roshan

How can there be a sense of claustrophobia in NWN2 when many of the dungeons have massive chambers and wide sprawling hallways? IWD nailed claustrophobia down.

DND doesnt have night elves.

I meet the requirements, therefore, the game should be playable on my machine.

Yesterday, I tried a little experiment. I created a blank module and started a game. OMFG 20 FPS - the first time I have ever seen the game actually perform smoothly. I found out that at such high FPS levels, normal mapping and bloom actually impacted my frame rate. Turning each on increased frame rate by 2.5. Oddly enough modifying resolution had no impact on my frame rate. As usual texture settings were useless. I didnt bother messing with shadows as Im pretty much used to having them off now. So I was getting a decent 25 FPS(max, occassionally dropped down to about half of this, seemingly randomly). I opened the map editor and put in 20 chests. When I started the module again, FPS immediately dropped down to 18 at max. A 25% FPS drop for a bunch of chests? No wonder my FPS in the OC maxes out at 5.

The dragons were a joke. I went through both fights without anyone going down... and I didnt even use crafting in my game. The fight with the dragons and the fire giants was a massacre. blah blah blah WOW you're all so freaking hardcore! I couldn't beat the first god damn dragon even though i brought the setting down to easy and reloaded like crazy. It just wasnt possible with the gear and the people i brought with me. it might be that I autoleveled all the way and never bothered to craft anything but the game was ****ing hard, playing on hardcore setting wasnt even an option for me. i think i'm a fairly average player and the game difficulty was perfect for me, even assuming i'm somewhat below average then moving the slider to hardcore would most certainly be enoguh to challenge the normal guy playing the game (as a side note i only reloaded once or twice playing NWN) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Dont use auto levelling. You will end up gimping your character. Build one for yourself.

I have never used resurrection except perhaps for the novelty of trying it out a few times in BG1. It is utterly idiotic that in NWN2 resurrection is forced on your characters.

If you can "win" a fight with half your party dead, and then have them autoresurrect, then the fight was not difficult irregardless of whether you lost any party members. Whether a fight is difficult or not must be judged using the games criteria for victory(which is what actually matters), not your own personal ideas. BTW there is a very simple solution to disease in NWN2. Let an enemy kill the character, when the character resurrects, POOF! Good as new. Not sure whether this affects level drain as well, but I never had to bother curing level drain or disease for any of my characters.

I know that the reason is to prevent clutter, but the fact remains that the end result is the same: being limited to just a few threads. ************************************************************** Uploading an attachment with some thoughts on the interface over here since images cant be uploaded to the Bio boards.

I thought that PST had a pretty good alignment system. Obviously it was pretty much the same as any other DND system but the distribution of law, chaos, good and evil points made a lot of sense, so I think it implemented it quite well. The Fallout alignment system was not well implemented. It was very easy to accumulate lots of good karma, however accumulating bad karma was very difficult.

I am quite sure that the IE games automatically created screenshots in the game directory.

In case you havent noticed, all topics regarding NWN2 except for a few are being locked by the mods, irregardless of the thread starter or the content.

BTW I can see the point that any fight where a party member is lost is a difficult one. However, I equate difficulty with failure, and having to try hard in order to succeed. Whether you lose no one or your entire party except for 1 character, the end result is the same as your dead characters will automatically resurrect. So there is no difference and either way you have succeeded. A real difficult battle is one where failure is possible, a battle that you need to play multiple times in order to achieve success. The one and only battle in NWN2 where I actually failed and had to reload was the battle with Zaxis. In NWN2 I eventually got tired of the fighting the clumsy interface and the awful AI and towards the end just put my casters on powered casting mode and let the AI manage my fighters as well. I fought through the fire giant area without ever even selecting any of my characters except the PC. Khelgar and my PC were pretty much invincible in melee and took more damage from Sand and Elanee than the giants. Neeshka on the other hand kept dying from Sand and Elanees AOE spells. I think Elanee may have also killed Sand once, or maybe it was the other way around and Sand killed Elanee. It was only during the final battle that I actually gave the NPCs commands. I sent my PC to kill the giant king, set Khelgar against some giants, set Neeshka against another giant and ordered Sand and Elanee to cast spells at the dragon. After the giant king dropped dead, I sent my PC to fight the dragon and to my surprise after just a couple of hits the dragon dropped dead as Elanee ice stormed him. That battle was such absolute crap, it was perhaps the most anticlimatic battle I have ever played in any game. I dont know about you guys but entire areas of fire giants that can be cleared by my party without any input from me does not count as difficulty. In fact during the early areas of the game the only thing that led to battles feeling "difficult" was my excessive micromanaging, a habit from the IE games - which in NWN2 was extremely difficult due to the interface, and compounded due to my framerate problems. As soon as I started relaxing and decided to play NWN2 as NWN2 and not another IE game, battles became easier than eating cheesecakes.

Just a small correction, but petrification is one of the effects of Prismatic Spray, and the only one triggering in the non-1.03b version of the game. Petrification, though, does go away similarly to death. I learned this when Neeshka failed a Will save vs. confusion, attacked Sand, and Sand hit her with Prismatic Spray. It's happened a couple of other times since then. The petrification effect seems to last longer than death, though I might have been kept in combat for a while and not known it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> good to know. we never seen a baddie use any disitegrate or prismatic spray effects, so we assumed they were not in oc bag of baddie weapons. though it is kinda lame that petrification wears off, just as does death. btw, we would post more at bio regarding nwn2, but derek french and the mods there seems to have decided that people who simply wanna complain 'bout game bugginess or performance must needs do so in a specific thread. get locked otherwise. got nothing 'gainst lockage when a guy wants to spam board with "I HATE OBSIDIAN!" posts, but lock any thread started to complain 'bout game is somehow more than a little disturbing to Gromnir. am hopeful that obsidian not take a similar approach in this place. you can complain, but all complaints must be type-written and deposited in the round file next to josh's desk? that would be unfortunate. HA! Good Fun! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well it is pretty much the same over here as all NWN2 discussion is being limited to just these 2-3 threads by the mods. Start a new topic like Soulthief did and it gets locked. I can see that there may be a reason for this, that this is a general RPG discussion forum and therefore they dont want too many NWN2 topic here, but a spade is still a spade and the end result is a restricted environment just like the Bio forums.

As a character, Irenicus was decent. Perhaps better than Sarevok. But as a villain? No, I dont think so. Villains are characters that should be feared or at the very least hated. I never feared Irenicus - I believe that there were multiple times where the PC fought him in the game and beat him. Irenicus never incited any hatred either - he was a pathetic and pitiful character.

I do't recall charm wearing f when the caster is dead. But I could be wrong on this. I agree that stoneskin was only a nuisance and nothing else though. There is Disintegrate in the game as well, although I'm not sure if any enemy ever use it. But I absolutely hate spells that kill without resurrection in the IE games so I'm fine with that one being nerfed. Worst of all was Imprisonment. I really hated that spell. I can live with no auto-resurrect (like I said it's only a preference), but if so let the characters that go down actually be resurrectable. Or remove resurrection completely from the game. (strange as it may sound, that last one is actually my favorite option, since I always felt resurrection as it works in D&D is a bit retarded) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Even if dire charm didnt wear off after the succubi died, it did wear of eventually, and the game didnt end when you were only left with only dire charmed characters. So the solution was always to simply let you dire charmed characters kill your uncharmed characters, and then wait till the dire charm wore off and all your characters resurrected. For me, whether a character was killed with or without the ability to be resurrected, it didnt make a difference since I never bothered with the spell. Any game with resurrection is going to be broken as it will become too easy. NWN2 doesnt even give you the option of not using resurrection - it actually forces resurrection on you!

The dragons were a joke. I went through both fights without anyone going down... and I didnt even use crafting in my game. The fight with the dragons and the fire giants was a massacre. Yesterday I created a custom map and my level 20 character killed 2 dragons(one black and one red) in melee - without using healing. The only time I ever felt threatened was when one of the dragons stunned my character and they were beating on me. If my character had UMD for the sun soul boots and a tower shield plus 5, the dragons wouldnt even have been able to touch him. In the IE games there were battles and areas that were tough enough that you had to seriously consider whether to reload and try again or continue on with a member missing - or go through the trouble of going to a temple and returning. And there was also the consideration of the money that you would have to spend. In any case I never used resurrection in the IE games - I always reloaded. Fighting through battles with everyone alive was the challenge of the games. NWN2 would have been ridiculously easy even without auto resurrection. Most of the time you are just hacking and slashing through melee enemies who are of much lower level than your characters. Auto resurrection turned the game into a complete joke. The first time I remember fighting succubi was in the place where I first fought zaxis. In that area none of the succubi used dire charm. The area was easy until the final battle with zaxis which was the games one and only challenging situation. (except for the final area, which I have not played yet) I also remember fighting succubi in another area, I believe before fighting the githyanki leader, and that area was also easy, just had to chop away. Now some of my party members may have become dire charmed but as soon as the succubi were killed, the dire charm wore off. Thus if anyone was dire charmed you just had to kill off the succubi quickly so dire charm was never an issue. Stoneskin was never an issue with my main characters huge damage output. The only time I remember dire charm ever being an issue was in Ammon Jerros haven. First Khelgar got dire charmed. I killed off Khelgar with my PC. Then my PC got dire charmed. My PC then killed off the rest of the party. When his dire charm wore off, he finished off the succubi, everyone resurrected, I hit the rest button and everything was good as new. Even when there is a potential for a challenging situation, it is lost due to auto resurrection, which is a complete joke... Obsidian had to be insane to come up with such idiocy.

Im quite sure that there is no difference. I havent monked Khelgar yet Ive gotten dialogues where he is referred to as a monk. Before, someone mentioned that his dwarven character got a dialogue in the Ironfist stronghold where someone mentioned "He may be a dwarf, but hes no Ironfist". Well, my wood elf also got the same dialogue therefore I assume that it referred to Khelgar. I think there is a tendency for people to imagine/assume that the game is a lot more reactive to the players character creation decisions than it actually is.

You can spar with Nevalle for a combat bonus? Where? In the keep?

I agree with you. Another major problem is that there is often no rational reason for why the NPC is in your party. Take Zhjaeve accompanying you to the spirit dragon, for example. The only thing she did was make a couple of stupid comments on the way. Why the hell did we have to take her along? Obsidian has really screwed up this game.

Why are these boards so prudish? Even the underwear that Sargallath posted in the other threads was pruned. Also, any discussion which gets even slightly warm(in the form of heated debates) gets locked. Of course its definitely good that anti Obsidian statements dont get censored at these boards.

Does anyone actually play a female dwarf or half orc?

In the OC? Yes, far too late. The OC is a very tightly-wound clump of stuff. Non-linearity and the ability to attack/kill any old shmoe wandering around are things that designers have to accept and accommodate from the get-go or they wind up going, "OH WAIT THAT BREAKS A THOUSAND THINGS DURRRR." as soon as they allow people to do so. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but when it comes to D&D games, I'd rather approach them as personal projects. If we do an expansion, I won't be working on it. That said, there are a lot of other designers who recognize big flaws in the OC, so it's not like I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If there are many designers at Obsidian who consider the OC flawed, how did the OC come to be that way in the first place? Was it due to some misguided idea that all RPG campaigns have to be done like KOTOR? That being said, I do hope that you get the chance to do design some hardcore PC RPGs - if you are still interested in that sort of thing after Jefferson and Van Buren. And hopefully Obsidian hasnt completely ruled out the possibility of making such RPGs in the future.

Yeah, but its sort of a gaming laptop.

Obviously not. Question: Is this the minimum requirements that Obsidian gave or what Atari printed on the box, because the two are not the same. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My specs: 256 MB Radeon 9800 Pro Pentium 4 3.2 ghz 1 GB RAM

I don't think those are silly complaints. Freedom to explore and freedom to be a bloodthirsty idiot (no, seriously) are both very valuable in CRPGs, I think. I wish the NWN2 OC were more "open" on many fronts. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I hope you get to design the NWN2 expansion packs campaign.