I like NWN, and no, I'm not Volourn

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

As the topic states, I like NWN, and no, I'm not Volourn, and I even disagree with him on a number of issues.

Many people complain of Bioware 'pandering to the lowest common denominator', and to that I say 'meh!' If Bioware was doing that, then the only thing possible to do in the Toolset would be making lame pure hack and slash modules, and, guess what, that isn't the only possible thing to do. Sure, none of the OCs are masterpieces, but they shouldn't be. In fact, I couldn't care less if they are or not, because that's not the point of NWN!

"Then what is it?!?" I hear you cry (If you respond to this sort of thing easily and want to flame the hell out of me), "I bet you're going to say that the Toolset is the point of NWN, but I won't believe you, because if what comes out of the box isn't worth it, then I stick my nose in the air. I can't hear you, nananana!!"



Yes, I'm sure that many of you believe that firmly. I have news for you, though. The Toolset is NWN. The OC isn't. The OC is, in fact, a product of the Toolset. It is a sampler. I feel truly sorry for anyone that believes (or hopes) otherwise. It seems to me that many of you don't even want to like NWN, and find any excuse to put it down. I'm happy that Bioware put more effort into the Toolset than the OC, because that's the part that's still going to be around two years from now when Dragon Age comes out (And hopefully replaces it). Many of you (I've heard you) say that you won't try any user-made modules because of some kind of messed up principle that you have. Well, I guess I don't really care, but you're completely missing the point (and the fun!). Actually, I can't even begin to imagine why anyone even bought NWN if they had already made up their mind not to EVER play a module other than the OC. It seems like a phenomenal waste of money to me. Or maybe you were just stupid... I guess that could be it.

Now I'll try to tie this in to something that's actually semi-relevant. DA is going to be like NWN, like it or not, if they include a toolset as powerful or more powerful that that of NWN. They are not going to have the resources to devote to the OC, and it'll suffer because of that. I would really not advise buying it if you still have those strange principles that I mentioned earlier.

Okay, enough ranting. My name's Grandmaster_Woo'Ta, and it's nice to meet you. I hope you like me, but I wouldn't bet on it. Get used to me, because I may be here for a while. (Or someone can ban me. It's his choice.)

 

[fnordcircle]

Good for you, having poor taste is an American pasttime. So says Mencken, at least.

The great thing about Bioware games is they take pesky notions like exploration that plague RPGs and replace them with awesome intra-group relationships. Nailing Aerie remains the highlight of my life to this very day.

In my mind, I spidermanned her.

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Good for you, having poor taste is an American pasttime. So says Mencken, at least.

The great thing about Bioware games is they take pesky notions like exploration that plague RPGs and replace them with awesome intra-group relationships. Nailing Aerie remains the highlight of my life to this very day.

In my mind, I spidermanned her.

Hmm, then I guess it's a good thing I'm not American. :wink:

Seriously, tell me with a straight face that the Toolset of NWN is not a really, really good thing for the RPG lover.

 

[DrattedTin]

Seriously, tell me with a straight face that the Toolset of NWN is not a really, really good thing for the RPG lover.

The Toolset of NWN is not a really, really good thing for the RPG lover.

 

[Anonymous]

. Sure, none of the OCs are masterpieces, but they shouldn't be.

I sure do love going to the store to buy a videogame, only to discover I didnt buy a videogame, but a level editor.

Hmmm..

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

Good for you, having poor taste is an American pasttime. So says Mencken, at least.

Hey don't blame us. It's not our fault the Canadian people allow such things as BioWare to come into exsistance.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Was there another purpose of this thread other than to insult the Codex staff?

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Was there another purpose of this thread other than to insult the Codex staff?

Erm... I believe that I insulted their ideas, not the actual people. There's a difference you know, even if you can't see it.

Oh, and just for curiosity's sake, is there any point to the Codex other than to insult Bioware? Judging from the number of 'news' items doing just that on the front page, I'd guess not.

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Seriously, tell me with a straight face that the Toolset of NWN is not a really, really good thing for the RPG lover.

The Toolset of NWN is not a really, really good thing for the RPG lover.

Your face =

It needs to be a straight face!

And you call yourself an RPG lover.

 

[Amerestatistic]

You could just post like everybody else, you know. You don't have to announce yourself as the new Guy Who Likes Bioware (and he's gonna be here for a while! Watch out!)

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

. Sure, none of the OCs are masterpieces, but they shouldn't be.

I sure do love going to the store to buy a videogame, only to discover I didnt buy a videogame, but a level editor.

Hmmm..

Did you read my post? That's the point of it! Since it was announced, the Toolset was the focus, with the OC only becoming prominent shortly before release. Anyone even slightly reading between the lines could tell that the OC would NOT be worth the purchase.

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

You could just post like everybody else, you know. You don't have to announce yourself as the new Guy Who Likes Bioware (and he's gonna be here for a while! Watch out!)

Hey, I have to stroke my ego somehow, you know.

 

[plin]

Yes, please post like every other critic prick here.

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Yes, please post like every other critic prick here.

Ok, so you want me to go around posting that everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot.

Oh, and I need to do this at least 100 times daily.

 

[Anonymous]

. Sure, none of the OCs are masterpieces, but they shouldn't be.

I sure do love going to the store to buy a videogame, only to discover I didnt buy a videogame, but a level editor.

Hmmm..

Did you read my post? That's the point of it! Since it was announced, the Toolset was the focus, with the OC only becoming prominent shortly before release. Anyone even slightly reading between the lines could tell that the OC would NOT be worth the purchase.

Yet oddly, it isnt sold as software. The editor is a nice 'Get out of Jail Free' card when the Jail is 'We cant design games worth a shit, so we'll just make a gumbo of popular features' design thought. Also see: Morrowind.

And if you think all RPG Codex exsists for is to bash BioWare, you're quite the retard. Maybe you should see WHY we bash them, then you will discover the real purpose. (Pro-Tip: It's because we like GOOD RPGs, that give ROLEPLAYING in a GAME, BioWare cant seem to do that, so they get trashed like the others who do so).

 

[Sol Invictus]

A man is inseperable from the opinions which that he espouses. When you insult the opinion, you insult the man.

Oh, and just for curiosity's sake, is there any point to the Codex other than to insult Bioware? Judging from the number of 'news' items doing just that on the front page, I'd guess not.

Spoken like a proud troll. You're not one to hide your true identity, are you?

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Yet oddly, it isnt sold as software. The editor is a nice 'Get out of Jail Free' card when the Jail is 'We cant design games worth a shit, so we'll just make a gumbo of popular features' design thought. Also see: Morrowind.

And if you think all RPG Codex exsists for is to bash BioWare, you're quite the retard. Maybe you should see WHY we bash them, then you will discover the real purpose. (Pro-Tip: It's because we like GOOD RPGs, that give ROLEPLAYING in a GAME, BioWare cant seem to do that, so they get trashed like the others who do so).

Or maybe it's because you have a definition of a good CRPG that is impossible to obtain. Face it, there is probably never going to be another RPG comparable to Fallout (if you're into that sort of thing). The future is not turn-based, no matter how much you want it to be. But that doesn't matter; the point is that neither you nor the Codex respect Bioware for who they are (or were). They almost single-handedly kicked the CRPG industry into action, and are now solid contributors to the ranks of CRPGs year after year. I don't like everything they do. I know that you're going to flame me as a Bio-Fanboy, but it's the way it is. Without Bioware, you wouldn't have your beloved Arcanum or any of the other CRPGs that you cherish.

You seem to have a skewed view of game design. What you seem to think is that you can just put together and release a toolset without really doing any work to make it good. I've got news, that just isn't the way reality works. Perhaps you're one of those that doesn't want toolsets since P&P can do it better anyways. Well, it certainly can now, but I can't wait until the computer catches up. I ask you, why do you play CRPGs at all? Is it just poor man's P&P, or is it something else? Do you like the fact that there is some visualization to go with the fantasy? If the former, then you should embrace toolsets, since they make the CRPG approach the P&P level, and if the latter, then you should like it all the more, since P&P with visualization will be possible.

Exitium, a person is never inseperable from his opinions. It is a fool that takes offense at somebody attacking his ideas. Only through debate and attacks can the human race and all our knowledge advance. And I'm only saying what I think I see. When I took a look at the front page just now, I see about a 1 : 2 ratio of Bioware posting 'news' to other news, and almost all of the editor's notes on them were snide remarks about how the Bioware employee was wrong and implied that they were morons for their opinions. Frankly, even if the website were insulting a company I had no knowledge of, that would still offend me.

 

[Psilon]

Hyping the editor as the primary focus of NWN would make more sense if...
- BOTH the conversation and scripting editors could be open at once.
- You could override the visual presentation of conversation lines. Embed an image for a map, or even just set a particular passage to be rendered in a monospaced font. The only "map" effects I saw on NWVault were atrocious kludges.
- The scripting language supported complex data structures. Arrays? Hashes? Structs? References?
- Hey, tilesets that didn't suck would be nice. Hell, interior tilesets which were scaled to fit humanoids would be even better.
- How about the ability to set individual stores' buying patterns? Maybe I don't want militantly atheist sorcerers in depressed areas to shell out 25000GP for a Rod of Holy Smite. The assassins' guild shouldn't want to purchase Holy Avenger swords.
- Terrain modification? Exploding buildings, crumbling walls: these things would be cool.
- Retrieving VFX effect classes would help. Say you've got a CTF module with some FPS-style magic items. If the quad damage (say, VFX_DUR_ELEMENTAL_SHIELD) expires, you don't want your RemoveEffect loop to get rid of the flag-carrying effect as well. If that happens, the module breaks.
- Grouping missions into campaigns would be nifty. The more modules you download, the less you want to scroll through "Elemental Weevils I-IX" to find the new stuff.
- The faction system is awful. Even the BioWare guys commented on it in the postmortem.

And that's just the editor; I'm not counting the limited vista of 2DA hacking.

Incidentally, I have a higher respect for systems whose editors allow off-the-wall stuff. The original Unreal Tournament supported a fully-functioning version of Tetris in the GUI. Someone actually wrote a LISP interpreter for the Infocom Z-Machine. (Tetris as well, but honestly, LISP is far cooler a hack.)

NWN? $50 was a ripoff for a lackluster D20 editor and a worse campaign. If I were truly interested in creating an RPG, I'd fire up my C compiler. Should I want to start with someone else's graphics engine, there are tons available. Crystal Space, Ogre, Torque, Wild Magic: all are available freely or for next to nothing, and I can write whatever rule tweals I damn well please. The toolset (I refuse to dignify it with a capital letter) of NWN is not a really, really good thing for the RPG lover.

 

[Anonymous]

The future is not turn-based, no matter how much you want it to be.

Correct, a quick glance at the Underdogs will show you that most of the past and a good deal of the present is turn-based, the future will just come along like normal, with the usual wad of 'omg real-time omgomgomgomg' games that companies spew out.

But that doesn't matter; the point is that neither you nor the Codex respect Bioware for who they are (or were). They almost single-handedly kicked the CRPG industry into action,

Apparently we live in different dimentions, as this never happened.

and are now solid contributors to the ranks of CRPGs year after year.

While repacking the same gameplay year after year, odd innit?

I don't like everything they do. I know that you're going to flame me as a Bio-Fanboy

Likewise, not all of everyone here hates everything BioWare has made, but of course, you're just going to label us 'Biased BioWare Hating Members of the Satan's Third Reich Turn-Based Party', but oh well. What matters is you're totally clueless, though, and with a note on cluelessness, we go to your next point:

Without Bioware, you wouldn't have your beloved Arcanum or any of the other CRPGs that you cherish.

I really really want you to explain this one. Here was I thinking that Tim Cain likes to make original non-fantasy RPGs with lots of options, as he did with Fallout, so he created Arcanum. But apparently, in that magic universe of yours, BioWare's generosity caused it's creation. Hmmm.

You seem to have a skewed view of game design. What you seem to think is that you can just put together and release a toolset without really doing any work to make it good. I've got news, that just isn't the way reality works.

You just said it did! That's what your whole post was about!

Perhaps you're one of those that doesn't want toolsets since P&P can do it better anyways. Well, it certainly can now, but I can't wait until the computer catches up. I ask you, why do you play CRPGs at all? Is it just poor man's P&P, or is it something else? Do you like the fact that there is some visualization to go with the fantasy? If the former, then you should embrace toolsets, since they make the CRPG approach the P&P level, and if the latter, then you should like it all the more, since P&P with visualization will be possible.

No, dumbass, I just want to play a quality RPG, which have been made...

 

[Psilon]

But that doesn't matter; the point is that neither you nor the Codex respect Bioware for who they are (or were). They almost single-handedly kicked the CRPG industry into action, and are now solid contributors to the ranks of CRPGs year after year. I don't like everything they do. I know that you're going to flame me as a Bio-Fanboy, but it's the way it is. Without Bioware, you wouldn't have your beloved Arcanum or any of the other CRPGs that you cherish.

Bzzt. Wrong! Fallout and Daggerfall, which both came out years before Baldur's Gate, are generally the ones credited with kick-starting the RPG genre in the late 1990s. Giving BG credit for that brief renaissance is like praising StarCraft for the invention of the RTS. Also, please present evidence of the causal link between BG/BG2 and Troika's incorporation.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Oh, goody. A newbie who comes in loaded for bear after lurking an indeterminate amount of time, there's a new one.

Just dig up the old NWN topics and sit down for a few weeks reading them if you're really that curious about the general dislike of a 2 year old game. We've already had this discussion with your four-score predecessors. We have some guy every 2 weeks drop in just like you have shooting his mouth off, it's really nothing new. Your only fate now is to be Rosh's new chew toy. Enjoy!

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Most of those things in your list are nitpicks. I freely admit that the Toolset (I do choose to dignify it with a capital letter) is far from perfect, but I see NWN as a stepping stone to the ideal future (for me). As I see it, there are three camps. There is the camp that wants to play P&P on the computer, there is the camp that just wants to play a good CRPG, and there is the camp that lies somewhere in between. I fall somewhere in between, myself. Personally, I'd prefer not to have to write my own RPG from the ground up, like you propose. I see nothing wrong with accepting a few limitations in order to allow for easier implementation.

You know how CRPGs started? Way back in the beginning, there wasn't a hell of a lot that your character or any other character in the world could do. Basically, you could move, attack, and maybe sit down on a chair (if you were lucky). Despite this, we revere many of these old games as classics. Why? Well, partly because we're looking through the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia, and because they had good storylines and gameplay, even within very strict limits to what was possible to do.

I do admit, however, that the faction system is a POS, though.

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

Oh, goody. A newbie who comes in loaded for bear after lurking an indeterminate amount of time, there's a new one.

Just dig up the old NWN topics and sit down for a few weeks reading them if you're really that curious about the general dislike of a 2 year old game. We've already had this discussion with your four-score predecessors. We have some guy every 2 weeks drop in just like you have shooting his mouth off, it's really nothing new. Your only fate now is to be Rosh's new chew toy. Enjoy!

This topic is not about NWN, but instead about, like many a political campaign, respect. I don't care how corny that sounds, but that is what it is about. Apparently, there is some agreement here that NWN and Bioware in general are 'bad things'. Well, of course, I don't want to interfere with that, because, after all, opinions like that are inseperable from you! Who am I fooling, of course I want to interfere with that.

Very few people are newbies anymore, and you should realize that. Just because I haven't posted on this forum before today doesn't mean that I haven't posted countless numbers on other forums.

Maybe you can just think of me as the Second Coming and we can stop at that.

 

[Anonymous]

Ehh, alot of the classics people look highly on had some contribution to the progress of CRPGs and usually were really damn good CRPGs to begin with, an example would be Ultima 7.

 

[Grandmaster_Woo'Ta]

But that doesn't matter; the point is that neither you nor the Codex respect Bioware for who they are (or were). They almost single-handedly kicked the CRPG industry into action, and are now solid contributors to the ranks of CRPGs year after year. I don't like everything they do. I know that you're going to flame me as a Bio-Fanboy, but it's the way it is. Without Bioware, you wouldn't have your beloved Arcanum or any of the other CRPGs that you cherish.

Bzzt. Wrong! Fallout and Daggerfall, which both came out years before Baldur's Gate, are generally the ones credited with kick-starting the RPG genre in the late 1990s. Giving BG credit for that brief renaissance is like praising StarCraft for the invention of the RTS. Also, please present evidence of the causal link between BG/BG2 and Troika's incorporation.

I admit that that statement of mine was not my greatest, but it is true that BG made RPGs mainstream, which made it financially feasible for publishers and developers, like Troika, to concentrate on making quality RPGs.

Also, it is quite funny that you praise Daggerfall for helping the RPG industry, and yet you, and the rest of the people like you on this board, diss Morrowind tirelessly.