What would people like to see?

[temnix]

I kind of reached a point where I can pretty much implement any idea that comes to mind using the toolset, outside of area editing - I've never gone into that. But otherwise, whatever. But I'm also bored. What kind of mods people want? Quests, NPC, spells, new mechanics? Longer polearm reach? Transparent bears?

[Shin]

Since you ask, in your particular case I would say modularity. Like I've mentioned before, several of your projects have been inventive, like the spell/lightning effects mod and more recently the adventurer's miscellany one. For one thing because of good ideas and for another because graphics editing tends to be more time consuming and more difficult to get right than many other kind of edits.

 

Without the possibility of modular installing though, much of it may end up moot. When you install 50+ mods onto EET or similar, even with care, game knowledge and tried-and-true mods, you can be pretty sure you're inducing at least a couple of bugs that will surface at some point. Hence, installing untested, unwieldy mods that make sweeping file changes often seems like an unnecessary risk even if there is something inside that you feel would benefit your game. Maybe someone just wants a different fireball effect. Case in point, after asking you about modularity for adventurer's miscellany and getting a no, I decided to just edit out the campfire portion for use in my install. Not everyone has that option, and may therefore decide to skip it altogether.

[megamike15]

friendship mods for characters that still dont have one: jan, anomen, nailia, edwin,  jheria, and the ee npcs 

afew more quest mods to  make tob feel less linear. 

 

[temnix]

3 hours ago, Shin said:

Since you ask, in your particular case I would say modularity.

What's your problem with campfires? You don't have to use them if you don't want to. What I think you asked for for the Miscellany was to exclude creature-patching, but that was necessary for several features, like dice-playing. If street NPC had no equipment to wager, no alignment differences and stats to influence how to wager, the dice would be at best a very trivial addition. Another thing I've done in a couple of mods is replace static NPC animations with versions that can walk. There is absolutely no advantage to NPC thrashing on the spot like speared fish when they should be running away or leaving the area on command from my Hypnosis spell, and so on. And I can't imagine why anyone would want to keep stupid, bland original aspects of the games like this untouched. It's this way with all non-optional changes that I've made - they were all of such a nature as to make the games more interesting without taking anything away (except holy blandness). What you say about lighting: you must mean my old stuff with fireball effect replacements. Yes, I might come back to that and make it modular, especially since there are different possibilities - a fire-ring spread or one huge explosion and so on.

@Arthas I've heard there are several mods out there that rewrite Thalantyr's conversation. The dialogue all over again bugs me too, but I haven't ventured to change that to avoid screwing up people's new stores and quest triggers. Recharge wands? I'll think about that...

[subtledoctor]

...Prefixes? 

Okay, I’ll see myself out. 

[Shin]

1 hour ago, temnix said:

What's your problem with campfires? You don't have to use them if you don't want to.

It's the other way around, I liked the campfires but as there was no option to install them without everything else I ended up manually taking them out and implementing them.

[Psionica]

Shar-Teel for BG2 and TOB !

It would be nice if someone found a way to bring back Dynaheir , maybe a twin?

[ithildurnew]

BG2 main plot improvements (arguably fixes) -  call it Consequences In Amn. Make a couple of key decisions actually MATTER (I'm pretty sure there's a lot more than these 2 points that could be made more sensible but this is imo one of the biggest holes in bioware's plot):

1. early or late Spellhold; i.e. make it actually matter, have consequences if you ignore Imoen in Spellhold for too long. Can work off of ingame timer (or total XP accumulated by Charmain if this isn't feasible). Two parts to this:

A. The longer you wait to pick up Imoen, the worse of a state she's in. Make the consequence something that even powergamers would care about; i.e. she becomes weaker and weaker the longer she's in Irenicus' clutches - the version of Immy you get when you get to Spellhold varies in levels depending on how long you took to get there, losing more and more levels the longer you wait. Irenicus and his torture/experiments SHOULD take a real toll over weeks and months! This will create incentive for both roleplayers AND powergamers who want Imoen in their party without being too far behind in levels (the EE game as is often results in an Imoen that's behind the party's XP anyway, so this could be a significant incentive even for the most diehard powergamer).

B. Also, your reputation starts to drop eventually if you wait too long.  This might sound odd, but the fact is Reputation in this game is a highly abstracted response to 'moral' choices (Virtue mod had a more 'realistic' approach to moral choices and public perception vs. actual virtue) and effectively more than just 'what people think of you'; it's often an actual reflection of whether you're making naughty choices or not. While it might seem odd that public opinion goes down for what seems like a private decision, this is more or less how Reputation in the vanilla game often works; i.e. if you do naughty things even in private, karma can come back to bite you in a way that matters as far as game mechanics.

Naturally, pragmatic/evil parties might not care just as in the vanilla game... but it's lackluster storytelling if good and even neutrals do not experience any consequences/impact of this choice. No matter how much some people try and argue otherwise, letting months slip by while someone who is a friend or even acquaintance has been kidnapped to an unknown fate is either dubious motivation/storytelling and/or a less than virtuous choice. For a CE party dropping karma/Reputation and ignoring Immy might be sensible; for most others it's silly (and NOT pragmatic - an adventuring party's best assets are it's members, not magical items - unfortunately games tend to present companions as replaceable objects that are lower priority than spiffy magic items).

2. Make it so that there's in-character reason to do quests that were skipped in ch2 and 3 to get to Imoen quickly. i.e. Don't penalize parties for making sensible in character decisions by making them miss out of huge chunks of the game's content silly Bioware! 

How? The oldest trick in the book for adventure/action plots -  Mcguffins. In chapter 6 you're racing against the clock supposedly because your soul is missing and you need it back; plotwise it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time chasing after the quests you didn't get to in ch2/3... But what if in order to get your soul back, you NEED to chase those quests to fetch Mcguffins that are required to be in your possession to ensure you'll get your soul back? I mean, CHARMAIN doesn't exactly have a plan for HOW to get the soul back once he catches up to Jon anyway - give him one. Have him find content in Jon's journal that hints items/regeants X, Y, and Z are needed to make the soul exchange. Irenicus with all his power and knowhow needed tons of dead Shadow Thieves and intricate machines/rituals in order to extract Charmain's soul - yet Charmain expects to get it back just by stabbing Jon? Let's make it a little more interesting and sensible, and give a credible reason why we need to chase down the quests we didn't get to in earlier chapters - Jon's journal gives clues where these items might be found, script said mcguffins to be in the inventories of boss types from unfinished ch2/3 quests.

In the end, all the best plans fall apart at the Tree of Life since everyone dies and goes to hell etc. - there's no need for a substantially altered cutscene/ritual to get the soul back. Just kill Jon as normal in hell, watch the vanilla cutscene where your soul gets sucked back into you because of the powers of the demiplane. Optionally add text that indicates the presence of the Mcguffins DOES factor in the restoration of your soul as Jon dies.

The End.

 

Ideally, this sort of tweak would be done by someone with some writing chops/finesse...

Edited February 5, 2020 by ithildurnew

[Lauriel]

That's pretty good!  I always used to rush to get Imoen...until @jastey's Imoen Forever mod, in which she doesn't go to Spellhold until you do.  So, the point of doing all the quests in that scenario is to get strong enough to defeat Irenicus, I guess.  I thought a good addition would be to give a different reason for going to Spellhold ... since it's no longer to rescue Imoen for me.  Rather like the Alternatives mod.  But I'd be motivated to go to Spellhold with the purpose of bringing Irenicus to justice for the horrible things he's done.  Just keeping him in Spellhold (as if they could actually keep him there) because he let loose some spells wouldn't be justice enough for keeping people in jars for pity sake!

 

[Lauriel]

Speaking of motivation - I'd like reasons for good characters to break into every house on the every block in every town.  Seriously?  I just don't do it and miss out on SOO much.

[ithildurnew]

@Lauriel

I've installed ImoenForever mod as well on a couple of playthroughs, to address the problem with Bioware's original plot/design. I enjoyed it and definitely found it an improvement in that I can explore more of SoA content while making better storytelling choices than vanilla, plus the extra Imoen banter earlier on with Aerie thanks to Wings mod, etc is very fun (legitimately having Imoen not lose any effectiveness/power at all is also bonus).

There's 2 issues for me with Imoen4ever - there were times where I felt like it changed the base plot TOO drastically, rather than simply improving/fixing it. I have mixed feelings on this; the base plot is arguably silly enough that it's not a big deal, but sometimes I found myself missing the sense of urgency in the vanilla plot (even if it turns out to be completely artificial/false because there are no consquences) and just wanting an improved/fixed version of BW's plot concerning Imoen. (I also think as a guy, the 'rescue damsel in distress' trope more often than not pulls me in rather successfully  )

The 2nd issue (very minor quibble) is that there are elements/bits of dialog etc in Imoen4ever that could stand tightening up. I realize Jastey is not a native English speaker so I give her all the credit in the world for what she's been able to accomplish especially on a conceptual level; however there are bits in her writing that occasionally utilize some odd phrasing/word choices/colloquials and expressions that remind me that I'm reading modded content.

Currently I don't have the mod installed on my latest  EET run, and find myself wishing that there was a mod out there that successfully improves/tweaks the main plot while remaining faithful to the main structure AND providing a sense of believable motivation and urgency.

 

As for motivation for breaking into houses... ... for me having someone like Imoen (or even Coran or Alora) is enough. I mean, she probably won't break into and rob EVERY house in Beregost say, but given her personality and skillset she's definitely going to have a look around and might even pocket some nice things, just like she used to do back in Candlekeep (where DID she get that Wand of Missiles, hmm...).

 

Edited February 5, 2020 by ithildurnew

[Shin]

4 hours ago, ithildurnew said:

How? The oldest trick in the book for adventure/action plots -  Mcguffins. In chapter 6 you're racing against the clock supposedly because your soul is missing and you need it back; plotwise it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time chasing after the quests you didn't get to in ch2/3... But what if in order to get your soul back, you NEED to chase those quests to fetch Mcguffins that are required to be in your possession to ensure you'll get your soul back?

For what it's worth, this is pretty much how I roleplay it, only the other way around. That is, to justify going after Imoen relatively late, I for one thing use SCS to up the gold required to ~120k, and for another headcanon that the work involved in finding out where Imoen is and how to get there requires me to do more than just some quick missions for Bodhi or Aran. For example I might need to explore the Windspear Hills, the ruins beneath the temple area, the Planar Sphere and the Umar Hills to find various bits of information before I can embark on an expedition to Brynnlaw. So when I finally go, weeks or months later, that is as fast as my character was able to do all that which was needed. And, immersive enough, also allowed Irenicus the time to take over, set up his laboratory and perform experiments on numerous test subjects.

[Grammarsalad]

On 1/29/2020 at 1:53 AM, Arthas said:

...

A simple potion seller selling a very huge number of potions in BGT/EET so you don't have to cheese around.

An option to make it possible to recharge wands, rather than having to sell them and buy them once again.

...

It isn't coming any time soon, but I'm working on a mod that adds wand crafting, a lot of new wands and (more relevant) will offer wand recharging. Here are the details so far:

https://github.com/UnearthedArcana/B_Spells/issues/153

I'm doing something similar with potions. I like the idea of adding a potion merchant or two, so I'll see about that as well.

You can also check out tome and blood. It has a version of wand recharging

[subtledoctor]

7 hours ago, ithildurnew said:

2. Make it so that there's in-character reason to do quests that were skipped in ch2 and 3 to get to Imoen quickly. i.e. Don't penalize parties for making sensible in character decisions by making them miss out of huge chunks of the game's content silly Bioware! 

How? The oldest trick in the book for adventure/action plots -  Mcguffins. In chapter 6 you're racing against the clock supposedly because your soul is missing and you need it back; plotwise it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time chasing after the quests you didn't get to in ch2/3... But what if in order to get your soul back, you NEED to chase those quests to fetch Mcguffins that are required to be in your possession to ensure you'll get your soul back?

I discussed an idea like this a long time ago.  It wouldn't be that hard to implement, for a modder who deals with quests and dialogues and such.  (Alas, I am not that modder.)  Something like, you can't leave for Spellhold until you find the Macguffin.  Where is it?  Could be in any one of several dangerous dungeons nearby.  Every time you complete one of the man ch. 2 quests, increase a global variable; when the variable hits a certain number, present the Macguffin among the treasure.  The number could be set during installation, so the player can decide whether they want to be required to do 2 quests, or 4, or 6, or whatever.

The Macguffin to get your soul back is a nice idea, but is a bit involved.  How about something simpler: the Macguffin is needed to get to Brynnlaw.  Think about it, the place consists of mad wizards and pirates... what kind of social/economic situation leads to that?  Well, the wizards have both a reason and the means to keep the island magically hidden.  But the pirates are useful for simple sundries like food etc.  How great would it be for a pirate, if your base of operations was magically shielded and hidden?  You could raid with near-impunity!  Heck, maybe they weren't pirates to begin with; maybe they were trusted professional sailors, hired by the Cowled Wizards.  But then, over time, they turned to piracy because with a magically hidden island as their home, how could they resist??  It's too perfect.

Anyway, so you need this magical sextant or whatever - all the Brynnlaw pirates have one on their ships, but one was lost long ago, a pirate defected and fled to the mainland to be with his beloved, but he was killed and nereids took the sextant, eventually their cave was raided and yadda yadda yadda the Macguffin made its way to somewhere east of Athkatla.  Maybe a dragon ended up with it; maybe a plane-hopping lich; maybe a shadow druid.  Etc.  You'll have to go out and find it and offer it to Saemon Havarian, who knows how to use it and, conveniently, has a ship that can make use of it.  (This also explains his role in the game; the Shadow Thieves alone cannot use the Macguffin; but Saemon, being a multiclass pirate/mage, is both uniquely positioned to make use of the sextant, and uniquely motivated to get his hands on it.)

Like I say, I think a very lightweight mod could achieve this, it would only require a very very small amount of added dialogue and scripting.

Edited February 5, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Skitia]

Timewise, doesn't Irenicus not even takeover Spellhold until the start of chapter 3 (At least shown via cutscene.)? So the torturing doesn't really start until then IMO. Storywise, at the start of chapter 2 you just know she's stuck in prison. With some of the stakes of other quests in the area, I can see validity in helping these other people out first and preparing yourself in equipment before attempting to get Imoen away from the Cowled Wizards. After all, you don't know what you're getting into.

Thus in my opinion, it makes no sense to weaken her or drop reputation, especially the latter, in fact if anything, rushing to Spellhold would seem to have the bigger consequences due to lack of preparation, and that does naturally in the form of your xp and equipment.

My preference is some mod expanding Throne of Bhaal instead or adding quests or unique content specific to its chapters. 

Edited February 5, 2020 by Skitia