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Hayte gets internet points for creating a clear and concise argument I can not agree with more.


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Originally Posted by Hayte
I don't understand this concept of "fairness" in a player vs AI encounter in a single player rpg. The AI should have stacked mechanical advantages over the player in order to pose any challenge at all. As such I approach fights like Alice as a puzzle solving element of the game. I walk in, get wrecked the first time, then ask what are the rules? What tools do I have? How do the mechanics work? How can I use tools and mechanics in ways that help me solve the puzzle? It may take many attempts to understand what you need to do and why.

This iterative process also works for a blind Honour playthrough, you just have to be careful. It is clear long before Act 2 that this game has for lack of a better term "f*** you" encounters. An argument can be made that if you play blind Honour you should never initiate combat under-levelled without a means of escape i.e. initiating with 3 of 4 characters and joining combat with the 4th once you know its a fight that can be won. You don't get to blame the game when carelessness is the reason you lost.

It turns out after getting wrecked a few times, you can easily beat Alice at level 12 on Tactician where you move 1 character far in advance of the rest of the party, pre-emptively cast "Living on the Edge" on them and initiate combat (thus wasting Alice's first turn on a target that can't be killed). Then you teleport her away from her totems (so she can't heal), shred either physical or magic defence and CC chain. I suggest physical knockdown/chicken because you have plentiful sources of this type of CC for 1 point pre-requisites.

If done correctly with level 12 weapons and somewhat optimized builds, Alice will not get to attack at all beyond her first turn. It can be done with full hybrid parties and mixed magic/physical specialists too which are very sub optimal. This is a case where the puzzle seems impossible to solve at first but it becomes easy when you know how it works.

So really, this fight is "unfair" to Alice since the AI is a dumb automaton and you are a living, thinking person, capable of pre-empting combat and approaching it with contingencies so you can extricate yourself from fights you got into as a result of poor decision making. Below Honour difficulty you can also reload if you get it wrong.


Exactly...and well said. Bravo!

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Originally Posted by Yasen
Exactly...and well said. Bravo!
Seems a bit complicated to me. Can't I just hit the enter button really fast? I'm a rogue with lots of armour both magical and the other one...

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Originally Posted by lx07
Originally Posted by Yasen
Exactly...and well said. Bravo!
Seems a bit complicated to me. Can't I just hit the enter button really fast? I'm a rogue with lots of armour both magical and the other one...


Maybe the tech is to rebind it to your mouse wheel, enable free scrolling, and just send that sucker flying. I feel like this should be the hardcore enter spamming.


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Originally Posted by Undesirable
Originally Posted by CatR
My one issue with videogames is when they confront me with an obstacle that challenges me and requires me to carefully consider my options. Especially when these things are purely optional and has absolutely no bearing on the progression or the story of the game. Baldur's Gate did that with the demi-lich. They actually put it in the game knowing full well not everyone would want or be able to defeat him, which is ridiculous. +4 to hit and 90% physical resistance? Nonsense, I say.

I sense some sarcasm there, but I'm saying that encounters like Kangaxx and Alice Alisceon aren't just a little bit more challenging, they're infuriating and absolutely require advance knowledge.

"Quaff fire resistance potions or read a Scroll of Protection from Undead and 'x' monster will barely touch you, if not you're dead in one hit no matter how good your armour is."

at most, one person should be dying

if you're approaching a fight involving a fast moving level 15 enemy surrounded by necrofire by grouping everyone together and initiating combat, then i'm sorry, but the game is not at fault

this game is full of punishing encounters that can kill your team within one or two turns if you approach them incorrectly. this isn't "requiring advanced knowledge", it's punishing you for approaching fights shoddily

this enemy is extremely strong and can one shot a character. put someone forward to get one shot, then cc her with the rest of your party that you spread out beforehand. it seriously is not that hard and i've done it with parties under level 15 on tactician, without lone wolf. positioning yourself strategically (there's even highground that puts you out of range of her aura if you look) is not metagaming or cheesing the fight, it's playing smart

arguably, magic shelling a character beforehand isn't cheesy either since loremaster will tell you what to expect from this enemy, but it's your choice if you don't want to pre-buff

this is a game in which frequent quick saving should be your default behaviour. getting one shotted by a difficult enemy should not stunt your progress. it's a game about encountering challenges, potentially dying a few times, figuring out how to maneuver around said challenges and coming out ahead

i'm honestly surprised at how many people are complaining about this enemy and not, say, the voidwoken drillworm during the alex fight at the end of act 1, considering the latter is completely rng based in the sense that it can completely annihilate you if it decides to focus your party or make the fight a breeze if it focuses the magisters, while the former is just especially hard but requires no luck to defeat; not to mention that alice is entirely optional while the worm is compulsory for advancing the story

Last edited by miaasma; 21/11/17 01:00 AM.
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Yes, the worm is extremely frustrating on Tactician, but it doesn't always target your party immediately, so you do have a play. In fact, I was so amused by the fact that I could draw Alexander back to Gareth and the other members of the Seeker camp, I didn't mind so much.

With Alice, you simply get one shotted if your party is bunched together and / or you don't have a lot of foreknowledge. My preference is to play all elemental damage out in the open, but defensively (lots of armour regen spells) with the party bunched together (for leadership bonuses and surface elemental affinity) without any cheesy out of combat preparation, thus it was annoying to fight Alice because I was basically required to respec. If the 100% increased resistance to cold and immunity to freeze wasn't given to her as soon as the fight starts, I would have killed her easily in one or two turns too (after having to space my party out and cast Living on the Edge).


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Yeah, Alice is one of those enemies that pretty much require you to already know of a way to beat her, in order to beat her.

My personal strategy was to enter combat with her with just one partymember who had cast Living On the Edge just before, while bring the rest of my team into the fight immediately after she fireballs my one guy.

Cheesy, but it worked.

If I had played on Honour-mode, and accidentally walked into her as a high level character, and be forced to start over, I'd probably uninstall lol.

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"Alice is one of those enemies that pretty much require you to already know of a way to beat her, in order to beat her" = exactly, this is unacceptable especially if you're allowing people to play honor mode

The Worm in act1 is fairly easy (also your skills to manage a 3 way fight) and you have time to react because he doesn't one shot you, in this case you don't

Like I said before if the fight against Alice is "meh" after the one shot kill that she does, then they should rethink the whole fight...because for as much as I find unacceptable to be one shot, I also find unacceptable when the fight last 15 seconds the time to just take your archer and destroy her physical armor and just cruise to the win keeping her CCed....

Like I said before, if she can fireball for 2-5k damage, then she shouldn't be shown as a lvl 15 because your characters are far from doing that much damage with a critical damage fireball....and you're character should in some ways give you a sens of how much damage that could be dealt to you using the same magic against you

She's a boss, she automatically get critical hits? fine, a critical fireball still doesn't do 2k at lvl 15 with 40 INT and 17 Pyro

The initial fireball should be tone down and give Alice some sort of way to "not be CCed" which is fairly easy when you're 4 vs 1 ... or in this case 3 vs 1 if you "knowingly sacrifice somebody" which is something I really don't like...

Maybe be force to kill her totems before you can damage her?....give the totem enough health not to be AoE insta kill using easy skills....such the special archery skill that cost 2 source point and shoot arrows everywhere which I haven't tried yet...

I think there are better ways to make this fight challenging without having the possibility to be "one shot" one, two, three or your entire party....

I stand my ground forever...

Last edited by AngeliusMefyrx; 22/11/17 01:52 AM.
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I give AngeliusMefyrx 1 more internet point than CatR gave Hayte.

Alice's fireball should not 1 shot and she should get another less annoying ability. I would also like to add that her elemental damage resistance is silly (if I hadn't gotten that across already) leading to most, if not all, people in this thread to suggest solely using physical damage against her, and people like CatR and tesb conveniently not mentioning how unbalanced that is at all in their arguments.


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Originally Posted by Cavemandiary
Yeah, Alice is one of those enemies that pretty much require you to already know of a way to beat her, in order to beat her.


The only problem here is her first turn, not what comes after.

I have no problem in failing at an encounter, then learning it in order to overcome it. Apart from cRPGs I am a big fan of the Soulsborne series. Alice Alisson is D:OS 2 Bed of Chaos. It´s not hard, but fair, it´s cheap.

Getting one shoted in her first turn isn´t a fun challenge to overcome. Resorting to cheese (like abusing the dialog) in order to solve it isn´t rewarding. The issue here isn´t that she cannot be defeated, but the means how to resolve the puzzle.

Learning a hard boss in Darksouls and then overcoming the challenge gives me the feeling of an acomplishment, overcoming bosses like Alisson just leaves a sore taste in my mouth.

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Maybe give her permanent evading showing her ability to move quickly......if im correct you can hit but much lower %....
And tone dowm the stupid initial fireball damages

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Originally Posted by AngeliusMefyrx
"Alice is one of those enemies that pretty much require you to already know of a way to beat her, in order to beat her" = exactly, this is unacceptable especially if you're allowing people to play honor mode

The Worm in act1 is fairly easy (also your skills to manage a 3 way fight) and you have time to react because he doesn't one shot you, in this case you don't

Like I said before if the fight against Alice is "meh" after the one shot kill that she does, then they should rethink the whole fight...because for as much as I find unacceptable to be one shot, I also find unacceptable when the fight last 15 seconds the time to just take your archer and destroy her physical armor and just cruise to the win keeping her CCed....

Like I said before, if she can fireball for 2-5k damage, then she shouldn't be shown as a lvl 15 because your characters are far from doing that much damage with a critical damage fireball....and you're character should in some ways give you a sens of how much damage that could be dealt to you using the same magic against you

She's a boss, she automatically get critical hits? fine, a critical fireball still doesn't do 2k at lvl 15 with 40 INT and 17 Pyro

The initial fireball should be tone down and give Alice some sort of way to "not be CCed" which is fairly easy when you're 4 vs 1 ... or in this case 3 vs 1 if you "knowingly sacrifice somebody" which is something I really don't like...

Maybe be force to kill her totems before you can damage her?....give the totem enough health not to be AoE insta kill using easy skills....such the special archery skill that cost 2 source point and shoot arrows everywhere which I haven't tried yet...

I think there are better ways to make this fight challenging without having the possibility to be "one shot" one, two, three or your entire party....

I stand my ground forever...


It's quite possible that I'm misreading your post, but it sounded like your impression of my post was that I was challenging you - I wasn't, I completely agree with you.

Last edited by Cavemandiary; 25/11/17 11:08 AM.
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Originally Posted by Cavemandiary
Originally Posted by AngeliusMefyrx
"Alice is one of those enemies that pretty much require you to already know of a way to beat her, in order to beat her" = exactly, this is unacceptable especially if you're allowing people to play honor mode

The Worm in act1 is fairly easy (also your skills to manage a 3 way fight) and you have time to react because he doesn't one shot you, in this case you don't

Like I said before if the fight against Alice is "meh" after the one shot kill that she does, then they should rethink the whole fight...because for as much as I find unacceptable to be one shot, I also find unacceptable when the fight last 15 seconds the time to just take your archer and destroy her physical armor and just cruise to the win keeping her CCed....

Like I said before, if she can fireball for 2-5k damage, then she shouldn't be shown as a lvl 15 because your characters are far from doing that much damage with a critical damage fireball....and you're character should in some ways give you a sens of how much damage that could be dealt to you using the same magic against you

She's a boss, she automatically get critical hits? fine, a critical fireball still doesn't do 2k at lvl 15 with 40 INT and 17 Pyro

The initial fireball should be tone down and give Alice some sort of way to "not be CCed" which is fairly easy when you're 4 vs 1 ... or in this case 3 vs 1 if you "knowingly sacrifice somebody" which is something I really don't like...

Maybe be force to kill her totems before you can damage her?....give the totem enough health not to be AoE insta kill using easy skills....such the special archery skill that cost 2 source point and shoot arrows everywhere which I haven't tried yet...

I think there are better ways to make this fight challenging without having the possibility to be "one shot" one, two, three or your entire party....

I stand my ground forever...


It's quite possible that I'm misreading your post, but it sounded like your impression of my post was that I was challenging you - I wasn't, I completely agree with you.


I know, I was answering the other people that disagreed with me in the chat....I've used your sentence to promote the idea smile

Last edited by AngeliusMefyrx; 30/11/17 03:31 AM.
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She killed my shining lights...


Hear ye, hear ye! Bishop Alexander was slain by seagulls! Culprits still at large!
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Oh. Uhm. I killed her at like level 10 or 11 in one turn using Living on the Edge and Forced Exchange.

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