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[Arian Dynas]

 Ok, I am a long time player of Neverwinter Nights, having played the bejesus out of it for years.
Having shelved the game a long while back I got bored and decided to pull out NWN 2 again, and find myself in a conondrum.

I am fond of almost all early Bioware Games, Torment, Baldur's Gate, ect. but I find that if I just go back to them "as is" I tend to get bored because I'll have played them so many times I practically memorized them. So my usual response to this is modding, TuTu, Party interaction mods  and Unfinished Business for Baldur's Gate, Ascension for Throne of Bhaal, ect. to stave off boredom and make the games new and fresh again.

Unfortunately I seem to be failing at finding similar things for NWN 2. I am looking for sugguestions of mods, graphic improvers/ texture improvers, mods to restore cut content ala Unfinished Business, that sort of thing.

So, what sort of things should I look in to?

[painofdungeoneternal]

You are so used to other games, that you come into this game expecting similar offerings as those, well hopefully you take some time to understand NWN2 and what it offers. What you are going to hopefully realize is that those who mod this game are far less limited compared to those other games. Why do a minor addition when you can do your own epic story. This means what you usually see with a game just does not exist, but what we have in this game is the same tools the devs used, and then some.

The standard additions i'd recommend are. ( thinking you are focused on the ones for playing the OC )
Kaldors OC makeover ( puts features from the final expansion into the OC )
Kaedrins class Pack ( his work rivals that of the official classes, even though he has to fight the engine a bit, and includes almost all the bug fixes out there - his version is going to be the highest quality and most stable package available )
Tony K's AI ( note his content is in 1.23, this is just minor corrections to what the devs missed or omitted )

Those are basically no brainers.

Most of the texture additions are implemented for you inside various custom modules, even though there are some on the vault. Light emitting spell effects one might be of use, and there are a few UI mods which can help you.

But really I'd suggest you not replay the same module all the time, and try something new entirely. A mod in this communtity is not a modification, it's a full fledged module or campaign approaching or surpassing what they can do officially. Try reading this review and / or playing this module and I bet you will be impressed ---> http://tiberius209.b...sery-stone.html

And if you johnny ree's beholder i think you will agree it's the best one in ANY video game so far. It was pretty much ground breaking when it came out, and still is pretty impressive.

I'd suggest trying Zork, Trinity, Pirate Cards, or perhaps even joining a PW where they have live DM's telling stories. Well there are hundreds of options, with the best of them surpassing all of the classic games.

Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 07 février 2012 - 09:52 .

[Arian Dynas]

I'm not unused to mods, I've designed a few and downloaded quite a slew for Elder Scrolls games. Mostly why I am asking this is because most of what I come across IS modules designed by people (and yes I am trying out a few of those too, Subtlety of Thay looks awesome, though there seem to be far less of them on the NWN Vault than there used to be.)

Most of why I am looking into this at all is for a bit of nostalgia, having thoroughly enjoyed the original NWN games, and having decided to go back and re-visit them, seeing if there is anything new to be added to an old story, especially now that I have a deeper understanding of things in general than I used to,

[painofdungeoneternal]

Like you are finding,the most of the content is in modules, i listed what i'd call the primary "mods" you basically should use.

Inside the modules people have added a lot of custom content. Some even do entire cutscenes, with voice acting, and custom modeling.

No there are not what you'd call changes or additions to the story, the modules that come with the OC would have to be "redistributed" which is pretty much illegal, and the closest thing we have is Kaldors OC makeover. Basically the tools are set up so you can play multiple modules instead of having things so they add to the official one.

I would not compare what is available to elder scrolls, or to any game really besides NWN1. It's like comparing apples to oranges. You might want to check out the toolset and see what it provides, and peruse the vault modules and the rest of it . Most of the things people make are used by module makers and by Persistent worlds as content for use in telling stories and making areas.

[The Fred]

Yeah, people typically do not spend time improving or otherwise modding the Original Campaigns, because most people would prefer to play Path of Evil, Legacy of White Plume Mountain, Misery Stone, The Maimed God's Saga, Dark Waters, Trinity, Risen Hero, that Planescape one, The Wizard's Apprentice, Sheep and Stone, Last of the Danaan, or one of the many more great player-made adventures out there.

Kaldor's, Kaedrin's and TonyK's and the most popular mods for the OC, as Pain mentioned, though there are one or two others (e.g. KevL's difficulty adjuster, my own XP slider, minor though it may be, or party scripter, etc).

[kamal_]

Honestly, few people replay/mod the OC. In other games, people mod the official campaign because effectively, that's all the game allows them to do for various reasons (difficulty of modding, lack of toolset, modder mindset etc). In Neverwinter Nights, we're not forced to play in the official sandbox and can tell the story we want.

Modifié par kamal_, 07 février 2012 - 12:28 .

[Arian Dynas]

Thank you all for the help, Mostly I was just wondering if anyone had done a Unfinished Business style restoration of things cut from the OC, so apparently there wasn't yet.

[kevL]

The woeful thing is, many who are still interested in the OC see it as sort of a loveable runt. Our aspirations haven't hit the practical level of Unfinished Business ...

it's sort of like going to the moon: the first person who touches down gets to stand there and say, "oh ****, what now". There are people looking into it, but no rush

[Arian Dynas]

The original campaign is kind of a red-headed stepchild isn't it? Personally I enjoyed my Slayers-esque romp through the Sword Coast. In fact I played NWN 2 first, before the original NWN, which is why the story has kind of a special place in my heart, alongside Baldur's Gate.

[dunniteowl]

I haven't even finished the OC -- got bored. You really should just forget it and let it roam the streets like an orphaned waif. The Modules "The Fred" listed are mostly terribly AWESOME (I use the word Terrible in it's archaic and traditional meaning) and along with those I would strongly recommend:
Subtlety of Thay (it's one of the first and best mods)
Pool of Radiance: Remastered
The Red Prison
(Kaldor, correct me if I get this wrong) King's Festival
Nighthowls in Nestlehaven
Jabberwocky (*Yes, Jabberwocky!)
And I've played almost all those ones listed by "The Fred" and cannot recommend them any more highly than to tell you that they all pretty much put the OC to shame, especially considering the Developers made the toolset, giving them the Home Court Advantage for making modules.

I used to have, on the old site, dozens of signatures to apply for when the post warranted it. My favorite one to use in this particular case would have to be my own quote:

In the end, after all the programing is done, the OC is nothing more than another module made with the toolset.

[painofdungeoneternal]

Arian Dynas wrote...

The original campaign is kind of a red-headed stepchild isn't it? Personally I enjoyed my Slayers-esque romp through the Sword Coast. In fact I played NWN 2 first, before the original NWN, which is why the story has kind of a special place in my heart, alongside Baldur's Gate.

Best way to fix it is to just do something from scratch. In other games this is much harder, in NWN2 we have the same toolset the developers had so it's not an obstacle.

Try misery stone, then try the OC again. I think you will have a lot of trouble enjoying the OC, which would be a problem except there are so many other modules like misery which folks are aiming you at.

[The Fred]

I didn't think Jabberwocky was done yet.

I started a sort of "Unfinished Business" for NWN1's OC once. Well, it was more akin to Kaldor's remakes - a sort of "OC Remixed: HotU edition", though I planned on restoring a little cut content - but I don't think anyone's done much (aside of course from the aforesaid SoZ remake) for NWN2's OC.

To be honest, I typically don't replay things (BG no-reload challenges notwithstanding), so whilst I enjoyed the OC I never went back to it. The thing it has is a bit more polish than a lot of community stuff. Actual companies don't like to let things go chock-full of typos, for example. However, in terms of the storylines, creativity and innovation (amongst other things), the community have come up with some pretty awesome things.

[Arian Dynas]

Look, to explain one thing for all you fine folks.

I have tried and enjoyed several of the modules you are all mentioning. I like them. Some I still have yet to try, but I am excited for those too, the thing that really escapes me here though is, why all the hate for the OC?

I can enjoy other modules and other games with absolutely fantastic storylines, and still come back and like the Original Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign.

Why is it apparrently taboo to like the OC? Please explain this for me, for me, part of the appeal in the OC is the knowledge that it IS cliched, that it's making fun of and picking apart cliches, You become a Knight, you also lose your lands in the end. You fight a powerful ancient monster, you also were originally supposed to be crushed beneath a mountain of stone (now instead you get abducted and cut open, but meh.) You go in expecting such and such character to be dead, or suspect another is the villain when he's not. It's playing with cliches,turning them around.

One thing to point out, the same team that wrote the OC also wrote MoTB, one of the most beloved and personal storylines of all time for CRPGs. Did it occur to you that perhaps there is more here at work than you thought?

I'm just saying, there's space here to like both.

Modifié par Arian Dynas, 08 février 2012 - 02:45 .

[Kaldor Silverwand]

We are in the no spoilers forum so we need to tread carefully. There may still be new players lurking about. I thought I saw one out of the corner of my eye a moment ago.

I have no desire to bash the OC, but I don't have fond memories of it. I was ticked off 20 minutes into it when a character could not be saved regardless of your choices, and the last few minutes, which should have been the best were instead the worst of any game I have played. I played it once, swore never to play it again, and began developing my own epic story which would hopefully show what the toolset should really have been used for. (I'm still working on that.) When MotB came out I played it for about 20 minutes, realized it had all of the same things I disliked in the OC and put it away. I continued developing my own skills with the toolset. When SoZ came out I bought it just for completeness and to support the only D&D cRPG being published, and happily I found that it fixed many of the things I disliked. So I looked carefully at what they had done and figured out enough of it to implement their death system, crafting system, and party creation system in my own work, how to allow companions to multi-class, and how to let party members conversation skills matter. Then someone in the old forums, now lost in the sands of time, wondered aloud if the SoZ features could be put into the OC and I replied, "I think it wouldn't be too hard" or some similar inane comment. And so the OC Makeover was born. It wasn't done with the aim of finishing incomplete content although I did add in Nasher's missing items, but was really to change the feel and open up more possibilities for the player and make it more like Baldur's Gate had felt. At the time no one asked for new content and it was difficult enough to do what I said I could do in a reasonable time period as well as add in SoZ crafting which several people asked for. I know that romance mods were being developed (are developed?), but since I hate most of the companions and what they represent (which like cutscenes is the dumbing down and crippling of the D&D rules not for technical reasons but to serve the pre-determined plot) that is of little interest to me.

When I started the MotB Makeover I did add in a few new areas because some of the mandatory plot elements really bothered people who were playing good characters, and for good reason. Also this allowed me to salvage several characters from the OC, including Amie, Casavir, Neeshka, and Shandra. Of course I had a pretty good handle on the other changes I would have to make, but even so it took a year of development and testing. I have never played the MotB without the Makeover, and I would never replay the OC without the Makeover. To me they are essential to enjoying those campaigns.

Harvest of Chaos: King's Festival+Queen's Harvest also uses many of the same features as the Makeovers, but also provides a customizable resting system.

I hoped with the Makeovers to give people who didn't like the OC and MotB for the reasons I did a reason to replay them and hopefully get their money's worth. I think I succeeded with some folks.

Regards

[I_Raps]

Arian Dynas wrote...

Why is it apparrently taboo to like the OC?

You're not alone.  Some of us love the OC.

[Dann-J]

The OC was fine - as long as you don't mind the cliched 'ancient evil threatens the world and only you can stop it' story line. Then again, that's the basis for a lot of games out there.

I much prefered Mask of the Betrayer to the OC. Making the lone hero and the ancient evil one and the same person was an interesting twist, and allowing the player to follow either a good or evil plot path allowed for more actual role playing than the largely linear OC (where your decision to join either the thieves or the city watch makes absolutely no difference to the outcome).

I see the OC as little more than one long tutorial on how to use the game interface, and as an advertisement for the game engine's abilities. It certainly lacked the challenge factors of MotB or SoZ, where you could quite easily get your butt kicked if you chose to enter a situation before your party was ready for it. The OC portioned out encounters so that they always matched your player level (and even then, you could usually rely on the game's AI to control your companions successfully).

[Dorateen]

The experience I had with the OC is that I got the game when it first came out, and played it shortly after. So unfortunately, this was before Kaldor's excellent make-over work was even conceived.

The two mods I did use was AlanC9's Universal Companion program which allowed me to import and adventure with three other created characters. And I also made use of the mod that allowed players to level up companions as they wish, even the stock NPCs. Made Shandra a Divine Champion at one point, and Neeshka a Ranger. Grobnar a Red Dragon Disciple at the very end, just for kicks. 

The lingering design direction I didn't like, was the characters popping up automatically after combat, thus no meaningful death and bleeding system. And that only the "Main PC" could communicate with other NPCs in the game. That's just ridiculous. However, as was mentioned above, SoZ fixed these issues.

I am of the opinion that Obsidian was walking a tightrope and was burdened in some respect by modern bioware's "story-focused" fanbase, which led to the soap opera type companion situations and limited choices. I enjoyed the OC most when our party was venturing, exploring, and immersed in combat.

I'd point out, that MotB should rightly be considered an extension of the OC. It made improvements by not forcing any of the companions on the player, and providing a path to continue the story in the tradition of heroic fantasy, fighting classically evil Dungeons & Dragons monsters.

I also maintain that Storm of Zehir is the crown jewel NWN2, and opened up the possibilities for the building community. Really, the continued outpouring of player-made modules and campaigns is where all the fun is.

Harumph! 

[dunniteowl]

I don't hate the OC. I just couldn't get invested in it. Far too many out of character moments in the plot, too many sidequests of little to no use, meaning or utility -- or, for that matter, even to lighten the mood, show a different side of the world, or allow for optional paths -- for my taste. I don't hate it. I just don't think it's as superlative an offering from the Developers as, say, Baldur's Gate was, or the Pool of Radiance in the old Gold Box series. I mean, you have all this POWER to really do some new things and we got the OC. Sort of pedestrian in terms of ingenuity.

I don't say that lightly, because I know the Developers primarily spent their time making the toolset (I bow down and worship thee, O'Developer Gods for the NWN2 Toolset, warts and all) and they had to also provide a story, plot, characters, models, scripts, etc. that are far beyond my meager abilities. And the OC is not bad. It's just not superlative, even compared to other great stories by other Developers in times past using more limited tools and abilities.

Then again, I'm a pretty hard grader.

As we are in the non-spoilers thread section, I caution and admonish you to not provide plot hooks, twists and such. I'll leave it to you to either edit them or not as I don't think they are any more seriously spoilerish than can be found in official reviews of the game -- in fact, much less so. Still, one must be careful to be a good deal more vague in this section than in the OC Forum where spoilers are allowed. Besides, I haven't finished it yet, so don't spoil the end for me, okay?

I will, in closing, offer this as my own interesting point of view: No one here said they didn't like the OC, but they opined that there are other modules out there that are far superior. I hate people who claim that such praise for others equates "hating" the OC. Haters don't hate, haters claim others hate. That's what I see.

I think it's a quirk of personality in many, that when someone doesn't praise those things we think are fun, likeable or whatever, that's it's taken to be some form of personal insult (not directly, but one of those unconscious things -- Person A didn't sing the praises of what I like, and extolled the praise on something they felt more worthy; therefore, that person A is saying what I like is not good, and this equals an attack on my worldview of likes and dislikes; ergo, they "hate" what I like and the means they're hating on me -- ATTACK!!!) and then lay the claim of others hating on their likes. [Author's Note: this is not directed at Arian Dynas. It is nothing more than my experiential and stream-of-consciousness point of view on why some folks call others "haters" when there has been no hate expressed -- it applies as equally to myself as to anyone else when the perception of dislike on someone else's part causes us to feel diminished -- but that's for another type of forum to discuss at length.]

It ain't so. It just ain't so. Lots of people love the OC; to the point where they create fan-fiction and other things. They replay it as all the different characters they can imagine and just play it repeatedly. I can dig that. I just can't do it for this particular Module. There are too many other much more creative and enjoyable stories made by Community members (of which I consider the Obsidian Development team a worthy part) that eclipse the OC story and I have little precious time to play these days. I prefer that variety when it comes to NWN2.

So, it's not hate you're seeing it's just not love of what you love. They are not the same. We love that you love the OC. We also have plenty of others out there who do, in fact, hate the OC, but I believe the vast majority of them went on to other things and didn't even buy MotB or SoZ. In short, the true haters have found other things to invest their time into and don't post.

Oh, and by the way, Welcome to the Forums! Hope you stay and continue to express yourself. There are a great bunch of people here, many who have only one thing in common: NWN2. All other views, ideas and backgrounds seem to be as diverse as possible. And we do get along quite well I think. One more is always welcome.

[painofdungeoneternal]

The OC was good. However everyone learned what you can do and can't do, and even obsidian improved things considerably for each successive story they released. Like Dunniteowl said, I only said other things were better, the OC is the base upon which all that came after it was based.

[Axe_Edge]

Funny that this talk of the OC came up. I just started my yearly playthrough last night, ending after Fort Locke. I always try to get to Neverwinter as quickly as I can. That's when the game hooks me.

Can't wait until I see kevL's new mod in action.

[kevL]

good luck wit tha'

If you happen to be using the Pia as well, prepare yerself for Superhero status!

[kamal_]

Modding Advice?
Patience.

[Arian Dynas]

Dunniteowl, I respect your opinion.

I can understand differing tastes, personally as much as I love the options for character customization of companions (I'm looking at you DA2) having characters who are blank slates, or having to write them yourself is not what I play videogames for.

If I wanted to write backstories and personalities for characters and how they interact off each other, I'd work on my novel, I go to become a character in whatever setting, to interact with other characters there, hence why I like Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Skyrim and a bunch of other good games, both old and new, It gives me the chance to see the world from a new perspective every so often.

It's the same reason why I play pen and paper RPGs too, half the fun is in seeing what other people come up with, watching as personalities rub up against one another, you can't do that in games like (and yes this is heresy but...) Icewind Dale and Storm of Zehir, which I just didn't like as much.

So basically, as a mod, as a resource for modding, and as a fun little romp along the Sword Coast, SoZ was good.

But as an entire expansion? I felt a bit cheated to be honest. It just felt too bland, too dry, the characters that I even could add felt uninteresting, like blank slates, no personality to them, but what they could establish in brief cutscenes that you only saw once.

But, then maybe the fact that they located it so close to 4th ed is part of what put me off it too. I am a rabid 4th edition D&D hater. (Seriously it's the result of inbreeding with WoW, look at the guy on the cover of Heroes of Shadow, he's a dead ringer for Arthas.)

But that's just my opinion on it.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

Arian Dynas wrote...

... having characters who are blank slates, or having to write them yourself is not what I play videogames for.

If I wanted to write backstories and personalities for characters and how they interact off each other, I'd work on my novel, I go to become a character in whatever setting, to interact with other characters there, hence why I like Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Skyrim and a bunch of other good games, both old and new, It gives me the chance to see the world from a new perspective every so often.

...half the fun is in seeing what other people come up with, watching as personalities rub up against one another, you can't do that in games like (and yes this is heresy but...) Icewind Dale and Storm of Zehir, which I just didn't like as much.

People play these games for different reasons. You like games where someone else has created characters for you to be forced to interact with. You don't mind this and in fact without it you find the games lacking - like Icewind Dale and SoZ. I feel exactly the opposite. I want to pick exactly who is in my party and I have no patience with characters forced on me, regardless of how interesting their pre-written back-stories might be. When I play BG I generally keep Jaheira and Minsc in my party but the others are entirely my own.  When I play NWN I leave all of the companions behind and only return to talk to them when I have found their items so I can get their gifts. And I found the forced companions of the NWN2 OC to be completely irritating except for possibly Neeshka and I never actually need her because I play a rogue myself. If I wanted to play with people who act however they wish I would play multi-player. I think the challenge for the developers is to make companions interesting enough that you might want to let them tag along, but not make them essential to the plot that way people who dislike them can choose to leave them behind with no great penalty. The BG developers succeeded with that and the NWN2 OC developers failed. NWN2 would be a better game if the companions were optional, but if that had been the case they wouldn't have been able to use all of the cutscenes and voice-acting and plot devices they wanted to use. So they told their story and you paid to tag along. I don't think of that as adventuring.

Regards

[nicethugbert]

Make it compatible qwith Kaedrin's class Pack.