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Old 07-07-2002, 11:57 PM   #21
Dulan
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The "height of twitdom", Tau? I believe that it is truly the "height of twitdom" to suggest that about another person, rather then commenting about someone's lack of respect.

In my view, blatantly mispelling someone's name like that (Not only is Threshold a common name on these boards, but it is a fairly well-used word), and not even bothering taking the time to make sure the name was spelt right is one of the greatest forms of disrespect you can show another poster. It is like posting entirely in wannabe-speak, or posting like shao_long - not bothering to even put in a moment of effort to make the post more readable and comprehensible to others. Now, if you wish to speak of the "height of twitdom", sure. Let's go - but lets take the flaming to the correct thread, dear boy.

-D
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Old 07-08-2002, 06:11 PM   #22
GenmaC
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Crashes every two hours. Multiplayer is horribly screwed up on the server side, crashing every half hour on some setups.

This game should never have made it to the shelves, and I'm damn glad I pirated it instead of actually spending $60 on it. Once it fixes the bugs, it should be worth playing at least.
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Old 07-09-2002, 03:20 AM   #23
Threshold
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Ecclesia, did you get the director's cut version of NWN? My version does not have Whirlwind attack, and it only supports 64 people in any multiplayer game (not 96).

I want to make it clear that I think NWN is a very fun game. I have really enjoyed playing it (though I don't have much time to play since my wife and I just had our baby in June =) ).

This game is LIGHT YEARS better than Dungeon Seige (DS is possibly the most disappointing game I have ever played). I am even enjoying NWN at least as much as I enjoyed playing Morrowind- which is saying a lot because Morrowind was a much more impressive game and system (but I find the NWN story more gripping).

There are of course flaws, but what game doesn't have them? The monster AI is mindless. They just bumrush you. This makes them really easy to fool by going around corners, running 20 or 30 feet away, etc. The henchman AI is even worse. And the problem with friendly fire is that you cannot trust an NPC mage to cast their spells intelligently. They really should have let you increase difficulty independently of friendly fire. NWN is a very, very easy game, and I'd love to increase difficulty, but having a henchman AE nuke me because of poor AI isn't a difficulty increase, its just poor programming.

What I want to focus on though is the whole multiplayer/persistent world concept. In my opinion, NWN is HORRIBLY suited to running a persistent world. There are TONS of reasons why- some more titanic than others. I feel I am relatively qualified to analyze this aspect of the game since I've played a good bit of multiplayer, and I have even been designing my own "module." I am not an expert, however, so please don't reply with epiphany-like glee when you point out an inaccurate, nit picky detail (like saying there is some patch coming that lets you have 80 players instead of 64! Sorry, until it can handle a few hundred online and until it can store thousands of accounts on the server, it ain't persistent world territory).

1) Maximum of 64 players and it can only store 256 *total* characters. Any decent sized mud quickly breaks 64 players online, and even a SMALL mud has more than 256 characters on it. If you let people have more than 1 character, then you are even more limited.

2) Horrendous lack of customization: There are only *2 body types*- average and fat ass. Do you want to play a skinny rogue? You can't. Do you want to play a frail, old wizard? You can't. Hell, you cannot even make NPCs like this. There is only 1 old man and 1 old woman NPC model, and if you use those models, you cannot put clothing or armor on them. The only models that allow clothing, armor, etc. to change their appearance are the default racial ones- and when you use the default racial ones, you're back to only having 2 body types.

Then there is the clothing and armor itself. Gloves, boots, and cloaks are not represented on the character model. Only suit armor, helmet, and weapon. The suit armor determines what your boots and gloves look like (*BOGGLE*). There are also only about 9 or 10 heads per race, and at least 75% of those heads look completely RIDICULOUS (some of them look like comical imitations of a character from Fiddler on the Roof).

And the gear itself barely varies. Do you want a wizard to wear a robe? Sorry, there's no such model. That's right- all armor and clothing are some type of mail-like suit or form fitting body suit. No flowing robes or gowns.

So what you have are a whole bunch of characters that look identical. Their gear looks identical. Their body shapes and types are identical. Their heads are identical. And even the voices barely vary: out of the 8 or so choices, only 3 or 4 are even worth considering.

If you tried to run a persistent world, it would look like a bunch of clones running around.

This problem plagues NPC creation as well. I have been working on making a NWN version of Threshold's largest city. The problem I have come across is that it is REALLY, REALLY hard to make diverse looking NPCs. They all look related!

3) No Persistence!!!!!!!! This is probably the worst part of all. While you can save character data, that's it. You cannot save state. You cannot write data to files to retrieve later. You cannot have a bulletin board. You cannot have a list of who has joined a guild. Your players truly cannot have ANY lasting impact on the "world." Part of the draw of a persistent world is the ability for players to affect it in a lasting way. A NWN game "world" resets every time you fire the game back up.

4) Communication is very limited. Some people might think it is a good thing that channels and such are non-existence. IMHO, this simply creates a very boring and quiet world. If you build a large tavern (big enough for say 20 or so people), you won't be able to hear what people are saying. Is this realistic? Sure it is realistic that you cannot hear something said on the other side of the tavern. But for a game world, it is pretty darn boring.

5) Party Management: You cannot auto follow the leader of your party. I said this before, and some fanboi replied that this was merely some "small pieves like not being able to make your character mindlessly tag along behind some party leader". Considering the fact that movement is handled by click-click-clicking on the landscape, following someone for 5 minutes is an incredibly PAINFUL process. Considering the game can handle following (NPCs do it, pets do it, etc.) it really wouldn't have been that hard to let players follow someone in their own party. There is even a kludge workaround for this- try to use a healing kit on your party leader when he starts moving, and your character will follow him trying to use the kit. When he stops, cancel the heal. Now, this kludge *sucks* for actual use in the game, but it just goes to show that the capability was there, they just didn't make use of it (bad game design imho).

6) Camera: Folks, the camera blows. And once again, the sad part is that it doesn't have to blow. Bioware has stated that the toolset uses the exact same engine as the game itself to render the environment. In the toolset you can rotate the camera from 0 to 90 degrees. So why does the game limit you to 45-90? The lacking camera control is a HUGE complaint (check their official forums). People really want to be able to SEE WHERE THEY ARE GOING for crying out loud. Is that so wrong? When you get more people in the world, being able to look around effectively becomes even more important.

7) Very difficult to import custom content: Making and importing your own animations, models, and sounds is very, very difficult. It is actually HARDER to use custom sounds and such than in Bioware's Infinity engine games *boggle*. People will figure out how to do this, but it is a shame that they did not make it a LOT easier. Want to see a modern game that makes it easy to add models and skins? Check out this Freedom Force site:

8) D&D rules: I've said this before and it is just as true now as ever: the D&D rules port VERY BADLY onto a computer. I am actually a fan of the D&D rules in general. My wife, our friends, and I really enjoy playing D&D together. It is a good set of rules for face to face gaming because it is relatively simple, and it is open ended enough to let people express their imagination.

Well, imagination doesn't work on a computer. The computer needs hard facts and formulas in order to compute a situation. The Attack of Opportunity debacle is a perfect example. Easily 90% of all attacks of opportunity in the game are totally bogus. They are the result of poorly calculated "threatened areas", the fancy "combat footwork" animation moving your character too far in one direction moving him in/out of someone's threatened area, pathfinding problems making you run a weird route opening yourself up to numerous ridiculous AoOs, the whole AoO provoked when casting rule (which is fine for Pen and Paper, but sucks in a CRPG where you run one character).

Sneak Attacks: These are laughable. A tiny little strafe is all you need to get a sneak attack. Your character's automatic combat footwork animation can open you up to sneak attacks. It is ridiculous! At higher levels, these sneak attacks add 4d6 damage or MORE. We're talking some serious damage.

Advancement/Skill/Ability system: D&D has too few levels, too few skills, and too few special abilities for a CRPG. For melee characters, you click on the nearest enemy and watch. Granted, the graphics engine renders melee combat very well. It looks cool. But after the 5,000th battle, the coolness wears off. I would enjoy having to DO more in combat. I would enjoy having to use some special moves, special attacks or styles, etc. The D&D rules simply do not support this.

D&D Gear: D&D gear is pretty boring really. You cannot script fancy behavior into the gear. You cannot make "sets" ala Diablo. You cannot make weapons that transform (gauntlets that have blades shooting out, etc). You are very limited here.

================================================== ==========

There are other problems as well, but those are some of the highlights.

Before I close this post, I want to say a few good things about the toolset.

The scripting language is very powerful. You write scripts in C which means there is a lot you can do. I applaud them for using a real scripting language rather than making some dumbed down "easy" language. Sure, every D&D geek under the sun would have been able to use it, but after about 2 weeks its possibilities would have been exhausted. Bioware has taken a lot of heat from the folks who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag (or even code the bag itself in the first place), but they made a smart move here.

Editing things like conversations for interaction with the NPCs is excellent. It works like a dream and is very, very easy to make rich dialogue for the NPCs your players will interact with.

Building maps, creating hack-n-slash encounters, etc. are all very easy.

I think NWN is a great single player game and I think in time people would put out some REALLY fun modules. It will be a lot of fun to download a module, decide what kind of character you want to play for that module, and then play it solo or with your friends. In time, modules will have cool, interesting stories with challenging and exciting encounters and battles.

But here is what will NOT happen with NWN:

Persistent worlds that are anything more than glorified chat rooms will not exist. The game engine lacks way too much to create anything closely resembling a true, persistent world game.

People will not be able to stick with one character and play it long term. You hit the level cap too quickly and there is no way to import a different character into an existing saved game. What you will have is people having many characters and they will use whichever character suits their whim and the level requirements of the latest "cool" module they want to play. NWN will be about the stories and exciting challenges people write into their modules. You will need to have many different characters and pull out the one appropriate at the time depending on which module you want to play. It won't be like a mud or an MMORPG where you have a truly MAIN character you play the majority of the time. The only way that will be possible is if you play very few modules or if you play only with a single group of friends and have a DM keeping things interesting long term.
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