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#546625 21/08/14 09:05 PM
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Let's discuss the new patch.

I for one am thoroughly disappointed in Larian and will be rolling back my patch to finish out my current games before starting new ones. If I start new ones at all (not entirely due to this patch, one of my games is a completionist run).

-Resist hard-capped at 80%, not noted in the patch notes. This breaks the Zombie talent, making it 80% useless (pun intended), and at later levels makes the Weather the Storm Talent useless. Formerly good crafting items, such as Rubies and the Sword of the Planets, are also useless, since the stock loot from chests and drops now caps your resists around level 10-14 (depending on luck).
-Leech heals only on your turn. This makes Leech less valuable on a warrior now, and useless on anyone else, since it no longer reduces damage dealt from physical attacks. It also breaks the Leech+Bloodletting combo - some cried broken on this before. I am ambivalent on this issue, since casting Bloodletting on your own character was usually (80%+ of the time) a waste of actions in combat.
-Inventory changes. Now you cannot have more than one inventory open at a time, nor can you have one character operate on another's inventory via crafting. This is a logistical step backwards, but is not a huge deal overall - more of an inconvenience. The addition of sorting in the barter screen was a nice addition.
-Quest fixes and bug fixes. Most of them were fairly minor, though actually filling out the philosophy of death I guess is good for newer players who haven't figured out the answers to the ghost's questions yet.

I believe this patch to be a huge step backward, with the resist cap - which is not even noted in the patch notes - being the largest offender. The leech change I suppose was inevitable, but I personally thought it was fine the way it was. The inventory changes are annoying, but I can live with them.

However, the patch introduced very few positive changes, which can be summed up, in order of importance:
-Sorting the barter screen
-Minor quest fixes that had workarounds previously
-Fixes to minor bugs that I have never seen (doesn't mean that others haven't - just noting that I have yet to see any of these bugs in action)

Edit: Apparently the Skull-based crafting recipes were also fixed in this patch. This is another positive change.



Last edited by strider24seven; 21/08/14 09:45 PM.
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I think the resistance cap is a good thing and is more in line with other games. The 100% resistance made things too easy and the healing at over 100% made no sense at all.

LeBurns #546656 21/08/14 10:11 PM
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Originally Posted by LeBurns
I think the resistance cap is a good thing and is more in line with other games. The 100% resistance made things too easy and the healing at over 100% made no sense at all.


I would respectfully disagree with >100% resist not making sense. It actually makes perfect sense mathematically (damage - resist*damage = hp change), and thematically - a zombie is healed by poison, so why should a zombie character not also be healed by poison? A fire elemental is healed by fire, so why should an extraordinarily fire-resistant character not also be healed by fire.

If the game is too easy, then make it harder by challenging yourself. Don't give yourself greater than 100% resist in everything. I don't understand the point in balancing a single-player/co-op game as if it were a PvP game. This change stifles creative builds and ruins the fun for a lot of players.

Not saying your opinion is invalid - just that I disagree with it.

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Originally Posted by strider24seven

I would respectfully disagree with >100% resist not making sense. It actually makes perfect sense mathematically (damage - resist*damage = hp change), and thematically - a zombie is healed by poison, so why should a zombie character not also be healed by poison? A fire elemental is healed by fire, so why should an extraordinarily fire-resistant character not also be healed by fire.


I agree with your assessment of the situation. While 100%+ might be out of place in some games, it's part of the gameplay here.
In addition, the patch simply kills some builds like my 2x lone wolf/leech pair who were working towards 100% fire resist to use the explode skill. This is a very annoying forced restart. This might finish my game right here.

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Healing magic is different that fire resistance. I can understand a Fire Elemental being healed by fire, but someone of Flesh and Blood should not be healed by Fire, regardless of their resistance to being burned. To heal Flesh and Blood requires a different kind of magic, not negative burning.

And yeah I know it's a single player game and I know I can just make the game difficult on myself, but I'd rather game logic be logical. But to each their own I guess.

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I just am getting sick of re-starting. I bought this game about a week and a half ago because I thought it had been officially released and I was buying a full finished game. Then I spent a great deal of time over the past week trying out different builds, restarting several times, and finally settling on a pyromancer/battlemage build using PBAOE's stacked fire resist to survive them (since the PBAOE's are self-damaging, they rely on high resist levels to function). Now all that work is wasted and I have to start over again from a blank slate. At some point I'd really like to make it out of Cyseal, but I'm not sure I have the heart to grind through Black Cove etc. yet *again*.

There are a *lot* of parts of this game that are balanced around the ability to stack high resist. Maybe not *healing*, but at least functional immunity. It's not just the Zombie builds, it's the pyromancer AoE builds, any build that uses Elemental Affinity, etc.

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Originally Posted by strider24seven
Now you cannot have more than one inventory open at a time, nor can you have one character operate on another's inventory via crafting. This is a logistical step backwards, but is not a huge deal overall - more of an inconvenience.

WHAT?! Caps very much intended. For me this is a total deal breaker. Henchmen changes in patch 107 were bad enough but this... I simply don't have words.

I don't use Leech and I don't care that much about resists. The game is easy anyway so an increase in difficulty is welcome. But inventory management with all the clutter is killing me as it is. And I'm not going to update just to make things even worse, thank you.

It's as though Larian is bent on making gameplay as annoying as possible and bit by bit they've already achieved a lot.

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Originally Posted by LeBurns
Healing magic is different that fire resistance. I can understand a Fire Elemental being healed by fire, but someone of Flesh and Blood should not be healed by Fire, regardless of their resistance to being burned. To heal Flesh and Blood requires a different kind of magic, not negative burning.


Fire Resistance is magic - so it's not just flesh and blood. Magic is the fly in the healing ointment, as it were.

Originally Posted by prodigydancer
Originally Posted by strider24seven
Now you cannot have more than one inventory open at a time, nor can you have one character operate on another's inventory via crafting. This is a logistical step backwards, but is not a huge deal overall - more of an inconvenience.

WHAT?! Caps very much intended. For me this is a total deal breaker. Henchmen changes in patch 107 were bad enough but this... I simply don't have words.

I don't use Leech and I don't care that much about resists. The game is easy anyway so higher difficulty is welcome. But inventory management with all the clutter is killing me as it is. And I'm not going to update just to make things even worse, thank you.

It's as though Larian is bent on making gameplay as annoying as possible and bit by bit they've already achieved a lot.


Honestly my biggest complaint is the resists, followed by the inventory changes - although the sorting on the barter screen was nice. I'd just like to not see 3 of my parties effectively lose half of their items and talents every other patch.

Last edited by strider24seven; 21/08/14 11:23 PM.
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I too would support capping resistances (of course Zombie should keep working).
I'd allow immunity, though* - but healing on >100 resistance might be removed for balance and challenge.

* maybe only with (additional) potions - would also make those more useful

Last edited by El Zoido; 21/08/14 11:46 PM.
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Capping resists is a great thing. Maybe this will stop all the players complaining about how easy the game is after they intentionally stack resists to make everything heal themselves to full health+use leech/comeback kid for 100% invulnerability.

I might even look at taking leech now that it isn't gamebreakingly broken. But it's not really necessary.

@El Zoido -- I like your idea. Allow resists to reach 100% with potions, or even spells, but not otherwise.

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Originally Posted by freerealestate
intentionally stack resists to make everything heal themselves to full health+use leech/comeback kid for 100% invulnerability.


What exactly is the problem with this?
It's a single player game - let people do what they want.

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Right capping resistances was needed, but also Traits that expect certain things should override where needed and function. Hope you Zombier's get a hotfix asap. For others playing more general it was silly healing when being hit with enemy elemental powers etc.

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Originally Posted by freerealestate
I might even look at taking leech now that it isn't game-breakingly broken.


Same.

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Originally Posted by freerealestate

@El Zoido -- I like your idea. Allow resists to reach 100% with potions, or even spells, but not otherwise.


I think for potions and spells, they should just absorb the elemental damage, not adding to the resistance because of hard cap. this way, the highest elemental resist we can get is 80, but potions and spells can help negate further damage.

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There needs to be some way to reach at least 100% resist just because there are so many spells and talents that rely on standing in the middle of damaging terrain. It's not just Zombie, it's also Elemental Affinity, Explode, Storm, Self-Immolation, so on and so forth.

I get nerfing the interaction of Leech and Comeback Kid, but broadly capping all resists at 80% is a huge design change that breaks a lot of skills and a lot of builds.

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This thread simply proves that no matter what Larian (or any game developer does) someone will always complain.

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I welcome these changes

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During my months of play, I had 3 full playthroughs each on a different difficulty, I was only using a balanced crafting mod that made it so that unavailable recipes were fixed and there was some extra stuff for crafting/bs 5+ which I can't recall having used.

During these playthroughs I had great fun building and leveling the characters from 1-14 at that point most of the builds you created are well rounded and only require some finetuning and you require some blessings from the rng gods as far as loot goes. Even after level 14 I had great fun trying hoard all the arrows and different items making sure I bought essences and trying my best to grab rubies and making sure to say hello to some vendors in order to try and make some sword of the planets and grabbing some sextants and tormented souls.

During these playthroughs I have not been blind, I saw the strength of having talents like zombie/leech and grabbing a ton of resistances. I personally did not like the zombie talent (Even though there is no visual drawback I personally don't feel like playing an undead.) and as far as leech goes, I gave it to Madora on the 1st playthrough and it was rather overpowered. So overpowering that I stayed away from it during my other playthroughs. I am somewhat old school so I did not mind having my mages using healing spells on my melee characters. Although I am not judging anyone who took these talents. That is not the point I am trying to make in this post that will most likely be too long.

The point I am trying to make is, that I felt that it was up to me whether or not I would take some talents that would make the game a lot easier. On my normal playthrough I made a spellsword or battlemage w/e name you will prefer to give it, and I really made sure his fire resistance was allways 120%+ so he could make use of self immolate, phoenix dive and explode and as an added bonus it was great to heal him incidentally with fireballs. (although that was not the initial intention.)

I too have experienced the latest patch, and even though I was just horsing around, trying stuff out in what most likely would not have been my 4th playthrough I was pretty amazed to see that there were some game altering changes that in my opinion were not in the best interest of the game.

As I advocated earlier, I strongly feel that people that want to take full advantage to what the game offers may do so. (Especially in a single player game.) And the people who think it would be too easy or that just don't want to use those advantages can just ignore them. Therefore I am sad to say that I actually am surprised that you put in a hardcap on all resistances which hardcaps at 80%.

*Hardcap means that no matter what you do to increase the % it will never show as more then 80%. You can have 130% fire reistance which is shown as 80% and if you get a 50% resistance penalty you will still have 80%.

I ofcourse have no idea what you guys from development are thinking or what your gametesters are doing, however I do have some issues with this is in general.

The zombie talent is currenly broken because of this, it took me like 1 minute to realize this, how on earth did your gametesters miss that?

During the game you will be able to craft/find/buy a lot of resistance potions and with the introduction of the hardcap there usefulness will decline, especially the large resist all potion (that confers a +70% resistance) feels rather useless to make now as with or without cap the lowest potion will probably suffice in 9 out 10 situations. The search (and joy) from finding elemental essences and/or rubies went down in value aswell. With an enforced hardcap you probably have the basic 4 elemental types capped around level 11-12 with a melee character and that does not include any rubies/essences. The "ultimate" man at arms talent Weather the storm has become utterly useless because with a hardcap there is no reason to "pay" 1 talent point to get an extra 25% basic elemental resist. Not to mention ofcourse sword of the planets loses some of its value aswell.

Add to that, that I could not find the elemental resist 80% hardcap in the patch notes. (I might have overlooked it, so if it was there my apolagies.)

It saddens me to say that for me this last patch even though it has fixed some issues that needed to be fixed, namely actual bugs or performance issues due to technical issues did not really come through as progress.

This is what I expect to happen with games that are in BETA and the developers/testers are like... oops that was not intended. This is not what I expect from paid professionals. You guys have had a lot of time to test this game, and you had the funds to do it. The game picked up a lot of momentum and from there on you did great things and when you released the game, I expected a semi finished product where you *points* were going to polish up the game a bit, add some extra companions, maybe add some extra sidequests or a random dungeon. I did not expect you guys to adress "balance" issues. Those things should have been done in alpha, you had tons of time to test the stuff back then, the fact noone noticed that leech/zombie/glass cannon and or mechanics weren't working as you guys wanted or intended is something you should have noticed then. If you happen to have missed them I will work as free tester in the future to sort out all of this OP stuff for you in order to prevent stuff like this happening in the future.

I am aware that as a game company you can not make every customer a happy gamer. However if you really adress balance issues in a finished single player game that will heavily affect gamepeplay I am somewhat disappointed. I think so shortly after release dealing with balance issues should not be a high priority either.

There is a decent chance I will use this post in topics regarding the lastest patch, this is not because I'm suddenly starting to spam, but I feel strongly about this, so I really want to get my/the message across.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

200% resistance mod (All credit goes to Rhidian):

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=546666&gonew=1#UNREAD

Last edited by Rashar; 22/08/14 01:41 AM.
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Well I personally like the recent change in resistance cap (except the zombie part) but apparently there are a lot of people who don't. So I suggest Larian adding a new difficulty option where your resistances are capped at 80% for players who want a more challenging game (one that doesn't require you to gimp yourself so deliberately). And then you can leave the original 3 difficulties with 200% res cap for those who want it.

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Originally Posted by Armakoir
This thread simply proves that no matter what Larian (or any game developer does) someone will always complain.


This post simply proves that no matter what kind of discussion people try to have, some users simply have nothing useful to say.

Originally Posted by Sinthesizer
Well I personally like the recent change in resistance cap (except the zombie part) but apparently there are a lot of people who don't. So I suggest Larian adding a new difficulty option where your resistances are capped at 80% for players who want a more challenging game (one that doesn't require you to gimp yourself so deliberately). And then you can leave the original 3 difficulties with 200% res cap for those who want it.


I actually rather like this idea. Customizable difficulty would be an interesting idea.

Last edited by strider24seven; 22/08/14 01:53 AM.
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