I have seen several polls created on another website about the sexuality of NPCs in Baldur's Gate. Some of these polls can be quite interesting/humerous. I, myself created one of the polls on the aforementioned website because many people there seemed to find them interesting and amusing to read and discuss. However, a small group of people on that website decided to make it their business to prevent the rest of us from exercising our First Amendment rights to discuss this topic and flamed these polls and eventually persuaded a moderator to close them.
Before they shut down these polls I found it to be a somewhat amusing topic, but nothing special. Now that they have been shut down, I see it as only fair that they be continued here. If people want to vote in them they should have that right and this blog will provide it. If you don't like the topic you don't have to vote. It's that simple.
Poll #1:
This first poll concerns Kivan's sexuality. Kivan's sexuality is in question because his biography refers to Kivan's "mate," but does not use any pronouns or other words that might signify the sex/gender of the "mate" being described. The first several options are from the original poll. The rest I garnered from answers people posted after voting for the "Some other option" category.
Poll #2
The second poll concerns the sexuality of Xan, an NPC from Baldur's Gate 1. I did not make this poll myself and the name and all the possible choices are the same as in the original. It was originally created by Mungri on a different site, but was shutdown in the same repressive wave that took the Kivan poll.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
My opinion about Baldur's Gate
The purpose of this blog is to discuss aspects of the Baldur's Gate
games that are interesting or intriguing in some way or that could be
improved. One way of doing this is by using polls. I plan to post
several polls that will help gage the opinions people have for various aspects of the game. I will try to make all polls balanced so that everyone will have an option they agree with, but if by some chance that doesn't happen, than please vote for whichever option seems to fit you best and if you want to elaborate post a comment clarifying your point.
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Ever since it was first released in 1998, Baldur's Gate 1 and later Baldur's Gate 2 have been among my favorite games of all time. I really like being able to travel on adventures with a party of NPCs with well-developed personalities, some of whom I came to admire in the same way I would characters in well-written novels.
There are two features of the games that I think could be made much better:
1.) The level cap. In my opinion, there should be no level cap at all, but if there is going to be one it should be much higher than the current level cap of 40. Ideally, it should be so far away that no one ever reaches it. This would be more fun because it would be possible to play through multiple playthroughs of the game with the same characters and still continue to advance. If the game's difficulty were also adjusted it would not get significantly easier than in its present form, indeed the SCS tactics mod and turning the slider up to the "insane" difficulty level will allow the game to remain very difficult, so that that is possible to both use the fun high level spells and still have a challenging game experience at the same time.
2.) Importing NPCs. The way the games are currently designed it is possible to import the player character (PC) into the beginning of the game from any point further in, even the very end of the game. I would like this to also be an option for joinable party members (NPCs). This makes it much more interesting and balanced in additional game playthroughs beyond the first, since the NPCs will be the same approximate level as the PC and it doesn't make sense to be forced to replace a good party dynamic with weak, incompetent characters at the beginning of each subsequent playthroughs, particularly when playing on more difficult settings.
I have played both games many times and with a myriad of different character classes and on different settings, however, the kinds I have found that I like the most are playing with a half-elf multi-class Fighter/Mage in multiple playthroughs with the same character. Before I learned to use Shadowkeeper I would just use the same character by himself through multiple playthroughs until I eventually grew tired of the game. With Shadowkeeper it is possible for me to re-create my favorite NPCs and re-play the game with them advancing with me. It is also possible for me to cycle my characters' XP, so even though the game has a level-cap, it is possible to circumvent it, although the process is currently a bit slow. I can also use Shadowkeeper to re-create NPCs in the beginning of a new playthrough to what they had at the end of the previous one, but this is very time consuming, especially for spellcasters. I estimate that I spend more time circumventing problems like this than I do playing the actual game, which is why I would really like to get this problem solved.
I will try to explain my level-cap circumvention process in more detail, for those who are interested. If you aren't just skip this next section and vote in the polls! A couple years ago I tried to get the mod that raised the level cap to 50 to work on my computer. It did not, so I came up with my own system of cycling my characters through levels 1-40 since it was the best that I could do. Whenever a character reaches level 40 I use Shadowkeeper to reset their XP to zero and their level to one, but they keep whatever proficiencies, spells, saving throws, and HP they already had. They can then start gaining XP again and increasing their power.
This system is far from perfect and is very time consuming because every time I get a level-up the game wrecks my characters' spells and saving throws and I have to add them all back in again, but it is the only functional way that I've been able to keep going. My current game is the 5th playthrough of my PC and my favorite NPC (Viconia). My two 5th playthrough characters are currently in their 7th cycle, which means that they have reached level 40, been reduced back to level 1, and then reached level 40 again 6 times, and are currently mid-way through their next cycle. If I were to add all those levels up, this would make Viconia a level 195 cleric right now. My PC is a bit more complicated to calculate because he is multi-class, so he's probably a bit lower, but is still in excess of level 100.
If the level cap were either removed or greatly increased beyond its current form and if it were possible to import NPCs into subsequent playthroughs like it is now for PCs the Baldur's Gate games would be considerably more convenient. Thus, I am hoping that some nice person in either the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (BGEE) development team or in some other position to maybe be able to fix these problems will do so.
------
Ever since it was first released in 1998, Baldur's Gate 1 and later Baldur's Gate 2 have been among my favorite games of all time. I really like being able to travel on adventures with a party of NPCs with well-developed personalities, some of whom I came to admire in the same way I would characters in well-written novels.
There are two features of the games that I think could be made much better:
1.) The level cap. In my opinion, there should be no level cap at all, but if there is going to be one it should be much higher than the current level cap of 40. Ideally, it should be so far away that no one ever reaches it. This would be more fun because it would be possible to play through multiple playthroughs of the game with the same characters and still continue to advance. If the game's difficulty were also adjusted it would not get significantly easier than in its present form, indeed the SCS tactics mod and turning the slider up to the "insane" difficulty level will allow the game to remain very difficult, so that that is possible to both use the fun high level spells and still have a challenging game experience at the same time.
2.) Importing NPCs. The way the games are currently designed it is possible to import the player character (PC) into the beginning of the game from any point further in, even the very end of the game. I would like this to also be an option for joinable party members (NPCs). This makes it much more interesting and balanced in additional game playthroughs beyond the first, since the NPCs will be the same approximate level as the PC and it doesn't make sense to be forced to replace a good party dynamic with weak, incompetent characters at the beginning of each subsequent playthroughs, particularly when playing on more difficult settings.
I have played both games many times and with a myriad of different character classes and on different settings, however, the kinds I have found that I like the most are playing with a half-elf multi-class Fighter/Mage in multiple playthroughs with the same character. Before I learned to use Shadowkeeper I would just use the same character by himself through multiple playthroughs until I eventually grew tired of the game. With Shadowkeeper it is possible for me to re-create my favorite NPCs and re-play the game with them advancing with me. It is also possible for me to cycle my characters' XP, so even though the game has a level-cap, it is possible to circumvent it, although the process is currently a bit slow. I can also use Shadowkeeper to re-create NPCs in the beginning of a new playthrough to what they had at the end of the previous one, but this is very time consuming, especially for spellcasters. I estimate that I spend more time circumventing problems like this than I do playing the actual game, which is why I would really like to get this problem solved.
I will try to explain my level-cap circumvention process in more detail, for those who are interested. If you aren't just skip this next section and vote in the polls! A couple years ago I tried to get the mod that raised the level cap to 50 to work on my computer. It did not, so I came up with my own system of cycling my characters through levels 1-40 since it was the best that I could do. Whenever a character reaches level 40 I use Shadowkeeper to reset their XP to zero and their level to one, but they keep whatever proficiencies, spells, saving throws, and HP they already had. They can then start gaining XP again and increasing their power.
This system is far from perfect and is very time consuming because every time I get a level-up the game wrecks my characters' spells and saving throws and I have to add them all back in again, but it is the only functional way that I've been able to keep going. My current game is the 5th playthrough of my PC and my favorite NPC (Viconia). My two 5th playthrough characters are currently in their 7th cycle, which means that they have reached level 40, been reduced back to level 1, and then reached level 40 again 6 times, and are currently mid-way through their next cycle. If I were to add all those levels up, this would make Viconia a level 195 cleric right now. My PC is a bit more complicated to calculate because he is multi-class, so he's probably a bit lower, but is still in excess of level 100.
If the level cap were either removed or greatly increased beyond its current form and if it were possible to import NPCs into subsequent playthroughs like it is now for PCs the Baldur's Gate games would be considerably more convenient. Thus, I am hoping that some nice person in either the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (BGEE) development team or in some other position to maybe be able to fix these problems will do so.
The purpose of this blog is to provide a place where people can vote in polls about game-related topics that interest them. Currently there are other sites that provide this, but they have recently come under attack by forum-nazis/trolls who seek to remove all content that does not 100% meet their approval. I created this blog as a means to circumvent that so the democratic process of poll voting can continue in spite of those who seek to destroy it.
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