As you probably know, the seventh chapter and the Guardians line were deleted from New Balance in previous updates, so anyone starting a new game with a script version from 5.11.2024 onwards will no longer have it in the game. This move has logically sparked all sorts of emotion and conjecture, so let's explain and tell you what happened and why it happened.
How did it start?
At the end of October, the author of the New Balance modification, Liker, created a thread on the Russian forum with a poll about Chapter 7 and the guardians. In this thread people started to discuss about this move and also to vote.
Introduction of the post by Liker
Now that we've broached the subject, let's discuss it here. I've been thinking about removing Chapter 7 from the game completely for half a year now, which would of course mean that the Guardians would also be completely unavailable. I'd have to add bonuses in some places instead, but that shouldn't be a problem. I would also have to edit some of the entries in the Stonnose Chronicles.
Reasons:
Many players are having trouble completing Chapter 7.
It is not well described in the journal, often it is not clear what to do.
Causes problems with new classes (I had to fix 6 bugs in Cursed because of chapter 7).
No balanced system is created for it.
There's already so much content in the mod, it's still pretty long.
Leave your vote below and you can write what you think about it.
Poll
The poll itself lasted only 3 days and was in a pretty small circle of Russian forum users (probably all important and active players and mods of this community expressed their opinions here).
How did the poll turn out?
Number of people who participated in the poll - 150
As you know, Liker decided to remove Chapter 7 and the Guardians. The fact is that not many people were enthusiastic about Chapter 7 - it was such a relic of the old Returns, which was an absolutely horrible affair in terms of gameplay, with running back and forth between immortal orcs. The other thing to remember is that Liker really had extra work to do, having to deal with bugs just for the sake of a seventh chapter that virtually no one plays and answering questions and problems over and over again from those who decided to play it for the first time.
Solace?
Of course, the one who cried and liked this content - a few options. The first option is to save your scripts (game version) before this change, and the second option is to set the seventh chapter in Gothic.ini, just like the old quests, or maybe the xtended mod.
For those who want to play with Chapter 7 and the Guardians thread: a special command has been added to the Gothic.ini file (bOldGuardiansWay = 831407) that restores quests, but note that none of the quests have bonuses anymore. Just add this bracketed command to the Gothic.ini file in the System folder as a new line, among other similar lines (functions).
So hopefully I have clarified and explained it at least a little bit. I would add to this, especially for new players to understand, that New Balance is a modification on top of a modification. New Balance is a 7 year refined modification of Returns 2.0, made by different creators than New Balance. These creators released the source files after the modification was finished and that started the story of New Balance, with Liker and Haart taking over and making over 6000 different changes and a bunch of new content. So it makes sense that the author of New Balance would cut, delete or redo some things as he wants, but the main thing is that Liker listens to the community and what New Balance looks like today is largely made by us (the players) who give feedback either on the forums or on streams and videos.
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