1. The UI already handles multiplayer groups. During the refactoring process, it won't be difficult to translate what's already there to single-player mode. Any half-decent coder with access to the source code could add it
With a good enough coder you can do anything. But this is beamdog we are talking about, they fuck up things that not even a 1st year intern would.
even Obsidian managed to do it (whether or not you think it was any good, they did it, and it's better than dumb companion AI for a lot of people).
Obsidian killed the IP for i dont know how long, the game was bad. Can we stop using nwn 2 as an example of anything but a decent text editor for interactive dialogue?
If Beamdog refuse to implement it themselves but at least unhardcode its potential, you can bank on modders running through walls to make FPC happen.
Not that it would matetr, most modules still arent and wouldnt be compatible with that crap, so its largely irrelevant.
2. MotB and PS:T were given as examples of FPC not precluding role-playing focus. If MotB combat is cancer, NWN companion AI is terminal cancer.
Nwn companion AI never bothered me because i never relied on a retarded companion in the first place.
MotB wasnt a personal story anyway, it was more focused on a character that was long dead and your companions that on the player. And PST was a visual novel.
3. Believe what you want. Fact is the best role-playing and combat RPGs employ FPC.
This is a horrible lie. Best roleplaying comes from fallout/AoD (meaning games that are clearly focused on the character and not the party), best combat comes from best mechanics, completely divorced from you controlling a single character or a group of characters.
Giving the player access to companions and not giving them direct and full control of them was an outstandingly bad decision by BioWare
Nope, it wasnt. You know how i know this? because nwn is still alive today while nwn2 only saving grace was that someone wrote something cool to read there.
second only to RTwP implementation for Baldur's Gate.
RTwP was best decision for baldurs gate. RTS was huge at the time and it allowed the game to be embraced by an audience that simply would have not been there for a turn based game. Everything else is your own personal bias.
4. Back in the day, people couldn't believe NWN didn't have FPC.
Back in the day people couldnt believe you could play modules made by your DM with your friends. Then they couldnt believe there where persistent worlds where they could play with different people, then they couldnt believe it was so easy to make their own modules.
Absolutely no one gave a flying fuck about full party controls other than a couple autists.
You weren't around, obviously. On all public venues over the years, I've seen it consistently called for. I really don't care that you think it's just the 'Dex, because it wasn't, isn't and won't be just the 'Dex. Even now, people are calling for it on reddit, GoG and the Beamdog forums. It'll be called for on Steam, too.
Here, take a look at this and take a look at the top-rated comment:
Oh shit, 23 upvotes? alright you won the argument.
You really have no grasp of how many it would take for it to be even a meaningful sample, do you?
Those people are long-time Infinity Engine fans that have been around since Day 1. I know a few of them well.
Alright, so IE fans would have liked full party controls? color me surprised.
5. Way to ignore what I said. While multiplayer, DMing and PWs might have been the initial out-of-touch-with-your-Infinity-fanbase pitch, it thankfully wasn't the only way NWN evolved.
It evolved in the direction it could evolve. We had modules where you commanded armies.
Besides HotU and certain PMP modules (
which are not intended for MP), the hundreds of modules listed by me in
Core - and referred to by Trent as "megalithic" - speak for themselves.
I have no idea what this is meant to represent. That people used the aurora to make their own modules?
6. FPC should have been there from the start, not just afterthought trickery for companion inventory.
If it was there game would have failed. Theres too much microing from one character to ask for an entire party. And the control scheme which is fairly easy to use with a single character would be a nightmare with a party, especially considering the game was designed to be played without pause. UI cant reconcile this.
Also most people just want to larp their own character, not an entire group. Go play nwn2 if you are so desperate for full party control. The mere existence of nwn2 proves my point beyond any shadow of a doubt, you insisting on beamdog going the extra mile following a failure is p. funny tho.
Anyway, this entire argument is meaningless. You do not alter the gameplay of a classic fundamentally then try to sell it.
I can see it now, citizen kane with lens flares and slow motion, in 3D!