Beamdog's hand-holding has poisoned the games everywhere

[temnix]

I'm trying to make changes, add some new features. Balance one thing against the other. When I add a new item, I ask myself where I should make it available. Where it should be sold. Where it would make sense to stash some freebies as well. In a container, possibly. To get people to look around again instead of going through BG on powergaming zombie autopilot. Not too early, not too easily available. Hide it here, or there. All these considerations are bouncing off between the walls of my head like tennis balls, and then WHAM, I run into another case of egregious hand-holding by Beamdog, who really insists on stuffing expensive, overpowered loot in places where the softest-noggined player is going to run into it, doing nothing to deserve it. Make gameplay blatantly obvious, safe like snuggling with a eunuch and sugary sweet like a lollipop handout - that's Beamdog's way.

The latest example? Galtok, that gnome who is running away from kobolds in the south of Nashkel's mine exterior. In the original BG he just cried for help and got shot in short order. What did Beamdog do? Boost his XP value three-fold, so that the party can kill him and get experience with no effort (of course, he should be an innocent, I don't know if he was in the original, but he ought to be by every right), boosted his carried gold to 153 gp (again, I don't know how much he carried with Bioware, but practically no one carries THAT much), gave him no fewer than two suits of armor (worn one on top of the other, I guess), several spell scrolls, a robe of fire resistance, too (I don't remember him dropping it before), but best of all, a scroll of protection from magic! Those scrolls were a bad idea of Bioware's to begin with. If there is one item that's overpowered in the original game, it's them. They block everything and their protection lasts a long, long time. You can laugh at whole bands of wizards and priests with just one scroll and wade through traps. Any number of these scrolls in the game is a mistake, in my opinion, but at least they weren't common. And what did Beamdog do in this case? Put a free one in the inventory of an NPC with 2 hit points, who will die a moment after his conversation ends and unload the goodies!

And this kind of shit is everywhere. Players are used to these handouts, if they play the Enhanced Edition, which is what I make most mods for, just because I want the improved toolset features. It's only natural. Beamdog could understand that they have the present of these games in their hands. And all that company does is add more butter! What kind of innovation, new accents or rebalancing are possible when every angle of gameplay is covered with foolish, easy, stupid, lazy lard?

[Graion Dilach]

Galtok has no differences in these values regards between his unmodded ToTSC and his unmodded BGEE variant. He gives 54 gold in both (dunno where your 153 came from, check your mods), has and drops two armor in both besides the fire resistance cloak. The only meaningful difference he has in BGEE is that he lost his short sword proficiency (and having his soundset fixed).

[The Artisan]

tl;dr you're an idiot

[temnix]

I was actually wrong about this. It's surprising. I did not notice that although, unmodded, he has two suits of armor and a few scrolls, including protection from magic, they are not assigned slots in the inventory, so he does not drop them. He only drops a robe of fire resistance and a dagger. The point about Beamdog's hand-holding remains, but in this case they didn't do anything. Except double his XP worth from 75 to 150, in case the party decides to kill this wounded fugitive before the kobolds do.

[CamDawg]

2 hours ago, temnix said:

I was actually wrong about this. It's surprising.

 

[CamDawg]

[Guest SBlack]

It's people like you who poison games with their inability to never make a point without silly, completely unrelated, whining

[temnix]

@CamDawg What is the point of those screenshots? For a guy who's not not lazy you have plenty of time on your hands. I already acknowledged that I was mistaken about dropped items. I simply had not noticed that the scrolls and armor were not assigned slots. As for the experience value, here I went by the BG Wiki. I'm not going to look for a link to that page, if you'll excuse me.

[CamDawg]

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Galtok

[suy]

2 hours ago, temnix said:

@CamDawg What is the point of those screenshots?

I think Artemius already anticipated well which is the point of those screenshots...

[temnix]

How many useless excuses for humanity are banging about these boards? Go masturbate with a mop or something.

[Almateria]

1 hour ago, temnix said:

How many useless excuses for humanity are banging about these boards? Go masturbate with a mop or something.

[jastey]

I'm tempted to write "please don't feed the troll".