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Well, the last seasons that had no relation with the book are the worst ones.

But Larian had an hard challenge ahead. Imagine an monster that can cast Flesh to Stone spell or spell like ability that insta petrify on failed save. An BG fan will see it as "makes sense, is a medusa", but an D:OS2 would probably think that this is an unbalanced broken mechanic. An solution is have alternative rules and make it optional. Even among the Divinity fans, some liked the new "armor system" and some disliked. Please Greeks and Trojans will be almost impossible. Unless they have two game modes. One with more "modernized"mechanics and other more close to pnp under the limitations of the technology.

And in some cases, balance goest against immersion. For eg, during World War two, German had by far the best tanks and the best planes, but Allies, numbers. Mainly soviets had an massive amount of troops and vehicles. An multi player game where one side has 8 tanks but another has an tank with much more firepower, maneuverability and armor that can deflect much more projectiles would be insanely broken. Or an game that happens in Battle of Agicourt, an small group of archers outnumbered by several times(around 9k vs 36k according to wikipedia) defeated knights and cavalry on heavy armor due positioning and terrain advantages. Few hundreds of Spanish Conquistador managed to defeat civilizations of natives due the fact that natives din't had bows capable of punching their steel armor and they had mounted arquebusiers capable of hitting an Amerindian at 500m. On Falklands war, British had much better equipment. In a MP game, sure, you need to artificially nerf and balance things, but ina SP game where the PC can control a lot of party members, the worst thing that can happens is have an companion/class that people only uses on challenge runs.

An SP game will not fail because he is unbalanced.

Last edited by SorcererVictor; 19/07/19 01:29 AM.
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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
And in some cases, balance goest against immersion. For eg, during World War two, German had by far the best tanks and the best planes, but Allies, numbers. Mainly soviets had an massive amount of troops and vehicles.

I think it's not just that: there's so much exaggeration about particular elements that the picture becomes very distorted, and I think there's a risk that we're replacing The Myth of German Awesomeness regarding their engineering with a new myth of The Soviets Did It All. There's some truth to it, but e.g. where WWII German equipment looks good on paper, it can be less good IRL so looking at their tanks, there's no denying that the guns were excellent and paired with superb optics, the armour was thicker and of better quality and so on. But, they were delivered in a package that was expensive to manufacture, powered by an engine and transmission intended for a vehicle barely half the weight and whose interleaved wheels tended to clog with freezing mud on the Eastern front. Whereas the brutally simple T34 just kept on going and it wasn't simply a numbers thing, though the latter was apparently a pig to drive.

The allied tanks in particular get a bad rap in comparison to The Myth Of German Awesome, with numerous examples. The Sherman being apocryphally nicknamed "the Tommy Cooker" for instance, but does that actually bear scrutiny? The word "Tommy" suggests those in use by the British, which is interesting as those Shermans predominantly had diesel engines fitted rather than much more flammable petrol like the Germans. British designs in general also tended to use electric turret systems rather than the hydraulics of German tanks because hydraulic fluid catches fire; not sure if that was retro-fitted to the Sherman but the 17pdr gun certainly was, and while a slightly smaller calibre than the Kwk.36 it could out-penetrate it thanks to more advanced ammunition designs. Not that I'm claiming most Shermans had 17pdrs, it was an inefficient use of an expensive gun when most of the time their job was to lob high-explosives about, but the technology was definitely there and led to some hilariously unconvincing efforts to disguise the ones that were a serious worry to enemy tanks.


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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
Well, the last seasons that had no relation with the book are the worst ones.

But Larian had an hard challenge ahead. Imagine an monster that can cast Flesh to Stone spell or spell like ability that insta petrify on failed save. An BG fan will see it as "makes sense, is a medusa", but an D:OS2 would probably think that this is an unbalanced broken mechanic.


Actually, Dwarves in DoS2 have a racial ability that petrifies enemies and also does damage, so I do not think that is the case.


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vometia, yes, you are right. There are exaggerations but remember that Germany din't had much materiel available and had a lot of slave labor to use on Europe but IMO they lost the war much more because their leader stopped listening to his Generals than by other factors, anyway, my point is just that some times, balance goes against other things, like variety, immersion, consistency and in some times, world building. Look to War Thunder. Between nerfing planes like Me 262 and making the Me 262 to have less firepower, climbing and speed and be eqqual to same era planes, put then in a 0,001% change of getting on a lootbox or make the plane fight against cold war era planes, they decided by the last option. But on a SP game, you can make an unbalanced game and will be no problem.... Adolf Gallad said ". I would at this moment rather have one Me 262 in action rather than five Bf 109s." and note that BF 109 was not an bad plane for his era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Galland#Innovations

Deprived class on Dark Souls is an example. If DkS was an MP game, nobody would pick an class that was made to be weak and give an massive disadvantage, mainly on earlier game.

Originally Posted by _Vic_
Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
Well, the last seasons that had no relation with the book are the worst ones.

But Larian had an hard challenge ahead. Imagine an monster that can cast Flesh to Stone spell or spell like ability that insta petrify on failed save. An BG fan will see it as "makes sense, is a medusa", but an D:OS2 would probably think that this is an unbalanced broken mechanic.


Actually, Dwarves in DoS2 have a racial ability that petrifies enemies and also does damage, so I do not think that is the case.



But as i've said, Petrify on DOS2 can be "negated" by magic armor https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Physical_and_Magical_Armor_(DoS2)

On DOS1, will be different but i din't played DOS1 so i can't give an honest opinion. And note that petrify works very different on both games. On NWN1, depends the difficulty. On Might & Magic VI, petrify is permanent and the unique spell that can counter(Stone to Flesh) have an time limit to work...

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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
vometia, yes, you are right. There are exaggerations but remember that Germany din't had much materiel available and had a lot of slave labor to use on Europe but IMO they lost the war much more because their leader stopped listening to his Generals than by other factors, anyway, my point is just that some times, balance goes against other things, like variety, immersion, consistency and in some times, world building. Look to War Thunder. Between nerfing planes like Me 262 and making the Me 262 to have less firepower, climbing and speed and be eqqual to same era planes, put then in a 0,001% change of getting on a lootbox or make the plane fight against cold war era planes, they decided by the last option. But on a SP game, you can make an unbalanced game and will be no problem.... Adolf Gallad said ". I would at this moment rather have one Me 262 in action rather than five Bf 109s." and note that BF 109 was not an bad plane for his era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Galland#Innovations

I don't know anything about the games in question, but it is absurd if they're just making stuff up like that; it's not as if the 262 didn't have actual shortcomings they could've capitalised on, such as apparently being vulnerable when taking off and landing. But aircraft aren't my forte and I only know the vaguest of stuff about that. But so much of it is prone to exaggeration though, I mean it seems that the MG42's claimed firing speed increases every time I hear about it, I think the last claim being a cyclic rate of 1,800rpm, which is absurd. Yet nobody ever mentions its problems, such as not being very accurate and its tendency to become "unstable" when firing more than short bursts which could cause "out of battery firing" (i.e. the bolt bouncing back open at the same time it fires, which can damage the gun and will probably leave its crew with nasty injuries). But I guess even more so than most things the subject is imbued with a great deal of fanboyism which is generally not a great medium in which facts can flourish...


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OS 2 literaly has an ability called Medusa head where you petrify all enemies around you so IDK what you are talking about.

Youalso dont need to be balanced against an ENEMY.
You need to be balanced against your party members. All party members should be equally capeable. THATS the problem with balance.
Also what you fail to see is that "modernized" mechanics represent the exact same things as the old mechanics did.

You said it right there, saving throws. In the greek myth, you were petrified, no matter what.
In DnD you get a Fortitude save.
Guess what, in divinity, the Fortitude save is represented by your Magic armor. Its the same thing: a mechanical abstraction to make combat less boring. Because lets face it, if you went full greek myth, there is literaly only one way to defeat a medusa and thats using a mirror. Either that or having the blind fighting feat. Which in DnD isnt exactly hard to get, but also not very usefull most of the time.

What you say about "Immersion" is mostly "old thing good new thing bad".

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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor


Originally Posted by _Vic_
Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
Well, the last seasons that had no relation with the book are the worst ones.

But Larian had an hard challenge ahead. Imagine an monster that can cast Flesh to Stone spell or spell like ability that insta petrify on failed save. An BG fan will see it as "makes sense, is a medusa", but an D:OS2 would probably think that this is an unbalanced broken mechanic.


Actually, Dwarves in DoS2 have a racial ability that petrifies enemies and also does damage, so I do not think that is the case.



But as i've said, Petrify on DOS2 can be "negated" by magic armor https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Physical_and_Magical_Armor_(DoS2)

On DOS1, will be different but i din't played DOS1 so i can't give an honest opinion. And note that petrify works very different on both games. On NWN1, depends the difficulty. On Might & Magic VI, petrify is permanent and the unique spell that can counter(Stone to Flesh) have an time limit to work...



ed: Yes, you also have the "petrify" status in DoS1. It works differently than in the games you told us about. In Dos1 the status debuffs have a chance to fail, but only depends on the caster, you cannot "improve or decrease your character´s chances to be debuffed" (saving throws are that). You can be immune to or cure them. They removed those in Dos2 and put the "armor protects from debuffs" thing.

There is a mod to have "Saving throws" in DoS2. I use it and works well. Also, a mod to make the hit rate more difficult. Those make the game more interesting for me.

You can easily make optional the "Show helmets" or graphic changes, interface, difficulty etc, but make core rules like saving throws or combat mechanics optional could be very challenging and usually the devs do not bother. The modders usually address that kind of things.

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Yes you can mod that, but i still am baffled by this argument.

WHy does it have to be THIS SPECIFIC mechanic? When another mechanic solves the same problem, for the same reason, with roughly the same kind of result.
Why is THIS SPECIFIC way of doing it """"Immersive""" and another, in my opinion mechnaically superior, way of doing it not immersive?

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Originally Posted by vometia
I don't know anything about the games in question, but it is absurd if they're just making stuff up like that; it's not as if the 262 didn't have actual shortcomings they could've capitalised on, such as apparently being vulnerable when taking off and landing. But aircraft aren't my forte and I only know the vaguest of stuff about that. But so much of it is prone to exaggeration though, I mean it seems that the MG42's claimed firing speed increases every time I hear about it, I think the last claim being a cyclic rate of 1,800rpm, which is absurd. Yet nobody ever mentions its problems, such as not being very accurate and its tendency to become "unstable" when firing more than short bursts which could cause "out of battery firing" (i.e. the bolt bouncing back open at the same time it fires, which can damage the gun and will probably leave its crew with nasty injuries). But I guess even more so than most things the subject is imbued with a great deal of fanboyism which is generally not a great medium in which facts can flourish...


Yes, but every plane is ultra vulnerable when landing/taking off or stationary in the ground, Allied was outnumbering Germans by a great amount on late stages and they tried to attack Me 262 in this time, because they could't defeat then in the sky. The unique guy born in Americas that got "knight's Cross of the Iron Cross", defeated 11 aircraft in the ground with his Bf 110 in a single mission(https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Egon_Albrecht-Lemke) There are records of Me 262 destroying formations of bombers in "combat box" formation and their P-51 escort unable to do anything, against his amazing 4 30mm cannons and insanely speed... About MG 42 fire rate, it can be modded to 1800 rpm, but if an plane has 4 MG 42, each one with 300 rounds, in 10 seconds, the plane will ran out of ammo with an single 10 second burst. IF none of the MG 42 "jam"...

Originally Posted by Sordak
OS 2 literaly has an ability called Medusa head where you petrify all enemies around you so IDK what you are talking about.

Youalso dont need to be balanced against an ENEMY.
You need to be balanced against your party members. All party members should be equally capeable. THATS the problem with balance.
Also what you fail to see is that "modernized" mechanics represent the exact same things as the old mechanics did.

You said it right there, saving throws. In the greek myth, you were petrified, no matter what.
In DnD you get a Fortitude save.
Guess what, in divinity, the Fortitude save is represented by your Magic armor. Its the same thing: a mechanical abstraction to make combat less boring. Because lets face it, if you went full greek myth, there is literaly only one way to defeat a medusa and thats using a mirror. Either that or having the blind fighting feat. Which in DnD isnt exactly hard to get, but also not very usefull most of the time.

What you say about "Immersion" is mostly "old thing good new thing bad".


But petrification works differently. On NWN1, on easy/normal, there are no friendly fire and petrification is temporary, but on core D&D rules difficulty, PETRIFICATION IS PERMANENT, save or petrify is like save or die, except that stone to flesh can cure someone petrified. On M&M VII, the stone to flesh had an time limit to be able to revert the petrification, is an expert lv spell and you can find enemies that can petrify you on Bracada desert, in an dungeon relative earlier on.

Originally Posted by _Vic_


ed: Yes, you also have the "petrify" status in DoS1. It works differently than in the games you told us about. In Dos1 the status debuffs have a chance to fail, but only depends on the caster, you cannot "improve or decrease your character´s chances to be debuffed" (saving throws are that). You can be immune to or cure them. They removed those in Dos2 and put the "armor protects from debuffs" thing.

There is a mod to have "Saving throws" in DoS2. I use it and works well. Also, a mod to make the hit rate more difficult. Those make the game more interesting for me.

You can easily make optional the "Show helmets" or graphic changes, interface, difficulty etc, but make core rules like saving throws or combat mechanics optional could be very challenging and usually the devs do not bother. The modders usually address that kind of things.



I disagree. Look to Pillars of Eternity 2. After the success of DOS2, they decided to create an turn based mode and re made all rules to fulfill an turn based game. How weapon/armor works, how some spells work, spell duration(...)

But can you offer an link to that mod? And there are an mod that increases the range and remove CDs? Make armor works like armor that deflects blows? Multiple summons? I would love to play DOS2 with this mechanics and hope that BG3 will be easily moddable, so if Larian remove missing and other thing, people will mod the core rules into the game. Just like on NWN2, Obsidian nerfed Warlock to oblivion and made the SR/DCs bugged, but there are mods that fixes the warlock class and after i installed the mod, an class that i could't play due frustration becomes my favorite class.

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Ok, Petrification is permanent, im aware of that, its that way in every edition of DnD.
It isnt in OS, probably because in OS you dont get to fight an actual medusa, but just use a spell that simulates that effect and thus it only lasts for its duration.
But realy, thats the difference between a video game and a DnD campaign.

permanent petrification is only interresting if you then have a DM that deals with the consequences of it.
Such as offering an actual solution. Otherwise its just "load your last save".


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Originally Posted by Sordak
Ok, Petrification is permanent, im aware of that, its that way in every edition of DnD.
It isnt in OS, probably because in OS you dont get to fight an actual medusa, but just use a spell that simulates that effect and thus it only lasts for its duration.
But realy, thats the difference between a video game and a DnD campaign.

permanent petrification is only interresting if you then have a DM that deals with the consequences of it.
Such as offering an actual solution. Otherwise its just "load your last save".



Some people enjoy "no reload" runs. On most classic RPG',s this stats effects are "permanent", I got 3 party members petrified on M&M VII and din't reloaded, just started to search desperately potions... On P:K, you can choose between removing this conditions on rest on the difficulty menu. Anyway, you should be able to limit resting to city only.

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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
Yes, but every plane is ultra vulnerable when landing/taking off or stationary in the ground, Allied was outnumbering Germans by a great amount on late stages and they tried to attack Me 262 in this time, because they could't defeat then in the sky. The unique guy born in Americas that got "knight's Cross of the Iron Cross", defeated 11 aircraft in the ground with his Bf 110 in a single mission(https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Egon_Albrecht-Lemke) There are records of Me 262 destroying formations of bombers in "combat box" formation and their P-51 scouts unable to do anything. About MG 42 fire rate, it can be modded to 1800 rpm, but if an plane has 4 MG 42, each one with 300 rounds, in 10 seconds, the plane will ran out of ammo with an single 10 second burst. IF none of the MG 42 "jam"...

The thing I'd heard about the 262 was supposedly some vulnerability peculiar to that particular aircraft, though I don't recall anything about the details, so it may or may not have been all that special.

I can see that conceptually an MG42 could theoretically be modified to obtain an increased firing rate as were several other recoil-operated aircraft guns were by lightening the barrels, given that they didn't need the same heat-absorbing mass thanks to increased airflow e.g. the Brownings in both .303 and .50 calibre as used by the RAF (ISTR they used a compressed air recocking system which could presumably clear at least some stoppages) though I hadn't heard of the MG42 being used in such a manner and would be somewhat surprised as my understanding is that the Luftwaffe preferred much larger calibres (I heard one related anecdote where an ex Luftwaffe pilot described the amusement they shared at the RAF fitting Spitfires with rifle-calibre weapons... which quickly evaporated once faced with the reality of being on the wrong end of eight modified Brownings all firing at once). I should look it up now that my interest has been piqued, though I am a little sceptical.

Never got to fire any of the things in question during my brief stint in the army, sadly. Closest I got was having to lug a Bren about for someone else to fire (or not, as turned out to be the case) though maybe that's as well as I wasn't a great shot.


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Yes Victor, and thats exactly WHY OS doesnt have it.
Because having one of the 3 protagonists permanently dead, means the game cannot be finished.
thus one character becoming turned to stone equals a game over.
hence why the game doesnt have it. (of course this is not neccesarily true you can finish the game on your own, but for most playthroughs this will be true)

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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor


But can you offer an link to that mod? And there are an mod that increases the range and remove CDs? Make armor works like armor that deflects blows? Multiple summons? I would love to play DOS2 with this mechanics and hope that BG3 will be easily moddable, so if Larian remove missing and other thing, people will mod the core rules into the game. Just like on NWN2, Obsidian nerfed Warlock to oblivion and made the SR/DCs bugged, but there are mods that fixes the warlock class and after i installed the mod, an class that i could't play due frustration becomes my favorite class.


Of course. Here your have two of your requests.

https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/168

https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/185

I hope the new Bg3 will be modder-friendly, too. Enjoy!

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Originally Posted by _Vic_

I hope the new Bg3 will be modder-friendly, too. Enjoy!


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Sordak, perma effects like blind can be "cured", but they last until cured. Anyway, in therms of versatility, IMO divine casters are far more versatile than arcane casters. Mainly druids on pathfinder(don't know much about then on 5e). An lv 9 animal companion, buffed with few low level spells, can easily reach an AC of 39. An fu***** ancient silver dragon has 38 AC ( http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/mo...n/metallic-silver/ancient-silver-dragon/ ) and is a CR 19 monster. I an not saying that he is stronger than an ancient silver dragon, but on AC, he is ludicrous powerful. And only considering his animal companion as an "tanker", Druids can heal(an thing that arcane casters can't) and can cast on armor without penalty.

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vometia, about luftwaffe using mostly cannons, in later stages yes, but in earlier stages of WW2, they used both. Bf 110 was they main ground attack aircraft and had 4 machine guns + 2 cannons.


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Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
vometia, about luftwaffe using mostly cannons, in later stages yes, but in earlier stages of WW2, they used both. Bf 110 was they main ground attack aircraft and had 4 machine guns + 2 cannons.

I know they used to use the MG15 quite a lot: I mainly remember it as I used to confuse it with the MG34 from a distance, which it wasn't. I guess the differentiation with "cannons" is also somewhat semantic and for me it's the differentiation between standard rifle ammunition of the time (.303, 7.92mm etc) and "bigger boys came". In the latter regard (and apologies for what is a rather obscure reference for anyone outside the UK: Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke's "Kevin and Perry" characters) largely in the form of the likes of the 20mm Hispano-Suiza which was a bit like a Bren on steroids, and additionally blurred the line in having a really very quick firing rate, about 700rpm IIRC. Okay, a bit pedestrian compared to the Vulcan (I'm imagining another comedy series with the Californian scientists saying how awesome it would be to make a Gatling with an electric motor and huge ammunition) and even some actual aircraft cannon at the time, including some scary 75mm jobbies,but pretty lethal nonetheless. AFAICT, with that caveat that aircraft aren't my forte, the HS guns eventually ousted the .303 Browning M1919s as the RAF's mainstay. Contrary to the "less is more" cliche, sometimes more is more, it just depends what you want more of. Well that was very philosophical of me.


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How did this thread turn into a history lesson on German WWII military armaments question rpg006

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Originally Posted by Nobody_Special
How did this thread turn into a history lesson on German WWII military armaments question rpg006

I bear responsibility for that one. I've had a fascination with small arms ever since first firing a rifle and thinking "ow, that hurts" but also "I wonder how it works? Maybe I should take it to bits and find out." And tanks, because they're cute. ish.


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Two people here have an fascination with firearms. I down own any firearm, but i visit firing ranges often, so an small comment mentioning balance and using some IRL examples of how balance is mostly in conflict with variety, immersion and historically accuracy lead to this. Anyway, introducing firearms into a D&D game can be interesting. For example, would mages try lobby to prohibit it? And assassinate those who are developing this new research to avoid loss their monopoly on mass destruction? And firearms would be that amazing in a world with magic? If an barbarian tribe can use spells, an situation like Pizarro destroying an civilization would be possible? How aristocrats would see this new technology?

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