roshan

LOL, youre comparing movies, where you watch a story unfold, with RPGS, where you are supposed to create your own story by playing a role. You must be joking.

I just got to the 3rd level of the orc cave where you find the real emissary. I found a vein of ore here but I cant get any XP for finding it. Has anyone else had this problem? Also, is this actually the 4th vein of ore or have I missed some along the way?

Im doing a fighter(12)/berserker(7)/barbarian(1). However this build can change drastically later on. Im also considering a Fighter(6)/Berserker(10)/Barbarian(1)/NWN Nine(3).

You cant click to pick up an item and then click where you want to put them. You have to drag them with your mouse Im talking about the neverwinter button at the bottom left of the screen that you need to click. Thats a keyboard command. That is also a keyboard shortcut. You cant adjust it to 0.

I actually like NWN2. Its one of those rare games where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Lots of things. Power Attack is bugged. (I never claimed all buttons are unresponsive, just PA) You need to type the name of the game again whenever you save. Inventory items need to be dragged around. No option to reverse the camera controls. No options for reassigning or mapping keys. No option to use WSAD for the camera instead of movement. You select the characters at one corner of the screen and access their inventories at the exact opposite end. It takes two clicks to open up a characters inventory or character screen instead of the usual 1 click in most games. The delay in bringing up the right click menu. There are a lot of other examples for why the interface isnt good. I would rather control my party then rely on AI but the lack of the ability to select groups of characters and issue them commands as a group makes it very difficult and time consuming. The infinity engine games gave us options for basic AI as well as some very good scripts for different classes and playstyles. But here the only choices are between completely **** AI and no AI at all. When you are fighting a massive horde of zombies it can be very tiresome to continously direct your characters to the next zombie. It is also very irritating to see one fighter surrounded by enemies and getting killed while your other fighter character stands right behind him doing absolutely nothing. When I had Qara on scaled back casting, the supposed conservative casting mode, she kept frying the rest of my party with lightning bolts, the highest level spell she had access to. When I turned off her spellcasting she kept running up to enemies and attacking them in melee. Another problem with the game is that the characters keep running towards each other even during combat. I keep having to order them to stand their ground. And stand your ground only works until another party member is selected upon which the command needs to be issued again. The party controls, interface and AI in this game are an absolute nightmare, it may even be the worst among all the PC games that I have played for a significant amount of time.

This bothers me as well. It would also be cool if you could simply right-click the Character's portrait to bring up it's inventory panel. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yep, gotta agree on this one too. It's taken me a long while to get used to selecting the actual portrait rather than the character on screen. I don't know how many times I've moved my fighter away from a perfect doorway position because I though I was controlling someone else. Still, this is something I'll get used to over time, like the camera. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> AFAIK there is such an option. Im playing with it turned on.

Actually, NWN2 doesnt have too much going for it. Its got great graphics and music, great joinables, a decent plot and multiple ways to solve quests and situations. However its got a lot of repetitive encounters (I swear if I have to fight another thug I might quit playing the game), a clunky interface, several bugs(power attack is the worst of them), horrible party control, the worst party AI Ive ever seen in a game, is too easy for the most part, doesnt give the player any freedom to explore, doesnt let the player kill who he/she wants to, has areas that are pretty much empty etc etc etc. I think that the game really needs to be polished up quite a bit.

it's not an NWN2 option. only through your windows control panel can you set it. right click on your desktop. click the "Settings" tab. click the "Advanced" button at the bottom. one of the tabs will be either "GeForce <whatever>" or something similar for ATI. if it's a GeForce, click that tab and a little sticky will pop up on the left. the top option will be "GeForce FX <whatever>". click that and then "Performance & Quality Settings." there will be several things on the next screen, including a scroll-bar list titled "Settings" under the "Global driver settings" box. scroll down to "Vertical sync" and click it. at the bottom, a slider will appear with another check-box that says "Application-controlled." uncheck that box and move the slider to the left (or wherever the "off" position is). taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> i have an ati radeon 9800 pro and i cant find the option anywhere. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ive got the same card. You can find the vsync option at the bottom in the opengl and direct3d tabs. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> where? in the control panel? i just can't find it me = dumb <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Right click on your desktop, click on properties, then settings, then advanced, and then direct3d.

it's not an NWN2 option. only through your windows control panel can you set it. right click on your desktop. click the "Settings" tab. click the "Advanced" button at the bottom. one of the tabs will be either "GeForce <whatever>" or something similar for ATI. if it's a GeForce, click that tab and a little sticky will pop up on the left. the top option will be "GeForce FX <whatever>". click that and then "Performance & Quality Settings." there will be several things on the next screen, including a scroll-bar list titled "Settings" under the "Global driver settings" box. scroll down to "Vertical sync" and click it. at the bottom, a slider will appear with another check-box that says "Application-controlled." uncheck that box and move the slider to the left (or wherever the "off" position is). taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> i have an ati radeon 9800 pro and i cant find the option anywhere. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ive got the same card. You can find the vsync option at the bottom in the opengl and direct3d tabs.

Based on NWN2, I am willing to bet that most Obsidian devs vote for the democrats.

I dont have any problems with unresponsive buttons anywhere in the game except for the PA one. There are some buttons at the bottom right hand of the screen that allow you to turn on modes like stealth, detect and power attack. The only ones that I have used so far are detect and PA. Detect works perfectly fine without any problems. I click on it and the character starts searching right away until I turn it off. But power attack is a complete mess. Sometimes I need to click the button up to 10 times in order to enter the power attack mode. Very often the game is unpaused and I am clicking on the button with no response from the game. And power attack keeps turning off randomly. Sometimes it lasts just a few seconds before I need to try to turn it on again. The characters really do run too quickly during combat. Its a lot faster than the speed of NWN1. Sometimes they just zip accross the screen to an enemy before I can even hit the pause button. I also have a low end system and I had some bad performance issues, the game was almost unplayable even in the lowest settings until I turned off VSYNC in my graphics card options as was recommended on these boards. Now I can run the game with all the texture settings such as the quality and the filtering at their best, with the best character shadows and also with bloom, normal mapping, lights from party members and the water special effects. I tend to have a minor lag in large areas with lots of characters and also in dungeons. I cant turn on environmental shadows, and Ive also got all the shadow maps etc at the smallest size(it didnt seem to affect the way the game looked at all, and neither did VSYNC). I think NWN2 looks very impressive. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Do you have Combat Modes enabled? It may be that the AI is overriding your decisions. Just a thought. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, Ive turned off combat modes for all characters. I believe that in the itnerface thread there were others who complained as well about power attack turning off randomly.

I dont have any problems with unresponsive buttons anywhere in the game except for the PA one. There are some buttons at the bottom right hand of the screen that allow you to turn on modes like stealth, detect and power attack. The only ones that I have used so far are detect and PA. Detect works perfectly fine without any problems. I click on it and the character starts searching right away until I turn it off. But power attack is a complete mess. Sometimes I need to click the button up to 10 times in order to enter the power attack mode. Very often the game is unpaused and I am clicking on the button with no response from the game. And power attack keeps turning off randomly. Sometimes it lasts just a few seconds before I need to try to turn it on again. The characters really do run too quickly during combat. Its a lot faster than the speed of NWN1. Sometimes they just zip accross the screen to an enemy before I can even hit the pause button. I also have a low end system and I had some bad performance issues, the game was almost unplayable even in the lowest settings until I turned off VSYNC in my graphics card options as was recommended on these boards. Now I can run the game with all the texture settings such as the quality and the filtering at their best, with the best character shadows and also with bloom, normal mapping, lights from party members and the water special effects. I tend to have a minor lag in large areas with lots of characters and also in dungeons. I cant turn on environmental shadows, and Ive also got all the shadow maps etc at the smallest size(it didnt seem to affect the way the game looked at all, and neither did VSYNC). I think NWN2 looks very impressive.

In this game I have to pause almost every second because my characters power attack modes keep turning off randomly and because the stupid characters keep doing something else other than what I have ordered them to do. Not only that, the PA mode button is extremely unresponsive and I need to try several times to turn it back on. And sometimes it doesnt turn on and I click it again and then a second later it turns on and then back off again right away. Its also necessary to pause because I often need to keep on broadcasting stand your ground commands. Its really stupid because whenever you select a character, all the other characters suddenly run towards that character. There is no button to disable follow the leader mode for all the party members. If you want the characters to stop running accross the screen towards each other, you need to select them each of them one by one, HOLD right click to bring up the menu and then click through 2 buttons in order to broadcast stand your ground. 4 characters means that you need to go through this four times. Another is that combat is extremely frantic with characters sprinting accross the screen at light speed like in Lionheart. Actually, the combat is ridiculously easy, about 95% of all the pauses are unneccesary and are mostly due to these problems. My main character is more than capable of hacking through a most of the major areas by himself without any concern for any sort of strategy. Diablo 2 is much more tactical than this. Combat wise, NWN2 is nothing like the IE games, it is just a much more frustrating version of the original game.

I don't think Jack Thompson is a "leftist".. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Who exactly is Jack Thompson?

What. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There are remarkable similarities. 1. Leftists want to ensure everyones welfare and to guarantee them a minimum standard of living no matter whether they have done anything to deserve it or not. Bioware and Obsidian want to make sure that all players will win the game no matter what they do. 2. Leftists try to dictate what people need to do with their money and try to let the state control and redistribute resources and industries. They try to dictate what people need to buy. Bioware and Obsidian tell players which creatures they can and cant attack. These are but some of the parallels and should suffice for now. There are many more parallels between leftist political theories and the Bioware/Obsidian theory of RPG design.

Baldur's Gate is a linear plot. PS:T is a linear plot. Baldur's Gate 2 was a bit less linear, as you could choose to not do some stuff when it came to acquiring money to track down Imoen, but even then, the plot is still pretty linear. At least there were ways to go through parts differently, but these ways were similar to the small branches that a game like KOTOR or NWN2 has. I'd also argue that the NWN plot is linear as well, as I don't particularly care for referring "Go get 4 things, but you can get the four of them in any order you want" as being particularly non-linear. The only RPG with a non-linear plot I can think of off the top of my head is Ultima 7, where you could literally solve parts of the main plot in a vastly different sequence of events. Not optional, go wander off and do whatever you want (which I don't consider to be non-linear gameplay either, since it's essentially just extra exploration that has no bearing on the plot) type stuff, but actual plot related quests that helped unlock the mysteries going on in Brittania. Even Oblivion (what I have played so far) has a linear plot. It may open up a bit more, but all the "non-linear" stuff is just extra, not particularly related to the plot at all. As for killing innocents, I don't particularly care. I never liked the wholesale slaughter of strangers in the older games because I thought it was not particularly punishing enough. And in games like Baldur's Gate, you can just run to the temple and buy back some reputation. I'm thinking he's referring to the comment that "the game looks horrible" that you made many pages ago when you switched out of your native resolution, which I would attribute more to your monitor as well, since the game looks pretty good to me at 1024x768. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I dont really care that the plots are linear. Its mostly the coddling the players part that upsets me.

I think that RPGS moving in this direction is NOT a good thing. The IE games tended to punish people who killed innocents, but if you were careful you could get away with it. For example in Nashkel I would always kill Noober. The trick was to kill him in one swift blow without giving him the chance to turn hostile. You could also kill innocent people in isolated areas and as long as you didnt let your reputation get too low you could get away with it. I hate the fact that freedom is being taken away from the players and I despise how games like the NWN expansion pack, NWN2 and the KOTOR series are treating players like children by coddling them through linear plots. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I know it does suck. Almost like a form of censorship."We can't allow you to role play your character as total evil, that would be immoral." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I dont think it has anything to do with morals. I think its because developers assume that the common gamer is stupid(and many of them actually are). They also want to make sure that anyone who plays the game is definitely going to beat it no matter what they do. Thus they eliminate all scenarios where the player may not be able to complete the game. The other alternative, which is to make the game so open ended that it is rare that people would screw up their chances of finishing costs a lot more time and money. Thus Bioware and Obsidian have decided to railroad players into largely linear plots and cut their freedom. I dont actually mind the linearity. But I do have an issue with limiting the freedom of players. These companies have gone so far that they have actually taken away the players ability to lose the game through any method except combat, and that too very rarely, with combat being really easy and with characters automatically resurrecting after battle! Computer games are being dumbed down whether we like it or not. I think that their assumption about gamers is silly. The common RPG gamer is smart enough to figure out which characters are critical to the plot and will normally avoid killing them. They are also smart enough to know that massacreing people left and right is not going to help them beat the game. Thus the only situations where a player would indulge in such actions are if they are not interested in the plot and do not want to follow it and complete the game, or if they are just experimenting and fooling around with the game. (Ex: I wonder what this guy has in his inventory? Let me him and find out, then reload later! Ex2: I wonder if my druid is more powerful than main character X? Let me fight him!) In the greater scheme of things this dumbing down of RPGs is a part of the leftist outlook, for which I have nothing but contempt and derision as it ends up dragging the entire human race down to the level of the least common denominator.

I think that RPGS moving in this direction is NOT a good thing. The IE games tended to punish people who killed innocents, but if you were careful you could get away with it. For example in Nashkel I would always kill Noober. The trick was to kill him in one swift blow without giving him the chance to turn hostile. You could also kill innocent people in isolated areas and as long as you didnt let your reputation get too low you could get away with it. I hate the fact that freedom is being taken away from the players and I despise how games like the NWN expansion pack, NWN2 and the KOTOR series are treating players like children by coddling them through linear plots.

STR: Without enhancements, the best STR score you could have would be 25, unless you factor in stat bonuses from the RDD prestige class polymorph forms or druid wild shapes. With enhancements, it gets pretty absurd. Power critical improves your chances to confirm a crit. When you roll an attack die and it lands within the critical threat range of the weapon, you then make another attack roll. If that hits, you have actually scored a critical and get the increased damage. Improved critical just increases the threat range of the weapon. Hope that helps. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Good, that means there is no hardcoded limit to the strength like in IWD2 Im still a bit confused about criticals though So in DND, there are two rolls, one that decides whether the attack is a critical, and another one that decides whether the attack hits the target? Or is there only 1 roll normally, a roll that decides some sort of bonus to your attack, and if you roll a high amount that is in your weapons critical threat range, then you need to roll again to see if it hits a target? If this is the case, doesnt this mean that having a high critical threat range also increases your chance of missing a target because there is also a greater chance that you may need to roll twice in order to hit a target instead of once? And so(in both cases), you can roll a critical and then miss the target when you roll for the attack, which means in order to critically hit a target you need to pass two rolls? If so, which is more useful in terms of how many more critical hits you get, Improved Critical, or Power Critical? I assume it would be Improved Critical, since it is applied before Power Critical comes into play?

Regarding performance, I have a low end computer (only 1 GB RAM, and a Radeon 9800 256 mb with 1.5 year old drivers, P4 3.2 GHZ) but the game runs well on my machine with several settings at max. (Although the frames per second is most likely ****) I only have a minor lag in dungeon areas. (In some dungeons the performance is quite bad though) Ive turned on both water effects, I have textures at high, Ive turned on the best texture filters, normal mapping and bloom. However I have resolution one level lower than my laptop can support and I have all the maps such as the shadow map etc at the lowest settings(I doubt that these things really matter since when I turned them on the game looked pretty much the same). I can turn on character shadows as well as soft shadows and the other shadow setting with only a minor drop in performance, but for some reason I cant turn on environmental shadows. Since character shadows dont matter to me and I cant turn on environmental shadows anyway I havent bothered with the shadow settings. Ive already seen the characters shadows once and I doubt that they will look radically different anytime. Im going to try running the game at a higher resolution later to see what happens to the performance. HOWEVER, I had really **** performance even at the lowest settings until I turned off VSYNC in my hardware settings. After I turned it off, everything changed. Thanks to whoever gave this tip earlier on. I suggest that anyone with bad performance do the same. The game didnt look any better with VSYNC turned on anyway. I think NWN2 is a really great looking game. I am honestly quite surprised at the level of detail of the textures when I zoom in(I havent played Oblivion though so I cant really compare). But compared to KOTOR at maximum settings this is light years better even when in a similar third person view.

Hi guys, Id really appreciate some help on a couple of points. Does anyone know the maximum strength score that a character can have with and without enhancements? Also, can someone please explain to me what exactly power critical is and how it is different from improved critical? Thank you very much!

You mean using the broadcast command feature? Thats exactly what I am talking about. If A is selected and you broadcast stay your ground, B, C, D will stay in one place while A is selected. But when you select B, party members A, C and D will run towards B, and you need to broadcast the command again. When you select C, once more, A, B and D will start running and thus you need to broadcast stay your ground yet again. I want a button that will make everyone stay in one place and stop following anyone else no matter which character is currently selected.

Is there a way to put notes on the map in NWN2? If not then I think that this feature should be included in in a possible future expansion pack. I was also wondering whether we could have more detailed information in the character sheet, kind of like what Icewind Dale 2 had. Another nice interface feature would be a button that would quickly toggle follow the leader mode on and off for all characters(in addition to a selection rectangle). Right now, I can choose character A and broadcast stand your ground to characters B and C. But when I select character B, character A starts running to B! It can be quite tiresome sorting this out.