20 réponses à ce sujet

[generalkorn12]

Hello,

I'm thinking of purchasing NW2 for modding purposes (always wanted to make custom campaigns!), and I've got two questions:

a) If I purchased NW2 only, (none of the expansions), will I miss out on being able to download custom campaigns/models/characters from the 'Nexus'? And, is the toolset upgraded substantally if I bought the expansions?

What sort of DRM is on NW2 (such as install limits, securom etc)?

[painofdungeoneternal]

a) nwn2 only will mean quite a few things won't work, most of the community is using all of that stuff, and you'll find custom classes won't let you level up. ( and its called the vault where everything is at )

it uses a cdkey, and the steam protection if you use that. Cd being required and securerom were removed in the final patch. You will have to have one copy for everyone playing at your residence, but the server and toolset don't really have such limitations - its just for the game client.

[The Fred]

From the point of view of someone who's been modding without MotB or SoZ, the core of stuff, you can do, and that's most things, but a lot of community stuff is SoZ only. I'd say it's more of an issue as a player, but there are thing you'll miss out on. One point to note is that a recent patch introduced an annoying issue which made the game treat most custom classes like SoZ classes and not let you play them so if you ever wanted to go into that sort of custom content you'd have issues (I see Pain has actually mentioned this).

[JasonNH]

You lose a lot of assets by not having the expansions (creatures, tilesets, placeables, textures, and all the nice SoZ goodies like overland map and party conversations). If you're a builder and plan to play this for a long time, I can't imagine not taking advantage of the cheap platinum deals out there.

Modifié par JasonNH, 29 novembre 2011 - 02:34 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Like Fred, I've never bothered buying the expansions, mainly because I when I build a module, I don't want to exclude potential players that don't have the expansions. I've looked at plenty of screenshots for MotB and SoZ, but I haven't seen much in the way of new creatures, tilesets, placeables, or item models to justify the trouble of buying them. Can anyone tell me what the expansions have, for builders, that justifies the buying them?

[The Fred]

Things like the overland map, party creation and all that other SoZ stuff which is pretty awesome. You can also use custom classes. MotB does have a few creatures and things which are handy too, given how limited NWN2's are generally, and of course cherry blossom trees.

[M. Rieder]

MotB has some very excellent visual effects. Many of the visual effects I use are from MoTB. The large ship placeable has been excellent to have. It is the only walkable ship you get that is stock. IF you want the other ships to be walkable you have to download from the vault. There are several creatures: fire salamanders (which can be changed to whatever salamander you want), you get the sea monster (which is pretty cool), you get lots of new icons for gems and various objects which are indispensible.... that's just off the top of my head.

Unless you are seriously strapped for cash, you should buy them all. Right now you can get NWN1 and NWN2 with all expansions for only 30.00 from the atari store. You can get NWN2 with expansions for less.

Plus, if you want to play almost any of the community modules, you have to have the expansion. You may not think that is important, but they are pretty fun.

Furthermore, much of the community content has been made with the two expansions in mind. This probably won't be a huge problem and can be worked around, but it will likely cause more work, and if you are building, you will want to be as efficient as possible. It already takes tons of time to release a quality module.

[MasterChanger]

The Fred wrote...

Things like the overland map, party creation and all that other SoZ stuff which is pretty awesome. You can also use custom classes. MotB does have a few creatures and things which are handy too, given how limited NWN2's are generally, and of course cherry blossom trees.

Furthermore, the playable race models that come with MotB and SoZ can be useful for builders also. Even if a builder is sticking with NPCs that don't look too exotic, some of these models can be re-tinted and re-scaled to provide more options.

The other part of this is that the general quality of the MotB and SoZ heads is much better than many of those that were available originally. The half-drow (MotB) is one of the best examples of well-done modelling, especially compared to the truly awful half-elf models. Yuan-ti purebloods (SoZ) are also pretty good, and with some tinting the scales on some of the faces are hardly noticeable. Even a bald water genasi (MotB) can be shrunk down into a passable goblinoid variant.

[painofdungeoneternal]

The only new folks without all the expansions are becoming a minority. The main way to get it at this point includes everything out of the box. Those who haven't upgraded are either those who got the first game way back when, or who are trying to cater to those who have not upgraded. The first group frankly are not those who really like NWN2 that much to begin with.

The bugs of not having everything are real issues ( lots of really wonky  things which are not worth researching due to how easy it is to upgrade ), and major content makers specifically dropped support for multiple expansions when 1.23 came out. I think only reeron and tonyk and kaedrin tried to really support multiple versions, and kaedrin stopped that when 1.23 came out. Even hellfires models require animations that came with soz ( the tyrannosaurus rex for example ), and i think the horses as they are were not in the original ( but could be wrong on that ). There are numerous 2da fixes which are pretty much required which you get in various content which would require major efforts to work with the OC only version.

At some point supporting the older versions just becomes too much effort, and frankly those who are not upgraded with everything are using a version that just is not tested. Its pretty trivial to support the game for 10 bucks ( wait for the sales ), 30 on dvd ( for nwn1+nwn2 ) and get up to speed, and the content creators would have to do heroic efforts to just make there content work with this ever shrinking set of users.

Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 29 novembre 2011 - 06:04 .

[Dorateen]

painofdungeoneternal wrote...

and i think the horses as they are were not in the original ( but could be wrong on that ).

This is correct, the official NWN2 horses were included in the MotB expansion. In fact, the amount of placeables and variations on tilesets that both expansions added is not insignificant. To say nothing of the game mechanic systems, which the latter added.

I cannot begin to imagine building without the content provided by both expansions.

Harumph!

Modifié par Dorateen, 29 novembre 2011 - 09:01 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Thanks for answers so far. I remember the walkable ship and the waterfall VFX, but the improved head models and the sea monster sound interesting. I really want to know about the apparent gaps in the original NWN2 release, the lack of different models for many weapons, the limited animations for non-humanoid creatures, few armor model options, and the general lack of non-two-legged monsters. Also, what new placeables and tilesets are available? I've seen the a-frame houses from SoZ, and the sunken ruins tileset, but is there anything else?

[kamal_]

It's just silly at this point not to have the expansions, considering you can get the whole kit and caboodle for $20, or often $10.

For Tilesets, MoTB added Sunken Ruins and Estate. SoZ didn't add any new ones, but gave a lot of new texture options. Each adds a couple hundred of placeables of all sorts, buildings, general objects, natural objects etc, many trees, vfx etc.

[foil-]

^^^That

The conversation system, crafting systems, and overland map of SoZ. It was $10 on steam all last week. Even $20 is still a steal with the core game and both expansions.

Pushing Steam for ease of install. The original versions may have been worth it for some of the extras in the box, but these compilations are generally light on extras and just have pdf manuals and a disk.  The Steam version makes the patching so much less painful.  It's probably one of the main reasons I'm finally sold on Steam after resisting it for years.

I'm not sure if Steam ever installs Securerom like the disk versions do (and then patch it out in one of the later patches).  That would require some research on your end.

Modifié par foil-, 29 novembre 2011 - 11:43 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

The money isn't an issue, it's the potential players that don't have the expansions. My two modules are among the few on the vault that are up to v1.23 and don't require the expansions. Eventually any player who likes playing will buy the expansions, but it's nice to have something up there to convince the casual players that the community-made mods are worthwhile. The platinum edition hasn't been around for that long, so there's probably still a fair number of players that picked up the original NWN2 or Diamond in the bargain bin a year ago. I do this with games I'm marginally interested in, buy the $8 version instead of the $30 combo pack.

[kamal_]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

The money isn't an issue, it's the potential players that don't have the expansions. My two modules are among the few on the vault that are up to v1.23 and don't require the expansions. Eventually any player who likes playing will buy the expansions, but it's nice to have something up there to convince the casual players that the community-made mods are worthwhile. The platinum edition hasn't been around for that long, so there's probably still a fair number of players that picked up the original NWN2 or Diamond in the bargain bin a year ago. I do this with games I'm marginally interested in, buy the $8 version instead of the $30 combo pack.

At this point I think you could say you've proved the point of xp's not required for a good module with Danaan. Then again there's Dark Waters, Moonshadows, Subltety of Thay chapter 1, Night Howls in Nestlehaven and Tomb of Horrors. Hall of Fame modules all. We're not lacking in "good modules that don't require expansions". MotB only includes things like Harp and Chrysanthemum, Subtlety of Thay chapter 2, and Trinity. If they've not been convinced of the worth of community made mods after playing those, then they're just not going to be.

[MokahTGS]

 At this point, not purchasing the full NWN2 with expansions is just a waste of money.  You can get the entire thing on Steam for $20 which is three full games all patched plus the toolset.  It might not be cheaper, but the loss of features and loss of play due to PWs now running SoZ content shoots that argument out of the water.

Value is much higher with the NWN2 Platinum ed.

Really?  Are we still discussing this?  Excluding potential gamers is a non-point at this particular time.  I can count on one hand the number of players that only have vanilla NWN2, and need to use both hands and a foot to count the number of people that play with all expansions.

Get the Platinum Ed on Steam.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Many of those modules aren't built to patch 1.23, and since 1.21 introduced some bugs into older modules, some of them might no longer be fully playable. Regardless, it's a short list, and I'd have to have a good reason to take my two off that list. Of course, if I do a third module, I'll have to get the expansions, and in a year's time the Platinum edition will have saturated the bargain market.

[foil-]

I'm a bit confused at this point. Are you and generalkorn12 (the op) the same person?

As for your reasons, that's reasonable. But I have to agree, that any people still playing and new comers who see the packages advertised on steam or atari, are likely using all packs. If the original people are really resisting expansions then they can make use of manual patching to avoid bugs from later patches.

But if you can still tell your story with just the original assets, it doesn't really matter. I do however look for SoZ features when scanning new modules.  I feel the overland map gives a real tabletop feel while the dialogue system was something that needed to be included from the get go.  Those two features make NWN2 one of the best D&D engines out there and set it appart from NWN1 and Baldur's Gate.

I'm one of the unlucky who has to pick and choose carefully these days what to play. I would love to plow through everything, but the lottery gods haven't been kind to me yet.

Modifié par foil-, 30 novembre 2011 - 04:36 .

[M. Rieder]

Also the new spells added in the expansions are excellent for spellcasters. I forgot to mention that earlier.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

I'm a different person, just curious to what new assets the expansions have for builders.

[foil-]

ah, okay. I thought it might have been your mobile account or something.