POLL: How do you feel about the key of evil...

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There is key that lurks on the left hand side of your keyboard waiting, asking to be touched... it removes the skill from finding those hidden items, it robs you of that thrill from discovering a secret stash and gives your character true sight with no come back... it is the dreaded TAB KEY! But how do you feel about the tab key?

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 39 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

Poll Results: How do you feel about the key of evil... (39 votes.)

How do you feel about the key of evil... (Choose 1)
* It is the key of EVIL! I would never touch it! - 5% (2)
* It feels dirty... but i like it - 13% (5)
* It gets rid of the boring clicking on everything. GO TAB! - 67% (26)
* I don't want to use it but it tempts me so - 8% (3)
* I dont mind it... its just a key for pete's sake! - 8% (3)

 

Very handy to have; no need to criss-cross the mouse cursor at every screen.

 

Probably a bit of a cheat - after all, items we need don't show up like that in real life - but it's something I use all the time because it certainly cuts down on hunting for the items. Besides, after you've played the game a couple of times you know where all the items are so it doesn't change that much.

 

What is wrong with it the tab button owns !!! Well now, I could spend 20 minutes moving my mouse around and around and around but instead I could use the tab button and save myself all that time.

In BG it was not there, I think it was available after ToB was installed.

 

The tab key is, sadly, the best reason to buy ToB.

 

It also gets rid of the wait time when you want to scan items, without having to change the tip delay setting so high that it gets annoying. Very handy indeed.

 

Best invention for RPGs ever. Item highlighting saves time that would be pointlessly spent looking for the drawer that opens, let alone has something in it. Sure it isn't realistic but niether are beholders.

 

Aye, it's a great key indeed. I've never been able to get into any games which don't use the tab key in the same way, it just doesn't seem right.

 

I understand why some people would consider this cheat, but its also VERY handy indeed.

You dont see "buttons" ( objects that have two arrows in a circle on it once your mouse moves over it ) with tab. Knowing that, you can still hide things very effictively. It happened to me in Icewind Dale 2, searched for hours with tab and then found it finally...

 

But it takes away that special thrill from finding items the designers have hidden away in little secret places. items in unusual places are usually more powerful, ergo you'd expect them to be harder to find. in SOA there was no such key so the game was designed with some items being harder to find. add in the TAB key and suddenly everyone's got them...

 

Swordalizer, I agree completely. Part of the attraction of the original Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate was that there were items hidden and you - the player - had to search for them, as the characters themselves actually would.

On a side not, I think item locations weren't well thought out in BG - can you really expect to find a Ring of Wizardry in a rock or a diamond in a tree?

 

True, but the button I didnt see was so important, I couldnt continue until I found it, so critcally needed switches shouldnt be hidden from the TAB, the rest can be hidden from it imho. It makes it more special indeed, if you find an item in a box.

 

It feels bad to touch it, but it's so handy
Maybe it is some sort of power the child of Bhaal gets after he/she have killed Irenicus Innate and out of control of course

 

LOVE it.

After cleaning out a room, the last thing I wanna do is miss some item that was dropped, or spend too long looking for it. I don't think it's a cheating thing because if you were really in that room, you'd be able to see everything that's on the floor by being there anyway. This just speeds things along.

 

Fair enough, Rabbit, your character would likely spot an item on the ground much more easily than you could using the mouse, but what of items hidden in walls/bed/etc?
Nothing short of a good spot check or the taking of 20 would find these items in a PnP game, nothing short of a thorough search would find them in reality (damn that reality, so, all things considered, pressing tab and seeing every nook and cranny with something hiding in it is a little unrealistic. Though I can see how it would help with game continuation, noone wants to stop the story for 10 minutes to find a plot item.
A better system would likely be the use of tab to highlight areas easily noticable for characters, anything better hidden requiring a good old fashioned mouse hunt.

 

The TAB is a saviour. I remember before ToB came out and I was running through SoA and my main man Yoshimo kicked the bucket. No big deal right?

Big deal. All of his stuff was dropped behind some wall, and I wasn't able to reserect him right away because it was an intense battle. I NEVER found his stuff again. There goes Celestial Fury, the Spider Figurine, and all of my gem bags, full. I didn't want to reload because I had just barely won this fight and didn't want to do it again. And if I was really there, I would have seen them because they were ground level.

Man it feels good to get that off of my chest. That was some built up rage there.

Oh yeah, GO TAB!!

 

That reminds me of the time Aerie died in my fight with Firkaag.
He'd forced us to the entrance of his lair with wing buffets and the fact that he liked to advance on us a lot, and we (Kensai, Minsc, Jahira, and Valygar) Were wailing on him while Aerie sat back and buffed/attacked.
Instead of focusing on the immediate danger (read: 4 high level melee fighters hacking at him) he decided to cast a death spell at Aerie.
No problem, I thought, I'll just resurrect her at the end of the fight. Unfortunately just before death he used wing buffet in the general direction of Aeries corpse, blowing her and 3 of my melee-ers away. When I managed to hill him, I resurrected Aerie using her portrait for a target, but her equipment had been blown away, either off the map or so well hidden behind the scenery no amount of searching would find it. This of course ended up with me having to reload and fight the beast all over again.
That was the day I sorely lamented neglecting to install ToB and its TAB key.

The point of this rant? It doesn't matter what I say, I'll end up contradicting myself anyway.

 

I can see the attraction of TAB in IWD and co, as hack n slash is more about the level treadmill and combat tactics than searching for hidden treasure but... i dunno it just feels kinda cheap seeing everything all the time.

I think it should highlight buttons and objects on the ground, but containers shouldn't glow. that means my character can "see" which chests have things in them, or which rock in the wall hides the magic sword...