Cantousent

Tigranes, you just made a very good case to make the packaged campaign shorter. After all, it'll be good to see what happens in one setting. Personally, I want a 40 hour campaign, but I'll take an excellent experience I can replay. I'm kind of surprised, but I don't feel inspired to start another run of Oblivion. If I do, however, it will jump into the three run range. That's a good sign.

Sandbox just sounds so ugly. Maybe it's the cat owner in me, but I don't get a good image from the term.

A true gem. Every day is Gromnir day. Huzzah! In celebration, it's time to have some steak and sing Gromnir Carols. Oh yeah, I say we discuss the length of the game based on a twice translated statement attributed to Feargus. Better yet, is it too late to add quality content to the game? If not, then go get 'em, Gromnir. I'll put up a Gromnir tree if you do.

Okay, I did the Pale Pass quest twice, Hassat. I'll look to find your question again. I don't remember the chests in question. There're probably keys on someone around there. I don't know if it requires a key or not, but I use alteration magic to unlock chests and doors. I'm sorry.

If you do a CoC game, I'm joining.

Yeah, anti-aliasing and bloom disable screenshots.

hehehe. I especially love the PS3 v Xbox 360 discussions! Talk about shamelessly dishonest.

Yeah, I'm buying it sight unseen. I have the money to spend and I'm getting the damned game. If I don't like, I'm going to be here complaining. My favorite targets will be folks telling me that I shouldn't ever buy a game pre-order. To be honest, however, I buy a lot of games on pre-order and I almost always enjoy them. Anyhow, I'm buying this game sight unseen. If it sucks, I won't be preordering the next.

Hades, you always want to have things both ways. You beat every other game lickity split. You took 60 hours for Fallout. Now, I take a long time for every game. I try to do eveything I can. I agonize over character creation. I milk it for what it's worth. You play some games really fast in order to argue you finished them quickly. You play some games really slow in order to argue you took a long time. I like you Hades, but you have absolutely no credibility. None. You make so many contradictory statements, rife with so many opposing views, that I simply cannot take you seriously. The only thing you accomplish in most threads is to muddy the water. You're a fixture. You're a landmark. You're the ultimately manifestation of Randomness on this board. ...But, as Gromnir might say, you is nuts.

Don't let that stop you. It doesn't stop anyone else around here! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> hahahahahaha Okay, this is a snippy comment. It was funny as hell, but it was still snippy. Total comedy. I love the internet. Anyhow, I see Hades agreed that it might be early to judge. In reading the posts since I responded to his comment, I noticed that Sawyer has been saying the exact same thing since. We really don't know yet. I agree with the idea of clamoring for what we want before release, but I also think we should keep in mind that we simply cannot know the truth this far out.

No, Feargus didn't. A german magazine quotes something Feargus said, after they translated it, of course. A member of the Codex, that shining beacon of intellectual honesty, free from bias, then retranslated it into English. Pardon me if I'd rather wait until Obsidian releases the game. Or, perhaps at least wait until closer to the release date.

If Baley is going to switch, we can take another player in my campaign. I couldn't really run a game of it, but I'd really, really love to play some CoC.

Oh, I probably had a chip on my shoulder, Lonewolf. It gets late and you never know what the hell I'm going to write. Anyhow, For good or ill, we're going to have to wait to find out what the hell is going on with the game length. The previews will undoubtedly give us a clue. No matter what else, even if the reviews tend to be glowing, there won't be much hiding how long the game is. If that doesn't work for you, then you'll just have to wait. Still, find someone you trust to give you the skinny here and maybe at a couple other boards and then just flatout ask those specific individuals how long the game lasts. For whom is the exact length of the game a deal-breaker? That's not a snide, loaded, or sarcastic question. I'm curious. I mean, there are so many other factors going into the game that the length, in and of itself, doesn't present a significant worry.

Yeah, I remembered you said you couldn't make it this Friday. Anyhow, I could run a game at any time, since I can only sleep a couple hours at a time these days. You'd think I would collapse from sheer exhaustion by now. Right now, I'm pissed off about everything from lack of sleep. I swear to goodness, I'll be hallucinating soon. Anyhow, let's hope it doesn't impair my ability to DM. The character sheets are all done and we're just waiting to arrange a time when we can all meet. Frankly, this will be an ongoing problem, I have no doubt. I'll try to work with folks next week and see if some other day during the week will work. My goal is to get 20 pages written between now and Wednesday morning when I leave town. I can possibly run a game on the road, but I'm hoping to work while I'm gone. I dunno, being out of town gives me more time since I don't play games on my laptop. Reading this, it seems more or less coherant, but who knows. Any questions, let me know.

Not entirely. Heaven knows Gromnir can defend himself, but he equates a long title with value on one hand and a certain length, something long enough to include a sufficient number of choices and quests and such, with quality. In other words, it seems that his point is that 20 hours will probably not suffice to do justice to the game in terms of quality. I disagree with the idea that we should write off the game because it only lasts some 20 hours. Witholding your custom because the game is only 20 hours makes length and length alone the only yardstick (hahaha) of quality. Moreover, I agree when it comes to KotOR 1 and 2. I also agree that every game need not be the "best game ever."

Where the hell is pixies these days, anyhow?

You should only buy a game if you have a reasonable expectation that you'll like it. Right now, I have a reasonable expectation that I'll like NWN2. I'm an easy sell. I like most games I play, although some are harder to enjoy than others. Gromnir is entirely correct in saying you should not buy a game that does not include at least some features you enjoy.

Oh, be glad you have some folks in agreement with you, Llyr. Wolf says, "OMG!* I can't believe I agree with Blank!!!!11!" How about this, if you spent less time being judgemental about Blank's religion, you'd realize that you two probably have quite a bit in common. Like RPGs? Like TOMBS? Like following computer games? Hell, you're both males, probably between your late teens and mid-twenties, and you both live in the United States. Good Lord. *The G in OMG represent "God," but Lonewolf only uses it as an expression as he would not want anyone to think he believes in something as silly as God. Now, as far as hours in the game go, I really do want more. Still, the point is that I'll settle for fewer hours in a single play as long as those hourse are quality. If the game has sufficiently quality, I'll replay it. So, it really isn't a matter of trying to browbeat the developers. On the other hand, if they don't pull through, then we should put their feet to the fire. I'm serious. Unless Obsidian wants to let Bioware do the heavy lifting indefinitely, they simply must be willing to feel some heat for their mistakes. They want to close the doors on these fora? That's fine, but it won't stop folks from talking about a project as important as NWN2. If they include some short, lackluster campaign out of the box, their street cred will take a hit. Sure, NWN2 will sell well. It's pretty much guaranteed. A couple great sellers won't keep them in business forever. So, 20 hours or 60 won't matter much, but the game needs to be solid. It needn't be awesome, but it must be good. ...But hey, I'm probably not the average gamer. I don't know much about all this stuff. Nonetheless, I'm going to be here making myself heard no matter what. I plan on pre-ordering the game. I'm decided. They'll get my dime. This time.

It makes sense, Gromnir. I'm sure games will always have some area or another that seems like fluff to some players. I'm pretty forgiving, but I can almost always see areas in a game I consider "fluff." Something meant to increase the time rather than the quality of the game. Actually, I'm not pretty forgiving. I'm a lot more forgiving than most folks in these parts. As far as length goes, I wouldn't answer the question. There's no good way to answer it. Some folks want a shorter game and others want a longer game. ...And a game never meets time expectations exactly. Come on, who here has ever played a game for exactly the amount of time printed on the box? It's just nuts. Do you just go by the main quests? The game as played by one particular character type? Do you read fast? Do you like to try to admire particularly breath-taking scenes? It sounds like the game developers version of voodoo economics. EDIT: The answer I received made me laugh out loud.

Well, there are two developers here. Care to comment? :Eldar's eyebrow raised with an enigmatic smile icon:

I don't trust the source, to be honest. It seems pretty flimsy as a solid basis for assessing a game that isn't going to see the shelves for another some months. At this point, however, I'll throw out that I hope the packaged campaign lasts longer than twenty hours. If it's really great, and I'm sucked into the MP component this time, then the short length won't be as much of a concern.

Okay, I finished reading from the beginning to end. Sawyer never made an untoward comment to anyone. He was clearly a tiny bit exasperated by some fellow who complained about when the fans got some information. I thought that was kind of funny. The question here is, are some of you upset because the game, not yet released, might be 20 hours? ...Or some of you upset because the single and small scale MP game received priority over PWs? There is more than one issue here, and I'm going to make a controversial statement by saying, unabashedly, that I want good graphics. No, I don't want good graphics attached to a bad game, but the better looking game, all else being equal, is better.

Actually, I replay virtually every CRPG I play. Some of them, BG2, PS:T, IWD 1, (and probably) Oblivion, I play several times from beginning to end. I may or may not be the average gamer, but I'm the player making this post in support of his point of view. Now, Moose, I actually read through up until the third iteration of the thread to which you referred. Now, I have a long history of pointing out that Sawyer can be condescending and elitist in his remarks, so it's not like I turn a deaf ear to his comments. I cannot see where he displays such tendencies in the original thread, the second thread, or even the third thread. There might be a fourth thread, but he displays considerable restraint in the face of unreasonable hostility. To be perfectly honest, I believe your hostility is unreasoning. Yes, I am a single player fan. I am biased. I want them to put more into the single player experience than multi-player. Nevertheless, he didn't tell the PW crowd to shove it. He said it would be harder to create a good PW with the same numbe of areas currently in fashion in NWN 1. He goes on to say that including more areas in the future is a viable option. I don't want to say "screw you" to the PW crowd, even though I have never played a game of NWN 1 in a PW. I do, however, agree with Sawyer that the first priority is single player and a good MP component, not a PW. The fact is, I was dissappointed by NWN 1. I played it twice, had a good time, and tried MP, but it just wasn't the revolution I was expecting. If the single player game is good, and I enjoy the multi-player component, I might buy into a PW. I might become one of the MP crowd. Wouldn't that be good for PW in the long run? His comments, although not completely what the PW crowd wanted to hear, were actually quite good for the long haul.

I think speculation on the length of single-player isn't particularly fruitful. Feargus can say what he wants, but I'll trust it when I see it. If there is good replay value, I don't mind a short playtime. If it's boring and I only go through the game once or twice at 20 hours, I'll be irritated. ...And I'll be here complaining or praising the game, probably both, as I see fit. I'm still not going to scream over the length of a game when it's still months from release. The bottom line is, folks will go through the game at different speeds. Sure, some will exaggerate, but outright lie? You people are fools. Perhaps it's fatigue, but it's quite irritating to see people calling other folks liars all the time. Unless it's truly outrageous, why don't you people stop calling each other liars.