GameBanshee Forums

Hi!

Do you consider the "cast-web-while-out-of-line-of-sight-then-lower-resistence-then-cast-cloudkills-and-maybe-some-magic-missiles-tactic" a cheat?

I beat almost everybattle with this tactic : /

Not that fun i guess but it certaintly a part of the game...

Many people, including me consider doing things that enemies can't do against you as cheating, but there are a lot of different opinions about that. As for your example casting spells such as cloudkill or fireball from out of the fog of war is cheating but casting those spells to enemies who are already webbed is not, assuming you did cast web while they can see you.

No, not really. There are a lot of cheats in the game, but the only reasonable argument as to why that would be a cheat is that either 1 - you "know" the fight beforehand and takes advantage of it or 2 - the enemies can't do the same to you.

1 is kind of unavoidable. No matter if you prebuff or not, you do know the fight and you will subconciously be prepared on a totally different way to the fights.

2, well, my personal oppinion is that that argument is just plain invalid. It's a part of the game. Many enemies uses things that I don't have, I can't see why I shouldn't be able to use my arsenal.

2, well, my personal oppinion is that that argument is just plain invalid. It's a part of the game. Many enemies uses things that I don't have, I can't see why I shouldn't be able to use my arsenal.

Like what? A dragon using his wing buffet against you? oh my god he's cheating! Besides don't you also have things that enemies don't have, like a bra.. uhh, a keyboard?

Apsis wrote:Like what? A dragon using his wing buffet against you? oh my god he's cheating! Besides don't you also have things that enemies don't have, like a bra.. uhh, a keyboard?

Um, no, he's not cheating. That's exactly what I mean. You're the one arguing the opposite unless there's a huge typo in your previous post.

Apsis wrote:Like what? A dragon using his wing buffet against you? oh my god he's cheating! Besides don't you also have things that enemies don't have, like a bra.. uhh, a keyboard?

Of course that's not cheating, but Dragons having numerous instant Heal spells, now that is cheating.

There are numerous ways that the game does 'cheat', many are understandable in some way, but the Min1HP items which mean a cahracter/creature can't be killed in anyway, that is cheating big time, just to make up for extremely poor game design.

As for attacking enemies before they know you're there, that is standard tactics if you can pull it off, to call it cheating is absurd. Yet again the real culprit is piss poor AI, not players behaving naturally. All too often the enemy stand around in convenient groups, no attempt having been made to establish a perimiter, no warning devices or guards on watch. Don't blame the chracters for taking advantage of the enemy's stupidity. Of course alignment and ethics should play a part, should goody two-shoes really be ambushing those brain dead campers without establishing that the ARE the enemy? Having someone who can detect evil helps of course, but if you're evil yourself, it doesn't matter.

I don't see exploiting the engine and AI as cheating, but I see it as a rather cheesy tactic.

Nightmare wrote:I don't see exploiting the engine and AI as cheating, but I see it as a rather cheesy tactic.

Now that I can agree with.

What about utilising your characters properly though? If you have a Light reconaisance expert (thief or ranger) in you rparty doesn't it make sense to use their expertise. By having them scout ahead using their HIS or invisibility, then surprising an opponent is part and parcel of that. Do you consider that cheesy? I can understand why you would, because the AI is incapable of handling that type of situation. Unfortunately deliberately not taking advantage of your assets is in it's way more unrealistic than exploiting them.

The heal spells that dragons cast are not instant.

I dont consider using fog-of-war to ones advantage cheating, cheesy as it is legitly where the AI wont properly respond to such suprise attacks, that to them are coming seemly out of nowhere, i'd say its also the fault of the limited sight range of characters, considering in reality you could easily see far beyond of that small distance that is covered in the game.

About the Min1hp thing, i dont think its poor game design really, considering that usually in games you cant even attack everybody, or if you can the mainplot gets screwed up like in Morrowind etc. if you kill some important person. Its much cooler this way, rather than instantly getting killed(well except at one point) or something if you attack such a person whos not meant to be killed at that time. Also its even possible to kill such Min1hp people anyways, so while having a few seemly indestructible people in the game imo limits the freedom you have in the game far less i think, than not being able to attack them at all for example. We cant exactly expect the kind of freedom you get in like Fallouts, this is a very story driven game afterall, but still i think bg's are extremely free and without much limitations.

@Thrifalas
I'm sorry if i misinterpreted any of your posts, i'm not a native speaker.

There are numerous ways that the game does 'cheat', many are understandable in some way, but the Min1HP items which mean a cahracter/creature can't be killed in anyway, that is cheating big time, just to make up for extremely poor game design.

I don't understand, are you considering avoiding plot breakings as cheating? There is no creature that you are supposed to kill carrying a minhp item.

As for attacking enemies before they know you're there, that is standard tactics if you can pull it off, to call it cheating is absurd. Yet again the real culprit is piss poor AI, not players behaving naturally. All too often the enemy stand around in convenient groups, no attempt having been made to establish a perimiter, no warning devices or guards on watch. Don't blame the chracters for taking advantage of the enemy's stupidity.

This is not what i meant by cheating. Of course surprise attacks are a part of the game but if you are killing a group of enemies by aoe spells while the sole reason they can't fight back is poor AI, then it is cheating. It would be easier if you kill them by ctrl+Y and add the xp to party by console.

Well, even in the advanced tactical mods, where almost all tough enemies can at least detect Invisible/Hidden in Shadows/Sanctuaried party members, there is a simple divination spell called Farsight. With its help, each time a party enters a new dungeon, the whole area can be scouted. In addition, I personally don't consider targeting AoE spells under Farsight cheating, no matter that the enemy cannot do the same to you.

As a side note - even in the Improved Anvil mod (which Sikret claims to be free of monster cheat) I've encountered certain monsters cheating - not simply using some special abilities which the party doesn't have, but simply blatantly cheating. I can provide screenshots for proof if need be.

Of course we're all cheating! Every gamer knows the most powerful spells that have no match: SAVE and LOAD

Saros wrote:I can provide screenshots for proof if need be.

I'd love some. ^^ I am still in quite a shock after comparing what Sikret told me about the mod and the actual mod, hehe.

Here you are - an example. Traxll'ssilliya casting his Spell Trigger:

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/21096/234402.jpg

And sequencer:

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/21096/234403.jpg

Under Time Stop effect.

I might post some more later - right now I don't have the time.

Here you are one more example: Layene in the Improved Anvil Twisted rune:

To make a long story short - the Protagonist is a Blade, with pre-set 7 Time Traps. Layene's location was revealed via an Oracle spell, and immediately afterwards Shyressa triggered a serie of pre-laid traps. PC removed Layene's stoneskin in melee, dealt a little damage (1-2 strikes) and cast Time Stop from a scroll afterwards:

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/23314/260734.jpg

Only 1 round later - Layene is at near-death.

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/23314/260735.jpg

Still, even though Layene received many wounds afterwards (and a second Time Stop was cast from a scroll) she didn't die. There is no 'death-talk' in her case (like Abazigal or Sendai for instance) - her script is made in such a fasion that she *cannot* die before she casts her one and only Wish spell. It's neither logical, nor fair - this tactic is in fact very probably to be applied by anyone who has fought this battle several times and have discovered that Layene is the most dangerous enemy. and relatively easy to be brought to Near-Death.

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/23314/260736.jpg

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/23314/260737.jpg

I also have some screenshots on Improved Anvil dragons casting Spell Turning from their Spell Triggers, which is also not fair.

http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/23314/260759.jpg

These are the most notable cheating-monster examples. But there are more, even though one may not consider them that much of a cheat or, in other words, 'nothing-can-be-done-about-this' kinda stuff.
Here are some examples:

Enemy spellcasters have a sequence of starting buffs activated when a party members enters their line of sight for the first time. This is logical, of course, since it is made to simulate a pre-buff (which party members also do). However, since all of these buffs are activated simultaneously (and there is quite a lot of them, usually 10-12), the duration of short-lasting buffs is highly unrealistic - for instance, no player with a Cleric character can cast True Sight, DUHM, Chant, Bless, Death Ward (in IA only 2 turns lasting), and benefit from these buffs at their full duration, while an enemy Cleric can and will. This may seem a little thing, but in Improved Anvil even such small details may mean the difference between winning and losing a battle.

Enemy high-level casters (in one party) can summon more than 1 Deva or Fallen Planetar (although usually each enemy caster has 1 such spell memorized). For instance, in the first Improved Drow Ambush, the 4 Drow Priestesses each summon a Fallen Deva. In this connection - the summoning 5-unit limit doesn't apply for enemies - and I mean exactly summons, from spells, and not additional gated monsters, which is a totally different thing,

Apsis wrote:I don't understand, are you considering avoiding plot breakings as cheating? There is no creature that you are supposed to kill carrying a minhp item.

Putting characters that are essential to the plot in a position that they can be killed is bad managemen, to avoid the plot being broken by equiping the caharacter with a Min1HP item is frankly pathetic game design, and yes it is cheating in my opinion.

For example why does Bohdi appear when all her den have been wiped out and you drive the final steak through the heart of her chief minion? It should be obvious to her by that point that she can only lose a confrontation, so being an intelligent Vampire she'd logically run away, to fight another day. Making her appear, get beaten, but preventing her death by use of a cheat item is quite frankly god awful game design and rank cheating. It's also infuriating, the first time I reached that point I put the game away in disgust, and only came back some time later when I had nothing else to play.

BG2 is a masterpiece, but an extremely flawed one, when assessing it one has to take a 'Wart's and all' approach, even with the warts it's still one of the best games ever produced.

That was awesome, thanks Saros. Was a very good read, the pics and descriptions was very appreciated. It would be typically Sikret to script it so that she always gets to cast her Wish spell, he probably considers anything else to be cheating.

Well, would you rather that everything was piss easy? And what says that those enemies don't have some abillities you just can't get? (Maybe some magicall creatures from other planes? :O ) And the game would suck if you only fought Bodhi once. The game is about hunting Irenicus and Bodhi... And to pump up the excitment you need to be close to a kill. Clever design rather then lousy.... imo