Random remaining inaccuracies in Legacy Mode

[Adventure Square]

- Various equipment is usable by the wrong characters classes in at least Bard's Tale 1.
- Chest disarming incorrectly is unavailable to non-rogues
- Chest disarming UI rework is obviously inconsistent, but increases chance of error. In the original system, the choices were (T)rap Zap, and (D)isarm. Now they are (5) Disarm and (6) trap zap. The latter are far, far easier to miskey. Overall competency at touch typing numbers is far lower. This could be reduced by moving my rogue to the front of the party, though miskey would still exist, it would not result in an unintended action. However, a rogue leading the party doesn't sound like a good idea.
- Exposed (and variable) hunter skill
- Wrong initial stat ranges (generally N-1, mimicing the amiga bugs)
- Vastly too much gold
- Still no differentiation between forward and forward-open-door. (necessary for disabled automap!)
- Traveller's Tune still double-strength.

I assume the gold is intentional, but this is called Legacy Mode, right? Gold is a bit broken in the Bard's Tale 1/2/3 design, where it's generally only relevant towards the start (and in 3, barely even that), but by pumping it up it's kind of never relevant. This isn't really an improvement, at least not for Legacy Mode.

This is less of a problem in the plain remaster, because you can stuff a very large number of gold pieces into identifying items at Roscoe's. Legacy (rightly) lacks this gold sink, so money should probably be returned to closer to BT1 levels. The ability to grind large enemy counts in Legacy is also a factor. I began BT2 with close to 3 million gold. At original game levels, gold also piled up, but it was a realistic cushion against a string of party wipes for a while. Exploring Mangar could easily be money negative due to level drains and stonings unless you knew what to run away from.

Minor:
- In many prompts to select a character, choosing one from the character list doesn't work, though sometimes it does.
- Sanctuary Score incorrectly shows mystic shield icon
- When attacking, only groups A and B are listed. C and D are not displayed. In Non-Legacy mode this might be a deliberate choice (though I would argue it is poor one, just grey out C and D, or things out of range). In Legacy Mode, it is inaccurate.
- The lighting remains too dim to see walls accurately 3-4 tiles away, rendering GRRE pretty useless. This is pretty bad in no-automap, because some dungeons are built to rely on mapping at a distance.

Annoyances:
- During character creation, it's natural to type the character name incorrectly into the portrait filter, which results in the wrong portrait an confusion when asked for the name "again". Avoidable with some kind of YES THIS PORTRAIT action located right by the filter entry.

[Adventure Square]

It's unclear whether the STUN effect from sorcerer lightning attacks is intended as a novel experience or a bugfix. it certainly doesn't match the actual experience of playing the original games on any platform.

Based on https://bardstale.fandom.com/wiki/Status_Effect it seems this effect never existed.

It would be a bit ho-hum except for the penchant for applying to the entire party at once. That sort of thing is best left for Wizardry.

[76561198827547584]

Hey there, I've run your comments over to Krome so we can consider them, but something worth noting is that we've said since the beginning of Krome's work on the project that Legacy Mode was never going to be a 1:1 recreation of how the original games played. This is mainly down to the fact that there is no definitive original version. Each version of each game had myriad differences in gameplay, graphics, audio, and bugs. Legacy Mode is more closely designed to capture the spirit of the originals while also allowing players to implement certain elements that were changed for the core remastered versions.

[Satisfaction]

Thanks, Paul, for a wonderful remastering! But I think there's a BUG in the Legacy version. I get "not usable item" with my Paladin tries to use the Pureblade. Also, Mage Star used to cost 5 sp.

[76561198827547584]

I passed that one along earlier, too, actually, re: Pureblade. There's a large update arriving in the not too distant future that may address some of these issues already. You can read about here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/843260/discussions/1/1651045226219581198/

[Adventure Square]

The definitive version of Bard's Tale 1 & 2 is easy. The c64 and Apple II versions are those which the vast majority played and with the fewest obviously unintended changes.

That said, the changes listed here are mostly just completely different from all the versions. The presentation of "you can play like the 1980s games" is pretty mis-representative in that context. It would probably be best to rephrase the promo copy and in-game description if the target is to change a wide variety of design elements to be significantly dissimilar.

I would add that when running the Kickstarter campaign, the "remaster built by Old Skuul" definitely did not imply "random design changes" in the implied promises delivered. Obviously, Krome was not party to those suggestions, but the now-implicit decision to not even try to make a remaster option that plays like the original game does not impress.

[Satisfaction]

I want to thank inXile for staying in touch. I play the original Bard's Tale (Amiga) and started the 2004 Apple ][gs before getting the remaster. I have found this version quite a bit easier, but mostly because there was no internet back in the 80's and didn't know how important Dexterity was during character creation!

[Adventure Square]

- Anti Magic squares incorrectly immediately disable light spells. The map makers clearly designed SOME locations to remove magic, others to remove light,and SOME to remove both. This version just implements this incorrectly. This removes gameplay variation to no benefit, and in automap just makes the game more irritating without adding anything. With automap disabled, this damages gameplay significantly. Addition: Since most Death Snares are anti-magic zones, this change really ruins them.

- Second Sight & Sorcerer Sight incorrectly can locate a trap behind another trap. Some maps are specifically designed to make sussing this information out a challenge.
- Summoned monsters do not reliably attack group A. This makes it harder to co-ordinate with summoned groups,which makes them even less useful than in the original games in most cases. It's better in rare situations like a party of 6 summons, but much worse in the common situation of 1 summon and 6 party members. Since summons were already very underpowered compared to party members, this feels like a really unfortunate change.
- Crystal Golem in Kylerean's Tower is somewhat broken. Killing the statue with crystal sword in possession is not enough as it was in BT1. Killing the statue with the sword equipped is not enough. Killing the statue after hitting it with the sword is not enough. Only getting the killing blow with the sword is enough. Since my Greater Demon kept sniping it, I just had to try 15 times in a row.
- Major alterations in Bard's Tale 2 to the requirements to access the Dreamspell. These require interacting with new characters, stories, etc that are just for BT4 linkage. They're fine in the non-legacy mode but shouldn't exist in this mode. -- Ugh, and to top this off, it doesn't even work the same way in legacy mode vs non-legacy?? So it's deliberately inaccurate? This is also pretty annoying on replay going from legacy -> nonlegacy. You know the words, and now you have to "find" them again?
- In the Tombs for example in the original game, there are already too many messages that don't refer to the current dungeon. Adding more for the Dreamspell is unfortunate.
- Zanduvar Carack appears to incorrectly deliver 1hp per cast per round, regardless of dungeon depth.
- Remaster drops movement keystrokes. If you move, for example, forward,forward, forward,left, forward, pressing those buttons rapidly, then the game will drop inputs entered when previous movements were not completed. This seems reasonable when you are moving around town, but when you're in the dungeon, you can be in the dark, and you can be entirely unaware that your movements are dropped, and what movements are dropped. This is a huge bug for no-automap mode. You can correct for it in some places with judicious scry sight, but in others you are in antimagic and cannot. This is sort of a irritation in general really, walking through town was vastly faster and more accurate on the C64. But in Darkness in dungeons it's really annoying.

???:

- Combat numbers are way out of whack. In BT1, at around -8 AC, the 99 berserkers miss over 90% of the time,probably hitting around 4% of the time. That's enough for 198 to kill someone, but not until most of the round has passed. In this game, at -8 AC, they hit around 30%-40% of the time, which is easily enough to kill early in the round. I need to get to an AC like -15 to reasonably participate in this fight.

Minor:
- Spinners are incorrectly weaker. In the game, you could not get correct information from the compass or map about current facing while on a spinner. Here the minimap simply tells you. Some dungeons are clearly designed to make spinners leave you on ambiguous locations where you would have to depart the spinner to later determine your direction / location via one of various means. With automap, this is sort of ho-hum, but in automap disabled this damages gameplay.
- A much larger percentage of traps in Mangar 1 are Basilisk Snares. And they much more reliably apply their results. Combine this with the anti-magic incorrectly disabling light, and the tight weave of spinners and antimagic and traps and you get way more statues than are necessary when fully exploring. Probably the most important thing here is: antimagic isn't supposed to kill light-spells.
- Dispossessing a NUTS character does not drop them to 1hp. This feels like an improvement though. That behavior didn't really add anything to the game.

[Adventure Square]

- Day/Night cycle is much longer. This seemed inconsequential until I tried to Pass the Light at Night. After waiting 20 minutes for it to change, I just walked through it to multiple character deaths. In the original games, the time it would take to reach this location (at moderate pace, no phase doors, fighting most of the fights along the way) would take about 25% of the day-night cycle. If you entered the dungeon in the afternoon, you would be good by the time you reach the beam. Here that travel time seems to take closer to 5% of the day-night cycle. Since of course Garth and the Review Board don't work at night, and the night is so long, the frequency with which you'll have a reasonable experience is vanishingly small
- The new equip system is pretty bad in practice. I'm looking at an item "Mithril Axe (1)". Presumably this means it's ranged weapon. So can I equip it in addition to my normal weapon to use to throw? I don't know, so I press spacebar on it. There's a noise, and presuambly it equipped. What, if anything got de-equipped? Even if I scan my new equipment list, I can't see what was equipped before.

[kaypy]

With regards to equipment, mouse hover will tell you what it is going to swap with, along with a comparison of the stats. Also if you turn on individual inventories you have pretty much the old system (with or without use-from-inventory to taste)

Changes to light and antimagic actually make life easier overall. Non-spell based effects are not cancelled by antimagic, so use a lantern, a light wand or whatever, and you can keep it running. (Get an item that does BASP and you can pretty much ignore antimagic)

Also note that SCSI is one of the few spells that work in antimagic.

[Adventure Square]

I'm fully aware that I can mouse-hover to see what an item does,but when using the keyboard, the new system still has this real problem. Heck the problem exists with the mouse too. Oh that's a cool weapon, I'll equip it. Oh wait, what was I using before? I can't tell.

If it's not clear why this wasn't a problem in the original games, it's because whatever you were using before is still there right on the screen. That isn't the only way to implement an inventory system, but the new system has new, avoidable problems.

I'm also fully aware that I can use items, and how carry a Lantern on my warrior at all times for this reason. Regardless, it isn't easier, as in the original games your light kept running in the first place. But the point of this thread is to catalog the inaccuracies, and it is that regardless. It is clear from map designs that Darkness and Anti-Magic were intended to operate independently, given the large number of Darkness squares without antimagic, antimagic without darkness, and squares with both, so the Remaster implementation is simply a mistake.

That Scry Sight works everywhere is an obvious concession to paper-based mapping in the face of these challenges, because the original game was designed with that in mind. The crafters of this game made so many errors with regards to mapping, it's clear the original design hasn't been understood.

[Madpuppet]

tool tip on equipment tells you what slot the equipment uses.

[Adventure Square]

MadPuPPet: I'm sure you're trying to help, but both of us mentioned that fact already,and it doesn't solve the usability problem the shared inventory introduces.

Problems:
- When viewing the item you are going to equip, you can't see the item you currently have equipped.
- After equipping an item, you no longer know what you had equipped before.
- The tooltip which tries to mitigate these problems isn't visible when using the keyboard interface.
- When passing through a character inventory, it's natural to press SPACE to continue if you played the original games, where this was the most reliable method. (Yes, the screen said escape, but space worked more reliable.) Oh, and you have space to get out of screens in this game remake too,so you train the player to press space to get out out, but in the inventory screen it's equip-roulette.

The net total is the game encourages me to unequip my inventory without realizing it and without any information on how to restore the prior state, and equipping things where the slots have been altered in the remake leads to similar problems.

---------------------

MadPuPPeT: Since this is off-thread-topic, I'm not going to add another post about it.
Your next suggestion below to remove the divider doesn't help with any of the usability problems, unless the item was just one item too far down to see your own equipment.

It doesn't fix the inappropriate use of space for swapping equipment. It doesn't let you determine what you had equipped previously. It doesn't explicitly log what item is replaced. It doesn't retain your previous item on the screen, still returning it to a 40 item bin.

The tooltip change sounds like a good change, if awkward as tooltips aren't designed for keyboarding. Probably better would be something like making equip be E, and potentially showing the current item to the right, if it's equippable, eg

Mithril Armor Cur: Leather Armor

You could even leave the cursor in place and exchange the items -- current goes to left, item goes to current. This would be a change from the current behavior of reloading the list (which is super annoying when identifying items).

I doubt this much effort will go into the inventory UX now, but this type of change would address the problems introduced by the shared inventory.

[Adventure Square]

- Saving throws are well-off. The most basic of treasure traps in the seweers trigger fairly reliably against a level 25 party with maxed out luck.

Minor:

-There are various hints about the Scarlet Bard added to the game even in Legacy Modes where they are not relevant.

[Madpuppet]

in settings, turn off the "party inventory divider" option.

The divider mode is there for newbie players who get confused about how shared inventory works, but at the sacrifice that the inventory moves around when you equip/unequiped.

As a more advanced player, you will probably not want that turned on. Just be aware that anything not equipped, is in shared inventory and will appear in everyone's inventory list.

[Madpuppet]

Also, in the next update, the tooltips work with cursor only controls, so that will help you identify what slot things are using while using keyboard only.