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The Icewind Dale Problem

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Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#11

Post by beloch »

Negative1 wrote: post #4

I was hoping this was going to talk about the problem that Beamdog ran into 'enhancing' Icewind Dale 2. They can't find the source code and doing the reverse engineering to make improvements was deemed too costly; http://www.pcgamer.com/icewind-dale-2-cant-be-enhanced-becau... As far as this article; not my cup of tea but the author seems to have put a lot of time into it. If you like data science, dive on in.

I was a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate games back in the day, but never got around to playing the IWD series, which were based on Bioware's infinity engine. I played the enhanced version of IWD1 not too long ago and, of course, had to play IWD2 to satisfy my completionist OCD, even though that meant a little bit more fiddling to get it to work properly.

Verdict: Go play a newer RPG like Pillars of Eternity instead. While I'm sure some people have very fond memories of the IWD series, it has not aged well. The story isn't particularly good, and IWD2 rehashes a little too much of IWD1 for comfort. It is undoubtedly possible to give IWD2 the enhanced version treatment. It's "too costly" because IWD2 just isn't very good, and likely wouldn't have strong sales.

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#12

Post by batiudrami »

Nr7 wrote: post #9

The article briefly mentioned that different stats are useful for different character classes but didn't really take that into account in the model. For example if a barbarian get really high rolls for all stats except strength is it actually a really a good roll for that character or should you consider re-rolling? Edit: Oops, I completely forgot about the ability to reassign points between stats. Thanks to batiudra…

It has a "point buy" system where you can add and subtract points, so only the total is really useful.

Different classes also have different minimum stats - so the calculation is actually rolling 4d6, excluding the lowest, and then rounding up to the minimum if necessary. This means multi-class characters (who might have minimum of 13 in two stats instead of the usual 9), or odd classes such as Paladin who have a minimum 17 charisma end up with much higher average totals than other classes.

It's an entirely broken system, designed for pen and paper D&D where you roll your stats and then choose your class based on what you get, adjusted for video game players who prefer to choose their class first.

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#13

Post by [deleted] »

beloch wrote: post #11
Negative1 wrote: post #4

I was hoping this was going to talk about the problem that Beamdog ran into 'enhancing' Icewind Dale 2. They can't find the source code and doing the reverse engineering to make improvements was deemed too costly; http://www.pcgamer.com/icewind-dale-2-cant-be-enhanced-becau... As far as this article; not my cup of tea but the author seems to have put a lot of time into it. If you like data science, dive on in.

I was a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate games back in the day, but never got around to playing the IWD series, which were based on Bioware's infinity engine. I played the enhanced version of IWD1 not too long ago and, of course, had to play IWD2 to satisfy my completionist OCD, even though that meant a little bit more fiddling to get it to work properly. Verdict: Go play a newer RPG like Pillars of Eternity instead. Wh…

[deleted]

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#14

Post by grawlinson »

Negative1 wrote: post #4

I was hoping this was going to talk about the problem that Beamdog ran into 'enhancing' Icewind Dale 2. They can't find the source code and doing the reverse engineering to make improvements was deemed too costly; http://www.pcgamer.com/icewind-dale-2-cant-be-enhanced-becau... As far as this article; not my cup of tea but the author seems to have put a lot of time into it. If you like data science, dive on in.

>They can't find the source code and doing the reverse engineering to make improvements was deemed too costly

The reverse engineering will be done eventually, by fans that love the game. It's been done for other games (Morrowind, Diablo II, Grand Theft Auto 3, etc)

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#15

Post by dri_ft »

I clocked more than my fair share of hours rerolling stats on Baldur's Gate. But in retrospect, it seems like outrageously shoddy game design. "We're going to have a permanent set of stats that determine how powerful your character is for the whole game, and how good those stats are is going to depend mostly on how much time you spend clicking 'reroll' and a little bit on luck. And we're going to make you do this all in one go, right at the start of the game, before you even get to have any fun."

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#16

Post by dozzie »

dri_ft wrote: post #15

I clocked more than my fair share of hours rerolling stats on Baldur's Gate. But in retrospect, it seems like outrageously shoddy game design. "We're going to have a permanent set of stats that determine how powerful your character is for the whole game, and how good those stats are is going to depend mostly on how much time you spend clicking 'reroll' and a little bit on luck. And we're going to make you do this all…

Note that it's not because the game was designed this way, but because the Dungeons and Dragons system was designed this way. It's not optimized for first-time and impatient computer players, but for roleplayers.

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#17

Post by Nr7 »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #6

Alternate Reality, a cult classic game from the 1980s by Philip Price featured a character creation process similar to the one described in this article (it also contained many other game features well ahead of its time). A rotating series of numbers would scroll through each stat box, with the player having to hit the space bar to freeze the numbers and select their stats. However, the stats slowly degraded the long…

Captive, another cult classic from early 90s used another novel method of calculating the stats for the characters. The game used an algorithm that determined the stats based on the name the player gave to each character. I even remember seeing some recommended names on the cheats & tips sections of some computer games magazines back in the day.

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#18

Post by masklinn »

erikb wrote: post #7

It seems the article talks about anything but the topic it is trying to talk about. What is the conclusion? When to stop? What do the axis in the diagrams mean? I read it like 1.5 times and still don't get any result from it.

It's sad that the plots are mostly unlabelled because that aside they're fairly clear:

On the color maps, vertical is the score you got on your last roll (sum of all attributes), horizontal is the index of the current roll, color is the chance of getting a better roll.

There is no "hard line" for when to stop because it depends on how risk-averse you are, and compounding the lack of labelling the labelling of color maps 3 and 4 is the opposite of what it shows: it's how the map changes when you lower risk averseness (increase risk seeking) by increasing probability thresholds compared to map 2.

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#19

Post by rodgerd »

dozzie wrote: post #16
dri_ft wrote: post #15

I clocked more than my fair share of hours rerolling stats on Baldur's Gate. But in retrospect, it seems like outrageously shoddy game design. "We're going to have a permanent set of stats that determine how powerful your character is for the whole game, and how good those stats are is going to depend mostly on how much time you spend clicking 'reroll' and a little bit on luck. And we're going to make you do this all…

Note that it's not because the game was designed this way, but because the Dungeons and Dragons system was designed this way. It's not optimized for first-time and impatient computer players, but for roleplayers.

It's not really inherint to role players. Plenty of popular RPGs had radically different (and often non-chance based) character generation systems, ranging from the sublime (doling out combinations from a pool and trading strengths and weaknesses, like GURPS and Shadowrun) to the ridiculous (Traveller, where your character can die before the start of the game).

Re: The Icewind Dale Problem

#20

Post by Semaphor »

rodgerd wrote: post #19
dozzie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it's not because the game was designed this way, but because the Dungeons and Dragons system was designed this way. It's not optimized for first-time and impatient computer players, but for roleplayers.

It's not really inherint to role players. Plenty of popular RPGs had radically different (and often non-chance based) character generation systems, ranging from the sublime (doling out combinations from a pool and trading strengths and weaknesses, like GURPS and Shadowrun) to the ridiculous (Traveller, where your character can die before the start of the game).

To be fair, in some games, Hackmaster for example, your character dying during char creation can give benefits to your next character. But then that game also had you roll a D10,000 for critical hits ;)
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