Black Isle Studios Board Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

There's lots of new stuff from the Black Isle Studios message boards today, so let's get to it. Enjoy!

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

David Gaider, Senior Designer:

Big Metal Unit: (Ed. Note: A very powerful armour made from pantaloons from BG1, BG2 and ToB).

Yep. That's all it's meant to be is an obscure easter egg.

But if someone wants to complain that there's an overpowered item that they only got by spawning the required items in and only heard about by reading the hint guide...well...I dunno...

Ah, yes. Someone else with a skewed sense of time. Let's see...time to come up with something fun (which is all it is) that only a miniscule number of players could honestly even encounter without cheating...mmm...a few hours. Time to give paladins a whole new set of their own powers and make new graphics for them? Hmmmm. Come on, dude.

Why does everyone who finds an element that they didn't like think that it could have been exchanged for more of something they did? I doubt the same people even worked on it.

Obviously we can't please everyone. It's completely impossible. Some people will like the Easter Egg. Some will not. Perhaps some of the things that you like about the game piss other people off, as well.

The point is, this Easter Egg is about .01% of the game at most. Hopefully you find something to make your experience worthwhile in the other 99.98% of the game.

Does anyone really need to argue about this?

ToB expansion: It's an expansion pack, my friend.

Watcher's Keep is half the game...and the entire expansion pack can be played in about 20-40 hours, we figure (depending on how fast you play). (TotSC was about 15 hours. HoW was, I hear, even less than that.)

There aren't many subplots...we already said this. There's no time (or use) for you to get cats out of trees, and you're hardly available for hire. There's one main story that unfolds.

This doesn't mean it's a bad story, or that Watcher's Keep is bad because someone went through it in 14 hours. Being an expansion pack, though, means that it's not BG3 (or BG2) as far as length or depth goes.

But you might want to reserve judgement until you play. I think it's a good expansion and good final story...but if you've shot up your expectations to a BG3 then you're only setting yourself up for disappointment, Mysterious Man.

Deck of Many Things: Actually, there's a couple of REALLY good cards that you can get...not even the hint guys picked up on that one, it seems, because the way I implemented it actually circumvents the whole save/reload thing.

I won't tell you how to do it, though, so nyah.

Dimension Door: All of this is correct. Plus it was kind of cheesy to have Dimension Door so limited as a short-range teleportation spell. Engine limitations required that the 'target' be on the screen, naturally.

Personally, I would have liked Dimension Door to be a sort of travel spell. If you cast it, it was like taking your party to the edge of the screen...you could avoid travel times and random encounters that way (and plus it would be pretty cool to bop around like every mage does).

Thing is, that would mean changing Dimension Door so it was long-range only. And there would have to be other tweaks as well...such as only being able to leave maps by sides you had explored (so you couldn't go to the next area of a dungeon unless you had found the exit)...but otherwise it might be OK.

Short-range teleportation is a nightmare, though. The entire engine would have to be redesigned...we'd have to look at every plot, transition point and trap polygon and design it so that it could conceivably be teleported past. Ick. Would need a bunch of engine changes to say the least...just thinking about it gives me shivers.

As for laying down waypoints for a Dimension Door, the engine just isn't built to do that. I think what would have been needed would be to have accounted for possible teleportation right from the very beginning.

Yes, THAT would be easy. Going in and adding it retroactively would be not. I can just imagine the amount of twitching that would result from even asking Mark Darrah about it.

But yeah...we realize that, too, about every other mage Dimension Door'ing about. That's why I created the POOF_GONE and the SWOOSH_GONE disappearing effects for some of the mages later in the game...so not EVERYone was using Dimension Door.
We would have liked to have included teleportation. Heck, we created the spell and even added the whole effect in, didn't we? And that's something we're going to have to try and account for in future games, I guess (although I guess the idea of players zipping about wherever they like is ALWAYS a really big design element...for what, in the end, is a small part of being a mage. Ya gotta think about that, too.)

Imoen's new dialog: Incidentally, the conversations between Imoen and Sarevok can be priceless, especially if you get Imoen to...well...never mind.

Dragon Scale and rings of protection:The rule, right from the beginning and right out of AD&D, is that the bonuses from rings of protection can't be combined with the bonuses from magical armor.

We don't allow people to put on the rings in that case because they would be confused as to why the AC bonuses weren't cumulative. The game tells you clearly why it can't be worn.

It's powerful armor because of its powerful magic. Period. The armor's been changed with lots of other things...and the change is retroactive to the beginning of BG2, just as any other patch would be.

Lots of items are fixed in ToB. The red dragon scale IS magical, after all. What's so cheap about that?

Actually, if you play BG2 again the dragon armor will be magical right from the get-go. All BG2 item changes affect BG2.

Oh, puh-lease. This is an old mistake that has nothing to to with balancing. Dragon scales are inherently magical...hence the bonuses when you make armor out of them. Generally any kind of powerful armor is powerful because it's magical, duh.

Not all of us hinged our entire existence on the exploit that one could combine a ring of protection with the red dragon armor, so we missed it. And besides, the patch was reserved primarily for stuff that was broken...not just implemented other than how we would have liked. Lots of other items that we wanted to change (like the ioun stones, the cloak of mirroring, darts, etc.) weren't changed for the patch, but are now.

Some make the items stronger, some make them weaker, as required. Issue a power-gamerish wail if you like, but that's the way it is.

Third Party Patches: Installing ToB over top of third-party fixes shouldn't cause any problems...although we've never tried that, here, so there's no way to be 100% certain. That doesn't seem to be the case, anyway.

There's another post on the dialogue bug by Kevin, elsewhere. As far as we can tell, the few people who have reported this (this is 'A LOT'?) are getting it on Windows 2000, which is an unsupported OS (Win95 & Win98 only). That said, some of our QA guys do use 2000ME and didn't have any problems. We will try to fix it regardless as soon as we can replicate the bug (I believe Kevin has asked someone for a saved game).

If you experience the bug (or any bug) and don't get a response here, contact us directly at bginfo@bioware.com. We may end up asking for a saved game if we can't duplicate it here, but we will try to be on top of it asap.

Don't forget to include system info like operating system (and OS patches installed), direct x version, video card and drivers, sound card and drivers, processor and motherboard, ram and so forth.

European Shipping Dates: We don't distribute the game, Myhaely. I imagine there's a few weeks delay simply due to the fact that shipping and duplication to Europe takes a bit. The same would apply to European titles coming to North America.

Beyond that, you'd have to ask Interplay (or their distributor in Europe...that would be Virgin, I suppose).

Sorry. I know how much waiting with anticipation must suck.

Derek French, Assistant Producer – Neverwinter Nights:

ToB working on Windows ME: Yes, BG2 and ToB will run on WinME, but I will warn you: we have had more reports of problems on WinME that go away when the user switches to another OS. Whether its by dual-boot or by reinstall, there seem to be more problems under WinME.

Kevin Martens, Lead Designer:

High level abilities: It depends on the ability. Some of them can be chosen multiple times, some can only be chosen once. If it would unbalance the game or otherwise screw things up, then the ability only shows up once.

Cloak of mirroring: Cloak of mirroring was stupid powerful so now, instead of reflecting the damage back on the caster, it just absorbs it. To fit in with the mirror theme, I believe we changed the description to say, reflects harmlessly away.

I apologize for it being so freaky powerful to begin with.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

Kevin Osburn, Line Producer

Trials of the Luremaster: Hey Guys, so far we are on schedule for the end of this month, if anything changes we will let you know.

My presence here on the board the next week or two may not be as strong as it has been. This is due to the fact that I am focusing most of my time on Trials of the Luremaster and finishing that project. I will still be checking the boards, but it may take me a little longer to get back to you guys.

Thanks everyone.