A few questions

[goblinsly]

Hi DavidW,

 

First of all, i really love SCS2, you have done a great work ! As a computer science student i am pretty bussy right now and i cant wait until i have some time to play SCS2 again ( only played it for a few hours but it was soo good i couldnt stay away from pc, had to uninstall it because otherwise i would prolly not even go to college lectures ).

 

I have a few questions about gameplay and settings. I know you cannot give me a completely straight answer since its up to everyone, but surely you have thought about it a bit when modding.

 

- First of all, HP. I will play SCS2 with most options ( basicly the hardest it can be, the only thing i am not sure is whether add extra creatures to the last fight in SOA, like lich, beholder, etc., maybe the 5 are tough enough considering you dont have certain items like robe of vecna.. ) installed and on insane offcourse. And i am not sure what to do about HPs. On insane HP are very low. Did you think about it when modding ? For instance is the game modded for char to have such low HP, or did you keep in mind that u use other tweaks to get max HP on every level ( by mods or lowering difficulty when leveling up ), or maybe mod that gets you half the maxximum points everytime you level up ? I am asking because i want to play it the way it was meant to be played and this can make a huge difference ( difference between having 90HP or 150HP is huge.. ).

 

- certain "bugged" spells. Since you didnt edit them out, i guess you are ok with them. For instance the bug in Dragons Breathe spell that ignores magic resistance ? And sunfine ? How about project image which gives you x times the amount of spells ( cast project image, cast spells, kill your image, summon another.. )? I wont even mention project image summoning because clearly thats like cheating. How about wands ? I never used them because instantly casting stinking cloud and such was like cheating to me. But if you didnt remove them...the game was designed with having in thought that character will use them. Same with traps...

 

This is all for now, before i install scs2 again i might come back with more questions. Until them, great work, i hope this is not the end of SCS2, there is soo much more you could do, i read that you have ideas for the future, lets hope you wont drop this project and end its development. Cheers !

[DavidW]

You're overestimating the degree of planning and thought that went into SCS2! It's much more piecemeal than you expect: I modify creatures to be as smart as I can manage, and then sometimes I tweak a bit more if "being smart" isn't sufficient to create a challenge (for "David finds it interesting" levels of challenge, not "Players who play extensively using Tactics on Insane will still have to reload many times" level!)

 

Design parameters:

 

(i) The mod is designed to be played at Core level. Feel free to play at higher levels, but I don't make any allowance for them.

(ii) I deliberately don't block exploits

(iii) I don't modify existing game resources unless I really can't make things work without modifying them. So I leave wands alone not because I'm making a positive judgement that they're good, but because I'm not aware of any disastrous consequence of using them.

(iv) I basically ignore the possibility of traps, because (a) I have no experience of using them; (b) I can't immediately think of anything clever to do with them, short of eliminating them entirely.

 

Incidentally, the fact that Dragon Breath and Comet bypass MR looks pretty deliberate to me.

[goblinsly]

Thank you for your reply,

 

Maybe part of the reason that SCS2 was harder to me then Tactics in past ( talking about the beginning of SOA ) was that i tried to play fair and square. Firstly, i didnt use sell/steal to get infinite money and buy every good items right away. That alone made huge impact. Also i didnt use learn/erase/re-learn spells for big experience boost. Partly this is what you do with the mod, sometimes instead of making enemies stronger you nerf the player. That is what i did and as a bonus it is fun to play like this....wait until you get money for new items..buy them....heh. I know Raksasha and Yuan-ti Mages did prove a challenge with SCS2, while with Tactics they werent worth mentioning. Maevar on the other hand is a lot easier with SCS2.

 

SCS2 was designed for core difficulty, does that mean there are problems if you play in insane ? I thought it only meant that between core and insane is 2x the amount of damage. I know, cheap way for harder fights but there it is. From what i gather it would probably be best to install that tweak to basicly always get about half or more health ( NWN style ). To always get the max sounds a bit cheesy to me, with minimum its hard to complete the game on insane. But if you get 5-10 instead of 1-10 on each level up thats fine, there is still a certain amount of randomness involved.

 

As far as traps are concerned, i thought that certain creatures were made immune to them...that would be a possiblity....or even easier, change their damage type to something that is commonly resisted by strong mobs.

 

Have you thought about using the difficulty slider at all ? I mean difference between core and insaine even now is big because of increased damage, and if there would be other things added to it, it would be great. For instance lets say there is a fight on core against 3 big demons and 3 lesser demons ( i am making this up ). In the settings it would be easy to add extra 2 lesser demons on insane, soo u would fight 3 big demons and 5 lesser ones. Since you wouldnt add any "unique" creatures to the battle, it would still look original, hell, certain ppl would not even notice it. Imagine adding 5 beholders to a beholder hive. No one in the world would notice that you did anything, but still, they would be happy because challenge would be greater.

 

Once again, congrats for your great work, it doesnt matter how much planning and thought was involved. To me, this is the greatest bg2 mod and i cant wait to play it once more.

 

edit: Actualy i changed my mind. I gave the answer regarding HP to myself while writing this text. Since core - insane makes nothing more then simply double damage, i can leave the leveling up as it is. That is part of the insane and if you play on insane and tweak the hitpoints, that is basicly not playing on insane. Soo to trully be able to say that you completed it on insane, you have to leave the double damage AND lower health on level up.

[DavidW]

SCS2 was designed for core difficulty, does that mean there are problems if you play in insane ?

No, it should be fine (but I don't make any promises as to how challenging it might be!)

 

As far as traps are concerned, i thought that certain creatures were made immune to them...that would be a possiblity....or even easier, change their damage type to something that is commonly resisted by strong mobs.

 

I generally try to avoid that kind of tweak - it's not very transparent (i.e. the player just has to guess) and it's usually not clear what the in-game justification is.

 

Have you thought about using the difficulty slider at all ?

I've resisted it so far because I don't like the way the difficulty slider changes monster damage (for that reason I wouldn't myself play off core and I don't generally write things I wouldn't want to use myself). However, the latest version of ToBEx (Ascension64's engine-modifier) allows this to be turned off, so I may start making more use of the slider (probably to allow for a more streamlined install for people who don't want to micro-manage it).

 

Once again, congrats for your great work, it doesnt matter how much planning and thought was involved. To me, this is the greatest bg2 mod and i cant wait to play it once more.

 

Thanks!

[freddie]

SCS2 was designed for core difficulty, does that mean there are problems if you play in insane ? I thought it only meant that between core and insane is 2x the amount of damage. I know, cheap way for harder fights but there it is. From what i gather it would probably be best to install that tweak to basicly always get about half or more health ( NWN style ). To always get the max sounds a bit cheesy to me, with minimum its hard to complete the game on insane

 

The problem with Insane in my opinion is basically that classes that can remove damage all together (anyone with stoneskin or ironskin) become much better than classes that just reduce damage (warrior HLAs). The former see no increase in damage (still 0) while the latter gets brutalized unless you take specific steps to avoid that (certain items, kits, etc).