The Black Hound FAQ

[Humodour]

I don't have NWN2 or its expansions yet because I don't have a good enough computer, but BH is extra incentive for me to buy these games once I do upgrade.

[Sammael]

I have NWN2 and MotB, but I never finished the NWN2 OC and never even installed MotB. I have to do it one of these days...

[samm]

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[J.E. Sawyer]

I find it hilarious that Sawyer, basically co-leader of an internationally famous gaming company, with 100 something employees, can not find somebody to draw a sheep skin, for a pre-existing wireframe, in their spare time.

Generally speaking, I only ask people at work for troubleshooting help (e.g. figuring out why the overland map wasn't working for me), not to do "real" work.

[kirottu]

Doing sheeps isn't work. It's pure pleasure. Or that's what I've heard.

[Llyranor]

Let's page the resident expert, Nick.

[taks]

good to see you back, sammael!

 

as far as i'm concerned:

NWN2 = fun game albeit a little annoying in some respects for reasons that aren't difficult to find everywhere on the web. i've replayed it a few times. never finished NWN1 once.

MotB = really good if you turn off the spirit meter.

SoZ = annoying.

TBH = apparently missing sheep.

 

if we go by kirottu and llyranor, there's a much deeper meaning to this last one that scares me.

 

taks

[Killian Kalthorne]

if we go by kirottu and llyranor, there's a much deeper meaning to this last one that scares me.

 

taks

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCRE9qOgbug

 

[taks]

you're not right in the head, killian.

 

taks

[Enoch]

I find it hilarious that Sawyer, basically co-leader of an internationally famous gaming company, with 100 something employees, can not find somebody to draw a sheep skin, for a pre-existing wireframe, in their spare time.

J.E. is prominent in our thoughts because he communicates a lot with the fanbase, but as I undestand Obsidz' setup, he's nowhere near a "co-leader." The corp has 5 founding officers (F.U., Monahan, and the Chrisses Parker, Avellone, and Jones) who I assume hold the bulk of the equity interest. Josh is an employee with some management responsibility (and good for him for not exploiting that responsibility by asking co-workers to help on his side-project), but he's still just an employee.

[Killian Kalthorne]

you're not right in the head, killian.

 

taks

Why, thank you.

[Gromnir]

good to see you back, sammael!

 

as far as i'm concerned:

NWN2 = fun game albeit a little annoying in some respects for reasons that aren't difficult to find everywhere on the web. i've replayed it a few times. never finished NWN1 once.

MotB = really good if you turn off the spirit meter.

SoZ = annoying.

TBH = apparently missing sheep.

 

if we go by kirottu and llyranor, there's a much deeper meaning to this last one that scares me.

 

taks

 

 

the spirit meter were annoying. Gromnir goes to vault o' myrkul and applied a cycle o' eternal rest and suppres and actual rest to get our craving reduced to nil. those shadow o' the void thingies in the urns were a bit like vending machine dispensers as far as Gromnir were concerned... 'cept that Gromnir actually were getting paid with a brilliant spirit essence. whenever our spirit meter got to genuine debilitating, we would simply go back to vault and "free" the spirit o' a shadow o' the void.

 

Gromnir had to rest a couple o' times in the skien til we figured out how to get to the hag, but suppress seemed to be effective enough for the duration... were the only time during game in which we had to endure even some sorta minor spirit meter penalty.

 

is odd, but we thinks we woulda' appreciated the spirit meter more if it were more annoying, rather than less. spirit meter, as included in game, were not genuine adding another level o' gameplay 'cause it were relative easy to overcome... if you had the patience to hike back to dead god's vault over and over.

 

*shrug*

 

no doubt the developers always face a difficult choice with such features: make hard enough to be a challenge, but easy 'nuff that only an unavoidable fraction o' the purchasers will suffer actual frustration.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tigranes]

Grommy, you sort of 'gamed' the meter... not blaming you, but the vast majority of people would have had a more difficult time. Especially with all the back-and-forth you have to do in the Ashenwood areas.

 

I never understood the hate against it, it was very appropriate and well-integrated into the game and story, and provided interesting role-playing options. You were so buffed up with spells and everything as epic level characters, you didn't need to rest that often anyway (I mean, all those vampiric feasts, mass heals, Okku the bulldozer, etc).

[taks]

thought you'd appreciate that, killiian.

 

i don't really think it added "role-playing" options, it added a hindrance that was equally annoying as trucking back and forth from durlag's tower because i have more gems and scrolls than slots to store them. it was just a forced meta-game, IMO. gromnir gamed it by trudging back and forth ala durlag's tower, i gamed it by turning it off (and had a much more enjoyable game).

 

hopefully TBH won't have it.

 

taks

[Pop]

Apparently the spirit meter was much more of a hassle if you passed over eternal rest for spirit gorge or whatever it was, the one that allowed you to devour souls without a cooldown period but increased the severity of cravings. I imagine after awhile you'd be desperate to eat anything.

[Starwars]

The game is certainly more "stressful" if you take the all out evil route and devour anything. But it's also where I really think the Spirit Meter comes into its own I feel, because the connection between curse and gameplay is most definetely there.

I played an evil Sorceror and it was a lot of fun. It's especially cool as an evil spellcaster because you have to be careful with spell management. The Spirit Gorging is actually quite empowering and really makes your character feel dangerous (aside from being an epic level character of course, heh).

 

I thought the Good path of Supressing was made to easy, and I would've liked some specific penalties for a character who relies only on Supress. The character is denying the hunger through will (thus negating the need to use the Spirit Meter system to eat) which is cool, but I really felt there should've been some pay off there. There is no real thing in game which suggests that it's a massive act of willpower to Supress the hunger. For the player it's just clicking Supress and that's that. Some sort of consequence there would've been very appropiate I think.

 

But yeah, making it harder to manage would've probably made the Bioware forums explode. MotB took a fair bit of punishment from both community and reviewing sites because of the Spirit Meter. Very unfortunate if you ask me. I applaud the effort to connect the story to the gameplay and found it made the curse plot point much weightier. I don't think it would've had much impact if the game just said "yeah, you're the victim of a terrible curse, but it doesn't actually affect anything aside from when you're in a cutscene".

[Aristes]

Yeah, but that spirit meter allowed for some truly funny dialogue options. I still chuckle to think of them. I always played the good guy, but I think the funniest options were always evil and some of the best were way down the evil path. I think the good option yielded some unexpected but quite good rewards. Not only in terms of gameplay, but also in terms of the dialogue.

 

EDIT: I think I read somewhere that there were a lot of folks in the project who really wanted to follow the cutscene/backstory approach and get rid of the spirit meter altogether. This was especially true of many of the QA folks who hated the mechanic from the early days of its design. I guess it was really brutal at first and got easier, or so I've read. I think the spirit meter was plenty tough for most folks. It could be far more than a hinderance, even in it's final form. However, I think it added immeasurably to the game. By the time I was done playing MotB, I loved the spirit meter. Even if you "gamed the meter," as my young Korean friend says, you still couldn't deny its impact on your decisions and the flow of the dialogue weighed heavier when you saw the results of your various decions regarding your use of your curse. I'm not saying the meter was perfect. I don't think any such mechanic could ever be perfect. I just think they did a great job with it. Ultimately, it might have been better for them to take out the mechanic altogether and to convey the same ideas entirely through dialgoue and cut-scenes, but it was an ambitious plan on Obsidian's part. I'm glad they did it the way they did, because, unlike other games with a similar backstory, that spirit eater curse was in your face the whole game. You could make it easy, but you couldn't just ignore it.

Edited January 12, 2009 by Aristes

[Pop]

I thought the Good path of Supressing was made to easy, and I would've liked some specific penalties for a character who relies only on Supress. The character is denying the hunger through will (thus negating the need to use the Spirit Meter system to eat) which is cool, but I really felt there should've been some pay off there. There is no real thing in game which suggests that it's a massive act of willpower to Supress the hunger. For the player it's just clicking Supress and that's that. Some sort of consequence there would've been very appropiate I think.

People who played the game prior to the first big patches for it will remember a time when using suppress tipped your character's law/chaos axis towards law by 2 points. If you played a warlock, say, or a barbarian, this was a significant consideration if you wanted to keep your craving low. But Obsidz patched that out after the waves of griping battered their hull, so to speak.

[Tigranes]

I'm playing it right now without any of those things. I just wander around as I want to, suppress sometimes, devour sometimes. No satiate, no eternal gorge, no specials. And I still don't suffer. Granted, as it's my 3rd time I know my way around better, but the only way you can really suffer from it is if you (a) rest after every battle, or (b) have to trek back and forth between areas because you forgot something or whatnot.

 

It *did* add role-playing options in interesting ways - the 'evil' path, for once, was a lot more profitable in MOTB because of all the special essences you could get through devouring (as well as the full meter); it also dealt with the quesiton of telthor spirits and managed to balance it right so that you're not just treating spirits as "oh look, Meter oil" but you were made to recognise the harm you are doing to these things.

 

And yes, if you go evil and devour a lot it will crank up your craving, but that's perfectly fine. That doesn't stop you from playing evil, that is proper C&C. There are still ways to survive and even thrive after abusing your hunger, but it really starts to take hold of what you do and hwo you plan your journey, which is exactly what it should be. The spirit meter was part of a system that was well integrated into the game and made you own up to the choices you made, and that's great RP for me.

 

The alignment change does not make sense, and if it was any tougher it would have been excessive, but as it is, I think if you accept the Spirit Meter as part of the game and a part of your role-play (which is easy to do given how well integrated it is), then it really performs well. If you don't like it from the get go and just want to circumvent it at every opportunity, well, you're better off turning it off a la Taks.

[Gromnir]

damn straight Gromnir "gamed" the spirit meter. am not sure how many times we had to "trudge" back to the vault... not many. the key is getting your craving down to virtual zero... which we did with 1 trip to vault and some rest-rinse-repeat action. got craving to 0 after first trip back to vault, which we did immediately after we figured out the mechanics behind the spirit meter. otherwise, we coulda "gamed" even more tedious doing even more suppress & sleep repeats in some other locale. Gromnir experimented with this approach... sleeping near the spirit sinks (locations with static non-combat spirit encounters) in ashenwood or at the lakeshore. turns out that the vault were actually a more time efficient scenario as travel 'cross considerable distances happens in game time and not real time.

 

btw, the alignment hit for supress were, for most characters, a non-factor. the only players who got "hit' were folks who had to maintain a non-lawful alignment. so, for most players, suppress, even as original implemented, had 0 cost at all. Gromnir never played a druid or barbarian character in motb, but we were one o' the folks that questioned the enormous cumulative law injection that suppress resulted in conferring 'pon a character. do every chaotic option in game, but you suppress enough times and you still end up extreme lawful? doesn't make sense, does it. Conan, as the kinda Prototype for barbarian types, were weak-willed? do suppress enough times and that means the barbarian forgets how to surrender to rage? makes even less sense why druids suffer... though Gromnir feels that anybody playing a druid (or bard) deserves whatever misfortune comes their way. how is suppress a lawful action... even given the silly alignment rules o' the d&d universe?

 

bah. spirit meter were flawed, easily circumvented, and added little to gameplay as far as we could tell.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps if after figuring out how the spirit meter worked, and how easily circumvented it were, Gromnir had known how to turn spirit meter off, we surely woulda' done so. am not one o' those nutters that has some kinda weird notion 'bout legit v. non-legit gameplay. re-roll 200+ times to get an uber bg2 character? is not our cup-o' tea, but we surely not see as any more legit than manual change o' stats.

Edited January 13, 2009 by Gromnir

[Humodour]

I find it hilarious that Sawyer, basically co-leader of an internationally famous gaming company, with 100 something employees, can not find somebody to draw a sheep skin, for a pre-existing wireframe, in their spare time.

J.E. is prominent in our thoughts because he communicates a lot with the fanbase, but as I undestand Obsidz' setup, he's nowhere near a "co-leader." The corp has 5 founding officers (F.U., Monahan, and the Chrisses Parker, Avellone, and Jones) who I assume hold the bulk of the equity interest. Josh is an employee with some management responsibility (and good for him for not exploiting that responsibility by asking co-workers to help on his side-project), but he's still just an employee.

 

I get that. I know he wasn't even there when Obs split from Interplay, but he's still been with them as long as anybody, overall, and must have some serious connections there.

 

You can get talented people you know to help you out without it being exploitation of your position, Enoch. Unless he's a ruthless tyrant I imagine quite a few people at Obs would be willing to help him on Black Hound if he broached the matter, purely for the interest of doing something on the side. That said, I fully understand why he'd prefer the game's assets to be distinct from any ties to Obs - I was mainly just being facetious.

[Pope]

I'm currently going through MotB with my chaotic neutral swashy/fighter/duelist from the OC, and I've concluded that the spirit meter is probably most cumbersome for neutral characters. The only really viable options seem to be lawful good and chaotic evil. It's quite difficult managing the spirit meter with a craving of 3 or 4 whilst only devouring 2/3 spirits per day, since the meter is always filled up to somewhere in the middle, so you always have to keep an eye out for it, especially when traveling. It actually made me give up trying to remain neutral, so I just started devouring everything in my path. Now it isn't cumbersome at all. It's even quite cool from a roleplaying perspective to succumb to the selfish evil path as a result of being cursed. Also, One Of Many makes it all worth it; he's so kickass as a warlock.

 

I must say that I'm truly enjoying MotB. I had a hard time early on because I tried to tackle Myrkul's Vault too soon, but once I did the other quests it got a lot better. 7 levels of weapon master really helped too. I thought the OC was okay, but too linear and too Disney. Somehow having to save the world always makes me feel guilty for choosing the evil options, but in MotB I have no such remorse at all. That must be because of the more personal storyline, and the fact that there's no overdose of whiney good companions.

Edited January 14, 2009 by Pope

[Tigranes]

Well, devouring

Myrkul

shot up the craving to 100 and life is really difficult there - of course, you are such a high level by then that you can play for an hour without needing to rest. I had no choice but to use Satiate and lose some XP - it seems to reset the craving at 0, as well. Quite pleasant to be forced into the action, actually. It's the consequence of getting that essence.

 

I could never figure out how to make OoM useful. He'd always just die too fast.

[Pope]

Yea I was forced into using Satiate when I was still neutral. But I didn't really mind, there seems to be xp in abundance.

[Pop]

Satiate was kind of broken if you just levelled, because it couldn't really take levels from you, it just reduced you to the beginning of your xp bar. Saved my ass a couple of times.

 

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