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Improved Anvil v5+ and BWL


Saros

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Long time no writing here. However, I searched through this forum today and found the discussuions 2-3 months ago about Improved Anvil 6.0. Also saw the posts of some friends from BWL forums, also my nickname mentioned, and thought obliged to express my opinion:

 

 

 

by Guest_Guest_*

post Mar 28 2010, 04:29 PM

Post #118

 

I was a member too, and became a visitor which surprised me, but don't think it's something terrible. It's their site, they do what they want, I could view the forums for free, now I cannot. I'm going to pay because I want to see Improved Anvil. As I've said I was surprised but hardly offended. It's their right, and Improved Anvil (which I admittedly supported - paid - before) is a really well-made MOD. If this is needed to pay their bills. IMO most people nowadays get used to free things and then they start to whine when they need to pay a few cents for a quality service. Just because you were an active member, do you think you did some favour for them and they owe you? They just want to pay their bills, and you bunch of troublemakers here immediately start to complain, as you immediately think to the worst (admittedly due to some inspiration from a troll). I've actively played the Improved Anvil MOD for more than a year, and it's great fun. They don't owe because I was playing their mod or actively visiting their forum.

 

Seeing how you're bad mouthing here, I'm actually glad there is an elite subscriber group at Improved Anvil homepage forums for privileged members. It keeps out your troublemaker sort (no offense).

 

Those who even feel a little need to become elite in this crowd, I suggest joining Improved Anvil. I'm setting up my PayPal account at the moment (haven't possessed one until now). There is nothing in paying a few bucks. No, I'm not Vlad or Sikret with an alternative account, smart asses. I just agree with their elite concept, that is all.

 

First of all, let me tell you I seriously and fully agree about the paying part, and don't agree on the part about 'privileged members' and 'troublemakers'. Sikret, as forum member and administrator, is no better than any other 'troll', as he calls them. Otherwise, he's an excellent programmer and IA mod developer. No offense, 'privileged BWL members' (if any of you actually reads this).

However, IMO making and modifying such a complex mod and providing maintenance for it is more than enough reason to pay for it. Whoever doesn't - let's not play it. Keep in mind, that if Sikret is denied payment of some sort (which is not much IMO - six dollars a year) he will obviously stop working on improving the IA mod, and find himself another job. IMO it's better to have Sikret working and somewhat rewarded for it with cash rather than stop the development of the best tactical BG2 mod.

 

by Guest_kkk_*

post Mar 29 2010, 09:03 AM

Post #135

 

"When you have regular IA posters (matti, Iroumen, Nominar, myself, to name a few), strong IA supporters (who even defended IA and Sikret in the OffTopic Thread here and other places were people attacked IA), skilled IA players, very active forum members who provided a lot of bug reports thru out the years, post here in this thread and show their frustration and disappointment, that after all those years they get poop in the face, just about when v6 was supposed to come out and give IA a fresh spin after a very long time. "

 

Count me in as well

Kerkes

 

Hello, Kerkes, Matti, coaster, lroumen, Nominar! Nice seeing you again. However, if you wanna play the mod earlier and with full forum support, I suggest putting your principles aside and paying those $6. I know each of you probably spends a greater amount each day on stuff you can live without - as do I, I spend at least $10/day on stupid things I don't really need. The main mistake of Sikret and Baronius IMO was that they didn't ask straight for downloading the mod, which would be extremely fair, but tried to go sideways with some explanations about 'the BWL losing donation support'. Sikret worked for more than 2 years on IA 6.0., for god's sake! And even if he had some free help from other players as testers, he DID the main work (programming, thinking, assembling people, spending time etc). I haven't myself paid for membership, because I fear I will spend my money in vain (I think I will be immediately banned), so I have to ask a friend to make a membership account, pay those $6 for me and get me the mod and some forum info about hotfixes and such. If successful, I would gladly give you ANY info and the mod itself.

Without forum support, it will be harder to play, however some of us old IA players assemble and use another forum (BioWare, this one, or any other except BWL), we can provide enough forum support for each other, and help with info about this or that IA 6.0 fight, this or that item upgrade, etc.

 

 

 

by Guest_Fantozzi_*

post May 14 2010, 09:49 AM

Post #18

 

I'm saros btw (if you remember)

 

 

 

Sorry - no. You're not ??? Hmm I have a fan club now? :hm:

 

 

by Guest_Guest_*

post Mar 31 2010, 02:35 PM

Post #155

 

You know the biggest irony of IA6?

The person Sikret hates the most (Saros) is actually the one he should thank the most, because he pointed out more bugs than all other members of BWL put together and Sikret spent most of the time devising "Anti-cheat" (a.k.a. tactical retreat biggrin.gif , endless Wishing, no exp cap.... ) devices so that he proves to Saros that IA cannot be won solo (actually, ia5 can, regardless of what Sikret believes in). As another point, IA is delayed for so long for the very same reason.

Therefore I wonder, if Sikret wasn't so obsessed perhaps IA 6 would be out by now and this whole thing wouldn't blow up as it did (let's face it, it's not about BWL, it's about Anvil making some money anyway).

 

This is a fact I am aware of about 1.5 years ago, when Sikret openly started disregarding any info I give about IA 5.0., while at the same time making improvements in IA 6.0. according to each winning strategy I posted about. It turned out with some ridiculous and unexplainable (role-wise) 'solutions' like making enemies immune to damage during Time Stop, for example.

In that aspect, I would like to apologise to IA players. I am well aware that probably my successful solo-noreload Anvil runs are the only reason of Sikret's long and hard anti-cheese 6.0. modifications - which delayed the IA 6.0.'s date of release by at least 15 months, in addition to the fact that much of the new content, which was supposed to be in the 6 version, was left unfinished in favour of more anti-cheese measures.

BTW, had Sikret asked, I could provide him with easier and more effective solutions rather than the one he applied - like for example setting QUEST XP rather than REGULAR XP for each killed monster/completed quest - this way a party would benefit much more from each encounter than a solo character.

I don't want any gratitude from Sikret. He's too thick-headed and will never see the forest unless he hits his head in a tree first. However, many IA players have posted me a 'thank you' message - although there's no need to do it, I just play for fun and help other players for no reason - just because I want to.

 

 

by lroumen

post Mar 31 2010, 03:11 PM

Post #157

 

Do you think Saros will play it solo once v6 comes out ? (ETA today?)

 

I know that the smaller your party is, the easier it becomes. I've done a 3 party game which was quite a bit easier than my 6-party game where party members dropped like flies, and I've heard of others doing 2 party games as well. There are good incentives to do it...

 

......

 

Parts that will be troublesome are sections of WK and of course the EDE, but those sections were already tough in IA, so if you're with 6 that you need to baby-sit or 3, the general difficulty is little different.

 

Basically, indeed, the smaller the IA 5.0. party, the better protected would it be. However, a solo-game is much harder than 2 or 3 person game (speaking about all-part/full arcane caster party). A solo character has extremely limited resources(spells mainly), which if not used wisely in many of the tough Anvil fights will lead to quick defeat. My opinion is that the hardest game is a solo or 6-person party, and easiest would be a 2 or 3 person party.

 

Again: Just my 2 cents :)

 

P.S. Please use this thread only as constructive criticism/approval about IA 6.0 or BWL policy. Or if the administrators of this site feel it's best to be closed right away, I won't mind. Tnanks all.

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Actually, the money only goes towards keeping the extremely overpriced BWL server up (they use a dedicated server, that could cost 1000+$ per year, when they could use use any cheap shared host and spend less than 100$ per year), Sikret doesn't receive any money (he had a donation thread, but that was for getting professional area art for v7).

 

Also, this raises the question of why other modders (not going to make names) wouldn't deserve being paid.

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However, if you wanna play the mod earlier and with full forum support, I suggest putting your principles aside and paying those $6.

 

This is the crux of it saros - I don't really. I kind of enjoyed IA v4.2 (I think that was the last one I played) but even that iteration was extremely hard in places and edging towards more "work" than "fun". I might have had another go at it with v6 given the large amount of additional content since 4.2, but with compulsory payments and an even higher level of difficulty I decided I wouldn't.

 

And yes as the bigg says there is a principle here. If I pay for IA access, why not pay for SCS or Ascension (which I enjoyed much more than IA frankly). Or Francescos mod in Oblivion. Or Qwinn's PST fixes. Or Wesp's Bloodlines patch. Drog's Arcanum patch. And so on. I might be tempted to donate on odd occasions on a voluntary basis (I have in the past) but can't afford to pay everyone and so would ideally like a choice of where to donate so the things I enjoy the most get supported the most. Given that my enjoyment of IA 6 is likely to be heavily reduced by the difficulty, I don't think it would make that shortlist.

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However, if you wanna play the mod earlier and with full forum support, I suggest putting your principles aside and paying those $6.
...

 

If I pay for IA access, why not pay for ...

I think Baronius clearly stated that all BWL downloads would be available at the dragon's hoard regardless of usertype. So, even if you don't pay, you probably still could download the legit mod (legit as in no third-party sources) once Sikret decides to make it available to the masses ... so saros is right, you only pay for forum support and/or possibly test the early versions, not the real mod :)

 

Point being, nowhere is it said that you'll only get IAv6 if you pay! ??? ... I think :hm:

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Meh, just give it a rest and let it die in peace/rot in hell (choose one) alone and forgotten on it's precious little forum for cash cows elite members.

I, for one, believe it would be good idea to stop mention IA on IE modding forums as all you eventually achieving by doing so is spreading the word, while all the thing deserves is to be ignored.

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I find that IA is a good mod if you like tactical difficulties and I appreciate the amount of time that has gone into its development. However, many other good mods have had an equal or higher amount of effort gone into their development, so I fail to see how IA excels in that matter.

 

Regardless of this observation, I just don't want to pay for forum access if I want to go there to get something called support. It is something I will not do out of principle. I get enough of this crap from certain government institutions (well, in that case you pay for the telephone costs of their customer support) so I am not about to dish out some cash for a game I play out of leisure.

It is nothing against IA or BWL, just about the idea behind it. If G3, SHS, CoM, Rosenranken or whichever were to become 'pay'-sites, I would treat them the same way and just revert back to playing the game in vanilla mode.

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I, for one, believe it would be good idea to stop mention IA on IE modding forums as all you eventually achieving by doing so is spreading the word, while all the thing deserves is to be ignored.
What do you mean? The IA is the best mod everTM even though it's not exactly v5 or v6, as it's beta v5, but still, it's still the best IA mod out there, erhm, I probably also meant to say best IE mod, but that's just a side point. ???

 

Regardless of this observation, I just don't want to pay for forum access if I want to go there to get something called support. It is something I will not do out of principle.
You do have a point... but to me it's not the actual payment issue, but that I need something to pay with it. As I for one do not trust something I cannot control when it goes out of my doorstep. Say I want to buy something online, the only way I am going pay for it is when I have it in my hands... that's why I use shops that deliver... to for example, a local bus terminal, as I actually pay to them, not online to some account I am nevr going to get my money back from.
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Guest Guest
However, if you wanna play the mod earlier and with full forum support, I suggest putting your principles aside and paying those $6.

Not to pick a nit, but my reading of the "donation" system is that $6 gives you limited access to BWL, and certain forums (including IA) will still be blocked. Full access (including IA) will cost you $30/year. (It's unclear if $6 would allow you to get the mod before public release, but without forum access.)

 

As an aside, it cracks me up that they call it a "donation". Donations are voluntary, and if you don't donate, you can still access the services that the people requesting the donation offer. That isn't the case here; when you are denied access if you don't pay, that's called a "fee".

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Guest Matti
Also, this raises the question of why other modders (not going to make names) wouldn't deserve being paid.

 

oh, year!

 

Stupid stupid Weimer, he could be a pretty rich dude right now. Weidu licence - 6 euro per mod for normal modders, 600 for elite modders paying separatly for each version of the mod. Lets take for exemple Sikret, actual size, I mean, IA actual version, it is v6 (I hope so!), which means 6x600=3 600 dolla!! OMG, it's heavan!!!! But wait!! There is SCSI mod version 14, 14x6...nah...not heavan at all. Heya there, I'm talking to you, dear modder, wanna be elite modder?? Sign here ................

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Regardless of this observation, I just don't want to pay for forum access if I want to go there to get something called support. It is something I will not do out of principle. I get enough of this crap from certain government institutions (well, in that case you pay for the telephone costs of their customer support) so I am not about to dish out some cash for a game I play out of leisure.

 

It is nothing against IA or BWL, just about the idea behind it. If G3, SHS, CoM, Rosenranken or whichever were to become 'pay'-sites, I would treat them the same way and just revert back to playing the game in vanilla mode.

 

I agree with this. I found BWL to be a decent enough community, even had some projects hosted there in 2008. I'm glad to have bailed out before this payment rule was enforced. I have no problem with shopping online, even if it's just digital content, but honestly...I'm not going to pay between $6 and $150 a year just for "support" and forum access. I'm sure IA is the flagship of BWL by now, they certainly treat it that way, but this is one truly foolish policy.

 

Like TheBigg said, why not move to a cheaper host? Hells, I'm using free services and I'm very happy with them. =) They're good enough for what I'm doing.

 

As an aside, it cracks me up that they call it a "donation". Donations are voluntary, and if you don't donate, you can still access the services that the people requesting the donation offer. That isn't the case here; when you are denied access if you don't pay, that's called a "fee".

 

Yes, "donation" my furry arse. I don't think modders should be paid for their work (even though some do deserve it), rather it should remain free fanwork. If every site and mod requires payment, you bet there's going to be several (new) free communities that will be visited lots, and perhaps certain paying users will upload the new versions of paid mods elsewhere. I mean, that's the way it goes with virtually every other product out there, be it music, literature, video...

 

In any case, I guess this will lower BWL's site traffic tremendously, and I doubt that IA alone (or even when combined with NeJ and TS) are enough to make every visitor pay. Personally I don't even play any tactical mods. =/

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