What new features do you hope to see in BGEE?

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So you just want to dumb the game down? The point of the cost of death being high is that you have to be careful and is what makes the game exciting. Also I don't think the cost of death is that high, if it were up to me I would have had ressurected npc's lose one point of constitution everytime such as it is in DnD's second edition rules. I'm sorry but games these days are always so easy and made for kids with the lowest attention span, I wouldn't want that to happen to my BG.

 

I am fine just as it was. I would not like bringing back con drain because all that would do is make me always reload when somebody dies rather than reloading most of them time (since I rarely used raise dead I would rather do the fight again without dying at all). In a game of reloads having the con drain is just not that effective anyway.

Also I highly doubt that they will make any major changes to how 2e works. I would expect proficiencies to work about the same (though if you are lucky they may decide to bring back bonus proficiencies for high int for warrior classes). I am just hoping that they make some things work better due to it being a real time game hence my desire for "singing" and fighting to work together. You can probably think of other areas as well.

 

@Dr. Asik, I think our discussion is getting a little too chippy for a non-alleys thread (not to mention one titled "What new features do you hope to see" ), so I'm content to leave you with the last word and the hope that we at least agree that BGEE is generally a good thing.

 

Being able to rip the Nether Scrolls out of Edwin's grubby mitts and using them myself.

I have three words for gameplay and saves. Leave them alone. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the BG NPCs making a join-able appearance in BGII. I've always been a little disappointed that Garrick could never join my party in II.

At Azlon: I don't think they should just remove characters. If anything, they should expand on them, especially the characters that don't have much in the way of dialogue.
At Dr.Asik: As a mage in BG, I always do side quests and level up before I progress the main story.

 

Hell I couldn't ask for anything better than them expanding EVERY single NPC's, giving them lines and quests and such but I just don't see it happening. I would LOVE if every voice actors could come back to voice their character's and turn them into more dimensional people because BG1 could seriously use that. Trust me I love every single BG npc's even the ones I call boring and useless if only because they add more diversity to the game. One thing we can agree on though is that NOT all 25 of those NPC's will be transferable to SoA and that if they all are, it would be in an incredibly sloppy fashion. Adding quests and dialogues for all of those BG1 NPC's in SoA is simply impossible, I'm not even sure they'll make any other NPC's besides the canonical ones transferable, hell, we're not even sure that they'll actually bridge the two games together but I would be so terribly dissapointed if they didn't.

 

I don't think all of the characters should carry into SoA, only that they could make room for the ones that actually make appearances. Just expanding on the banter in SoA would be a nice addition. I don't expect them to come in and voice a bunch of stuff, or add a whole new game worth in content, just adding some quests and banter to make some of them a little more interesting . The one thing I couldn't see myself doing is not having Minsc and Keldorn in my party no matter who got added (if they make additions).

If they are to link the games, they would need to offer an epilogue for BG. As for BGIII potential, they would need to do the same with ToB.

 

Many of the points made by other members I totally support.

Especially these:
- Some animation updates would be stellar.
- Resolution 1920x1080 support (duh)
- Instead of introducing 'new' characters, I'd LOVE to have additional dialogue for the existing ones to make the gaming experience even better. The amount of characters is already pretty high. I realise that there won't be any spoken dialogue for them, but that's only a minor concern for me. But I guess new ones would'nt hurt either.
- MORE CONTENT! The most important of all the potential changes. Gimme gimme!! More musical scores would rock (how are you these days Mr. Hoenig/Zur?), new areas seems like an auto-include, etc etc.

As far as the discussion of "dynamic savegames vs JRPG-style save points" goes. Including dynamic saving is strictly better then the alternative. Why limit it in any way? You have the power to limit them yourself. If you choose not to use that possibility and it somehow pissed you off, you need to build some character and push yourself to only save at the end of a dungeon level or something. Besides, people won't always save every 5 minutes. What do you care what other people's gaming experiences are? I do support the claim that video games need to put the player in danger levels sometimes, but it might piss off casual gamers to the extent that they'll slander the game on the internet, equalling bad publicity for you, the game designer.

And as for the engine. Infinity engine is old, but it still rocks my world. What does get old are the graphics. They can obviously improve these a lot. There is NOTHING wrong with 2D gaming, but the gfx of BG2 are outdated - though still playable of course. Look at the newest Rayman. It can still be beautiful. I don't realise how much work it'd cost, but it'd be awesome if they could enchant the game with some extra graphical awesomeness (as gameplay awesomeness is already taken care of).

 

I'm super pumped for this announcement. Some of my best childhood memories were of playing BG 1 & 2 and enjoying the interactions the game offered, that even to this day no game has come close to.

Personally I'd love to see some serious improvements in the graphics department. I was a little disappointed that they weren't at least doing 3D character models on a 2D backdrop, but I can live with highly detailed 2D as long as it fits well with HD resolutions.

New characters would be super, but what I think would reaaaaly enhance the experience was if they included more depth to the already magnificent cast of companions, and add voice overs for all the areas of the game that were purely text based.

Fingers crossed guys. Really hope that this isn't just a glorified repackaging effort to make a quick profit.

 

It would be nice to see weather and environment animations getting an update. I don't think any of the areas themselves need one. I've always thought the save when you want approach is better than constant auto-saving and/or save points.

I'm all for more music for additional content, so long as they get Hoenig.

 

Every player has a different approach when they play a RPG. For me, when I started BG, I didn't abuse the save game file, especially on the first playthrough, which is usally the most memorable experience a player will have in a CRPG. I wanted to maximize the experience, which a chane of death certain heightens. It didn't matter to me that I could reload, as it is a Role-Playing Game. Each individual interprets it in his own way as he palys through it. Re-load just gives you another option of playstyle. It is up to the player whether or not they abuse it.

 

A yes I understand D&D button. Make a game that will sell to the crowd, but has the option to be core D&D.

A good starting level that tells new players what to do and why. Explain the rules. Warn players on the box that it is not fast paced hack and slash to avoid bad online reviews that pull the metacritic down.

 

I'd like to see choosing a specialist mage class giving some sort of bonus to the school you're a specialist in - maybe conjurers always have 100% chance of learning a conjuration spell etc. Actually are there any mods for that?

 

You could just set difficulty to easy and then scribe the scrolls then you don't need to add a mod...

 

Yes, there are mods that will make this change for you. I believe that a number of the tweak packs out there offer this feature. You can grab one from the gibberlings3.net website. I believe their BG2 Tweak pack has this in the Convenience Tweaks category.

 

An other thing, (and some of you might pick up some stones now and sentence me to death right before I'm finished ):

I'd like an option for my female dwarves and gnomes to actually look feminine, that is no goateed quasimodo gnomettes or bearded flat-barrel-chested dwarvines.

(I like more options for looks altogether, btw)

Oh, and more voicepacks, but that should be quite easily fixed with some mod, I suppose

 

NOT on my list: radical interface changes for the i-Pad, while only adding high resolutions and wide screen support and not much else visually for the PC.

Oh darn, that's already been confirmed. Hi-res and widescreen support... have been available due to modding for years.

Enthusiasm level has taken a major plunge.

 

a version with intact debugging symbols.

 

A few things:

1. Add more content. Don't care what it is. Make already existing mods easy to port over (or just add some of that content as well). Obviously there are addons that I enjoy having in every game.

2. Deaths are already NON-PERMANENT at the default setting, which also reduces enemy damage, gives you max hp, etc. etc. The fact that you actually have to res, makes the res spell useful. In NWN you never ever prepare it because your party just gets back up. If you want to talk about immersion, how about, "Oh, he cut off your head but you just got back up? cool!"...

3. Updated graphics/character motions. I don't want to see my dude attacking 100times/second when he has haste on and only 3 attacks.

4. Explanation of the rules. When I started playing the game I figured it out pretty fast because the better armor had lower numbers. Not everyone gets that.

5. I'd like the game to completely, totally, and utterly... lack consolitis.

Edited:
6. More word of mouth advertising. I went to my local game store, discussed the new Enhanced Editions coming out and turned quite a few heads.

 

Hmm, I think they definitely should extend existing stuff (more landscape areas - I loved those, too bad that there was only so much stuff happening in each), but without making it feel unnatural (you can't just add 4 quest-triggering NPCs into Gnoll Stronghold or rely on newly spawning encounters in old areas too much). But I think Ulcaster could use more stuff and Firewine Bridge could be expanded with some lairs/caves/etc.

I'd also like them to not rely too much on newly added joinable NPCs, because as BG1 had relatively inferior-stats NPCs compared to BG2, and it is likely that the newly made characters would be at least a bit overpowered, making the old folk obsolete - especially if new quests/stories get tied to the new characters.

(It's not like they have nothing to extend - Shar-Teel had some background that could be used, Kagain had those caravan to investigate, there was that Eldoth-Skie thing...)

Same thing goes for items: if you introduce new superb items to please gamers, you make all those old ones useless, which will harms the overal gameplay. New additions should be made with caution...
OTOH, I think they *should* make Drizzt's stuff unstealable/unlootable, since the scimitars are too good and can be obtained too soon.


I think they really shouldn't remove or alter stuff that was in the original. It should be an expansion, not a remake. While using the interface (and class/abilities extensions - but adding kits to the existing npcs should be *very* conservative) from BG2 is fine, I will miss the original graphics (items etc). Also, I think they really really should stick to the 2nd edition rules present in the original games (hopefully it would be too hard for them to redo it all).

 

I don't think there should be any new NPCs - there's plenty already. I would like to see them banter and have sub-quests though.

I would like some NPC changes in the BGII EE though:
1 - There needs to be at least 1 Neutral or Evil Warrior. Evil players getting just Korgan is harsh. Jaheira doesn't count as she's clearly only Neutral because of class constraints.
2 - There should also be a sorceror, monk and a barbarian as well as a half-orc of some description.
3 - Nalia should be a thief who could be dual-classed to a mage as opposed to a Thief 4/Mage X. This fits better with her background and would give an alternative decent thief to Jan.
4 - Maybe another evil/neutral thief (single or multi-class). Jan is a bit mischievous but he doesn't really fit into an evil party that well. Nor do any of the neutral characters to be honest. Even the jerk version of Anomen. At least BG1 had neutral characters closer to the evil side of things (Safana for instance).