Neverwinter Nights was originally planned to be "approximately 30 2-hour missions"

[JarlFrank]

At least NWN had tons of modules that had carefully thought-out resource management and rest restrictions that actually made them challenging.

When a game is an abominable mess, muh challenge only makes it worse. An ability to breeze through it and forget about it forever can be its only saving grace.

Yeah. I don't enjoy NWN modules focused on challenging combat encounters because the combat is so tedious and boring. There's no fun overcoming a "challenge" when your companion isn't under your control and will just derp around under AI control, and the combat system just feels tedious and slow rather than tactical or exciting.

A challenging module made for ToEE? YES GIMME, I wish there were more modules for that game.
A challenging module for FRUA? Let me have at it, it's gonna be fun.
A challenging module for NWN? Uh, no. The gameplay is shit, why would I want to spend my time trying to overcome challenges in a game which has worse combat than Russian Diablo clones?

 

[GloomFrost]

What is dead can never die. NWN was beyond salvation no matter what. Ugly 3d graphics after glorious 2d IE, no proper party, forgettable soundtrack, God awful level design, mediocre writing. Believe it or not but i enjoyed DA 2 and 3 a lot more than NWN OC.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

So the bottom line here is: skip the NWN OC. It's crap. I can agree with that. But don't condemn the engine because it's not nearly as bad as people (usually full-paty groupies who can't conceive of playing only a single character under your control) here claim. Some great stuff came out of NWN, especially HotU and some of the better user-made content. In fact, though I completed it only a couple of years ago for the first time (I was stumped by the puzzle on the Golem island on first playthrough attempt years ago), Hordes of the Underdark contains some of my absolute favorite content and ideas in RPGs. It was the first game where I felt C&C really mattered in endgame and whether you would succeed or not, and it encouraged thinking outside the box more than any other RPG I had played (including the incredibly overrated BG series), especially in the Beholder Caverns which was just one HUGE dead magic zone and you were forced to use your brains to figure out how to get out of that terrible predicament when you had so relied on magic and your +5 weapons (I ended up sacrificing a henchman).

There is just a shitload of good stuff in NWN if you know where to look so if you want real role-playing with good, challenging combat and real C&C, I can only suggest to newcomers to ignore the partytards and play it. Just... play it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Behead those who insult NWN.

 

[NatureOfMan]

I like the combat in the other DnD games better but even though your henchmen are functionally retarded it's pretty amusing when you get them to do the things you want them to through some incredibly retarded combination of issuing commands. It would've been better if there was full party with full control over the characters but I still like it. OC sucks yeah and it doesn't help that it's long as fuck. It has its moments though like the Charwood quest. But judging a game by its OC, which was essentially made just so there is one, is pretty fucking retarded due to the countless modules and PWs. Participating in faction play with DM supervision in the PWs is absolutely amazing and I am happy that I was patient enough to get involved in this scene. The addition of extra PRCs in some PWs is also pretty cool although some of them are pretty subpar and applying for a PRC is a pain in the fucking ass on most PWs and as a previous post said some DMs are socially retarded or with a god complex.

forgettable soundtrack.

Incorrect. The other points you made can be applied mostly to the OC which we all agree is either shit or mediocre at best.

 

[Seethe]

Believe it or not but i enjoyed DA 2 and 3 a lot more than NWN OC.

What do you gain from telling everyone you're retarded?

 

[GloomFrost]

Believe it or not but i enjoyed DA 2 and 3 a lot more than NWN OC.

What do you gain from telling everyone you're retarded?

Everything.

 

[JarlFrank]

challenging combat

Skip those modules because the combat in NWN is the worst combat in the history of RPGs.

Play those with stealth approaches or a focus on C&C instead.

 

[Roguey]

Believe it or not but i enjoyed DA 2 and 3 a lot more than NWN OC.

What do you gain from telling everyone you're retarded?

Both had far better content than the NWN OC.

 

[Seethe]

Believe it or not but i enjoyed DA 2 and 3 a lot more than NWN OC.

What do you gain from telling everyone you're retarded?

Both had far better content than the NWN OC.

I won't speak for DA 3 because I never played it, but for DA 2, such a claim is utter heresy. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about that game. I'd rather watch paint dry.

 

[Lacrymas]

DA2 has the best writing Bioware have ever produced. The suckage that is NWN OC is irredeemable. I don't know how people didn't scream bloody murder when it first came out, and it even got 2 expansions. It's good that it did, though.

 

[Perkel]

Thoughts? Would this have been an improvement? Did anyone actually like the NWN OC?

I didn't like OC precisely because of its crappy design which screamed that they don't have idea what to do with big campaign. Only when they hit expansions they started to actually design something better but that was mostly because they were smaller.
Which points out to the obvious design dilemma. The smaller the project the better usually it is.

So imho their original idea was great. I don't know about those 30 missions though. I feel like 10 4 hour modules would be better.
Secondly it is not like those modules couldn't have overarching story creating effectively campaign especially since you could import characters over from different module.

 

[Roguey]

I won't speak for DA 3 because I never played it, but for DA 2, such a claim is utter heresy. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about that game. I'd rather watch paint dry.

DA2 has two out of three interesting acts and an entertaining-if-intentionally-polarizing cast of characters. NWN has a boring excuse plot and the most boring cast of characters Bioware's ever written.

 

[JarlFrank]

Believe it or not but i enjoyed DA 2 and 3 a lot more than NWN OC.

What do you gain from telling everyone you're retarded?

Both had far better content than the NWN OC.

I won't speak for DA 3 because I never played it, but for DA 2, such a claim is utter heresy. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about that game. I'd rather watch paint dry.

The same applies to NWN1 though, especially the OC...

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I remember when an asshole DM on the now pretty much defunct Neversummer PW servers got upset when I took my low-level party to the big Dragon boss in the pre-Epic level and beat his (her) ass down because they were fucking clueless about how to even play NWN multiplayer. I used my Sorcerer's counter-magic ability to drain the Dragon's regeneration (sock-puppeted by the DM) as my Monk buddy hacked away and watched it drop. The DM got so steamed she (he) killed me on the spot with an invisible bolt from The Heavens. It's reasons like this that servers like Neversummer slit their own throats and pretty much disappeared. Wacky, immature and clueless DMs, and today I heard it's not much different, but the trend seems to be DMs favoring their friends on the servers over new players that deters any kind of growth for the PW. No wonder these things dry up and die so often. It's Royal incest that leads to madness and sterility.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

ppl shit talking NWN?
Volourn

 

[nikolokolus]

The only redeemable things about NWN were the much too short, and incomplete, Witch's Wake module and then finding a truly first rate persistent world with perma-death, PvP, player-driven politics, a rotating pool of DMs who would spring shit on you and an admin who was a scripting wizard.

The former (WW) just gave me blue balls and made me even more depressed by the OC, and the latter eventually fell apart when the admin got burnout, and a group of players started abusing some of the unwritten rules about fast-leveling alts, making it less like a PnP game and more like a regular P.O.S. MMO.

This episodic, 2-hour missions approach sounds like it would have been just as execrable as the OC in it's own deeply unsatisfying way.

 

[NatureOfMan]

I remember when an asshole DM on the now pretty much defunct Neversummer PW servers got upset when I took my low-level party to the big Dragon boss in the pre-Epic level and beat his (her) ass down because they were fucking clueless about how to even play NWN multiplayer. I used my Sorcerer's counter-magic ability to drain the Dragon's regeneration (sock-puppeted by the DM) as my Monk buddy hacked away and watched it drop. The DM got so steamed she (he) killed me on the spot with an invisible bolt from The Heavens. It's reasons like this that servers like Neversummer slit their own throats and pretty much disappeared. Wacky, immature and clueless DMs, and today I heard it's not much different, but the trend seems to be DMs favoring their friends on the servers over new players that deters any kind of growth for the PW. No wonder these things dry up and die so often. It's Royal incest that leads to madness and sterility.

Sounds like a right cunt especially since Neversummer was supposed to be an action server, right? I can see DMs from the RP servers getting buttmad about muh immersion but in an action server this sounds even more stupid. Btw you just reminded me that most dungeons and encounters are handled better in the PWs too especially since permadeath(in some places for my server at least) and penalties upon dying add a new dimension to being careful and more tactical with your approach.