Improvements for Single Players?
Jidokwon
Member Posts: 395
I'm likely blind to some of the EE changes that can benefit a single player, but it seems that most of the patch content is favored towards multiplayers and toolset builders. The boards are full of ideas for many improvements, though. I'm curious if it'd be any faster, with all of the tools available, for fans to develop and submit improvements/bug fixes on their own and send them in to Beamdog when they're working. They'd still have to be tested, of course, before being added to official patches. Would Beamdog and the mod community even be up and for such a task?
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As with singleplayer many of the other changes useful for multiplayer are in the details, and if you don't really use it then it might as well not be there. Most changes affect both singleplayer and multiplayer equally, but again, they are usually things that have to be used to notice. Likewise when the renderer is overhauled and if there are no new art assets to use the new rendering then is it a feature for singleplayer or multiplayer?
I don't think Beamdog will change their stance on crowdsourcing but they have said that people who wish to make changes to the basic campaigns can do so. They can be opened and modified as anyone sees fit. The loudest voices demanding such changes have never seemed keen on the idea and instead want Beamdog to spend the time on it themselves.
However, one of the selling points of the Enhanced Edition to many was for instance indeed the promise of upgraded graphics for the base game. Beamdog's very own steam workshop "teasers" date back all the way to Summer 2018 after all - four months after the release of NwN:EE. I can relate how non-PW players may feel somewhat at a loss concerning improvements that "seem" to be first and foremost for the multiplayer crowd. Seeing as the remaining 99.9% of the game assets still haven't been touched by Beamdog and all. I myself am pondering whenever or not the devs will finally pick up speed on that front after the PC renderer is out. We'll just have to wait and see I suppose.
That said, one clear improvement for me was the ability to select both custom classes and races inside the game's own character creation menu. Prior to the EE, the community had to use third party programs such as Leto in order to accomplish this. But I suppose this improvement doesn't really matter for players who don't use custom classes/races in the first place. Faster loading times might probably be the only really noticeable change for people who don't mod their game at all.
The point about the tech demos being used as a selling point is an unfortunate misunderstanding that some people make and then choose to misconstrue and use to spread false information. You will note that images of those tech demos are absent on all promotional and store sources. You will also note that you will not be able to find a source where Beamdog commits to overhauling all of the art assets. It's good that Beamdog chose to share them with us and I hope people act responsibly.
However if it was a selling point then it's a point that customers sold themselves on, nobody else.
Seeing as like you said 99.9% of the remaining assets have never been touched, and they have never committed to remaking all of the art assets, I myself am not pondering what will happen. The last time they showed some added shader effects which is what they were talking about, as opposed to a remake of the assets. You can find that here: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwnee/other/nwnee-shader-prototypes-advanced-content
As for noticeable changes, like I already said there isn't really much favoritism to multiplayer over singleplayer. As you note yourself custom races needed some workarounds, the client extender, or leto, or fudging it, but it doesn't matter if you don't actually use it. the UI was the best convenience change, pre-loading haks too, but again custom content existed since the 00s without it. So obviously modules that use custom content will also see improvements in providing a more seamless experience, both singleplayer and multiplayer.
I think the sooner people get comfortable with modding and start to organize the sooner we'll see more content that takes advantage of the features included with NWN EE. It will most likely need to be a community effort and most likely it will be unofficial like the CEP.
Luckily we do have confirmation that work on enhancing the game's art assets will resume once the renderer is out in the wild. This was answered within the Ask Beamdog thread. Making it really not so much an unfortunate misunderstanding of customers here. A delay of announced features seems to be dead on target, however. Although I can understand that some NwN players follow that particular side of NwN:EE's development closer than others.
You can read through Julius's replies yourself and you wont find any such statement either. You will find (1) one reply (page 10, June 2019) confirming that they're committed to creating new content as opposed to remaking old content. (2) One reply (page 20, March 2020) much later vaguely stating they are working on things. Nether of which confirm that they are remaking old content.
Even the mods you linked earlier have claims of showing modders what is possible, to pick apart, and make amazing new custom content for NWN EE. Unfortunately after over two years people still seem to rather hold Beamdog to unfair one-sided promises and very few use their free time modding to make that new content. They may still deliver at some point but there's certainly no guarantee nor obligation to do so.
I urge you rather than continue to argue about what their statements do or don't mean, instead learn how to model and mod for the game and create the new content you wish to see. There are plenty of great tutorials to help you get started. Then in two more years there will be more to show than simply having the same thread every few weeks for the next two years as well.