So I tried out NWN2....

[Elhoim]

The levels and the gold is ridiculous. You gain two levels in 1 day of your life, and you can buy a full plate armor in the first inn you come acrooss. In the second day of adventuring, you can clear a bandit camp with about 50 bandits, only with 2 companions, and find a drum that can be selled for 2000 gold. Also, in the 4th area of the game, you can find a morningstar that is very powerful (+1, +1d6 fire).

Traps do laughable damage, and I usually don´t wait for the voice to finish to continue a dialogue. The cutscenes are almost amateur. If I wanted to "watch" a game, I would play a Final Fantasy. At least they use better cameras angles, better character facial gestures, and great CG movies.

At many points I laughed at how bad the game was. Specially...

***SPOILER***

At the part in when you talk with Elanee at the keep walls. The music they used for this "romantic" scene was so cliched, that I almost heard: "Why do birds suddenly appear, everytime, you are near...".

***SPOILER***

Also the problem with the controls is that the game is based in a 1-2 person party engine, and it becomes difficult to use as you don´t have options to select various characters, etc.

Anyway, I´m glad that some people liked it, but it doesn´t mean it´s great. I´m not someone who lives in the past, and can enjoy new games. In fact, the last game that really hooked me was KOTOR, which is not a great RPG, but it was a refreshing and very interesting game.

 

[Jim Kata]

Override - yes, the bugs are annoying and humorous. Like the way I parry arrows left and right, and how instead of parrying one enemy I parry everyone who attacks me. Since I have improved parry and high skill I pretty much always get a counterattack, as well.

 

[WittyName]

I don't think it's that bad but I will say it's more geared as a construction set -- hopefully people will make some interesting mods.

As, Elhoim pointed out the amount of gold and itemization is severely flawed. But hey, I got it for $25 so it's not that bad.

 

[Texas Red]

The leveling is bad, is it? What do you suggest? Letting players only advance 10 levels like in BG or ToEE and see how the forums drown in whine? Or perhaps increasing the campaign by another 50 hours by adding useless chest bashing like in NWN 1?

Personally I find starting at level 3 is a good decision. There arent any of these annoying "fetch me my sandwich ktnx you achieved level 2". If that would be the case then you would whine about it as well. Would you prefer to defend West Harbor from the attack of the giant rats instead of grey dwarves and bladelings?

 

[Volourn]

"Letting players only advance 10 levels like in BG or ToEE and see how the forums drown in whine?"

1. People can whine all they want; but BG muist have done soemthing right since it spawned a whole bunch of games made in its style - the IE games, Aurora games (inclouding the KOTORs); not to mention all the rip offs from other non BIO/BIS/Obsidian companies. It's leveling pace is one of the best things about the game.,

2. You may gain 'only' 10 levels in TOEE; but that's in a 10-25 hour game where you are also leveling up 5 levels so the limited levels are really not all that noticeable since you are leveling up pretty consatntly since your characetrs are likely to have different amounts of crafting (crafting, dying if you don't just reload, etc., xp penalties do class differiential).

In esseence, you give piss poor examples.


What i do find hialrious is that many people who whined non stop about NWN1 OC giving 2 'free' levels during its proluge don't complain about NWN2 OC doing the same thing. R00fles!


"At the part in when you talk with Elanee at the keep walls. The music they used for this "romantic" scene was so cliched, that I almost heard: "Why do birds suddenly appear, everytime, you are near...".

1. Obsidina comes across as hating romances in RPGs, and I think the cheesy music was their way of rebeling against the fans who demanded romances in the game. I thought it was cute myself. Stop being such a jaded old cootie!

 

[Jim Kata]

The leveling is bad, is it? What do you suggest? Letting players only advance 10 levels like in BG or ToEE and see how the forums drown in whine? Or perhaps increasing the campaign by another 50 hours by adding useless chest bashing like in NWN 1?

Personally I find starting at level 3 is a good decision. There arent any of these annoying "fetch me my sandwich ktnx you achieved level 2". If that would be the case then you would whine about it as well. Would you prefer to defend West Harbor from the attack of the giant rats instead of grey dwarves and bladelings?

There an idiotic false dichotomy. You could have the OC go up to level 10 if you do everything, but have a higher max level for mods and NPCs.

I would *prefer* there was no idiotic village attack in the first place, but going from level 1, err 3 to 20 all the while defeating the high level oppositiont hat could have just teleported ina nd crushed you in one heartbeat is ridiculous.

Why not have a few nonepic quests that have nothing to do with the storyline to start with and the ability to wander around a bit? Then once you get to a certain level you start to have more and more storyline hooks.

 

[Elhoim]

Personally I find starting at level 3 is a good decision. There arent any of these annoying "fetch me my sandwich ktnx you achieved level 2". If that would be the case then you would whine about it as well. Would you prefer to defend West Harbor from the attack of the giant rats instead of grey dwarves and bladelings?

You start at level 1 if you do the tutorial, and you gain 2 levels only by competing in a practically rigged town fair.

And in a couple of game days (if there were such a thing) you can gain 5 more levels.

The starting leveling is ridiculous, as you can be level 10 very fast.

And I don´t think that a lower level cap is a bad thing, but perhaps that would anger the new oblivious crowd.

I prefer the "sandwhich" quest than these "Ooohh, you are TEH POWERFUL ALL SOLVING player!!!", that can take a bandit camp and a horde of undead with his two allies (who have more adventuring experience than you but are of the SAME LEVEL! And Shandra can "barely hold a sword", but has your SAME LEVEL!). And the commander of the camp has only 24hp max, beign at most level 2.

 

[Elhoim]

"At the part in when you talk with Elanee at the keep walls. The music they used for this "romantic" scene was so cliched, that I almost heard: "Why do birds suddenly appear, everytime, you are near...".

1. Obsidina comes across as hating romances in RPGs, and I think the cheesy music was their way of rebeling against the fans who demanded romances in the game. I thought it was cute myself. Stop being such a jaded old cootie!

Je, je... Yeah, that must be it. It was like "you want romance? Fuck her and get over it!".

 

[Nael]

I like it. Act 1 is, frankly, awful, but 2 is pretty good - great in parts - and 3 is decent. Not a brilliant game, but a good one.

That's generally how I feel. Act 2 was alright, but I felt Act 3 would've been outstanding if it didn't feel so damn rushed. Like I said a week or two ago in a different thread the whole game feels like Kotor2 meets NWN1. Good writing, some of my favorite settings for RPGs (D&D and SW), but absolutely abysmal interface and ho-hum interaction with your companions except for the occasional plot device. The game could've been so much better if they just let Obsidian write the plot/dialogue and let someone more... focused to handle the details.

On another note though, some of the PWs are showing some genuine promise too once all the kinks inherant to NWN2 are worked out. I was expecting most them atm to be fairly cookie-cutter or horribly designed. I was also expecting the typical MMO crowd these days, spamming Chuck Norris jokes. So far I've found quite the opposite. Alot of the world building I'm seeing matches or surpasses the OC tilesets and most of the people I've partied with have been pretty good all-around and even RP appropriately.

All in all, after having completed the OC twice I'd have to say having played the past 2 nights on some PW Story servers I'm having way more fun doing that than the single player game. I don't think many of them can accommodate very high level characters yet so I don't think right now they'll provide a whole lot of fun filled hours unless you have some DMs that are really active. Enjoying the PWs at this point is more of a waiting game until they've gone through their betas.

So I'd say, if you haven't bought NWN2 yet don't bother yet. If you're somewhat interested though, I'd give it 6 months or so and wait for the bargain bin deal or a used copy or somethin. The OC is for the most part forgettable, but the modding community is already starting to take pretty good shape.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

They have decent PWs out already? Interesting. Recommend a few.

 

[Baphomet]

You start at level 1 if you do the tutorial, and you gain 2 levels only by competing in a practically rigged town fair.

And in a couple of game days (if there were such a thing) you can gain 5 more levels.

The starting leveling is ridiculous, as you can be level 10 very fast.

I got up early and milked a cow this morning. And that's how I became an epic level Commoner.

 

[Elhoim]

D&D Noob question. Before your character becomes a level 1 adveturer, he gained levels as a commoner?

 

[Zomg]

The stuff with going to level 20 and so on is just the pandering they had to do for D&D autistics, the same kind of people that plan out their World of Warcraft builds on notebook paper obsessively. It's why you get the D&D license in the first place, that built-in audience of build heads drawn from the Magic: The Gathering/Japanese cartoon CCG player nerd subculture. I don't particularly blame Obsidian for that, since the implications of a given level are arbitrary outside of eminently ignorable mainstream D&D flavor.

 

[Texas Red]

You start at level 1 if you do the tutorial, and you gain 2 levels only by competing in a practically rigged town fair.

And in a couple of game days (if there were such a thing) you can gain 5 more levels.

The starting leveling is ridiculous, as you can be level 10 very fast.

I got up early and milked a cow this morning. And that's how I became an epic level Commoner.

Thats a tutorial, you idiot. When the real game starts you are forced in to fighting dwarves and lizardfolk and such instead of fetching bottles and sandwiches as in other RPGs. And you can skip the tutorial if you want.

 

[Solaris]

I pretty much agree with Elhoim here. So many things flawed in this game.....when I reached Neverwinter for the first time (which is reasonably early on in the game) I had about 30K in gold and god knows how many decent bits of gear for my companions & me etc. Which is another reason why the game is so easy even on hardcore imo. Of course, I could always refuse to use this gear, but...

Leveling does slow down a bit once you hit lvl 10 or so but the balance overall is fucked anyway. I've heard some people say that detractors of the game's mechaincs/flaws like me are expecting too much of a MMO type thing...well, no not really. I expect balance. Any rpg worth its salt should be properly balanced surely...unless of course D&D is not supposed to be that way?...hmmm

But hey, maybe the fact there is so manyy bugs in this game its hard to actually see if its balanced or not

 

[Jim Kata]

The stuff with going to level 20 and so on is just the pandering they had to do for D&D autistics, the same kind of people that plan out their World of Warcraft builds on notebook paper obsessively. It's why you get the D&D license in the first place, that built-in audience of build heads drawn from the Magic: The Gathering/Japanese cartoon CCG player nerd subculture. I don't particularly blame Obsidian for that, since the implications of a given level are arbitrary outside of eminently ignorable mainstream D&D flavor.

I like that too, but why not have some randomly generated content to play with where you can gain some levels if you must go that way? Starting a super epic story from a village is just ridiculous. If they are going to start higher, give the player a little background that warrants a higher level and then start as that level - maybe a few backgrounds/starting places to choose from depending on alignment or class.

 

[Nael]

They have decent PWs out already? Interesting. Recommend a few.

Grim's Tavern and Dasaria are the two I've played most. Grim's Tavern seems to be more laid back and not quite as expansive, but it's still very well thought out and designed. The dungeon under the Tavern is fairly large and easy to get lost in at first. The people on Grim's seem to be more personable than any other servers I've been on.

Dasaria seems pretty cool, but it's always pretty crowded and they use much larger tilesets than they needed to. I had to turn down the graphic settings because the opening tileset is about 4 times larger than anything in the OC. It's far more developed than Grim's but feels too MMO'ish to me at times. People aren't as ready to group up either because the XP isn't as easy to come by. I haven't played Dasaria as much as Grim's though so that's my impression after only about 2 hours of play versus about 6 hours on Grim's Tavern.

 

[Jasede]

Are those hardcore low-magic low-level low-loot high-danger RP permadeath PWs or something less perfect?

 

[Volourn]

"The stuff with going to level 20 and so on is just the pandering they had to do for D&D autistics"

No. It's to pander to the people who only buy the game for OC so theyf eel they get their money's worth in experience most everything the game to offer. That's why the idiots who called for Obsidian (and BIO with NWN1) to have the OC(s) to only go up to x level (Obsidian fanboys wnated it to be level 12 or so) for the OC, and 'save' the higher level for the 'special' players who would play modules and what not.

Intelligently, they were told to fuck off!!!

 

[cutterjohn]

One of my problems with NWN2 is that they have 967478326784742892789426931704982624789+1 cut scenes, of which 967478326784742892789426931704982624789 have zero value.

That and the camera is complete and total shit. You're just lucky that you quit before you got to one of their stupid little linear huge canyon maps with that ultra crap camera. It almost makes me want to quit NWN2, but I shall persevere.

Oh, and the dialog choices, so far, seem to have no real affect on the dialog outcomes. Or at least the several times that I experimented with different options I always ended up witht he exact same last 3 dialog sections. Once in a while, there MAY be an influence change, but even that is pretty fucking transparent, as in I've decided to say fuck the party, have fun with your lame ass quests.

 

[Elhoim]

Thats a tutorial, you idiot.

And I wondered why you were a dumbfuck...

 

[Nael]

Are those hardcore low-magic low-level low-loot high-danger RP permadeath PWs or something less perfect?

Aside from permadeath (only XP penalties), yes they pretty much are low-magic even down to having time limits between rests. Dasaria currently operates with a 3 minute cooldown plus an additional 30 seconds per level between rests. Grims was considering adopting an even harsher 1 minute additional between levels, but obviously by the time you're level 20 it'd be damn near prohibitive to almost any kind of play style. Personally I like the cooldown idea, but I'm not too keen on the logarithmic scaling for increasing player levels.

As for low-level and loot, I don't really know for sure considering I haven't played past 3 on any PWs yet. Most claim to be such so you could probably do a search either on Bioware's forums or Google.

 

[Elhoim]

Ah, also I really don´t like the 5-second-almost-everywhere-full-heal. Anything to say, TWD?

 

[aweigh]

I dig how TWD is now to NWN2 what Volourn was to NWN1.

 

[Pegultagol]

I found the experience so far (in Neverwinter, doing the Watch's bidding against thugs) in line with what I expected. Although it is not excusable to limit any aspect of roleplaying due to the game design, I expected how the group dynamics will support the linear storyline, how the plot will be shoehorned without much room for alternative paths. Sometimes it is quite transparent how the designers wanted the game to be experienced, and for the most part I have no qualms with it.

I found the combat not as harrowing. I'm playing at normal difficulty and as a D&D novice, there were occasions where my party was wiped out, particularly when I did not anticipate the placement of the enemy prior to barging in without discretion. I tend to observe the enemy AI targeting the main character (wizard) or any spellcaster seems to get priority. The enemy spellcaster seems to be governed by a macro in launching attacks, but effective enough in getting my attention foremost. The enemy AI generally knows how to navigate and support its comrades in its vicinity. The combat is sometimes fantastic visually awash in effects, especially in close quarters battle with lighting bias.

The companions seem rather disappointing up to now, as the level of interaction is not completely polished for sustaining that especial air of realism. The tiefling girl speaks harshly of the dwarf in the earshot of him without any expectant retort from him. The characters are written fairly well, though (for example in the tavern where the insults are flung about and the dry wit of Sand after the uncle character describes him as so). The characters' criteria for influence seems sometimes a bit dubious, exposing the perspective of designers in their definition of the myriad of alignments that are exploited for the dynamic / relationship. The way the characters are introduced seem to be a calculated move on the designer's part to better coordinate the pace of the plot; after the fire sorceress is introduced is when enemy magic users are thrown into the mix, and after the rogue tiefling comes a dungeon where her skills become almost mandatory. Again, I have no problem with it since the gameplay expands for uses of each character with more things to do. I wish the application of skills could extend when the party appraises wares and converses with NPCs in which the speech skills could take effect.

I found the AI of the party during combat adequate. At least I did not feel that it was partly responsible for any of the mishaps during the combat. Again, I'm playing on the normal difficulty with an inadequate knowledge of D&D combat mechanics. If Area of Effect was present, I would not have the same genial feeling toward any of the combat I've had with the sorceress. Sometimes I wish there were some formation options. The interface is serviceable, but one can download a certain mod (xUI, I believe is called?) that makes it more customizable.

The quest is very combat heavy, and while I expected this, I could not help but confounded by the prospect of stealth in one particular side quest for the tiefling girl, only to find out 'infiltration' method really did not necessitate sneaking around but just adhered to normal par for the course romp at the supposed hideout while the presumed 'rival' was not present. Pity, since I was half expecting at least some kind of platform puzzles using rogue skills while the rest of the party 'stood ground'. I am still in the thick of things so I do not know what to say about the overall plot.

One comment about the economy. I don't know why, but I am quite dirt poor at this point, well relatively speaking, with only 1000 gold among the party. Most of the wares of notable value I just picked up along the way. Maybe I did not attempt to steal from the NPCs with the rogue, but the economy aspect of the game seems realistically drawn up.

I guess these are my quick impressions so far. I am quite content with the game, maybe due to my adjusted expectation in line with how my NWN experience went. I understand everyone has his or her taste for the kind of roleplaying that suits them best. Maybe I am really desperate for any kind of competent RPG, so I did not let the problems mentioned bother me as much. The camera was getting out of hand, I moved it a bit to get a better view of the surroundings, changed its speeds for a more fine control. The dwarf was stuck and became unresponsive during the warehouse level, so off I go to load the previous save and all is well. I am happy that the patch 1.03 drastically increased the performance on my system. It has been quite enjoyable, if not pleasantly generic, experience.