My 5 cents on NWN EE needs!

necxelos

Hello everyone

Since I'm new, please let me introduce myself. I'm Lucas, fan of D&D based games since forever and proud owner of all original infinity engine games and EE versions of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and Beamdog's expansion. I feel those EE were done near perfectly (as they are now, I have no idea how they were at release) and I hope NWN EE will reach the same or higher quality soon.

I do not yet own NWN EE (I plan to buy it via GOG at some point though). Why? Because I remember several big issues with original NWN and seeing NWN EE on my friend's PC showed me that they aren't fixed with EE. I will share those issues here and I hope that someone will be kind enough to forward those to the devs, as I feel those are pretty major.

With no further add, here's the list (for starters things that I'm quite sure weren't put on trello board yet):
- COLLISION BOXES. Currently every monster/NPC/player have unrealistically large collision box. It generates a number of issues with AI pathing but also makes it hard (or impossible) to walk around in dungeons with let's say henchman, familiar and summoned monster. Bigger monsters also get stuck in doors with no way to get through, even though judging by their model, they should easily get through.
- EQUIPMENT SCREEN. What was acceptable 10 years (and more) ago is nowhere near enough today. Being unable to search for item by name, sort items (or highlight them) by type or even switching items (currently you can't even put one item on top of another item to switch the one currently "handled" by mouse and leave the other one) feels like a prehistoric era of gaming and is simpy discouraging today.
- SPELL TARGETING. Same as above - current spell targeting feels really outdated and unintuitive. We don't see the range, area or any spell related data while casting spells and after. All spells are basically being cast blind with no way to optimize our spell placement whatsoever, there are no timers that tell us how long spell will last (on us or on enemies) other than icon blinking during last few seconds.
- HENCHMEN/SUMMON/FAMILIAR AI. All friendly NPC's tend to waste all their spells at the start of the fight instead of attacking, even forcing attacks of opportunity, they refuse to switch weapons dynamically (if you tell henchment to use bow, they will keep doing soo, even when encircled by melee enemies) and they use their abilities completely randomly (for example I never got to understand when my Eyeball familiar attacks from range and when it goes into melee and why).

And there's one last thing, probably talked about quite a bit by now, but I feel like it's the most important point, a staple of whan NWN is and should be: PRC. I understand that incorporating it would be hard due to legal issues but that's not the point. I believe all effort should be directed at making game more PRC-friendly, which includes:
- Custom spellbooks, so we don't have to learn spells via dialogue anymore,
- No class limit. This one is strongly debated in terms of vanilla game, where I agree more classes than 3 doesn't add much to the gameplay. Once You take PRC into consideration though You can clearly see that 3 classes are nowhere near enough. Optimizing Your build (D&D powergaming, yes) requires 5-6 classes minimum and I can see people needing even more than that.
- More slots for skills on skillbars and more skillbars. Current 3x12 isn't even enough for vanilla spellcaster but when You think in terms of PRC needing at least 100 skill slots doesn't really feel like overstatement, more like bare necessity.

Thanks for reading and feel free to move this topic to more suitable subforum if I posted it in wrong one. Godspeed everyone.

FreshLemonBun

Don't forget to vote on Trello input board or if it's already in the roadmap then it's just a matter of waiting.

https://trello.com/b/K0C0i8wF/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition
https://trello.com/b/Lb79bbgy/neverwinter-nights-input

necxelos

Thanks for Your response. I indeed found some of my points out there on Trello (looks like I was only checking one of those 2). This means:
- My point about equipment UI overhaul is out there. No idea why it's still in input only and not somewhere top on the priority list in roadmap but it seems popular so I allow myself luxury of having hope
- My point about AI is there on input board but only partially. My biggest issue which is henchmen/familiars/summons/etc. wasting all spells and abilities at the start of the fight isn't mentioned there. How do I make this thing included?
- My point about collision boxes size for all living things is nowhere. How do I put it on the board?
- My point about spell targeting is nowhere to be found. There is only point about timers (which is good) and spells ordering (which is bad, people only posted alphabetical order there, instead of sort/search which should be ideal, just like it would be for equipment). How do I put it on the board?
- Most of PRC-related stuff is on roadmap already, which I'm very happy about. Except classes limit, which I failed to find. This is mostly good though, as UI skillbars and custom spellbooks are probably most important, classes limit comes next (although it's also needed).

Additional question (on top of bolded ones above): how fast does Beamdog progress with those? I was following roadmap trello for a while (since release I looked like 1-2 times a month) and it doesn't seem like a fast pace. For example: can I expect everything currently on the roadmap to be done in let's say half a year?

FreshLemonBun

If you think something is missing you should post in one of the suggestion threads at the top of the forum section, sometimes it can be added as an additional note on an existing card.

Class limits are here, and links to a thread where people express also wishing for higher limits or none. It's in the icebox because it hinges on the UI overhaul being completed first.
https://trello.com/c/qoi6QZTO

Hitbox sizes is here, and you could request to have an additional note added about summoned creatures and polymorph shapes when going through doors.
https://trello.com/c/YPWY29wR

Spell targeting changes would also hinge on the new UI investigation/overhaul being completed first. I believe you can find the spell timer card somewhere, otherwise you could make the request on a suggestions thread. Probably in the Game Mechanics thread.

Usually Julius will pick things up that seem to have traction and then place them on the trello board. Then it has to be moved over to the roadmap when staff decide it has enough support and it's something they can do. To get an idea of how long things take you can look at the shipped cards and the patch cards, they make up about a years worth of work so far.

necxelos

Thanks for Your answer very helpful. I didn't know most of this stuff is locked behind UI overhaul. Makes it even more important to make new UI as modular, editable and close to perfection as possible. I've got one question though:

FreshLemonBun said:

Hitbox sizes is here, and you could request to have an additional note added about summoned creatures and polymorph shapes when going through doors.
https://trello.com/c/YPWY29wR

How do I request that?

Restricting such change to player model is nowhere near enough. It's a problem of both pathing (summons and henchment loosing their way because they have trouble walking around each other or around player), targeting (having big summon on screen makes it impossible to let's say pick drop, because all the space around the summon becomes selection of this summon) and unpassability (when summons simply choke the path and You can neither move them or Yourself). As it is now I'd rather make "move through ally" a default behaviour, rather than what we have already.

FreshLemonBun

Some persistent worlds have the option to turn hitboxes off completely but it's considered potentially cheating in combat when you normally couldn't path through an enemy. If you have specific changes you want to ask for usually you should post them in the relevant suggestion thread you'll find in nwn's general discussion sub forum.

Suggestion Thread: Game Mechanics
Suggestion Thread: Structural
Suggestion Thread: Miscellaneous
Suggestion Thread: Art Assets

There are a lot of fans that all want different things and anti-fans sometimes too, so it can get quite hectic to get your suggestions acknowledged. The best bet is to post any suggestion you have in the appropriate thread and then one of the staff will review it and ask for more information, add it to a Trello card, or pass it on to whoever needs to know. JuliusBorisov usually handles most forum communication with the community, so if you think he's missed something or you think it needs to have it's own Trello card you could ask him.

Alternatively you could ask the question either on the stream thread or in the twitch chat for the live stream every Friday at 10 or 11 AM Canadian time on the Beamdog twitch channel. Make sure to ask it early and the developers will usually respond to directly to your question as best they can.

necxelos

Well in perfect world people should straight out demand hitboxes to be exact monster/NPC models (pixel to pixel collision physics) and not "boxes" at all.

But since that's most likely impossible in engine so old, we should at least aim for something as close to usability as possible. Sadly ATM it's as far from usability as possible and people are simply forced to teleport to the city to fix being stuck.


As for Streams - too much self-promotion and childish laughs and too less merithorical talk, on top of hiding lots of information from the players. I watched fragment once and was disgusted. I prefer pure merithorical talk to "shows" of any kind. Valuable information doesn't need decoration.

SkipBittman

Merithorical isn't a thing, tho.

TarotRedhand

@necxelos Instead of merithorical did you mean meritorical? Even then it's not a word in common usage. In the context of what you wrote I think informative would have been a better choice anyway.

TR

Sherincall

necxelos said:

Well in perfect world people should straight out demand hitboxes to be exact monster/NPC models (pixel to pixel collision physics) and not "boxes" at all.

But since that's most likely impossible in engine so old, we should at least aim for something as close to usability as possible.

That may not be doable in NWN for other reasons. Suppose you install a graphical 'facelift', such as the new high poly character models, but I play with the old models. What we see on the screen is different, and one might be bigger than the other. The server needs to define what the logical size of each creature is (i.e. what its hitbox is), and then the clients can render whatever they want there. If you want your toon to be a dragon on your screen, you can do that. And I can make you a cactus on my end.

All graphics is handled by the client, and can be tweaked by individual players how they wish. All game logic is handled by the server, and hitboxes are a logic thing. In singleplayer, you still have a client and server, just on the same machine/program.

necxelos

Yeah, that's why I said it would be impossible to make exact model a hitbox of it's own. But we can at least mitigate current overwhelmingly big hitboxes that prevent actual game controls and game logic from working properly. I mean, did You ever try to summon some big creature and then pick up loot that's near it? You'll notice that even several "game meters" away from the creature You still select that creature with the mouse instead of loot. That's beyond retarded.

voidofopinion

Add Loot Boxes and a "MyHero" mode.

Got it!

Drakon

Keep in mind that NWN is a tile-based game. Just like a real-life D&D session on a grid. I agree that large collision boxes could be reduced slightly, but people already made content with objects expecting certain collision behavior and wouldn't want all content ever made to be upended (squeezing through obstacles and around traps, having more space in tight battles, etc). There is some evidence of collision boxes being somewhat fine-tunable though, for example in caves one of the wall variants is slightly concave and lets you to step into it a little (which can actually get you stuck, unfortunately).

If the game were made anew I would agree - I prefer objects to clip and get real close rather than have large airy forcefields around everything blocking any touching.