December 7, 2018 Livestream Recap

JuliusBorisov

During today’s livestream Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Producer Luke Rideout shared the latest news on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, the mobile version of NWN:EE, and Infinity Engine games. They discussed features of the next patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and answered a few community questions.

Check out the recap!

themazingness

I'm excited for True Type Fonts so I can read again!

Thanks for including my questions. Any chance I could get the size of NWN + Endless Dungeons?

ThacoBell

I'm getting over being sick, so I'll cut to the chase today. Where is the Soultaker resolution?

#resolvesoultaker

JuliusBorisov

@themazingness NWN:EE is 3.51gb. Don't know about Endless Dungeons.

themazingness

JuliusBorisov said:

@themazingness NWN:EE is 3.51gb. Don't know about Endless Dungeons.

Oh sad, but that sounds about right. That can't go on my tablet then. Maybe next device . Thankfully, I have my PC.

lefreut

The 2.6 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition will come later than we initially planned, as we ran into an unforeseen problem with the Dice, Camera, Action! Voice and Portrait Pack and the team pack.

It's very disappointing to see that a DLC will delay a patch Again trying to do a big patch was a mistake.

ThacoBell

@lefreut 2.6 isn't a big patch. The problem is the bundleing.

lefreut

@ThacoBell I call it big because they want to bundle the Dice Camera Action DLC with it. If they had split the two, they probably could have released 2.6 by now.

ThacoBell

@lefreut Ah, I assumed you meant just the patch.

zenblack

The one leperous Canadian they have in the basement that is assigned to patch the BG-series must have gotten sick. Swift and genuine patches for NWN while BG languishes again. I wish patching out the major bugs was important to BD at all.

Adul

Yeah, Beamdog has mostly moved on from the IE games while a lot of us voicing our opinions here on the forums still seem to be more interested in IE development than NWN:EE.

Part of the reason why many of us still want Beamdog to pay more attention to the IE games is that some of those games haven't been left in a "good shape."

Beamdog's decision is understandable from a business perspective, as the monetization options for BG and IWD must have dried up at this point, but it still seems like a really unhealthy situation they've gotten themselves into. These forum threads are a ticking time bomb filled with audience fragmentation and disgruntled customer shrapnel.

ThacoBell

What games (besides one platform being left without SoD) are in a bad shape? What do you call "bad shape". These games are more stable than they have ever been.

Aedan

I would not say that the EEs are in a bad shape. Of course there is always room for improvement (see the UI, for instance), but all the games are fully playable and enjoyable

MiraStastny

Gotta admit that I don't like the direction Beamdog is heading. I guess new NWN content is better than nothing but still, things looked vastly better 2 or 3 years ago.

IE games have a huge fandom, so creating new content and making them better made ton of sense. Polishing NWN feels like going back to black and white tv.

ThacoBell

@Mirak Remember that NWN has had a very devoted fanbase for years now. Probably even bigger than the IE fanbase. At the very least, big enough for years long maintenance of persistent worlds to be not only viable, but common.

MiraStastny

Bigger? I have serious doubts about that, but also zero evidence either way, so I can't really dispute that statement.

batoor

I think it will depend on the quality of potentially new DLCs from NwN eventually, when compared to the content in the IE games.

Adul

NWN has a huge dedicated fan base and so does Baldur's Gate. I'm not sure how the numbers compare to each other, but it's unfortunate that they're now in direct competition with each other over which game gets development resources dedicated to it.

Kilivitz

I would bet they had never intended to be still allocating resources for patching BG(2):EE six years down the line, nevermind the folks who are more than happy to spin it as "undying devotion" to the games.

ThacoBell

Mirak said:

Bigger? I have serious doubts about that, but also zero evidence either way, so I can't really dispute that statement.

Well, how many players do you think are constantly playing multiplayer BG? While NWN has entire persistent worlds up at all times. Each of these worlds also requiring more players to be worth maintaining than any given BG session. The sheer amount of fan created content of NWN is staggering as well. I wouldn't even know how to start comparing BG's offerings to a flood like that.

MiraStastny

So are we completely disregarding single player? Because I would think that there are more BG single players than NWN multi players.

ThacoBell

@Mirak How would you measure them? The multiplayer stuff is easier to track, as its more visible. But no, I don't think I agree that BG single players outdo MWN multiplayers.

lefreut

It's far from perfect but you can get an idea of how many people owns each game on Steam (Baldur's gate 1/2 is way ahead but it's been out for much longer):
https://steamspy.com/app/228280
https://steamspy.com/app/257350
https://steamspy.com/app/704450

And also see who is currently playing (BG + BG2 > NWN):
https://steamcharts.com/app/228280
https://steamcharts.com/app/257350
https://steamcharts.com/app/704450

Adul

If I'm reading the charts right, they currently seem pretty evenly matched as far as playtime goes. As in NWN:EE is getting around the same amount of playtime on Steam as BG:EE and BG2:EE combined, maybe a bit less.

fortyseven

lefreut said:

It's far from perfect but you can get an idea of how many people owns each game on Steam (Baldur's gate 1/2 is way ahead but it's been out for much longer):
https://steamspy.com/app/228280
https://steamspy.com/app/257350
https://steamspy.com/app/704450

And also see who is currently playing (BG + BG2 > NWN):
https://steamcharts.com/app/228280
https://steamcharts.com/app/257350
https://steamcharts.com/app/704450

Interesting. Seems to show that both BG games are significantly more popular individually than NWN. Which I would have expected given how famous those games are compared to NWN. However, the BG EE releases are so long ago now we all know they will be on a backburner from a sales points of view. I just really hope that when Beamdog decides to end its support for the IE that they externalise everything to give the community all the possibilities to mod and currate these games for the long term future.