Things that need to be good enough in PE

[Hassat Hunter]

And as you probably know well, being from the TSLRCM team, the main tester/fixer... I also spend waaaaaay too much time with KOTOR2 to really see it being as you mention.

Yeah, it's definitely buggy, but you need to have bugattracting skills worse than me to get all that without someway your system is borked up.

[ImRhoven]

ImRhoven: I was a modder in NWN2 all through its expansions and I knew those patches by heart. I had the game installed on two computers, one laptop and one desktop, and I hade like two crashes in dozens of months. Those computers weren't even very good, so I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I supect your pc was clogged with malware and other stuff that drained its performance.

 

*sigh* No, it really wasn't. My PC's are always as clean as they can be, I make sure of that. Besides I went through 3 PCs in the time period spanning my attempts at playing NWN2 (the one I had 6 years ago, an upgrade from that one, and my current 2 year old one).

 

The first time I played it, just after release, I never even got out of the tutorial area because the codger that gave you the final quest wouldn't recognize the quest item you had to get from the dungeon (silver shard or something?) while it was plainly sitting in my inventory. I remember starting completely over 3 times, before giving up until a couple of patches had released. The final time I tried it (2010 somewhere) I had reached the Crossroads keep part, despite the game corrupting all my save games on me twice, (I managed to salvage them after some trolling on the internet for solutions), but I finally gave up after my save games getting corrupted a third time and my found solution failing to work. In between those attempts there were 2-3 more that stalled at various places in the game, either due to corrupted save games or me getting fed up with the CTD's and breaking quests and losing interest.

 

The most hilarious bug was, when I loaded my save game after a CTD and noticed that the annoying gnomish bard(?) fellow, who was in my party at the time of the crash, had somehow merged with his familiar (weasel?) into a single entity. His portrait was the weasel's, the stats were the bard's, the skills were a mix of both, and his AI had gone completely unresponsive. I had to reload an older save and restart from there to fix it.

 

KotoR2 actually had most of it's crashing stuff fixed for me by the latest patch, though I will always remember that one planet being unplayable for a good while because of the flying manta ray slowing my frame rate to a crawl every time he got in frame (which was always), and the horribly annoying sound of a lightsaber being drawn getting stuck on infinite loop at random times. And the game's still a horrible mess in the endgame, that was such a let down. (and, again, I'm aware that might not've been entirely OE's fault, but it's still their name on the box.)

 

Anyway, whether you had any problems or not is irrelevant, I know people who had plenty of problems, both with NWN2 and KotoR2, (my brothers, a friend, I can get none of them to pledge to PE, I wonder why?) though admittedly not as much as me, and the internet, if you care to look, is filled with people having problems with various OE games. So, I'm honestly glad for you that you could enjoy your games without problems, but you can keep your condescension to yourself, thank you.

 

I'm here now though, I pledged way more than I should have, and all I'm asking is for OE to take their time and properly polish their game before releasing it.

[Director]

I foresee this thread listing 57,500 different must haves... (once we get 57.500 backers).

[IndiraLightfoot]

ImRhoven: I feel your pain, but you must imagine my surprise at hearing that it was such a calamity for you. I've literally played thru vanilla NWN2 dozens of times with all kinds of characters. And I've also tinkered with it big time, and still no crashes as such. Now I run it on x64-system on an OS that didn't even exist back then, and still no issues. I know, of course, that there were some people having trouble with that silver shard, but I could've sworn that the bug was ironed out once and for all early on. Perhaps it's just one of those rare mismatches between code and certain computer set-ups? I' don't know. One thing is absolutely certain, however. If you install it on some other system it would in all probability run like clockwork. Obviously, there are still minor bugs in game today, but those are of cosmetic nature or mild nuisances, like your party sinking through the cobblestone as it was butter in some areas of Neverwinter, for instance, hehe. That you can fix yourself in the toolset, just change the walking mesh a bit and rebake!

 

EDIT: And not to derail this topic: Yes, I agree that it is a worthy goal for Obsidian to make this game as polished as possible at release, so sorry if I came across as snarky.

Edited October 12, 2012 by IndiraLightfoot

[Sensuki]

Combat: I have not enjoyed combat in many games post-IE, it's merely been a sufferance that you have to get through to get to the next bit of the story.

 

Character Creation/Levelling: Character creation and levelling needs to be at least on par with the Baldur's Gate games, but I am hoping it's even better.

 

Voice Acting: what little it does have needs to be pretty good to have impact

 

Writing: won't be any problems here. Avellone, Ziets and no cuts or restraints = GG.

 

Storyline: The main storyline needs to be pretty good

 

Companions: also like writing, shouldn't be a problem.

 

Level of Exploration: To whet my appetite for world exploration it needs to be at least up with Baldur's Gate 1 standards.

 

Volume of content: I want this game to take a long time to finish on the first playthrough. Assuming I read all the dialogue and do all the quests I can find.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

Great input, Sensuki! Voice-acting can be most memorable indeed! And volume of content is another thing to underline. I actually want the game to be that rich that is not fully explorable in one go. A completionist should by no way be able to. To really see all that game has to offer, you need to roll other characters and/or do entirely different things, make different choices.

[Sugarjaye]

I think 'If' Romances are included they need to be done well or not at all.

[timobkg]

For me, there's ONE thing I absolutely demand from Obsidian Entertainment:

 

A gripping, intense personal story where the character grows in maturity and power and is forever marked and defined by the hard choices he/she has had to make.

 

I can only think of a few games like these, namely Planescape Torment & MOTB. The battle system may not be gripping, the graphics may not be enthralling, it may not be fully voiced, but who cares? It's the STORY, that I'm interested in, especially if I had a hand in making it through the choices that I make.

I would add to this rich companion interactions feeding back into, and enhancing, the gripping personal story, as in PST.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love great graphics, love good battle systems and enjoyable combat, and really enjoy voice acting too, but I can get those already from many other games by many other studios. But those other studios all fall short on the story, and it's the promise of an intense, gripping, personal story that has me most excited for Obsidian and PE.