Single-player support

AstroBryGuy

Will the OC allow more companions/henchmen at once, to give a real D&D party feel for single-player games?

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Mordaedil

I mean, if you want a real D&D party feel, you should just get some friends together and play NWN together. That's as real as it gets.

(I don't see the point in doing this, those games are over and done with)

Jidokwon

The OC and SoU were tuned and designed for a main character and one henchman. HotU was tuned and designed for a main character and two henchmen. While I'd love to see support added for full parties in the OC, I imagine that this would require a ton of work. I don't know, though, I'm not a developer. Maybe scaling and tuning encounters for full groups (and raids even?) that were initially designed for solo or solo+1/+2 might be something trivial. I hope to, at least, see EE worthy henchmen upgrades for the OC, though.

Edit: I'm still in the Prelude, but from everything that I've seen, so far, it is identical to the 2002 version. Not even updated to where Bioware left off in version 1.69, but identical to release. Pavil needs inventory control!

Cvijeta

Jidokwon said:

The OC and SoU were tuned and designed for a main character and one henchman. HotU was tuned and designed for a main character and two henchmen. While I'd love to see support added for full parties in the OC, I imagine that this would require a ton of work. I don't know, though, I'm not a developer. Maybe scaling and tuning encounters for full groups (and raids even?) that were initially designed for solo or solo+1/+2 might be something trivial. I hope to, at least, see EE worthy henchmen upgrades for the OC, though.

Edit: I'm still in the Prelude, but from everything that I've seen, so far, it is identical to the 2002 version. Not even updated to where Bioware left off in version 1.69, but identical to release. Pavil needs inventory control!

Your'e joking, right?

Jidokwon

@Cvijeta: Not so much. Do I absolutely need access to Pavil's inventory and his plot flagged tunic? No, of course not, but better henchman support is just the earliest example that I could think of where the OC should have been updated to current patch levels. As of now, there's nothing Enhanced at all about it.

BelgarathMTH

@Jidokwon , Henchman inventory support has never been in the OC. It came with the SoU expansion, and was never backported into the OC in any version.

There may be a mod that somehow puts henchman inventory support into the OC, but I don't know of it.

Jidokwon

@BelgarathMTH: There are definitely mods that allow this and more. My point, though, is that the OC(s) should receive as much love as the Infinity EE games have. All of those have been properly updated to the most recent patch levels. Why aren't the OC(s) seeing the same kind of attention? Just because Bioware really dropped the ball here, doesn't mean that BD has to repeat the mistake.

Cvijeta

Maybe because this is early access, so we won't see much?

Jidokwon

*nods* It is early and I know that they are good at receiving feedback. There's so much potential here. I have access to all of the premium modules, but I'm hoping to upgrade my account to the digital deluxe version just to be more supportive. I don't mean to be so hard, but it's frustrating at the same time.

Mordaedil

I dunno why you are surprised by this, that's kind of the same reason why they didn't change the OC in patches. But if you dislike it so much, you can always edit the OC yourself and make the henchmen use the expansion template? It's not hard to edit these games.

AstroBryGuy

Mordaedil said:

I mean, if you want a real D&D party feel, you should just get some friends together and play NWN together. That's as real as it gets.

(I don't see the point in doing this, those games are over and done with)

The games are being "enhanced" and the engine capability is already there to allow at least 2 henchmen and inventory access. So, it would just be enabling that across the original campaign (sort of like Tutu brought BG2's features to the BG1 story). It doesn't feel like D&D to me with a party of 2.

Multiplayer is fun, but I don't often have time for it. When I played PST on my iPad, it was usually in brief sessions under an hour each (e.g., grab a quick session at lunch). Even when I had longer sessions, I often had to pause the game to check on a batch job result or deal with action emails. It's nice to be able to pause the game and be able to do these things without worrying if I'm leaving the other players mid-combat or something.

Deltharis

@Mordaedil In BG every single simple rule change, every little item or a silly quest gets it's own mod. Here, because it's "not that hard", it's fine to suggest people fix it themselves? Whole point of a moddable game should be having a community that fixes and changes stuff, and changes from multiple people accumulate into making a better experience for everyone who would like to partake.

HunterRayder93

AstroBryGuy said:

Will the OC allow more companions/henchmen at once, to give a real D&D party feel for single-player games?

I understand that on one side NWN and relied on the game Multy but ... because he can not play coop, for lack of friends or else this can be problematic, I still remember the first campaign that base, the final boss game was really hard to be thrown down with just a puppy that followed you ... it was pure madness, I do not remember how many times I will have tried to beat it ... I do not know.

demoix said:

#1 feature needed. To be party control system like in NWN2

but Absolutely! I'm not saying I can make a party of 6 characters as in the BG 1-2 or IWD series, but 4 as in NWN2 would be ideal, the 2 many despised it for the mechanics etc ... but had a lot of strengths that were definitely better than NWN1 as the comrades' AI or the fact that they could have 4 comrades in square rather than 1 or 2, was already something higher and made the experience more enjoyable with with the 3rd expansion of NWN2 there was also the possibility of creating ourselves other characters to put inside the party as in IWD.

Jidokwon

What's cracking me up, I guess, is that they refuse to upgrade the OCs to current patch levels, yet at the same time they block us from making basic improvements ourselves and uploading these improvements to the Vault. So they don't want to improve NWNEE to current patch level (but they do with all of the Infinity games). At least let us make and share these very basic things that we're asking for then.

BelgarathMTH

@Jidokwon , I still have no idea what you're talking about with "current patch levels". I'm playing NWN:EE Head Start right now through the OC, and it's exactly the same as GoG NWN 1.69 as far as gameplay.

Jidokwon

@BelgarathMTH: I'm comparing the OCs(EE) to BGEE, BG2EE, IWDEE, PSTEE. All of the Infinity games are patched and maintained currently. Bioware just let the OCs rot and never updated them. I'm hoping BD won't follow that example.

Edit: The OC that you're playing today is almost identical to how it was released in 2002. Better henchman support is just one example of something that should have been updated to current patch levels.

Edit II: Or, if they do just let them rot, I hope that they'll at least have the integrity to allow other builders to make *and share* improvements.

BelgarathMTH

@Jidokwon , Okay, that is very reasonable. But somehow you're not being clear in your posts so far that that is what you're saying. The way I understood what you have said so far, I thought you were being very critical, combative, and aggressive, as though you thought Beamdog had done something wrong. You do realize their Enhanced Edition is in very, very early Beta, and that they are trying to get feedback about what the NWN community wants for the distant final release at this point, right?

I thought I kind of understood that you wanted henchman inventory support and ability to carry two henchmen through the OC like in HotU. Is that what you were wanting? Why not put your two cents in about that as a feature request to the devs? They are at the stage of trying to listen to community wants at this point in their development cycle for the eventual release of NWN:EE.

They have opened up pre-orders for the game and generously allowed any interested consumers to beta-test for them, as well as opening up the suggestion process. They are doing a second livestream taking questions as I type this post.

Old wise cliche: "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

Jidokwon

@BelgarathMTH: How to root out and destroy inherited evil? It's a question that I ask myself daily. I'll take that old and wise cliché to heart, thank you.

I do know that it's very early beta and I do certainly appreciate all that they've done and are doing. I've been pretty active here in the forums and do post ideas as I come up with them. As far as the OC(s) go, I would just love for them all to be more uniform. I understand that the OC and SoU were tuned and designed for one player, plus an optional henchman. I don't expect them to redesign and retune everything. However, I do hope that they upgrade the henchmen support, at least.

Mordaedil

Deltharis said:

@Mordaedil In BG every single simple rule change, every little item or a silly quest gets it's own mod. Here, because it's "not that hard", it's fine to suggest people fix it themselves? Whole point of a moddable game should be having a community that fixes and changes stuff, and changes from multiple people accumulate into making a better experience for everyone who would like to partake.

People provide the mods themselves, integrating it with on-disc content is going to be a thing players will have to do themselves, yes? This kinda applies to all aspects of the game already.

1varangian

Full party support for 4-6 characters for single player would be a pretty game changing feature. D&D just isn't meant to be played with only 1 character + henchman. It would make SP modules much more appealing.

HunterRayder93

1varangian said:

Full party support for 4-6 characters for single player would be a pretty game changing feature. D&D just isn't meant to be played with only 1 character + henchman. It would make SP modules much more appealing.

but I think so too! there is ... you do not know if you have the final boss of the first cambagna but if I do not remember bad and it was really a hell, buff and continuous debuff I did to me and my puppy was unbearable.

I'm not saying to support up to 6 character as for BG1-2 and IWD, in singleplayer but at least 4 characters as for NWN2.

junk11

It seems the current focus is on multiplayer, mod support and bugfix, there is no enhancements on the OCs , and it seems like there won't be in the near future (maybe new premium modules). I guess I will wait until the 'director's cut' OCs come out before buying it.

BelleSorciere

There won't be any director's cut OCs. That's just something Trent said a long time ago that I wish would happen.

junk11

BelleSorciere said:

There won't be any director's cut OCs. That's just something Trent said a long time ago that I wish would happen.

yeah, I got misinformed. Someone mentioned it in steam forum.

MateoFrozen

@Mordaedil
There are several mods that adds inventory menangment to oc. But I do not find any mod alowing 2 or more henchman in OC, i tried add this for myself but without luck.

britishj

I believe focusing on improving the module creation tools is ok up to a point however updating the original content with improvements should absolutely be a priority, after all I dont see alot of players moving over to this version with no visual improvements to the base game content.

Focusing too much on improving the creation tools could split the playerbase and give module creators less people to play their content.

Smaller changes such as improved henchman and enemy ai could go a long way when it comes to giving this version of the game a visual feature list for its playerbase.

silverbello

1varangian said:

D&D just isn't meant to be played with only 1 character + henchman. It would make SP modules much more appealing.

This is partly true — PnP D&D is perhaps at its best with the classic party consisting of a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard. However, DMs will often adapt modules to the number of players they have and their skill sets.

More importantly, NWN is not a clone of PnP 3e D&D. There are changes to the rules that make it easier for characters to survive. For example, the familiars in NWN are quite different than in PnP. The Pixie familiar provides a rogue! Other familiar serve as classic "tanks." The heal skill was much different in 3.0 PnP too. Its been awhile, but I'm pretty sure it didn't heal hit points as in NWN. And I believe that 3e summons were not as strong as they are in NWN.

The point is: NWN, although based on 3.0 D&D, was modified such that certain skills and such are far more powerful than they are in PnP. The changes between PnP and NWN made the single-player campaign viable with or without a henchmen.

I recall finding the overall power level of NWN being frustrating when I was involved in persistent worlds back in 2003-5, and I wanted more of a PnP feel. At the time, there were a set of DM tools that allowed for this, and the absolute most fun I had was playing in a campaign with other players and an actual DM. This was because the DM could possess NPCs and bad guys giving them something no amount of AI scripting could!

1varangian

silverbello said:

1varangian said:

D&D just isn't meant to be played with only 1 character + henchman. It would make SP modules much more appealing.

This is partly true — PnP D&D is perhaps at its best with the classic party consisting of a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard. However, DMs will often adapt modules to the number of players they have and their skill sets.

More importantly, NWN is not a clone of PnP 3e D&D. There are changes to the rules that make it easier for characters to survive. For example, the familiars in NWN are quite different than in PnP. The Pixie familiar provides a rogue! Other familiar serve as classic "tanks." The heal skill was much different in 3.0 PnP too. Its been awhile, but I'm pretty sure it didn't heal hit points as in NWN. And I believe that 3e summons were not as strong as they are in NWN.

The point is: NWN, although based on 3.0 D&D, was modified such that certain skills and such are far more powerful than they are in PnP. The changes between PnP and NWN made the single-player campaign viable with or without a henchmen.

I recall finding the overall power level of NWN being frustrating when I was involved in persistent worlds back in 2003-5, and I wanted more of a PnP feel. At the time, there were a set of DM tools that allowed for this, and the absolute most fun I had was playing in a campaign with other players and an actual DM. This was because the DM could possess NPCs and bad guys giving them something no amount of AI scripting could!

And here lies the big controversy.

NWN is a multiplayer game first.

But they made changes to 3e to make the single player campaign with only one character more playable.

HunterRayder93

1varangian said:

And here lies the big controversy.

NWN is a multiplayer game first.

But they made changes to 3e to make the single player campaign with only one character more playable.

I do not agree EE should be the improved version of NWN, so I expect (I speak a bit for all the content that offers the game in general) that at least it is forced to increase the quality of life not just for the single palyer but also for the rest of Multy and Tollset.

The idea of ​​NWN especially in OC that there has never been a real update of the contents based on the inserted expansions, the different changes remained feme to their current state regarding the changes you have companions.
Frankly I say we are in 2017 not in 2002 now the times change and return to play the original campaign and get to the boss and smadonnare because I can not defeat him ... I'm sorry but I will not, D & D has always been a group game, with this I do not say that I penalize the game multy indeed I'm glad that from that point of view want to improve it but not everyone here on the forum I think we have friends or relatives who play video games together ... I do not think so.

So if we want to find an agreement I would propose to update the first 2 campaigns to the group mechanics of the 3rd expansion, I do not think it is difficult, and then add the control of the group members AI as in NWN2 that was more comfortable and it's a mechanic present in all modern games and it works, but if most of the people here are too tied to the past and do not want to change their opinion and then exit, you can leave because here you are trying to rivagilzzare a game and not release it as it without correzzioni or added because if not NWN: EE did not buy it, I'm point I prefer to buy them but Diamond is enough.

Cerabelus

Mordaedil said:

I dunno why you are surprised by this, that's kind of the same reason why they didn't change the OC in patches. But if you dislike it so much, you can always edit the OC yourself and make the henchmen use the expansion template? It's not hard to edit these games.

Last time I played NWN 1 & 2 I upgraded the enemies giving them at least basic gear and proper classes & stats and spell books, the problem when I finished was I knew all the changes because I'd just done it so I had to wait at least a few months before playing them, if Beamdog makes changes I have to discover them and it's even better when you don't know what's in the Chest your about to open or what Spell they're gonna cast at you.