1123 replies to this topic

[Jarno Mikkola]

Wait what? Is this SHS or RPGCodex?

Well, like you can see from this:

BG:EE happened (and it's bad (that's why people are angry))

That people love to hate things they didn't contribute to, had they the opportunity or not. Hopefully you don't take it at face value at this point, we'll see it in the future when the Weidu.exe gets it's update, and the projects this spawns ... if the reception becomes more or less positive.
It's like saying the ME3 has a bad ending... yeah, without the DLC, it does. The point being that it was fixed, when the production time allowed.

I know that, but BGT isnt charging me 20 bucks.

Yeah, but instead of the 20 bucks, you need both original games.

. I'm no modder and have little technical skills but going throught all the ".itm" files and putting the appropriate "not usable by <kit>" checkmarks is something even I could do with NI.

Well, if you provide the expertise of the 6 languages, it would yes, be nice.

I think that people fail to realize that the motto: "Free with mods" is not that free and definitely not without mods... see the BWP's .pdf file that has been written on the reference on how to actually "how to install".

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 02 December 2012 - 02:46 PM.

[Daulmakan]

Wait what? Is this SHS or RPGCodex? All I can say is many of you had the chance to be part of the production of BG:EE and say all this stuff directly to the devs... and you didnt. I said what I could and I am quite proud of what was produced.

Cuv, I know you personally made the new Gorion VS. Sarevok cutscene which was an improvement, at least to me. And most of the unhardcoding will certainly prove an asset for future mods. But that's for modders only, and this is a game re-release, for gamers, and it should be judged as such.

So, let me ask you, in general, are you're proud of having a GUI that's much worse than the original and has scaling issues? Of having ZERO graphical options in an "enhanced" game? Of having new bugs (including game-breaking ones) for the "enhanced" version of a 14-year old game? Of not being able to play with most of the mods around (which kept the game strong for all these years) for who knows for how long?

And all these issues come after postponing the release date for 2,5 months. Overhaul/Beamdog seem to me like a beacon of unprofessionality, and the fact that most of the job involved was willfully and freely done by already established modders just makes it a lot worse, because the devs only had a small group of tasks left to accomplish, and they botched them (Apple rejecting the port to Ipad because of bugs is just icing on the cake). I don't want to see the chance for a BG3 game left in the hands of these people.

In turn, you can colour me confused about the fact that people are surprised at why paying 20 bucks for getting a less stable, less complete version of what you can get for free with mods today doesn't sound like an appealing option for some people.

Edited by Daulmakan, 02 December 2012 - 02:39 PM.

[Grunker]

nitpicking

They produced a strictly inferior version with a huge amount of problems. How is commenting on that 'nitpicking'?

[Cuv]

Good points Jarno

Heya Daulmakan! Good points all and I can see how people would be a little upset if their game is not working perfectly.
However, my game IS working perfectly. I remember getting BG1 when it came out... OMG, that was a nightmare getting patches and updates and buggy as hell. Took months before the first patch. These guys have already patched BG:EE 3 times... in 4 days! These devs are the best I have ever seen. Yes... I have been around a while and had dealings with Bioware and Black Isle devs. Trent & Co really care about what they are doing, and knowing that really hurts to see so much Overhaul/Beamdog trashing going around. They have given us everything we asked for... and it has caused problems. We wanted ToBEX... they gave it to us, and then they had to fix the engine. We wanted 1PP, again.. then they had to fix it, but didnt whine about it. We wanted Externalized Animations (tall order)... but ScottBrooks did it for us! That list goes on and on, there is more I cant even talk about until after BG2:EE. So the people you should really be blaming are... Me (and Yovaneth, Avenger_teambg, Solaufein, CamDawg, Wisp, Ardanis, FredRichardson, etc, etc, etc)

About the UI... if you want to know the truth (which I am sure you do)... I hated it and threw a fit when they put that in. Much like everyone else. But I have had time to get used to it and I actually like it more now than the original. Call me weird... but its totally easy to mod that back to the original if you like. And the scaling you mention... I dont see that at all. It scales to my monitors native resolution of 1920x1200. If I want windowed -> I hit Alt+Enter, just like before.

The way I look at this is its a brand new incarnation. You would NOT believe what we went through, heh. We fought them tooth and nail on so many things. Mods will come and existing ones will be made compatible. I am back around to help with that. Just ask everyone to have a little patience. Its has literally been 4 days since release. According to a poll at the forums, 2/3 of players have had no problems at all with their games. And I have seen people posting about trying to force-install mods that wouldnt even be compatible with normal BG2 engine and then screamng bloody murder how beamdog ruined their game! LOL. But of course, this is all just my opinion. I will respect yours too.

[Grunker]

Can mods fix the blurry backgrounds? (serious question)

I doubt it, but I don't know it.

[Cuv]

Grunker I am not getting blurry backgrounds except at the highest zoom. I leave my zoom out so I can see what I am doing. As for the image quality of the tilesets... they are the higher resolution and the upscale algorithm keeps them crisp. Can't really talk about what happened, but they are working on getting us the necessary info for the new tilesets (which has changed) and making modders a tool to help with creating new areas.

Judging by the developers past helpfulness... I have no reason to doubt they will make all things possible. We have but to ask and they try to do it. Right now fixing the game for people with hardware problems is their top priority, and I agree.

[Tempest]

Cuv, we are all well aware that a lot of work went into BGEE. I personally still do not consider it worth buying, particularly given that the great strength of the series has always been the story, and EE adds nothing noteworthy to the story. The new characters are mediocre, and their "romances" deserve the quotation marks.

[Cuv]

Tempest That is a fair opinion. I am not going to be able to sway anyone and I won't try. Will be around modding it though.

[Andrea C.]

Tempest – It's perfectly fine if you don't like the new characters, but I would just want to point out that their "romances" are actually meant to be flirtations that pave the way to a full-blown BG2:EE romance. I believe the rationale between this choice was that full-blown romances have always been a BG2 thing, and it would have been weird to have three already in BG:EE ... especially so in consideration of consistency between the two titles: If you already get the full romance in BG:EE, what is left for BG2:EE?

So, while I can see people being disappointed by the flirty talks if they were expecting a full-blown romance, I can certainly appreciate how it makes sense for it to be this way.

As for the mediocrity of the characters ... well, that's a personal matter, I believe. I admit adding new joinable NPCs to a game that already has above 20 wasn't the first enhancement I though of; however, I must say that I really like the professional portraits and voice-overs they have made for them, and I really like the concepts behind Neera and Dorn (I'm luke-warm toward Rasaad, but I really enjoyed the vignette Dave Gross wrote for his backstory).

[AmyAE]

I appreciate that the BGEE devs have been putting out patches very quickly (although I personally have not experienced many of the problems I've seen other people mention). I also like what I've seen of the original content.

However, I'm disappointed because people who weren't as excited about BGEE to begin with got absolutely nothing to change their mind. I saw "BGEE is a buggy mess" and really, really wanted to give it a chance; a lot of people saw "BGEE is a buggy mess" and decided it wasn't worth their money. It feels like BGEE was super rushed for no good reason (it's a 14-year-old game, waiting a while longer for a new version will not kill anybody). I'm worried about the bad feelings this has created among people who might have supported the game if the initial release was more polished, and what this means for future projects (BG2EE, etc.).

Edited by AmyAE, 03 December 2012 - 08:33 AM.

[Archmage Silver]

I'm just going to wait for some patches now, I don't see the need to frustrate myself with all these new bugs by buying the EE now. That and I want to see a mod or a patch that fixes the GUI.

I might even hold out for BG II EE and buy them both in a package deal, fully patched mind you.

[Azazello]

It's a disappointing "update" to a beloved old game that adds little not already covered by mods and is plagued by technical problems. There's a difference between simply being reactionary and giving the new game its fair chance and finding it wanting.

+1

[Cuv]

Here is your first BG:EE mod - http://www.shsforums...-customize-mod/

[Zireael]

Cuv, I know you personally made the new Gorion VS. Sarevok cutscene which was an improvement, at least to me. And most of the unhardcoding will certainly prove an asset for future mods. But that's for modders only, and this is a game re-release, for gamers, and it should be judged as such.

So, let me ask you, in general, are you're proud of having a GUI that's much worse than the original and has scaling issues? Of having ZERO graphical options in an "enhanced" game? Of having new bugs (including game-breaking ones) for the "enhanced" version of a 14-year old game? Of not being able to play with most of the mods around (which kept the game strong for all these years) for who knows for how long?

And all these issues come after postponing the release date for 2,5 months.

I like the new Gorion's death cutscene too. But the improvements are too few and too unnoticeable compared to the bugs I found out by 30-min browsing of BG EE bug forum. Also, I was like wtf when a friend showed me a screen of the graphical options.

[Dakk]

So the people you should really be blaming are... Me (and Yovaneth, Avenger_teambg, Solaufein, CamDawg, Wisp, Ardanis, FredRichardson, etc, etc, etc)

The day I blame Ardanis (or Wisp, or CamDawg etc) is when you tell me what his salary was from Beamdog and/or how much he's paid from each sold copy of BG:EE.

Edited by Dakk, 03 December 2012 - 12:27 PM.

[Cuv]

We are volunteers. Anyway... I am not seeing the bugs that are being reported. Plays just great on my comp.

[smeagolheart]

It didn't work on my laptop (with integrated intel graphics and AMD graphics), it took some work but I found newer drivers and messed with the ini and the game works fine now. There are still bugs and some functionality that is in BGT is not in EE at the moment. I am used to pressing the Enter key (next to the mouse) to continue and that button doesn't work. little things like that are annoying and not really game breakers but make me want to hold off a bit until a few more patches come out. Once the new patch comes out there will be other stuff that I will report on the BGEE forums to fix. I believe the things that are broken now will be fixed.

[Vonburen]

The thing is: my fully modded ( customized Big World Install) game looks much better than this, has more content than this and runs on an Intel 945GM Express onboard card to boot.
Nothing justifies spending 20$ on this remake, nothing, anything it does, mods do much better.

[Dakk]

We are volunteers.

Exactly.

And that's why I'm not going to blame any of the persons you mentioned, you included.


EDIT: Not that I actually have any blame at all to assign - at this stage - as I've yet to play BG:EE, but the notion that any failure of the game should be attributed to the volunteers was borderline offensive.

Edited by Dakk, 03 December 2012 - 04:33 PM.

[Daulmakan]

We are volunteers.

Exactly.
And that's why I'm not going to blame any of the persons you mentioned, you included.

Pretty much this. It'll be a cold day in hell when I start blaming folks like Ascension or Cam after all they've done.

Beamdog, on the other hand...

The game has no END cinematic anymore, hope it will be fixed soon

Kill Sarevok -> instant Main menu ; no cinematic, no generic, nothing.
http://forum.baldurs...#Comment_169771

Is this for real???

Words truly fail me.

Edited by Daulmakan, 03 December 2012 - 06:20 PM.