details in a fantasy game... For all we know it could have been there before the city itself, or not. The BG story never even took place as for as Forgotten Realms canon.

OK, well... whether it fit or not wasn't the issue.

The devil's in the details- and for me it can make or break a thing. Things need to work right within their own context.

BG/FR canon? What, who cares, and what does it have to do with anything?

 

[Rabby]

being able to enter a travel map to get to major landmarks (the marked buildings for example) from any point (assuming not in a conversation or combat, and already explored area- the walking never bothers me the first time through an area) would be a major bonus for this type of game. Or NWN style for that matter.

*Much toasting and cheering ensues* A feature like that would make me very happy. It could even be implemented similarly to the city-travel map where a random encounter would just plop you down somewhere with a bunch of red circles to eliminate.

I spent my early PnP days and early CRPG days mapping things (anyone else remember the first Might and Magic, with the blank map tablet?) I don't do it much anymore, but it did color my thinking a bit- and sometimes I just notice theses things and say- this just doesn't fit here.

So, if an anthropologist was playing the game, should s/he be complaining about the lack of people present in cities? While my choice of profession in the analogy is no doubt inappropriate, my point is that I think it's a reasonable abstraction to make in regards to interior/outdoor sizes. If they expanded the exterior of buildings to be as large as their interiors, I just envision the travelling inside, say, the Slum to be much more painful. Now, if the auto-travel feature you mentioned above was implemented, then I would definitely be on your side in regards to the size issue.

 

[Sharpei_Diem]

and at least we're at the stage now where they're thinking about things like "a dragon has to be able to get out of it's lair to eat" and stuff...

but rabby's right, a certain level of abstraction is involved. If you built a city with thousands of buildings, you have to load the majority up with nothing (well, maybe not for Bio....nope, won't go there). So you end up wasting the player's time by investigating all these things when they don't serve a purpose other than to make the world seem plausibly sized. It's a fine line....too much abstraction and you take away everything that's enjoyable in a game and put the player on autopilor(dungeon siege), not enough abstraction and you have to make sure your poor pc eats twice a day...

 

[Voss]

Honestly, most of the slogging in BG2 would be solved by better quest design.

No going over here to get the key to the door. All the way across the dungeon to the door. the length of a huge platform to the genie, all the way back to where you found the key to get the flask, back across the dungeon to the platform and genie to get finish the quest.... and even more if you actually found the door before the key in the first place. Helping the dryads and getting the flask and key at the same time would cut down on walking immensely. And not having the genie at the end of a pointlessly long platform. Cut out a lap and a half of pointless walking.

And yes, if the anthropologist finds it wrong or bad, why shouldn't they (I hate English by the way. Mongrel language made of half a dozen others, most of which have gender-neutral or indeterminate gender nouns/phrases, and it drops them completely) complain? It a person doesn't like something, they don't like it. No matter how nice or convenient other people find it...they don't have to conform to the popular opinion.

 

[Rabby]

Honestly, most of the slogging in BG2 would be solved by better quest design.

No going over here to get the key to the door. All the way across the dungeon to the door. the length of a huge platform to the genie, all the way back to where you found the key to get the flask, back across the dungeon to the platform and genie to get finish the quest.... and even more if you actually found the door before the key in the first place. Helping the dryads and getting the flask and key at the same time would cut down on walking immensely. And not having the genie at the end of a pointlessly long platform. Cut out a lap and a half of pointless walking.

And yes, if the anthropologist finds it wrong or bad, why shouldn't they (I hate English by the way. Mongrel language made of half a dozen others, most of which have gender-neutral or indeterminate gender nouns/phrases, and it drops them completely) complain? It a person doesn't like something, they don't like it. No matter how nice or convenient other people find it...they don't have to conform to the popular opinion.

The genie/dryads quest was annoying every single time I replayed the game. The type of I'll-purposely-send-you-walking-to-the-other-corner-of-the-dungeon seems so. . . old-school and purposeless. I usually enjoyed the dungeon designs where there were many rooms to explore, but from the entrance to the room-that-counts not traversing the entire map, especially if it's somewhere you'd have to return to. If I remember correctly, IWD's designs were more in this vein -- there was a "lobby" (I guess for the villain to host his cocktail parties) with a room on the left, a room on the right, and a room in front.

Point duly noted about the anthropologists and freedom of opinion expression.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

One thing I really wondered about was how no one had bothered to rob the ancient crypts in the middle of the city that were easily accessible to all. It's not like the guardians were that tough, and the city was crawling with mid- to high-level folks. Kind of goes with the other loot lying around that Bio's so fond of. Why doesn't anyone else pick it up?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

One thing I really wondered about was how no one had bothered to rob the ancient crypts in the middle of the city that were easily accessible to all. It's not like the guardians were that tough, and the city was crawling with mid- to high-level folks. Kind of goes with the other loot lying around that Bio's so fond of. Why doesn't anyone else pick it up?

That's one think I've never understood. If the sewers in these locations are so filled with ph4t l3wt, why isn't the best guild in terms of fighting power in the setting the Sewer Worker Guild?

Think about it. Go down to fix a broken pipe with a few coworkers, kill a few ratmen and zombies, come back up with magical platemails, swords, gobs of gold, and so on.

 

[Elwro]

Damn right. It's also a good explanation for the existence of dragons in the games. And look, why could you get to XP level 40 in Throne of Bhaal, and only 20 in NWN? Because the former was Advanced D&D, and the latter just D&D.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

While we're picking apart BG2, can anyone give me examples of where the rules were modified from PnP to accomodate real time combat?

 

[Psilon]

That's one think I've never understood. If the sewers in these locations are so filled with ph4t l3wt, why isn't the best guild in terms of fighting power in the setting the Sewer Worker Guild?

Think about it. Go down to fix a broken pipe with a few coworkers, kill a few ratmen and zombies, come back up with magical platemails, swords, gobs of gold, and so on.

It's been suggested.

The rank stench of the tavern assailed the nostrils as Yarnn the Mighty, Jaccotan the Bastard and Merron the Wise entered; walking through the open doorway in search of some good food and a pitcher of ale (and in Jaccotan's case a quick screw with one of the scrubbers who worked the upstairs room).

Yarnn approached the landlord. "It fucking stinks in here! What d'ya put on the floor - raw sewage?"

Before the landlord could answer, one of the drinkers at a nearby table got up and approached Yarnn. He wore a battered brown leather tunic, and stank. Really badly. "You got a problem mate?" he asked.

Yarnn, mid-level adventurer that he was, looked the workman up and down and smirked: "Who's asking?"

The man stood his ground. "Darmok the Sewerman, that's who!"

That explains the smell, thought Yarnn, sniggering. The man reached down beneath the table and pulled out a battered shovel.

"Do you know what I do every day?"

Yarnn was beginning to get annoyed. Why couldn't the little shit just sod off and take his stink with him.

"I kill rats," the man continued, holding up the shovel. "Dozens of them. Dozens of rats every day for the past 15 years. Do you know what that means?"

"Er... no."

"It means that I'm a 28th level sewerman. My mate Jennon is 25th level, and there's not a man at that table below 15th. What was it you were saying to my friend the landlord?"

Yarnn squeaked out a response. "Three pitchers of ale and a packet of smoky bacon crisps..?"

 

[Spazmo]

Damn right. It's also a good explanation for the existence of dragons in the games. And look, why could you get to XP level 40 in Throne of Bhaal, and only 20 in NWN? Because the former was Advanced D&D, and the latter just D&D.

No. No, not at all. ToB let you hit level 40 because BioWare decided to make up some rules and toss them into their bastard version of AD&D. The base 2nd Ed. D&D books were already called AD&D, and they included concrete rules only for progression up to 20th level, just like 3E books. Wizards did eventually put out a book called High-Level Campaigns with rules for all this, but that book only let characters reach thirtieth leve, stating that after that, to progress further, PCs had to petition for godhood, something only the PC could do in BG. Furthermore, even if you did petition for godhood, you couldn't gain any more levels while doing it, and certainly not reach level forty, not even as a thief. Just one more example of BioWare sodomizing an already weak ruleset.

As for 3E, Wizards has already put out another book called the Epic Level Handbook, which lets Third Edition characters advance to infinite level.

 

[Volourn]

Wrong. It wa spossible for character to get past 30th level in 2E. Ther are actually various examples of this in various dnd sources. I guess Spazmo hasn't heard of Larloch who was a 36th level wizard turn lich. Though; it was always reccommended for chaarcetrs to retire at 20th level; let alone 30th or 40th level. That said, there is no doubt that TOB went beyond the call of duty since there were a ton of high level creatures. That said, the game was still overall balanced in terms of the game itself.

 

[Spazmo]

Well, that's true, but then again, Second Edition was a viper's nest of variant rules and systems that usually contradicted each other. Going by the most recent one, the High-Level Campaigns book, 30th level was the max. As for your megalich, designers can take certain liberties with the rules to properly reflect the power of a given creature. Characters aren't usually allowed to reach 36th level unless the DM is either very, very good or very, very shit.

 

[Volourn]

That is all true. Then, I guess in terms of TOB, BIO is either a really, really good DM, or very, very shit. It depends on your perspsctive which I know what side most here on on. :D

 

[Elwro]

Damn right. It's also a good explanation for the existence of dragons in the games. And look, why could you get to XP level 40 in Throne of Bhaal, and only 20 in NWN? Because the former was Advanced D&D, and the latter just D&D.

No. No, not at all. .

Of course not; I just wanted to make a, bad as it was, joke. I was really interested in TSR products a few years ago; I own e.g. D&D (the one before any AD&Ds), and of course it takes place in dungeons only.
THX for all the info on AD&D.

 

[Section8]

The type of I'll-purposely-send-you-walking-to-the-other-corner-of-the-dungeon seems so. . . old-school and purposeless.

There are some interesting discussions to be had on this topic from a design perspective. At the heart of the problem, you have unnecessary downtime, since moving characters across a map is neither challenging or fun, and with the exception of Dungeon Siege fans, most gamers recognise this.

So you consider solutions. You can either eliminate the need to backtrack, or you can make the backtracking interesting. You can take the easy way out on both counts. There's the NWN style, where there's some kind of portal at the end of each item hunt. There's the Doom style where you have little hidden areas full of critters that open up for the return trip, or there's the System Shock 2 style of constant respawn.

Or, you actually give the problem some thought. Is it essential from a world design and continuity perspective that the key is over the other side of the dungeon? Why is it there? Is part of the challenge following the clues to lead to the key's owner?

More likely, Iis the challenge merely fighting a bunch of stuff to get to a key? If so, why can't the player be overcoming the same challenges to reach an unlocked door? Is the locked door important? Can a skilled character pass the door without needing the key?

None of this is particularly insightful, as it's the sort of thing any DM should be thinking when they plan and create their world. It irks me that so called professional game devs just do things and don't consider a single aspect of what they're doing.

 

[roguefrog]

You see, I was only arguing the fact that it doesn't have to fit within the markets space above ground. Nothing more. The origins/creation of such a secret dungeon with existing structures above is anyones guess. But worrying about such details in a fantasy game... For all we know it could have been there before the city itself, or not. The BG story never even took place as for as Forgotten Realms canon.

OK, well... whether it fit or not wasn't the issue.

The devil's in the details- and for me it can make or break a thing. Things need to work right within their own context.

BG/FR canon? What, who cares, and what does it have to do with anything?

Then there is no issue as far as I'm concernd. As in my point was irrelevant to what was actually being discussed. :D

As for the actual discussion, agreed, however its something rather insignificant considering the information on the enduring existance in secret and unknown creation of the dungeon or lack there of, so its entirely dependant on practical assumption which IMO is subjective.

I guess I still think it can be reasonable.

As for the BG/FR canon thing, nothing. :wink:

 

[lurker3000]

I don't know what this thread is about but I liked BG2.

edit: Thanks to Vault Dweller for linking to it in the PoE thread. I think he was trying to prove a point of some sort. Who really knows.

 

[Great Deceiver]

 

[Black_Willow]

Let's see how will AoD fare against BG2 in the next Best RPG Poll

 

[Perkel]

wow first time i disagreed on something with VD.

NPC interaction. I think it was fine. Problem is that ton of characters had romance option and it ruined most of the time character. Only berable one was Viconia, rest were total crap. Path of friendship is crap for all of those characters.

NPC imo should be whiny etc. This is part of RPG. You may love character for his awesome power but you can't stand its character so you need to choose being annoyed for rest of the game or getting someone else.

Aerie was i think best example of that. I wish i could burn her on stake for whining but i couldn't fucking neglect her shit ton of attack and support spells.

Good RPG isn't about handing everything to you so you have the best experience with it 100% of time. IT is also about kicking you in nuts so that those 30% rest of that RPG will feel amazing after earlier shit.

Only problem i had with BG2 companions was that most of them didn't have reason to come with PC. Aside from Nalia or Viconia most of them were like: ok i don't know you but let's go !