My thoughts of Nevewinter Nights EE
sarevok57
Member Posts: 6,002
so i finally caved in a week or two ago and bought Neverwinter Nights EE basically out of boredom, and since it wasnt really that much i bought the deluxe version because apparently it comes with all these goodies, so here is my thoughts on it so far:
first thing i noticed, it looks and feels no different than the original game ( im talking about single player OC ) and one bug i noticed is that when selecting a feat for example and pressing on the "?" it tells you what it does, but at the end of level up and if you press cancel instead of confirm, then you have to do your level up section all over again, except this time when you click on the "?" the upscaled RES is broken and at 1440p i almost need binoculars to read that tiny writing, so far that is the only bug i can think of
next, bloated dire spiders, are absolutely ridiculously dumb, it annoys the urine right out of me when an enemy is "moderate" challenge rating and obliterating me out of existence, in fact the bloated dire spider ( to my loosely filled knowledge) is virtually no different than a regular dire spider, they both have the same to hit, same INSANE poison DC, and HP so what gives? now some people say that you can't rely one the "challenge rating" system of enemies, but that is just hog wash nonsense, why is something that is on purposely implemented into the game that is suppose to help players know what they are up against be something they can't rely on? that makes absolutely no sense, so there be 2 solutions to this problem, A ) make the bloated dire spider A LOT weaker to much up the challenge rating showing, or B ) keep his insane stats the way they are but increase his challenge rating level to something way more appropriate, the bloated dire spiders were the only bad guy in the game that i had to exploit so hard to win, and i HATE using exploits to win a battle, if you make bad guys so strong that the only way to win battles is by exploits, then that is a poorly built enemy
on the other hand, NWN 1 is the ONLY game that i have played out of the BG/IWD/NWN series where trolls didnt live up to their name by being absolute trolls to kill, it is so refreshing that when fighting trolls in NWN there is no need for fire or acid finish upon death, holy crap is that nice, to be honest it doesnt bother me much in BG2 but NWN2 they can be annoying as hell, especially if you arent prepared for them
next, why is this game so penalizing? the more companions you have the less XP you get, this includes summons an such, say what ? lol ? the BG series doesnt penalize you for summons so why here? all this does is just motivate me to do solo runs because i feel that im not rewarded for bringing party members or should i say member, and speaking about companion x1 , i've never been a fan of how NWN did this, where you only bring one companion along, to me, it doesnt really feel like an RPG game at this point, there is no party ( 2 is not a party ) and i always found this to be a super weak point in NWN, and not only that, very little variety in henchmen, no wizards or sorcerers to choose from, just a bunch of fighter types, a bard, a thief and maybe a cleric? and if your main fighter is struggling against baddies, how could their mediocre henchmen possibly be any more useful
and while im on the subject, the fact that you have so little control on what your hencemen do is a little frustrating, you can physically select and move them to more strategic spots, so if holmes is using a missile weapon and going toe to toe melee with that spider, he is going to get eaten for lunch, giving the player less control over henchmen is going in the wrong direction ( at least it's a little better in SoU ) in fact, i find NPC control so clunky and unintuitive that i find it easier to just go solo, why is the game doing this to me? if feels like this game is meant to be played with a party, but them make it as painful as possible to do so, oi
next, what is up with treasure chests have 40 damage reduction, for realz? 40, the big ol' four zero damage reduction, why am i wearing full plate armor when i could be wearing that chest that has the INSANE FORTY damage reduction, hook me up with that chest seriously, it makes absolutely zero practical sense that a chest with perhaps 2 inch walls at best has 40 DR when a foot thick steel door has 8 ( friggin lol ) my only assumption is, is that they did this to make you want to bring a thief along, but the problem is, you are only getting ONE henchman ( they're not even party members or companions, just some randoms basically of the street it feels like) and perhaps you don't always want to bring tomi along, so this 40 DR chest silliness is exactly that ( keep those scythes handy )
the pacing, oh man do i hate the pacing, and this is what was the final cabosh for me basically, the pacing is so whacky and slow and it just feels like im a slug dragging my ass through molasses, especially those first few levels where you have 1 attack per round, holy crap do battles take forever, and the best part is, no one can hit each other and we are all attack once per round, but everyone has bagillions of HP it feels, and some battles just take way too long, i never get the sense of suspense when these shenanigans are going on, i just roll my eyes and boringly wait for this pointlessly drawn out battle to end, one prime example of this was near the end of chapter 1 i was at helm's hold and there was a suit of animated armor that had OUTRAGEOUS AC , im talking more outrageous than mega rayquaza being adamant with max IVs and EVs in attack using outrage, so here we were, animated chap versus my apparent schmuck just going back and forth to see who could score more critical hits first, and wow is the RNG bad, that animated goober was rolling natural 20s every 2nd or 3rd attack WAY TOO OFTEN, and it was annoying to the extreme where my guy got a natural 20 once every hailey's comet pass over, and this guy was popping them out like it was nothing, erg bad times
actually there was another that makes my NWN playing experience all the more bleh, i hate full 3d games like this where you have to maneuver around the map, one problem that NWN has is that EVERYTHING looks the same, everything is so bland looking i lose my bearings so quickly and all the time, that im always going the wrong way getting lost, all these years when i saw the compass on the interface i thought it was just there for the lulz, but now i realize that it's there because even the original devs knew that it would be hard getting bearings, and i had to use that compass so much to find where i was going, and it was just frustrating
so with this all being said i made it to level 12 or 13 and Luskan the city and i just couldn't play anymore, i was forcing myself to play more play more because of the old antage "it will eventually get better" but the more i played NWN it just made me want to play NWN 2 more, and thats the thing i dont understand, NWN 2 basically does everything absolutely better than NWN in everyway ( at least from a single player experience, also not including the toolset) so im baffled as to why people like this game more, even NWN 2 had some pacing problems so i find it hard to play the NWN 2 OC ( and MotB i just keep getting lost ) but it's SoZ that saves me, SoZ is the only NWN game i find that actually brings the RPG element back to the series, your skills are majorly used in that game, and the pacing is so much better in my opinion, thats why if they ever made an EE of NWN 2 i would be very interested
so with that being said, what makes NWN so great? a couple of years ago i played through the entire series ( well the OC, SoU and HotU ) and i found the experience to be bland, hard to look at and stretched out a bit, is it the multiplayer that makes this game amazing? is it the fact that you can make some amazing modules for other player to play? im curious as to what other people think of this game
first thing i noticed, it looks and feels no different than the original game ( im talking about single player OC ) and one bug i noticed is that when selecting a feat for example and pressing on the "?" it tells you what it does, but at the end of level up and if you press cancel instead of confirm, then you have to do your level up section all over again, except this time when you click on the "?" the upscaled RES is broken and at 1440p i almost need binoculars to read that tiny writing, so far that is the only bug i can think of
next, bloated dire spiders, are absolutely ridiculously dumb, it annoys the urine right out of me when an enemy is "moderate" challenge rating and obliterating me out of existence, in fact the bloated dire spider ( to my loosely filled knowledge) is virtually no different than a regular dire spider, they both have the same to hit, same INSANE poison DC, and HP so what gives? now some people say that you can't rely one the "challenge rating" system of enemies, but that is just hog wash nonsense, why is something that is on purposely implemented into the game that is suppose to help players know what they are up against be something they can't rely on? that makes absolutely no sense, so there be 2 solutions to this problem, A ) make the bloated dire spider A LOT weaker to much up the challenge rating showing, or B ) keep his insane stats the way they are but increase his challenge rating level to something way more appropriate, the bloated dire spiders were the only bad guy in the game that i had to exploit so hard to win, and i HATE using exploits to win a battle, if you make bad guys so strong that the only way to win battles is by exploits, then that is a poorly built enemy
on the other hand, NWN 1 is the ONLY game that i have played out of the BG/IWD/NWN series where trolls didnt live up to their name by being absolute trolls to kill, it is so refreshing that when fighting trolls in NWN there is no need for fire or acid finish upon death, holy crap is that nice, to be honest it doesnt bother me much in BG2 but NWN2 they can be annoying as hell, especially if you arent prepared for them
next, why is this game so penalizing? the more companions you have the less XP you get, this includes summons an such, say what ? lol ? the BG series doesnt penalize you for summons so why here? all this does is just motivate me to do solo runs because i feel that im not rewarded for bringing party members or should i say member, and speaking about companion x1 , i've never been a fan of how NWN did this, where you only bring one companion along, to me, it doesnt really feel like an RPG game at this point, there is no party ( 2 is not a party ) and i always found this to be a super weak point in NWN, and not only that, very little variety in henchmen, no wizards or sorcerers to choose from, just a bunch of fighter types, a bard, a thief and maybe a cleric? and if your main fighter is struggling against baddies, how could their mediocre henchmen possibly be any more useful
and while im on the subject, the fact that you have so little control on what your hencemen do is a little frustrating, you can physically select and move them to more strategic spots, so if holmes is using a missile weapon and going toe to toe melee with that spider, he is going to get eaten for lunch, giving the player less control over henchmen is going in the wrong direction ( at least it's a little better in SoU ) in fact, i find NPC control so clunky and unintuitive that i find it easier to just go solo, why is the game doing this to me? if feels like this game is meant to be played with a party, but them make it as painful as possible to do so, oi
next, what is up with treasure chests have 40 damage reduction, for realz? 40, the big ol' four zero damage reduction, why am i wearing full plate armor when i could be wearing that chest that has the INSANE FORTY damage reduction, hook me up with that chest seriously, it makes absolutely zero practical sense that a chest with perhaps 2 inch walls at best has 40 DR when a foot thick steel door has 8 ( friggin lol ) my only assumption is, is that they did this to make you want to bring a thief along, but the problem is, you are only getting ONE henchman ( they're not even party members or companions, just some randoms basically of the street it feels like) and perhaps you don't always want to bring tomi along, so this 40 DR chest silliness is exactly that ( keep those scythes handy )
the pacing, oh man do i hate the pacing, and this is what was the final cabosh for me basically, the pacing is so whacky and slow and it just feels like im a slug dragging my ass through molasses, especially those first few levels where you have 1 attack per round, holy crap do battles take forever, and the best part is, no one can hit each other and we are all attack once per round, but everyone has bagillions of HP it feels, and some battles just take way too long, i never get the sense of suspense when these shenanigans are going on, i just roll my eyes and boringly wait for this pointlessly drawn out battle to end, one prime example of this was near the end of chapter 1 i was at helm's hold and there was a suit of animated armor that had OUTRAGEOUS AC , im talking more outrageous than mega rayquaza being adamant with max IVs and EVs in attack using outrage, so here we were, animated chap versus my apparent schmuck just going back and forth to see who could score more critical hits first, and wow is the RNG bad, that animated goober was rolling natural 20s every 2nd or 3rd attack WAY TOO OFTEN, and it was annoying to the extreme where my guy got a natural 20 once every hailey's comet pass over, and this guy was popping them out like it was nothing, erg bad times
actually there was another that makes my NWN playing experience all the more bleh, i hate full 3d games like this where you have to maneuver around the map, one problem that NWN has is that EVERYTHING looks the same, everything is so bland looking i lose my bearings so quickly and all the time, that im always going the wrong way getting lost, all these years when i saw the compass on the interface i thought it was just there for the lulz, but now i realize that it's there because even the original devs knew that it would be hard getting bearings, and i had to use that compass so much to find where i was going, and it was just frustrating
so with this all being said i made it to level 12 or 13 and Luskan the city and i just couldn't play anymore, i was forcing myself to play more play more because of the old antage "it will eventually get better" but the more i played NWN it just made me want to play NWN 2 more, and thats the thing i dont understand, NWN 2 basically does everything absolutely better than NWN in everyway ( at least from a single player experience, also not including the toolset) so im baffled as to why people like this game more, even NWN 2 had some pacing problems so i find it hard to play the NWN 2 OC ( and MotB i just keep getting lost ) but it's SoZ that saves me, SoZ is the only NWN game i find that actually brings the RPG element back to the series, your skills are majorly used in that game, and the pacing is so much better in my opinion, thats why if they ever made an EE of NWN 2 i would be very interested
so with that being said, what makes NWN so great? a couple of years ago i played through the entire series ( well the OC, SoU and HotU ) and i found the experience to be bland, hard to look at and stretched out a bit, is it the multiplayer that makes this game amazing? is it the fact that you can make some amazing modules for other player to play? im curious as to what other people think of this game
8
Comments
Put it down to taste I guess is all I can say.
That all changed with going multiplayer. My first server was a POA originally hosted by AW and it was an interesting experience. Had a DM "confront" me for exploiting the game (I was running around finding "easter eggs" and gathering them up, they didn't like the fact that I kept track of where they were and would hit them on a server restart). After a bit of a back and forth the guy just up and booted me. At this point I could have easily said "Screw the multiplayer" and call it a day but there was other POA servers so I decided to try them. I really liked the concept of Path of Ascension, it has a nice story arc that isn't years long lol. It allowed completion and replayability with other classes. It was a small enough world to allow interaction, social, pvp, etc. But it was also big enough to where you didn't run into people if you didn't want to. I played POA on that server for the next 3 years. We had capped the first server early on (then cap was 25) and made a second server to accomodate members. After 3 years we branched out and hosted a world of Rhun module and myself and 10 or so others fell in love with it and moved exclusively to that server (still hosted by the same group).
The biggest issue back in the day were when people would login and start crying in shout to the whole server about how they didn't like your iteration of the world, how this group does it better, how you need to change this and that. And of course the occasional griefers but they were funny at best.
My NWN online experience has been the best by far, hands down. I've played tons of games online with large and small communities and not one has come close to NWN.
If you haven't experiences the online play of NWN I would highly suggest giving it a try.
When NWN is judged based on the OC and the expansions alone it usually doesn't fare as well as when the totality of what the game and toolset can offer is factored in.
I mean, you'll find more fun playing some custom module than the Bioware campaings. They wont touch them, so don't expect to find a rebalance at the release date. What you'll find within this new version is a new optimized unhardcoded toolset so you can build better things.
I recommend to search the vault for something that appeals you.
Sign me up for some serious 40 damage reduction chest armor! Like, it could be a unique pirate treasure in some upcoming Premium EE Modules! After all, everyone likes some booty!
That is all.
-JFK
Also, some of the writing is based upon some serious railroading ideas. I remember going to a warehouse of some sort in one of the cities. Immediately upon entering, I got a quest trigger telling me about how I had entered the lair of the "Sword Coast Boys" (or something like that, I can't remember too well). I was a bit baffled, because I had never even heard of such guys. Turns out there had been a quest, but I had failed to turn up at the place where the quest started. I only got the last entry which implied I knew what was going on. I didn't.
Also, each and every quest is a FedEx variant. Go there a bring me this item.
Also, the amount of times the same characters repeat the same voiced dialogues is just baffling. "Don't worry, young Alhelor, I'm sure everything turns out fine in the end", or something like that, as the (as it turns out) werewolf says in Port Last.
NWN is a platform for multiplayer servers and singleplayer modules made by the community.
I dont think they should include the original campaign at all with the game, make it a separate module just like all the others.
I've actually played the OC a fair bit (I guess I'm just crazy), but I have concerns about a modern-day player encountering that as their first experience with NWN:EE and how that will affect the way they feel about the game. Specific issues that leap to mind:
1. Poor lighting in the peninsula district, which is likely to be the first area you go to given that someone asks you to go there. Starting out with an area that you can barely see during the day, much less at night, just doesn't seem like a good way to show off a new game (Light spell or items can help, but a new player may not know that).
2. Very large shifts in difficulty between facing hundreds of weak enemies that pose no danger whatsoever, suddenly interrupted by an enemy that's almost impossible for a newbie player unless their build or henchman happens to be designed to counter it, such as the aforementioned bloated dire spiders, or the intellect devourer, which is likely to be the first boss you encounter, but it has mind-affecting spells, intelligence drain, invisibility, fire immunity, and 5 points of physical damage reduction -- good luck facing it with a low-strength build and the few spells that might be available to you at this level (wiz/sorc builds: start level 1 with wiz/sorc and keep your Rod of Frost!). Gulnan and Desther can also be extremely difficult for some builds.
3. Tedious number of chests and boxes and barrels, and traps, and as Sarevok mentioned, the crazy amount of damage resistance to bash them. (Flame Weapon and Darkfire work great, but not everyone is a mage or cleric.)
4. Chapter 2 seems to drag on forever. I actually like all the dungeons except Castle Jhareg and forest spirit place, but something about the way the chapter is constructed bothers me.
Anyway, I typed more than I meant to, but in the days of social media, it would be nice if the OC wasn't the first impression that a new player had, when NWN as a whole is much more promising than that.
I'd also echo Sarevok's request for an NWN2:EE. I love that game even more than NWN, but there are numerous bugs that need fixing, and it'd be great to have some new campaigns to play.
About NWN2:EE, Beamdog could just take everything that NWN2 did better (full party control, overland map, etc) and bring it back to NWN:EE.
I agree with Trent's view on things, leave it as it is and create new things looking forward.
Now... NWN1 is probably one of the best games ever as far as I am concerned. Yet, here is the secret. I have hardly played ANY of those campaigns.
I still remember clicking RUN then stopping for a minute to say "Hmmm I wonder what I can do with this toolset" and I was lost after that. I spent thousands (no exaggeration) of hours working on NWN. I loved every minute.
I wrote a lot of tools. One that went on to inspire some systems in NWN2. I also worked heavily on one of those Premium Modules in the Digital Deluxe Edition. I also wrote the official horse scripts and a few other things that are in the 1.69 Official patch and now part of EE as well.
I never played the official campaigns.
That said the toolset is so amazing that there are THOUSANDS of campaigns for this game, and many of them are considered far better than the Official Campaign.
So if you want to compare this to Baldur's Gate or others the campaign was not as compelling to most people. Yet that truly is not what makes NWN1 and now NWN:EE so magical. I can tell you that I didn't get into making things for NWN2. There were aspects of its design that actually got in the way of me doing things. It also took a lot more time. You could rapidly prototype stuff in NWN.
----
Now there are some other things you mentioned comparing Baldur's Gate and this. This product like Baldur's Gate is beholden to the Dungeons & Dragons Intellectual Property. This means everything Bioware did back then Wizards of The Coast had to sign off on. They also had to follow those rules as closely as possible.
Baldur's Gate was not using 3rd Edition D&D if I remember correctly. 3rd Edition got pretty hard core on the entire challenge rating thing. That is why your XP varies and other things.
As to the Damage Reduction on the Chests. I thought your using a chest as armor comment was pretty amusing, but it was story related to have reasons for a thief. It was also so it wouldn't become simply a Diablo Hack and Slash run around smashing pots and chests thing...
Fortunately there are hooks you could use for breaking things that they could have used to make it so if you wanted to smash things you'd likely break a lot of the contents. These are the type of things the community tapped into though.
You wouldn't like my modules. I don't always put things into areas that you can beat. Sometimes there are things you don't want to mess with, and learning to lure them away, run away, or sneak around them is relevant. I tend to hate most MMOs due to thinking they must scale everything in a zone to match the level of the player. That has always annoyed me.
I start out and there are some bad ass farmers... I go adventure I level up and I go to the next zone
where guess what??? There are some more bad ass farmers.
If all I have to do is plant food, and dig trenches and run a farm and I level up like a hero why am I out busting my ass to be a champion? That concept of needing to "balance" everything I find extremely annoying... Thus, why I don't enjoy many MMOs.
So as to spider stats and such. I don't expect to beat everything. In a starter area for one of my modules learning you shouldn't assume you can beat everything might be a good lesson. Though I don't think that is why the OC did it.
To get the most out of NWN you really need to also play a lot of community creations from places like neverwintervault.org
----
I made:
NPC ACTIVITIES - used in a lot of modules, and scripts and inspired Scripted Waypoints in NWN2
RTS - Harvest of Souls - judging by what you wrote not likely your cup of tea
The Wyvern Crown of Cormyr - included in the Digital Deluxe Edition
1.69 Patch for Neverwinter Nights - mostly horse scripts - but did a few others as well
I believe that NWNEE's success will lie in unlocking even more possibilities for builders. Forget the OC - try a PW instead, or a multiplayer LAN with your friends, or one of the many user-made modules that try to improve on all the negative points the OP has raised. NWN isn't a game meant to be played through once; it's a set of tools for making your own games, your own worlds, powerful yet accessible.
So I won't be buying NWNEE until such time as it gains a substantial new single player campaign.
If people got stuck on nostalgia and never go past that, there will be a lot of missed opportunities to be had.
In PnP sessions, my friends and I sometimes get distracted by memes and inside jokes, and often enough we don't roleplay as our characters through and through.
There's something about that multiplayer that offers the complete immersion in a D&D experience that I've always wanted. Something that even PnP sessions don't get to accomplish (for my group of friends, anyways). You are not seeing the players behind the characters, afterall, but you are seeing the representation of the character from day 1.
(Although that isn't saying much, Pong has better graphics thsn NWN).
I don't think I'm the only person in the world who hates all things multiplayer.