CrumpetsForBreakfast

Considering the reception of NWN EE by the community (which is larger and more active than NWN2), I think if the hardcore NWN2 fans aren't willing to pay $50 for a minor touch up then I'm not sure developers could justify the investment of making an enhanced edition for NWN2. It's probably more likely to get some semi-official bugfixes or a proper Kotor II remaster.

The multiplayer does still work but you either need to direct connect or connect from your server history tab. You can also use the Skywing client extender which is recommended to reduce walk animation stuttering, the extension uses a new master server list. Beamdog also uses a new master server list for NWN EE which seems like it was made with the technology for the replacement list. In essence it functions equivalent to the list already available but is a separate list, some servers even broadcasted to both lists simultaneously. The conclusion is that technically NWN2 already has a restored multiplayer but it's one that you can't pay extra money to use, but you can donate to the maintenance if you really want to pay someone. The other argument is that a re-release would breath new life into the game by drawing new and old interest to it. This is somewhat true but it looks like for persistent worlds more people still play the old NWN rather than the enhanced one. There are various reasons for that but eventually servers will most likely all switch over, yet the total extra players seems to be somewhere around only 10% to 30% more than before the remaster got released. Most of the NWN EE players were already playing the old one but now they're divided into two halves. I think that's the best estimation for how much an NWN2 re-release will actually improve the multiplayer community. My final conclusion is that a remake or re-release would be good for the NWN2 community and there are definitely some bugs and performance issues to fix but it shouldn't be a factor stopping you from enjoying the game or modding a server for it right now.

NWN2 was an Obsidian game and it is not likely that Beamdog will ever do anything with it or be able to justify the investment. Their people worked on the original and are intimately familiar with the technology but did not work on the sequel and are unfamiliar with it. If there's an NWN3 it might be done by many companies including Beamdog but if there is an NWN2 remaster it is most likely to be done by Obsidian.

I agree an RPG should give more options for what kind of character you play, at least giving options to play something that relates to yourself. Unless the whole point of the setting is to play a robot or mystical monster creature. It would be a lot more progressive and respectful than having yet another poorly written token gay or trans character in an rpg whose entire identity is "hi I'm gay btw" which is generally insulting to LGBTQA anyway. Playing non heteronormative binary characters happens in table top games so it's nothing new, it would just mean a computer game is finally catching up.

Where does only single player game come back from exactly? If you google you can find there was multiplayer in infinity games and also neverwinter game series where it was a primary part of the experience. A lot of multiplayer only games today have very simplified and streamlined designs that can be understood and tweaked in spreadsheets. They also rely on various addictive techniques such as what some call "loot chests" which are essentially virtual slot machines. Those are problems that need not apply to a role play game. I also don't think taking out multiplayer changes a game's direction in the way that going from 3d to 2d does. Many people appreciate multiplayer but might still buy the game regardless. I suppose you could cut many non essential features if the question is only if it's necessary to get buyers, most features aren't necessary for buyers either. In general a role playing game is always multiplayer except you can substitute primitive and scripted AI for the dungeon master. Your companions are controlled by the player, but I imagine some people would much prefer being able to go on an adventure with their friends or SO.

What will the current Wizards/Hasbro owner do with this Icewind Dale license - draw the comics? Why not sell the rights to Obsidian to make a new Icewind Dale 3, but the past games remain in their Wizards/Hasbro property and GOG will also sell old games. Is it possible to do so? Who else can develop a Icewind Dale 3, except Obsidian devgroup with a technically ready SDK for developing. The current moment is most suitable to sell this title to Obsidian, right? I'm more than sure that the current Wizards/Hasbro owners have become such by chance because of many coincidences. They need this license as the fifth wheel of a cart, no? No it is not possible to sell it because it is part of the Forgotten Realms property they own. They still sell products with that name in their table top RPG called D&D. They also do sell comics and many novels by RA Salvatore that involve Icewind Dale. It's such a key property to them and the video games came much later, they're very minor in comparison. Like I've said it's all about legal business stuff, they might get the license but I think it will be very different now since the setting and rules have changed.

you have identified a fundamental difference 'tween fighting games and crpgs. the effectiveness o' a crpg character is based on the character's stats and numbers and math as 'posed to the player's skill at hitting the correct button combination at the correct time. is precise 'cause the player's manual dexterity is not what determines the efficacy o' the crpg character which is making awareness o' the numbers important. similar, am imagining how agiel would react if the numbers were removed from his military simulation games. don't need specific ranges for fighter avionics when can simple use a range o' yucky to exceptional. flight ceiling and air speeds being discussed numerical no doubt confuses agiel and others who play such games. would be better to remove the numbers in military sims and strategy games and replace with more psychological satisfying adjectives, no? the most obvious and clear manner to express the capabilities o' military hardware is via numbers, particular in a computer game. in crpgs wherein the player's character efficacy is largely defined by computer math (whether you see the numbers or not) it is difficult to imagine an approach using adjectives which would make the game mechanics more clear than numbers. HA! Good Fun! It is the same for a fighting game, there is no amount of player reaction that saves you from making a bad move and not knowing the numbers either from feel or from examining the numbers. If you take arbitrary numbers that must be lower than 0 to prevent failure and one player has +10 and the other has -7 then obviously they will fail. This is the same as armor class vs attack bonus, or spell dc vs saving throw. A player that understands the values and picks the options (character selection in fighting game or feat selection in rpg) with better bonuses has the advantage. Manual dexterity is similar to reaction speed in an online rpg like NWN or an MMO. Players that think quickly and react quickly do have an advantage but a 25 + d20 saving throw vs fire and 15 fire damage reduction avoids a DC 25 fireball because the rpg player knows the numbers just as a fighter player knows their numbers. Obfuscating numbers with adjectives or visual representations doesn't make things easier to understand in any numerical simulation I know of. If you play a platformer and you know a jump never goes above so many pixels and an obstacle is 1 pixel higher than that range you know you can ignore it without slowing down. Difficulty is gained from hiding the numbers and forcing players to learn from experience, because they don't yet understand the parameters, not the other way round.

I've seen that too, he has quite a few interesting takes on things like padded armor being very good.

She seemed the most potentially interesting so far but I wouldn't invest too many expectations in a sequel to a product that isn't even finished yet.

It's funny people are arguing about numbers now. If you look at an alternative example in say fighting games, there are no numbers, there are only buttons and moves with various combination. They don't show numbers and instead use visual information like life bar and character animation. The games are still broken down into numbers by the players that reverse engineer it and call it frame data and reverse engineer how much life each character has. The exact same argument of learning curve is given for fighting games, which hide their complexity, because players have to understand the hidden numbers to do well. People say they're too difficult to get into, learning curve is much too steep, and too esoteric to do well. If your simulation is based on numeric values then it's probably easier for players overall to make the important stuff explicit.

Yes what it means is they can't use Icewind Dale or anything about it because they don't own it. You might be surprised but ownership of intellectual property can be quite complicated and make things impossible. For example in the movie industry three or more businesses can own the rights to some part of a movie which means they all need to agree to the terms to have a sequel made. So fans and original cast might really want that movie but the companies can't come to an agreement that makes it feasible. Apparently if you've read some Obsidian interviews before they have worked on quite a lot of projects that got cancelled because companies that owned the rights to the property pulled the plug. If you look at the release of regular D&D licensed games, with the exception of mobile games and rereleases of old games, their last game was Sword Coast Legends and before that it was Daggerdale in 2011. Both did very poorly. So the trend would suggest Wizards/Hasbro probably doesn't want to focus on that right now. It's much easier for them to let GOG parcel their old games with an emulator and make a page for that than to fund full production costs of a modern game from scratch.

I personally find visual customization of a character the most interesting and expressive part of creation. I think 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder have some mechanics that are interesting, like flaws and traits and alternative class/race features, which are excessive if you're not familiar with the basic rules. If you have played it for some years with friends then maybe next time you want a ranger that isn't exactly like every other ranger you've seen. More customization is just inherently more complex tho. I did try out Arcanum recently and I did not find it too complicated but I was more perturbed about the sexist limitations in character creation, and subsequent sexist and sleazy limited quest options. I was an elf with the sickly childhood background and I bought a gun and a purple dress at the start and misfired everywhere while my henchmen all wore tuxedos and hit things with their fists.

Using the 3.5 rules is free for everyone under the OGL license. A lot of groups have started their own publishing companies and their own products with this license, but you have to follow all the requirements in it. That is what Pathfinder is, but if you look at Pathfinder you will understand some iconic monsters are absent, so is the setting and some of the cosmology. Those are official Wizards/Hasbro identities not covered by the OGL. So you can use 3.5 rules, but you can't associate it with D&D, can't be Forgotten Realms, and you can't call it Icewind Dale. Since Icewind Dale is actually a place in the Forgotten Realms, it's under the product identity license. The same thing is probably why Numenera was called Torment: Numenera instead of Planescape: Torment 2 or Planescape: Numenera, because they can't get a license for the Planescape setting. Plus it's much easier negotiating with Monte than with a room of 20 Hasbro lawyers. So as Fardragon says, their solution is called Pillars of Eternity.

The point is that as far as Icewind Dale is concerned Obsidian doesn't get to make any of those decisions. Wizards of the coast makes those decisions, it should seem beneficial to Hasbro. Currently all the material in both rules and setting is outdated. It is not a question of the newer being better, it is a question of what they're selling now isn't that old stuff. The only way I can see the old stuff getting new life today is because it's incredibly low investment with some returns. People still criticize Beamdog but all things considering I think they're doing pretty good with what they have.

It isn't a case of role based characters "initially seeming" more constricted than class based characters. It is simply a fact by virtue of a roles tightly defining what a character can and cannot do whereas a class is just a package of stuff you start with. The inception of role cased systems for the MMO genre brought about the so called Holy Trinity which is a rock-paper-scissors style concept that ensures a tank needs a dps and healer to succeed, a healer needs a tank and dps, and a dps needs a tank and healer. From a historical view the MMO industry has been stuck in this design pattern ever since with very few variations. On the other hand D&D and other games have had things like multiclassing since decades long gone. There is very little restriction in a table top role playing game, a character with fighter class can be a sniper, can be a socialite, or like Indiana Jones, or the modern concept of a "tank" character. Class systems just give you a base package and you fill in the details as much as you like, AD&D did this with proficiencies and non combat profiencies among other rules like class kits and feature buy systems. D&D 3.5 did this with an extensive skill list and near limitless feat list, flaws, traits, alternate class features, and beyond limitless multiclassing options. The only limitation in computer games is due to the limit of options developers make available, and I don't see how an alternative system increases developer productivity and reduces costs. They also had story heavy progression rules like in 2nd edition AD&D when a druid would stop leveling until they could succeed or defeat various ranked druids, eventually they could rise to be the boss druid or they could step down from power and become the hierophant druid. In D&D 3.5 the designers also specifically added tests and organizations which would guard access to certain prestige classes but also feats. So those features have always existed but if people didn't use them that's kind of their own fault. It's not like you can say it's never been done professionally before. There's a wealth of material out there now, all easily accessible, so anyone interested in design can easily find out what designers came up with before.