List of my suggestions - to try to match modern mmos
Libertyisback
Member Posts: 49
I love what Beamdog is doing. Thank you so much for working again on the community's and my beloved game.
In this list, if not already implemented, are some of the things which I feel are needed to make NWN fully competitive against the best mmorpgs out there today.
A lot of people say NWN is not a true mmorpg. I think it is still the best mmorpg out there. People say it is not an open world where everyone can chat together. I tend to say that is not necessary.
Here is my wishlist:
1) Voicesets -- NWN has the best voicesets in the entire industry. The game should let a player select any voiceset for their character. So many wonderful voicesets not being heard. Leto lets you customise your character. Release the voicesets across for all characters (except maybe monster voicesets limited to monsters). Allow this to be customised in game in the character build screen without using Leto.
2) Should it be possible for players to put in their own custom voicesets? (questionable)
3) Portraits. Allow players to pick more portraits, all in game portraits to be available to all players. Leto already allowed this. Allow the game to do this without using Leto.
4) Appropriate emotes must keep going on and repeating until stopped. Dancing emote in particular. Singing. Laughing.
5) Should have more than one dance emote.
6) Characters need to be able to Jump. Yes, it is really vital. If possible map it to the spacebar key. Players need to be able to express their joy while playing and running in a group. Mmorpg players love to jump while running with their team.
7) Music. Need to be able to play music in game. Just a simple midi file is fine. And a playing music emote. This is really essential for bards. For examples of other mmorpgs with this ability: lotro and that other anime one whose name I have forgotten.
8) Eyes. Character faces must have proper eyes. Beautiful eyes are quite needed. Sure, not as big as anime, but just eyes.
9) Flight would really be good, if it was possible. (Shadowrun i think had flight)
10) Huge persistent world faction pvp (team pvp) servers. Community has some of them, but a huge faction pvp persistent server (or mod?) would be great for nwn. WoW has.. is it called Battlegrounds? Guildwars has it too.
11) In game web browser. This is pretty important. Yes we can alt tab or have a dual monitor setup - but players love to sit in game browse the web and chat (i think lotro has an ingame browser, not sure).
12) On the main game screen, the chatboxes, fonts and menus need to be resizeable. Was this already done in EE? Basically, I stopped playing one favourite mmo of mine, because when I upgraded to a large LCD screen, all the chat fonts and windows became too small and unreadable. I'm not certain if NWN still has the same problem.
I will try to edit and post more as i remember it.
NWN is still the best mmo for me. The combat and spell and formula calculation system is so far ahead of everyone in the industry, nwn can easily beat everyone else. This alone gives nwn the ability to defeat any other team pvp mmo out there today, including LoL, Dota, Smite etc. You do not need demanding gfx to feel the greatest satisfaction in defeating your enemy.
NWN also has the best artwork and design in the industry, except maybe WoW. Every icon and interface in NWN is carfully scuplted and designed to fit together. All the spell and ability icons are like.. from a Faculty of Design in a top University-- beautifully crafted to fit together. The atmosphere of NWN itself, just walking in the forest, is still the ebst fo any mmo ive experienced (except maybe WoW). So yea, i still feel NWN can beat everyone else with just the tweaks I listed above.
Also want to say NWN has the best voiceset of any mmo out there today (possibly the only voicesets). I think even better than WoW. The voicesets are so incredible that I would play just for the fun of saying fun things while in the middle of combat. Hilarious.
In this list, if not already implemented, are some of the things which I feel are needed to make NWN fully competitive against the best mmorpgs out there today.
A lot of people say NWN is not a true mmorpg. I think it is still the best mmorpg out there. People say it is not an open world where everyone can chat together. I tend to say that is not necessary.
Here is my wishlist:
1) Voicesets -- NWN has the best voicesets in the entire industry. The game should let a player select any voiceset for their character. So many wonderful voicesets not being heard. Leto lets you customise your character. Release the voicesets across for all characters (except maybe monster voicesets limited to monsters). Allow this to be customised in game in the character build screen without using Leto.
2) Should it be possible for players to put in their own custom voicesets? (questionable)
3) Portraits. Allow players to pick more portraits, all in game portraits to be available to all players. Leto already allowed this. Allow the game to do this without using Leto.
4) Appropriate emotes must keep going on and repeating until stopped. Dancing emote in particular. Singing. Laughing.
5) Should have more than one dance emote.
6) Characters need to be able to Jump. Yes, it is really vital. If possible map it to the spacebar key. Players need to be able to express their joy while playing and running in a group. Mmorpg players love to jump while running with their team.
7) Music. Need to be able to play music in game. Just a simple midi file is fine. And a playing music emote. This is really essential for bards. For examples of other mmorpgs with this ability: lotro and that other anime one whose name I have forgotten.
8) Eyes. Character faces must have proper eyes. Beautiful eyes are quite needed. Sure, not as big as anime, but just eyes.
9) Flight would really be good, if it was possible. (Shadowrun i think had flight)
10) Huge persistent world faction pvp (team pvp) servers. Community has some of them, but a huge faction pvp persistent server (or mod?) would be great for nwn. WoW has.. is it called Battlegrounds? Guildwars has it too.
11) In game web browser. This is pretty important. Yes we can alt tab or have a dual monitor setup - but players love to sit in game browse the web and chat (i think lotro has an ingame browser, not sure).
12) On the main game screen, the chatboxes, fonts and menus need to be resizeable. Was this already done in EE? Basically, I stopped playing one favourite mmo of mine, because when I upgraded to a large LCD screen, all the chat fonts and windows became too small and unreadable. I'm not certain if NWN still has the same problem.
I will try to edit and post more as i remember it.
NWN is still the best mmo for me. The combat and spell and formula calculation system is so far ahead of everyone in the industry, nwn can easily beat everyone else. This alone gives nwn the ability to defeat any other team pvp mmo out there today, including LoL, Dota, Smite etc. You do not need demanding gfx to feel the greatest satisfaction in defeating your enemy.
NWN also has the best artwork and design in the industry, except maybe WoW. Every icon and interface in NWN is carfully scuplted and designed to fit together. All the spell and ability icons are like.. from a Faculty of Design in a top University-- beautifully crafted to fit together. The atmosphere of NWN itself, just walking in the forest, is still the ebst fo any mmo ive experienced (except maybe WoW). So yea, i still feel NWN can beat everyone else with just the tweaks I listed above.
Also want to say NWN has the best voiceset of any mmo out there today (possibly the only voicesets). I think even better than WoW. The voicesets are so incredible that I would play just for the fun of saying fun things while in the middle of combat. Hilarious.
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Comments
As for the rest, I have no real opinion. I don't play NWN as an MMO, I play it as a single player hack-and-slash/story-and-slash experience, and I don't enjoy MMO's too much anyway. I don't see anything wrong with the suggestions, they just wouldn't affect me as much as it would for others.
So NWN: EE yes ... offers the possibility of creating mini MMOs etc ... but it's not an MMO, we say that the Voice sett unlike the titles Infinity gives the opportunity to choose between different sets of voice (although perhaps nowadays are a little bit as a choice, for me and satisfactory), ok add the ability to use any voice setting but ... obviously always within certain limits, that is, you should not use vocal lines of monsters like dragons etc .. so monsters and animals no, vocal lines of important NPCs like Lady Arbrieth be and already feasible but if type are missing lines voice? it would be strange, so ok for the idea but always trying not to overdo it with the use of vocal lines.
A job similar to BG: EE1-2 and IWD: EE for me is fine, to be able to use male and female vocal lines regardless of the sex you have chosen. Here's one thing and insert the universal vocal lines, another thing and insert custom vocal lines, I like this idea ... for some time I thought about proposing it or not on the forum but ... I decided not to write it in case the my suggestion was not seen by most people.
as for the idea of custom portraits already proposed and discussed many times both by myself and by many veteran people and not on the forum the vocal lines on the one hand can make even more unique the PW, on one side could help SP players to customize even more their characters, and of course there are 2 problems for me here.
1° NWN: EE still supports various audio formats, images etc ... of files that many can not see if they do not have certain programs, then we should solve this problem giving the possibility if you want to use muscihe etc ... audio file here ... in Mp3 format which is the most common and most used audio format.
2° you want to create a vocal line ... this implies different voices related to an action like an attack:
"Attak!"
like your character is dying:
"Ha ... my hart ... im..im die"
every emote or phrase that says the character that performs the characters and tied to a vocal file ... now I do not know how the creation of such a thing works but ... on the one hand and very cool on the other and seriously complicated.
if BD ever goes to investigate on a possibility to create custom vocal lines and put them into play, first of all it would take a folder creation in documents / NWN: EE and call it "Voice" then make sure to create several subfolders where insert the various voice files connected to a set of voice files such as:
Voice:
Young fluffy:
Attack
Cry
Laugh
etc..
so when you are in the game or want to use a custom voice file in the Tollaurora all the vocal files in that folder are automatically linked and the character or NPC uses all the connected voice set. Linking to the first comment of the first point this could benefit PW moders and SP pepoles, but in my opinion the system should be more intuitive (as most systems of NWN: EE should still be improved and be available not only for Moddr but available of deafult for SP players, but as already discussed by many on the survey I created myself this creates conflicting thoughts on this implementation:
but this topic for me opens other "sub-topics" that are:
1 ° Update icons, icons must be updated, I think the NWN icons are too monotonous, different symbols for each skill etc ... but ttute the same color, the colors that predominate are, yellow / gold (class icons, feat , sat), green (positive buff), blue (factive skill, passive skill), purple (spell), red (buff negatives).
They are definitely too monotonous ... this is a basic problem that on many discussions has been a little neglected and should be discussed absolutely (also because in my opinion it is part of the UI refactor investigation)
so this needs to be revised, colorarel and icons to make them "less equal and monotonous" would be nice if BD could do it, or even give the PW modder the ability to create and insert custom icons.
returning to points 4-5 the problem and that in addition to having icons of the same color also have all the icons of a star, which makes the search for emote a little more frustrating, so in addition to creating new animations would also create icons for each emote in order to make it easier to use for PW moder and SP people.
Here is an example mod, taken from a series of famous mods for the PW "World Arena":
Here, too, there are several topics such as adding skills and improving others, jumping, balancing, swimming missing in NWN and it would be nice if BD would insert them. give the ability to create levels-areas to "plans" like a tower, where you can jump on platforms or climb the stairs would be more immersive and add more mechanics to the game play, but this needs more research and investigation for me by of BD because in the case of the jump BG must find an alternative way to change the key of the tactical break. I do not understand if by "giving the possibility to play your own music" you mean background music while you play ... or play musical instruments and create a kind of musical band.
if you intend my second option, a similar and rather complex system, create different musical instruments and then create a system that allows you to connect notes to different keys or a virtual piano keyboard to create your own songs.
A similar system already exists in an MMO called "Lord of the Rings Online" for me and the most beautiful music system ever and I've never seen anything like this in my life ... one thing is certain in LOTRO there are players with this system have created virtual "bands" ... here is an example of the musical system in place:
To give you an idea of how Pvp works, here's a demonstration:
Many considerations I explained in another post of my creation (which was not popular ... maybe I was wrong to do more than one topic like I did on your post ... people are lazy to read everything or not the interesting any player's imprecations) in any case here is the link of my discussion where I talk about the UI refactor and some ideas on how to improve it.
In the end I continue to say that NWN: EE still has a long way ahead for a release of the actual game ... in need of remodeling, new features and features, but the real problem here is finding a
KEY WORDS FOR NWN SUCCESS: EE:
BALANCE, COMPROMISE, MODERNIZAZIONE
I also don't know what is meant by 12 years, the game is almost 16 years old, the last update was about 9 and a half years ago.
I agree NWN is not an MMO. I always think of it as MUD, or if one permits a new acronym (and one hasn't a choice, really, has one? ) I'd say it's an SMO (Small Multiplayer Online) game.
-JFK
Miniature Multiplayer Online Role-Play Game
MMO RPG It means:
Massive-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Game
I know it for a long time now that means, but if you have doubts oxen look at Wikipedia and tell me if I'm right or wrong.
...
Micro Multiplayer Online Role-Play Game.
Or we could use MMORPG.
Minute Multiplayer Online Role-Play Game.
Either one should help clear up confusion and also help avoid any confusion with the Minuscule Multiplayer Role-Play Games.
Never heard of Massivly Multiplayer Role-Play Games.
Who uses massively in a sentence?
That's a genre that is never going to catch on.
I prefer Colossal Role-Play Games. Or CRPG's as they have become to be known.
1) I continue to highly recommend the availability of all voicesets, maybe limited to those which use words rather than monster grunts etc, for all player characters. The material is already all in the game, and there are some hilarious hidden gems in the voices. Some of the most memorable moments in teampvp was being able to acerbically threaten your slayer after you died. Lying on the ground waiting for respawn, voicesets of npcs like Boddyknock or Deekin i think, had the most amazing one-liners and comebacks.Players lying dead on the ground waiting for repawn could have a caustic conversation between corpses while dead, just using voicesets. Meanwhile, players would fight on top of their bodies. No other mmo allows this.
2) Music-- yup, just a simple ability to play a midi file in game is sufficient (if possible). Lotro's band ability is absolutely amazing, but im not sure if that is beyond our resources to implement. I would settle just for the ability to play a simple midifile.
3) Definition of mmorpg and is nwn an mmo. I like to feel this is only semantics. What is nwn and what are other mmos? Just a fun way for online players to adventure together, wonder, hilarity and heartbreak all in one. Understood that way,I feel nwn still excels and is far ahead of other mmos.
4) GUI update. I'm not keen on modernising the UI, beyond allow resizing of windows and font.
(I wonder how BD is being funded...)
I constantly see people saying "There are already mods/downloads/fixes" to address this issue when talking about almost any issue and thats great but I personally do not want to go through Morrowind all over again (where the first 40 hours is browsing, installing and trying to get mods working) when this game needs to be brought up into this era with a single install.
This really does have the potential to give new life to this game with a highly active playerbase - New Modules, Persistent worlds and all that will come with a huge influx of players- But alot of that is contingent with modernizing everything.
There were already mods that did everything including giving a listing of Pw servers- So why add anything then? Why even have an EE? Why not stick with Diamond and just mod it? Nobody is taking that option from anyone- But if this game is going to have the reach I believe it will (and beamdog has to want from it or they would have just released Diamond on Steam)then the basics need to be part of the game and not something that we need to hunt for on a frankly, outdated website that is not well organized.
-This has to be more than just "tweaked to run on a modern system" but must be brought up to date in all facets and this game becomes huge...That will benefit everyone.
MMMORPG
Mini Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Game
My dear @GreenWarlock I'm glad you think so like this, but I think it's for me (but maybe I'm wrong) the right way to describe one of the many qualities of NWN.
I repeat anyway ... NWN is not an MMO and a game where you can "create" your own MMO, exceeding the programming limits.
TR
This is not how discussions work if you don't want to go around in circles.
However, mine is not an intimidating speech and a reflection.
You said "this is a bit sad because a solid community must be united and not have divided and conflicting thoughts". I don't agree with that statement at all. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion and discussions are there to get through the differences. If everybody would agree with everybody else right from the start, we wouldn't need discussions, but we also would never get some fresh opinions or could ever adjust our point of view to a better one.
Put yourself in the shoes for a moment of a new player, who starts playing NWN: EE, the first time he tries to enter the community it seems to him so distantly distant, and then the new player gets a slightly distorted idea of the community of Neverwinter Night's ... in a nutshell and as if from outside a new player feels treated like an Outsider and is not considered, or as he opens his mouth is attacked, maybe I'm wrong from a certain point of view ... but ... and that the impression I'm starting to have.
Likewise, progressives need to be mindful of their responsibility to consider carefully what should be added to what is now. To do that well, they need to be able to understand and appreciate the things that are and were. It's perfectly possible to progress from a warm, cushy couch into a spiky pit - that's change, too, just not desirable change.
I rather agree that the shutdown of @HunterRayer93's suggestions here has been unnecessarily harshly formulated at times. It doesn't make a lot of sense until you consider that the old-established people have reason to fear change, here. Many of us joined the game community because it was the way it was - a great but essentially derelict game. Some of the folks you've been clashing with have put years and years into their lives into this, @HunterRayder93 - and, as awesome as it is that NWN is being developed again, it's also pretty dang distressing. It's basically climate change - move to a desert because you like deserts, but then water appears! Oh no! What do you mean, it'll be an ocean soon?!
They've got squabbles and worries of their own, which they oughtn't be taking out on you. I can only guess that it seems more acceptable since this is a different place from the Vault. I think putting people in unfamiliar surroundings may make them more likely to stick together and defend familiar faces. @Proleric and @Shadooow certainly have their own history, too, which is unrelated to anything you've suggested. ::fist shake:: This kind of thing is why I keep telling you people to put effort into not being jerks to eachother. These problems just grow and spread until everyone's just kind of snapping at eachother.
For what it's worth, I'm quite sure that there will be a new generation of modders soon enough, and Beamdog are plenty smart enough to consider the marketability of the product and include things like workshop support (see latest livestream). Sad truth is, the current denizenry of the Vault may not necessarily be as relevant as we might like to think we are.
But the Vault is not an extension of Beamdog. The currently existing NWN community has plenty of reason to be disillusioned with and suspicious of the patronage of commercial entities; it's been kicked to the curb by such patrons more than once. There're good reasons for why suggestions of Beamdog modernizing the Vault or taking and integrating content aren't received with cheers of joy and agreement by the people who've been around to experience that.
I think the guys at Beamdog see the right way forward just fine. It's not an either-or thing; it's perfectly possible to have both. The Vault can stay the calm noncommercial newbie-friendly place it's always been. Modders that want their content to be more accessible can upload it onto the workshop, or on the Nexus. I'm sure some of the old faces will be making use of that option.
I think it'd be more productive to discuss the pros and cons of individual suggestions rather than make it a conservatism-versus-progressivism or old-versus-new thing, anyway. When it comes down to it, the existing modders are the ones capable of teaching the new ones the ropes; these are the guys manning the help desk for everybody who wants to get into content creation or modulebuilding.
Progressivism and conservatism both have important roles in society, and they both do their work best when they consider eachother's needs and wish eachother well. It's difficult to picture, in the world as we've got it today, but these positions aren't actually enemies.
Opposing views and preferences only become a problem when people decide that there may only be one or the other.
Person A |----------| |----------| Person B^- These viewpoints overlap, but are significantly different. If Person A and person B both say "our viewpoints must be identical!!", there's the problem of deciding who should shift. A to the right? B to the left? A a little to the right, B a little to the left?What we really ought to try to be doing is this:
Person A |----------|----| |----|----------| Person BParadigm expansion, rather than paradigm shifting. It's possible to grow to appreciate something we currently don't appreciate ourselves, for the fact alone that somebody else appreciates it. Moreover, differing viewpoints are an advantage, not a disadvantage. We are trying to see things from as many different perspectives as possible, after all. Cultivating cultural homogeneity just means everyone is blind to the same threats.To make a pretense of being in this thread to do anything other than advocating for a healthy degree of centrism in all things:
It's actually already possible to make playable music instruments in NWN. What you need to do is get the sound files, get a music instrument model, set up an activatable inventory item, set up a script named for the tag of the activatable inventory item, make the script check which event has been signalled, make the item start a "music playing" conversation with the PC if the activation event has been signalled, set up a conversation with dialogue options for the various sound files, make choosing the dialogue options play the sound file. If y'wanna try, @Libertyisback, we're always up to walking newbies through the processes.
I want flying and jumping too! ^^ Even just vertical-position adjusting flying. And swimming! And playable races that don't have legs, but rather have tails, like mermaids and snakepeople.
I'd also like to (optionally) be able to tab out of the game without it autopausing, and agree that more of the existing voicesets should be made available for players to choose. I've also dabbled in raid boss scripting a bit, and would be pretty stoked about it if raid groups of upwards of ten people became feasible in NWN.
More emotes are always good. Multiperson ones would be very nice - waltzing, for instance. Or bosses that grab players, or stuff like the player jumping onto the back of the dragons' necks in Dragon Age: Origins. I don't think that's something we've got in NWN at the moment.
Something else I'd really like would be to be able to store and restore the contents of the action queue; "pause actions - do thing - resume actions". ClearAllActions() just erases the queue. If it's already possible, please for the love of cake somebody tell me how; I'm currently trying to figure out how to work around not being able to do this, and it is causing me considerable grief. :-(
Don't be discouraged if it seems like your ideas are met with opposition. Instead, state your ideas and the reasons behind them, and defend them with more ideas instead of settling back on "the Community is against me".
Go to the Vault. Log in, read up. Get to know people. This community is NOT insular or elitist. Anyone can participate.
-JFK
Well, others, too, of course.
At the same time, sometimes people are *also* defending their personal work, and yeah, in those cases people can get protective, sometimes
Good: These are my ideas and I wanted to share them with you! Let's discuss how they could best become a reality or why some of them can't work!
Bad: These are my ideas and I demand every single one of them be added in the next patch. They should all be really easy to add, especially turning my last idea into its own completely separated game. Everyone who tells me otherwise is part of an agenda and they are KILLING TEH GAME!
Better: Now I'm going to go eat tide pods for YouTube hits.
::wail of anguish:: BUT I JUST FINISHED REWRITING IT FROM SCRATCH.
Thank you kindly. :-)
What I'm saying is that there are about 4000 officially published feats in D&D 3rd edition and if Beamdog had to make everyone's own personal favorite as a feat in the standard game then they wont have any time to work on anything else. On the other hand you can make your own feats or download feats made by modders, and Beamdog could make feat creation/modding much better. I think if you don't understand where to put hak files or something like that you should ask someone to explain it to you instead of labeling them as conservative, closed minded, or too proud.
That sort of thinking applies to everything. Now look at it from the perspective of a new player, they already have a favorite game and probably wont play an old game. How invested are they in that one particular feat? They're not.
What happens if all development shifts and capitulates to someone's demands and it does not result in a huge influx of new players? What if those demands actually lead to problems? Will that player take responsibility for their mistakes?
Of course not, so it's not reasonable to expect a unanimous agreement. That does not mean that one group asking only for features you don't quite understand or think isn't important aren't trying to revitalize the game for new players. The custom content community is the most focused group on what the game can do and what it cannot do, also with many ways they can work around it and ideas of how to implement it as a standard feature. To call them conservatives and ppl focused only on the old campaign and old assets as progressive really makes no sense at all.
Like with the reveal of the improved graphics and Aribeth model. I don't remember a great demand from those who demanded new models to add things like normal and specular maps to the game engine or do any graphical improvements for that matter. Without focusing on the sorts of things content creators ask for there would have been no new graphics to show off. So saying things like they only care about the old game is kind of misinformed and a tad rude.
Just my 2 cents.